Washington Blade - June 22, 2007
Joshua Lynsen

House members are expected to vote next week on a measure that would lift the ban. The bill, which governs the District budget, lacks the prohibition it has annually reiterated since 1998.

"We are much more optimistic than we have ever been before," said Dr. Pat Hawkins, a Whitman-Walker Clinic policy specialist. "We think we have a real opportunity to get the ban lifted in D.C."

Members of a House subcommittee voted earlier this month at the behest of Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.) and Rep. Jose Serrano (D-N.Y.) to remove the ban.

Observers said Serrano, who chairs the Financial Services and General Government subcommittee, told members that the District should be free to spend its locally raised funds on needle exchange efforts.

"D.C. needs to be able to deal with their HIV/AIDS epidemic and they need to be able to use their own funds to care for their citizens," said Andrea Levario, a Human Rights Campaign public policy advocate. "The chairman understood that, and Eleanor Holmes Norton was very persuasive in driving that point home."

Paul Strauss, an attorney who serves as the District's shadow senator, said the subcommittee vote June 5 was a key step toward removing the ban.

But he said ban opponents must yet overcome other hurdles, including floor votes in both chambers.

"We're in a much better position than during the other floor fights we had," he said. "We've kept it out of the bill and they have the burden of getting the majority to put it back in."

Strauss and others said they remain hopeful, though, that Congress will vote to lift the ban.

"We've won the battle, but the war certainly isn't over," Strauss said. "And I don't think anyone on either side of the aisle expects it to be."

Overcoming obstacles

Needle exchange efforts, which began in the District about 15 years ago, have long faced obstacles.

"We started fighting for needle exchange in 1990 and it took a while to get it through the City Council," Hawkins said. "But once we got it through and people saw the impact it was having, we had very strong support from the City Council for needle exchange."

The efforts were curtailed in 1998 when Congress voted to ban use of D.C. tax money to fund the program. Critics said the efforts contravened the nation's "zero tolerance" drug policy.

Since then, local officials have sought to overturn the ban and Prevention Works, a privately funded group, has continued to exchange needles. Workers there trade syringes on a one-for-one basis to registered participants.

Hawkins said this month's subcommittee vote is the closest Congress has yet come to overturning its 1998 decision. Local officials and activists are now pressing for victory.

"We're trying to get people to look at this in terms of science," she said, "not emotions."

Hawkins said a vote count was unclear this week, but House members appeared willing to forego the ban.

"We don't want to put anybody in the difficult position of voting to, quote unquote, give needles to addicts," she said. "I see needle exchange as not only a great way to stop the spread of HIV, but to get people into treatment."

Hawkins and Levario noted some moderate Democrats could back efforts to reinstate the ban, but some moderate Republicans are expected to resist those efforts.

Strauss said the vote's outcome could consequently be difficult to predict - and the ban's removal is not assured.

"It would be a mistake to simply assume that the fact that because we have a Democratic majority, this is a done deal," he said. "At the same time, I'm optimistic that we're going to prevail, but not without a fight."

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Joshua Lynsen can be reached at jlynsen@washblade.com.

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