New
Jersey
Needle
Exchange
Busted
Again
10/02/98
Life-saving services to persons at risk for disease and injury were abruptly "canceled" by law enforcement officers on Tuesday evening, September 29, 1998. For the third time in two years, workers at a Chai Project syringe exchange site were arrested. Diana McCague, founder and Executive Director of the Chai Project, and another volunteer were arrested at 8:10pm. Both were charged with possession and intent to distribute hypodermic syringes in violation of statute 2C:36-6. Incident to the arrest, officers seized the project van, thereby taking away the project's primary tool for distribution of life-saving materials and information. "It's as if they wanted to make sure that this arrest did as much damage and put as many New Jersey residents at risk as possible," McCague told The Week Online. "Do they think that a whole bunch of people are going to wake up this morning and decide to kick their heroin addiction because they don't have a clean needle? No. They're going to use whatever is available because they're addicted and that's the nature of addiction. And many of them will be putting themselves, their loved ones and their future children at risk for no other reason than Governor Whitman thinks it's good politics to kill drug users." As with the arrest of McCague and another project volunteer in April 1996, the raid occurred during a period of increased public attention to the issue of syringe exchange. Earlier this month, Governor Whitman sent a letter to her own Advisory Council on AIDS, demanding that they cease discussion of syringe exchange. "Whitman is apparently not satisfied with an inhumane policy that condemns injection drug users and those they love to preventable but deadly diseases, she wants a gag on public debate around this critical public health issue," said McCague. "Whitman wants drug users, their partners, and their children to die in silence." Gene Herman, a spokesman for Governor Whitman's office, told The Week Online that the action had nothing to do with the recent publicity surrounding Whitman's stance against syringe exchange and that the decision to arrest McCague was made at the local, rather than the state level. Middlesex County Assistant Prosecutor Ronald Kercado was waiting at the New Brunswick police station when McCague was brought in, to lobby for a high bail. Bail for McCague was set at $7,500 without the usual allowance for ten percent cash payment. McCague was treated as a "flight risk" despite the fact that she is a native New Brunswick resident and despite the fact that she has spent the past two years dutifully appearing in municipal and state courts on her previous charges. WRITE NOW: DRCNet urges our readers to make themselves heard regarding this arrest. In particular, since the Chai Project also delivers bleach kits and condoms to at-risk populations, it is important that they get their van back to continue at least this part of their work. Letters should go to the Middlesex County Prosecutor's Office, 1 JFK Square, New Brunswick, NJ 08901 and to Governor Christine Todd Whitman, Statehouse, West State St., Trenton, NJ. You can also send a letter to one or more of the newspapers that covered the bust. You might want to point out the absurdity of New Jersey officials wasting taxpayer's money arresting people who are working to limit the spread of deadly (and expensive) disease. Or that with organizations such as the American Medical Association, the World Health Organization and the US Department of Health and Human Services endorsing syringe exchange as sound public health policy, the New Jersey state government is apparently still living in the dark ages even as AIDS rages within its borders. Write to: The Newark Star-LedgerRemember that most published letters to the editor are under 200 words, and most papers required an address and phone number in order to consider a letter for publication. Please send copies of your letter to DRCNet at 2000 P St., NW, Suite 615, Washington, DC 20036, fax to (202) 293-8344, or e-mail your letter or a note informing us that you've written a letter, to [email protected].
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