Snoop Dogg takes a drive down a Downtown Eastside alley and has words on clean needles for drug users

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      Snoop Dogg is apparently not a fan of Vancouver’s needle-distribution programs for drug users. (Or maybe he’s simply frustrated with Canadian border security. It’s not exactly clear.) The rap superstar was in Vancouver last night (April 17) and took a moment while cruising through a Downtown Eastside alley to weigh in on the health-care program with a nuanced critique.

      “I can’t believe these motherfuckers be sweating us at the fucking border and they got an alley, they got an alley where they pass out needles for people to do heroin at,” Snoop says in a video posted on Instagram. “You motherfuckers at customs, y’all ain’t shit. And y’all be sweating me? And y’all got this shit going on in your fucking alleys? Y’all need to raise up off me Canada. Ya’ll need to just walk me through and stop taking me back into that fucking customs office. Clean this shit up out here. Look at this shit, man. And y’all sweating niggers at the border. Y’all got an alley for the motherfuckers y’all let do drugs. This is terrible, cuz. This is terrible.”

      https://www.instagram.com/p/BEVK5ezP9D2

      Snoop was in Vancouver playing a DJ set at Fortune Sound Club, which is located on Pender Street near the intersection of Pender and Main.

      Vancouver has made needle-distribution services available for many years now. They officially began in 1989 as one of the first such initiatives in North America.

      Coauthors Larry Campbell, Neil Boyd, and Lori Culbert, recount the program's origins in their 2009 book, A Thousand Dreams. There, it's founding is traced back to the Downtown Eastside alleys that Snoop was driving through on Sunday.

      "By late 1988, injection drug use had so increased in prevalence that John Turvey, the founder of DEYAS (Downtown Eastside Youth Activities Society), started single-handedly giving out three thousand clean syringes a month to try to reduce the spread of infectious diseases among addicts," they write. "Alongside him was Jerry Adams, who was hired by Turvey as a DEYAS outreach worker in 1986. He says Turvey, a former heroin addict who got clean in the 1970s, used donated money to buy clean needles because he was worried about the abscesses and scarring some users were developing. Turvey would walk the streets for hours, plucking clean rigs from his green army bag to give to surprised users."

      The book goes on to note that those early effort to distribute needles led the government to give DEYAS $100,000 in 1989 to open the fist sanctioned needle exchange in Canada.

      Former Vancouver mayor Philip Owen is quoted there recalling that at the time, needle exchange was a new and unknown concept. He credits former Vancouver chief medical health officer Dr. John Blatherwick with bringing government on board.

      Since then, Vancouver's needle-exchange programs have been credited with reducing infection rates of HIV, hepatitis C, and other diseases transmitted through the sharing of used needles. Today, needle distribution is managed by Vancouver Coastal Health. In 2009, the health authority and partner agencies distributed 1.85 million clean needles for the illicit use of intravenous drugs, according to the Globe and Mail.

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