By voting a motion which radically contradicts the proposal to intervene in order to curb the diffusion of AIDS among drug addicts with the distribution of clean needles in exchange for dirty ones, the Lombardy Region has chosen to maintain the unfortunate primate of the region with the highest percentage of HIV infection and AIDS. The Socialist Party and the lay parties, which had suggested a compromise which could have been accepted by all the signers of the original project, have once again proved to be victims of the converging clericalisms of the Christian Democrat Party's Left Wing (Patrizia Toia) and of Comunione e Liberazione (town councillor Simone). Once again, the presumption and the arrogance of an intolerant minority, that feels it can impose it own moral principle (either abstinence, from heroin and sex, or death) to other people at all costs, has prevailed over the sanitary policy and over the pragmatism which must characterize it.

And yet, even Toia and Simone know that AIDS affects drug addicts with the exchange of dirty needles, and that it is all but impossible to change this habit. The experiments carried out in Amsterdam and Liverpool confirm it: in The Netherlands, only 8% of drug addicts are HIV-positive, whereas in Liverpool, thanks to 6 years of an effective sanitary policy, the percentage of HIV infection has dropped almost to zero. But in Lombardy, in the name of virtue, the authorities accept an incredible and ever increasing number of AIDS infected drug addicts and a catastrophic 70% share of HIV-positive patients among drug addicts, without doing anything, and in fact refusing measures suggested by the World Health Organization and by the Health Ministers of the European Community.

Fortunately, today Lombardy is an isolated case in Italy: the prevention campaign on AIDS will soon be started, with the distribution of clean needles, mobile units and automatic needle-dispensing machines in several other regions (from Piedmont to Liguria, from Latium to the Abruzzi) and in several other municipalities (first of which Milan).