In 1986, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s special cabinet committee on AIDS made a fundamentally important decision which changed the course of the emerging HIV epidemic in the UK. In spite of some vocal opposition, it decided there should be clean needle exchanges for injecting drug users (IDUs) to prevent the spread of HIV.
The opposition to that move has been echoed in the years that followed — not least in the United States. Government-financed needle exchanges would condone crime, the critics claimed. It would encourage drug use and give entirely the wrong message to the public.
The experience of the last quarter of century has disproved those fears. There is no question that needle exchanges and drug substitution have reduced HIV: only 2% of new infections in Britain now come through that route. The policy has neither encouraged drug taking nor crime. Similar reports come from other nations that have adopted this approach. Tragically, not all nations have followed such a lead. Nearly half of the countries with epidemics concentrated among IDUs have no needle and syringe programs at all according to UNAIDS. The result is the further spread of HIV and an increasing death toll — only four of every 100 people who inject and are eligible for treatment get antiretroviral (ARV) drugs.
