By 1987, Jon Stuen-Parker, an activist and former intravenous drug user, has already handed out 50,000 syringes illegally.

He will be featured in the New York Times in 1989 after staging arrests in Boston and New York to show that public health interest outweighs ineffective "drug paraphernalia" laws that criminalize needle exchanges.

In 1990, Parker will partner with the needle exchange committee of the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP) to openly hand out needles in the Lower East Side, while trying to get arrested in what is the epicenter of the AIDS epidemic.