A GOOD THING FOR ADDICTS AND D.C.

Ron Daniels runs what is perhaps the most controversial effort in the
District's fight against AIDS: a needle exchange program. Drop off
your dirty works at his mobile outreach unit, and he'll give you all
this in return: new needles, sanitized cookers, vials of sterile
water, alcohol swabs and cotton balls. Everything but the dope.

The van was parked in a drug hot spot near 21st and H streets NE one
recent afternoon, and about 20 people showed up. They looked like the
living dead, some with poorly bandaged abscesses, others with
amputated limbs -- all casualties of a heroin, cocaine or
methamphetamine addiction that, sooner or later, destroys mind, body
and soul. Buy This Photo John Turner, left, an outreach worker,
confers with Ron Daniels, director of PreventionWorks!. (By Courtland
Milloy -- The Washington Post) Save & Share ArticleWhat's
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A man in his 40s entered the van with 15 used syringes. When Daniels
asked how he was doing, the man replied: "I'm blessed. I still have
my family, and I still have a job."

Daniels nodded sympathetically and said, "What you're doing now is a
full-time job: trying to get it without getting caught, doing it
without being seen, getting more before you get sick."

He had summed up the man's desperate daily routine in a sentence, and
it appeared to hit home. "I really want to stop," the man said. "I
mean, I can stop. I just can't stay stopped. Can you help me get into
a treatment program? Detox? A methadone clinic? Anything but this."

Daniels, 50, is program director for PreventionWorks!, a privately
funded needle exchange program that seeks to stem the spread of HIV,
the virus that causes AIDS, among intravenous drug users in the
District. The city has the highest rate of new AIDS cases in the
country, and intravenous drug use is the second-most common mode of
HIV transmission among men (after sex between men) and the most
common mode of HIV transmission among women, according to the D.C.
Administration for HIV Policy and Programs.

PreventionWorks!, which started in 1998, provides drug counseling,
drug treatment referrals and HIV testing to thousands of IV drug
users. Last year alone, Daniels, his staff of four and his group of
volunteers collected and disposed of 232,357 used needles and
syringes. This on a budget of just $600,000 a year, all donated.

But as the city commemorates National Black HIV/AIDS Awareness Day
today, the program's successes on a shoestring are overshadowed by
the disdain in Congress for needle exchanges. Lawmakers not only
prohibit the use of federal funds for such programs but they also
forbid the District to use its own money. Only residents of the
nation's capital are subject to such dictates from Congress.

At a hearing before the House drug policy subcommittee in 2005,
then-Chairman Mark E. Souder (R-Ind.) explained his opposition:
"Instead of addressing the symptoms of addiction -- such as giving
them clean needles, telling them about how to shoot up without
blowing a vein, recommending that addicts abuse with someone else in
case one of them stops breathing -- we should break the bonds of
their addiction and make them free from needles and pushers and pimps
once and for all."

In fact, PreventionWorks! does both.

"The needle exchange is just the beginning," said Daniels, a former
heroin user. "We use the syringe to engage in conversations with
those people nobody wants to talk to. We believe in meeting people
where they are, treating them like human beings and helping them
avoid catching and spreading diseases."

Six days a week -- unless the outreach van breaks down -- Daniels and
several volunteers visit 12 sites in areas hit hard by AIDS. Last
year, they provided 1,963 intravenous drug users with educational
materials, treatment referrals and clean needles. But in a city with
an estimated 9,700 IV drug users, much work remains.

"We sure could use a second van," Daniels said.

Numerous studies have shown that needle exchange programs do work --
especially when government provides a reliable source of funding. But
there are no studies, no epidemiological reports or speeches in
Congress that can convey the heartaches of desperate drug addicts or
the heartbreak Daniels feels when he reaches them too late.

At a stop near Nannie Helen Burroughs and Division avenues in
Northeast, a woman in her 30s climbed aboard with 43 used needles to
trade. She had watery eyes, parched lips and trembling hands. Daniels
asked her, "What would you do without this program?"

The woman took a seat and squeezed her hands between her knees,
stopping the shivers just long enough to say, "Maybe if you all had
been around 10 years ago, I wouldn't be infected."