As Research Shows Risks of Smoking Crack, Experts and Advocates Urge Free Pipes

Vancouver health officials later this year will launch a pilot project to distribute free, unused crack cocaine pipes to smokers of the drug. The effort is intended to connect health and social workers with hard-to-reach drug users at increased risk for HIV and hepatitis. The city already distributes clean mouthpieces, but not the pipes.

“We want to do it in a way that we can evaluate this, because there’s a couple of questions I hope we can answer by doing this,” said Dr. Patricia Daly, the medical officer for Vancouver Coastal Health. “If you can deliver [harm-reduction programs] in a way where you can get people into other services, that’s very beneficial.”

Crack users can buy glass pipes or fashion them out of anything from glass bottles or cans to hollow antennae. Though research data on the population are limited, a British Columbia study two years ago found crack smokers were at increased risk of HIV infection. Evidence is growing that pipe-sharing could play a role. In response, Calgary and Winnipeg officials distribute crack pipes, while Vancouver and some other cities provide crack smokers with clean mouthpieces as a way to prevent exposure to saliva and possibly blood on the pipes.

However, removing one’s mouthpiece before sharing the pipe “is not the easiest thing to do,” explained Andrew Ivsins, a University of Victoria researcher who studied pipe-sharing. “So people end up just not taking the mouthpiece off and sharing it that way, or not putting a mouthpiece on and just sharing the pipe. By not giving out the pipe, they’re not really getting at the main problem.”

Beyond helping prevent disease transmission, the pilot’s greatest effect could be connecting crack smokers with health care workers, said Walter Cavalieri of the Canadian Harm Reduction Network.

The Friends of AIDS Foundation is dedicated to enhancing the quality of life for HIV positive individuals and empowering people to make healthy choices to prevent the spread of the HIV virus. To learn more about The Friends of AIDS Foundation, please visit: http://www.friendsofaids.org.


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