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Law Enforcement
The activities of authorised agencies such as police, customs, border services, and investigative bodies to enforce drug control laws and address criminal activities related to the production, trafficking, and distribution of illicit substances. These activities may include investigations, intelligence gathering, interdiction, and collaboration with national and international partners to disrupt organised crime networks. Law enforcement plays an important role in protecting public safety and maintaining the rule of law, and is most effective when coordinated with broader public health, prevention, treatment, and recovery efforts as part of a balanced and comprehensive response to substance use.
Common Marijuana-Related Cases Encountered in the Emergency Department
In 2000, Colorado voters decriminalized marijuana for medical use; however, because marijuana use remained illegal under federal law, the number of users was low. In 2009, President Obama instructed federal officials not to enforce...
Characteristics of Persons Who Inject Drugs and Who Witness Opioid Overdoses in Vietnam
Abstract
Background
Persons who use opioids have a high risk of overdose and associated mortality. In Vietnam, little is known about the characteristics of this population and the persons who are witness to those overdoses. One approach...
Barriers to Retention in Methadone Maintenance Therapy among People who Inject Drugs in Bangkok
Abstract
Background
Methadone maintenance therapy (MMT) is a mainstay for treating opioid use disorder and preventing and managing HIV among people who inject drugs (PWID). While previous research suggested low dosing of methadone and...
Trends in Deaths Involving Heroin and Synthetic Opioids Excluding Methadone, and Law Enforcement Drug Product Reports
Summary
What is already known about this topic?
Opioid overdose deaths in the United States have been increasing since 1999, initially driven by prescription opioid misuse and more recently by heroin and other illicit opioid use.
What is...
Changing Patterns of Substance Misuse in Adult Prisons and Service Responses
Inspection findings were supplemented by fieldwork in eight prisons in 2014 to generate an overall picture of drug use and responses to it in prisons in England and Wales. In the face of rapidly changing and varied drug use patterns, policy...
The Effectiveness of Illegal Drug Interventions
This Health Research Board document reviews evidence on the effectiveness of interventions in the areas of prevention, harm reduction and long-term recovery from addiction to illegal drugs.
It asks which interventions are effective for:
- ...
How to Tackle America’s Opioid Crisis?
Much the result of a poor understanding of how to treat chronic pain, the United States has in recent years been rocked by an unprecedented drug crisis: The opioid epidemic.
Opioids include drugs derived from opium, such as heroin, as...
Fentanyl Isn’t Just Deadly for Drug Users: Police Are Getting Sickened
This article describes how fentanyl is affecting police officers and medical examiners across the US as they try to investigate it. Read more...
N.E. Fentanyl Deaths 'Like No Other Epidemic' - Boston Globe
Mexican cartels are delivering vast quantities of the inexpensive and powerful synthetic drug fentanyl to New England, causing the highest rate of fentanyl-related deaths in the nation while creating a plague that the area’s top drug...
Alcohol Treatment Matrix Row 5: Safeguarding the Community
Time to consolidate the lessons of the course’s last five instalments about treatment intended to safeguard the community, the final row of the Alcohol Treatment Matrix. A common theme is the contradiction between treatment centred on the...
ISSUP at the 22nd Annual National Institute on Drug Abuse International Forum
The 22nd Annual National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) International Forum was held in Montreal, Canada from June 16th – 19th, 2017.
Long Lasting Effects of Chronic Heavy Cannabis Abuse
Abstract
Background and Objectives
The purpose of this study was to evaluate the extent of short-term memory impairment and schizophrenia-like symptoms in heavy and systematic cannabis users and the association between the severity of...
Drug Misuse and Dependence: UK Guidelines on Clinical Management
Often called the Orange Book, this is guidance for clinicians treating people with drug problems.
This 2017 version offers new guidelines on:
- prison-based treatment
- new psychoactive substances and club drugs
- mental health co-morbidity...
SAMHSA Opioid Overdose Prevention Toolkit
This toolkit offers strategies to health care providers, communities, and local governments for developing practices and policies to help prevent opioid-related overdoses and deaths. Access reports for community members, prescribers...
Effectiveness Bank Matrix Bite: Treatment Systems to Reduce Alcohol-Related Crime and Safeguard the Community
Final cell of the Alcohol Treatment Matrix. The theme is set by an Australian review which argues that despite radically different starting points, criminal justice and treatment systems must collaborate to deliver treatment. We invite you...
Field Guide to Drug Demand Reduction Program Development, 2nd ed.
The Field Guide to Drug Demand Reduction (DDR) Development is an annual publication by the U.S. Department of State primarily for its Embassy personnel abroad to guide in the development of substance use prevention and treatment programming...
For Whom Does Prison-Based Drug Treatment Work? Results from a Randomized Experiment
For the first time in a prison setting, a randomised trial has rigorously compared intensive residential therapeutic community treatment to outpatient counselling. Confounding expectations, the US prison for problem drug users which hosted...
Effectiveness Bank Matrix Bite: What If the Therapist ... Is Also the Jailer?
A cell in the Alcohol Treatment Matrix. In an extreme form, the title poses the dilemma for alcohol treatment staff who may also be (seen as) working for authorities whose main role is to control or punish the ‘client’ or who may be...
Effectiveness Bank Matrix Bite: Treatment not for the Patient but for the Community
The final row of the Alcohol Treatment Matrix enters the domain of treatment organised not primarily for the patient, but to safeguard the wider community, encountering what seems a core contradiction depicted on the cover of WHO guidance...
Adult Substance Misuse Statistics from the National Drug Treatment Monitoring System (NDTMS)
This report brings together information on people receiving specialist interventions for drug problems and for problem drinking in England, other than patients receiving this treatment in prison.
Analysed textually and pictorially through...