Little attention has been paid to the initiation of others into injecting [15]. One small study of a brief intervention to prevent initiation to injecting found that 40% of the 86 IDU interviewed had initiated a mean of two people to injecting [26]. Crofts et al. found that 47% of recently initiated IDUs had also initiated another into injecting and of those who had, few informed new initiates of BBVI risk [20]. The relationship between initiators' BBVI status and risk behaviour was not reported, so it was not possible to determine whether those engaging in risky behaviours were more or less likely to initiate others to injecting. Moreover, the study focused on young or recently initiated injectors, so the role of age and experience in initiating others to injecting was unable to be determined.
