NEEDLE SWAPS MAY GAIN LIFESAVING LEGITIMACY

JEFF Cormier took a plastic biohazard bucket out of the trunk of his
'91 Lexus last week at the usual spot, not far from San Jose Arena. He
was pretty hard to miss, standing on the curb wearing an Indiana
Jones-style fedora. He doesn't look like the one-man staff of an
``underground operation.'' But he is.

He put a couple of boxes of clean syringes on the sidewalk and waited
for the 6 p.m after-work crowd.

One of the first ``regulars'' to stop by was a woman who had been
coming every week for more than three years. The puffy scars on her
arms were a legacy of half a lifetime of shooting drugs into her
veins. She said she used to drive all the way from Modesto to dispose
of her dirty needles at Cormier's outpost, the only needle exchange in
Santa Clara County, run by the AIDS Resources and Information Service.

Several of the regulars were wearing shirts with company logos
stitched onto the pockets when they came to drop their needles into
the biohazard bucket. All of them were middle-aged.

The thing to keep in mind about the addicts who stop by the ARIS
needle exchange is, among the estimated 13,000 to 15,000
intravenous-drug users in Santa Clara County, they represent the small
fraction trying to stem the spread of disease. It's easy to write them
off as hopeless junkies, but they're the only junkies who have it
together enough to try to keep their habit from killing other people.

SINCE the state Legislature passed a bill last week that protects
needle-exchange programs from criminal prosecution, Cormier and his
colleagues in other counties hope there will be more funding available
to reach out to addicts who are still playing Russian roulette with
dirty needles.

It's about time. For years, the medical community and even some law
enforcement agencies have said needle-exchange programs can halt the
spread of AIDS without creating new junkies. It's the reason a lot of
cops, including many in Santa Clara and San Mateo counties, don't
arrest people who show up at ``underground'' needle exchanges. It's
the reason a recent Field Poll showed overwhelming support for
needle-exchange programs, even among self-described
conservatives.

But politicians who insist on confusing a public health issue with a
morality issue outlawed the programs several years ago.

Even though the spread of AIDS through IV-drug use has leveled in
Santa Clara County, the public health department reports that 70
percent of addicts who come through the system are infected with
hepatitis C, a sometimes fatal disease that's far more contagious than
HIV. Clearly, there's a new, urgent need for needle-exchange programs.

Dr. Martin Fenstersheib, Santa Clara County's health officer, hopes
the new law will shake loose private grant funding from foundations
who'd been afraid to help the county sponsor illegal programs.

SOME needle exchanges in other counties have gotten private donations
and launched remarkable outreach programs. Joey Tranchina has been
running a program in San Mateo County for more than a decade. Now it's
partially funded by private grants and exchanges 329,000 syringes a
year.

``We do exchanges with guys living under the freeway and with people
at the end of long driveways in Los Altos,'' he said. ``This is about
building a bridge of trust between health educators and drug injectors
. . . and that's why the spread of AIDS among drug users here has
flat-lined since needle-exchange programs started. I may not be able
to prove the connection, but it's one hell of a coincidence, don't you
think?''

Jeff Cormier knows it's no coincidence. He wouldn't be handing out
syringes on the curb every week if he thought so. It's time for the
governor to sign the needle-exchange bill so Cormier, Tranchina and
others fighting on the front can finally have some fresh troops before
the body count starts to climb again.