Sam Friedman Presents at Argentina Ministry of Justice
On April 9, 2008, Dr. Samuel Friedman met Aníbal Fernández, the Minister of Justice, Security and Human Rights of Argentina, and gave a presentation to the "Ministerio de Justicia, Seguridad y Derechos Humanos, Comité Científico Asesor en Control de Tráfico Ilícito de Estupefacientes, Sustancias Psicotrópicas y Criminalidad Compleja."
This talk consisted of a summary of findings of the Community Vulnerability and Response to IDU-Related HIV project that suggest that: Metropolitan areas in the United States that arrest a greater proportion of their populations for heroin or cocaine possession do not later have lower proportions of injectors in their populations; nor are higher hard-drug arrest rates associated with decreases in drug injectors per capita; nor are increases in hard-drug arrests associated with decreases in drug injectors per capita.
Furthermore, metropolitan areas with higher rates of hard-drug arrests per capita in the mid-1990s had higher, not lower, subsequent rates of HIV prevalence among IDUs in 1998.
Subject to various limitations on these data and analyses, these findings suggest that drug arrests for cocaine and heroin do not deter injection drug use; may induce non-injection drug users to become injectors (because otherwise the removal of users from metropolitan areas to prison should decrease injectors per capita); and may lead to increased spread of HIV among drug injectors.
Thus, subject to these limitations, these findings suggest that these arrests do not achieve their purpose and may do considerable harm to the public health.
In the subsequent discussion, Dr. Friedman also presented evidence that drug users, both injectors and non-injectors, were more likely than non-users to be infected with a number of sexually-transmitted diseases. He suggested, and the committee seemed to agree, that it would be desirable to offer services to assist drug users at STI clinics and to offer STI services and sexual risk reduction at harm reduction and other treatment services for drug users.
Dr. Friedman is in Argentina as part of his ongoing collaboration with Diana Rossi and the Intercambios Civil Association around HIV prevention research and also as part of his participation in a Fogarty International Consortium project of Mt. Sinai (Debbie Indyk, Principal Investigator).
The Community Vulnerability and Response to IDU-Related HIV project is funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (R01 DA013336).
April, 2008