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Children's early development is influenced by characteristics of the child, family, and environment, including exposure to substance abuse. The aim was to examine the association of early childhood development (ECD) with the prevalence of psychoactive substance use in Mexican municipalities. We obtained ECD data from the 2015 Survey of Boys, Girls, and Women (ENIM, for its Spanish acronym), measured with the ECD Index. The prevalence of psychoactive substance use was estimated at the municipal level, using the 2016 National Survey of Drug, Alcohol, and Tobacco Use (ENCODAT, for its Spanish acronym). Multilevel logistic models were fitted to evaluate the association between drug use and inadequacies in ECD overall and in four specific ECD domains: socio-emotional, literacy-numeric, learning, and physical. Inadequate ECD was directly associated with illegal drug use (OR = 1.10; 95% CI: 1.03, 1.17). For the specific ECD domains, inadequate socio-emotional development was directly associated with illegal drug use (OR = 1.08; 95% CI: 1.01, 1.15). These findings suggest that exposure to illegal drug use may influence ECD, and especially can lead to socio-emotional problems, although this cannot be considered the unanimous determinant of the problems presented. The implementation of evidence-based interventions to prevent drug abuse is necessary.

Background: Monitoring drug use in México is a challenge due to emerging drugs and rapid changes in consumption patterns. The temporal and geographical patterns of cocaine, methamphetamine, amphetamine, MDMA, cannabis, heroin, ketamine, and fentanyl were examined in Mexican cities using wastewater-based epidemiology (WBE)., Methods: 105 daily composite wastewater samples were collected from sewage treatment plants in fifteen Mexican cities. We quantified drug residues using liquid chromatography-high-resolution mass spectrometry, and estimated drug use by back-calculation of drug loads., Results: We identified ten drug target residues in at least one sample across cities. Drugs with the highest median levels were cannabis, methamphetamine, and cocaine. The median range of cannabis for one week was between 147 and 20,364 mg/day/1000inhab across cities, whereas methamphetamine ranged between 5 and 3,628 mg/day/1000inhab. Cocaine was found in levels between 2 and 370 mg/day/1000inhab. The highest levels of methamphetamine and amphetamine were observed in the US border cities of Tijuana and San Luis Río Colorado. The presence of heroin, MDMA, ketamine, and fentanyl was stronger during weekends, while cannabis, cocaine, and amphetamine were found throughout the week., Conclusion: This study provides the first report of fentanyl, norfentanyl, and ketamine in wastewater in Mexico. The results indicate an increased presence of drugs on known drug traffic routes, demonstrating that WBE can help identify areas of high drug use and assist governments in developing policies to reduce drug use and harm in the communities., Competing Interests: Declaration of Interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper. The authors declare the following financial interests/personal relationships which may be considered as potential competing interests: This study was approved by the Ethics, Research and Biosafety Committees at the National, Institute of Public Health (CI:1476), Copytzy Cruz-Cruz, Viviane Yargeau, Desireé Vidaña-Pérez, Astrid Schilmann Halbinger, Marco Aurelio Pineda Castro, María Margarita Lobato Calleros, Mauricio Hernández-Ávila, Jorge Ameth Villatoro Velázquez, Tonatiuh Barrientos-Gutiérrez, (Copyright © 2020 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Objective: Monitor drug use through wastewater metabolite measurement., Materials and Methods: Wastewater samples were obtained from 31 wastewater treatment plants and 95 sites with specific populations (38 schools, 42 units of addiction treatment and 15 penitentiaries). Using ultra high liquid chromatography, we measured nine metabolites from six drugs., Results: Eight out of nine drug metabolites were identified in the samples. Marijuana (THC-COOH), cocaine (benzoylecgonine) and methamphetamine were identified in schools, centers of addiction treatment and penitentiaries. Nuevo Laredo, Culiacan and Torreon had the highest consumption of cocaine, marijuana, amphetamine and methamphetamine., Conclusions: Monitoring drug use through wastewater is feasible in Mexico and could constitute a surveillance system to identify changes in the time., Competing Interests: Declaration of conflict of interests. The authors declare that they have no conflict of interests.