Exchange drug needles to stop A.I.D.S. spread?

Press, 9 October 1987, Page 22

Exchange drug needles to stop A.I.D.S. spread?

PA Wellington Drug users in New Zealand shared needles from necessity rather than habit, Parliament’s Social Services Select Committee lias been told. The committee was hearing submissions on the Misuse of Drugs Amendment Bill by Dr Geoffrey Robinson, of the Wellington Alcohol and Drug Centre. The bill would let drug users legally obtain clean needles and syringes as an anti-A.I.D.S. measure. Dr Robinson said the centre was concerned that providing needles and syringes could lead to a large pool of potentially contaminated equipment. “Jo prevent this, the scheme adopted should run an exchange, once each user has his or ner own equipment," said the centre’s submission. The New Zealand I. V. League spokesman, Mr Gary McGrath, was concerned that the police might put exchange

places under surveillance. He was also concerned that drug users would not go to places where their anonymity was at risk. Drug centres would be impractical, because only about 2 to 10 per cent of users would accept the service. "The only viable public service agency is the local chemist,” Mr McGrath said. Any exchange programme should be linked with education and counselling to reduce H.I.V. transmission and to encourage the user to be treated for the drug dependency, Dr Robinson said. Anonymous exchange schemes in the Netherlands, Australia and Britain had proved successful and addicts had started to ask for advice, he said. Mr McGrath suggested that the package of syringes should contain information about safe sex and some condoms.

The A.I.D.S. Foundation hotline telephone number and a contact with the I. V. League could be included, he said. Only 10 per cent of New Zealand’s drug users could be classed as addicts or habitual users, while the rest — up to 25,000 people — could be Called recreational or corporate users. While habitual users would have their own syringe, it was the other 90 per cent who were in real danger of contracting diseases from shared needles. A corporate user — someone who uses drugs once or twice a year — would be unlikely to keep a needle in the home. In rural areas there were now more hard-core users because of the need to shift homebake operations out of the cities. In a survey of one town of 3000 people, Mr McGrath said his organisation had discovered 25 homebakes in one month.