Norton Letter to Emerson and Serrano Requests Maintaining D.C. Local Needle Exchange and HIV/AIDS Funding

Press Release

Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC), joined by 31 of her House colleagues, sent a letter this week to House Committee on Appropriations Subcommittee on Financial Services and General Government Chairwoman Jo Ann Emerson (R-MO) and Ranking Member José Serrano (D-NY) to urge the committee to maintain the current D.C. needle exchange language in fiscal year 2013 and to request funds for the Office of National AIDS Policy (ONAP).

Norton and her colleagues asked the committee to maintain the fiscal year 2012 appropriations language regarding the District's needle exchange programs, which allows D.C. to use its local funds for needle-exchange programs unless local public health or local law enforcement authorities deem a site to be "inappropriate." Preventing the D.C. needle-exchange rider, which would ban D.C. from using its local funds for needle exchange, from being re-imposed in fiscal year 2013 continues to be at the top of the Congresswoman's agenda because D.C.'s program has been remarkably successful since Norton got the rider removed in 2008, showing a 60 percent drop in the number of HIV/AIDS cases in D.C. attributable to injection drug use in the first two years. Before Norton got the D.C. needle-exchange rider removed in 2008, the HIV/AIDS rate in D.C. had jumped to first in the nation, and thousands of residents died or were infected because of the rider.

Norton and her colleagues also requested $1.4 million for ONAP to ensure the implementation of the National HIV/AIDS Strategy (NHAS), which is designed to reduce the number of people who become infected with HIV, increase access to care, optimize health outcomes for people living with HIV, and reduce HIV-related health disparities.

"Thirty years after the first reports of HIV, the epidemic continues needlessly to grow in the United States. The most needless loss of life and increase in infection occurred in the District of Columbia because Congress usurped the local government's right to spend its local funds to benefit its own local citizens. Only by getting the rider removed in 2008 have we begun to take on a disproportionate cause of the epidemic in this city," Norton said. "Life-saving anti-retroviral drugs are enabling more people to live longer, healthier lives, but an increasing number also require access to care, medication, and support services. This means doing several things at the same time -- preventing this preventable virus with safe sex, testing, and treatment and care for those who need it."

When the fiscal year 2012 omnibus spending bill passed in December 2011, Emerson and Serrano met their public commitment to add HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment funding for the District in the final bill, even though it was in neither the House nor Senate spending bill.

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