President joins calls for debate after figures reveal extent of violence since launch of military offensive against cartels in 2006. Murders in Mexico’s drug wars are becoming increasingly gruesome.

Mexico’s president, Felipe Calderón, has joined calls for a debate on the legalisation of drugs as new figures show thousands of Mexicans every year being slaughtered in cartel wars.

“It is a fundamental debate,” the president said, belying his traditional reluctance to accept any questioning of the military-focused offensive against the country’s drug cartels that he launched in late 2006. “You have to analyse carefully the pros and cons and key arguments on both sides.” The president said he personally opposes the idea of legalisation.

Calderón’s new openness comes amid tremendous pressure to justify a strategy that has been accompanied by the spiralling of horrific violence around the country as the cartels fight each other and the government crack down. Official figures released this week put the number of drug war related murders at 28,000.
Until recently the government regularly played down the general impact of the violence by claiming that 90% of the victims were associated with the cartels, with the remainder largely from the security forces. In recent months it has started to acknowledge a growing number of “civilian victims” ranging from toddlers caught in the cross fire to students massacred at parties.

Momentum behind the idea that legalisation could be part of the solution has been growing since three prominent former Latin American presidents signed a document last year arguing the case.

César Gaviria of Colombia, Fernando Cardoso of Brazil and Ernesto Zedillo of Mexico urged existing governments to consider legalising marijuana as a way of slashing cartel profits.

This year Mexico’s national congress began a debate on the possibility that resurfaced again this week during a series of round table discussions between the Calderón, security experts, business leaders and civic groups.

The “Dialogue for Security: Evaluation and Strengthening” is part of a new government effort to counter the growing perception in Mexico that the president’s drug war strategy is a disaster.

“I’m not talking just about legalizing marijuana,” analyst and write Hector Aguilar Camin said during the Tuesday session, “rather all drugs in general.” After accepting the need to directly address the proposal, Calderón made it clear he did not support it. “It requires a country to take a decision to put several generations of young people at risk,” he said, citing a likely increase in consumption triggered by lower prices, greater availability and social acceptability.

He added that the predicted “important economic effects by reducing income for criminal groups” would be limited by the integration of Mexican drug trafficking into international markets where drugs remain largely underground. Calderón did not mention current moves to soften drug laws in the US, including a planned vote in California in November on an initiative that would allow marijuana to be sold and taxed. Nor did he address the home grown argument that legalisation would remove the roots of the violence raging in the country.
“Legalisation would render the war pointless as drugs would become just another product like tobacco or alcohol,” Jorge Castañeda, a legalisation advocate and former foreign minister, told W Radio. He added that even if it did prompt an increase in drug use. “It is worth considering whether this is preferable to having 28,000 deaths.”

The new death toll, which was not broken down, is significantly higher than the informal counts kept by newspapers. Milenio newspaper put the number of drug-related deaths in July at 1,234.

Some leading critics of Calderón’s strategy, however, do not believe legalisation is the key to reining in the cartels and the violence, preferring to emphasize the need to increase efforts to go after money laundering and political corruption. Edgardo Buscaglia, and expert in organised crime around the world, argues that the recent diversification of the Mexican cartels into other criminal activities ranging from systematic extortion to people trafficking would give them ample reason to keep fighting each other, even if drugs were legal. “Legalising drugs would be good public policy,” he said, “but it would not be a tool with which to combat organized crime.”

Source: guardian.co.uk Wednesday 4 August 2010

A proposal to create medical marijuana dispensaries in Hawaii has gone up in smoke.
The idea is dead because the House Judiciary Committee refused to consider the measure before a legislative deadline Thursday.
Committee Chairman Rep. Jon Riki Karamatsu says he was worried that marijuana dispensaries would fuel illegal sales of the drug. He’s also concerned about the state running up against federal drug laws.
Medical marijuana patients argue that Hawaii needs to reform its decade-old law allowing them to smoke and even grow the drug, but prohibiting them from buying it.
The bill passed the Senate and two House committees before stalling. Medical marijuana dispensaries will likely be considered again during next year’s legislative session.

Source: www.omaha.com, 1st April 2010

A new study published in the Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndromes finds that HIV prevalence in the city Toggliatti in Russia declined from 56 percent in 2001 to 38.5 percent in 2004, “despite the lack of needle and syringe exchange.” The study found that “a history of drug treatment was associated with a reduced likelihood of testing positive for HIV,” and credits less frequent injection of drugs for the overall reduction in HIV among new injectors, “rather than interventions through services, such as needle exchanges.”
Compare the HIV decline in Toggliatti, Russia—which has no needle exchange program—to the HIV explosion in Vancouver, Canada, which boasts the largest and one of the oldest needle distribution program in North America.
When Vancouver’s needle exchange program (NEP) was established in the late 1980s, the city’s estimated HIV prevalence was 1 to 2 percent. By 1997, one-quarter of the of the drug users in Downtown Eastside were infected with HIV, with a transmission rate of nearly 19 percent, giving Vancouver the distinction of having the highest infection rate of any city in the developed world. By 2003, an estimated 40 percent of the drug using population in Vancouver was infected with HIV. Research has directly linked needle exchange to this trend. A study published in the Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndromes in 1997 found that “frequent NEP attendance” was one of the “independent predictors of HIV-serostatus” among IDUs. The study found that HIV-positive IDU were more likely to have ever attended NEP and to attend NEP on a more regular basis compared with HIV-negative IDUs. With only one exception, the NEP was the main source of syringes for all of those who became infected during the course of the study.
Source: http:// www.aidsmap.com/en/news/AA1E32BC-20EF-4B93-B811-83CF26FEF1F9.asp April 23, 2008

A significant decline in risky injecting practices and a decline in HIV prevalence in new drug injectors was seen in a Russian city severely affected by HIV between 2001 and 2004, despite the lack of needle and syringe exchange, researchers from the London School of Hygiene report in the April 15th edition of the Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndromes.

The researchers believe that word of mouth, and growing awareness of the rising number of HIV diagnoses, contributed to the shoft, but also note that changes in the drug market during the study period may have driven the change in injecting and equipment sharing practices.

Several major cities worldwide have witnessed explosive outbreaks of HIV due to injecting drug use. In these contexts, some research suggests that new injectors might adopt riskier behaviours, or alternately, within the context of an HIV outbreak, new injectors might adopt safer behaviours than longer term injectors. Thus, measuring behavioural change in targeted populations may help to monitor risks in a changing epidemic.

Therefore investigators from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine examined two anonymous, cross-sectional community-recruited surveys of injecting drug users in Toggliatti city, which is in the Samara region of Russia. They also conducted a review of new HIV diagnoses in the region since 2000.

Participants in both surveys had used injection drugs in the previous four weeks and consented to HIV testing via oral fluid samples. The participants analysed were injecting drug users who had injected for three years or less (recent injectors): 138 people in 2001 and 96 in 2004.

Participants were identified by respondent-driven sampling, in which those initially recruited act as ‘seeds’ for an expanding chain of referrals. Mathematical modelling was then used to estimate population effects. Injection drug use was estimated to occur in 5.4% of the registered population of the city, but in 2.7% of the assumed genuine population, close to 1 million people.

In 2004, a lower proportion of injecting drug users reported injecting daily, using used needles, syringes or filters, or front-loading – when a solution of drug is passed from a donor syringe into another person by removing the needle. Although fewer injecting drug users in 2004 reported contact with drug treatment services, needle exchange or outreach workers, more had been tested for HIV.

Overall HIV prevalence was high among injecting drug users, but it declined between 2001 and 2004, from 56% to 38.5% A significantly lower prevalence of HIV was found among new injectors in 2004 (11.5%, 95% CI: 5.0 – 17.9) than in 2001 (55.2%, 95% CI: 46.7 – 63.8). A history of drug treatment was associated with a reduced likelihood of testing positive for HIV, while increased odds of HIV were associated with exchanging sex for drugs and sex work, duration of injection (odds ratio 1.4 per year), and front-loading. Most injecting equipment was obtained from pharmacies in both surveys.

Examination of surveillance data revealed that in 2000, 97% of new HIV cases were linked with IDU whereas that figure had fallen to 56.4% by 2005.

The reduction in HIV among new injectors in 2004 seems likely to be related to general risk awareness and changes in injection practice rather than interventions through services, such as needle exchanges. However, the authors suggest that “IDUs, and IDUs involved in sex work specifically, should be targets for sexual risk reduction interventions”.

Given the nature of IDU-related health services in this region, the authors write that “we emphasize the need for increasing access to voluntary and confidential HIV testing in combination with increasing the accessibility of sterile injecting equipment through pharmacies”.

Source: Platt L et al. Changes in HIV prevalence and risk among new injecting drug users in a Russian city of high HIV prevalence. J Acquir Immune Defic Syndr 47: 623 – 631, 2008.

The Jornal da Tarde, a newspaper published in Sao Paulo, in its edition of September 1, 2008 (see below) exposes some of the never ending new formulas for the drug trraffickers to attract and keep their drug using clients. Now in Brasil, they have found a new way to go about the fact that the Brazilian Matihuana is of “low quality” (less that 1% THC content). They simply have started adding
crack to the marihuana cigarettes which are old so that their clients can have stronger psicoactive effects when they smoke those cigarettes.

The alert was first given by the Director of the Toxichology Center of the prestigious Hospital das clinicas in São Paulo, Anthony Wong.
Luiz Carlos Freitas Magno, a Delegate of the Denarc which is São Paulo State Department of Narcotic Investigations, has known about this practice of adding crack to marihuana.
About a year and a half ago, the drug traffickers of Rio de Janeiro started selling marihuana mixed with crack, but they sell it as a new drug called crackonha (in English it would sound as crackonia).
Dr. Womng says that the danger of young people using this new mixture drug is that it is very addictive. Another problem pointed out is that when somebody arrives at an Emergency Room because of drug problems, it is more difficult to know rapidly which was the drug causing the problem
Source: Journal da Tarde Sept. 1st 2008

We, participants of the World Mayors’ Conference against drugs – reaffirm our support for the UN Conventions and declare that all people have the right to expect their governments to work according to the conventions and their intentions.Worldwide, cannabis is the most frequent used illicit drug, which calls for action from each city and country. Extensive research confirms that the use of cannabis is detrimental to health, causes crime, and is addictive. Cannabis, and certain other drugs, for example khat, should be viewed in the same way as other types of illicit/psychotropic drugs for example cocaine,
heroine and amphetamine, when it comes to control policy, rehabilitation and preventive measures.

We, participants …..
 Reaffirm our unwavering determination and commitment to overcoming the world drug problem through international and domestic strategies to reduce both the illicit supply of and demand for drugs;

 Recognize that action against the drug problem is a common and shared responsibility requiring an integrated and balanced approach in full conformity with the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations and international law;

 Affirm our determination to provide the necessary resources for treatment and rehabilitation and to enable social reintegration to restore dignity and hope to children, youth, women and men who have become drug abusers, and to fight against all aspects of the world drug problem;

 Urge all people to work with their governments to strengthen, support, and encourage the UN system of drug control, in order to reduce the global demand and supply of illicit drugs;

 Emphasize the immediate need for all countries and cities to place drug issues as one of the high priorities on their development agendas;

Together we can meet the challenge and make a difference!

Unlike their larger mainland cousins, the wallabies of Tasmania appear to be more trippy than Skippy. No lesser an authority than the island’s attorney general has discovered that hungry marsupials and thousands of acres of legal opium poppy fields do not mix.
“We have a problem with wallabies entering poppy fields, getting as high as a kite and going around in circles,” Lara Giddings told a budget hearing on Wednesday. Nor does the problem end there. Even drugged-up marsupials, it seems, cannot break free of the physical law that demands that what goes up must come down. “Then they crash,” said Giddings. “We see crop circles in the poppy industry from wallabies that are high.”
Tasmania is the world’s biggest producer of legally grown opium for the pharmaceutical market. About 500 farmers grow the crop on 49,420 acres (20,000 hectares) of land, producing around half the raw opium for morphine and other opiates. Giddings was answering questions about the security of the island’s poppy stocks, which are estimated to be among the safest in the world. However, the attorney general noted that 2280 poppy heads had been stolen over the last financial year.
Rick Rockliff, field operations manager for Tasmanian Alkaloids – one of the two Tasmanian companies licensed to take medicinal products from poppy straw – said that deer and sheep that munched the poppies had been known to “act weird” afterwards.
“There have been many stories about sheep that have eaten some of the poppies after harvesting and they all walk around in circles,” Rockliff told the Mercury newspaper. He said growers did their best to stop the local lifestock invading the fields as there were worries over the contamination of meat from animals that ate the drug crops.
“There is also the risk to our poppy stocks, so growers take this very seriously but there has been a steady increase in the number of wild animals and that is where we are having difficulty keeping them off our land,” he said.
British animals appear to be more conservative in their choice of intoxicants. Last October, a drunk pony called Fat Boy had to be rescued from a Cornish swimming pool after gorging himself on fermented apples and falling into the water.
Source: www.guardian.co.uk 25 June 2009

Russia has a provision in their Advertising Law that makes it illegal to advertise drugs, as well as an article in the Administrative Code on the “promotion of narcotic and psychotropic substances and their precursors.” The Federal Drug Control Service has pressed charges against vendors of T-shirts and jewellry with images of marijuana. A vendor was recently arrested for selling cell phone covers that feature an image of a cannabis leaf. Nikolai Sumburov, a Russian federal narcotics agent, stated that the sale of drug paraphernalia is as important as snaring dealers. He continued, “16 and 17-year-old teenagers buy the cell phone so they can consider themselves to be part of the so-called subculture…then they start thinking about trying the drug.”

According to an opinion poll commissioned by the biggest Swedish daily, Dagens Nyheter (ON), and carried out by TEMO, an overwhelming majority, 96 per cent, of the Swedish population supports a restrictive drug policy. As such an overwhelming majority is extremely rare, TEMO, double- checked the results. Out of 1.002 people aged 16 years and older almost all answered that they were against any idea that Sweden would allow use of cannabis, so-called ‘party drugs’ and other drugs. More than nine out of ten 16- 29-year-olds said they were against such ideas.
The survey clearly indicates that the Swedish Government’s government bill, due to be presented later this year, on a continued and developed restrictive drug policy has massive popular support. Furthermore, comments on the final report from the Swedish Governments Narcotic Commission show a strong support from local, regional and national authorities for a continued and intensified fight against drugs.

The Ministry of Health is warning users of illegal drugs about the added danger they may be exposing themselves to after Dutch authorities found strychnine in a sample of MDMA (Ecstasy} in Holland. The New Zealand Customs Service advise that most of the Ecstasy smuggled into New Zealand comes from Western Europe, particularly Holland. Strychnine, which is now only used as a rat poison, is deadly in quite small doses. Two tablets, each containing the amount reported from the Dutch sample, could be fatal. Substances including and ketamine, anaesthetic medicine also used as an animal tranquilliser, have been found. “This issue highlights the danger with illegal drugs. The consumer has no idea what he/she is buying and they should realise that they could be putting themselves at serious risk of injury or death”, said Dr Bob Boyd, Chief Advisor.

Italy’s centre-right government has approved a proposal making it an offence to possess and use even the smallest quantities of mild narcotics. The move could give Italy some of Europe’s most severe anti-drugs laws.       People caught with modest amounts of cannabis, cocaine, ecstasy and other drugs will be subject to penalties such as deprivation of their passports and driving licences. Those with larger amounts will face prison sentences of up to 20 years.

The proposal, adopted by the prime minister and his cabinet on Thursday, must still be passed by parliament. But approval seems likely because all four parties in the coalition government, headed by Silvio Berlusconi, supported it. The coalition controls both legislative chambers.The proposal goes further than anti-drugs legislation in other European Union countries by abolishing the distinction between so-called “soft” and “hard” drugs. It also virtually turns existing Italian law on its head by starting from the principle that it is drug use, rather than drug abuse, that must be stamped out. In a referendum in April 1993, Italians voted to decriminalise the possession of drugs such as cannabis for personal use. The vote reflected the social reality of a country in which consumption of mild drugs had become increasingly common and whose sunny climate permits extensive cultivation of marijuana, notably in large plantations in the   mezzogiorno, or south.
According to a 2001 study cited this year by the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction, the EU’s official body for analysing trends in drugs use, 9.4 per cent of Italians between the ages of 15 and 34 had used cannabis in the previous year. An article in Cannabis Culture, a Canadian magazine, estimated in 1998 that at least 2m of Italy’s 57m people had used cannabis. “Italy has a one-year mandatory draft, and it is common knowledge that an overwhelming majority of the soldiers smoke joints,” it said. If the government gets its way, it will no longer be possible – as happened last February – for a court to rule that a 17-year-old student who took 40 joints on a school excursion did nothing wrong because they were for his own use. The legislation draws a dividing line between the amounts of drugs that will incur administrative sanctions – such as passport suspension – and those that will trigger prison sentences. Administrative sanctions will apply to people caught with up to 500 milligrams of cocaine, 300mg of ecstasy, 250mg of cannabis, 200mg of heroin and 50mg of LSD. Any quantities above these limits will incur penal sanctions. For cannabis the law will consider not the joints’ weight but the amount of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the brain-affecting substance contained in them.

Vancouver, British Columbia, a city unaccustomed to widespread crime, is facing a rise in gang-related violence stemming from drug dealing and local turf wars between young people of Indian descent, “They are Indo-Canadians killing Indo-Canadians,” said Kash Heed, commanding officer of the Third Police District in Vancouver. “Seventy-six murders mainly within one ethnic group. The cycle of violence, we’ve not cracked it yet.”

Immigrant community leaders blame inaction on the part of Vancouver police for the rise in gang violence. “Out here, it’s a slap on the hand,” said Amar Randhawa, co-founder of the Unified Network of Indo-Canadians for Togetherness and Education Through Discussion (UNITED). “Law enforcement can’t crack the lower hierarchy, let alone get to the top.”

But police officials said the cycle of murder and revenge has hampered their efforts. “One day suspect, and the next day victim,” said Heed. “One day you are the shooter. The next day you’re lying in your coffin.”

According to police, gangs deal in the potent variety of marijuana called B.C. bud, which is grown in the province. “It is often exchanged for cocaine, cash, or firearms. It is a deal between two criminal gangs, one on the south side of the border and one on the north side, guns for marijuana,” said constable Alex Borden of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. “If there is violence in our streets and firearms are involved, we are concerned the firearms come from across the border.”

According to Joe Giuliano, assistant chief at the local U.S. Border Patrol office in Blaine, Wash., 23 Canadian smugglers have been arrested on the U.S. side of the border so far this year. “Virtually all marijuana smuggling in the past fiscal year is either directly or indirectly tied back to the Indo-Canadian community,” he said.

According to officials, gang members are generally from upscale families. “Unlike in other countries, people involved in the gang activity here are not the poor or disadvantaged,” said Wallace Oppal, a justice of the Court of Appeal of British Columbia. “For the most part, kids involved here are people who come from middle-class and upper-class homes. They get involved for the glamour.”

Heed added that parents should get more involved in discouraging their children from joining gangs. “We’ve gone to notify people their son was killed and they have been in such denial they slammed the door in the police officer’s face,” Heed said. “They don’t want to believe their child is involved. They will ask the question to their dying day after their son is murdered why they didn’t do something.”

A report by Columbia University’s Earth Institute blamed cigarettes, cheap food, and city living for contributing to millions of premature deaths from heart disease in the developing world.

“The tobacco scourge, now at epidemic levels in less-developed countries, exacts its toll in many ways, but cardiovascular deaths are its principal mode of mortality,” the report said.

The report further found that unlike the United States, few developing countries are helping people to quit smoking.

The study examined the death rates in Brazil, South Africa, China, Tatarstan, and India.

It looks like marijuana but users say its effect is more like LSD. According  to the Drug Enforcement Agency it’s use is growing in popularity among young adults. It’s called Salvia Divinorum and when smoked or chewed, it can pack a psychedelic wallop.

An herb grown in Mexico, Salvia is easily accessible on the internet or at several head shops around the metro area. Jeannette Grafeman, a clerk at a store that sells Salvia says you can buy it in many different forms. “You can smoke it or chew it. Some people buy it in liquid form and drop it on their regular tobacco,” says Grafeman.

Salvia is on the DEA’s watch list. They call it a drug of concern. And they were more than just concerned in St. Peters.

“We were having some problems at the malls with some assaults and some other juvenile issues and some of those issues had to do with kids that were using salvia,” says St. Peters police captain Jeff Finkelstein.

Captain Finklestein says he can’t say for sure that the assaults were as a result of the Salvia, but “The word to us was that kids were hallucinating. Anytime that you have anybody hallucinating especially kids under 18, it was something that really concerned us,” says Finkelstein.

So the Police took the problem to city officials who wanted to make the sale of Salvia illegal in St. Peters.

“But our city attorney informed us that this product is on the DEA’s watch list but has not been banned as an illegal substance. So the only thing the city could do was restrict the age with which the product can be sold” says St. Peters Alderman Jerry Hollingsworth.

In January of last year St. Peters became the first city in the nation to place a restriction on Salvia. It cannot be sold to anyone under the age of 18.

“The vote was unanimous as it always is when it comes to dealing with protecting children,” says Hollingsworth.

Since Salvia is legal elsewhere, it’s hard to know if the ordinance in St. Peters is having an affect but St. Peters police tell us they’re getting fewer complaints about Salvia users. Jerry Hollingsworth doesn’t want to stop there. He wants action on the state level and then on the Federal level.

The incidence of smoking in top grossing movies has increased during the 1990s, and dramatically exceeds real smoking rates, according to a new University of California San Francisco study. After declining over three decades, smoking in movies has returned to levels comparable to those observed in the 1960s, before the issuance of the first Surgeon General’s report on smoking and health in 1964. The report appears in the new issue of Tobacco Control, a scientific journal published by the British Medical Association. The presentation of smoking in films remains pro-tobacco with only 14 percent of tobacco screen-time presenting adverse social or health effects of tobacco use. The researchers found that in movies from the 1960s, tobacco was used about once for every five minutes of film time. In films from the 1970s and 1980s, tobacco was used about once every 10 to 15 minutes, but in movies from the 1990s, tobacco was used an average of every three to five minutes. “The use of tobacco in films is increasing and is reinforcing misleading images that present smoking as a widespread and socially desirable activity,” according to the authors. These portrayals may encourage teenagers – the major movie audience to smoke. “Films continue to present the smoker as one who is typically white, male, middle class, successful and attractive a movie hero who takes smoking for granted,” the researchers report. “As in tobacco advertising, tobacco use in the movies is associated with youthful vigour, good health, good looks, and personal and professional acceptance.

The Swedish epidemic of intravenous amphetamine injection, which started in 1945, was surveyed annually in Stockholm from 1965 to 1987. During that period, approximately 250.000 arrestees were examined for needle marks from intravenous drug injections that they presented in their cubital regions. The progression or regression of the epidemic was gauged by calculating the percentage of addicts (marked with needle scars) among the population arrested for any kind of criminal or civil offense. This epidemiological study using an objective marker demonstrated that a permissive drug policy leads to a rapid spread of drug use. A restrictive policy not only checks the spread of addiction but brings about a considerable reduction in the rate of current consumption. The restrictive policy is based on a general consensus of social refusal of illicit drug use, and strict law enforcement. All countries which have adopted this model such as China, Japan, Korea, Singapore and Taiwan have succeeded in controlling epidemics of amphetamine or heroin addiction. By contrast, Western industrialized nations which have accepted permissive policies have seen their epidemics of drug addiction grow steadily since World II War and erode their democratic institutions. The author concludes that such a trend may only be reversed by adopting a restrictive model validated by epidemiological and historical facts.

Japan has one of the lowest drug abuse and crime rates of any industrialised nation. It also has some of the stiffest laws. After the Second World War it faced an epidemic of amphetamine use and in the early 1960s problems with heroin. A combination of strong law enforcement, stigmatisation of drug users and rehabilitation was successful in overcoming these problems.
After the Second World War Japan’s military stocks of amphetamines went astray, abuse started among artists, musicians, ‘bohemians’ and prostitutes but quickly spread. Not enough was done initially to combat this and it soon escalated.
In 1954, 2 million of the population of 100 million was using tablets. but the epidemic was ended by the enforcement of strict laws. Possession incurred a sentence of 3-6 months: 1 to 3 years was the sentence for pushing and 5 years for illicit manufacture. Convicts were closely monitored on release and immediate restrictions imposed on anyone who relapsed. 55600 arrests were made in 1954 but by 1958 this had dropped to 271 and the epidemic was over.
Measures had been taken against 15% of intravenous users and it seems others were discouraged by fear of arrest. This policy was carried out with broad political consensus and massive public support.

References
1. A Brief Account of Drug Abuse and Countermeasures in Japan Pharmaceutical Affairs Bureau, Ministry of Health and Welfare. Japan. 1972
Masaaki Kato. “An epidemiological analysis of the fluctuation of drug dependence in Japan”, The international Journal of Addictions. 4 (4). Dec. 1969
2. Bejerot N. ‘Drogue et Societe. Masson, Paris 1990. ‘Cannabis: Physiopathology. Epidemiology, Detection.’ Nahas G & Latour C (eds). CRC Press. 1993.

Trends in drug use in various countries are reported in a number of sources; some current examples are given in this item:

In Australia marijuana is the most popular illicit drug, followed by amphetamines. While cocaine is not readily available in Australia, heroin is, especially among the arrestee population. Nineteen percent of youth in detention centers and 40 percent of adult prisoners have used heroin at least once in their lifetime.

Marijuana is the drug of choice in Canada’s cities – 48 percent of youth aged 15-19 in British Columbia use marijuana, and 61 percent of treatment clients in Toronto reported marijuana as a major problem. In addition, powder cocaine and crack use were reported as serious problems in several cities.

Cocaine is the most common drug of abuse among treatment clients in Mexico, followed by marijuana and inhalants.

In South Africa, marijuana and methaqualone are the most frequently abused substances, often used in combination. There are also reports that crack cocaine, powder cocaine, and heroin uses are increasing.

As a result of a brief heroin shortage in 1996, many addicts in Thailand began injecting the drug, and there are reports of lower purity heroin being diluted with barbiturates and benzodiazepines. In addition, methamphetamine use continues to be popular, especially among students, and the number of methamphetamine laborites in Thailand has increased.
 

Italy: Now has the highest heroin addiction rate in Europe and attributes 70% of all AIDS cases to IV drug users. Italy decriminalised possession of heroin in 1975. Within the European Parliament the Italian Radical Party has been one of the leading promoters of drug law relaxation; the Radicals former leader Marco Tarradash has moved on into the media empire of Berlusconi.

Amsterdam: Where marijuana was decriminalised and sold or distributed under city auspices, citizens in April 1995 successfully pressured authorities to close many coffeehouses (where drugs were openly sold), and reduce the amount of cannabis allowed on premise. Subsequently permitted individual possession was reduced from 30 grams to 5 grams.

Alaska: In 1972, with financial and legal support from NORML (the National Organisation for the Reform of Marijuana Laws), a young lawyer, Raven appealed to the Alaskan Supreme Court following arrest for possession of marijuana; he declared his arrest violated his private rights.  In 1975 the Supreme Court ruled by five to one in favour of Raven.  Raven and his supporters had declared that decriminalisation would not result in greater use, the use of other drugs would not be affected since there is no such thing as a ‘Gateway Drug’ and there would be no increase in problem use.  The police force supported the appeal – having been persuaded that there would be no increase in crime.

By 1990 there had been a major increase in the use of marijuana – to twice the national average, similarly a huge increase in problem drug use, heavy increase in health and social costs, use of all other drugs had increased, crime overall went up.  The law was later rescinded with the support of the police who had changed their minds in the face of this unequivocal evidence.

Armed forces: Compulsory drug tests introduced in December 1993 for Army personnel in the UK and Germany showed 0.5% tested positive for illegal drugs.  (3,619 men tested between January and May 1995.)