IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/aph/ajpbhl/19968681161-1166_0.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The legal strategies used in operating syringe exchange programs in the United States

Author

Listed:
  • Burris, S.
  • Finucane, D.
  • Gallagher, H.
  • Grace, J.

Abstract

Objectives. This study sought to identify the strategies used by syringe exchange programs to establish their legality. Methods. Statutes, court decisions, published studies of exchange programs, and news stories were reviewed, and telephone interviews were conducted with syringe exchange personnel. Results. Twenty-seven exchanges have been authorized by amendments to or judicial interpretations of state drug laws or by administrative action under such laws, or operate in a stale that has no laws regulating needles. At least 13 programs operate under claims of legality based on local interpretations of state law, principally public health law. The remaining syringe exchanges operate without a claim of legality. Conclusions. The deployment of syringe exchanges has been hindered by concerns about their legal status. This study shows that the applicability of drug laws to syringe exchange is open to dispute, and that local public health authorities may under some circumstances rely on their own legal authority to fund or operate syringe exchange programs.

Suggested Citation

  • Burris, S. & Finucane, D. & Gallagher, H. & Grace, J., 1996. "The legal strategies used in operating syringe exchange programs in the United States," American Journal of Public Health, American Public Health Association, vol. 86(8), pages 1161-1166.
    • Handle: RePEc:aph:ajpbhl:1996:86:8:1161-1166_0
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. James F. Anderson & Kelley Reinsmith-Jones, 2017. "Opioid Addiction in Rural North Carolina: A Criminal Justice and Public Health Issue," International Journal of Social Science Studies, Redfame publishing, vol. 5(7), pages 42-53, July.
    2. Anat Gofen, 2015. "Reconciling policy dissonance: patterns of governmental response to policy noncompliance," Policy Sciences, Springer;Society of Policy Sciences, vol. 48(1), pages 3-24, March.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:aph:ajpbhl:1996:86:8:1161-1166_0. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Christopher F Baum (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.apha.org .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.