GROUP FINDS AND DESTROYS USED NEEDLES

About a dozen people combed an area of Curtis Park on Saturday picking up
very specific trash: needles discarded by drug users.

Their aim is to safeguard against accidental cuts from needles and to curb
the use of such needles by drug users, because old needles increase the
transmission risk of HIV, the virus that can lead to AIDS, and Hepatitis B
and C.

In less than two hours, the volunteers picked up 150 needles in a
five-block area near Gilpin-24th Street School.

"It's illegal to hand out clean needles, but we hope this will help prevent
the spread of viruses through the use of old needles,'' said Sheryl Silver,
who is a psychiatric social worker.

The event, which is repeated several times a year, was sponsored by
Regional Users' Group, which includes people who use drugs, those trying to
recover from drugs and citizens who care about drug problems. Many in the
group favor a needle exchange program.

The volunteer needle scavengers, who came from all three groups, wore
rubber gloves and used shiny new tongs to pick up the needles, raking
through grass, leaves and other debris with tongs to find them.

Disposal Detail

They carefully put the needles in bright orange plastic bio-hazardous
bottles, which they took to Denver Health and Hospitals for disposal.

They also handed out "bleach kits,'' small plastic sacks containing cotton
and small bottles of bleach and water that users can clean used needles
with, and "cookers,'' which look like pop bottle lids. They are used for
cooking cocaine before it is put in a syringe, and if dirty ones are used
the chance of transmitting viruses rises. The kits included an illustration
of how to clean used syringes. The kit also include moist towelettes and
condoms.

Drug users and former users have been a big part of the needlepickup
program, Silver said. "They are most definitely committed to the importance
of what we're doing and they hand out kits for us too.''

The kits are also placed in the Stout Street Clinic and the St. Francis
Shelter so that users can pick them up. In the past month, 850 kits have
been distributed in Downtown Denver.

The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment recently reported
that from July 1997 to June 1998, 19 percent of newly diagnosed HIV cases
in the state were people who inject drugs.

Hepatitis B and C are both transmitted through blood-to-blood contact and
are much more infectious than HIV.