The global burden of death and disability attributable to drug users, remains a significant threat to public health for both developed and developing countries. This paper present a new mathematical modelling framework to investigate the effects of drug use in the community. In our model the transmission process is considered as a social contact process between the susceptible individuals and drug users based on the epidemiology principles. An epidemic threshold value, ܴ , is proposed for the drug-using career. Sensitivity analysis is performed on ܴ , and it is then used to examine the stability of the system. A condition under which a backward bifurcation may exist is found, as are conditions that permit the existence of one or more endemic equilibria. A key result arising from this model is that prevention is indeed better than cure.

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