What happens to misuse of psychotropic substances when general use spreads? The answer to this question is crucial to public health policy on control of drugs and alcohol, but it remains unanswered. Part of the difficulty lies in the different indicators of increasing use — per capita consumption versus incidence of new use — which measure separate aspects of growth of use. A second problem is related to the length of time between first use of a substance and the appearance of serious consequences. For those users who evolve to abusers, this interval is short for some drugs (like heroin) and long for others (like alcohol).
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