VOX: In December, Congress quietly made a huge change to help combat HIV: It effectively lifted the federal funding ban on needle exchange programs, which provide clean needles — meaning syringes that aren’t infected with HIV — to drug users.
The change, reported by John Stanton at BuzzFeed on Tuesday, keeps the federal funding ban on syringes themselves, but ends the ban on all other aspects of the programs — staff, vehicles, gas, rent, and so on. Activists praised the move as an effective end to the ban, since the syringes are a very inexpensive part of needle exchange programs.
The ban’s end was spearheaded by two Kentucky Republicans, House Appropriations Chair Hal Rogers and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, in large part as a response to an HIV crisis in Indiana and a heroin epidemic nationwide. Last year, the worst ever HIV epidemic in Indiana prompted Republican Gov. Mike Pence to allow needle exchange programs in his state. And with the worsening heroin epidemic, federal lawmakers were purportedly worried that growing addiction to the needle-injected drug could make HIV spread further… (more)
