Needle-Exchange Programs Effective HIV Prevention Methods, Letter To Editor Says

The "notion that clean needle-exchange programs are enabling and encouraging drug use is nonsense," Stephen Heath, public relations director for the Drug Policy Forum of Florida, writes in a New York Times letter to the editor in response to a recent Times editorial. It is "possible to overcome drug addiction," Heath writes, adding that it is "of course impossible to overcome a case of HIV and hepatitis C that's been received by use of dirty needles." According to Heath, communities benefit by "reducing the peripheral and associated disease that is passed by dirty or infected needles" (Heath, New York Times, 6/11).

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