Addicted to saving lives

Harry Leno leaned against a boarded-up window on a dark street in Lowell where the only voices came from people who shoot heroin. Leno blended into the darkness, but the voices knew where to find him. And Leno was happy they did.

As he waited, grateful men and women stepped out of the shadows of back alleys and tenements, greeting Leno with nervous smiles. He then led them to his car, which he drives from his Ipswich home each week, and handed them something he believes will save their lives: clean syringes. When all of his regulars had come and gone, he drove to Lawrence to continue his mission.

During his weekly trips to Lowell and Lawrence, Leno does not lecture about the dangers of addiction. Instead, he tells addicts they are making the right choice by using clean needles and then hands them a plastic supermarket bag filled with a week's worth of syringes. Some take as many as 500 for personal use and for friends.

The needles will be used to break the law. But the former heroin addict, who is also Ipswich's animal control officer, calls his work ''harm reduction." When people question his motives, he'll cite a mass of research, including a report from the Massachusetts Department of Public Health that links dirty needles to 39 percent of the state's HIV and AIDS cases.

For more than a decade, needle distribution advocates like Leno have been pushing for a new law that would allow intravenous drug users to legally buy new syringes. Last month, for the first time, the House overwhelmingly approved a bill that would decriminalize possession of a hypodermic needle and allow people 18 and older to purchase them from pharmacies. The state Senate is expected to debate the bill next month.

Massachusetts, New Jersey, and Delaware are the only three states where syringes cannot be legally purchased. Boston, Cambridge, Northampton, and Provincetown allow intravenous drug users to legally obtain syringes at state-supervised programs in each municipality. However, no community north of Boston has agreed to allow needle distribution for drug users.

While no formal debate has yet to take place in the Senate, state Senator Jarrett T. Barrios, who represents several communities north of Boston, predicted that the Senate would endorse the measure and send the proposed law to Governor Mitt Romney's desk.

While the state Department of Public Health has endorsed the bill, Romney opposes legalizing syringes, according to spokeswoman Julie Teer. She declined to comment on whether the governor would veto the bill.

''The governor has expressed his opposition to the legislation. When you give addicts the tools of the trade, you are facilitating illegal drug use," said Teer. The bill was approved by a veto-proof majority in the House, which has historically been the more conservative chamber.

Several health agencies and organizations have endorsed the passage of the bill, including the Massachusetts Pharmacists Association and the AIDS Action Committee of Massachusetts. The bill also has received widespread support from legislators, including Barrios and state Senator Thomas M. McGee of Lynn, and has been endorsed by Essex District Attorney Jonathan Blodgett, Suffolk District Attorney Daniel Conley, and Middlesex District Attorney Martha Coakley.

Reducing the spread of HIV and hepatitis C is at the root of the bill, said supporters.

''The costs of unnecessary disease transmission continues to rise, and we're looking for a smart public health policy solution to save taxpayers money," said Barrios. According to the International AIDS Society, the estimated lifetime treatment cost for someone living with HIV/AIDS is $405,000.

Not all officials, however, believe that the bill should be passed.

''I think there's a potential downside, and it could lead to increased heroin use," said Lynn Police Chief John Suslak, whose city is a major distribution point for heroin on the North Shore. ''I think it sends a mixed message to the kids in general about how serious the state is in preventing the use of drugs, when, in fact, they're going to make it legal for anyone to go into any pharmacy and buy a needle."

Other area police chiefs who oppose the bill include Malden's Kenneth Coye and Peabody's Robert Champagne.

Leno, who is 69 and looks like the singer Willie Nelson, makes the opposite argument. ''This is not going to create more addicts," said Leno, who began passing out needles 20 years ago in Boston, New Haven, and New York. Leno said people usually begin to inject heroin only after snorting or smoking the drug no longer gives them the desired high.

Leno quit heroin in 1982, and by the mid-1980s, wanted to do something to prevent the spread of AIDS. He helped start an underground needle exchange in Boston and later in Lynn, where he was arrested for giving sterile syringes to intravenous drug users and given a suspended sentence. In 1993, he set out for Chelsea, where he developed a walking route, handing out more 1,300 clean needles a night. After two years, he was threatened with arrest, and moved on to his route in Lawrence and Lowell.

On a below-freezing night last week, Leno sat in his car in Lawrence inspecting a plastic bag filled with 20 syringes, cotton balls, alcohol swabs, condoms, and a flier on hygiene. Because Leno is registered with the state at the Boston needle exchange, he can legally possess the needles. The packets are subsidized by the New England Prevention Alliance.

Leno returned the bag of syringes to his green backpack and prepared for his walking and driving route, where he alternately stops at apartments and back streets at scheduled times. At one regular stop, he's established a routine of bringing people into his car, rather than handing the needles out in the street.

He is personable and polite, frequently calling people by their first names as he hands out the needles. ''I'm like the mailman," said Leno, who figures he has missed only five needle distribution nights in the last 20 years. ''I'm there on a reliable, weekly time frame."

Every week, Leno begins his route at a Lawrence restaurant. Before Leno had a chance to sit down with his coffee, he locked eyes with a Hispanic man in his 40s, and the men walked out to Leno's car. The man was silent when Leno handed him 300 syringes, enough for himself and two friends. ''I love you. Be safe," Leno said, as the man waved, and disappeared into the darkness.

During the next four hours, Leno gave out 1,760 needles, traveling to Lowell and then back to Lawrence again. Inside a Lawrence apartment, Kathy, Wes, and Paula greeted him enthusiasticallyas they received their weekly allotment of 500 needles. ''We used to go to New Hampshire to buy them legally until we met Harry," said Kathy, who is in her mid-30s and has used heroin for nine years. The three said they would buy the needles legally if the new bill passes.

The roommates also said they've taken risks in the past by using dirty needles. On occasion, they also buy needles for $5 from diabetics who resell their needles.

As Leno prepared to leave, Kathy presented him with two red hazardous waste containers, filled with 1,000 used syringes. Leno collected the needles and planned to deliver them to a hazardous waste drop-off center. In the next three hours, he befriended an unemployed man who used to buy clean needles in New Hampshire but is now homeless.

But it's scenes like this that trouble Anthony Verga, a Gloucester state representative who voted against the syringe bill last month. Verga said he believes people will continue to share needles even if they can buy them legally.

''They say if you get clean needles you'll have no problem. What happens if you have four guys and they say, 'I want to get high.' Do they run to the drugstore and get new needles or do they say 'Let's just share this one and worry about the consequences later.' "

Verga also opposes outreach workers, like Leno, who distribute syringes. ''Now, if a kid wants to experiment, he'll have an opportunity to do it when someone gives him a free needle," said Verga.

Later, in Lowell, Harry drove Tommy, a 27-year-old unemployed carpet-installer, to a parking lot where he handed him bags containing 500 syringes. Tommy will use some of the needles and give others to friends who are users.

''I'm hepatitis C positive," said Tommy. He lifted two plastic bags and began to walk away, before stopping. ''There would be a lot more people out here with AIDS if it wasn't for Harry," he said.

Gary Langis used to do a similar underground route in Lynn, but, like Leno, was arrested. Langis still spends most of his time in Lynn, managing an HIV program for CAB, a nonprofit social service agency in the North Shore and counseling drug users not to share needles. Langis knows how devastating that practice can be. His wife, Angela, contracted the HIV virus after sharing a contaminated needle and died in 1993. Last April, his son Michael committed suicide. At his feet was a picture of his mother.

''I figured he was 25, it had been 12 years, and I just thought that he would recover. But when I found him and where the picture was positioned, I knew he was thinking about her and the loss," said Langis.

Langis said he believes a needle exchange program should be set up in many of the cities outside of Boston that are also facing a heroin problem. ''It's not just giving out a syringe," said Langis. ''It's engaging a whole population. . . . They feel they can talk to a person who cares about them enough that they don't want to see that person get infected with HIV."

Steven Rosenberg can be reached at rosenberg@globe.com.