Due to the data of the Ministry of Justice of the Republic of Serbia, over 70% of persons being in prisons and serving their sentences are drug addicts, and 50% of them are drug users. In the European prisons, the percentage of persons using drugs in the entire prison population is 20-70%, and in the USA 70-80%, in the Australian prisons between 50 and 80% of the convicts in prisons are addicts...

This study aimed at investigating the relationship between the use of unprescribed licit and illicit drugs and problematic drinking with reported depressive symptoms and suicidal behaviour in a nationwide general population sample of 4291 respondents aged 12 to 64. Depressive symptoms were detected by the use of the Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression Scale (CES-D). A higher proportio...

BACKGROUND The proportion of Australians aged over 65 years is increasing. Although screening and treatment for alcohol and drug issues has traditionally focused on those aged less than 65 years, there is growing evidence of alcohol and drug related harm among older people. OBJECTIVE This article broadly discusses our current understanding of alcohol and drug problems among people aged over 6...

BACKGROUND There is good evidence to suggest that performance and image enhancing drug (PIED) use is increasing in Australia and that there is an increase in those using PIEDs who have never used another illicit substance. Peers have always been an important source of information in this group, though the rise of the Internet, and the increased use of Internet forums amongst substance consumers...

In 1997, 248 urban university students in central Massachusetts rated responsibility for addiction using the Attributions of Responsibility for Addiction Scale (ARAS), developed for this study with university-based financial support. The vignette-based factorial design varied sex of drug user and type of addictive substance. Factor analysis yielded two subscales: internal and external responsib...

Reaching hard-to-reach and high-risk injecting drug users (IDUs) is one of the most important challenges for contemporary needle syringe programs (NSPs). The aim of this review is to examine, based upon the available international experience, the effectiveness of syringe vending machines and mobile van/bus based NSPs in making services more accessible to these hard-to-reach and high-risk groups...

Injecting drug users (IDUs) play an important role in spreading HIV as amply documented in several developing countries (1). India has also experienced a similar type of HIV spread among IDUs, which was detected for the first time in Manipur, a northeastern state of India bordering Myanmar, in 1990 (2). Soft tissue infections, including abscesses and cellulites, are the major complications, whi...

OBJECTIVE To review the ethical and legal implications of the involvement of medical practitioners in workplace screening for drug misuse. CONCLUSIONS Workplace screening for drugs of abuse raises many ethical issues. If screening is considered as being part of medical practice with the involvement of occupational health physicians, as suggested by the Faculty of Occupational Medicine, then t...

This study compares drug patterns and prevalence of risk behaviors in a randomized trial using two methods of administration, Audio Computer-Assisted Self-Interview (ACASI) and Interviewer-Administered Questionnaire (IAQ), among drug users seeking treatment in a drug treatment center. We randomized 735 participants: 367 to ACASI and 368 to IAQ. No significant difference in sociodemographic vari...