newfoundland

APRIL CUNNINGHAM, TELEGRAPH-JOURNAL

 

SAINT JOHN - Setting up a safe injection site, a youth shelter and increasing access to guidance counsellors are just some of the ideas a group of high schools students have for decreasing crime in Saint John.

 

Six students from a Saint John High School law class presented the ideas to common council Monday night.

 

Over the past few months, the class, taught by Adam McKim, heard from various guest speakers including the police chief and the executive director of AIDS Saint John. The class split into groups of two and came up with a comprehensive list - which six young women presented to council.

 

By: ALISHA MORRISSEY, The Telegram

 

The Safe Works Access Program (SWAP), which provides clean needles to injection drug users in exchange for used ones, is expanding into the Corner Brook area.

The SWAP program offered through the AIDS Committee of Newfoundland and Labrador handed out nearly 43,000 clean needles in 2009 in exchange for 24,000 dirty ones.

"It's busy. It's busier and busier all the time," says Tree Walsh, who helped build the St. John's needle exchange program, now running out of the Tommy Sexton Centre.

The first year it had funding, Walsh says she gave out 5,000 needles and took in nearly 36,000 dirty ones.

"People might debate whether Saint John needs one or not, but I would say there's no harm in having one," said Tim Christie, associate professor in bioethics at Dalhousie University and a lecturer at the University of New Brunswick Saint John.

"They're brilliant at preventing people from dying of overdose deaths. They're brilliant at linking people with other treatments."

In 2009, 18 substance abusers in Saint John died while on a waiting list for treatment, Christie said.

The addition of the uptown clinic, in operation for less than five months, has more than doubled the number of people in the city receiving treatment and slashed wait lists for treatment from six to 10 months to just a couple of weeks.

Methadone helps treat opiate addicts - those dependent on drugs such as Dilaudid and heroin.

"If you go back five months, there (were) only about 140 people in Saint John receiving methadone treatment and there were literally hundreds of people waiting to get into treatment," Christie said.