Scott County has been introduced to the nation in the most unwelcome — even scary — way these past few weeks.
It is at the center of an epidemic spread of HIV, the human immunodeficiency virus that is a precursor to acquired immune deficiency syndrome — AIDS.
The outbreak, which already has spread to other southern Indiana counties, including Jackson County at the southeast tip of Monroe County, has been traced almost exclusively to the sharing of needles by users of illegal drugs.
By late last week, the count of new HIV cases traceable to needle sharing was approaching 150, and predictions are that number likely will climb.
AIDS, once a mystery illness that killed millions (and still does in underdeveloped countries), remains an incurable threat but advances in treatment and drug therapies have turned it into a long-term chronic disease for many, one requiring costly and constant attention but which doesn’t take the same deadly toll it did in the later decades of the 20th century.
Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, who opposes needle exchange programs on the principal that they encourage illegal drug use, wisely paid attention to health authorities who raised the alarm about the current outbreak and suspended enforcement of the ban in Scott County for a month, which he since has extended for another month.
H-T staff writer Lauren Slavin reported last week that there are certain public health markers that can predict the arrival of HIV transmission via shared needles in a particular county. They include increasing numbers of fatalities from illegal use of prescription drugs, heroin use in the community and the number of reported hepatitis C cases, which also is frequently transmitted among users of illegal drugs when they share needles.
Such markers are present in many Hoosier counties, including Morgan, Monroe, Greene and Brown counties, Slavin reported. That puts us on the front line of the HIV battle, only a short step behind Scott County.
Use of illegal drugs certainly causes great damage to individuals, to families and to neighborhoods. It costs lives and immense numbers of dollars in enforcement efforts and treatment, as well as in lost earnings of those cursed with addiction.
It seems counterintuitive, then, to offer new, clean hypodermic syringes, no questions asked, to those who almost certainly will use them to shoot up.
But the data show that it works, not only slowing the spread of disease but reducing drug use itself. That’s why Pence suspended the ban. That’s why he should lift it across the state and work to change the law.
It also is well past time for us all to rethink this nation’s drug connection and begin discussion of alternatives to the decades long failure to effectively address this monumental problem primarily as a criminal justice problem rather than the social disaster it is.