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2020-02-01
Open Society Foundations;
In the early post-Soviet period, Czech authorities, unlike their counterparts in some former Eastern Bloc countries, turned away from repressive drug policies and developed approaches to illicit drugs that balanced new freedoms with state authority. The end of Soviet rule meant that drug markets and the use of a wide range of new drugs attained a magnitude and visibility not previously known to Czech society.
From an early stage, some pioneering health professionals with expertise in drug addiction saw that the new drug situation would require greatly expanded services for drug users and collaboration between civil society and government to achieve this expansion. They were able to influence the new government and steer it toward drug policy that would define drug use as a multisectoral problem, not an issue for policing alone.
The report A Balancing Act: Policymaking on Illicit Drugs in the Czech Republic traces the development of drug policy in the Czech Republic from the post-Soviet period to the present day. The report examines the impact of the Czech Republic's evidence based approach to drug policy, compares the country's path on drug policy to that of its neighbour Slovakia and discusses challenges to maintaining this approach in the future.
Watch a video produced by the Rights Reporter Foundation based on the fin
2019-08-01
Wilder Research;
Project Recovery serves individuals experiencing homelessness and substance use disorders in Ramsey and Dakota counties through drop-in and case management services, linking them to appropriate housing, treatment, and health care supports. This report presents evaluation results for the second year of grant activities. It includes data from interviews with participants, evaluations of a training session provided to housing providers, and surveys with stakeholders who work with the chemical dependency and homelessness systems.
2019-04-01
Wilder Research;
Women's Recovery Services is an initiative of the Minnesota Department of Human Services Alcohol and Drug Abuse Division. Grantees across Minnesota provide treatment support and recovery services for pregnant and parenting women who have substance use disorders and their families. The evaluation, now in it's second round of grantees, includes process and outcome evaluations and a cost-benefit analysis. This report presents evaluation results from year two of the grant. It includes a description of the families served, services provided, and program outcomes.
2019-01-01
National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine;
The opioid crisis in the United States has come about because of excessive use of these drugs for both legal and illicit purposes and unprecedented levels of consequent opioid use disorder (OUD). More than 2 million people in the United States are estimated to have OUD, which is caused by prolonged use of prescription opioids, heroin, or other illicit opioids. OUD is a life-threatening condition associated with a 20-fold greater risk of early death due to overdose, infectious diseases, trauma, and suicide. Mortality related to OUD continues to escalate as this public health crisis gathers momentum across the country, with opioid overdoses killing more than 47,000 people in 2017 in the United States. Efforts to date have made no real headway in stemming this crisis, in large part because tools that already exist—like evidence-based medications—are not being deployed to maximum impact.
To support the dissemination of accurate patient-focused information about treatments for addiction, and to help provide scientific solutions to the current opioid crisis, this report studies the evidence base on medication assisted treatment (MAT) for OUD. It examines available evidence on the range of parameters and circumstances in which MAT can be effectively delivered and identifies additional research needed.
2018-10-31
Court Watch NYC;
The first issue-based zine from Court Watch NYC, a collaborative prosecutorial accountability project between the Brooklyn Community Bail Fund, VOCAL-NY and 5 Boro Defenders. This zine features findings from over 423 hours of observing how drug cases are handled in Brooklyn and Manhattan arraignments.
2018-09-09
West Africa Civil Society Institute (WACSI);
Drug use in general is a topic that rarely features in Nigeria media outlets. The focus has mostly been on arrests and seizures of drugs by law enforcement agencies to show how well the government is doing in terms of fighting the "war on drugs". Aside specific global campaigns such as the Support Don't Punish Global Day of Action (26 June) , very few programmes and documentaries report and discuss drug use from a public health perspective. Even though the non-medical use of codeine has been occurring for the past decades in the country, it has rarely been discussed as much as now. The coverage helped to reveal how codeine-based products are smuggled out of pharmaceutical companies.
2018-06-19
Carsey School of Public Policy at The University of New Hampshire;
Over the last two decades, opioid overdose deaths have increased over 400 percent, reaching 45,838 in 2016. Although the crisis is not disproportionately worse in rural than in urban America, opioid mortality rates have grown faster in rural areas, particularly in the Northeast and Midwest. Rural areas also face unique challenges in dealing with the crisis, including a smaller health care infrastructure than is available in more densely populated areas, community and family factors, and labor market stressors.
2018-06-05
Carsey School of Public Policy at The University of New Hampshire;
Hidden in the shadows of New Hampshire's opioid epidemic are the children who live with their parents' addiction every day. They fall behind in school as the trouble at home starts to dominate their lives, they make the 911 calls, they are shuttled about to live with relatives or in foster care, and they face an uncertain future when their parents can no longer care for them.
2018-05-11
FrameWorks Institute;
This communications toolkit provides advocates with clear, evidence-based guidance on how to shift public thinking about—and responses to—adolescent substance use.
2018-03-27
Carsey School of Public Policy at The University of New Hampshire;
The U.S. drug overdose problem has reached epidemic levels, prompting President Trump to declare a public health emergency. Since 2000, 786,781 people in the United States have died from drug overdoses and other drug-related causes, with nearly 40 percent of those deaths occurring in the last three years alone.
2017-12-19
Carsey School of Public Policy at The University of New Hampshire;
The opioid crisis besetting every region of the United States directly affects more than just those who use substances. For a pregnant woman, a consequence of substance use can be neonatal abstinence syndrome (NAS)—withdrawal symptoms experienced by the newborn.
2017-11-16
Altarum;
The negative impacts of the opioid epidemic are substantial and increasing rapidly over time. No part of society—including households, governments, and the private sector—is safe from the devastation brought on by this national crisis. The human toll of the combined misuse of prescription opioids, heroin, fentanyl, and related drugs has reached an unthinkable scale, with deaths soaring to more than 53,000 in 2016. Through this analysis of 2016 data, we estimate the magnitude of the economic and quantifiable societal harms and find the potential benefit of preventing opioid overdoses, deaths, and substance use disorders in 2016 would have exceeded $95 billion dollars—and preliminary data for 2017 predict this estimate will increase. This finding calls for substantial increases in funding at all levels—private and public sectors—to prevent opioid misuse and provide treatment for those affected.The potential benefits of eliminating the epidemic are concentrated in productivity gains from saved lives and reductions in substance use, averted health care costs due to fewer overdoses and other health complications, and lower spending on other services currently addressing the burden of opioids like law enforcement and child/family assistance (see Figure 1). These benefits—including savings to governments and increases in economic returns to households and the private sector (see Figure 2)—would accrue to all of society.
