Friends and lovers: needle sharing in young people in Western Australia

The Youth AIDS and Drugs (YAD) Study is a study of young people who inject drugs, and their risk of the transmission of HIV through needle sharing and/or unsafe sex. One hundred and five people, aged less than 21, 75% of whom were current or recent injectors, undertook in-depth interviews which were tape recorded, transcribed and analysed qualitatively. This paper focuses on the ways in which the young people in the group attempted to manage the risk of needle sharing. Needle sharing in the study group was not common behaviour. Almost all injectors employed one of four major Risk Management Strategies some of which included the possibility of sharing unbleached needles with a friend or a lover. These strategies were strongly related to beliefs that such friends and lovers were well enough known by the individual for there to be very little risk. The implications of these findings for health promotion with young people who inject drugs in Perth, a city of low IDU seroprevalence, are outlined.