Sunday, July 26, 2009

313: Guns and Needles in 1994 Berkeley

313.

Published news story by Lurene Kathleen Helzer for East Bay Journal, January 18, 1994, “Guns ‘n needles in Berkeley”. Berkeley’s city council was taking a stand in favor of needle-exchange programs and gun control. California’s then-Gov. Pete Wilson did not support gun control laws or needle-exchange programs, according to the council. Gun laws have been on the books like beached whales for years. They can only affect those who obtain guns through conventional channels, through legal paths. These laws don’t affect the thug of East Oakland who murders his gang enemy with an illegal weapon. The witnesses of the murder are afraid to speak. It’s a worn story by 2009.

But the needle-exchange programs in 1994 were relatively novel. Health care professionals still say the needle-exchange programs lessen the spread of AIDS inside poor communities of major cities. Washington D.C. is reportedly the city with one of the highest HIV infection rates of the U.S., according to multiple sources.

As of 2009, AIDS has become sadly common in poor, African-American areas and in non-U.S. cities across the continent of Africa. Much of the HIV’s spread in the U.S. is due to heroin use with dirty needles.

Those drug users then spread HIV through unprotected sex with multiple sex partners. The sex partners, often women, either use drugs themselves or do not ask their partners obvious questions. Even if they do ask questions, they foolishly believe whatever they’re told. If it’s not that, they are prostitutes. Or they are married to men who cheat on them. Or they are sleeping with men who were just released from prison, men who were raped inside prison by the HIV-infected prisoners. Then, at the end of the line, the infected women have kids. Those babies are born with the virus.

The thing is, it’s a far, far uglier pandemic than people realize. It increases each year in black America and in the black populations across Africa. Activists in areas like Washington D.C. still like to say that stemming the epidemic is a matter of “public education,” but this is false in the United States.

People know quite well what spreads HIV and have known since the late-1980s. This is not to imply we should ignore the illness or cut education programs, but it’s really not about teaching people to wear condoms in Washington D.C. anymore.

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