(7/26/97 Baltimore AFRO-American Newspaper)
by Congressman Elijah E. Cummings
Several months ago as I was leaving a small church in East Baltimore, an elderly woman approached me and took my hand. At about 70 years-old, her grip was still very strong and as I tried to pull my hand away, she held it even tighter.
She wanted to tell me about her grandson, "Rodney," who had died a few days earlier.
She had raised her grandson alone most of his life and she told me that he had provided her with a great deal of joy and pride while he was growing up. His bedroom was covered in ribbons and trophies he had won in public speaking contests, playing sports, and participating in church activities. But one day, she said, a friend introduced him to shooting up heroin. Before her eyes the boy she knew to be full of life, hope, and energy became an emaciated, zombie-like creature.
He shared needles with other addicts and often stayed away from home for weeks at a time. He would steal money from her purse and pawn her possessions to support his habit. He eventually moved out of state to escape her constant pleas for him to get treatment and put his life back together.
After years of not knowing where he was or how he was doing, one day he showed up at her front door and asked if he could come home to die. This aging woman took care of Rodney for two years before he died from AIDS-related pneumonia.
She finally released my hand from her grip, but I couldn’t let go. As tears swelled in my eyes, I promised her that I would not forget what she had shared with me. I would not forget Rodney.
AIDS has become the leading killer of people between the ages of 24 and 40. Sadly, it is estimated that one in fifty African American males in Baltimore is HIV positive. More than half of that population contracted the disease through intravenous drug use.
Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke and I, along with Delegate Salima Siler Marriott and others, fought to institute a Needle Exchange Program in the city of Baltimore. We knew that to begin to turn the tide in the public health crisis of AIDS transmission and increased drug use, drastic measures had to be taken.
The public was greatly divided and critics warned that intravenous drug use in our city would skyrocket. They were wrong. This program, which met with such opposition from around the state, has become a model for the nation.
HIV transmission rates among intravenous drug users have been cut by 39.7 percent in Baltimore, more than any other needle exchange program in the country. A study by the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine has reported that not only has the program in Baltimore reduced HIV transmission rates, but there is no evidence to support the idea that intravenous drug use has increased. In fact, it may have been slightly reduced.
For years, drug treatment medical professionals and HIV patient service organizations have requested that a national needle exchange program be developed by the federal government.
Though needle exchanges have been successful in Baltimore, Seattle, San Francisco, and New Haven, a provision passed by the United States Congress in 1988 prohibits federal monies from being used to support the expansion of these programs and the creation of others.
Congress stipulated that the federal prohibition for needle exchange funding would be lifted only when two criteria were met: that it be shown to reduce the transmission of HIV and not to increase illegal drug use. Our program in Baltimore meets both these provisions and has been proven to encourage intravenous drug users to seek effective treatment and turn their lives around.
This week I introduced legislation to instruct the Secretary of Health and Human Services to lift this unreasonable ban. Within the last month, needle exchange programs have received the endorsement of the respected American Medical Association (AMA), and have been lauded by academic evaluation groups at Harvard and Yale. A report from the General Accounting Office of the United States Congress said, "needle exchange programs appear to be the most effective weapon currently being used in America’s War on Drugs."
I know that there will be a lot of opposition to lifting the ban on federal support of needle exchange programs. But to finally turn the corner in the drug epidemic we must be swayed by reality not social taboos. No rational human being condones drug use, ever. But facts speak for themselves. Baltimore’s needle exchange program has saved lives and to restrict its expansion is unconscionable.
The truest measure of its success will not come through the reductions of HIV rates and cutting intravenous drug use. It will come when grandchildren are able to live longer than their grandmothers and when every drug addict who wants help is able to receive it. Rodney had great potential, but he is one of millions of men and women in America who have made bad choices and needlessly paid for those choices with their lives.
-The Honorable Elijah E. Cummings represents the 7th Congressional District of Maryland in the United States House of Representatives.