AIDS Impact on the Number of Intravenous Drug Users

For more than a decade the size of the intravenous (IV) drug-using population was relatively stable, but AIDS has changed that by increasing the exit rate and (probably) decreasing the recruitment rate. We created two mathematical models to make quantitative predictions about this change. The first is a simple descriptive model; the second takes a more detailed look at needle sharing. Both come to the same conclusion; barring other changes, AIDS will substantially reduce the number of IV drug users, perhaps by 50 percent or more. This implies that AIDS has changed the baseline against which one should measure the success of policies designed to reduce the number of IV drug users.