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Updated: Jun 5, 2026
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High-throughput and Comprehensive Drug Surveillance Using Multisegment Injection-Capillary Electrophoresis-Mass Spectrometry
Published on: April 23, 2019
Drug arrests and injection drug deterrence.
Samuel R Friedman1, Enrique R Pouget, Sudip Chatterjee
1National Development and Research Institutes, Inc, New York, NY 10010, USA. friedman@ndri.org
American Journal of Public Health
|December 18, 2010
Summary
Higher rates of hard drug arrests did not reduce injection drug use prevalence. This suggests that deterrence-based strategies are ineffective for curbing injection drug use (IDU).
Area of Science:
- Public Health
- Criminology
- Epidemiology
Background:
- Understanding the relationship between law enforcement and drug use is crucial for public health policy.
- Previous assumptions suggested that increased arrests might deter drug use, but evidence for injection drug use (IDU) is limited.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate whether higher rates of hard drug-related arrests predict lower rates of injection drug use.
- To examine the association between drug arrests and the prevalence of injection drug users (IDUs).
Main Methods:
- Analysis of Federal Bureau of Investigation Uniform Crime Reporting Program data for 93 US metropolitan areas (1992-2002).
- Used linear mixed-effects regression to correlate drug-related arrest rates with published annual estimates of injection drug users (IDUs) per 10,000 population.
Main Results:
- Hard drug-related arrest rates showed a positive association with the population rate of IDUs in 1992.
- No significant association was found between drug arrest rates and changes in the IDU rate over the study period.
Conclusions:
- Deterrence-based approaches appear ineffective in reducing injection drug use prevalence.
- Harm reduction strategies, focusing on HIV prevention and treatment referrals, may offer a more effective policy foundation.
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