Purpose: Opioid use disorder has caused significant morbidity and mortality resulting in opioid prescribing limiting laws, such as State Bill 273 in West Virginia. The purpose of this study is to explore the impacts of a restrictive opioid prescription law on physicians in medical practice in West Virginia.
Methods: A qualitative study with open-ended semistructured interviews with a purposive sample of physicians in West Virginia.
Background: West Virginia has one of the highest rates of opioid overdose related deaths and is known as the epicenter of the opioid crisis in the United States. In an effort to reduce opioid-related harms, SB 273 was signed in 2018, and aimed to restrict opioid prescribing in West Virginia. SB 273 was enacted during a time when physician arrests and convictions had been increasing for years and were becoming more prevalent and more publicized.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFHighly publicized college sex crimes have recently captured public and policy attention. In response, greater discussion has turned to institutional accountability and controversial reforms such as mandatory reporting (MR). No study to date has measured public perceptions of campus sex assault procedures, however.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMuch empirical evidence indicates that the popularity of various drugs tends to increase and wane over time producing episodic epidemics of particular drugs. These epidemics mostly affect persons reaching their late teens at the time of the epidemic resulting in distinct drug generations. This article examines the drug generations present in the 2000s among arrestees in the 10 locations served by the Arrestee Drug Abuse Monitoring-II program.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe increasing rate of opiate pain reliever (OPR) use is a pressing concern in the United States. This article uses a drug epidemics framework to examine OPR use among arrestees surveyed by the Arrestee Drug Abuse Monitoring program. Results demonstrate regional and demographic variation in use across nine focal cities.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFDrug Alcohol Depend
September 2007
Contemporary drug policy in the United States favors a balanced approach including a supply side dimension. The supply side dimension is grounded in the assumption that the disruption of illicit drug markets will result in diminished capacity of the markets to provide for consumer demand and thereby a reduction in the use of illicit drugs and a related increase in demand for treatment. In this paper we consider the disruption of methamphetamine markets in 10 cities in terms of the relative stability of those markets.
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