Emily Hamer's List: Needle Program

• handing out clean needles to heroin addicts.
• They distribute matches, condoms and even "pipe holders" to addicts who prefer to smoke their stuff rather than inject it.
• Narcan - an "opioid antagonist"
• Bill Keeton, director of communications for the AIDS Resource Center.
• it has been used no fewer than 500 times during heroin overdoses in the state in recent years.
• There is little doubt it is saving lives - and not just through Narcan injections.
• 500,000 needles in the past decade.
• There has been a substantial decrease in HIV infections attributed to drug injections since the program began in 1994,
• It's to get them to stop using completely by giving them information and trying to get them into a treatment program.
• there is a question about whether Lifepoint is "legitimizing" drug usage,
• I think, given all the evidence, that privately funded needle-exchange programs are an obviously good thing so long as the message gets across that there is a way to get treatment or to contact someone who can help.
• • It saves lives but is it handing addicts an easy way to get high rather than helping them?
• The ambivalence comes from the fear that addicts aren't looking for a way to avoid the next high. They're looking for a way to get one. And it's being handed to them.

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• 4 drug overdose deaths in Muskego in 3 years, 2 of them in the last 3 months. Can we stop the next one?
• between the ages of 19 and 24
• Captain Chuck Wood of the Waukesha County Drug Enforcement Unit. 
• the cause of death as drug intoxication

• 2010        29 Overdose deaths from diverted or illegal drugs all year

   

  2011        20 Overdoses from heroin alone in 7 months, Jan 1 - July 26, 2011, not all ending in death
• Wood s
• • Over the counter drugs can be just as dangerous as heroine
• “It looks safer to be taking a pill made by Bristol-Myers than to be shooting heroin,” Wood said.  “Without a doctor, they’re equally dangerous.”
• Lieutenant David Constantineau of the Muskego Police Department (MPD)
• “We are seeing prescription meds in high school,” he said. “Heroin comes out of prescription pain killers.
• • Madison Kiefer died at 15 after taking a combination of different drugs. What ultimately killed her was synthetic opiate.
• “think a pill is safer, then they’re drinking and you throw in depressants, the heartbeat slows or ceases and we end up at funerals,”
• heroin, it’s less expensive
• can’t tell what dose you’re getting
• “Pure heroin snorting can be a relatively quick death,”
• • Similar to the drug van, it saves lives, but encourages drug use by giving this "false sense of security"
• false sense of security.
• There is a drug that can prevent an overdose death, commonly known as Narcan, or Naloxone, Wood said.
• Addicts believe their intelligence will keep them from overdosing, when in fact, an overdose has more to do with the purity of the drug than a user’s intelligence, he said. 
• Constantineau.
• Narcan can give users a false sense of security
• Addicts get high in groups, and if somebody goes down, they’ll give them a Narcan
• Lifepoint
• distributes safe hypodermic needles within Wisconsin communities, HIV infections caused by injection drug use have dropped 67% since 1994.

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