Permitting access to sterile needles could substantially reduce the spread of HIV among injecting drug users.  No research has ever shown that making needle possession illegal is effective in reducing drug use in the United States.  Our needle possession laws have been effective, however, in making sterile needles scarce and in creating the circumstances in which people who inject drugs share their infected needles, resulting in the further spread of HIV and other blood-borne diseases.  In this way, an ineffective policy of drug control – denying access to sterile needles – has become a major factor in the spread of deadly disease.⁽¹⁾

People can avoid arrest for possession of an illicit drug by buying the drug immediately before they plan to use it.  In the many states where needle possession is illegal, those who carry their own clean needles are vulnerable to arrest at any time.

African Americans are more at risk in this regard because African Americans frequently have been the target of police drives to enforce drug laws.  This shows up in the federal government’s own data which indicate that blacks who use drugs are 2.4 times more likely to be arrested on drug charges than whites who use drugs.⁽²⁾  Official arrest records understate the situation.  In many states and cities, police do not record the stops they make, if the stops do not result in arrests.⁽³⁾ 

Although arrest data for Latinos are not available, concern about racial profiling by Latino organizations and Latino police officers makes it evident that racial profiling is having an impact on Latinos also.⁽⁴⁾

We can now begin to see why the number of injection-related new AIDS cases among African Americans and Latinos is so high: being stopped and searched is much more common among minorities than among whites.  This means that the legal system, via the police, is more likely to confiscate the personal needles of blacks and Latinos.  Also, because black and Latino user know (correctly) that they are vulnerable to arrest, these users are likely to “choose” not to carry their own clean needles.  Users who do not carry their own needles all too often end up sharing the needles and blood-borne diseases of others. 

Footnotes

(1)	David R. Holtgrave, Steven D. Pinkerton, T. Stephen Jones, Peter Lurie, and David Vlahov, “Cost and Cost-Effectiveness of Increasing Access to Sterile Syringes and Needles as an HIV Prevention Intervention in the United States,” Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndromes and Human Retrovirology, vol. 18 (supplement), 1998, pages S133-S138.
(2)	Based on unpublished arrest data from the FBI, blacks were about 4.4 times more likely to be arrested on drug charges than whites.  Based on data from the National Household Survey on Drug Abuse, blacks were about 1.8 times more likely than whites to use heroin or inject drugs in the past year. Taken together, this means that black drug users were about 2.4 times as likely to be arrested as white drug users. The drug use data are from U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, National Household Survey on Drug Abuse: Population Estimates 1998.
(3)	Bureau of Justice Statistics.  2001. “Fact sheet:Traffic stop data collection policies for state police, 2001.” December. 4 pages. William K. Rashbaum, “Review Board Staff Faults Police on Stop-and-Frisk Reports,” New York Times,  April 28, 2000, page B1.
(4)	Because of the way arrest data are collected, it is not possible to report on arrests of Latinos as a separate group.  However there is certainly substantial concern among Latinos, including Latino law enforcement officials about racial profiling and other abuses of Latino civil rights. National Council of La Raza. 2002. "Testimony on drug sentencing and its effects on the Latino community." Testimony before the United States Sentencing Commission by Charles Kamasaki, Senior Vice President. February 25.  National Council of La Raza. 1999. "NCLR, Hispanic law enforcement organizations, form partnership to address harassment and abuse of Latinos." December 15. The Hispanic law enforcement organizations are the Hispanic American Police Command Officers Association and the National Latino Peace Officers Association, the two largest associations representing Hispanic law enforcement personnel in the country.
(5)	In an examination of possible explanations for the high black/white ratio of AIDS deaths among injecting drug users, Day found that racial profiling contributed more to the differential than did differences in injecting drug use, genetic differences or racial differences in medical care. See Dawn Day. 2000. "The role of racial profiling in spreading AIDS among African Americans who inject drugs." Fordham Urban Law Journal. October. pages 70-77.