Blue

I find it hard to understand the need for a needle exchange in SE22 - there is already a perfectly good drug treatment centre called Marina House, near Kings College Hospital that prescribes and dishes out methadone etc. to their clients. You may have seen people waiting outside early in the morning.Presumably people could get a bus there from SE22 without too much difficulty - and presumably they could hire a couple of people to run the needle exchange (there may already be one there for all I know). Why would it need to be 24 hours? Say someone is injecting 4 times a day - that is 28, call it thirty syringes a week - say 120 a month. Why couldn't they be given 120 syringes / needles and a sharps bin once a month - how many people are likely to use the service in SE22? Presumably there has been a study of prevalence? If there were more than 200 I would be very surprised. I don't understand what the thinking is behind localising and duplicating all resources. http://www.southwarkmind.org.uk/details.asp?Resource=Marina%20House%20Addictions%20Resource%20Centre I worked at a needle exchange and facility where people could come and inject their drugs (usually heroin and pills) and also smoke their crack etc. in Maastricht, Holland. It wasn't based in a residential area, but was actually located next to (well, near to)the central police headquarters. The street sweepers in Holland have sharps containers attached to their trolleys (for syringes and needles) whilst 'street corner workers' (out reach workers) from the project I worked with regularly went out collecting used syringes and needles etc. It is inevitable that if there is a needle exchange some people will use drugs intravenously outside / on the street and casually discard their equipment. Many heroin and IV users are on society's margins and don't tend to have community safety issues at the forefront of their agenda. Users utilising a needle exchange will probably be those without many resources (your middle class junkie will manage quite well, thank you very much, without an exchange)and are more likely to be actively involved in criminal activity or on the periphery.Of course crime will go up locally. Of course there will be problems.I'm all for providing proper services - but in Crystal Palace Road? Come on.