Bath salt use in the military: Experiences with synthetic cathinone use among justice-involved Veterans
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Introduction: Ring-substituted cathinone derivatives emerged in Europe in the mid-2000s. These synthetic stimulants, colloquially called bath salts, reached the United States and Canada around 2008 and may have been disproportionately used by populations facing strict screening programs for traditional recreational drugs. Military personnel in most countries are subject to frequent drug tests, but the hypothesis that routine drug screens affect bath salt use decisions within the military has not been assessed. Methods: Between 2016 and 2018, 312 U.S. Veterans charged by civilian authorities with a criminal offence were interviewed. Respondents were drawn from eight sites within three states. Results: Bath salt use was reported by 2.3% of the sample. Instrumental reasons for use (increasing focus and staying awake) were commonly reported, followed by recreational purposes. All bath salt users reported extensive prior substance use histories. Qualitative analysis of responses identified four major themes: 1) bath salt use is limited (to one event or a brief time frame), 2) bath salts are associated with an intense effect relative to other drugs, 3) bath salts are perceived as a passable substitute for cocaine or methamphetamine, and 4) drug testing policies did not affect bath salt use. Discussion: Even among Veterans with extensive substance use histories, bath salt use is limited. There was no indication bath salt users were actively trying to elude detection in the military. This suggests current testing programs are not leading service members to substitute potentially more risky drugs for traditional substances.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.004 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.006 | 0.002 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".