U.S. NEEDLE POLICY HURTS AIDS SUFFERERS

Today, the African American community will gather under the banner of
National Black HIV/AIDS Awareness Day to bring attention to this
modern plague and its disparate impact on the black community.

While HIV/AIDS decimates our community, our nation has failed to
implement a national health policy that addresses how this disease is
spread. Nowhere is this discrepancy as great as over the issue of
needle exchange.

Needle exchange remains a scientifically proven strategy to curb the
spread of AIDS by providing clean needles and access to treatment for
injection drug users. Unfortunately, for nearly 20 years Congress has
maintained a no-longer-rational ban on the use of federal dollars for
needle exchange programs. Congress thinks differently than health
professionals and organizations such as the Black AIDS Institute,
National Minority AIDS Council, NAACP, National Urban League,
American Academy of Pediatrics; American Bar Association, American
Medical Association and U.S. Conference of Mayors.

These groups see needle exchange as a viable means of slowing the
spread of the virus. Nearly a quarter of the annual 40,000 new cases
of HIV/AIDS in this country are either a direct or collateral effect
of intravenous drug use. The failure to have access to clean needles
has wide-ranging implications not just for drug users, but also for
their families and entire communities. Up to 75 percent of new AIDS
cases among women and children are directly or indirectly a
consequence of intravenous drug use.

If most Americans knew, by simply removing a political plank in
congressional appropriation bills, that we could reduce the spread of
HIV/AIDS in the United States by up to one-third, they would run to
their congressional representative's office and demand answers. They
would want to know why our elected officials ignored a proven
strategy to prevent the spread of HIV - a strategy that has already
been approved by 16 counties and four cities in California, as well
as in more than 20 nations from Europe to Canada.

Due to the federal ban on syringe exchange enacted in 1988, states
and cities have been limited to using scarce local funds to combat
the damage that results from intravenous drug users sharing
HIV-infected needles.

According to the Harm Reduction Coalition, more than 200 needle
exchange programs exist in 36 states, and their impact on reducing
the spread of HIV and Hepatitis C has been amazing. According to a
2005 study of New York City HIV trends, the number of HIV positive
injection drug users dropped more than 75 percent from 1990 to 2001.
Similarly, a 1997 study in The Lancet medical journal compared HIV
infection rates among injection drug users in 81 cities around the
world. In the 52 cities without needle exchange programs, the rates
increased on average 5.9 percent annually; yet in those 29 cities
with needle exchange programs, HIV rates dropped 5.8 percent annually.

Health experts have called for allowing federal dollars for needle
exchange programs. Advocates for removal of the federal ban cheered
when Congress voted to allow the District of Columbia to use its own
funds to support syringe exchange programs. In California, Gov.
Arnold Schwarzenegger signed into law similar legislation that, after
20 years, finally provides local jurisdictions greater autonomy in
using funds to support syringe exchange.

Countless studies have documented the benefit syringe exchange
programs have had on reducing HIV/AIDS rates across the globe and
here in California, which hosts 39 syringe exchange programs.

Sadly, for African American and Latino communities, the problem of
HIV/AIDS has already reached the crisis level. Today, African
Americans make up only 12 percent of the national population but the
majority of new AIDS cases. Additionally, African Americans make up
50 percent of AIDS cases attributed to drug injection use, while
Latinos make up 25 percent.

These horrific numbers could lead many to see the federal ban on
syringe exchange programs simply as a "minority" issue instead of the
national public health policy issue that it is.

As law professor Lani Guinier noted, America's minority communities
often serve as "the canary in the coal mine" for social maladies. Why
would health problems facing these communities not eventually impact
each and every neighborhood? Already reports from the CDC indicate
that yearly HIV/AIDS infection rates could actually be 20 percent to
50 percent higher than previously estimated.

On National Black HIV/AIDS Awareness Day, ours is not a call from the
African American community alone. It is a call from advocates the
world over, whose communities are plagued by an epidemic and who seek
resources for the fight.

Removing the federal ban on syringe exchange programs makes sense
economically, politically and morally. Better public policy must not
be strangled by Beltway politics - after all, we are talking about
people's lives.