County May Approve Anti-AIDS Project : Health: Gloria Molina is expected to tilt the Board of Supervisors in favor of the free distribution of drug bleach kits and condoms.

With a new liberal majority in power, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors is expected to approve Tuesday the distribution of bleach kits and condoms to fight the spread of AIDS--four years after the preventive measures first were proposed here and years after similar programs were established in New York and San Francisco.

The action would be the most significant shift in county policy since Supervisor Gloria Molina’s election last month ended a decade of conservative control of the board.

County health officials have long recommended that social workers be allowed to provide drug addicts with pocket-sized bottles of bleach for use in cleaning their hypodermic needles. Until now, however, Supervisor Ed Edelman has been the only board member willing to support such a move.

AIDS attacks the body’s immune system and can be passed through the exchange of bodily fluids during unprotected sexual intercourse and through the sharing of contaminated syringes.

The county does provide condoms to the public, but only through birth control and venereal disease clinics; outreach workers have not been allowed to give them to drug addicts.

Edelman said he will reintroduce the bleach-and-condoms program to the board on Tuesday; fellow liberal supervisors Molina and Kenneth Hahn have said they will support the proposal.

AIDS activists greeted the anticipated approval of the program as the first indication that they may finally face a board sympathetic to their needs.

“There is a feeling that Ms. Molina and the board might be more receptive to our cause,” said David Lacaillade, who was one of 27 protesters arrested last May by gloved sheriff’s deputies at the downtown Hall of Administration building after they staged a sit-in demanding more money for AIDS treatment and prevention.

“It’s nice to know that the county now is maybe getting off its high horse . . . and getting down to the trenches, finding out what needs to be done and doing it,” Lacaillade said.

Opponents of the bleach-and-condom program, however, were fearful that the approval could foreshadow a flood of other initiatives.

Gwen Johnson, who lives in the Imperial Courts housing project in South-Central Los Angeles, said county social workers who hand out bleach kits to addicts are sending a message that the government condones drug use.

“I’m around a lot of dope fiends, addicts and so on,” Johnson said. “If they give them bleach kits it’s just like telling them to shoot drugs right under my window.”

Molina, who replaced Supervisor Pete Schabarum on March 8, said she will back the AIDS prevention efforts. She helped push through a similar program for Los Angeles last year when she was a council member.

Also key to the Board of Supervisor’s policy shift on AIDS prevention is Hahn.

When the issue was raised before the board twice before, the liberal Hahn joined conservative Supervisors Mike Antonovich, Deane Dana and Schabarum in opposing the idea. Previously, Hahn had said the bleach distribution would give addicts “the tools to destroy themselves” and the condoms would promote promiscuity and homosexuality.

But Hahn said last week that he changed his mind after speaking with Rabbi Allen Freehling, former chairman of the County AIDS Commission. AIDS activists also suggested that the spread of AIDS in Hahn’s largely minority district in South-Central Los Angeles, primarily through intravenous drug use, may also have influenced him.

“I am going to support Edelman,” Hahn said last week. “If a person gets AIDS, it’s like giving them their death certificate early.”

Freehling said that he met with Hahn a few months ago and they discussed in detail how the virus that causes AIDS can be transmitted through dirty needles.

“This has been a long battle,” Freehling said, noting that the distribution of bleach and condoms was one of the first things proposed when the county Commission on AIDS was established four years ago.

Dana said last week that he remains opposed to the idea because he thinks it is unnecessary. Antonovich also remains staunchly against the program, according to his health deputy, Kathryn Barger.

Unhappy with the county’s failure to take the lead in AIDS prevention, Los Angeles officials last year began distributing more than 100,000 bleach kits and condoms within city limits.

“We did it because people were dying and the county didn’t seem to care,” said the city’s AIDS coordinator, Phill Wilson.

With 11,534 cases reported as of the end of February, Los Angeles County ranked behind only New York City and San Francisco in the number of people known to have AIDS. Of those reported cases, 7,891--or 68%--have died since 1981.

In Los Angeles County, 4% of all AIDS cases have occurred among heterosexual intravenous drug users; another 7% have occurred among those homosexuals and bisexuals who also shoot drugs.

New York City’s bleach distribution program and an even more controversial handout of syringes were halted by Mayor David Dinkins soon after he took office last year, bowing to complaints of minority leaders who said the program contributed to drug use in their neighborhoods.

In San Francisco, city budget cutbacks have severely reduced the availability of bleach, which was first offered to drug users in 1986 through the Youth Environment Study (YES), a nonprofit organization.

YES director Harvey W. Feldman said that at least 250,000 bottles of bleach have been distributed during the last five years. But the program could become a victim of the city’s budget crisis. Feldman said its demise could translate into a tidal wave of AIDS cases.

Although Feldman said success of his program is difficult to measure, he said the percentage of addicts testing positive for the virus that causes AIDS has leveled off at 15% since the program began. He said outreach workers who distribute bleach win the trust of drug addicts, helping to coax many of them into treatment programs.

The distribution of condoms continues in both San Francisco and New York City, where municipal health workers passed out 4.5 million condoms last year.

John Schunhoff of Los Angeles County’s AIDS office said he did not know exactly when the program would begin here or how much it would cost. But he said that there is enough money in the county health budget. “Cost is not the issue,” he said.