Pubdate: Thu, 04 Jul 2002 Source: Monday Magazine (CN BC) Copyright: 2002 Monday Publications Contact: http://mondaymag.com/monday/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1150 Author: Andrea Scott-Bigsby 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. - --- MAP posted-by: Beth