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Needle Exchange in Santa Cruz - Call 831 239 0657
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IMPORTANT NOTE: The SOS Emeline exchange closed at the end of April. County Public Health has started their own exchange. Call Health Services at 454 2437 for more details.
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People often die from overdoses when their friends are afraid to call an ambulance (because the cops might show up too and bust everyone). A new law (AB 472, Tom Ammiano, SF) protects you from getting busted when you call 911 for an overdose. Details here.
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You can get Narcan/naloxone (the overdose antidote) at all our exchange sites. And yes, it's legal! Details here.
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Street Outreach Supporters (SOS) is a harm reduction-based organization serving the injection drug using community of Santa Cruz county. Our goal is to reduce the dangers associated with chronic injection drug use, primarily aiming to slow the spread of blood-borne diseases (HIV and Hepatitis C) among injection drug users (IDUs), their families and partners. We accomplish this by providing syringe access services, including regular exchange sites at fixed locations, deliveries, and street outreach.
We are trained Harm Reduction counselors and Community Health Outreach Workers who offer our program participants compassionate support, education, advocacy, and referrals to local resources. Our areas of focus include: safer injection practices, overdose prevention and survival, getting clean/accessing treatment, and connecting with local resources for food and shelter, as well as medical and mental health care. This is how we facilitate positive behavioral changes, and provide support and encouragement as participants improve the quality of their lives through an overall reduction of drug-related harm.
In the face of depleting social and medical services, and a culture that emphasizes punishment and blame over support and compassion, SOS strives to promote a sense of community and a belief that all humans should be treated with dignity and respect.
Principles of Harm Reduction
Harm reduction is a set of practical strategies that reduce the negative consequences of drug use, or any other risky activity. Harm reduction strategies meet drug users "where they're at," addressing conditions of use along with the use itself.
Because harm reduction demands that interventions and policies designed to serve drug users reflect specific individual and community needs, there is no universal definition of, or formula for implementing harm reduction. However, the following principles are widely accepted as being central to harm reduction practice.
* Accepts, for better and for worse, that licit and illicit drug use is part of our world and chooses to work to minimize its harmful effects rather than simply ignore or condemn them.
* Recognizes abstinence as one possibility along the continuum of drug use, rather than promoting it as an immediate goal.
* Understands drug use as a complex, multi-faceted phenomenon that encompasses a continuum of behaviors from severe abuse to total abstinence, and acknowledges that some ways of using drugs are clearly safer than others.
* Establishes quality of individual and community life and well-being (not necessarily cessation of all drug use) as the criteria for successful interventions and policies.
* Calls for the non-judgmental, non-coercive provision of services and resources to people who use drugs and the communities in which they live in order to assist them in reducing attendant harm.
* Ensures that drug users and those with a history of drug use routinely have a real voice in the creation of programs and policies designed to serve them.
* Affirms drug users themselves as the primary agents of reducing the harms of their drug use, and seeks to empower users to share information and support each other in strategies which meet their particular needs.
* Recognizes that the realities of poverty, class, racism, social isolation, past trauma, gender-based discrimination and other social inequalities affect both people's vulnerability to addiction, and their capacity for effectively dealing with drug-related harm.
* Does not attempt to minimize or ignore the real and tragic harm and danger associated with licit and illicit drug use, but rather identifies specific problems with identifiable, realistic solutions.
Numbers
We exchange about 20,000 syringes a month - that's a quarter million per year. We collect used needles in 8 gallon biohazard containers and take 5 or 6 of these every week for disposal at the County Health Services. That's 40-50 gallons per week. Imagine an oil drum filled with used needles - that's what we collect each week in Santa Cruz County.
Cost comparison
Estimates of the cost of treating a single HIV infection are presently over $500,000 and rising steadily. Modern AIDS drugs extend a patient's life for many years, and the drugs are very expensive. These are costs to the community, because so many of those infected don't have insurance.
The cost of a case of Hepatitis C is harder to calculate, but already more people die from HepC than AIDS.
We can provide a sterile syringe on the street for about ten cents. That's about a third of the retail price. We buy through a national buyers' club that negotiates the best bulk prices. We're a very cost-effective non-profit and our overhead is low.
A ten cents outlay, via Community Health Outreach, can save $500,000.