An amendment to a Senate appropriations bill that would bar cities that open safe injection sites from receiving federal education, health, and labor funding was adopted by the Senate last week. The bill is now in conference committee, where drug reform activists are working to kill it.

[inline:demint.jpg align=left caption="drug war bad guy Jim DeMint"]Sponsored by Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) in apparent reaction to talk about such a facility in San Francisco, the amendment to the Labor-Health and Human Services-Education annual appropriation bill would cut off funding from those departments to any city that opens a safe injection site.

At least 27 cities in eight European countries, as well as Vancouver, Canada, and Sydney, Australia, are operating safe injection sites. They have been shown to reduce needle-sharing and the rate of new HIV and Hep C infections among injection drug users without causing increases in drug use or criminality.

No American locality has so far tried to establish such a facility. But in San Francisco, discussions are underway.

"Drug war extremists in Congress are trying to ban cities from adopting a drug policy reform that no US city has even adopted yet," warned Bill Piper, national affairs director for the Drug Policy Alliance, in an email to supporters in states whose representatives are on the conference committee. "That's how scared they are of the growing drug policy reform movement. And they might win unless you take action today. We're in a major fight and we urgently need your help because at least one of your members of Congress is a key vote."

The measure needs to be nipped in the bud, Piper warned. "If this amendment passes, we can expect members of Congress to try to pass bolder amendments, like denying federal aid to any city that decriminalizes marijuana and cutting off highway funding to any state that enacts alternatives to incarceration for nonviolent drug law offenses," Piper wrote. "Obviously no city will consider such reforms if it means losing all their federal aid. That's why we have to stop this amendment right here, right now. We have to show the drug war extremists that there's no support in Congress for escalating the war on drugs."

Residents of Hawaii, Illinois, Iowa, Louisiana, New Jersey, Rhode Island, West Virginia and Wisconsin need to call their senators now, Piper said. "The bill is now in conference. If we don't get this stricken from the final bill, it could be years or decades before this draconian ban is repealed," he predicted.