ASSEMBLY PANEL CLEARS NEEDLE-EXCHANGE PLAN

Sponsor Sees Bill As HIV Weapon

TRENTON -- New Jersey took a step closer Monday to offering free
needles to addicts as a measure to fight HIV, the latest step along a
tortuous legislative path that has generated passionate arguments
from supporters and detractors.

The 8-4 vote in the Assembly Appropriations Committee came along
party lines, with one of the majority Democrats abstaining, in favor
of seeding $10 million in taxpayer money for drug-abuse treatment
programs and to allow six municipalities to begin needle-exchange centers.

"This is a positive development that could put New Jersey back into
the mainstream of other states that have approved clean-needle
exchanges and other strategies to reduce the transmission of AIDS
among drug addicts, their partners and children," said the bill's
sponsor, Assembly Speaker Joseph Roberts Jr., D-Camden.

"I am guardedly optimistic," said Roseanne Scotti, director of the
Drug Policy Alliance, which lobbies for the measure.

She said she hopes the measure may be heard by both the full Senate
and the full Assembly by the end of the year.

An impassioned Sen. Ronald Rice, D-Essex, waving his arms and
slapping the witness table, opposed the measure, saying education
should be tried before handing needles to addicts.

"Why don't we give that a chance first?" Rice asked the committee.
"This is the most crucial decision in my 20 years here. I live with
this stuff."

After the vote, Rice, a former police officer, issued a statement
saying, "There is a clear, direct link between drugs, gangs and guns.
Easy access to needles will create a greater demand for heroin and
other intravenous drugs, which will increase the number of suicides,
homicides and murders. By putting needles on the streets, we are
giving the gangs more reasons to kill."

Bill supporter Assemblyman Frank Blee, R-Atlantic, unfurled a list of
health care groups he said support systems in which addicts exchange
dirty, used needles. New Jersey, he added, ranks fifth in the nation
in HIV infections, first in the nation for women, and that one in 40
residents in Atlantic City, which is in his district, has HIV.

Among the resort city's black population, the rate is one in 32, Blee said.

The six locales to get needle-exchange operations would be decided by
the state Department of Health and Senior Services after applicant
communities present plans.

"It's sort of just first come, first served," Scotti said.