Drug Policy - Science topic

Background In response to the U.S. overdose crisis, many states have increased criminal penalties for drug possession, particularly fentanyl. This study sought to qualitatively explore diverse community perspectives on increasing criminal legal penalties in Colorado for fentanyl possession (House Bill 22-1326) and the broader role of the criminal l...

Background The increasing hospitalization expenses for Gastric Cancer (GC) impose a notable economic burden on society. Although the Chinese government has implemented the Universal Zero Markup Drug Policy (UZMDP) to control the growth of hospitalization expenditures, costs have continued to rise. Identifying the factors influencing the hospitaliza...

The addition of a Policy and Strategy pathway to the Career Framework for Paramedics in Canada represents a pivotal advancement for the profession, attempting to address our longstanding absence in senior health policy roles. In this commentary we explore the concept of paramedics in policymaking, emphasizing the perspectives paramedics bring to st...

Background Overdose deaths have continued to rise in the US despite heightened public attention and resources. Drug checking shows promise for integration into existing services for people who use drugs (PWUD) across North America. Amidst the backdrop of rising overdose deaths and emerging funds for harm reduction initiatives, this manuscript explo...

Purpose of review Different regulatory frameworks regulate the development and approval of orphan drugs, which target rare diseases affecting small patient populations, across various countries. The global market for orphan drugs is projected to grow at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 12.3% from 2019 to 2024. However, pricing and access to...

The cost of healthcare became an intense political issue with the systematic analysis of multinational pharmaceutical corporations and their track record. Medicines and their cost, and affordable access to healthcare, were too important to be left to doctors in big hospitals and executives of drug companies, and to indifferent governments. Such iss...

Introduction: The definitions of drug treatment developed by international organizations and implemented in the regulations of the countries were characterized, until the 2010s, by a significant lack of specificity. This enabled a great heterogeneity of institutions and treatments for drug abuse. There are works that analyze drug policies and other...

Cannabis is the most commonly used illicit drug worldwide. In countries with repressive drug policies, the costs of its prohibition plausibly outweigh the benefits. We conduct a cost–benefit analysis of cannabis legalization and regulation in the Czech Republic, taking into consideration alternative scenarios designed using parameters from the know...

People who use drugs (PWUD) experience stigma when accessing hospital-based health care, including emergency care. Rural settings are of particular concern due to heightened social-structural stigma towards PWUD in smaller communities. These barriers have been further exacerbated by recent media attention where nurses’ voices have been used to infl...

Background A welfare-first approach to harm reduction at UK festivals is emerging as a critical strategy for enhancing festival safety. In particular, the implementation of anonymous, non-punitive drug-checking services is posited as essential for reducing drug-related harm by enabling informed decision-making. This empirical study examines the lim...

Anti-malarial drug resistance poses a significant challenge to global malaria control efforts, necessitating a deeper understanding of the evolutionary dynamics underlying the emergence and spread of resistance. This study explores how evolutionary theory provides a framework for elucidating the molecular mechanisms and genetic variation within par...

Background: In many rural US Appalachian and Midwestern counties, stigma surrounding harm reduction interventions has led health professionals and policymakers to approach drug policy implementation with caution, fearing potential backlash from politically conservative communities. One concern is that the public's disapproval of harm-reduction pol...

The Province of British Columbia (BC) is in the midst of an ongoing public health emergency, declared in 2016 in response to significant levels of drug poisonings/overdoses stemming from the unregulated drug supply. In response, BC implemented decriminalization in 2023, removing criminal sanctions for adults possessing up to 2.5 cumulative grams of...

Background The COVID-19 pandemic health crisis and its potential implications for people who use drugs (PWUD) created permissive conditions toward social innovation and experimentation. Still, it also exposed gaps in harm reduction approaches. Harm reduction responsiveness was informed by the priorities defined at the local level, so it was not app...

The South Asian region, including India, faces an increased prevalence of illicit drug use. Key challenges include rising opioid use, injecting drug use and spread of stimulant use from some pockets to other regions of the country. Challenges faced are poor surveillance, lack of evidence-based and structured prevention programmes, wide treatment ga...

Harm reduction strategies in substance use disorders (SUDs) represent a pragmatic, evidence-based approach aimed at minimizing the adverse health, social, and economic consequences of drug use without necessarily requiring abstinence. Unlike traditional punitive models, harm reduction policies prioritize public health, human rights, and social just...

The 1925 Brussels Pharmacopoeia Agreement and Geneva Opium Convention were foundational in shaping international pharmaceutical regulation. The former sought to standardise potent medicines, while the latter established controls over psychoactive substances. Despite differing objectives, both treaties influenced global pharmaceutical governance, co...

Cannabis social equity programs are sub-policies within a larger state marijuana regulatory scheme that are geared towards prioritizing War on Drugs survivors when allocating market space and cannabis sales revenue. Of the over 20 states that have legalized recreational marijuana, many include some version of a cannabis social equity program. The i...

Collaborating with people who use or used drugs (PWUD) in research and policy fora and incorporating their perspectives in decision-making processes is a crucial step towards mitigating drug policy-related harm. PWUD are experts in drug use and equipped to share their experiences and knowledge and impact drug policy change. However, equitable inclu...

People who abuse substance, do not do so in isolation. On the contrary, they enter a social subgroup with its own social norms and moral system, even including a subgroup dialect. Illegality characterizes this subculture and influences it in many dimensions. Could this illegal aspect of drug use, along with the whole drug subculture, make drug use...

Objectives: Illicit drug use presents a significant challenge to global health and public safety, requiring innovative and effective monitoring strategies. This study aimed to evaluate the current landscape of wastewater-based epidemiology (WBE) for monitoring illicit drugs in Europe, focusing on collaboration, current practices, and barriers, whil...

In the early 1990s, the spread of HIV among heroin injectors prompted a shift in drug policy internationally, including in France. This led to the emergence of a new policy known as Harm Reduction (HR) and related tools, including needle exchange programmes, opioid substitution therapy programmes to manage illicit opiate consumption, as well as rec...

The carceral apparatus in the U.S. can be understood as mechanisms of policing, criminalizing, and incarcerating through the criminal justice system in its traditional sense but also encompassing mechanisms of social control, surveillance, and violence exerted through other systems such as family policing organizations, social service agencies, and...

This study uses interrupted time series analysis to evaluate the impact of four major pharmaceutical policy interventions initiated between 2017 and 2023 on household monthly drug expenditures. The findings emphasize the impact of external reference pricing in reducing the financial burden of pharmaceutical expenditures and underscore its potential...

Background The evaluation of health services and care is an important tool to define health policies. This study aimed at assessing user satisfaction with healthcare services, provided by public and private health facilities in Cape Verde. It was also our objective to analyze the sensitivity of satisfaction scores in relation to the respondent’s se...

El presente artículo analiza las reformas al artículo 220 del Código Orgánico Integral Penal (COIP) de Ecuador, las cuales endurecen las penas por tráfico ilícito de drogas. Estas reformas se justifican bajo principios teóricos como la disuasión, la proporcionalidad y la autoría, buscando reducir el narcotráfico y proteger el bien jurídico de la sa...

The Australian Capital Territory (ACT), a region that includes Australia’s capital, Canberra, decriminalised small-scale cannabis cultivation and possession in January 2020. Here, we examined cannabis use and cultivation behaviours, experiences and attitudes of current and past small-scale ACT cannabis cultivators. ACT residents (n = 311) who curre...

South Africa’s interaction with Cannabis sativa L.—locally known as dagga or ntsangu—spans centuries and reflects the nation’s complex history. Early prohibition, influenced by colonial dynamics, set the stage for the apartheid regime’s stringent criminalisation of dagga users and growers during the ensuing decades, further enshrined in a 1992 law...

The rise of new psychoactive substances (NPS) is a major challenge in drug policy, as these substances evade legal controls and spread quickly. This volume explores the NPS crisis in Central Asia and China, focusing on government responses within public health, law enforcement, and drug policy reforms. It offers a comprehensive look at regional and...

This study examines the psychosocial effects of drug abuse among undergraduate students in North-east Nigerian universities, highlighting its implications for guidance and counseling. A descriptive survey design was employed, involving a sample size of 900 students purposively selected from six tertiary institutions, including Adamawa State Univers...

Forging Intersectional Feminist Futures (FIFF) is a regional collaboration that aims to achieve systemic gender equality by strengthening intersectional movement-building in Asia. The project was formed based on the premise that intersectional movements are key to developing transformative advocacy strategies that (1) challenge multiple systems of...

Background Scotland currently has amongst the highest rates of drug-related deaths in Europe, leading to increased advocacy for safer drug consumption facilities (SDCFs) to be piloted in the country. In response to concerns about drug-related harms in Edinburgh, elected officials have considered introducing SDCFs in the city. This paper presents ke...

This study was conducted among the experts having good knowledge of the competition law and experience of dealing with the Competition Commission of Bangladesh. This first-of-its-kind study found certain interesting needs to be fulfilled for the better functioning of the Commission and the Competition Act 2012 in Bangladesh. Certain phenomena were...

Although the global movement towards abolition of the death penalty has been supported by an increasing number of countries in the world, the number of persons executed for drug offences actually increased in the last few years. Known executions for drug offences now account for more than 40 per cent of all global executions. Most such executions t...

Introduction Reimbursement schemes should be regularly updated to maintain a trade-off between costs for the system and access to medicines. The aim of this study was to review reimbursement systems in several European countries in terms of solutions that could have a positive impact on the health technology assessment (HTA) and reimbursement proce...

The rise of new psychoactive substances (NPS) is a major challenge in drug policy, as these substances evade legal controls and spread quickly. This volume explores the NPS crisis in Central Asia and China, focusing on government responses within public health, law enforcement, and drug policy reforms. It offers a comprehensive look at regional and...

The rise of new psychoactive substances (NPS) is a major challenge in drug policy, as these substances evade legal controls and spread quickly. This volume explores the NPS crisis in Central Asia and China, focusing on government responses within public health, law enforcement, and drug policy reforms. It offers a comprehensive look at regional and...

The rise of new psychoactive substances (NPS) is a major challenge in drug policy, as these substances evade legal controls and spread quickly. This volume explores the NPS crisis in Central Asia and China, focusing on government responses within public health, law enforcement, and drug policy reforms. It offers a comprehensive look at regional and...

The rise of new psychoactive substances (NPS) is a major challenge in drug policy, as these substances evade legal controls and spread quickly. This volume explores the NPS crisis in Central Asia and China, focusing on government responses within public health, law enforcement, and drug policy reforms. It offers a comprehensive look at regional and...

The rise of new psychoactive substances (NPS) is a major challenge in drug policy, as these substances evade legal controls and spread quickly. This volume explores the NPS crisis in Central Asia and China, focusing on government responses within public health, law enforcement, and drug policy reforms. It offers a comprehensive look at regional and...

The rise of new psychoactive substances (NPS) is a major challenge in drug policy, as these substances evade legal controls and spread quickly. This volume explores the NPS crisis in Central Asia and China, focusing on government responses within public health, law enforcement, and drug policy reforms. It offers a comprehensive look at regional and...

The rise of new psychoactive substances (NPS) is a major challenge in drug policy, as these substances evade legal controls and spread quickly. This volume explores the NPS crisis in Central Asia and China, focusing on government responses within public health, law enforcement, and drug policy reforms. It offers a comprehensive look at regional and...

The rise of new psychoactive substances (NPS) is a major challenge in drug policy, as these substances evade legal controls and spread quickly. This volume explores the NPS crisis in Central Asia and China, focusing on government responses within public health, law enforcement, and drug policy reforms. It offers a comprehensive look at regional and...

The rise of new psychoactive substances (NPS) is a major challenge in drug policy, as these substances evade legal controls and spread quickly. This volume explores the NPS crisis in Central Asia and China, focusing on government responses within public health, law enforcement, and drug policy reforms. It offers a comprehensive look at regional and...

The rise of new psychoactive substances (NPS) is a major challenge in drug policy, as these substances evade legal controls and spread quickly. This volume explores the NPS crisis in Central Asia and China, focusing on government responses within public health, law enforcement, and drug policy reforms. It offers a comprehensive look at regional and...

The rise of new psychoactive substances (NPS) is a major challenge in drug policy, as these substances evade legal controls and spread quickly. This volume explores the NPS crisis in Central Asia and China, focusing on government responses within public health, law enforcement, and drug policy reforms. It offers a comprehensive look at regional and...

The rise of new psychoactive substances (NPS) is a major challenge in drug policy, as these substances evade legal controls and spread quickly. This volume explores the NPS crisis in Central Asia and China, focusing on government responses within public health, law enforcement, and drug policy reforms. It offers a comprehensive look at regional and...

The imposition of sentences below the minimum penalty specifically for small-scale drug dealers has become an important debate in the context of criminal justice. This study aims to analyze the practice of judicial independence in small-scale drug trafficking cases and identify the challenges and implications for substantive justice and drug eradic...

This study examines the role of social engineering in the rehabilitation of drug addicts within Indonesia’s drug policy framework through a normative juridical analysis. The research evaluates legislative provisions, such as those outlined in Law No. 35 of 2009 on Narcotics, focusing on their alignment with social engineering principles and their e...

Title: Ice Cream for Dopefiends: Unraveling the Physiological Impact of Xylazine Adulteration in Illicit Substances Description: This preprint explores the emerging crisis of xylazine, a veterinary sedative increasingly found as an adulterant in illicit substances, and its profound physiological and public health implications. Xylazine, often refe...

This study examines the recent proliferation of manslaughter charges and subsequent prosecutions brought against people who have shared, sold, or provided drugs that have led to overdose death in Canada. It presents a documentary analysis of news media coverage, court decisions, and Access-to-Information and Freedom-of-Information requests of mater...

The risk environment framework (REF) is a widely-accepted tool in policy research related to drug use. Its prevalence warrants a critical exploration of its strengths and weaknesses. This critical appraisal is a comprehensive analysis of the REF by definition and through relevant examples of its use within the context of public health evaluations,...

La producción, distribución y consumo de sustancias consideradas ilegales -la cocaína, el crack (también llamada piedra) y, la marihuana, entre otras- son una de las prácticas históricas, culturales, sociales y económicas, de nuestras sociedades contemporáneas no sólo en México sino también en América Latina y Estados Unidos. Las juventudes, son de...

Contemporary arguments for drug policy reform, in support of legalising or decriminalising drugs, commonly implicitly (or explicitly) invoke the ideas of well-known thinkers and philosophers including Aristotle, Kant, and J.S. Mill. Mill’s famous liberal doctrine and ‘harm principle’, developed in his best-known work On Liberty, has been particular...

It becomes a real polemic when a drug intended for health development to support national development actually becomes a serious threat to health itself. The purpose of this study is to answer the issue of responsibility for drugs that cause adverse effects on consumers. This research uses normative juridical method. In this research, it is found t...

Background: Unlike evidence-based approaches, public drug policies are shaped more by political factors, with public opinion playing a key role. We hypothesized that using moral arguments in favor of harm reduction would carry greater levels of support in public opinion over empirical evidence arguments in favor of harm reduction. Methods: Based on...

This commentary explores a recent shift in British Columbia's drug policy under a novel drug "decriminalization" framework. We focus on the province's move toward "recriminalization" under this framework. In short, recriminalization was a shift in BC's drug decriminalization framework to only apply in private residences, and be removed from essenti...

The US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) and Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) recently ended their anti-doping partnership amidst controversy. We treat this decision, and the motivations underpinning it, as a means of exploring the complexities of anti-doping norms and the blurred lines between image and performance enhancing drug (IPED) use in sport...

Vietnamese nationals feature conspicuously in the British narrative of modern slavery. In 2019, 39 Vietnamese nationals tragically died in a refrigerated lorry in Kent, in a case which shocked both countries (Barnes T (2019) Essex lorry deaths: concerns ‘snakehead’ smuggling gangs could be behind 39 found dead in trailer. The Independent Newspaper....

Although consumption has increased over time, crack cocaine is still not among the most consumed drugs in Brazil. However, it is the illicit drug that leads most to hospitalization and treatment demand, with a significant financial burden on the Brazilian government. And yet, this situation tends to worsen with the fact that a significant percentag...

Research problem. Among the various methods of prevention and treatment of infectious diseases in children and adolescents, the leading place is occupied by the use of antibacterial drugs, the pharmaceutical market of which, today, is significant both in composition, efficiency and safety, and in the breadth of the assortment. The study of trends i...

My research is based on a contextual, social constructionist approach. Its aim is to answer whether and how parliamentary discussions affect the solutions adopted by individual states in the field of drug policy. In addition, I am looking for common elements in the narratives of politicians, as well as an answer to whether and under what circumstan...

NTRODUCTION: Addiction studies programmes are very diverse around the world. To respond to the public health perspective needs to decrease problems related to drug use, empowering the addiction workforce in a sustainable way is a relevant pathway. The main aim of the study was to describe and compare successfully running academic master’s programme...

The United States and its criminal-legal system have had a historically turbulent relationship with drugs and substance use. Public rhetoric, political ideology, and resulting policies, shaped by both rehabilitative and punitive ideals, have served as a foundation for the criminalization and mass incarceration of those who possess, distribute, and...

Review objectives The key aim of this systematic review is to explore the attitudes and perceptions of existing Misuse of Drugs Use Act (MDA, 1971) and consequences and policy implications. The review question is as follows: How does the public perceive the current MDA (1971)? The primary aim is to understand the different perceptions posed by the...

The Cannabis for Private Purposes Act, enacted in South Africa in 2024, marks a significant shift in national drug policy by legalizing private cannabis use while aiming to balance individual privacy rights with public health and safety. This paper examines the Act’s impacts on socioeconomic dynamics, public health, and crime within South Africa, a...

Zusammenfassung Die bisherige Cannabis-Verbotspolitik konnte die Zunahme des Konsums in Deutschland nicht aufhalten, führte aber zu zusätzlichen Risiken für Konsument_innen durch Kriminalisierung, gesundheitsgefährdende Beimischungen und unklaren Wirkstoffgehalt. Das Cannabisgesetz ist daher ein Schritt in die richtige Richtung. In Prävention und B...

Diabetes Mellitus is a significant global public health burden. Although medication adherence is an inevitable consideration in managing and curing the disease, medication price is the major barrier to patients in Nepal, like any other low- and middle-income countries. Prescribing in brand-name inhibits the possibility of accessing cost-effective g...

Background Harm reduction for people who use drugs (PWUD) is an established evidence-based practice that encompasses a wide variety of services, delivery formats, and settings and has been named a priority in US drug policy. Harm reduction is focused on planning with communities and meeting PWUD where they are and encompasses a wide variety of inte...

Background and aims Injectable opioid agonist treatment (iOAT) is a valuable, patient-centred, evidence based intervention. However, limited information exists on contextual factors that may support or hinder iOAT implementation and sustainability. This study aims to examine existing research on iOAT using diacetylmorphine and hydromorphone, focusi...

Support for a human rights framework for drug policy has been growing for some years. This year, the UNODC published a chapter in the World Drug Report focussed on the right to health. In this paper, we draw attention to the conceptualisation of the right to health for people who use drugs. While one essential element is access to appropriate, high...

The United States (U.S.) and its criminal-legal system have had a historically turbulent relationship with drugs and substance use. Public rhetoric, political ideology, and resulting policies, shaped by both rehabilitative and punitive ideals, have served as a foundation for the criminalization and mass incarceration of those who possess, distribut...

Changes in the pattern of drug use among women before and during imprisonment Female prisoners comprise a vulnerable population. Reliable data on their drug use patterns can contribute to the development of an evidence-based drug policy in prisons. In this study, 211 women (88 percent response rate) in Flemish prisons were surveyed about their drug...

The British model of harm reduction has been referenced as a pioneering approach to substance use in Europe. While many have described the development of UK drug policy through different governments, few studies have focused on the role that drug user activists played in the UK drug policy reform movement. We examine the different conceptualisation...

Norwegian drug policy has been disputed for more than 50 years and rose to the top of the political agenda when the government proposed a reform in 2021. To make a sound evaluation of the current policy regime, it is a requirement that the upsides can be balanced with the downsides. The term “control damage” captures some of the downsides, which ha...

In this piece, I argue that the drug policies of successive governments have failed to address the complex reasons for Scotland's drug crisis and that, in their failings, they have contributed to the problem. This essay will analyse the impact of drug policy on drug addiction and drug-related crime in Scotland. I will argue that the crisis began in...

Psychedelics are a group of psychoactive substances that alter consciousness and produce marked shifts in sensory perception, cognition, and mood. Although psychedelics have been used by indigenous communities for centuries, they have only recently been investigated as an adjunctive therapeutic tool in psychotherapy. Since the early twentieth centu...

Since the 1990s, Vietnam has begun prioritising preventing and combating drug-related crimes (supply reduction) and rehabilitating drug users (demand reduction). In the 2000s, harm reduction approaches in relation to drug control began to be recognised as one of Vietnam’s opiate substitution therapy methods before embarking on greater drug policy r...

The article presents the drug policy in Poland, specifically refers to the Act on combating drug addiction. The lack of legal differentiation between so-called hard and soft drugs is explained, with the exception of the possibility to legally purchase medical marijuana. The author also presents data on the number of reported crimes from the analyze...

La investigación se estructuró bajo un diseño metodológico basado en la revisión documental sistemática, con el objetivo de analizar la acción penal pública sobre el tráfico ilícito de sustancias controladas en la Unidad Judicial Penal de Ecuador. Para ello, se seleccionaron 14 artículos científicos. El análisis de la acción penal pública sobre el...

Background: Drug policy is prone to build on rationales based on different moralities rather than evidence. Less is known about how moralities influence drug policy implementation in practice. The aim was to analyze expressions of moralities among local policy-makers, professionals, and drug users in the context of the Stockholm needle and syringe...

This study explores the interplay between the right to life, right to development, bodily autonomy and freedom of conscience, and demonstrates how these factors collectively shape the concept of freedom of consciousness and simultaneously lead to increased access to altered states of consciousness, cognitive liberty, freedom of development, and the...

Background Research can inform policies on substance use/substance use disorders (SU/SUDs), yet there is limited experimental investigation into strategies for optimizing policymakers’ engagement with SU/SUD research. This study tested the use of narratives to boost policymakers’ research engagement. Methods In five rapid-cycle randomized controll...

Effective policy implementation is crucial in combating drug abuse and trafficking, influenced by various complex factors beyond technical and administrative aspects. These factors include the policy's size and objectives, communication, resources, disposition, characteristics of implementing agents, and social conditions. This study, focused on th...

Background Over-the-counter (OTC) medications are sold directly to customers without requiring a doctor’s prescription. Misuse of OTC drugs is higher in adolescents and young adults than in the general population. This review is the first to narratively synthesize the factors associated with OTC drug misuse among adolescents and young adults (14-25...

Chloroquine is still used as a first-line treatment for uncomplicated Plasmodium vivax malaria in India and resistance to this therapy can act as a major hurdle for malaria elimination. It is difficult to monitor drug-efficacy and drug resistance through in vivo and in vitro studies in case of Plasmodium vivax so analysis of molecular markers serve...

Background On January 31st, 2023, the province of British Columbia (BC), Canada, was granted a federal exemption allowing adults (aged 18 +) to possess up to 2.5 g of select illicit drugs. The exemption will be in place for three years (2023–2026), marking the first formal decriminalization of illicit drug policy reform in Canada. BC’s decriminaliz...

This article delves into the complex dynamics of khat (Catha edulis) prohibition in the UK, with a particular focus on a Somali community in north-west London. Despite the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs finding no substantial evidence of khat causing societal or medical harms and recommending public health interventions instead of prohibit...

Background Most national programmes of opioid agonist therapy (OAT) in Eastern Europe and Central Asia are at a critical juncture for building their sustainability due to decreasing support from the Global Fund and other international HIV funders. Therefore, it is timely to identify the status, trends, opportunities and risk factors of OAT prepared...

The Enhanced Games, a privately funded sporting megaevent aspiring to rival the Olympic Games, have garnered significant media attention since its public inception in 2023. This attention has primarily been driven by the Enhanced Games’ embrace of performance-enhancing drugs. Lost in the public fixation on the event’s green-lit drug-use, however, i...

Thesis on Dutch drug policy and recent political debates on drug regulation for the European Masters in Drug and Alcohol Studies (EMDAS) based no the 'What's the problem represented to be' (WPR) approach by Bacchi and Goodwin.

The article, based on the study of judicial practice and scientific literature, examines the determinants of crimes committed by members of criminal organizations in the sphere of circulation of narcotic drugs, psychotropic substances, their analogues and precursors. According to the results of the study, it was established that the actions of memb...

Introduction: Novel psychoactive substances (NPS) are rapidly emerging and being reformulated to evade legislative controls, creating unpredictability in drug markets and ineffective drug policies. Given that Ireland has the highest self-reported NPS use within Europe and literature regarding health risks is lacking, the National Advisory Committee...

Background Chloroquine (CQ) was once an important drug used in malaria treatment especially due to its affordability, ease of use and high anti-malarial efficacy. However, it was withdrawn from clinical practice in Nigeria in 2005 following a widespread of resistance cases reported in the public health domain. This study aims to ascertain the level...

Venture capital (VC) firms fund biopharmaceutical research and development (R&D) while incurring substantial financial risk. VC firms seek to invest in clinical areas with the greatest potential for financial return. Using a combination of data for clinical trials and VC investment deals between January 2014 and March 2024, we found that approximat...

Background The development of drug policies has been a major focus for policy-makers across North America in light of the ongoing public health emergency caused by the overdose crisis. In this context, the current study examined stakeholders’ experiences and perceptions of power and value in a drug policy-making process in a North American city usi...

The three UN drug conventions comprehensively and almost universally regulate the dealing with illicit drugs worldwide. Although the treaties are prohibitive, more and more member states seek to liberalise their national drug policies and implement depenalisation, decriminalisation or even legalisation schemes. The article explores member states’ p...

Background: This study conducts a comparative historical analysis of two significant drug crises: the opium epidemic in 19th-century Qing Dynasty China and the ongoing opioid crisis in the United States, aiming to extract applicable lessons for current global drug policies. Methodology: A historical case study approach was employed, integrating exa...

Background: The changing drug situation in Ireland has led to the development of various drug policies. This paper aims to use Limerick City as a case study to examine approaches to policy development. Methodology: The study is qualitative and uses a hybrid technique that combines document, content, and stake-holder analysis. Kingdon's multiple st...