Eye of the needle

Montreal's youth top the list in North America for intravenous drug use

by JACQUIE CHARLTON

In 1995 and early 1996, 919 young Montrealers who had spent more than one night homeless during the previous year filled out a questionnaire on their drug use and sexual habits. The study was undertaken by the Infectious Diseases Division of the Montreal Regional Public Health Board to identify the factors contributing to HIV infection in the city's street youth. Results were so striking that governments at all levels provided the research team with $500,000 last spring to conduct follow-up studies.

Principal researcher Élise Roy is in the process of tabulating the results from the first follow-up study. And when the two studies are combined, they provide a grim perspective of the squalor of life on Montreal streets.

Montreal, number one in Canada for heroin shipments, further distinguishes itself for its high number of intravenous users. Researchers found that 36 per cent of the young people they interviewed had injected drugs intravenously, the largest proportion of any city's street youth in North America. Cocaine was the most popular injection choice, with heroin a close second, though cocaine/heroin combinations, PCP and even alcohol injections were popular. And according to a follow-up study, a select two per cent of regular users had even sampled le trip total, or total hit: the knowing injection of cocaine and HIV-infected blood.

The follow-up study has also shown that seven per cent of those who had never injected in the first group had begun to do so seven months later. Many had shared needles: most because they did not have any clean ones available, but others for reasons that had more to do with a strange sort of street etiquette and fatalism: some invoked a sense of solidarity with the people they shot up with, and a full 30 per cent told initial researchers they didn't care if they contracted AIDS or not.

And the police are obviously a constant in the lives of street youth: a staggering 81.5 per cent of respondents reported having been arrested.

Researchers did tests on the participants' saliva and found the HIV infection rate in the first study was 1.85 per cent, most of whom were intravenous drug users.

Perhaps the most poignant findings of Roy's study derive from the answers to a question on the type of services respondents thought they needed to improve their situation. Their requests are surprisingly modest: there are no "smash the state" replies, nor any demands for more money from the government. Most simply said they wanted job or skills training, with "help finding a job" a close second. The third most-mentioned request was for housing.

But Roy says the political will to provide even these for young people outside the accepted system is lacking. "With cutbacks and the employment situation as it is, we have ensured that a segment of the population is simply abandoned."