Needle Exchange Program Negotiable Report From Shalala Signals Clinton Willing To Discuss Issue

After years of dismissing AIDS activists’ pleas for federally funded clean needle exchanges, the Clinton administration signaled Tuesday it was open to negotiate the issue.

In a report sent to Congress, Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala stopped short of recommending lifting the ban on federal funds for needle exchange programs.

But her report said scientific studies conclude needle exchanges “can be an effective component of a comprehensive strategy to prevent HIV” infection and “can have an impact on bringing difficult to reach populations” into drug treatment.

AIDS activists seized on the report to Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., who chairs a subcommittee that controls public health funding, as a first step toward congressional negotiations to lift the ban.

“We were profoundly disappointed that they did not go the final step,” said Mike Shriver of the National Association of People With AIDS. But “we have a commitment from the administration to work with us on a process to make that goal happen.”

The report comes just days after a panel of experts convened by the National Institutes of Health called needle exchanges a powerful weapon against AIDS that has been blocked by politics, and proposed immediately lifting the funding ban.

An estimated one-third of adults with AIDS got the killer virus through contaminated needles or sex with injecting drug users.

Needle exchanges funded by private or other nonfederal funds already operate in 55 U.S. cities. But activists say federal funding is necessary to ensure more addicts are protected against HIV even if they can’t kick the drugs.

Congress in 1988 outlawed needle exchanges until they were scientifically proven to reduce both HIV’s spread and drug use.