Research/Trends/Statistics

The children’s rhyme makes it seem so simple: first comes love, then comes marriage, then comes the baby in a baby carriage. Of course this perfect image isn’t always a reality. The hope and expectation is a happy, healthy, bouncing little baby in your arms, but what happens when something, God forbid, goes wrong? Alcohol…

Cannabis is one of the most commonly used recreational drugs, with about 22.2 million users in the United States. Although a seemingly small percentage (7%-9%) of users develop a dependency, the total number of people needing treatment is significant at between 1.5 and 2 million people. Marijuana is designated a Schedule I drug, meaning that…

Only 6% of the 1 billion individuals who try to quit smoking are successful for longer than one month. For this reason, it can be argued that the current tobacco secession tools are inadequate and that there is a need to develop better products/methods to facilitate secession. One of the challenges with quitting any drug…

President Obama recently published an article discussing the Affordable Care Act (2010) in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). This publication is monumental for being the first medical article ever to be published in a journal by a president. It is a useful resource for members of the public, especially researchers, who want…

K-2, which has been around in the United States since 2008, is becoming more and more popular in recent years and has been linked to multiple drug poisoning outbreaks. If you know someone who is young and adventurous with drugs, you may need to be concerned about K-2. This product is sold in small packets…

Cigarette smoking and nicotine addiction lead to 400,000 deaths annually, despite the fact that the detrimental consequences of smoking are widely known and accepted. While smoking rates have declined considerably since the Surgeon General first announced its health hazards in 1964, still about 21% of the American public continues to smoke. Nicotine addiction is one…

There has been much debate on whether or not ecstasy, also known as methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA), is capable of causing susceptibility to infection. The evidence of infection is suggestive, but not entirely conclusive. Researchers have been studying the immune cell responses of rodents exposed to ecstasy. In these experiments, there seems to be a reduction in…

The increased access to and overuse of painkillers seen in today’s opioid epidemic was the result of past drug policy changes. In the late 1990s, the laws governing the prescription of opioids became relaxed, giving access to populations besides cancer patients with chronic pain. In 2000, the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations introduced…

Non-medical prescription opioid use is a major public health problem. In 2011, 5.1 million people in the United States were using opioids, 4.5 million of whom were using for non-medical purposes and 620,000 of whom were using heroin. 2.2 million of those using opioids were considered clinically dependent. 1.8 million of these dependent individuals were…

Most of us have heard by now that alcohol can have detrimental effects on our health, but did you know that it significantly raises the risk of developing Type 2 Diabetes?   How is blood sugar regulated? The cells in your body use glucose, a simple sugar, as fuel to survive and function. Normally, the…