There is increasing international concern about the health needs of older drug users. The European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction recently released a briefing paper titled Substance use among older adults (http ://www. emcdda. europa. eu/attachements. cfm/att_50566_EN_TDAD0800 lENC_web.pdf) and a conference was held in Glasgow in November 2009 titled Responding to the 'Trainspotting Generation'-An Ageing Problem (http://www.sdf.org.uk/sdf/482.html). In response, the International Harm Reduction Association has also scheduled a plenary session on this issue at its 2010 conference (http://ihraconferences. com/2010/sessions.php?presentations=show). Despite this emerging profile, little is known about the needs of this population and, in particular, the impact of long-term injecting drug use on health outcomes. While small studies of the health needs of older opiate users have been conducted in North America [1,2] and the UK [3], there is a significant gap in understanding how patterns of ageing and drug use co-occur.
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