Needle-exchange program hits roadblock

Pilot in Bexar County would have been Texas' only legal program.

State lawmakers who want to allow needle-exchange programs in Texas vowed to try again in 2009 after an attorney general opinion issued Monday cleared the way for a case against three activists in Bexar County who passed out clean syringes.

Attorney General Greg Abbott wrote that program participants "appear to be subject to prosecution" under the Texas Controlled Substances Act, which outlaws possession of drug paraphernalia.

"We were stopped dead in our tracks," said Bexar County Judge Nelson Wolff, who supported the needle-exchange program, which sought to reduce infectious diseases, such as HIV, by providing clean syringes to drug addicts.

Three members of a pilot needle-exchange program adopted in Bexar County, the Bexar Area Harm Reduction Coalition, were charged in February with possessing drug paraphernalia.

Bexar County District Attorney Susan Reed had warned local officials that legislation authorizing the program wouldn't shield participants from drug paraphernalia laws.

"Our decisions were not based on some philosophical or moral judgement," said Cliff Herberg, first assistant district attorney for Bexar County. "We are bound to follow the law as it is written, and this appeared to be a faulty piece of legislation."

He said the case against the workers — Bill Day, Mary Casey and Melissa Lujan — will move forward. Each could get up to a year in jail if convicted.

Neel Lane, an attorney for the coalition, said the opinion "reached an absurd conclusion ... that the Legislature somehow may have intended to criminalize the conduct of the people who carried out the program."

Texas is the only state that does not allow such programs, according to state Sen. Bob Deuell, R-Greenville, a doctor who tried unsuccessfully to pass a statewide program in 2007.

State Rep. Ruth Jones McClendon, D-San Antonio, said the legislation authorizing the pilot program was clear. She got the program added to a major Medicaid bill last year after a proposed statewide version died in a House committee. Deuell and McClendon both said they plan to fight for a statewide needle-exchange program during the legislative session that begins in 2009.

"We could have saved thousands of lives and saved the taxpayers millions of dollars if the program had been implemented in the way the Legislature clearly intended," McClendon said.

cmaclaggan@statesman.com; 445-3548

Additional material from The Associated Press.