Still on the topic of sensible policies to prevent disease among drug injectors, I’d like to pass on the idea of Wisdom reader Pierce Wetter. Pointing out that blackmailing brothel owners delivered very high levels of condom use in Bangkok’s brothels, Pierce suggests we use the same technique for drug dealers. Enlist them to sell [...]
Is HIV really about culture and migration and labour? You’d think so if you looked at the mandates of the 10 United Nations organisations that make up UNAIDS. I’ve always thought we only need two organisations involved: UNSEX and UNDRUGS. The first doesn’t exist, and the second (officially know and the United Nations Office on [...]
I ended my last post on an optimistic note. I should have known better. Canada’s health minister is sharpening the guillotine, and hopes to chop down North America’s only supervised injecting site despite a court ruling that the execution would be unconstitutional.
“In my opinion, supervised injection is not medicine; it does not heal the [...]
Drug Warriors have been gloating about the imminent closure of North America’s only supervised injecting site for drug addicts. (”The injection site is expected to close next month,” reported one conservative group. “Congratulations to members who have worked so hard to keep the pressure on the powers to be to close down this madly insane [...]
Vancouver is the only city in North America that provides a safe place for addicts to shoot up in. The local government thinks it’s a good idea. The national government doesn’t. So they’re sticking their oar in to undermine the project, according to local researchers.
“Scientists accuse Tories of ‘despicable’ interference”, yells a headline in the [...]
As I flicked through the headlines of the wonderful Kaiser Foundation HIV reports, I saw this headline. Pakistan, U.N. Agency Launch Pilot Initiative To Improve HIV Control Efforts Among Women. I rolled my eyes. Another touchy-feely let’s-empower-women-through-microcredit-so-they-can-protect-themselves initiatives that will do precisely nothing to reduce new HIV infections. Ho hum.
Then I read the story about [...]
UK taxpayers fund effective HIV prevention programmes for drug users in other countries, but not at home. Perhaps that’s because UK jails are better organised than those in, say Kyrgyzstan, so there’s not that many drugs inside? Uh, no. UK prisoners fork out around 100 million quid a year for drugs, according to the former [...]
The Canadian city of Victoria (not Vancouver, sorry) is still dithering over a home for its needle exchange programme: no-one wants it in their back yard. British Columbia’s top health official has a solution: open supervised injecting sites around the city. The cops are not too pleased.
In an editorial in the British Columbia Medical Journal, [...]
Needle exchange usually gets a pretty bad press. So I was surprised, as I wandered by accident into the greenosphere today, to find that harm reduction models could save the world.
Colin Beavan draws a parallel between injectors and consumers. You can’t break an addiction to consumer goods any more easily than you can break [...]
Drug use and homelessness go together in many cities around the world. The Canadian city of Vancouver, for many years a shining example of sensible drug policy, is no exception. Now, however, it’s the city’s much-vaunted needle exchange programme that is being thrown onto the streets according to Cindy Harnett of the Times Colonist.
The [...]
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