Needling the Mayor

"I can't risk my job for jail time," he says.

Fear of the law keeps Houston-area needle-exchange advocates from starting a program. Don Hollingsworth, the public safety adviser to Mayor Brown and a former analyst at the Office of National Drug Control Policy when Brown was drug czar, concedes that needle-exchange programs can be "useful." But Texas law would have to change before the city could support such a program, he says.

"I would favor anything that would reduce the incidence of HIV, except violate the law," says the former police officer. "We certainly should see what we can do to modify the law."

Hollingsworth says the decision to lobby lawmakers for changes would have to come from Police Chief C.O. Bradford and District Attorney Chuck Rosenthal.

Neither Bradford nor Rosenthal returned calls from the Houston Press.