From: Jackson Subject: Re: Needles in New York Date: 1996/10/05 newsgroups: alt.drugs.hard > >The interesting thing about the U.S.is that in the city where half of the > >country's dope fiends live, posession without a prescription is illegal. > >Or at least this is my general understanding of the case. Is the situation > >as bad as it sounds to my naive veins? What exactly is the situation with > >diverted syringes in New York? > > Well, you can always get syringes. I don't live in New York anymore, > but I'm pretty sure it's still illegal to possess them without a > prescription. We could probably open up another old thread here, but > all the laws governing drug use, possession, etc., appear to not have > anything to do with so called "sane, reasonable, rational" thinking. It's ridiculous,plain ignorance and stupidity. They are saying that 50% of all NYC addicts have aids.Hell in the depths of addiction and depression I've wished something would have come along and killed me.Not so any longer though it still isn't a bowl of cherry's. I live in Boulder County just outside Boulder,CO. and we have had a needle exchange program for over 7-8yrs. (3rd in the Nation)and a very small Addict Population. Plus all the Pharmacies cooperate(Or the laws allow)and sell syringes by the 100 or one without the hassle of saving toxic trash around your house and then meeting someone somewhere that will try to "Help" you and exchange one on one.Honestly they just give you a few ten packs if you call the beeper. But in this day and age to be arguing about the merits or demerits is ignorant on the part of any Health Dept.Period. NYC has an "Exchange" program doesn't it?? Jackson ==================================================================== From: peter@petermc.demon.co.uk (Peter McDermott) Subject: Re: Needles in New York Date: 1996/10/05 newsgroups: alt.drugs.hard In article <5346cb$j8d@news.ios.com>, roys@tribeca.ios.com (Roy Stanford) wrote: >Okay, to the best of my memory Mayor Koch started a needle exchange >program when he was in office before our present "lock em up and throw >away the key" mayor took office. The program was of little success as >people had to travel to far to trade in their old works for new ones >so if I remember correctly, the program is no longer in existance. It's true about the original program. The numbers were strictly limited, the people had to go through a rigorous 'evaluation' to get on the program, and worst of all, it was located downtown opposite one of the biggest police stations in the city. However, despite these obstacles, the evaluation _still_ found it to be a success, but Dinkins closed the program after the trial year was up anyway -- largely because of opposition from black politicians who were arguing that needle exchange is genocide. (This despite the fact that thousands of people of colour were contracting HIV from injecting equipment, and there is ample research from the rest of the world to show that needle exchange reduces HIV. It seems that the anti-drug propaganda is so powerful that many Americans felt that it was better to let addicts die of AIDS than it was to tacitly condone their drug use.) However, ACT-UP and others (people like Jon Parker, Joyce Rivera Beckman and members of the Harm Reduction coalition) carried on doing illegal Needle Exchange. Then, the (black) Mayor of New Haven published a study of Needle Exchange in that city, which showed that it actually reduced the rate of HIV and got more people into treatment, so the opponents could no longer argue that it wouldn't work in America because of the different culture, and the race ticket had more or less collapsed, and so while neither the city government nor the federal government would actually approve of such schemes, they dropped their rabid opposition to them, and AMFAR started to come up with funding for them. My spies tell me that Needle Exchange in the USA owes a great deal to Elizabeth Taylor who is on the board of AMFAR, and who supported needle exchange when it was both illegal and unacceptable, and who pushed for major funding as soon as was practicable. My kind of gal!