Supervisors Halt Bleach, Condom Giveaway Plans

Los Angeles County supervisors, spurning the advice of their own health officials, refused Tuesday to let the county hand out to drug users either condoms or bleach kits to clean dirty needles as a means of preventing the spread of AIDS.

In an at-times emotional airing of the issue, the board turned down the controversial plan to provide county social workers with the bleach kits and condoms to distribute to drug addicts during on-the-street counseling sessions.

The county Commission on AIDS as well as the Department of Health Services and individual doctors had urged the supervisors to adopt the needle-cleaning and condom giveaways as a necessary strategy to limit the spread of the AIDS virus.

Led by Conservative Majority

But the supervisors, led by the board’s conservative majority, opposed the idea and said they feared it would send the wrong message.

“We’re creating an . . . illusion (of safe drug use) to those individuals who have a drug habit. . . . It’s a myth, and it’s only camouflaging the problem that we have,” Supervisor Mike Antonovich said.

That position was echoed by Supervisor Deane Dana, who said the program did not attack the real problems of getting people off drugs and protecting children of drug users. Supervisor Pete Schabarum also said he “could not in good conscience” support the idea.

In its place, the board voted 4 to 1 to conduct a study into other educational approaches to combat AIDS among intravenous drug users. The conservatives were joined by Supervisor Kenneth Hahn, who backed the study and drew the ire of Supervisor Ed Edelman, the lone supporter of the bleach kit proposal.

“This is a health issue vital to our community that we are ducking today, and I think the health of the public is being jeopardized,” said an angry Edelman, who criticized Hahn for backing the proposal two weeks ago and changing his mind.

Rabbi Allen Freehling, chairman of the Commission on AIDS, was equally adamant that the board was making “a dreadful mistake.”

“It is not that the commission lost a vote, it’s that the AIDS virus has won a vote,” said Freehling, who denied that the bleach proposal condones drug abuse.

“Lives are at risk, and lives are going to be taken as a direct result of the Board of Supervisors’ deciding not to take the kind of action that can possibly forgo the spread of the virus in this community,” he added.

The Commission on AIDS had proposed that county workers--who are scheduled Thursday to begin seeking out intravenous drug users to provide AIDS education material--be allowed to carry bleach kits that health officials estimate cost about 58 cents apiece.

If the program had been adopted, the workers, who are funded with state and federal dollars, would have distributed information on AIDS, passed out condoms and shown intravenous drug users how to clean their needles to avoid infecting one other.

The practices of sharing contaminated needles and engaging in sex without condoms have been blamed for the growing number of cases of AIDS infections in the heterosexual community. A dozen other cities and counties, including San Francisco, Orange and San Diego counties, have already adopted programs to distribute bleach kits, officials said.

Estimated 5% Infected

According to county health officials, about 5% of the estimated 125,000 intravenous drug users in the county have the AIDS virus--compared to about 60% of New York City’s estimated 200,000 intravenous drug users. Although the numbers in Los Angeles are considerably lower than in New York and other cities, supporters of the bleach-kit and condom plan warned that, without resorting to such precautions, the number of victims would rise sharply.

Dr. Robert Hurd Settlage, an obstetrician at Women’s Hospital, said he sees one or two pregnant women with AIDS every month--most of them infected through either intravenous drug use or by a partner who is a drug user. “If the rates continue, I will be seeing one or two a day, not one or two a month,” he said.

Not all of the public speakers were in favor of the plan.

A vocal contingent from South Los Angeles told supervisors that the vote was a political litmus test to see if supervisors would sanction drug use and homosexual activity. “We’ll know before this is over who’s standing for family values and who’s standing with the perverts, that’s for sure,” said Ezola Foster, chairwoman of the Black-Americans for Family Values.

Dana said later that he could back a bleach-kit plan if the Sheriff’s Department were part of it. However, Freehling and others said they were disturbed by board suggestions that social workers should help authorities identify drug users.

“I think what is being set up is social workers becoming police agents, and that defeats the purpose of the social worker being a health educator,” he said.