Needle Exchange worker charged with possession of drug paraphenilia

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Nickatina

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SAN ANTONIO, TEXAS — Bill Day, 73 and neatly dressed, doesn’t look like he belongs out under the viaducts where skinny addicts shoot drugs into their bruised arms.

But they know him, giving him a look here, a head nod there, as he drives by in his familiar van.

Day is the source of something many of them desperately need: clean syringes, which Day sees as his calling from God to prevent the spread of disease.

The Bexar County district attorney sees it a little differently. Backed by an opinion from the Texas attorney general, District Attorney Susan Reed says she can prosecute anyone in possession of drug paraphernalia, regardless of the reason they have it.

Unless the Legislature makes it otherwise — which some members say they hope to do next year — Day can do no more than exchange nods with the addicts he once helped and wonder what will happen to them. He’s been off the streets since police ticketed him in January.

“I am really angry,” Day said, pointing to piles of used needles in the brush under a bridge on the city’s West side. “Every day we’re not out here, someone is getting HIV.”

Richard Wolitski, acting director of the division of HIV/AIDS prevention at the Centers for Disease Control, said three major reviews of needle-exchange programs have shown that they “decrease HIV transmission and do not increase the use of illegal drugs.”

The programs also provide drug users a way to get into treatment programs, Wolitski said.

“No one says to themself, ‘They’re giving away syringes, let’s go get some heroin,’” said Day, who co-founded the nonprofit Bexar Area Harm Reduction Coalition in 2003. “You’re first the addict and you do it whether you have a clean syringe or not.”

But David Murray, chief scientist for the Office of National Drug Control Policy, said recent research shows needle-exchange programs don’t change addicts’ behavior.

“When it comes to the distribution of needles, we know that it carries an enablement of continued drug use,” Murray said. “And we fear, the evidence is strong, that it does not succeed in its effort to control the contagion” of disease.

Murray advocated instead funding treatment programs.

Murray said needle-exchange programs don’t address the core of the HIV/AIDS problem, which is the high-risk behavior associated with drug use, such as venereal disease and multiple sexual partners.

Nevertheless, according to the North American Syringe Exchange Network, there were 186 syringe-exchange programs in 36 states, Washington, D.C. and Puerto Rico as of November 2007.

Some exchanges are authorized by state or local law, some aren’t and some operate underground. But even where they aren’t authorized it’s rare for law enforcement to take a hard line on such programs, said William Martin, a senior fellow at the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy at Rice University. He said authorities often look the other way because they believe the needle-exchange programs provide a public service.

Day, who has AIDS but didn’t get it through drug use, started passing out needles in San Antonio regularly a little over a year ago. Around the same time, the state Legislature authorized Bexar County, which includes San Antonio, to set up a separate pilot program.

State Rep. Ruth Jones McClendon, D-San Antonio, said lawmakers hoped to use the pilot to consider passing a statewide program during the 2009 Legislature.

But Reed said in August anyone with a needle, even in the program, was breaking the law.

“I just had to make a decision as the chief law enforcement officer in the county whether this would be a program, whether they (the pilot program) were excluded out of the penal code,” Reed said. “If they had gone forward, would they be in violation? It’s just a question of law.”

Attorney General Greg Abbott backed up Reed, saying people who possess drug paraphernalia as part of a needle-exchange program can be prosecuted because the law didn’t specifically exempt them.

Reed said the cases against Day and two associates cited with him are on hold until the Legislature meets next year.

Jones McClendon, whose amendment created the pilot program, said it was never lawmakers’ intention to subject anyone to prosecution.

“To me it seems quite shortsighted that our state lags so far behind in this important concept of preventing such diseases,” she said, adding that the Bexar County pilot exchange program hasn’t even started.

Day said if he gets back on the streets, it will be months before he’s able to regain the trust — and dirty needles — of those he’s worked with.

When he started he would get only 15 or 20 dirty needles back a month because the addicts didn’t trust him. In the six months before he quit, he said he got back more than 10,000.
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http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/tx/5896476.html
 
If anyone ever needed any more proof that Texas was run by idiots, then this article gives that proof in spades.
 
I think we've had a couple articles about him. At least he's gettin' some press for what he's trying to do. :\
 
A real travesty, but the law needs to be CHANGED not ignored in certain cases.
 
But David Murray, chief scientist for the Office of National Drug Control Policy, said recent research shows needle-exchange programs don’t change addicts’ behavior.

“When it comes to the distribution of needles, we know that it carries an enablement of continued drug use,” Murray said. “And we fear, the evidence is strong, that it does not succeed in its effort to control the contagion” of disease.<<


Does it scare the shit out of anyone else that this fucking idiot is the head scientist of the Office of National Drug Control Policy (the geniuses who brought us the ever-so-effective 'above the influence' campaign that is stopping millions of kids from smoking the evil mari-ja-wanna). I mean, fuck, this guy actually has a HUGE say in the information that our gov't disseminates. Fucking morons. All of them. Every reputable study that I have ever seen shows that needle exchanges work and work WELL. Ignorance is bliss I suppose. Though I don't think that this is what Joseph Campbell had in mind. Sigh.
 
zigzag| dta said:
first off, enough insulting texas.

second, dont insult texas



that is all
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a704_bm.gif
;) ;) =D
 
I haven't been able to find exact figures in the 20 seconds I looked, but there's more than 10x as many needle exchanges in the UK as there are in the whole of the USA.
How depressing is that?
 
Roxicodone King said:
But David Murray, chief scientist for the Office of National Drug Control Policy, said recent research shows needle-exchange programs don’t change addicts’ behavior.

“When it comes to the distribution of needles, we know that it carries an enablement of continued drug use,” Murray said. “And we fear, the evidence is strong, that it does not succeed in its effort to control the contagion” of disease.<<


Does it scare the shit out of anyone else that this fucking idiot is the head scientist of the Office of National Drug Control Policy (the geniuses who brought us the ever-so-effective 'above the influence' campaign that is stopping millions of kids from smoking the evil mari-ja-wanna). I mean, fuck, this guy actually has a HUGE say in the information that our gov't disseminates. Fucking morons. All of them. Every reputable study that I have ever seen shows that needle exchanges work and work WELL. Ignorance is bliss I suppose. Though I don't think that this is what Joseph Campbell had in mind. Sigh.
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Yea this is the part that really made me mad reading this article. I want to see that evidence. I want to see any "evidence" that access to clean needles keep addicts going. It's the same line of thinking that are eroding our other civil rights and liberties i.e. if we get rid of guns then people won't get murdered, if we spy on everyone then we won't miss the terrorists. How these people can live with themselves knowing what they are doing to humanity is beyond me.
 
What we have here is an idealogical divide, all the critics of harm reduction are ideologically opposed to drug use. They don't understand that reducing drug use is not the point of harm reduction, in fact to them harm reduction makes drug use less risky and therefore more attractive. They like HIV, after all it only kills addicts*, plus it will help scare their kids away from using*.

In their defense they likely have had no exposure to real drug use or users and have a tainted propaganda inspired view of the world. Imagine you had no exposure to drugs or the drug culture and no interest and all you had ever seen is shit in the media, to you it is at best a threat to your teenagers.

*I know this is not true, rhetorical liberty ;)
 
There is no state law agaisnt the possesion of a needle in texas. However, in the big cities, like dallas/austin.houston/san antonio, There are city laws. I've gotten pulled over with needles in the car (2 still wrapped needles) and I didn't get a charge. Mind you, i wasnt in a big city.
 
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