UNSEEMLY HASTE

Questions For Needle Exchange Advocates

If the departing City Council has its way, San Diego will begin passing out
hypodermic needles to drug addicts, despite protests from Police Chief
David Bejarano and the county Board of Supervisors, which actually runs the
region's public health programs.

Rarely has the council acted with so little forethought as it did last week
in declaring a "public health emergency" to allow the distribution of clean
needles to junkies as a way of countering the spread of AIDS and hepatitis.
Repeatedly over the last decade, the Board of Supervisors has rejected a
needle exchange program, on the common-sense premise that government should
not promote the illegal use of heroin, cocaine and other lethal drugs.

Consequently, the five-member council majority (including three members who
will depart on Dec. 4) took the unprecedented step of declaring a public
health emergency without hearing from a single health department official.

In its haste, the council also acted without knowing a single detail of the
proposed needle exchange, which will not be worked out until several months
from now by a task force to be created by City Manager Michael Uberuaga.
Mayor Susan Golding's sensible suggestion that the outlines of the needle
exchange program be developed before the council declared an emergency was
rejected out of hand.

At the same time, the council cast aside warnings from Chief Bejarano, who
expressed fears that a needle exchange in the city of San Diego would be a
magnet for drug addicts -- and related crime -- from throughout the county.
Unlike other big cities where needle exchanges have been started, San Diego
today has no single neighborhood recognized as a shooting gallery where
addicts congregate. A public needle exchange could become the catalyst for
creating just such a neighborhood in San Diego.

Needle exchange advocates say the programs are an important point of
contact for referring addicts to treatment. But the truth is that the City
of San Diego does not fund a single treatment bed, and shows no sign of
committing city resources to expand the county's overburdened treatment
programs. Without participation by county health officials, who have been
excluded from the city's initiative, how will addicts be referred to treatment?

That's just one of many hard questions the City Council did not pause to
reflect on before embracing a free needle exchange in San Diego.