NO QUESTIONS ASKED AT THE POINT EXCHANGE

The staff at The Point Risk Reduction Program, Sudbury's needle exchange
program, don't know their clients' names, but they know the faces of the
almost 500 people who use their services each month.

The Point provides a variety of services for addicts including providing
bus tickets and rides to doctors' appointments.

Clients are not subjected to any questions other than "what do you need."
In fact, clients of The Point are given code names for their protection.

"The most important thing is confidentiality," says social worker Satch
Pearson. "Then people won't be afraid to come here."

The Point offers clients testing for HIV, AIDS, hepatitis B. Condoms,
health information, referrals for treatment, social services, counselling
and immunization are also available.

The needle exchange program, located at 105 Elm St., was created by a
committee of representatives from community agencies including the Action
Centre for Youth, Access AIDS, Elizabeth Fry Society, the John Howard
Society, police officers, the medical officer of health and consumers.

The needle program, which is run as a part of the Sudbury Action Centre, is
overseen by Doris Schwar.

At any given time there are clients waiting for clean needles in the
waiting room just outside the office. In a small office filled with posters
and signs advertising clean sex and drug use, Pearson gives out clean
needles to drug addicts, and steroid users who bring in their used needles.

"Drugs are never going away. I don't care how many people you arrest and
put in jail," Pearson says. "I don't care if you burn every opium crop,
marijuana crop, and every cocaine crop. Someone will invent a synthetic
one. Drugs will always be with us, so will addiction. The question is, how
do we live with it as a society?"

The cost for a drug user with a minor habit is $50 to $60 a day. In 10
days, that can amount to $500 to $600.

For the Point, 2002 has been one of the most challenging and yet most
gratifying years since its inception in 1992. A record number of clients
(5,898) have used the program, but this has not translated into a
corresponding increase in the number of needles exchanged.

While the number of needles exchanged has remained virtually constant over
the past two years, the numbers of clients seeking support, on site
services and referrals, especially to treatment programs and HIV/HepC
testing, has more than doubled in the past year.