Harms associated with anabolic androgenic steroids (AAS) use are well-established and a public he... more Harms associated with anabolic androgenic steroids (AAS) use are well-established and a public health concern. Robust estimates of the numbers using AAS are needed to inform responses, however, in the UK these are lacking. Due to the comparative rarity and associated stigma, general population surveys are problematic and data availability limits the use of indirect approaches. To address this, the Delphi method was used to refine the key parameters needed for indirect estimation from attendances at needle and syringe programmes (NSP) for AAS use. An expert panel (n ¼ 63) was surveyed three times (n ¼ 40, 39, and 37) to refine the parameters needed to generate a likely range from data on NSP attendances. A broad agreement was reached on: regional variations in use; the proportion of men using AAS who only use them orally; the proportion of men who inject AAS using NSP; and the proportion of the AAS population who are women. We conclude that previous general population surveybased estimates of recent AAS use appear implausible, with the likely range indicated by NSP data being up to 10-times higher. AAS use in the UK is more common than previously indicated, but further work is needed to refine population size estimation and characteristics.
PROTOCOL: The effectiveness of abstinencebased and harm reductionbased interventions in reducing ... more PROTOCOL: The effectiveness of abstinencebased and harm reductionbased interventions in reducing problematic substance use in adults who are experiencing severe and multiple disadvantage homelessness: a systematic review and metaanalysis. Campbell Systematic Reviews, 18 (3). e1246-e1246.
The use of synthetic cannabinoid receptor agonists (SCRAs) within the homeless population: Motiva... more The use of synthetic cannabinoid receptor agonists (SCRAs) within the homeless population: Motivations, harms and the implications for developing an appropriate response.
The International journal on drug policy, Feb 1, 2017
In 2014, the annual report of the Her Majesty's Chief Inspector of Prisons (HMIP) for England... more In 2014, the annual report of the Her Majesty's Chief Inspector of Prisons (HMIP) for England and Wales raised concerns regarding New Psychoactive Substance (NPS) use in custody, specifically the consumption of synthetic cannabinoids. To date, however, the use of these substances in prison populations, and the markets that have emerged to facilitate it, have been under-researched. Our research was conducted in an English adult male prison using multi-method techniques. These included: in-depth interviews and focus groups with prison staff and prisoners; observations of prisoner-led focus groups, workshops and restorative justice circles involving discussion of synthetic cannabinoid use and markets; and analysis of routinely collected prison data measuring drug seizures, incidents of violence and incidents of self-harm. The findings highlight: (1) the scale and nature of synthetic cannabinoid markets in a custodial setting and the motivations for establishing them; (2) the nature...
This paper focusses on the reasons for the under-representation of British South Asians in substa... more This paper focusses on the reasons for the under-representation of British South Asians in substance use services. Based on a small-scale evaluation of a substance use service that delivers targeted outreach support within two predominantly Pakistani and Bangladeshi communities in the north west of England, this paper contributes to the debate around how substance use services can best engage with young British Pakistani and Bangladeshi substance users. The paper highlights the importance of what Fountain (2009) terms low threshold/open access services. Alongside this, the paper argues that the building of trust and confidence in a substance use service are key when it comes to engaging with young Pakistani and Bangladeshi substance users. Yet this necessary process takes time: something that is at odds with the current trend towards short-term funding regimes and 'quick wins'. The paper concludes by advocating the need for, not only a diverse range of engagement strategies, but also a longer-term approach when it comes to developing and delivering substance use services aimed at successfully engaging with this particular group of substance users.
Background The use of anabolic androgenic steroids (AAS) and associated image and performance enh... more Background The use of anabolic androgenic steroids (AAS) and associated image and performance enhancing drugs (IPEDs) is now a global phenomenon. There is a need to develop evidence to support the development of interventions to prevent the commencement of use, to minimise the potential harms or to support those in their cessation of use. While the United Kingdom (UK) is no exception to this issue, its public health and legislative response to the phenomenon differs to other countries and requires the examination of research specific to the UK. Therefore, a scoping review has been conducted to examine the recent relevant literature to help inform the development and evaluation of effective interventions to reduce the harmful use of IPEDs. Methods A comprehensive search strategy was developed for multiple bibliographic databases, supported by and iterative citation searching process and complimented by expert input from the Anabolic Steroid UK Network. Research conducted by or UK aca...
This chapter explores the relevance of ‘territory’ – variously understood – with regard to youth ... more This chapter explores the relevance of ‘territory’ – variously understood – with regard to youth gangs using data arising from an ethnograp hic study of youth gangs in an English city. Gangs are usually assumed or argued to be territorial entities – in the popular imagination, by police authorities and even by academic researchers (e.g. Ley and Cybriwsky 1974; Pitts 2008). A consistent find ing of research in the UK, and elsewhere, is that youth gangs appear to be grounde d i t rritory (particularly place of gang members residence) (e.g. Marshall et al. 2005) . For some, territoriality is a defining characteristic of gangs. Klein (1997: 517 ) for example, distinguishes between highly territorial ‘traditional’ gangs and ‘specialist’ gangs that ‘define territory by their criminal market’. The linkage be tween gangs and territories also has important policy implications. In the USA it has l ed, for instance, to targeted policing strategies based on mapping gangs and their ‘turf’ as a m...
A challenge in training discriminative models like neural networks is obtaining enough labeled tr... more A challenge in training discriminative models like neural networks is obtaining enough labeled training data. Recent approaches have leveraged generative models to denoise weak supervision sources that a discriminative model can learn from. These generative models directly encode the users' background knowledge. Therefore, these models may be incompletely specified and fail to model latent classes in the data. We present Socratic learning to systematically correct such generative model misspecification by utilizing feedback from the discriminative model. We prove that under mild conditions, Socratic learning can recover features from the discriminator that informs the generative model about these latent classes. Experimentally, we show that without any hand-labeled data, the corrected generative model improves discriminative performance by up to 4.47 points and reduces error for an image classification task by 80% compared to a state-of-the-art weak supervision modeling technique.
Harms associated with anabolic androgenic steroids (AAS) use are well-established and a public he... more Harms associated with anabolic androgenic steroids (AAS) use are well-established and a public health concern. Robust estimates of the numbers using AAS are needed to inform responses, however, in the UK these are lacking. Due to the comparative rarity and associated stigma, general population surveys are problematic and data availability limits the use of indirect approaches. To address this, the Delphi method was used to refine the key parameters needed for indirect estimation from attendances at needle and syringe programmes (NSP) for AAS use. An expert panel (n ¼ 63) was surveyed three times (n ¼ 40, 39, and 37) to refine the parameters needed to generate a likely range from data on NSP attendances. A broad agreement was reached on: regional variations in use; the proportion of men using AAS who only use them orally; the proportion of men who inject AAS using NSP; and the proportion of the AAS population who are women. We conclude that previous general population surveybased estimates of recent AAS use appear implausible, with the likely range indicated by NSP data being up to 10-times higher. AAS use in the UK is more common than previously indicated, but further work is needed to refine population size estimation and characteristics.
PROTOCOL: The effectiveness of abstinencebased and harm reductionbased interventions in reducing ... more PROTOCOL: The effectiveness of abstinencebased and harm reductionbased interventions in reducing problematic substance use in adults who are experiencing severe and multiple disadvantage homelessness: a systematic review and metaanalysis. Campbell Systematic Reviews, 18 (3). e1246-e1246.
The use of synthetic cannabinoid receptor agonists (SCRAs) within the homeless population: Motiva... more The use of synthetic cannabinoid receptor agonists (SCRAs) within the homeless population: Motivations, harms and the implications for developing an appropriate response.
The International journal on drug policy, Feb 1, 2017
In 2014, the annual report of the Her Majesty's Chief Inspector of Prisons (HMIP) for England... more In 2014, the annual report of the Her Majesty's Chief Inspector of Prisons (HMIP) for England and Wales raised concerns regarding New Psychoactive Substance (NPS) use in custody, specifically the consumption of synthetic cannabinoids. To date, however, the use of these substances in prison populations, and the markets that have emerged to facilitate it, have been under-researched. Our research was conducted in an English adult male prison using multi-method techniques. These included: in-depth interviews and focus groups with prison staff and prisoners; observations of prisoner-led focus groups, workshops and restorative justice circles involving discussion of synthetic cannabinoid use and markets; and analysis of routinely collected prison data measuring drug seizures, incidents of violence and incidents of self-harm. The findings highlight: (1) the scale and nature of synthetic cannabinoid markets in a custodial setting and the motivations for establishing them; (2) the nature...
This paper focusses on the reasons for the under-representation of British South Asians in substa... more This paper focusses on the reasons for the under-representation of British South Asians in substance use services. Based on a small-scale evaluation of a substance use service that delivers targeted outreach support within two predominantly Pakistani and Bangladeshi communities in the north west of England, this paper contributes to the debate around how substance use services can best engage with young British Pakistani and Bangladeshi substance users. The paper highlights the importance of what Fountain (2009) terms low threshold/open access services. Alongside this, the paper argues that the building of trust and confidence in a substance use service are key when it comes to engaging with young Pakistani and Bangladeshi substance users. Yet this necessary process takes time: something that is at odds with the current trend towards short-term funding regimes and 'quick wins'. The paper concludes by advocating the need for, not only a diverse range of engagement strategies, but also a longer-term approach when it comes to developing and delivering substance use services aimed at successfully engaging with this particular group of substance users.
Background The use of anabolic androgenic steroids (AAS) and associated image and performance enh... more Background The use of anabolic androgenic steroids (AAS) and associated image and performance enhancing drugs (IPEDs) is now a global phenomenon. There is a need to develop evidence to support the development of interventions to prevent the commencement of use, to minimise the potential harms or to support those in their cessation of use. While the United Kingdom (UK) is no exception to this issue, its public health and legislative response to the phenomenon differs to other countries and requires the examination of research specific to the UK. Therefore, a scoping review has been conducted to examine the recent relevant literature to help inform the development and evaluation of effective interventions to reduce the harmful use of IPEDs. Methods A comprehensive search strategy was developed for multiple bibliographic databases, supported by and iterative citation searching process and complimented by expert input from the Anabolic Steroid UK Network. Research conducted by or UK aca...
This chapter explores the relevance of ‘territory’ – variously understood – with regard to youth ... more This chapter explores the relevance of ‘territory’ – variously understood – with regard to youth gangs using data arising from an ethnograp hic study of youth gangs in an English city. Gangs are usually assumed or argued to be territorial entities – in the popular imagination, by police authorities and even by academic researchers (e.g. Ley and Cybriwsky 1974; Pitts 2008). A consistent find ing of research in the UK, and elsewhere, is that youth gangs appear to be grounde d i t rritory (particularly place of gang members residence) (e.g. Marshall et al. 2005) . For some, territoriality is a defining characteristic of gangs. Klein (1997: 517 ) for example, distinguishes between highly territorial ‘traditional’ gangs and ‘specialist’ gangs that ‘define territory by their criminal market’. The linkage be tween gangs and territories also has important policy implications. In the USA it has l ed, for instance, to targeted policing strategies based on mapping gangs and their ‘turf’ as a m...
A challenge in training discriminative models like neural networks is obtaining enough labeled tr... more A challenge in training discriminative models like neural networks is obtaining enough labeled training data. Recent approaches have leveraged generative models to denoise weak supervision sources that a discriminative model can learn from. These generative models directly encode the users' background knowledge. Therefore, these models may be incompletely specified and fail to model latent classes in the data. We present Socratic learning to systematically correct such generative model misspecification by utilizing feedback from the discriminative model. We prove that under mild conditions, Socratic learning can recover features from the discriminator that informs the generative model about these latent classes. Experimentally, we show that without any hand-labeled data, the corrected generative model improves discriminative performance by up to 4.47 points and reduces error for an image classification task by 80% compared to a state-of-the-art weak supervision modeling technique.
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Papers by Robert Ralphs