Responsible drug use

Responsible drug use maximizes the benefits and reduces the risk of negative impact psychoactive drugs cause on the lives of the user. For illegal psychoactive drugs that are not diverted prescription controlled substances, some critics believe that illegal recreational drug use is inherently irresponsible, due to the unpredictable and unmonitored strength and purity of the drugs and the risks of addiction, infection, and other side effects. Nevertheless, harm reduction advocates claim that the user can be responsible by employing the same general principles applicable to the use of alcohol: avoiding hazardous situations, excessive doses, and hazardous combinations of drugs; avoiding injection; and not using drugs at the same time as activities that may be unsafe without a sober state. Drug use can be thought of as an activity that is potentially beneficial but also risky, analogous to skiing, skydiving, surfing, or mountain climbing, the risks of which can be minimized by using caution and common sense. These advocates also point out that government action (or inaction) makes responsible drug use more difficult, such as by making drugs of known purity and strength unavailable. Duncan and Gold argue that to use controlled and other drugs responsibly, a person must adhere to a list of principles. They and others argue that drug users ought to proceed by: understanding and educating oneself on the effects, risks, side effects and legal status of the drug they are taking measuring accurate dosages, and take other precautions to reduce the risk of overdose when taking drugs where an overdose is possible if possible, drug checking all substances before use to determine their purity and strength attempting to gain the most pure and high-quality drugs laced with no cutting agent at best such as by buying on darknet markets using drugs only in relaxed and responsible social situations as altered consciousness can be inappropriate in potentially dangerous or unknown settings avoiding driving, operating heavy machinery, or otherwise situate themselves directly or indirectly responsible for the safety or care of another person while intoxicated and discouraging persons from operating a motor vehicle while intoxicated having a trip sitter (or "copilot") when taking hallucinogenic drugs taking a small dose first when taking a new drug ("start low and go slow") taking the smallest dose of a recreational drug that will produce the desired effects using recreational drugs in moderation, setting reasonable limits on the consumption and not allowing drug use to overshadow other aspects of their life (i.

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Supervised injection site

Supervised injection sites (SIS) are medically supervised facilities designed to provide a hygienic environment in which people are able to consume illicit recreational drugs intravenously and prevent deaths due to drug overdoses. The legality of such a facility is dependent by location and political jurisdiction. Supervised injection sites are part of a harm reduction approach towards drug problems. The facilities provide sterile injection equipment, information about drugs and basic health care, treatment referrals, access to medical staff, and, at some facilities, counseling.

Drug liberalization

Drug liberalization is a drug policy process of decriminalizing or legalizing the use or sale of prohibited drugs. Variations of drug liberalization include: drug legalization, drug re-legalization and drug decriminalization. Proponents of drug liberalization may favor a regulatory regime for the production, marketing, and distribution of some or all currently illegal drugs in a manner analogous to that for alcohol, caffeine and tobacco.

Drug overdose

A drug overdose (overdose or OD) is the ingestion or application of a drug or other substance in quantities much greater than are recommended. Typically it is used for cases when a risk to health will potentially result. An overdose may result in a toxic state or death. The word "overdose" implies that there is a common safe dosage and usage for the drug; therefore, the term is commonly applied only to drugs, not poisons, even though many poisons as well are harmless at a low enough dosage.

The predictive capacity of in vitro preclinical models to evaluate drugs for the treatment of retinoblastoma

Paul Joseph Dyson, Irina Sinenko, Roland Christopher Turnell-Ritson

Retinoblastoma is a rare childhood cancer of the eye. Of the small number of drugs are used to treat retinoblastoma, all have been repurposed from drugs developed for other conditions. In order to find drugs or drug combinations better suited to the improv ...

ACADEMIC PRESS LTD- ELSEVIER SCIENCE LTD2023

Combi-seq for multiplexed transcriptome-based profiling of drug combinations using deterministic barcoding in single-cell droplets

Christoph Merten, Ngoc Hien Du

Anti-cancer therapies often exhibit only short-term effects. Tumors typically develop drug resistance causing relapses that might be tackled with drug combinations. Identification of the right combination is challenging and would benefit from high-content, ...

2022

Repurposed drug combination via high-throughput screening and dual drug delivery system development for the treatment of retinoblastoma

Po-Jen Tseng

The goal of retinoblastoma (RB) treatment is to save the child's life, eyes and functional vision, with that order of priority. The management of RB is complex and involves strategically chosen methods of surgical enucleation, external beam radiotherapy, i ...

EPFL2022