Researcher Concludes That Pharmaceuticals Are A Market For Producing 'Lemons' And Serious Harm
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A new study by researchers at Drexel University’s School of Public Health suggests that abuse of prescription painkillers may be an important gateway to the use of injected drugs such as heroin, among people with a history of using both types of drugs. The study, published in the International Journal of Drug Policy, explores factors surrounding young injection drug users’ initiation into the misuse of opioid drugs.
If you want to know how people become addicted and why they keep using drugs, ask the people who are addicted. Thirty-one of 75 patients hospitalized for opioid detoxification told University at Buffalo physicians they first got hooked on drugs legitimately prescribed for pain. Another 24 began with a friend’s left-over prescription pills or pilfered from a parent’s medicine cabinet. The remaining 20 patients said they got hooked on street drugs. Results of the study appear in the current issue of Journal of Addiction Medicine.
In a newly published study, scientists from The Scripps Research Institute have shown for the first time that the same molecular mechanisms that drive people into drug addiction are behind the compulsion to overeat, pushing people into obesity. The new study, conducted by Scripps Research Associate Professor Paul J. Kenny and graduate student Paul M. [...]
Adolescence is a period of significant developmental change when health patterns are being established. Decisions that youths make about tobacco, alcohol, and drug use can have both immediate and long-term health consequences for themselves, their families, and their communities. Adolescents’ attitudes about the risks associated with substance use are often closely related to their substance use, with an inverse association between drug use and risk perceptions (i.e., as the prevalence of risk perceptions decreases, the prevalence of drug use increases). As such, providing adolescents with credible, accurate, and age-appropriate information about the harm associated with substance use is a key component in prevention programming [1].
Methamphetamine use among teens appears to have dropped significantly in recent years according to NIDA’s annual Monitoring the Future (MTF) survey that was released at a news conference at the National Press Club in Washington. However, the survey also reported that declines in marijuana use have stalled and that prescription drug abuse remains high. The [...]
