Clinic’s Experience Backs Needle Exchange Study : Health: Officials at Pacoima center say spread of AIDS is decreased and there is no increase in drug use. A panel has urged lifting the ban on funding such programs.

The news is not new--at least not for public health workers.

For years they have known what a prestigious medical panel recently concluded: Programs that provide drug users with clean needles help decrease the spread of the AIDS virus and do not increase illicit drug use.

“I’m not surprised by the results because other studies have reached the same conclusion,” said Maurice Weiner of the Tarzana Treatment Center, a private clinic that operates the Valley’s only needle exchange program--in a litter-strewn alley of Pacoima. Since it started about seven months ago, the program has seen the kinds of results reported in a study released this week by the National Academy of Sciences. About 300 drug users have brought their dirty needles to the alleyway near Glenoaks Boulevard and Paxton Street and exchanged them for clean ones. In all, about 17,000 needles have been swapped.

“The other way of looking at it is 17,000 dirty needles taken off the street,” Weiner said. “That helps to reduce the risk of HIV infection.”

Conducted at the request of Congress, the study concluded that needle exchange programs “should be regarded as an effective component of a comprehensive strategy to prevent infectious disease.” The panel urged federal officials to lift the ban on federal funding for such exchanges and encouraged states to repeal laws barring the sale and possession of injection paraphernalia without a prescription. Although the findings and recommendations bolster the position of public health workers who have long advocated needle exchanges as a means of stemming the spread of HIV, it is not certain what effect the findings will have on local programs.

Several proponents echoed Weiner, who said he hopes that the public “will be very much impressed with and moved by this study.”

“My sincere hope,” said Ferd Eggan, the city’s AIDS coordinator, “is that this will mean that the state of California will lift its ban on syringe exchange.”

“The governor has considered legislation that would have permitted a waiver of the state law about the requirement of prescriptions for needles three years in a row and vetoed it three times.” Eggan said. “I fear that our governor is motivated more by venal political considerations than by scientific truth.”

Nationwide, needle exchange programs have been highly controversial. In Los Angeles County, where a UCLA study documented about 14,000 drug users infected with the AIDS virus through needles, there are few programs. As in many other states, California law prohibits possessing hypodermic needles without a prescription. In the past, local needle exchange workers have been arrested.

Technically, needle exchange programs, including the one in Pacoima, are operating outside the law.

Just as lawmakers have resisted the idea, public opposition has persisted, even though other studies have demonstrated the value of such programs, said Douglas Longshore, a behavioral scientist who works for the UCLA Drug Abuse Research Center.

“It’s hard to be optimistic,” Longshore said. “I’m not an expert on the mood of the country, but the subject of drug use is so highly charged that people think needle exchange is condoning drug use, and that’s where their thinking stops.”

At the exchange in Pacoima on Thursday, workers from the Tarzana Treatment Center handed out clean needles and free advice to drug users who came on foot and by car to the group’s familiar white van. Health educators Mario Perez, Ester Ocon and Alex Adams sat near boxes of syringes, preparing safety kits filled with small bottles of bleach and water, cotton, condoms, lubricants and cookers. When they are available, users can choose from two types of syringes. Since February, the number of people using the program--mostly heroine addicts--has grown steadily while community concern seems to have calmed, Perez said. “When we first started, people were on their toes about having a needle exchange in their back yard,” said Perez, coordinator of HIV education and prevention programs for the Tarzana Treatment Center. “That’s dissipated. It’s become pretty routine for us to be here.”

As Perez spoke, Willie, a heroine user, dropped old syringes into a plastic bin on the ground and picked up new ones.

“Before this came into existence, this thing about sharing needles among people who use drugs around here, it [sharing needles] was common. People said, ‘The hell with catching AIDS.’ They needed an outfit,” Willie said, referring to the syringes. “They didn’t care where it came from.”