Boofing as a Tax Exempt Purpose

Maine Access Points,  a tax-exempt organization way up in Portland, is teaching addicts how to Boof.  Boofing, I have learned, is the term used to describe consuming fentanyl, heroin, or other illegal drugs by injecting those substances up your butt with a lubricated plastic needleless syringe. Apparently, the jury is still out on whether boofing -- aka "booty dumping" -- is safe, or just safer than needles.  Addiction is one of the worst kinds of sadness and tragedy.  But I find the boofing part hilarious in a juvenile, Saturday Night Live kinda way.  And intriguing too.  That's gotta be a pretty intense high, come to think of it.  Here's a bit from the Maine Wire:

Maine’s taxpayer-funded “harm reduction” specialists call it “boofing” or “booty dumping,” but those are just pleasant euphemisms referring to the practice of sticking heroin, fentanyl, or meth up your butt.  Maine Access Points, a taxpayer-funded nonprofit based in Bangor, as well as the city of Portland’s city-run needle distribution center are both offering extensive how-to guides and — even anal injection kits — to help drug users squirt narcotics into their anuses. In Portland, the “Portland Public Health Boofing Kit” comes with a needleless syringe and an informational flyer explaining the proper technique for putting drugs up your butt.

The article contains a picture of the boofing flyer in case you are interested.  I have spoken often on these pages about safe injection sites, all to no avail because federal law still precludes tax exemption for Safehouse, a Philadelphia organization that’s been trying to open and operate clinical space where junkies can safely consume illegal drugs.  Rather than in Kensington, a working-class neighborhood that is also a notorious open air drug market. People inject drugs or nod off with needles sticking out of their arms there all the time.  As kids walk to school or play outside nearby, and the cops avert their eyes. 

Our approach to illegal drug use has never made any sense. The thing stopping Safehouse is a federal law designed to keep trap houses from springing up in neglected neighborhoods, hastening inner city blight. Yet the law is relied upon to prevent Safehouse from bringing junkies closer to treatment and recovery. So instead, junkies set up and cops tolerate outdoor drug camps near working class neighborhoods filled mostly with the politically disenfranchised.  Because trust me, nobody will ever see an unmitigated open air drug market near a middle- or upper-class neighborhood.  If one persisted despite law enforcement’s best efforts, you better believe Safehouse would be a welcomed alternative.  It’s not always racial but it’s definitely about the Benjamins.

The post is about using the nonprofit sector to effectuate positive societal change and giving nonprofits the legal space in which to experiment with safe or safer alternatives. The approach to safe injection sites proves the point.  Nothing else has worked to stop drug abuse despite trillions of dollars. People are going to use, and some will get addicted. And all that use and addiction is generating an expensive criminal-industrial complex, parts of which would disappear by decriminalizing certain interventions.  And allowing tax exemption for organizations experimenting with nontraditional interventions.  Why not cut nonprofits some slack when they are desperately seeking solutions?   

Let nonprofits teach proper boofing if that might help. Things can't get no worse.

darryll k. jones