BACKGROUND Precise assessment of the prevalence of illicit drug use, face various methodological challenges. OBJECTIVES The current study aimed to investigate the prevalence of illicit drug use among students studying at Universities in Shahroud (Northeast of Iran) through crosswise method. PATIENTS AND METHODS Participants of this cross-sectional study were 1646 students at Universities in...

OBJECTIVE Among Finnish adolescent twins, we compared (a) a model that describes a direct impact of liability to tobacco use on cannabis and other illicit drug use with (b) a model that included a shared underlying liability for these substances. Furthermore, the extent to which genetic and environmental influences contribute to the covariation between liabilities to use these substances was ex...

OBJECTIVE Although potentially traumatic events (PTEs) are established risk factors for substance use disorders among adults, little is known about associations with drug use during adolescence, an important developmental stage for drug use prevention. We examined whether childhood PTEs were associated with illicit drug use among a representative sample of US adolescents. METHOD Data were dra...

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 application of regulatory theory to the problem of illicit drugs has generally been thought about only in terms of 'command and control'. The international treaties governing global illicit drug control and the use of law enforcement to dissuade and punish offenders have been primary strategies. In this paper I explore the application of other aspects of regulatory theory to illicit drugs-p...

Exosomes are important vehicles of intercellular communication that shape host responses to physiologic, tumorigenic, and pathogenic conditions. The composition and function of exosomes are dynamic and depends on the state and condition of the cellular source. In prior work, we found that semen exosomes (SE) from healthy donors who do not use illicit drugs potently inhibit HIV-1. Following seme...

It is known that individuals differ in their likelihood of becoming drug abusers. Many people never take any drugs at all, even on a single occasion. Of those who take drugs at least once, only a small number go on to use the drugs on a regular basis, and even fewer go on to use them in excessive quantities or abusive patterns. The differences in numbers of individuals who have ever tried drugs...

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 ...

An anonymous questionnaire survey of the knowledge and experience of drug abuse among fourth year pupils in three Wolverhampton secondary schools in 1969, 1974, 1979, and 1984 showed familiarity with the names of drugs but considerable ignorance and misunderstanding about how the drugs were taken and their dangers. The proportion of pupils who knew someone taking illicit drugs almost doubled ov...