spent long periods of time in prison. The illegality of the substance
that he used to take so regularly led him into a spiral of punishable
behaviour, resulting in a total of more than 15 years in prison. He is
still there.
As the possession of a needle is an indication of drug use and drug use
is illegal, Paco would hide his needle in his arse, cut down and wrapped
in a condom. The other accessories of a user such as cotton wool and alcohol
would simply not be used, as they are (even more!) difficult to hide.
Paco used to share his needle, in fact he would rent it to other people.
That's right: he rented it out, and it was used and used till it was blunt.
Paco is HIV positive. Now he is furious. No longer a user himself, he
is unsurprisingly passionate about needle exchange programs. Some years
ago, while being moved from one far-flung prison to another, he would
have liked to have had this choice. He knows there was information outside,
but none of it reached those on the inside.
And yet one of the characteristics of the society that I live in is its
capacity to generate contradictory, paradoxical situations. It's one of
our enchanting aspects. The approach taken with health in prisons is an
example of this. Precisely because of the high prevalence of HIV in prisons,
support groups clamoured to make recognised what is evident: in prisons
as in the street, sex and drugs happen.
So, while our penitentiary system continues to suffer from a notable lack
of infrastructure and of programmes for the reinsertion of ex-prisoners
into society, it
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has at the same time embraced the message that harm reduction is the best
