Castillo-Toledo Consuelo, Fraile-Martínez Oscar, Donat-Vargas Carolina, Lara-Abelenda F J, Ortega Miguel Angel, Garcia-Montero Cielo, Mora Fernando, Alvarez-Mon Melchor, Quintero Javier, Alvarez-Mon Miguel Angel
Department of Psychiatry and Mental Health, Hospital Universitario Infanta Leonor, Madrid, Spain.
Department of Medicine and Medical Specialities, Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, University of Alcala, Alcala de Henares, Spain.
Front Psychiatry. 2024 Mar 19;15:1282026. doi: 10.3389/fpsyt.2024.1282026. eCollection 2024.
Cocaine abuse represents a major public health concern. The social perception of cocaine has been changing over the decades, a phenomenon closely tied to its patterns of use and abuse. Twitter is a valuable tool to understand the status of drug use and abuse globally. However, no specific studies discussing cocaine have been conducted on this platform.
111,508 English and Spanish tweets containing "cocaine" from 2018 to 2022 were analyzed. 550 were manually studied, and the largest subset underwent automated classification. Then, tweets related to cocaine were analyzed to examine their content, types of Twitter users, usage patterns, health effects, and personal experiences. Geolocation data was also considered to understand regional differences.
A total of 71,844 classifiable tweets were obtained. Among these, 15.95% of users discussed the harm of cocaine consumption to health. Media outlets had the highest number of tweets (35.11%) and the most frequent theme was social/political denunciation (67.88%). Regarding the experience related to consumption, there are more tweets with a negative sentiment. The 9.03% of tweets explicitly mention frequent use of the drug. The continent with the highest number of tweets was America (55.44% of the total).
The findings underscore the significance of cocaine as a current social and political issue, with a predominant focus on political and social denunciation in the majority of tweets. Notably, the study reveals a concentration of tweets from the United States and South American countries, reflecting the high prevalence of cocaine-related disorders and overdose cases in these regions. Alarmingly, the study highlights the trivialization of cocaine consumption on Twitter, accompanied by a misleading promotion of its health benefits, emphasizing the urgent need for targeted interventions and antidrug content on social media platforms. Finally, the unexpected advocacy for cocaine by healthcare professionals raises concerns about potential drug abuse within this demographic, warranting further investigation.
可卡因滥用是一个重大的公共卫生问题。几十年来，社会对可卡因的认知一直在变化，这一现象与其使用和滥用模式密切相关。推特是了解全球毒品使用和滥用状况的宝贵工具。然而，该平台上尚未开展过专门讨论可卡因的研究。
对2018年至2022年期间111,508条包含“可卡因”的英文和西班牙文推文进行了分析。人工研究了550条推文，对最大的子集进行了自动分类。然后，对与可卡因相关的推文进行分析，以研究其内容、推特用户类型、使用模式、健康影响和个人经历。还考虑了地理位置数据以了解地区差异。
共获得71,844条可分类推文。其中，15.95%的用户讨论了可卡因消费对健康的危害。媒体发布的推文数量最多（35.11%），最常见的主题是社会/政治谴责（67.88%）。关于与消费相关的经历，负面情绪的推文更多。9.03%的推文明确提到频繁使用该药物。推文数量最多的大陆是美洲（占总数的55.44%）。
研究结果强调了可卡因作为当前社会和政治问题的重要性，大多数推文主要关注政治和社会谴责。值得注意的是，该研究显示来自美国和南美国家的推文集中，反映出这些地区与可卡因相关的疾病和过量用药病例的高流行率。令人担忧的是，该研究突出了推特上对可卡因消费的轻视，同时伴有对其健康益处的误导性宣传，强调了在社交媒体平台上进行有针对性干预和反毒品内容的迫切需求。最后，医疗保健专业人员对可卡因的意外支持引发了对这一人群中潜在药物滥用的担忧，值得进一步调查。
