Hawaii teens admit to injecting illegal drugs
Everyone’s got a story about a scar they got when they were young.
Casper’s scar doesn’t come from falling off a bike or getting scraped up at the playground.
It’s from the first time he injected.
“This is my first track line,” the 25-year-old said, pointing to his arm.
Casper, whose last name Hawaii News Now is not using, started using in high school about a decade ago but didn’t shoot up until graduation.
“I was alone and wanted somebody to spend time with. I didn’t have a lot of friends so drugs were an easy in to that circle,” he said. “It helped. But it robbed me of my ambitions.”
And Casper’s story isn’t unique.
In fact, it illustrates a deadly habit that’s becoming more common among Hawaii youth.
According to new state Department of Health figures, 1,200 public high school students admitted to injecting illegal drugs last year. Meanwhile, 2,000 public middle school students (7 percent) said they’d shot up.
Both numbers put Hawaii well above the national average.
“These middle schoolers. We’re talking real young. How they even got to know how to use a needle and do that was really surprising to me,” said Heather Lusk, who heads up the state’s largest syringe exchange program.
Over the past year, the Hawaii Health and Harm Reduction Center safely disposed of 1,068,621 dirty needles in an effort to prevent the spread of HIV and other diseases.
