The boys had driven into Elmer’s on Friday evening. The candy red Camaro was a hot car and Hypo frequently went for joy rides with his three friends, screeching through this quiet desert community at all hours of the night.

But tonight none of the teens were aware they been shortchanged on the amount of gasoline they thought they had purchased. They also did not realize one of the car’s brake lines had cracked when they bottomed out on the curb as they roared in to re-fuel.

Liberal was working that evening at Elmer’s. He purposely did not tell them about the damage to the brake line, despite the spreading pool of brake fluid underneath the rear passenger side wheel.

“I decided they were gonna go drag racing anyway,” an unrepentant Liberal told the Sheriff. “So what I did was to just put a little bit of gasoline into the tank so that if they spun out of control, they wouldn’t kill anyone else ‘cept themselves—you know, in case the car exploded or something.”

If you find this story appalling—good—thank God it’s fictional.

I wrote it to illustrate a point about a different kind of “needles”—hypodermic needles—and the “driving ambition” of some to make them available free to intravenous drug users in order to stop the spread of HIV.
Unfortunately this is not fiction.

It sounds like a good idea on the surface and needle exchange advocates try to make a good case for their programs. But a closer look at the scientific data raises red flags. And no wonder—it’s not just the science that’s bad—the rationale behind these programs is deeply flawed.

Drug addiction is not a “disease” as some incomprehensibly argue. Drug addicts can become clean by making life-changing decisions; the kinds that are offered by faith-based programs. Cancer is a disease. I’ve never met a person who was diagnosed with cancer who one day decided he would simply give it up by visiting a rescue mission or seeking the advice of a counselor and making a few behavioral changes.
When drug addicts are given clean needles, destructive behavior is simply encouraged and addicts remain at risk of dying, either from the drugs themselves or something else.

Several years ago an issue of Policy Review, published by the Heritage Foundation, featured an article by Joe Loconte entitled “Killing Them Softly.”

“It is this deep denial about the behavioral roots of drug addiction by the NEP crowd that prevents any real progress. Most IV drug users do not die from HIV-tainted needles but from other health problems such as overdoses or homicide. Addicts attending NEPs continue to swap needles and engage in risky sexual behavior. All the studies that claim otherwise are based on self-reporting, an unreliable gauge.”
“By not talking much about drug abuse, NEP activists effectively sidestep the desperation created by addiction. When drug users run out of money for their habit, for example, they often turn to prostitution—no matter how many clean needles are in the cupboard. And the most common way of contracting HIV is, of course, sexual intercourse.”

In 1998, a Clinton White House panel on AIDS cited “clear scientific evidence of the efficacy of [NEPs].” Actual studies proved no such thing. They instead demonstrated no increase in the rate of HIV, not a reduction. In other words, the NEPs had no affect.

“The NEP crowd mistakenly assumes that most addicts worry about getting AIDS,” Loconte writes. “Most probably don’t: The psychology and physiology of addiction usually do not allow them the luxury. Once they start pumping their system with drugs, judgment disappears. Memory disappears. Nutrition disappears. The ability to evaluate their life needs disappears.”

Dr. Brad Beck, a physician-advisor to Focus on the Family, an organization that promotes traditional family values explains, “Trying to help a drug addict by handing him a clean needle is hardly help at all. It’s just creating more problems because, actually, you are enabling the bad behavior to continue.”

“I compare it to a bunch of kids running . . . across a busy highway. Rather than telling them to stop and not do that because that’s really dangerous, you put helmets on their heads.”

It’s like Elijah Liberal, the fictional gas station attendant in Needles, California who thought it best to shortchange those four teens out of a full tank of gas so that when their brakes failed, they wouldn’t kill anyone else.

Governor McGreevey: Think twice about allowing needle exchange programs in New Jersey and sending a lot of poor, unfortunate drug addicts to early graves.

E-mail the author at GregoryJRummo@aol.com
www.geocities.com/gregoryjrummo/needles2002.htm