Mission accomplished: Two years of eye-catching bus-stop posters have gotten the message out to gay New Yorkers that if you “Buy Crystal!” you can “Get HIV Free!” Now, the anti-crystal methamphetamine campaign is going national. A full-page ad in today’s New York Times urges gay leaders around the country to take a stand against the buzzy, judgment-skewing drug. It’s also intended, its authors say, to extend the message beyond the urban club scene and out to rural and immigrant communities where crystal has also taken root—and may soon show the same HIV connection.

“We want to say to all groups: ‘Challenge crystal’s destruction out of love for your community,’ ” says Dan Carlson, a founder of the Crystal Meth Working Group, the group behind the Times ad. He argues that it’s time for the gay community to exercise broad national leadership on this drug problem the way it did when the AIDS epidemic first exploded in the 1980s.

According to the United Nations, 35 million people worldwide smoke, snort or inject the highly addictive substance, which commonly loses users their jobs, families and more. In the U.S., between 15% and 20% of gay men are estimated to have used it, many of them as part of round-the-clock, condomless sex parties that invite transmission of HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases. Dennis deLeon, president of the New York-based Latino Commission on AIDS and one of 34 prominent gay signers of the Times ad, cites a recent study showing that 62% of gay Latino clubgoers use crystal meth—and notes that most of them are HIV positive.

There are signs that HIV might be a problem for straight users too. Steve Suo, who authored a series of articles in the Oregonian about crystal use in that state, told POZ that police raids on users (and makers) have turned up clear evidence of heterosexual group sex. And the federal Centers for Disease Control recently reported a study in Northern California showing that straight male meth users were more likely than nonusers to have frequent unprotected sex, including anal intercourse, thus putting them at higher risk for HIV.

Perry Halkitis, director of New York’s Center for Health, Identity, Behavior & Prevention Studies, says certain straight communities may be more vulnerable to the HIV-crystal connection than others. “Because HIV rates are more pronounced in black [heterosexual] communities,” he says, “that group is vulnerable to infection, paralleling gays.”

Carlson says the intent of today’s Times ad is to start making connections between the otherwise distant worlds affected by this drug. He says, “We hope other communities will see how the gay community has taken on this problem and know that they can do it, too.”

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