TAKE ACTION PLEASE - TIME LAG IN VIENNA? DrugSense FOCUS Alert #392 - Saturday, 31 January 2009 Today the New York Times published the editorial below. If the Obama administration was paying attention to what Bush holdovers were doing the editorial would not have been necessary. Please help insure that the Obama administration takes action to correct the problem quickly. You may send a short message to the White House by using the webform on this page http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/ You may call the White House about the issue at 202-456-1111 or send a fax to 202-456-2461. Students for Sensible Drug Policy has set up an action alert webpage you may use to send an email the White House and to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton at http://drugsense.org/url/9mnHvBOK For background on the issue please see the Harm Reduction Coalition FAQ at http://www.harmreduction.org/article.php?id=876 and this Huffington Post article http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v09/n102/a06.html Source: New York Times (NY) Contact: Referenced: The letter by Members of Congress http://www.harmreduction.org/downloads/Rice.pdf TIME LAG IN VIENNA? Programs that give drug addicts access to clean needles have been shown the world over to slow the spread of deadly diseases including H.I.V./AIDS and hepatitis. Public health experts were relieved when President Obama announced his support for ending a ban on federal funding for such programs. Unfortunately, Mr. Obama's message seems not to have reached the American delegation to a United Nations drug policy summit in Vienna, where progress is stalled on a plan that would guide global drug control and AIDS prevention efforts for years to come. The delegation has angered allies, especially the European Union, by blocking efforts to incorporate references to the concept of "harm reduction" -- of which needle exchange is a prime example -- into the plan. State Department officials said that they were resisting the harm-reduction language because it could also be interpreted as endorsing legalized drugs or providing addicts with a place to inject drugs. But the Vienna plan does not require any country to adopt policies it finds inappropriate. And by resisting the harm-reduction language, the American delegation is alienating allies and sending precisely the wrong message to developing nations, which must do a lot more to control AIDS and other addiction-related diseases. Some members of Congress are rightly angry about the impasse in Vienna. On Wednesday, three members fired off a letter to Susan Rice, the new American ambassador to the United Nations, urging that the United States' delegation in Vienna be given new marching orders on the harm-reduction language. If that doesn't happen, the letter warns, "we risk crafting a U.N. declaration that is at odds with our own national policies and interests, even as we needlessly alienate our nation's allies in Europe." Prepared by: Richard Lake, Senior Editor www.mapinc.org =.

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