The History of Harm Reduction in Santa Cruz County

Santa Cruz area has a long and vibrant history around syringe access dating back to the late 1980’s and early 1990’s, long before it was legal, and long before mounting data proved that clean injection supplies greatly reduces the spread of disease among other things.

Accepting that people will inject drugs and providing safe equipment to them, curbs the spread of preventable diseases, connects users to services and reduces the amount of syringe waste in a community. Santa Cruz county had one of the highest rates of HIV among the injection drug using community at the time. In 1994 Santa Cruz was the 4th authorized syringe program in North America.

In 2013 an all volunteer program ended and the county Health Services Program began operating two fixed locations for syringe services at the two county health clinics on Emeline Avenue in Santa Cruz and Crestview Drive in Watsonville.