Study, Nov/22:Evidence of emergence of illicit benzodiazepines fr. online forums

The full title of this American study is "Evidence of the emergence of illicit benzodiazepines from online drug forums".

 

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36342855/

 

 

Abstract

 

Illicit or 'designer' benzodiazepines are a growing contributor to overdose deaths. We employed natural language processing (NLP) to study benzodiazepine mentions over 10 years on 270 online drug forums (subreddits) on Reddit. Using NLP, we automatically detected mentions of illicit and prescription benzodiazepines, including their misspellings and non-standard names, grouping relative mentions by quarter. On a collection of 17 861 755 posts between 2012 and 2021, we searched for 26 benzodiazepines (8 prescription; 18 illicit), detecting 173 275 mentions. The rate of posts about both prescription and illicit benzodiazepines increased consistently with increases in deaths involving both drug classes, illustrating the utility of surveillance via Reddit.

 

Full Study:

 

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9713424/

Thank you for scouring the internet for us Lapis2, this news is discouraging.

Very interesting Lapis. But so sad.

 

:'(

 

Katz

Yes, Pamster and OK, I agree. Very sad to see this type of thing, although not surprising. The internet represents the best of us and the worst of us too.