NO NEEDLE TRADING

There Is No Way To Make Drug Abuse Safe

Today the City Council will vote on a plan that is a radical departure from
San Diego's long-standing stance against intravenous drug abuse.

Instead of enforcing the law against illegal possession of hypodermic
needles and syringes, the proposal would extend the city's blessing, under
the guise of a public health emergency, to a program allowing addicts to
receive free clean needles in exchange for dirty ones. The aim of the plan,
sponsored by the Alliance Healthcare Foundation, is to counter the spread
of AIDS and hepatitis through infected needles shared by junkies.

Needle exchanges are the centerpiece of a movement commonly called "harm
reduction." It is based on the tragically flawed premise that, rather than
try to prohibit in-travenous drug abuse through legal sanctions, public
health officials should simply work to make the practice less harmful to
addicts.

Accordingly, needle exchanges intentionally abet the use of cocaine, heroin
and other lethal substances in their effort to combat AIDS and hepatitis.
This unorthodox approach ignores the hard reality that there simply is no
way to make drug abuse safe. Indeed, by helping addicts continue their
deadly habit, needle exchanges actually promote the even larger dangers
that drug abuse inflicts on addicts -- fatal overdoses, suicides,
homicides, liver ailments, heart damage.

Nor are addicts themselves the only victims. In other cities where needle
exchanges have been implemented, crime rates have soared in the
neighborhoods where addicts congregate to collect free paraphernalia. This
is hardly surprising, considering that needles routinely are passed out, no
questions asked, to desperate men and women who have no jobs or other means
of support. Robbery, prostitution, petty theft and other crimes are the way
they finance their habit.

Advocates of a needle exchange in San Diego claim they are motivated in
part by a desire to protect police officers from dirty needles discarded on
streets. Yet Police Chief David Bejarano has urged the City Council to
reject the Alliance Healthcare proposal, specifically because he fears it
will spur crime in San Diego.

Before City Council members take it upon themselves to declare a public
health emergency, they should consider the views of Dr. Bob Ross, who for
seven years was San Diego's highly respected health director. Although
Ross, a pediatrician, had earlier espoused a needle exchange in
Philadelphia, he did not support such a program in San Diego. "It's not a
panacea," he declared.

Nor did Ross support the idea of declaring a public health emergency in San
Diego. It is, after all, the county and not the city that is responsible
for public health programs in San Diego. The county Board of Supervisors
rejected a needle exchange on repeated occasions. That prompted Alliance
Healthcare to seek back-door approval of its proposal from the City Council.

The goal of slowing the spread of infectious diseases is certainly
laudable. But the means that needle exchange advocates propose to reach
that end -- abetting intravenous drug abuse -- would promote even larger
social ills. The City Council should reject this ill-advised plan.