BACKGROUND The costs to the individual and to society of psychoactive substance use is of growing concern in Bhutan. This study aimed to assess the relation between the demographic variables of patients admitted to the National Referral Hospital for first-time detoxification and the psychoactive substances used. METHODS The demographic variables and types of psychoactive substance used by 284...

She has published extensively on organized crime, drugs, and illegal markets. In the 1990s, she served as consultant to the Italian Ministries of the Interior and Justice and the UNODCCP. The decade following the breakdown of the Soviet Union has registered a rapid growth of illegal drug use and trade in Russia. Illicit psychoactive substances were consumed even prior 1991, but the former USSR ...

Council Decision 2005/387/JHA defines a new psychoactive substance as ‘a new narcotic drug or a new psychotropic drug in pure form or in a preparation, that has not been scheduled under the 1961 United Nations Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, and that may pose a threat to public health comparable to the substances listed in Schedule I, II or IV (new narcotic drug) or under the 1971 United N...

BACKGROUND Syndemics of illicit drug use and HIV remain as significant public health issues around the world. There has been increasing concern regarding the rapidly growing market of new psychoactive substances, particularly in Asia. In response, the Japanese government has increasingly banned such substances in recent years. We sought to identify the prevalence and correlates of use of quasi-...

Fragile X syndrome, caused by the loss of Fmr1 gene function, is the most common form of inherited mental retardation, with no effective treatment. Using a tractable animal model, we investigated mechanisms of action of a few FDA-approved psychoactive drugs that modestly benefit the cognitive performance in fragile X patients. Here we report that compounds activating serotonin (5HT) subtype 2B ...

OBJECTIVE To monitor the presence of pharmaceutical residues of 14 psychoactive drugs belonging to three therapeutic groups in the watersheds of Galicia (Spain). METHOD Five sewage treatment plants were selected in the main cities of Galicia. Thirteen psychoactive pharmaceutical compounds and one metabolite were chosen. In addition, tap water samples were taken from public places and private ...

New Psychoactive Substances (NPS) are drugs that lay in a grey area of legislation, since they are not internationally and officially banned, possibly leading to their not prosecutable trade. The exacerbation of the phenomenon is that NPS can be easily sold and bought online. Here, we consider large corpora of textual posts, published on online forums specialized on drug discussions, plus a sma...

Tobacco, alcohol, cannabis and cocaine are the most consumed psychoactive drugs throughout the population. Prenatal exposure to these drugs could alter normal foetal development and could threaten future welfare. The main changes observed in prenatal exposure to tobacco are caused by nicotine and carbon monoxide, which can impede nutrient and oxygen exchange between mother and foetus, restricti...

The use of new psychoactive substances and the new patterns of drug use can have important public health and policy implications. Few countries have monitoring systems that are sensitive to this new phenomenon in the drug field, but methodological difficulties to detect them are considerable. Nonetheless, the importance of identifying potential new threats is widely recognized. The European Uni...