Last month, the Public Safety & Neighborhood Services Committee heard and voted unanimously to accept a decade long report on the status of San Diego’s Clean Syringe Exchange Program.

“We’re approaching a million exchanges now,” said Dr. Jim Dunford, the city’s medical director to the committee. The program began in 2001.

The report states that a total of 995,836 dirty needles were received at two mobile locations, one in downtown San Diego and the other in North Park. In exchange, the program gave out 861,073 clean needles.

That is a difference of 134,763 needles, which advocates say is meaningful because it represents more safety to police officers and firefighters come in contact with suspects that carry dirty needles. It also means less dirty needles in neighborhood parks, sidewalks or playgrounds.

The purpose for handing out clean syringes in exchange for dirty ones is to cut the risk of HIV and hepatitis C transmission.

No city funds are used in the program; the Alliance Healthcare Foundation and the Family Health Centers of San Diego administer the program.

When people show up to exchange syringes, they meet with a case manager and are offered a variety of services that include substance abuse treatment, detoxification services, mental health programs or housing.

Critics of the program say it promotes drug abuse or crime, but Dunford told the committee that is not true. No one opposed to the program spoke to the committee.

Among the reports demographic findings were the following:

Gender: 72 percent of clients are male, 27 percent are female and one percent are transgender

Race: 66 percent of clients are white, 20 percent are Hispanics and 7 percent are black

Housing: 44 percent are living in their own residence, 22 percent live with someone else and 24 percent are homeless

Marital status: 59 percent have never married; 26 percent are divorced widowed or separated; 13 percent are married and two percent live with a domestic partner

Education: 52 percent of clients did not finish high school but 42 percent received their high school diploma and six percent dropped out of school in junior high or earlier

Employment: 64 percent of clients are without jobs in the latest figures. That doesn’t change much over the years. In 2002, 68 percent of clients said they were unemployed, with the highest at 74 percent in 2005.

Dunford told the committee that the program’s average client is a 37-year-old white male.

The Clean Syringe Exchange Program operates out of a recreational vehicle twice a week.

The downtown location is in East Village near Market Street on Thursdays from 6-9 p.m. The North Park location is in operation on Fridays from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. near University Avenue.

“It’s handled very discretely,” said Councilmember Todd Gloria to Dunford and others.

The report won’t be going to the City Council because the council no longer has to approve it.

The state legislature allowed clean syringe programs in 2001 only if local agencies declared a state of emergency, but that changed in 2006 when the state allowed syringe exchange programs to stay open without a declaration.

Since the program’s inception, there have been 27,120 total referrals including 2,025 to substance abuse treatment, 2,237 to detoxification services, 1,013 to mental health programs, 4,396 to primary care and 17,449 to other programs such as homeless shelters and medical service providers.