Opioid Use Among Those Who Have Criminal Justice Experience: Harm Reduction Strategies to Lessen HIV Risk.

Purpose Of Review: We reviewed the HIV and opioid literature relevant to harm reduction strategies for those with criminal justice experience.

Recent Findings: Opioid use in the United States has risen at an alarming rate recently. This has led to increased numbers of people who inject drugs, placing new populations at risk for HIV, including those who have criminal justice experience.

Treating Addictions: Harm Reduction in Clinical Care and Prevention.

This paper examines the role of clinical practitioners and clinical researchers internationally in establishing the utility of harm-reduction approaches to substance use. It thus illustrates the potential for clinicians to play a pivotal role in health promoting structural interventions based on harm-reduction goals and public health models. Popular media images of drug use as uniformly damaging, and abstinence as the only acceptable goal of treatment, threaten to distort clinical care away from a basis in evidence, which shows that some ways of using drugs are far more harmful than others and that punitive approaches and insistence on total abstinence as the only goal of treatment often increases the harms of drug use rather than reducing drug use.

Public Health and Solitary Confinement in the United States.

The history of solitary confinement in the United States stretches from the silent prisons of 200 years ago to today's supermax prisons, mechanized panopticons that isolate tens of thousands, sometimes for decades. We examined the living conditions and characteristics of the populations in solitary confinement. As part of the growing movement for reform, public health agencies have an ethical obligation to help address the excessive use of solitary confinement in jails and prisons in accordance with established public health functions (e.

Pathologizing poverty: new forms of diagnosis, disability, and structural stigma under welfare reform.

In 1996 the U.S. severely restricted public support for low income people, ending "welfare as we know it.

Failed drug policies in the United States and the future of AIDS: a perfect storm.

How much could US policies have reduced the initial growth of the epidemic had we moved earlier to institute Harm Reduction drug policies such as needle exchange programs for injecting drug users? The US Centers for Disease Control estimates 50 000 HIV infections annually in the United States (156 per million population), but the more populous European Union estimates 5000 (less that 10 per cent of the US incidence) - a measure of the failure of US prevention policies for HIV. The earliest official responses to AIDS in the United States expressed official fear and condemnation of victims and denial of the magnitude and seriousness of the population risks in the epidemic's early stages. These failures with AIDS prefigure current US crises in general health policies and interfere with efforts to successfully inform public understanding of the meaning and value of scientific evidence about health have diminished public confidence in credibility and trustworthiness of professional and political leadership for US health polices.

Adolescent substance use and other illegal behaviors and racial disparities in criminal justice system involvement: findings from a US national survey.

We used data from a national survey to examine arrest rate disparities between African American and White adolescents (aged 12-17 years; n=6725) in relation to drug-related and other illegal behaviors. African American adolescents were less likely than Whites to have engaged in drug use or drug selling, but were more likely to have been arrested. Racial disparities in adolescent arrest appear to result from differential treatment of minority youths and to have long-term negative effects on the lives of affected African American youths.

Bringing health care advocacy to a public defender's office.

Recent arrestees often face barriers to health care access as they move through the judicial process, placing them at significant health risk. The immediate postrelease period generally involves numerous court dates, meetings, and other obligations that can fragment the delivery of care. A residency training program collaborated with public defenders to facilitate medical screenings and referrals for recent arrestees in Bronx County, New York.

On drug treatment and social control: Russian narcology's great leap backwards.

The medical discipline of narcology in Russia is a subspecialty of psychiatry from the Soviet era and it is given warrant to define the scope of health activities with regard to alcohol and other drug use, drug users, and related problems. Narcological practice is in turn constrained by the State. The emergence of widespread injection opiate use and associated HIV morbidities and mortalities during the first decade following the collapse of the Soviet Union has brought the contradictions in Russian narcological discourse into high relief.

A paradoxical peace: HIV in post-conflict states.

Conflict has traditionally been thought to contribute to the epidemic spread of HIV. New data call into question this assumption, and there is concern that the 'post-conflict phase' may be a particularly dangerous time for HIV transmission. The post-conflict phase is characterized by a potentially disastrous confluence of factors including demobilization of combatants, the presence of peacekeeping forces, the return of potentially infected soldiers and refugees, high-risk behaviours and persistent economic and social debilitation.

Return to Galileo? The Inquisition of the International Narcotic Control Board.

Nearly 400 years after Galileo Galilei of Florence was arraigned and convicted of suspected heresy by the ten member Congregation of the Holy Office (Inquisition), the International Narcotic Control Board (INCB) is similarly inserting itself into matters pertaining to innovations in healthcare and the public health response to addiction throughout the world. Like that earlier Inquisition of 1633 that convicted Galileo of heresy for holding that the sun is the centre of the universe with the earth revolving around it (in contradiction to church doctrine of the time) the INCB and its thirteen-member panel, now rails against any evidence out of sync with the established doctrine of the war on drugs--particularly those innovations in public health called harm reduction. The latest healthcare and harm reduction practices to attract the ire of the INCB Inquisition are elements of Canada's most effective and innovative measures to minimize the harms of drugs in Vancouver--supervised injection facilities and, recently, the potential establishment of supervised inhalation rooms--along with the long established practice of providing safer mouthpieces for pulmonary inhalation in British Columbia.

Years of life lost to prison: racial and gender gradients in the United States of America.

Background: The United States has the highest rate of imprisonment of any country in the world. African Americans and Hispanics comprise a disproportionately large share of the prison population. We applied a "prison life expectancy" to specify differences in exposure to imprisonment by gender and race at the population level.

Tobacco harm reduction: how rational public policy could transform a pandemic.

Nicotine, at the dosage levels smokers seek, is a relatively innocuous drug commonly delivered by a highly harmful device, cigarette smoke. An intensifying pandemic of disease caused or exacerbated by smoking demands more effective policy responses than the current one: demanding that nicotine users abstain. A pragmatic response to the smoking problem is blocked by moralistic campaigns masquerading as public health, by divisions within the community of opponents to present policy, and by the public-health professions antipathy to any tobacco-control endeavours other than smoking cessation.

Closed to reason: time for accountability for the International Narcotic Control Board.

For more than two decades, the International Narcotic Control Board (INCB) has tried to stop harm reduction and its HIV prevention programs. This posture is based on a fundamental misunderstanding of their responsibilities and of drug addiction itself--i.e.

Insite: Canada's landmark safe injecting program at risk.

InSite is North Americas first supervised injection site and a landmark public heath initiative operating in Vancouver since 2003. The program is a vital component of that cities internationally recognized harm reduction approach to its serious problems with drugs, crime, homelessness and AIDS. InSite currently operates under a waiver of Federal rules that allow it to provide services as a research project.

The case of Scott Ortiz: a clash between criminal justice and public health.

The criminal justice system creates particular challenges for persons with HIV and Hepatitis C, many of whom have a history of injection drug use. The case of Scott Ortiz, taken from public trial and sentencing transcripts, reveals the manner in which incarceration may delay learning of important health problems such as Hepatitis C infection. In addition, the case of Mr.

Immigration and HIV/AIDS in the New York Metropolitan Area.

Because the HIV pandemic undergoes continual change in its locations and affected populations, it is crucial to study HIV risk behaviors among mobile and immigrant groups within and across borders. The impact of cross-cultural migrations and the importance of studying that impact in terms of demographic characteristics as well as cultural and environmental factors has not received adequate attention in public health research. This collaborative analysis utilizes data from three studies of immigrant groups in New York to describe and compare these factors that provide the context for risk and prevention of HIVAIDS and other health challenges.

Blood transfusions in the early years of AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa.

Blood transfusions transmit HIV more effectively than other means, yet there has been little examination of their role in the origins and early course of AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa. We review historical data in archives, government reports, and medical literature from African and European sources documenting the introduction, establishment, use, and growth of blood transfusions in sub-Saharan Africa. These data allow estimation of the geographic diffusion and growth of blood transfusions between 1940 and 1990.

Policy makers ignoring science and scientists ignoring policy: the medical ethical challenges of heroin treatment.

A decade of research in Switzerland, The Netherlands, Germany, and Spain now constitutes a massive body of work supporting the use of heroin treatment for the most difficult patients addicted to opiates. These trials concur on this method's safety and efficacy and are now serving as a prelude to the institution of heroin treatment in clinical practice throughout Europe. While the different sampling and research protocols for heroin treatment in these studies were important to the academic claims about specific results and conclusions that could be drawn from each study, the overall outcomes were quite clear--and uniformly positive.

Potential for HIV transmission through unsafe injections.

We tested for HIV in discarded needles and syringe washes from 191 HIV-infected patients receiving injections in rural Cameroon. HIV-1 RNA was amplified from 34 of 103 intravenous injection syringes and two of 88 intramuscular injection syringes. All 36 strains were HIV-1 group M.

Witch-hunt.

Beginning two years ago, the US Dept of Health and Human Services began "special reviews" of all current research grants that involved harm reduction, sex and drugs, and continues its ban on funding of needle exchange. With Bush's second term, the campaign was extended to all US funded international programs that dealt with these issues and populations. And, most recently, the US has again undertaken to dominate the discourse within international organizations charged with drug control and AIDS policies - especially those of the UN.