Bexar County awaits AG opinion on needle-exchange program
Project to prevent spread of disease legal only in Bexar, yet isn't
Monday, March 24, 2008
SAN ANTONIO – Bill Day uses his shoe to brush aside a couple of used needles littering the ground near a concrete arroyo in a seedy west side neighborhood.
The 73-year-old lay chaplain said he used to work with drug addicts at this spot all the time. He'd park the white minivan paid for in part by St. Mark's Episcopal Church and throw open the trunk.
Sickly and desperate and dying, they'd swarm him as he directed them to places to get help and gave them clean needles in an effort to keep them from spreading HIV and hepatitis C.
Now, the red-haired retiree, himself living with AIDS for the last decade, is awaiting word on whether he'll land in jail for a year for administering a program that has been legalized in every state in the nation but Texas.
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