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Needle Exchange

Religious Leaders Urge Congress to Expand Access to Clean Needles for Drug Users

Recently Congress lifted a ban on local funding for needle exchange in the District of Columbia. Now scholars and spokespersons from a variety of denominations will converge in the nation’s capital to urge Congress to help save lives by repealing the national ban that prohibits states from using their share of federal HIV/AIDS prevention money on needle exchange programs. They will explain their position and be available for questions from the media.

The Effectiveness of Syringe Exchange as an HIV Prevention Strategy

For this partners' forum, the Global Health Council will bring together experts working on or knowledgeable about HIV prevention through syringe exchange. We will hear both from advocates for syringe exchange and from those who oppose it. This forum will examine evidence of the impact of these programs on HIV transmission and drug use. We will additionally examine the barriers to implementing and scaling up this prevention approach, especially in US programs overseas.

Congressional Budget Deal Allows Federal Funding for Needle Exchange and Medical Marijuana in the Nation's Capital

US House and Senate negotiators in conference committee approved the finishing touches on the Fiscal Year 2010 budget Tuesday night, and they included a number of early Christmas presents for different drug reform constituencies. But it isn’t quite a done deal yet--this negotiated version of the FY 2010 Consolidated Appropriations Act must now win final approved in up-or-down, no-amendments-allowed floor votes in the House and the Senate. What the conference committee approved: * Ending the ban on federal funding for needle exchange programs--without previous language that would have banned them from operating within 1,000 feet of schools, parks, and similar facilities. * Ending the ban on the use of federal funds for needle exchanges in the District of Columbia. * Allowing the District of Columbia to implement the medical marijuana initiative passed by voters in 1998 and blocked by congressional diktat ever since. * Cutting funding for the Office of National Drug Control Policy’s National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign from $70 million this year to $45 million next year. In a news release after agreement was reached, this is how the committee described the language on needle exchange:
Modifies a prohibition on the use of funds in the Act for needle exchange programs; the revised provision prohibits the use of funds in this Act for needle exchange programs in any location that local public health or law enforcement agencies determine to be inappropriate
Its description of the DC appropriations language:
Removing Special Restrictions on the District of Columbia:...Also allows the District to implement a referendum on use of marijuana for medical purposes as has been done in other states, allows use of Federal funds for needle exchange programs except in locations considered inappropriate by District authorities.
And its language on the youth media campaign:
National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign: $45 million, $25 million below 2009 and the budget request, for a national ad campaign providing anti-drug messages directed at youth. Reductions were made in this program because of evaluations questioning its effectiveness. Part of the savings was redirected to other ONDCP drug-abuse-reduction programs.
Citing both reforms in the states--from medical marijuana to sentencing reform--as well as the conference committee’s actions, Drug Policy Alliance Executive Director Ethan Nadelmann stopped just short of declaring victory Wednesday. “It’s too soon to say that America’s long national nightmare – the war on drugs – is really over,” said Nadelmann. “But yesterday’s action on Capitol Hill provides unprecedented evidence that Congress is at last coming to its senses when it comes to national drug control policy.” But, as noted above, there are still two votes to go, and DPA is applying the pressure until it is a done deal. “Hundreds of thousands of Americans will get HIV/AIDS or hepatitis C if Congress does not repeal the federal syringe funding ban,” said Bill Piper, DPA national affairs director. “The science is overwhelming that syringe exchange programs reduce the spread of infectious diseases without increasing drug use. We will make sure the American people know which members of Congress stand in the way of repealing the ban and saving lives.” Washington, DC, residents got a two-fer from the committee when it approved ending the ban on the District funding needle exchanges and undoing the Barr Amendment, the work of erstwhile drug warrior turned reformer former Rep. Bob Barr (R-GA), which forbade the District from implementing the 1998 medical marijuana initiative, which won with 69% of the vote. “Congress is close to making good on President Obama’s promise to stop the federal government from undermining local efforts to provide relief to cancer, HIV/AIDS and other patients who need medical marijuana,” said Naomi Long, the DC Metro director of the Drug Policy Alliance. “DC voters overwhelmingly voted to legalize marijuana for medical use and Congress should have never stood in the way of implementing the will of the people.” "The end of the Barr amendment is now in sight,” said Aaron Houston, director of government relations for the Marijuana Policy Project. “This represents a huge victory not just for medical marijuana patients, but for all city residents who have every right to set their own policies in their own District without congressional meddling. DC residents overwhelmingly made the sensible, compassionate decision to pass a medical marijuana law, and now, more than 10 years later, suffering Washingtonians may finally be allowed to focus on treating their pain without fearing arrest." Medical marijuana in the shadow of the Capitol? Federal dollars being spent on proven harm reduction techniques? Congress not micromanaging DC affairs? What is the world, or at least Washington, coming to?

1000 Feet from Everywhere

One of the articles we are finalizing for publication in Drug War Chronicle tonight deals with needle exchange, and the state of legislation in Congress to end the ban on use by states of federal AIDS funds to support needle exchange programs. A bill has passed the House of Representatives -- good news -- but it includes a provision that would render it nearly useless. This provision would require that needle exchange programs receiving federal funds not operate "within 1,000 feet of a public or private day care center, elementary school, vocational school, secondary school, college, junior college, or university, or any public swimming pool, park, playground, video arcade, or youth center, or an event sponsored by any such entity." I'm not sure how any program could track where all the different such entities decide to hold events. More importantly, the rule would basically prevent needle exchanges from operating at all, because the area encompassed is pretty much everywhere inside any city. Dr. Russell Barbour, at Yale School of Medicine's Center for Interdisciplinary Research on AIDS, has produced several charts that advocates are using now on the Hill, illustrating the impact the provision would have on AIDS prevention efforts in Chicago and San Francisco. He graciously provided them to us. Check them out here: (more below the fold)

A Heroin User in Stockholm

Another video from the Hungarian Civil Liberties Union, this time in partnership with the Swedish Drug Users Union. Sweden's government is one of the world's most prohibitionist, but nevertheless has moved toward harm reduction in recent years by expanding needle exchange into a national policy. Previously needle exchange was happening only in two cities in the nation's south. Well, there's still no needle exchange in Stockholm, according to HCLU, it's even hard to get into a methadone maintenance program, and those who do often face negative attitudes from the program's staff. Check out the video below, or here.

More Big News: Needle Exchange Legislation Passes US House of Representatives

As I noted here two weeks ago, legislation to repeal the ban on use of federal AIDS funds for needle exchange programs was included in a House subcommittee's health budget bill. The language survived an attempt on the House floor to repeal it, and so has made it through the full House of Representatives. Satisfyingly, the Congressman who tried to delete the language was Mark Souder, who also lost a committee vote on Tuesday to significantly gut his anti-student aid drug law. Souder's pro-AIDS amendment lost 211-218. The flip side is that 49% percent of Congress voted to continue spreading HIV and Hepatitis throughout our communities.

Glorious Kyrgyzstan -- the Best Harm Reduction Program in Central Asia

The Central Asian Republic of Kyrgyzstan sits along a drug trafficking route, and has an estimated 80,000-100,000 drug users, more than half of whom inject drugs. Unlike some countries in the region, Kyrgyzstan has embraced harm reduction strategies such as needle exchange and methadone maintenance. Even prisoners in Kyrgyzstan have access to these programs. By going this route, they have been able to curb the country's HIV epidemic. A new video from the Hungarian Civil Liberties Union -- in Russian, with English subtitles -- tells the story. Check it out:

Big News: House Subcommittee Approves Legislation Eliminating the Needle Exchange Funding Ban

popular needle exchange logo
BIG NEWS: The infamous ban on use of federal AIDS grant funds to support needle exchange programs will soon be history, if the Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services of the House Committee on Appropriations has its way. Led by Rep. David Obey (D-WI), the subcommittee left the language which has imposed the ban these many years out of the new bill. According to Obey's office:
This bill deletes the prohibition on the use of funds for needle exchange programs. Scientific studies have documented that needle exchange programs, when implemented as part of a comprehensive prevention strategy, are an effective public health intervention for reducing AIDS/AIV infections and do not promote drug use. The judgment we make is that it is time to lift this ban and let State and local jurisdictions determine if they want to pursue this approach.
The vote followed a protest at the US Capitol in which 26 AIDS activists chained themselves together in the Capitol Rotunda earlier in the day. President Obama pledged during his primary campaign to eliminate the ban. Legislation allows the president to do so if certain scientific findings are made, specifically that needle exchange programs do not increase community drug use levels, and do reduce the spread of HIV. These findings were made long ago, and the Clinton administration acknowledged them, but declined to eliminate the ban. Earlier this year the Obama administration punted the issue to Congress by including the ban in its budget proposal while verbally expressing support for needle exchange. Whether Obey's subcommittee took action because of administration support, or despite a lack of administration support, I don't know. Perhaps a greater savant than I will enlighten us. Now the bill heads to the full committee, after which it will go to the floor of the House of Representatives. Drug warriors may try to add the ban back at either stage. Victory also depends on what happens on the Senate side. Assuming the House and Senate do not approve exactly identical Labor and HHS budgets, it will go to a conference committee that includes both Reps and Senators. Elimination of the ban will neither increase nor decrease the amount of money the federal government spends on AIDS prevention, at least not directly. What it will do is allow state governments who receive federal AIDS grants to choose whether or not to spend some of that money on needle exchange. Those states which are in the habit of using scientific evidence to guide their policies will support needle exchange.

Obama Claims to Support Needle Exchange, While Telling Congress to Ban it

Can someone please explain to me what this means?


White House spokesman Ben LaBolt said the administration isn't yet ready to lift the ban - but Obama still supports needle exchange.

"We have not removed the ban in our budget proposal because we want to work with Congress and the American public to build support for this change," he said. "We are committed to doing this as part of a National HIV/AIDS strategy and are confident that we can build support for these scientifically-based programs." [Huffington Post]

So they're going to build support for needle exchange by telling Congress to continue the federal needle exchange ban? How's that supposed to work? And what's up with this:
The White House website no longer features the president's support of the program, however. See the before and after here.

"It's hard to imagine how removing mention of support for a proven lifesaving program from the White House website is part of a grand strategy to 'build support' for syringe exchange," said Tom Angell, a spokesman for the group Law Enforcement Against Prohibition.

Exactly. If Obama wants to promote needle exchange, he should consider not making it illegal for the government to support needle exchange.

The administration is arguing that supporting the ban at this time is necessary to avoid politicizing the budget process, yet opposing needle exchange is just as political as supporting it. You're taking a political stance either way, obviously. The only difference is that Obama is choosing the wrong side and lending legitimacy to crazy idiots who oppose needle exchange.