Pubdate: Fri, 11 Jan 2008
Source: Victoria News (CN BC)
Copyright: 2008 Victoria News
Contact:  http://www.vicnews.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1267
Author: Keith Vass
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?137 (Needle Exchange)

REGAINING RESPECT

Drug Users Take Responsibility For Discarded Needles

The street outside is dark as lights come on inside the little office 
across the street from the police station on Caledonia Avenue. It's 7 a.m.

Five stick-on letters clinging to the front window spell out a single 
word, SOLID.

Inside, two men are getting ready for a few hours' work. Both are 
drug addicts - one is recovering from an addiction to crack cocaine, 
the other still shoots himself with heroin every morning.

Those five letters stand for the Society of Living Intravenous Drug 
Users. Its members, all current or former addicts and many of them 
homeless, banded together to provide peer support to people living 
with drug addictions, to try to stop them from dying from their addiction.

For the last four months, SOLID members have been out every morning, 
picking up used needles from the street, giving out clean ones and 
guiding people to health services.

Since September, when they got funding from the Vancouver Island 
Health Authority to start their street-based needle exchange, SOLID 
has picked up 26,000 used needles and given out around 5,000.

As he drinks one more coffee in the office, waiting for enough 
daylight to work, Craig Ballantyne, a SOLID board member and 
recovering crack-cocaine user who took part in the 2006 squat of the 
Janion Building on Store Street, says being drug users and knowing 
the streets means SOLID can reach places and people other services can't.

"We generally get a lot more respect on the street because people 
know us, they see us, they know we're not up to anything," he says.

Getting on the street early means getting the needles, or 'rigs' 
before the public has to deal with them. It also means they can get 
clean needles into users' hands when no one else can, says Randy, 
another SOLID 'rig-digger.'

"That time of the morning it's hard to get a rig. The drug stores 
aren't open, the needle exchange isn't open, no one's open. We're the 
only guys in town to get rigs (from), right?" he says.

"It makes a huge difference to some people, the way I look at it. 
Where you've got drugs and you've got no needles, you're going to use 
whatever you can find, man, because you want to get it the drugs in 
before the cops get you, that's about it. That's the way it is on the street."

"Alright, it's getting light. Let's get going," says Craig, as the 
clock ticks past 7:30.

Over the next two hours, Craig and Randy walk a four-kilometre route, 
covering downtown's drug-use 'hotspots,' the places they know people 
will inject themselves, more often with cocaine than heroin.

The night before was cold, and with the Extreme Weather Protocol in 
effect, not as many people or needles are on the street as some days, 
Craig says.

They'll pick up 33 needles this morning, and hand out just two. They 
also pick up a coffee can filled with 162 needles from the Our Place 
drop-in space on Johnson Street. All the needles will be incinerated.

There are a lot of motivations for them to do the work. It's a little 
income - with funding from VIHA, SOLID pays rig-diggers $20 for each 
two-hour shift.

But more importantly, they're helping other users protect themselves 
from HIV, Hepatitis C and infection. The rig-diggers are trained to 
teach users how to inject safely and they'll steer people toward 
health services if they see signs of trouble.

The peer-to-peer approach is why VIHA selected SOLID to deliver 
services, says medical health officer Dr. Murray Fyfe. Their funding, 
$280,000 over three years, is administered to SOLID by the Victoria 
AIDS Resource Centre.

Being users, SOLID workers "can reach people that other groups 
can't," said Fyfe.

All of that is central is to Craig, who can show off a wall full of 
health training certificates back at the office.

But it's also about showing that drug users can take of their own.

"I don't care who are, if you're an addict, or whoever you are, 
nobody wants to see the drug paraphenalia, the garbage and the dirty 
needles hanging around. So we want to go out there and clean up the 
community," he says.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom