Undeterred, Ms. Shalala called on charities to fund needle exchange programs and commissioned National Institutes of Health experts to provide needle exchange training. Mr Clinton later said that he regretted his decision.
When Mr. Biden was elected, addiction experts were ecstatic. The US bailout plan, the coronavirus relief package it signed last year, has earmarked $30 million for a new Harm Reduction Grant Program “support community overdose prevention programs, needle exchange programs, and other harm reduction services.”
This was the first time that Congress had created a special grant for often-budgeted harm reduction programs, and the grant program was exempted from a long-standing ban, renewed annually in spending measures, on using tax dollars to buy clean needles. Some experts thought the ban could be lifted permanently.
“We are finally getting to the point where this ban is lifted, we will see resilience, we will see a massive shift in our current state of infectious diseases,” said Chad Sabora, Vice President of Government and Public Affairs at Indiana. Recovery center, treatment center. He called the new controversy “heartbreaking”.
Safe smoking kits are often distributed by syringe maintenance programs and often include glass rods that serve as pipes, as well as lip balm, alcohol swabs, rubber tips, and other items to protect against mouth ulcers and cuts that can spread disease. The guidelines for the new federal grant program do not specify whether kits can include pipes.
The law is hazy; but law 1986 classifies crack pipes (but not needles) as narcotics and prohibits their sale or shipment. Ms LaBelle said the law and similar state laws could possibly prevent the government from funding the glass legs that serve as pipes.
After the Free Beacon controversy, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said the glass pipes “were never included,” insisting the story was untrue.