Drug use contexts and HIV-consequences: the effect of drug policy on patterns of everyday drug use in Rotterdam and the Bronx.

Epidemiological data on HIV seroprevalence has been essential in assessing the (future) extent of the AIDS epidemic. By coupling these data with quantifiable variables related to injection drug use (frequency of injecting, number of needle sharing partners) specific 'risk behaviors' could be determined, accounting for the rapid spread of the virus in the injecting drug user (IDU) population. Yet, such data give little information on the social mechanisms and setting generating such risk behaviors.

Reaching the unreached: targeting hidden IDU populations with clean needles via known user groups.

Needle exchange is a practical and important part of the Dutch prevention strategy to check the spread of HIV among injecting drug users (IDUs). However, needle-exchange programs are often tied to drug treatment programs that only reach a limited number of IDUs. To overcome this limitation, alternative designs are considered and initiated.

Needle sharing in The Netherlands: an ethnographic analysis.

Background: Needle sharing has been reported to be the main cause of the rapid spread of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) among injecting drug users. Risk behaviors such as needle sharing are, however, the end result of complicated interaction patterns in drug user networks, which have their specific rules and rituals, and larger social structures and official drug policy.

Methods: To study these interaction patterns we examined the drug administration rituals of heroin addicts in Rotterdam, The Netherlands.

Changing cocaine smoking rituals in the Dutch heroin addict population.

Recently the use patterns, circumstances and consequences of cocaine have become of interest to both researchers and policy makers in Europe. Currently only a few studies have been conducted of the social epidemiology of cocaine. In this article, focus is placed upon the use of cocaine in one subpopulation, heroin addicts.

Drug sharing and HIV transmission risks: the practice of frontloading in the Dutch injecting drug user population.

Injecting drug users may now be the largest group at risk for contracting HIV, mainly through the sharing of drug injection equipment (including lending, borrowing, and renting). This article presents the results of an ongoing ethnographic study into the drug-taking rituals of heroin addicts. A possible additional route of HIV contamination is presented, namely the ritual sharing of drugs through a practice termed "frontloading," which is embedded in a broader pattern of the sharing of resources among addicts.