Administers a needle exchange called Sharp Advice Needle Exchange (SANE).  The needle exchange provides safe injection equipment (clean needles, alcohol swabs, filters) and sharps containers for safe disposal of used needles.  Outreach services are available as well.

Needle Exchange programs exist to provide clean needles and syringes for injection drug users. Health experts say hypodermic needles can harbor more than 20 blood-borne diseases, including HIV, and hepatitis B and C. Almost half of the country's new HIV infections were among injection drug users. It's estimated an injection drug user will inject about 1,000 times a year.

The first official needle exchange program in Canada began in 1989 in Vancouver. Within a few months, similar programs sprouted up in Montreal and Toronto. Over the years, community health groups, helped by provincial and federal funding, have created more than 100 exchange programs in the country. Ontario has the most comprehensive network of programs with 16.

Critics of such programs say they encourage people to use illegal drugs and result in more needles being dumped in public places. A study published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal in August 1997 concluded that providing sterile needles is an inexpensive means of preventing greater health-care costs. Researchers at McMaster University examined the needle exchange program in Hamilton, which provided more than 14,200 clean syringes to 275 drug users in 1995.

The authors of the study estimated the program prevented 24 new HIV infections over five years. The study said the cost of treating HIV and AIDS over a person's lifetime could total $1.3 million in direct costs to the health system.

According to the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH), which looked at several surveys, needle exchange programs

(NEPs):
-Reduce the transmission of disease in drug users.
-Do not increase injection drug use.
-Do not increase the number of needles discarded (NEPs collect more needles than they give out).