"Single-use" needles and syringes for the prevention of HIV infection among injection drug users.

Providing single-use injection equipment to persons who inject illicit drugs would appear to be an effective method for reducing HIV transmission. However, interviews with manufacturers, syringe exchange program staff, and drug users revealed numerous difficulties with such a technologic solution. All designs for such equipment can be defeated and should probably be called difficult-to-reuse equipment. There are problems with consumer acceptance of difficult-to-reuse equipment and with safe disposal of large amounts of biohazardous waste. Despite these problems, it would be useful to conduct additional research, particularly on the potential for placing difficult-to-reuse equipment into shooting galleries.