A clean exchange

Program for IV drug users tries to stay low-key

By Kelly Davis 01/01/2008

The mid-size RV parked just off University Avenue in North Park is so nondescript, looks so much like, well, an RV, that a father walking by with his two small children takes them right past the vehicle’s front door, stopping so his little girl can pet a friendly copper-colored mutt who, with his leash tied to nearby chain-link fence, sits waiting for his owner. The dog’s owner, a skinny guy in a clean, too-big plaid flannel shirt, is inside the RV, just behind its closed door, exchanging used syringes for clean ones.

When someone comments that Dad and his kids probably had no idea they just strolled past a mobile needle-exchange program, Robert Lewis, director of HIV services for Family Health Centers of San Diego, the community medical organization that runs the city’s clean-syringe exchange program (CSEP), calmly replies, “Nope.”
This month, the San Diego City Council will review and vote on whether or not to approve CSEP’s first annual report since the program was restarted in mid-2006. One year prior, political opposition managed to shut down the program, which, at that point, had been operating for four years. Read all about it here.....