Jul 06, 2007  |  By: JOSHUA LYNSEN  | COMMENTS     

Congress has stepped closer to letting D.C. use its own money for a needle exchange program.

House members voted June 28 to drop a measure that prevented the District from spending local tax revenue on the program. The measure, which was dropped in committee, was rebuffed again on the House floor, 216-208.

In a separate vote, House members affirmed, 224-200, a longstanding stipulation barring the District from using federal funds to register domestic partners.

Because the District uses local funds to register domestic partners, the June 29 vote has no practical effect.

The only change could come from the June 28 vote, which moved toward ending limits that Congress has annually reiterated since 1998. Local health leaders praised the move.

“I’m elated,” said Paola Barahona, executive director of Prevention Works, a privately funded District group that exchanges needles on a one-for-one basis to registered participants.

“Finally, we’ve got public health prevailing over politics in this situation.”

The change, part of the District’s budget bill, is subject to Senate review before it is sent to the White House for President Bush’s signature.

Senators have voted in past sessions to drop the ban. It was unclear if senators would take similar action after they return from recess.

“I don’t have a crystal ball, but the Senate has been very good on this issue the last few years,” Barahona said. “We can’t take it for granted, but I’m very confident they will do the right thing.”

Dr. Pat Hawkins, a Whitman-Walker Clinic policy specialist, agreed.

“On the Senate side, we’ve always been lucky,” she said. “We’ve always had people who were willing to look at this as a home-rule issue and not as an ideological issue.”

Paul Strauss, an attorney who serves as the District’s shadow senator, said presidential candidate Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.) is “the only senator sufficiently motivated” to propose reinstating the ban.

“Obviously,” he said, “we’re watching closely and working diligently to make sure it doesn’t happen there.”

Contentious debate

But if Senate action resembles what transpired in the House, the vote could be close and the debate contentious.

Rep. Mark Souder (R-Ind.), who sought to reinstate limits on using federal funds for needle exchange programs, said during floor debate that Congress should vote against having “the taxpayers be heroin dealers.”

He said some studies have shown that such programs sustain intravenous drug use.

“I believe that it is not only practically wrong for us to provide the funds through taxpayer funds to a program that is not only practically not effective in not stopping HIV,” Souder said. “It is, I believe, morally and ethically wrong to ask the taxpayers to, in effect, provide the very needles that keep people addicted to heroin.”

But Rep. José Serrano (D-N.Y.), who led the committee that dropped the limitations, said needle exchange programs are “a very sensible medical approach to a very serious” social and medical issue.

“In fact, every needle exchange program that I am familiar with, including the one that exists in my congressional district, encourages people to seek treatment, demands in many cases that you seek treatment,” he said. “All it says is that while you are a drug addict, while you are trying to get off that addiction, that you not spread the HIV virus by sharing needles.”

Rep. David Obey (D-Wis.) blasted Souder for unnecessarily meddling in District affairs.

“You know, I came here to be a member of the United States Congress,” he said. “I didn’t come here to be a member of the D.C. City Council.”

Obey said for Congress to control the District in such ways was “the height of arrogance,” and that Souder should stop interfering.

“If you want to dictate to communities, would you dare go home and dictate to your own hometown what the city council ought to do?” Obey said. “Would you say that because we provide federal money to your city council that somehow we should decide what their policy ought to be on medical matters? I don’t think so.”

Souder, however, said taxpayers should not foot the bill for a program that might yield negative results.

“I do believe it increases heroin addiction,” he said. “I do believe that, in fact, it has been a well-intentioned … program that has worked out to be counterproductive.”

But Serrano and Obey said the District must be allowed to explore all options in its fight against AIDS.

“This is one of those issues where you have to go deep into your soul, into your heart, and not deal with the rhetoric of what sounds right in a 30-second sound bite,” Serrano said, “but what is proper for public safety, for ...