Even amongst the broader group of drug users

Even amongst the broader group of drug users, young IDUs have special problems with the law.
Their youth, often their status as juveniles and their marginalization often contribute to law
enforcement authorities being even more disrespectful, discriminatory and brutal than they
would be with drug users in general.
Many countries in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union attempt to control injecting drug use
through harsh, inappropriate measures. The police in some countries round up young people suspected
of drug use to search for needle marks (known as “tracks”) or force them to be tested for HIV.
Those who test positive have their drug use and HIV status officially registered with the police.
These measured not only have failed to reduce the negative health and social consequences of
drug abuse but have forced IDUs further underground, encouraging needle sharing and other risky
behaviours [12].
For these reasons, IDUs are frequently referred to as a “hard-to-reach” population. To maximize
the chance of success for HIV prevention, it is important to reach drug injectors in the street
and in the places where they congregate, to use former or current drug users as peer educators
and to win the cooperation of law enforcement officials so that outreach strategies and
programmes are tolerated. These approaches will be discussed in section two.
Finally, UNAIDS [5] emphasise three main reasons to single out young people for HIV/AIDS
prevention:
The special vulnerability of young people to the epidemic. Of all those infected after
infancy, at least half are young people under 25.
Young people account for hundreds of millions of people in the developing world, where
the epidemic is concentrated. If HIV prevention in this huge youthful population fails,
developing countries will have to face the staggering human and economic costs of vast
numbers of adult AIDS cases.
Working with young people makes sense because they are a force for change. They are
still at the stage of experimentation and can learn more easily than adults to make their
behaviour safe or to adopt safe practices from the start. Young people can change the
course of the epidemic.
Drug use patterns
Different parts of the world see different patterns of drug use and different trends regarding
which drugs are most commonly used. The chart below is not meant to be an exhaustive list of
all drugs injected around the world and only provides an indication of the relative popularity of
two drug groups. It is essential to remember that increasingly, injected abuse of prescription
drugs is also becoming important.