NEEDLE HANDOUTS CREATING 'SHOOTING GALLERIES'

A man who owns several downtown rooming-houses says the city's street
nurses are creating shooting galleries by distributing large numbers of
clean, packaged needles.

Standing in the basement suite of one of his houses at Fifth Avenue and
Battle Street, Gordon Perry pointed to a crate containing five boxes, each
containing 100 single-use needles.

"The base of the problem is not the needle exchange. It's how it's done,"
he said Tuesday.

"I saw the street nurse deliver a case of these needles to a house here on
Battle Street."

The sheer quantity of needles being handed out results in drug dealers,
buyers, prostitutes and pimps all coming and going from rooms to shoot up
or conduct illicit business, he said.

In the top-floor bedroom of the house next door, he moved the bed to reveal
a box of clean needles and two containers of used syringes.

Last week, he said as glass crunched under his shoes, he threw out a hooker
and a pimp four times from that bedroom. The last time they entered the
room, they broke a window. The man who lives in the room was away, but
knows the people who sneaked in, he said.

"I see the girls walk out of here with handfuls of needles," he said.

Perry would like to see the street nurses rent a room as a location and
supervise the activity of those coming in and out for needles, like a
legitimate shooting gallery.

Nora Walker, communicable disease co-ordinator for the Thompson Health
Region, said the current needle-exchange policy is a straight one-for-one
deal. And a cocaine addict can be shooting up as frequently as every 20
minutes, she said.

That policy is being reviewed by the government and there could be a new
one soon, she said.

"They can exchange up to 500 needles," she said.

"You want to prevent the harm to the community, the spread of hepatitis C."

Secondary exchanges - whereby someone who is involved in drugs takes
needles from the street nurse and doles them out to others using
intravenous narcotics - are now being looked at in terms of whether they
are harmful or are getting more people to reduce their risk of contracting
HIV or hepatitis, she said.

"These issues have no quick fixes," she observed.

"The cost to society of AIDS and hepatitis is pretty pricey."

Walker said there are plastic boxes to drop used needles in hospitals in
Vancouver and even in the Halifax airport. They aren't just for drug users,
but also for diabetics, she noted.

She said she was aware of a letter Perry had written to the health region
about his concerns, but was waiting until the new policy has been
established before calling him.