INDIANAPOLIS (AP) – Indiana’s incoming governor pledged Thursday to roll back some restrictions on needle exchanges that his predecessor, Vice President-elect Mike Pence, signed into law as part of the state’s response to its largest HIV epidemic.
Republican Eric Holcomb, who takes office next week, said he believes local officials – not the state – should be able to authorize needle exchanges, a move he characterized as a “prudent step.” Health experts, who criticized Pence’s response to the crisis, say exchanges can dramatically curtail deadly outbreaks by allowing intravenous drug users to swap dirty needles for clean ones.
“When we open the newspaper and you see the obituaries it’s heartbreaking and we know that this is just the tip of the iceberg,” Holcomb said during a news conference outlining an agenda for his first year in office. “We know it goes much, much deeper below the surface affecting our families.”
A spokesman for Pence, who backed Holcomb to succeed him as governor after Donald Trump tapped him for the Republican ticket, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In 2015, Scott County, in southern Indiana, saw the number of people infected with the HIV skyrocket, with nearly 200 people testing positive for the virus in a span of months. Indiana law at the time prohibited needle exchanges, exacerbating the outbreak, which primarily infected intravenous users of the painkiller Opana.