February 1, 2010
NEWS STORY
N.Y. Catholic Charities office to offer free needles to drug addicts
By Daniel Burke
(RNS) Catholic Charities of Albany, N.Y., has launched a new program to provide free syringes to intravenous drug users, an unusual move for a church that preaches abstinence for overcoming drug addiction and stanching the spread of HIV/AIDS.
After five years of studying the program, “Project Safe Point” began in two urban locations on Monday (Feb. 1) in the Upstate New York diocese. The project will be funded by $170,000 in grants from New York State.
Sister Maureen Joyce, CEO of Catholic Charities of the Diocese of Albany, said in a statement: “We view this new direction as an extension of our mission to serve the poor and vulnerable.”
Albany Bishop Howard Hubbard approved the needle program, according to the diocese. In a statement, the diocese acknowledged that it may appear to be complicit in drug use, but argued that providing disease-free needles is the lesser of two evils.
“To guide us, the church provides us with the principles of licit cooperation in evil and the counseling of the lesser evil. The sponsorship of Catholic Charities in Project Safe Point, then, is based upon the Church’s standard moral principles,” the diocesan statement reads.
While a number of secular social service agencies—including 17 in New York—maintain syringe-exchange programs, the project is thought to be a first for a Catholic Charities agency. A request for information from Catholic Charities USA, the national headquarters for 1,700 Catholic Charities institutions and agencies nationwide, was not answered immediately.
Medical studies have documented that needle-exchange programs effectively reduce the spread of blood-borne diseases such as HIV/AIDS and hepatitis C. According to New York State Health Department studies cited by the diocese, in 1990, 50 percent of new AIDS cases were caused by drug use. By 2004, after the introduction of needle-exchange programs, just 7 percent of new AIDS cases were linked to intravenous drug use.
The programs, however, are often politically volatile. Until 2007, Congress banned the District of Columbia from spending money on needle-exchange programs; the Democratic-controlled Congress recently lifted a 21-year ban on federal funding for such programs.
On Monday, Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes of Health, praised that move, saying such programs have been “scientifically proven to reduce HIV transmission among injection drug users and serve as a gateway to treatment for drug addiction, HIV and other diseases.”
The Albany policy, however, appears to contradict the U.S. bishops’ own teaching. In a 1987 policy statement, U.S. bishops said sexual abstinence outside of marriage and “avoidance of intravenous drug abuse are the only morally correct and medically sure ways to prevent the spread of AIDS.” That statement was later reaffirmed in 2003 by a top Vatican official.
And in a 1990 statement on AIDS that was re-printed in 1997, the U.S. bishops said: “Although some argue that distribution of sterile needles should be promoted, we question this approach for both moral and practical reasons.”
The bishops expressed concern that, given access to free needles, fewer drug users might be prompted to seek treatment; poorly monitored programs could lead to the use of infected syringes; and the program itself could send the message that drug use is safe.
The Albany diocese said the intent of the program is “not to skillfully craft loop holes in our moral obligations ... but to illuminate how we should act to minimize our participation in evil while still discharging our ministry to others in an imperfect world.”
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