Will Santa Ana soon get a needle exchange location? No, silly, an official needle exchange location, which is right now proposed for the French Court Neighborhood.
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The city sent out a community advisory Thursday afternoon revealing that a group of UC Irvine medical students are seeking approval from the state to establish a “free needle exchange program” in French Court for intravenous drug users.
The proposed location is at 1605 N. Spurgeon, which is not within a zone where a free needle exchange program would be permitted under Santa Ana's General Plan, the city explains.
And so, the city is turning to the community for its thoughts on the proposal. Public comments are being accepted via email through May 14 to:
Maria S. Islas-Sevilla, MPA
Communications Specialist
Office of AIDS – Prevention Branch
Center for Infectious Diseases
California Department of Public Health
MS 7700, 1616 Capitol Avenue, Suite 616, Sacramento, CA 95814
Phone: (916) 449-5790
E-mail: ma***********@cd**.gov
Many Santa Ana residents did not want a county homeless shelter, so we'll see how open they are to a needle giveaway spot.
Email: mc****@oc******.com. Twitter: @MatthewTCoker. Follow OC Weekly on Twitter @ocweekly or on Facebook!
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.