Pubdate: Tue, 27 Jan 2004 Source: Eagle-Tribune, The (MA) Copyright: 2004 The Eagle-Tribune Contact: http://www.eagletribune.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/129 Author: Shawn Boburg Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?137 (Needle Exchange) JUNKIES' 'HOW-TO' HEROIN KITS LITTER ALLEY The surprise was a note inside the bags saying that they came from a program bankrolled by the state. The Massachusetts Department of Public Health's needle-exchange program, in its 10th year, was conceived as a grass-roots way to stem the spread of AIDS and hepatitis C from sharing dirty needles. But community leaders have balked at the program, opponents charging that it encourages drug use. Only four cities have permitted it within their borders. The nearest to Lawrence is Cambridge. How these "how-to heroin kits," as police call them, ended up in an alley in Lawrence over the weekend and why they included rubber armbands and "cookers" -- virtually everything a drug user would need besides a cheap dose of heroin -- baffled Lawrence police, who called the completeness of the packages "disturbing" and vowed to investigate who left them there. Police Chief John J. Romero said detectives will look into whether someone associated with the state's four pilot needle exchange programs in Boston, Cambridge, Provincetown, or Northampton purposefully left the kits in Lawrence, trying to increase access to clean needles among the city's heroin users. The four needle exchange centers are nonprofts funded by both the state and private sources. "I understand the intention is to stem the spread of AIDS," said Romero. "But I question how so many needles could have found their way into an alleyway where someone -- a child - -- could have picked them up. Somehow someone dropped the ball, and our intention is to find out how they could have lost control of this." Kevin Cranston, acting director of the HIV/AIDs Bureau of the state's Department of Public Health, which allotted $900,000 of its 2004 budget to the four centers, said the note inside the bags is "absolutely not official." "Anyone with a word processor could have created this," he said. The blue pamphlet reads "You are now registered in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts Needle Exchange Program." It also has a description of the state Supreme Judicial Court's Dec. 2002 decision making it legal for participants in the needle-exchange program to possess needles in other communities besides the four participating cities. The note says needle-exchange "identification cards" can be mailed to participants by calling the four needle-exchange centers, and all four phone numbers are listed on the pamphlet. And "if you have been arrested, a letter will be mailed or faxed to you or your lawyer to have your syringe possession charge dismissed in court," it reads. The note is also translated into Spanish. The investigation into the source of the paraphernalia comes amid calls by needle-exchange program advocates to increase access to clean needles in communities like Lawrence, where AIDS is spreading through injection drug use. The state Legislature will hear testimony tomorrow on a bill that would allow hypodermic needles, the possession of which is now illegal without a prescription or registration in a needle-exchange program, to be bought over the counter at any drug store in the state. Massachusetts is one of only four states where a prescription is needed to buy a hypodermic needle -- the others are California, New Jersey and Delaware. Monique Tula, director of Harm Reduction Services in Cambridge, which runs the needle exchange program there, said, "I can tell you those baggies didn't come from the Cambridge program." "We can't go outside Cambridge; people have to come to us," she said, adding that they get visitors from Lawrence, Lowell, Framingham and even New Bedford. But she added: "In terms of what was in the bags, that sounds like traditional harm reduction materials that we distribute to people who are actively using. "I have no idea how they got there," she said about the stray cache. "It's a concern because our services come with human contact. By having someone present (when participants pick up the kits), it increases chances of recovery." Some 11,280 people are currently enrolled in the needle exchange program, and state oversight of the four centers is limited to guidelines laid out in a contract between the Department of Public Health and the exchange centers, Cranston said. One of those guidelines is that the centers require participants to register and offer them access to substance abuse programs when they visit the centers, Cranston said. "There's a very strong expectation that every effort be made to enable access to treatment," he said. The particular kits Lawrence police found, whatever their source, go "too far" in supplying drug users with the necessary tools to use heroin, Romero said, especially given the recent spike in use. Hospitalization statewide due to opiates such as heroin, morphine and OxyContin soared 230 percent in the 15-24 age group between 1996 and 2001, according to the Massachusetts Department of Public Health. In Essex County, meanwhile, heroin has become cheaper than a six-pack of beer and pure enough to be smoked or snorted. "We're trying to clean up this area of the city, and to me, I'm taken aback by the fact that the whole process is made available," Romero said. "I've been in the business 35 years and I've never seen anything like this." But program officials, while denying that they were the source of the bags, said "cookers" and plastic armbands are also potential disease carriers. "Hepatitis C is a hardy virus that can survive outside the body in dried blood so if people are sharing anything the possibility of contracting the disease is there," Tula said. The needle-exchange programs provide heroin users an unlimited number of syringes, but require visitors to exchange the same number of dirty needles in return, so it is possible one person could walk out of an exchange with the number of needles found in the Lawrence alley. That may seem shocking to some, but Tula said clean needles are a tool of survival for addicts, who shoot up three times a day on average. Needle exchange advocates say they should use a clean needle every time. "I don't know the answer to helping people get off dope, but while struggling with recovery, it's important that these people have access to the one tool that will help keep them alive as they move to recovery," Tula said. "That one tool is clean syringes." - --- MAP posted-by: Derek