By David Hutton
A coalition of health and support agencies is fighting to restore Ottawa’s controversial crack pipe program after it was cancelled by the city in July.
“We’re limping along, keeping the program going as best we can,” said Ron Chaplin, chairman of the Ottawa Council on HIV/AIDS, a group of 10 local health agencies that support the program.
“But we’re going to do whatever we can to get the funding in place to get it back to where it needs to be.”
In July, city council voted to cancel the program, which provided free glass tubes, mouth pieces, and screens to crack users. The program’s purpose was to prevent the spread of infectious diseases, such as HIV and hepatitis C, by encouraging addicts to use clean pipes rather than needles or homemade pipes. Supporters say the program also put drug users in contact with health care workers and resources they may not have otherwise encountered.
“We’re not going to let this program die,” said Kathleen Cummings, director of the AIDS Committee of Ottawa. “We’ve already seen an impact from this unfortunate decision. The number of clean pipes we hand out is less already but drug use hasn’t declined, so what are they using?”
The city-run program cost $30,000 a year, of which the city was paying $7,500, with the rest covered by the province. Around 90 per cent of the pipes were handed out by the city’s needle exchange van on evenings and weekends with the rest distributed by 10 community health clinics, Chaplin said.
The groups continue to hand out a smaller number of free crack pipes to addicts during the day, despite the cancellation of the program. They contributed $15,000 to keep the program running until the end of the year and have raised around $2,000 towards restoring it, Cummings said.
The groups would have to raise at least $50,000 to return the program to its previous level, a challenge for the cash-strapped agencies, Chaplin said.
Critics of the program, such as Mayor Larry O’Brien and Police Chief Vernon White, have argued that it legitimizes more drug use.
Orléans Coun. Bob Monette supported the motion that killed the city’s involvement in the program and has spoken out against health centres that continue to provide the pipes.
“It’s time to give it up. The crack program wasn’t working,” he said. “We have to move on and help get more treatment space for addicts. The only people who are winning are the users and the dealers.”
Cummings, however, said the program was curbing the spread of blood borne infections.
She cited a recent University of Ottawa study by epidemiology professor Lynne Leonard that showed the program resulted in drug users switching from riskier injection drug use to smoking crack.
“It’s sometimes hard for the public to understand how this is good for public health, but the program works,” she said.
The anecdotal evidence the group has gathered from users since the program was cut suggests that users are switching to injecting the drug rather than smoking it, a more dangerous practice, she said.
The coalition has been lobbying the provincial government to include the program in its mandatory health guidelines for cities, which would force council to reinstate the program, but they don’t expect a response until after the provincial election.
“We’re trying to find a longer term solution,” Chaplin said, “We had the rug pulled from underneath our feet and now we’re fighting to get up again.”