Possession and use of small amounts of marijuana, cocaine, heroin, LSD and amphetamines are no longer criminal offenses in Mexico, the A law that went into effect this week decriminalized minor drug possession, although individuals caught three times with drugs would be required to attend an addiction-treatment program.
Mexican officials have said that the law would free police up to focus on combatting dealers and higher-level drug traffickers.
Source: Associated Press reported Aug. 21.2009

The consequences of drug abuse cost the state and federal governments much more than they spend on prevention, according to a national report.
Substance abuse costs Michigan more than $5.2 million annually, but less than 1 percent of that amount goes to prevention and treatment.
And nationwide, taking into account both federal and state spending related to drug abuse and addiction, only 1.9 percent went to prevention and treatment, says the report from the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse (CASA), located at Columbia University, in New York.
The big cash outlays go to the consequences of drug abuse in the areas of criminal justice, health care, family assistance, and elementary and secondary school spending, says the report.
The report, titled “Shoveling Up II: The Impact of Substance Abuse on Federal, State and Local Budgets,” says that in 2005 Michigan spent about $5.28 million, or 18.2 percent, of its $28.9 million budget on the consequences of substance abuse and addiction. Those costs included about $1.6 million for criminal justice , $1.4 million in elementary and secondary school spending related to substance abuse, $1 million for health care, and $300,000 for child and family assistance. Less than $50,000 was spent on prevention, treatment and research.
In a foreword to the report, Joseph A. Califano, Jr., founder and chairman of CASA, calls current government spending patterns misguided.
“The facts revealed in this report,” he says, “constitute a searing indictment of the policies of government at every level that spend virtually all of the funds in this area to shovel up the wreckage of substance abuse and addiction and practically nothing to prevent and treat it.”
The figures in the report are based on 2005 spending, the most recent year for which data were available, “but there is nothing to suggest that anything in this area has changed since then,” Califano says.
Abuse of tobacco, alcohol and illegal and prescription drugs cost governments at least $467.7 billion in 2005, the report says. The report also cites these findings:
v State governments spent $135.8 billion — or 15.7 percent of their budgets — to deal with substance abuse and addiction, up from 13.3 percent in 1998.
v If substance abuse and addiction were a separate budget category for the 50 states, it would rank second behind states’ spending on elementary and secondary education.
v For every dollar that federal and state governments spent on prevention and treatment, they spent $59.83 dealing with the consequences of substance abuse.
“Despite a significant and growing body of knowledge documenting that addiction is a preventable, treatable and manageable disease, and despite the proven efficacy of prevention and treatment techniques, our nation still looks the other way while substance abuse and addiction cause illness, injury, death and crime, savage our children, overwhelm social-service systems, impede education — and slap a heavy and growing tax on our citizens,” Susan E. Foster, CASA vice president and director of policy research and analysis, said in a prepared statement about the report.
Source: Kalamazoo Gazette Thursday, August 20, 2009

MEXICO CITY — Mexico enacted a controversial law on Thursday that decriminalizes possession of small amounts of marijuana, cocaine, heroin and other drugs while encouraging free government treatment for drug dependency.
The law defines “personal use” amounts for drugs, also including LSD and methamphetamines. People detained with those quantities no longer face criminal prosecution when the law goes into effect on Friday. Anyone caught with drug amounts under the personal-use limit will be encouraged to seek treatment, and for those caught a third time treatment is mandatory — although the law does not specify penalties for noncompliance.
In 2006, the U.S. government publicly criticized a similar bill. Then-President Vicente Fox sent that law — which did not have a mandatory treatment provision — back to Congress for reconsideration. The maximum amount considered to be for “personal use” under the new law is 5 grams of marijuana — the equivalent of two or three joints — or a half-gram of cocaine. The limit for methamphetamine is 40 milligrams, and 0.015 milligrams of LSD.
The law was approved by Congress before it recessed in late April, and President Felipe Calderon — who is leading a major offensives against drug cartels — waited most of the summer before enacting it. Calderon’s original proposal would have required first-time detainees to complete treatment or face jail time. But the lower house of Congress, where Calderon’s party was short of a majority, weakened the bill.
Mexico has emphasized the need to differentiate between addicts or casual consumers and the violent drug traffickers whose turf battles have contributed to the deaths of over 11,000 people during Calderon’s term. And in the face of growing domestic drug use, Mexico has increased its focus on prevention and drug treatment. Sen. Pablo Gomez of the leftist Democratic Revolution Party praised the legislation: “This law achieves the decriminalization of drugs, and in exchange, offers government recovery treatment for addicts.”
Previously, all drug possession was punishable by stiff jail sentences, with some leeway for those considered addicts and caught with smaller amounts. In practice, relatively few people were prosecuted and sentenced to jail for small-time possession. While the United States openly expressed concern about the 2006 law, this time around it has been more circumspect.
Asked about the new law in July, U.S. drug czar Gil Kerlikowske said he would adopt a “wait-and-see attitude. If the sanction becomes completely nonexistent I think that would be a concern, but I actually didn’t read quite that level of de facto (decriminalization) in the law,” said Kerlikowske, who heads the U.S. Office of National Drug Control Policy. Whether the law’s proposed sanctions “are actually enough or not, I’m not sure,” he said.
Source: The Associated Press Aug.2009

August 19, 2009

VANCOUVER’S Skid Road is a slummy end-of-the-line refuge for drug-addicted criminals.
Once a vibrant district, Skid Road is now overrun by junkie marauders who plunder law abiding citizens and merchants in a predictable pattern of violence and property crime.
Just deserts for these incorrigibles ought to be detoxification followed by a significant stretch in jail as pure punishment for their parasitical behaviour.
My suggestion that we get tough with Skid Road misfits will likely draw a cacophony of cluck-clucking from big-brother medical health officers and senior bureaucrats engaged in an Orwellian scheme to medicalize drug addiction.
Medicalization is simply an expedient way to transform the deviant moral and criminal behaviour of drug addicts into a non-deviant medical issue.
You may recall that since 2000, the City of Vancouver and the Vancouver Coastal Health Authority have engaged in pernicious campaign to neutralize criminalization of possession of illicit drugs. They unabashedly mislead the general public with the falsehood that drug addiction is: a particular kind of disease displaying special symptoms; that it is beyond personal agency and self-imposed abstinence; and, that it requires professional medical assistance under the aegis of an addictions bureaucracy.
They have adopted a stigma-neutral lexicon including words and definitions such as “problematic substance abuse” rather than “drug abuse”, and “illegal” for “illicit” to eliminate moral/ethical considerations.
It is indisputable that opiates are poisons; and it is equally a fact that there will always be rogue citizens who, regardless of the risk, want to narcotize themselves out of the uncertainties and rigours of daily life, even if it inevitably leads to life of crime and ill health.
In Romancing Opiates – Pharmacological Lies and the Addiction Bureaucracy, Dr. Anthony Daniels says that “medical consequences (of addiction), however terrible, do not make a disease.”
Before publishing Romancing Opiates in 2006, Daniels had worked 14 years as a doctor in a large general hospital in a British slum, and in an even larger prison nearby. During this period opiate addiction increased dramatically and Daniels began treating as many as 20 new cases a day. He witnessed a worsening of the problem even though drug clinics increased as did medication prescribed to addicts.
Based on his experience with addicts and his extensive reading, Daniels rejects the notion that opiate addiction is relatively instantaneous. He says that it requires determination to reach habitual use three or four times a day, and that “it is truer to say that the addict hooks heroin than that heroin hooks the addict. The active principle in the exchange is the person, not the drug, and the addiction is a freely chosen state: an obvious fact that is ignored by the addiction bureaucracy.”
In forming his opinion Daniels also relied on the experience of American soldiers during and after the Vietnam War: “Thousands of American soldiers, especially towards the end (of the war), addicted themselves to heroin. … What happened to them when they went home? Only one in eight of the addicts continued with his addiction after return to the United States, and by two and three years after their return, the addiction rates among those who had served were no higher than among those who qualified for the draft but did not serve in Vietnam.
“And what help or services did these thousands of addicts receive when the returned home? For all intents and purposes, it varied between very little and none. They simply stopped taking heroin and did not resume.”
When Skid Road’s drug addicts go about robbing and stealing to fund their purchases of illicit drugs, they are cunning, wily and mindful of what they are doing. They are not automatons.
The festering sore of Skid Road is a national disgrace. It is worse today than in 2000.
Parliament has the constitutional right to enact a Public Safety Act that would authorize police to arrest any person found in a public place in a state of incapacitation by illicit drugs, and to forthwith render that person to a justice of the peace for committal into a secure detoxification facility.
It’s high time to take back our streets and public places. So just do it, all you members of Parliament.

Source:wallace-gilby-craig@shaw.ca. – North Shore News – Aug 19/09

ABSTRACT

Background Studies in Europe have suggested that injectable diacetylmorphine, the active ingredient in heroin, can be an effective adjunctive treatment for chronic, relapsing opioid dependence.
Methods In an open-label, phase 3, randomized, controlled trial in Canada, we compared injectable diacetylmorphine with oral methadone maintenance therapy in patients with opioid dependence that was refractory to treatment. Long-term users of injectable heroin who had not benefited from at least two previous attempts at treatment for addiction (including at least one methadone treatment) were randomly assigned to receive methadone (111 patients) or diacetylmorphine (115 patients). The primary outcomes, assessed at 12 months, were retention in addiction treatment or drug-free status and a reduction in illicit-drug use or other illegal activity according to the European Addiction Severity Index.
Results The primary outcomes were determined in 95.2% of the participants. On the basis of an intention-to-treat analysis, the rate of retention in addiction treatment in the diacetylmorphine group was 87.8%, as compared with 54.1% in the methadone group (rate ratio for retention, 1.62; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.35 to 1.95; P<0.001). The reduction in rates of illicit-drug use or other illegal activity was 67.0% in the diacetylmorphine group and 47.7% in the methadone group (rate ratio, 1.40; 95% CI, 1.11 to 1.77; P=0.004). The most common serious adverse events associated with diacetylmorphine injections were overdoses (in 10 patients) and seizures (in 6 patients).
Conclusions Injectable diacetylmorphine was more effective than oral methadone. Because of a risk of overdoses and seizures, diacetylmorphine maintenance therapy should be delivered in settings where prompt medical intervention is available. (ClinicalTrials.gov number, NCT00175357 )

Source: New England Journalof Medicine Volume 361:777-786. 20.08.2009

In this new study, researchers compared marijuana smoke to tobacco smoke, using smoking machines to simulate the smoking habits of users. The scientists found that ammonia levels were 20 times higher in the marijuana smoke than in the tobacco smoke, while hydrogen cyanide, nitric oxide and certain aromatic amines occurred at levels 3-5 times higher in the marijuana smoke, they say. The finding is “important information for public health and communication of the risk related to exposure to such materials,” say the researchers.

Source: American Chemical Society (2007, December 18). Marijuana Smoke Contains Higher Levels Of Certain Toxins Than Tobacco Smoke

Driving under the influence of cannabis almost doubles the risk of a fatal road crash, finds a study published online by the British Medical Journal. However its share in fatal crashes is significantly lower than those involving alcohol.The study took place in France and involved 10,748 drivers who were involved in fatal crashes from October 2001 to September 2003. All drivers underwent compulsory tests for drugs and alcohol.

A total of 681 drivers tested positive for cannabis (7%) and 2096 for alcohol (21.4%), including 285 for both (2.9%). Men were more often involved in crashes than women, and were also more often positive for both cannabis and alcohol, as were the youngest drivers, and users of mopeds and motorcycles.

The risk of being responsible for a fatal crash increased as the blood concentration of cannabis increased (known as a dose effect). The odds increased from 1.9 at a concentration of 0-1 ng/ml to 3.1 at or above 5 ng/ml. These effects were adjusted for alcohol and remained significant when also adjusted for other factors.

These results give credence to a causal relationship between cannabis and crashes, say the authors.

Samples show that the prevalence of cannabis (2.9%) within the driving population is similar to that for alcohol (2.7%) at or above 0.5 g/l, they add. However, in France, its share in fatal crashes is significantly lower than that associated with alcohol (2.5% compared with 29% for alcohol).

Source: BMJ-British Medical Journal (2005, December 5). Cannabis Almost Doubles Risk Of Fatal Crashes. ScienceDaily. Retrieved October 5, 2009, from http://www.sciencedaily.com­ /releases/2005/12/051205115540.htm

Conflicting evidence exists regarding the long-term effects of cannabis use, according to background information in the article. “Although growing literature suggests that long-term cannabis use is associated with a wide range of adverse health consequences, many people in the community, as well as cannabis users themselves, believe that cannabis is relatively harmless and should be legally available,” the authors write. “With nearly 15 million Americans using cannabis in a given month, 3.4 million using cannabis daily for 12 months or more and 2.1 million commencing use every year, there is a clear need to conduct robust investigations that elucidate the long-term sequelae of long-term cannabis use.”

Murat Yücel, Ph.D., M.A.P.S., of ORYGEN Research Centre and the Melbourne Neuropsychiatry Centre at the University of Melbourne, Australia, and colleagues from the University of Wollongong performed high-resolution structural magnetic resonance imaging on 15 men (average age 39.8 years) who smoked more than five joints daily for more than 10 years. Their results were then compared with images from 16 individuals (average age 36.4) who were not cannabis users. All participants also took a verbal memory test and were assessed for subthreshold (below the standard of disease diagnosis) symptoms of psychotic disorders, which include schizophrenia and mania.

The hippocampus, thought to regulate emotion and memory, and the amygdala, involved with fear and aggression, tended to be smaller in cannabis users than in controls (volume was reduced by an average of 12 percent in the hippocampus and 7.1 percent in the amygdala). Cannabis use also was associated with sub-threshold symptoms of psychotic disorders. “Although cannabis users performed significantly worse than controls on verbal learning, this did not correlate with regional brain volumes in either group,” the authors write.

“There is ongoing controversy concerning the long-term effects of cannabis on the brain,” the authors write. “These findings challenge the widespread perception of cannabis as having limited or no neuroanatomical sequelae. Although modest use may not lead to significant neurotoxic effects, these results suggest that heavy daily use might indeed be toxic to human brain tissue. Further prospective, longitudinal research is required to determine the degree and mechanisms of long-term cannabis-related harm and the time course of neuronal recovery after abstinence.”

Source: Arch Gen Psychiatry, 2008;65(6):694-701

As frequency of family dinners increases, reported drinking, smoking and drug use decreases.Compared to teens who have frequent family dinners (five to seven family dinners per week), those who have infrequent family dinners (fewer than three per week) are twice as likely to have used tobacco or marijuana, and more than one and a half times likelier to have used alcohol.

The relationship between the frequency of family dinners and substance use is especially strong among the youngest teens in the survey.

Compared to 12- and 13-year olds who have five to seven family dinners per week, those who have fewer than three family dinners per week are six times likelier to have used marijuana, four times likelier to have used tobacco, and three times likelier to have used alcohol.

Source: www.casacolumbia.org Sept.2009

In a finding that challenges the increasingly popular belief that smoking marijuana is less harmful to health than smoking tobacco, researchers in Canada are reporting that smoking marijuana, like smoking tobacco, has toxic effects on cells.Rebecca Maertens and colleagues note that people often view marijuana as a “natural” product and less harmful than tobacco. As public attitudes toward marijuana change and legal restrictions ease in some countries, use of marijuana is increasing.

Scientists know that marijuana smoke has adverse effects on the lungs. However, there is little knowledge about marijuana’s potential to cause lung cancer due to the difficulty in identifying and studying people who have smoked only marijuana.

The new study begins to address that question by comparing marijuana smoke vs. tobacco smoke in terms of toxicity to cells and to DNA. Scientists exposed cultured animal cells and bacteria to condensed smoke samples from both marijuana and tobacco. There were distinct differences in the degree and type of toxicity elicited by marijuana and cigarette smoke.

Marijuana smoke caused significantly more damage to cells and DNA than tobacco smoke, the researchers note. However, tobacco smoke caused chromosome damage while marijuana did not.

Source: ScienceDaily. September 30, 2009, from http://www.sciencedaily.com­
The Genotoxicity of Mainstream and Sidestream Marijuana and Tobacco Smoke Condensates. Chemical Research in Toxicology, Online July 17, 2009

Using new DNA “fingerprinting” techniques, two University of Minnesota researchers have become the first to unequivocally separate hemp plants from marijuana plants with genetic markers. Hemp, a crop grown for durable fiber and nutritious seed, and marijuana, the most abundant illegal drug of abuse in the United States, both belong to the species Cannabis sativa. They differ in levels of the psychoactive drug tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) but are otherwise difficult to tell apart. The technique holds promise for distinguishing different cultivars (domesticated plant lines) in U.S. criminal cases. It may also prove useful in countries where the cultivation of hemp is permitted but marijuana is illegal, as in Canada and Europe. The work appears in the March issue (volume 51, No. 2) of the Journal of Forensic Science.The new technique is an improvement on previous means of separating the two types of Cannabis, said author George Weiblen, an assistant professor of plant biology in the university’s College of Biological Sciences and College of Food, Agricultural and Natural Resource Sciences. For decades it has been possible to identify THC chemically, but the drug is not present in all plant tissues or throughout a plant’s life cycle. And other researchers have found that genetic markers known as “short tandem repeats,” which are used to identify individuals in paternity and criminal cases, lack the power to distinguish Cannabis cultivars unequivocally.

In tests with three different cultivars of hemp and one of marijuana, the DNA fingerprints of all the cultivars were distinct and nonoverlapping. Weiblen and Shannon L. Datwyler, a postdoctoral associate who is now on the faculty of California State University, Sacramento, found that the AFLP (amplified fragment length polymorphism) technique generated hundreds of genetic markers that together established separate identities for each of the four cultivars.

“We think this technique has the potential to distinguish marijuana varieties as well,” said Weiblen. “It has implications not just for separating hemp from marijuana in countries where hemp cultivation is permitted, but in establishing origins of seized drugs and, therefore, conspiracy in drug distribution networks. It also could be used in criminal defenses against claims of conspiracy.”

The technique chops up DNA and generates numerous fragments of DNA, each defined by particular “marker” DNA sequences that act like bookends. The lengths of the fragments within the bookends were found to vary according to the cultivar. Thus, the pattern of fragment lengths adds up to a composite picture of each cultivar.

“With this technique, we find hundreds of markers scattered across the genome,” said Weiblen. “The larger number of markers, compared to other techniques, gives us the power to separate the cultivars.”

The Cannabis plant has been cultivated for millennia and is important in the global economy as both a licit and an illicit crop, said Weiblen. Hemp is a source of durable fiber that provides an alternative to cotton fabric, among other uses. Cotton requires pesticide application and a hot climate, whereas hemp does not, which makes it suitable for local Minnesota agriculture. Weiblen seeks to screen a wider range of Cannabis cultivars to refine the technique. He is also working to identify regions of the Cannabis genome responsible for drug content in marijuana. If enough can be learned about the genome, it may one day be possible to produce an entirely drug-free hemp plant that looks different from marijuana. Currently, all hemp products are imported into the United States. Developing a new variety that could be cultivated in the United States would reduce American dependence on foreign products while creating a new alternative crop for American farmers.

Source: www.ScienceDaily March 23rd 2006

Regardless of the explanation, the findings suggest “that there are very long-term benefits to a higher drinking age,” Norberg said.

From the Vietnam era until the mid-1980s, many states allowed people to purchase alcohol at the age of 18. However, a federal law pressured states to boost the drinking age to 21, and all did with the exception of Louisiana, which finally followed suit in the 1990s.

In the new study, Norberg and colleagues looked at surveys of 33,869 people born in the United States between 1948 and 1970. They examined the records to see if there were differences in alcoholism and drug abuse rates depending on when states allowed individuals to buy booze.

The study findings appear in an early online edition of the December issue of Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research.

After adjusting their statistics to prevent things like the ethnicity of the respondents from skewing the results, the researchers found that those who lived in states that allowed drinking before age 21 were 1.3 times more likely to have suffered recently from alcoholism. They were also 1.7 times more likely to have had a recent drug abuse problem.

Norberg said lower drinking ages might have a “peer effect,” since that makes it easier to find friends of one’s age to drink with. “If the drinking age is at 21, it will be a little harder to find some friends to go out with. You’ll probably drink less often and have a smaller number of drinks.”

Because of widespread concern that the present economic crisis, particularly its effect on unemployment, will adversely affect population health, the research team investigated how economic changes have affected mortality rates over the past three decades in European Union countries. The research team, which is comprised of researchers from the University of California, San Francisco; University of Oxford, and London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, used data from the World Health Organization and the International Labor Organization. They analyzed more than 50 causes of death in 26 EU countries between 1970 and 2007 and compared the results to unemployment data. They also examined the different levels of government social spending during the same period, taking into account other factors that might affect rising death rates, such as population aging and the different ways that countries monitor employment rates and causes of death.

The stress of recessions, particularly of unemployment, seemed to markedly increase rates of death from intentional violence, with women particularly affected by homicide and men by suicide, according to study results.

“Suicides are just the tip of the iceberg” said lead author David Stuckler, PhD, of the University of Oxford and London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. “Rising suicide rates are a sign of many failed suicide attempts and high levels of mental distress among workers and families.”

Employers need to be aware that workers often turn to alcohol during times of stress and need to be aware of the signs of alcohol abuse. For help on launching a workplace substance abuse prevention program, visit the Department of Labor’s Working Partners Web site.

Source: www.cadca.org Sept.l9 2009

A solid body of research has shown that raising the taxes and price of alcohol leads to a decrease in consumption by youth, and reduces alcohol-related deaths and illness. Increasing the total price of alcohol has also been shown to decrease drinking and driving among all age groups.The level of alcohol taxes and the rules for serving alcohol make a difference in underage and high-risk drinking. The taxes on beer, the drink of choice for the vast majority of underage drinkers, vary from $.02 per gallon in Wyoming to $1.07 per gallon in Alaska.

The five states with the highest beer taxes have significantly lower rates of teen binge drinking than the states with the lowest taxes.

Although raising alcohol taxes has proven to be effective, it is rarely used by states. According to the Center for Science in the Public Interest, most states’ alcohol taxes have not been raised in decades. With the effects of inflation taken into account, the current value of most state alcohol taxes is very low.

For example, in California alcohol taxes have fallen 49 percent in inflation-adjusted dollars since the last increase in 1991, according to the Marin Institute.

Some states that have raised alcohol taxes dedicate the proceeds to public health programs, including substance use treatment programs, prevention campaigns, and other public education efforts.

Source: www.Join Together.org Aug.2009

Heavy alcohol use is associated with an increased

risk of chronic pancreatitis, which may put patients

at risk for pancreatic cancer. In this study, an increased risk

was seen among subjects who reported either no alcohol

consumption (a group that probably contained former

drinkers) or consuming 3 or more drinks per day of liquor.

I agree with the conclusions of the authors that, although

moderate alcohol use was not a risk factor for pancreatic

cancer in this study, heavy alcohol use, particularly of liquor,

may play a role in its etiology. R. Curtis Ellison, MD

Source: Alcohol use and risk of pancreatic cancer: the NIH-AARP

Diet and Health Study. Am J Epidemiol. 2009;169(9):1043–1051.

Regular moderate alcohol consumption may be a protective

factor for cardiovascular disease. However, the effect

of alcohol consumption immediately prior to cardiovascular

events has not been studied extensively. Researchers conducted

a “case-crossover” study in 250 first-time nonfatal

acute myocardial infarction (AMI) cases to assess the influence

of alcohol consumption in the 12 hours preceding

AMI. Each case served as its own control; i.e., the control

information for each subject was based on his or her own

past behavior. The 12 hours preceding AMI was considered

the hazard period, while the corresponding time period a

week before AMI was the control period.

Drinking any alcohol in the hazard period increased

the risk for AMI threefold (odds ratio [OR], 3.1); even

moderate drinking (U24 g of ethanol for women and

U36 g for men) more than doubled it (OR, 2.3).

 Of the 187 subjects who drank any alcohol, 15 men

and 2 women reported heavy episodic drinking (4+

drinks per occasion for women and 5+ drinks for

men). The association between heavy episodic drinking

and AMI was not significant (OR, 3.0).

 These results were not influenced by known risk factors

for AMI (age, gender, smoking status, family history

of AMI, hypertension, hyperlipidemia, diabetes,

prior unstable angina pectoris, physical exertion

shortly before the event, psychological stress, or cocaine

use) in adjusted analyses.

 Compared with an age- and sex-matched general

population sample, subjects with AMI had more frequent

heavy episodic drinking (less than monthly, 21%

versus 11%; monthly or more, 7% versus 3%) and were

more likely to drink irregularly, i.e., less than weekly

(29% versus 16%).

Comments: Drinking any alcohol increased the risk for AMI in

the next 12 hours in this study. Researchers were not able

to demonstrate a significant association between heavy episodic

drinking and AMI due to the small number of exposed

subjects; however, the sample had higher rates of heavy and

irregular drinking compared with the general population,

giving some support to the hypotheses that heavy drinking

increases AMI risk, and that pattern of drinking is important

when assessing the risk for cardiovascular events. The relationship

between alcohol use and cardiovascular events is

likely not as simple as is commonly thought.

Source: Gerlich MG, Krämer A, Gmel G, et al. Patterns

Gerlich MG, Krämer A, Gmel G, et al. Patterns

of alcohol consumption and acute myocardial infarction: a

case-crossover analysis. Eur Addict Res. 2009;15(3):143–149

Maternal drug misuse can seriously affect the health of the fetus and newborn infant. The association of maternal drug misuse with prematurity, intrauterine growth restriction (IUGR) and neonatal abstinence syndrome (NAS) is well recognised, and there is growing concern about infant visual development and longer-term neuro-developmental outcome. Drug misuse is associated with changes in the visual system as measured by the visual evoked potential (VEP) in adults and animal models. A recent study has shown abnormal VEPs in newborn infants exposed to methadone in utero, consistent with reports of delayed visual development in this population. Since visual abnormalities and neuro-developmental abnormalities can be predicted by abnormal VEPs in infancy, it is postulated that the VEP may be a valuable tool in the detection of the adverse effects of maternal drug misuse upon the infant. This review summarises the impact of maternal drug misuse upon the health of the foetus and newborn infant, addresses the specific effects of maternal drug misuse upon the developing visual system and discusses the potential role of the VEP in the assessment of these infants.

Source: Archives of Disease in Childhood 2009;94:708-712

Nearly one in two teenagers knows someone who has suffered from a mental health problem like paranoia after using cannabis, a survey suggests.Forty-two percent of 11-18 year olds know someone who has experienced memory loss, panic attacks or paranoia from cannabis, drugs information service Frank said.

The survey of 27,000 teenagers found 74% were aware of the risks.

It revealed 18% of teenagers felt under pressure to try the Class B drug.

One in ten thought it made them look cool.

The research, which was carried out on networking website Habbo Hotel, found 64% of young people were aware cannabis could cause panic attacks, 41% knew it could bring on paranoia and 38% thought it could result in memory loss.

Over 50% of teenagers associated cannabis use with losing motivation and doing badly at school or college.

But one in four said they saw cannabis as a “natural” drug, despite the risks.

And 14% of 11-18 year olds admitted using the drug to help them to cope with life.

Chris Hudson, from Frank, said: “The majority of teenagers (55%) don’t want to risk their health by using cannabis, however, some people choose to take the risk; while others wrongly believe cannabis is harmless because it is a plant.

“Cannabis messes with your mind – and reactions can be more powerful with stronger strains such as skunk, which is around twice as potent,” he warned.

Source: BBC Newsbeat 6th Aug.2009

Francesca M. Filbeya, et alCraving is one of the primary behavioral components of drug addiction, and cue-elicited craving is an especially powerful form of this construct. While cue-elicited craving and its underlying neurobiological mechanisms have been extensively studied with respect to alcohol and other drugs of abuse, the same cannot be said for marijuana. Cue-elicited craving for other drugs of abuse is associated with increased activity in a number of brain areas, particularly the reward pathway. This study used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to examine cue-elicited craving for marijuana. Thirty-eight regular marijuana users abstained from use for 72 h and were presented with tactile marijuana-related and neutral cues while undergoing a fMRI scan. Several structures in the reward pathway, including the ventral tegmental area, thalamus, anterior cingulate, insula, and amygdala, demonstrated greater blood oxygen level dependent (BOLD) activation in response to the marijuana cue as compared with the neutral cue.

These regions underlie motivated behavior and the attribution of incentive salience. Activation of the orbitofrontal cortex and nucleus accumbens was also positively correlated with problems
related to marijuana use, such that greater BOLD activation was associated with greater number of items on a marijuana problem scale. Thus, cue-elicited craving for marijuana activates the reward neurocircuitry associated with the neuropathology of addiction, and the magnitude of activation of these structures is associated with severity of cannabis-related problems. These findings may inform the development of treatment strategies for cannabis
dependence.

The relationship between craving and drug use behavior is an integral piece of the addiction puzzle. Craving is considered the intense desire for a rewarding object or experience. Cue elicited
craving, induced by exposure to alcohol- or drug-related cues, is a particularly potent form of craving. Previous investigators have reported that subjective craving increases after exposure to cues specific to a variety of drugs of abuse, including cocaine (e.g., tactile cues, videos, i.v. administration, images, guided imagery) heroin (e.g., images) alcohol (e.g., alcohol taste, images, alcohol-related words), and tobacco (e.g., visual and tactile presentations) .

Cue-elicited craving for alcohol and tobacco in particular have important clinical implications and have been the focus of psychosocial and pharmacological intervention efforts.

The advent of functional neuro-imaging has allowed studies of cue-elicited craving to elucidate the neurobiological mechanisms that accompany increased craving. Such neuro-imaging studies
have associated craving with increased activation of reward pathways . The reward circuits involve the dopamine projection from the ventral tegmental area (VTA) to striatal areas (e.g., nucleus accumbens) and the prefrontal cortex (PFC), the repeated activation of which underlies the attribution of incentive salience to otherwise neutral stimuli . Other reward-related areas, including the insula and cingulated gyrus show increased activity with the presentation of drug-related stimuli. Presentation of these stimuli is also associated with increased activity in brain structures that underlie reward and emotion regulation, such as the thalamus and amygdala.

The few published studies of cue-elicited craving for marijuana suggest that it is a reliable and valid phenomenon, analogous to cue-elicited craving for other drugs of abuse. Marijuana-related cues presented in a variety of sensory modalities, elicit increases in self-reported craving. For example, auditory-presented imagery scripts induce craving in marijuana smokers, and the magnitude of this craving varies as a function of the amount of marijuana-related content presented in the script . Craving also increases when abstinent frequent marijuana users are exposed to an auditory script that is paired with a tactile cue, such as a used marijuana pipe or bong .

Importantly, in this paradigm, cue presentation increases craving beyond the effects induced by abstinence. Additionally, marijuana related visual cues elicit greater craving in chronic heavy users than in controls; physiologically, users demonstrate greater skin conductance and larger late positivity of visual event-related brain potentials than controls in response to these stimuli .

The present study was designed to examine the effects of marijuana-related cues on the activation of reward circuitry, and to examine the relationship between these effects and the behavioral symptoms of cannabis dependence. We hypothesized that among regular marijuana users, marijuana-related cues compared with neutral cues, would elicit greater blood oxygen level dependent (BOLD) activity in reward structures (i.e., VTA, striatum, anterior cingulate, and insula). Furthermore, we hypothesized that the magnitude of this response would be associated with the number of problems related to marijuana use.

Results

Compared with the neutral cue, presentation of the marijuana cue elicited significantly greater BOLD activation in a large cluster encompassing several areas, including the VTA, dorsal anterior cingulate cortex, cerebellum, thalamus, pre- and postcentral gyri, inferior frontal gyrus/insula, thalamus, amygdala,

fusiform gyrus, pre- and postcentral gyri, inferior parietal lobe, and superior temporal gyrus (cluster-corrected z_2.3, P_0.05)

BOLD response in several of these differentially activated areas was also significantly positively correlated with total marijuana problem scale (MPS) score (cluster-corrected z _ 2.3, P _ 0.05). These areas included the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) and nucleus accumbens (NAc) The analyses of correlations with the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM Disorders (SCID) total symptom count, subjective urge ratings, frequency, and duration of use did not meet the significance threshold.

Source: 13016–13021 _ PNAS _ August 4, 2009 _ vol. 106 _ no. 31 www.pnas.org_cgi_doi_10.1073_pnas.0903863106

The following survey findings highlight a strong need for drug use prevention:

there is evidence that the earlier a person starts taking drugs, the greater the

likelihood that they will develop more serious health and drug problems over

time compared to those who abstain at a younger age (Lynskey et al, 2003).

Research has also shown that there are strong links between drug use and poor

academic performance (Ellickson et al, 2002), truancy (Hallfors et al, 2002) and

initiation into criminal activity (South and Teeman, 1999.