NEEDLE DROP BOX PRICKLY ISSUE

Simcoe Street Residents Are Concerned About A Clean Needle Program

Melanie Bradley is sick and tired of finding needles and crack pipes
in and around her backyard.

"Just yesterday, there was a bag with two needles, a spoon and some
residue on my patio," she says. "The problem is getting worse."

Bradley says she's lived on Simcoe Street for 14 years.

"It's never been a great area," she admits. "But it was mostly
harmless old drunks."

But Bradley, who has four teenage children, insists things have
deteriorated since the city set up a bin for used syringes beside her
house, and the London Harm Reduction Coalition -- an agency that
supports and educates addicts -- set up an office in the London
public housing complex at 241 Simcoe St., which is beside her house.

As part of its work, the coalition distributes sterile syringes to drug users.

"They walk around the neighbourhood with a backpack full of clean
needles and hand them out," says Bradley. "So they're really just
putting more (needles) out on the street."

In Bradley's view, handing out needles is helping the addicts do
drugs -- not helping them stop.

Jim Watkin disagrees. As executive director of the London Harm
Reduction Coalition, he's one of the front-line workers who regularly
pounds the pavement in that neighbourhood, collecting old needles,
handing out new ones and talking to addicts.

"Our experience is that the number of needles that are being
discarded in that area has reduced drastically (since the bin was
installed late last year)," says Watkin. "Last summer, before we got
there, we'd pick up hundreds of needles off the 241 (Simcoe St.)
property, maybe once a week. That's not happening now."

The coalition is one of more than a dozen local agencies working
together under the umbrella of London Cares, which was officially
launched six months ago and is aimed at helping homeless and
street-based individuals.

Stephen Giustizia, who works with the city's social and community
support services division, helps oversee London Cares. He says the
public housing complex at 241 Simcoe St. has long had "a high drug
presence," and that's exactly why the needle bin and the coalition are there.

And he disputes the contention that handing out clean needles
attracts more addicts or leads to more drug use.

"Studies have shown that providing a needle doesn't make someone
inject more," says Giustizia.

He insists -- and I tend to agree -- that providing clean needles and
safely disposing old ones helps protect the drug users and their neighbours.

But he says he'll meet with Bradley. And he promises to have the bin
moved farther from her house.

"But this isn't about liking needle bins," he adds. "The needles
aren't there because of London Cares. The needles are there because
we have an injection-drug use issue that's escalating in this city."

He's probably right about London's drug woes. And he's probably right
about how to treat it.

But I'm glad I don't live next door to it.