Ignoring Stimulant Use is Deadly

What You Need To Know

• Stimulant users are often stigmatized and receive little access to care. 

• Psychosocial treatments are the only proven treatment for stimulant use disorders. Among the psychosocial treatments, contingency management appears to be among the most effective across substance use disorders.*

• Other successful care strategies for stimulant users include: safer smoking kits, safer sex kits, female focused interventions, drug consumption rooms, self-regulation strategies, housing first, substitution, outreach and peer-based interventions, drop-in centers, drug checking, online interventions, and therapeutic interventions.* 

Where to Go for More Information

• Speed Limits: Harm Reduction for People Who Use Stimulants

• Harm Reduction for Stimulant Use - Harm Reduction International, 2019

• Stimulant Use: Harm Reduction, Treatment, and Future Directions - Drug Policy Alliance

• Stimulant Overamping Basics - National Harm Reduction Coalition

• What Is Overamping? - National Harm Reduction Coalition

• Factsheet - Meth - Drug Policy Alliance

Programs To Know

• Smoke Works

• Tweaker.org

• Smoking From Foil

Leaders to Know

• Mark Kinzly - It’s nearly impossible to adequately distill his 30-year career and impact on harm reduction in the U.S. and beyond, from policy and advocacy, to implementing syringe services, pioneering harm reduction for people who use crack, providing widespread mentorship and much more. He was the founding member of the Texas Harm Reduction Alliance and the Texas Overdose Naloxone Initiative.

  
  

Photo by Mark Jenkins

Research

• Contingency management treatment for substance use disorders: How far has it come, and where does it need to go?

• Contingency management for drug use disorders: Meta-analysis and application of Tolin’s criteria.

• Methamphetamine-Related Mortality in the United States: Co-Involvement of Heroin and Fentanyl, 1999–2021

• Reduced drug use as an alternative valid outcome in individuals with stimulant use disorders: Findings from 13 multisite randomized clinical trials - Amin-Esmaeili et al, 2023 

• Motivation and context of concurrent stimulant and opioid use among persons who use drugs in the rural United States: a multi-site qualitative inquiry - Fredericksen et al, 2024

• Incorporating prescription psychostimulants into the continuum of care for people with stimulant use disorder in Canada - Palis and MacDonald, 2023