San Francisco Chronicle - September 15, 2004
John A. Perez

Numerous studies have established that when adults are allowed to buy clean syringes in exchange for used ones, they are much less likely to share dirty ones and spread diseases among themselves and to others. This is by far the most cost-effective way to reduce the rates of HIV/AIDS and the deadly liver disease hepatitis-C among drug users, their sexual partners and their unborn children.

With the first AIDS cases identified in California in 1981, it is hard to believe that California has been so slow to reform its syringe laws. Pharmacy sale of syringes is now the norm in 45 states and is supported by the federal Centers for Disease Control & Prevention and other leading scientific bodies as a key component of a comprehensive HIV and hepatitis control strategy.

Most states never criminalized over-the-counter sale of syringes, and of those that did, most have amended their laws to fight AIDS. Independents, Republicans and Democrats alike have seen the clear logic of allowing adults to spend their own money to prevent the spread of disease, including Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson, formerly governor of Wisconsin who reformed that state's syringe laws in 1989.

Why would we want drug users in our pharmacies, along with the disposal and liability problems their used needles present? Because we know and care about people with AIDS. A pharmacist and his or her staff may see more patients than any individual physician. We witness the ravages of fatal illness, and despite our best efforts, we are forced to watch patients suffer, wither and die. We see mothers come in to fill prescriptions once their children are too weak to walk. We see the grieving, the loss of life and the destruction of families and communities.

In addition to patients, we have watched our own coworkers and friends suffer the stigma and the pain of AIDS or other diseases associated with sex or drugs. We've attended far too many funerals in the last 20 years, and we are unwilling to stand by and let more Americans die when there are sensible alternatives.

We have pored over reams of research findings, and heard testimony from the leading experts on disease prevention. The scientific consensus is clear and unassailable: Providing sterile syringes reduces the rates of disease without contributing to increases in drug use, drug injection or crime. Every year, over 1,000 new HIV infections and 3,000 hepatitis C infections occur among Californians who inject drugs, about a third of whom are women. Hundreds more are infected through sex with injectors, and every year more infants are born infected with HIV because their mothers either shared syringes or slept with a man who did.

And who pays to treat these costly and deadly infections? The taxpayer. Pharmacies are paid more than $200 million dollars a year by the state of California to provide medicines to medically indigent patients suffering from injection-related AIDS or late-stage liver disease caused by hepatitis C. Our bottom line is we would rather sell a 25-cent syringe and prevent a disease, than profit from needless suffering.

We ask Gov. Schwarzenegger to let us do our job, which is to protect the health of the communities we serve, and sign SB1159.

John A. Perez is political director of the United Food & Commercial Workers, a board member of AIDS Project Los Angeles and a former member of the Bush administration's Presidential Advisory Council on HIV & AIDS.

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