According to several reports (1,2,3)

wtf.jpg
young people in South Africa are using Sustiva to get high. Not too surprising- we have seen people using it in the US to get high for years.

The media however just can’t seem to get a handle on how to report these kinds of stories. One story never mentions the name of the drug- leaving the reader with the impression that any HIV drug could be ground up and smoked to get high. The most recent story- from ABS News,  story claims the drug is highly addictive- which is certainly not true when one takes it as an ARV, but in any case, this claim is made with no evidence to back it up. Of course, a bit of hysteria and demonization gets thrown in to the mix- with one headline calling the users ’thugs’ and making claims that the problem is sweeping through communities across South Africa- with very little actual reporting to back it up.

It is also funny how this story keeps cropping up. The first of these stories was published almost 2 years ago, another in 2008 and the ABC story just last month. Each article treats this as a new story, with no context whatsoever.