These two selections that follow recently appeared in the New York Times, the first as an editorial and the second as a letter to the editor.
Taken together, they are well suited for work with more advanced ESL students and can be presented at the end of Lesson 4 or 5. Ask the class to read them for homework and decide which of these conflicting arguments is more persuasive, and why. Ask the class to write a letter to an elected official supporting or opposing needle exchange.
Researchers in New York City have found the most persuasive evidence yet that providing clean needles to drug addicts can slow the spread of HIV. The results, though preliminary, strengthen the case for needle exchange programs, not only in New York but in all cities with injecting drug users at risk of infection with HIV. Such programs are banned in some states and only allowed as an experiment in New York.
The logic behind needle exchanges has always seemed plausible. In many cities, addicts who inject drugs have been devastated by AIDS, largely because HIV can be spread from person to person through the sharing of needles and syringes. One way to slow this spread, the reasoning goes, is to give addicts clean needles in exchange for used ones that could be contaminated. The addicts may remain hooked on their drugs, but at least they are less likely to spread HIV.
However, it has been a long, slow struggle to prove that such needle exchanges would really work.
Previous studies have shown that needle exchanges reduce the sharing of dirty equipment, cut the percentage of equipment that is contaminated and cut the infection rate for some diseases that are spread through shared needles. But no study has previously measured a significant decline in HIV infections among drug addicts that is attributable to needle exchanges.
That is why the latest findings from the first two years of a three year study of needle exchanges in New York City seem especially encouraging. The city has some 200,000 injecting drug addicts, of whom perhaps half are infected with HIV. More than 26,000 of the injecting addicts are enrolled in five needle exchange programs run by community groups. The two year evaluation, led by researchers at Beth Israel Medical Center, covered some 2,500 of these enrollees.
The most striking finding was a low HIV infection rate among needle exchange participants. Only 1 to 2 percent of those enrolled in the program became infected with HIV each year, compared with 4 to 5 percent of those not enrolled.
Equally important, the study found no evidence that needle exchanges increased the rate of drug injecting by participants or attracted newcomers to take up drug injecting--two of the chief fears that have stirred opposition to needle exchanges in many communities.
One explanation for the lower rate of infection among participants may be that they are more highly motivated than other addicts to avoid risky behavior; that is why they went to the needle exchanges in the first place.
But surely the provision of clean needles and the added motivational support provided by the programs’ staff members and counselors played a major role. Once in the program, participants greatly reduced their use of rented or borrowed syringes.
The researchers believe regular participation in exchange programs can cut the risk of infection in half. If their early findings are confirmed, states everywhere should add needle exchanges to the arsenal of weapons deployed against HIV and AlDS.
To the Editor:
Re your Nov. 26 front page article, "On the decrease in human immune deficiency virus infection among addicts in New York’s needle exchange programs:"
Ever since the Lower East Side Harm Reduction Center, a needle exchange program, began operating in a storefront in a residential population of working poor, our community has witnessed drug abuse not seen since Operation Pressure Point cleared the area of drugs in the 1980’s. Needle exchange is a link in a chain called "one stop shopping." You can receive your government sponsored clean needles (there is no limit to the number), rob and steal to get money for drugs (or sell your clean needles), buy cocaine in storefronts or heroin on any corner, then leave behind a pool of blood, dirty syringes, glassine bags, alcohol swabs and bottle caps: the debris of depraved indifference.
The needle exchange program has legitimized drug use on the Lower East Side and by its tacit approval has invited a population of predators into our community. Statistics on the spread of AIDS cannot be the only criteria for measuring the success of the program.
N.S., New York, Dec. 1, 1994 (The writer is a member of Community Board 3.) New York Times, 12/6/94