DRUGWAR POLITICS IS DEADLY

By Joanne Jacobs

Among victims of the war on drugs are thousands of Americans who died of AIDS
because the federal government kept clean needles from intravenous drug
users. Last week, Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala issued a
report to a Senate committee conceding that research shows needleexchange
programs slow the spread of AIDS from addict to addict to sexual partner to
baby.

A National Institute of Health panel told Shalala that the scientific
evidence is overwhelming: Needle exchange saves lives. That's not news. In
1993, the federal Centers for Disease Control urged lifting the ban,
endorsing a University of California study that found needleexchange
programs to be effective; the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy
of Sciences recommended federal support for needle exchange in 1994. The
National Commission on AIDS, the Office of Technology and Assessment, the
General Accounting Office and the American Medical Association agree.

But Shalala failed to recommend lifting the ban on federal funding for
needleexchange programs.

Drug warriors fear that needle exchange "sends a message" that shooting up
heroin is OK. But the research also shows that needleexchange programs don't
increase drug use by addicts or persuade nonusers to try heroin. The National
Institute on Drug Abuse accepts the evidence; the politician's won't. If
anything, needle exchanges reduce drug use by linking addicts to health
workers, who refer them to rehab.

The real message sent by the federal ban is this: Go ahead and die. If you
shoot up drugs, or have sex with someone who shoots up, or are born to a
mother who had sex with someone who shoots up, your life isn't worth saving.

At the Vancouver AIDS conference last year, researchers estimated that 10,000
Americans were infected with AIDS from 19871995 because federal policy
blocked the expansion of programs that take addicts' used syringes and give
them clean needles in exchange. Their medical care has cost more than $500
million. Another 5,000 to 11,000 people will be infected by the year 2000 if
the ban continues, said Peter Lurie of the Center for AIDS Prevention and the
University of California at San Francisco and Ernest Drucker, of Albert
Einstein College of Medicine.

Needle exchange started in the U.S. in 1988 in Tacoma, Wash. Volunteers
risked arrest to persuade drug users to trade dirty needles for sterilized
syringes, and they gave advice on avoiding AIDS.

As evidence mounted that needle exchange significantly cuts the AIDS
infection rates, dozens of cities found ways to sidestep drug paraphernalia
laws in order to provide needle exchange. But Congress and the Clinton
administration maintained the federal funding ban. (Editor's note: A bill
allowing Colorado communities to set up needleexchange programs died in the
state House Feb. 19. Boulder County's existing exchange program, however, is
expected to continue.)

It's estimated that up to 900,000 Americans are infected with the AIDS virus;
more than one in four are infected because someone used a dirty needle. One
in three new AIDS cases are linked to intravenous drug use.

Twothirds of AIDS victims infected through heterosexual sex are women; only
7 percent say they had a bisexual partner; 2 percent had a partner infected
through a blood transfusion or hemophilia.

Minorities, especially blacks, are disproportionately affected:
Threequarters of women with IVlinked AIDS are blacked.

One way to stop the epidemic from spreading is for all intravenous drug
abusers to kick the habit, and for all women to insist on an AIDS test and a
marriage license before having sex, and for all women to take an AIDS test
before becoming pregnant. Until that happens, one of the most effective ways
to fight the AIDS epidemic is to give drug users clean needles, advice on
avoiding infection and an opportunity to get into a rehab program.

Saving people's lives should be more important than playing drugwar
politics.
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Joanne Jacobs is a columnist at the San Jose (Calif.) Mercury News.
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