Andrew Golub

National Development and Research Institutes, Inc. | NDRI

Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) stands as a form of psychopathology that straddles moral and psychiatric domains. Grounded in discrete instances of trauma, PTSD represents an etiological outlier in an era of increased attention to the genetics of mental illness and a prime location for social constructivist analyses of mental illness. This exa...

This study examines the temporal relationship between prescription opioid (PO) and heroin use among veterans in New York City. Drawing on survey data from a convenience sample of 214 OEF/OIF/OND-era opioid-using military veterans, analyses demonstrate substantial cohort-level variation. Most notably, heroin use prior to PO initiation and prior to m...

Background: Mirroring nationwide trends in a broad range of U.S. populations, an alarming number of Afghanistan/Iraq-era U.S. Military veterans have experienced opioid-related overdoses. A growing body of research has examined the proximal behaviors that can precipitate an overdose; considerably less is known about more distal physiological, psych...

Objective To identify meaningful classes of opioid-using military veterans in terms of self-reported opioid overdose risk behaviors. Method The study recruited a sample of 218 military veterans in the NYC area who were discharged from active duty service after September 11, 2001 and reported past-month opioid use. Survey data including measures of...

Intimate partner violence (IPV) is common, particularly in families with children. Observing such verbal and physical aggression has consistently been linked to unfavorable outcomes for affected children. Although cohabiting families are becoming increasingly prevalent and preliminary data suggest that rates of IPV may be high in these families, li...

Objective: To identify the prevalence of substance use and mental health problems among veterans and student service members/veterans (SSM/V) returning from Iraq and Afghanistan to New York City's low-income neighborhoods. Participants: A sample of 122 veterans attending college and 116 veterans not enrolled recruited using respondent-driven sam...

This chapter looks at the history and purpose of America's drug law enforcement and how they inform current issues. It examines three current issues in drug law enforcement: quality-of-life policing, mass incarceration, and marijuana legalization. These major issues represent some of the historical residue of previous drug law enforcement practices...

abstract: Serial cohabitation has increased dramatically in the U.S., especially in the low-income Black population. The purpose of the study is to understand cohabiting and co-parenting relationships among unmarried cohabiting low-income urban Black families on their own terms, identifying the strengths, challenges, and unique needs of these famil...

The authors examined cohabiting union formation processes by analyzing in-depth interview data collected from 30 individuals in cohabiting relationships: 15 low-income Black mothers of adolescents and their partners. Prior research suggests that cohabiting union formation is a gradual, nondeliberative process. In contrast, most couples in this stud...

http://www.fedprac.com/specialty-focus/substance-use-disorder/article/veterans-health-and-opioid-safety-contexts-risks-and-outreach-implications/f1b8d3a3c20d095699780a0870dc23e2.html

Cohabitation is a family structure that is rapidly increasing in the United States. The current longitudinal study examined the interplay of involvement in a youth's daily activities and firm control parenting by male cohabiting partners (MCPs) on change in adolescents' internalizing and externalizing problems. In a sample of 111 inner-city African...

As Caulkins et al. [1] note, the prevalence of illegal drug use is often cast as an overall indicator of the size of the national drug problem [e.g. 2], the annual change is often used as a performance measure of policy efficacy, but the true costs of drug abuse can be better understood by examining a richer set of indices. To this end, they calcul...

This article examines recent combat veterans' experiences of “first-person shooter” (FPS) gaming and its relationship to posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Current PTSD treatment approaches increasingly use virtual reality (VR) technologies, which have many similarities with FPS games. To explore these similarities, this article presents six cas...

This paper places America's "war on drugs" in perspective in order to develop a new metaphor for control of drug misuse. A brief and focused history of America's experience with substance use and substance use policy over the past several hundred years provides background and a framework to compare the current Pharmacological Revolution with Americ...

This article presents interview and focus group data from veterans of recent conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan about their use of cannabis as a coping tool for dealing with posttraumatic stress disorder. Veterans’ comparisons of cannabis, alcohol, and psychopharmaceuticals tended to highlight advantages to cannabis use as more effective and less co...

Many veterans face various mental health challenges after separation. This study examines change over 14 months in mental health and related factors among 242 veterans returning to low-income predominately minority sections of New York City. Mental health treatment provided more than reductions in symptoms of PTSD and depression. It also resulted i...

Fathers have often been ignored in the parenting literature. The current study focused on male cohabiting partners (MCPs) who can serve as “social stepfathers” and examined the association of coparent support and conflict with their positive parenting behavior (i.e., acceptance, firm control, and monitoring) of adolescents. Participants were 121 lo...

Male cohabiting partners (MCPs) in low-income urban Black single mother families may represent an extreme case of stepfathers who have been characterized as “polite strangers” in the household. The purpose of this study was twofold: To examine who serves as a coparent in these families; and to determine if identification of a coparent in addition t...

This article examines the division of domestic labor in low-income cohabiting Black stepfamilies. We analyze survey data collected from 136 such families in order to understand how stepparent gender and relationship length impact the distribution of domestic labor. We hypothesize that women do more domestic work than men across all three family typ...

Cohabitation is a family structure experienced by many Black children; yet, we have limited understanding of how personal and interpersonal processes operate within these families to influence the parenting provided to these children. Informed by both family systems theory and the spillover hypothesis and using a model to account for the interdepen...

Cohabitation is a family structure experienced by many Black children. This study examines the link between family relationships (child relationship with mother and the cohabiting partner; parent and cohabiting partner relationship) and involvement of biologically unrelated male cohabiting partners (MCP) in child rearing. The participants were 121...

Research finds that many impoverished urban Black adults engage in a pattern of partnering and family formation involving a succession of short cohabitations yielding children, a paradigm referred to as transient domesticity. Researchers have identified socioeconomic status, cultural adaptations, and urbanicity as explanations for aspects of this p...

This paper presents an overview of substance use patterns of recent veterans returning to low-income predominately minority communities over four periods of the military-veteran career. Respondent driven sampling (RDS) was used so that unbiased estimates could be obtained for the characteristics of the target population. The majority of participant...

This special issue examines major structural, sociocultural, and behavioral issues surrounding substance use and misuse among US military personnel and veterans who served in recent military conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. This introduction provides a brief historical review of the US's experiences of the linkages between war and substance use,...

Prescription opioid (PO) misuse represents a major health risk for many service members and veterans. This paper examines the pathways to misuse among a sample of US veterans who recently returned from Iraq and Afghanistan to low-income, predominately minority sections of New York City. Recreational PO misuse was not common on deployment. Most PO m...

Estimates of substance use and other mental health disorders of veterans (N = 269) who returned to predominantly low-income minority New York City neighborhoods between 2009 and 2012 are presented. Although prevalences of posttraumatic stress disorder, traumatic brain injury, and depression clustered around 20%, the estimated prevalence rates of al...

This paper describes veterans' overdose risks and specific vulnerabilities through an analysis of qualitative data collected from a sample of recently separated, formerly enlisted OEF/OIF veterans in the New York City area. We illustrate how challenges to the civilian readjustment process such as homelessness, unemployment, and posttraumatic stress...

Much empirical evidence indicates that the popularity of various drugs tends to increase and wane over time producing episodic epidemics of particular drugs. These epidemics mostly affect persons reaching their late teens at the time of the epidemic resulting in distinct drug generations. This article examines the drug generations present in the 20...

The increasing rate of opiate pain reliever (OPR) use is a pressing concern in the United States. This article uses a drug epidemics framework to examine OPR use among arrestees surveyed by the Arrestee Drug Abuse Monitoring program. Results demonstrate regional and demographic variation in use across nine focal cities. High rates of OPR use on the...

Many veterans returning from Afghanistan and Iraq experience serious mental health (MH) concerns including substance use disorders (SUD), post-traumatic stress disorder, traumatic brain injury, depression, or serious psychological distress (SPD). This article uses data from the 2004 to 2010 National Survey on Drug Use and Health to examine the prev...

Studies of adolescent substance use progression typically infer a sequence of initiation from self-reported ages at first use of alcohol, tobacco, marijuana, and hard drugs. This paper examines the reliability of this procedure for a sample of 892 New Jersey youths (aged 12 and 15 yrs) interviewed on two occasions separated by 3 yrs. Individual res...

This paper examines a mismatch between the surveys used to study U.S. household composition and the dynamics of living arrangements prevailing among many low-income African Americans. Mounting survey findings suggest that many low-income African Americans engage in a series of short cohabitations resulting in children with a succession of partners....

This study assessed how problem video game playing (PVP) varies with game type, or "genre," among adult video gamers. Participants (n=3,380) were adults (18+) who reported playing video games for 1 hour or more during the past week and completed a nationally representative online survey. The survey asked about characteristics of video game use, inc...

Purpose – In this chapter, we expand the definition of disaster through combining the tenets of disaster studies with the literature on risks and consequences of war and conflict-related displacement and dislocation, with a focus on the challenges that drug misuse and changing drug markets present in these contexts. We conclude with policy recommen...

This paper examines the accounts of NYC marijuana smokers about the information and values underlying decisions about where to smoke. We do so to assess the deterrent value of NYC's "quality of life" policing of marijuana in public view. Participants indicated a general awareness of escalated marijuana policing and its attendant risks and almost un...

Powerful controlling images perpetuate misguided messages about impoverished African American women that contribute to the oppression these women endure. These images inform policies and behavior that create and maintain structural barriers such as lack of access to education and meaningful employment further marginalizing oppressed individuals. Th...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine the experiences of poor drug users and sellers who remained in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina in 2005 to identify their special needs and the unique challenges they present to disaster management. Design/methodology/approach Semi‐structured, open‐ended interviews were conducted with 119 poor, p...

Hurricane Katrina accomplished what no law enforcement initiative could ever achieve: It completely eradicated the New Orleans drug market. However, Katrina did little to eliminate the demand for drugs. This article documents the process of the drug market reconstitution that occurred 2005–2008 based on in-depth interviews and focus groups with pre...

In recent years, cannabis potency and new methods for the drug's consumption have become heated issues. However, procedures for accurate measurement of cannabis consumption are still needed to assess the role of drug potency in rising rates of cannabis misuse disorders. This chapter presents a range of conceptual and methodological concerns related...

Family structures have been undergoing extensive changes in the past few decades. Marriage has been declining. Divorce has been increasing. Cohabitation has been increasing. And increasing numbers of children are being born outside of marriage. Consistent with these changes, there has been an increase in multiple partner fertility (hereafter MPF),...

Among poor African Americans, the mainstream traditional household including a married couple and their joint biological children is becoming increasingly less common. However, there are often male romantic partners present in what have been traditionally counted as single-parent mother-only households. This chapter profiles six such male partners...

This paper extends a compartmental epidemiological model for HIV transmission and AIDS incidence to include hierarchical and expansion spatial diffusion. An implication of the resultant model is that hierarchical diffusion causes the large infection growth rates of densely populated areas at the top of the central places hierarchy to “chain” down a...

Inner-city relationships face numerous challenges including illegal drug use and its consequences. The nature of this challenge, however, has changed dramatically with a shift from the crack subculture of the 1980s and early 1990s to the subsequent marijuana/blunts subculture. This study presents data concerning 95 inner-city relationships where il...

The New York City Police Department (NYPD) has made enforcement of laws against disorder and quality-of-life offenses a central part of their policing strategy. Concomitantly, New York City (NYC) experienced a renaissance in orderliness, cleanliness, tourism, real estate value, and crime reduction, although other problems such as poverty, unemploym...

An increasing literature mostly based on retrospective surveys has been consistently documenting a correlation between physical abuse in childhood (CPA) and substance abuse in adulthood (ASA). This article uses ethnographic data to reveal the processes behind and context of this linkage for one population-poor, inner-city New York residents who bec...

African American males are regularly cast as deadbeat dads and non-contributors to family life. However, a growing literature has been documenting that African American males do contribute in many ways, including as custodial fathers. 5% of African American children live in single-parent father-only households. This paper presents B.K.'s story whic...

Purpose During the 1990s, the New York City Police Department (NYPD) instituted a policy of arresting and detaining people for minor offenses that occur in public as part of their quality‐of‐life (QOL) policing initiative. The purpose of this paper is to examine the pros and cons of the current policy and compare it with possible alternatives inclu...

There are numerous analytic and methodological limitations to current measures of drug market activity. This paper explores the structure of markets and individual user behavior to provide an integrated understanding of behavioral and economic (and market) aspects of illegal drug use with an aim toward developing improved procedures for measurement...

This article examines the growth in marijuana misdemeanor arrests in New York City (NYC) from 1980 to 2003 and its differential impact on blacks and Hispanics. Since 1980, the New York City Police Department (NYPD) expanded its use of arrest and detention for minor offenses under its quality-of-life (QOL) policing initiative. Arrest data indicate t...

Background During the 1990s, the New York Police Department (NYPD) greatly expanded arrests for smoking marijuana in public view (MPV). By 2000, MPV accounted for 15% of all arrests. The NYPD's supporters report this arrest activity is just part of quality-of-life (QOL) policing, which seeks to promote order in public locations by aggressively patr...

The Expanded Syringe Access Program (ESAP) in New York State (NYS) made syringes available to injection drug users without prescriptions through pharmacies and health care providers on January 1, 2001. This program was intended to provide illicit drug users with clean syringes so as to reduce transmission of blood-borne diseases, including HIV and...

Numerous African American families have struggled for generations with persistent poverty, especially in the inner city. These conditions were further strained during the 1980s and 1990s by the widespread use of crack cocaine. For many, crack use became an obsession, dominated their lives, and superseded family responsibilities. This behavior place...

Measured trends in drug use can potentially reflect changes in drug use, changes in the accuracy of the measurement instrument, or both. This paper compares marijuana use trends from 1987 to 2001 using self-report and urinalysis data from arrestees interviewed at 23 sites served by the Arrestee Drug Abuse Monitoring (ADAM) Program. Overall, 60% of...

This article articulates a subcultural basis to the evolving popularity for different illicit drugs primarily based on empirical research in the United States, especially among inner-city populations. From this perspective, drug use emerges from a dialectic between drug subcultures with individual identity development. The prevailing culture and su...

This research note addresses the accuracy of arrestees' self-reports of contacts with the criminal justice system as a means of exploring the relative importance of various sources of inaccurate responding. Erroneous self-report of sensitive behaviors has been linked to deception , memory problems, and faulty criterion measures, among other things....

The incidence of heroin use among Manhattan arrestees interviewed by the Arrestee Drug Abuse Monitoring (ADAM) program remained around 20% from 1987 through 2001. However, the authors had expected a decline because the heroin injection epidemic peaked back in the 1960s and early 1970s. A detailed analysis found differences across race/ethnicity. Bl...

This study provides a comprehensive multivariate analysis of drug use disclosure among arrestees interviewed between 2000 and 2001 at 37 sites across the U.S. served by the Arrestee Drug Abuse Monitoring (ADAM) Program. Rates varied widely by drug and across sites. The marijuana disclosure rate varied from 68% in Fort Lauderdale to 93% in Spokane....

Marijuana use among American youths and young adults increased substantially during the 1990s. This paper reviews that trend using data collected 1979-2003 by the National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH). The data suggest that the increase in marijuana use started first among persons age 12-20. Among 18-20 year-olds, the increase started earl...

Learn why marijuana use has increased in the new millennium. According to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, marijuana is the most commonly used illicit drug. The Cultural/Subcultural Contexts of Marijuana Use at the Turn of the Twenty-First Century takes a close look at present cannabis use trends in the new millennium...

In the mid-to late 1990s, violent crime plummeted nationwide. The Uniform Crime Report (UCR 1998) program documented a 28 percent decline in homicides recorded by the police from 1993 to 1997 and similar or larger declines in robbery and aggravated assault. The National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) also identified a 21 percent decline in repor...

Information about individuals' drug expenses can indicate much about the size of drug markets, the financial burden of use, drug-related crime, and potential challenges for treatment. Most often, expenses have been estimated holistically by asking respondents to report how much they spent. In 2000, the Arrestee Drug Abuse Monitoring (ADAM) program...

Since the 1990s, marijuana has been the drug of choice among American youths, especially those that tend to sustain arrests. Previous birth cohorts had greater use of crack, powder cocaine, or heroin. This paper summarizes prior research that strongly suggests drug eras tend to follow a regular course. These insights then serve as the basis for pro...

In the 1990s, the New York City Police Department instituted a policy of arresting individuals for less serious offenses that impinge on the city's quality of life (QOL). Critics contend that QOL policing widened the net for arrest, especially among minorities. Alternatively, QOL policing could have created additional opportunities for arresting in...

In the 1990s, the New York City Police Department expanded its focus on reducing behaviors that detract from the overall quality of life (QOL) in the city. Many have credited this effort for the decline in the city's overall crime rate. They often cite the fixing broken windows argument, which maintains that reducing disorder sets off a chain of ev...

Welfare reform has transformed a needs-based family income support into temporary assistance for persons entering the workforce. This paper uses observations from an ethnographic study covering the period from 1995-2001 to examine the impact on drug-using welfare-needy households in inner-city New York. The analysis suggests that studies may undere...

Child Sexual Abuse (CSA) has been linked to a wide variety of adverse psychological and behavioral outcomes. This paper describes girls' sexual development in the inner city based on qualitative material from a long-term ethnographic (observational) study. For many inner-city girls, early and then continued experiences of being compelled to have se...

This paper examines growing up in severely-distressed households typical of many in inner-city New York where drug abuse, sexual exploitation, and violence are the norm. The continual assault on young girls often leads to mortification of self, characterized by acceptance of their situation and socialization to these behaviors in adulthood. A case...

Self-reports of 892 New York City arrestees were compared to urine tests and official criminal records. Disclosure was highest for any priors, incarceration, and recent marijuana use; moderate for cocaine/crack and heroin use and drug priors; but low for index priors and very low for violent priors (disclosure was higher among those who were curren...

Much research (mostly from general population surveys) suggests that people typically use alcohol, tobacco and then marijuana, so called ‘gateway drugs’, prior to any potential use of ‘hard drugs’ like cocaine powder, crack and heroin. Other research (mostly with surveys of special populations) indicates that hard-drug use is associated with numero...

NHSDA and MTF survey data indicate "epidemic"-like growth in hallucinogen use from 1992-1996 and associated increases in cocaine, crack, heroin and amphetamine use. These trends might have resulted from a proliferation of raves and dance clubs in the U.S. as occurred in Europe and elsewhere, although in contrast to evidence regarding European exper...

Much research has documented that youthful substance use typically follows a sequence starting with use of alcohol or tobacco or both and potentially proceeding to marijuana and then hard drug use. This study explicitly examined the probabilities of progression through each stage and their covariates. A secondary analysis of data from the National...

This review examines trends in marijuana use through a study employed to track the progress of the recent epidemic among arrestees at 23 locations across the nation. It identifies nationwide drug use trends within the mainstream population on the basis of self-reports of past-month use, a measure parallel to the length of time in which marijuana ca...

Household survey data on age at first use of alcohol, tobacco, marijuana, and hard drugs can be biased due to sample selection and inaccurate recall. One potential concern is attrition, whereby individuals who get involved with substance use at an early age become increasingly less likely to be surveyed in successive years. A comparison of data fro...

This paper identifies three inner-city cohorts differing by birth year and preferred drugs that routinely passed through Manhattan's criminal justice system from 1987 through 1997: The Heroin Injection Generation born 1945-54, the Cocaine/Crack Generation born 1955-69, and the Blunts (marijuana plus tobacco) Generation born since 1970. The future p...

Early news coverage of the rapid expansions and horrors associated with use of crack in the mid-1980s led to a great panic. Scholarly research subsequently debunked the various myths emanating from this media scare. This article examines whether this expanded understanding was reflected in the quality of news coverage over time through a comprehens...

A large proportion of criminal offenders in New York City, and many other urban areas, are also persistent drug abusers. Getting these otherwise recalcitrant offenders into treatment could help reduce both crime and drug abuse. Many researchers and practitioners are examining the potential for using arrest to intercede into both criminal and drug u...

Much prior research has found that alcohol and/or tobacco use in early adolescence typically precedes marijuana use which typically precedes any hard drug use and abuse. This finding has been often misinterpreted as suggesting that use of alcohol somehow 'causes' subsequent hard drug abuse. This perspective has lead to the simplistic policy positio...

The popularity of crack cocaine grew dramatically in the 1980s and became the primary drug of abuse in much of the United States. This paper examines variation in the reported year of first use by 724 crack abusers from New York City. The finding of a dramatic increase in first use from 1984 to 1986 is consistent with a word-of-mouth process of dif...

The Careers in Crack Project examined the impact of crack cocaine on the lives of users and sellers of crack, heroin, and cocaine powder recruited in Manhattan in 1988-1989 (N = 1,003). This article summarizes findings that place in context and even debunk several myths about use of crack and the crack culture, presents insights into the crack epid...

Much prior literature has focused on substance use progression through alcohol, tobacco, and marijuana leading from a time of no drug use as a youth to the possibility of serious drug abuse. This article extends this literature by empirically examining retrospectively the sequence of hard drugs used as reported retrospectively by 994 hard drug abus...

Prior research based on representative samples drawn from the general population suggests persons tend to follow a common developmental pathway from use of alcohol as youths through possible use of marijuana as teens potentially leading to use of more serious substances as adults. Based on this model, alcohol and marijuana act as gateways, whereby...

Cocaine use among youths as measured by several annual surveys was most popular from about 1979 to 1986, after which it declined. This study carefully examines the nature of the decline by focusing on microdata for youthful arrestees in Manhattan. Multiple statistical analyses examine whether the decline in cocaine use detected by urinalysis is att...

This study attempts to better understand a limited segment of the drug-abusing population, especially individuals who repeatedly use crack and other drugs. This article addresses the methodological strategies and underlying paradigms informing the recruitment of hard-to-reach and ill-defined subpopulations of crack abusers and noncrack drug abusers...

In modeling the AIDS epidemic, the geographic dimensions have been totally ignored, partly as a result of ignorance, partly from an exaggerated and unreasoned concern for confidentiality. For both educational intervention animated cartography for television and health planning expanding already overstressed facilities, it is necessary to predict th...