Viewpoint:

We have got to be about preventing disease!  We have better drugs, but we still don’t have a vaccine or a cure for this disease.  We have watched people die from this disease; now they must learn how to live with HIV/AIDS.  But why can’t we help prevent this disease by providing clean needles? We do not allow people to get the clean needles that would reduce the spread of HIV disease, yet we spend thousands to treat each person who develops AIDS to take care of them, to watch them die.  That makes no sense!  We have got to be about preventing problems, not fixing things after they are broken.

Our best scientific research shows that needle exchange programs do not increase drug use, but do reduce the spread of HIV.  We need to speak out.  Silence about the importance of needle exchange programs is causing the deaths of thousands of our bright young black and Latino men and women. Time is slipping away.  Our bright young people are slipping away. 

We must recognize the spread of AIDS through dirty needles as the public health problem that it is.  We must accept the scientific data and stand up for needle exchange programs and begin to save precious lives! ⁽¹⁾

  Dr. Joycelyn Elders, former U.S. Surgeon General