ILLEGAL CALIF. NEEDLE EXCHANGE OPERATES IN SHADOWS

EL CAJON, Calif - Brent Whitteker spends his days breaking the law, trying
to slow the spread of AIDS.

Whitteker, who runs a covert illegal syringe exchange program for heroin
addicts in San Diego County, gives out up to 7,000 needles a week and
collects thousands of used ones for disposal through a local clinic.

He drives his pickup truck, loaded with thousands of needles, to meet his
750 regular clients in shabby mobile home parks and upscale apartments, in
blue collar communities like El Cajon east of the city and in ritzy beach
communities, in parking lots and on street corners where boxes of needles
and other medical equipment quietly change hands.

"I'll take 50," said Lee, a first-time client who met Brent in his second
floor apartment. Lee, a member of a heavy metal rock band with a new
recording just out on compact disc, said he was injecting heroin to deal
with the pain he suffered from Crohn's disease.

"I need it to get out of bed in the morning and function. I'm not one of
those hood rats taking the stuff to get high and I don't want my 7-year-old
son knowing," he said. But his wife sometimes joined him "joyriding," he added.

Needle exchange programs have been spreading in the United States and by
the end of 1998 were operating in at least 81 cities in 31 states,
according to a review last March by the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention.

But the decision on whether to begin such a program lies in the hands of
local authorities, giving rise to a patchwork of official and underground
exchanges across the nation.

The city of San Diego is about to begin an officially sanctioned pilot
program, but in far-flung San Diego County just getting caught in
possession of a syringe without a doctor's prescription is illegal and the
political leadership and police remain adamantly opposed to legal needle
exchange.

Whitteker was arrested once in the city in 1994. But the authorities
decided not to press charges and since then his privately funded San Diego
Harm Reduction Program has operated under a kind of unspoken agreement with
law enforcement.

"We don't flaunt it, don't shove it in their faces and they don'thassle us
or arrest us," Whitteker said. However no such amnesty applies to the drug
users he serves. If caught, they are prosecuted with the full severity of
the law.

Studies Show Programs Help

Numerous scientific studies suggest that needle exchange programs can help
arrest the spread of AIDS and hepatitis C, two deadly diseases spreading
rapidly among injecting drug users sharing dirty needles. But many
conservatives dispute the science and object to the morality of such programs.

The issue is political dynamite in this traditionally conservative part of
southern California, where an estimated 23,000 people are addicted to
heroin and where cases of hepatitis C rose by 50 percent to around 4,500
between 1998 and 1999 alone.

After a battle that went on for several years, the San Diego City Council
last November approved a one-year pilot program by a vote of 5-4 over the
strong opposition of Mayor Dick Murphy and Police Chief David Bejarano.

"If we are trying to make San Diego the city that has the lowest crime rate
in the nation we should not support a needle exchange," said Murphy, a
former judge.

"We're also concerned again about the message we're sending children," said
Bejarano. "We're sending a message that encourages drug abuse."

Whitteker believes that through secondary distribution networks, he may
reach as many as a quarter of the estimated 23,000 heroin addicts in the
county. Just as important is the disposal of thousands of dirty needles
each week that would otherwise be discarded under bushes or on sidewalks or
on the beach where they pose a huge public health hazard.

"Use Until Numbers Wore Off"

"Before Brent came on the scene, I would reuse needles until the numbers
wore off," said Bill, who has been injecting heroin for 25 years and uses
the drug four times a day.

Bill distributes clean needles to five other addicts. On this day, he
receives 1,000 clean needles and gives Whitteker a large plastic container
stuffed with 2,000 used syringes.

Donna, who said she was 43 but looked at least 20 years older, said she
would often share needles if she could not find new ones before Whitteker
came on the scene. With scars on her skinny arms and bloody tracks on her
legs, she looked like a picture of ill health.

"Sometimes I got them from someone with a diabetic card. But if I couldn't,
I found them where I could," she said.

In 2000, the Surgeon General reviewed all the peer-reviewed scientific
studies of clean syringe programs since April 1998 and concluded that they
were "an effective public health intervention that reduces the transmission
of HIV and does not encourage the use of illegal drugs."

A survey of 81 cities worldwide estimated that HIV prevalence declined by
almost 6 percent in cities with clean needle programs but increased by a
similar amount in cities without such programs.

But conservatives argue that needle exchanges grant intravenous drug users
all the needles they want and effectively create police-free zones in which
addicts and dealers can network.

"This is not compassion. It is ill-conceived public policy. This is not
'saving lives' but abandoning them, consigning countless thousands to
drug-induced death on the installment plan," wrote Joe Loconte in an essay
for the conservative think-tank, the Heritage Foundation.