"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.

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

Prevalence of HIV Among Injection Drug Users in Australia: "The prevalence of HIV among people who inject drugs in Australia has remained low at 2.1% or less since 1995. The prevalence of HIV in 2011 was 1.2% (Figure 46). HCV prevalence among this group was much higher at 61% to 62% from 2005 to 2008, however this figure was lower at 53% 2011 (Figure 46) (Iversen and Maher, 2012)."

"The monitoring of hepatitis C in Norway was intensified from 1 January 2008. The notification criteria were changed so that all laboratory-confirmed cases of hepatitis C must now be reported to MSIS. Previously, only acute illness had to be reported, and this resulted in a very inadequate overview of the real incidence of the disease in the country. In 2013, 1,318 cases of hepatitis C (both acute and chronic cases) were reported.

"In the period 1995–2008, a considerable increase in hepatitis B among drug users nationwide was reported to MSIS. In 2013, four of a total of 30 reported cases of acute hepatitis B involved injecting drug users. During the period 1995–2013, the total number of reported cases of acute hepatitis B infection among injecting drug users was 1,980. Hepatitis B vaccination has been offered free of charge to injecting drug users since the mid-1980s."