The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) has released guidelines that cover targeted interventions to prevent misuse of drugs, including illegal drugs, ‘legal highs’ and prescription-only medicines. It aims to prevent or...
A new study published in the journal Nature has found that brain scans can predict whether or not teenagers will develop drug taking behaviours later in life.
A sample of 14-year-olds was assessed. The investigation reports that, from an...
Many states have recently made significant changes to their legislation making recreational and/or medical marijuana use by adults legal. Although these laws, for the most part, have not targeted the adolescent population, they...
New research published in the journal Addiction suggests that poor working memory and the inability to control impulses during adolescence are key predictors for future substance abuse. ‘Working memory’ refers to one’s capacity to...
Summary and Findings
Most people do not use illicit drugs and among those who try them, only a fraction will develop patterns of dependence. Still, drug use constitutes a serious health problem for many people in the Americas. Early age of...
Despite the accumulation of scientific evidence confirming the health consequences of smoking and the new paradigm of smoking as a disease where nicotine is the drug that modifies the functional and morphological characteristics of...
“You don’t have to use drugs to be affected by them.”
In 2010 Adfam identified five key challenges for families that the Government should address, identified by stakeholders across England. They were:
What is already known about this topic?
Fentanyl and its analogs have been substituted for heroin and other opioids, and are usually marketed to persons seeking opioids. Because of fentanyl’s high potency compared with heroin...
Abstract English/Spanish
Introduction: New therapeutic strategies against cocaine overdose toxicity have been developed. These new approaches are based on the design and synthesis of proteins involved in the destruction of cocaine before...
Public Health England’s recently published review reveals that the country’s drug misuse treatment system is performing well. However, there are still several areas that call for improvements.
Amongst the report’s findings, notable are:
The longer teenagers delay the use of marijuana, the better it is for their developing brains. However, a new study has found that there may be little adverse effect if one starts smoking the drug after the age of 17. According to the...
Finland plans to cut consumption of tobacco products - in any form – to less than 2% among adults by 2040. As is the case with many industrialised countries, Finland’s smoking rates have decreased in recent years as a result of various...
It is widely accepted that adolescents are predisposed to indulge in risky behaviours, more so than adults. Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development have recently provided us with new insights into the underlying...
The Healthy Nightlife Toolbox (HNT) is an international initiative that focuses on the reduction of harm from alcohol and drug use among young people.
The Healthy Nightlife Toolbox collects and provides information on evidence-based...
The Evaluation Instruments Bank (EIB) is an online database of freely available resources for evaluating drug prevention and treatment programmes and initiatives. You can search the archive by type of intervention (treatment or prevention)...
Tobacco smoking is a causal risk factor of at least 16 different types of cancer. In Mexico, smoking causes 6,035 premature deaths annually of lung cancer and 5,154 from other types. Additionally, 16,408 new smoking attributable cases are...
In what way is parental socioeconomic status associated with nicotine dependence in children?
This is the question a new study conducted in Norway aimed to find out. The study measured parental socioeconomic status by looking at their...
