them provide food, shelter and care to their clients.
‘ In the early days, when there was less structure, if somebody that we worked with was trying to find housing for someone after an emergency, or a bail fund, abortion fund, or healthcare drive, we could just throw some money,’ he says.‘ And that was a cool thing to do, because all that was based on pipe sales.’
MUTUAL AID This evolution from buyer’ s clubs to a mutual aid model happened‘ really organically’ he says.‘ I can’ t say enough that it’ s at the behest of the community we serve.’ Previously, when AHOPE had obtained private funding to start distributing some pipes in 2020 his job had‘ got easier, because I had something to offer more people when I went out to
Above: Smoke Works at Harm Reduction 2025, # HR25 in Bogota.
meet them’, he says.‘ And we learned quickly that as much as we thought we knew everything, we didn’ t realise that not everybody wants to inject. So the effect was immediate, and the effect was huge.’
In the first three months of pipe distribution at AHOPE, people brand new to the exchange were coming in‘ just for pipes – nothing else, no injection supplies’ and 50 per cent were leaving with naloxone, he states.‘ These were communities that we weren’ t getting naloxone to, and this was during the period of fentanyl being found in stimulants.’
FENTANYL CONTAMINATION When he’ d started working in needle exchange two years previously it was‘ just at the point that fentanyl contamination in the local drug supply was becoming a major issue’, he says.‘ It was turning into saturation – arguably a safer place to be, because there was less mystery about what people were ingesting. But I saw the injection rates increase dramatically – from three to five times a day for heroin to 15 to 20 for fentanyl – and it seemed like we just weren’ t addressing that. There were other, less risky, options than injection, but we weren’ t offering them. And that seemed like a disservice to people, letting their needs go unmet.’
He and Nate began distributing pipes from a basement in evenings and on their days off from the exchange.‘ I’ d take a personal day to take receipt of a pallet, and hopefully it would show up,’ he says.‘ We’ d clock out of the needle exchange and start packing up pipes. And eventually the larger institutions started calling, because people had been talking about the need endlessly.’
HOSTILE ENVIRONMENTS Before long they’ d managed to find pipes‘ at the right price point, so that we could get them out to people for less’ he continues.‘ So when we started buyer’ s clubs, we just got on Instagram and the people who responded were the folks doing this work in some of the most hostile environments, without any institutional funding.’ Many were working at full-time jobs to fund the distribution they did‘ out of the trunk of their car on the weekend’, he says.‘ Here we were at this well-funded exchange in Boston, and the inequity of services was just so stark.’ It was this that made him determined that‘ everything we built was to support those smaller groups’, he states.‘ It was one less thing that those folks with no money had to struggle to find.’
They partly achieved this through selling a range of Smoke Works merchandise – t-shirts, badges, even COVID masks – to cover the shipping costs, and eventually‘ stumbled into this system of prioritising those smaller, independent groups working where there’ s no other services.’ The larger institutions would pay, allowing them to keep sending out free supplies to the smaller organisations.‘ That’ s developed over the years, but it’ s still the core mission,’ he explains.‘ To sell pipes so we can also give them away.’
By early 2022 he was able to quit the needle exchange –‘ a tough decision’ – and turn Smoke Works into a full-time operation. It has since moved fully beyond the earlier mutual aid model and concentrated its efforts exclusively on pipes, understanding that while there’ s‘ no end to any need, we’ re best if we stay in our avenue. So now everything we do is specific to free pipes.’
PUBLIC PERCEPTIONS When it comes to public perceptions and media reporting – and obviously the two are very closely linked – it seems that while most people probably now regard traditional needle exchange as something beneficial and relatively uncontroversial, pipe distribution can seem a step too far. Why is that?
‘ Sometimes I think that if we’ d had pipe distribution for the last 30 years and were just now introducing syringes, it would be the same,’ he says.‘ But I’ m going to point the finger towards ourselves. For decades we’ ve been advancing access to harm reduction services in general, and we’ ve gotten to people having at least a passive acceptance of the value of needle exchange by pointing to HIV prevention. That justifies the work they might not otherwise see the value in, and that’ s completely valid – it’ s the foundation of harm reduction internationally. But we failed to evolve the definition of harm reduction over time to really illustrate what’ s offered in a needle exchange. If we had a more robust definition, people would see the value of safer smoking as well.’
Since pipe distribution can’ t be as straightforwardly linked to HIV prevention –‘ you can, you just can’ t do it as quickly’ – people won’ t necessarily see the same tangible benefit.‘ But in reality when there’ s a headline
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