Saturday, December 19, 2009

U.S. repeals funding ban for needle exchanges

On friday, the a ban on needle exchanges was repealed. This is definitely a victory for AIDS for prevention. The Ban was a 21 year old ban, which is very long considering the effect AIDS has. The ban was a small part of a larger bill that involved $163.5 billion. Now disease-prevention can use federal funds to get clean needles.

This is great, because now that there are more needles, there will be less disease, especially AIDS spreading around. "Hundreds of thousands of Americans will not get HIV/AIDS or hepatitis C, thanks to Congress repealing the federal syringe funding ban,"

3 comments:

Sarah Jacobs said...

I am not sure that I agree that the lifting of the ban is a good idea. Basically, the government is now providing drug users with needles? It seems kind of counterproductive. I am sure that these needle exchange programs may minimally reduce the spread of diseases such as hepatitis C and HIV/AIDS, but is it really a good idea to aid drug addicts? I think the money spent on these programs might be better used towards government-run rehabilitation programs. Eliminating the need for needles might do more for stopping the spread of diseases.

Brian Stephens said...

Sarah, I understand what you are saying, but to pretend that the government is the only source of needles for addicts would be ignorant of them.

Drug users will find needles in other contaminated sources, and, if not, will use eachother's :(

Armaan Vachani said...

I agree with Brian. If the government can't stop them for doing drugs, then at least stop them from spreading disease while using the drugs, right?