The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) reminded us last week that public health issues among young gay men remain our biggest challenge.

The CDC reported that diagnoses of HIV and AIDS in gay men rose markedly from 2001 to 2006. It declined in other groups. The increase in infection was highest among males ages 13 to 24, with an annual increase of 12.4 percent (compared with 1.5 percent for men overall).

“It means roughly speaking that about half of the American AIDS epidemic is occurring among a few percent of the adult population. And the terrible trends we’re seeing among white gay men are even amplified further among minority men,” Dr. Robert Stall, an epidemiologist, told The New York Times.

In simple terms, young gay men (13-24) are becoming infected at a rate 10 times higher than gay men older than 24.

This is simple to explain. Those of us who experienced the beginning of the epidemic in the ’80s saw firsthand the effects of HIV infection. We didn’t have Pride parades; they were death marches, with the majority of parade entries consisting of various AIDS organizations.

So we among the older GLBT community know how important it is to take what precautions we can against contracting the disease. But young people are more complacent. They believe the disease can be managed with medications. As a result, young gay males today are more willing to participate in “risky sexual behaviors,” the CDC says, adding, “some [young] MSM may mistakenly believe that they or their partners are not infectious when they take antiretroviral medication or when they have low or undetectable viral loads.”

But the side effects (and costs) of medication are hardly benign. And although the disease isn’t as visible, that doesn’t mean the gay community is devoid of AIDS: A cure for the disease is elusive; there’s no vaccine to prevent it, and a condom is still the best preventive measure we have.

Methamphetamine use is equally as vicious a problem as HIV for our community. Let’s just hope billboard campaigns and ads in gay papers work, because the feds’ approach to controlling its usage is seriously lacking. “The U.S. government has taken a punitive, supply-side approach to methamphetamine for more than 40 years, and at every step of the way this approach has enriched organized crime, made street methamphetamine more potent, and worsened meth-related problems,” Bill Piper, the Drug Policy Alliance’s director of national affairs, said in a recent report on the subject.

The response of the present administration to HIV/AIDS prevention has been equally ineffective. Almost immediately upon taking office, Bush censored the most effective HIV-education programs because they were graphic and designed to reach sexually active young people. Rather than talking frankly about anal and oral sex, Bush officials and the then Republican-controlled Congress required sexuality programs to emphasize “abstinence until heterosexual marriage.”

So we need to stay abreast of how the federal government mandates the CDC and other organizations to use funding to create prevention strategies to the AIDS epidemic in the United States. A detailed Web cast about how much money (or how little – CDC funding has fallen by $200 million since 2006) the CDC receives, and how, where and why it spends it is available at: www.kaisernetwork.org/health_cast or visit www.cdc.gov to view budget documentation.

We also need to follow the example of more progressive countries’ response to the problem. While international health officials hope to stem the spread of HIV and other blood borne diseases via syringe exchange programs (SEPs), the United States has a different perspective. Although 36 states provide SEPs, many politicians believe they promote drug use. Consequently, the federal government prohibits federally funding them.