Many people who inject drugs begin before 18, while they are still legally minors/children. This age group has not been a specific focus in youth harm reduction research. We explore thresholds for service access for under 18s who inject drugs from the perspectives of both people who inject drugs and service providers. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 19 people in Sweden, Switzerland and Wales who began injecting drugs before turning 18, exploring their experiences at the time, and the interviews were analysed thematically. Common themes across the three countries were age barriers, fear of discovery, informal harm reduction strategies, the appropriateness of adult services and difficulties in the transition to adulthood. Focus groups were conducted with harm reduction, drug treatment and social work professionals, and analysed deductively based on the previously generated themes. Despite local differences in law and policy, thematic commonalities across three high-income settings provide important points of departure when considering barriers to and enablers of access to services for under 18s who inject drugs.
Barrett et al. (Fri,) studied this question.