Tuesday, September 18, 2007

the needle cafe ~ thoughts?

Tuesday, September 18, 2007

I wrote a piece a few years back, after my stint at that place I now call the needle cafe ~ the sunshine-heads that cooked up this ridiculous waste of taxpayers' funds like to delude themselves by calling it the safe injection site ... HA, what's safe about it? Sorrry, I've tried, but can't think of anything safe about watching (dirty) street junkies shoot up using insulin needles filled unsterile drugs! And, I can't really think of how this prevents junkies from getting sicker, and sicker. I feel pretty confident about the fact that I would ultimately get charged with neglect, if I ever tried to start an IV on a patient with an insulin needle (too small to reach the vein), after having washed my hands in a dirty, fetid alley-puddle! So ... why does everyone think this f*cking needle cafe such a good idea?




~ see? this needle is tooo short for a venipuncture! ~



~ and this ... this is what we use in the hospitals to start IVs - much longer! ~

Anyway ...

I find myself thinking about what to do with this knowledge I have ... I think I will have to revisit this piece. I know I will, given that the Federal Minister of Health plans to make a decision regarding the future of this site by year's end! Here's the link, anyway. Keep in mind that I wrote this 3 years ago, so the quality of the writing may seem like slightly less than what you've come to expect from me. Anyone who reads this ~ I'd appreciate your constructive feedback, in a comment or via e-mail.

needle cafe PDF



8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hidy Ho!

Man I am LOVING this new site!!

Wowie wow wow wow!

You are talented in the areas that you apply yourself, you know that, it seems like everything you set your mind to do, you excel in.

I wish you would teach me how to make a custom image in the header field.

I wish i knew half the stuff you do about blogs!

Well, there is a smackdown brewing at aunt belle's pad (back door a course)

SMACKDOWN

see you there!

Anonymous said...

hey girlfriend!

nicey nice nice to see ya. ya likes the digs? recognize the header pics? they're depictions of dante divine comedy.

the header is just the pictures i liked cut down and it changes when you mouse on and off it because of a javascript i have in the template ...

there's a way you can add a header image to your blog, but you can't control the position on the page and you can soup it up with a script like mine ...

its easy to make a header. do you have a couple of pictures in mind? or a concept? i can make you one. i hafta make mayden a second header (lol, have promised for a while now) ... i'm doing a photoshop course now. haha. what i joke! i could do the final project now and get 100 %.

but i'll go along and have fun. so ... yeah ... i'll have time this week to make some photochoppies. send me a picture or tell me what you want ... i'll make it fer ya, if you want.

and then, once ya gots a header ... then i'll give you the code to slap in your layout.

thanx girl ... yeah, i'm insane like that ~ whenever i learn a new skill i have the if i can't win, i don't wanna play attitude. its crazy. but i learn lots.

pssst ~ i learned a lot of how to do all this blog html stuff by viewing the source code and seeing "how they did it" ...

thanx for the tip on the smackdown ... on the back porch. spent a couple hours there ... this afternoon.

Anonymous said...

You and I share a lot of dark interests. It would be good to know you in real life.

Anonymous said...

hi your cruelness,

how'd the move go? smoothly i hope. miss you ... nice to see you around. i'll bet we'd have lots to share over a big ass magnum of bubbly ... like, a whole nite's worth of conversation ... one day, when life is settled ... we'll meet. i feel sure of that, somehow.

hope your week is going ok.

Anonymous said...

i read your pdg. highly interesting.
in theory it would seem the enlightened way to go, but reality is different, isn't it?
i think holland has had similar sites and has distributed synthetic heroine at certain sites.

Anonymous said...

hi foamy. yes eu has several. all working wonderfully, because they're managed and operated way differently. there process and outcome mean something. here, its good enuf that the place opened, and it will create the illusion something is being done and it keeps junkies off the street. who cares if the junkies actually benefit. no one here really ever truly had that as an objective .. only their own self interest. many a career has been made on the backs of junkies and other unfortunate souls. that's sucks.

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the information about the insulin needle.

From what people say in the US, the needle provisions are primarily to cut down HIV infection, nothing else. But as you point out here, there are other health risks involved with the program that could also cause a public health crisis.

Are there any statistics about how your needle program is doing? Are HIV infections going down, and are the authorities making a correlation between that and the program?

Anonymous said...

The problem with using insulin needles - which are used, btw because they cost less - is that they cause more trouble than they save. reducing the number of hep c and hiv infections, in exchange for endocarditis, abcesses, and damage to limbs that even lead to amputation ... that's not much of a harm reduction, is it?

in europe, they use the longer needles, and the other advantage is that those proper needles come detached from syringes ... another key thing for infection control. coz ... junkies are not going to throw out that insulin needle if they don't get the vein the first time (like, say, i would). they will keep re-using it!

i think harm reduction has its place ... if planned and carried out in a thoughtful, sensible manner. just providing a place for street people to frequent where basically anything goes ... that's a recipe for disaster. and ...

well, the plan the city of vancouver adopted to deal with the open drug and addiction problem involved four pillars ~ harm reduction, enforcement, treatment and prevention. it seems to me a whole lot is being spent on harm reduction and not much else. its like trying to eat dinner on a one-legged table ~ how's that gonna work for us? LOL. NOT!

its hard to say about this injection site ... since all who control the study data/stats have totally bought into the venture ~ they're all harm reduction groupies hoping to get a name for themselves by associating with something BIG. and they're just in on the "study" to look for things that will support their stance.

like, when i worked there, they tried altering the definition of "overdose" to make it look like there were less overdoses than there actually were. i did not make myself too popular when i reminded the powers that be of the reality that, really, everyone who shoots up in that place is technically overdosed, since they get high and that is really an effect of the drug's toxicity. haha ~ they all hated hearing me say that ...

once again, a fine example of how self-interest of a few can eclipse the greater societal good.


on the subject of harm reduction. if any party really was serious about it they would seriously contemplate a system by which junkies could get an "IV loc" inserted in their arms ... something they could access without having to puncture their skin several times per day. you know there are even needless systems out there ... ? of course, its a matter of determining whether or not the junkies are worth spending that kind of money on those sorts of things. how sad.