Regarding the June 29 Metro article "House Repeals Needle Ban":

The repeal of the ban on funding for the District's needle exchange program brings up a bigger issue: access to clean needles for the rest of the world. A federal ban prohibits the United States from supplying clean needles, even to countries with huge HIV-AIDS epidemics caused by needle-sharing among drug users.

There is no time to waste. In an epidemic fueled by intravenous drug use, transmission of the human immunodeficiency virus is so rapid that weeks and months make a difference.

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First lady Laura Bush rightly pointed out in the June 25 news story "Beyond Iraq: The First Lady, Back in Africa" that the stigma attached to having AIDS is an enormous barrier to fighting Africa's pandemic. Stigma and discrimination reduce the effectiveness of billions of dollars spent on HIV/AIDS programs because infected people are often reluctant to avail themselves of these services.

Until recently, the global health community and development workers lacked a concrete set of tools to effectively identify and tackle stigma. To address this, the International Center for Research on Women, the Academy for Educational Development and our partners developed a tool kit, based on stigma research in Ethiopia, Tanzania and Zambia, that offers strategies and practical skills -- from the perspective of the "stigmatizer" and the "stigmatized" -- for HIV-affected communities, health-care providers and local media to reverse the devastating effect that the stigma has on people infected with and affected by HIV and AIDS. T

If U.S. and other world leaders want HIV/AIDS programs to be effective, more resources and interventions must be put in place to combat the stigma. These efforts will go a long way in battling AIDS.

Geeta Rao Gupta

President

International Center for Research on Women

Washington ns

[end]

In Paola Barahona's tiny office at PreventionWorks!, a needle exchange program, a Wonder Woman Pez dispenser sits on the shelf above her desk. She sports a Wonder Woman bracelet and carries a Wonder Woman notebook.

On the city's back streets, where she encourages intravenous drug users to use clean needles and get tested for HIV, Barahona is a down-to-earth version of a superhero, trying to save lives. "I just wish I had a magic lasso in this town to make people tell the truth," she said recently, recalling her experience with bureaucracy.

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The District Is A Step Closer To Getting A Tool It Needs To Fight HIV/AIDS.

OF THE 36 congressional riders that cluttered the appropriations bill for the District of Columbia, the ban on the use of local funds for needle-exchange programs was the most harmful. With intravenous drug use accounting for about one-third of new AIDS cases each year, the District has had to watch from the sidelines as the scourge with no cure claimed more and more lives. That congressionally enforced inaction might be coming to a merciful end with the House's vote last week to repeal the prohibition.

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As a school administrator, I celebrate the Supreme Court decision that upheld the right of a principal to a penalize a student for displaying a banner reading "Bong Hits 4 Jesus" ["Court Backs School on Speech Curbs," news story, June 26]. The job of a high school principal is difficult, and the principal who hesitates to take daily action to ensure order in her school will quickly find it drowning in a flood of inappropriate language, including hate speech and sexual harassment, not to mention advocacy of illegal behavior.

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In January 2002, in Juneau, Alaska, Joseph Frederick had the sort of idea that makes a teenager seem like one of nature's mistakes. Last week, after five years and the attention of 13 federal judges, Frederick became a footnote in constitutional history.

His case illustrated how the multiplication and extension of rights lead to the proliferation of litigation. It also illustrated something agreeable in a disagreeably angry era -- how nine intelligent, conscientious justices can civilly come to strikingly different conclusions about undisputed facts.

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'Bong Hits' Dissent Points to Prohibition

Justice John Paul Stevens, the third-oldest person ever to sit on the Supreme Court, turned 87 on April 20. If he's still on the court 142 days from now, he'll overtake Roger B. Taney, who died as chief justice in 1864 at the age of 87 years 209 days.

Stevens still has a long way to go if he wants to catch Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., who was 90 when he retired from the court in 1932. But he has already started invoking his considerable life experience to buttress his opinions.

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In its 1969 Tinker decision, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled an Iowa public school could not expel students who wore black armbands to protest the Vietnam War because students do not "shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate."

On Monday, the Supreme Court issued a muddled ruling -- with four justices agreeing, one partially agreeing and three dissenting -- that restricts those free-speech rights, even outside the schoolhouse gate.

The story begins in January 2002. An Alaska high school student attending a Winter Olympics Torch Relay on a Juneau sidewalk unfurled a banner that read, "Bong Hits 4 Jesus." Joseph Frederick hoped that prank would land him on TV news.

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Oh, boy, another supposed "epidemic" associated with drug use ["The Drugged Driving Epidemic; Why the Mayhem at a Southeast Festival Wasn't the Fluke You Might Think It Was," Close to Home, June 17].

To truly understand what's going on with regard to the impact of "drugged driving," it would be wise to look at the data on traffic crashes. I am a former intelligence analyst who does volunteer statistical research and analysis for the organization Law Enforcement Against Prohibition. The simple reality is that while the rates of use for intoxicating drugs other than alcohol (both illegal drugs and legal pharmaceuticals) have indeed increased in recent decades, curiously enough, the accident rates on America's roads have been in constant decline.

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Why the Mayhem at a Southeast Festival Wasn't the Fluke You Might Think It Was

More than three dozen men, women and children were hurt at a Southeast Washington festival by a driver police say was high on crack. Two days later, another allegedly drug-addicted driver crashed into a crowd of students at a bus stop in La Plata, injuring four.

These were not isolated incidents, and they raise the question of how we can get drug-impaired drivers off the streets.

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BOGOTA, Colombia -- Top Democratic lawmakers, including presidential hopefuls Barack Obama and Chris Dodd, have urged Colombia to reverse the "infiltration" of murderous paramilitary groups at high government levels or risk losing $700 million a year in aid.

In a strongly worded letter sent last month to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, eight senators expressed "grave concern regarding the infiltration of important Colombian state institutions by terrorists and drug traffickers."

A copy of the letter was released by Sen. Dodd's office on Friday, just before President Alvaro Uribe was to appear in New York for a dinner honoring former President Clinton, part of a lobbying campaign by Colombia to counter Democrats' intense scrutiny of its human rights record.

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With Signs That His Country Is Losing Its War On Drugs, Democrats Plan To Shift Aid Away From Military And Toward Humanitarian Programs

WASHINGTON -- President Alvaro Uribe of Colombia, in Washington yet again to lobby for trade and aid, will be greeted by Democrats planning a dramatic change in U.S. support for the South American nation -- away from military and anti-drug efforts and toward development and human rights projects.

Earlier this week, a House Appropriations subcommittee drafting the foreign aid budget cut Colombia's overall aid package by 10 percent, from $590 million to about $530 million.

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Shift in Congress Stirs Hope Among D.C. AIDS Officials

Nearly a decade after it was first imposed, a unique congressional ban limiting the District's effort to fight AIDS could be lifted and the city again allowed to use local tax dollars for needle-exchange programs.

The ban's changed prospects owe to the changed balance of power on Capitol Hill, particularly in the House of Representatives, which has attached the prohibition year after year to legislation governing the District's budget. With Democrats now in control and support growing to give the city a vote in Congress and greater autonomy generally, health advocates are optimistic that the restriction could be history by fall.

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The ambitious immigration overhaul package that Congress is studying has drawn criticism from conservatives who say it offers amnesty to lawbreakers, and from immigration advocates who say it will not do enough to bring millions of people out of the shadows.

But to Douglas Husak and Lawrence Solum, the elephant in the room is that the existing immigration law that underlies the debate has no connection with reality.

Husak and Solum, legal theorists and philosophers, argue that laws on immigration are part of a broad pattern. In recent decades, they say, Congress has passed innumerable laws that no one seriously expects will be enforced. Such laws largely seem to serve symbolic purposes and are often designed to placate some powerful constituency -- conservatives in the case of immigration, or the entertainment industry in the case of laws that seek to deter people from swapping

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WASHINGTON - The nation's capital is the only city in the country barred by federal law from using local tax money to finance needle exchange programs. It is also the city with the fastest-growing number of new AIDS cases.

These two facts keep Ron Daniels on the move, tirelessly driving his rickety Winnebago from drug corner to drug corner across the rougher parts of this city, counseling the addicted and swapping clean needles for dirty ones.

Faced with an AIDS problem growing here at a rate 10 times the national average, Mr. Daniels, the director of Prevention Works, the city's only needle exchange program, is armed with a shoestring budget of $385,000 in private donations, a small fraction of what programs in other major cities receive in state and local money.

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Freshman Sriram Prakash was standing outside of Package Services when an early snow fell Jan. 15. Handcuffs bound his arms behind his back.

Flanked by two Metropolitan Police Department officers wearing civilian clothing, Prakash was arrested on drug charges. The undercover officers had waited in Foggy Bottom until Prakash arrived at Package Services to retrieve a box filled with marijuana.

Each year, several students are arrested by MPD on charges of possession with intent to distribute marijuana. These arrests have become more prevalent on campus in recent years, according to police records obtained by The Hatchet under the D.C. Freedom of Information Act and University officials. Prakash is one of at least four students to be arrested this academic year on this type of drug charge.

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Until recently, I had never heard of cluster headaches, and neither had my friend Bob, which isn't his name for reasons that will soon be evident.

Bob was in his late 40s with no medical problems.

Out of nowhere he began having headaches. These were not the two-aspirin kind, or even migraines. They were monsters. I realized this one night at his house. For an hour he lay on the floor, screaming. We're not talking moaning and grousing. Screaming.

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WASHINGTON- A first-time crack-cocaine conviction should mean a lower federal minimum sentence than under current guidelines, according to a judicial agency that has raised concerns about a disparity in punishment for people caught with crack or powder cocaine.

The U.S. Sentencing Commission voted to lower the recommended sentencing range for those caught with 5 grams or more of crack cocaine from 63 months to 78 months to a range of 51 months to 63 months. Those with at least 50 grams should serve 97 months to 121 months in prison, not 121 months to 151 months, as the guidelines now say, the commission said late Friday.

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BOGOTA, Colombia: The street price of cocaine fell in the United States last year as purity rose, the White House drug czar said in a private letter to a key senator, indicating increasing supply and seemingly contradicting U.S. claims that US$4 billion (€2.9 billion) in aid to Colombia is stemming the flow.

The drug czar, John Walters, wrote that retail cocaine prices fell by 11 percent from February 2005 to October 2006, to about US$135 (€99) per gram of pure cocaine. That's way below the US$600 a gram pure cocaine fetched in 1981, when the U.S. government began collecting data, and near the level it has been at since the early 1990s.

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Something strange is going on in the global opium market, and it could spell trouble.

Opium is a commodity -- an illegal commodity, but it should still be subject to the normal rules of supply and demand.

Annual demand for opium is approximately 4,500 tons. Last year a record 6,100 tons were produced in Afghanistan alone. That country's production is 30 percent more than total world demand. Heroin prices should, in theory, be plummeting. But they are not. So what is going on?

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