California and the West : Davis to OK Revised Needle Exchange Bill : Legislation: After veto threat, governor says he will sign compromise on distributing syringes. ‘We are not approving it. We are just not interfering with local decisions,’ he says.

After first threatening to veto a bill authorizing hypodermic needle exchange programs across California, Gov. Gray Davis said Wednesday that he will sign a much narrower version that protects local needle programs from criminal liability.

Communities most affected would be Los Angeles and San Francisco, which have already established such programs under emergency health declarations.

Davis, who believes that programs providing clean syringes to known drug addicts send the “wrong signal to our youth,” nonetheless decided to decriminalize programs instituted by individual cities or counties.

“The state is not sanctioning it,” Davis said in an interview Wednesday. “We are not approving it. We are just not interfering with local decisions.”

Under current laws, needles are classified as drug paraphernalia and supplying them without a prescription is a misdemeanor. Large cities such as Los Angeles, where there is widespread support in the police community for needle exchanges, have ignored the law, contending that such programs were necessary because of the AIDS health crisis.

But advocates have argued that some city and county governments are unwilling to establish needle programs until ambiguities in the law are resolved.

“The lack of legal clarity has had a chilling effect on several communities in California that have previously indicated support in some type of program,” said Regina Aragon, policy director for the San Francisco AIDS Foundation, which operates the largest needle exchange in the country, annually supplying more than 2.1 million syringes to more than 5,000 addicts.

Governments considering such programs, Aragon said, include those in Sacramento, Contra Costa County, Long Beach and Santa Clara.

“What I am prepared to do,” Davis said, “is sign a bill that will preclude any state prosecution of public employees or their agents acting in good faith pursuant to a locally declared public health emergency.”

The compromise disappointed supporters of the bill, AB 518, offered in this session of the Legislature and passed by the Assembly and Senate.

“The devil is in the details,” said Aragon. “It will be very important for any compromise to send a very clear message to those local communities who want to do needle exchange that these programs are both legal and appropriate.”

The original bill, by Assemblywoman Kerry Mazzoni (D-San Rafael), was similar to bills vetoed on three occasions by former Republican Gov. Pete Wilson. Mazzoni’s bill called for a more comprehensive program that would combine needle exchange with treatment for drug addiction.

The bill also eliminated the cumbersome mechanism that requires cities to issue emergency health declarations to establish needle programs. States with similar needle exchange policies include New York, Washington, Maine, Vermont, Massachusetts and Connecticut.

Mazzoni said Wednesday that the new language drafted in extensive negotiations with the governor and his staff was not perfect but at least represented some progress in a sensitive policy decision that pits the concerns of people with one disease, AIDS, against the scourge of drug addiction.

“Our bill was too expansive for the governor, but we needed some sign of progress in this area,” Mazzoni said. “The modified version of the bill would provide a safe haven for cities and counties and protect them from criminal liability.”

Under the current scheme, Mazzoni has withdrawn her bill from consideration and will offer the new version as an amendment to another bill before the Legislature, where it is expected to succeed.

Significantly, the compromise version solved a political problem for Davis who, in his efforts to steer a middle course in public policy, senses a huge gap in attitudes on the subject between the state’s urban coastal and rural interior electorates.

“There are clearly competing considerations at work here,” Davis told The Times. “I feel the people best able to resolve that conflict are at the local level. It makes no sense up here for the state to decide what is best for San Francisco or what is best for Atwater [in the San Joaquin Valley].”

According to legislative sources, Davis has agonized over the needle bill for the last three days, trying to find a way out of a veto.

“The problem is that in San Francisco,” said a source close to Davis, “a guy can dress himself up like a syringe and pass needles out in the park. The same thing doesn’t work in the Central Valley.”