Minority adolescents and substance use risk/protective factors: a focus on inhalant use.

Despite the fact that inhalant use is a growing problem among youth in the United States, relatively little attention has been paid to the demographic and social factors related to its use. This study used data from a household survey of adolescents in Washington state, and found that race/ethnicity was a strong predictor of lifetime prevalence of inhalant use, with Native-American youth being particularly likely to use inhalants. Comparing the age at initiation of inhalant use to other legal and illegal substances, we found that cigarettes and inhalants showed the lowest age at initiation.

High-performance liquid chromatographic analysis of cocaine in human plasma.

A simple isocratic HPLC procedure for the analysis of cocaine in plasma, with or without an internal standard, is described for the first time. Basified plasma was extracted in ether, re-extracted in acetic acid, which was subsequently basified prior to the final extraction in n-hexane. The hexane extract was evaporated to dryness, reconstituted in the mobile phase and then chromatographed.