Needle
Exchange
Controversy
in
Australia
2/5/99
Marc Brandl, [email protected] Pictures splashed on the pages of a Sydney paper showing a teenager shooting up has brought the issue of needle exchanges to the headlines and spurred a government official to close one exchange site. In last Sunday's edition of the Sun-Herald, several pictures appeared showing people shooting up, including one youth about to inject with the help of a fellow user. The boy was identified as being only twelve years of age. The area where the incident took place, Redfern, a suburb of Sydney, is predominantly a very low-income aboriginal community with a growing drug problem. The day after the photos were printed, New South Wales (NSW) Health Minister Andrew Refshauge closed the needle exchange in Redfern. The story didn't end though, when a memo from the Health Department in April surfaced directing all government run needle exchanges to give out clean needles to drug users regardless of age if there was a good chance the person was injecting drugs already. Information also came to light from police and people who know the youth that he was in fact 16, and not twelve and that the photos may not be very recent. State wide elections next month in NSW may have also contributed to the quick decision on the part of the Health Minister. The Week Online spoke with Dr. Alex Wodak, director of the Alcohol and Drug Service at St. Vincent's Hospital in Sydney and chair of a recent review of NSW's needle exchanges. "Had there not been elections coming so soon, it might have been handled more appropriately." According to Wodak, Health Minister Refshauge is also Minister for Aboriginal Affairs and has worked closely with the aboriginal community most of his career, including serving in the Aboriginal Medical Service (AMS) as a young doctor. As it turns out, the local chapter of the AMS in Redfern is opposed to needle exchange and prevailed upon the minister to close down the exchange in lieu of the pictures being published. "This is particularly unfortunate because it is a well regarded program," said Wodak. "The staff [of the Redfern clinic] do a tough job. One half the staff are aborigine themselves, and they exchange about 30,000 needles a month. They also attend about 20 overdoses a month and they haven't lost one yet. Scrapping the program is a very high risk thing to do." High rates of sexually transmitted disease among members of the aboriginal community brings a heighten sense of urgency in keeping HIV infection rates low. Wodak worries, "The presence of high rates of sexually transmitted infections means that the aborigines are at considerable risk an African type spread of HIV infection." In the wake of the needle exchange program closure and controversy, two stories on a much more positive note made the news. On Monday, The Age newspaper reported that an experimental drug user caution program in Victoria was deemed a success by several top police and health officials. The programs' supporters include the Chief Superintendent of police in the district where the trial is being held, the Chief Commissioner of police in Victoria, and the Health Minister, Rob Knowles. The program allows first time offenders caught in possession of small quantities of any illegal drug to get a "professional assessment" of their drug use and treatment rather than criminal sanctions. In other encouraging news, the Sydney Morning Herald published comments from the new president of the NSW Law Society, Ms. Margaret Hole, on Tuesday. On drug policy, she said, "For the law society, the first constructive step is to decriminalize the personal use of marijuana. The second positive step this year is to support a trial, as proposed in the Australian Capital Territory, of legal heroin use."
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