This week the House Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies stripped from a spending bill language barring federal funding for syringe exchange programs. The ban has been renewed every year during the congressional budget process since it was first instated over a decade ago.

The funding freeze on syringe exchange is one of the pillars of the modern drug war, and ending it is essential step in dismantling the war on drugs and restructuring drug policy through the lens of public health.

If Congress votes to lift the funding ban on syringe access it would end a more than decade-long betrayal of the American people, whose government promised it was doing everything possible to quell the spread of HIV while, year after year, it was renewing a ban on programs that could have prevented thousands from contracting the virus.

On the practical level, ending the funding ban would provide states with the resources to expand their syringe exchange programs and serve more people, more effectively. Nearly a third of HIV/AIDS cases are related to injection drug use, and currently, states can use none of the federal money allotted to them for HIV prevention to enhance syringe exchange programs.

The syringe exchange funding ban is an ugly law. It has survived because of a callous disregard for the lives of injection drug users on the part of many lawmakers, who have defended the ban without acknowledging the wealth of scientific evidence that syringe access programs lead neither to an increase in drug use nor to the recruitment of new users.

There are still some hurdles to clear before the funding ban is repealed - the appropriations bill could come up in the full House Appropriations Committee next week, and the Senate still hasn’t finalized it’s version of the legislation - but the move by the House subcommittee to take out the prohibitive language shows a promising attitude shift in Congress.

Currently, the federal government is one of the major obstacles to effective HIV prevention in the U.S. It's about time Congress stepped out of the way and allowed states to proceed with programs that protect their citizens. I'm hopeful that ending the funding ban will create momentum in Congress for a more comprehensive reexamination of failed drug war policies.