Last week when President Obama signed into law the Fiscal Year 2010 Consolidated Appropriations, it included an important provision that repeals a decades-old policy that prohibited states from using their share of federal HIV/AIDS prevention money to fund needle exchange programs. This ban frustrated advocates and underminded their efforts for a decade. But after grueling efforts to lift this ban, it's finally a reality.
This is an important victory for DC. Here is what Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton said when the House voted to lift the ban:
We will never make up for the HIV/AIDS epidemic that has besieged this city because needle exchange was banned for a decade, or make up for the resulting loss of lives. There is no way to make poor women, forced to carry pregnancies to term, believe that their reproductive choice was guaranteed in the decades during the longest of the bans, on using local funds for abortions for poor women. But, today we start a new chapter in democracy in the District of Columbia with the first D.C. appropriations in memory free of all un-democratic, anti-home rule riders.
Our political system is such that keeping a ban on federal dollars for needle exchange programs despite the proven fact (including eight federal reports) that needle exchange programs save lives without encouraging drug use, is politically popular.
Advocates of needle exchange programs have argued for years that providing clean needles to intravenous drug users is a proven method of reducing transmission of HIV/AIDS and Hepatitis C. However, a long time ban at the federal level made it hard to implement these programs. Several states have these programs and they rely on state and local funding.
The lifting of the ban does not mean needle exchange programs would have access to federal funding right away but it is a positive and symbolic step. It’s an important win for science over prejudice and ignorance.
Swapping Politics for Science on Drug Policy
Policy wonks and deficit hawks weren’t the only ones paying attention when President Obama signed the Fiscal Year 2010 Consolidated Appropriations Act last week. HIV activists, public health experts and communities of drug users celebrated—not for what’s in the appropriations bill, but for what’s not in it: a ban on federal funding for needle exchange programs, which has appeared in the federal budget every year since 1988.
After two decades, this change is a historic achievement. Obama had already missed one opportunity to lift the ban, neglecting to pull it out of his budget in May. Still, that same month former Seattle chief of police Gil Kerlikowske was sworn in as the director of national drug control policy, calling for a new common-sense approach to drug addiction. When the drug czar calls for an end to the war on drugs, it’s clearly the start of a new era.
Unlike during the Clinton administration, when there was only mixed support for needle exchange—in 1998, drug czar Barry McCaffrey convinced Bill Clinton to renege on his stated intention to lift the ban—all of the top brass in the Obama administration are on record in favor.
I am sure President McCain would have been happy to lift the needle exchange ban.
Update 1: As per commenter Red no more: “The same bill lifted the despised "Barr Amendment" that prevented DC from implementing the results of an election.”
This is what Wikipedia says about the Barr Amendment:
In 1998, He successfully blocked implementation of Initiative 59— the "Legalization of Marijuana for Medical Treatment Initiative of 1998" — which would have legalized medical marijuana in Washington, D.C.[35] The "Barr Amendment" to the 1999 Omnibus spending bill not only blocked implementation of Initiative 59 but prohibited the vote tally from even being released.
This reversal means that the District government can allow medical marijuana use and spend local tax dollars to help low-income women pay for abortions.
The District now joins twelve other states that allow medical marijuana (Alaska, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, Michigan, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington.)
Update 2: Those of you who are offended by the poll, my apology. It’s not my intention to offend anyone and if I could delete the poll I would. It just angers me when people compare President Obama to Bush. No comparison but I should not have conflated this important development with this legitimate beef of mine. I am sure the lifting of the ban is something all progressives would welcome.
Thanks for the recommend.