Free Republic

Indiana Governor Mike Pence is extending an executive order allowing a needle exchange program in southern Indiana’s Scott County. So far, there have been 128 confirmed cases of HIV connected to Scott County and intravenous drug use. Last month, Pence signed a 30 day order to suspend state law and allow the needle exchange program. With that order due to expire on April 24, the governor signed Monday a new order extending the exchange program into May. Pence says he got the recommendation to do so from the Indiana State Department of Health, the CDC, and Scott County health officials....

As lawmakers head toward a likely conference committee to negotiate an agreement on anti-heroin legislation, Gov. Steve Beshear says a provision to allow local needle-exchange programs should be part of a final bill. Speaking to reporters outside his Capitol office just hours after the Senate Judiciary Committee heard discussion on the House version of the heroin legislation, Beshear said he was in favor of the House version of the bill but applauded both the House and Senate for their work on the issue. “I personally would like to see a needle exchange,” Beshear said. “Number one, I don’t think it...

It was one year ago this month that lawmakers in Fresno County, California wisely rescinded their previous support for a local needle-exchange program, which supplied clean needles and syringes to junkies with which they could shoot up. Fresno recognized, however belatedly, that the program was enabling drug addiction in the name of so-called “harm reduction.” Dr. Marc Lasher, who founded Fresno’s needle exchange program, thinks the county’s ban wrongheaded. So every weekend, he and his team of volunteers pile on an old school bus (kind of like Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters, as immortalized by Tom Wolfe in “The...

Formal cooperation in another’s evil act (that is, undertaking to help expressly another to perform an act known to be evil) is itself evil. Davis, Moral and Pastoral Theology (1938), I: 341-342. There are no exceptions to this rule; no supervening circumstances can ever render formal cooperation in evil good.The use of [illegal] drugs “inflicts very grave damage on human health and life [and] . . . is a grave offense. Clandestine production and trafficking in drugs are scandalous practices. They constitute direct co-operation in evil, since they encourage people to practices gravely contrary to the moral law.” CCC...

As another World AIDS Day dawns this morning, prepare for the usual media blitz of stories designed to promote more spending on failed approaches to HIV/AIDS, and more bashing of the Bush Administration despite increases in spending by the billions each year.  Here are some of the questions that the media probably won’t ask the professional HIV/AIDS lobby, which grows ever fatter while the human tragedy rises: • What have American taxpayers gotten for the $20 billion per year (and rising) government spending on HIV/AIDS? • What has happened to the more than half a billion condoms that the...

Paterson and three other cities will provide clean syringes in a three-year pilot program approved by the state Health Department. The initiative includes $10 million for drug treatment, but no state funding to the municipalities for distributing clean needles to addicts in exchange for their dirty syringes. Making the case •  More than half of the nearly 67,000 New Jersey residents who have been infected with HIV/AIDS are intravenous drug users or are partners or children of drug abusers.•  New Jersey has the highest proportion of women infected with HIV in the nation, the third-highest number of pediatric cases, and...

They tell us he was steaming, but San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom shouldn't have been too surprised when The Chronicle reported that Golden Gate Park was littered with used drug syringes. After all, his own Public Health Department spent $800,000 last year to help hand out some 2 million syringes to drug users under the city's needle exchange program -- sometimes 20 at a time. Although Health Department officials say 2 million needles were returned, the fact is they don't count them and can only estimate how many are coming back. And from the looks of things, a lot of...

<p>You people are jerks. Not likeable jerks either, but the kind folks would like to smack in the back of the head with a shovel. Think Judge Snells from Caddyshack or Neidermier from Animal House.</p> <p>I know this probably comes as a shock to you, but if you do some serious soul searching, you'll realize that I am right.</p>

Why is HIV So Prevalent in Africa? By Michael Fumento Tech Central Station, April 15, 2005 Copyright 2005 Tech Central Station Massive airdrops of condoms won't stop African AIDS.   Ninety-nine percent of AIDS and HIV cases in Africa come from sexual transmission, and virtually all is heterosexual. So says the World Health Organization, with other agencies toeing the line. Some massive condom airdrops accompanied by a persuasive propaganda campaign would practically make the epidemic vanish overnight. Or would it? A determined renegade group of three scientists has fought for years &#8211; with little success &#8211; to get out...

(CNSNews.com) - Billionaire political activist George Soros, at the center of a controversy involving the alleged use of American taxpayer dollars to support needle exchange programs, Thursday accused his critics of "bigotry" and said they were "endangering the country." "I really have to question the motives of people who are arguing that the federal government should not support or not use organizations like ours on tasks where we are very well qualified," Soros told reporters in Baltimore. "It is this kind of bigotry and carrying party politics to extremes that is endangering our country." Soros was responding to allegations made...

(CNSNews.com) - The U.S. Agency for International Development has allegedly supported needle exchange programs in Central Asia, an apparent violation of federal law, according to documents obtained by Cybercast News Service. At least one member of Congress says the foreign aid agency violated congressional intent by giving taxpayer dollars to groups like George Soros' Open Society Institute, which support needle exchange programs. Needle exchange programs are part of a strategy called "harm reduction," the contested hypothesis that a certain percentage of society will engage in high-risk behaviors like intravenous drug abuse, regardless of education and interdiction efforts. The theory is...

VIENNA (AFP) - Non-governmental organizations have charged at a UN meeting US opposition to programs offering needle exchanges to drug users to fight the spread of HIV/AIDS is threatening the lives of thousands. In an open letter to a UN drug meeting that opened in Vienna Monday, the Human Rights Watch group said the United Nations "under pressure from the United States, is being asked to withdraw support from proven HIV prevention strategies at precisely the moment when increased commitment to measures such as syringe exchange and opiate substition treatment is needed." "The United States should be encouraging proven HIV...

McGreevey devout, yet diplomatic By PETE McALEER Statehouse Bureau, (609) 292-4935 Ask Gov. James E. McGreevey about the Tropicana Casino Parking Garage collapse and the first person he mentions is Sister Grace Nolan from Atlantic County Catholic Charities and her power to console in the midst of tragedy. Listen to the governor speak and you're likely to hear a lighthearted story about the nuns who taught him at St. Joseph's grammar school in Carteret. Stop in his office in Trenton and you will see numerous pictures of John F. Kennedy, the first Catholic president, and his brother Robert. McGreevey's...

<p>Legislation to make it easier for California cities and counties to develop needle-exchange programs for intravenous drug users was vetoed Saturday by Gov. Gray Davis.</p> <p>With more than 200 bills awaiting action this weekend, Davis signed nine measures and vetoed five, including the needle-exchange proposal, AB 946.</p>

Last Updated: Wednesday, 8 October, 2003, 23:14 GMT 00:14 UK Needle exchanges 'failing public' Syringes are handed out to cut the risk of infection Needle exchanges for drug addicts are not doing enough to protect the public from discarded syringes, senior police officers have warned. They said some exchanges are making "no attempt or effort" to prevent dirty needles being dumped in public places. Figures show that at least one in 10 dirty needles carry the hepatitis virus. The Police Superintendents Association said the numbers of discarded needles has become a "menace" in some areas. Sharing needles Every year more...

Group fights HIV by giving drug addicts clean syringes 8-19-03 By SAM LAGRONE, Staff Writer News & Record HIGH POINT -- Stephen Daniels walks through the brush below the overpass in a run-down east High Point neighborhood. His dusty Reebok sneaker sifts through the empty beer cans and lighters, the occasional needle cap and tourniquet. He's looking for used syringes -- the ones used by addicts who sneak under the overpass for their vein-punching fix. Stephen Daniels, holding a soda bottle with which he collects needles, looks under a tarp for discarded needles in High Point. (Joshua Greer/©News & Record)...

Sex-workers' advocacy service closes 05/27/2003 Associated Press After eight years promoting safe sex, needle exchanges and clean, well-lighted strip clubs, the Portland nonprofit Danzine is falling to a weak economy and shrinking public health budgets. Activist and exotic dancer Teresa Dulce, 31, started Danzine as a magazine for Portland-area sex workers. In 1996, she registered it as a nonprofit, offering needle exchanges and health services. (AP File Photo) Other agencies will continue some services but most will stop by June. Danzine never had direct government funding, but got some in-kind help such as use of a computer from the...