ARRESTING AIDS

If some of the world's top AIDS researchers sign a radical manifesto
linking drug policy to AIDS prevention, and the world shrugs it off,
how radical is it, really?

Scientists and other AIDS experts who have signed the Vienna
Declaration -- 14,756 people in all, as of Friday -- appear to have a
"tree that falls in the forest" problem. They're doing their best to
shout in the world's ear, but the world thus far doesn't seem to be
taking much notice.

That's unfortunate, because the scientists' point is important,
whether or not you agree. Their message: The war on drugs is not only
an abysmal failure, but in some countries it is aiding and abetting
the AIDS epidemic.

By driving drug users underground, and away from clean needle
exchanges and other public health programs, the "war" tends to
multiply barriers between drug users and the testing and treatment
services drug users need. That makes it more -- not less -- likely
that drug users will ultimately acquire the HIV virus and spread it.

The number of countries in which people inject illegal drugs is
growing. And outside of sub-Saharan Africa, drug use by injection
already accounts for roughly one in three new cases of HIV. (In some
areas of Eastern Europe and Central Asia, where the virus is spreading
fastest, the researchers said, 70 percent or even 80 percent of
injection drug users are already infected with the virus.)

Certainly, this is not a call to decriminalize drug use, look the
other way, or ignore the pain, tragedy and suffering inflicted by drug
use. But it might be wise to stop, rethink and retool our approach.
There isn't much evidence that increasing "the ferocity of law
enforcement meaningfully reduces the prevalence of drug use," as the
Vienna Declaration puts it.

Recently, R. Gil Kerlikowske, the former Seattle police chief who now
directs U.S. drug-control policy (we don't call them "czars" anymore,
apparently) admitted that the 40-year-old war on drugs here has not
been a success.

What the international AIDS researchers were trying to point out is
that the war's casualty count includes some people with newly acquired
HIV infections. In the United States, roughly 56,300 people find out
each year that they have the infection, and about 12 percent of these
are injection drug users. (Of the 1 million people here already living
with HIV, about 19 percent acquired it from using drugs. Roughly the
same percentage of that million don't know they have the infection,
which means they may very well still be spreading the disease, whether
through shared needles or sex.)

Last year, the libertarian Cato Institute reported that Portugal's
drug-decriminalization experiment -- eliminating jail time for drug
users but not dealers -- has dramatically decreased HIV infections
acquired via dirty needles. These went from nearly 1,400 in 2000 to
about 400 in 2006.

We're certainly not prepared to endorse the Vienna Declaration. But it
does deserve a much wider audience. If you care about arresting the
spread of AIDS, read the declaration at www.viennadeclaration.com and
think about it for yourself. Clearly, this is not just a matter of
drugs, but of life and death -- and preventing the ravages of a
terrible disease.