U.S. Spends Millions To Promote Condoms In Asia

In a deplorable waste of taxpayer dollars, the U.S. government has spent millions to promote condom use among injecting drug addicts in a Central Asian country known for illicit drug production and opiate consumption.

The National Institutes of Health has actually given an Ivy League university professor more than $2 million in federal funds to study methods that could help combat the spread of AIDS, Sexually Transmitted Infections (STI) and Hepatitis C among intravenous drug users in Kazakhstan, a former Soviet socialist republic that serves as a main route for Russia and Europe bound narcotics. Another goal is to “reduce unsafe injection practices” among junkies.

This unbelievable waste of public resources was exposed this week by a conservative news organization, which links the Columbia University Social Work professor’s description of the study on the U.S. Department of Health website. The goal is to “rigorously test the efficacy of an innovative, couples-based HIV/STI risk reduction intervention to decrease new cases of HIV and Hepatitis C and incidence of sexually transmitted infections as well as to reduce unsafe injection practices and increase condom use among injecting drug users and their heterosexual, intimate partners in Shu, Kazakhstan.”

Indeed, a noble cause but most likely one that doesn’t create a sense of urgency for most Americans. Regardless, the studies were funded by the U.S. government over three years with the first chunk of cash—$676,058—coming in 2008. In 2009 Uncle Sam forked over $670,914 and $670,212 this year for a grand total of $2,017,184 to entice druggies thousands of miles away to use condoms.

The professor, Nabila El-Bassel, convinced the government to fund her project by claiming that a “sharp increase in injection drug use” has led Central Asia to experience one of the world’s fastest growing AIDS epidemics and that there is a “race to develop and implement” effective AIDS interventions for injection drug users and their sexual partners to stem the spread of the deadly disease in Central Asian towns along “drug trafficking routes.” Eligible participants in the U.S.-funded study must have at least one partner report “unsafe injection and unprotected sexual intercourse in the past 30 days.”