To investigate how alcohol container labels can be used to build public awareness, the Canadian Centre on Substance Use and Addiction commissioned Enhanced Alcohol Container Labels: A Systematic Review and developed a summary of the report’s highlights. These findings will be useful for public health stakeholders, researchers and policy makers considering the evidence on alcohol container labels.

Key findings include: 

• In Canada, alcohol containers are not required to display information like the nutrition information on food or the health warnings on medications and other regulated...

The novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic has resulted in substantial burden of disease in Canada. Daily cannabis use is most strongly implicated in the cannabis-attributable burden of disease. In the context of the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic in Canada, the trends were characterised in daily cannabis use in the overall sample and various population subgroups, and examined risk characteristics associated with daily cannabis use.

The specific objectives of this study were as follows:

1. Characterise trends in daily cannabis use in the overall sample and various...

The Public Health Agency of Canada developed The Blueprint for Action: Preventing substance-related harms among youth through a Comprehensive School Approach with a policy paper. 

These new resources for preventing substance-related harms among youth are now available for administrators, school board officials, teachers, guidance counsellors, healthcare professionals and community organizations that support youth.

The Blueprint combines evidence-based prevention and intervention approaches with the Comprehensive School Health framework, an internationally recognized approach to building...

The Canadian Centre on Substance Use and Addiction (CCSA) and Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami (ITK), the national organization representing Inuit across Canada, have summarized the latest statistics on substance use and mental health among Inuit in Substance Use, Mental Health and Suicide among Inuit in Canada. The statistics come from the full technical report, Risk and Protective Factors for Suicide among Inuit in Canada.

The new report sheds more light on the risk and protective factors for suicide among Inuit across Northern Canada. As Inuit have some of the highest suicide rates in Canada, with...

The Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) movement created the term "in recovery" to express the continuing requirement for vigilance in order to sustain sobriety (which includes abstinence from alcohol intake) and avoid a return to dangerous drinking. This term, or identity, may be adopted by someone who considers themselves to be in recovery for the rest of their lives. Recovery is considered to entail gains in health and wellbeing, and has been described as a social process in which individuals learn to absorb new norms and values as part of a recovery-oriented identity, but it is not specifically...

The high dropout rate (75%) in opioid use disorder (OUD) treatment among women and racial/ethnic minorities in the United States necessitates a better knowledge of the factors that contribute to treatment success. While therapy and medication for OUD are considered the top standard of care in substance use disorder (SUD) treatment, many people with OUD receive just counseling or methadone-only therapies. This study compares gender inequalities in methadone-based treatment plan progress to counseling-based programs in one of the biggest SUD treatment systems in the United States.

The...

In response to the rising efficacy of the illicit opioid drug supply and often observed delays in access to follow-up therapy, emergency departments (EDs) occasionally utilize a high-dose buprenorphine induction method for the treatment of opioid use disorder (OUD). The objective of this study is to investigate the safety and tolerability of high-dose (>12 mg) buprenorphine induction for patients with OUD presenting to an ED.

Data were manually extracted from electronic health records for all ED patients with OUD treated with buprenorphine at a single, urban, safety-net hospital in Oakland...

2021 INCSR–Volume I: Drug and Chemical Control (As submitted to Congress)

To read the full report, please visit: https://www.state.gov/2021-incsr-volume-i-drug-and-chemical-control-as-submitted-to-congress/

The Global Synthetic Drugs Assessment 2020 provides an analysis of the global synthetic drugs market.

• The first part of this report provides options for responses to counter the synthetic drug problem.
• The second part presents a global thematic analysis of the key trends and emerging developments of the synthetic drugs market as well as the recent trends in the manufacture of synthetic drugs, including the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.
• The third part provides the key findings of the synthetic drug situation in the different regions of the world.

Global Synthetic Drugs Assessment