The debate on needle exchanges returned during last week's city council meeting, with a lot of the opposition focused on the needle exchange at AIDS Saskatoon on 33rd Street. I have lived a couple of blocks from AIDS Saskatoon for the past 14 years and have seen the deterioration of the neighbourhood. People who lived in the area have decided to build in the suburbs and sold their homes to investors looking to rent. People who called the place home were replaced by people who drove through the neighbourhood periodically. [continues 726 words]
The City of Saskatoon will soon "clarify" the definition of medical clinics to include needle exchanges, with a report saying Saskatoon's harm reduction efforts are working to reduce the spread of HIV. The report - tabled Monday with city council's executive committee - is a response to a vocal group of residents and business owners in Caswell Hill and Mayfair who spoke out against the 601 Outreach Centre needle exchange operated by AIDS Saskatoon earlier this year. The AIDS Saskatoon needle exchange has operated for 3 1/2 years out of a nondescript building at 33rd Street and Avenue F. A number of nearby business owners say the needle exchange has residents and business owners fighting perceptions the area is unsafe. [continues 437 words]
The guards' union has warned it will take the government to the industrial relations tribunal if it tries to push ahead with the needle exchange program at Canberra's jail without the consent of prison officers. The government has been consulting with a large number of interest groups over its plans to introduce a one-for-one needle exchange model to swap a single clean needle for a dirty needle in the Alexander Maconochie Centre. The plan, designed to combat blood-borne disease, has sparked strong criticism from guards, who warn it is unworkable, will feed a black-market trade of needles and put correctional officers in danger. [continues 312 words]
An outdoor drug den littered with used needles, spoons, matches and various drug paraphernalia has been cleaned up by the local health unit. David Ryding, a public health inspector with the communicable disease control department, visited the site Tuesday afternoon after inquiries about it from The Intelligencer. Ryding, who removed the potentially dangerous material which included some needles that were not capped, said in two years with the department he had never seen a site like the one just west of the Riverside Trail in downtown Belleville. [continues 537 words]
A Vancouver woman was shocked to find a toy shaped like a hypodermic needle complete with fake blood in the Halloween section of a Kitsilano drugstore. Wendy Dalton was shopping at her local Shoppers Drug Mart on Broadway this week when she came across a bucket full of what looked like syringes featuring either blue or red liquid and a plunger. She was troubled to see children pretending to shoot up with the plastic novelty pens. Dalton was curious what other people would think, so she bought two pens and began conducting her own poll around her neighbourhood and on the bus. [continues 257 words]
Andre Picard's suggestion that our prison system ought to be more like Iran's is ridiculous (A Call For Pragmatism In Clean-Needle Debate - Life & Arts, Oct. 2). Our government is committed to developing a correctional system that actually corrects criminal behaviour. As such, we have a zero-tolerance policy for drugs in our institutions. That is why we made a commitment during the last election to develop drug-free prisons. Drug use among prisoners dramatically reduces their chances of successful rehabilitation. Putting needles in prisons also creates a dangerous situation for correctional officers. We will never consider putting items that can be used as weapons, such as these, in the hands of potentially violent prisoners. Vic Toews, Minister of Public Safety [end]
Four AIDS groups and a former inmate have filed a lawsuit in Federal Court seeking a supervisory injunction - a court order that would force Ottawa to establish needle exchange programs in Canadian prisons. The claimants argue, essentially, that prisoners should have the same access to health care as non-prisoners, and denying them clean needles violates their rights under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. It's an imaginative use of the courts but has little chance of success. Criminal conviction and incarceration have some consequences, including temporary loss of some privileges of citizenship, if not fundamental rights. The courts have been clear that access to all health and social services is not an absolute right; the provision of services has to be balanced against other societal interests, in prison as elsewhere. [continues 530 words]
TORONTO - Canada's public safety minister ruled out syringes in prisons Thursday - despite him and cabinet colleagues being needled with a lawsuit demanding free handouts for locked-up drug users. "We believe in drug-free prisons," Public Safety Minister Vic Toews told reporters at an unrelated Toronto press conference. "I don't see the need to have needles in prisons." Ex-inmate Steve Simons, who says he contracted hepatitis C after another prisoner used his injection equipment, joined four AIDS prevention advocacy groups in a lawsuit filed this week against Toews, Attorney General Rob Nicholson and Don Head, commissioner of the Correctional Service of Canada. [continues 140 words]
A group of Burlington residents is up in arms about a public health clinic slated to open later this year in their neighbourhood that, among other things, will offer a needle exchange service for intravenous drug users. The residents fear the clinic at 3350 Fairview, in a strip mall between Guelph and Walker's lines, will lead to needles being discarded in the area and they are worried about children being exposed to drug users who use the service. "We cannot understand the rationale of placing it directly within a family neighbourhood," said resident Beverly Hardy. [continues 422 words]
Fertile soil and favourable weather conditions have produced bumper field crops across Chatham-Kent this fall. Farmers may be happy, but not necessarily local law enforcement. The combination of favourable growing conditions also produces abundant marijuana plants, shielded by corn in area fields. And keeping up with the pot growers got a lot harder this year, according to Chatham-Kent police intelligence unit member Const. Neal Iles. Municipal police didn't get to utilize the RCMP helicopter as they have in the past. [continues 362 words]
OTTAWA - A former prisoner infected with hepatitis C is suing the federal government over its refusal to allow clean-needle exchanges inside prisons. Steven Simons, who served 12 years behind bars, has the backing of several HIV/AIDS advocacy organizations in a suit that names Public Safety Minister Vic Toews, the Correctional Service of Canada and its commissioner. The lawsuit, filed Tuesday in the Ontario Superior Court of Justice, argues the government has arbitrarily disregarded the health evidence on needle exchanges in prisons. [continues 363 words]
A former inmate and a group of HIV advocacy organizations are suing the federal government for its ban on distributing sterile needles in prisons. Steven Simons, incarcerated from 1998 to 2010 in Ontario's Warkworth prison, says he contracted hepatitis C when he shared his drug injection equipment with another inmate. The lawsuit filed Tuesday names the Correctional Service of Canada and its commissioner, the public safety minister and the attorney general of Canada. Simons and four organizations including the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network argue the government is violating prisoners' charter rights by failing to provide sterile needles and syringes. [continues 376 words]
Ten minutes before intravenous drug users began walking through the door of the Allegheny County Health Department building in Oakland on a recent Sunday, Ron Johnson of Prevention Point Pittsburgh was arranging syringes. "Browns," the biggest needles, sat next to "pogos." Nearby were cotton balls, alcohol wipes, cookers, where drugs are dissolved, and tourniquets, which ease vein access. By the end of the day, 65 users had visited Prevention Point Pittsburgh to exchange their dirty syringes for clean ones. PPP, the only needle exchange program in Western Pennsylvania, works to reduce the transmission of blood-borne diseases like HIV and hepatitis C by giving addicts clean needles to use in place of shared, dirty ones. [continues 1741 words]
About a month ago I was by the museum in Prince Albert taking photos for my sister's wedding and I noticed four used needles lying on the ground in a small space. It made me wonder if the needle exchange program really is working. There aren't a lot of places you can go without finding a used needle in public view. Even a couple days ago, I was working by St. Mary School and I saw three within 30 feet of the school. [continues 723 words]
AIDS Saskatoon will change some of its practices, the non-profit told Caswell Hill and Mayfair residents at a meeting focused on its needle exchange. Residents and business owners hosted the Thursday night meeting to raise concerns about the AIDS Saskatoon-operated 601 Outreach Centre needle exchange and dozens of people packed a Mayfair Library meeting room to criticize, defend and learn more about the program. Robin Riehl is the property manager for the strip mall across the street from the needle exchange and he told the crowd the concerns are about the unwanted activity outside the outreach centre and not the needle exchange itself. [continues 300 words]
Harm reduction review hits Abby council Monday Moments after parking in a central-Abbotsford alley, the Portland Hotel Society's mobile needle exchange van is quickly and quietly swarmed by half a dozen people. Hushed conversations ensue as the group congregates around the vehicle's doors to gather clean syringes, needle filters, crack pipes, alcohol swabs or condoms. There is no idle chatter. As soon as the men and women have their supplies, they scatter and vanish into surrounding streets and parking lots as quickly as they appeared. [continues 771 words]
JUDY Smith knew nothing about heroin until it had her only child, Daniel, in its grip. She and her husband, Ray, had raised their son in a stable home and sent him to a leading Catholic boys school in Sydney's eastern suburbs. They were not blind to his bouts of low self-esteem and anxiety but believed he was building the foundations for a happy, successful life. A bachelor of fine arts from the University of New South Wales was proof. [continues 555 words]
Council Will Revisit Harm Reduction Bylaw Abbotsford will re-examine its harm reduction policy. Mayor Bruce Banman said he plans to review the bylaw, which bans needle exchange facilities and other forms of harm reduction from operating in the city - despite the fact he hasn't seen a new report issued by Fraser Health. In the report, which was made public on Monday, Fraser Health indicates that a minimum of 500 intravenous drug users could be served in the Abbotsford area and a program would likely distribute about 120,000 needles per year. [continues 754 words]
Fraser Health Sticks It to Safe Injection Sites, Suggests Needle Exchange Is the Best Option for Abbotsford Fraser Health Authority released a proposed harm reduction plan centered around needle distribution for the City of Abbotsford on Monday. The proposed plan, authored by FHA public health director David Portesi, does not propose establishing a safe injection site within Abbotsford. The proposed needle exchange plan would likely need to serve a minimum of 500 intravenous drug users living in the Abbotsford area, and distribute about 120,000 needles annually, stated the report. [continues 751 words]
