Newsbrief:
Camden
Opens
Second
Front
in
New
Jersey
Needle
Exchange
Rebellion
5/28/04
Camden on Tuesday became the second New Jersey city to announce plans to conduct a needle exchange program (NEP) in defiance of law enforcement officials. As DRCNet reported last week, Atlantic City recently announced its intention to operate such a program, prompting opinions from local prosecutor Jeffrey Blitz and New Jersey Attorney General Peter Harvey that state law does not allow municipalities to engage in NEPs.
But Roseanne Scotti of the Drug Policy Alliance (http://www.drugpolicy.org) found an obscure provision of a 1999 criminal code revision that included government entities (such as municipalities) among those groups exempted from the laws regulating the distribution and possession of syringes. While Scotti's reading of the law has been backed up by city attorneys in Atlantic City and Camden, as well as needle exchange law experts, Atlantic County Prosecutor Blitz and Attorney General Harvey disagree. Camden isn't waiting for the lawyers. At a city council meeting Tuesday, the council voted to approve a first reading of an ordinance that would establish a NEP in Camden. Introduced by Councilman Ali Sloan-El, the ordinance would place the program under the city Department of Health and Human Services. The department would supervise two programs, one at a facility run by the AIDS Coalition of South Jersey, the other a mobile program operated by the Camden Area Health Education Center. Sloan-El told the Philadelphia Inquirer that Camden suffered from an epidemic of HIV and and Hepatitis C due to the sharing of contaminated needles and that providing clean ones was necessary. "We feel it is a human service," he said. "We're trying to cut the spread of AIDS." While officials in both Atlantic City and Camden have expressed a willingness to go to court over the issue, state Sen. Nia Gill has provided one possible alternative. In response to Attorney General Harvey's opinion that city-operated NEPs were illegal, Gill has filed a bill that would make their legality explicit. After years in the cold with Republican Gov. Christine Whitman, a passionate opponent of needle exchange, drug reformers hoped Democratic Gov. James McGreevey would be more amenable to the idea of NEPS. But while McGreevey has said he supports NEPS, he qualified that by adding only in hospital-based drug-rehab programs. There are none in New Jersey. Relief could come through the courts or through the legislature via the Gill bill. In the meantime, more than 30,000 needle-sharing New Jerseyites are getting HIV each year.
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