Chesapeake, VA Public Health Rules: Syringe Disposal (2026)

Chesapeake City Code Sec. 46-11 makes it unlawful for anyone to possess a hypodermic syringe, needle or any instrument adapted for injecting narcotic or dangerous drugs, unless a licensed medical doctor or osteopathic physician has issued a certificate authorizing that possession within the preceding year. The ordinance targets injection paraphernalia tied to illegal drug use rather than medical equipment generally: subsection (b) carves out manufacturers, wholesalers, jobbers, licensed medical technicians and technologists, nurses, hospitals, research and teaching institutions, clinical laboratories, doctors, osteopathic physicians, dentists, chiropodists, veterinarians, pharmacists and embalmers acting in the normal course of their work, along with people who need self-injection for diabetes, asthma or another medical condition.

Subsection (c) places a separate duty on anyone lawfully holding syringes and needles: disposal cannot be done in a way that leaves the instrument usable by an unauthorized person afterward, meaning sharps have to be rendered unusable or placed where someone else cannot retrieve and reuse them. The section cross-references the city's health and sanitation chapter (ch. , the state controlled-paraphernalia statute. Chesapeake has no needle-exchange or harm-reduction siting ordinance anywhere in its municipal code, so any such program would run under state authorization rather than a separate city permit process; nothing in Chapter 46 addresses program siting locally. Enforcement runs through the general possession prohibition in subsection (a), which the Chesapeake Police Department applies citywide.