Bulletin on narcotics
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Bulletin on narcotics · Jan 1993
ReviewDrug injecting and HIV infection among the population of drug abusers in Asia.
Opium has been produced and consumed since the nineteenth century in the areas of Asia currently referred to as the Golden Crescent and the Golden Triangle. In the 1970s and 1980s, most countries from Afghanistan to Japan experienced a heroin epidemic of varying degrees of severity. Opium and heroin abuse appeared to be more severe in countries and areas where those drugs were produced, an exception being Hong Kong, which has had a large population of heroin abusers for more than two decades. ⋯ Great caution should be exercised in interpreting prevalence because of vast differences in methods of assessment. Given the vulnerability of intravenous drug abusers to rapid transmission of HIV infection, the prevention of drug injecting is of paramount importance in arresting the spread of the epidemic. Efforts to contain drug abuse, though difficult, are a principal means of achieving that end.
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The article focuses on countries and areas of South-East Asia, which are seriously affected by drug abuse and the problems associated with it. Opium has traditionally been used for treating illnesses and alleviating physical and mental stress, as well as for recreational and social purposes. The prohibition of the sale and use of opium in Burma, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand forced many habitual opium users to switch to heroin. ⋯ Studies have also shown that the abuse of manufactured psychotropic substances has been increasing and that heroin addicts resort to these substances when heroin is difficult to find. The article also briefly reviews the history of opium use in China and the history of drug abuse in Japan, particularly with regard to the problem of methamphetamine abuse, which has appeared in two epidemic-like waves. The first followed the end of the Second World War and disappeared at the end of the 1950s; the second reappeared in 1975 and since then has gradually been increasing in size.
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Bulletin on narcotics · Jan 1981
ReviewA review of trends in alcohol and cannabis use among young people.
This review identifies recent trend studies in alcohol and cannabis use among young people in an attempt to define increases over time, demographic subgroups where changes have taken place, possible future trends and areas where there is a lack of current information. Trend studies on alcohol use are described for eight countries: Australia, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Mexico, Norway, Sweden and the United States of America. ⋯ Rates of alcohol use are reported to have reached a peak and per capita alcohol consumption to have stabilized or decreased in many Western countries since 1975-1976. Rates of cannabis use are reported to have increased remarkably from the late 1960s to the late 1970s although the hazards of cannabis use are becoming more widely recognized.