NEEDLE PROGRAM FRUSTRATES SOME CHINATOWN RESIDENTS

Some Feel The Effort To Clean Up Drug Users And Prostitutes Is Being
Hampered

The gates are now closed around Chinatown's Kukui Health Building, the
bathrooms are locked and the downstairs water fountain has been removed --
actions to deal with prostitutes and drug users along North Kukui Street.

But while local, state and federal officials try to crack down on drugs and
prostitution in the designated Weed & Seed area, a state program is handing
out condoms and sterile needles there, raising some questions from the
Downtown Neighborhood Board.

"I think it's curious, but I need to see what's going on with this," said
Lynne Matusow, chairwoman of the neighborhood board, which takes up the
matter tomorrow. "It doesn't make sense, we're cleaning up the area ...
we're trying to clear up prostitution and this is bringing the type of
people they're trying to get out."

The Community Health Outreach Worker Project to Prevent AIDS, contracted by
the state Department of Health to provide sterile needles, condoms and drug
education, distributes services from a van on Kukui Street, near Nuuanu
Avenue, just outside Hosoi Garden Mortuary, six days a week.

Suzette Smetka, CHOW's executive director, said Chinatown is the busiest
site. She said 43 percent of visitors to the syringe-exchange program live
or sleep in Kalihi-Palama or downtown.

"Therefore to prevent HIV and also the transmission of other blood-borne
pathogens, especially hepatitis, we have to be located in this area," she
said.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Constance Hassell said Weed & Seed emphasizes both
weeding out drugs and seeding and "needle exchange is certainly part of the
seed effort -- prevention and intervention."

Hassell emphasized that the U.S. Attorney's Office did not take a position
on whether the program was appropriate for the Weed & Seed district, but
said it is up to the community to decide what programs are needed in its
neighborhood.

Meanwhile, Sgt. Les Hite of the Honolulu Police Department said the two
programs are at odds. "We're working against each other because we're saying
... we're going to address (drug crimes) but yet you're still providing the
paraphernalia I need to use the drugs."

Hite and Matusow suggested running the program out of the Department of
Health on Punchbowl Street.

"Basically the community should be working with us and not against us
because we're providing a critical public-health service for the community.
We'd be happy to talk about a better location," Smetka said, adding that the
Chinatown location was selected because it was discreet.

But it's not discreet enough for Kukui Plaza resident Dolores Mollring, who
said the needle-exchange program is valuable, but she doesn't like that it's
taking place in the Weed & Seed area and so close to residential complexes.

Don Weisman, communications director for American Heart Association on the
second floor of the Kukui Health Building, said drugs and prostitution are
occurring in the area.

He said locks on bathroom doors were put on "because people were using them
for bathing and who knows what else."

Cindy Sharp, also of the Heart Association, said running the needle-exchange
program in Chinatown doesn't help.

"It's like saying here's the clean needles so go and do your drugs and
here's the condom so continue the prostitution because we're not going to
condemn you for it."

Condom and Needle Program

What: Downtown Neighborhood Board meeting

When: 7 p.m. tomorrow

Where: Pauahi Community Center at 171 N. Pauahi St.