Obama Afraid of Needles?

President Barack Obama has not included in his proposed budget a pledge to lift a federal ban on funding for needle exchange. During the primary campaign Obama came out in support of needle exchange as a way to reduce the spread of HIV/AIDS. "The President will support common sense approaches" to promoting AIDS prevention, the White House website previously boasted. "The President also supports lifting the federal ban on needle exchange, which could dramatically reduce rates of infection among drug users."

Now, however, that pledge has been removed from the website. A White House spokesman told the Huffington Post that the administration isn't quite ready to lift the ban, but that Obama still supports needle exchange. "We have not removed the ban in our budget proposal because we want to work with Congress and the American public to build support for the change," spokesman Ben LaBolt said. "We are committed to doing this as part of a National HIV/AIDS strategy and are confident that we can build support for these scientifically-based programs" -- they're just not that interested, apparently.

Meanwhile, also included in the proposed budget is the so-called Barr Amendment, which blocks Washington, D.C., from implementing a medi-pot law that voters there passed in 1998. At the time, then-Republican Georgia Congressman Bob Barr was so irritated by the 70% voter approval for the measure that he authored the amendment which would strip the District of all funding if officials tried to implement the voter-approved measure. Ironically, in March 2007, Barr changed his tune, joining the Marijuana Policy Project as a lobbyist in order to press for the repeal of his own amendment. So far, it would seem, he hasn't gotten very far.