Legislative practices
Kate Seear in Law, Drugs and the Making of Addiction, 2019
The proposal to drug test welfare recipients did not gain support in the Senate, and was dropped from the initial bill. A proposal to drug test welfare recipients was later reintroduced to parliament, this time via the Social Services Legislation Amendment (Drug Testing Trial) Bill (2018) (Commonwealth) (‘the second bill’). This second bill proposed the establishment of a drug testing pilot programme for recipients of welfare across three Australian locations: Canterbury-Bankstown, in the state of New South Wales; Logan, in the state of Queensland; and Mandurah, in the state of Western Australia. The drugs to be tested for were methamphetamine, methylenedioxy-methamphetamine, tetrahydrocannabinol, opioids or another substance prescribed by the drug test rules for the purposes of this definition. The proposed trial would have two objectives (Commonwealth of Australia House of Representatives, 2018a: 3): maintain the integrity of, and public confidence in, the social security system by ensuring that taxpayer-funded welfare payments are not being used to purchase drugs or support substance abuse; andprovide new pathways for identifying recipients with drug abuse issues and facilitating their referral to appropriate treatment where required.
Prison Corruption
Michael C. Braswell, Belinda R. McCarthy, Bernard J. McCarthy in Justice, Crime, and Ethics, 2019
Third, prison systems need to develop and enforce a strict, zero-tolerance policy on corruption and communicate a strong and forceful anticorruption policy. Resources must be expended to build an investigative capacity to root out corrupt practices and partnerships. They need to be built by working with local law enforcement and prosecutorial agencies. As part of this zero-tolerance approach, it must be clear to all that staff members who engage in corrupt practices will be prosecuted, not merely asked to resign. Many states have adopted an Inspector General model (http://inspectorsgeneral.org/) that uses an external investigative agency to investigate charges of staff misconduct. In addition, the use of routine and special audit procedures on a random basis will ensure the proper expenditure of funds. Drug testing of employees and searching correctional employees as they enter and leave institutions can also be implemented. Adopting an Inspector General model or a specialized internal affairs unit that functions independently is needed at a minimum.
Cannabis Use Treatment
Jonathan C. Beazley, Stephanie Field in Cannabis on Campus, 2018
What are some of the specific problems in treating the younger marijuana-primary patients? Dr. Garbely: “Young adults have the mistaken belief that marijuana is harmless, so it can be difficult to make them understand that the drug is causing problems in their lives.” He goes on to include the increased difficulties they have had treating younger patients since the emergence of synthetic marijuana—K2 or Spice. “While K2 is not marijuana, the chemical structure bears a mild resemblance. K2 causes mental health issues and triggers a psychotic, dissociative experience. Patients lose touch with reality. This is very difficult to manage, even on our campus. In some instances, Caron enlists the help of local acute psychiatric units to stabilize these patients. It’s important to talk about K2 and Spice when talking about cannabis because a lot people switch over thinking they are the same thing. They also make the switch to avoid detection. It’s hard to monitor for these drugs, simply, because they won’t show up in drug testing the same way marijuana does.” Drug testing is a very important issue in the treatment of cannabis use disorders, as a significant percentage of those adolescents and young adults admitted have legal pressures and may be monitored by juvenile or adult probation. The long period for marijuana to be eliminated from the body would make K2 an attractive way to circumvent the legal system to an unrepentant 17-year-old cannabis user.
Psychiatric and non-psychiatric drugs causing false-positive amphetamines urine test in psychiatric patients: a pharmacovigilance analysis using FAERS
Published in Expert Review of Clinical Pharmacology, 2023
Vera Battini, Giovanna Cirnigliaro, Luca Giacovelli, Maria Boscacci, Silvia Massara Manzo, Giulia Mosini, Greta Guarnieri, Michele Gringeri, Beatrice Benatti, Emilio Clementi, Bernardo Dell’Osso, Carla Carnovale
Drug testing is frequently used to monitor drug use and adherence to psychiatric treatments and rehabilitation programs (such as opiate dependency and pain management programs) [84], monitor pharmacological therapy, and identify illicit use of substance abuse in workplaces or legal trials. In the psychiatric setting, drug testing is often used to diagnose substance-induced psychosis versus primary psychosis, to make prognostic assessments and the correct treatment choices during emergency department evaluation as well as hospitalization or territorial programs. Immunoassay UDS is one of the most objective and flexible tools available, despite the lack of information regarding substance abuse dosage and time-consumption. Furthermore, the time length of drug screen positivity has not been fully elucidated [6,85]. Many clinicians have limited knowledge on immunoassay cross-reactivity, and several health facilities do not have the possibility to do additional confirmatory tests. Thus, patients with amphetamine false-positive results can easily incur negative clinical, social, familiar, and legal implications [26,47,86].
Repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) administration to heavy cannabis users
Published in The American Journal of Drug and Alcohol Abuse, 2018
Gregory L. Sahlem, Nathaniel L. Baker, Mark S. George, Robert J. Malcolm, Aimee L. McRae-Clark
Each participant completed three visits. On the initial visit, participants underwent a standardized evaluation that included a Mini International Neuropsychiatric Interview (MINI) (24), a Time Line Follow-Back (TLFB)(25), the Cannabis Use Disorder Identification Test-R (CUDIT-R) (26), the Inventory of Depressive Symptoms (IDS) (27), and the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI)(28). Participants additionally underwent both a urine (Alere Toxicology, testing for amphetamines, benzodiazepines, cannabis, cocaine, and opiates), and saliva drug test (Confirm Biosciences, testing for amphetamines, benzodiazepines, cocaine, cannabis, and opiates) to detect the presence of cannabis and other drugs of abuse. Both the urine and saliva drug test was performed on all three visits. The urine drug screening was performed in order to confirm the recent use of cannabis, and to ensure participants had not recently used any other drugs of abuse. The saliva drug test confirmed that participants had not used any drugs for the previous 14 hours.
Concordance assessment between self-reports of substance use and urinalysis: A population-based study in Mashhad, Iran
Published in Journal of Ethnicity in Substance Abuse, 2022
Mohammad Khajedaluee, Seyed Abdolrahim Rezaee, Narges Valizadeh, Tahereh Hassannia, Toktam Paykani
A 10-panel drug test (ACON Laboratories, San Diego, CA) was used based on a chromatographic immunoassay to analyze the urine samples and rapidly detect ten different drugs, i.e. cocaine, amphetamine, methamphetamine, cannabis, opium, buprenorphine, barbiturates, benzodiazepines, methadone and tricyclic antidepressants, at the minimum cutoff sensitivity established by cutoff sensitivity established by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (Hawks & Chiang, 1986), the WHO and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA). The cutoffs levels used in ng/ml included 300 for amphetamine, 300 for barbiturates, 10 for buprenorphine, 300 for benzodiazepines, 150 for cocaine, 50 for cannabis, 500 for methamphetamine, 300 for methadone, 200 for opiates and 1000 for tricyclic antidepressants.
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