Recently, two United States Senators made a statement saying federal money from a proposed transportation funding bill should be used in order to train law enforcement officials to identify drugged drivers.
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Nurturing mothers may protect their offspring from drug abuse, according to a new study from Duke University, in conjunction with the University of the Adelaide in Australia.
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Understanding cocaine addiction is central to treating it. Scientists have long known that there are certain areas of the brain related to pleasure and reward that are activated by certain behaviors, like eating dessert or using drugs or alcohol. The research in this area has been narrowing down the region and specific neurons involved with cocaine addiction.
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No one is surprised when illegal drugs are connected to crime. What may surprise people is that legal prescription medications are also increasingly linked to criminal behavior.
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Thanks to a greater understanding of many illnesses, more drugs available for treatment, and the improved diagnostic procedures in healthcare, the elderly are taking many more prescriptions today than ever before. Although this means they have more options for living a healthy, comfortable, and longer life, there are many negative connotations that go along with these advances in medicine. One of these is that the availability of all these medications increases the risk for prescription drug abuse in the elderly.
The United States Drug Enforcement Agency keeps track of all the drugs seized each year in order to determine which drugs are being abused and where. Those DEA statistics tell us that oxycodone is more abused than any other drug in the country, closely followed by hydrocodone. These drugs are opiate narcotics, so called because of their chemical similarity to opium. Opiates include heroin, morphine, oxycodone, methadone, codeine and hydromorphone. These drugs are effective in blunting moderate to severe pain, but also provide the opiate-related sensations of pleasure and well-being that are highly addictive.
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It used to be that when people talked about drug abuse and addiction, they were typically referring to street drugs like cocaine, heroin, or methamphetamines. However, in recent years there has been a growing epidemic of prescription drug abuse and addiction. According to a recent report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), deaths caused by an overdose of prescription pain medication now exceed those from cocaine and heroin combined in the U.S.
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Methamphetamine is already one of riskiest drugs of abuse throughout the U.S. and worldwide-the highly addictive stimulant causing irreversible physical and cognitive impairments and too often death for thousands of users-but now researchers have discovered a new alarming trend among meth users that has remained rather undetected in previous studies. According to researchers at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, injection methamphetamine users are significantly more likely than other injection drug users to attempt suicide-a difference by as much as 80%. The researchers’ findings have been published in the December issue of Drug and Alcohol Dependence.
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Alarming new research is exploring whether or not veterans may be becoming an increasing target for those who abuse prescription drugs and want more of the drugs in a hurry.
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Sales of painkillers have risen by 300 percent since 1999. Along with that the number of people abusing them and dying from overdoses has increased. The nation’s Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports that 100 people die every day from drug overdose, the majority of which are prescription painkillers. In fact, deaths from drug overdose have tripled since 1990. Prescription painkillers take more American lives than heroin and cocaine together. Some are hoping that a drug called Suboxone could help stem the tide.
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