Be Aware

....is what my friend Scott Henson says in his blog about National Meth Awareness day, which apparently is today. Before you head out to celebrate, check out his blog, and the link he included to Drug War Rant, which provides some basic facts about meth in America today. It's the holidays, time to get up to 'speed' (sorry) on your trivia, and check it out.

A more local approach towards meth awareness can start with the 2006 Report on Substance Abuse Trends in Texas. The report covers pretty much all drugs used illegally, including legal drugs like riddalin, alcohol, and cough medicine. Of the prohibited substances, the author Jane Carlisle Maxwell tells you where the goods are coming from, what it's typically made from (incase you were looking for recipies) and what you should expect to pay for it depending on what city you happen to be visiting.

She's also got a great graph on page 13 that demonstrates how Texans are finally starting to wise up when it comes to injecting the stuff. In the late 80's, over 80% of folks here were shooting meth, while only 1% were smoking it. In 2005, we see that the number of meth users poking themselves to get off decreased to 40%, while over 50% have taken to smoking it.

While I wouldn't recommend ever touching the stuff, it's good to know that people have chosen a method of delivery that is 'safer' than injection drug use. But at the same time, given the statistics provided in the report, injection is the second most common route Texans use to take meth, and that makes for quite a lot of people out there who are in need of clean needles.

Glossary of Popular Syringe Access Terms

As with all specialized fields of study, drug policy discussions frequently include terminology not used in every day conversations. Here are some brief definitions of common terms used in syringe access dialogue.

Harm Reduction-Harm reduction is a set of practical strategies that reduce negative consequences of drug use, incorporating a spectrum of strategies from safer use, to managed use to abstinence.

Names for Syringe Access Programs
SEP- Syringe Exchange Program- A program that collects dirty syringes in exchange for sterile ones. SEP's often provide many other services such as disease testing, referrals to treatment and other risk reduction education. syn: NEP
NEP- Needle Exchange Program- syn: SEP, see above
Pharmaceutical Access- non-prescription sales of syringes in pharmacies

Names for Users of Drugs
IDU- Intravenous Drug User
Addict- A person who has developed a psychological or physical dependence on a substance.
User- A person who uses drugs but is not addicted.
Junkie- A person addicted to narcotic drugs, especially heroin

Diseases and Health Risks Related to Injection Drug Use
HIV- Human Immunodeficiency Virus
AIDS-Acquired Immune Difficiency Syndrom
HCV- Hepatitis C
HBV- Hepatitis B
HAV-Hepatits A
Addiction- The disease of psychological or physical dependence on a substance.
Cotton Fever- Cotton fever is believed to be caused by the Enterobacter agglomerans bacterium, which colonizes cotton plants. IDU's elevate their chances of contracting cotton fever when using short strand cotton (cigarette filters, cotton balls, etc) as opposed to long strand cotton.
OD- Overose. Overdose is the poisoning of a persons body that occurs when a drug is ingested in too large of a quantity, causing severe illness or death.

Risk Reduction Drugs and Practices
Buprenorphine- An opioid drug used primarily in the relief of pain associated with drug addiction withdrawl and treatment.
Naloxone- A drug that instantly reverses the respiratory depression associated with opiate overdose, often used to save lives of those who OD on opiates. Does not work for non-opiate OD's.
Methadone- A simple synthetic opioid often used in the detoxification and treatment of people with addiciton to narcotics. Also used in treatment of chronic pain.
Safe Injection- Eliminating as many risks as possible to make injection drug use survivable. Example: never use alone, one sterile needle per person, used one time only, rotate injeciton site on body to save veins, ect.

7.7 BILLION DOLLAR VICTORY

Last week, St. Vincents Hospital in Darlinghurst Australia celebrated 20 years of providing sterile syringes to injection drug users, and they have a lot to celebrate. In 1986, one young and daring doctor, Dr. Alex Wodak, acted according to his medical ethics and against Australian drug policies, and began distributing sterile syringes to injection drug users using money collected in a hat that was passed among clinic staff. Alex challanged law enforcement with medical redommendations, and "It was a gamble that paid off" according to the Sydney Morning Herald (Nov 13),

By 2000, needle and syringe programs around Australia had prevented an estimated 25,000 HIV infections and 21,000 hepatitis C infections and saved the country as much as $7.7 billion in health costs.

Since the late 80's, the Australian government has incorporated harm reduction principles into their "Tough on Drugs" campaign and designated 860 locations where needle and syringe programs provide syringes and drug treatment services to addicts. By acting upon the recommendations of doctors rather than anti-drug laws, Australia prioritized disease prevention and they succeeded.

By contrast, the US authorities deciede it would be best to use HIV/AIDS as a deterrent to drug users. The result?

..the US has the highest AIDS incidence in the industrialised world, and 36 per cent of new HIV cases are injecting drug users, compared with less than 5 per cent in Australia.

Good for you Australia. And for my native country, shame, shame, shame.....

RIM JOB

The New Jersey Senate comittee finally passed a bill allowing for the legal operation of syringe exchange programs in the state. Great progress, now it just has to get voted off off the Senate floor to become a reality.

While most New Jersey residents understand the science supporting the programs, the Family Policy Council still persists with invalid and uniformed protests, reported the Cherry Hill Courier Post ("Needle exchange bill moves forward," Oct. 20).

Won Kyu Rim of the New Jersey Family Policy Council said that although he and the supporters of the bill shared the goal of stopping the spread of the disease, their solutions differed.

"We should be going with the programs that are proven to work, not a pilot program where the results are ambiguous," said Rim. "The best way to use the state's money is to allocate it toward established treatment programs, not to mush them all together."

The most interesting thing about Rim's comments is that NEP's are proven to work, with results that are easy to interpret: reduced blood born disease, reduced needle litter on the street and no increase in drug use. They also tend to pull addicts into treatment pretty regularly. In fact, the only reason NEP's are even being proposed in the form of pilot programs is to combat the irrational fear of increased drug use that folks like the Family Council have created.

New Jersey has the fifth highest HIV rate in the nation, and nearly 50 percent of those infections were caused from used of infected needles. Seventy percent of newborns infected with HIV get it because their parents had used shared needles. Sounds to me like pilot program or not, New Jersey needs clean needles.