A New Shot at Life : In defiance of the law, a tiny army is on the streets, getting drug users to swap dirty needles for clean ones. : The goal: curbing the spread of AIDS.

Aman with a blood-filled hypodermic dangling from his arm is running down Burlington Street yelling, “Wait! Wait! I’m almost done.”

As he yanks the needle from the vein, his eyes roll back as he feels the rush. “ Ooooahhh, “ he moans and, with surprising precision, drops the hypodermic through the small opening of a red waste bucket.

“Thang youuuu ,” he slurs.

“Thanks for coming by,” chirps a volunteer for Clean Needles Now, and hands him a paper bag of new needles.

One more dirty needle off the streets.

For almost a year, tiny bands of soldiers in the fight against AIDS have quietly removed tens of thousands of dirty needles from the streets of Los Angeles. And with each transaction, they have broken the law.

Despite a growing body of evidence that such programs slow the spread of HIV among intravenous drug users, needle exchanges--legal in New York City, Philadelphia, Chicago, San Francisco and many other cities--are outlawed in Los Angeles.

Last fall, Gov. Pete Wilson added to the confusion by vetoing a bill that would have legalized pilot exchanges throughout California, attacking the plan for “threatening the credibility” of the state’s anti-drug efforts.

The governor missed the point, says Neil Klasky, an attorney and founding member of Clean Needles Now. “We can’t say the goal is ending drug abuse because until there is treatment on demand that is not going to happen. But you never know when some addicts might just get hooked on health. . . .”

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Debbie is only 28 but you wouldn’t know it from her hands. They are bony and red, the delicate skin on top bruised and scarred from too many injections with needles dulled by use.

“I started shooting with my boyfriend about seven years ago, but I’m not really good at it--as you can tell,” says Debbie, holding out her hands.

Every Tuesday about 5:30 p.m., she waits on a littered sidewalk at Burlington Street near Wilshire for the needle exchange team to arrive.

As the old Jeep pulls into its usual parking spot, a crowd materializes out of the shadows and surrounds Debbie. By the time exchange coordinator Renee Edgington and four other volunteers have set out their wares along the curb, a neat line has formed.

“This is a good idea,” says Debbie, pleased to be first in line. “A lot of people think it’s bad because they’re like influencing us. But they’re not. They’re just helping us. Without this, the whole block could be using one needle.”

AIDS enters the heterosexual population primarily through shared needles. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than one-third of reported AIDS cases in the United States are attributed to intravenous drug use. And as the virus races through the drug-using community, among the hardest hit are women and children.

Eight months ago, Debbie began bringing her needles--and her friends--to the needle exchange. Before that, she and the others bought used hypodermics on the street for $2 to $5.

Now, as a result of referrals from the needle exchange, Debbie is on a waiting list for one of the county’s overburdened detox programs.

Public health officials estimate that as many as 190,000 people in Los Angeles County inject illegal drugs on a regular basis. That volume is exceeded only by New York City’s 200,000.

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Clean Needles Now has nearly exhausted its meager first-year budget of $36,000. The money, spent strictly for supplies, was raised by a 1992 benefit concert sponsored by the gay activist group ACT-UP/LA.

No longer associated with ACT-UP, the needle exchange--the only one of its kind here--depends on volunteer staff and private contributions to continue its work.

The exchange reaches only a sliver of the city’s drug-injecting population. On any Tuesday, close to 100 men and women will use the exchange instead of getting their needles on the street.

Some come by public transportation, stepping off the 6:30 bus at the corner. Some drive in. A pair of young men in fashionably baggy shorts and turned-around baseball caps pull up in a shiny new Toyota truck. Others come from neighboring street communities, pushing grocery carts heaped with soda and beer cans.

One man carries his house with him. A volunteer quickly moves him to the front of the line. “Hurry up and give this man his points (needles). He’s got a sofa on his head.”

All have come, as one puts it, “for our health.”

The line of users moves along a row of turquoise Rubbermaid bins. One bin holds tiny bottles of bleach, another holds small bottles of sterile water. In another are foil-wrapped alcohol swabs and one is overflowing with “safe shooting kits”--a sampler with one of each item and an instruction sheet for using the supplies.

“Help yourself,” a volunteer urges a newcomer. “Take from each bin, as much as you want. Take what you need.”

An elderly man walks by slowly with an inebriated young woman on his arm. “Wouldn’t you like some condoms?” suggests a bold volunteer, offering a fistful.

As volunteers hand out supplies, police cruise by in black-and-whites trying to see--but not see--what’s going on.

Sometimes, beat cops stop addicts and snap their clean needles in two. Once, police searched the exchange’s converted mail truck, which was filled with needles, but arrested no volunteers. Some addicts say they have been arrested right after they’ve picked up their clean needles.

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More than 2,000 needles will be exchanged before the Jeep leaves at dark. To swap their used needles for an equal number of clean ones, users must present a program-issued ID card. Those new to the program with nothing to swap are limited to two clean needles.

Ruby, who is a regular, usually takes 20 needles, which will last a week. Program volunteers--among them recovered addicts, social workers, artists, musicians--say her story is typical of those who use the program.

“How long have I been using?” Ruby ponders when asked by a reporter. “Let’s see now. How old am I? Thirty? Well then, I’ve been using 15 years. Yes, 15 years. And, you can write this down: I have lost everything. My husband, four children. Everything.”

On more than one occasion, Ruby says she has also lost her clean needles to overzealous beat officers who confiscated her paraphernalia during a search for drugs. “That just about killed me.”

To support her heroin habit, Ruby panhandles. “I don’t sell my body though. Not like some of the girls are forced to do.” She lives “nowhere special” along this miserable street, hawking oranges, cereal, old clothes, anything she is handed or comes across in the trash.

Not long ago, she entered a detoxification program. “But the kick was so hard I just couldn’t do it. But I want to quit. I gotta quit before it’s too late. . . . “

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All needle exchanges offer information and referrals to drug treatment programs, but that is not their goal. “We’re not here to end drug abuse on the streets,” says Edgington. “That is beyond us. What we’re here for is to slow the spread of AIDS.”

But sometimes the program does help people quit, or at least cut back.

Tim, 38, with a long unkept blond beard and shoulder-length hair, thanks the needle exchange for helping him whittle his $200-a-day habit to $30 a day. He supports himself with handouts from motorists.

“I hold a sign up on the freeway: ‘Work for food. Vietnam vet.’ Ya know?” says Tim. “I tell the people I’m going to use some of what they give me for my habit and use some to live on. Most folks understand. . . . “

People like Tim who use the exchange regularly say they’ve been shooting drugs an average of 10 to 15 years. Tim says he’s been using cocaine, and more recently heroin, for about 20 years.

Milton, a 31-year-old man who lives beneath a stack of old sofas on the street, says he “definitely feels healthier now that I’ve got clean needles.” Still, he wishes he could quit the $100-a-day habit that he says keeps him unemployed. “If I could just walk into a clinic and get saved, I would. But you can’t do that here.”

In Los Angeles, there are just 43 publicly funded drug detoxification beds. And even the publicly funded methadone maintenance programs require a $100-$200 cash admission fee. A few programs use private contributions to waive those fees but the wait can be weeks long, which is “impossibly long,” according to addicts like Ruby and Tim.

But Milton is still hopeful. When he awakens in his plaid-upholstered shelter, he says, “I actually look forward to getting up.”

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There are at least 32 needle exchanges operating nationwide and public health experts believe they are making a difference. Even the clandestine exchanges, like the Los Angeles program, have attracted significant numbers of addicts and stopped them from sharing needles.

In 1992, Yale University researchers reported that an exchange program in New Haven, Conn., had reduced new HIV infections by 33% in less than a year. That program, like Clean Needles Now, relied on a van cruising through neighborhoods where drug users lived and handed out 200-250 needles a day.

By the end of the first year, about 100 of New Haven’s estimated 2,000 intravenous drug users had received treatment or other drug-related health services through the exchange. At least half of New Haven’s street addicts are believed to be infected with the AIDS virus.

The success of the New Haven program prompted New York City Mayor David Dinkins to reverse his once-firm opposition to needle exchanges and lend his support to four pilot projects that have gone on to enroll more than 5,000 New York City addicts.

Some critics who believe needle exchanges breed addiction have had their minds similarly changed. Research here and abroad by the World Health Organization has found no evidence that making clean needles available makes people want to shoot up.

California is one of 10 states in the nation that makes possession of hypodermic needles without a prescription a misdemeanor. But no needle exchange workers in Los Angeles have been arrested.

“Whether they admit it or not, the police know this is a law without conscience,” says coordinator Edgington, “and that what we’re doing is right.”

Los Angeles police will say only that they are obliged to enforce all laws, even the controversial ones. And when asked to support specific measures to decriminalize needle exchanges, they have restated their opposition to any changes in the law that could be interpreted as giving tacit approval to drug ingestion, according to Lt. Sergio Diaz of the Narcotics Group.

Some critics of needle exchanges say handing a sterile needle to an addict is like handing a loaded gun to a killer. Others object to the message it sends, a concession to the hopelessness of ever getting people off drugs.

But such logic is lost on the street, where even savvy addicts cite studies showing needle exchanges not only discourage needle sharing, but also provide a bridge to treatment for addicts who want to quit.

As for encouraging drug use, one exchange volunteer shakes her head. “That’s like saying if you took away all the condoms, people would stop having sex. Not very likely, is it?”