NEW LAW ALLOWS NEEDLE EXCHANGES IN WASHINGTON

WASHINGTON -- President Bush signed legislation on Wednesday lifting
a ban that for nearly a decade has prevented city officials here from
using local tax money for needle exchange programs.

Officials of the District of Columbia Health Department said that
with the ban lifted, they would allocate $1 million for such programs in 2008.

Since 1999, the nation's capital, which reports having the highest
rate of AIDS infection of any major city in the country, has been the
only city barred by federal law from using municipal money for needle
exchanges. A recent report by the city showed that intravenous drug
users' sharing of needles was second only to unprotected sex as a
leading cause of H.I.V. transmission.

Congress controls local government here, and for nine years members
of the House, expressing concerns about worsening drug abuse, had
inserted into the bill approving the city's budget a provision to
prohibit financing needle exchange programs. But with Republicans'
loss of Congressional control to Democrats, this year's bill, signed
by Mr. Bush on Wednesday, reversed the ban.

"For too long, Congress has unfairly imposed on the citizens of D.C.
by trying out their social experiments there," said Representative
Jose E. Serrano, the New York Democrat who heads the House
Appropriations subcommittee that handles the city's budget. "The ban
on needle exchanges was one of the most egregious of these
impositions, especially because the consensus is clear that these
programs save lives."