COUNTY OFFICIALS MULLING LEGALIZING NEEDLE PROGRAM

PITTSBURGH As Allegheny County officials mull a needle exchange program
for intravenous drug users, a group of college professors and other
professionals are running their own surreptitious and - for now - illegal
program.

The County Health Department is considering several options, including
making Prevention Point Pittsburgh's syringe exchange its official program.

For six years, Prevention Point Pittsburgh volunteers have prowled
abandoned buildings and alleys once a week to give drug addicts clean syringes.

The group hopes to stem the spread of blood-borne diseases, especially
human immunodeficiency virus, or HIV, which causes AIDS.

The dozen volunteers wheel the tainted needles away in biohazard drums and
also give the addicts "cookers" to sterilize their own.

After a series of public hearings this summer, the county health board
could begin discussing a needle-exchange program as early as next month.
The proposal would also need approval from County Council and county Chief
Executive Jim Roddey - who has yet to take a public position on the matter.

"Any proposal is going to have a treatment component attached to it,
something to channel them into a treatment program to get off of this cycle
of intravenous drug use," health department spokesman David Zazac said.

The American Medical Association, the National Institutes of Health, the
national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Institute for
Medicine all endorse needle programs.

But under a 29-year-old state law, the volunteers' activities are as
illegal as the drugs the addicts inject. The law labels the syringes drug
paraphernalia and they are illegal without a prescription.

"Do you know how frustrating this is, to be doing something that benefits
the public's health but is illegal?" Dennis Fisk, a nurse at Allegheny
General Hospital and a volunteer, told the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.
"That's the insanity of the war on drugs."

"I've seen young men and women die of AIDS or hepatitis. They kept shooting
up, using dirty needles, until they died from the disease. That's how they
get clean," Fisk said.

Despite the county Health Department's acknowledgment, Pittsburgh and
Allegheny County police officials said they hadn't heard of any underground
needle-exchange groups.

"It is illegal, realistically and technically. If someone wants to do that
they should organize it through the (county) health department," said
Allegheny County police Superintendent Ken Fulton.

Fulton said he would support a county-led needle-exchange program.

"Overall, the picture is to save lives, we would help any way we could,"
Fulton said.

Philadelphia has had a city-funded needle-exchange program since 1992.
According to a 1997 survey by the North American Syringe Exchange Network,
Prevention Point Philadelphia turned in 800,000 used syringes.

More than 150 such programs operate in more than 30 states, but only half
are legal, according to the survey.

Former Mayor Edward Rendell authorized the Philadelphia program citing a
public health emergency. City lawyers concluded that the state's drug
paraphernalia law wasn't intended to apply to disease control measures, and
that program hasn't been challenged in court.

According to the national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more
than one-third of the new cases of HIV reported were linked to intravenous
drug use. Among women, the rate is twice as high.

Through routine blood screenings, Allegheny County health officials last
year found 18 HIV-positive drug users, double the nine they found in 1999.
So far this year, county health officials have found six, but caution the
number could be higher because of delays in reporting.