Source: New York Post Contact: The Editor, The New York Post, 1211 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10036 Pubdate: Fri, 23 Jan 98 Website: http://nypostonline.com/ Note: The NY Post says send '75-100 word letters to the editor.... Please include your name, address and daytime phone number. No unverifiable letters will be published. The Post reserves the right to edit and condense all letters.' EDITORIAL NEEDLING GIULIANI Say that Mayor Guiliani got a report last June issued by one of his outside advisory councils - a report recommending that the city bankroll people's drug habits, facilitate addiction and condone hard-core drug abuse. If the mayor had seen such a report, would he have buried it? No, he would have attacked it and gotten himself an easy headline in the midst of an election: "Mayor Attacks Advisory Council/"Soft on Drugs,' Guiliani Says." It turns out that an outside advisory council did issue such a report, which surfaced this week in a New York Observer story. The report was called "Needle Exchange Programs: An Analysis of Benefits and Costs," and it was the handiwork of the Mayor's Office of AIDS Policy Coordination. The Observer claims that Giuliani and his aides buried the report. The only problem with the story is that Deputy Mayor Randy Mastro says no one in the Mayor's Office ever heard of the document. But if it had crossed his desk, Mastro says, he'd have proudly nixed it. And New Yorkers would have had reason to be grateful. The report recommended that the city fund and publicize needle-exchange programs. It argued that some studies indicate such programs help slow the spread of HIV among intravenous drug users. What is a needle-exchange program? It's a trade-in service. A junkie comes in with a polluted needle and trades it for a shiny new rig. The folks who go to exchange programs make no secret that they use their needles to inject heroin and other illegal narcotics. Do they get busted? Quite the opposite. They're given a pat on the back and told to go out and shoot safely. Nine private programs in the city currently distribute this drug paraphernalia. But the report concluded nine just wasn't enough. It urged City Hall to spend $2.5 million of taxpayer money on more needles. It even encouraged the city to make needles more easily available by having hospitals and other "relevant city service entities" distribute them. Hey, these aren't sewing needles. They are hypodermics, used exclusively for the abuse of drugs whose very possession is a felony. Furthermore, it's a crime in New York state to use or possess needles without a prescription. So when junkies walk in with their tainted needles, they are already breaking the law. Guiliani believes needle exchanges reinforce drug addiction and muddy the struggle against illegal narcotics, and he's right. He has launched a sweeping crackdown on narcotics, and handing out paraphernalia to junkies would basically end a drug war right where it must begin - in City Hall. By wrongly charging the mayor with a cover-up, The New York Observer and its reporter, Joe Conason - yes, Joe Conason, better known as the nation's most embarrassing Clinton suck-up - have done the mayor a disservice. Copyright (c) 1998, N.Y.P. Holdings, Inc.