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Care providers in Sweden have different views on how alcohol problems should be treated. Some suggest that people with alcohol dependence can learn to control their drinking, while others believe these people should practice total abstinence. Previous studies have shown that the crucial factor in treatmen t success is that patients and care providers have the same view, and that the choice of treatment method plays a subordinate role. But how great an influence choice of method has on the final treatment outcome has not been studied previously. The study followed up 201 adult patients 2.5 years after treatment onset. It showed that a shared view between patient and care provider was not decisive for the treatment outcome. "Instead," states Associate Professor Kristina Berglund, who studies dependence at the Department of Psychology, "patients whose goal was total abstinenc e were more successful than those who had chosen to control their drinking." Around 9...

Researchers analyzed 1999-2013 Fatality Analysis Reporting System data from 18 U.S. states that tested for alcohol and other drugs in at least 80 percent of drivers who died within one hour of crashing. They looked at opioid positivity among drivers ages 21 to 40 who crashed their cars in states with an operational medical marijuana law compared with drivers crashing in states before those laws went into effect. There was an overall reduction in opioid positivity for most states after implementation of an operational medical marijuana law. "We would expect the adverse consequences of opioid use to decrease over time in states where medical marijuana use is legal, as individuals substitute marijuana for opioids in the treatment of severe or chronic pain," explained June H. Kim, MPhil, a doctoral student in the Department of Epidemiology at the Mailman School of Public Health, and lead author. Among the 68,394 deceased drivers, approximately 42 percent were fatally injure...