Illicit drug use is the practice of consuming a legally restricted substance in a manner contrary to the moral or traditional practices of a particular culture. In 2005/2006, over 10% of adults between 16 and 59 years of age had used illicit drugs in the previous year (Home Office 2006). The use of ‘Class A drugs’ (usually heroin or cocaine) was over 3%, mainly because of the rise in cocaine us...

Wastewater analysis is a rapidly developing scientific discipline with the potential for monitoring real-time data on geographical and temporal trends in illicit drug use. Originally used in the 1990s to monitor the environmental impact of liquid household waste, the method has since been used to estimate illicit drug consumption in different cities (Daughton, 2001; Zuccato et al., 2008; van Nu...

BACKGROUND: Prescription drug misuse among young adults is increasingly viewed as a public health concern, yet most research has focused on student populations and excluded high-risk groups. Furthermore, research on populations who report recent prescription drug misuse is limited. This study examined patterns of prescription drug misuse among high-risk young adults in Los Angeles (LA) and New ...

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 ...

A sample of criminalized cannabis users provided information about their use of other illicit drugs and friends' attitudes toward various substances. The majority of those surveyed were regular, heavy users of cannabis, had friends who were similarly involved, and were more experienced with a variety of other illicit drugs than youthful groups from the larger population. In its perception of ha...

Symptoms of depression and anxiety are widespread, chronic, and recurrent; their recovery is poor. They are associated with decreased work productivity, dissatisfaction in social relations, low quality of life, and high risk of suicide [13]. Negative emotions play a major role in the development and continuation of substance use disorders (SUDs) [4]. Individuals turn to illicit drugs to achieve...

BACKGROUND A significant number of chronic pain patients may use marijuana. Physicians treating those patients can benefit by knowing whether their patients using marijuana are at higher risk for using other illicit drugs such as cocaine and/or methamphetamine. OBJECTIVE Our objective was to determine whether marijuana-using chronic pain patients have a higher incidence of cocaine and/or meth...

The World Drug Report of 2012 [1] reports that, globally, illicit drug use is a common occurrence and is a growing health problem in some regions. Global reporting estimates indicate that approximately 230 million people or 5% of the global adult population have used illicit drugs. While somewhat stable use is ongoing in developed countries, resource-limited settings are seeing the growth and e...

Cannabis and other illicit drugs are often used or abused comorbidly. Two competing theories to explain this comorbidity are (i) the phenotypic causation (gateway) model and (ii) the correlated liabilities model. We used data from 1191 male and 934 female same-sex twin pairs to test 13 genetically informative models of comorbidity. Models were fit separately for use and abuse/dependence in both...

BACKGROUND Substance use among Korean adolescents has been increasing, but little is known about the correlates of substance use in this population. Identification of the correlates is required for development of preventive approaches that aim to reduce or eliminate risk. Therefore, we examined the prevalence and correlates of substance use including psychological problems in a nationwide sampl...