A BATTLE WORTH FIGHTING

It appears, at last, that New Jersey has a governor with the
compassion and the commitment to fight for a program that will save
lives among the politically powerless -- intravenous drug users,
their sexual partners and the children whom they conceive.

Gov. Jon Corzine said this week that he'll fulfill a campaign promise
by bringing public pressure on the Legislature to enact a bill to
legalize the distribution of clean needles to drug users, and the
over-the-counter purchase of syringes at pharmacies, as a way to curb
the spread of infectious diseases like AIDS and hepatitis. "I'm going
to start talking about the issue over and over again," the governor
told The Star-Ledger.

His immediate predecessors, Gov. Richard Codey and Gov. Jim
McGreevey, said they were for the reforms, but never made the effort
necessary to get them passed. Earlier, Gov. Christie Whitman
stubbornly opposed the changes, parroting the platitude that to enact
them would "send the wrong message" about illegal drug use -- and
never mind the hapless human beings they would rescue.

New Jersey and Delaware are the only two states that forbid both
controlled needle exchange AND the sale of needles without a
prescription. This punitive policy does nothing to discourage drug
use; instead, it abets the spread of AIDS. Because of New Jersey's
intransigence, the state has the fifth highest rate of HIV infection
in the country, with half the cases linked to injection drug use. (On
average, the infection rate for intravenous drug use in other states
is roughly 20 percent.) New Jersey also has one of the highest rates
of HIV among women in the nation, with nearly 80 percent of these
cases involving women of color. AIDS and other illnesses due to HIV
infection constitute the number one cause of death for New Jersey
women between ages 25 and 44. The state also ranks in the top five
for HIV cases involving children and newborns.

This is a litany of shame, and it endures because of a handful of
willful men in the Senate. The chief impediment is Sen. Ronald Rice,
D-Newark, who has found a political cause in denouncing needle
exchange programs as a plot against poor, minority neighborhoods. Why
Senate President Codey and his colleagues allow one demagogue to
block action on this issue is incomprehensible. Other legislators who
should know better also have lined up against needle exchange,
particularly Sen. Tom Kean Jr., R-Westfield, the leading Republican
candidate for the U.S. Senate. Sen. Kean actually went to court to
prevent desperate municipal health officials in Atlantic City and
Camden, where AIDS is epidemic, from implementing their own
needle-exchange programs under Gov. McGreevey's executive order
authorizing them to do so.

Gov. Corzine is ideally positioned to take on these negative forces.
Fortunately, he has powerful allies, notably Assembly Speaker Joseph
Roberts, D-Brooklawn, who won Assembly approval of the reforms in the
last legislative session; Sen. Nia Gill, D-Montclair, who is invoking
senatorial courtesy to block all gubernatorial appointments of Essex
County residents until the Senate takes a vote on needle exchange;
Sens. Joseph Vitale, D-Woodbridge, and Loretta Weinberg, D-Teaneck,
and Assemblymen Reed Gusciora, D-Princeton Borough, and Wilfred
Caraballo, D-Newark. More power to them all. No political fight
shaping up at the State House this year is more important to win than this one.