NEEDLE PROGRAMS ARE ASSISTED SUICIDE

GIVING kids condoms doesn't promote promiscuity. Providing welfare benefits
for unwed mothers doesn't encourage illegitimacy. And distributing needles
to addicts has no impact on drug use.

Liberals have abolished cause and effect.

On April 20, Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala announced
that the administration will not lift the ban on federal funding of
needle-exchange programs (NEPs). Congress had loudly threatened to reinstate
the ban, if Shalala lifted it, and the president's own drug czar fought the
move.

Then, as a statement of ideological commitment, the secretary declared that
while federal money won't be available, NEPs are an effective way to fight
AIDS and don't encourage addiction. Sure, and they also build strong bodies
in 12 ways and are clinically proven to fight cavities.

Three days later, billionaire George Soros stepped forward to fill the void,
offering $1 million of his own money to underwrite these lethal projects.

Needle-exchange programs are part of the stealth campaign for drug
legalization, a point we will return to shortly. That aside, how effective
are they? Very -- if the goal is to give the Golden Triangle a
full-employment economy.

James L. Curtis, a professor of psychiatry and director of addiction
services at the Harlem Hospital Center, calls NEPs ''simplistic nonsense
that stands common sense on its head.'' Curtis warns that the exchanges
''hurt not only individual addicts but also poor and minority communities.''

Vancouver, Canada, has the largest needle give-away program in North
America. Two million syringes are distributed each year. Since the program
started in 1988, HIV prevalence among intravenous drug users has gone from 1
to 2 percent to 23 percent and deaths from drug overdoses have increased
five-fold, giving Vancouver the highest heroin death rate in the United
States and Canada.

In a Montreal study, 39 percent of those who participated in its
needle-exchange reported sharing dirty needles, compared to 38 percent of
non-participants.

NEPs promote the spread of AIDS by promoting addiction. The addicts who
gather for syringe swaps network and learn where to acquire new supplies. By
cutting the time it takes them to get drugs, NEPs increase drug use.

Since police are ordered not to harass addicts at the exchanges, the sites
become safe zones for the sale and use of narcotics.

In many of the more than 100 NEPs in America, users are given a variety of
additional paraphernalia, like pans for cooking heroin. At Baltimore's NEP,
consumers receive a pamphlet, ''Shoot Smart, Shoot Safe: Tips for Safer
Crack Injection,'' illustrated with photos of needles being jabbed into
veins. What better use for our tax dollars?

Soros' support for needle-exchange programs establishes a crucial link
between NEPs and the legalization lobby. Former Health, Education and
Welfare Secretary Joseph Califano calls the financier the ''Daddy Warbucks
of drug legalization.''

In the past decade, Soros has given more than $20 million to change American
drug policy. This includes millions poured into so-called medical marijuana
initiatives in California, Arizona and Washington state.

He's also bestowed $6.4 million on the Drug Policy Foundation (a
legalization think tank) and given $4 million to its parent group, the
Lindesmith Center, which he founded.

To head Lindesmith, Soros chose Ethan Nadelmann, whose January 1998 article
in Foreign Affairs calls for making needles available through public vending
machines and heroin distribution to addicts.

In the name of compassion, medical marijuana and needle exchanges are back
doors to legalization. The idea is to legitimize addiction by getting
government involved in various ways, such as subsidizing needle distribution
and certifying pot as a palliative.

Not surprisingly, the biggest boosters of NEPs are also the most
enthusiastic legalizers -- besides Soros, former Surgeon General Jocelyn
Elders, Baltimore Mayor Kurt Schmoke and the ACLU's Ira Glasser.

Heroin use among teens doubled between 1991 and 1996. In San Francisco, site
of another NEP, hospital admissions for heroin increased 66 percent from
1986 to 1995.

Needle-exchange programs are a form of assisted suicide -- another of Soros'
pet causes for the betterment of humanity. It would be cheaper to just give
addicts .38s and ammo, along with instructions on how to safely blow their
brains out. The effect is the same.