Chaco Canyon Organic Cafe in Seattle’s University District is defending the used needle bins in its bathrooms after an online photo of the containers rubbed people the wrong way.

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These are secure containers where people can dispose of used syringes safely. In short, the restaurant would rather have a clean and orderly bathroom amid the ongoing heroin crisis.

I’ve recently changed my mind on this exact issue.

It was about year ago that I went into my local QFC with my son. We couldn’t get into the bathroom because it was closed.

I went to talk to the assistant manager about this. The bathroom was closed because they kept finding used syringes in there. They also had an incident where they found some feces in the bathroom — what looked like feces was smeared on a mirror.

They were sick and tired of cleaning up the needles.

The bathroom reopened a few months later. You have to get a key now to get in. They also added needle bins. When I saw this I said, “I can’t believe that this is going on in my neighborhood QFC; in the same bathroom where I would go and change my son’s diaper. I can’t believe this is happening in my neighborhood.”

I was mad. But not long after that — at the same QFC — something else happened.

My son and I were in the parking lot when he picked up a needle. It was a needle that didn’t have a cap on it. I froze. I was horrified. I was so upset. I looked around on the ground and I didn’t see any other needles, but I saw plenty of needle caps.

And I’m not alone in this experience. Stephanie at MyNorthwest said the same thing happened with her child.

That got me thinking, would I rather have my son pick up a dirty needle in the parking lot, or would I rather have somebody given an opportunity to go into the bathroom, be conscientious, and drop that needle off? I prefer the latter.

We are not doing a very job in the Pacific Northwest, or the country, in dealing with this heroin epidemic. We have a president who has said it’s an emergency but won’t spend the necessary money to find a solution. You still see a lot of people living under bridges and overpasses in our community — many of them are connected to heroin.

Even if someone woke up today under I-5 or the Emerson overpass and said, “I want to get clean and sober today,” there are only a handful of beds where they can go an get treatment. Snohomish County opened up 65 beds and I give them credit for that. But it’s not enough. We have thousands of people in crisis right now.

Until we get to a point in this city, and in this country, where we provide long-term care, we have to get used to the fact that heroin is going to be in our neighborhoods. Until we provide a place where people can kick a heroin habit, it’s going to be in our parks. It’s going to be in our parking lots.

I would rather have somebody take that syringe and stick it in a bin at QFC or at a restaurant like Chaco Canyon than have my son find it on the ground.