Two years ago this week, after years of advocacy by public health and harm reduction advocates, the long-standing ban on federal funding for needle exchanges was repealed. On Saturday, it was restored as the Senate took the final votes to approve the 2012 federal omnibus spending bill. Chronicle story here.

Earlier this week we alerted our email subscribers and web site readers that Republicans in Congress were pushing to reinstate the only recently repealed syringe exchange funding ban. Lifted two years ago as part of the FY 2010 budget bill, the ban had prevented states from making their own decisions as to whether to use federal AIDS grant funding to support needle exchange programs. As most if not all aspects of the drug issue demonstrate, when Republicans talk about state and local control, they don't sincerely mean it, at least not as a group. (The libertarian-minded Ron Paul initially supported the ban, but changed his view and helped repeal it years later.)

Not that the ban's reinstatement can be blamed solely on Republicans, certainly not in the Democratically-controlled Senate. It happened in part because Democrats did not make it a priority to keep it from happening.

Congress's action this week means misery and death for large numbers of people. As the eight federal reviews of the research on this issue demonstrate, needle exchange programs reduce the spread of HIV without increasing the use of drugs. According to the Harm Reduction Coalition, needle sharing by injection drug users accounts for 8,000 new cases of HIV and 15,000 new cases of Hepatitis C each year. Of course the diseases spread from them to other people on occasion, including people who have no involvement in illegal drug use. As HRC points out, New York City has seen a 75% reduction in new HIV cases as a result of instituting such programs, according to a 2005 study.

So let's be clear; the evidence is overwhelming. In fact, even the studies cited by opponents of needle exchange actually support needle exchange, if you take the time to read them. Reinstituting the federal ban will have the effect of defunding many programs, and the science is clear that this means more infections and more needless of life. It won't save the federal government any money, because it doesn't affect the total amount of funding in the Ryan White program. All it does is make the program less effective at accomplishing its goals. And of course, health care costs will only grow because expensive AIDS and Hepatitis treatments will be needed for more people. Sadly, expressing the drug war ideology through deadly legislating seems to be more important for certain members of Congress than any of that. On the bright side, at least they didn't reinstate the old ban on the District of Columbia spending its own funds on needle exchange programs.

Don't give up and don't think that it's over. The ban got repealed once, and it will get repealed again. In the meanwhile, here are a few of the statements about the event that have come to my attention since yesterday. (Feel free to link more in the comments section.)

• Rep. José Serrano, sponsor of the House legislation that had repealed the ban
• AIDS United (formerly AIDS Action)
• Drug Policy Alliance
• amfAR The Foundation for AIDS Research
• Maia Szalavitz on Time.com: "Clean Needles Saved My Life. Now Congress Wants to Ban Funding for Needle Exchange"

As expected, the House of Representatives has passed a bill banning synthetic stimulants and cannabinoids. On the positive side, 98 members voted against responding to the drugs with a new prohibition. Chronicle story here.

Just when you thought the medical marijuana debate couldn’t get any uglier, the Drug Czar shows up at your doorstep demanding to know why you want to drug the children.

One out of every 15 high school students smokes marijuana on a near daily basis, a figure that has reached a 30-year peak even as use of alcohol, cigarettes and cocaine among teenagers continues a slow decline, according to a new government report.

…

R. Gil Kerlikowske, the federal drug czar, said he believed the increasing prevalence of medicinal marijuana was a factor in the uptick. “These last couple years, the amount of attention that’s been given to medical marijuana has been huge,” he said. [NYT]

If you're one of the 4 out of 5 Americans who supports medical marijuana, then he's talking about you. Something teens have been doing for decades suddenly became your fault the instant you expressed sympathy for people who use marijuana to treat illnesses. Your efforts to provide friends and neighbors with fact-based information about marijuana have made the Drug Czar's job very difficult indeed.

“And when I’ve done focus groups with high school students in states where medical marijuana is legal, they say, ‘Well, if its called medicine and it’s given to patients by caregivers, then that’s really the wrong message for us as high school students.’”

That's priceless. I'm sure that's exactly what they said to him. Well yes, Mr. Kerlikowske, sir, ever since Proposition 215 passed when I was 11 months old, I've been struggling to understand the concept of the patient-caregiver relationship in the context of medical cannabis. How can a drug be medicine? Confusion about the matter has forced myself and several classmates to smoke joints after school each day behind the dumpster at Jack-in-the-Box. I can feel it impairing my motor skills, but I'm too addicted to stop.

Seriously, if there's anything confusing young people about this, it's probably the fact that there's a government stooge called the Drug Czar whose job it is to go around refuting common knowledge about marijuana and replacing it with a bunch of dumb propaganda. Ironically, it's the Drug Czar himself who's been telling everyone that marijuana is for partying instead of medical use, so maybe it's his fault when teenagers use pot at parties.

In all likelihood, the situation would improve dramatically if the Drug Czar would shut up and let young people think for themselves. Remember when Bush's Drug Czar was making anti-drug ads that were so bad they caused more teens to try marijuana? Congress pulled the funding for the program and probably saved some people's lives from the sort of dangerous idiocy that anti-drug fanatics will engage in when they think they can do no wrong.

In any case, blaming the medical marijuana debate for anything at all is supremely absurd considering that this debate wouldn’t even exist if the federal government had never waged war on medical marijuana in the first place. Yes, this debate is hot right now. Yes, young people are likely aware of it. But that isn't the fault of patients who need marijuana or the 80% of Americans who support those patients. It's the fault of the lying, intransigent imbeciles who pretended marijuana wasn't medicine and forced the nation to spend decades arguing about one simple irrefutable fact, when we could have spent that time on any number of other things, including designing better drug education for our kids.

Stupid silver-bullet strategies to win the war on drugs are as common as the reckless zealots who dream them up, but rarely does one find an example so deeply absurd and irresponsible as this.

Sheriff Price believes there are still many dealers on the streets. He is now asking for the public's help to catch them.

"Basically what we need from the public to help combat this, is we need some informants. Without community involvement, there is no way we can combat these drugs. We have to have community involvement," said Sheriff Price.

The sheriff will pay people up to $100 to tell him who is dealing drugs and then possibly help with undercover work.

"If you know someone that sells drugs and you feel like you can put a stop to it by wearing a wire, at least come in. It doesn't cost you anything to come in and talk to us and we'll explain the process to you," said Sheriff Price.  [WKYT.com]

It’s fun and easy! Just use common sense. If someone tries to blow your head off, duck. If they set your house on fire, stop, drop and roll. After all, if teams of highly-trained, heavily-armed narco-cops can pull off these kinds of operations, what's your excuse? Certainly, you aren't afraid of a few ill-tempered drug dealers.

"Don't let people scare you. A lot of people are afraid they will get burnt out or beat up. I've done this for 25 years and got nobody hurt yet," said Sheriff Price.

Really, one can scarcely find words to describe the sickening irony of police suddenly claiming that drug enforcement is so safe a civilian could do it. 

Frightened police officers routinely panic and unload their weapons on innocent people and pets when entering the homes of drug suspects. When that happens, we're reminded by them that this work is dangerous, that drug dealers are bloodthirsty killers, and that it's necessary we arm our police to the teeth and forgive any fatal errors they may make with their machine guns, because failing to do so could result police being shot at or bitten by dogs when they smash down people's doors looking for drugs.

Meanwhile, police want to pay random people $100 each to approach these same deadly criminals with no training or protective gear? The whole thing just makes a mockery of everything police ever said about the dangers of drug enforcement, and yet it does so for the purpose of persuading naive people to do something that really is incredibly risky. Drug informants are routinely identified and targeted for harassment and even death. The murder of Rachel Hoffman, who was arrested for marijuana and agreed to wear a wire, is a well-known example, but Google finds many more. 

The whole idea is just idiotic on its face, and in ways that I would have thought obvious. The drug war isn't some action comedy on afternoon cable, and when you start screwing around with slippery BS like this, anything and everything could go horribly wrong. The fact that the war on drugs creates a temptation to enforce the law this way is a good example of why we'd be better off without it.

Going in the face of an ever-increasing clamor to reform decades of failed drug policies, the US House of Representatives is poised to pass two bills that promise more of the same. Chronicle story here.

Events and quotes of note from this week's drug policy events of years past. In the Chronicle, here.

An undercover Dallas narcotics officer shot and killed a man who opened fire on him as he and other officers swept an idling Amtrak train for drugs. The as yet unidentified man becomes the 47th person to die in US domestic drug law enforcement operations so far this year. Chronicle story here.

A College of Staten Island employee died November 29 in a confrontation with an NYPD officer after he was caught smoking marijuana in a campus bathroom. Chronicle story here.

Busy, busy, busy! Quite a crew of miscreants this week, including a former national Sheriff of the Year. Chronicle story here.

A bill that would allow for the sale of syringes in pharmacies without a prescription has cleared the New Jersey legislature with bipartisan support and awaits the governor's signature. Chronicle story here.

Czechs will be able to grow peyote and magic mushrooms under reforms in the drug laws approved by the Cabinet this week. Chronicle story here.