August 3, 2007
EXCHANGE THIS!
—thanks to some savvy bird-dogging by a well-known activist
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We know she has good posture. Does she have spine? |
It can be tough getting the domestic AIDS epidemic into the mainstream media's conversation about the presidential elections—witness Gwen Ifill's headline-making question about black women and AIDS during the 2004 vice-presidential debate. But Housing Works President and CEO Charles King scored his own mini-Ifill moment last week. Ben Smith, a blogger for the popular website The Politico, wrote a piece centered on King's bird-dogging of Sen. Barack Obama and Sen. Hillary Clinton about lifting the federal ban on needle exchange, and in particular the entertaining clash between King and Clinton over having "spine" on the issue. We won't spoil the fun: Check out the piece here (and scroll to 1:08 or so in the video).
Suffice it to say that AIDS listservs were buzzing and the exchange was commented on in many a blog.
There was other, decidedly mixed news on needle exchange this week. The Newark Star-Ledger revealed that a law allowing New Jersey cities to start needle exchange pilot programs will receive no state funding…but on the other hand the Bergen Record reported that three municipalities are ready to start exchanging needles.
According to the Harm Reduction Coalition one third of people with HIV in the United States were infected through injection drug use, and every year another 8,000 people are newly infected with HIV through sharing contaminated syringes. Among women, an estimated 61 percent of AIDS cases are due to injection drug use or the result of sexual contact with someone who contracted HIV through injection drug use.