Our background and history

We know that there's other companies out there supplying a lot of the things we sell - we hope that you will want to buy from us because of our products, prices, service, passion and ethos.

We've got a background in health, believe passionately in harm reduction, and want to feel entierly comfortable about what we do. So we'll never be driven solely by profit. As we don’t have any private wealth, government funding, or shareholders behind us, we have to make a profit from the stuff that we sell in order to fund the product development programme, conferences, and the purchase of new stock.

So we have a ‘social enterprise’ ethos – which means working to be a successful and profitable company, so we are able to do things that companies with a motive of maximising profit for their shareholders wouldn’t consider. Which means that if something is worth doing and we can see a way of achieving it, we’ll give it a go, when others operating on commercial sense alone, wouldn’t even begin to think about it.

Illicit drug use is often poorly understood and drug users are often highly marginalised. We believe that that by bringing business skills (which we've had to learn from scratch!) together with an understanding of drug related harm - and how to prevent it - we can play an essential and unique part in limiting the physical damage caused by illicit drug use.

Exchange Supplies was the first, and is the only, organisation in the UK committed to:

History
Before trying to summarise the history and growth of Exchange Supplies, it’s probably important to say that it's all surprised us as much as anyone!

From the start – and as we continue to evolve – we're led by the huge need to do things to reduce harm and health inequalities... rather being than an unfolding plan for world domination that was being secretly nursed all the time (while we practised our maniacal cackles and waited for the right atmospheric conditions to allow us to grasp the levers of commerce)!

The ‘we’ in the early days were Andrew Preston & Jon Derricott. Both originally trained as nurses, and in the early 1990’s independently embraced harm reduction as something that made instinctive, health and political sense.

We met for the first time at a conference in Chester in 1993: Andrew was in the bar carefully showing someone how to juggle 3 balls, when Jon barged up and tried to show off by attempting to juggle 5, something he claims he used to be able to do fairly well, at least when sober… From this inauspicious beginning, things began to develop.

By 1999 Jon had moved from Wirral drug service to HIT and had been managing the HIT training department in Liverpool for several years, and Andrew had left his job as a drug worker in Dorset to write and train full-time. We’d already done quite a few writing projects together, including the safer injecting handbook and safer injecting briefing.

We were getting increasingly involved in the issue of citric acid for injecting drug users because we were seeing growing evidence of problems, both of access to it and in the consequent use of other acidifiers.

While still working for the drug service in West Dorset, Andrew had negotiated the UK’s first local agreement with the police to allow the sale of citric acid, and we both began campaigning to get the problem resolved.

We tried hard to persuade companies that were well placed to do it, to commercially supply drug paraphernalia. Some couldn’t see the need or potential, others could, showed interest and were then dissuaded from doing anything because of the illegality (then) of supplying any paraphernalia other than needles and syringes.

In retrospect it wasn’t surprising (we were probably a bit naive), but at the time we were hugely disappointed and frustrated by our lack of progress.

So, it became clear that if anyone was going to do it, it was going to have to be us. By now, we were both full-time freelance trainers, writers and activists.

To pay for the first million citric sachets, we used money that was supposed to be set aside to pay our income tax. This was fairly high-risk behaviour – losing all the money was likely because supplying drug users with citric was illegal. So, without being totally explicit with our wives as to exactly how precarious it all was, we set about seeing if we could make paraphernalia supply work.

Having placed the order, we had to set up a business to trade. Andrew's publications had been published by 'Exchange Health Information' - a name born out of the philosophy of promoting the exchange of information between drug users and health professionals... without too much thought Exchange Supplies was created denoting the shift in emphasis, and somehow kind of fitting what we were now doing. The company was registered on 1st October 2002. We could have been a charity, but charities have to have trustees and they are personally liable for the actions of the charity, and as we intended to break the law, it seemed wrong to ask people to take responsiblity for that... so the only other option at the time was to be a company.

Within a couple of years, with our help, the law was being systematically broken all over the UK, with the full agreement of the police. As new agreements were negotitated, we posted them on our website which in turn influenced other police forces to agree to allow the supply of citric. Of course the fact that it did work has been as much down to the enthusiasm and willingness of drug workers to push boundaries, and stand up for the rights of users, as it was to anything that we did.

Citric acid supply was quickly recognised as influential in helping needle exchanges to stay in contact with injectors and The Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs recommended a change in the law, and in 2003, the supply of selected items of paraphernalia became legal.

After the law changed, we were suddenly no longer alone in supplying paraphernalia. This is a good thing – we’re glad that our products have become mainstream – but (of course) we hope that the field will continue to value the quality, ethics and investment in research and development that we provide, and continue to support the Exchange Supplies 'project' by choosing our products.

Getting back to the history... after launching citric, we were also the first to supply other paraphernalia items to address long-standing needs, including:

as well as some legal things too like:

We also believe that annual national conferences are an essential part of a dynamic and developing field and so, we established and organise the annual:


In May 2007 Exchange Supplies launched the nevershare syringe - the world's first syringe designed for injecting drug users, with different coloured plungers to prevent accidental sharing, in 2008 we launched the world's first aluminium foil pack, designed to facilitate the transition from injecting drugs to smoking them, and in 2010 we launched our comprehensive range of injecting equipment – making available the full range of needles to injecting drug users for the first time.

In September 2011 we launched the 2ml Nevershare - the world's first syringe for detachable needles designed for injecting drug users.

In February 2012 we launched the The LDS colour, the first low dead space 1ml syringe for detachable needles designed for injecting drug users

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