"Nationwide, 1.5% of students had used a needle to inject any illegal drug into their body one or more times during their life (Supplementary Table 129). The prevalence of having ever injected any illegal drug was higher among male (2.0%) than female (0.8%) students; higher among white male (1.4%), black male (2.6%), and Hispanic male (2.1%) than white female (0.5%), black female (1.1%), and Hispanic female (0.9%) students, respectively; and higher among 9th-grade male (2.1%) and 10th-grade male (1.9%) than 9th grade female (0.6%) and 10th-grade female (0.6%) students, respectively.

"High-risk opioid users are a heterogeneous group that includes marginalised drug users with long-standing ‘careers’ of heroin use, as well as socially included persons who became addicted to opioids through excessive consumption of prescribed pharmaceuticals. The description of high-risk opioid use does not include stable patients in opioid substitution treatment (OST) or others using pharmaceutical opioids in accordance with a doctor’s prescription. Patients in OST who misuse prescribed drugs or other opioids than the prescribed one(s) shall be included, however.

"The joint UNODC/WHO/UNAIDS/World Bank estimate for the number of people who inject drugs (PWID) for 2014 is 11.7 million (range: from 8.4 to 19.0 million), or 0.25 per cent (range: 0.18-0.40 per cent) of the population aged 15-64.

"Hepatitis C is associated with more deaths in the United States than 60 other infectious diseases reported to CDC combined. Despite curative hepatitis C virus (HCV) therapies and known preventive measures to interrupt transmission, new HCV infections have increased in recent years (1,2). Injection drug use is the primary risk factor for new HCV infections (2). One potential strategy to decrease the prevalence of HCV is to create and strengthen public health laws and policies aimed specifically at reducing transmission risks among persons who inject drugs."

"In terms of the historical development of this intervention, the first supervised drug consumption room was opened in Berne, Switzerland in June 1986. Further facilities of this type were established in subsequent years in Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, Norway, Luxembourg, Denmark, Greece and France. A total of 78 official drug consumption facilities currently operate in seven EMCDDA reporting countries, following the opening of the first two drug consumption facilities in the framework of a 6-year trial in France in 2016.

"In the thirteen-year (2004–2016) combined sample of young adults aged 21–30, 1.5% report having ever used any drug by injection not under a doctor’s orders, and 0.5% reported doing so on 40 or more occasions (Table 4-1a). Thus, about 1 in every 67 respondents has ever used an illicit drug by injection, and about 1 in every 200 respondents reports an extended pattern of use as indicated by use on 40 or more occasions. There is a fair-sized gender difference -- 2.3% of males vs. 0.9% of females indicate ever injecting a drug.

"• The proportions of 21- to 30-year-olds who say they have ever shared needles in this way during their lifetime are 0.5% overall—0.6% of males and 0.4% of females (bottom of Table 4-1). As noted in the previous section, 1.5% of the full samples say they have ever injected a drug, so this indicates that a minority—but still a third (0.5%/1.5%)—of the people injecting any of the several drug classes mentioned in the question (heroin, cocaine, amphetamines, and/or steroids) shared a needle at some time.

"• In the fifteen-year (2004–2018) combined samples of young adults aged 21–30, 1.5% report having ever used any drug by injection not under a doctor’s orders, and 0.5% reported doing so on 40 or more occasions (Table 4-1a). Thus, about 1 in every 67 respondents has ever used an illicit drug by injection, and about 1 in every 200 respondents reports an extended pattern of use as indicated by use on 40 or more occasions. There are appreciable gender differences—2.2% of males vs.

Click here for the complete datatable of Characteristics of SEPs Participating in Beth Israel Medical Center/North American Syringe Exchange Network (NASEN) Surveys, 2004-2011

"Overall, the number of PWID per 10,000 persons aged 15–64 years varied from 31 to 345 across MSAs [Metropolitan Statistical Areas], median 104.4 (mean 127.4; standard deviation 66.7; percentile range 76–162) in 1992 and from 34 to 324 across MSAs, median 91.5 (mean 103.6; standard deviation 56.4; percentile range 61–125 ) in 2007 indicating an overall decline in PWID prevalence across MSAs.