IMPACT OF AMPHETAMINE ABUSE ON HEALTH AND CRIME

描述(由申请人提供)： 尽管有大量资源专门用于预防，但与吸毒有关的健康和社会成本最近估计为1600亿美元。这一研究项目的重点是调查安非他明滥用所造成的健康和社会成本，并确定提高安非他明价格的政策干预措施是否有效地降低了这些成本。这项提案针对的是苯丙胺，因为它们在美国是一个迅速增长的问题，与其他主要药物相比，研究人员对它们的关注较少。就在20世纪90年代初，安非他明的滥用还集中在白人男性中，仅限于加利福尼亚州和附近的西部各州。然而，在过去的十年里，苯丙胺滥用在人口统计和地理上都有所蔓延。从人口统计学角度看，女性、少数族裔和年轻人的使用有所增加。从地理上看，在全国毒品威胁调查的412个州和地方机构中，近三分之一的机构现在将苯丙胺列为其所在地区最大的毒品威胁之一。该项目的第一个目标是记录与甲基苯丙胺有关的健康问题的地理和人口传播情况。第二个目标是确定导致住院人数增加的健康问题的类型。然后，我们将研究旨在减少甲基苯丙胺前体供应的干预措施。我们将研究对甲基苯丙胺前体市场的特殊干预如何导致甲基苯丙胺价格大幅上涨和纯度下降。然后，我们将研究这种干预措施如何影响与甲基苯丙胺相关的住院和治疗入院、暴力和犯罪。这些目标的实施将为有关甲基苯丙胺的负面健康和社会影响的文献提供信息，并将产生关于以价格为目标的预防机制效力的间接证据。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Despite the significant resources dedicated to prevention, the health and social costs associated with drug use have recently been estimated at $160 billion. The focus of this research project is to investigate the health and social costs attributable to amphetamine abuse and to determine if policy interventions that increase amphetamine prices are effective at reducing these costs. This proposal targets amphetamines because they are a rapidly growing problem in the U.S. that has received less attention from researchers than other major drugs. As recently as the early 1990s, amphetamine abuse was concentrated among white males and confined to California and nearby Western states. In the last ten years, however, amphetamine abuse has spread both demographically and geographically. Demographically, use has increased among women, minorities, and youth. Geographically, nearly one-third of the 412 state and local agencies in the National Drug Threat Survey now rate amphetamines as one of the greatest drug threats in their areas. The first goal of this project is to document the geographic and demographic spread of methamphetamine-related health problems. The second goal is to characterize the types of health problems that result in this increase in hospitalizations. We will then turn to examining interventions intended to reduce the availability of methamphetamine precursors. We will examine how a particular intervention in the market for methamphetamine precursors resulted in a significant increase in price and decrease in purity for methamphetamines. We will then examine how this intervention affected methamphetamine-related hospital and treatment admissions, violence and crime. The implementation of these goals will inform the literature on the negative health and social effects of methamphetamines and will generate indirect evidence on the efficacy of prevention mechanisms targeting price.