NEEDLES FOR FREE IN A JIFFY

Except for the cargo she carries around town, Georgina Scott isn't so
different from your average Dominos pizza driver. When the orders
come in, she arranges a meeting place and heads off to make a delivery.

But instead of the 2-for-1 house special, Scott delivers clean
needles and other injection-related paraphernalia to the city's
population of intravenous drug users.

"We did about 1,500 yesterday," Scott says, handing me a clipboard
with a hand-written record of how many clean syringes are given out
and how many dirty needles are returned.

"It was a busy day, but it's not our record."

An outreach worker with the Victoria AIDS Resource Centre Society,
Scott runs Mobile X, the province's only mobile needle exchange program.

It's barely 10 a.m. on a misty, grey weekday morning but already
Scott is responding to a call for service. The Mobile X van pulls
into the parking lot next to the E&N Railway station in downtown Victoria.

Two men stand up and signal when they see the van coming. One is
about 30 years old and wiry with shoulder-length dirty blonde hair.

The other looks to be in his mid-40s. He's a head taller and
heavy-set, wearing a grubby jean jacket and smells of liquor. Beyond
looking like most other street people in Victoria, there's no outward
sign they are IV drug users.

"Gimme 40 ones, 40 halfs, some cookers, some waters, a few swabs,"
the younger man tells Scott as she slides open the van's side door.

"You guys do a great job," says the older man, slurring his words as
Scott rummages through the supplies.

She hands over the supplies, along with a couple of suckers to help
ease the dry mouth that often results from IV drug use. "You got any
ties," he says, referring to tourniquets.

"Not today."

"You got any more candy? I really want a purple sucker," the younger man says.

"Sorry, no more purple ones," she apologizes.

As we pull out of the parking lot, Scott explains the terminology.
"Ones" are one cubic centimetre syringes. "Halfs" hold half a cubic
centimetre. Cookers are tiny aluminium cups specially designed for
heating solutions of cocaine or heroin mixed before the user sucks
the mixture into the syringe. Waters are little blue tubes of sterile water.

"Generally the people using opiates will use the halfs and the ones
using speed or cocaine will use the ones," Scott says.

In addition to its practical purpose, the candy serves as a small
reward for addicts who take the step of calling Mobile X.

"It's a goodie and basically we're handing out goodies," Scott says.
"It's an acknowledgment that they're doing something good. Here are
people who at least care enough to take the time so they're not
increasing their own risk."

Risk management - preventing the spread of HIV and Hepatitis C - is
the reason Mobile X exists.

Driving around town handing out free needles might seem like an
expensive way to address the problem, but Scott maintains that the
program's cost, around $40,000 a year, is well worth the investment.

"They say every dollar you spend saves between $5 and $7 in long-term
costs," she says. "We get back 85-90 per cent of (the needles) we give out."

Once or twice a week, Scott hits the road with a street nurse from
the Vancouver Island Health Authority, who assesses and treats
addicts' medical problems when possible.

For most of them, it's the equivalent of an annual medical check up.

In addition to medical costs, IV drug use eats up massive amounts of
police resources each year, as evidenced by last week's raid on a
pair of suspected crack houses along Esquimalt Road, which involved
more than 60 police officers and resulted in just eight drug
trafficking charges.

The Mobile X van was a regular visitor to the Esquimalt houses, as it
was to a notorious Irma Street drug den that was shut down by the
City of Victoria bylaw department following a fatal overdose.

"We used to drop off cases of needles there," Scott says.

However, unstable funding has put the future of Mobile X in question.
The program started about 18 months ago, buying a van with a few
thousand dollars from the organization's reserve account and using
"bits and pieces of money" to keep the program alive, says VARCS
director Michael Yoder.

Eventually VIHA agreed to fund Scott's position, but that money is
only guaranteed until the end of March.

VARCS is in the process or writing a new grant proposal that could
determine whether Mobile X lives or dies, Yoder says.

"Everything's been extended to the end of the fiscal year," he says.
"After that it's open bidding."