SAN FRANCISCO BAY GUARDIAN
© copyright by Richard S. Ehrlich
NEWS
July 16, 1997
Needles
by RICHARD S. EHRLICH
BANGKOK, THAILAND -- Defying numerous law enforcement agencies across Southeast Asia, an American AIDS activist and convicted former heroin addict has been traveling through Thailand, Vietnam, China, Cambodia, Burma, and Singapore distributing new needles to Asian junkies in exchange for their old, blood-encrusted hypodermics.
Jon Parker, founder of the National AIDS Brigade, said he is financed by rock musician Bruce Springsteen and other private contributors. He has distributed more than 50,000 needles in Asia during the past seven years.
"I just returned from Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam, where I exchanged 400 needles," he told the Bay Guardian.
"I went to a park on the river, where they go under a bridge and inject. Injectors come down from the villages to get their needles there. I'm returning later this year. There's an opportunity for me to work there."
Parker, 43, says he provides clean needles in an effort to protect heroin addicts from contracting HIV, the virus thought to cause AIDS. The virus can be spread through residual blood when drug users share needles, syringes, and other drug paraphernalia.
The Boston native showed the Bay Guardian a 1.5-liter clear plastic water bottle crammed full of about 50 filthy needles and syringes, which were dark brown from dried blood and dirt.
"This is an example of what one person picked up in 15 minutes in Yuxi," he said, referring to a town in southern China's Yunnan province, about 80 kilometers south of Kunming.
"I carry them. I want to save them, to show proof that we've been there. We'll have enough old needles to show the Chinese officials, 'Look, we have picked up these from the streets, to clean up the country. Is that good?' There is nothing wrong with needle exchange."
The National AIDS Brigade, headquartered in Boston, also runs Veterans with AIDS Drop-In Centers in New Haven, Conn., and Key West, Fla. The organization's needle exchange programs have been active in the United States since 1986, but Parker felt the need to expand his services to Asia in 1990.
In search of addicts
He said he has traveled back and forth from America to Asia several times each year, adding China to his tour this year.
"The purpose now is to start a needle exchange program in China," he said. Parker said his interest in helping addicts stemmed from personal experience.
"I was a drug addict," Parker said.
"I was in jail for two years, from 1972 to 1974, for possession of narcotics and receiving stolen goods."
He said his experience was necessary for the work he does today.
"I'm an expert at looking for an addict. You're looking for people's eyes, if they have contracted eye pupils, and tracks on their arms."
He said the bright sun makes it hard to see people's pupils. "So I look for their hands, puffy hands, because they shoot up a lot between their fingers to hide the marks.
"The basic motive is that they want a new needle for an old needle. We'll go around to the back of an alley and they'll go and get two or three old ones and get two or three new ones in exchange. An old one will break or get clogged -- if you're doing drugs it's very frustrating. So they want to exchange."
Busted in Vietnam
His worst experience occurred in Vietnam, where officials had seemingly sanctioned his work. After the AIDS Brigade had run a program there for two years, police busted Parker's colleagues in 1995.
"Two people were arrested and three places were shut down in Ho Chi Minh City," Parker said.
"They were Vietnamese. One was a needle seller and the other was his brother who helped him. They were working for us."
Parker said he convinced the two men to distribute clean needles for him, because Vietnamese addicts buy heroin, liquid opium, and other drugs from dealers who work alongside people who sell needles.
"We gave them so many needles and said 'When we come back we will give you more clean needles in exchange for dirty needles.' "
Over the past seven years Parker estimates he has distributed 35,000 clean needles in Thailand, 12,400 in Vietnam, 3,000 in China, 300 in Cambodia, 200 in Burma, and 20 in Singapore. He recently went to Cambodia's capital, Phnom Penh, looking for junkies.
"There are no injectors in Phnom Penh that could be found. We exchanged needles there with pharmacists, because they sell old needles. We distributed a few hundred.
"They smoke opium there, and we found opium dens. They will be injecting there soon. That's why it's important to do AIDS prevention now."
Parker found the most wretched and desperate addicts in Burma.
Opium fields in the north of Burma provide much of the world's heroin. Burmese people who are too impoverished to buy hypodermic syringes instead stab themselves with a needle attached to a long intravenous tube.
Lacking a plunger to force the heroin and water through the tube, addicts blow into the tube to force the fluid into their veins.
"Burma's addicts go through the trash at hospitals and use old intravenous lines to blow drugs into themselves,"Parker said. "You can force the drug in with air pressure."
Parker is concerned because "they are forced to share" their intravenous tubes and needles and thus risk spreading AIDS.
While in Burma in 1994 he also wanted to visit Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi, who is leading the country's campaign for democracy and an end to military rule. Unable to get through Suu Kyi's front gate, Parker said he "was going to climb over the wall to give her a letter expressing the dangers of AIDS and ask her to speak out," but he was advised he would never be able to return to Burma if the authorities caught him.
He also went to Singapore in 1994.
"There's a red-light district, and that's where I found the addicts. I only exchanged six needles, then I went to the police station and told them what I was doing. They called the U.S. embassy and said if I did it again I'd be arrested. They have undercover police everywhere," Parker said.
"In Singapore they sell needles, but if you try to give an addict a needle they don't condone it."
Nuts and bolts
The National AIDS Brigade's annual budget is about $120,000, he said.
Springsteen donated $7,743 in November 1996.
"He gave us the money to go to China this year." Parker said the National AIDS Brigade depends on more than 200 volunteers, including a few who also tour Asia.
"Ninety percent of them are ex-addicts, including 50 Vietnam vets with AIDS."
Parker displayed an August 1994 letter on White House stationery, signed by then-National AIDS Policy Coordinator Kristine M. Gebbie, which stated, "I would like to extend my gratitude for your participation in the Focus Group on HIV and Substance Abuse."
It added, "This office looks forward to continued collaborations with you and your organization. It is only through the work of dedicated persons like yourself that we are able to be successful on our first fight against HIV/AIDS."
He hopes President Clinton will lead a worldwide effort to promote needle exchanges as a way to curb AIDS, because addicts also often pass the virus to their partners and children, thus infecting people who don't use drugs.
"But Clinton has skeletons in his closet," Parker said.
"Maybe because he smoked pot himself, and so did some of his staff, and he doesn't want to open himself up to [criticism for] possible drug use by him and his colleagues."
The National AIDS Brigade is located at 492 E. Broadway, Boston, Mass. It can be reached at (617) 268-0129.
email: animists *at* yahoo *dot* com
Richard S Ehrlich is a Bangkok-based journalist who has reported news from Asia since 1978. He is co-author of "Hello My Big Big Honey!", a non-fiction book of investigative journalism.
His web page is
http://www.oocities.org/asia_correspondent