"Prevalence of past-12 month ketamine use among 12th grade students has been below 2% for the past decade and in 2023 stood at 1%. This 'club drug' was added to the survey in 2000. It showed little change in its usage levels through 2002. Since then use has declined in all grades. Because of the very low levels of use of this drug by 2011, questions about its use were dropped from the questionnaires administered to 8th and 10th graders."
"SCRA vaping products were almost exclusively on sale as liquid formulations for refilling EVDs. It therefore does not appear that the rise in popularity of disposable nicotine e-cigarettes [17] has so far impacted on the online SCRA vaping product market. The most common bottle size on sale was 5mL. Given the lack of data on the concentration of SCRA in these liquids, it is difficult to quantify how many SCRA doses this may constitute.
"This study provides evidence of a rapidly evolving and active online marketplace from which SCRA vaping products seem to be easily obtainable, but also difficult to identify as controlled substances. Using simple search terms on a widely used search engine, we identified 62 websites selling SCRA vaping products, with 1225 individual listings and 128 unique brands.
"Since the early 1990s, binge drinking (defined as drinking at least 4 drinks in a row for women or at least 5 drinks in a row for men) has been a key indicator of risky drinking.
"However, the binge threshold may not clearly distinguish drinking risk. A person who consumes five drinks over a few hours may or may not show signs of intoxication, depending on factors including body composition, food and water intake, and tolerance. In contrast, a person who consumes ten drinks over the same time period is at high risk for alcohol poisoning and other negative outcomes.
"The tusi phenomenon complicates the drug landscape because it has the potential to confuse both people who use and researchers alike. With respect to people who use, given the drug concoction’s name, people may assume the drug is 2C/2C-B. Since many partiers are unfamiliar with 2C series drugs (14), there is also potential for people to simply think this is a new (and perhaps benign) drug – especially given that the powder is pink with a sweet scent.
"Tusi is a relatively new drug concoction that is marketed using the phonetic translation of “2C.” This name, especially when mentioned verbally, has great potential to incorrectly refer to 2C. This was likely an intentional marketing tactic. Variations in spelling include “tuci,” ”tucci,” and “tussi,” and tusibí and tucibí (17,18)—which even further misrepresent the specific compound 2C-B.
"Alcohol-caused harms are spread across populations and can be experienced both by people who use alcohol and by those who do not.
"The estimates presented in this article find important evidence of the potential consequences of the rapid expansion of the MA supply in Ohio, which can help inform the public health consequences of a similar expansion across the US. We find that relatively more MA detected by crime labs is either unrelated to or associated with a small, but measurable decrease in the overall risk of unintentional overdose death. This is not to say that MA is safe or cannot cause overdose deaths. Our findings are not that the combination of MA and fentanyl is in fact safer than fentanyl on its own.
"Most of the concern with MDMA adulteration focuses on the plethora of other substances that have been detected in the MDMA supply. This includes novel designer drugs with potentially serious health risks such as synthetic piperazine and cathinone compounds, which were detected in about 5 % of samples overall. Piperazines first appeared in 2000 but saturated the market from 2008–2013, when these compounds were detected in about one-quarter (24 %) of drug items.
"The misrepresentation of illicit drugs is a persistent problem in unregulated markets (Barratt et al., 2024, Marshman and Gibbins, 1969). Misrepresentation can take several forms, including dilution of alleged drugs with inactive fillers, adulteration with other active drugs or contaminants, and substitution with other substances.
