Worldwide, law enforcement agencies are encountering a substantial increase in the number of illicit drug pills being circulated in our society. Identifying the source and manufacturer of these illicit drugs will help deter drug-related crimes. We have developed an automatic system, called Pill-ID to match drug pill images based on several features (i.e., imprint, color, and shape) of the table...

BACKGROUND Medication overdose accounts for >80% of hospital presentations for self-harm. Previous research has identified typical characteristics of medication overdose cases; however, these cases have not been well differentiated from other similar presentations, namely (1) illicit drug overdose and (2) self-harm by means other than overdose. METHOD A 12-month audit of medication overdose c...

BACKGROUND Despite the growing body of literature and putative links between the use of ergogenic nutritional supplements, doping and illicit drugs, it remains unclear whether, in athletes' minds, doping aligns with illicit behaviour or with functional use of chemical or natural preparations. To date, no attempt has been made to quantitatively explore athletes' mental representation of doping i...

Years-of-school is negatively correlated with illicit drug use. However, educational attainment is positively correlated with IQ and negatively correlated with impulsivity, two traits that are also correlated with drug use. Thus, the negative correlation between education and drug use may reflect the correlates of schooling, not schooling itself. To help disentangle these relations we obtained ...

OBJECTIVE The purpose of this study was to investigate the association between depression and illicit drug dependence among a Latin-American population. METHOD illicit drug dependent patients (n = 137) and controls (n = 274) were interviewed using the Diagnostic Interview for Genetic Studies, in order to detect lifetime and current depressive disorder and illicit (cocaine, cannabis or inhalan...

This article applies methods of latent class analysis (LCA) to data on lifetime illicit drug use in order to determine whether qualitatively distinct classes of illicit drug users can be identified. Self-report data on lifetime illicit drug use (cannabis, stimulants, hallucinogens, sedatives, inhalants, cocaine, opioids and solvents) collected from a sample of 6265 Australian twins (average age...

The abuse of licit and illicit drugs [“drugs” throughout this chapter refers to tobacco, alcohol, and other drugs] has placed an extraordinary burden on the Nation’s health, human service, and criminal justice systems (Rice 1991; National Institute of Justice 1993). Alcohol, a licit drug, is misused by more Americans than any other drug. A smaller number of Americans use illicit drugs, but the ...

Opioids are commonly used in chronic pain management. Their role in chronic pain is met with controversy, with reports of abuse. Many studies have shown that urine drug screens can detect inappropriate opioid use or illicit drug use among patients receiving opioids for chronic pain. In this study, failed urine drug screens of 89 patients in an interventional pain management practice were analyz...

BACKGROUND The Gateway Drug Theory suggests that licit drugs, such as tobacco and alcohol, serve as a "gateway" toward the use of other, illicit drugs. However, there remains some discrepancy regarding which drug-alcohol, tobacco, or even marijuana-serves as the initial "gateway" drug subsequently leading to the use of illicit drugs such as cocaine and heroin. The purpose of this investigation ...