San Francisco Chronicle - February 23, 2005
Suzanne Herel at sherel@sfchronicle.com.

"Safe access to needles has been essential to preventing the spread of HIV," said Supervisor Bevan Dufty, who sponsored the ordinance with Supervisors Tom Ammiano and Ross Mirkarimi, and whose district includes the heavily gay Castro neighborhood.

The board voted unanimously to invoke the city's power under a state law that took effect Jan. 1. That law gives cities the option to provide drug users with new needles through pharmacies that register with the local health department, as part of a statewide demonstration project.

Pharmacies can provide as many as 10 syringes at a time to anyone 18 or older, as long as they also provide written or oral information about testing and treatment of HIV and the hepatitis C virus. Customers do not have to give their names.

San Francisco is home to an estimated 20,000 intravenous drug users, Dufty said. Of those, he said, 20 percent are HIV-positive, and 80 percent carry the hepatitis C virus.

The city already sponsors needle exchanges, but Dufty said those programs cannot reach out to every area of San Francisco. In addition, he said, dispensing needles through pharmacies does not promote group drug use, as may occur at the needle exchanges.

The idea of the state law was to prevent the spread of disease, thereby sparing taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars in health treatment costs for destitute drug users.

Contra Costa County has also joined the state program. There, needles are available at five Walgreens pharmacies, said Christine Leivermann, AIDS program director for the county.

"We wanted to make sure we made all possible, feasible tools available for people to reduce their exposure to HIV," Leivermann said. It's too early to tell how effective the program is, she said.

Dr. Mitch Katz, director of the San Francisco Department of Public Health, welcomed the supervisors' action Tuesday.

He cited one study that showed that among injection drug users, those who are diabetic were less likely to become infected with HIV than nondiabetics. "The reason is they have access to clean needles," he said.

He noted that 35 other states already permitted pharmacies to sell syringes without a prescription.

The state law expires at the end of 2010, when the California Department of Health Services will evaluate the desirability of providing hypodermic needles without a prescription.

The San Francisco law requires two hearings before the Board of Supervisors. After next week's meeting, the ordinance will go to Mayor Gavin Newsom, who has 10 days to sign it, veto it or allow it to pass into law without his signature. Newsom is expected to sign it, and if he does, the law will go into effect 30 days later.

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