AEGiS-APPJ: Drug Users' Organizations and AIDS Policy AIDS & Public Policy JournalImportant note: Information in this article was accurate in 1988. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
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Drug Users' Organizations and AIDS Policy

AIDS & Public Policy Journal 3, no. 2 (1988): 30-36
Samuel R. Friedman and Cathy Casriel

In their response to the AIDS epidemic, gay men have greatly benefited their communities by setting up organizations to provide services for the ill and to struggle within their group for risk reduction. These groups also fight for social and medical policies to protect gays from discrimination and stigmatization. Intravenous (IV) drug users have failed to organize in a similar manner. Neither have the heterosexual partners of IV drug users organized to deal with the epidemic. The absence of self-organization by IV drug users and their partners has probably greatly impeded attempts to reduce the spread of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection. Collective self-organization of drug users does not seem impossible.
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