State laws complicated for syringe use and sales
State laws complicated for syringe use and sales
ID needed when picking up syringe in Baltimore
Add some political spice to legislation about needle-exchange programs or decriminalizing syringe possession, and you’ll have a colorful potpourri of laws on the books.
Here are a few examples:
• Prince George’s County in Maryland permits the legal distribution of needles for a needle-exchange program, but it must be a one-on-one exchange of needles. If needle-exchange volunteers distribute needles outside the county, they could be arrested. Also, the people exchanging their needles must carry a card showing that the needle came from the needle-exchange program, says Steffanie Strathdee, PhD, associate professor of epidemiology at Johns Hopkins School of Public Health in Baltimore. "Some of the early needle exchanges had photo IDs, and that’s completely ridiculous because it’s obviously labeling a person as a drug user," she adds.
• In Colorado, any person is permitted to possess up to 10 clean syringes without fear of being sent to jail. But pharmacists could be arrested if they sell needles without a prescription, says Lisa Speissegger, public health analyst of HIV/STD Project for the National Conference of State Legislatures in Denver.
• This spring, after the Rhode Island Senate passed a bill permitting the sale of syringes without a prescription and completely decriminalizing the possession of needles, the Rhode Island House briefly considered an amendment to its syringe bill that would restrict syringes to the retractable type, meaning that only a certain type of syringe could be sold over the counter, says Rhode Island State Sen. John Roney (D - Providence). Other types would continue to be sold with a prescription. The bills are still in legislative session. Rhode Island passed a law in 1998 that reduced the penalty for possession of hypodermic instruments from a felony to a misdemeanor.
• Perhaps the most unique situation involved Washington, DC, which was told two years ago that it would lose its local AIDS funding, which comes from the federal government and is in lieu of state funding, because of a privately funded needle-exchange program, says Julio Abreu, deputy director of government affairs for AIDS Action in Washington, DC.
For example, the Whitman-Walker Clinic in Washington, DC, couldn’t use private dollars for needle-exchange programs for fear of losing other non-needle exchange-related federal funding, Abreu explains. "Any other federal dollars that clinic receives would be jeopardized," he notes.
AIDS groups successfully lobbied Congress to change the law so that the clinic could use private dollars to fund needle-exchange programs. "However, the program still cannot use local dollars to operate it, which is really a shame, but that could happen only here in the District," Abreu says.
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