WESTPORT REVERSES NEEDLE-EXCHANGE VOTE

Three days after unanimously voting to become the first Massachusetts town
in nearly a decade to begin a needle-exchange program for drug users,
Westport's Board of Selectmen bowed to public pressure yesterday and voted
not only to rescind its decision but to ban any such future program.

The selectmen's vote Monday night to create the program ignited a firestorm.

Yesterday, nearly 200 people crowded into Town Hall, forcing the board to
move the meeting outside on the building's front steps, selectmen said.

As residents screamed insults at them, some selectmen apologized for
advancing their plan to encourage illegal drug users to swap dirty needles
for clean syringes without gaining more public support, according to those
who attended the meeting.

The board first voted unanimously to reverse Monday's decision, then voted,
3 to 2, never to allow a needle-exchange program in the town.

"There was fear, there was anger," said the Board of Selectmen chairwoman,
Elizabeth A. Collins, who said she fielded more than 100 calls in recent
days about the issue.

"It was not right we didn't engage the town in debate. I take full
responsibility for not being more aggressive in publicizing it."

But Collins, who trained as a registered nurse and voted against the
measure to ban a future program, said she did not regret her vote on
Monday, which she had hoped would reduce blood-borne diseases such as HIV
and hepatitis C. About 43 percent of HIV cases can be traced to the use of
injectable drugs in this town of about 14,000 people.

"I believe in needle exchange very strongly," she said. "I believe it saves
lives. This is not an epidemic; it's a pandemic. The idea was to back off
now and raise public awareness. We cannot even do that now."

It is possible a Board of Selectmen could approve a needle-exchange program
in the future, Collins said.

Westport became the state's first community outside of Boston, Cambridge,
Northampton, and Provincetown to adopt a needle-exchange program. About 50
miles south of Boston, Westport is between the cities of Fall River and New
Bedford, which have experienced a rash of drug use and HIV.

In New Bedford, between 2001 and 2003, two of every three newly diagnosed
HIV patients contracted the virus after using old needles.

In Fall River, 58 percent of HIV patients used them. On average, about 25
percent of the infected population in Massachusetts used tainted needles.

Westport Selectman Richard M. Tongue, who voted to ban any future program,
said he was "disappointed" by the public outcry.

"I just didn't think the town would really ever be ready," he said.

"There aren't a lot of forward thinkers in the town. I think it's something
that's needed. There are people out there dying every day from the use of
dirty needles. I want to help," he said.

After yesterday's meeting, Nancy Paull, a Westport resident who is chief
executive officer of Stanley Street Treatment & Resources, which would have
run the program, said she was shocked by the public backlash.

"I had read about mob mentality, and for the first time in my life, I saw a
mob," Paull said. "There was threatening behavior. There was screaming.
There were slurs. It wasn't public pressure, it was mob pressure."