United Nations International Drug Control Research Articles

Illicit drug profiling: A historical perspective.

For many years following the Second World War trafficking in cocaine, heroin and methylamphetamine was on a comparatively small scale. However, by the 1970s heroin usage increased to a point where it had became a serious worldwide problem creating concern at high levels in many governments. In 1977 the United Nations International Drug Control Program convened a special meeting of experts to explore ways of 'profiling' or geo-locating heroin to aid in determining trafficking routes used to move the drug around the world. The Panel was tasked with developing a concerted research program into the chemical profiling of heroin with the express aim of using chemistry for geo-location. Eventually the scope of the program was expanded to include cocaine because it was a major problem in the United States and was being increasingly seen in European cities. The amphetamine type stimulants, methylamphetamine, amphetamine and 3, 4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA), were also included and research into profiling techniques for these five major drugs became common. Today many countries have dedicated drug profiling programs employing large staff numbers and using sophisticated analytical technology. Drug profiling, especially the chemistry that underpins it, is an interesting field and will continue to be valuable as long as it remain relevant to the law enforcement community and its attempts to disrupt drug manufacture and trafficking.

Tracing a path for opium gum from Mexico as a safe supply harm reduction measure for Canada

Historically, the poppy plant has had multiple uses including as a food product and with medical uses in pain relief; today it is most commonly known as the plant from which heroin is derived. The United Nations international drug control regime currently only allows legal poppy production for medical use in 19 countries. Although Mexico is the third largest illegal poppy producer in the world, no Latin American country is currently allowed to legally produce poppies. Meanwhile, the United States and Canada are experiencing an overdose crisis due in large part to the adulteration and substitution of heroin with fentanyl and its analogues, while the price of opium gum has dropped 80% in the last two years in poppy producing areas of Mexico. The prohibition of opium has wide ranging health and development impacts that bring up a moral imperative regarding the safe supply of diverse opium-based products –including opium gum and heroin– that urgently need to be explored and addressed. Opium gum can be used orally or smoked, reducing riskier modes of administration and possible fatal overdoses. This article discusses the political and legal possibilities of safely supplying opium gum and manually extracted heroin from Mexico to Canada as a public health, harm reduction and development policy.

Drug control, violence and capitalism in an international perspective: an analytical framework

ABSTRACT In recent decades, many academic texts analysed the international dimensions of the security-drug nexus in the Americas. Their main focus is on the so-called ‘war on drugs’ carried out by the United States in the region since the 1970s. They seek to understand its international modes of violence and its political and social repercussions, especially for Latin-American countries. In this article, we suggest a complementary perspective that highlights the capitalist aspect of this global trend. Based on a literature review, this paper drafts an analytical framework grounded on a historical approach that draws attention to how factors and motivations related to capitalism interact with drug control and its respective violence. We highlight how this dynamic was driven by the interests of private and public actors within the United States, particularly pharmaceutical corporations. It argues that two factors underscore the importance of capitalism in the analysis of the security-drug nexus. The first is the process of drug commodification since the mid-19th century pari passu the professionalization of medicine and technological development. The second concerns the use of State police power to manage the illicit market resulting from the licit-illicit dichotomy stressed by the United Nations international drug control conventions. We conclude that such a perspective can reveal the intrinsic connection between the legal and illegal scope of drugs, which ends up analytically repositioning the relationship between public and private actors, as well as between the local and global scales.

Responding to New Psychoactive Substances in the European Union: Early Warning, Risk Assessment, and Control Measures.

New psychoactive substances (NPS) are drugs that are not controlled by the United Nations international drug control conventions of 1961 and 1971 but that may pose similar threats to public health. Many of them are traded as "legal" replacements to controlled drugs such as cannabis, heroin, benzodiazepines, cocaine, amphetamines, and 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA). Driven by globalization, there has been a large increase in the availability and, subsequently, harms caused by these substances over the last decade in Europe. The European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA) is monitoring more than 670 NPS that have appeared on Europe's drug market in the last 20years, of which almost 90% have appeared in the last decade. While some recent policy responses have been successful in reducing availability and sales of these substances in some settings - such as "legal highs" and "research chemicals" sold openly in the high street and online - and there are signs that growth in the market is slowing, new challenges have emerged. This includes monitoring a growing number of highly potent substances - including 179 synthetic cannabinoid receptor agonists and 28 fentanils - that can pose a high risk of life-threatening poisoning to users and can cause explosive outbreaks. This chapter briefly traces the origins of NPS, provides an overview of the situation in Europe, and discusses the work of the EMCDDA as part of a legal framework of early warning, risk assessment, and control measures that allows the European Union to rapidly detect, assess, and respond to public health and social threats caused by these substances.

Pattern of Substance Abuse in Patients Attending Psychiatry OPD of IGMC, Shimla

Substance abuse has become one of the major contributor to psychiatric morbidity worldwide. The pattern of substance abuse, in patients attending psychiatry OPD of IGMC, Shimla, from the years 2006 to 2008, was studied. Alcohol abuse was found to be the most prevalent, followed by that of cannabis. Opioid, sedative and inhalant abuse trends were found increase over these years. One of the objectives of the United Nations International Drug Control Programme is to improve the quality and comparability of country - specific drug abuse data by developing an information infrastructure in some 100 countries. The Annual Reports Questionnaire (ARQ) is used to gather information from various international and regional organizations, research institutes, and epidemiology networks. Based on the most recent data collected, it is estimated that:  Around 8 million people abuse opiates / heroin, mostly in South East and South West Asia. Heroin abuse is far more wide-spread than it was a decade ago. Sharp increases have been reported in former Soviet Union countries. Increases also have been reported in Iran, Turkey, and Pakistan. Heroin has remained readily available in major metropolitan areas in the United States.  Some 13 million people abuse cocaine worldwide, with the highest prevalence reported in the United States. Many Latin American countries also have high levels of cocaine and bazuco (coca paste) abuse. In the 1995 to 1997 period, cocaine abuse spread in Europe and was stabilized in the main markets of North America. Increases have been reported in the Andean and neighboring countries and along trafficking routes to America and Europe.  141 million people consume cannabis annually. It is the most widely abused drug in all parts of the world. Cannabis abuse is particularly high in western Africa, Oceania, Central America, North America, and a number of European countries. 2

Bertil Lintner and Michael Black. Merchants of Madness: The Methamphetamine Explosion in the Golden Triangle. Chiang Mai: Silkworm Books, 2009, xii+180p.

Merchants of Madness: The Methamphetamine Explosion in the Golden TriangleBERTIL LINTNER and MICHAEL BLACKChiang Mai: Silkworm Books, 2009, xii+180p.In recent years, amphetamine type substances (ATS) have become the most widely used illegal narcotic drugs in Mainland Southeast Asia. These substances contain the medicinal alkaloid ephedrine which amply found in Asiatic species of the Ephedra Family. Ephedra known in Chinese as ma huang (), Yellow Cannabis. The plants themselves are mostly deciduous shrubs growing in arid areas in the middle and north of China and points westward.As Bertil Lintner and Michael Black show clearly in Merchants of Madness, production and use of ATS in the region has exploded in recent years, far surpassing the total number of opiate users. Because ATS in this region essentially a local phenomena with little exported to Europe or North America, much less known about it outside Southeast Asia.However, within Thailand and Burma as well as its neighbors, ATS has become a serious problem. As long ago as 1996, UNDCP officials (the United Nations International Drug Control Programme, forerunner of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, UNODC) were becoming aware that ATS production in the region was accelerating even as opium poppy cultivation and use was stagnating if not actually declining. In its 2010 Situation Assessment on Amphetamine-Type Stimulants (UNODC Global SMART Programme 2010), UNODC noted that 50-80 percent of the world's ATS users are in East and Southeast Asia, that almost 100 million tablets were seized in 2009, and that production increasing mostly in border areas in North and East Shan State.As with opium, ephedrine has both positive and negative properties. It stimulates the brain, increases the heart rate, and expands the bronchial tubes. It also increases the metabolism. Ephedrine has long been used in China to treat asthma and other ailments. In the United States ephedrine the active ingredient in pharmaceutical preparations such as Benzedrine which was an inhalant for the treatment of asthma. However, when it was learned that ephedrine had a euphoric effect, people began removing the paper strip inside the inhaler and swallowed it. Bennies grew so popular that Ian Fleming had 007 using them in three of his novels. There are websites that claim that ephedra is a plant with a PR problem, has a reputation as a troublesome herb, and can contribute to weight loss and other benefits (i.e. http://www.diagnose-me.com/treat/ T327930.html).The Asiatic ephedra plants are not native to the countries of Southeast Asia but to Mongolia and the north of China, where the substance was formerly known as ma huang. In Thailand it was called ya ma. Probably ma originally was derived from the Chinese ma huang but when used in Thai it came to be pronounced with the same tone as ma, meaning horse. As Lintner and Black well explain, this horse medicine became widely known after World War II among long distance truckers as useful for staying awake on long drives with an estimated 300,000 users in Thailand.As for negative side-effects, Lintner and Black, as well as the Thai Government, UNODC, and other involved agencies point out that the drug can cause aggressive behavior leading to murder, kidnappings, and other violent crime. Unlike opiates which generally sedate the user, ATS can lead to conflicts and much harm to innocent bystanders.Ya ma remained something of a niche drug for decades until the 1990s when groups in the northeast of Burma, such as the United Wa State Army and other breakaway groups from the Communist Party of Burma, began producing large quantities of ATS.It was at this time, and through a marketing process not fully understood (but discussed in depth by Chouvy and Meissonnier [2004, 81-103]), ATS use spread rapidly and particularly among school children-mostly boys in their second year of secondary school (grade 8 in the 12 year Thai pre-university educational system). …

Personality profiles of patients with alcohol and drug misuse in a Nigerian treatment facility

Drug dependence treatment in Nigeria is at an early stage of development. The first 'stand alone' drug dependence treatment in-patient unit in Nigeria, the Drug Addiction Treatment Education and Research (DATER) unit, Aro, Abeokuta, Nigeria, was established in 1983. Prior to this, patients with drug dependence received care along with other patients in psychiatric wards and traditional healing homes (United Nations International Drug Control Programme, 1998). Currently, there is no national body in Nigeria actively involved in regulating or facilitating good practice in drug dependence treatment.

Psychoactive Substance Use among Young People: Core Findings of a Multi-Center Study in the Republic of Belarus and the Russian Federation

This article presents core findings of a pre-intervention survey of psychoactive substance use in two communities in the Republic of Belarus and three communities in the Russian Federation between December 2000 and March 2001. The survey was part of the Global Initiative for the primary prevention of psychoactive substance use among young people in eight countries, initiated by the United Nations International Drug Control Program and the World Health Organization. The survey found that young people (10–21 year olds) fairly commonly reported the use of psychoactive substances, especially the use of malt beer and cigarettes. The young people also tended to report such use among significant others (e.g. (step)fathers, (step)mothers, older siblings, and close friends) in their lives. The young people in the Russian Federation sites tended to approve of various forms of psychoactive substance use among their peers.

The cost of organised transnational economic crime: a case study from the health sector

This article focuses on transnational organised crime as it relates to the health sector in the context of the misuse of precursor chemicals, without which most drugs of abuse under international control cannot be manufacturedArticle by Dr Dayanath Jayasuriya (Visiting Professor of Law, University of the Free State, South Africa; formerly Chief Technical Adviser, United Nations International Drug Control Programme) published in Amicus Curiae - Journal of the Society for Advanced Legal Studies. The Journal is produced by the Society for Advanced Legal Studies at the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies, University of London.

Effective injection in pulsed splitless mode for impurity profiling of methamphetamine crystal by GC or GC/MS

Gas chromatography (GC) and gas chromatography/mass spectrometry (GC/MS) are commonly used for the impurity profiling of illegal drugs. For the impurity profiling of methamphetamine, it is very important to obtain information about impurities related to the manufacturing route and the precursor chemicals [B. Remberg, A.H. Stead, Drug characterization/impurity profiling, with special focus on methamphetamine: recent work of the United Nations International Drug Control Programme, Bull. Narcotics LI (1999) 97–117 [1]]. There are many artifact impurities arising from the preparation of samples and conditions of GC. Moreover, some impurities pose a barrier to the statistical processing of methamphetamine profiling. We investigated capillary GC analysis using pulsed splitless (PS/L) injection to minimize the thermal decomposition of impurities at the injection port and improve the transfer of samples into the column. We confirmed that the optimal conditions of PS/L-mode are 230 °C (injection temperature), 50 psi (pulsed pressure) and 1.1 min (pulsed time) for the methamphetamine profiling. Based on the impurity profiles of 48 methamphetamine crystals in PS/L-mode, we can achieve very easy handling and obtained, good results.

The Commission on Narcotic Drugs and the United Nations International Drug Control Programme: politics, policies and prospect for change

Meetings of the Commission on Narcotic Drugs (CND) are no forum for debate and change. The author, a former senior officer of the United Nations International Drug Control Programme (UNDCP), shows how CND meetings are manipulated in the interests of 17 developed countries that largely fund UNDCP—the CND's ‘civil service’. However, these major donors are not united on policy or on how to apply the UN drug Conventions, so CND decisions reflect the lowest level of disagreement, with major splits on policy ignored. The USA, Japan, Sweden and most former Soviet Bloc nations want to maintain or tighten worldwide prohibition, supported by the International Narcotics Control Board, a body co-located with UNDCP. Australia, Canada and several EU states are in technical compliance with the Conventions, but their policies make parts of the Conventions ineffective. Against the wishes of the USA and UK, Latin American and Caribbean countries want stronger demand reduction policies among the main ‘drug consumer’ states. The paper shows how this affects UNDCP, where inherent conflict between specialists and generalists, plus an eclectic mixture of nationalities and abilities have compounded problems of leadership and management. With most staff on fixed-term contracts paid for indirectly by the major donors, many fear for their jobs if they offend one of them, or make a wrong decision. Non-renewal of contract has been a weapon to stifle dissent and internal debate on policy reform. Paralysis often results. Meanwhile, what the CND claims as success in implementing various UN action plans is often more the result of countries reporting process, not necessarily progress. This impression of successful action masks a global policy failure that is itself fuelling pressure for change. Three possible ways are suggested through which change may be effected.

Confronting the UN drug control behemoth

Two articles in this issue of the International Journal of Drug Policy disperse much of the fog swirling around the UN institutions and legal instruments dealing with illegal drugs (Fazey, 2003; Bewley-Taylor, 2003). What appears through the mist is not always heartening, and hardly flattering of the UN. In many ways, the components of the UN drug control apparatus appear like a seriously dysfunctional family, causing positive harm to those under its influence. Fortunately, these articles point to a way out of the international straitjacket that has for so long impeded reform. Proponents of drug law and policy reform inevitably confront the United Nations drug control conventions and their interwoven UN bureaucracies. ‘‘The drug control treaties won’t allow it’’ is a familiar refrain sung by both defenders of the status quo and the more cautious of reformers. Reformers recognise the need to factor the UN into their efforts, but their lack of understanding of the dynamics of the international drug control bureaucracy and treaties makes it almost impossible to determine how to work with that bureaucracy and those treaties. Given the historical reluctance of UN drug control bureaucracies to shift their thinking and policies, some question whether it is even worth trying to involve the UN in reform efforts. Which organisations can be trusted to work in the interests of sound drug policy? Which organisations have real influence on the shape of policies, and who within those organisations has influence? And how does one respond to the influential US role in UN organisations in responding to drug control issues? The more naive or trusting among reformers may believe that the UN drug control bureaucracy weighs public policy considerations more heavily than political considerations in its work. In The Commission of Narcotic Drugs and the United Nations International Drug Control Programme: Politics, Policies the Prospect for Change , Professor Cindy Fazey pointedly reveals the less noble forces at play. She speaks with the authority of a former insider, having served for 8 years with the UN International Drug Control Programme in Vienna. Her analysis is sharply critical of the UN organisations that administer drug policies. She describes organisations populated by self-interested, self-deluding, risk-averse and manipulative bureaucracies, too often serving not the public good, but theirs and that of their bureaucratic allies. Professor Fazey walks the reader through the formal UN drug control hierarchy. But more important are her insights into what drives the policies of these organisations. She argues that reform can be stifled by international civil servants who prefer inaction to taking action that may prove wrong. Then come the other interests that impede progress within international organisations*/the networks and friendship groups, national allegiances, the ability of some bureaucrats to manipulate the system for their own personal gain, the reluctance of others to step out of line lest their careers be cut short or their next posting be Lagos, far from the comforts of Vienna. Add to that the suffocating influence on policy exerted by the major donors and the inflexible ideology they bring with them. In the end, we are left with the harsh view that political self-interest and the power of the pocketbook, rather than sound public policy drives reform*/or, more accurately, resistance to reform, at the international level. Professor Fazey’s analysis is sometimes disheartening (typified by her mention of the vacuous UN slogan, ‘‘A Drug Free World*/We Can Do It’’), but necessary * Tel.: /1-613-238-5909; http://www.cfdp.ca. E-mail address: eugene@oscapella.ca (E. Oscapella). International Journal of Drug Policy 14 (2003) 203 /204

Optimum Methamphetamine Profiling with Sample Preparation by Solid-Phase Microextraction

Solid-phase microextraction (SPME) is a relatively new technique in which a small, polymer-coated fiber is employed to extract volatile and semivolatile organic compounds from the sealed headspace above a questioned sample. SPME, coupled with gas chromatography/mass spectrometry (GC/MS), was used to characterize impurities in illicit methamphetamine samples. Trace impurities present in a specimen were tentatively identified using mass-spectral databases and included 1,2-dimethyl-3-phenyl-aziridine (indicating synthesis via a halogenated ephedrine intermediate), ethyl vanillin (a flavoring compound), and caffeine (a stimulant used as cutting agent). The types and numbers of organic compounds sampled by SPME were compared with those collected by various solvent extraction protocols. In addition to unambiguously confirming the presence of methamphetamine, SPME-GC/MS analyses detected approximately 30 more organic analytes than were found by GC/MS following the ethyl acetate extraction method adopted by the United Nations International Drug Control Programme. SPME-GC/MS is a superior method for generating material "fingerprint" profiles in methamphetamine samples. The detection and characterization of increased points of comparison in drug samples provide more detailed chemical signatures for both intelligence and operational information.

Spain: youth, leisure, and alcohol consumption.

Spain: youth, leisure, and alcohol consumption.

How to Develop More Effective Policies Against Crime: Some Reflections on Drugs and Crime Research in an International Context

This paper offers some reflections on how to develop more effective policies against crime, drawing on more than 10 years of research experience on the international drug problem. The paper begins by trying to illustrate the so-called ‘justice gap’ in the world, and explain why an institution such as the United Nations has a comparative advantage in closing that gap. It then details four lessons that the author has learnt from his own personal experience as head of research in the United Nations International Drug Control Programme, now called the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime: (i) measure, count, and keep counting; (ii) publish or perish, either in inter-governmental default, or in public hysteria; (iii) limit the dangers of committing the ‘euphemistic fallacy’; and (iv) divorce research and policy, because research is policy-dependent; make research policy-relevant, and re-marry it to policy. Finally, the paper tries to show how these lessons can be applied in related areas and used as good practice in research on crime.

United Nations International Drug Control Programme responds

[First paragraph]We would like to reply to the article written by Axel Klein entitled, "Between the Death Penalty and Decriminalization: New Directions for Drug Control in the Commonwealth Caribbean" published in NWIG 75 (3&4) 2001. We have noted a number of factual inaccuracies as well as hostile comments which portray the United Nations International Drug Control Programme in a negative light. This reply is not intended to be a critique of the article, which we find unbalanced and polemical, but rather an alert to the tendentious statements about UNDCP, which we feel should be corrected.

Origins of an epidemic: the methodological and political emergence of rapid assessment

The recent emergence of rapid assessment as a public health tool in the drug and alcohol field has been a relatively ahistorical process. The lack of such an explicit historical biography is understandable — the findings and impact of rapid assessment have rarely made their way into mainstream journals. However, its continued absence presents the manifest danger of an inward-looking field. This paper describes the development of rapid assessment during the past two decades, with a detailed focus on the emergence of rapid assessment in the drug and alcohol field. This focuses on the central role played by international agencies during the 1980s and 1990s, and the development of rapid methodologies by the World Health Organization to prevent epidemics of HIV among injecting drug users, and the use of rapid methodologies by the United Nations International Drug Control Programme to instruct drug policy reform. The paper also describes key events in other fields including: the emergence of the first formal rapid methodologies in the late 1970s, and the production of the first formal guidelines on conducting rapid assessment during the mid-1980s. The paper concludes by highlighting common challenges that rapid methodologies have faced throughout their history.

From kidnapping to corruption: some trials and tribulations in the implementation of rapid assessment studies

In between the description of the methodology and the discussion of assessment results, lies a crucial area, namely that of implementation. If assessment methods cannot be implemented, there will be no assessment report, and no recommendations for intervention or policy development. Implementation is a critical, yet neglected, area of drug policy delivery. This paper describes some of the problems associated with the implementation of rapid assessment studies commissioned by the United Nations International Drug Control Programme (UNDCP) over the last 5 years. Drawing on the author’s experience of commissioning rapid assessments on the extent and nature of drug use in a variety of international settings and political contexts, the paper draws eight main lessons for rapid assessments commissioned within the context of international development programmes. These are: (1) the need to get high level political support; (2) the need to employ competent social scientists to run the assessment; (3) the need to define exactly the object of the assessment; (4) the necessity of spelling out the methodology and the time scale; (5) the careful establishment of the financial framework; (6) the importance of cultivating contacts; (7) the necessity of actually getting a report; and (8) the danger of accepting an unseen or unread consultant’s report as the basis for programme implementation. The paper emphasises the critical importance of planning prior to implementation and flexibility during it.

Rapid assessment and response is an increasingly popular and useful method in Sub-Saharan Africa

Neil McKeganey’s critical commentary on the method of Rapid Assessment and Response (RAR) (McKeganey, 2000), while identifying its unique features and perceived advantages, expresses reservation on several aspects of the method as contained in the World Health Organization (WHO) RAR Guides (WHO, 1998; WHO/UNAIDS, 1998). The specific aspects of the RAR method which were put under the searchlight include claims on its cost effectiveness, its use of inductive enquiry and multiple levels of investigation, and its emphasis on practical adequacy rather than scientific perfection. This response is informed by three key factors: (1) my close involvement in the development of the WHO RAR Guide on Injecting Drug Use, having anchored its pilot testing in Lagos in 1997; (2) the training I have received on the use of the RAR method through a workshop organized by WHO, and my service as a trainer and resource person on the RAR method internationally (Malaysia, 1997; Brazil, 1998; Geneva, 1998; Nairobi, 1998; Nigeria, 1997–1999); and (4) my personal involvement as a consultant and researcher in recently conducted United Nations International Drug Control Programme (UNDCP) RAR surveys in Nigeria.

Making choices

Drug and Alcohol ReviewVolume 17, Issue 2 p. 149-152 Free Access Making choices John B. Saunders, John B. Saunders Editor Department of Psychiatry, University of Queensland, Brisbane, AustraliaSearch for more papers by this author John B. Saunders, John B. Saunders Editor Department of Psychiatry, University of Queensland, Brisbane, AustraliaSearch for more papers by this author First published: 29 May 2009 https://doi.org/10.1080/09595239800186941AboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL References 1 Edwards G., Anderson P., Babor TF et al. Alcohol policy and the public good. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994. 2 Saxena S. Alcohol, Europe and the developing countries, Addiction 1997; 92(Suppl.): 43– 8. 3 United Nations International Drug Control Programme. World Drug Report. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997. 4 World Health Organization. Amphetamine-type stimulants. Geneva: World Health Organization, 1997. 5 Single E., Rohl T. The National Drug Strategy: mapping the future. Canberra: Department of Health and Family Services, 1997. 6 Smart RG, Mann RE. Are increases in treatment levels and Alcoholics Anonymous membership large enough to reduce liver cirrhosis rates Br J Addict 1990; 85: 1291– 8. 7 Project MATCH Research Group, Matching alcoholism treatments to client heterogeneity: Project MATCH posttreatment drinking outcomes. J Stud Alcohol 1997; 58: 7– 29. 8 Bien TH, Miller WR, Tonigan JS. Brief interventions for alcohol problems: a review. Addiction 1993; 88: 315– 36. 9 Fagerstrom K-O. Measuring degree of physical dependency to tobacco smoking with reference to individualization of treatment. Addict Behav 1978; 3: 235– 41. 10 Saunders JB, Aasland OG, Babor TF, da la Fuente JR, Grant M. Development of the Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test (AUDIT): WHO collaborative project on early detection of persons with harmful alcohol consumption—II. Addiction 1993; 88: 791– 803. 11 WHO Brief Intervention Study Group. A cross-national trial of brief interventions with heavy drinkers. Am J Pub Health 1996; 86: 948– 55. 12 Holmila M. Experiences of Lahti project. Paper presented at the Kettil Bruun Society Symposium on Community Action Research, Chianti, Italy, September 1995. 13 Hawthorne G., Garrard J., Dunt D. Does Life Education's drug education programme have a public benefit Addiction 1995; 90: 205– 15. 14 Homel R. Random breath testing in Australia: a complex deterrent. Aust Drug Alc Rev 1988; 7: 231– 41. Volume17, Issue2June 1998Pages 149-152 ReferencesRelatedInformation