Suchergebnisse

Diabetes among the Pima: Stories of Survival. Carolyn Smith‐Morris. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2006. 210 pp.

The study uses qualitative interviews conducted with 19 crack using women to explore their experiences of stress and their views regarding the relationship between stress and drug use. Fifteen of the women participated in follow-up interviews conducted 5–7 years after the baseline. Life history interviews unveiled a pattern of close connection between the intensity of women's drug use and the level of stress they experienced in relation to their past adversities and current life circumstances. The majority of the women viewed stress as an important causal explanation of their drug use. Tensions related to romantic relationships, traumatic childhood, motherhood failures, unabated grief, and humiliating experiences of "crack life" were discussed as the most common sources of psychosocial stress. Most women had very limited positive coping resources and skills. Crack use was perceived as a very common, although highly maladaptive, way to deal with stress. Implications for interventions are discussed.

Pharmaceutical opioid misuse has been recognized as a growing public health problem across the nation. To develop appropriate treatment and prevention programs, the population of pharmaceutical opioid abusers has to be well understood. This exploratory study is based on qualitative interviews with 24 people in the Dayton/Columbus, Ohio, area. Interviews were conducted for the Ohio Substance Abuse Monitoring Network, a statewide epidemiological surveillance system. Participants ranged in age from 18 to 48 years; the majority was White and male. To explain initiation and continued use of pharmaceutical opioids, participants discussed a number of different reasons, including self-medication of emotional and physical pain, legitimate medical prescriptions related to chronic pain management, social influences, recreation, and easy access to pharmaceutical opioids. On the basis of participant age and lifetime experiences with pharmaceutical opioid and other drug misuse, six user groups were identified that faced unique risks and prevention/treatment challenges. Research implications are discussed.

Aims: Several states in the U.S. have legalized cannabis for recreational or medical uses. In this context, cannabis edibles have drawn considerable attention after adverse effects were reported. This paper investigates Twitter users' perceptions concerning edibles and evaluates the association edibles-related tweeting activity and local cannabis legislation. Methods: Tweets were collected between May 1 and July 31, 2015, using Twitter API and filtered through the eDrugTrends/Twitris platform. A random sample of geolocated tweets was manually coded to evaluate Twitter users' perceptions regarding edibles. Raw state proportions of Twitter users mentioning edibles were ajusted relative to the total number of Twitter users per state. Differences in adjusted proportions of Twitter users mentioning edibles between states with different cannabis legislation status were assesed via a permutation test. Results: We collected 100,182 tweets mentioning cannabis edibles with 26.9% (n = 26,975) containing state-level geolocation. Adjusted percentages of geolocated Twitter users posting about edibles were significantly greater in states that allow recreational and/or medical use of cannabis. The differences were statistically significant. Overall, cannabis edibles were generally positively perceived among Twitter users despite some negative tweets expressing the unreliability of edible consumption linked to variability in effect intensity and duration. Conclusion: Our findings suggest that Twitter data analysis is an important tool for epidemiological monitoring of emerging drug use practices and trends. Results tend to indicate greater tweeting activity about cannabis edibles in states where medical THC and/or recreational use are legal. Although the majority of tweets conveyed positive attitudes about cannabis edibles, analysis of experiences expressed in negative tweets confirms the potential adverse effects of edibles and calls for educating edibles-naïve users, improving edibles labeling, and testing their THC content.