ABBOTSFORD NEEDS NEEDLE EXCHANGE

From working directly with homeless people for the past several years
around Abbotsford and Mission, both as a volunteer visiting people in
their tent cities or cardboard boxes and currently as a shelter
worker, I am very familiar with the plight these very vulnerable
members of society face.

Mission has made great strides in helping homeless in our community
such as the Haven in the Hollow Shelter and new Grant Street Lodge
where people can live in independent suites but have access to trained
mental health workers and other support staff.

Abbotsford, however, with a much larger population has made little
progress. A pressing issue for municipalities has been the needle
exchange program, used in Europe for decades, and Vancouver, Surrey
and even Chilliwack for several years, and is one of the fundamental
three pillars in actually reducing drug abuse and its consequences.
Needle exchange also puts addicts in contact with mental health and
addiction workers that increase the chance a person seeks treatment
and gets clean.

What is our greatest fear about this program in Abbotsford? It's
simple, flawed logic: that programs such as the needle exchange
condone drug use and actually will increase its rate. This is farthest
from the truth, most of the people on the street, though have
different individual stories, have faced a similar lack of social
support, from family members that were abusive or neglectful, living
conditions throughout their life at or below the poverty line, unequal
access to education and in general a stigma that views poverty and
criminality as being part of someone's DNA.

Wake up Abbotsford. Because of the desperate circumstances this
segment of the population is in, people seeking a temporary escape
from their misery will continue to happen.

While we seek to solve the larger problems that have led people to
drug use in the first place, why do we add the additional misery of
shared needles massively increasing people's chance of contracting HIV
and hepatitis? Are we so naive as to think by not giving users clean
needles they will stop doing drugs?

Having a needle exchange program prevents dirty needles from being on
the streets or in our parks and unsuspecting children from stepping on
them.

Lowering disease rates in the addicted population also lowers the
chance front line workers will contract the same diseases.

Support needle exchange and make Abbotsford a cleaner and healthier
city.

Richard Tatomir