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Study finds sharing is a necessity, not a ritual.


 Anthropologist Steven Koester of the University of Denver has determined that drug users are eager for sterile injection equipment, but are forced to share because anti-paraphernalia laws make it too risky for them to carry their works. Sharing needles has been regarded as a ritualized bonding experience in the drug subculture, dating back to a study of heroin users in San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury District in the 1970s. The only studies since then have focused on what addicts knew about AIDS transmission and prevention. A 1991 study indicates that 98 percent of drug users were aware that HIV could be transmitted through shared needles, although 70 percent reporting sharing. However, Koester's 1994 study of heroin addicts found that addicts went to the nearest place to shoot up following a purchase, and frequently had to use each other's equipment. His work has been cited by a National Academy of Sciences panel that called for legalizing over-the-counter sales of needles and syringes. Legalization in Connecticut has resulted in a forty percent drop in sharing syringes among injection drug users.
