Tools
Tools
Karden, A, Fragner, T, Feichtinger, C, Strizek, J, McDermott, DT 
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7005-6446 and Grabovac, I,
2025.
Utilization of drug checking services in Austria: a cross-sectional online survey.
Harm Reduction Journal, 22: 17.
ISSN 1477-7517
Abstract
Background: The use of psychoactive substances is a key public health issue due to its impact on mental, physical, and social health. Integrated drug checking is a well-known harm reduction and addiction prevention measure and is currently implemented in four federal states in Austria. The aim of this study is to investigate the prevalence of drug checking use among a web-survey sample of people who use drugs (PWUD) in Austria and to examine differences in socio-demographic and substance use characteristics between individuals with and without drug checking experience. In addition, reasons for not using these services are explored.
Methods: A secondary data analysis of the Austrian data from the European Web Survey on Drugs (EWSD), a targeted survey conducted between March and May 2021 was performed. Based on reported drug checking experience, the data set was divided into two groups - those with and without drug checking experience – and compared.
Results: In this web-survey sample of PWUD (n = 1113), 20.1% reported prior use of a drug checking service in Austria. The groups with drug checking experience (n = 224) and those without (n = 889) differed significantly in both univariate and multivariate analyses. Univariate analysis revealed significant differences in terms of age, household composition, highest level of education, employment status, region of residence, substance use prevalences and treatment experience. Participants who used cannabis only had significantly less experience with drug checking. No significant differences were found regarding gender and income. While logistic regression analysis showed a significant relationship between sociodemographic predictors and drug checking experience, this relationship was relatively weak. The main reasons for not having used the services yet included a high level of trust in the source of supply (68%), confidence in receiving high quality of substances (64%), and a lack of service availability near the place of residence (62%).
Conclusions: The results indicate that drug checking services are well-accepted and trusted but not equally accessed by and accessible to all PWUD. Specifically, people who use only cannabis and those residing with parents or in rural or small-town areas access services less. In conclusion, there is considerable potential for expanding the availability and accessibility of drug checking services in Austria, particularly to reach underserved groups of PWUD who could benefit from this intervention.
| Item Type: | Journal article |
|---|---|
| Publication Title: | Harm Reduction Journal |
| Creators: | Karden, A., Fragner, T., Feichtinger, C., Strizek, J., McDermott, D.T. and Grabovac, I. |
| Publisher: | Springer |
| Date: | 15 February 2025 |
| Volume: | 22 |
| ISSN: | 1477-7517 |
| Identifiers: | Number Type 10.1186/s12954-025-01168-1 DOI 2377989 Other |
| Rights: | This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License, which permits any non-commercial use, sharing, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if you modified the licensed material. You do not have permission under this licence to share adapted material derived from this article or parts of it. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creati vecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. |
| Divisions: | Schools > School of Social Sciences |
| Record created by: | Jonathan Gallacher |
| Date Added: | 17 Feb 2025 12:33 |
| Last Modified: | 17 Feb 2025 12:33 |
| URI: | https://irep.ntu.ac.uk/id/eprint/53055 |
Actions (login required)
 |
Edit View |
Statistics
Views
Views per month over past year
Downloads
Downloads per month over past year
