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Street Roots • Jan. 15-21,2016
Volunteers Sam Junge a nd Wren Ronan talk with a client who’s picking up a new sharps container, used fo r safely disposing o f used needles, as
part o f Portland People’s Outreach Project’s volunteer-run syringe exchange. PPOP is launching a new program to distribute meth pipes.
Meth pipe project
comes to Portland
Volunteers say distributing meth pipes should
cut down on injection and disease transmission
BY E M IL Y GREEN
S T A FF W R IT E R
n the back room of an anarchist book
shop in North Portland, past a rack of
zines and chalkboard list of upcoming
punk shows, volunteers with the Portland
People’s Outreach Project set up shop each
Saturday afternoon.
On Friday evenings, they make rounds on
their bicycles, making deliveries to people
sleeping under bridges downtown and to
drug users hanging out within inner East
Portland.
These 10 volunteers, most of whom are
former or current drug users, offer free
syringes, hygiene kits, socks and, starting
Jan. 15, meth pipes to Portland area drug
users.
While it’s rumored that a handful of other
U.S. syringe exchanges unofficially offer
meth pipes to their clients, the move to do
so publicly will make the Portland metro
area the second region in the nation, after
Washington’s King County, with an official
meth pipe program.
Portland police, S gt Pete Simpson
I
recommended that anyone planning to hand
out free meth pipes have a lawyer review
the law to determine of they are open to
legal penalties.
Oregon’s paraphernalia statute still
prohibits the sale or delivery of items such
as “water pipes” and other mechanisms for
smoking marijuana - along with all other
items used for consuming drugs. The only
exception is hypodermic syringes or
needles. Head shops and corner stores in
Portland have been openly selling
paraphernalia, including meth pipes, for
years.
“As far as enforcement,” Simpson said, “I
can’t say we would or would not take
enforcement actions. It’s all dependent on
calls for service.”
Volunteers at Portland People’s Outreach
Project said that by offering meth smokers
clean pipes, they will reduce the spread of
diseases such as Hepatitis C and prevent
some meth smokers from moving to a far
more dangerous form of consumption -
injection.
But most important, the volunteers said,
Street Roots purchased this glass meth pipe fo r $5 a t a
convenience store about a mile east ofP P O P ’s Saturday
afternoon syringe exchange.
they will be showing an ostracized group of
people “love” by telling them they want
them to be the best person they can be -
and that might mean being the best drug
user they can be.
More than the actual distribution of
pipes, “it’s about treating drug users with
compassion and respect,” said Sam Junge, a
community health worker who’s been with
PPOP (pronounced “P-pop”) since its
inception 11 months ago. “Other places will
give you that compassion, but it’s contingent
on being sober.”
PPOP is a branch of Seattle-based
People’s Harm Reduction Alliance, which
has been handing out meth pipes since
February. As of December, it had
distributed 5,781 meth pipes in urban and
rural King County through its pre-
established syringe exchange program. It’s
providing the funding for the first year of
PPOP’s meth pipe program in Portland,
which is roughly $3,000.
People’s Harm Reduction Alliance
recently announced it would open the
See PIPES, page 5