Posts Tagged ‘HEPPAC’

“Hello, sir. What do you need today?” Braunz Courtney says with a welcoming smile, standing comfortably behind a buffet of sterile syringes and pipes.

“I need some medium sharps,” his client Vernon, 64, responds.

In places like Oakland, where local authorities treat syringe exchange as an accepted public health practice, groups like HEPPAC no longer face the risk of arrest. Today their challenge is going mainstream, and needle exchange programs are now reaching for the biggest government seal of approval of all—federal funding.