Motivation

Around 270 million people worldwide (about 5.5% of the world’s population aged 15-64 years) use psychoactive drugs, with significant health consequences. Drug use disorders increase morbidity and mortality risks and impair personal, family, social, educational and occupational functioning. Drug use disorders are associated with premature mortality, increased health care expenditures, and criminal justice and social welfare costs. It is estimated that about 35 million people are affected by drug use disorders (drug dependence), and 0.5 million deaths per year are attributable to drug use (350,000 deaths in men and 150,000 deaths in women). Worldwide, it is estimated that there are nearly 11 million people who inject drugs, of whom 1.4 million are living with HIV and 5.6 million with hepatitis C [1]. The figure below shows some statistics related to drug-induced deaths in the European Union [2].

Electronic Health Records can contain different types of information regarding drug use and abuse that is not usually structured, including things such as the type of substance use, how much time someone has been using or how frequently. With this in mind, it is important to build systems that can detect mentions of drug use in texts and also characterize them.

References:

[1] World Health Organization. (n.d.). Psychoactive drugs. World Health Organization. Retrieved March 31st, 2025, from https://www.who.int/health-topics/drugs-psychoactive#tab=tab_2

[2] European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction. (2022). European drug report 2022 : trends and developments. Publications Office of the European Union. https://data.europa.eu/doi/10.2810/75644.​