BUYER'S CLUB FOR ADDICTS

To the Editor:

Julie Bruneau and Martin T. Schecter (Op-Ed, April 9), the authors of the
Canadian studies on needle exchange programs, say that intravenous drug
users who take part in such programs in Montreal and Vancouver have higher
H.I.V. infection rates than users not in exchange programs because the
needle exchange users represent a higher risk group.

Yet the Montreal study authors (including Ms. Bruneau) postulated that the
reason for this increase could be because "the N.E.P.'s may facilitate the
formation of new sharing groups."

Indeed, exchange programs may serve as buyers' clubs. Donald Grove writes
in Harm Reduction Communication (spring 1996) that "a user might be able to
do the networking needed to find good drugs in the half an hour he spends
at a street-based needle exchange site -- networking that might otherwise
have taken half a day."

JANET D. LAPEY, M.D.

Boston, April 9, 1998
The writer is president of Drug Watch International.