Changes coming to La Crosse’s free needle exchange

AIDS Resource Center handed out 300,000 needles in 2016

Changes appear to be coming in how hypodermic needles are provided for free in the La Crosse community.  

La Crosse Mayor Tim Kabat says, after a meeting with reps from the AIDS Resource Center downtown, they’ve agreed to work on minimizing the impact of the free needle exchange, which has handed out around 300,000 needles in 2016. In 2008, that number was 11,000.

Kabat says from the organization’s perspective, La Crosse appears to be an outlier in having as many improperly discarded needles show up everywhere.

“They’re as puzzled as we are as why we are seeing so many discarded needles all over the communities,” Kabat said.

The Aids Resource Center workers have agreed to be a first responder of sorts when needles are reported found, Kabat added. 

“I’m not quite sure that maybe even they know the total scope of what that means,” he said, “but I thought that was very positive for the city that we weren’t going to have to be marshalling all of our resources all the time to have to do that.”

The center has also agreed to provide addiction treatment information inside of the drug kits that are provided at the exchange. It’s also considering labeling the needles that come from the exchange.  

“They did not give us a firm commitment on that yet but we’re going to keep trying to push on that,” Kabat said. “They didn’t rule it out. But they also needed to check because, obviously, what they’re trying to do is provide a program at a very low cost.”