THE BREAKING POINT

There are no abandoned hypodermic needles in my backyard. I've found a 1986
licence plate, a patch of stinging nettle, two wooden flutes and enough
dinky cars and action figure amputees to fill a small sandbox. But there
are no needles. Not in my backyard.

The needles are down the street, in the parks and along the sides of the
roads. If you look, you might find them too.

Check out Pioneer Park downtown. That's where, three years ago, an idyllic
breastfeeding moment with my son turned sour. I relaxed on a bench, gazed
at my healthy baby and, as the letdown reflex kicked in to nourish him, I
spotted two men in the bushes, perching on milk crates and filling their
veins with drugs.

Or peek into the shrubs at the entrance of the Conservatory of Music, where
my son (now an energetic preschooler and self-described "wild-man")
recently frolicked with a friend. They chased each other around a discarded
needle, but my husband found it before they noticed.

In Fernwood, my neighbourhood, you might find a needle in Stevenson Park,
where children from nearby homes, daycares and Fernwood Community Centre
programs romp around.

Last week, a friend and I had an impromptu picnic there. Our
three-year-olds ran around in the sun while we fed our babies in the shade.
After tiring of the playground equipment, the kids darted into a nearby
cluster of bushes.

A kid's perfect hide-out is also a needle user's perfect hide-out. But the
place looked safe, and after checking it quickly, we resumed our picnic. I
believed that if my son ever found a needle, he would leave it on the
ground and tell an adult.

I underestimated the power of a new and interesting object in the eyes of a
three-year-old. And my warnings about "pokey, pointy needles" didn't
accurately describe what he found that day: a tube with colours and numbers
and lines on it. An orange cap hid the sharp point.

My son's friend emerged from the bushes holding the uncapped syringe. She
said she poked it into a bush a few times. My son said he found it first.

There was blood on his hand.

Recalling a poster at the public health department that stressed the
importance of going to Emergency within two hours of a needle stick, I sped
to the Royal Jubilee hospital with my two kids and a Coke bottle containing
the needle. A triage nurse swabbed my son's index finger with rubbing
alcohol, and told us we'd have to wait for paperwork.

I looked at the mark--tiny and ugly. After waiting nearly two hours, I
asked about the two-hour window of treatment. A doctor and nurse told me to
relax, it was a myth. The doctor soon saw us and explained that treatment
within 72 hours was adequate. He said there was no risk of HIV, but an
extremely remote chance my son could get hepatitis B or C. He ordered an
injection called HBIG and a series of immunizations to minimize the danger
of developing hepatitis B. Nothing could be given to prevent hepatitis C.

After another two-hour wait for the HBIG, we were finally able to leave. My
husband and I felt confused and exhausted, even though we were told our son
would be fine.

Needle pricks are dramatic, but abandoned syringes aren't the loaded guns
of our imagination. Nobody analyzed the needle in the pop bottle. We don't
know how long it had sat in the bushes, or whether it carried infected
blood. Only blood samples taken from my son--at three, six and 12 months
after the event--will assure us that he's healthy.

Funky, Junkie Fernwood

In the years I've lived in this neighbourhood, "funky" Fernwood has held
many meanings for me. Fun, diverse, earthy, friendly. A place where my
grandma's care home can co-exist with community gardens, a piercing salon
and makeshift skateboarding structures with family co-ops, a gourmet pizza
parlour with overgrown lots and chickens.

Today, my neighbourhood looks different. "Funky" takes on its other
meaning: a state of panic, fear or mental depression. Funky, junkie Fernwood.

After a visit to our favourite bagel shop, my kids grow restless in their
double stroller. My son wants to wade through the tall grass at the side of
the road (there are no sidewalks on this street). My baby girl needs to nurse.

Haegert Park, the green space at Chambers and Grant, has often been our
favourite rest stop: my son studies ants, I feed my baby, and we regularly
meet up here with my Grandma. In the past, I've simply warned my son to not
touch needles.

But today, I can't sit back and trust him, or the park, so I push on
towards home with two unhappy kids. My decision feels irrational. But as I
struggle not to envision every bush as a pincushion, I spot a pile of dirty
clothes and an abandoned, capless needle. I drop it into an empty juice
container, trying to explain to my son (who is chanting, "I can't believe
my eyes. I can't believe my eyes!") why it's OK for me, a grown-up, but
it's not OK for him to handle a needle, ever.

We stop at the Fernwood Community Centre, to dispose of the needle and have
a nursing break on a comfy couch. FCC staff members know what to do with
needles. Until last month, injection-drug users regularly used the main
public washroom. It's now locked, with a key behind the counter. Too many
people emerged from 45-minute sessions inside, leaving behind bloody walls,
scattered toilet paper, overflowing toilets, and needles down the drain, in
the toilet tank, behind the mirror and in the paper towel dispenser.

Turns out the comfy couch has cradled many passed-out addicts, and the
public phone has been a tool for drug dealing.

Drug activity in the centre has decreased since the bathroom door was
locked and a sign announced: "This is a drug-free centre."

However, the struggle to enforce a zero-tolerance drug policy continues.
Centre co-ordinator Susanne Dannenberg explains the conflicts. "We don't
ask to see track marks. We try to be there for people," she says. "But I
don't want to expose my staff to bloody walls any more."

Drug activity outside the centre is also a concern. Each time the
playground at Stevenson Park is used by the centre's day-care or preschool,
staff must sweep the area to ensure it's needle-free. Kids under the
centre's supervision aren't allowed to play on the grass or in the bushes.
Not surprisingly, few people are registering for the centre's recreation
programs these days. And the sign meant to scare away drug dealers and
users may well scare off people who were otherwise unaware of a problem.

Dannenberg has been lobbying for an increased police presence in the area.
She hopes this will let the centre focus on the everyday challenges of
giving the community what it needs.

"We want the centre to be more reflective of the diversity of the
community, not just for people who think they can shoot up here,"
Dannenberg says. "We want people to come here for help, for fun, for
networking, and for learning. We don't want to be a dumping ground anymore."

Shooting Targets

Six days a week, a volunteer from the neighbourhood's methadone clinic
cleans up other people's garbage, seeking out syringes around the FCC,
Spring Ridge Commons, Victoria High School, the Fernwood Community
Association and the Belfry Theatre. In three months of looking, he's found
about 12 needles, mostly on Monday mornings.

Clinic director Brian Oswald says that Outreach Services isn't to blame for
the abandoned needles in the neighbourbood. They dispense methadone, not
syringes. However, they decided routine sweeps would be a tangible way to
help clean up the area.

Oswald feels that creating safe-injection sites, or shooting galleries,
might be a more permanent solution to the needle problem.

"When it's called a shooting gallery, there's a lot of imagery around it,"
he says, suggesting that cultural boundaries here get in the way of trying
things that have worked in cities like Amsterdam. "I think it may help
here. The outlaw aspect of drug use is taken away."

Oswald says the rise of hard-core drug use and trafficking is not unique to
Fernwood. "It's a city-wide problem that's come with the slow erosion of
our social system over the last 10 years," he says. "And this [provincial]
government is just hammering people where they've been hammered enough."

Oswald says that while the services for alcohol and drug services have
dwindled, so has the cost of injection drugs. These two factors have
created some of the clinic's newest clients: Vic High students. Some kids
as young as 14 have come in for methadone treatment.

"Heroin and cocaine are so cheap and pervasive, kids can get a habit
going," Oswald says. And when this fall's reconfiguration of schools brings
an extra 300 students to Vic High, he suggests the school is going to need
a good drug strategy.

Oswald, Dannenberg and several other representatives from Fernwood groups,
health organizations and businesses comprise the Fernwood Community Action
Group, which meets regularly to discuss, among other youth issues, the
reconfiguration. Previously a school for grade 11 and 12 students, Vic High
will soon include kids in grades nine and 10.

Some people are concerned about how the community will affect the kids.
Others worry about how the kids might affect the community.

Do abandoned needles endanger the kids? Not likely. Will they get sucked
into a neighbourhood drug culture? Some think that's a risk. Wendy Neumann,
coordinator for Vic High's Community Integrated Services, is a member of
the action group. She's worked at Vic High for 10 years, and feels the
current drug problems can be linked to the red zoning of traffickers downtown.

"A lot of people who've been banned from downtown are being pushed into
Fernwood," she says. "Fernwood is losing its character, and I think it's
become a collecting place for undesirables."

Neumann says there are some fears about the proximity of the methadone
clinic to the Fernwood village square, a regular hangout for Vic High
students. "We don't disagree with [the clinic] being there," says Neumann,
"but we're concerned that the younger kids will be influenced by the people
who are hanging around to get methadone."

The school doesn't currently have a drug strategy. And the FCC's Dannenberg
says neighbourhood youth are being underfunded.

"We have the highest number of older youth in Greater Victoria," she says.
"And that's not reflected in the services offered. We want to offer
alternatives [to drug use]."

Watching The Streets

Of course, the majority of intravenous drug users in the neighbourhood are
not high school kids. Most are over 30 and living in poverty. A recent
study by the Capital Health Region, as it was formerly known, showed that
21 per cent of those who used the needle exchange were HIV-positive, and a
survey suggests that more than half of Victoria's intravenous drug users
have hepatitis C.

Linda Poffenroth, deputy medical health officer for the Vancouver Island
Health Authority/South, says intravenous drug users are unable to work
because of their addictions, and their poverty then limits their treatment
options. Being poor also means many intravenous drug users have no home to
shoot up in.

"When you talk to users they'll tell you they're dropping needles where
they use them," says Poffenroth. "And they have no place to go."

Poffenroth says more could be done to help addicts beat their habits, and
more could be done to keep needles out of the parks. In a city so
preoccupied with beautification that it has hotlines to report dog poop and
graffiti, there is no one to call for safe needle disposal. People can ring
up their local environmental health office for a needle collection
container, but only in rare cases will an officer come out and collect a
needle.

"We just don't have the resources to help with every needle found," says
Poffenroth. "So it's incumbent upon property owners to maintain vigilance
around the issue."

For my son, handling a dirty needle has brought about a strange natural
consequence: he'll need more needles. Needles for blood work and needles
for immunizations. Hopefully not needles to monitor or treat a chronic
liver disease.

He has a shorter leash, and I have keener eyesight: "It's a needle? A
straw? Just a pen."

I don't want to be scared out of Fernwood's public spaces, but now I can't
relax in them, either. And as long as the parks and dark corners are the
only safe places for injection drug users, the neighbourhood may not be a
safe place for kids to run free. For now, my kids and I will be spending
more time in our backyard. And, sadly, less time beyond it.