Long Overdue, Ban on Syringe Exchange Funding to be Lifted. Thanks, and No Thanks.

Bill Clinton said NOT lifting the federal funding ban on syringe exchange was one of the biggest regrets in his presidency. But he didn't fess up to that till he was safely out of the White House.

Barack Obama pledged to lift the ban. Then pointedly didn't publicly work to do so, even when his imprimatur could have given a much-needed margin of safety for congressional efforts.

But who really did work to lift the ban? People with HIV, drug users, harm reduction leaders and their allies. Long-time and brand new AIDS activists who took to the streets and the halls of Congress and the plaza of HHS and the UN for decades at this point, including those who got arrested in the Capitol Rotunda in one of the first acts of civil disobedience against the Obama Adminstration. Organizers and policy wonks who counted the votes and worked hand in hand with grassroots activists to persuade and convert legislators. Religous people who spoke up about what faith and redemption and compassion really means. AIDS service and prevention providers and drug treatment people and harm reduction counselors and people in recovery, and people in and out of recovery, who spoke up about their lives and their work.

And because of all this - not because of the political cowardice of those who knew they were doing the wrong thing by allowing the ban to persist but who time and again shrank in the face of ideological opposition - the ban will now be lifted.

This weekend, the Senate joined the House in approving the final 2010 appopriations bill that will lift the ban, without the deadly not-near-1000-feet-of-anything amendment that would have rendered it virtually meaningless.

Long overdue, and now happening in the context of economic crisis where prevention efforts are being defunded on a daily basis due to state cuts. CDC must act on their pledge to do all they can to help syringe exchange now that the ban is lifted. It's not going to be easy.

But the best way to bring any possible justice to this long-standing affront is to immediately work with all due haste to remove any possible barriers - funding, local misinformation or bias, bureaucratic social service practices that would alientate users, etc - and get the needles out where they are needed. As has been said so many times before, the point is the point.