“The prescription opioid epidemic is shrinking the time it used to take drug users to progress to drug injection, a new Keck School of Medicine of USC-led study suggests.
“The prescription opioid epidemic is creating a heroin epidemic, which will create an injection drug use epidemic,” Bluthenthal said. “We’ve seen the first two. Now we’re waiting to see the last emerge on the national level. I predict we’ll see an uptick in injection-related diseases over the next couple of years.”
The study, published in April in the journal Drug and Alcohol Dependence, is based on 776 drug users in Los Angeles and San Francisco. Participants born in the 1980s or 1990s, on average, took six years to escalate from first illicit drug use to first drug injection. The average for participants born in the 1970s was nine years.
Read more at: https://medicalxpress.com/news/2017-05-pill-needle-prescription-opioid-epidemic.html
Source: MedicalExpress.com – May 8, 2017
