Below are the most recent reports and articles from the RAND Drug Policy Research Center. Please visit our RAND Topics pages for a complete research archive on these and other drug policy-related research topics.
RAND Topic Pages: Drug Policies and TrendsHomeless young adults who engaged in greater talk of changing risky substance use and sexual behavior during group interviews were less likely to be heavy drinkers.
The attitudes of military personnel about drinking predict their future drinking behaviors and may be key to understanding the relationship between normative perceptions about drinking and drinking behaviors.
Guidelines designed to reduce the prescription of opioids following an injury did not reduce opioid use.
Implementation of a prescription drug monitoring program in 10 states was associated with a reduction in overall volume of opioid drugs prescribed.
This paper describes the process of planning and developing an intervention for delivering treatment for opioid and alcohol use disorders in primary care.
Supporting more social connections between neighbors and monitoring of adolescent deviant behaviors by neighbors may be effective in reducing cigarette, e-cigarette, and marijuana use.
Insomnia severity accounts in part for the impact of symptoms of depression and PTSD on alcohol use in young adult veterans.
High rates of internalized stigma - self-applied negative stereotypes - among primary care patients with opioid or alcohol use disorders were significantly related to greater substance use problems.
State actions to relax marijuana policies vary substantially, making it difficult to compare policies and draw conclusions about user and market reactions.
Youth who are victimized more frequently by peers in 5th grade are more likely to use alcohol, marijuana, and tobacco in the tenth grade.
The Protective Behavioral Strategies for Marijuana scale identifies strategies that may mitigate the harms related to marijuana use by young people.
Proposed quality of care measures for unhealthy alcohol use focus on screening, assessment, treatment, and follow-up in outpatient care.
One month after a single 10-minute intervention to adjust perceptions of peer drinking behavior, young veterans reported significant reductions in their drinking compared with control participants.
The cannabis-policy landscape is undergoing dramatic change. Although many jurisdictions have removed criminal penalties for possessing small amounts of cannabis and more than half of U.S. states allow physicians to recommend it to patients, legalizing the supply and possession of cannabis for nonmedical purposes is a very different public policy.
Facebook appears to be a valuable mechanism through which to recruit young veterans with unmet behavioral health needs, although more specific efforts may be needed to engage certain types of veterans after initial enrollment.
Testimony presented before the Florida House of Representatives Health & Human Services Committee, Subcommittee on Health Quality on January 25, 2017.
Perceived injunctive norms (i.e., what behaviors peers find acceptable) should be targeted in prevention programs with youth because these perceptions are associated with multiple drinking outcomes, such as heavy drinking.
Many Los Angeles-area African American churches provide recovery supports and services for alcohol and other drug (AOD) use and actively connect individuals to formal AOD treatment.
Asians and Pacific Islanders are most likely to enter substance use treatment through court mandates, underscoring the need for preventive outreach before they are involved with the criminal justice system.
This integrated collaborative care protocol was created for a research study that looked at ways to implement medication-assisted and behavioral treatment for patients with opioid and alcohol use disorders in a community health clinic. The project helped the clinic implement universal screening and brief intervention procedures and evaluated whether a collaborative care intervention helped patients get the treatment they needed.
