PUBLIC SAFETY COMMITTEE ACCEPTS REPORT ON CLEAN SYRINGE PROGRAM

Report Outlines Client Demographics And Number Of Needles Exchanged

Last month, the Public Safety & Neighborhood Services Committee
heard and voted unanimously to accept a decade long report on the
status of San Diego's Clean Syringe Exchange Program.

"We're approaching a million exchanges now," said Dr. Jim Dunford,
the city's medical director to the committee. The program began in 2001.

The report states that a total of 995,836 dirty needles were
received at two mobile locations, one in downtown San Diego and the
other in North Park. In exchange, the program gave out 861,073 clean needles.

That is a difference of 134,763 needles, which advocates say is
meaningful because it represents more safety to police officers and
firefighters come in contact with suspects that carry dirty needles.
It also means less dirty needles in neighborhood parks, sidewalks
or playgrounds.

The purpose for handing out clean syringes in exchange for dirty
ones is to cut the risk of HIV and hepatitis C transmission.

No city funds are used in the program; the Alliance Healthcare
Foundation and the Family Health Centers of San Diego administer the program.

When people show up to exchange syringes, they meet with a case
manager and are offered a variety of services that include substance
abuse treatment, detoxification services, mental health programs or housing.

Critics of the program say it promotes drug abuse or crime, but
Dunford told the committee that is not true. No one opposed to the
program spoke to the committee.

Among the reports demographic findings were the following:

Gender: 72 percent of clients are male, 27 percent are female and
one percent are transgender

Race: 66 percent of clients are white, 20 percent are Hispanics and
7 percent are black

Housing: 44 percent are living in their own residence, 22 percent
live with someone else and 24 percent are homeless

Marital status: 59 percent have never married; 26 percent are
divorced widowed or separated; 13 percent are married and two
percent live with a domestic partner

Education: 52 percent of clients did not finish high school but 42
percent received their high school diploma and six percent dropped
out of school in junior high or earlier

Employment: 64 percent of clients are without jobs in the latest
figures. That doesn't change much over the years. In 2002, 68
percent of clients said they were unemployed, with the highest at 74
percent in 2005.

Dunford told the committee that the program's average client is a
37-year-old white male.

The Clean Syringe Exchange Program operates out of a recreational
vehicle twice a week.

The downtown location is in East Village near Market Street on
Thursdays from 6-9 p.m. The North Park location is in operation on
Fridays from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. near University Avenue.

"It's handled very discretely," said Councilmember Todd Gloria to
Dunford and others.

The report won't be going to the City Council because the council no
longer has to approve it.

The state legislature allowed clean syringe programs in 2001 only if
local agencies declared a state of emergency, but that changed in
2006 when the state allowed syringe exchange programs to stay open
without a declaration.

Since the program's inception, there have been 27,120 total
referrals including 2,025 to substance abuse treatment, 2,237 to
detoxification services, 1,013 to mental health programs, 4,396 to
primary care and 17,449 to other programs such as homeless shelters
and medical service providers.