Evidence of the emergence of illicit benzodiazepines from online drug forums

Abstract Illicit or ‘designer’ benzodiazepines are a growing contributor to overdose deaths. We employed natural language processing (NLP) to study benzodiazepine mentions over 10 years on 270 online drug forums (subreddits) on Reddit. Using NLP, we automatically detected mentions of illicit and pre...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:European journal of public health 2022-12, Vol.32 (6), p.939-941
Main Authors: Sarker, Abeed, Al-Garadi, Mohammed Ali, Ge, Yao, Nataraj, Nisha, McGlone, Londell, Jones, Christopher M, Sumner, Steven A
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Benzodiazepines
Complications and side effects
Drug Overdose - epidemiology
Drugs
Electronic discussion groups
Fatalities
Humans
Illegal drugs
Natural language processing
Overdose
Public health
Purchasing
Statistics
Surveillance
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Summary:Abstract Illicit or ‘designer’ benzodiazepines are a growing contributor to overdose deaths. We employed natural language processing (NLP) to study benzodiazepine mentions over 10 years on 270 online drug forums (subreddits) on Reddit. Using NLP, we automatically detected mentions of illicit and prescription benzodiazepines, including their misspellings and non-standard names, grouping relative mentions by quarter. On a collection of 17 861 755 posts between 2012 and 2021, we searched for 26 benzodiazepines (8 prescription; 18 illicit), detecting 173 275 mentions. The rate of posts about both prescription and illicit benzodiazepines increased consistently with increases in deaths involving both drug classes, illustrating the utility of surveillance via Reddit.
ISSN:1101-1262
1464-360X
DOI:10.1093/eurpub/ckac161