Objective: This study assessed undergraduate unhealthy substance use, levels of knowledge about opioid pharmacology, unhealthy use and safety, and students' perceptions about their level of knowledge. Participants: Participants were undergraduate students at a large, private university in the Northeast. Methods: This study employed a…

Objective: The current study examined the mediating role of distress tolerance on the association between pain-related disability and addiction to opioids, past-month opioid use, and risky opioid use among an ethno-racially diverse sample of young adults with current pain. Methods: Participants were 141 undergraduate college students (78.7%…

Approximately 70% of 67,367 drug overdose deaths involved opioids with rates 4 times higher than in 1999. The purpose of this systematic review is to assess the effectiveness of psychosocial interventions in opioid cessation. The search criteria for this review were: (a) published in English language between 2014 and 2019; (b) indexed in…

Illicit drug use is a persistent health problem among Nigerian youths. Social media platforms currently facilitate online illicit drug markets in the sub-Saharan Africa state. The current qualitative study investigates the influence of social media platforms on the sale and use of illicit drugs among undergraduates in selected tertiary…

Higher education leaders and staff have long expressed concern about the impact of student drug use. This includes its effects on learning and mental health and on future job prospects, as well as the serious consequences of addiction and avoidable deaths. However, there has historically been limited understanding of the prevalence of student drug…

Introduction: Opioid use disorder (OUD) is a critical health issue in the USA. Pennsylvania has the third highest number of drug overdose deaths per year, with the COVID-19 pandemic worsening these trends. Stigmatising beliefs towards OUD are associated with negative health outcomes, and there is a need for a larger evidence base on OUD stigma…

This article offers a longitudinal computational-rhetorical analysis of biomedical writing on opioids. Using a corpus of 1,467 articles and essays published in the "New England Journal of Medicine" and the "Journal of the American Medical Association" between 1959 and May 2019, this study evaluates diachronic shifts in (a) the…

The number of deaths caused by the use of heroin or prescription pain killers nationwide has increased annually over the past decade with some of the most rapid growth occurring in the nation's most rural areas. This qualitative study examines the responses of districts and superintendents to this growing health crisis in twelve rural school…

Drug Outreach, Promoting Awareness (DOPA) is an undergraduate outreach program for local high school students designed to convey the neurobiological basis, risks, and addictive potential of commonly abused drugs. Here we describe DOPA and evaluate the program, including its impact on high school student attitudes about drug harm risk and…

The urgency of this study has become vivid in the light of the growing problem of prevalence and use of new synthetic drug types. Lately there has been a tendency of expanding the range of psychologically active substances (PAS) used by addicts with the purpose of their illegal taking. The aim of this research is an attempt of systematizing and…

The progression from prescription opioid (RXO) abuse to RXO addiction is not well understood in adolescents, nor is the progression from RXO addiction to heroin abuse. The purpose of this pilot study was to characterize the development of RXO drug abuse, RXO drug addiction, and heroin abuse in a small cohort of adolescents recovering from opioid…

The purpose of Science Education Against Drug Abuse Partnership (SEADAP) is to use the planarian animal model to develop an inquiry-based program to teach the science of drug addiction and pharmacology of drugs being abused. Upon completion of a SEADAP teacher professional development, study data reveals a favorable increase in teacher awareness…

Rehabilitation for persons who use drugs in the Philippines is premised on a multidisciplinary team approach to treatment, where delivery of services is collaboratively undertaken by physicians and rehabilitation practitioners. In 2013, a government-academe-civil society collaborative developed a customized training program for nurses,…

Aims: Opioid substitution therapy (OST) is an evidence-based HIV prevention strategy for people who inject drugs (PWIDs). Yet, only 2.7% of Ukraine's estimated 310,000 PWIDs receive it despite free treatment since 2004. The multi-level barriers to entering OST among opioiddependent PWIDs have not been examined in Ukraine. Methods: A multi-year…

This study aimed to examine (a) the impact of the change in the "Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders" ("DSM") from a categorical to dimensional classification of substance use diagnoses, (b) the elimination of the legal criterion, and (c) the inclusion of a craving criterion in the "DSM"-5.…