Three injection drug users filed a lawsuit Tuesday over an Abbotsford, B.C., bylaw that has banned harm-reduction services such as clean needle exchanges for the past eight years, arguing the prohibition violates their charter rights and needlessly puts them at risk. The lawsuit comes as councillors in the Fraser Valley community study the future of the bylaw, which health officials say is preventing them from providing harm reduction services in an area with some of the province's highest rates of overdoses and infections of HIV and hepatitis C. [continues 751 words]
A bipartisan bill from Reps. Nickie Antonio, D-Lakewood, and Barbara Sears, R-Maumee, would authorize the establishment of syringe exchange programs. House Bill 92 has been crafted to "promote harm reduction and a path to treatment," Antonio said. Under the bill, a local board of health would be permitted to establish a syringe exchange program for injection drug users to reduce the transmission of blood-borne pathogens and specifies that the program's cost is the board's responsibility. The measure would allow a board of health to contract with a private, nonprofit organization to operate a program on the board's behalf. [continues 771 words]
Photographer Tony Fouhse Helps Bring Addicts Back From the Brink Photographer captures the road back from drug addiction The phrase "Live Through This" sounds like a dare, with an implied but real chance that you will not live through whatever "this" is. At one point during Tony Fouhse's two-year project, titled Live Through This, the odds were 1 in 2 that Stephanie MacDonald, the subject of his photographs, would die. The odds were surely higher when MacDonald, then a 22-year-old junkie in Ottawa, checked herself out of hospital too soon after brain surgery, against medical advice, and slipped away into the night to score whatever would get her high. [continues 925 words]
Expansion of harm-reduction services at a sobering centre at Cook and Pembroke doesn't mean it's being turned into a fixed needle exchange, Fernwood residents have been told. And residents should have no concerns that the centre will generate the same types of problems that plagued Cormorant Street when a fixed needle exchange operated there, said Cheryl Damstetter, Vancouver Island Health Authority's acting executive director for mental health services. "Information that's out there is that somehow this a standalone, fixed site needle exchange. No it is not," Damstetter told an information session at the Fernwood Community Association hall. [continues 501 words]
Fernwood will get a needle exchange without public consultation. At a meeting on Wednesday, a panel of "stakeholders" announced that old services were being "enhanced" with "health supplies," according to their own information sheet. It was explained to the standing-room-only crowd that the panel saw no need for public consultation. A multitude of complaints about the former needle exchange that closed in 2008 led them to believe that they could navigate change without further input. Members of the public expressed concern that the site is located near two schools: Vic High and George Jay. The panel responded by saying that Vancouver-based Supervised Consumption Services has been demonstrated to function well within larger communities. The concept was met with optimism from the audience. [continues 65 words]
Editor, the Times: As a scientist, it was disturbing to read that the ongoing discussions regarding needle exchange in Abbotsford arrived at a simple difference of opinion regarding the benefits and shortcomings of these programs. The reality is that needle exchanges have been rigorously studied, and there now exists a large body of scientific facts concerning these programs. The evidence consistently shows that, contrary to the opinions of Tim Williams of Life Recovery, needle exchanges reduce HIV risk behaviour and do not encourage drug use. [continues 158 words]
Since he can remember, Geoff has made a conscious decision to search out clean needles as he continues to fight his heroin addiction. Now that the 39-year-old homeless man with Hepatitis C uses a one-stop service where he can exchange his used needles for new ones, his health concerns are lessened. Geoff, who didn't want his surname published to protect his privacy, found a needle exchange in the neighbourhood in which he panhandles and sleeps on the streets. "I was one of the original people to start using it," he said by telephone Tuesday as he walked down a noisy alley. [continues 508 words]
A day after David Purchase died, friends remembered him Tuesday as a pioneer who fought HIV-AIDS on the streets of Tacoma and gave birth to what became an international health movement. A day after David Purchase died, friends remembered him Tuesday as a pioneer who fought HIV-AIDS on the streets of Tacoma and gave birth to what became an international health movement. With a borrowed TV tray and a folding chair, Purchase began the nation's first exchange of dirty needles for clean ones in 1988 while sitting on a street corner in downtown Tacoma. [continues 722 words]
Public Forums Start Next Week The debate over harm reduction measures in Abbotsford is surfacing again as the city undertakes two public forums to examine the controversial issue this month. Abbotsford Mayor Bruce Banman said the focus of the meetings is to present all sides of the issue and get public input on the topic of harm reduction. "The Fraser Health Authority has said it totally disagrees with Abbotsford's harm reduction policy," said Banman. "They believe we are putting people in harm's way with contamination via needles." [continues 347 words]
WORCESTER - A Hopkinton man accused of stabbing a police officer with a hypodermic needle in the ladies' room at a Park Avenue supermarket pleaded not guilty at his arraignment Monday morning in Worcester Superior Court. [name redacted], 29, of 14 Pinecrest Village, Hopkinton, was indicted Dec. 13 on charges of assault and battery with a dangerous weapon, trespassing and disturbing the peace stemming from a July 16 incident at the Price Chopper at 221 Park Ave. According to a police statement on file in Central District Court, where Mr. [name redacted] was initially charged, Officer Ryan Stone went to the Price Chopper July 16 to investigate a report of a man in the ladies' room who was refusing to leave. Store employees said there was blood on the floor in the ladies' room and expressed concern for their safety and that of their customers, according to Officer Stone's written account. [continues 316 words]
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]
