To the chagrin of progressives everywhere, the Obama budget was released last month without any alteration to the 20-year old ban on funding needle-exchange programs.

According to White House Spin Meister Ben LaBolt:

“We have not removed the ban in our budget proposal because we want to work with Congress and the American public to build support for this change.”

The Obama White House is making an appeal here to higher minded politics by claiming to put the needle exchange debate on the floor of Congress instead of obscuring it in the murky land of Omnibus. Unfortunately, there are several problems with this approach:

Firstly, if Republicans have been waging political war through the budget for the better part of a decade, Dems are ceding a great deal of ground by refusing to go back and revise it. A budget provision to ban needle exchange funding is inherently political, in itself. We’re not talking about a grey area where funding can vary administration to administration. This is a prohibition on federal support for all time until the ban is lifted.

Secondly, wasn’t the Obama budget already hailed as a political statement? Obama’s first address to Congress repeatedly stressed the budget’s importance in setting a new national agenda. Health care, renewable energy, and education funding were hammered into the budget as a direct statement of purpose by the new administration. Therefore, we can only assume that Obama is selectively choosing what budget items to play politics with and what not to. This is exactly what Bill Clinton did on this issue in 1998, when a lifting of the needle exchange ban became a victim of political negotiations and remained intact.

The new dialogue on drugs in this country (as embodied by Obama and Kerlikowski) is supposed to dispose of the crusader’s ‘moral’ approach to the problem. In point of fact, there is no moral approach to the problem. What people choose to put in their own bodies is not a moral issue, it’s a public health issue. And public health officials have been crystal clear on the benefits to having these clean needle programs.

The premise of this program is mind numbingly simple. Needle exchange reduces the spread of HIV, and thereby reduces suffering and death. No one on either side of the political aisle disputes this. Any stance that opposes needle exchange, therefore, fosters an increase in HIV and deaths. If that’s the moral approach to the issue, then I’m a monkey’s uncle.

Originally posted on The Fresh Scent

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