As many as 77,000 needles a year are being distributed in the Tri-Cities to prevent disease among drug users, and some of them are being found in parks, behind businesses and along trails, raising concerns about safety and proper collection.

Port Coquitlam city council is calling for a meeting with Fraser Health to find out why thousands of needles have been found behind businesses, along trails and in city playgrounds — many unused with their caps on, but still a concern.

article continues below

Both the city’s mayor, Greg Moore, and Coun. Brad West are among those demanding answers and solutions while the Downtown Port Coquitlam Business Improvement Association also has concerns.

They’re hoping a meeting with Fraser Health will help find a solution.

“I think Fraser Health needs to take responsibility for their actions. It’s irresponsible for them to not be following up and doing their best to work with our community and work with users and find a better solution than dropping off a box of needles and moving on to the next site,” Moore told The Tri-City News.

NEEDLES FOUND

West recently posted on Facebook a photo of a box of needles that had been found by a local business owner. He said the issue of discarded needles is getting out of hand and needs to be dealt with or families will stop going to local parks.

As well, PoCo BIA executive director Susanna Walden told The Tri-City News a box of needles was found behind a business near Lions Park while an insurance company employee on Shaughnessy Street said a co-worker found a cache of needles, as well as clothes and a bottle of methadone this past winter, and called authorities.

How many needles are circulating in the Tri-Cities and the number of those that are discarded unsafely is difficult to determine.

Safe needle collection is an important part of Fraser Health’s harm-reduction program, according to the authority, whose spokesperson, Tasleem Juma, stated in an email that 78,000 needles were collected last year — 1,000 more than the health authority distributed through its agencies, which do daily sweeps of the area and also collect needles from clients.

Juma cautioned that numbers of needles circulating in the community can’t be confirmed because other agencies besides Fraser Health, such as pharmacies, distribute them. But she maintains the problem of unsafe needle disposal hasn’t worsened.

“The number of inappropriately discarded needles has stayed steady over the past few years,” Juma said, acknowledging it’s upsetting to find needles.

At the permanent homeless shelter located at 3030 Gordon Ave. in Coquitlam, clients have to register to pick up needles, while the New Westminster-based Purpose Society has a contract with Fraser Health to distribute and collect needles. Two full-time staff drive a van and distribute supplies such as needles, glassware for people who do drugs by inhalation, such as crack and meth pipes, mouth pieces and alcohol swabs. It also distributes Naloxone kits to prevent overdose deaths.

DAILY SWEEPS

Logan Ansell, team leader with the Stride with Purpose Program, said his organization takes its job seriously and is available seven days a week to pick up needles from clients and the community (call 604-351-1885 for pickup) while peers, former drug users, do daily sweeps.

“It’s a responsibility we take very seriously," he said. "Part of the work we do is collect used sharps. If the community does find anything they can call us and we will discard them.

“It’s to prevent communicable disease from being passed on by people who would be sharing pipes and needles,” Ansell said, adding, "We work with people who use drugs and people do sex work; a lot of our clients are marginalized homeless folks."

The van, which serves people from Burnaby to Maple Ridge, typically passes through the Tri-Cities three times a week but there’s no pre-assigned route, Ansell said; instead, the van shows up when it gets a call from someone who needs supplies.

He said he wasn’t aware of a large number of needles being left behind, although had heard from the PoCo bylaws department when a box of needles was found.

He said clients are asked why they need a box of needles but are not discouraged from taking them, while more are picked up through sweeps and collection than are distributed.

But both Moore and West say needles are being found in the thousands and it has become the city’s job to comb its parks for needles every day — and in addition to increased police enforcement in downtown PoCo, this has resulted in downloading of costs to the cities.

SOLUTIONS SOUGHT

“I understand the principle of harm reduction and the intention of it is to stop the spread of disease. In my view, again, this is just a Band-Aid-type solution the community has to deal with,” said West, who said he has heard from parents that they are avoiding taking their kids to city parks because they are worried they’ll find a needle.

Port Coquitlam bylaw and parks workers are doing regular sweeps of Fox Park, where a needle was found by a daycare worker last fall. According to city staff, bylaw officers find one to two needles per visit in the natural areas while park staff who do daily sweeps have found three needles in the park since October.

While discussions have yet to be held to find a solution to the problem, both Moore, who isn’t running for reelection, and West, who has yet to declare, say the problem is a complex one that require senior levels of government to step up.

“We do have this opioid crisis, we do have more people who are using drugs that are taking needles [but] there’s a bigger society issue that the provincial government is working on. [It is] putting [together] a plan to deal with drug use in all of society,” Moore said.

It’s not a solution to place containers around the city for people to dispose of their needles, he said, because it might just turn outdoor spaces, such as parks, into a magnet for people to do drugs.

But both Moore and West suggested to The Tri-City News that a supervised injection site, if done properly, might be one way of dealing with the problem.

“How about this as an idea? How about there is a facility — if you need to shoot up, you go where you’re given a needle you shoot up and the needles’s retrieved, more of a supervised approach," West said.

Neither say the problem will be solved immediately but by talking to Fraser Health and starting a community conversation, they hope something will be done stop the dumping of needles in PoCo's public spaces.