Posted on 05/25/2009 8:39:40 AM PDT by csvset
fter nearly 20 years of quietly handing out free, clean needles to drug users on Berkeley's streets, the city's needle exchange is coming out of the shadows.
In April, a year ahead of its 20th birthday, the Needle Exchange Emergency Distribution became a registered charity, a certified nonprofit group and last year was able to get a state grant that increased its yearly budget to more than $100,000.
"We've really grown a lot in the last year," said NEED's 22-year-old director Christina Muller-Shinn. "When we got the money from the state, we were able to hire staff and before we were all volunteer. We were able to become legitimized."
Before it got the state grant, the organization received nearly all of its funding, $50,000 a year, from the city of Berkeley.
Muller-Shinn said the organization now spends about $6,000 a month on needle containers, needles, condoms and other items that it hands out on street corners three times a week.
"We don't just hand out needles to people," Muller-Shinn said. "We make referrals to other health services, and we're going to start having HIV testing at all of our sites."
The NEED hands out drug cookers, ascorbic acid to break down crack cocaine for shooting, saline solution to mix heroin and methamphetamine, tourniquets to pop out usable veins, cotton balls to filter the drugs going into a syringe, Narcan, which can stop an overdose in progress, condoms, lube and personal containers for the used needles.
It also hands out brochures with titles like "If the Shot Hurts: Pull Out!! Avoiding Arteries and Nerves when You Want a Vein," "Shoot Smart, Shoot Safe," and "Stayin' Alive, Prevent Overdose Death."
The giveaway is intended to prevent death among addicts that share contaminated needles.
Although it now gets city and state funding and does its work unimpeded, that wasn't always the story. A history of arrests and harassment made the organization wary of outside help.
Before 2005, state law outlawed needle exchanges unless cities declared a state of emergency every two weeks to allow them in their borders. And it was just last year that state law changed, allowing pharmacies in participating counties to sell up to 10 needles and syringes.
"I think there was this idea that we didn't want to advertise what we do because we didn't want backlash," said Muller-Shinn. "So we worked independently on a grass-roots level to get our supplies out to reach the people we need to reach."
Despite society's reluctance to help out injection drug users, the organization stuck to its mission because at the time, the spread of AIDS among injection drug using was going through the roof.
It appears that needle exchanges helped bring those numbers down.
Two years after it started handing out clean needles in Berkeley, the spread of AIDS through injection drug use peaked in 1992 at 11 cases, according to the Berkeley health department. The spread of AIDS among men who have sex with male intravenous drug users peaked in 1993 at five cases.
By contrast, in 2007, there were only two cases of AIDS reported among injection drug users in Berkeley and one of a man who had sex with a male injection drug user.
In California as a whole, 15,579 men and women have gotten AIDS as the result of injection drug use since 1983, or 10 percent of the total, according to the California Department of Public Health. And another 14,313 men who had sex with men and injected drugs got AIDS since 1983.
Now that the heat is off in Berkeley, the collective's membership is slowly warming to life as a legitimate do-gooder organization.
"I think we're getting to the place where needle exchange will be the norm," Muller-Shinn said. "It's also really amazing that if someone needs a needle on the day we don't provide services, they can buy it at a pharmacy."
Despite changes in thinking in Berkeley, needle exchanges still face plenty of stigma in other parts of the state, Muller-Shinn said.
"In California, there are needle exchanges along the coast, but you go to the central valley and Southern California and they don't have them, and the counties don't allow it," Muller-Shinn said.
"And there's still a ban on spending federal money on needle exchanges."
And that's despite eight federally funded reports dating back to 1991 that concluded needle exchange programs can reduce new HIV infections and do not appear to lead to increased drug use among injection drug users, according to a city of Berkeley report.
Barbara Rabo, Berkeley's health department liaison with the needle exchange, said it's a given in public health circles that needle exchanges reduce transmission of AIDS and hepatitis C.
"And I don't know of anyone in public health who thinks it promotes drug use," Raboy said.
Yet, there is still "stigma on needle exchange across all segments of society." But she's happy NEED is growing and becoming more organized.
"For the first time, they are sitting down and doing some planning to get them beyond the next year," Raboy said. "They were focused on doing good deeds and not paying attention to how they were organized or portrayed in the community." Muller-Shinn said there was some resistance among members of the collective about going above ground, accepting money from the state and becoming a nonprofit group.
"There were some people who were resistant, because working with the government can change your dynamic," Muller-Shinn said.
"We'd be held more accountable to the government and the government is not really reliable. But the majority of the group thought it was the way to go."
Now Muller-Shinn has a full-time job with the organization and a second member is paid.
And Muller-Shinn will be able to do more of the job she loves — teaching people how not to overdose.
"It's a one-on-one conversation and I can ask them what their use looks like, if they are using alone or with someone else and if I hear something dangerous, I can do harm reduction," Muller-Shinn said.
Muller-Shinn said her organization is dedicated to "giving as many options as possible to lower risk, and almost all the risk can be eliminated by never using a dirty needle, always cleaning your injection site and learning about overdoses."
Isn't that just special.
Needle exchange programs are just a bunch of hype.
getting straight to the point I see.
Just more dope and change from the liberals.
What is it about the left that just loves enabling bad behavior ?
this is a blueprint for everything that is wrong about government. Why on earth do you need a staff to hand out clean needles. If the intention was to make sure addicts get what they need, it would only take a couple of volunteers and a box of needles. But that is not what it’s about. How can people be so blind?
This really gets under my skin.....
The supposed justification for this is that it saves on the cost of treating HIV. From what I can tell, it only marginally delays contraction. Do you know of any data on that?
Only one of several zillion reasons why CA is packing it in (no pun intended!) financially.
And now it won't be long before you get your salary up into the six figure zone and staff that empire with all your relative relatives. Not a bad deal for handing out needles to encourage drug use and increase the perception to our children that drug use and a diction is "ok".
“We’ve really grown a lot in the last year,” said NEED’s 22-year-old director Christina Muller-Shinn. “When we got the money from the state, we were able to hire staff and before we were all volunteer. We were able to become legitimized.”
MONEY! MONEY! MONEY! MONEY! I is now legitimized!
Kinda like ACORN,eh?
Exactly...now they can ride the Gravy Train on the tracks of their “clients”....
Nope, I don’t keep track of such figures.
The best thing for these addicts is to get aids and die. Prolonging their misery and the cost to society from crimes these drop outs from the human race commit, the the higher than normal costs of incarceration because they have to be placed on medical wards treated, cleaned up and nursed back to health, only to be released and repeat the cycle all over again.
Or, they end up in a mental institution permanently when they finally fry their brain for good.
Shifting the cost of their bad choices to the taxpayers is just plain wrong, and only encourages the addicts to continue living that way, since these bleeding heart liberals are making it easier to do so every year. Soon they will all live in government housing with 24 hr nursing care ensuring their government supplied IV line is filled with good clean drugsm and pillow fluffers making sure they are comfortable and tucked in so they have an enjoyable trip.
Yep. just another arm of the nanny state.
Well at least they did not forget the lube.
““When we got the money from the state, we were able to hire staff....”
.....it’s about creating jobs....another semi-government agency that will grow and grow....all to be funded at taxpayer expense.
Aren’t the drugs themselves sometimes tainted and potentially dangerous? This group should be handing out heroin, cocaine, meth, etc. You know, for safety’s sake.
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