After over a year of waiting for a needle exchange, the Clark County Health Department will open its syringe exchange at the end of January. The needle exchange, located at 1301 Akers Ave. in Jeffersonville, will start Jan. 26 from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. and be open each Thursday from then on. Dr. Kevin Burke, the Clark County health commissioner, said he hopes the program will eventually provide services two days a week and operate the needle exchange at other locations. [continues 625 words]
Health officials in Lucas County are working to get the area's first needle exchange program up and running by the spring. Health officials in Lucas County are working to get the area's first needle exchange program up and running by the spring, adding another weapon to their arsenal in the fight against the heroin and opioid epidemic. Toledo will be the last large metro area in Ohio to adopt such an exchange. Cleveland, Columbus, and Cincinnati all have them, as do the smaller cities of Dayton and Portsmouth. Such programs aim to decrease the likelihood of spreading HIV or hepatitis C among users who share needles. [continues 1072 words]
A new program has started up to help tackle the city's discarded needle problem. In the realm of tongue-twisting health acronyms, CHANGE is one of the worst offenders. It stands for Community, Harm Reduction, Needle Pickup, Guidance and Education, and it's the Prince Albert Parkland Health Region's newest strategy to reduce discarded needles in the community. Formed late this September, the CHANGE team goes to "hotspots" for IV drug use, places where large numbers of discarded syringes tend to litter public places. [continues 548 words]
SURREY - After having to end its needle pickup program after a loss in funding, Lookout Emergency Aid Society has temporarily revived the program. The peer-led Rig Dig program, which began in 2006, came to a halt on Sept. 9 came after the society was unsuccessful in its bid for $44,000 in gaming grant funding this year. But it has been announced that Lookout Foundation has granted $10,000 out of an emergency fund to restore the program this week, enough to keep it running until the end of March 17, according to a release. [continues 413 words]
Peer-based education, disposal, overdoses and treatment options part of new plan Drug use was a topic Melanie Sinclair hoped to avoid discussing with her kids for a few more years. But an evening visit to a Maple Ridge mall changed that. Her husband took their seven-year-old son to the bathroom and found it strangely busy. "There were people sitting on the floor in the stalls," said Sinclair. "I can guess they were using drugs." Her husband decided to use the family bathroom - usually reserved for parents with young children - and found a sharps container almost overflowing with used needles. When he informed staff about the full box, he was told it had been replaced 30 minutes earlier. [continues 516 words]
Unlimited distribution, but no pick-up As part of its harm reduction strategy, Fraser Health offers an unlimited supply of needles to intravenous drug users. But the local health authority does not recover those needles once they've been used - - a fact which has become more evident in Langley parks, streets, at the doorways of businesses and on trails and even school grounds throughout the Township and City. A sharps disposal box and its spilled contents was found near the Cascades Casino parkade recently, and a needle stabbed into the grass at Douglas Park was pictured from August on the Langley City Crime Watch Facebook page. [continues 467 words]
A bright yellow bin, about the size of a mailbox but taller, is now positioned on the edge of the Junction Creek trail near Hnatyshyn Park. The sunny hue, however, belies the gravity of its contents and the issue it's mean to address. The receptacle also boasts a biohazard symbol, and is there to contain used drug needles that might otherwise be left on the ground and cause a prick wound and possible infection. It appeared within the last week, and in the wake of concerns raised in late July about the dangers of discarded syringes. [continues 466 words]
Advocates Say Clean Paraphernalia for Inmates Will Curb Blood-Borne Illness Rates in Prison, but Correctional Staff Say They're Unsafe The availability of illicit drugs in B.C. prisons underscores the need for needle exchanges to curb the transmission of blood-borne illnesses behind bars, civil liberties advocates say, but correctional staff are strongly opposed to the idea, arguing that the increased availability of clean needles could do more harm than good. Marijuana is the most commonly seized intoxicant from federal prisons in British Columbia, with 225 seizures from eight sites between January, 2010, and June of this year, according to records obtained by The Globe and Mail under freedom of information legislation. [continues 582 words]
It's a rare occurrence for Cochrane park users to stumble across strewn syringes and hypodermic needles in a public area. Needless to say, it created concern for soccer player Lucy Lovelock when she came across a scattered pile of such paraphernalia in the soccer field parking lot in community of GlenEagles the evening of Aug. 2. "I have no issues with what people do in their private lives, but it concerns me to find this in a public area used by kids all the time," said the mother of two, who contacted Cochrane Fire Services to dispose of the mess. [continues 125 words]
The Toledo-Lucas County Health Department will soon begin a local needle exchange program aimed at preventing intravenous drug users from contracting HIV or Hepatitis C. The health board voted unanimously Thursday in support of starting a program which will be administered at two local sites. Both the Talbot Center, a drug addiction recovery center in East Toledo, and St. Paul United Methodist Church downtown have agreed to be access points for the exchanges, said Kelly Burkholder-Allen, acting director of health services. [continues 553 words]
WHALLEY - A program responsible for the cleanup of hundreds of used needles a day in Surrey might see its end in September due to funding cuts. As the Now reported last week, the Downtown Surrey BIA is calling for expansion of the needle program due to used syringes becoming an "ever-growing concern" in the area over the past two years. Lookout Emergency Aid Society's provincial gaming grant is not being renewed and as a result, their peer-lead 'Rig Dig' needle recovery program is in crisis. [continues 328 words]
It is without doubt ironic that you use the word 'crack' in your editorial when hundreds of millions of Canadian dollars are thrown down the drain with regards to the so-called "harm reduction" in the form of freebies to the drug dealers and drug addicts. Like all things, it started with a simple idea of giving syringes to prevent the spread of hepatitis. Then they were advised by the drug companies to give them crack pipes, push sticks, mouth pieces, swabs, heroin fryers and rubber bands etc. Please note the rubber bands are medical rubber bands and the crack pipes are medical crack pipes. That way the drug companies make more profit. [continues 94 words]
Every day, hundreds of discarded needles are picked up from Whalley streets, many of them just steps from City Hall. Now, a downtown business group is offering up fresh solutions. On one side of the street, children glide up and down on their skateboards at Chuck Bailey skate park. Their laughter fills the air. On the other side of 107A Avenue, not far away, a homeless man named Robert sits on the ground behind a tree, shrieking while feverishly clapping his hands. His belongings, including a handful of needles, are strewn about on a damp, dirty piece of carpet. [continues 1390 words]
Future archaeologists will no doubt be needing lots of Band-Aids as they dig down into certain Whalley neighbourhoods where one would be hard pressed, figuratively speaking, to find a haystack among all the discarded needles. What a legacy. There's very little that's civilized about people dumping their disgusting, bloodied hypodermic syringes in our city's parks. We have needles on curbsides, needles on pathways. Even needles stuck in trees... and within sight of city hall. Rig Dig, an outfit that collects and disposes of these disgusting relics of drug abuse, gathered 250 in two hours on Monday within the downtown core. [continues 73 words]
EDITOR: The public relations and health departments of the county would like us to believe that the needle exchange program is in the best interests of all concerned. If this is an exchange program, why are there used needles all over the area, especially in industrial parks where the homeless tend to congregate? It's because it isn't a true exchange program that requires any degree of responsibility on the part of the user. And because there are no controls in place, the health and well-being of the general public is at risk. [continues 69 words]
UKIAH - Mendocino County's needle exchange is reached off Highway 101 after winding through verdant hills and past multimillion-dollar wineries. It's a simple two-story bungalow with white lace curtains on a Ukiah street where, on a recent sunny afternoon, several drug addicts waited to exchange used syringes. Operated as part of the Mendocino County AIDS/Viral Hepatitis Network, it collected and redistributed about 127,000 needles last year over the course of 6,259 visits, said Libby Guthrie, the network's executive director. [continues 876 words]
You have found a used needle, in one of the last places you ever expected - or wanted - to see one. On the playground. Inside the schoolyard. On the beach. Now what? Shiloh Sukkau was shocked at first. Then resigned. Now she's upset. Same with Joel Reid and Jessica Leung, and now they're speaking out. Three people, unknown to each other, living and working in different parts of the city. Finding dirty needles in public places. Kids' spaces. In this permissive city, where open drug use is sadly common, people have finally reached a boiling point. They're fed up with finding dangerous materials left behind by intravenous drug users, whose numbers in Vancouver exceed 12,000, according to local health authorities. [continues 715 words]
Special needs teacher Mariya Astashenkava has a morning ritual when she arrives at Lord Roberts Annex elementary school in Vancouver's West End. Before the kids can use the playground, Astashenkava and other staff comb the area looking for used hypodermic needles left behind by drug addicts who frequent Nelson Park at night. "Every morning we walk around looking for used needles," she said Tuesday after the ongoing problem was made public by the school's Parent Advisory Committee. "We even find used condoms and lots of cigarette butts." [continues 297 words]
WEST END: Morning Cleanup A Necessity For Staff At Lord Roberts Annex Elementary Special needs teacher Mariya Astashenkava has a morning ritual when she arrives at Lord Roberts Annex elementary school in Vancouver's West End. Before the kids can use the playground, Astashenkava and other staff comb the area looking for items left behind by drug addicts who frequent Nelson Park at night. "Every morning we walk around looking for used needles," she said Tuesday after the ongoing problem was made public by the school's parent advisory committee. "We even find used condoms and lots of cigarette butts." [continues 316 words]
MANITOULIN - It is still unclear as to how the Sudbury and District Health Unit's (SDHU) harm reduction supplies and services programming will roll out on Manitoulin, but members of the Manitoulin Harm Reduction Committee have realized a need when it comes to safe needle use on the Island. Jeanette Cyr, a public health nurse specializing in sexual health with the SDHU, explained that the harm reduction supplies and services programming is just in the preliminary phase and will be different for each community, based on that community's needs. "It needs to fit the needs of the clients," she said. [continues 347 words]
