OBJECTIVE Prescription drug diversion involves the unlawful channeling of regulated pharmaceuticals from legal sources to the illicit marketplace, and can occur along all points in the drug delivery process, from the original manufacturing site to the wholesale distributor, the physician's office, the retail pharmacy, or the patient. However, empirical data on diversion are limited. METHOD In...

BACKGROUND The use of prescription opioid medications has increased greatly in the United States during the past two decades; in 2010, there were 16,651 opioid-related deaths. In response, hundreds of federal, state, and local interventions have been implemented. We describe trends in the diversion and abuse of prescription opioid analgesics using data through 2013. METHODS We used five progr...

Preventing diversion and abuse of prescription controlled substances while ensuring their availability for legitimate medical use is an important public health goal in the United States. In one approach to preventing and identifying drug diversion, 17 states have implemented prescription monitoring programs (PMPs) to monitor the prescribing of certain controlled substances. While PMPs are not i...

UNLABELLED This study evaluated changes in abuse exposures, therapeutic error exposures, and diversion into illegal markets associated with brand extended-release oxycodone (ERO) following introduction of reformulated ERO. Original ERO and reformulated ERO street prices also were compared. Data from the Poison Center and Drug Diversion programs of the Researched Abuse, Diversion and Addiction-R...

UNLABELLED OBJECTIVE. Beginning in the late 1990's a marked increase in abuse of OxyContin emerged, which led to the development and establishment of a proactive surveillance program to monitor and characterize abuse, named the Researched Abuse, Diversion and Addiction Related Surveillance (RADARS) System. The main goal of RADARS was to develop proactive, timely and geographically sensitive met...

This article investigates everyday experiences and practises that are associated with processes of pharmaceuticalization and with practices of 'drug diversion'--that is, the illicit exchange and non-medical use of prescription drugs. It reports results from a qualitative study that was designed to examine the everyday dimensions of non-medical prescription stimulant use among students on an Ame...

Numerous national surveys and surveillance programs have shown a substantial rise in the abuse of prescription opioids over the past 15 years. Accessibility of these drugs to non-patients is the result of their unlawful channeling from legal sources to the illicit marketplace (diversion). Empirical data on diversion remain absent from the literature. This paper examines abusers' sources of dive...