Understanding Drugs Markets

Understanding Drugs Markets

Author: Carine Baxerres

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2021-07-23

Total Pages: 285

ISBN-13: 1000413144

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Drawing on anthropology, historical sociology and social-epidemiology, this multidisciplinary book investigates how pharmaceuticals are produced, distributed, prescribed, (and) consumed, and regulated in order to construct a comprehensive understanding of the issues that drive (medicine) pharmaceutical markets in the Global South today. Based on primary research conducted in Benin and Ghana, and additional data collected in Cambodia and the Ivory Coast, this volume uses artemisinin-based combination therapies (ACTs) against malaria as a central case study. It highlights the influence of the countries colonial and post-colonial history on their models for state regulation, production, and distribution, explores the determining role transnational actors as well as industries from the North but also and increasingly from the South play in influencing local pharmaceutical markets and looks at the behaviour of health care professionals and individuals. Stepping back, the authors then unpick the pharmaceuticalization process and the multiple regulations at stake by looking at the workings of, and linkages between, (biomedical health) pharmaceutical systems, (representatives of companies) industries, actors in private distribution, and consumer practices. Providing a thorough comparative analysis of the advantages and disadvantages of different pharmaceutical systems, it is an important contribution to the literature on pharmaceutalization and the governance of medication. It is of interest to students, researchers and policy-makers interested in medical anthropology, the sociology of health and illness, global health, healthcare management and pharmacy.


Understanding the Demand for Illegal Drugs

Understanding the Demand for Illegal Drugs

Author: National Research Council

Publisher: National Academies Press

Published: 2010-10-23

Total Pages: 124

ISBN-13: 0309159342

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Despite efforts to reduce drug consumption in the United States over the past 35 years, drugs are just as cheap and available as they have ever been. Cocaine, heroin, and methamphetamines continue to cause great harm in the country, particularly in minority communities in the major cities. Marijuana use remains a part of adolescent development for about half of the country's young people, although there is controversy about the extent of its harm. Given the persistence of drug demand in the face of lengthy and expensive efforts to control the markets, the National Institute of Justice asked the National Research Council to undertake a study of current research on the demand for drugs in order to help better focus national efforts to reduce that demand. This study complements the 2003 book, Informing America's Policy on Illegal Drugs by giving more attention to the sources of demand and assessing the potential of demand-side interventions to make a substantial difference to the nation's drug problems. Understanding the Demand for Illegal Drugs therefore focuses tightly on demand models in the field of economics and evaluates the data needs for advancing this relatively undeveloped area of investigation.


Understanding Drug Dealing and Illicit Drug Markets

Understanding Drug Dealing and Illicit Drug Markets

Author: Tammy C. Ayres

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2023-07-31

Total Pages: 434

ISBN-13: 1351010220

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This book examines the drug dealer in contemporary society from an interdisciplinary perspective and considers the increasingly blurred demarcation between illegitimate and legitimate drug markets. It explores the motives and drivers of those involved in drug supply and dispels common and stereotypical myths and misconceptions surrounding illegal drug markets and those who operate within them. The drug dealer has become one of our foremost contemporary ‘folk devils’. Those who trade in substances prohibited by law are the subject of array of inaccurate myths and urban legends. Criminology has tended either to shoehorn drug dealers into neat typologies or portray them as ‘victims’ of an uncaring, predatory post-modern society. In reality, we know relatively little about the complex and diverse world of drug markets and our concentration inevitably falls on low-end ‘retail’ dealers who operate in the most visible sectors of the illegal economy. Bringing together an international group of experts, this book considers perspectives from around the world, including UK, USA, South America, Spain, India and Australia. This book will be of interest to students and researchers across criminology, law, sociology, criminal justice and public health, and will be essential reading for those taking courses on drugs, drug markets and substance misuse.


Understanding Drug Use and Abuse

Understanding Drug Use and Abuse

Author: Benjamin P. Bowser

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2014-05-30

Total Pages: 346

ISBN-13: 1350314277

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Addressing drug use and abuse as a global phenomenon, this text draws on contemporary and international research findings to examine the causes of drug use in different countries and to explore different policy responses to its prevention and treatment. It is an invaluable resource for students, practitioners and anyone concerned with drug use.


Understanding Drug Selling in Communities

Understanding Drug Selling in Communities

Author: Tiggy May

Publisher: Policy Press

Published: 2005-01-01

Total Pages: 56

ISBN-13: 9781859354179

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

How do local drug markets impact on their 'host' communities? This report, based on the largest British study of drug-dealing to date, draws on work in three areas where drug dealing is prevalent, and assesses the the financial, social, environmental and cultural impact of local drug markets on the communities in which they operate. It documents the views of community members about the market and its impact, whilst exploring the career paths and motivations that lead people into drug dealing, together with the social and demographic differences between dealers, users and others in the community. The authors consider the extent to which drug dealers are predatory outsiders who 'prey on' the local community, suggesting that local drug markets are often integrated - to greater or lesser extent - in the licit and illicit economies of deprived areas. Understanding drug selling in communities highlights the complex nature of drug dealing and its effect on local communities. It outlines a range of possible enforcement measures and will be of interest to a range of practitioners concerned with communities, drug prevention and rehabilitation as well as local authorities, the police and probation service.


Making Medicines Affordable

Making Medicines Affordable

Author: National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine

Publisher: National Academies Press

Published: 2018-03-01

Total Pages: 235

ISBN-13: 0309468086

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Thanks to remarkable advances in modern health care attributable to science, engineering, and medicine, it is now possible to cure or manage illnesses that were long deemed untreatable. At the same time, however, the United States is facing the vexing challenge of a seemingly uncontrolled rise in the cost of health care. Total medical expenditures are rapidly approaching 20 percent of the gross domestic product and are crowding out other priorities of national importance. The use of increasingly expensive prescription drugs is a significant part of this problem, making the cost of biopharmaceuticals a serious national concern with broad political implications. Especially with the highly visible and very large price increases for prescription drugs that have occurred in recent years, finding a way to make prescription medicinesâ€"and health care at largeâ€"more affordable for everyone has become a socioeconomic imperative. Affordability is a complex function of factors, including not just the prices of the drugs themselves, but also the details of an individual's insurance coverage and the number of medical conditions that an individual or family confronts. Therefore, any solution to the affordability issue will require considering all of these factors together. The current high and increasing costs of prescription drugsâ€"coupled with the broader trends in overall health care costsâ€"is unsustainable to society as a whole. Making Medicines Affordable examines patient access to affordable and effective therapies, with emphasis on drug pricing, inflation in the cost of drugs, and insurance design. This report explores structural and policy factors influencing drug pricing, drug access programs, the emerging role of comparative effectiveness assessments in payment policies, changing finances of medical practice with regard to drug costs and reimbursement, and measures to prevent drug shortages and foster continued innovation in drug development. It makes recommendations for policy actions that could address drug price trends, improve patient access to affordable and effective treatments, and encourage innovations that address significant needs in health care.


Countering the Problem of Falsified and Substandard Drugs

Countering the Problem of Falsified and Substandard Drugs

Author: Institute of Medicine

Publisher: National Academies Press

Published: 2013-06-20

Total Pages: 377

ISBN-13: 0309269393

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The adulteration and fraudulent manufacture of medicines is an old problem, vastly aggravated by modern manufacturing and trade. In the last decade, impotent antimicrobial drugs have compromised the treatment of many deadly diseases in poor countries. More recently, negligent production at a Massachusetts compounding pharmacy sickened hundreds of Americans. While the national drugs regulatory authority (hereafter, the regulatory authority) is responsible for the safety of a country's drug supply, no single country can entirely guarantee this today. The once common use of the term counterfeit to describe any drug that is not what it claims to be is at the heart of the argument. In a narrow, legal sense a counterfeit drug is one that infringes on a registered trademark. The lay meaning is much broader, including any drug made with intentional deceit. Some generic drug companies and civil society groups object to calling bad medicines counterfeit, seeing it as the deliberate conflation of public health and intellectual property concerns. Countering the Problem of Falsified and Substandard Drugs accepts the narrow meaning of counterfeit, and, because the nuances of trademark infringement must be dealt with by courts, case by case, the report does not discuss the problem of counterfeit medicines.


Forbidden Drugs

Forbidden Drugs

Author: Philip Robson

Publisher:

Published: 1994

Total Pages: 268

ISBN-13:

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This study presents detailed historical, scientific and social information on all drugs currently used illegally in the UK, North America, and other countries of the world. It also discusses the natural history of drug use, the nature of addiction, and treatments available.


White Market Drugs

White Market Drugs

Author: David Herzberg

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2020-10-23

Total Pages: 372

ISBN-13: 022673191X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The contemporary opioid crisis is widely seen as new and unprecedented. Not so. It is merely the latest in a long series of drug crises stretching back over a century. In White Market Drugs, David Herzberg explores these crises and the drugs that fueled them, from Bayer’s Heroin to Purdue’s OxyContin and all the drugs in between: barbiturate “goof balls,” amphetamine “thrill pills,” the “love drug” Quaalude, and more. As Herzberg argues, the vast majority of American experiences with drugs and addiction have taken place within what he calls “white markets,” where legal drugs called medicines are sold to a largely white clientele. These markets are widely acknowledged but no one has explained how they became so central to the medical system in a nation famous for its “drug wars”—until now. Drawing from federal, state, industry, and medical archives alongside a wealth of published sources, Herzberg re-connects America’s divided drug history, telling the whole story for the first time. He reveals that the driving question for policymakers has never been how to prohibit the use of addictive drugs, but how to ensure their availability in medical contexts, where profitability often outweighs public safety. Access to white markets was thus a double-edged sword for socially privileged consumers, even as communities of color faced exclusion and punitive drug prohibition. To counter this no-win setup, Herzberg advocates for a consumer protection approach that robustly regulates all drug markets to minimize risks while maintaining safe, reliable access (and treatment) for people with addiction. Accomplishing this requires rethinking a drug/medicine divide born a century ago that, unlike most policies of that racially segregated era, has somehow survived relatively unscathed into the twenty-first century. By showing how the twenty-first-century opioid crisis is only the most recent in a long history of similar crises of addiction to pharmaceuticals, Herzberg forces us to rethink our most basic ideas about drug policy and addiction itself—ideas that have been failing us catastrophically for over a century.