NO-PRESCRIPTION SYRINGE BILL PASSES

The Measure Heads to Gov. Davis, Who Vetoed Similar Legislation
Before.

The state Senate on Thursday approved a controversial bill allowing
pharmacists to sell syringes without prescriptions and sent the
measure to Gov. Gray Davis, who vetoed similar legislation last year.

The bill, SB 774, is widely supported by public health advocates as a
means to reduce the spread of HIV. The measure is strongly opposed by
law-enforcement officials, who argue that access to needles eases
illegal drug use.

The vote was 21-10, the minimum needed to pass. The Assembly approved
the measure Tuesday, 41-33, also without a vote to spare.

Last year, Davis rejected an effort to allow prescription-free syringe
sales. This year's measure has been worked over to meet concerns Davis
expressed in his veto message, but the governor has not taken a
position on SB 774, spokesman Russ Lopez said.

The current bill includes a sunset provision, requiring lawmakers to
reauthorize the program to continue past 2007. SB 774 also addresses
other concerns raised last year by Davis by requiring that pharmacies
establish a syringe disposal program and authorizing local governments
to include needles in pre-existing household hazardous-waste recovery
programs.

The measure would allow pharmacies to sell up to 30 syringes per
transaction. Pharmacies could set up an on-site collection program,
create a needle mail-back program or refer syringe buyers to other
collection sites to meet the disposal program requirement.

If the bill is signed into law, California would be the 46th state to
allow needle sales without a prescription.

Supporters said the measure would prevent the spread of infectious
diseases and reduce health-care costs. Half of the 600,000 hepatitis C
cases and 19 percent of the more than 124,000 HIV cases in California
are related to needle sharing, according to the California Department
of Health Services.

"We must face the reality that persons who are addicts are going to
shoot up, and we should not have a state policy that makes that a
death sentence," the bill's author, state Sen. John Vasconcellos,
D-Santa Clara, said in a prepared statement. "People can recover from
drug addiction but not from AIDS."

Glenn Backes of the Drug Policy Alliance said studies comparing cities
where addicts have access to clean needles with cities where they
don't show that while drug use and crime are the same, the spread of
diseases linked to needle sharing is cut in half.

"There is a raft of research that says that when provided clean
needles," users share fewer needles, Backes said.

But Art Croney, executive director of the Committee on Moral Concerns,
disagreed with arguments that drug addicts who have access to clean
needles won't share syringes.

"It has nothing to do with clean needles. They are going to share
needles anyway," Croney said. "It is part of the culture."

Lodi Police Chief Jerry Adams said that while there are some
"legitimate arguments" for SB 774, on balance making it easier to get
needles is "just not good public policy."

"I think we (would be) sending the wrong message ... (that) we are
condoning the use of illegal drugs," said Adams, vice president of the
California Peace Officers Association.