June 28, 2004
Vol. 13, Issue 26

Nine behaviours and attitudes differentiate students who used marijuana before age 15 from those who had not, according to an analysis of data from the 2002 Maryland Adolescent Survey (MAS). Overall, one-fifth of Maryland 12th grade students reported using marijuana before age 15. A scale of 9 warning signs of early marijuana use among 12thgraders was developed from an analysis of the MAS data (see below). The scale also detected early use among 8th and 10th graders. The more warning signs a student had, the more likely he or she was to have used marijuana early . For example, approximately three-fourths of 12th graders with 6 or more warning signs were early marijuana users, compared to 3% of 12th graders with no warning signs. Students with more warning signs also reported using a greater number of other illegal drugs*and experiencing a greater number of serious problems **resulting from drug and alcohol use report, “Warning Signs for Early Marijuana Users Among Maryland’s Public School Students,” discusses the implications of these findings for intervening with youth and implementing prevention programs. Complimentary copies of the report can be ordered by contacting CESAR at cesar@cesar.umd.eduor 301-405-9770.

Behaviors•
Cigarette use before age 15
•Alcohol use before age 15
•20 or more unexcused absences
•Drug arrest
•Alcohol arrest
Attitudes/Opinions
•Smoking marijuana is safe
•Smoking cigarettes is safe
•My parents think it’s okay to smoke marijuana
•My parents think it’s okay to smoke

SOURCE: Maryland Drug Early Warning System (DEWS), CESAR, “Warning Signs for Early Marijuana Users Among Maryland’s Public School Students,” DEWS Investigates, June 2004. For more information, contact Dr. Eric Wish at ewish@cesar.umd.edu.

Research Summary

Fifth-grade students who took part in comprehensive, interactive school-based prevention programs starting as early as first grade were half as likely as their peers to use alcohol or other drugs, act out violently, or engage in sexual activity, according to a new study from the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA).
“This study provides compelling evidence that intervening with young children is a promising approach to preventing drug use and other problem behaviors,” said NIDA Director Nora Volkow. “The fact that an intervention beginning in the first grade produced a significant effect on children’s behavior in the fifth grade strengthens the case for initiating prevention programs in elementary school, before most children have begun to engage in problem behaviors.”
Researchers led by Brian Flay of Oregon State University studied students at 20 public elementary schools in Hawaii who had participated daily in Positive Action (PA), a comprehensive K-12 program focusing on social and emotional development. Students who had received the PA lessons the longest had the least amount of problem behaviors, the study found.
The authors will next look at whether the PA program had lasting effects on older students.

Source: American Journal of Public Health June 18, 2009

The CDC announced the 2009 National Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS) found that 1 in 5 high school students have ever taken a prescription drug such as OxyContin (oxycodone, from Purdue), Percocet (oxycodone/acetaminophen, from Endo), Vicodin (hydrocodone/acetaminophen, from Abbott), Adderall (mixed salts of a single-entity amphetamine product, from Shire), Ritalin (methylphenidate, from Novartis), or Xanax (alprazolam, from Pfizer), without a prescription. Data from the Drug Abuse Warning Network show that in 2008, people 12–20 years of age accounted for an estimated 141,417 (14.5%) of the 971,914 emergency department visits for nonmedical use of pharmaceuticals, not including suicide attempts.

Source: http://www.empr.com June 2010

Montana and other states that have legalized medical marijuana are seeing a backlash, with public anger rising and politicians passing laws to slow the proliferation of pot shops and bring order to what has become a wide-open, Wild West sort of industry.
They are looking to avoid what happened in California, which allowed the pot industry to grow so out of control that at one point Los Angeles had more medical marijuana shops than Starbucks – about 1,000 by one count.
“Yeah, it’s out of control – and it needs control, if not extinction,” Montana Sen. Jim Shockley said Friday. “There’s no control over distribution. There’s no control over who’s growing it. There’s no control in dosage.”
Fourteen states have legalized medical marijuana, beginning with California in 1996, and the District of Columbia followed suit this month. The laws allow chronically ill people to buy marijuana with permission from a doctor.
But many of these states passed their laws without working out the details. And they weren’t ready for the boom in pot shops that occurred this past year after the Obama administration announced it wouldn’t prosecute medical marijuana users.
In some places, law enforcement officials and civic leaders are complaining that there are too many marijuana dispensaries, that buyers and sellers are falling victim to robberies and break-ins, that driving-under-the-influence arrests are on the rise, and that the pot is being sold indiscriminately and winding up on the black market.
Some state and local governments are now rushing to put regulations in place.
Colorado lawmakers passed sweeping rules this month for pot growers and the estimated 1,100 shops selling marijuana, creating a new state bureaucracy led by auditors and criminal investigators who would monitor the industry to make sure, for example, that the drug is being sold only to patients who have a doctor’s recommendation.
Regulators expect only about half of the state’s dispensaries to continue operating under the stricter rules.
The Billings City Council approved a six-month moratorium on new medical marijuana businesses in May after the violence against pot businesses the previous two nights. On Thursday, the city of about 90,000 people ordered 25 of Billings’ 81 pot businesses to shut down after discovering they were not properly registered with the state.

Los Angeles officials recently took steps to shut down hundreds of dispensaries and ensure that the remaining ones meet stringent new guidelines. Owners must undergo a background check, their stores must be 1,000 feet from schools, parks and other gathering sites, and their pot must be tested at an independent laboratory.
Montana’s medical board is considering curbing mass screenings and teleconferences that make it easy for people to get a marijuana card. Montana in recent days has seen “cannabis caravans,” mobile operations that pass through town, charging people $100 to $150 for a doctor’s recommendation to smoke pot.
The push for tighter regulation has infuriated medical marijuana users.
“They are creating ordinances and moratoriums that are blatantly against the law,” said Jason Christ, founder of the Montana Caregivers Network, the group that organizes the cannabis caravans. “They do not serve to protect the welfare of our citizens, and they do no good.”
In Colorado earlier this month, veterans in wheelchairs, college students and dispensary owners packed legislative hearings to speak out against the regulations. The hearings lasted eight hours and reached a fever pitch when several people had to be removed for shouting at lawmakers.
Medical marijuana has been around for more than five years in Montana, but the boom came this past year. The number of registered users in Montana, a state with a population of just under 1 million, has gone from 2,923 last June to about 15,000 today. The number of registered suppliers has increased from 919 to about 5,000.
DUI arrests involving marijuana have skyrocketed, as have traffic fatalities where marijuana was found in the system of one of the drivers, Montana narcotics chief Mark Long told a legislative committee last month.
Also, Montana confidentiality laws prevent law enforcement from knowing where most medical marijuana businesses are, and civic leaders complain they don’t know whether the shops are up to city and fire codes or close to churches, schools or parks.
During Colorado’s legislative debate, state Sen. Chris Romer quoted the Grateful Dead as he contemplated the spectacle of lawmakers actually passing regulations for the legal sale of marijuana: “What a long, strange trip it’s been.”

Source: The Associated Press Friday, May 21, 2010

Opiate addiction-treatment admissions have risen from 16 percent to 20 percent of all admissions in the last decade, and marijuana admissions have also ticked upwards even as cocaine admissions declined, according to a new report from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA).
Marijuana admissions rose from 13 percent of total admissions in 1998 to 17 percent in 2008, while cocaine admissions fell from 15 percent to 11 percent. Admissions for addiction to stimulant drugs rose from 4 percent to 6 percent.
“Although the concurrent abuse of both alcohol and drugs has remained widespread, the proportion of treatment admissions for the co-abuse of these substances has declined gradually yet significantly during this period from 44 percent to 38 percent,” added SAMHSA. “At the same time there has been a steady rise in the proportion of treatment admissions attributed to drug abuse alone from 26 percent in 1998 to 37 percent in 2008, while the proportion of admissions attributed to alcohol alone fell from 27 percent in 1998 to 23 percent in 2008.”
Teen drug admissions dropped 10 percent between 2002 and 2008 after rising 13 percent from 1998 to 2001. Nearly 4 of 5 teen treatment admissions involved marijuana use, and about half were referrals from the criminal-justice system.
The National Admissions to Substance Abuse Treatment (TEDS) report is available online in PDF format.

Source: SAMHSA Report May 2010

Abstract
California data on drivers involved in passenger vehicle fatal crashes using Marijuana were analyzed to determine the impact on traffic safety and to provide information on the possible impact of an initiative, the Tax and Regulate Cannabis Initiative or “TC2010” which is on the California ballot in November 2010 to reform and partially legalize Marijuana.

A total of 1240 persons were killed in the last five years in fatal motor vehicle crashes involving Marijuana. 230 were killed in 2008. Use has increase steadily in the last ten years and is now at 5.5% in fatal passenger vehicle crashes. The use in single vehicle fatal crashes where most drivers are tested shows an involvement rate of 8.3%.

The largest increases occurred in the 5 years following the legalization of Medical Marijuana in January 2004. For the five years following legalization there were 1240 fatalities in fatal crashes, compared to the 631 fatalities for the five years prior, for an increase of almost 100%. In 2008 there were 8 counties where more than 16% of the drivers in fatal crashes
tested positive for Marijuana. Five of the 8 counties had rates over 20%

Based on this experience, a use rate of 16% to 20% is very likely. A rate increase to only 16%, would result in 670 fatalities, and at 20% we would have about 840 fatalities annually. The 20% level would be more than triple the present level of 230 fatalities in 2008. At these levels, Marijuana would rival alcohol at 17.9%, as the top cause of traffic fatalities.

If “TC2010” passes, tax income on Marijuana is estimated at $1.4 billion annually compared to an estimated $4 billion or more economic loss from Marijuana related fatal crashes.
Over 80% of the Marijuana drivers are male, with a median age of 25. In addition, about half (48%) of the drivers using Marijuana also were legally intoxicated. About 75% of the drivers that used Marijuana did not use any other drug. About 1.2 fatalities were reported for each Marijuana involved driver.

Source: Sent by Ronald E. Brooks Northern California High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area June 2010

1. Executive Summary
Policymakers and other stakeholders can use cost-benefit analysis as an informative tool for decision making for substance abuse prevention. This report reveals the importance of supporting effective prevention programs as part of a comprehensive substance abuse prevention strategy. The following patterns of use, their attendant costs, and the potential cost savings are analyzed:
• Extent of substance abuse among youth;
• Costs of substance abuse to the Nation and to States;
• Cost savings that could be gained if effective prevention policies, programs, and services were implemented nationwide;
• Programs and policies that are most cost beneficial.

1.1. Costs of Substance Abuse
Studies have shown the annual cost of substance abuse to the Nation to be $510.8 billion in 1999 (Harwood, 2000). More specifically,
• Alcohol abuse cost the Nation $191.6 billion;
• Tobacco use cost the Nation $167.8 billion;
• Drug abuse cost the Nation $151.4 billion.

Substance abuse clearly is among the most costly health problems in the United States. Among national estimates of the costs of illness for 33 diseases and conditions, alcohol ranked second, tobacco ranked sixth, and drug disorders ranked seventh (National Institutes of Health [NIH], 2000). This report shows that programs designed to prevent substance abuse can reduce these costs.

1.2. Savings From Effective School-Based Substance Abuse Prevention
If effective prevention programs were implemented nationwide, substance abuse initiation would decline for 1.5 million youth and be delayed for 2 years on average. It has been well established that a delay in onset reduces subsequent problems later in life (Grant & Dawson, 1997; Lynskey et al., 2003). In 2003, an estimated:

• 5.6 percent fewer youth ages 13–15 would have engaged in drinking;
• 10.2 percent fewer youth would have used marijuana;
• 30.2 percent fewer youth would have used cocaine;
• 8.0 percent fewer youth would have smoked regularly.

The average effective school-based program in 2002 costs $220 per pupil including materials and teacher training, and these programs could save an estimated $18 per $1 invested if implemented nationwide. Nationwide, full implementation of school-based effective programming in 2002 would have had the following fiscal impact

• Saved State and local governments $1.3 billion, including $1.05 billion in educational costs within 2 years;

• Reduced social costs of substance-abuse-related medical care, other resources, and lost productivity over a lifetime by an estimated $33.7 billion;
• Preserved the quality of life over a lifetime valued at $65 billion.

Although 80 percent of American youth reported participation in school-based prevention in 2005 (SAMHSA, 2004), only 20 percent were exposed to effective prevention programs (Flewelling et al., 2005). Given this level of participation, it is possible that some expected benefits already exist for these students, and the estimates in this paper are adjusted for these probable benefits.
These cost-benefit estimates show that effective school-based programs could save $18 for every $1 spent on these programs.

In a program targeting families with low income, intensive home visitation coupled with preschool enrichment reduced infant/toddler abuse (Aos et al., 1999; Karoly et al., 1998). As these toddlers reach adolescence and adulthood, visitation programs also can reduce a range of problems including substance abuse and violence.

Among indicated programs (targeted to individuals who have detectable symptoms), cost estimates that primarily focused on substance abuse were not available. However, estimates indicating good returns on the investment were available for several violence prevention interventions that address the roots of multi-risk behavior. Moral reconation therapy for adult and youth offenders, and multi-systemic therapy and functional family therapy for youth offenders returned more than $30 per dollar invested.

1.3. Conclusion
The cost of substance abuse could be offset by a nationwide implementation of effective prevention policies and programs. SAMHSA’s Strategic Prevention Framework should include a planning step that considers cost-benefit ratios. Communities should consider a comprehensive prevention strategy based on their unique needs and characteristics and use cost-benefit ratios to help guide their decisions. Model programs should include data on costs and estimated cost-benefit ratios to help guide prevention planning.

Source:
Substance Abuse Prevention Dollars and Cents: A Cost-Benefit Analysis
Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) Center for Substance Abuse Prevention (CSAP)

Monitoring the Future survey shows that while marijuana continues to be the most commonly used illicit drug among teens in the USA, current use of marijuana has dropped by 25 also dropped by seven percent among all three grades combined. Teen use of amphetamines, particularly methamphetamine, dropped significantly in five years and year-over-year, between 2005 and 2006, with less than one percent of teens having used it in the past 30 days.

The survey also noted reductions in the following drug categories between 2001 and 2006, including:

** Marijuana use is down in all categories for all grades combined. Lifetime, past year, and past 30 day use decreased 18 percent, 20 percent, and 25 percent (from 35% to 29%; 26% to 22%; and 17% to 13%, respectively).

** Use of cigarettes is down since 2001 in all four use categories (lifetime, past month, daily, and more than one-half pack per day) in all three grades.

** Youth use of alcohol was also down across the board – in all five use categories (lifetime, past year, past month, daily, and more than five drinks in a row in the last two weeks) and in all three grades over five years.

** Lifetime use of steroids for teens declined among all three grades, with past year and past month use also down among 8th and 10th graders.

Source: Source: nyac@TheAntiDrug.com Dec 2006

Drug treatment works. How do we know? Today, there are millions of millions of Americans successfully recovering from drug and alcohol addiction. These courageous Americans are living proof that effective drug treatment can save lives and reduce our national drug problem.
That’s why it’s so troubling to see this:
“SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — City health officials took steps Thursday toward opening the nation’s first legal safe-injection room, where addicts could shoot up heroin, cocaine and other drugs under the supervision of nurses.
Hoping to reduce San Francisco’s high rate of fatal drug overdoses, the public health department co-sponsored a symposium on the only such facility in North America, a four-year-old Vancouver site where an estimated 700 intravenous users a day self-administer narcotics under the supervision of nurses…
… Bertha Madras, deputy director of demand reduction for the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, called San Francisco’s consideration of such a facility “disconcerting” and “poor public policy.”
“The underlying philosophy is, ‘We accept drug addiction, we accept the state of affairs as acceptable,’ Madras said. “This is a form of giving up.” [AP]
Indeed, no one proposes aiding and sustaining an alcoholic by providing a supervised site for alcohol use. At best, so-called “harm reduction” is half-way measure; half-hearted approach that accepts defeat. Pretending harmful activity will be reduced if we condone it under the law is foolhardy and irresponsible.
Need more proof that treatment works? Consider this:
• Nearly 10,000 clients in community-based programs in 11 cities were compared before and after treatment on a number of key outcomes. Depending upon treatment modality, the data showed reductions in weekly use of heroin (between 44 and 69 percent), cocaine (between 56 and 69 percent), and marijuana (between 55 and 67 percent); reductions in illegal behavior (between 36 and 61 percent); and improvements in employment status (between 4 and 12 percent).
• One year following discharge from drug treatment, use of the primary drug of choice dropped 48 percent; arrests dropped 64 percent; self-reported illegal activity dropped 48 percent; and the number of health visits related to substance use declined by more than 50 percent.
• Five years after discharge, there was a 21 percent reduction in the use of any illegal drug—a 45 percent reduction in powder cocaine use, a 17 percent drop in crack cocaine use, a 14 percent decline in heroin use, and a 28 percent drop in marijuana use. Similar reductions were reported for criminal activity: a 30 percent reduction in selling drugs, a 23 percent decrease in victimizing others, and a 38 percent drop in breaking and entering, as well as a 56 percent drop in motor vehicle theft.

Sources: Drug Abuse Treatment Outcome Study, National Treatment Improvement Evaluation Study, and Services Research Outcomes Study.

On March 1, Ethan Nadelmann of the Drug Policy Alliance had expressed pleasure that “Obama and his Drug Czar, Gil, have made it clear that they don’t want to talk about marijuana at all.” Nadelmann considered the silence to mean assent to his agenda of marijuana decriminalization and legalization. But just three days later, in a dramatic development, Gil Kerlikowske, the director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP), came out in strong opposition to almost everything that Nadelmann and his “progressive” backers represent.

In a major speech on March 4, Kerlikowske denounced the use of marijuana, including its “medical” version, and cited facts and studies linking the weed to all kinds of health problems. “The concern with marijuana is not born out of any culture-war mentality, but out of what the science tells us about the drug’s effects,” he said. “And the science, though still evolving, is clear: marijuana use is harmful. It is associated with dependence, respiratory and mental illness, poor motor performance, and cognitive impairment, among other negative effects.”

This has to be perceived as a tremendous setback for Nadelmann and the rich liberals, led by George Soros and Peter Lewis, who have financed the drug legalization and “medical marijuana” movements. The Kerlikowske speech constitutes belated recognition that the drug wars south of the border are inexorably linked to the growing use of marijuana in California, where some of the same Mexican drug gangs are planting and harvesting their crop.
A report, Organized Crime in California Annual Report 2007-08, prepared by the California Department of Justice, states that “Mexican drug trafficking organizations [DTOs] command a large portion of the illegal drug trade in California.” Those DTOs, which “dominate the outdoor cultivation of marijuana in California,” are, in turn, linked to criminal street gangs and organized crime groups.

Maryland Considers Pro-pot Bill

Despite the wake-up call from Obama’s own Drug Czar, the well-financed movement to legalize dope continues on many fronts. On Thursday, March 18, Joyce Nalepka, former President of Nancy Reagan’s favorite charity, the National Federation of Parents for Drug-Free Youth, will testify in hearings before the Maryland State Legislature in Annapolis. She says that Maryland Senate Bill SB 627 would allow use of marijuana under the guise of “medicine.”
Thursday will mark the ninth time Nalepka has testified on this issue in Maryland. “There is nothing new to say, except the marijuana that kids are using today is so much more potent, they refer to it as ‘Skunk.’ Eighteen nations, including the U.S., now link ‘Skunk’ marijuana to depression, psychosis and schizophrenia,” she says.

On the national level, supported by Soros and Lewis, then-candidate Barack Obama adopted the soft-on-drugs approach. As President, his Attorney General Eric Holder decided to withhold federal resources from the war on drugs in California, at least as they apply to the growing “medical marijuana” program. But that was before a psychotic pothead named John Patrick Bedell came all the way from California with a “medical marijuana” card and opened fire on the entrance to the Pentagon, wounding two guards before getting killed himself.

Ironically, on the same day that Bedell was preparing his assault, Kerlikowske was getting ready to speak to the California Police Chiefs Association Conference in San Jose, California. His topic: “Why Marijuana Legalization Would Compromise Public Health and Public Safety.” The speech was so powerful, in terms of the facts he presented about the problems associated with marijuana, including “medical marijuana,” that it is somewhat shocking to consider that he has a job in the Obama Administration.

The editorial board of the Christian Science Monitor was pleasantly surprised, saying that “The Obama White House has finally laid out its most thorough, reasoned rebuttal to arguments for marijuana legalization—countering a campaign that is gaining alarming momentum at the state level.” Its editorial headline highlighted that this position had “finally” been articulated, reflecting frustration with the silence and confusion on the matter of drug legalization coming from the Obama Administration. The editorial referred to the “well-financed, well-organized pro-marijuana effort,” without noting that billionaires Soros and Lewis, major Democratic Party donors, are behind it. Obama should be asked at his next news conference, when and if he ever holds one, if he agrees with his Drug Czar about the dangers of dope, which he smoked as a young man, along with snorting cocaine. But the President has apparently been too busy with national health care legislation to take an interest in the health impact of illegal drugs and the drug wars that are resulting in part from its cultivation and use in the “Golden State.” Pot Linked to Mental Problems

In its editorial, “Marijuana legalization? A White House rebuttal, finally,” The Christian Science Monitor made prominent mention of John Patrick Bedell’s marijuana use and mental problems, which gave urgency to Kerlikowske’s remarks. It said, “The recent ‘Pentagon shooter,’ John Patrick Bedell, was a heavy marijuana user. The disturbed young man’s psychiatrist told the Associated Press that marijuana made the symptoms of his mental illness more pronounced.”
There is a contrast, as noted by the publication, between Kerlikowske’s tough talk to the California police chiefs and the Holder policy of withdrawing from a big part of the war on drugs in California. Attorney General Holder insists that the Department of Justice just doesn’t have the “resources” to do anything about the “medical marijuana” problem.

Kerlikowske alluded to “the problems associated with medical marijuana dispensaries,” where people get their dope with the simple approval of a pro-pot doctor, and said that “We’ve seen the problems of medical marijuana here in this state but also in places like Colorado, too, where kids are given the message that since marijuana is a medicine, it must be safe.” Although he failed to say anything about the Administration having basically given up on doing anything about those dispensaries, his comments have put him on a collision course with Holder and perhaps Obama himself. In California, anti-drug activists are examining what can be done about the pro-pot doctors behind the “medical marijuana” scam.

The Warning

As the Christian Science Monitor pointed out, some of the best material in the speech came in a jam-packed footnote. The paper said, “As Kerlikowske pointed out, marijuana is harmful—and he has the studies to back it up. Read the footnotes in his speech; they’re sobering, especially No. 8.” That footnote describes the scientific studies linking marijuana to respiratory illnesses, lung injury, and mental illness, including psychosis. Little did Kerlikowske know that, as he was speaking to the police chiefs, a crazed California pothead was on his way to try to kill people at the Pentagon because he thought the U.S. military was involved in a conspiracy of some sort. Of course, this is just one aspect of the mental problems associated with marijuana use. Simply put, the weed reduces the ability of people to think and act clearly.

On the matter of why drug legalization will increase and not solve any marijuana-related problems, Kerlikowske said that “it is clear that the social costs of legalizing marijuana would outweigh any possible tax that could be levied. In the United States, illegal drugs already cost $180 billion a year in health care, lost productivity, crime, and other expenditures. That number would only increase under legalization because of increased use.”
Regarding the claim that legalization would eliminate the black market, reduce crime and strike a blow against the drug trafficking organizations, he explained that the evidence indicates that there would still be a “profit motive for the existing black market providers to stay in the market, as they can still cover their costs of production and make a nice profit.” As a result, he noted, legalization would “saddle government with the dual burden of regulating a new legal market while continuing to pay for the negative side effects associated with an underground market whose providers have little economic incentive to disappear.”
In practical terms, he added, “Legalization means the price comes down, the number of users goes up, the underground market adapts, and the revenue gained through a regulated market will never keep pace with the financial and social cost of making this drug more accessible.”

Now Under Attack

Predictably, Kerlikowske is being attacked by the illegal drug lobby. The Peter Lewis-funded Marijuana Policy Project called his speech “supremely uneducated.” Like John Patrick Bedell, the potheads won’t rest until society recognizes their right to smoke, grow and even worship pot. Do they have an ally in President Obama? “Yes we Cannabis!” they say. But the public, concerned about a generation literally going to pot under a President who inhaled and liked it, may have something to say about that. With all the criticism of Obama’s various “Czars,” at least one of them, Gil Kerlikowske, has taken a bold stand that is out of step with what Obama’s “progressive” base has been demanding. It will be interesting to see how long he lasts.

Source Cliff Kincaid March 17 2010

Thank you for inviting me here today to address your conference. I especially want to thank Chief Rob Davis for that introduction.
Furthermore, I’d like to congratulate and thank your new President, Susan Manheimer.
I also want to acknowledge my friend, Barney Malekian, and congratulate him on his appointment as the COPS Director. I believe our appointments speak very clearly about the level of support and respect this Administration has for local law enforcement.
You have been at the forefront of some very controversial issues, and I appreciate your leadership. Other states look to California 2
for guidance, and your thoughtful and timely efforts on drug issues ranging from medical marijuana to pseudoephedrine are important for the health and safety of all Americans.
When President Obama asked me to serve as Director of National Drug Control Policy, he explained that one of my first duties would be drafting his Administration’s first National Drug Control Strategy, laying out the policies and programs best suited to curb drug use and its consequences.
But the President didn’t want a traditional policy paper, with a few people from Washington putting their ideas down and then submitting to Congress a plan that would be forgotten or disregarded by the field. Instead, he asked me to travel the country and sit down with people on every side of this issue.
Since my confirmation, I’ve visited 37 cities in 19 states, as well as 8 foreign countries, holding roundtable discussions and meeting with hundreds of drug prevention and treatment experts, local officials, law enforcement, parents, teachers, community groups, academics, and young people.
We also convened a working group made up of the 35 Federal agencies with a role in the anti-drug effort. The group’s task was to develop a coordinated approach at the Federal level.
These months of consultations across the country helped highlight an important truth – that public safety and public health are threatened by drug use and its consequences. Addressing these 3
challenges requires a balanced, comprehensive, and evidence-based approach.
The Administration’s Drug Control Strategy, which will be released soon, will build on the hard-won knowledge we already have, but it will also incorporate new information and new tools that experience in the trenches and our best research have provided us.
The scope of our country’s drug problem is disturbingly clear: drug overdoses outnumber gunshot deaths in America and are fast approaching motor vehicle crashes as the leading cause of accidental death. It’s hard to believe since we seem to hear much more about H1N1, the Toyota recall, and texting while driving.
We are also deeply concerned about two relatively recent threats to public safety and public health: prescription drug abuse and drugged driving.
Prescription drug abuse harms the people who take these pills and those close to them. While we must ensure access to medications that alleviate suffering, it is also vital that we do all we can to curtail diversion and abuse of pharmaceuticals.
Past-year initiation of non-medical prescription drug use has surpassed the rate for marijuana.1 Moreover, between 1997 and 2007, treatment admissions for prescription painkillers increased more than 400 percent. The latest data from the Monitoring the Future study show that seven out of the top ten drugs used by teens are prescription drugs
.
1 Results from the 2008 National Survey on Drug Use and Health: National Findings, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), 2009 4
2 Treatment Episode Data Set (TEDS) Highlights – 2007, SAMHSA: National Admissions to Substance Abuse Treatment Services.
3 Drug Abuse Warning Network (DAWN), SAMHSA, 2010. Found at https://dawninfo.samhsa.gov/
4 See Supra note 1.
And between 2004 and 2008, the number of visits to hospital emergency departments involving the non-medical use of narcotic painkillers increased 111 percent.3
Because prescription drugs are legal, they are easily accessible, often from a home medicine cabinet. Further, some individuals who misuse prescription drugs, particularly teens, believe these substances are safer than illicit drugs because they are prescribed by a healthcare professional and sold behind the counter. This is not the drug that people buy behind a gas station wrapped in tin foil, and so people think it is somehow safer.
We know from the latest National Survey on Drug Use and Health that most people who abuse these drugs are getting them from friends and family or from a doctor.4
As law enforcement professionals and community leaders, you can help spread an important message to parents and other adults: If you have unused prescription drugs in your home, dispose of them properly. I also know that many of you have initiated take-backs with the community to help this problem, and I applaud you for that. 5
Another priority for us this year is drugged driving.
A Department of Transportation study released in December showed that 16 percent of nighttime weekend drivers were under the influence of a licit or illicit drug.5

5 2007 National Roadside Survey of Alcohol and Drug Use by Drivers: Drug Results, U.S. Department of Transportation, National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, December 2009. Accessible at http://www.ondcp.gov/publications/pdf/07roadsidesurvey.pdf

This study highlighted the alarming prevalence of drugged driving, and I’ve made anti-drugged driving efforts a top priority.
We will be assessing how we can help states deal with this issue, and I will be meeting with leaders – from trainers of Drug Recognition Experts (DRE), to police chiefs, researchers, and policy makers –to see how the Administration can engage with them to reduce this threat.
This evening I’ll be in Sacramento, meeting with 30 officers currently undergoing DRE training. I will encourage them in their efforts and sit down with them to better understand the issues they face in this area.
I know it is impossible to talk about drug policy issues ranging from prevention to policing, from drugged driving to treatment, without mentioning the role of the most commonly used illicit drug today – marijuana.
You all know the impacts of marijuana in this state– from the proliferation of marijuana being grown on public lands and indoor grows, to the negative effects of marijuana use among youth, the 6
increasing influence of violent gangs on the marijuana trade, and the problems associated with medical marijuana dispensaries.
As I’ve said from the day I was sworn in, marijuana legalization – for any purpose – is a non-starter in the Obama Administration. I’d like to explain why we take this position.
First, on the medical marijuana issue, I believe that the science should determine what a medicine is, not popular vote.
We’ve seen the problems of medical marijuana here in this state but also in places like Colorado, too, where kids are given the message that since marijuana is a medicine, it must be safe.6

6 “Doctor says medical marijuana laws hurt teens,” NPR. Talk of the Nation, Feb, 10, 2010. Accessible at http://www.npr.org/templates/rundowns/rundown.php?prgId=5&prgDate=02-10-2010
7 “Government to scale down coffee shops,” Ministry of Health, Welfare, and Sport, Sept. 11, 2009. Accessible at http://www.minvws.nl/en/nieuwsberichten/vgp/2009/government-to-scale-down-coffee-shops.asp. Also see “Dutch border towns to close coffee-shops,” Expatica, October 24, 2008, http://www.expatica.com/fr/news/local_news/Dutch-border-towns-close-coffee_shops.html. It is also worth noting that research from MacCoun, R. and Reuter, P. (2001; Drug War Heresies, Cambridge University Press) shows that, despite traditionally higher rates of marijuana use in the U.S., there was a tripling in lifetime marijuana use and a more than doubling of past-month use among 18- to 20-year-olds in the Netherlands from 1984 to 1996 – a time when the commercialization of Dutch coffee shops was rapidly expanding

But we’ve also seen how localities are dealing with this, with success, through zoning, planning regulations, nuisance laws, and other mechanisms.
I recently met with officials from the Netherlands, they are closing down marijuana outlets – or “coffee shops” – because of the nuisance and crime risks associated with them. What used to be thousands of shops have now been reduced to a few hundred, and some cities are shutting them down completely.7 7
This brings me to the issue of outright legalization.
The concern with marijuana is not born out of any culture-war mentality, but out of what the science tells us about the drug’s effects.
And the science, though still evolving, is clear: marijuana use is harmful. It is associated with dependence, respiratory and mental illness, poor motor performance, and cognitive impairment, among other negative effects.8

8 Moore and colleagues (2005) summed up the literature on respiratory illnesses and marijuana in the Journal of General Internal Medicine by stating that “the current literature of case reports and clinical samples suggests that marijuana-related respiratory problems may constitute a significant public health burden.” See Moore, B.A., et al, Respiratory effects of marijuana and tobacco use in a U.S. sample, Journal of General Internal Medicine 20(1):33-37, 2005. Also see Tashkin, D.P., Smoked marijuana as a cause of lung injury, Monaldi Archives for Chest Disease 63(2):93-100, 2005. Other evidence on the effect of marijuana on lung function and the respiratory system, and the link with mental illness, can be found in expert reviews offered by Hall W.D, and Pacula R.L. (2003), Cannabis use and dependence: Public health and public policy. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press., and Room, R., Fischer, B., Hall, W., Lenton, S., and Reuter, P. (2009), Cannabis Policy: Moving beyond stalemate, The Global Cannabis Commission Report, the Beckley Foundation. Room et al. write, “Cannabis use and psychotic symptoms are associated in general population surveys and the relationship persists after adjusting for confounders. The best evidence that these associations may be causal comes from longitudinal studies of large representative cohorts.” Also see Degenhardt, L. & Hall, W. (2006), Is cannabis a contributory cause of psychosis? Canadian Journal of Psychiatry, 51: 556-565. A major study examining young people and, importantly, a subset of sibling pairs was released in February 2010 and concluded that marijuana use at a young age significantly increased the risk of psychosis in young adulthood. See McGrath, J., et al. (2010), Association between cannabis use and psychosis-related outcomes using sibling pair analysis in a cohort of young adults, Archives of General Psychiatry.

We know that over 110,000 people who showed up voluntarily at treatment facilities in 2007 reported marijuana as their primary substance of abuse.9 Additionally, in 2008 marijuana was involved in 375,000 emergency visits nationwide.10 8
Several studies have shown that marijuana dependence is real and causes harm. We know that more than 30 percent of past-year marijuana users age 18 and older are classified as dependent on the drug,11 and that the lifetime prevalence of marijuana dependence in the US population is higher than that for any other illicit drug. Those dependent on marijuana often show signs of withdrawal and compulsive behavior.12

11 Compton, W., Grant, B., Colliver, J., Glantz; M., Stinson, F. (2004), Prevalence of Marijuana Use Disorders in the United States: 1991-1992 and 2001-2002, Journal of the American Medical Association, 291:2114-2121.
12 Budney, A.J. & Hughes, J.R. (2006), The cannabis withdrawal syndrome, Current Opinion in Psychiatry, 19: 233-238.; Budney, A.J., Hughes, J.R., Moore, B.A. & Vandrey, R. (2004), Review of the validity and significance of cannabis withdrawal syndrome. American Journal of Psychiatry, 161: 1967-1977.; Budney, A.J.,Vandrey, R.G., Hughes, J.R., Moore, B.A. & Bahrenburg, B. (2007), Oral delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol suppresses cannabis withdrawal symptoms, Drug and Alcohol Dependence, 86: 22-29.; Kouri, E.M. & Pope, H.G. (2000), Abstinence symptoms during withdrawal from chronic marijuana use, Experimental and Clinical Psychopharmacology, 8: 483-492.; Jones, R.T., Benowitz, N. & Herning, R.I. (1976), The 30-day trip: clinical studies of cannabis use, tolerance and dependence. In Braude, M. & Szara, S. (eds.), The Pharmacology of Marijuana. New York: Academic Press, Vol. 2, pp. 627-642.
13 For a review of the evidence on marijuana and educational attainment, see: Lynskey, M.T. & Hall, W.D. (2000), The effects of adolescent cannabis use on educational attainment: a review, Addiction, 96: 433-443.

Travelling the country, I’ve often heard from local treatment specialists that marijuana dependence is as a major problem at call-in centers offering help for people using drugs.
Marijuana negatively affects users in other ways, too. For example, prolonged use is associated with lower test scores and lower educational attainment because during periods of intoxication the drug affects the ability to learn and process information, thus influencing attention, concentration, and short-term memory.13 9
Advocates of legalization say the costs of prohibition – mainly through the criminal justice system – place a great burden on taxpayers and governments.
While there are certainly costs to current prohibitions, legalizing drugs would not cut the costs of the criminal justice system. Arrests for alcohol-related crimes such as violations of liquor laws and driving under the influence totaled nearly 2.7 million in 2008. Marijuana-related arrests totaled around 750,000 in 2008. 14

14 Federal Bureau of Investigation (2008) Uniform crime reports, Washington, DC. Available at: http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/ucr.htm
15 Heron M., Hoyert D., Murphy S., et al. Deaths: Final data for 2006. National vital statistics reports; vol 57 no 14. Hyattsville, MD, National Center for Health Statistics, 2009. See http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr57/nvsr57_14.pdf
16 For example, see: Williams, J., Pacula, R., Chaloupka, F., and Wechsler, H. (2004), “Alcohol and Marijuana Use Among College Students: Economic Complements or Substitutes?” Health Economics 13(9): 825-843.; Pacula R., Ringel, J., Suttorp, M. and Truong, K. (2008), An Examination of the Nature and Cost of Marijuana Treatment Episodes. RAND Working Paper presented at the American Society for Health Economics Annual Meeting, Durham, NC, June 2008. Jacobson, M. (2004), “Baby Booms and Drug Busts: Trends in Youth Drug Use in the United States, 1975-2000,” Quarterly Journal of Economics 119(4): 1481-1512.

Our current experience with legal, regulated prescription drugs like Oxycontin shows that legalizing drugs is not a panacea. In fact, its legalization widens its availability and misuse, no matter what controls are in place. In 2006, drug-induced deaths reached a high of over 38,000, according to the Centers for Disease Control – an increase driven primarily by the non-medical use of pharmaceutical drugs.15
Controls and prohibitions help to keep prices higher, and higher prices help keep use rates relatively low, since drug use, especially among young people, is known to be sensitive to price.16
The relationship between pricing and rates of youth substance use is well-established with respect to alcohol and cigarette taxes. 10 There is literature showing that increases in the price of cigarettes triggers declines in use.17

17 See, for example, Chaloupka, F., “Macro-Social Influences: Effects of Prices and Tobacco Control Policies on the Demand for Tobacco Products,” Nicotine & Tobacco Research, 1999, and other price studies at http://tigger.uic.edu/~fjc and www.uic.edu/orgs/impacteen. Orzechowski & Walker, Tax Burden on Tobacco, 2006. USDA Economic Research Service, www.ers.usda.gov/Briefing/tobacco. Farelly, M., et al., State Cigarette Excise Taxes: Implications for Revenue and Tax Evasion, RTI International, May, 2003, http://www.rti.org/pubs/8742_Excise_Taxes_FR_5-03.pdf. Country tax offices. CDC, Data Highlights 2006 [and underlying CDC data/estimates]. Miller, P., et al, “Birth and First-Year Costs for Mothers and Infants Attributable to Maternal Smoking,” Nicotine & Tobacco Research 3(1):25-35, February 2001. Lightwood, J. & Glantz, S., “Short-Term Economic and Health Benefits of Smoking Cessation – Myocardial Infarction and Stroke,” Circulation 96(4):1089-1096, August 19, 1997, http://circ.ahajournals.org/cgi/content/full/96/4/1089. Hodgson, T., “Cigarette Smoking and Lifetime Medical Expenditures,” The Millbank Quarterly 70(1), 1992. U.S. Census. National Center for Health Statistics.
18 See http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxfacts/displayafact.cfm?Docid=399
19 Harwood, H. (2000), Updating Estimates of the Economic Costs of Alcohol Abuse in the United States: Estimates, Update Methods and Data. Report prepared for the National Institute on Alcoholism and Alcohol Abuse.

Marijuana has also been touted as a cure-all for disease and black market violence – and for California’s budget woes. Once again, however, there are important facts that are rarely discussed in the public square.
The tax revenue collected from alcohol pales in comparison to the costs associated with it. Federal excise taxes collected on alcohol in 2007 totaled around $9 billion; states collected around $5.5 billion.18
Taken together, this is less than 10 percent of the over $185 billion in alcohol-related costs from health care, lost productivity, and criminal justice.19
Alcohol use by underage drinkers results in $3.7 billion a year in medical costs due to traffic crashes, violent crime, suicide attempts, and other related consequences.20 11

20 See Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation (PIRE), 2009, Underage Drinking Costs. Accessed on March, 1, 2010. Available at http://www.udetc.org/UnderageDrinkingCosts.asp
21 State estimates found at supra note 27. Federal estimates found at https://www.policyarchive.org/bitstream/handle/10207/3314/RS20343_20020110.pdf, Also see http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/31/weekinreview/31saul.html?em and http://www.tobaccofreekids.org/research/factsheets/pdf/0072.pdf; Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids, see “Smoking-caused costs” on p.2.
22 The Economic Costs of Drug Abuse in the United States, 1992-2002, Office of National Drug Control Policy, Executive Office of the President, Washington, DC: (Publication No. 207303), 2004.
23 Pacula, R. (2009). Legalizing Marijuana: Issues to Consider Before Reforming California State Law. Accessed at www.rand.org

Tobacco also does not carry its economic weight when we tax it; each year we spend more than $200 billion and collect only about $25 billion in taxes.21
Though I sympathize with the current budget predicament – and acknowledge that we must find innovative solutions to get us on a path to financial stability – it is clear that the social costs of legalizing marijuana would outweigh any possible tax that could be levied. In the United States, illegal drugs already cost $180 billion a year in health care, lost productivity, crime, and other expenditures.22 That number would only increase under legalization because of increased use.
Rosy evaluations of the potential economic savings from legalization have been criticized by many in the economic community. For example, the California Board of Equalization estimated that $1.4 billion of potential revenue could arise from legalization. This assessment, according to a researcher out of the independent RAND Corporation is, and I quote, “based on a series of assumptions that are in some instances subject to tremendous uncertainty and in other cases not valid.”23 12
Recent testimony from a RAND researcher concluded that “There is a tremendous profit motive for the existing black market providers to stay in the market, as they can still cover their costs of production and make a nice profit.”24

24 Ibid.
25 Gruber J., Sen, A. & Stabile, M. (2003), “Estimating Price Elasticities When There is Smuggling:
The Sensitivity of Smoking to Price in Canada,” Journal of Health Economics 22(5): 821-842.
26 See Supra note 23.

Canada’s experience with taxing cigarettes showed that a $2 tax differential per pack versus the United States created such a huge black market smuggling problem that Canada repealed its tax increases.25
Legalizing marijuana would also saddle government with the dual burden of regulating a new legal market while continuing to pay for the negative side effects associated with an underground market whose providers have little economic incentive to disappear.26
Now that I’ve told you what the research says, let me tell you what this means in practical terms. Legalization means the price comes down, the number of users goes up, the underground market adapts, and the revenue gained through a regulated market will never keep pace with the financial and social cost of making this drug more accessible.
Now let’s talk about what will work to reduce drug use. 13

The Office of National Drug Control Policy is pursuing a combined, coordinated public health and public safety strategy.
This strategy recognizes that the most promising drug policy is one that prevents drug use in the first place.
We have many proven methods for reducing the demand for drugs. The demand can be decreased with comprehensive, evidence-based prevention programs focused on adolescence, which science confirms is the peak period for drug-use initiation and the potential for addiction.
Our young people must be made aware of the risks of drug use – at home, in school, in sports leagues, in faith communities, in places of work, and in other settings and activities that attract youth.
This is vital because an individual who reaches age 21 without smoking, using drugs or abusing alcohol is virtually certain never to do so.
ONDCP’s National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign can reinforce these efforts by connecting with youth through popular television shows, Internet sites, magazines, and films. Community anti-drug coalitions can provide an environment conducive to remaining drug-free. Expanding early intervention services for drug users and treatment options for the addicted will also be major components of our effort to reduce demand for drugs in this country. 14
Surveys of prevalence show that these efforts work. Drug use today remains comparatively low. Annual marijuana prevalence peaked among 12th graders in 1979 at 51 percent. By 2009, annual prevalence had fallen by about one-third. Similar statistics can be found for other age groups. However, we are seeing some troubling signs that have bubbled up in the last year or two. The perception that drugs are dangerous is dropping, and that usually predicts imminent increases in use.
At the same time, we’ve learned that trying to manage drug-addicted criminal offenders entirely through the criminal justice system results in a costly, destructive cycle of arrest, incarceration, release, and re-arrest.
Together, we can transform this situation through new collaborations between the criminal justice system and the treatment system. Drug courts are just one example of how these systems can work together.
Re-entry programs that provide addiction treatment, combined with intensive monitoring and swift and certain sanctions for violations – as evidenced by Hawaii’s HOPE program – are another example of the kind of scientifically supported cross-system initiatives we seek to expand, especially in the probation system, which represents a highly important but often under-utilized and forgotten role in drug and crime control.
We advocate further research on pre-arrest diversion programs like the one piloted in High Point, North Carolina. These programs threaten dealers in a community with credible sanctions, but also 15
offer them other resources to change their lives. Research on these kinds of pre-arrest diversion programs is just emerging, but preliminary results have been positive.
We are also firm believers in the law enforcement techniques you employ every day, based on local assessments of needs and available resources.
A balanced approach based on a combination of public health and public safety strategies is the surest route to reducing drug use and its consequences. This approach employs best practices in prevention, treatment, and law enforcement with community partners. We know that working together has resulted in lowering crime and drug use.
Thank you for being on the front line of these issues. I look forward to supporting you to reduce drug use and its consequences.

Source: Statement from ONDCP Director R. Gil Kerlikowske
Delivered at the California Police Chiefs Association Conference
March 4th, 2010 San Jose, CA

Can your state afford to gamble on legalizing marijuana?

California is capturing national media coverage as the state debates the issue of legalizing and taxing marijuana. A legislative bill (AB 390) and three potential ballot initiatives propose different strategies to allegedly profit financially from marijuana. Promotion of those measures rely on a biased study. The study suggesting potential revenue gains is not only questionable, but also neglects to identify societal costs associated with marijuana.

In a written response to an article published by the Sacramento Bee, Police Chief Scott C. Kirkland addresses what the pro-drug lobby and the study they promote have neglected. His response may have been written to specifically address issues in California, but his points are relevant to other states considering similar measures.

Can your state afford to gamble on legalizing marijuana? After reading what Chief Kirkland has to say, I think you will agree the answer is NO; our nation cannot afford the damaging cost such efforts would have on society.

On August 6, 2009, the Sacramento Bee published an editorial by F. Aaron Smith entitled, “Legalized pot is more than a tax bonanza.” I would like the opportunity to present the other side.

My name is Scott C. Kirkland and I am currently the Police Chief in El Cerrito. I am on the Board of Directors for the California Police Chiefs Association as well as the California Peace Officers’ Association. Moreover, I am currently the Chair Person of the California Police Chiefs Medical Marijuana Task Force. The task force is comprised of representatives from the California Peace Officers’ Association, California Police Chiefs Association, California State Sheriff Association, California District Attorneys’ Association, California Narcotics Association, and other interested parties.

The purpose of this article is to write specifically about the financial aspect of the issue. I would be more than happy to contribute other articles that discuss the Assembly Bill specifically, the substance itself, or any other aspect of this issue should you so desire.

The advocates on this issue have once again selected a very well crafted message to the public. In essence, they are saying that the State of California should legalize and tax marijuana and that this action would allow the State to remain solvent. The argument would then be that with a solvent State, police officers, firefighters, and teachers will not be laid off. Mr. Smith states that there would be $1.4 billion in new tax revenue available to solve the state budget crises. But, let us examine those numbers and see if the State of California could afford such a gamble.

Yes, the Board of Equalization did identify a potential revenue stream from the sale of marijuana but are those numbers accurate? In their bill analysis, the sole report that is cited as the basis of their revenue projections is entitled, Marijuana Production in the United States (2006). The report was written by Jon Gettman, who served as President for the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws. He writes the “Cannabis Column” for the HighTimes.com. Mr. Gettman owns DrugScience.com which he cites six times in his report. Upon reading the report and comparing the report to various law enforcement data that is published, his estimates of marijuana crops are more than twice as high.

I believe it is and was irresponsible for the individuals that wrote the bill analysis not to have known who the author of the report was and to have questioned his credibility. In this day of Internet usage I have become in the habit of doing a “Google” search on authors upon reading their work. It is important to me to know where the author is coming from and it should be important for those who complete a bill analysis. It took me ten minutes to glean information about Mr. Gettman. I believe it is important for all who delve into this emotional issue to fully research it and failure to do so results in a slanted and inaccurate analysis.

Since the Bill Analysis is utilizing a study that shows double the estimates of any other law enforcement data, the Board of Equalization’s initial projections are simply wrong. I believe it is this type of financial forecasting that has caused the State of California so much trouble today.

In May of 2009, the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse (CASA) at Columbia University released a report entitled, “Shoveling Up II: The Impact of Substance Abuse on Federal, State and Local Budgets.” This one hundred and seventy-six (176) page report documents for the first time the costs of the two legal substances that are abused today (Alcohol and Tobacco). The costs are substantial!

In 2005, the State of California spent $19.9 billion dollars on substance abuse and addiction or $545.09 per capita (population of 36.5 million). Once again I am talking specifically about Alcohol and Tobacco. But, the State of California collected $1.4 billion dollars of tax revenue or $38.69 per capita on the sale of Alcohol and Tobacco products. Yes, the costs far exceeded the revenue!

I believe it is also worth mentioning that as of June 19, 2009, California’s Carcinogen Identification Committee of the Office of Environmental Health and Assessment Science Advisory Board issued a ruling that listed marijuana smoke as causing cancer. This is just another reason why the financial analysis of the bill does not make economic sense. From a public health stand point, why would we, residents of California, want to legalize a crude substance that is known to cause cancer when the costs of substance abuse of the psychoactive drug will far outweigh the amount of monies the state receives? Are we that short sighted? How is the State of California going to find the monies to pay for the costs of abuse, treatment, and damage to youth? These are all unanswered questions that must be addressed in order for there to be a fair and impartial analysis that voters rely on when they go to the polls.

Source: Source: Save Our Society From Drugs Oct 2009

Cigarette smoking rates among American teens in 2008 are at the lowest
levels since at least as far back as the early 1990s, according to the Monitoring the Future (MTF) study based at the University of Michigan, which has been surveying national samples of 8th-, 10th-, and 12th-grade students each year since 1991.

MTF tracks tobacco use with surveys administered to a national sample of over 45,000 students in about 400 secondary schools each year. This year represents the low point for smoking in all three grades. The proportions of students indicating any smoking in the prior 30 days (called “monthly prevalence”) stands at 7 percent, 12 percent, and 20 percent in grades 8, 10, and 12, respectively.

These rates reflect large declines since the recent peaks in the mid-1990s: 8th graders’ smoking rates are down by two thirds, 10th graders’ by more than half, and 12th graders’ by nearly half. “I can’t begin to tell you what a dramatic difference this is going to make in the health and longevity of this generation,” said Lloyd Johnston, the study’s principal investigator. “The fact that teen smoking is still declining is particularly encouraging, because a couple of years ago it looked like the long decline in youth smoking might be coming to an end.”

Across the three grades combined, there was a statistically significant decline in monthly smoking prevalence from 13.6 percent in 2007 to 12.6 percent in 2008. All grades showed some decline this year, but it was greatest in the upper grades. This year’s declines are also greatest among males and students who say they are college-bound.

The study has actually tracked the smoking behavior of 12th graders for a considerably longer period, going back to 1975. Their smoking rate today is the lowest it has been over that entire 33- year period. The investigators note that in the early 1990s cigarette smoking was making a rapid comeback among American teens, one to which the MTF study drew considerable public attention. A number of governmental and other institutional responses to the growing threat followed, perhaps the most
important of which was the tobacco settlement between the industry and the state attorneys general. That settlement brought about some immediate changes in cigarette advertising in the country, including the termination of the Joe Camel ads, and it launched the American Legacy Foundation, which has sponsored national antismoking ad campaigns aimed at youth in the years since. It also forced the tobacco companies to raise the price of cigarettes considerably in order to cover the costs of the settlement, and increasing the price has been shown to be a deterrent to youth smoking. A number of states and some municipalities have raised prices still further by increasing their excise taxes on tobacco.

One important reason that smoking rates have been dropping for over 10 years is that fewer students even try cigarettes. The proportion of 8th graders who ever smoked a cigarette is down from 49 percent in 1996 to 21 percent in 2008—a decline of nearly six tenths.

Attitudes About Smoking
One belief that has proven to influence the likelihood that young people use a drug is their belief about whether its use poses a danger for the user. For cigarettes, there has been a substantial increase since 1995 in the proportions of teens who see pack-a-day smoking as involving “great risk” to the smoker. And the proportions of teens who said that they “disapproved” of pack-a-day smoking began to rise a year later and continued into recent years

However, the increase in perceived risk did not continue into 2008; indeed, there was a significant decline in this measure in 2008 among 12th graders. Disapproval of smoking, while quite high, appears to have levelled off in 2008, as well.
The great majority of teens today say that they “prefer to date people who don’t smoke”: 83 percent, 80 percent, and 75 percent in grades 8, 10, and 12, and nearly two thirds of them think that “becoming a smoker reflects poor judgment.”

These attitudes became more widespread after the mid-1990s, but have not grown much over the past few years, except in 12th grade, where the earlier cohorts of 8th graders are still working their way up the age spectrum, bringing their more disapproving attitudes toward cigarette smoking with them. The investigators say that teens should take note that becoming a smoker will make them less attractive to the great majority of the opposite sex—a high price to pay.

Availability of Cigarettes to Teens
The proportion of teens reporting that they could get cigarettes “fairly easily” or “very easily,” if they wanted some, has been declining for some years, particularly among younger teens. Today, 57 percent of 8th graders—most of whom are 13 or 14 years old—say they could get cigarettes fairly easily.

As high as that number is, it is down considerably from 77 percent in 1996. Availability for 10th graders is higher, as might be expected, but fewer of them say they could get cigarettes easily in 2008 (77 percent) than in 1996 (91 percent). It appears that the efforts of many states and communities to get retail outlets to stop selling to underage smokers have been having some success, the researchers say. Despite that, however, the majority of teens—even younger teens—still say that they can get cigarettes if they want them.

Source: Johnston, L. D., et al. (December 11, 2008) http://www.monitoringthefuture.org

As kids flood weed outlets, Ramon Cortines admits there’s no plan

Los Angeles City Hall is thrashing around as the City Council and mayor belatedly try to control a pot-shop explosion they ignited, which has spawned dozens of freewheeling weed emporiums near public schools. The Los Angeles school board’s response? Nada.

That’s what the Los Angeles Unified School District has done to stop kids from trekking a short distance from Fairfax, Hollywood and other high schools and middle schools to score buds at unregulated neighborhood pot shops that have opened, often in the same block as schools or very nearby.

The LAUSD school board and Superintendent Ramon Cortines have held no meetings about the impact on kids, have no idea how many children are turning to the flood of easy weed, have not tried to assess the money the dispensaries are making off healthy kids, and have not trained faculty and administrators in how to deal with ever-younger stoned students.

Now, following routine questions from L.A. Weekly, some school board members are pledging to deal with it.

The lack of interest from LAUSD’s top officials seems unlikely to help the district — already hammered by high dropout rates and intense competition from charter schools — to win back parents. Scott McNeely, of the Pico Neighborhood Council, complained to the City Council last summer when he heard about 17 dispensaries within a mile and a half of his home, three near elementary schools. “It’s a little discomforting when parents try to walk their kids to and from school and the kids smell marijuana smoke in the air,” he says. “It’s long past time for the LAUSD to weigh in on this issue and pressure the City Council, work with the City Council, just as we are doing. … The school board needs to raise a little hell.”

Some school board members believe the weed-and-kids situation is out of control. “After school you can see students stopping at the dispensary before going home,” says school board member Tamar Galatzan. “That’s unacceptable.”

The first sign that kids were being affected by the medical-pot explosion — and even directly targeted — arose at Grant High School in Van Nuys. It was the end of summer 2006 and time, apparently, to get back to the San Fernando Valley’s version of the three R’s: reading, writing and rolling joints.

On August 10 of that year, Van Nuys police found that a nearby marijuana dispensary, Pacific Support Services, had left fliers on cars in the Grant High School student parking lot. The fliers were emblazoned with the iconic, three-leaf marijuana bud, and underneath was a friendly message:

“It is still legal to own, grow and smoke marijuana as long as you do it properly. Qualification is simple and our experienced physicians are more than happy to help you,” it informed students, who probably had no idea California law gives seriously ill patients the right to smoke pot if they merely obtain a doctor’s verbal recommendation.

The flier language was directly aimed at those who might be tempted to spend their burgers-and-fries money: “$15 off with this flier. … If you do not qualify for a recommendation your visit is free.”

In other cities, the targeting of an academically struggling school like Grant High and its mostly minority, mostly working-class students, which resulted in a Los Angeles Daily News story, might have prompted school leaders to act. But it just floated right over the heads of the seven LAUSD board members.

“We had so many other things going on that I guess we just plain missed it,” says school board member Marguerite LaMotte, who represents much of South Los Angeles. “I can’t speak for the rest of the board but myself, I was more worried about the gangs, the liquor stores and all the other problems in my district. … There’s so much going on in my district.”

Since then, neither the school board nor Cortines has done anything — no new policies, rules or special teacher or principal training — to protect children from unregulated pot dispensaries.

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and the City Council today have no idea how many pot stores exist, where they are, where they are getting their pot, who is financing them or where the huge profits are going. The exact number of stores in L.A. is a highly fluid calculation, with dispensaries opening and closing daily and dozens filling out paperwork but never switching on the lights. On paper, there are more than 1,000; hundreds are believed to be actually operating.

An analysis by the Los Angeles Times showed that at least 240 of the 1,000 dispensaries are within 1,000 feet of a school, park or library. Teenagers can be seen heading into them after school lets out in Hollywood, Fairfax, Northridge, the San Fernando Valley, Wilshire District and other areas.

According to both police and residents, many medicinal-marijuana shops are covertly targeting healthy kids as young as 14 through street contacts who urge students to “get your card.”

Yet the City Council and school board have yet to open a meaningful dialogue. “On issues that impact LAUSD, there’s been a lack of formal or even informal communication and coordination between the [City] Council and the school board,” says board member Galatzan. “This is the latest manifestation of that problem.”

Galatzan, an attorney who works for the L.A. City Attorney’s Office dealing with street-level crime, supports a tough ordinance proposed by her boss, City Attorney Carmen Trutanich, which among other things would ban dispensaries within 1,000 feet of a school.

The Los Angeles City Council failed for years to adopt state-required local medical-marijuana regulations that other cities, including San Francisco, Oakland and Berkeley, long ago debated and approved.

Those three politically liberal cities cracked down on pot profiteers while adopting rules that allow the ill to easily obtain weed. The City Council here, gridlocked and unable to decide what to do, instead adopted a series of moratoriums — and then missed the state’s legal deadline for acting. Now the council is unhappy with Trutanich’s plan, and is looking at its options once again.

At the time of the Grant High incident, Los Angeles dispensaries had mushroomed from just four in 2005 to dozens in 2006. That was before the great medical-bud flood of the last 18 months.

LaMotte and recently elected school board member Steve Zimmer say they too support a 1,000-foot restriction. Zimmer, however, says his is a narrow endorsement of that one provision. He has problems with the rest of Trutanich’s ordinance, which bans the selling of pot over the counter and profiting from it. Zimmer particularly objects to calls to shut down the existing pot stores.

“I support the 1,000-feet restriction because I believe in creating ‘safe passages’ for our students to travel to and from school,” Zimmer says. “But I also support medical marijuana, and I think Trutanich and [Steve] Cooley are focused too much on suppression and not enough on harm reduction.”

Zimmer insists, “They won’t get one student to stop smoking weed by shutting down the dispensaries.”

Frank Sheftel, an advocate of the medical-marijuana movement and co-founder of the Toluca Lake Collective, a medicinal-pot outlet, favors a restriction of 600 feet, as with liquor stores and pharmacies. “Why create a different set of standards for this industry?” he asks.

But Galatzan notes that pharmacies require written physician prescriptions — not verbal recommendations, as with medical pot — and are so heavily regulated that no L.A. schoolchildren can score drugs at pharmacies. Moreover, liquor stores operate under strict laws forcing them to check age and I.D. Pot stores “are totally different from liquor stores, where kids are not allowed, because minors are [being] allowed into dispensaries,” Galatzan says.

David Berger, a special assistant to Trutanich, tells the Weekly that at least two police investigations are under way involving students and medical marijuana. One stems from a community complaint about a dispensary whose “stoned people” hang out next to a Lexington Avenue elementary school. The other is in Venice, where a pot store opened directly across from one public school and down the block from another. Berger says, “LAPD is documenting all this stuff for us now.”

Source:paulteetor@verizon.net. 5th Nov. 2009

“ I would establish a strictly controlled distribution network through which I would make most drugs, excluding the most dangerous ones like crack, legally available.” – George Soros

Source: Soros on Soros: Staying Ahead of the Curve.
Published :New York John Wiley & Sons 1995

Decades of painful experience dealing with the misery, violence, and crime associated with drugs have left parents and public health officials with a responsibility to educate every new generation of young people about the devastating effects of illegal drug use.
Working against these efforts, however, is a small, but well-funded group of pro-drug advocates who argue that the legalization of drugs provides a cure-all for America’s drug problem. By placing pro-drug politics ahead of scientific consensus and common sense, these groups place obstacles in the way of making progress.

Drugs are Illegal because they are Harmful

Medical research has established a clear fact about drug use: once started, it can develop into a devastating disease of the brain, with consequences that are anything but enticing. Consider the facts:
The potency of retail marijuana has more than doubled since the mid-1980’s, leading to an increase in drug treatment need for teens. Today, more young people enter drug treatment for marijuana than for all other illegal drugs combined. (MPMP, NSDUH)
Young people who smoke marijuana weekly have double the risk of depression later in life. Additionally, teens aged 12-17 who smoke marijuana weekly are three times more likely than non-users to have suicidal thoughts.
(Source: British Medical Journal, SAMHSA)

Marijuana smoke contains 50 to 70 percent more carcinogenic hydrocarbons than does tobacco smoke. (Source: NIDA)

Drug Legalization Would Dramatically Increase the Costs to Our Society
If drugs were legalized, the United States would see significant increases in the number of drug users, the number of drug addicts, and the number of people dying from drug-related causes.
Studies show that attitudes about drugs drive youth drug use rates. By trivializing and advocating tolerance for illegal drug use, drug legalization groups send a message to young people that experimentation with dangerous illegal drugs is acceptable. Drug legalization would increase the occurrence of drug impaired driving. Drugs affect concentration, perception, coordination, and reaction time; many of the skills required for safe driving.

Who’s Really in Prison for Marijuana?
One of the primary arguments used by drug legalization advocates is based on a lie – that our prisons are filled with marijuana smokers. In fact, the vast majority of drug prisoners are violent criminals, repeat offenders, traffickers, or all of the above.
The most recent data available reveals that just 1.4 percent of the state inmate population were held for offenses involving only marijuana, and less than one percent of all state prisoners (0.3 percent) were incarcerated with marijuana possession as the only charge. (Dept. of Justice Bureau of Justice Statistics)
Out of all drug defendants sentenced in federal court for marijuana crimes in 2001, the overwhelming majority were convicted for trafficking, according to the U.S. Sentencing Commission. Only 2.3 percent—186 people— received sentences for simple possession, and of the 174 for whom sentencing information is known, just 63 actually served time behind bars.

Source: www.WhiteHouseDrugPolicy.gov 2007

Smoke and mirrors: Colorado teenagers and marijuana

By Christian Thurstone

Colorado’s public policies regarding the use of medical marijuana are a complete mess — and as the medical director of a busy adolescent substance abuse treatment program in Denver, I get to contend with this mess every day.
Take, for example, the 19-year-old whom I have treated for severe addiction for several months. He recently showed up in my clinic with a medical marijuana license. How did he get it? Easy, he said. He paid $300 for a brief visit with another doctor to discuss his “depression.” The doctor took a cursory medical history that certainly didn’t involve contacting me. The teenager walked out with the paperwork needed not only for a license to smoke, but also for a license permitting a “caregiver” to grow up to six marijuana plants for him. My patient, who had quit using addictive substances after a near-death experience, is back to smoking marijuana daily, along with his caregiver. So, that’s just one young person who managed to game the system, right? Not by a long shot.
In the last three months, I have seen more than a dozen young people — all between the ages of 18 and 25 and with histories of substance abuse — who received from other doctors what are essentially permission slips to smoke pot. Some of my colleagues recently reported seeing a young, pregnant woman who was granted a license to smoke marijuana because of her nausea. (Yes, you read that right.) Kids without licenses tell me about the potent pot they buy from from caregivers whose plants yield enough supply to support sales on the side.
Colorado schools are also scrambling to make sense of our muddled public policies. Educators ask me how to deal with students who have marijuana prescriptions for their attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder and with the “medical marijuana specialists” seen passing out business cards in student parking lots. Here’s what I tell them: Good research shows that using marijuana makes anxiety, depression and ADHD worse, so let’s stop prescribing marijuana to our youth.
Colorado is just beginning to see much bigger and more costly problems associated with teen marijuana smoking. That’s particularly unfortunate because our state already ranks among the top five for adolescent marijuana use and among states providing the least access to adolescent substance abuse treatment. For teenagers, marijuana is an especially addictive drug. Nationally, almost 5.5 percent of high school seniors smoke marijuana daily, according to researchers at the University of Michigan. About 95 percent of the hundreds of young people referred to my clinic each year have problems with marijuana. I see teenagers who choose pot over family, school, friends and health every day. When they’re high, these young people make poor choices that lead to unplanned pregnancies, sexually transmitted diseases, school dropouts and car accidents that harm innocent people. When teenagers are withdrawing from marijuana, they can be aggressive and get into fights or instigate conflicts that lead to more trouble.
Now, almost every day, a kid asks me, “Doc, how can marijuana be bad? It’s a medicine.”
I recently reviewed medical marijuana licenses in Colorado and found that only 3 percent belong to people with cancer and 1 percent to people with HIV. Those illnesses are not open to much interpretation; you’ve either got them or you don’t. However, a whopping 90 percent of Colorado’s medical marijuana licenses have been awarded for “pain,” which is a highly subjective qualifying condition that makes it easy to abuse the system. Also interesting is that 70 percent of Colorado’s medical marijuana prescriptions are for men, and the biggest age group of licensees is 25- to 34-year-olds. Medical marijuana in this state is not being prescribed for end-stage illnesses. Instead, it is being handed to the demographic most likely to have addictions.
The medicinal value of smoked tetrahydrocannabinol — marijuana’s active ingredient — has hardly been studied in controlled trials, which is why the American Medical Association recently called for more research. In the absence of credible data, we’re allowing this public debate to be bombarded by junk science and blatant lies championed by people more interested in getting high than in alleviating the pain of end-stage illness.
Medically speaking, there’s probably little need for smoked marijuana. Tetrahydrocannabinol has been available as a pill for years. For patients too nauseous to take a pill, a tetrahydrocannabinol patch has been produced and studied but is not yet available for prescription. The pill and patch have been deemed effective, produce less intoxication and are far less addictive than smoked marijuana.
With such limited data, it’s incredible that marijuana bypassed FDA approval and the way medications are normally dispensed in pharmacies. It is ridiculous that this “medicine” can be sold in an array of flavors alongside pot brownies and candies. Also stunning is that marijuana has bypassed the Colorado Prescription Drug Monitoring Program, which enables me to look up all of my patients’ prescriptions. Now, I can see all of their meds — except for their marijuana. What Colorado has created is a backdoor way to legalize marijuana, and it has done so in a manner that makes a mockery of responsible medicine.
Let’s stop talking in terms of smoked marijuana’s medicinal value because we’re not even close to knowing what that is. Let’s instead answer the question that’s truly at the heart of all of this political wrangling: Is smoking marijuana a civil right? Before answering that question, Colorado should carefully study the social costs of accidents, aggression, school dropouts, STDs and teen pregnancy that will inevitably be the result of increased marijuana use. No medication — not even marijuana — is without side effects.
Christian Thurstone is a board-certified child/adolescent and addictions psychiatrist who conducts federally funded research on marijuana addiction in teenagers
Source: http://www.denverpost.com 31st Jan 2010

Being a teenager isn’t as risky as it used to be, but too many teens still put their lives and their health at risk, a CDC survey shows.

Every two years, the CDC conducts its huge Youth Risk Behavior Survey. It contains detailed data from more than 14,000 questionnaires anonymously completed by teens in grades 9 through 12.

Overall, the 2007 results suggest that teens are acting more responsibly. Fewer are sexually active, nearly all wear seat belts, drinking and drug use are down, 80% of kids don’t smoke, and there are fewer suicide attempts.

This is good news to Howell Wechsler, EdD, MPH, director of the CDC’s Division of Adolescent and School Health. In some cases, the new numbers begin to approach the CDC’s Healthy People 2010 objectives. “What we are seeing is from the early to mid-1990s to now, on a large number of health risk behaviors, we are seeing very, very encouraging progress,” Wechsler tells WebMD.

Even so, the new numbers are enough to take a parent’s breath away:
• 7% of teens say they’ve attempted suicide (down from nearly 9% in
2001).
• 35% of teens say they’re sexually active (down from 37.5% in 2001).
• 18% of teens say they carry a gun, knife, or club (no significant change from 2001).
• 20% of teens say they smoke cigarettes (down from 36.4% in 1997).
• Nearly 45% of teens say they use alcohol (down from 50% in 1999).
• About 20% of teens say they use marijuana (down from nearly 27% in 1999).
• Only about 21% of kids eat five or more servings of fruits and vegetables (down from 24% in 1999).
• 25% of teens play video games or use the computer for three or more hours a day (up from 21% in 2005).
• More than 65% of kids don’t get enough exercise , and 25% of teens say they don’t even get an hour of exercise on any day of the week.

“We are gratified that there is progress being made,” Wechsler says. “But my take on it is this: I have a bunch of kids myself and I am not going to be satisfied until we meet our goals — and in most areas we are still not meeting our Healthy People 2010 objectives. So I see no cause to be overly
satisfied.”

(Which teens are most at risk? Find out from guest blogger Howell Wechsler on WebMD’s News Watch blog.)

Best States/Cities, Worst States/Cities

In some cases, the overall numbers conceal states and localities where teen behavior is much better — and much worse — than average:
• 62.2% of Kentucky kids have tried smoking cigarettes, compared with only 24.9% of Utah teens (national average: 50.3%).
• 34.5% of West Virginia teens use tobacco products, compared with only 8.9% of kids in Vermont (national average: 25.7%).
• 44.7% of Alaska teens have tried marijuana, compared with only 17.4% of Kentucky kids (national average: 38.1%)
• 90.8% of kids in New York attend physical education classes at least once a week vs. 28.4% of kids in South Dakota (national average: 53.6%).
• 49.7% of Baltimore teens are sexually active, compared with 17.5% of San Francisco teens (national average: 35%).
• 39.2% of ninth to 12th graders in Dallas have been offered, sold, or given an illegal drug, compared with 13.5% of teens in Baltimore (national average: 22.3%).

Wechsler says the survey data don’t show exactly why teens in some areas take fewer health risks than teens in other areas. But he says that state and local efforts to reduce specific risk behaviors pay off. He points to anti-tobacco efforts as an example.

“One thing that is instructive is the tremendous difference in resources different states put into this,” Wechsler says. “In some states, teen tobacco use is much lower than the national rate. And we see this in exactly those states where they have made substantial investments in tobacco
reduction.”

Even Good Teens Take Risks — What Parents Must Do

If none of this sounds like your teenager, listen to Nancy Cahir, PhD, a child/adolescent/adult psychologist in private practice in Atlanta.

“What I have seen in my practice is even parents who think it couldn’t happen to their child — well, it can,” Cahir tells WebMD. “Even with the ‘perfect child,’ there may be hidden issues; even in good families, bad things can happen. There is no discrimination when it comes to high-risk behavior for teens.”

Parents have a responsibility to involve themselves in their children’s lives, Cahir says. They cannot assume their teen is doing fine because they haven’t had calls from the school or because their teen’s grades are good.

“Parents, I say stay close to your children. Know your kids the way you know your best friend, and keep in touch with them,” she says. “Spend time with them, know their friends, and know the parents of the children your children hang out with. Say to them every day, ‘Did you have a difficult day? What’s going on with you? How are you doing?’”

It’s probably not news that teens can be moody, even surly at times. Your teen may respond to your inquiries with something like, “My life is none of your business.”

Not so, says Cahir.

“Every parent has the right to say, ‘It is too my business,’” she says. “Parents sometimes shy away from being more involved because they don’t want to seem intrusive. But it is their business to know whom their child hangs out with, to know whether the child is in distress, and to help their children through these difficult times. Sometimes kids don’t like hearing that, and may respond in defiant ways, but parents must toe the line and say, ‘We have a right to know.’”

But Wechsler agrees with Cahir that communication is not only what your children need, but what they truly want.

“As a parent of two teens myself, you tend to believe them when they walk out of the room and don’t express any interest in hearing from you,” Wechsler says. “But kids really do want that communication with parents. They really do want to hear their parents’ values. They really need their parents to monitor their whereabouts and stay in touch and stay a very strong part of their lives.”

Cahir says the key to communicating with teens is developing mutual respect.

“Each member of a family should treat the others members like a best friend or at least as a guest in the house,” she says. “If you are angry with your teen, or your teen is angry with you, you have to talk it out in a way that is not hostile or aggressive. I’ve seen some families go after each other tooth and nail and they end up really harming each other.”

If communication breaks down, it may be time for the family to sit down with a professional to learn how to express disagreements in a constructive way.

The full CDC report, “Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance — United States, 2007,” is available on the CDC’s web site. For comparison, earlier years’ reports are also available.

Source:CBS News Web 4 June 2008

The CDC report “Deaths: Final Data for 2006” released in April 2009, reveals a spectacular 15% increase in drug induced deaths in 2006 compared to 2005 (latest data available.) These 2006 rates once again have reached yet another new national all-time record high for the 16th consecutive year. It reports that 38,396 Americans died in 2006 directly from “Drug-induced causes” the vast majority of which were overdose deaths from use of illegal drugs or from illegal use of legal drugs. ( See page 93 of 135 of the CDC report at link: http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr57/nvsr57_14.pdf )

Steadily increasing OD deaths over the past two decades strongly indicate that current national drug OD death rates in 2009 are raging out of control at national crisis levels. The graph shows the 2006 total of 38,396 deaths with the trend line heading off the chart! This calculates to a rate of over 3,000 deaths occurring MONHLY and rising.

Parents’ drug prevention organizations from throughout the nation recognize that the vast majority of those drug overdose deaths result from the early introduction and addiction of schoolchildren to drugs and alcohol (which is an illegal drug for teens) in their schools. Therefore they have petitioned President Obama and Congress for early enactment of the demand-reducing national drug prevention strategy of implementing a federal mandate for health screening all secondary school students for drugs by Random Student Drug Testing (RSDT) see attached. The legislative precedent for such a mandate is the federal mandate for the 21 drinking age that Congress enacted in 1984 in reaction to widespread tragic teen auto crashes, injuries and deaths on the nation’s highways that had directly resulted from states authorizing teen alcohol use in the 1970s.

“Diagnostic drug testing is the very best means ever found for effectively reducing the kids’ exposure to the deadly disease of drug addiction. This has been well demonstrated in the military, businesses, transportation industry and in the over 4,000 U.S. schools currently using drug testing,” said Joyce Nalepka, president of Drug Free Kids: America’s Concern and former president of Nancy Reagan’s National Federation of Parents. “We parents sincerely appreciate that RSDT is fully supported by Congress, the ONDCP, the U.S. Education Department, DEA, U.S. Justice Department, and all health-related federal agencies,” she added.

Congress should reject recent efforts by professional drug legalization lobbyists to soften federal laws on drug abuse and reduce federal support for RSDT. Their frenzied attempts to get street drugs legalized will only help drug traffickers reap further profits from the drug-related destruction of families, schools and communities throughout the nation. Congress must support parents and their children against the drug traffickers.

“This avalanche of tragic drug overdose deaths among our children should serve as a wake up call to all members of Congress. They must support America’s drug-besieged parents who demand that federal support continue and be increased for utilizing RSDT as a compassionate non-punitive means of reducing the nation’s inordinate demand for drugs and reducing the ultimate harm of massive drug overdose deaths,” said

Source DeForest Rathbone, Chairman of the National Institute of Citizen Anti-drug Policy (NICAP.)
April 30, 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

Last year seven student-athletes at Green Valley High School tested positive for drugs or alcohol. This year? Zero.
Green Valley High School players cheer before the second half of their game against Bishop Gorman during the Nevada girls basketball state semifinals Feb. 26 at the Orleans Arena. Student-athletes at the school and other students engaged in extracurricular activities that involve travel are subject to random drug testing.
Green Valley High School administrators say the success of their year-old random drug testing program can be seen in the lower numbers of drug users they are catching.
But Taylor Ashton, a sophomore at the Henderson campus, said he has seen the changes in a more direct way — in the school’s “bathrooms and hallways.” A year ago, he explained, it wasn’t unusual to walk into a campus bathroom and smell smoke. He said he couldn’t be more specific about the type of smoke.
These days, even the talk about drugs — on campus, at the bus stop and at parties of Green Valley students — is down, he said. Green Valley students appear to be trying hard to avoid failing a test that an increasing number of Clark County schools are adding to their curriculums. Next month, seven additional Clark County high schools will begin randomly testing students for drugs.
In February 2008, Green Valley became the first public high school in Nevada to randomly test students for drug use. One of the reasons, Green Valley Principal Jeff Horn said, was that during the 2006-07 academic year, the school caught nearly 8 percent of its athletes using drugs or alcohol, more than twice the rate for the rest of the school’s student population.
This academic year, just two student-athletes have been referred to the dean’s office for offenses involving controlled substances, said Jackie Carducci, assistant principal for athletics and activities. That equates to less than a half-percent of the school’s student-athletes. Horn said the two were playing hooky when they were caught by Clark County School District Police and brought back to campus, where it was determined that they had been smoking marijuana.
The number of students who are flunking urinalysis is also down.
Through the end of the academic year in June 2008, seven of the 264 Green Valley athletes tested positive. From the start of the 2008-09 academic year through January, Green Valley tested 263 students with only four positive results. None of those were student-athletes. This year’s testing pool has been expanded to include students who participate in extracurricular activities that require travel, such as forensics and musical groups.
The U.S. Supreme Court has deemed random drug testing of students participating in sports or other school activities constitutional, but public schools cannot require testing of all students. At Green Valley, parents can opt to have their children added to the pool and more than 100 have, the principal said.
“Our community is behind us,” he said. “I would say things are going extremely well.”
Funding uncertain
In September, Coronado and Silverado high schools followed Green Valley’s lead. Since then, Coronado has tested 224 students and five student-athletes flunked the tests. Silverado has checked 100 student-athletes and five didn’t pass. The school is testing only student-athletes — a pool of about 500 — because that’s all it can afford.
And because it doesn’t have any external funding, Silverado’s program has an uncertain future, Principal Kim Grytdahl said. To cover the cost this year, he boosted the fee for athletic registration to $20 from $5. “With the way school budgets are right now, I don’t know that we can fund the program at the level that it needs to be, so that it does what it’s supposed to do,” Grytdahl said. “Given the economic climate, I don’t think it’s fair to pass any more of the price along to the children.”
At Green Valley, the program is covered by private grants and donations, enough to keep it going at least through 2010, Horn said.
A three-year, $450,000 federal grant is paying for the random drug testing that is to begin next month at Centennial, Del Sol, Desert Pines, Durango, Eldorado, Foothill and Mojave high schools. But whether additional federal money will be available to allow more high schools to start drug testing is unknown.
The Bush administration made random student drug testing a priority; opponents of such programs hope that “with a new administration that values evidence-based outcomes, … money will no longer be diverted from student-based programs to random drug testing,” said Jennifer Kern, youth policy manager of the Drug Policy Alliance, a national advocacy group. A spokeswoman for the U.S. Education Department said Tuesday that the new administration has not yet taken up the question of random student drug testing.
Proponents say random testing serves as a deterrent, helps schools identify students who need help and gives those students an excuse to say no to offers of drugs or alcohol, while opponents contend the at-risk students who often benefit the most from involvement in school activities and sports drop out rather than risk being tested.
Administrators at Green Valley, Coronado and Silverado all said, however, that student participation in sports or extracurricular activities has not declined since the random testing programs began. In fact, participation is up at Coronado, Principal Lee Koelliker said. The testing will continue at Coronado next year, he said.
“Our athletes as well as their parents understand that there is a drug problem in our schools, not only in the CCSD but throughout the country, and appreciate the fact that we are taking a stance to try and combat the use of these substances,” Koelliker said.
‘False sense of security’
Kern contends, however, that random testing gives parents a false sense of security that if there’s a drug problem at a school or with their child, campus administrators will catch it. “The prevention research out there shows what really works is helping students feel connected to school and getting them to believe there is an adult who cares about them,” she said. “With random testing, you’re treating students like they’re guilty until proven innocent.”
In addition to questions about the long-term efficacy of random testing, organizations such as the ACLU say the program raises serious concerns about privacy rights, and can serve only to diminish trust among students and school staff.
Leah Yaffe, a senior and president of Green Valley’s forensics team, said she doesn’t find the random drug testing policy intrusive. “I don’t see it as administrators trying to find out who the bad kids are,” she said. “It’s trying to find out who might have a problem.”
The program might be less of a deterrent to students who are regular drug users, especially those whose social group revolves around the behavior, Yaffe said. But for a student who might be considering experimenting, she said, the specter of the test offers “a viable excuse” for turning down an offer of drugs or alcohol — a way to deflate peer pressure without losing face.
Green Valley junior Asli Kupoglu, a starter on the varsity girls soccer team, had to pass the test twice in three weeks, and it was inconvenient and a little embarrassing. Still, Kupoglu said she fully supports random drug testing for students who represent Green Valley in extracurricular activities. The possibility of being called for a drug test has made some students rethink some of their choices, she said.
Kupoglu also said she would support expanding the testing pool to include all extracurricular activities, and not just the ones that involve travel. She pointed out that the Student Council members who weren’t in the testing pool voted to voluntarily add their names, to set an example.
“I was really proud of them for doing that,” Kupoglu said.
How the testing works
Green Valley, Coronado and Silverado high schools are all using Sport Safe, an Ohio-based vendor, for testing services.
Green Valley and Coronado require students who participate in athletics or extracurricular activities that require travel — music and vocal groups, forensics teams — to be part of the testing pool. Both schools also allow parents of students who don’t fall into those categories to sign their teens up for the program. Silverado currently tests only student athletes.
Sport Safe chooses the names of students to be tested at random, and provides the list to the school. Those students are escorted by a staff member from class to the nurse’s office, where they must provide a urine sample. Refusal to give a sample is considered a positive test.
The test covers a range of substances, including alcohol, nicotine, anabolic steroids, amphetamines, marijuana and cocaine. Nicotine is included on the list because the use of tobacco products is a violation of Nevada Interscholastic Activities Association regulations, even if the student is of legal age.
The sample is processed at a local lab, and the results go to Sport Safe. If a test is positive, Sport Safe notifies parents within 24 hours. The school’s principal is also notified.
Students who test positive for any banned substance are required to undergo drug counselling, and are restricted from participating in school activities, in keeping with the guidelines of NIAA. Students who test positive a second time are not allowed to participate in interscholastic competition for a minimum of six weeks and cannot practice with their teams or participate in offseason activities. Students who have a third positive drug test are ruled ineligible for interscholastic competition for the remainder of their high school careers in Nevada.
Students who test positive must also submit to five follow-up tests over the course of the academic year, and the school can charge them $35 per test.
Source Las Vegas Sun 6th March 2009

The romance with weed is never-ending for California marijuana devotees. Now, they claim their beloved drug can save the state by solving its unrelenting budget nightmare.
State legislation is afoot to legalize and tax marijuana to backfill the state budget. But, like the grandiose daydreams of a stoner, the reality of this plan would be far different from its vision. I won’t go all “Reefer Madness” on you or claim that hemp T-shirts are a slippery slope to damnation. The problem with marijuana legalization is simpler and worse.
California cannot afford more stoned people, especially stoned young people. We need a lot fewer stoned people.
Prevention experts understand the problem with legalization: The greater the access to an intoxicant, the more abuse there will be of that intoxicant. Alcohol isn’t the most dangerous drug in the world because it’s worse than heroin or cocaine. It’s the most dangerous drug because it’s so easily accessible. You can get large quantities of it anywhere, and cheaply, too. Underage drinking is a big problem because kids can get alcohol so easily.
Legal marijuana would mean more access to marijuana. The number of marijuana users would spike, including teens. Problems related to marijuana use would spike. Marijuana lobbyists argue that if a dangerous drug such as alcohol is legal, then marijuana should be, too. I’ve never understood that. With all the problems we have with alcohol, why would we want to legalize another intoxicant?
Right now, there are 127 million alcohol users and 14 million marijuana users in this country – because one is legal and the other isn’t. But, most alcohol users don’t get intoxicated. About one-fifth of alcohol users binge drink or regularly drink heavily.
The serious problems from alcohol occur when people get intoxicated. With marijuana, you get intoxicated every time you use it. That’s the whole point. Marijuana intoxication and alcohol intoxication may be different, but both are bad for society.
Marijuana intoxication means cognitive impairment, grandiosity, short-term memory loss, difficulty in carrying out complex mental processes and impaired judgment. It severely hurts your ability to perform at school and work. It saps initiative and drive. It increases confusion. In other words, it makes you stupid.
An increase in stoners among California’s young people and work force would be very bad for the state. Right now, we’re in a recession in which people without college degrees are losing jobs twice as fast as people with college degrees. Our future economy will be based on innovation, education and highly skilled labor.
But we’re already not producing enough college graduates for our future work-force needs. With many more stoned teens and young people, the problems of an unskilled, uneducated and unmotivated work force will get worse. Stoned people can’t learn or work very well. Marijuana is the loser drug: That’s the big problem with it.
What about the idea that California can balance its budget by legalizing marijuana and taxing the heck out of it? You haven’t been paying attention to special-interest politics if you believe that.
Moneyed special interests run policy in this state. Look what happened when California criminal justice policies made prison guards one of the most powerful lobbies in the state. The union quickly began dictating policy in its own interest.
The alcohol industry is so powerful in California that beer taxes haven’t increased in nearly 20 years; the last time they were raised was by a minuscule amount and the industry almost killed that. A wealthy marijuana industry will soon co-opt policy-makers and dictate how much tax we charge, where we sell the product and who gets to buy it. Why would a marijuana industry be different from any other special interest?
Personally, I don’t think the marijuana lobby believes its own arguments. When I talk to legalization proponents, it usually boils down to their angry demand that people should be left alone to get stoned if they want to. That libertarian sentiment shows a complete disregard for the public good. If legalizers can’t understand that, elected policy-makers certainly should.
The disingenuousness of the marijuana lobby becomes clear on the subject of medical marijuana. For marijuana lobbyists to push both recreational marijuana and medicinal marijuana at the same time is duplicitous. It’s nakedly obvious where their real desires lie.
Recreational drug use and medical drug use have nothing in common. If pharmaceutical lobbyists pushed recreational and medical use of the same drug, they’d get hauled before Congress and slammed by state attorneys. But the marijuana lobby sees nothing wrong with its tactics.
How about a little more candour from marijuana romantics? Like the panhandler standing on a street corner with a sign that says, “Why lie? I just want a beer.”
Source: San Diego Union Tribune March 26, 2009

Texas Prevention Impact Index or TPII numbers for the past 4 years show decreases across the board here in Amarillo.
The Texas Prevention Impact Index is a report showing statistics in the usage of drugs, alcohol, tobacco, and violence among students in the Amarillo independent school district.
The TPII look at risk and protective factors that lead students to or away from the various substances. They look at perceptions in the community towards alcohol, drugs, and tobacco use. The numbers also reflect the usage of these substances by the students that fill out the survey.
25 hundred surveys are filled out by a cross section of students in the Amarillo school district, ranging from the 6th grade up to seniors in high school.
Here a few noteworthy statistics you may find interesting from the data collected by Research and Educational services, a private evaluation and research firm based out of Houston. The company has done the surveys and completed the data for A.I.S.D. since 2002.
47.9% of students say they would go to parents if they had a question about alcohol or drugs, versus 20.7% say they would ask a friend their age.
The number of students who say it’s ok to have alcohol to have a good time is 26% down from 30% just 4 years ago.
The number of students who think schools do NOT enforce rules on drinking have gone down form 30% to 19%, which means more students are getting the idea that it’s not acceptable to use alcohol from the school district.
In the category of usage in the past 30 days here are some numbers that show improvement.
In the past 30 days, seniors are using alcohol 7% less, using tobacco 6% less, and nearly 14% less of the students serveyed say they have participated in binge drinking in the past 30 days. All are positive stats.
87% of all students across the board have NOT used Marijuana in the past 30 days.
Frequency of usage numbers also show decreases. Tobacco is down 12%, alcohol is down 6%, marijuana is down 11%, this means that those kids that do use these substances are not using as frequently.
Some statistics that show perception changes are the following: 93% of the students surveyed say that they are harming themselves by smoking. 79% of students, up from 69% say that they are harming themselves by smoking marijuana.
Switching gears to violence and safety issues.
15% of students say they have been bullied during the past 30 days.
12% say they’ve been involved with a group fight.
In the past year the percentage of students who have been in a fight at school was 15%.
33.4% of the students say they have discussed safety issues with family in the past 30 days.
All in all, some of the numbers shown are alarming and some show great improvement in prevention and awareness programs here in Amarillo. The Amarillo community should be proud that the students have made progress and the school district is working decrease these all important problems.
“It shows, basically that the efforts that are being conducted here are working, to be honest with you when you look at the rest of the state or other areas in the state, I don’t think you see the same kind of trends or same kind of change in those areas, it’s been very successful here,” said Dr. Robert Landry, Director of Research and Educational Services.
“We’re seeing some decreases in some types of drug use which we’re glad to see, we also know that we need to continue the education K-12 for our students and be able to share current information with them,” said Teresa Kenedy, A.I.S.D. Prevention Specialist.
Source: www.connectamarillo.com 31st March 2009

Aim is reducing first-time use of dangerous narcotic through outreach, media
The Hawaii Meth Project kicks off today at the Kalihi YMCA, citing a new survey that says 30 percent of Hawai’i teens believe there is no risk to trying meth, and 19 percent say it’s readily available.
The statewide drug prevention project targets youths 12 to 17 years old and is aimed at reducing first-time methamphetamine use through a community outreach program and aggressive — some would say graphic — media campaign that begins today.
In one radio spot, Gloria, a 15-year-old recovering drug user, confesses:
“When you’re doing ice, everything is fast, everything is going like 500 mph, and all you can think about is getting high. And then I started doing things I normally wouldn’t do. I would have sex with my dealer for money. I would have sex with guys for money. I lost myself completely in one month.”
Hawai’i has one of the nation’s worst meth problems, ranking behind just four other states in a 2007 survey measuring meth use.Meth is one of the most addictive, destructive drugs in terms of the financial burden and human cost, said Michael Broderick, lead judge of the Special Division of First Circuit Family Court.
“Once someone has begun using, it’s very difficult to get them to stop,” Broderick said. “The Hawaii Meth Project is crucial to our efforts to combat this epidemic by preventing our young people from ever trying meth.”
In Hawai’i the perception among youths is that meth is good and consequences are minimal, so using it once or twice is not a problem, said Cindy Adams, executive director for the Hawaii Meth Project.
“It’s really alarming that kids see significant benefit with meth use in the way of weight loss, increased energy and alleviating boredom,” Adams said. “They don’t correlate risk with use.”
The television portion of the project’s Not Even Once campaign shows young, vibrant teens promising to try the drug just once, then spiraling out of control, losing their good looks, selling their bodies and turning to crime to sustain a habit they thought they could control. Radio ads made from testimonials by recovering teen drug users like Gloria will also be used.
Gloria goes on to say in her ad: “I lost my friend. (He) hung himself because of it, because he couldn’t handle hearing all the voices he heard,” Gloria said. “My friends were all selling their bodies. They’re in jail. Two of them are dead.”
Adams acknowledged that some people might have a visceral reaction to the spots, but she said the kids say this is what gets their attention. Before the campaign, the Meth Project surveyed 1,065 teens, 318 young adults and 400 parent of teens. Their replies demonstrate the need to change youths’ perception, Adams said.
The 2009 Hawaii Meth Use & Attitudes Survey found that one in three teens believes there is little or no risk in trying meth, 35 percent believe it can help you lose weight, 24 percent believe it gives you energy, 21 percent believe it can make you happy and 19 percent believe it helps alleviate boredom.
The survey also shows that teens and young adults are at high risk of exposure to meth, with 19 percent of the teens and 36 percent of young adults reporting that meth is readily available.
According to a 2007 Youth Risk Behavior Survey, 7.3 percent of Hawai’i 10th-graders said they had used meth, up 87 percent from 2005. National surveys on drug use and health conducted by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services found that Hawai’i ranked fifth in the nation for meth use by people 12 and older as recently as 2007.
Besides the television and radio ads, the project will place posters in areas where youths visit and run banner ads on www.MySpace.com, a popular Internet destination for youth ages 12 to 17. Eight radio spots were made from interviews with Hawai’i teenage drug users. Their names and neighborhoods were changed to protect their identities, but their stories are real, Adams said.
Lucien, 18, would use the rent money to buy his drugs and he said he didn’t care when his mother would cry about it.
“I started doing meth when I was 12 years old,” Lucien said in his radio spot. “My mom used to cut open her pillow and put her wallet inside and sleep on the pillow. It was so hard for her to trust us.”
Alan Shinn, executive director of Coalition for Drug Free Hawaii, said meth use is reportedly down in the Islands, but the state’s love affair with the drug persists. He said preventive education is a proven way to reduce the problem. When Montana launched the first such Meth Project in 2005, it was ranked No. 5 in the nation for meth use. Two years later, meth use among teens had dropped by 45 percent, and Montana ranked 39th.
“(Hawaii Meth Project) is looking at youths who have not ever used it, so they’re trying to keep them from using it at all,” Shinn said. “So for some of them, yes, I think it will be very effective, and for others, I think we’re going to have to look at other methods or strategies.”
Source: Honolulu Advertiser. 5th June 2009

According to a report CASA issued this morning, federal, state and local governments spend almost half a trillion dollars every year — almost 11 percent of their total budgets — as a result of alcohol, tobacco and other drug abuse and addiction. The worst part is that, for federal and state spending, about 95% of that money is spent “Shoveling Up” the mess created by a failure to provide enough money for prevention and treatment.
That’s right. Out of every dollar federal and state governments spent on substance misuse in 2005 (the latest data available), 95 cents paid for the enormous burden of this problem on health care, criminal justice, child welfare, education, and other programs. And only 2 cents were invested in prevention and treatment programs that could reduce many of these costs – and save lives.
1. See detailed expenses for your state and download the report:

http://www.jointogether.org/NO

Our researchers studied all federal, state and local budgets for 2005 using careful, conservative methods to determine how much of each major budget category was directly linked to substance misuse. For example, they determined how much of each state’s Medicaid and other health care expenses were due to one of over 70 medical diagnoses that are caused or made worse by alcohol, tobacco and other drug abuse and addiction. They did the same for criminal justice, welfare and other key government budgets. They also identified all government spending on prevention, treatment and research, regulation of alcohol and tobacco products and drug interdiction.
When the numbers are added up, the total is really shocking: 467.7 billion dollars. Spending less than 2% of the federal and state costs for prevention and treatment, and more than 95% shoveling up the mess, is upside down public policy that wastes billions in taxpayer dollars at a time when resources are scarce, and results in untold human suffering.
David L. Rosenbloom, President and CEO
The National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia Univ.
Source: CASA May 2009

3668 Bonita View Drive., Bonita, Ca. 91902 (619) 475 9941/475 9942 email rogermorgan339@sbcglobal.net

4/18/2009
To: President Barack Obama
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Ave NW
Washington, D.C. 20500

CC: Vice President Joe Biden
Director of The Office of National Drug Control Policy, Gil Kerlikowske

Dear Mr. President:

We, an international coalition of drug prevention professionals and organizations throughout the world, many with over thirty years of experience, believe that the nation’s problems of health, academic achievement, crime, welfare and resultant impacts on the federal and state budgets cannot be resolved without focusing on the root cause of all of these problems ….. alcohol, tobacco and other drugs (hereinafter ATOD). We therefore call upon the President of the United States to reduce the demand for ATOD as follows:

WHEREAS …..

• Almost all of our nation’s problems, are caused by or made worse by alcohol, tobacco
and illicit drugs. (hereinafter ATOD).

• In your first term of four years, unless there is a radical shift to prevent the disease of addiction, the nation will incur $2.4 TRILLION in cost and an estimated 2.8 MILLION AMERICANS WILL DIE from tobacco, alcohol, illicit drugs and misuse of legal drugs.

• Addiction to ATOD is a “pediatric onset disease” (Dr. Barthwell, former Deputy Director of ONDCP). Almost all addiction begins with adolescents, aged 11 to 18 years old.

• If a young person reaches age 21 prior to first significant use of alcohol, tobacco and illicit drugs, they should virtually never have a problem. (Joseph Califano Jr., Chairman of CASA)

• Just as we inoculate for measles, small pox, polio and other diseases, if we universally employ the best known prevention methods we can significantly reduce the level of death, destruction and economic cost of health care, and increase academic achievement and productivity.

• America has 5% of the world’s population, yet we consume 65% of illicit drugs. Over 2000 young people start smoking tobacco daily, 50% of whom will die from it, and in the process of dying will inflict enormous costs on society for health care. 50% of adolescents use drugs and alcohol, 25% frequently.

• Demand for drugs fuels the drug cartels which in turn financially underwrite terrorism and corruption in Mexico and throughout the world. Reducing demand is of equal importance to interdicting supply, and no longer an option if the nation is to effectively win the war on drugs.

• The High School Drop Out Rate – UC Santa Barbara recently concluded a study showing the average drop out rate in California is 24.2%. Each class of drop outs (127,000 students) cost California taxpayers $46.4 billion …. $365,000 PER DROP OUT, as two thirds will end up on welfare, in prison, and/or burdening public health care. Nationally there are 1.2 million high school drop outs (www.edweek.org). If the same cost figure applies as in California, the ANNUAL NATIONAL COST FOR HIGH SCHOOL DROP OUTS IS $438 BILLION.

• The Cost of Substance Abuse – NIDA reported in 2006 that the annual cost of illicit drugs to the nation was $181 billion, and when combined with alcohol they exceed $500 billion, which includes costs for healthcare, criminal justice and lost productivity. Add tobacco, and the figure is over $700 billion a year … SOON TO BE ONE TRILLION DOLLARS A YEAR.

• Criminal Activity/Prison Overcrowding – Drugs and alcohol are implicated in roughly 85% of all crime. 80% of prison inmates are high school drop outs. Unless corrective measures are taken to improve the high school drop out rate, the social and economic costs to society will increase as the employment, crime, welfare and health care costs increase.

• Death Rate – According to The Center for Disease Control, overdose deaths in 2006 amounted to 3,042 deaths a month. In 1998, the last year total drug deaths were quantified, overdose deaths were only 27% of the total and drug related deaths comprised the balance. If that holds true today, 2,620 Americans die weekly from drugs….. almost the equivalent of 9/11, every week. But tobacco trumps them all, with 1200 deaths a day.

• Treatment vs Prevention – NIDA reported in 2006 23.6 million persons aged 12 or older needed treatment for an illicit drug or alcohol (9.6% of persons aged 12 or older), and only 2.5 million actually got treatment. Every dollar spent on addiction treatment returned $4 to $7 dollars in reduction of drug-related crimes. While treatment is economically sound, and necessary, the savings in human lives, misery and costs from PREVENTING the problem to begin with could save HUNDREDS OF BILLIONS OF DOLLARS ANNUALLY.

• States (and we think the federal government) spend 113 times as much to clean up the devastation that substance abuse visits on children as they do to prevent and treat it.” (Joseph Califano; 2001 Study called Shoveling Up: The Impact of Substance Abuse on State Budgets). This is appalling economic and social policy.

• “The primary responsibility for the protection of its people does lie with the state itself …. and, prevention is the single most important dimension of the responsibility to protect. “(George Soros, The Bubble of American Supremacy)

• Parents are considered to be the number one factor in determining a child’s at-risk behavior. However, parents are unable to protect all children without federal help. 56% of kids in American children are at moderate to high risk of substance abuse (CASA) and the only plausible way to ensure that all children are protected is with federally mandated and approved school-based drug prevention programs in all schools combined with improved education for students and their parents on the pharmacology of drugs.

• We cannot rely on persuasion to get 17,000 school boards in America to make the right choices to defer the onset of ATOD and protect kids. A federal mandate is required to direct schools to protect all kids using the best known prevention techniques starting with non-punitive random drug testing.

• ATOD is a national problem, that inflicts more death, destruction and economic cost on this nation than all other forms of terrorism combined. It makes no sense to focus on terrorism alone, or a war in Iraq that claimed 3,000 soldiers in four years, when 3,000 Americans die monthly just from drug overdose, not to mention a cost of $200 billion a year just for drugs ( $600 billion if one adds alcohol and tobacco.)

• Two of the most important responsibilities of all elected officials are to protect the people, and manage tax dollars intelligently.

• Schools, by virtue of the fact they house 98.5% of adolescents, are critical in terms of shoring up the shortfalls in parenting. A federal mandate for schools to implement the best known prevention practices is an absolute necessity to protect all kids.

• In large part due to drugs and alcohol, there are 6.1 million children in America being raised by grandparents or foster parents; 1.6 million of those are in foster homes.

• China has more children getting straight A’s in school than all of the kids in the school system in America combined, and 1.2 million kids in America don’t even graduate from high school. (Capt Len Kaine, Retired) We cannot retain our competitive position in the world if this is not corrected.

THEREFORE we request President Obama and the Administration to take the following actions to reduce the demand for alcohol, tobacco and illicit drugs:

1) Implement a Demand Reduction Program in all schools for grades 6 through 12 to include:

A) A requirement for non-punitive random drug testing for ALL STUDENTS aged 11 to
17 years old. This is the best known tool for deterring the onset of ATOD use. It keeps kids in the system, gives them a reason to say no to peer pressure, takes the burden off teachers and the administration to play drug cop, identifies problems early so kids can get help if needed, keeps law enforcement out of the equation, gets parents involved when problems arise, decreases juvenile problems, and enhances academic achievement and graduation rates.

B) Use the best known practices to keep alcohol, tobacco and other drugs off campus.
According to CASA research, the propensity to use is 5 times greater if ATOD is readily available on campuses.

C) Strive to get Student Assistant Programs (SAP) and effective counselors on each campus, to
fill the void in many young people’s lives caused by the lack of effective parenting.

D) Continue with educational programs that convey an effective no-use message from grades
K – 12 for young people and adults in communicating the pharmacology of ATOD, and their effect on individuals and society in general.

E) Create activities during and after school that enhance physical fitness and healthy
lifestyles.

2) As a condition for receiving federal aid for welfare, health care or child/family assistance, require all
recipients to subject to random drug testing.

3) As a means of expanding knowledge on the pharmacology of drugs by parents and the general public, have ONDCP and/or the Department of Health and Human services provide materials and information to all major employers in the United States so they in turn can provide the information to their employees; and extend incentives such as tax credits for employees who pass an exam. Smaller employers should be allowed to piggy back on larger employers.

SUMMARY

The health of our nation, and the individuals in it, requires a coordinated effort by the Departments of Health and Human Service, Education and ONDCP, but most importantly, leadership from the President of the United States.

The magnitude of the problem suggests that DEMAND REDUCTION for alcohol, tobacco and other drugs is no longer an option, but a necessity, if America is to reduce the cost of health care, enhance education, productivity and retain its competitive position among nations. We pray that you will have the wisdom, courage and conviction to stand in the face of opposition and mandate a policy that will protect our young people, and in turn the future of our nation.

ENDORSED BY:

• Roger Morgan, Californians For Drug Free Schools
• Carla D. Lowe, Californians For Drug Free Schools
• Sandra Bennett, Northwest Center for Health & Safety
• Dee Rathbone, National Institute of Citizen Anti-Drug Policy
• Joyce Nalepka, Drug Free Kids, Americas Challenge
• Dr. Eric Voth, Consultant to the White House
• Ron Cuff, Partnership for Responsible Parenting
• Aurora Williams, Partnership for Responsible Parenting
• Dr. Arlene Seal, Founder & President, Positive Moves/CWD International, Inc.
• Dr. Eric Voth, Chairman of the Institute of Global Drug Policy
• Alex Romero, Founder, Arizonans for Drug Free Youth & Communities
• Mina Seinfeld de Carakushanksy, President of BRAHA, Brazilian Humanitarians in Action
• Brenda Chabot – The Inland Valley Drug Free Community Coalition
• Dr. Paul Chabot, Coalition for Drug Free California
• Lori Green, Yucca Valley Anti-Marijuana/drug Activist
• Cap Beyer, Chairman of the National Student Drug Testing Coalition
• Jeanette McDougall – MM, CCDP. Director – National Alliance for Health & Safety
• Katalin Szomor – Hungarian Parliament’s Drug Committee. Drug Czar 1991-1997
• Stephanie Haynes – SOS – Save our Society from Drugs
• Fabio Bernaber – President of Associazione Osservatorio Droga – Rome Italy
• Linda Taylor – Ex Director Repeal Prop 36 Fund. Anti Drug Activist
• Yvonne Gelpi, Former Head Mistress and Principle of De La Salle High School, New Orleans
• Geraldine Silverman – New Jersey Federation for Drug Free Communities
• Wayne Rogues – Retired DEA. Rogues Group
• Theresa Costello, Port Richmond Community Group, Philadephia
• Ruby Schaaf, R.N. The Chemical People of Erie County, Pa.
• Nancy Starr, The Chemcial People of Erie County, Pa.
• Kate Patten, The Kelley McEnery Baker Foundation. “Forever Kelley;s Mom”
• Susie Dugan, Drugwatch, Omaha, Nebraska

Arnold Schwarzenegger believes it could solve California’s spiralling financial crisis and supporters rave about its positive effects, so could marijuana be coming to a shop near you? Shane Dunphy reportsChanging attitudes: Legalising cannabis may be on the horizon in California, thanks to a softened stance from Arnold Schwarzenegger

The drug of choice for the free-love counterculture, marijuana has probably received more mixed press than any other recreational drug. Regular users speak of its positive effects: relaxation, warm, friendly feelings towards others and an expanded world-view.

Medical research, however, suggests that marijuana smoke actually contains more toxic substances than tobacco smoke. A study commissioned by the Canadian government, for example, determined that marijuana smoke contained 20 times more ammonia, and five times more hydrogen cyanide and nitrogen oxides than its legal counterpart, making it potentially much more harmful.

Yet the debate as to whether marijuana and its various related substances ( hashish, kief, and hash oil ) should be decriminalised continues, and the latest place to consider the ramifications of such a move is the US state of California.

Supporters of legalised marijuana claim that the drug can solve California’s spiralling financial crisis. A series of television ads was launched last week supporting a bill by Democratic assemblyman Tom Ammiano that would regulate and tax the sale of marijuana in the Golden State, where Arnold Schwarzenegger’s administration is in a $26bn ( €18.7bn ) black hole.

One of the 30-second films features an “actual marijuana user”. She is a retired, 58-year-old civil servant called Nadine Herndon, shown in front of her family portraits at home in Sacramento County, where she began using the drug after suffering a series of strokes three years ago. She speaks of the huge cuts to police, schools and healthcare that are imminent due to California’s budget crisis. She points out that Schwarzenegger and his legislature are ignoring millions of Californians who want to contribute by paying taxes on their marijuana usage.

The series of advertisements seem to have achieved their goal, as even the arch-conservative ‘Governator’ has softened his stance, and publicly stated that it is time to open the debate on fully legalising the weed, medical use of which was introduced in California by a majority vote in a 1996 referendum.

Commentators propose that there is a huge demographic in California who will support legalisation — children of the participants of the Summer of Love, who were raised within a hippy ethos, believing that smoking the occasional joint is perfectly normal.

The logical extension to this argument is obvious: if legalising marijuana can solve bankrupt California, then why not Ireland? A recent survey by the HSE showed that as many as 15pc of the Irish population use marijuana regularly ( at least once a year ), while 2pc use it daily. The highest using group, the study found, was 15–34 year olds.

Marijuana, as most people encounter it, is a dry, shredded green and brown mix of flowers, stems, seeds, and leaves derived from the hemp plant Cannabis sativa. The main active chemical in marijuana is delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol; THC for short.

The average user will buy marijuana by the quarter ounce, the average price of which is around €100. This will make approximately 20 average sized joints, putting the price of a joint at around a fiver, making it a reasonably competitive alternative to alcohol. Whether legalisation and an added tax would increase this price is open to conjecture. Perhaps a government sanctioned hash farmer, growing in bulk and without the need to hide from the law, would be able to produce a crop more cheaply than the current black market gardeners. And think of all the green jobs.

The campaign for legalisation in Ireland has been ongoing for many years, making a minor celebrity out of its most outspoken and flamboyant spokesperson, Luke “Ming the Merciless” Flanagan, currently a county councillor in Roscommon. Occasionally a TD ( usually in need of some cheap publicity ) will attempt to reopen the legalisation debate, but Ireland has never taken the argument really seriously — a fact that might change if California bites the hemp bullet.

Legalisation has been tried in other countries, with varying degrees of success. Some countries, Belgium, for instance, while not overtly legalising cannabis, tolerate its usage, and so long as the amount in your possession could be reasonably defined as for personal usage, the authorities will turn a blind eye. Canada legally permits small amounts of the drug to be held for personal usage, although marijuana is still grown and traded on the black market and is not yet centrally controlled.

Holland has become synonymous with the legalisation of marijuana, where it can be purchased legally through specially designated coffee shops, in the form of marijuana cigarettes, in teas and in cakes and biscuits. Interestingly, Holland does not condone the purchase of marijuana wholesale or in bulk, and this has, apparently, led to continued problems with the black market sale of the drug, and what the Dutch describe as “nuisance drug users”.

Recent studies of schools in Amsterdam show that the incidence of young people using marijuana regularly is slightly higher than Ireland, at 15.8pc. These studies have also commented on the growing levels of THC, the active ingredient, in Dutch cannabis, suggesting that long-term exposure has created an appetite for stronger and stronger crops, which private growers are doing their best to engineer.

New findings which link regular use of the drug to depression and lethargy have also brought the Dutch government under fire, and earlier this year 27 coffee shops were closed, all within 200 metres of schools. The traditional Dutch stance that marijuana is a harmless and relatively innocent soft drug seems to be under revision.

So while California is considering broadening its laws, Holland, with many years’ experience of selling marijuana openly, is tightening its legislation.

It would seem that this is a debate we will be hearing much more about as the international recession continues.
Source: Irish Independent 25th July 2009

Nine people accounted for 2,678 of the emergency room visits in the Austin, Texas, area during the past six years at a cost of $3 million to taxpayers and others, according to a report by the nonprofit Integrated Care Collaboration, a group of health care providers who care for low-income and uninsured patients. The average emergency room visit costs $1,000. Hospitals and taxpayers paid the bill through government programs such as Medicare and Medicaid. Eight of the nine patients have drug abuse problems, seven were diagnosed with mental health issues and three were homeless.
Source: St.Petersburg Times. 4th April 2009

11/17/2004

News Feature
By Erika Miles Edwards

South Boston is a close-knit community of 3 square miles and 30,000 people. It’s the kind of place where everyone knows everyone else, and gossip, good or bad, spreads like wildfire.

South Boston also is a community with a significant heroin problem. In the past three years alone, 125 young people from South Boston aged 17-24 have died from using heroin. An estimated five to ten times as many have overdosed — some several times — but lived. The community is on the front lines of an epidemic of heroin use among young adults in the greater Boston area, where the drug is $4 a bag and so potent that it can be snorted instead of injected. Heroin overdoses are one of the leading causes of death among young adults in the region.

People in communities that lose children to tragic circumstances tend to bond together, and South Boston is no exception. In response to the crisis, a group of 10 mothers with children addicted to heroin formed the South Boston Family Resource Center and started a 24-hour hotline for families who need help. The group finds treatment for those who want it, even driving people to their first appointment. For many young adults, they are a lifeline.

Strange Remedy

Sometimes crises bear solutions that, under any other circumstance, would seem strange. In the case of the mothers of the South Boston Family Resource Center, that solution came in the form of the Dorchester Drug Court, founded by Judge Robert Ziemian, presiding justice of the South Boston District Court, with help from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

The drug court is a collaborative process designed to help addicted individuals facing criminal charges get through treatment, a process that can take 15 months or more. Participants start out in detox, and then go to residential treatment for a minimum of six months. When they’re ready, they move to outpatient treatment, then relapse prevention, before being left unsupervised. Then, they are on their own, their criminal charges erased.

Drug-court participants are motivated through the system with sanctions, drug testing, encouragement, and support. Most adult drug-court clients are severely addicted, with long histories in the criminal-justice and social-service systems.

“If you think someone should be in jail, that’s who we want in drug court, because we know drug court keeps people in treatment,” said Ziemian. “Most people have setbacks, but from our experience, we know when those are going to occur. We’re watching them, and we’re encouraging them to succeed.”

After Ziemian started his drug court in 1995, word spread quickly of this place where people with criminal records were getting treatment and leaving clean and sober. He soon was approached by a mother in South Boston, asking him what he could do to help stem the tide of heroin overdoses.

“We normally work with hardened addicts,” said Ziemian. “They’re older, and have had a longer history with substance abuse. It’s easier to convince them that they need treatment. But we had to do something to help these kids. We needed to stop the overdosing before another death occurred.”

Mothers of children at risk of overdoses received letters from the probation office, inviting them to discuss solutions. The result: The women decided to apply for restraining orders against their heroin-addicted kids. Since a child breaking a restraining order is subject to criminal charges, the parents reasoned, these young adults would get connected to the criminal-justice system and be supervised in the South Boston Drug Court, receiving life-saving treatment in the process.

Not surprisingly, word of the solution spread like wildfire throughout South Boston. Even with a shortage of resources, the court has produced dramatic results. “One of the things we’ve learned about drug court is that you can usually coerce someone into treatment with the threat of jail or brief incarceration,” Ziemian said. “We and the parents have a chance to get through to them.” Notably, not a single person under active supervision of the drug court has died of a drug overdose.

Building on History

For years, America has fought an expensive war against drugs, using tactics ranging from extensive eradication efforts to lengthy periods of incarceration. In 1989, a judge in Miami dared to try something different, offering people with criminal cases treatment instead of incarceration and, in doing so, created the nation’s first drug court.

Around the same time, Ziemian returned to Massachusetts from Operation Desert Storm. Assigned to the Dorchester District Court in South Boston, he processed cases involving guns and drugs, and gained a reputation for sentencing criminal defendants to lengthy periods of incarceration.

Ziemian’s first impressions of drug courts were less than positive. “I went to a workshop about it at a bar association meeting, and I thought the guy was out of his mind,” he recalled. But Ziemian was urged by the Boston Coalition Against Drugs and Violence and by Join Together to look into the concept. A turning point was when Ziemian went to Miami to see the first drug court in action.

“For those familiar with court proceedings, drug courts are very different,” said Ziemian. “You really have to go, watch what happens, talk about it afterwards. But once you’ve seen it in action, it all makes sense.”

Today, Ziemian is the driving force behind the development of more than 30 drug courts in Massachusetts, Connecticut, Maine, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island. His Dorchester drug court is a model recognized by the National Association of Drug Court Professionals.

Each drug court develops differently, but in Massachusetts and throughout New England, many follow Ziemian’s model — with his assistance. The process starts with the support of a district’s presiding judge, who brings the other justices on board. Ziemian then meets with the justices and the clerks, probation officers, lawyers, treatment providers, and public-health officials who need to work together to make the drug court succeed.

Over objections heard from every drug court he has ever established, Ziemian sets the first drug-court date for as soon after the initial meeting as possible; the only way to learn is to do, he believes. Cases stay in their courts of origin, which forces teams in those regions to work together to come up with solutions. Every probation officer, for example, has to learn how to work with serious drug offenders and treat substance use disorders holistically, coach people through treatment, even find them treatment slots.

Strong Results, But a Struggle for Funding

But do drug courts work? Research shows that addiction treatment significantly reduces drug use, crime, and additional medical problems. Drug courts specifically reduce recidivism, or re-entry into the criminal-justice system, which saves states significant amounts of money. Nationally, incarceration costs at least $20,000 annually per person, whereas drug court costs about $4,000. Additionally, one study found that the Lackawanna Drug Court in upstate New York State saved over $2.1 million annually in public assistance, foster care, substance-free births, and child support.

Despite widespread support within the criminal-justice system, however, Ziemian and his drug-court colleagues struggle for financial stability. The Massachusetts state legislature has never provided line-item funding for drug courts, so the state’s drug courts run on skeleton crews of committed lawyers, justices, and probation officers. Ziemian has received federal grant funding to hire a coordinator that he shares with other regional courts, but worries about what he will do when that support runs out.

“Drug courts have a lot of moving pieces — many more than regular courts,” said Ziemian. “People are with us for much longer than people with other types of sentences. We build relationships with them. They count on us. We don’t want to give up on it because of lack of resources.”

“We want to do everything we can to help these kids,” added Ziemian. “We need to institutionalize this system. We need data to show that it works. We need an alumni network that could mentor the kids in the system. We can’t do that without help.”

Despite such funding worries, Judge Ziemian hopes that all judicial districts in New England will soon have drug courts. “The only thing I don’t have to do is convince people that their communities have problems with drugs. Drugs are everywhere,” he says. “With drug courts, we can do something about it.”

By Erika Miles Edwards

People in communities that lose children to tragic circumstances tend to bond together, and South Boston is no exception. In response to the crisis, a group of 10 mothers with children addicted to heroin formed the South Boston Family Resource Center and started a 24-hour hotline for families who need help. The group finds treatment for those who want it, even driving people to their first appointment. For many young adults, they are a lifeline.

Strange Remedy

Sometimes crises bear solutions that, under any other circumstance, would seem strange. In the case of the mothers of the South Boston Family Resource Center, that solution came in the form of the Dorchester Drug Court, founded by Judge Robert Ziemian, presiding justice of the South Boston District Court, with help from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

The drug court is a collaborative process designed to help addicted individuals facing criminal charges get through treatment, a process that can take 15 months or more. Participants start out in detox, and then go to residential treatment for a minimum of six months. When they’re ready, they move to outpatient treatment, then relapse prevention, before being left unsupervised. Then, they are on their own, their criminal charges erased.

Drug-court participants are motivated through the system with sanctions, drug testing, encouragement, and support. Most adult drug-court clients are severely addicted, with long histories in the criminal-justice and social-service systems.

“If you think someone should be in jail, that’s who we want in drug court, because we know drug court keeps people in treatment,” said Ziemian. “Most people have setbacks, but from our experience, we know when those are going to occur. We’re watching them, and we’re encouraging them to succeed.”

After Ziemian started his drug court in 1995, word spread quickly of this place where people with criminal records were getting treatment and leaving clean and sober. He soon was approached by a mother in South Boston, asking him what he could do to help stem the tide of heroin overdoses.

“We normally work with hardened addicts,” said Ziemian. “They’re older, and have had a longer history with substance abuse. It’s easier to convince them that they need treatment. But we had to do something to help these kids. We needed to stop the overdosing before another death occurred.”

Mothers of children at risk of overdoses received letters from the probation.office, inviting them to discuss solutions. The result: The women decided to apply for restraining orders against their heroin-addicted kids. Since a child breaking a restraining order is subject to criminal charges, the parents reasoned, these young adults would get connected to the criminal-justice system and be supervised in the South Boston Drug Court, receiving life-saving treatment in the process.

Not surprisingly, word of the solution spread like wildfire throughout South Boston. Even with a shortage of resources, the court has produced dramatic results. “One of the things we’ve learned about drug court is that you can usually coerce someone into treatment with the threat of jail or brief incarceration,” Ziemian said. “We and the parents have a chance to get through to them.” Notably, not a single person under active supervision of the drug court has died of a drug overdose.

Building on History

For years, America has fought an expensive war against drugs, using tactics ranging from extensive eradication efforts to lengthy periods of incarceration. In 1989, a judge in Miami dared to try something different, offering people with criminal cases treatment instead of incarceration and, in doing so, created the nation’s first drug court.

Around the same time, Ziemian returned to Massachusetts from Operation Desert Storm. Assigned to the Dorchester District Court in South Boston, he processed cases involving guns and drugs, and gained a reputation for sentencing criminal defendants to lengthy periods of incarceration.

Ziemian’s first impressions of drug courts were less than positive. “I went to a workshop about it at a bar association meeting, and I thought the guy was out of his mind,” he recalled. But Ziemian was urged by the Boston Coalition Against Drugs and Violence and by Join Together to look into the concept. A turning point was when Ziemian went to Miami to see the first drug court in action.

“For those familiar with court proceedings, drug courts are very different,” said Ziemian. “You really have to go, watch what happens, talk about it afterwards. But once you’ve seen it in action, it all makes sense.”

Today, Ziemian is the driving force behind the development of more than 30 drug courts in Massachusetts, Connecticut, Maine, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island. His Dorchester drug court is a model recognized by the National Association of Drug Court Professionals.

Each drug court develops differently, but in Massachusetts and throughout New England, many follow Ziemian’s model — with his assistance. The process starts with the support of a district’s presiding judge, who brings the other justices on board. Ziemian then meets with the justices and the clerks, probation officers, lawyers, treatment providers, and public-health officials who need to work together to make the drug court succeed.

Over objections heard from every drug court he has ever established, Ziemian sets the first drug-court date for as soon after the initial meeting as possible; the only way to learn is to do, he believes. Cases stay in their courts of origin, which forces teams in those regions to work together to come up with solutions. Every probation officer, for example, has to learn how to work with serious drug offenders and treat substance use disorders holistically, coach people through treatment, even find them treatment slots.

Strong Results, But a Struggle for Funding

But do drug courts work? Research shows that addiction treatment significantly reduces drug use, crime, and additional medical problems. Drug courts specifically reduce recidivism, or re-entry into the criminal-justice system, which saves states significant amounts of money. Nationally, incarceration costs at least $20,000 annually per person, whereas drug court costs about $4,000. Additionally, one study found that the Lackawanna Drug Court in upstate New York State saved over $2.1 million annually in public assistance, foster care, substance-free births, and child support.

Despite widespread support within the criminal-justice system, however, Ziemian and his drug-court colleagues struggle for financial stability. The Massachusetts state legislature has never provided line-item funding for drug courts, so the state’s drug courts run on skeleton crews of committed lawyers, justices, and probation officers. Ziemian has received federal grant funding to hire a coordinator that he shares with other regional courts, but worries about what he will do when that support runs out.

“Drug courts have a lot of moving pieces — many more than regular courts,” said Ziemian. “People are with us for much longer than people with other types of sentences. We build relationships with them. They count on us. We don’t want to give up on it because of lack of resources.”

“We want to do everything we can to help these kids,” added Ziemian. “We need to institutionalize this system. We need data to show that it works. We need an alumni network that could mentor the kids in the system. We can’t do that without help.”

Source: JTO online Nov 2004.

The rate of drug addiction in the Tuva Republic in 2000  rose to almost four times Russia’s national average. Tuva has 226.1 addicts per 100,000 members of the population, compared to the national average of 59.7 addicts per 100,000, interfax-Eurasia reported. According to the agency, the number of addicts in the republic has increased 40 times during the last 10 years, and the number of crimes involving the illegal sale of drugs has risen 10 times. Recent reports suggest that Tuva is becoming a second Colombia,’ where the local narco-business is becoming the republic’s primary business activity.

While needle exchange advocates claim that such programs effectively prevent the spread of blood borne diseases such as HIV and hepatitis, the latest report from Vancouver, which boasts the largest needle exchange program (NEP) in North America, suggest otherwise. In fact, this report’s ‘smoking gun’ is its finding that both HIV and Hepatitis C have reached ‘saturation’ among the injection drug using population, meaning few if any of who are not already infected are left to become newly infected.
Here are some of the reports specific findings: In 2002, nearly 3 million needles were distributed by NEPs in the City. Injection drug use was the main mode of HIV transmission in British Columbia from 1994 to 2000. Today injecting drug use and men having sex with men tie as the top risk factors for new HIV cases.

Vancouver began its NEP in 1988, and the number of new HIV infections among injecting drug users (IDUs) increased every year thereafter until peaking in 1996. A 1997 study of more than 1,400 Vancouver IDUs revealed an annual HIV infection rate of 18 percent– the highest level anywhere in the developed world and one of the highest incidence rates reported anywhere worldwide The number of new positive tests began to increase again in 2002 and estimates for 2002 anticipate a further increase. This report notes that many infected injecting drug users have not been tested, so these rates are likely to be higher. The current HIV prevalence among Vancouver IDUs is 35 percent.
The report attributes the HIV incidence peak in 1996 not to the success of needle exchange, but rather to ‘the near saturation’ of HIV infection among IDUs, meaning after 1996 there were few drug addicts left to become newly infected. Needle exchange not only failed to prevent HIV from reaching a saturation point among Vancouver IDUs, but also had the same lack of effectiveness if preventing the spread of hepatitis C (HCV). This report notes that like HIV, HCV has also reached a saturation point among Vancouver IDUs with over 80 percent infected with the incurable and deadly blood borne disease. Nearly two-thirds of Vancouver HCV cases are attributable to injection drug use with Vancouver’s HCV rate being nearly four-times higher than the rate for Canada as a whole.

In 1997, the reported rate of newly identified hepatitis B infections another blood born disease often spread by needle sharing– in Vancouver was eight times the rate for the rest of British Columbia and the highest rate in Canada. The leading cause of death of Vancouver drug addicts is overdose, accounting for 25 percent of deaths among those who are HIV-positive and 42 percent among those who are HIV-negative. Although the overall British Columbia crime rate has decreased over the past decade, drug offenses have increased by 63%. A study by the Canadian centre on Substance Abuse estimated that half of gainful crimes such as theft, break and enter, and robberies were attributed to substance abuse.
Source: Vancouver drug Epidemiology report 2003, Posted on www.ccsa.ca/ccendu/pdf/report

Marijuana use and Trends

What’s Down with Marijuana?

What has the latest research shown us about marijuana? Among other things, marijuana has now been linked to violent teen behaviour, may be responsible for youth tongue cancer, and has been shown in weekly users to trigger suicidal depression. For those with a disposition toward other serious mental illness, marijuana has been found to unleash it.

Marijuana usage up somewhat

The myth among youth is that ‘everyone is doing it.’ In fact, the majority is not – 51 percent of high school seniors have never tried marijuana even once. However, 22 percent of seniors are ‘current’ (past month) users of marijuana. The hard-core, or daily marijuana users (20 or more times in the past 30 days) remain a small portion of youth: 5.8 percent of seniors, 4.5 percent of sophomores, and 1.3 percent of eighth graders.

New use and historical patterns

There have been ebbs and flows in use of marijuana over the past 40 years. About 2.4 million Americans tried marijuana for the first time in 2000. This was a substantial increase from 600,000 new users in 1965, However, initiation in the marijuana world peaked in 1976-1977 at 3.2 million, and dipped to its lowest figure in decades at 1.4 million in 1990. New users rose from there until hitting 2.5 million in 1996, where it has remained for half a decade.

Marijuana has been on the American scene for at least a century. In 1906, it was proscribed under the Pure Food and Drug Act. In 1914, Utah was the first state to pass anti marijuana legislation; by 1931, 29 states had prohibited the medical use of marijuana. In 1936, the government film, ‘Reefer Madness’ was released; it is still a cult film. In 1970. the Federal Government eliminated mandatory sentencing for possession of small amounts of marijuana.

The peak year for teen use of marijuana was 1979. In 1985, synthetic THC, or Marinol, was produced to relieve the nausea of cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy. In 2001, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously voted down medical marijuana laws. That same year, the #1 rap song “Because I Got High” by Afroman spoke about the destructive effects of marijuana

ccording to the results of a national survey in America 34% of parents of teens thought their child had been offered drugs, while over one-half (52%) of the teens reported being offered drugs. This disparity is even greater for youth–7% of parents thought their preteen had ever been offered drugs, while 23% of the youths said they actually had. Parents perceptions of their children’s drug use is not much better. While parents of preteens had fairly accurate perceptions of their children’s experimentation with marijuana and cocaine, they underestimated their children’s use of inhalants. Parents of teenagers seriously underestimated their children’s use of all three of these substances. According to the authors, “parents need to understand the true vulnerability of their kids to drug experimentation today, and to educate themselves about drug use so that they can have greater confidence in listening to, talking with, and educating their children”.

Drug Availability and Use Among U.S. Students, Grades 4-12,
Parents Perceptions Versus Students’ Self-Reports, 1995*

Pre-teens Teenagers
(Grades 4-6) (Grades 7 – 12)

Parents’ Youth Parents’ Teens
Student’s Experiences Perceptions Reported perceptions Reported

Anyone ever tried to sell or give drugs 7% 23% 34% 52%
to student
Student tried marijuana at least once 1 2 14 38
Student tried cocaine/crack at least once 1 1 3 8
Student tried inhalants at least once 1 6 3 24

*This national survey was conducted by Audits & Surveys Worldwide, Inc. on behalf of the Partnership For a Drug-Free America. Self-administered questionnaires were given to a randomly selected sample of 2,424 youth (grades 4-6). 6,096 teenagers (grades 7-12) and 822 parents (adults aged 18 and older who were parents of children under 19). The survey was conducted in May and June of 1995.
Source: CESAR from Partnership, for a Drug-Free America. Attitude Tracking Study. February 1996.

A new health education campaign launching in the Phoenix area seeks to respond to data from the Partnership for a Drug-Free America (PDFA) that finds usage rates of methamphetamine and Ecstasy among Phoenix-area teens are above national averages. The campaign unveiled today by the Partnership – with support from the Partnership for a Drug-Free Arizona, the Arizona Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics (AzAAP) and Consumer Healthcare Products Association (CHPA) – is dedicated to reducing methamphetamine and Ecstasy use among teens in the Phoenix area. The campaign consists of a pediatrician-driven media outreach effort designed to educate parents and teens about the dangerous health consequences of these drugs, and includes an intensive public service advertising campaign in the Phoenix market. Phoenix is one of two U.S. cities where the campaign is being introduced.

“The disturbing number of teens in the Phoenix area who already are experimenting with these drugs makes this a health problem that must be addressed,’ said Dr. Peggy Stemmler, president of the AzAAP, a key partner in the new health education campaign. “Paediatricians are in a unique position to help close the gap between perception and reality about the real consequences of these drugs.”

In the Phoenix area, 14 paediatricians will serve as primary spokespeople for the media communications effort. Campaign coordinators believe the voice of the medical community will resonate with parents in particular in order to motivate them to take an active role in persuading their teens not to use these drugs. HMA Public Relations, a local public relations agency, will coordinate media efforts for paediatricians participating locally.

“More than one of every three teens in the Phoenix area has been offered Ecstasy or ‘meth,’ and teen use of both drugs is above national averages,” said Steve Pasierb, president and CEO of the Partnership, the national non profit organization best known for its media-based drug education campaigns. “Phoenix needs the facts about the real risks of using these drugs if we’re going to turn those numbers around.” The Partnership is providing the local effort with hard-hitting public service ads for television, radio, print and Internet, as well as with research to measure the impact of the effort.

Top-line findings of the Partnership for a Drug-Free America’s study include:

* 13 percent of Phoenix-area teenagers report having used methamphetamine (meth), compared to nine percent of all teens nationwide; 13 percent report having used Ecstasy, compared to 11 percent of all teens nationwide;
* 33 percent of teens report having been offered methamphetamine, and 35 percent report being offered Ecstasy;
* 61 percent of teens report knowing someone who uses Ecstasy, and half (50 percent) report knowing someone who uses methamphetamine; and
* Just one to two percent of Phoenix-area parents surveyed (one percent for Ecstasy, two percent for meth) agree that it’s possible their kids may have tried these drugs.

“Survey data also show parents and teens underestimate the specific health risks of these drugs,’ said Pasierb. “Risk-related attitudes correlate strongly with trends in drug use; for example, when teenagers see greater risks associated with a particular drug, use of that drug declines, Unfortunately, the opposite holds true as well, so the time is right for a concerted intervention to reverse the trends were seeing in Phoenix.”

Methamphetamine is an addictive stimulant. Often called ‘speed’ or ‘crystal’, meth is a crystal-like, powdered substance that sometimes comes in large rock-like chunks. Meth is usually white or slightly yellow, depending on the purity. The drug can be taken orally, injected, snorted or smoked. Once a threat largely in the American southwest, production and use of the drug, which is cheaper and longer lasting than cocaine, has moved steadily eastward in recent years, finding willing users in a generation unlikely to remember the phrase, ‘speed kills’. Long-term use and/or high doses of methamphetamine can bring on full-blown toxic psychosis, often exhibited as violent, aggressive behaviour. Ecstasy–chemically known as 3-4 methylenedioxymethamphetamine, or MDMA – is a psychoactive drug with amphetamine-like and hallucinogenic properties. It can be extremely dangerous, especially in high doses. Usually taken orally in pill form, the drug accelerates the release of serotonin in the brain and provides users with an intense high, characterized by feelings of love and acceptance, as well as a general sense of well being, decreased anxiety and enhanced sensitivity to touch. Ecstasy can cause dramatic increases in body temperature, muscle breakdown, and kidney and cardiovascular system failure, as reported in some fatalities.
Source: Press release, Partnership For Drug Free America June 200

A new federal report says that adolescents who are first-time marijuana users are at risk for becoming addicted to harder drugs, such as cocaine and heroin. While the report indicated a decline from previous years in the number of adolescents who are first-time marijuana users, it also found that marijuana users are at risk for long-term drug addiction. The study found that 62 percent of cocaine users aged 26 or older were first-time marijuana users by the age of 14.

“Marijuana is not a soft drug, said John P. Walters, director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy.

The study, which is based on the 1999 and 2000 National Household Surveys on Drug Abuse, found that two million American youth aged 12 or older used marijuana for the first time in 1999, a drop from 2.5 million in 1998.
Source: National Household Survey 1999/2000, Reported by associated Press 2001

Sustained attention to timing-tasks was substantially altered in laboratory rats when they were given a synthetic cannabinoid – a compound similar to the naturally occurring one in marijuana, according to a just published study by scientists at the University of Georgia. The research team, headed by psychologist Jonathan Crystal, showed that rats ‘under the influence’ had difficulty distinguishing between long and short periods of time during tasks for which they were trained. “In the real world, this suggests that someone smoking marijuana might well be able to do a task briefly, but overtime there could be serious attention problems, said Crystal. The implication is that users of marijuana could be lulled into thinking they are capable of using the motor skills for such actions as driving when in fact there could be serious long-term attention-span problems.

The study used rats that were placed in a box equipped with a speaker and two retractable levers. A sound was presented to the rats for either a short period or a long period. For example, the rats were required to distinguish between four and 16 seconds. If the duration of the sound was short, the rat had to press one of the levers to obtain a pellet of food. The rat had to press the other ever to receive food if the sound was long. “Under these circumstances, animals will typically learn to press the correct lever with high accuracy,” the authors said. The research team then played sounds of intermediate length to find a midpoint at which rats were equally likely to respond as if the sound were ‘short’ or ‘long’. After the rats learned the right levers to press, they were injected with a synthetic cannabinoid, and their sensitivity to time was measured, Cannabinoids produced a substantial decline in sensitivity to time through a specific brain receptor mechanism. Crystal’s team used a synthetic compound rather than tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the ‘active’ ingredient in marijuana, because the synthetic cannabinoid is more powerful and easier to use in laboratory settings. It is so close chemically to THC, however, that the findings can be equated with the effects of THC. Using computer models to interpret the data, the scientists found that the general ability to maintain attention was altered by exposure to the cannabinoid, The cannabinoid disrupted performance of the task by producing a disorder of attention.The research was just published online in the journal Behavioural Brain Research and will be published soon in its print version. Co-authors of the paper are Andrea Hohmann and laboratory research coordinator Kenneth Maxwell, both also of UGA. The study was funded by a grant from the National Institute on Drug Abuse.
The raw data from the study are available at http://www.uga.edu/animal-cognition-lab.
Source: Ascribe newswire, Athens, Ga June 03

A new study finds that high school students who smoke marijuana are likely to see lower math scores, and ultimately, lower wages, than peers. Poets and literary types may have less to fear however. Scores showed no difference on reading scores between potheads and those who abstained from the weed.
Economist Rosalie Pacula from the public policy group RAND presented her findings at a conference on global health economics in San Francisco this week. It makes a lot of sense that it (marijuana) would affect certain types of cognitive functioning, particularly things that are hard to grasp like math,” she said. Her study looked at 6,000 standardized test scores of those who started using marijuana after the 10th grade in 1990 and compared with results when they were in the 12th grade in 1992. Those who started smoking marijuana had 15 percent lower scores in math than non-smokers but no difference in the reading test, Pacula said. That lower math score could result in a salary 2 percent lower later in life, her research found.Source: Reuters June 2003.

The prevalence of marijuana use among young people has risen rapidly in recent years, causing concern over the potential impact on academic performance of such use. While recent studies have examined the effect of alcohol use on educational attainment, they have largely ignored the potential negative effects of other substances, such as marijuana. This paper examines whether the relationship between the initiation of marijuana use and the decision to drop out of high school varies with the age of dropout or with multiple substance use. Data are from a longitudinal survey of 1392 adolescents aged 16-18 years. The results suggest that marijuana initiation is positively related to dropping out of high school. Although the magnitude and significance of this relationship varies with age of dropout and with other substances used, it is concluded that the effect of marijuana in on the probability of subsequent high school dropout is relatively stable, with marijuana users odds of dropping out being about 2.3 times that of non-users. Implications of these conclusions are considered for both policy makers and researchers.
Source: Author Bray, Zarkin et al Research Triangle Institute NC USA July 1999

According to a new study by Dr. Zuo-feng Zhang of the Johnson cancer center at the university of California Los Angles, smoking marijuana can cause cancer.“many people may think marijuana is harmless, but it is not”, Zhang said in a statement. “The carcinogens in marijuana are much stronger than those in tobacco. the big message here is the marijuana, like tobacco, can cause cancer.”Zhang studied 173 patients diagnosed with head and neck cancer, and compared them to 176 cancer free control patients. Those who said they habitually smoked marijuana were more likely to be in the group with head and neck cancers. And the more they smoked , the bigger the risk.
Source: Dr Zhag , Jonsson cancer center University of California,Reported in
journal of cancer Epidemiology Biomarker and prevention Dec 1999.

Youngsters who smoke cigarettes are more likely to use marijuana than those who don’t smoke, according to a study released Tuesday. The report by the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University and the American Legacy Foundation said young cigarette smokers are 14 times more likely to try pot. Eighty-four percent of the kids who have tried marijuana have smoked cigarettes within the past 30 days. The study focusing on 12- to 17-year-olds also found those who smoke cigarettes are six times likelier to be able to buy marijuana in an hour or less and 18 times likelier to say most of their friends smoke pot.

“Pot is a significant presence in the lives of teenage smokers,” said Joseph Califano Jr., president of the addiction center. “If kids are regularly smoking, you should be concerned they are smoking pot.” Califano said anti-tobacco campaigns can make help reduce pot smoking among young Americans and urged the Bush administration to educate people on the dangers of tobacco use.Young people perceive a link between cigarette smoking and pot use: When asked whether they think that a kid who smokes cigarettes is more Likely to use pot, 77 percent responded yes.

The study found:

–Among those who acknowledge having tried marijuana, those who do not smoke cigarettes are likelier to have tried pot only once.
–Teens who have tried pot and are current cigarette smokers are 60 percent likelier to be repeat marijuana users.
–Fifty-five percent of those who are current cigarette smokers report more than half their friends use marijuana.
–Among the kids who have tried pot, 57 percent first smoked cigarettes; 29 percent never smoked cigarettes; and 13 percent either tried pot and cigarettes at the same time or tried pot before cigarettes.

In the survey by QEV Analytics, 1,987 teenagers and 504 parents of teenagers were interviewed between April 30 and July 14 over the telephone. The margin of error for the 2003 survey is plus or minus 2 percentage points.
Source: Report by National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia university.
Reported by association press Sept 2003

Augusta, June 3,2003… Main’s House of Representatives voted 95-47 to join California, Delaware, New York, and Connecticut in passing smoke free workplace legislation for ALL workers. The bill now goes to the full Senate where it’s expected to pass. Earlier this month the Legislative Health and Human Services Committee voted 12-1 in favour of the legislation.

Gov. John Baldacci, director of communications, has also indicated support for the measure. Having already passed smoke free restaurant legislation four years ago, Maine has seen the benefit of smoke free laws. Consequently, opposition to this years smoke free bar proposal has been minimal.

“We’re tired of working in an environment that is not safe or healthy,” said Rep. Leila Percy, a Phippsburg Democrat who works as a singer and bandleader in the haze of clubs that serve alcohol.Rep. Roger Landry said that after his decade-long battle against cancer, he puts health concerns over personal freedoms cited by the bill’s opponents.

To become the 5th smoke free state, Maine will have to compete with Massachusetts and Rhode Island which are also in final stages of smoke free workplace legislation for ALL workers (including restaurant and bar workers).

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful citizens can change the world. Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.” Margaret Mead
Source: www.smokefree.org

The greatest cause of disease and death in every developed country and most developing countries is tobacco addiction. The World Health Organization estimates that tobacco addiction kills 5 million people worldwide each year, including more than 400,000 Americans. In effort to combat this worldwide plague, the World Health Organization (made up of 192 member countries) voted unanimously last week to adopt the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC). The Convention urges countries to eliminate tobacco advertising, establish bigger/stronger warning labels, raise cigarette prices, and adopt smoke free workplace laws.

France announced that it is raising cigarette prices by 25% and will continue to do so until prices reach 7 euros ($8.40) per pack. Currently, cigarettes cost about 4 euros ($4.80) per pack. The last price hike resulted in a 10% decline in youth smoking. In addition new cigarette warning labels have gone into effect in Europe covering 1/3 of both the front and back of a pack of cigarettes. Canada and Brazil have strong picture based warning labels. Ireland and Norway have announced that restaurants and bars will be smoke free next year. Finland currently has smoke free casinos.

In the U.S., four entire states— CA, DE, NY, and CT– have gone totally smoke free (including restaurants, bars, and casinos). Hundreds of cities have also gone totally smoke free, including four of the most popular tourist destinations— New York, Los Angeles, Boston, and San Francisco. Canada and Australia continue to lead the world in smoke free workplace legislation.

In Japan the densely populated Chiyoda Ward went smoke free outdoors last year in response to growing complaints from residents about sidewalks and roads littered with cigarette butts and clothes being burned by cigarettes. Mayor Masami Ishikawa himself a smoker backed the ordinance, saying he believes it is no longer possible to rely on smokers to voluntarily stop throwing cigarette trash on the street.

Although there is much to be done, it is obvious that the world is taking action to prevent another generation of tobacco addiction and disease. Five million deaths a year are simply too much to ignore.
Source: smoke Free Educational services, www.corpwatch.org, June 2003

Ads warning about the dangers of smoking pot or taking Ecstasy can persuade young people stay away from drugs, according to a study released by an advocacy group.A survey of teens conducted for the Partnership for a Drug Free America found kids who see or hear anti drug ads at least once a day are less likely to do drugs than youngsters who don’t see or hear ads frequently. Teens who got a daily dose of the anti drug message were nearly 40 percent less likely to try methamphetamine and about 30 percent less likely to use Ecstasy, the study found. When asked about marijuana, kids who said they saw the ads regularly were nearly 15 percent less likely to smoke pot.

The partnership produces most of the anti drug messages for the White House. Among them: one featuring a young man visiting the site where his brother was killed by a driver under the influence of marijuana. The difficulty is getting kids to see the ads and pay attention to them. A University of Pennsylvania study released last year found the ads are largely ignored by teens.

A spokesman for the government’s drug policy office, Tom Riley said the partnership changed the tone of the ads in the last year to make them harder hitting and punchier. The ads also play up the negative consequences of drugs more, he said.
“These ads have taught millions of teens the truth that marijuana is a harmful drug,” said Riley.

Barry McCaffrey drug czar during the Clinton administration said the anti drug ads are having a profound impact in a fundamental way, affecting not just adolescents but adults” as well including parents, pediatricians and teachers. The drop in drug use proves the ads are a key part in the battle, he said.
Source: Sunday Partnership for Drug free America 2003

A new study shows that heavy users of marijuana are at elevated risk for depression. According to the 15-year study by Dr. Gregory B. Bovasso, adults who abused marijuana were four times more likely to report symptoms of depression compared to those who never used the drug.
Marijuana smokers were more likely to have suicidal thoughts and a lack of interest in things that once held their interest. ‘Treatments or other interventions that prevent the abuse of cannabis from occurring in the first place are important, Bovasso said. “On a general policy level, marijuana may not be as harmless as many believe,”
Bovasso said additional research is needed to determine how excessive marijuana smoking leads to a higher risk of depression, and how much marijuana put people at risk of becoming depressed.Source: Dr G B Bovasso American journal of Psychiatry December 2001.

The highest all-time THC in a marijuana sample was 33.125 from the Oregon State police. This report covers only 2002 May 8 year-to-date. So far, the THC average has shot way up this year. For example, all 46,000+ cannabis samples ever tested at the University of Mississippi have averaged a THC of 3.63%. However, between February 8 and May 8 of 2002. The 1200+ cannabis samples have averaged 5.8% THC.
Marijuana tested there gradually increased in the 3%+ THC range from 1991-1996. Then, from 1997-1999, its THC was in the low 4% + area. The year 2000 saw an average THC for marijuana of 4.69%, and in 2001 it was 5.01%. so far thus year, THC in commercial has averaged 7.79%.
Sinsemilla shows a similar trend. It averaged 6-9% THC per year during 1992-1996. The average was 12-13% in each year 1997-2000, but then dropped to only 9% in 2001. However, so far in 2002 the average THC found in Sinsemilla was 16.09% .That is , the THC in Sinsemilla has close to doubled so far this year versus 2001.

Source: University of Mississippi (Marijuana) potency Report 2002

Laboratory studies have shown that animals exhibit symptoms of drug withdrawal after cessation of prolonged marijuana administration. Some human studies have also demonstrated withdrawal symptoms such as irritability, stomach pain, aggression, and anxiety after cessation of oral administration of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), marijuana’s principal psychoactive component. Now, NIDA-supported researchers at McLean Hospital in Belmont, Massachusetts, and Columbia University in New York City have shown that individuals who regularly smoke marijuana experience withdrawal symptoms after they stop smoking the drug.
“These studies suggest that in real-world situations abstinence from daily marijuana smoking creates withdrawal symptoms similar to those of other drugs of abuse,” says Dr. Jag Khalsa of NIDA’s Center on AIDS and Other Medical Consequences of Drug Abuse. “Marijuana smokers may continue to use the drug to prevent the irritability and discomfort they experience when they stop.”

Aggression
Dr. Elena Kouri and her colleagues at the Biological Psychiatry Laboratory at McLean Hospital found that long-term heavy marijuana users became more aggressive during abstinence from marijuana than did former or infrequent users. Previous studies of withdrawal symptoms have relied largely on patients’ subjective reports of a range of symptoms, Dr. Kouri notes. “We studied measurable changes in one specific symptom-aggression,” she says.

The researchers recruited two groups of male and female volunteers: 17 current long-term users of marijuana and a control group of 20 infrequent or former users. Current long-term users were smoking marijuana daily at the time of recruitment and had smoked marijuana at least 5 000 times – the equivalent of smoking once each day for more than 13 years. The infrequent or former users had not smoked more than 50 times in their life and had smoked less than once per month in the past year, or had formerly smoked at least daily but had not smoked more than once per week for the past 3 months.

“The results demonstrate that abstinence is associated with unpleasant behavioral symptoms that may contribute to continued drug use.”
At the beginning of the study, all participants were instructed to refrain from any marijuana use for 28 days. Abstinence was monitored by analysis of daily-observed urine sampling. Cigarette smokers were allowed to continue their usual tobacco use.
Aggression was measured on the first day of the study and after 1, 3, 7, and 28 days of abstinence. To measure aggression, the researchers used a 20-minute computerized test that participants were told would measure motor skills and other physiological characteristics. Participants were told that pressing one button in a certain pattern would add points to their score and that pressing another button would subtract points from the score of their opponent, who could similarly add or subtract points.

In fact, Dr. Kouri says, there was no human opponent; the computer was programed to subtract points randomly in order to give the illusion of a human opponent. At the end of each session, aggressive responses – those that subtracted from the supposed opponent’s points – were compared with non-aggressive responses – those that added to the participant’s points. Dr. Kouri notes that studies involving parolees with a history of violent behavior have shown a close correlation between performance on this game and actual aggression.

After 1, 3, and 7 days of abstinence, current marijuana users registered significantly more aggressive responses – more than twice as many on days 3 and 7 – than the control group. By the 28th day, there was no significant difference between groups. Aggressive behavior was limited to responses in the test situation, Dr. Kouri notes; participants did not display overt hostility. “At this point we do not know exactly how these findings reflect changes in aggressive behavior outside the laboratory,” Dr. Kouri says. “But the results demonstrate that abstinence is associated with unpleasant behavioral symptoms that may contribute to continued drug use.”

Other Withdrawal Symptoms
Studies at Columbia University in New York City have demonstrated that, in addition to aggression, marijuana smokers experience other withdrawal symptoms such as anxiety, stomach pain, and increased irritability during abstinence from the drug. “These results suggest that dependence may be an important consequence of repeated daily exposure to marijuana,” says NIDA-supported researcher Dr. Margaret Haney.

Dr. Haney and her colleagues investigated the effects of abstinence on 12 adult males with an average age of 28 years who, in the laboratory, smoked marijuana with THC concentrations of 3.1 percent or 1.8 percent, or marijuana cigarettes containing no active THC. All participants smoked inactive marijuana during the first 4 days of the study followed by either the high concentration, low concentration, or inactive marijuana on alternating 4-day periods. Three times each day, the participants completed a 50-item checklist that rated physical conditions such as hunger, dizziness, and headache and aspects of their mood, for example, anxiety, talkativeness, friendliness, or depression.

“The withdrawal symptoms are not as dramatic as those associated with withdrawal from opiates or alcohol, but are still significant.”
Abstinence from either high or low-concentration marijuana resulted in reduced hunger, decreased ratings of “friendly” and “content,” and increased ratings of “irritability,” “stomach pain,” and “anxiety.” Moreover, Dr. Haney notes, participants receiving high-concentration marijuana rated the drug’s effects higher (“good drug effect,” “stimulated,” “high”) on the first day of exposure than on the fourth day, indicating the development of tolerance to THC.
“It appears likely that the onset of the withdrawal symptoms we observed in this study may contribute to maintaining chronic marijuana use,” Dr. Haney says. “The withdrawal symptoms are not as dramatic as those associated with withdrawal from opiates or alcohol, but are still significant to the individual marijuana user. These symptoms must be taken into account in order to develop effective treatment programs for marijuana abuse.”

Kouri, E.M; Pope, HG.; and Lukas, S.E. Changes in aggressive behavior during withdrawal from long-term marijuana use. Psychopharmacology, 143:302-308, 1999.
Haney, M; Ward, A.S.; Corner, S.D.; Foltin, R. W.; and Fischman, M W.
Abstinence symptoms following smoked marijuana in humans.
Psychopharmacology,141:395-404, 1999.

Study Finds Marijuana Ingredient Promotes Tumour Growth, Impairs Anti-Tumour Defences

What is preventive education for adolescents or children?
One of the most popular forms of ATOD (Alcohol, Tobacco and Other Drugs)prevention is preventive education for adolescents or children. Youth in classrooms or other community settings are presented with preventive lessons by a teacher, preventionist, trained police officer, or other authority. Often, trained teen volunteers may co-present a lesson. Lesson content may include ATOD information, life skills, or other components. (Note: Preventive education is just one way that schools play a prevention role. See the U.S. Dept. of Education’s list of “Characteristics of a Safe, Disciplined, and Drug-Free School,” in Appendix E of this Best Practices Handbook.)

Why does preventive education work?
Different kinds of curricula are based on different premises. Some seek to remedy a lack of drug information. Some seek to develop decision-making and resistance skills. Some seek to help adolescents counter pro-drug social influence as the youth establish their attitudes about ATOD. Research indicates that only some of these premises are valid.

How effective is preventive education for adolescents or children?
Preventionists have long been aware that preventive education alone is inferior to a more comprehensive approach that includes a focus on parents and community. Even so, preventive education as a sole approach has been one of the most heavily researched approaches to ATOD prevention. As a result of cumulative research, particularly in the 1980s and early 1990s, the evolving consensus of researchers in the field is that:

1. Given the correct curriculum, implementation support, and teaching approach, preventive education can have a significant positive effect in terms of delaying or preventing youth ATOD use.
2. Most currently used preventive education materials are NOT among the effective ones. But, they continue to be used due to political support, low cost, or other factors.
What else does research tell us about preventive education?
For adolescent education, two key research sources are Tobler and Stratton (1997) and Hansen (1996). Following earlier (1986 and 1992) meta-analysis studies of drug prevention programs, researcher Nancy S. Tobler conducted a meta-analysis of 120 experimental or quasi-experimental school-based adolescent drug prevention programs (5th-12th grade) that evaluated success on self-reported drug use measures. Each program was classified as either interactive (included guided discussion among students) or non-interactive (included only a lecture and discussion with the class facilitator).
Tobler found a tremendous difference in effectiveness, with non-interactive programs having little impact but the interactive programs having a substantial impact. Surprisingly, this impact on drug use occurred even when the average program length was only 10 contact hours.

Content categories of the various programs also played a role in effectiveness. Programs that focused only on intrapersonal skills such as decision-making, goal setting, and values clarification were ineffective. Effective programs may have had some intrapersonal skills, but included a strong interpersonal skill component focused on dealing with peer influence. Even with this content, programs delivered in a non-interactive way were substantially less effective, and frequently ineffective.

Another attribute, program size, was unexpectedly found to play a significant role in effectiveness. ‘Small” interactive programs did much better than “large” interactive programs, even though the latter did better than small non-interactive programs. The Tobler article does not define “small” and “large”, but a sub-analysis with “extremely large programs” may be used to infer a cutoff of about 1,000 students between the two categories.

Tobler’s meta-analysis used self-reported drug use as the sole measure of effectiveness, but “mediating variables” including knowledge and attitudes were also measured. An interesting point about the pattern of results on these measures is that interactive and non-interactive programs were approximately equal in producing knowledge gain, but interactive programs were superior in changing attitudes and decreasing use.

William Hansen’s summary of work in progress indicates that the three most powerful curricular elements in ATOD prevention are:

1. Normative Beliefs. Youth tend to greatly overestimate the percent of peers who use drugs. When given actual numbers, they apparently feel less deviant in their non-use.

2. Life Style Compatibility. In spite of hearing about the negative effects of drugs, many adolescents don’t necessarily see any threat by drug use to their desired lifestyle. When these connections are explicitly made, it has an impact.

3. Commitment. Opportunities for adolescents to make a personal, public commitment to avoiding ATOD use can lead to lower use rates.

For preventive education of younger (elementary school) children, the National Structured Evaluation indicates that a “Psychosocial Skill” approach is best. The approach is congruent with a “youth development” model, emphasizing affective, social, and other skills. It includes no didactic ATOD education. Examples of beneficial life skills for prevention include resistance skills, assertiveness, social problem solving, and decision-making.

Source: Best practices in ATOD prevention: US Dept. of Health & Human Services, National

The Prevention Works : Vol.2 Issue 3

Neighborhood revitalization

‘Project Revitalization’ in Vallejo, California, has developed a comprehensive strategy to address alcohol and other drug related crime in the city’s worst areas. The project relies on a strong community partnership comprised of Vallejo Fighting Back Partnership, Vallejo Code Enforcement, Vallejo Chamber of Commerce, Vallejo Police Department, Vallejo Neighborhood Housing, California Employment Department, the Private Industry Council, and neighborhood associations.
By integrating neighborhood revitalization, alcohol policy, neighborhood safety, job training, and coordination of human services into a comprehensive effort, the project aims to reduce code violations and police calls for service and to improve safety and the quality of life of residents in deteriorating crime-ridden neighborhoods.

Project Revitalization is based on the following four complementary premises:

• The physical makeup of a community has an important influence on its vulnerability to crime. Physical signs of disorder and illegal activities in a neighborhood such as abandoned cars, problematic liquor stores, drug dealing, and deteriorating housing invite crime and disorder if left unchanged.
• Neighborhoods where residents have some level of commitment and shared interest in improving their environment can influence the level of crime.
• Individuals and families must personally gain from the revitalization of an area. When people are drowning in problems such as unemployment, addiction, lack of childcare, and other social service needs, it is unrealistic to expect their engagement in improving their neighborhoods.
• Problems with alcohol can and do contribute to the overall level of area deterioration and require appropriate enforcement and policy interventions.

A Five-Step Process
Revitalization is a five-step process beginning with assessment and ending with ongoing evaluation. While the following steps are presented somewhat in sequence, overlap and intentional repetition is inherent in the process.

Initial problem assessment
The project relies on a block-to-block component, which is designed to accurately determine which areas of the city are the worst hot spots for crime, violence, and physical deterioration. To accomplish this, we rely on the use of the Alcohol/Drug Sensitive Information Planning Systems (ASIPS), coupled with a Geographic Information System (GIS).
ASIPS, a planning tool developed by CLEW Associates in Berkeley, CA, engages the Vallejo Police Department to identify alcohol and drug involvement in every call for service. Officers end their calls to dispatch with a three digit alpha numeric indicator that identifies whether alcohol or drugs – both or neither – was involved in the call for service. For example, the code A11 means “alcohol in a single family detached residence.”
This simple process yields a tremendous amount of information about the nature of the call, as well as the location and setting of the event. Calls for service that are alcohol or other drug-involved are then mapped through the GIS. These maps graphically depict where crimes occur and provide project workers with the locations in the city to move to the next phase of assessment.

Additional assessment
After identifying potential hot spots, project workers visit each of the areas to assess the level of physical deterioration of housing in the surrounding environment, which often acts as a magnet for certain criminal and social problems. In the final assessment stage to select target neighborhoods, project staff speak with residents to see if they are interested in working in a revitalization process.
Staff members contact neighborhood associations – if they exist – to discuss the project. Areas are not selected unless residents invite the project in and are committed to participating in the process.

Initial intervention
Once areas are selected, the intervention phase begins. It includes the following components:

• Law Enforcement. Often, problem residences where illicit activity occurs are part of neighborhoods that suffer from crime and physical deterioration. These locations have an effect on the willingness of neighbors to interact socially and form the social structures that can be effective in reducing problems. Therefore, it is important for law enforcement, as part of the early stages of the project, to weed out these locations and create a safe environment for residents. Part of this weeding effort involves the police in towing abandoned vehicles. This action alone creates a significant improvement in the quality of the neighborhood and begins to prove that the revitalization effort is serious about improving the quality of life for residents.

• Code Enforcement. Concurrent with the law enforcement effort, code enforcement staff engages in a residence-by-residence appraisal of building code violations.

• Community Organizing. During this stage, community organizers begin to establish relationships with residents in order to better understand each individual’s social service and employment needs.

Full implementation
As the police engage in various law enforcement activities to address crime and violence in project neighborhoods, streets become safer. This transition slowly increases the feeling of safety on the part of residents and work on forming a neighborhood association or block watch can proceed. In addition, the community organizer can deepen personal relationships with residents and begin the social service work in earnest. Residents are organized to create political pressure for stores to clean up their acts.
_________________________________________________________________
‘Project Revitalisation’ – Vallejo – Project elements:

Residents Code Enforcement
Industry Community
Employment Housing
Police Commerce
________________________________________________________________
Code enforcement staff work with homeowners and renters to bring property up to city standards. Together, they form plans about how homes can improve beyond minimum city requirements. Code enforcement is critical in this process for it holds the legal tools to cite owners that refuse to voluntarily cooperate with the revitalization process. During this stage of the intervention, all project agencies and organizations are also organizing a clean-up day during which large numbers of volunteers from all over the city work with residents to paint, haul debris, build fences, do carpentry, and cut and trim landscaping – performing essentially a neighborhood make-over. Clean-up days include a barbecue to further cement relationships between neighbors, volunteers, and project workers.
Neighborhood stability
The final phase can last from 6 to 9 months. After the clean-up, the community organizer steps up efforts to work with the residents to form a neighborhood group and to adopt a set of community standards to serve as the basis of how the area should be maintained in the future. The organizer also continues to work with the residents to help them get whatever services they need to improve the quality of their lives.

Project results
How is this process working? To date, work has begun in two areas of Vallejo (Alabama Street and Springs Road) and the results look promising. The first project area – Alabama Street – was a test to determine if the process was viable. The neighborhood experienced a reduction in police calls for service and improvement in the perception of safety on the part of residents.

The second neighborhood revitalization project in Springs Road was much larger in scope than the first project. Started in November 1997, the Springs Road project is in the final stages of implementation. This ambitious and far-reaching project featured joint efforts of many partners. On its clean-up day, streets were blocked off as teams of volunteers painted, trimmed trees, rebuilt fences, swept and hauled away debris and weeds. More than 225 people signed up to work during the day. Highlights included the live broadcast of music and interviews of residents by Radio KDIA and a barbecue for all participants. In all, 22 dumpsters of trash were hauled away, totaling over 37 tons; 6 old vehicles were towed; and more than 50 residences were worked on. But the day is as much about bringing neighbors and volunteers together as a real community as it was about a clean up.

The role of policy
Alcohol policy and other policy development are critical to the long-term success of this effort. Helpful policies include:

• A conditional use permit for alcohol outlets to regulate new outlets
• An approved ordinance for alcoholic beverage establishments to regulate existing outlets
• A teen party ordinance to reduce non-commercial access of alcohol to minors
• A social nuisance ordinance to hold non-compliant property owners accountable to a standard of property maintenance and resident conduct
• A rental inspection ordinance.

These policies help neighborhoods proactively address problem properties before they become nuisances and are part of the structural changes required to sustain the positive neighborhood changes that result from the revitalization process. Based on early results, the revitalization project is about to move into its third and fourth neighborhoods. Ultimately the project will engage between 10 and 15 neighborhoods. Real, sustained improvements in people’s lives are the mark of success for this project. Will residents assume long-term responsibility for their environments? Can this effort reduce crime citywide? And can the project continue with the broad base of support it currently enjoys? In perhaps a year, these and other important questions will be answered.

Source: Michael Sparks – Michael is the director Of Project Revitalization. He can be reached by e-mail at SPARKS@SONJC.NET – Reported in Prevention Pipeline Sep/Oct 1998

Prevention Works!

Data from the past 20 years show that prevention has succeeded in substantially reducing the incidence and prevalence of illicit drug use. Successful substance abuse prevention also leads to reductions in traffic fatalities, violence, unwanted pregnancy, child abuse, sexually transmitted diseases, HIV/AIDS, injuries, cancer, heart disease and lost productivity.

Substance Abuse Prevention can be shown to be effective. In 1979, 25 million Americans used an illegal drug during the preceding month. (SAMHSA National Household Survey) In 1995, 12.8 million Americans used an illegal drug in the past month, a decrease of nearly 50 percent. In the 1980s, complete abstinence from drugs was claimed by fewer than one in thirteen high-school seniors. (NIDA–Monitoring the Future Survey) In 1995 nearly one out of five seniors reported complete abstinence, an increase of nearly 250 percent. Examples of Prevention Findings from CSAP national cross-site evaluations, CSAP grantee evaluations, and other programs.

FINDING:
Prevention programs can encourage change in youth behavior patterns which are indicative of eventual substance abuse.

Cornell University researchers in a study of 6,000 students in NY State found that the odds of drinking, smoking, and using marijuana were 40% lower among students who participated in a school-based substance abuse program in grades 7-9 than among their counterparts who did not.
Forty-two schools in Kansas City, MO reported less student use of alcohol, tobacco, and marijuana than control sites as a result of Project Star, a prevention program.
In Nashville, the proportion of students who achieved perfect attendance for 20-day attendance periods increased from 27% to 60% as a result of a CSAP-funded community partnership school incentive prevention program.
FINDING:
Substance abuse prevention programs can improve parenting skills and family relationships.
A CSAP-funded study at CO State University found significant and enduring enhancement of successful parenting skills including: increased parental satisfaction, decreased harsh punishments for children, increased positive attitudes towards parenting, and increased appropriate control techniques.
FINDING:
Drug abuse prevention programs are effective in changing individual characteristics which are predictive of later substance abuse.
In Oakland, CA and other sites across the country, the Child Development Project found significant decreases in incidents of weapons possession and gang fighting among program participants in comparison to control groups.
FINDING:
Substance abuse prevention programs reduce delinquent behaviors among youth which are frequently associated with substance abuse and drug-related crime.
The Mexican-American Unity Council found significantly fewer conduct problems, less hyperactive behavior, and reduced passivity among children participating in a CSAP-funded prevention program. A similar study in Denver, CO replicated these results.
The Safe Streets Prevention Partnership in Tacoma, WA has been instrumental in closing 600 drug selling locations since 1990 and in reducing crime by more than 40%.
The Miami Coalition Community Partnership program has spurred Dade County community officials to demolish more than 2000 crack houses. Crime in the area has been reduced 24% and annual drug use has decreased by more than 40%.
FINDING:
The transmission of generic life skills is associated with short-term reductions in substance abuse among adolescents.
In DE, the Diamond Deliveries program which targets pregnant adolescent alcohol and drug users resulted in a 60% lower incidence of low-birth-weight babies and significantly lower neonatal costs than a matched control group.
CSAP’s High Risk Youth projects confirm that prevention efforts incorporating “life skills” such as problem-solving, decision-making, resistance against adverse peer influences, and social and communication skills are associated with reduced incidence of substance abuse among adolescents.
Source: CSAP (Center for Substance Abuse Prevention) – www.health.org – Apr/1999

Preventive education for adolescents or children

What is preventive education for adolescents or children?
One of the most popular forms of ATOD (Alcohol, Tobacco and Other Drugs)prevention is preventive education for adolescents or children. Youth in classrooms or other community settings are presented with preventive lessons by a teacher, preventionist, trained police officer, or other authority. Often, trained teen volunteers may co-present a lesson. Lesson content may include ATOD information, life skills, or other components. (Note: Preventive education is just one way that schools play a prevention role. See the U.S. Dept. of Education’s list of “Characteristics of a Safe, Disciplined, and Drug-Free School,” in Appendix E of this Best Practices Handbook.)

Why does preventive education work?
Different kinds of curricula are based on different premises. Some seek to remedy a lack of drug information. Some seek to develop decision-making and resistance skills. Some seek to help adolescents counter pro-drug social influence as the youth establish their attitudes about ATOD. Research indicates that only some of these premises are valid.

How effective is preventive education for adolescents or children?
Preventionists have long been aware that preventive education alone is inferior to a more comprehensive approach that includes a focus on parents and community. Even so, preventive education as a sole approach has been one of the most heavily researched approaches to ATOD prevention. As a result of cumulative research, particularly in the 1980s and early 1990s, the evolving consensus of researchers in the field is that:

1. Given the correct curriculum, implementation support, and teaching approach, preventive education can have a significant positive effect in terms of delaying or preventing youth ATOD use.
2. Most currently used preventive education materials are NOT among the effective ones. But, they continue to be used due to political support, low cost, or other factors.
What else does research tell us about preventive education?
For adolescent education, two key research sources are Tobler and Stratton (1997) and Hansen (1996). Following earlier (1986 and 1992) meta-analysis studies of drug prevention programs, researcher Nancy S. Tobler conducted a meta-analysis of 120 experimental or quasi-experimental school-based adolescent drug prevention programs (5th-12th grade) that evaluated success on self-reported drug use measures. Each program was classified as either interactive (included guided discussion among students) or non-interactive (included only a lecture and discussion with the class facilitator).
Tobler found a tremendous difference in effectiveness, with non-interactive programs having little impact but the interactive programs having a substantial impact. Surprisingly, this impact on drug use occurred even when the average program length was only 10 contact hours.

Content categories of the various programs also played a role in effectiveness. Programs that focused only on intrapersonal skills such as decision-making, goal setting, and values clarification were ineffective. Effective programs may have had some intrapersonal skills, but included a strong interpersonal skill component focused on dealing with peer influence. Even with this content, programs delivered in a non-interactive way were substantially less effective, and frequently ineffective.

Another attribute, program size, was unexpectedly found to play a significant role in effectiveness. ‘Small” interactive programs did much better than “large” interactive programs, even though the latter did better than small non-interactive programs. The Tobler article does not define “small” and “large”, but a sub-analysis with “extremely large programs” may be used to infer a cutoff of about 1,000 students between the two categories.

Tobler’s meta-analysis used self-reported drug use as the sole measure of effectiveness, but “mediating variables” including knowledge and attitudes were also measured. An interesting point about the pattern of results on these measures is that interactive and non-interactive programs were approximately equal in producing knowledge gain, but interactive programs were superior in changing attitudes and decreasing use.

William Hansen’s summary of work in progress indicates that the three most powerful curricular elements in ATOD prevention are:

1. Normative Beliefs. Youth tend to greatly overestimate the percent of peers who use drugs. When given actual numbers, they apparently feel less deviant in their non-use.

2. Life Style Compatibility. In spite of hearing about the negative effects of drugs, many adolescents don’t necessarily see any threat by drug use to their desired lifestyle. When these connections are explicitly made, it has an impact.

3. Commitment. Opportunities for adolescents to make a personal, public commitment to avoiding ATOD use can lead to lower use rates.

For preventive education of younger (elementary school) children, the National Structured Evaluation indicates that a “Psychosocial Skill” approach is best. The approach is congruent with a “youth development” model, emphasizing affective, social, and other skills. It includes no didactic ATOD education. Examples of beneficial life skills for prevention include resistance skills, assertiveness, social problem solving, and decision-making.

Source: Best practices in ATOD prevention: US Dept. of Health & Human Services, National Inst. Of Health. 1997
Evidence Accumulates That Long-Term Marijuana Users Experience Withdrawal

Laboratory studies have shown that animals exhibit symptoms of drug withdrawal after cessation of prolonged marijuana administration. Some human studies have also demonstrated withdrawal symptoms such as irritability, stomach pain, aggression, and anxiety after cessation of oral administration of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), marijuana’s principal psychoactive component. Now, NIDA-supported researchers at McLean Hospital in Belmont, Massachusetts, and Columbia University in New York City have shown that individuals who regularly smoke marijuana experience withdrawal symptoms after they stop smoking the drug.
“These studies suggest that in real-world situations abstinence from daily marijuana smoking creates withdrawal symptoms similar to those of other drugs of abuse,” says Dr. Jag Khalsa of NIDA’s Center on AIDS and Other Medical Consequences of Drug Abuse. “Marijuana smokers may continue to use the drug to prevent the irritability and discomfort they experience when they stop.”

Aggression
Dr. Elena Kouri and her colleagues at the Biological Psychiatry Laboratory at McLean Hospital found that long-term heavy marijuana users became more aggressive during abstinence from marijuana than did former or infrequent users. Previous studies of withdrawal symptoms have relied largely on patients’ subjective reports of a range of symptoms, Dr. Kouri notes. “We studied measurable changes in one specific symptom-aggression,” she says.

The researchers recruited two groups of male and female volunteers: 17 current long-term users of marijuana and a control group of 20 infrequent or former users. Current long-term users were smoking marijuana daily at the time of recruitment and had smoked marijuana at least 5 000 times – the equivalent of smoking once each day for more than 13 years. The infrequent or former users had not smoked more than 50 times in their life and had smoked less than once per month in the past year, or had formerly smoked at least daily but had not smoked more than once per week for the past 3 months.

“The results demonstrate that abstinence is associated with unpleasant behavioral symptoms that may contribute to continued drug use.”
At the beginning of the study, all participants were instructed to refrain from any marijuana use for 28 days. Abstinence was monitored by analysis of daily-observed urine sampling. Cigarette smokers were allowed to continue their usual tobacco use.
Aggression was measured on the first day of the study and after 1, 3, 7, and 28 days of abstinence. To measure aggression, the researchers used a 20-minute computerized test that participants were told would measure motor skills and other physiological characteristics. Participants were told that pressing one button in a certain pattern would add points to their score and that pressing another button would subtract points from the score of their opponent, who could similarly add or subtract points.

In fact, Dr. Kouri says, there was no human opponent; the computer was programed to subtract points randomly in order to give the illusion of a human opponent. At the end of each session, aggressive responses – those that subtracted from the supposed opponent’s points – were compared with non-aggressive responses – those that added to the participant’s points. Dr. Kouri notes that studies involving parolees with a history of violent behavior have shown a close correlation between performance on this game and actual aggression.

After 1, 3, and 7 days of abstinence, current marijuana users registered significantly more aggressive responses – more than twice as many on days 3 and 7 – than the control group. By the 28th day, there was no significant difference between groups. Aggressive behavior was limited to responses in the test situation, Dr. Kouri notes; participants did not display overt hostility. “At this point we do not know exactly how these findings reflect changes in aggressive behavior outside the laboratory,” Dr. Kouri says. “But the results demonstrate that abstinence is associated with unpleasant behavioral symptoms that may contribute to continued drug use.”

Other Withdrawal Symptoms
Studies at Columbia University in New York City have demonstrated that, in addition to aggression, marijuana smokers experience other withdrawal symptoms such as anxiety, stomach pain, and increased irritability during abstinence from the drug. “These results suggest that dependence may be an important consequence of repeated daily exposure to marijuana,” says NIDA-supported researcher Dr. Margaret Haney.

Dr. Haney and her colleagues investigated the effects of abstinence on 12 adult males with an average age of 28 years who, in the laboratory, smoked marijuana with THC concentrations of 3.1 percent or 1.8 percent, or marijuana cigarettes containing no active THC. All participants smoked inactive marijuana during the first 4 days of the study followed by either the high concentration, low concentration, or inactive marijuana on alternating 4-day periods. Three times each day, the participants completed a 50-item checklist that rated physical conditions such as hunger, dizziness, and headache and aspects of their mood, for example, anxiety, talkativeness, friendliness, or depression.

“The withdrawal symptoms are not as dramatic as those associated with withdrawal from opiates or alcohol, but are still significant.”
Abstinence from either high or low-concentration marijuana resulted in reduced hunger, decreased ratings of “friendly” and “content,” and increased ratings of “irritability,” “stomach pain,” and “anxiety.” Moreover, Dr. Haney notes, participants receiving high-concentration marijuana rated the drug’s effects higher (“good drug effect,” “stimulated,” “high”) on the first day of exposure than on the fourth day, indicating the development of tolerance to THC.
“It appears likely that the onset of the withdrawal symptoms we observed in this study may contribute to maintaining chronic marijuana use,” Dr. Haney says. “The withdrawal symptoms are not as dramatic as those associated with withdrawal from opiates or alcohol, but are still significant to the individual marijuana user. These symptoms must be taken into account in order to develop effective treatment programs for marijuana abuse.”

Kouri, E.M; Pope, HG.; and Lukas, S.E. Changes in aggressive behavior during withdrawal from long-term marijuana use. Psychopharmacology, 143:302-308, 1999.
Haney, M; Ward, A.S.; Corner, S.D.; Foltin, R. W.; and Fischman, M W.
Abstinence symptoms following smoked marijuana in humans.
Psychopharmacology,141:395-404, 1999.

Study Finds Marijuana Ingredient Promotes Tumour Growth, Impairs Anti-Tumour Defences

Researchers report in the July 2000 issue of the “Journal of Immunology” that tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the major psychoactive component of marijuana, can promote tumor growth by impairing the body’s anti-tumor immunity system. While previous research has shown that THC can lower resistance to both bacterial and viral infections, this is the first time that its possible tumor-promoting activity has been reported.
A team of researchers at UCLA’s Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center found in experiments in mice that THC limits immune response by increasing the availability of two forms (IL-b and TGF-13) of cytokine, a potent, tumor-specific, immunity suppresser.
The authors also suggest that smoking marijuana may be more of a cancer risk than smoking tobacco. The tar portion of marijuana smoke, compared to that of tobacco, contains higher concentrations of carcinogenic hydrocarbons, including benzapyrene, a key factor in promoting human lung cancer. And marijuana smoke deposits four times as much tar in the respiratory tract as does a comparable amount of tobacco, thus increasing exposure to carcinogens.
Dr. Steven M. Dubinett, head of the research team that conducted the study, says, “What we already know about marijuana smoke, coupled with our new finding that THC may encourage tumor growth, suggests that regular use of marijuana may increase the risk of respiratory tract cancer and further studies will be needed to evaluate this possibility.”
The UCLA researchers examined the effects of THC on the immune response to lung cancer in mice. Over a two-week period, the animals were injected four times per week with either THC or a saline solution. Fourteen days after the injections were started, murine Lewis lung cancer and line 1 alveolar cell cancer cells were implanted in the mice. The mice continued to receive THC or saline injections after the tumor cells were implanted, and tumor growth was assessed three times each week. To test the hypothesis that THC impairs tumor-specific immune system response, a group of mice with compromised immune systems was also studied.
The researchers found that in the mice with normal immune systems there was significant enhancement of tumor growth, but THC had no effect on tumor growth in the immunodeficient mice. The study also showed that when lymphocytes from the THC-treated mice were injected into untreated mice, the immune deficit was transferred and tumor growth was accelerated in the normal controls.
Additionally, the UCLA research team demonstrated that when anti-IL-10 and anti-TGF-B were administered, there was no acceleration of tumor growth in THC-treated mice. These results suggest that enhanced tumor growth is prompted by THC’s ability to stimulate production of IL-10 and TGF-B, which inhibits anti-tumor immune response.

Roun et al. Biological Psychology Laboratory at Maclean Hospital Limited in haemorrhage Notes Vol. 15, No. 1

Cocaine Use, Hypertension Major Risk Factors For Brain
Haemorrhage In Young African Americans

Young African Americans who use cocaine are six times more likely to suffer a potentially lethal episode of bleeding inside the brain than non-users, a case-control study of major risk factors for intracerebral haemorrhage in this population conducted by researchers at the University of Buffalo and Emory University has found. The study, published in the July issue of Ethnicity and Disease, also shows twice the incidence of hypertension and five times the number of people with hypertension who weren’t taking their blood-pressure medicine among those who had had an intracerebral haemorrhage, compared to healthy, age-matched controls. Alcohol use also was associated with an increase in risk.

“African-American patients experience a two-fold higher risk of intracerebral hemorrhage compared to white patients,” said Adnan I. Qureshi, UB assistant professor of neurosurgery and lead author on the study. “This high incidence of intracerebral haemorrhage contributes significantly to death, disability and loss of productivity in young populations.

“In the absence of any definitive treatment for intracerebral haemorrhage, significant stress needs to be placed on primary prevention and understanding of factors that predispose to a higher risk in young African Americans,” he said.

Internal bleeding, also known as intracerebral haemorrhage (ICH), can occur in any part of the brain. Blood may accumulate in the tissues as well as in the space between the brain and the membranes covering the brain, a subarachnoid haemorrhage. Bleeding may be isolated in a part of one cerebral hemisphere (lobar intracerebral haemorrhage) or occur in other brain structures, such as the thalamus, basal ganglia, pons, or cerebellum (deep intracerebral haemorrhage).

ICH occurs in about 20 out of 100 000 people, statistics show, and can affect any person regardless of age, sex or race, but appears to occur more frequently in African Americans, striking the young and middle-aged disproportionately. The incidence of intracerebral haemorrhage in African Americans reaches nearly 50 out of 100 000 persons, Qureshi noted.

Since there is no effective treatment for ICH, prevention takes center stage, but little information has been available on the factors that put this population at higher risk. This study is the first to use a case-control approach to tease out these risks. It assessed health and lifestyle histories of 122 African Americans between the ages of 18 and 45 admitted to a public hospital in Atlanta with ICH between December 31, 1997, and January 1, 1990. This information was compared with data from 366 African Americans in the same age group without the condition who took part in the most recent National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES Ill).

Researchers included data on hypertension, diabetes, smoking, cocaine use, alcohol use, and stroke or heart disease from all participants, as well as the record of prescriptions for hypertension medication and compliance with their use.

Results showed that cocaine use was the strongest risk factor associated with ICH in this population, even higher than hypertension, Qureshi said. “While the mechanism for this association isn’t clear, we suspect that the sudden elevation in blood pressure that occurs immediately after using cocaine may cause an existing aneurysm or artenovenous malformation (AVM) in the brain to rupture.” Several clinical studies of stroke among cocaine users have found a high frequency of aneurysm or AVM, he noted.

Hypertension, particularly in those who had been prescribed medication but took it irregularly, also was shown to be an important high-risk factor for ICH. These findings suggest that physicians should focus more on compliance than on screening, Qureshi said.

“In chronic hypertension, the body develops a certain protective response in an effort to counter high blood pressure’s effects. Taking blood-pressure medication intermittently may impair the development of this response and may make patients more vulnerable to blood pressure fluctuations.”

The bottom line, Qureshi said, is that a reduction in the high rate of death and disability associated with intracerebral haemorrhage can’t occur without effective preventive measures.

“The study demonstrated the presence of factors in the community that easily can be modified to reduce this risk. These include avoidance of cocaine use and regular use of blood pressure medication as prescribed.”

Fareed et al, Dept. Neurosurgery, UB Sch. Medicine and Biomedical Sciences; and Mohammad et al, Dept. Neurology, Emory University School of Medicine.

Drug that curbs Nicotine Craving may do same for Cocaine

A drug that Duke University Medical Center researchers have successfully used to help some people quit smoking may also help curb cocaine cravings, according to studies conducted in rats.

The drug mecamylamine, used in combination with nicotine to help reduce the urge to smoke cigarettes, has now been shown in animal studies to reduce their self-administration of cocaine. Rats that were trained to press a lever in order to get cocaine no longer pressed it with the same frequency after they were given mecamylamine, said Edward Levin, lead author of the study. When injected with mecamylamine, the mice infused cocaine 11 times per hour, versus 19 times per hour when they received a placebo injection of saline – a reduction of more than 40 percent. “It’s always very exciting when a drug used for one addiction has implications for a broader range of addictive drugs,” said Levin, whose study was funded by the National Institutes of Health. Mecamylamine is an older medication originally used to treat high blood pressure. Researchers now know it blocks some of nicotine’s ability, and potentially that of other drugs, to generate feelings of pleasure in the brain. Levin said it works by occupying specific sites, called “nicotinic receptors,” on nerve cells where nicotine would normally act. When mecamylamine blocks these receptors, nicotine can no longer exert its full action, that of stimulating the release of dopamine. Dopamine is the primary brain chemical involved in generating pleasure. Drugs like nicotine, alcohol and cocaine all increase available amounts of dopamine and thereby increase the pleasure sensation, said Jed Rose, chief of the Nicotine Research Program at Duke and study co-author. Eventually, the brain may prefer the drug over natural rewards like food or sex, and hence, the person can become addicted. Mecamylamine blocks the action of nicotine, and potentially cocaine, by lowering the net amount of dopamine available in the brain. While cocaine still boosts available levels of dopamine, its overall amount is decreased because mecamylamine has plugged up some of the nicotinic receptor sites where the brain would naturally be activating its own dopamine. “In other words, the brain has its own chemical, acetylcholine, that stimulates the release of dopamine. Mecamylamine comes along and occupies some of the nicotinic acetylcholine receptor sites and prevents them from activating dopamine,” Rose said. “So the net effect is that less dopamine is being produced, even when cocaine comes along and boosts dopamine levels through a different pathway.” Rose said the person still desires nicotine or cocaine, but the desire is weakened because the brain is no longer being flooded with dopamine. “Mecamylamine reduces desire, but it doesn’t quench it,” he said. “Yet given how few medications there are to combat serious addictions, even a medication that reduces craving can be of significant benefit.” Already, mecamylamine has proven to be of significant benefit in helping people quit smoking.

In earlier Duke studies, Rose demonstrated that using a patch with nicotine and mecamylamine together helped 40 percent of smokers quit for at feast one year, while only 15 percent of smokers were able to do so using the patch alone. The researchers expect mecamylamine to be approved for smoking cessation sometime this year.

Rose et al. International Behavioural Neuro Science Society, April, 2000.

Trauma and stress in early life increases vulnerability to cocaine addiction in adulthood.

The trauma that a majority of drug addicts suffer in early life has now been shown to increase their vulnerability to drug addiction, Yale researchers report in a new study. “Using well-established animal models, we’ve found strong evidence that early life stress enhances vulnerability to drug addiction,” said Therese A. Kosten, assistant professor of psychiatry at Yale School of Medicine. “This study demonstrates the need to target drug abuse prevention strategies to children with early life traumas.”
Rat pups that were separated from their mothers for one hour per day during the first week of life learned to self-administer cocaine more readily when they were adults compared to rats that had not had this early life stress. This effect was not due to differences in learning or general activity levels. “Previous studies show that most drug addicts have had early life trauma,” said Kosten, principal investigator on the study. “Given that 1.8 million Americans are currently using cocaine, this information will be valuable in directing future research toward potential interventions for children with early stress experiences in order to reduce the risk of developing drug addiction in adults.”
Kosten and her team tested 14 adult rats, eight of which had experienced the stress of isolation from their mother, siblings and nest three months earlier. Compared to six rats that had not experienced this stress, isolated rats learned to press a lever to receive a cocaine infusion in two-thirds the number of days, and at half the dose needed for the non-isolated rats. Kosten said the groups did not differ in the number of days to learn to press a lever to receive food pellets, demonstrating that the isolation effect was specific to cocaine.

(Source: Kosten et al. Yale School Medicine
Published in Brain Research Journal 2000)

Opiate and Cocaine Exposed Newborns: Growth
This investigation examined growth parameters at birth in 204 infants born to mothers who used cocaine and/or opiates during pregnancy. Analyses considered both type (cocaine, opiate or both) and pattern of in utero drug exposure. A unique feature of the investigation was the large group of opiate exposed infants. Singleton newborn infants born to cocaine and/or opiate using mothers, were recruited. Using a structured interview and urine toxicology screens, information was obtained on the type and pattern of in utero drug exposure for each infant. Outcome measures included birth weight, length, and head circumference. Birth weight and length were significantly different by type of drug exposure with the opiate only infants the largest (p=.0001) and longest (p=.008). Differences in head circumference size were not statistically significant (p=.58). Mean Z-scores were I S.D. lower for birth weight and length and 1.5 S.D. lower for head circumference when compared to National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) growth standards. This study provides support that in utero cocaine exposure may confer more risk for somatic growth retardation at birth than opiate exposure even when controlling for nicotine and alcohol exposure, amount of prenatal care, gender, maternal age, education and marital status.

(Source: Butz et al. “Opiate and Cocaine Exposed Newborns: Growth Outcomes”, ‘Child & Adolescent Sub. Abuse’, 1-16, 1999)

Vaccine Against Effects Of Cocaine Nearly Ready For Clinical Trials

Researchers at The Scripps Research Institute have developed a second-generation, long-lived cocaine immunoconjugate that blocks cocaine passage into the brain of rats.
The new immunoconjugate displays two amide groups in the stereochemical configuration found in the cocaine framework, so that antibody affinity to cocaine is optimized, Dr. Janda and associates report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Rats were immunized with the vaccine and challenged with systemic cocaine. Compared with unimmunized controls, locomotor activity was significantly reduced, as were stereotypic patterns of behavior, such as sniffing and rearing. Effects were sustained throughout the 12 days of the study.
“We have been able to tap into the immune system to immobilize antibodies to recognize cocaine as foreign and remove it from the body,” Dr. Janda said. “The current vaccine provides a much longer lasting effect than our previous vaccines, suggesting that boosting requirements would be minimal and the antibody circulation time would be increased.”
Dr. Janda added that the vaccine would be of most use in addicts who are motivated to stop using cocaine. “Typically an addict will relapse several times before he or she will ‘kick’ the drug,” he said. “We believe the vaccine will protect addicts at weak moments when they have the urge to get high. If we can prevent the high we can prevent relapse and this would speed the process of kicking the addiction.”

(Source: Proc National Academy of Science, USA 2001;98:1988-1992.)

Ozzy Says He Now Believes Pot Leads To Other Addictions

Ozzy Osbourne may have weathered the lowest lows that drug addiction has to offer, but the news that his son Jack was seeking treatment for substance abuse taught him a lesson that his own decades of addiction never did.
“I used to think they should legalize pot, but you know what? They should ban the lot,” Osbourne told MTV News, addressing Jack’s battle for the first time. “One thing leads to another. Coffee leads to Red Bull, Red Bull leads to crank.“When I found out the full depth of him getting into OxyContin. which is like hillbilly heroin, I was shocked and stunned,” Osbourne continued. ‘The thing that’s amazing was how rapidly he went from smoking pot to doing hillbilly heroin.”
Ozzy’s son entered a California rehabilitation facility in April to battle what was later revealed to be an addiction to the prescription painkiller OxyContin. Jack also said that he was drinking and using a variety of substances — including Vicodin, Valium, Xajiax, Dilaudid, Lorcet, Lortab, Percocet and marijuana — before his trip to rehab.Jack’s laundry list of controlled substances made his father painfully aware of just how readily available drugs are. “When I started doing drugs years ago, they were hard to get, but today it’s everywhere,” Osbourne said. ‘It’s not just Beverly Hills. It’s not just downtown New York. It’s not just London. It’s all over the world’ .This relatively easy access to allegedly ‘controlled’ substances is especially hard for Ozzy to swallow given his firsthand experience with the damage that drugs can do.
“I’m 55 years old, and I didn’t get off scot-free,” Osbourne explained. “I have to take medication for the rest of my life because I’ve done so much neurological damage to my body,” Osbourne said.

Religious Beliefs Linked to Decreased Drug Use

New research shows that adolescents with strong religious beliefs are less likely to smoke cigarettes, drink alcohol, or use marijuana.
For the study, researchers at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine interviewed 1,182 adolescents from a metropolitan area. The teens were surveyed four different times from 7th grade to 10th grade.The researchers found that adolescents who considered religion a meaningful part of their life and a way to cope with stress were half as likely to use drugs as those who didn’t find religion important.
“Besides offering coping techniques, being involved with religion can also create more healthy social networks than adolescents would have if they got involved with drugs to find social outlets, said Ashby Wills, Ph.D., one of three co-authors of the study.

Study shows MS patients further impaired by smoking Low-THC marijuana

‘Greenburg et al, in their paper in Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics Vol. 55:324-328,1994, performed a double-blind randomized, placebo-controlled study of inhaled marijuana smoke on balance and coordination responses in ten adult patients with spastic multiple sclerosis, and normal volunteers who were matched for age, sex, and weight. A sophisticated computer-controlled video system was used to identiFY responses. The study showed that marijuana smoking enhanced the abnormalities already present in MS patients and that smoking just one marijuana cigarette containing 1.5% delta-9 THC increased the objective errors in these responses. The authors concluded that marijuana smoking impairs coordination and balance in patients with spastic MS.

What Americans need to know about Marijuana

•Of the 7.1 million Americans suffering from ilegal drug dependence or abuse, 60 percent abuse or are dependent on marijuana.
•Of all youth age 12-17 in drug treatment in 2000, nearly 62 percent had a primary marijuana diagnosis. Approximately half were referred to treatment through the criminal justice system and half through other sources, including self-referral.
•The average age of initiation for marijuana use generally has been getting younger.
•More young people are now in treatment for marijuana dependency than for alcohol or for all other illegal drugs combined.
•Among 10th graders, past-year and past-month use of marijuana or hashish decreased from 2001 to 2002, as did daily use in the past month.
•There has been slow but steady progress toward reduced marijuana use rates among 8th graders. Their past-year marijuana-use rate of 14.6 percent in 2002 is the lowest since 1994, and well below their recent peak of 18.3 percent in 1996.
•At 30.3 percent for past-year marijuana use, 10th graders are at their lowest level since 1995 and somewhat below their recent peak of 34.8 percent in 1997. The past-year use rate for 12th graders is down, albeit only modestly, from 38.5 percent in their recent peak year (1997) to 36.2 percent in 2002.

Source:Monitoring the Future, National Survey Results on Drug Use,1975-2002

Snippets from SAMHSA

In 2000, an estimated 4.7 million people aged 12 or older (2.1 percent of the  total population) needed treatment for an illicit drug abuse problem.
16.6 percent of the people who needed treatment in 2000, received Priority treatment services at a specialty facility.
Among Hispanic male admissions in 1999, alcohol was the most common primary substance of abuse(39%), followed by opiates (32%) and marijuana(14%).
In 1999, the most common primary substance of abuse among Hispanic female admissions was opiates (34%), followed by alcohol (26°/o) and cocaine (16%).
In 1999, opiates were the most common substance of abuse for Hispanic admissions aged 25-44, while alcohol was the most common substance of abuse for non-Hispanic admissions in the 25-44 age group.

Report Shows Parents Unaware of Children’s Ecstasy Use

While nearly 3 million teenagers in America have already tried the club drug Ecstasy, only one percent of parents believe their son or daughter is among them – and half of all parents are unclear about the effects of the so-called ‘love drug,’ according to a national survey by the Partnership for Drug-Free America (PDFA).
The 2001-2002 Partnership Attitude Tracking Study (PATS) surveyed 1,219 parents across the country from December 2001 to January 2002. (Margin of error + / -2.8 percent. Data are nationally projectable.) This is the 14th installment of parents data fielded for the PATS study since
1987. Top line findings include the following:

• Spreading the word: 92 percent of all parents have heard about Ecstasy. Parents of children in grades 7 to 12 are more likely to have heard about Ecstasy (93 percent) than parents of younger children in grades 4 to 6 (89 percent).
• Instilling the meaning: One of every two parents in America (49 percent) is unclear about Ecstasy’s effects on users. Some 60 percent of all parents are unsure of what is in the drug.
• Not acknowledging the risk to their children: With 12 percent of teenagers in the country (2.8 million teens) reporting use of Ecstasy, the study released today shows that only one percent of parents believe their teen might have tried the drug. (Teen use of Ecstasy has jumped 71 percent since 1999- and is now equal to or greater than adolescent consumption of cocaine, crack, heroin, LSD and metbampheta mine.)
• Parent & teen perceptions far apart: Parents underestimate the availability of Ecstasy to teenagers, and overestimate the degree of risk teens associate with the drug. Almost three out of four parents (72 percent) believe their teen sees great risk in using Ecstasy once or twice. (Just 42 percent of teens agree.) Some 41 percent of parents think Ecstasy would be very or fairly difficult for their teen to get. (Just 26 percent of teens agree.)
• More reminders, more talks: Exposure to anti-drug ads correlate with frequent parent-child communication about drugs. Among parents who reported seeing or hearing an anti-drug message every day or more, 55 percent talk frequently. Among parents exposed to fewer messages, 44 percent talk frequently.
• Ecstasy-specific talks: Among the drugs parents talk ‘a lot’ about with teenagers, parents were more likely to discuss inhalants (36 percent)
• cocaine/crack (48 percent); marijuana (60 percent) and alcohol (70 percent) than Ecstasy (29 percent).

‘Kids who learn a lot about the risks of drugs at home are less likely to try drugs’ Pasierb said. “Yet millions of parents sincerely don’t believe that their kids are the ones experimenting with drugs like Ecstasy. It’s these assumptions that enable drug use to go undetected. rf you’re a parent hearing this, the question we beg you to consider is ‘Could this be me?”
Ecstasy–chemically known as 3,4 methylenedioxymethamphetamine, or MDMA – is a synthetic, psychoactive drug with amphetamine-like and hallucinogenic properties. Taken orally in pill form, Ecstasy can be extremely dangerous, especially in high doses. Ecstasy accelerates the release of serotonin in the brain, producing an intense high, often characterized by extreme feelings of love and acceptance – ‘the very emotions teens crave the most,” Pasierb said. Ecstasy can cause dramatic increases in body temperature and can lead to muscle breakdown, as well as kidney and cardiovascular system failure, as reported in some fatalities. A growing body of research has found Ecstasy to be neurotoxic. According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, MDMA can damage the neurons that use the chemical serotonin to communicate with other neurons.
As reported by the Partnership’s research and other studies, Ecstasy use has increased significantly across the country. Partnership research indicates that older teens (16-17) are more likely to experiment with Ecstasy than are younger teens (13-15); most users are boys, but by a slim margin. Unlike methamphetamine and other drugs that are more regional in nature, Ecstasy is a drug that has been found in major cities and small towns throughout America, with noteworthy emergence in locations as diverse as Baltimore, Maryland and Billings, Montana. (See “Pulse Check” findings.) Emergency room mentions related to Ecstasy increased nearly 13-fold from 421 in 1995 to 5,542 in 2000.

The federal government recently announced that the growing potency of America’s most popular illegal drug, marijuana, and the number of kids seeking help to get off the drug (one in five users) worried them so much that they were soliciting new marijuana-research proposals and urging local law enforcement to crack down on those who sell the drug.

The pro-marijuana lobby was furious and immediately charged the feds with fear-mongering and clamoring to protect their (not so glamorous, actually) jobs in Washington. Their cries rested on claims that more potent marijuana is not tantamount to more dangerous marijuana and that the rise in the number of treatment beds for marijuana users is due to criminal justice referrals, not the drug’s harmfulness.

But the evidence shows the government may indeed have it right. The pro-drug movement, fuelled with the motivation to legalize harmful substances and angry at the attack on its values of “drug use for all,” is putting kids at risk by downplaying the known dangers of marijuana.

Although not as destructive as shooting heroin or smoking crack, marijuana use is unquestionably damaging. Today’s more powerful marijuana probably leads to greater health consequences than the marijuana of the 1960s: Astonishingly, pot admissions to emergency rooms now exceed those of heroin. Visits to hospital emergency departments because of marijuana use have risen steadily, from an estimated 16,251 in 1991 to more than 119,472 in 2002. That has accompanied a rise in potency from 3.26 percent to 7.19 percent, according to the Potency Monitoring Project at the University of Mississippi.

More potent marijuana is also seen as more lucrative on the market. Customs reports claim that a dealer coming north with a pound of cocaine can make an even trade with a dealer traveling south with a pound of high-potency marijuana. It makes sense that people pay more for stronger pot because the high is better.

A flurry of very recent research studies – concerning withdrawal, schizophrenia and lung obstruction, for example – have also shown marijuana’s unfortunate consequences. These conclusions were not being reached in the ’70s and ’80s (legalizers often point to the Nixon-commissioned Shafer report, which said nice things about the drug as evidence of marijuana’s harmlessness), because marijuana from that era was weaker and less dangerous than today’s drug. The May 5 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association reported that the number of marijuana users over the past 10 years stayed the same while the number dependent on the drug rose 20 percent – from 2.2 million to 3 million.

And although a majority of kids in treatment for marijuana are referred there by the criminal justice system, it still remains only a slight majority – about 54 percent. The rest is self-, school or doctor referral.To paint the picture that the reason marijuana dependence looks higher is because of the criminal justice system is disingenuous (especially because most people who use only marijuana never interact with law enforcement as a result of that use).

Some still argue that it’s wrong to arrest kids and force them into treatment. It seems like the government can never win: If it arrests and locks people up, legalizers kick and scream that we’re not giving users “alternatives to incarceration.” If it arrest kids as a way to get them help, and not as a punishment mechanism, all of a sudden the government is giving in to George Orwell.

It’s too bad that pot apologists don’t see what most parents do see: Marijuana is a harmful drug with serious consequences, and mechanisms – even a brush with the law to help a user realize that what he’s doing is harmful – to help stop the progression of use should be seen as a good thing. That’s not government propaganda. That’s common sense.And it may save a few lives.

Source: Kevin A. Sabet recently stepped down as senior speechwriter to America’s drug czar, John P. Walters. A Marshall Scholar, he is writing a book on drug policy and is also a Ph.D. candidate at Oxford University.

If state legislators wrote a bill outlawing a critical remedy to help kids avoid a disease like tuberculosis, there would probably be a major effort to boot every single one of them out of office. Recently, the state Senate did something just as asinine — except the condition in question was drug use by kids, far more prevalent than TB. Bowing to pro-drug interest groups, a bill is making its way to the governor’s desk that would stymie efforts by local schools to test students for drugs. Unlike lawmakers in other states, Sacramento bureaucrats would like to control the way schools drug-test students, making such testing voluntary and placing restrictions on how it is administered.

Drug testing sounds costly, unnecessary, uncompassionate, even unconstitutional. Those who want to legalize and legitimize drug use caricature drug testing as a draconian policy designed to catch kids using drugs and throw them into jail.

It’s time to set the record straight. At a time when drug abuse in California plagues many students, it makes sense to drug-test students as a part a comprehensive drug-prevention program (which includes after-school programs). Since addiction is spread from peer to peer, drug testing gives a student another more credible reason to say “no” when offered drugs by his or her friend.

Unfortunately, the sponsors of Senate Bill 1386 miss the point of random drug testing when they assume that the practice is unnecessary because it is already easy to detect drug use: “You come into class, your eyes are red, you’re falling asleep, and yesterday you weren’t like that,” argues Assemblywoman Jackie Goldberg, D-Los Angeles, who coauthored the bill with Sen. John Vasconcellos, D-Santa Clara.

But drug testing is not meant to catch the kid who “everyone knows” is using drugs. The purpose of testing is to get those kids who have yet to show symptoms of their drug use the help they need before their “recreational fun” turns into dependence or addiction. It’s meant to prevent the scenario described above so that the student and his or her peers don’t have to live with the consequences of their classmate coming to school on drugs.

Drug testing is also not intended to detect drug use for punitive purposes — in fact, the U.S. Supreme Court prohibited that in its recent landmark ruling defending random drug tests for kids involved in activities at school. No student goes to jail as a result of a positive drug test. Instead, the family’s privacy is respected and the child is referred to get help to stop his or her use. Consequences entail being denied involvement in sports or other extra curricular activities during the treatment period and until the child tests negative for drugs.

Employing this carrot-and-stick method works. For example: After two years of a drug testing program, Hunterdon Central High School in New Jersey saw significant reductions in 20 of 28 drug use categories, including a drop in cocaine use by seniors from 13 percent to 4 percent. The U.S. military saw drug-use rates drop from 27 percent in 1981 to 3 percent today, thanks to the introduction of random drug testing. Schools like St. Patrick’s High in Chicago are seeing a total change in the culture of education at their school as a result of drug testing.

Compared to other health interventions, drug testing is cheap. It costs roughly $10 to $50 per student, per year. Most parents would gladly pay that small fee in exchange for knowing that their child was safe. In addition, the federal government has proposed $25 million to help school districts offset the costs.

Unfortunately, opponents of random drug tests (many of whom carry mission statements dedicated to legalizing drugs) can claim some victories in our state. Already, schools such as Bret Harte Union High School in Angels Camp (Calaveras County) have said that they will pull their effective drug testing program if SB1386 passes.

Principals, teachers and parents who employ an effective drug-testing program at school realize it is a valuable tool to deter kids from delving into drug use in the first place and to refer troubled teens to help. Our elected officials should not make that tool harder to use with this misguided legislation.

Source: Kevin A. Sabet. Former chief speechwriter for the Bush administration’s drug czar. A Marshall scholar at Oxford University, Sabet and is writing on book on drug use.

Nation’s Youth Turning Away from Marijuana, as Perceptions of Risk Rise; Most Adults with Substance Abuse Problems Are Employed

Secretary Tommy G. Thompson announced today that there is a five percent decline in the number of American youth between the ages of 12 and 17 who have ever used marijuana. Current use of marijuana plummeted nearly 30 percent among 12 and 13 year olds. The findings were included in the 2003 National Survey on Drug Use and Health released today at the annual Recovery Month press conference.

The findings, released by HHS’ Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), show that while overall, the change in the category “current use of any illicit drug” was not statistically significant, the use of some drugs decreased sharply. For youth, 12-17, past year use of Ecstasy and LSD dropped precipitously, by 41 percent for Ecstasy and 54 percent for LSD. Overall, 19.5 million Americans ages 12 and older, 8 percent of this population, currently use illicit drugs. The data indicate that of the 16.7 million adult users (18 and older) of illicit drugs in 2003, about 74 percent were employed either full time or part time.

SAMHSA Administrator Charles Curie said: “Employers who think alcohol and drug abuse will never be a problem in their workplace need to consider that more than three quarters of adults who have serious drug and or alcohol problems are employed. Encouraging employees to find help when they need it can result in fewer accidents and fewer workers absent on Monday morning. It may even save an employee’s life, family, or job. Creating a drug-free workplace program or enhancing an existing program can lead to a healthier, more productive work force and be an important part of solving one of our nation’s most persistent problems.”
The survey found that of the 19.4 million adults (age 18 and over) characterized with abuse of or dependence on alcohol or drugs (19.4 million) in 2003, 14.9 million (77 percent) were employed either full or part time. This amounts to over ten percent of full-time workers as well as over ten percent of part-time workers.

Marijuana continues to be the most commonly used illicit drug, with 14.6 million current users (6.2 percent of the population). The study shows that there were an estimated 2.6 million new marijuana users in 2002. About two thirds of these new users were under age 18, and about half were female.

An important positive change detected by the survey was an increase in the perception of risk in using marijuana once a month or more frequently. Both youth and young adults reported a significant increase in their awareness of the risks of smoking marijuana. Particularly striking was the 20 percent decline between 2002 and 2003 in the number of youth that were “heavy users” of marijuana (those smoking either daily or 20 or more days per month). Perceived availability of the drug also declined significantly among youth.

The results of this year’s survey demonstrate that anti-drug messages inside and outside of school, participation in religious and other activities, parental disapproval of substance use and positive attitudes about school are linked to lower rates of youth marijuana use. For example, those exposed to anti-drug messages outside of school had rates of current marijuana use that were 25 percent lower than those not reporting such exposure (7.5 percent vs. 10.0 percent). Youth who believe that their parents would “strongly disapprove” of marijuana had use rates fully 80 percent lower than those who reported that their parents would not “strongly disapprove” (5.4 percent vs. 28.7 percent).

The numbers of binge and heavy drinkers did not change between 2002 and 2003. About 54 million Americans ages 12 and older participated in binge drinking at least once in the 30 days prior to being surveyed. These people had five or more drinks on one or more occasion in the past month. There were 16.1 million heavy drinkers, who had five or more drinks on five or more occasions in the past month. The highest prevalence of binge and heavy drinking in 2003 was among young adults ages 18-25, with both binge and heavy drinking at their peak at age 21.

There were 10.9 million drinkers under legal age (ages 12-20) in the month prior to the survey interview in 2003. This is 29 percent of this age group. Of these, nearly 7.2 million (19.2 percent) were binge drinkers and 2.3 million (6.1 percent) were heavy drinkers.

Drunk driving declined from the 2002 survey, but drugged driving remained similar to that reported in the 2002 survey. An estimated 13.6 percent of persons aged 12 or older drove under the influence of alcohol at least once in the 12 months prior to their interviews (32.3 million people) in 2003, a decrease from 14.2 percent (33.5 million) in 2002. An estimated 10.9 million persons reported driving under the influence of an illicit drug during the past year. This is 4.6 percent of the population ages 12 and older.

Against the backdrop of generally good news, the non-medical lifetime use of prescription pain relievers showed a five percent increase for the population 12 and older, with young adults (18-25) experiencing a 15 percent increase in lifetime, as well as current use. Over all, current use of prescription pain relievers non-medically remained stable from 2002-2003. There was a statistically significant increase in lifetime non-medical use of Vicodin, Lortab, or Lorcet from 13.1 million to 15.7 million. Percocet, Percodan, or Tylox misuse in a lifetime increased from 13.1 million to 15.7 million people. Hydrocodone lifetime non-medical use increased from 4.5 million people to 5.7 million; OxyContin lifetime misuse increased from 1.9 million people to 2.8 million; non-medical methadone use increased from 0.9 million to 1.2 million; and non-medical use of Tramadol increased from 52,000 to 186,000 from 2002 to 2003.

Estimates for persons who currently used psychotherapeutic drugs taken non-medically are similar in 2003 to estimates for 2002. There were 6.3 million persons currently using prescription medications non-medically in 2003, about 2.7 percent of the population ages 12 or older. Of these, an estimated 4.7 million used prescription pain relievers; 1.8 million used tranquilizers; 1.2 million used stimulants, including methamphetamine; and 0.3 million used sedatives.

There were an estimated 2.3 million persons who currently used cocaine in 2003, 604,000 of whom used crack. One million persons used hallucinogens, including LSD, PCP, Ecstasy and other substances, and 119,000 people were estimated to currently use heroin. These projections are all similar to estimates for these drugs in 2002. But, past month inhalant use among youth ages 16 or 17 increased from 0.6 percent in 2002 to 1.0 percent in 2003. Methamphetamine use did not change significantly between 2002 and 2003, with 600,000 past month users each year.

The survey reported 21.6 million Americans in 2003 classified with dependence on drugs, alcohol, or both (9.1 percent of the population ages 12 and older). Over 20 million persons needed but did not receive treatment for an alcohol or drug problem in 2002 and 2003, but the number receiving specialized substance abuse treatment declined from 2.3 million in 2002 to 1.9 million in 2003. Of the 20 million people in need of treatment in 2003 who did not receive it, about 1 million recognized that need. Only 273,000 tried to obtain treatment and were unable to access it. The other 764,000 made no effort to get treatment.

The report found a major correlation between serious mental illness and substance dependence and abuse. In 2003, an estimated 4.2 million adults suffered from serious mental illness and substance dependence or abuse in the past year. Adults who used illicit drugs were more than twice as likely to have serious mental illness, compared to adults who did not use an illicit drug. In 2003, 18.1 percent of adult past-year users of illicit drugs had serious mental illness that year, while the rate was 7.8 percent among adults who had not used an illicit drug. Among adults with substance dependence or abuse, 21.6 percent had serious mental illness, compared to 8.0 percent among those who did not have dependence or abuse.

Among adults with serious mental illness in 2003, 21.3 percent (4.2 million people) were dependent on or abused alcohol or illicit drugs. The rate among adults without serious mental illness was only 7.9 percent.

Tobacco use rates in the past month remained essentially the same from 2002 to 2003, with 70.8 million people reporting current use of a tobacco product. Of these, 60.4 million smoked cigarettes in the past month, 12.8 million smoked cigars, 7.7 million used smokeless tobacco and 1.6 million smoked tobacco in pipes. There were significant declines in past year and lifetime cigarette use among youths ages 12 to 17 between 2002 and 2003, and a decline in the rate of cigarette smoking among young females.

The 2003 survey is based on interviews with 67,784 respondents ages 12 and older who were interviewed in their homes. This includes persons residing in dormitories or homeless shelters. Not included in the survey are persons on active military duty, in prisons, or other institutionalized populations or people who are homeless but not in shelters. Lifetime use is defined as ever used a substance in one’s lifetime. Past year use is having used the substance at least once in the past 12 months. Current use is use in the past 30 days.

A St. Louis study finds that drug courts and addiction treatment are far more cost-effective than probation over the long run, Alcoholism & Drug Abuse Weekly reported March 8.

The study by the Institute of Applied Research focused on the city’s adult felony drug court. Researchers concluded that drug court costs about $1,449 per offender more up front than probation, but end up saving taxpayers $7,707 within four years of discharge.

“The drug-court client pays for his drug-court experience within about 3.5 years by avoiding costs [such as reinvolvement with the criminal-justice system] and paying taxes,” said Jeffrey N. Kushner, the city’s drug-court administrator.

The complete report is available on the Institute of Applied Research website.

Marijuana indicators continued upward trends that began in the early 1990s. In 2002, however, marijuana ED mentions stabilized, after rising from almost 600 to 1,200 from 1999 to 2001. When found as the sole drug in a hospital ED situation, patients typically present with symptoms of a panic or anxiety attack.

As in past years, marijuana precipitated more admissions into addiction treatment programs than any other illicit drug in the Twin Cities in 2003. Overall, one out of five (22.8 percent) people entering addiction treatment programs reported marijuana as the primary substance problem, compared with only 8 percent in 1991. Most (77.3 percent) were males, and 68.3 percent were white. For many, it was the first treatment experience (44.2 percent), which can reflect a relatively short abuse history. The average age of first marijuana use was 13.7 years.

Marijuana was overwhelmingly the primary drug among adolescents and young adults in treatment. Among treatment admissions under age 18, a whopping 73.2 percent reported marijuana as the primary substance problem, and among youth age 18 – 25, 34.8 percent. In contrast, among patients age 26 to 34, 14.6 percent reported marijuana as the primary substance problem, and among patients 35 and older, only 4.5 percent.

In 2003 in Minneapolis, 48.3 percent of adult male arrestees tested positive for marijuana. Nationwide, it ranged from a high of 54.9 percent in Oklahoma City, to a low of 30.9 percent in Honolulu and 31.9 percent in Salt Lake City.  The median across all cities was 44.1 percent.

Marijuana, readily available according to multiple sources, sold for $5 per joint, and could be purchased by any metropolitan area middle school student. Standard, commercial grade marijuana sold for $50 per quarter ounce, $150–$175 per ounce, and $600–$900 per pound. Higher potency “BC Bud” from British Columbia was increasingly available and sold for $100 per quarter ounce and up to $600 per ounce.

Marijuana joints that are dipped in formaldehyde, which is often mixed with phencyclidine (PCP), are known as “wets,” “wet sticks,” “water,” or “wet daddies.” Marijuana joints containing crack cocaine are known as “primos.”

College students who smoke contend that they are just as healthy as nonsmokers and aren’t particularly worried about the health effects of smoking, according to a University of Texas study.

The Health Behavior News Service reported July 29 that researcher Alexander V. Prokhorov, M.D., and colleagues found that many college students felt invulnerable to the health impact of smoking. “Unfortunately, most smokers commonly deny personal risk, believing that others are more likely to experience negative consequences,” he said.

For example, 94 percent of smokers reported at least one respiratory problem, such as morning cough or shortness of breath. But 90 percent also believed they had no symptoms or illness related to smoking.

However, young smokers who were contemplating quitting reported more smoking-related symptoms, and were more aware of the health risks of smoking.

The study looked at 1,283 community-college students in Texas.

Cocaine abusers are more likely than nonusers to suffer from HIV, hepatitis, sexually transmitted diseases, and other infections. Most of this increased incidence is the result of conditions and behaviors–for example, injecting drugs, poor nutrition, and unsafe sex–that are often are associated with drug abuse. Now, NIDA-supported investigators at the McLean Hospital Alcohol and Drug Abuse Research Center in Belmont, Massachusetts, have found that cocaine itself has a direct biological effect that may decrease an abuser’s ability to fight off infections.

Dr. John H. Halpern, along with colleagues at McLean Hospital and Harvard Medical School, found that a key immune system component, a protein called interleukin-6 (IL-6), responded less robustly to an immunological challenge in male and female abusers injected with cocaine than in those who received placebo. “When your body detects a foreign object, IL-6 helps trigger the release of a cascade of other immune system components that isolate and neutralize the threat,” explains Dr. Halpern. “If the balance of this response is disrupted, your body cannot fight infection as effectively as it should.”
The study involved 30 participants (16 women, 14 men, ages 21-35) with a history of cocaine abuse, including at least one drug administration within the past month. The investigators placed an intravenous catheter in one arm of each participant and measured IL-6 levels. The catheter is detected as foreign by the body’s immune system and triggers an immune response. After 30 minutes, the researchers injected cocaine or saline solution (0.4 mg/kg) into each participant’s other arm; 4 hours later, they measured IL-6 levels again. In participants given saline, IL-6 levels had more than quintupled in response to the presence of the catheter, increasing from an average of less than 2 trillionths of a gram (picograms, or pg) per milliliter of blood to an average of more than 11 pg/ml. In men and women who received cocaine, however, IL-6 levels barely doubled–from less than 2 pg/ml to an average of 3.8 pg/ml.

“The findings in this study show that in people with a history of cocaine abuse, exposure to the drug establishes conditions that can lead to immediate harm,” Dr. Halpern says. “In such subjects, we found that cocaine impairs the body’s defense system for at least 4 hours. We can’t rule out the possibility that IL-6 response returns to normal shortly after that time. But even if the blunted immune response lasts only a few hours, it makes it more likely that an infection like HIV or just a common cold can take hold,” Dr. Halpern says.

“This research suggests a link between cocaine use and compromised immune response and could help explain the high incidence of infectious disease among drug abusers,” observes Dr. Steven Grant of NIDA’s Division of Treatment Research and Development. “It reminds us that the health consequences of drug abuse reach far beyond disruption of the brain systems involved in abuse and addiction.”

The findings also have significance in another context, Dr. Grant adds. “The IL-6 findings are a small but possibly significant part of a much larger study designed to gather a wide range of information on the acute and chronic effects of abused drugs on the brain, endocrine system, and immune function. This kind of discovery-based research can yield unexpected, sometimes important, insights.”

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.

Patterns of HIV transmission among different classes of injection drug users have been characterized.

In a recent study from the United States, the “prevalence of HIV and associated risk behaviors were assessed among three groups of heroin users: long term injection drug users (LTIDUs), new injection drug users (NIDUs), and heroin sniffers (HSs) with no history of injection.”

“HIV seroprevalence was similar among NIDUs (13.3%) and HSs (12.7%),” while “LTIDUs had almost twice as high a level of HIV infection (24.7%),” reported D.D. Chitwood and coauthors at the University of Miami. “After including drug use and sex behavior variables in logistic regression models, both drug and sexual risk factors remained in the models.”

“Attributable risk percent (APR) from injection for HIV infection among injection drug users was estimated to be 55.7% for LTIDUs and 5.8% for NIDUs,” published data indicated. “High-risk sex behavior plays an important role in the prevalence of HIV among drug users and accounts for nearly all the infection among NIDUs.”

“Both injection and sexual risk behaviors need to be stressed in HIV prevention and intervention programs aimed at drug users,” the researchers concluded.

Chitwood and colleagues published their study in the Journal of Psychoactive Drugs (Prevalence and risk factors for HIV among sniffers, short-term injectors, and long-term injectors of heroin. J Psychoactive Drug, 2003;35(4):445-453).

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 question of whether a clinically significant marijuana (cannabis) withdrawal syndrome exists remains controversial. In spite of the mounting clinical and preclinical evidence suggesting that such a syndrome exists (Beardsley et al., 1986; Budney et al., 2001; Holson et al., 1989; Huestis et al., 2001), the DSM-IV does not include marijuana withdrawal as a diagnostic category. The clinical syndrome has been characterized by restlessness, anorexia, irritability and insomnia that begin less than 24 hours after discontinuation of marijuana, peak in intensity on days 2 to 4, and last for seven to 10 days (Budney et al., 1999; Haney et al., 1999; Mendelson et al., 1984).

The question of whether this syndrome is clinically significant is important, not only because marijuana is the most commonly used illicit drug in the United States (Johnston et al., 2001), but also because marijuana has been shown to produce dependence at rates comparable to other drugs of abuse (Kandel et al., 1997; Kessler et al., 1994) and because relapse rates among individuals seeking treatment for marijuana dependence are similar to those with other drugs of abuse (Budney et al., 1998; Stephens et al., 1993). Furthermore, many violent crimes are committed by individuals undergoing withdrawal from drugs of abuse, including marijuana (Kouri et al., 1997; Peters and Kearns, 1992). If a clinically significant marijuana withdrawal syndrome does exist, the omission of this syndrome from the DSM-IV might contribute to the perception that behavioral or pharmacological treatment regimens for marijuana dependence are not necessary.

We conducted two studies in our laboratory to determine whether abstinence from marijuana after long-term use results in withdrawal symptoms, to identify those symptoms and to quantify their severity (Kouri and Pope, 2000; Kouri et al., 1999). The first study focused specifically on whether abrupt discontinuation of marijuana following chronic use results in changes in aggressive behavior (Kouri et al., 1999).

To measure aggressive behavior, we used the Point Subtraction Aggression Paradigm (PSAP). This computer test has been used to detect changes in aggressive responses following acute administration of a number of drugs, and its external validity has been demonstrated in a number of studies of male and female parolees with histories of violent behavior (Cherek and Lane, 1999; Cherek et al., 1996).

Subjects in our study were long-term heavy users of marijuana who reported a history of at least 5,000 separate episodes of marijuana use in their lifetime (the equivalent to smoking once per day for 13.7 years), were smoking at least once daily at the time of recruitment and met DSM-IV criteria for marijuana dependence without meeting criteria for a current Axis I disorder. Subjects were excluded if they reported that they had used another class of drugs more than 100 times in their lifetimes or had consumed more than five alcoholic drinks per day continuously for one month or more in their lifetimes. The controls were composed of two groups: 1) individuals who had not smoked marijuana more than 50 times in their lives and had not smoked more than once per month in the last year and 2) individuals who had formerly smoked marijuana on a daily basis but who had not smoked more than once per week during the last three months. The rationale for using infrequent or former smokers rather than marijuana-naive subjects as controls was to minimize possible confounding variables that might differentiate individuals who had never tried marijuana from those who had. We based this decision on data from our laboratory demonstrating that heavy marijuana users do not differ from occasional users in a wide range of demographic and psychiatric measures (Kouri et al., 1995).

During the study, subjects were required to abstain from smoking marijuana and using any other drugs for 28 consecutive days. To verify abstinence, subjects had to come to the laboratory every day to provide supervised urine samples that we analyzed quantitatively for tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) metabolites. We measured aggressive responses with the PSAP on study days 0 (before abstinence), 1 (after 24 hours of abstinence), 3, 7 and 28.

Subjects were told they would be playing a computer game against an anonymous same-sex subject from the study. In fact, however, this second subject was actually a computer. During the course of each 20-minute computer session, subjects had the option of pressing one of two buttons on the PSAP response panel (labelled “A” or “B”). Pressing button A resulted in the accumulation of points that were exchanged for money at the end of the study. Pressing this button was defined as a non-aggressive response. By pressing button B, subjects could subtract points from the fictitious opponent. Points taken from the opponent, however, were not added to the subject’s counter, and pressing button B was defined as an aggressive response. Aggressive responding was provoked by random subtractions of the subject’s points, which were attributed to the fictitious opponent.

On study day 0 (before marijuana abstinence) and study day 1 (24 hours of marijuana abstinence), the current marijuana users did not differ from past heavy users or light users in the number of aggressive or non-aggressive responses they made. However, current marijuana users were significantly more aggressive on days 3 and 7 of marijuana abstinence compared to their pre-withdrawal levels of aggression and compared to the controls. By day 28, the number of aggressive responses from the current marijuana users was not different from their pre-withdrawal baseline levels or the controls (Figure). These data demonstrate that abstinence from marijuana after chronic use is associated with increases in aggressive responding following provocation. Specifically, during the first week of abstinence, current marijuana users displayed levels of aggression that were significantly higher than before abstinence and higher than the levels displayed by matched controls. Interestingly, the increases in aggressive responding followed a specific time course and then returned to pre-withdrawal levels after 28 days of abstinence. The transient nature of these changes is consistent with other reports of marijuana withdrawal.

The second study was designed to further characterize symptoms of marijuana withdrawal and to quantify their magnitude (Kouri and Pope, 2000). We used the same study entry criteria as in the first study and subjects were required to come to the laboratory every day to provide urine samples and to fill out a daily diary.

The items assessed in the daily diaries were: mood, appetite, sleep, anxiety, irritability, physical tension or agitation, physical symptoms, ability to concentrate, desire to use marijuana, and desire to resume using marijuana at the end of the study. The questions were presented on a 10-point Likert scale with the qualifiers “extremely low” at the zero end of the scale and “extremely high” at the 10-point end of the scale. We obtained pre-withdrawal baseline levels for all of the diary items via a personal interview with each subject before the beginning of the withdrawal period.

Thirty current marijuana users and 30 controls (16 former heavy users and 14 light users) participated in the study. Before the beginning of the abstinence period, the current marijuana users were not different from the former users or the light users on any of the items assessed in the diaries except for the ability to concentrate item. The current users reported a lower ability to concentrate than the controls. Interestingly, the former heavy users were not different from the light users on any of the diary scores during the course of the study. In contrast, the current users reported increases in irritability, anxiety, physical tension and physical symptoms, and decreases in mood and appetite starting on day 1 and peaking between days 7 and 10 of marijuana abstinence.

It is important to note that although, as a group, the current marijuana users experienced an increase in withdrawal symptoms compared to the controls, only 60% of the subjects in the current users group reported a change in symptoms of at least three points in magnitude. The fact that 40% of subjects who had used marijuana regularly for an average of 22 years did not report experiencing severe withdrawal symptoms during abstinence might suggest that physical dependence on marijuana is not as strong as that observed with other drugs of abuse. This may be due, at least in part, to the long half-life of THC. However, many subjects reported that when trying to remain abstinent in the past, the presence of withdrawal symptoms had played an important role in their relapse. Thus, alleviation of abstinence symptoms may contribute to the maintenance of daily marijuana use in chronic users.

Another significant finding is that after 28 days of marijuana abstinence, all of the symptoms returned to pre-withdrawal levels except for irritability and physical tension. It is possible that these two symptoms remained slightly elevated because they represented a premorbid characteristic of the current users and were not a result of marijuana withdrawal. If this is the case, the fact that the former users did not have elevated scores on these two items may reflect a characteristic that potentially differentiates individuals with a history of heavy marijuana use who have successfully stopped from individuals who continue to smoke regularly.

Taken together, the data from these two studies provide further evidence of the existence of a marijuana withdrawal syndrome. An important aspect of both of our studies is that we used two control groups: 1) former heavy marijuana users and 2) individuals who had rarely smoked marijuana during their lives.

It is noteworthy that these control groups were indistinguishable from one another in diary scores or number of aggressive responses on the PSAP, whereas both were significantly distinguishable from the current marijuana users. This observation argues that the elevated diary scores and aggressive responses of the current marijuana users were attributable to marijuana withdrawal, rather than a mere history of marijuana use or some other aspect of subject selection or study design. Future studies should focus not on whether a marijuana withdrawal syndrome exists but rather on determining the clinical significance of this syndrome and the role withdrawal symptoms play in perpetuating marijuana use.

Acknowledgement
These studies were supported by NIDA grants DA10346, DA03994, DA00343. Dr. Kouri is assistant profesor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School in Boston, Mass.
References
Beardsley PM, Balster RL, Harris LS (1986), Dependence on tetrahydrocannabinol in rhesus monkeys. J Pharmacol Exp Ther

By Timothy Wilens, M.D.,Psychiatric Times.
The overlap between attention-deficit/ hyperactivity disorder and alcohol or drug abuse or dependence (referred to here as substance use disorders [SUDs]) in adolescents has been an area of increasing clinical, research and public health interest. Appearing in early childhood, ADHD affects from 6% to 9% of children and adolescents worldwide (Anderson et al., 1987) and up to 5% of adults (Kessler, in press). Longitudinal data suggest that childhood ADHD persists into adolescence in 75% of cases and into adulthood in approximately one-half of cases (for review, see Weiss, 1992). Substance use disorders usually appear in adolescence or early adulthood and affect between 10% to 30% of U.S. adults and a less defined, but sizable, number of juveniles (Kessler, 2004). The study of comorbidity between SUDs and ADHD is relevant to both research and clinical practice in developmental pediatrics, psychology and psychiatry with implications for diagnosis, prognosis, treatment and health care delivery.

Overlap Between ADHD and SUD

Structured psychiatric diagnostic interviews assessing ADHD and other disorders in substance-abusing groups have indicated that from one-third to one-half of adolescents with SUDs have ADHD (DeMilio, 1989; Milin et al., 1991). For example, aggregate data from government-funded studies of mainly cannabis-abusing youth indicate that ADHD is the second most common comorbidity with from 40% to 50% of both girls and boys manifesting full criteria for ADHD. Data largely ascertained from adult groups with SUDs also show an earlier onset and more severe course of SUD associated with ADHD (Carroll and Rounsaville, 1993; Levin and Evans, 2001).

Summary

There is a strong literature supporting a relationship between ADHD and SUDs. Both family/genetic and self-medication influences may be operational in the development and continuation of SUDs in ADHD. Adolescents with ADHD and SUDs require multimodal interventions incorporating addiction and mental health treatment. Pharmacotherapy in individuals with ADHD and SUDs needs to take into consideration timing, misuse and diversion liability, potential drug interactions, and compliance concerns.

While the existing literature has provided important information on the relationship of ADHD and SUDs, it also points to a number of areas in need of further study. The mechanism by which untreated ADHD leads to SUDs, as well as the risk reduction of ADHD treatment on cigarette smoking and SUDs, needs to be better understood. Given the prevalence and major morbidity and impairment caused by SUDs and ADHD, prevention and treatment strategies for these adolescents need to be further developed and evaluated.
Source: Psychiatric Times January 2006 Vol. XXV Issue 1

Developed by the Boys and Girls Clubs of America, the Stay SMART program is a drug prevention initiative that utilizes role playing, group activities, and discussions to promote social skills and increase knowledge about the health consequences and prevalence of substance use by youth and adults. The program curriculum calls for 12 sessions, each lasting for an hour or more.
SMART Leaders is a 2-year booster program aimed at reinforcing the skills and knowledge youths learned in Stay SMART. Five booster sessions last 90 minutes and focus on improving self-image, coping with stress, resisting media pressure, and providing education/ discussion modules on alcohol, tobacco, and drugs. Five Boys and Girls Clubs offered the SMART Leaders program to 13-year-old boys and girls of various ethnic/racial backgrounds living in public housing projects in Pennsylvania, Florida, New York, Wisconsin, and Arkansas.

The SMART Leaders booster program was effective in maintaining and furthering gains made in the initial Stay SMART program. Self-reported questionnaires reflected significantly minimized drug-related behavior and fewer misconceptions regarding alcohol and marijuana use than in the control group. Tests also showed an increase in knowledge concerning the health consequences of alcohol, tobacco, and drug use.

To assess long-term trends in cigarette smoking according to the combined influence of sex and education, this study examined smoking prevalence in sucessive U.S. birth cohorts. Data from nationally representative surveys were examined to assess smoking prevalence for six successive 10-year birth cohorts stratified by race, ethinicity, sex, and educational attainment. Substantial declines in smoking prevalence were found among men who had a high school education or more, regardless of race or ethinicity, and slight declines women of the same educational background were revealed. However, little change was found in smoking prevalence among men of all race/ethnic groups with less than high school education, and large increases were found among women with the same years of schooling, espcially if they were white or African American. These data suggest that persons of low educational attainment have yet to benefit from ther policies and education about the health consequences of cigarette smoking.

Source: Escobedo, L.G.; Peddicord, J.P.
American Journal of Public Health 86(2):231-236, 1996

In the office dictionary the word next to ‘educate’ is ‘edulcorate’ – meaning to sweeten up; to make more palatable . In the search for acceptance for drugs messages, especially by youth, we sometimes run the risk of adding too much sweetener whilst leaving out what may be found bitter to the taste. Nowhere is this more true than with cannabis. The media have had a love affair with ‘pot’ for years now, and even much of the nationally-available drugs literature is sanguine about this ‘pernicious weed’. Not content with taking the lowest common denominator of harm, there is a tendency to open the dialogue by listing the perceived ‘benefits’ of a drug’s misuse. Of course the risk of ‘edulcoration’ can apply to any field of endeavour in regard to drugs. Over-zealous treatment workers are as much at risk of propagandising their position as are harm reduction workers or even – perish the thought – prevention workers. The perennial battle for a slice of the (tiny) funding cake adds to this tendency. The truth, as ever lies (to quote the Blessed Paddy Ashdown) “somewhere in-between”. If ever we were to see a united drugs profession – without the aid of a powerful telescope – it would probably include an acceptance by all concerned that they have been guilty of hyperbole, and the respective roles of each sector could be more constructively interlinked to reach a common good of minimum drug misuse plus sensitive and effective interventions for these who do misuse, to whatever extent. For the present, sadly it has to be recognised that common goals are still some way off.

A Queensland University study of 5000 pregnant women has found a correlation between smoking and poverty. The three year study measured smoking against income levels, with the lowest earners defined as those who attract an income of $4,144 a year and the highest above $21,639 a year. Two thirds of the lowest income group smoked before pregnancy compared with 46 per cent of middle income earners and 39 per cent of higher income earners. Young and impoverished single mothers are more likely to be heavy smokers with half of the lowest income earners puffing during pregnancy. And 14 per cent of them are such serious smokers that during pregnancy they light up more than 20 cigarettes a day.

Source: British Medical Journal 7135:316

In a study of 6,000 high school students in New York State, Cornell University researchers found that the odds of drinking, smoking, and using marijuana were 40 percent lower among students who had participated in a school-based substance abuse prevention program in grades 7-9 than among students who had not. In 1995 near1y one out of five seniors reported complete abstinence from drugs. This represents an increase of almost 250 percent since 1980. Also in 1995, 12.8 million Americans used an illegal drug within the past month. A decrease of nearly 50 percent since 1979.

Source: Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration: Prevention Works!
The 1997 National Household Survey on Drug Abuse found that the rates of use of marijuana, psychotherapeutics, cocaine, hallucinogens, and inhalants in the total population age 12 and older did not change between 1996 and 1997.
Source: White House Drug Policy Website

Some people are born to smoke, and find nicotine pleasurable from their first puff, according to the latest issue of the journal, Addiction. Researchers from the University of Michigan Medical School found that some people are destined to become smokers because they are more sensitive to the nicotine buzz.

(Courier Mail, 6/4/98 p2)

The cigar that juts from the mouth of Orson Welles as he eyes Kermit the frog in The Muppet Movie, a children’s film, may have been a gift from Philip Morris. Newly released internal company documents show that the company supplied the film makers with tobacco products. Similar deals were made for Crocodile Dundee, Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, Die Hard and dozens of other films which had huge youth audiences.
The arrangements continued until at least 1998 despite pledges by the film industry not to deal with tobacco companies. Philip Morris has long said it does not target children, but critics believe that deals like these have helped the company circumvent legal bans against such advertising. “A kid coming away from the movies today will have the impression that everyone smokes,” said Professor Stanton Glantz from the University of California The documents detailing the Philip Morris movie deals were among millions released during the State of Minnesota’s continuing lawsuit against the tobacco industry.

(Daily Telegraph, 3013/98)

A leaked internal memo from British American Tobacco allegedly shows Britain’s biggest tobacco company knew nearly 20 years ago that the sales of its products depended on their addictiveness.
The 1979 document is in 10,000 released in a lawsuit brought by Medicaid, the US state health organisation. It details executives looking for a new “socially acceptable addictive product, likely to include nicotine or a substitute for it, that did not need to be lit – to eliminate the need for inhalation and the danger of passive smoking”… “We also think that consideration should be given to the hypothesis that the high profits additionally associated with the tobacco industry are directly related to the fact that the customer is dependent on the product.” The industry has never admitted publicly that cigarettes are addictive.

(British Medical Journal, 21/2/98)

Abstract: Research has shown that adolescent users of tobacco are much more likely to progress to use of illicit drugs than are nonusers of tobacco. This article suggests potential psychosocial reasons for the progression based on principles of Learning Theory, Theory of Reasoned Action, Health Belief Model, and Cognitive Dissonance. In addition, a neuropharmacologic causal mechanism is discussed. The existence of tobacco’s gateway function has important implications in (the nation’s) efforts to reduce illicit drug use and adolescent smoking.

Gateway drugs — drugs of entry — serve as stepping stones to illicit drug use. Tobacco use in particular has proved a strong and consistent predictor of subsequent illegal drug use. Not all adolescent cigarette smokers progress to using marijuana or cocaine, but a strong statistical link exists between tobacco use and progression to illegal drugs. Research indicates it is incredibly rare for a “hard core” drug user to bypass the initial behaviour of cigarette use prior to using illicit drugs. Nicotine has been described as an “almost essential precursor” and a “necessary intermediate” to the use of marijuana and other drugs. Studies documented the link between adolescent smoking and illegal drug use. These studies indicate tobacco use consistently precedes illicit drug use, and the association shows a clear dose response pattern. The more adolescents smoke, the more likely they are to use illegal drugs. The statistical link between adolescent smoking and subsequent illegal drug use has been described by researchers as a “striking quantitative relationship” and a “dramatic association”. The contrast particularly becomes impressive when illegal drug use prevalence rates of adolescent daily cigarette smokers are compared to nonsmokers. Results vary, depending on which illegal drug is being studied, frequency of use (daily, monthly, ever) and the grades included in the study. One study showed the relative risk for illicit drug use among one pack or more daily teen smokers consistently at 10 to 30 times greater than for nonsmokers. Surveys by the U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services demonstrated that young daily smokers were 114 times more likely to have used marijuana than those who had not smoked. Much of the statistical link between smoking and illegal drug use results from an indirect association where both behaviours share a common etiology caused by other psychosocial and environmental factors. However, an increasing number of researchers suggest the link between adolescent smoking and subsequent illicit drug use also results from causal mechanisms. While studies document a statistical association between the two behaviours, few propose theoretical models to explain potential causal mechanisms for the association. Yet, several potential psychosocial and neuropharmacologic causal mechanisms promote tobacco’s gateway drug function.

Results of tests for drug use in 21 big cities in the US are found in the ADAM Report. The conclusion says that: By any measure, the level of recent drug use among 1997 ADAM arrestees is significant. Every site reported that a majority of its male adult arrestees tested positive for at least one drug. The same is true for female adult arrestees in 19 out of 21 sites where data was collected. There are differences in trends for specific drugs and segments of persons arrested.
The 1996 national Survey of Inmates in Local Jails in the U.S. showed that
A. 82% of all jail inmates in 1996 said they had ever used an illegal drug, up from 78% in 1989.
B. The percentage ever using drugs regularly went from 58% in 1989 to 64% in 1996.
C. 55% used drugs in the month before the offense, vs. only 44% in 1989.
D. 36% were using drugs at the time of the offense, up from 27%.
E. 16% said they committed the crime for drug money, up a little from the 13% in 1989.

Arrestee Drug Abuse Monitoring Program

Much of the push toward drug testing has come from the federal government. In 1982, the Navy began the first broad-scale random drug testing after an aircraft accident aboard the USS Nimitz uncovered widespread drug use about the ship. The practice soon spread to other branches of the military. Then drug testing was introduced in safety-sensitive government agencies such as the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and mandated for government contractors with contracts worth more than $25,OOO.

Several horrific accidents spurred drug testing in the transportation industry. In 1987, two trains collided in Chase, Md., causing 16 deaths, and it was later revealed that one of the trains engineers had been smoking marijuana before the collision. And in 1991, eight people were killed in a New York subway train crash; the train’s driver later tested positive for alcohol.

These incidents led to the passage of the Omnibus Transportation Employee Testing Act of 1991 which required the Department of Transportation to mandate drug and alcohol  testing of employees in safety-sensitive transportation positions in private companies.

A snapshot of how drug testing works comes from Tom Warner, president of three D.C-based plumbing, heating and air conditioning companies that together employ 92 workers.  He wasn’t pushed to his drug-testing policy because of any big disaster. Instead, it was little things such as recurring minor accidents and foolish mistakes.  He remembers one experienced technician, for example, who had used his bare hands on a sewer-contaminated piece of machinery, rather than use his gloves. “It wasn’t something a rational person would do” he recalled thinking at the time.

Warner decided to introduce drug testing, and the first results startled him.  About half of a group of new trainees failed. as did the worker who had failed to use his safety gloves. Some drug users quit rather than be tested. Warner decided to clean out the problem workers by simply firing people who tested positive for drug use.  They are invited to reapply after one year and will be rehired if they pledge to remain drug-free.  Few drug users either apply or reapply now, Warner said. “It’s known we’re a drug-free company,”  he said. “People who do drugs want to do drugs — and want to be in a place where they can.” The percentage of major firms requiring employee drug tests has escalated in the past decade, … and the percentage of employees who test positive has declined significantly.

Construction workers are among the category of employees reporting the highest usage rate of Illegal drugs. Percentage of employees, 18-49, reporting use of illicit drugs in the past month :-
 

With little public debate, big corporations have adopted what amounts to zero-tolerance policy toward illicit drug use, at least by new employees. Almost all of the nation’s fortune 200 companies for example have instituted drug-testing programs in the past decade.

Surveys by the American Management Association, a trade group whose members are disproportionately large companies, estimates that about three-quarters of their members do drug testing – most on a pre-employment basis but with a growing number testing their workers randomly as well. Employees who institute drug testing believe it causes the rate of employee drug use to fall. Indeed, according to statistics released last month by Smith Kline Beecham Clinical Laboratories in Collegeville, Pa. positive drug-test results have plummeted to 5 percent, from 18.1 percent in 1987. Workers in safety-sensitive positions have the best records, according to the firm’s statistics, with only 3.5 percent testing positive for illegal drugs. But how did workplace drug testing become so pervasive so quickly? The answer seems to be that corporations saw many benefits especially in reducing the incidence of drug-related accidents in the workplace, and almost no drawbacks. Indeed, except from civil libertarians. there have been few public protests. The spread of testing has been extraordinarily rapid. particularly at big companies that offer good pay, health insurance, benefits and pension plans. In 1983, only six firms out of the Fortune 200 were testing their workers for drugs, but by 1991, 196 of the 200 largest companies were doing it, said employment lawyer Mark De Bernardo, executive director of the D.C-based institute for a Drug-Free Workplace, an employer group. “To go from six to 116 of the Fortune 200 in only eight years, that’s really revolutionary,” De Bernardo said. “Typically the wheels in Corporate America don’t turn that fast. This was a movement that spread from CEO to CEO”.  De Bernardo said the trend was propelled by industry concerns about safety issues, absenteeism, productivity and liability for accidents, and its growth was hastened by waves of government regulation advocating drug crackdowns. “Now”, he said, “it has spread outward to businesses of almost every size around the country, the notable exceptions being Hollywood and Wall Street”.

“People who use drugs don’t apply at a company they know drug-tests said Dale Masi, a professor of social work at the University of Maryland at Baltimore and president of Masi Research Consultants, a D.C-based firm that advises major corporations on how to handle substance-abuse problems in the workplace. Companies know that if their competitors do it, they have to do it, or they will get all the users” Masi explained. “The individual with behavioral problems goes to the place of least resistance, and that happens to be in small businesses,” said Harold Green, president of Chamberlain Contractors Inc., a Laurel-based paving company. He instituted a drug-testing program 15 years ago, after a marijuana smoking employee was involved in a serious truck accident. He fired the driver then established a drug treatment and employee assistance plan, including drug testing, that was one the first of its kind in the country.  When Green set up his drug-testing plan, it was nearly unprecedented, particularly among small firms like his.

Many observers and critics considered it jarringly invasive to ask job hunters or employees to urinate in a cup to prove themselves drug-free. But such criticisms were gradually overwhelmed by a louder chorus of support.

In middle school 36% of students and 33% of teachers say the drug problem is getting worse compared to 10% of principals; in high school. 51% of students and 41% of teachers say it is getting worse compared with 15% of principals.

In high school. 50% of teachers and 48% of principals believe a team can smoke pot every weekend and still do well in school compared to 23% of teens.

71% of high school students think more than half the students tried pot: only 27% of principals and 26% of teachers do.

There is a dramatic difference between substance use by teens that attend religious services at least four times a month and those who attend less than once a month:

Only 8% who attend religious services at least tour times a month smoked cigarettes compared to 22% who attend less than once a month.

Only 13% who attended four times or more have smoked marijuana compared to 39% who attended less than once a month.

Only 20% who attend four times or more say at least half their friends drink compared to 38% who attend less than once a month.

Only 49% who attend four times or more know a friend or classmate who has used illegal drugs like acid, cocaine or heroin compared to 62% who attend less than once a month.

45% who never smoked pot rely most on their parents’ opinion compared to 21% who smoked it.

17% who never smoked pot hang out with friends after school compared to 1% who smoked pot.

United States of America
At the turn of the century cocaine, heroin and marijuana were in use legally and widely promoted. Between 1907 and 1917 thc murder rate rose by 300% Cocaine and opium addiction rates in these early years rivaled those of today and the effects led to pub1ic outcry.
In 1914 these drugs were made illegal and by 1940 the number of addicts had dropped from 250,000 to 50,000. Between 1923 and 1939 the rate of opium addiction fell 90%, apparently simply as a result of a strict drug policy which dramatically reduced exposure factors.

The US experimented briefly with decriminalisation of marijuana in the period 1975 to 1978. This resulted in a statistically significant increase in the reported number of marijuana-related visits to hospital emergency departments compared to metropolitan areas where decriminalisation had not been implemented.

By 1979 use of all drugs in the US was very high but between then and 1991, largely due to the efforts of parents, the number of users dropped from 23 million to 14 million, a 60% reduction sustained over a 12-year period. Use of cannabis halved, daily use fell by 75% and the use of cocaine fell by 50%. A wide-ranging and successful collaboration between Customs & Excise. Police. educationists, social workers and parents and the young people themselves reinforced the idea that the use of drugs is not normal and is socially unacceptable However, since 1991 a relaxation of this strategy has seen an increase in the problem.

In the state of Arizona Proposition 200 authorised doctors to issue prescriptions for drugs such as marijuana, heroin, LSD and PCP. It encouraged the immediate release of 1032 prison inmates sentenced for drugs offences and prohibited prison sentences for drug offences until the third conviction. A poll carried out between January 27th and 31st  1997 by Dr. Bruce Merrill (Prof. Of Mass Communications and Director of the Walter Cronkite School. Arizona State University) overwhelmingly supports the conclusion that Arizona residents believe the enactment of Proposition 200 has led to dangerous unintended consequences 85% of registered voters in Arizona believe that Proposition 200 needs to be changed.  60% of registered voters believe it should be repealed.

References
1. Musto, David F. “The American Disease – Origins of Narcotic Contr6l’. OUP New York 1987 especially pp 70-73
2. US Bureau of the Census. Historical Statistics of the United States Colonial Times to 1970. Part One. Washington DC. 1975
3. See ref 1: especially pp 91. 115. Also Wall St Journal June 11th  1986. p30: Parade July 31st  1988
4. See ref 1. Also Wilson. James Q. “Against the Legalisation of Drugs”, Commentary February 1990, pp 21-28
5. Bejerot. N. ‘Drogue et Societe. Masson Paris 1990 ‘Cannabis: Physiopathology. Epidemiology, Detection.’ Nahas G & Latour C (eds). CRC Press. 1993.
6. Model. KE. The Effect of Marijuana Decriminalisation on Hospital Emergency Room Episodes 1975-1978. Journal of the American &Statistical Association. 88: 737-747. 1993
7. Rosenthal. MS. Report from North America. In “Cannabis: Physiopathology, Epidemiology. Detection.’ Nahas G & Latour C (eds). CRC Press~ 1993
8. News Release from the Office of Maricopa County Attorney, 301 West Jefferson, Phoenix, Arizona 85003

Did the Michigan survey on the effectiveness of student drug testing support its conclusions?

March 24, 2004 – Hunterdon Central Regional High School began tracking student drug use in 1997. Following a 1997 survey of drug use among students, the high school added a random student drug testing program for athletes to its existing prevention programs. It then re-surveyed students in 1999 to measure the impact of that single change to its drug prevention program. What the data revealed was so compelling that the school did not hesitate to continue its random testing program.

In 2000, the ACLU targeted the school for a lawsuit and the random testing program was temporarily suspended pending outcome of the litigation. The school maintained all other components of its drug prevention programs during the suspension period. By July 2002, the high school had prevailed in the lower court. For the school administration, there was no question that the random student drug-testing program should be re-implemented. However, prior to re-starting the testing program, it was determined that the students should be re-surveyed. The data from the 2002 survey was compelling. The high school re-implemented an expanded testing program in December of 2002.

The ACLU appealed the case to the state supreme court. But, as with so many other ACLU-brought cases against schools conducting random testing of students, the high school’s random drug testing program prevailed and it continues today.

A University of Michigan study attempted to determine the effectiveness of student drug testing. The study’s conclusions were widely covered by the media. A thorough reading of the study would have revealed that it was seriously flawed in its methodology and that its highly-publicized conclusion is erroneous.

It would appear that many people, including the reporters heralding the conclusions of the study, did not actually review the study. However, knowledgeable researchers and others did review it. What they had to say about the University of Michigan study and its highly questionable conclusions is illuminating.

A careful reading of the study reveals that, astoundingly, even the study’s authors could not support their own conclusion, stating, “the study was limited by its design, making it impossible to establish a definitive link between student drug testing and the use of illegal drugs by schoolchildren”.

Source: www.studentdrugtesting.org