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New York through the eye of a needle
First published: The Face, Oct. 1992
(c) Peter McDermott
peter@petermc.demon.co.uk
East Third Street runs between Avenues A and B on the Lower East Side of
Manhattan. Also known as Alphabet City, or Loisaida to the Hispanics
whose numbers dominate the area, it lies between Little Italy, the
spiritual home of the Mafia even if today all the wiseguys live out in
Queens or Long Island, and the East Village, where New York beatniks
gave birth to our modern global drug subculture.
The area has always been a major centre for the narcotics trade. The
term 'smack' originated here in the 1930's when the area was dominated
by Jewish immigrants. The term is derived from the Yiddish word
"schmecker", meaning taste. In the 1970's the area was settled by Puerto
Rican immigrants, a community that was exploited by Andy Warhol and
Paul Morrissey in Bad, a film about a family of heroin dealers. By all
accounts, heroin dealing was out of control in the area in 1978 when
New York police mounted Operation Pressure Point. Pressure Point was
aimed at closing down the area's drug markets and was hailed as a great
success. Today, on East Third Street a casual passer-by would notice
nothing untoward. Small groups of African Americans and Hispanic
people of all ages, hang out on the stoop or outside the bodega, drinking,
talking, watching the evening go by.
With closer scrutiny though, you can pick up on the barely
subcutaneous activity of the street. A black man in his late forties walks
around in circles, jabbering to himself. Occasionally he bends to
examine a white pebble or a piece of paper. The homeboys call it
'Ghostbusting', the tendency to see pieces of crack everywhere after
you've smoked up all of your own supply. As you walk along the street,
Puerto Rican youths whisper offers of "Poison" and "Cash". They don't
whisper it to just anyone, but if you've got that look about you, the high
cheekbones and sallow skin, you can connect.
"Poison" and "Cash" are two of the brand names of the local heroin,
stamped on the glassine bags that the drug comes wrapped in. New York
drug dealers seem to go in for sophisticated marketing technique. No old
pieces of tinfoil or wraps of cling-film here. It isn't unusual to see a
crack dealer studying Donald Trump's book, *The Art of The Deal*, and
even the smallest amounts come packaged in a manufactured plastic vial
with different coloured tops. Some people say that the different brands
are an attempt to build brand loyalty. Others say that if you're caught
selling crack in red capped vials or "Satisfaction" instead of "Heavy D."
then you're likely to end up with a bullet in the head.
Halfway down the street, a loose line of people stand outside a house.
Lookouts sit on the sidewalk opposite, watching the street. A black man
with the confidence of a night-club bouncer keeps the line in order.
One by one, punters disappear into the doorway, pick up a couple of dime
bags of coke, and then hustle away down the street. On the corner of the
street, where it meets Avenue B, a thin woman propositions customers.
"Sealed works? Three dollars apiece." Syringes are on sale at most
dealing locations, though sometimes they have already been used and
the package resealed. You pay your money and you take your chance.
Locations like these exist all over New York, but are heavily
concentrated in certain areas. Despite the recession and the war on
drugs, business is booming. Police claim one local enforcer takes over $1
million a year by leasing spots to drug dealers on a single block in
Harlem. Throughout the eighties, crack increasingly dominated
traditional heroin areas like Harlem and the Lower East Side, but heroin
is making a comeback. Purity levels on the street are up from around 4%
in the late seventies to 40% last year. DEA intelligence reports that the
Colombian cartel, having saturated the market with cocaine, has begun
to grow opium poppies. The Lower East Side is where the dope ends up,
Manhattan's most notorious heroin location.
Tonight though, something is amiss. Junkies and dealers alike are
hovering uneasily, looking anxious. A patrol car drives around the
block, teasing the homeboys and at the end of the street, a fat white guy
in a baseball jacket who even to my untrained eye is obviously a cop,
hangs out on a stoop alone, scoping the place out. The scrutiny has put
the dampers on trade. Later that night, I catch the T.V. News and
discover that earlier that day Curtis Sliwa, pugnacious spokesman for the
Guardian Angels, had been the victim of an assassination attempt on that
very block. He had hailed a taxi outside his Tompkins Square apartment
that morning but instead of driving across town, the taxi took a left and
headed down Avenue B. Curtis realised something was amiss when an
armed man popped up from the front of the cab and shot him in the
stomach, thigh and groin. As the assassin steadied his aim at Curtis's
head, he managed to scramble out of the window. Sliwa's wife, Lisa was
claiming that police resentment at the Guardian Angel's activities was
preventing the shooting from being thoroughly investigated. Whatever
the truth of the matter, New York's Finest were all over the block that
night and as far as trade was concerned, it was strictly no way, Jose.
Anyway, after ten minutes waiting, Michael and David, my guides to the
dealing spots of Alphabet City reluctantly decide to try to cop elsewhere.
We didn't have far to walk. Two blocks south, across East Houston, right
near Katz's Deli is a similar spot. Unlike Avenue B, there is no police
scrutiny here, so we load up on 'Heavy D' and $20 half-gram bags of coke
from the bodega then retreat to their loft in Soho for the night
Today, the United States has about a million injecting drug users. One
quarter of them live in New York City. By the point in the mid-eighties
when epidemiologists identified injecting drug use a major route for the
transmission of HIV, the virus had already hit New York City hard. Today,
research shows that fifty per cent of the city's intravenous drug users
have been infected. The virus has since been passed on to their children,
their sexual partners and their partners' partners. The vast majority of
these people are black and Hispanic and most of America couldn't care
less whether they live or die.
My friend Edith works as an AIDS trainer. As an ex- addict herself, she
works in her chosen field out of emotional necessity ? the AIDS virus has
claimed the lives of half of her community. Now in her mid-forties, she
spent most of the sixties shooting heroin on the Lower East Side. Edith
explained how the infection spread so rapidly. "New York has always
had laws prohibiting the possession of syringes and needles. Junkies
would travel from their own neighbourhood to the Lower East Side or
Harlem to cop, because the dope was cheaper and better quality in those
places. You wanted to try the drugs before parting with all your money,
and you didn't want to be arrested in possession of a works. So you'd slip
into a shooting gallery to test the dope. For a few dollars you could use
the room, rent a works and get high." In galleries across the city,
needles were passed indiscriminately from arm to arm, and along with
each hit went the deadly virus.
When British health officials recognised that injecting drugs was a route
for transmitting the virus, needle and syringe exchange programmes
were rapidly established. Drug policy in Britain was always pragmatic,
based on a medical model rather than a law-enforcement model. Drug
policy in America has always been shaped by racism, politicians and the
media successfully labelling drug users as the enemy within since the
1920's. As a result, meaningful AIDS prevention for injecting drug users
has been virtually non-existent in many parts of the USA.
Lena has used heroin since she was seventeen. Today, at 43, she is no
longer addicted to heroin. She does have AIDS. The city council are
responsible for housing people who have AIDS and have taken her off
the streets and found her in a room in a single occupancy hotel. A
welfare hotel. A crack hotel. A place where everybody, employees and
residents alike, smokes crack.
Lena is unsure how or when she contracted the disease. As we talk, she
cooks up a rock of crack.
"I've always been around dope. My mom and dad both used heroin,
and most of the people in my neighbourhood liked to get high,
smoke a little reefer. I used to turn tricks to pay for dope.
Eventually, dope got too expensive and I couldn't afford to get
high anymore. Then crack showed up."
"I don't know whether I got AIDS from a needle, from a boyfriend,
or from a trick. I do know that my time is nearly up. My social
worker say that I shouldn't be gettin' high, because it damages the
immune system. But nearly everybody in this hotel use crack. If
they ain't smokin' it, they sellin' it. I don't know how long I got
left, but gettin' high helps me pass the time."
Access to clean needles might have saved Lena. Aseptic injection
equipment will almost certainly shorten her life, introducing bacteria
into her bloodstream that her depleted immune system is unable to fight
off.
"There is a higher goal than the reduction of transmission of HIV,
and that goal is the elimination of use of illegal narcotics by
injection, period."
NYC Health Commissioner, Woodrow Myers. WCBS Radio, 6 June
1990
"It's a wonderful goal, except that it is not going to be reached
overnight. What they are saying by setting this goal exclusively
is that there are a huge number of people out there who are
expendable."
Dr. Mathilde Krim, AMFAR. Newsday, 6 June 1990
There has been a consensus among European drug researchers for many
years over the value of needle exchanges but U.S. politicians chose to
ignore their recommendations. Evidence that needle exchange
programmes play a vital role in limiting the spread of HIV was dismissed
as not relevant to the American situation, and Federal regulations barred
further research on the issue in the United States. Eventually, in 1988,
under pressure from drug experts and epidemiologists who were
studying the spread of AIDS, Mayor Ed Koch established a pilot needle
exchange programme. Many of those who were involved with the
programme believe that it was an experiment that was designed to fail.
Koch decided that no needle exchange could be located within 1000 feet
of a school. This ruled out the possibility of basing the programme
anywhere near a community. Eventually it was located in the
Department of Health building, downtown in the business district. It
faced the Tombs correctional centre where arrested drug users are
brought handcuffed, to await trial. New York's District Attorney
publicly threatened to arrest anybody who used the scheme for
possession of drug paraphernalia. In the immediate vicinity of the
building is the highest concentration of narcotics detectives in the
western world. The Department of Immigration and the FBI offices are
also nearby. Places in the programme were limited to 200, out of 250,000
injectors in the city and to make things worse, each client would only be
able to exchange a single needle, and in order for the exchange to take
place, you had to sit around while your old syringe was tested for the
presence of foreign blood.
Despite these constraints, the programme was regarded as a success. So
desperate for help are many of New York's drug users that the
programme could attract and retain clients by offering them a route into
treatment. However, overwhelming political opposition to the
programme meant that it was doomed before it began. Just one month
into the programme's existence, the city council's Black and Hispanic
Caucus moved a motion to close the programme, a motion that was carried
unanimously. Although the council decision was not binding, it sent the
mayor a signal from the city's political power brokers. When David
Dinkins was elected as the city's first black mayor, the following year,
one of his first acts after taking office was to close down the needle
exchange.
The black politicians and community leaders who opposed needle
exchange claimed the programme was racist and genocidal. Senator
Charles Rangel, Democratic representative for Harlem, chairs the
Congressional Committee on Narcotics Abuse and Control. He believes
that there should be no support for needle exchange programmes as
"they encourage and support drug addiction, while black youth is
mortally jeopardised by drugs." Yolanda Serrano, a Harlem resident who
is the Director of ADAPT, an advocacy group for the rights of
intravenous drug users, disagrees with the Congressman. "He claims
that Needle Exchange is genocide. In fact, what we have now is
genocide." Serrano's comments were echoed by Charles Eaton, director of
the pilot needle exchange programme and now a city health official.
"There is no evidence from any syringe exchange scheme anywhere in
the world suggesting that they encourage people to inject. Our critics
argued that we should be putting resources into rehabilitation
programmes, but the places aren't available. We had to continually try
to remind them that you can't rehabilitate a dead addict."
A central figure in America's struggle for clean needles is Jon Parker, a
37 year old ex-addict from Boston. While studying for a Master's Degree
in Public Health at Yale, Parker heard the director of an English Needle
Exchange scheme speak in Boston. Fired with enthusiasm, Parker took it
upon himself to get needles out onto the streets. In August 1988, he was
arrested for possessing illegal drug paraphernalia ?.syringes. Parker
fully expected to go to jail for his actions, but in January 1990, in the
case of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts versus Jon Parker, he was
acquitted. The judge found that though he had violated the law, Jon
Parker's illegal action was justified by the severity of the AIDS epidemic.
The Drug Policy Foundation, a Washington pressure group, awarded
Parker $100,000 for risking imprisonment in his act of civil
disobedience. Though the federal government still regards them as
criminals, some Americans view the guerilla needle exchanges as
modern-day heroes.
Like Parker, America's gay activists have long been critical of US AIDS
policy, arguing the disease has received insufficient priority because it
was 'only' killing gay men. Eventually, some of those activists began to
take a wider perspective. If the lives of gay men are undervalued, how
about the lives of homeless black and Hispanic people who shoot up
drugs? In February 1990, Rod Sorge and some other members of ACT UP
got together with Jon Parker and occupied the intersection of Essex and
Delancey, another copping block on the Lower East Side. Over on the
opposite corner, the Guardian Angels staged a counter demonstration. As
ACT UP distributed needles, bleach and AIDS education materials, the
Angels stood chanting "No drugs, no needles!" Eventually, ten members
of the group were arrested. In May 1991, Judge Laura Drager handed
down her decision in the ACT UP case. Once again, the court found that
the AIDS epidemic was such a grave medical emergency that the
defendants were justified in their actions.
I went to New York to find out what makes people risk imprisonment to
supply syringes and needles to a group of people that the dominant
society sees as worthless and undeserving. Joyce is a Puerto Rican
woman in her late twenties. Joyce understands discrimination. Her
extraordinarily beautiful eyes move rapidly from a smile to betray her
anger about the impact of racism in the melting pot of New York City,
racism that affects her both as an individual, and as a member of a
minority community. At university, Joyce was made aware that of her
fellow students view: that she was only there because she was a minority
woman, not because she had ability. She believes she suffers from the
same discrimination in her job as a researcher. Like many of the key
players in this drama, Joyce is not her real name. She must remain
anonymous because the organization that she works for receives money
from both the state and federal government. If they got wind of her
activities, then either Joyce would lose her job or the agency would lose
its funding.
Like many of those involved in needle exchange, Joyce views heroin
addiction somewhat differently to most people employed in the drugs
field. Once again, her perspective has been shaped by her personal
experience of drugs rather than government and media drug war
ideology.
"I don't use drugs myself, but I grew up in the South Bronx where
heroin use was all around me. Both of my parents were addicts, so
I get so angry when I see the way that drug users are portrayed
by the media and by drugs researchers. All of their lives are
reduced to their drug use. In fact, drugs are just a minor part of
their lives. First, addicts are people ? workers, housewives,
mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, members of a community."
"Though I don't live there any more, I still regard the South Bronx
as my community and I want to try to give something back. In
fact, I do very little, I was a catalyst but the community is really
doing it for themselves. My needle exchange operates on a
dealing street. It couldn't happen without the permission of the
dealer, but he too is a member of that community and he cares
what happens there. He sees that this thing is in everybody's
interests and gives me protection. Today, the exchange is run by
the clients. When I arrive on Saturday morning, the people are
all there, waiting to help me set up the table, making up kits,
giving out leaflets."
This trend towards getting the local community involved in syringe
exchange is evident in all of the five voluntary syringe exchanges that
are currently operating. Organised by a combination of activists and
health care workers, many of those who are involved, like Joyce, have
personal experience of drug use that provides them with a motivation
that goes far beyond some abstract sense of solidarity with the
underclass. However, this experience of drug use is often the only point
of contact between the predominantly white, middle class volunteers,
and the lumpenproletariat that that constitutes the clientele.
Saturday morning, 10.00 am. I have arranged to visit the syringe
exchange scheme that operates on the Lower East Side. Volunteers meet
at a street corner that is publicised by leaflets that circulate
surreptitiously among injectors. Half of the volunteers occupy a static
site, while the other half will tour the neighbourhood. I decide to take
the grand tour. At 10.30 we take off and as soon as we walk down the
street, we are recognised by a handsome Latino man and his girlfriend.
They come over and ask us for works. In their late twenties and smartly
dressed, nobody would suspect that they are both injectors. They tell us
that they only do dope occasionally, a factor that potentially puts them at
greater risk. Confirmed junkies have their own works, but impulse
users can get caught short and may use someone else's. We give them
syringes and bleach to clean them with, but they don't want condoms.
Getting the safe sex message across is difficult; the machismo culture of
Latin American men makes it almost impossible.
As we turning a corner onto Forsyth Street, a handful of people is
waiting for us to arrive. Most just take the needles and go, but one
lesbian woman wants some advice on safer sex. The group has a
counsellor who specialises in giving such advice. As we stand talking,
we notice that a patrol car has spotted us and although the officers don't
approach us, they make it obvious that we are under observation.
Eventually, we leave Forsyth and head for the local needle park. Men
and women of all ages are sitting around, chilling out, copping the rays.
As we arrive and set up our shop, the park's occupants reveal themselves
as a total bunch of stone junkies. The homeless and the housed, workers
and unemployed, black, white, Latino, Jewish. Dealers and consumers.
All ages. Everybody wants works. Some want more; they want to chat
about their problems ? their upcoming court cases, where they can get
an AIDS test, how they can get into drug treatment. Almost all of them
express gratitude that somebody gives enough of a shit to come out and
do this thing for them.
For me, this gratitude is one of the most surprising aspects of my visit. It
may be because Britain still has some semblance of a reasonable welfare
provision, but here, people expect services as a right and confront
British drugs workers with suspicion and resentment, rarely with
gratitude. The people who were receiving needles clearly understood
that they live in a country where neither the government nor the
majority of the population care whether they live or die.
The patrol car arrives again and parks across the road from us. One
bedraggled, beaten-up man of about forty comes over to warn us. "I'm
like, the king of this park. I can tell you what goes down. The cops be
over there again. Be cool. They won't do anything while you here, but
as soon as you go, they'll roust us." We sit off, eyeing up the cop car
carefully and handing out the works a little more surreptitiously.
I get into conversation with a black man in his fifties. Married for over
thirty years, Michael is the father of five girls. He is extremely dapper,
with shaved head, a Nike shell suit and a beeper, clipped to his pocket.
We talk about the merits of different drugs and his aversion to
methadone. "That's bad shit. I'm in a programme now, but only for a
month. If you don't watch out, you can get a worse habit than the one
you started with. I first had Methadone tablets, dollies, when I was in the
Tombs, back in 1960. It was cool, gettin' high every day. Then, I got
sentenced and went upstate to do my time. Man, to this day I've never
been so sick." Michael is what used to be known as a righteous dope
fiend. He always goes to work, pays the mortgage on his co-op and
supports his family and his habit. The only difference between Michael
and Mr. Average Joe Public, from White Bread, USA is that Michael's
drug of choice is heroin rather than alcohol. Today, many thousands of
men like Michael have died of AIDS. Some have infected their wives,
who in turn have infected their children.
As we sit talking, I contemplate the reasons behind drug prohibition.
Unlike our legal drugs, alcohol and tobacco, heroin is a fairly safe drug.
It can cause death through overdose, but the number of people who die
are very few. They tend to be people who have had their drug use
interrupted by jail or by rehab, then they get out, get drunk, shoot up
and choke on the vomit. The use of heroin alone does no organic damage,
unlike alcohol, which damages the liver, or tobacco, which causes
bronchitis, emphysemia and lung cancer. There is a great deal of crime
associated with heroin use. Acquisitive crime, as people steal to pay
exorbitant black market prices, and violent crime as dealers engage in
wars to defend their patch. But these are consequences of the illegal
status of heroin, rather than effects that are attributable to the drug
itself. So how was it that heroin got such a name, while alcohol and
tobacco, proven killers, are on sale openly? Well, think about the
countries where illegal drugs are produced. In the 1920's, the US
government made it illegal to smoke opium, although anybody could
walk into a pharmacy and buy as much heroin or morphine as they
wanted. Why? Well, morphine and heroin were used by the white middle
classes who could afford medical treatment, whereas only the Chinese
smoked opium....
At around 1.00 PM we arrive at our final destination. Near the end of
Canal Street is a piece of waste ground. In a city with so many homeless,
little goes to waste. On a lot about 60 foot square, a shanty town has
sprung up. Houses have been fashioned out of cardboard, canvas and
corrugated tin. A tepee stands in the centre. One of the houses bears a
hand-painted board, evidence of the fact that these dwellings, while
unfit for animals, are occupied by humans. The sign read
FATHER
HURT
YOU WERE NEVER THERE FOR ME
NEVER HONEST NEVER HELD ME NEVER
KISSED ME NEVER NOTICED ME NEVER
FED ME NEVER TOOK ME WITH YOU NEVER
SHOWED ME ANY EMOTION
WHY DO I CARE
Halfway across the site, the earth is scorched, and the remnants of
dwellings bear witness to a horrendous fire. In the centre of the site, a
hand-fashioned cross bears an inscription. "Mr. Yi-Po Lee. He was one
of us." A small memorial garden has been planted to commemorate Mr.
Lee, and a small fence erected to prevent people trampling on the
flowers. According to Eric, one of the residents, some two weeks before
our visit there was some dispute over drugs and one of the shacks had
been torched. The fire spread rapidly, consuming many of the pathetic
homes that had been erected. Over 100 people lived on the lot before the
fire. Now there were only between thirty and forty. The old Chinaman
had died. Though the city does provide some shelter for the homeless,
conditions in the municipal shelters are so bad that many people prefer
to take their chances in a cardboard shanty town.
The people that lived there weren't young. These people weren't the
crusty soap dodgers that dominate London's squats. Most were in their
forties or fifties, some were even older. Most had the gaunt, skeletal
features associated with heavy drug use and AIDS. A man with no legs
came trundling out of his shack in a wheelchair. Everybody used drugs.
As the residents brought out their used syringes and collected new ones,
a neighbour of sorts, a working class black man who lived in an
apartment across the street, brought a bundle of used clothing onto the
lot. "If anybody can make use of those," he told one the residents, "well,
they're welcome to them." As two homeless men argued and fought over
an old pair of Levi's, the look on the donor's face conveyed the sense of
powerless that some New Yorkers feel about the city's inability to
provide even basic necessities for the sick, the old and the poor.
When Mayor Dinkins closed down the needle exchange he said "Giving
out needles gives the wrong message. I think we need to go at fighting
drug addiction in the first instance and I don't want to give people the
paraphernalia to continue using drugs." Simplistic rhetoric that betrays
a politician's lack of understanding of the complex role that drugs play
in twentieth century culture. For the Soho yuppies who took me on my
tour of the copping spots, drugs are just another commodity in the
American dream of conspicuous consumption. For the dealers who stand
on the corners of Stanton, and Forsyth and Orchard and Spring and
Avenue B and the hundreds of other spots in Manhattan, Brooklyn, and
the Bronx, selling drugs is one way to ensure that they don't end up in a
shanty town. For the people condemned to live in shanty towns, drugs
are a means of survival, a way of facing another day that holds no hope
of escape from unutterable poverty, while in the midst of unfathomable
wealth.
Today, there are five syringe exchanges operating in New York. They
are in the process of transition, currently operating in a twilight zone
between legality and illegality. At present, they are still technically
illegal, but there is currently a bill before the New York state legislature
seeking to change the laws relating to needle possession and
distribution. Plans to transfer the management of the schemes to
community organizations are almost complete and Liz Taylor's pet AIDS
charity, AMFAR has set aside a small sum of money to fund them. No
matter how much money AMFAR provides, it will be too little, too late.
Add it up. Five needle exchange schemes, each running for a couple of
hours a week. A quarter of a million injectors in the city, 125,000 of
them already HIV positive. It's like offering an elastoplast to somebody
who has just been disembowelled. Since the AIDS epidemic began, 20,000
children in New York City have lost one or more parents to AIDS. Drugs,
racial tension, street crime and a massive urban underclass are some of
the biggest problems facing the United States today, but for many right-
wing politicians, AIDS isn't a problem, it's a solution. By the year 2,000,
the number of AIDS orphans in New York City will exceed 100,000.
Someday, those children will demand answers.
Peter McDermott
July 7 1992
Since my visit in June, little has changed. Although AMFAR agreed to
fund the needle exchange programmes, the grant was insufficient to
cover insurance, so the community groups who were to take over the
needle distribution have been forced to wait while AMFAR, city and state
officials argue over who'll pay the premiums.
In July, the Democratic convention was held in New York and the city
made a concerted effort to get the homeless people off the streets. During
this effort, people who lived the shanty town were evacuated, and their
homes were cleared by bulldozers. Mr Yi-Po Lee's memorial garden has
been razed to the ground.
P.M. 12/8/92