New psychoactive substances are causing increasing harm across the UK but the use of new psychoactive substance by injecting has become a significant problem within Lothian since the beginning of 2014. Data indicate a rapid rise in the number of existing drug injectors, particularly heroin injectors, moving to new psychoactive substance injecting. This paper reports the experiences within Lothian of a sudden increase in injecting of ethylphenidate over one year. A temporary class drug order was placed on ethylphenidate on 10 April 2015, and as yet the effects of this are unknown.
Data specifically relating to new psychoactive substance recorded during injecting equipment provision transactions conducted by the NHS are reported. A survey was utilised to gather more detailed data from new psychoactive substance injectors.
Injection of new psychoactive substance, including ethylphenidate has had significant adverse effects on physical and mental health. Risky behaviour such as sharing of equipment is known, and there are risks of transmission of infections.
The rapid increase in injecting ethylphenidate has had a major impact on injecting equipment provision services, health services and public health. More work is required to identify routes to recovery.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 11. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 09 August 2026.
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#4,355,945
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Outputs from Scottish Medical Journal
#40
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#51,426
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Outputs of similar age from Scottish Medical Journal
#1
of 13 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 34,020,007 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done well and is in the 87th percentile: it's in the top 25% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 546 research outputs from this source. They receive a mean Attention Score of 4.9. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 92% of its peers.
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We're also able to compare this research output to 13 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 92% of its contemporaries.
