Washington
DC
Appropriations
Bill
Forbids
District
from
Funding
its
own
Syringe
Exchange
Program
10/23/98
A provision in the appropriations bill which funds the DC government makes it illegal for city funds to go to any group that operates a syringe exchange program, even if the funds are unrelated to the exchange. The language, attached by Rep. Todd Tiahrt (R-KS), impacts the Whitman Walker Clinic, which until this week operated a mobile exchange program out of a van. Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) was less than pleased about the provision. "This congress has said 'drop dead' to thousands of Americans, most of them people of color. I view it as a callous death sentence with profound racial overtones." In response to the provision, Whitman Walker has formed a new corporate entity called Prevention Works!, unrelated to the clinic, which will run the program with private funds, although district monies had accounted for $210,000 of its $260,000 annual budget. Whitman Walker's attorneys believe that this arrangement will protect the clinic's other city grants which it uses to provide a multitude of health services. The first private money for Prevention Works! came through this week, as the Washington, DC-based Drug Policy Foundation pledged $25,000 to help to keep the program running. "It's our hope that this $25,000 gift will inspire at least eight more $25,000 gifts this year. We must keep Prevention Works! alive and vibrant," DPF Executive Director Sher Horosko said. "We challenge our foundation colleagues and any individual to step forward and match our gift. No amount of fear or prejudice will stop this program and other programs like it from preserving human life." "This deplorable, regressive act is a slap in the face to the residents of the District of Columbia," Horosko said. "This is passive genocide. Social conservatives in Congress are telling African-Americans in particular to drop dead. Six federally funded studies conducted under Republican and Democratic administrations have shown that syringe exchange works. Each study has each shown that syringe exchange prevents the spread of HIV and that syringe exchange neither encourages nor increases the rate of drug use." "Why Congress would single out one community to lead to the edge of its grave is beyond us." DPF can be found on the web at http://www.dpf.org.
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