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This review describes the evolution of smoking prevalence in countries with relatively high adoption of alternative nicotine products such as e-cigarettes, heated tobacco, and snus compared to neighboring coun...
Overdose-associated deaths and morbidity related to substance use is a global public health emergency with devastating social and economic costs. Complications of substance use are most pronounced among people...
While natural disasters like hurricanes are increasingly common, their long-term effects on people who inject drugs are not well understood. Although brief in duration, natural disasters can radically transfor...
Chronic health conditions associated with long-term drug use may pose additional risks to people who use drugs (PWUD) when coupled with COVID-19 infection. Despite this, PWUD, especially those living in rural ...
This paper explores the feasibility of delivering a music festival-based drug checking service in Australia, evaluating service design and stakeholder acceptability.
The overdose crisis in Canada has worsened since the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic. Although this trend is thought to be driven in part by closures or reduced capacity of supervised consumption services (...
Settings throughout Canada and the USA continue to experience crises of overdose death due to the toxic unregulated drug supply. Injecting drugs alone limits the potential for intervention and has accounted fo...
Hospital-based harm reduction services are needed to reduce drug-related harms, facilitate retention in care, and increase medical treatment adherence for people who use drugs. Philanthropic donor support play...
The original article was published in Harm Reduction Journal 2022 19:113
To counteract the spread of new psychoactive substances (NPS) and to prevent the emergence of novel substances, specifically designed as a response to the legal control of individual substances, a new law was ...
The incidence of HIV among persons who inject drugs (PWID) in the USA has been increasing since 2014, signaling the need to identify effective ways to engage PWID in HIV prevention services, namely pre-exposur...
Preventing HIV transmission among people who inject drugs (PWID) is a key element of the US Ending the HIV Epidemic strategy and includes both pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) and medications for opioid use dis...
Opioid agonist therapy (OAT) is associated with reduced injection, reduced HCV transmission, and more opportunities to initiate hepatitis C virus (HCV) treatment in people who use drugs (PWUD). We aimed to stu...
Harm reduction services and professionals have had to reorganise and adapt to COVID-19 prevention measures while still ensuring health and social services for people who use drugs (PUD).
Opioid overdose epidemic is hitting record highs worldwide, accounting for 76% of mortality related to substance use. Take-home naloxone (THN) strategies are being implemented in many developed countries that ...
Narrow or non-existent Good Samaritan Law protections and harsh drug selling statutes in the USA have been shown to deter bystanders from seeking medical assistance for overdoses. Additionally, little is known...
Transactional sex is an important driver of HIV risk among people who use drugs in the USA, but there is a dearth of research characterizing men’s selling and trading of sex in the context of opioid use. To id...
Opioid overdose response training (OORT) and the need for its rapid expansion have become more significant as the opioid epidemic continues to be a health crisis in the USA. Limitation of funding and stigmatiz...
Given the ongoing opioid crisis, novel interventions to treat severe opioid use disorder (OUD) are urgently needed. Injectable opioid agonist therapy (iOAT) with diacetylmorphine or hydromorphone is effective ...
The Correction to this article has been published in Harm Reduction Journal 2022 19:123
In August 2019, an outbreak of “e-cigarette or vaping product use-associated lung injury” (EVALI) prompted many states and health organizations to warn against the use of electronic cigarettes, or e-cigarettes...
The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration’s (SAMHSA) Harm Reduction grant program expanded access to several harm reduction strategies to mitigate opioid overdose fatalities, including expa...
Opioid-related overdose death is a public health epidemic in much of the USA, yet little is known about how people who use opioids (PWUO) experience overdose deaths in their social networks. We explore these e...
Existing research in urban areas has documented a multitude of ways in which law enforcement may affect risks for bloodborne infectious disease acquisition among people who inject drugs (PWID), such as via syr...
Injection drug use and needle sharing remains a public health concern due to the associated risk of HIV, HCV and skin and soft tissue infections. Studies have shown gendered differences in the risk environment...
Access to sterile needles, syringes and methadone maintenance therapy (MMT) is critical to reduce the prevalence of bloodborne virus infections among people who inject drugs (PWID). We aimed to explore the exp...
In 2016, the US state of North Carolina (NC) legalized syringe services programs (SSPs), providing limited immunity from misdemeanor syringe possession when law enforcement is presented documentation that syri...
The impact of policing practices on the engagement of people who use drugs (PWUD) with harm reduction services is well evidenced. Although the police have traditionally taken an enforcement role in responding ...
Prescription opioids have been increasingly prescribed for chronic pain while the opioid-related death rates grow. Naloxone, an opioid antagonist, is increasingly recommended in these patients, yet there is li...
Heroin pipe distribution may encourage people who use heroin (PWUH) to transition from injecting to smoking heroin, reducing harms associated with injection drug use. A syringe services program (SSP) in Seattl...
The COVID-19 pandemic has amplified the need for wide deployment of effective harm reduction strategies in preventing opioid overdose mortality. Placing naloxone in the hands of key responders, including law e...
Australian harm reduction services are provided via a mix of modalities, including fixed-site needle and syringe programmes (NSP) and syringe-dispensing machines (SDMs). SDMs are cost-effective and provide 24-...
Vaccine-hesitant persons who inject drugs are at increased risk for several vaccine-preventable diseases. However, vaccination rates among this population remain low. While syringe services programs (SSPs) are...
People who use drugs in Scotland are currently experiencing disproportionately high rates of drug-related deaths. Drug consumption rooms (DCRs) are harm reduction services that offer a safe, hygienic environme...
In Scotland drug policy and consequently the progress of evidence-based treatment options has been struggling for many years. Political inaction is brought about by a complex chain of legal and operational obs...
Emergency departments (EDs) are important venues for the distribution of naloxone to patients at high risk of opioid overdose, but less is known about patient perceptions on naloxone or best practices for pati...
Increased opioid-related morbidity and mortality in racialized communities has highlighted the intersectional nature of the drug policy crisis. Given the racist evolution of the war on drugs and the harm reduc...
Substance use treatment and harm reduction services are essential components of comprehensive strategies for reducing the harms of drug use and overdose. However, these services have been historically siloed, ...
Resilience is a commonly used construct in substance use and mental health research. Yet it is often narrowly defined by only its internal qualities (e.g., adaptability, hardiness) and overlooks its external q...
Incarcerated people are at an increased risk of contracting HIV and transmitting it to the community post-release. In Iran, HIV epidemics inside prisons were first detected in the early 1990s. We assessed the ...
The majority of opioid-related deaths occur in suburban communities with people who use alone in their homes.
The original article was published in Harm Reduction Journal 2021 18:130
People who both smoke cigarettes and vape are often considered as a homogenous group even though multiple subgroups may exist. We examined biomarkers of exposure (BOE) and biomarkers of potential harm (BOPH) t...
Opioid agonist treatment (OAT) is the primary intervention for opioid use disorder (OUD) in Canada and the USA. Yet, a number of barriers contribute to sub-optimal treatment uptake and retention, including dai...
Australia has had a framework for legal medicinal cannabis since 2016, yet prior online surveys in 2016 and 2018 indicated that most consumers continued to use illicit medical cannabis products. Regulatory dat...
Supervised injection facilities (SIFs) provide spaces where persons who inject drugs (PWID) can inject under medical supervision and access harm reduction services. Though SIFs are not currently sanctioned in ...
Police action can increase risky substance use patterns by people who use drugs (PWUD), but it is not known how increased police presence affects utilization of low-barrier substance use disorder bridge clinic...
The original article was published in Harm Reduction Journal 2022 19:67
Per the CDC, it is estimated that 69,710 opioid overdose deaths occurred in the United States from September 2019 to September 2020. However, it is unclear whether naloxone prescribing also increased or otherw...
The meaningful inclusion of young people who use or have used drugs is a fundamental aspect of harm reduction, including in program design, research, service provision, and advocacy efforts. However, there are...
Internationally, strategies focusing on reducing alcohol-related harms in homeless populations with severe alcohol use disorder (AUD) continue to gain acceptance, especially when conventional modalities focuse...
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