Program
receives drug study grant
By
Monica Pardee
On-line Forty-Niner
The
Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services
Administration (SAMHSA) awarded the Center
for Behavioral Research and Services (CBRS)
at Cal State Long Beach $341,221 in the
form of a grant to study club drug use among
a specific population in the Long Beach
area.
The
one-year grant will build upon previous
study by the center, where they have worked
with similar populations to decrease the
spread of HIV and decrease the risk of exposure
for men who have sex with men.
One
of 12 programs funded by grants from SAMHSA,
and one of only two programs that will study
populations 18 years and older, the program
will work within the Long Beach community.
The program, titled "Intervention for
Hard-to-Reach Club Drug Users," aims
to prevent and halt the use of ecstasy and
other club drugs, according to the CBRS.
The
program will sample 1,000 men for brief
study and 200 that will be brought to the
center for further intervention and study.
"We're
not going to be targeting everyone,"
said Grace Reynolds, the CBRS evaluator
and a doctorate student of public administration
at USC. "There is the club drug using
group and then a comparable group in terms
of being men who have sex with men, 18 years
of age or older who are at risk. We find
them in the club scene but they haven't
necessarily yet used the drugs, but for
a variety of reasons they may be at risk."
Half
of the sample group will be men who have
not used club drugs and the other half will
have used club drugs once or more in the
previous month, all who are part of a population
of hard to reach, out-treatment men who
have sex with men, according to the CBRS.
The
CBRS principle investigator, Dennis Fisher,
professor of psychology at CSULB said he
feels the main purposes of the project will
be to effect populations of club drug users
and prevent or reduce usage by the groups
being studied.
The
center also provides HIV testing and education,
programs for Spanish speaking gay men and
indigent food bank programs, according to
Lee Kochems, the CBRS program manager, and
a professor of anthropology at Long Beach
City College.
According
to Reynolds, the common thread between the
programs at the CBRS is that they all deal
with out-of-treatment, drug-using populations.
A large proportion of participants in the
programs offered by the CBRS also have criminal
or other judicial records, Reynolds said.
According
to Kochems, the next year of research at
the center will open doors for further grants
and for further study into prevention of
club drug use. Vincent Del Casino Jr., assistant
professor of geography is also a participant
in the program.
According
to "LA Info," a publication by
the Los Angeles County Evaluation System,
use of club drugs such as GHB and ecstasy
has become prevalent by evidence of the
drastic increase in reported emergency room
overdoses. In the Los Angeles-Long Beach
area GHB emergency situations experienced
a 452 percent increase from 1994 to 2000.
In six years the emergency cases where GHB
was mentioned increased from 27 to 149,
according to the publication.
The
publication also states that according to
law enforcement the Los Angeles area is
one of the "principal importation gateways"
and that in July of 2000 2.1 million tablets
of ecstasy were seized at LAX. Emergency
situations involving ecstasy rose 380 percent
in the Los Angeles-Long Beach area from
37 in 1995 too 177 in 2000, according to
the SAMHSA, Drug Abuse Warning Network.
For
more information on GHB, ecstasy and other
drugs visit www.samhsa.gov or www.laces-ucla.org.
For more information about the CBRS or to
participate in one of their programs contact
John or Zach by calling (562) 495-2230,
extensions 502 or 132.
|
