Big Apple press sticks it to Rudy
There was ink -- but little stink --
after a sensational New York Observer front-page headline
alleged that New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani's office squashed a
37-page report that recommended funding for needle-exchange programs
(NEPs). A leaked interoffice document urging city cash for sterile
syringes had been kept in the closet by an election-year mayor famed
for his zero-tolerance drug policy ("I don't think it's a good idea
to give people needles in order to inject heroin," he has said).
Giuliani denied the accusation. The citywide commissioner for AIDS
policy, Erroll Chin-Loy, had an official "no comment" on what he
termed a "touchy" subject.
Sources close to the mayor suggested that leaks like these may
stall the strained NEP dialogue between Giuliani and advocates. And
activists such as the National Coalition to Save Lives Now's Chris
Lanier were shy about pointing fingers. "It's counterproductive to
bash the mayor for suppressing the report, given the defensiveness
of this administration," he said. "Giuliani said he'd hear arguments
in favor of NEPs. That's a ray of hope." But Toni Perri, of
Brooklyn's Moving Equipment Harm Reduction, doesn't see it quite
that way: "People of color at risk for HIV and substance abuse --
Giuliani doesn't consider them a constituency."
In 1995, nearly half of all new AIDS cases in New York City were
among injection drug-users (IDUs). The city has never funded the
nine existing NEPs, which serve less than a quarter of the estimated
250,000 IDUs. The report, as quoted in the January 26
Observer, stated that with a $2.5-million shot in the arm,
NEPs could prevent as many as 2,000 HIV infections and save as much
as $54 million in Medicaid costs for new AIDS cases. GMHC's Ronald
Johnson, director of the Office of AIDS Policy at the time of the
report, declined to discuss the leak but was adamant about future
action: "What the hell are they [city government] doing to address
HIV transmission among IDUs? The answer is still nothing, and that's
something they have to be held accountable for."
