Pubdate: Wed, 11 Apr 2001
Source: Worcester Telegram & Gazette (MA)
Copyright: 2001 Worcester Telegram & Gazette
Contact:  http://www.telegram.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/509
Author: Kenneth J. Moynihan

CELLUCCI LEAVES BEHIND THE HOT ISSUE OF NEEDLE EXCHANGE

Gov. Jane M. Swift has inherited from her predecessor any number of 
political hot potatoes. One of those is the Cellucci-Swift administration's 
muted support of efforts by health groups around the state to initiate 
programs providing intravenous drug users with clean needles.

Attempts to implement such programs have run into popular and official 
resistance in most communities, including Worcester, where the City Council 
has twice turned thumbs down, most recently on a 7-4 vote in January 1999. 
Only Cambridge, Boston, Provincetown and Northampton have put programs into 
effect.

Mr. Cellucci and his Department of Public Health have both been in favor of 
such programs. Unlike his health department, Mr. Cellucci had a chance to 
change the legal requirement for local approval, but he chose not to.

The opportunity arose late last summer, when Sen. James P. Jajuga, 
D-Methuen, managed to attach to the state budget legislation that would 
have given the Department of Public Health authority to establish clean 
needle programs without local political approval. In the name of local 
control, Mr. Cellucci vetoed that provision, all the while urging his 
Department of Public Health to do more to educate the public and convince 
municipal authorities of the need to implement such programs.

Mr. Cellucci spoke as though redoubled educational efforts by the 
Department of Public Health should be regarded as an alternative to state 
mandated programs. Local officials don't tend to see it that way at all. 
People who have taken a stance against needle exchange don't cotton easily 
to publicly funded efforts to convince their constituents that they were wrong.

Part of the Department of Public health's effort was embodied in a $10,000 
grant to the Henry Lee Willis Center in Worcester to conduct a survey of 
local attitudes toward needle exchange and also to educate the public on 
how such a program could slow the HIV/AIDS epidemic among the city's 
intravenous drug users. When District 2 Councilor Michael C. Perotto heard 
about the grant he questioned whether the city should allocate any 
block-grant funding to agencies that did not follow the council's position 
against needle exchange. He was persuaded by his colleagues to back off.

Things took a different course in Fitchburg. After city officials expressed 
renewed opposition to needle exchange, the Gardner Visiting Nursing 
Association -- which had also received a $10,000 Department of Public 
Health grant to educate the local public -- withdrew from that role.

As politicians are wont to do, Mr. Cellucci mixed elements that could very 
well have been in conflict with one another. He was combining a rhetorical 
stance in favor of needle exchange with a rhetorical stance in favor of 
local control. Since local control can thwart needle exchange, he was in 
effect putting local control first. As he slips off to Ottawa local control 
rather than public health may be becoming the main political issue.

Standing up for its own power, the Worcester City Council went on record 
9-2 against the Jajuga amendment last year. This year, Fitchburg's council 
has beaten Worcester's to the draw, voting unanimously to oppose new 
legislation filed by Mr. Jajuga. Ward 6 Councilor Ralph R. Romano III 
summed up where the debate seems to be heading. "Now it's an issue of local 
control," Mr. Romano said, "and no matter where you stand on the issue (of 
needle exchange), all of us need to take that to heart."

The spotlight will soon be on the renewed effort of Mr. Jajuga, author of 
the legislation vetoed by Mr. Cellucci last year, to change the law. He is 
back with a new bill to allow the Department of Public Health to act 
without having to seek any form of official local approval. Hearings have 
yet to be scheduled on the Jajuga legislation, but they will undoubtedly 
give full vent to people, including some from Worcester, who don't want a 
program forced upon their communities. It will probably take a strong stand 
by legislative leaders to overcome local opposition to the proposal.

All of the resistance may give the impression that public opinion is 
staunchly opposed to needle exchange programs. On the other hand, a poll 
commissioned last year by the McCormack Institute at the University of 
Massachusetts at Boston found that 62 percent of Massachusetts residents 
favored needle exchange, with support appearing across virtually all 
demographic groups.

The Worcester City Council, which undoubtedly believes it has been 
reflecting the will of the city's residents and voters in resisting needle 
exchange, may have a chance this year to find out. One of its committees is 
considering two petitions filed by community activist William S. Coleman 
III, asking that two questions on the subject be placed on the November ballot.

One would ask voters if they feel information regarding the transmission 
and spread of HIV/AIDS has so far been presented in a way that allows them 
to make an informed decision on the establishment of a needle exchange 
program in Worcester. The other would ask if voters support the 
establishment of a state-funded needle exchange program, combined with drug 
treatment on demand, in Worcester.

The first of those questions, if it gets on the ballot and gets some 
discussion, might help people to understand the critical link between 
intravenous drug use and the spread of HIV/AIDS, which many people 
undoubtedly continue to regard as a disease that is almost always 
transmitted sexually.

The second question would be the more important one, although its outcome 
and effects are impossible to predict. Advocates of needle exchange point 
repeatedly to that 62 percent support in the McCormack Institute poll, but 
they may not really be ready to take their chances at the polls. A ballot 
question might produce an educational discussion of the public health 
issues, or it might just give people a change to express their negative 
feelings about HIV/AIDS and about illegal drug use.

Billboards have sprouted along Interstate 290 in support of needle 
exchange, and advertisements have begun to appear on Worcester radio 
stations. Maybe a real local campaign could get under way, and Worcester 
could lead the state in finding out just how hot a potato Mr. Cellucci has 
left Ms. Swift and the rest of us to toss around.
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MAP posted-by: Larry Stevens