Clere and Hill joust: "Should needle-exchange programs be part of Indiana's fight against opioid abuse?"

From Indianapolis Business Journal's "Forefront" supplement (November 13, 2017) comes this point/counterpoint segment, featuring two prominent Indiana Republicans: Attorney General Curtis Hill and State Representative Ed Clere.

Should needle-exchange programs be part of Indiana's fight against opioid abuse?

Hill says no; Clere replies yes. If you have a subscription to IBJ, you can skirt the paywall and view this article. If not, go here.

Mike Pence minced in The New Yorker: "(Ed) Clere remains bitter about Pence."

Together occasionally, if not forever (photo credit).

Yesterday there was just enough time for us to fire off a link and tease readers a little bit.

In the NAC posting "Be careful what you wish for: 'The President Pence Delusion,' including a pivotal cameo by a New Albanian we all know," a long and very worthwhile read in The New Yorker was linked.

The President Pence Delusion, by Jane Mayer (The New Yorker)

Trump’s critics yearn for his exit. But Mike Pence, the corporate right’s inside man, poses his own dangers.

 ... (Vice President Mike) Pence likes to say of himself, “I am a Christian, a conservative, and a Republican, in that order.” But Clere is not alone in questioning Pence’s political purity.

Yes, the questioner in question is none other than State Representative Ed Clere, the New Albanian we know so well, whose cameo is a critical component of an essay no doubt being consumed nationally even as I write.

Here is the passage.

---

In 2015, Ed Clere, a Republican state legislator who chaired the House Committee on Public Health, became aware of a spike in the number of H.I.V. cases in southern Indiana. The problem appeared to be caused by the sharing of needles among opioid abusers in Scott County, which sits across the Ohio River from Louisville, Kentucky. In a place like Scott County, Clere said, “typically you’d have no cases, or maybe one a year.” Now they were getting up to twenty a week. The area was poor, and woefully unprepared for a health crisis. (Pence’s campaign against Planned Parenthood had contributed to the closure of five clinics in the region; none had performed abortions, but all had offered H.I.V. testing.) That same year, the state health commissioner called Indiana’s H.I.V. outbreak a public-health emergency.

Clere came of age during the AIDS crisis, and had read Randy Shilts’s best-selling account, “And the Band Played On.” He tried to get the legislature to study the possibility of legalizing a syringe exchange, which he felt “was a matter of life and death,” and could “save lives quickly and inexpensively.”

But conservatives blocked the idea, and Pence threatened to veto any such legislation. “With Pence, you need to look at the framework, which is abstinence,” Clere said. “It’s the same as with giving teen-agers condoms. Conservatives think it promotes the behavior, even though it’s a scientifically proven harm-reduction strategy.” In March, 2015, Clere staged a huge public hearing, in which dozens of experts and sufferers testified about the crisis. Caught flat-footed, Pence scheduled his own event, where he announced that he would pray about the syringe-exchange issue. The next day, he said that he supported allowing an exchange program as an emergency measure, but only on a temporary basis and only in Scott County, with no state funding. Clere told me that he spent “every last dime of my political capital” to get the bill through. After Scott County implemented the syringe exchange, the number of new H.I.V. cases fell. But Republican leaders later stripped Clere of his committee chairmanship, a highly unusual event. “I commend Representative Clere for the efforts to help the state deal with this,” Kevin Burke, the health officer in neighboring Clark County, told me. “But he paid a price for it.”

Clere remains bitter about Pence. “It was all part of his pattern of political expediency,” he said. “He was stridently against it until it became politically expedient to support it.” Clere, a Christian who opposes abortion, told me that he now finds Pence’s piety hypocritical. “He says he’s ‘pro-life,’ ” Clere said. “But people were dying.” When Clere was asked whom he would rather have as President—Trump or Pence—he replied, “I’d take Trump every day of the week, and twice on Sunday.”

Prayer, needles and Pence. Radical Christian extremists, be gone.

Mike Pence: Radical Christian Extremist (photo credit Patheos)

"In the face of a growing epidemic, Mr. Pence put aside his own moral opposition to giving syringes to drug users to allow a needle exchange program."
--- New York Times

I'm of the generation unable to read these words without recalling a beloved, iconic Ronald Reagan, steadfastly ignoring the AIDS epidemic not for a few months, but more than a few years.

I'm of the secular cohort unable to fathom why prayer is required to interpret science.

I'm of the local constituency of Ed Clere's, who gets good (and deserved) press here, and will be getting my vote this November in his bid to serve a fifth term in the Indiana House.

Mike Pence’s Response to H.I.V. Outbreak: Prayer, Then a Change of Heart, by Megan Twohey (NYT)

AUSTIN, Ind. — On the evening of March 24, 2015, Sheriff Dan McClain got an unexpected voice mail: “This is Gov. Mike Pence calling. I would welcome the opportunity to get your counsel on what’s going on in Scott County.”

What was going on was unprecedented in Indiana and rare in the United States: H.I.V. was spreading with terrifying speed among intravenous drug users in this rural community near the Kentucky border. Local, state and federal health officials were urging the governor to allow clean needles to be distributed to slow the outbreak.

But Indiana law made it illegal to possess a syringe without a prescription. And Mr. Pence, a steadfast conservative, was morally opposed to needle exchanges on the grounds that they supported drug abuse.

And this:

On March 23, more than two months after the outbreak was detected, Mr. Pence said he was going to go home and pray on it. He spoke to the sheriff the next night.

Two days later, he issued an executive order allowing syringes to be distributed in Scott County.

But this:

State Representative Ed Clere, a Republican who was among those pushing the governor to approve the needle exchange, said he was relieved when Mr. Pence finally did so. He also wished it had been done sooner. “It was disappointing that it took so much effort to bring the governor on board,” Mr. Clere said.

Yes, disappointing. I'll be praying that Pence loses the national race, too. Forget Trump; I'm worried about Indiana foisting its state nightmare on the country at large.

"Indiana could have avoided HIV outbreak," but Mike Pence was busy being all fundamentalist and shiz.

"Indiana could have avoided HIV outbreak," but Mike Pence was busy being all fundamentalist and shiz.

As an opening aside, best wishes to Lexy Gross as she decamps for law school. She's been doing a fine job covering our area for the C-J.

In this, one of her last dispatches, we are reminded that Mike Pence enjoyed governing from the pages of his Old Testament, and it took sensible members of his own party -- our own Ed Clere -- to treat matters of public health as ... exactly what they are.

Clere and Zoeller instrumental in Pence's needle exchange turnaround.

Which reminds me: I need to get to work on that endorsement of Clere for re-election.

Indiana could have avoided HIV outbreak, study shows, by Lexy Gross (C-J)

Not only was the nationally publicized HIV crisis in rural Indiana last year preventable, but other U.S. communities are at high risk for nearly identical outbreaks, according to a recently released study from the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine.

The study also reveals contradictions between what Indiana public health officials think is best for the state and the policies currently in place.

And:

(Indiana Governor Mike) Pence signed an executive order in March 2015 that allowed Scott County to implement an emergency needle exchange for 30 days, although he still expressed his opposition of the programs. In May of that year, Indiana Rep. Ed Clere, R-New Albany, wrote legislation ending Indiana's ban of syringe exchanges while chairman of the House public health committee. Counties can apply to start a needle exchange program after declaring a public health emergency due to rising HIV or hepatitis C cases.

Clere and Zoeller instrumental in Pence's needle exchange turnaround.

I never hesitate to lob grenades when the GOP goes off the rails (see "Pence, Mike"), so lest we forget, two prominent Indiana Republicans from right here in Floyd County were instrumental in doing the right thing in Scott County.

HAYDEN: Conservatives changed Pence’s mind on needle exchange, by Maureen Hayden (CNHI)

 ... Back in early March, as HIV numbers spiked in Scott County, Pence stopped state health officials from distributing “harm reduction” kits stocked with needle-cleaning supplies such as bleach, cotton, and alcohol wipes.

By the end of the month, conservative Republicans from communities near the HIV epicenter had convinced him that the situation was dire enough to set aside ideology.

They pushed him to take a first step — declaring a 30-day emergency that cleared the way for a limited exchange in Scott County wherein health officials could get clean needles into the hands of HIV-infected drug users.

Pence resisted.

House Public Health Committee Chairman Ed Clere, R-New Albany, wanted more. He filed a measure to let local health officials expand needle exchanges to other communities where IV drug use is fueling a fast rise in Hepatitis C — a blood-borne disease that often accompanies HIV.

Pence continued to resist.

To counter Pence’s argument that needle exchanges enable drug users — an argument echoed by prosecutors — Republican Attorney General Greg Zoeller went public with his support.

“I’m not going to have anybody put to death with HIV just because they’ve broken the law,” said Zoeller. By the time he made that statement, he had been lobbying both lawmakers and the governor’s staff to support Clere’s needle exchange bill.

Politically, Pence is a waste of human flesh. Kudos to Clere and Zoeller for being human. Every little bit helps, doesn't it?