Mixmag Drugs Survey 2012 - recruiting global sample!

Results have just been posted to http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2012/mar/15/truth-about-young-people-and-drugs

A fifth of young drug users admit to taking "mystery white powders" without any idea what they contain, according to an international Guardian survey that reveals the extent of reckless behaviour among a new generation of high-risk drug takers.

The poll of 15,500 people by the Guardian and Mixmag magazine also found that more respondents in the UK and US admitted taking cannabis than either tobacco or energy drinks. Those who defined themselves as clubbers were more likely to take ecstasy than smoke cigarettes.

The headline findings from what is one of the largest ever surveys of drug use raised alarm among health experts, who pointed out that even those who think they knew what they were taking could be consuming another drug entirely.

John Ramsey, toxicologist at St George's medical school in London, said: "It is amazing that so many people take mystery white powders. The truth is nobody knows what the risks are and it is patently dangerous to take untested drugs."

The survey found 15% of respondents say they have taken a unknown white powder in the past 12 months, a third admitting it was supplied by someone they didn't trust.

But younger drug users were much more likely to take risks with unknown substances, with a fifth of all respondents aged between 18 and 25 saying they had taken mystery powders. Respondents who spoke to the Guardian were confident that they could balance drug taking with their careers and relationships, and regarded the side effects of drug use as often no worse than a hangover.

One respondent, James, a financial broker, told the Guardian: "My daily life is sensible, regimented and very stressful, so at the weekend I want the opposite. When I go out, the last thing I want is to think about work and responsibilities. I just want to lose myself for a few hours."

The survey also reveals:

• There are signs of an emerging "grey market" in legally prescribed painkillers and antidepressants, often acquired from friends, dealers or through the internet.

• Mephedrone, which gained media notoriety and was banned by the British government in 2010, is falling out of favour, with reports of more harmful side effects compared with other substances.

• Survey respondents caught in possession of small amounts of illegal drugs are unlikely to be punished heavily by the law, and stand a high chance of being let off.

• Alcohol is used regularly by almost all drug users, and, apart from tobacco, is the substance respondents would most like to take less of. Two-thirds of male respondents and 60% of women reported drinking at hazardous or harmful levels – though a fifth of regarded their drinking as average or below average levels.

Some 7,700 UK drug users and 4,000 from the US and Canada took part in the detailed survey, carried out online in November. Respondents were asked a range of questions including what drugs they took, how often, and what the health and legal consequences were. It was conducted by the independent drug use data exchange Global Drug Survey, in association with the Guardian and Mixmag, the clubbing magazine and website.

One of the strongest underlying messages is that this group of drug users report as happy, healthy and educated, and feel at ease with their recreational consumption of a range of illicit substances from cannabis to ecstasy to cocaine. They are not in rehab, prison or in trouble with the law and do not take heroin or crack.

The mean age of UK respondents was 28. Nine out of 10 were white, three-quarters were in work and earning between £10,000 and £40,000. Some 55% were educated to degree level or above.

Dr Adam Winstock, a consultant addictions psychiatrist and director of Global Drug Survey, said: "This is the largest assessment of current drug use ever conducted. What is overwhelmingly tells us is that people are not defined by their drug use, but that the harms that drugs can have are defined by the way people choose to use them.

"The challenge for government and policy makers will be how to regulate and craft a public health response which remains credible and respects individual choice."

The drugs most likely to be used by respondents were overwhelmingly alcohol and tobacco, with 92% of respondents saying they had drunk alcohol in the last month, 53% had taken cannabis, 34%, MDMA and 22% cocaine.

One in 10 respondents said they had been stopped and searched for drugs in the past 12 months. Of those found with cannabis, just under half were let off. Over a third of those caught with MDMA were let off.

Niamh Eastwood, chief executive of the drugs charity Release, said the findings suggested the police might be reluctant to criminalise this demographic group for carrying drugs.

"If you sent the same survey to different groups – young black males in inner city areas, say – it would tell a different story. The survey probably does represent the experience of middle class people who use drugs."

David Nutt, the former government drugs adviser sacked for suggesting LSD and ecstasy were less dangerous than alcohol, said he was not surprised by the survey findings about the extent of drinking and the concerns people had about it. "That's what I expected. People understand. The message is out there and people know alcohol is the biggest problem. It confirms what the evidence has been saying."
 
First paper published from GDS2012 results, with yours truly as second author:

Winstock, A. R., & Barratt, M. J. (2013). Synthetic cannabis: A comparison of patterns of use and effect profile with natural cannabis in a large global sample. Drug and Alcohol Dependence. doi: 10.1016/j.drugalcdep.2012.12.011

Abstract
BACKGROUND: The last decade has seen the appearance of myriad novel psychoactive substances with diverse effect profiles. Synthetic cannabinoids are among the most recently identified but least researched of these substances.
METHODS: An anonymous online survey was conducted in 2011 using a quantitative structured research tool. Missing data (median 2%) were treated by available-case analysis.
RESULTS: Of 14,966 participants, 2513 (17%) reported use of synthetic cannabis. Of these, 980 (41% of 2417) reported its use in the last 12 months. Almost all recent synthetic cannabis users (99% of 975) reported ever use of natural cannabis. Synthetic cannabis reportedly had both a shorter duration of action (z=17.82, p<.001) and quicker time to peak onset of effect (z=-9.44, p<.001) than natural cannabis. Natural cannabis was preferred to synthetic cannabis by 93% of users, with natural cannabis rated as having greater pleasurable effects when high (t(930)=-37.1, p<.001, d=-1.22) and being more able to function after use (t(884)=-13.3, p<.001, d=-0.45). Synthetic cannabis was associated with more negative effects (t(859)=18.7, p<.001, d=0.64), hangover effects (t(854)=6.45, p<.001, d=0.22) and greater paranoia (t(889)=7.91, p<.001, d=0.27).
CONCLUSIONS: Users report a strong preference for natural over synthetic cannabis. The latter has a less desirable effect profile. Further research is required to determine longer term consequences of use and comparative dependence potential.
 
Thanks for posting these results, I was wanting to see something like this due to the interesting mixed opinions in synthetic cannabinoid users. Some people seem to prefer them by far to cannabis itself and find that it no longer satisfies them after use (partly due to tolerance but also due to having a better effects profile for them) while others seem to see them as a much inferior version of cannabis itself.

I was actually quite surprised to see a number as large as 93% people preferring cannabis over synthetics, I wonder if this simply a case of people finding them inferior or if it might be due to the difficulty of dosing these compounds (even in "herbal blends", given how strong many of them are made) since we've seen so many reports of people smoking way too much and having severe panic attacks etc - something that doesn't really happen in many people smoking cannabis unless their tolerance is fairly low and they're smoking a lot.

I'd very much love to read the rest of the paper if you happen to have it to hand and are able to share! :)
 
It's good to see the figures regarding patterns of use, and I'm glad to see that in the sample on the whole the number of daily users of synthetic cannabinoids was relatively small. Considering the many rather shocking reports of dependence on synthetic cannabinoids I've read recently (that seem a whole different ballgame to cannabis dependence), I was expecting a far greater number of daily users.

It was interesting to see how many respondents used other drugs (other than cannabis, alcohol, tobacco) too since I would have expected due to their relationship to cannabis that people would accept synthetic cannabinoids as being a lot safer than many other drugs. For this reason I was assuming that only a very tiny percentage of the people using them would have tried other drugs, but that looks not to be the case. I'm guessing this would be due to people who've used other drugs being more likely to know about synthetic cannabinoids and not be put off by their less well-researched nature, vs someone who has just used cannabis and is more concerned about the dangers.

It was interesting seeing that a greater percentage of natural cannabis users were concerned about their usage and wanted to cut down over the users of synthetics. I wonder if this is due to the amounts they're smoking or if they're more concerned about their natural cannabis use for other reasons such as drug tests and the legal status. The reference in the conclusion to your previous study seems to suggest that might be the case, since that seems to be why many people start using them in the first place.

For clarification, something I either managed to completely miss or that wasn't mentioned - was there any distinction in the study made between users of synthetic cannabinoids on their own and those using them in "blends"? I can't quite remember from when I completed the survey. I think it'd be interesting to see how the results compare between both - and I think there'd be some interesting differences, e.g. more negative effects experienced with users of the cannabinoids themselves than those using blends due to the increased difficulty in dosing accurately, particularly with some of the more potent chemicals, or differences in price such as the cannabinoids generally being much cheaper than cannabis itself while the blends themselves are often the same price or more.

Thanks for posting the link :)
 
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