 After two decades, the United States Congress has voted to lift the ban on the federal funding of needle exchange programs. This finally allows organizations providing this harm reduction service to apply for federal funds. The short movie explains why and how needle exchange programs save lives and protect communities. I'm an alien, I'm a legal alien, I'm an angel, I don't know you. You define what needle exchange is and how does it protect communities. Syringe exchange arose out of the HIV epidemic that emerged amongst injection drug users. Injection drug users were sharing contaminated syringes and other injection equipment and so syringe exchange is an opportunity for a drug user to get clean sterile new syringes and to dispose of their old used syringes. And that becomes a way in which we can establish contact with drug users who traditionally are often outside of all kinds of social services and begin to build a relationship. People come in and they all have a code. I get the code from them and enter it to the air system, ask them if they're returning any. This is where used syringes go. If you're using a syringe exchange that means you're not sharing needles, you're getting fresh clean needles and you're disposing of them improperly so you don't have to worry about no one stepping on them, them being in the parks, them being in any place that they shouldn't be. Do you put your 50 in there? Yeah. How many would you like? 50. Back in the mid 80s New York City was known as the epicenter for HIV and injection drug use in the world. More than 50% of the drug users in New York and there were about 200,000 of them had AIDS because you didn't even have HIV in those days. We didn't know HIV was, we had AIDS. And the New York City Department of Health began to investigate starting a syringe exchange in New York City back in 1986. But now we have about 17 programs in New York City that supply syringes to drug users. And it's had an enormous impact. As I said, we had over 50% of our drug users had AIDS back in the late 80s. And now it's down to under 10% and that is solely because of the impact of syringe exchange. 5-10% of people who inject drugs in this country are accessing syringe exchange programs which would translate to maybe 50-100,000 people a year. And we're probably in the range of 25 million syringes going out through syringe exchange programs in the late given year. I benefited personally from using needle exchange services in the fact that I was able to obtain clean syringes and use them without being a danger to myself by damaging my skin or re-injecting materials from a used syringe and I was able to live a healthier life. I'm healthier now than I've ever been in my life. When I was active, shooting heroin and cocaine, I trained me to get my syringes and I credit that for saving me from STDs and AIDS and everything. We're talking about a quarter of a million dollars on upwards for each case of HIV for the lifelong medical costs, whereas the cost of a syringe is more in the realm of a dime, 10 cents. So if you're looking at cost effectiveness, obviously investing in prevention is going to save you a lot of money. I grew up around injectors. My mother and father were both injectors for the vast majority of my life, early yet life and my mother has, is co-infected so I feel very connected to this movement. I believe if harm reduction had been around as a principle and an organization like this had been around, she wouldn't be having to deal with the diseases she's dealing with now. And more importantly, I wish people had treated her with respect that we make a trademark, I think, here. What are the other services syringe exchange provides for drug users? Through the syringe exchange you can begin to build things into drug users' lives that they were previously not associated with, so medical care, getting people into medical systems, mental health care, because mental health is a serious major issue for people, often for people who use drugs and maybe living on the street or whatever. We provide a lot of support groups for people. We can do a lot of HIV testing, a lot of STD testing, we do TB testing and provide medications both for managing people's HIV or managing their tuberculosis. We are beyond just a needle exchange and I think we look at the drug user, we have a more holistic approach that, you know, it isn't just the harms associated with using drugs, but it's also the harms associated with being poor and homeless or being hungry are social determinants of health that we really miss out on. And also needle exchanges are also a lot of times staffed by users themselves and so they're experts. They have groups, one was Hepatitis C, I suspected I had it and I enrolled in a group and they hooked me up with a doctor and the doctor put me on interfere on and my viral load is very low. This is our overdose prevention kit, we hold trainings for our participants on Tuesdays and Fridays so that they can actually be able to carry this so that they can actually save a life for someone who they may be injecting with and vice versa someone can save their life. Comes with two alcohol swabs. This is the magic formula that actually reverses the opioid overdose. This is what happens in each kit, we give two of each just to be sure. It's a muscle shot, not a vein shot, and the gloves, of course, sanitary reasons and if it comes to that, rest your breathing. Which is part of the training, we give them a quick knowledge of it. The fact that many people think that syringe exchange empowers people to use drugs is a myth. First of all, it's a well-known fact that drug use is going to occur whether we have syringe exchange or not. What we are propagating is that we want people to use safely and not spread the disease or do harm to themselves or others, their community or their family members and everybody who can be affected by it. If an individual is going to use, they're going to use, but they're not going to use any more or any less. If an individual chooses to use more drugs, that's a conscious choice that they may, whatever the situation may be, but they're not going to do that due to the fact that someone's given them a syringe and an individual that does not use a syringe is not going to just pick up a syringe and say, oh, let me try a syringe because there's a syringe exchange in an area. A lot of the people I've worked with previously when I ran a new exchange program have been to drug treatment many, many, many times. If it worked and if it was that simple, they wouldn't be coming back. Once people slow down around the chaotic drug scene, perhaps they can begin to strategize about what else they want to do with their lives and begin to think about what their drug use means to them and how they might want to change their relationship to the drugs they use. So there's people always available at syringe exchange programs, provide counseling and case management. One of the things that I learned very quickly from doing needle exchange is that people came for the needles, but that was the first step they asked for other things. And one of the big things they asked for is help with drug treatment. Long-standing syringe exchange programs haven't had community opposition. The any kind of fears the community have begin to go away after a while when they begin to see the benefits. The ways that HIV is transmitted link all of us together. So even though the proportion of people in the United States who inject drugs is relatively small, you know, in the ballpark of a million people, what happens to their health is important to all of us. Be yourself, no matter what they say, be yourself.