Free Hypodermics For Drug Abusers?

February 16, 1987

Has the danger of AIDS become so enormous that it justifies government actions that might encourage other dangerous, perhaps deadly, activities?

Those who are reluctantly arguing that the Chicago Health Department should provide free hypodermic needles to intravenous drug users consider it an urgently important way to help stop the spread of AIDS from current high-risk groups into the general population.

Intravenous drug users make up the second largest group of AIDS victims. Their sharing of contaminated needles is the primary route by which the AIDS virus is beginning to spread to heterosexuals--a major concern of public health officials. Most of the infants who have been born infected with AIDS virus are the offspring of mothers who use intravenous drugs.

Hard-core drug abusers are a particularly difficult group for public health officials to reach and influence. If they can`t be persuaded to give up drugs, at least it may be possible to induce them to use clean new needles if they are provided free, supporters of the proposal argue. Even the risk that free needles might encourage more people to use drugs intravenously, they say, is less scary than AIDS, especially if the virus jumps out of the original high-risk groups to become widespread in the general population.

But intravenous drug use is a deadly risk, too. Drug abusers not only destroy their health but often try to persuade others to share the habit. Pregnant women who use intravenous drugs run high risks of giving birth to damaged, addicted babies. Users who need money for drugs still commit a substantial number of crimes. And they help support the vast and lucrative illegal drug trade, with all its evil consequences. Most taxpayers cannot stomach the idea of using tax dollars to provide free needles to make it easier--and less scary--to shoot up.

A better approach might be simply to change the state laws that prohibit the possession of hypodermic needles except by medical personnel and diabetics. If intravenous drug users could readily buy inexpensive, sterile, disposable needles, they might be less likely to re-use needles that are contaminated with blood--and possibly AIDS virus. They might even be more willing to avail themselves of the opportunity if they do not have to go to a government agency and identify themselves as users of illegal drugs. And taxpayers would not feel they were subsidizing another terrible health problem.