Psychoactive substances are subject to law control, imposed through the system of medical prescription or legal prohibition, with penalties for their unauthorized use. The consumption drugs in a non-medical contexts is often labelled as "drug abuse", and substance used this way “narcotic” - term endowed illegality (Goodman et al. 2017). While legal, popular discourses attempt establish distinct...

OBJECTIVES Energy drink (ED) sales have increased greatly in recent years and ED is now a common topic in health behavior research. Most studies work with samples of college students and/or young adults and to a lesser degree with high school students. Research is lacking on ED consumption in younger users. The purpose of this study was to fill this gap and assess the prevalence of ED consumpti...

conclusions this study showed that mmt did not markedly alter the concentration of serum adiponectin in drug abusers. however, in regard to the variations in the serum lipid profiles and anthropometric parameters, the findings indicated that low concentrations of serum adiponectin might play a role in the pathogenesis of obesity and other metabolic abnormalities. thus, more long-term studies wi...

OBJECTIVES This article reviews the evidence on the adverse health consequences of low socioeconomic status, homelessness, and incarceration among drug users. OBSERVATIONS Social and economic factors shape risk behavior and the health of drug users. They affect health indirectly by shaping individual drug-use behavior; they affect health directly by affecting the availability of resources, ac...

INTRODUCTION Illicit drug users (DUs) are vulnerable to hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection. The shared use of illicit drugs is the main method of HCV transmission. METHODS A cross-sectional study was conducted in Breves, in northern Brazil. We surveyed 187 DUs to determine the prevalence of and factors associated with HCV infection. RESULTS The prevalence of anti-HCV antibodies was 36.9%, an...

BACKGROUND Globally, adults aged 65 years or older will increase from 516 million in 2009 to an estimated 1.53 billion in 2050. Due to substance use at earlier ages that may continue into later life, and ageing-related changes in medical conditions, older substance users are at risk for substance-related consequences. METHODS MEDLINE and PsychInfo databases were searched using keywords: alcoh...

She has published extensively on organized crime, drugs, and illegal markets. In the 1990s, she served as consultant to the Italian Ministries of the Interior and Justice and the UNODCCP. The decade following the breakdown of the Soviet Union has registered a rapid growth of illegal drug use and trade in Russia. Illicit psychoactive substances were consumed even prior 1991, but the former USSR ...

The psychiatric care of opioid users receiving agonist therapies is often complicated by high rates of illicit drug use (Brooner et al., 2013). The present study evaluates if illicit drug use (i.e., opioids, cocaine, sedatives) detected at the start of psychiatric care affects treatment response. Methadone maintenance patients (n = 125) with at least one current psychiatric disorder completed a...

Thailand has traditionally pursued an aggressive enforcement-based anti-illicit drug policy in an effort to make the country "drug-free." In light of this ongoing approach, we sought to assess impacts of enforcement on drug use behaviors among a cohort of injection drug users (IDU) in Thailand. We examined drug use patterns among IDU participating in a cross-sectional study conducted in Bangkok...