Asserts the conservative Republican columnist in Maryland, in response to documentary "The Other City": "'The Other City' is about a depressing topic: The horrendous rate of HIV infection in the nation’s capital, which the film’s producers tell viewers is higher than that in both Port au Prince, Haiti and Dakar, Senegal. If it weren’t for the silly finger-pointing that goes on in 'The Other City' about who’s responsible for Washington, D.C.’s high HIV infection rate, the producers would have one darned fine film. But the usual culprits are dragged out, and they are who you expect them to be."
Mr. Kane takes Washington Post columnist Colbert King and Rep. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.) to task for claiming that a congressional ban on a needle exchange program for the city’s heroin addicts is at fault for D.C.'s high HIV rate: "One of the ways HIV is spread is through addicts sharing contaminated needles. Give ‘em clean needles, the thinking goes, and they won’t get HIV. It’s a quaint idea, and downright silly. Injecting a controlled, dangerous substance like heroin into your veins is, almost by definition, an irresponsible act. Heroin addicts are, by definition, irresponsible people. A needle exchange program assumes that people who are by definition irresponsible are, all of a sudden, going to behave responsibly. That may happen in the alternate universe where King and Norton live, but it doesn’t happen here. Why would addicts suddenly be willing to accept clean needles to inject heroin? Because they don’t want to die? If that’s the case, then why are they injecting heroin in the first place?"
More: "Drug addicts DO fatally overdose on heroin. While high, they may harm themselves or others. And a fatal overdose can be injected with a clean needle as well as one contaminated with HIV. THAT’S why there was a congressional ban on a needle exchange program in the nation’s capital. That, and the good old American notion that people who choose to engage in dangerous, risky, irresponsible conduct aren’t entitled to do so on the taxpayers’ dime."
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GREGORY KANE COMMENTARY: Needle Exchange Programs Reward Risky Behavior
