PLAYING A DEADLY GAME WITH AIDS

Nearly 600,000 Americans with AIDS have died since the beginning of
the epidemic. Nearly a third of those cases can be traced to
intravenous drug users who became infected with the virus that causes
AIDS by sharing contaminated needles and who sometimes infect wives,
lovers and unborn children. Many of the dead would never have been
infected if Congress had allowed federal financing for programs that
have been shown the world over to slow the spread of disease, without
increasing drug use, by making clean needles available to addicts.

A state-financed version of the program has saved thousand of lives
in New York City, which cut infection rates among addicts by about 80
percent over several years by giving them clean needles and by
working hard to get them into drug treatment programs. But by banning
the use of federal dollars for these programs in 1988, in the very
teeth of the epidemic, federal lawmakers discarded a powerful weapon
in the fight against a deadly disease.

State and federal public health officials, who have long supported
the programs, were hoping that the ban would be lifted this year. But
a rider attached to two House appropriations bills would actually
continue the ban -- in a tawdry, passive-aggressive way -- by barring
federally financed programs from operating within 1,000 feet of
colleges, universities, parks, video arcades, day-care centers, high
schools, public swimming pools and other institutions.

This seems reasonable -- until you consider that such a restriction
would make it virtually impossible to have federally financed
programs anywhere in densely packed urban communities, which is where
the need for AIDS intervention is especially pressing and
institutions like schools and playgrounds are numerous. In other
words, this would wipe out the program.

Worse still, a rider on the city budget for the District of Columbia,
which is closely controlled by Congress, would place the same
limitations on the use of even locally raised tax dollars. This would
be an outrage in any case. But it is especially troubling because
Washington is an AIDS hotspot, where impoverished communities have
long been ravaged by the disease.

Needle-exchange programs would help these neighborhoods in many ways.
First, they would provide safe, central locations where addicts could
dispose of dirty syringes through the medical waste system instead of
leaving them on the very streets and playgrounds that lawmakers claim
to want to protect. Second, the programs often serve as a bridge to
drug treatment for addicts who have had difficultly finding help for
themselves.

The riders, which have passed the House in two appropriations bills,
are a clear threat to public health. They deserve to be stripped out
in conference.