House, White House back end to federal needle exchange funding ban

During the primaries, one of the policy differences between Obama and Clinton was that Obama supported an end to the federal ban on funding needle exchange programs. That's great; those programs have been proven to reduce HIV infection rates, and there's sound evidence that they get drug users into treatment programs and connect them with social services. The opposition is the standard conservative response to a program dealing even tangentially with drugs: this will subsidize drug abuse. There's no evidence that it increases drug abuse rates, but, hey, being conservative means not having to care about the facts. Full story...