The synthetic cannabinoid (cannabis-related) compound, called MDA19, seems to avoid side effects by acting mainly on one specific subtype of the cannabinoid receptor. “MDA19 has the potential for alleviating neuropathic pain without producing adverse effects in the central nervous system,” according to the study by Dr Mohamed Naguib of The University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center.

MDA19 Works on a Single Cannabinoid Receptor
The researchers performed a series of experiments to analyze the pharmacology and effects of the synthetic cannabinoid MDA19. There are two subtypes of the cannabinoid chemical receptor: CB1, found mainly in the brain; and CB2, found mainly in the peripheral immune system.

Dr. Naguib’s group has been doing research to see if the cannabinoid receptors—particularly CB2—can be a useful target for new drugs to treat neuropathic pain. Neuropathic pain is a difficult-to-treat type of pain caused by nerve damage, common in patients with trauma, diabetes, and other conditions.

MDA19 was designed to have a much stronger effect on the CB2 receptor than on the CB1 receptor. In humans, MDA19 showed four times greater activity on the CB2 receptor than on the CB1 receptor. In rats, the difference was even greater. The experiments also showed that MDA19 had “protean” effects, so-called after the shape-shifting Greek sea god Proteus—under different conditions, it could either block or activate the cannabinoid receptors.

In rats, treatment with MDA19 effectively reduced specific types of neuropathic pain, with greater effects at higher doses. At the same time, it did not seem to cause any of the behavioral effects associated with marijuana.

Potential to Develop Effective Pain Drugs that Avoid Side Effects
The “functional selectivity” of MDA19—the fact that it acts mainly on the CB2 receptor and has a range of effects under differing conditions—could have important implications for drug development. “[W]ith functionally selective drugs, it would be possible to separate the desired from the undesired effects of a single molecule through a single receptor,” Dr. Naguib and colleagues write.
This means that MDA19 could be a promising step toward developing medications that have the pain-reducing effect of cannabinoids while avoiding the mental and physical side effects of marijuana itself. However, more research will be needed before MDA19 or other agents that act on the CB2 receptor are ready for testing in humans.

“These elegant studies by Professor Naguib demonstrate remarkable analgesic properties for this synthetic cannabinoid,” comments Dr. Steven L. Shafer of Columbia University, Editor-in-Chief of Anesthesia &Analgesia. “The studies suggest a novel mechanism for this protean agonist. Although preliminary, these studies suggest that synthetic cannabinoids may be significant step forward for patients suffering from neuropathic pain.”

SOURCE : www.news-medical.net 2nd July 2010

This study is the first demonstration that a correlation exists between synaptic plasticity and the transition to addiction. The results from the teams at Neurocentre Magendie call into question the hitherto held idea that addiction results from pathological cerebral modifications, which develop gradually with drug usage.

Their results show that addiction may, instead, come from a form of anaplasticity, i.e. from incapacity of addicted individuals to counteract the pathological modifications caused by the drug to all users.

The voluntary consumption of drugs is a behaviour found in many species of animals. However, it had long been considered that addiction, defined as compulsive and pathological drug consumption, is behaviour specific to the human species and its social structure.

In 2004, the team of Pier Vincenzo Piazza showed that the behaviours which define addiction in humans, also appear in some rats which will self administer cocaine. Addiction exhibits astonishing similarities in men and rodents, in particular the fact that only a small number of consumers (humans or rodents) develop a drug addiction. The study of drug dependent behaviour in this mammal model thus opened the way to the study of the biology of addiction.

Today, thanks to a fruitful collaboration, the teams of Pier Vincenzo Piazza and Olivier Manzoni are reporting discovery of the first known biological mechanisms for the transition from regular but controlled drug taking to a genuine addiction to cocaine, characterised by a loss of control over drug consumption.

Chronic exposure to drugs causes many modifications to the physiology of the brain. And researchers wanted to find out which of these modifications is responsible for the development of an addiction.
The addiction model developed in Bordeaux provides a unique tool to answer this question. Thus it allows comparing animals who took identical quantities of drugs, but of which only few become addicted.

By comparing addict and non-addict animals at various time points during their history of drug taking, the teams of Pier Vincenzo Piazza and Olivier Manzoni have demonstrated that the animals which developed an addiction to cocaine exhibit a permanent loss of the capacity to produce a form of plasticity known as long-term depression (or LTD).

LTD refers to the ability of the synapses (the region of communication between neurons) to reduce their activity under the effect of certain stimulations. It plays a major role in the ability to develop new memory traces and, consequently, to demonstrate flexible behaviour.

After short-term usage of cocaine, LTD is not modified. However, after a longer use, a significant LTD deficit appears in all users. Without this form of plasticity, which allows new learning to occur, behaviour with regard to the drug becomes more and more rigid, opening the door to development of a compulsive consumption.

The brain of the majority of users is able to produce the biological adaptations which allow to counteract the effects of the drug and to recover a normal LTD.
By contrast, the anaplasticity (or lack of plasticity) exhibited by the addicts leaves them without defences and hence the LTD deficit provoked by the drug becomes chronic.

This permanent absence of synaptic plasticity would explain why drug seeking behaviour becomes resistant to environmental constraints (difficulty in procuring the substance, adverse consequences of taking the drug on health, social life, etc.) and consequently more and more compulsive. Gradually, control of the taking of the drug is lost and addiction appears.

For Pier-Vincenzo Piazza and his collaborators, these discoveries also have important implications for developing new treatment of addiction.

“We are probably not going to find new therapies by trying to understand the modifications caused by a drug in the brains of drug addicts,” explain the researchers, “since their brain is anaplastic.” For the authors, “The results of this work show that it is in the brain of the non-addicted users that we will probably find the key to a true addiction therapy.

Indeed,” the authors estimate, “understanding the biological mechanisms which enable adaptation to the drug and which help the user to maintain a controlled consumption could provide us with the tools to combat the anaplastic state that leads to addiction”. (ANI)

Source: www.sify.com/news 2010-06-29

In the study, researchers at The Scripps Research Institute in Jupiter, Florida found that cocaine consumption increased levels of a specific microRNA sequence in the brains of rats, named microRNA-212.

As its levels increased, the rats exhibited a growing dislike for cocaine, ultimately controlling how much they consumed.
On the other hand, as levels of microRNA-212 decreased, the rats consumed more cocaine and became the rat equivalent of compulsive users.

The study’s findings suggest that microRNA-212 plays a pivotal role in regulating cocaine intake in rats and perhaps in vulnerability to addiction.
Interestingly, the same microRNA-212 identified in this study, is also expressed in the human’s dorsal striatum, a brain region that has been linked to drug abuse and habit formation.

“This study enhances our understanding of how brain mechanisms, at their most fundamental levels, may contribute to cocaine addiction vulnerability or resistance to it,” Nature quoted National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) Director Dr. Nora D. Volkow, as saying.

“This research provides a wonderful example of how basic science discoveries are critical to the development of new medical treatments and targeted prevention,” he added.

Rats with a history of extended cocaine access can demonstrate behavior similar to that observed in humans who are dependent on the drug.
Current data show that about 15 percent of people who use cocaine become addicted to it.
The findings suggest that microRNAs may be important factors
contributing to this vulnerability.

“The results of this study offer promise for the development of a totally new class of anti-addiction medications. Because we are beginning to map out how this specific microRNA works, we may be able to develop new compounds to manipulate the levels of microRNA-212 therapeutically with exquisite specificity, opening the possibility of new treatments for drug addiction,” said Paul J. Kenny, senior author on the study.
The study is published in the journal Nature. (ANI)

Source:www.sify.com/news 9th July 2010-07-10

Marijuana use alters perceptions and creates time distortion and can cause drowsiness and lethargy. Heavy marijuana use can cause apathy, decreased motivation, and impair cognitive performance and can cause mental health problems.

Employees who use marijuana off-duty are still effected by it. Impaired cognition that can cause lapses in judgement can remain for a long period. Memory defects can last as long as six weeks. See: Abbie Crites-Leoni, Medicinal Use of Marijuana: Is the Debate a Smoke Screen for Movement Toward Legalization? 19 J. Legal Med. 273, 280 (1998) (citing Schwartz, et al., Short- Term Memory Impairment in Cannabis-Dependent Adolescents, 143 Am. J. Dis. Child. 1214 (1989)

Employers may be liable for the actions of employee who use marijuana especially those employees in safety sensitive positions. The more chronic the use of “medical” marijuana the higher the risk.

VIOLATIONS OF FEDERAL LAW

Will employers have to accommodate marijuana use that violates federal law? Marijuana, remains illegal under federal law because of its “high potential for abuse,” its lack of any “currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States,” and its “lack of accepted safety for use … under medical supervision.”Gonzales v. Raich, 545 U.S. 1 (2005); United States v. Oakland Cannabis Buyers’ Cooperative, 532 U.S. 483 (2001)

IF THIS BILL PASSES “MEDICAL” MARIJUANA WILL RESULT IN MORE MARIJUANA USE AMONG EMPLOYEES

As consumers we all pay for lost productivity and job-related accidents in the final costs of the produced goods and higher insurance premiums due to workplace accidents. Drug using employees are not as safe. They are 3.6 times more likely to be involved in a work-related accident than their non-using employee, and 5 times more likely to file workers’ compensation claims. As many as 50% of all workers’ compensation claims may involve substance abuse.[FN1]

The U.S. Postal Service did a study that showed that substance abusers have 55% more accidents, experience 85% more on-the-job injuries, and have a 78% higher rate of absenteeism when compared to non-substance abusing employees.[FN2] A report by the National Safety Council claimed that 80% of those injured in serious drug-related work accidents are not the drug using employees, but innocent employees and others.[FN3]

Drug using employees commit workplace crimes. There is a very significant statistical correlation between drug use and criminal conduct.[FN4]

Substance abuse also causes:
Domestic and financial difficulties for employees;
Poor judgment in employment decision making;
Potential embarrassment to the employer as a result of off-duty conduct, which may be publicized, including criminal charges, diversion of supervisory and managerial time;
Damage to company property; and
Time devoted to discipline and grievance matters.[FN5]

While the studies vary somewhat, it is clear that there is substantial substance abuse in the workplace and it has a powerful negative impact on our economy and productivity. The increased use of “medical” marijuana will magnify all these problems.

References

[FN1] Current, The Truth About Drug Testing: Answers to the Questions Everyone Is Asking, p. 3 (1st Ed., Fort Lauderdale, FL, 1998).

[FN2] “Pre-employment Drug Testing: Association with EAP, Disciplinary, and Medical Claims Information” U.S. Postal Service, Personnel Research and Development Branch, Office of Selection and Evaluation, July 1992.

[FN3] Wisotsky, The Ideology of Drug Testing [Ideology of Drug Testing], 11 Nova L Rev 763, 768 (1987).

[FN4] See Stewart, Proof Positive of Drug Link to Crime, Wall St J, May 28, 1987, at 26, col 3.

[FN5]Alcohol & Drugs in the Workplace: Costs, Control and Controversies, A BNA Special Report [Costs, Control and Controversies], 7 (Bureau of National Affairs, Washington, D.C. 1986)

Source: David Evans sent to DFAF May 2010

The study, published online in the American Journal of Public Health, found that a 10 percent increase in cigarette pricing resulted in an 18.2 percent decline in smoking among people in these groups.

The findings demonstrate that increasing cigarette taxes could be a way to curb smoking, which is still the leading preventable cause of death in the United States, according to the study’s lead author, Dr. Michael Ong, an assistant professor of medicine in the division of general internal medicine and health services research at the Geffen School of Medicine.
“Whatever we can do to reduce smoking is critical to the health of the U.S.,” said Ong, who is also a researcher at UCLA’s Jonsson Cancer Center. “Cigarette taxes are used as a key policy instrument to get people to quit smoking, so understanding whether people will really quit is important.

Individuals with alcohol, drug or mental disorders comprise 40 percent of remaining smokers, and there is little literature on how to help these people quit smoking.”

Prior research on the effect of cigarette pricing on smoking, which had been conducted using information from 1991, suggested that individuals with mental illness were less likely than other individuals to quit due to price increases. Unlike that research, however, the current study expanded the research to include people with alcohol and drug disorders.

The researchers based their work on data from 7,530 individuals from the 2000-01 Healthcare for Communities Household Survey. Of those, 2,106 people, or 23 percent, had alcohol, drug or mental disorders during the previous year. Of that group, 43.8 percent were smokers — a much higher proportion than among rest of the population.

Though the researchers found that people with alcohol dependence did not cut down on cigarettes when prices rose, people with binge-drinking problems, substance-use disorders and mental disorders were significantly more likely to quit smoking if prices rose, as would occur with a cigarette tax increase.

While the study does suggest that increasing cigarette prices through taxation could reduce smoking among individuals with alcohol, drug or mental disorders, the authors note that further study is needed to determine if recent cigarette price increases have reduced smoking among individuals with such disorders, and whether the identified association is causal.

Source: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases June 3, 2010

The drug works by blocking the right amount of the feel good effects of alcohol (brought on by increased levels of dopamine), making drinking less enjoyable and thus reducing cravings and helping to stop heavy drinking.

Topiramate was also found to lower blood pressure and cholesterol levels which may lead to a decrease in heart disease in alcohol dependent patients.

Alcoholism affects over 17 million people. Without proper treatment, it’s a devastating disease that can ruin lives and relationships. A new therapy that comes in a pill is bringing new hope to alcoholics.

There was a time in Christine Flemming’s life when alcohol came before her kids.
“I can’t remember when my daughter was very little, because I was drinking so much,” said Flemming. “That affected me a lot.”

Flemming needed help, but traditional treatment methods didn’t work. Now she’s on a new kind of therapy in the form of a pill called topiramate. It has changed her life. “I can tell you that it cuts my cravings, and I don’t feel like I have to drink,” Flemming said. “I don’t feel like that’s something I need in my life and I have to do.”

Alcohol increases levels of dopamine, a chemical in the brain that makes us feel good. The drug works by blocking the right amount of the feel-good effects from alcohol to reduce cravings and help stop heavy drinking. During clinical trials, neuropharmacologists were surprised to learn it also lowers blood pressure and cholesterol levels, which may lead to a decrease in heart disease in alcohol dependent patients.

“Most of the morbidity due to alcoholism is caused by secondary effects of all these other systems, so to have a drug that begins to correct all those other physical abnormalities is extremely helpful,” said Bankhole Johnson, Ph.D., a Neuropharmacologist at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, Va.

The drug helped improve Fleming’s health and end her dependence on alcohol. She cut her drinking from 15 beers a day to just three, so time with her kids is now a priority.
“It’s made a big difference,” Flemming said. “It’s made a really big difference, and I feel like I’m actually there for my family.”

Qualifying patients can find out how to receive the drug by contacting their primary care doctors.

WHAT IS TOPIRAMATE? Topiramate is a drug originally discovered in 1979. It is prescribed as an epilepsy medication and for migraine headaches. It is also used for a number of other purposes, including as a treatment for people with alcoholism.

Researchers believe that topiramate works in two ways. First, it reduces the release of dopamine that follows the consumption of alcohol. This reduces the positive feeling that people receive from alcohol, and thus reduce the incentive to drink. Second, topiramate interferes with the protein glutamate which normally excites dopamine neurons and again, lessening the ýfeel goodý effect of dopamine from alcohol.

WHAT IS ALCOHOL? Alcohol is created through the natural process of fermentation. This happens when yeast and sugar from vegetables and grains change the sugar into alcohol. When you drink alcohol, it is absorbed into your bloodstream, where it can affect the central nervous system, which is the control center for your entire body.

Alcohol slows down this control center with its sedative effect. In moderation it can reduce anxiety, but it also blocks some of the commands the brain sends to other parts of the body, so it alters your senses. That’s why, when drunk, people often have trouble walking, talking, and some may even “black out,” forgetting what they said or did. Drinking an excessive amount of alcohol can even be fatal.

Source www.ScienceDaily June 2010

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 establishment of the Medical Marijuana Program 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.

Authors: Alfred Crancer and Alan Crancer

Source: -Received June 2010 from Drug Free America Foundation

Main Findings
■ Support for legalising cannabis – which increased in Scotland (as in the rest of the UK) in the late 1990s – has fallen considerably in more recent years, from 37% in 2001 to 24% in 2009. Attitudes towards prosecution for possession of cannabis for personal use also hardened between 2001 and 2009.

■ Most people said taking cocaine occasionally is wrong – 76% rated it as 4 or 5 on a scale where 5 meant ‘very seriously wrong’.

■ 45% of people agreed that ‘Most people who end up addicted to heroin have only themselves to blame’, while just 27% disagreed.

■ Around half (53%) disagreed that ‘most heroin users come from difficult backgrounds’ (29% agreed).

■ Among those in paid employment, around half (47%) said they would be ‘very’ or ‘fairly comfortable’ working alongside someone they knew had used heroin in the past, while around 1 in 5 would be uncomfortable.

■ Just a quarter (26%) said they would be comfortable with someone who was receiving help to stop using heroin moving near to them, while half (49%) would be uncomfortable.

■ There was no public consensus on what should be the top government priority for tackling heroin use in Scotland – 32% chose ‘tougher penalties for those who take heroin’, 32% ‘more help for people who want to stop using heroin’ and 28% ‘more education about drugs’.

■ Just 16% agreed that people who possess heroin for personal use should not be prosecuted (compared with 34% for cannabis).

■ Public support for providing clean needles to injecting drug users fell from 62% in 2001 to 50% in 2009.

■ Opinion on educating young people about safer drug use was split – 44% agreed that young people should be given information about how to use drugs more safely, but 40% disagreed.

■ Four out of five (80%) agreed that ‘the only real way of helping drug addicts is to get them to stop using drugs altogether’. However, 29% agreed that ‘most heroin users can never stop using drugs completely’, while 27% said they neither agreed nor disagreed or did not know.

■ 63% disagreed that ‘Someone who has been a heroin addict can never make a good parent, even if their drug problems are in the past’.

■ Around two thirds (64%) said that young children of heroin users should be placed into temporary foster care until the parents stop taking heroin. A further 1 in 5 believed the child should stay at home while the family receives help from social workers and just 8% said the child should be permanently adopted by another family.

The full report is also accessible online.

Source: http://uwsnealb.wordpress.com/2010/05/28/scottish-social-attitudes-survey-2009-public-attitudes-to-drugs-and-drug-use-in-scotland/ May 25 2010

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

Ecstasy (MDMA) is a stimulant drug widely used recreationally that is also being tested in clinical trials for the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder.
Led by Dr. Stephen Kish at CAMH, this study provides confirmation of a previous finding from Johns Hopkins University that levels of the serotonin transporter (SERT) are low in cerebral cortex of chronic ecstasy users. The subjects were “typical” ecstasy users who used about two tablets of the drug twice a month.

SERT is a protein responsible for regulating levels of serotonin, a neurotransmitter important for mood and impulse control. Ecstasy interacts with SERT to cause the release of serotonin, an action that probably explains some of the behavioral effects of the drug such as increased sociability.

Scientists have long suspected that ecstasy might harm brain cells that use serotonin, but 12 years of brain scan studies have produced contradictory results, even within the same laboratory.
The CAMH study used a large subject size (49 drug users, 50 control subjects), confirmed by hair analysis that ecstasy users actually used the drug, and used an imaging probe that could measure SERT throughout the brain.
“We were surprised to discover that SERT was decreased only in the cerebral cortex and not throughout the brain, perhaps because serotonin nerves to the cortex are longer and more susceptible to changes. This finding is almost identical to newer data from Johns Hopkins and is the first time that one laboratory has actually been able to replicate results of another independent laboratory in a SERT study of ecstasy users.” said Dr. Kish.

Drug hair analysis indicated that many ecstasy users, probably unknowingly, also used methamphetamine, which might itself damage serotonin cells; however, low SERT was found both in ecstasy users who used and who did not use methamphetamine. Dr. Jason Lerch at SickKids showed that those ecstasy users who also used methamphetamine had a slightly thinner cerebral cortex.

Does low SERT equal “structural brain damage”? “Not necessarily” said co-author Dr. Isabelle Boileau of CAMH. “There is no way to prove whether low SERT is explained by physical loss of the entire serotonin nerve cell, or by a loss of SERT protein within an intact nerve cell.”
Dr. Kish suggests that low SERT might explain why many ecstasy users need to keep increasing the dose to experience the same effects, since SERT is necessary for the action of ecstasy. “Most of the ecstasy users of our study complained that the first dose is always the best, but then the effects begin to decline and higher doses are needed. The need for higher doses, possibly caused by low SERT, could well increase the risk of harm caused by this stimulant drug,” said Dr. Kish.

Media Contact: Michael Torres, Media Relations, CAMH ; 416 595 6015 or email media@camh.net

Source: www.camh.net 18th May 2010

The study was a ‘real-world’ test of a promising Dutch internet-based self-help intervention for problem drinking.
A previous randomised trial employing the methodological safeguards possible in tightly controlled research (particularly the recruitment of a comparison group not given access to the intervention) had established that the intervention reduced drinking. At issue in the featured study was whether similar drinking reductions would be seen when the intervention was made freely available to the general public. If they were, then the assumption could be made that these too were caused by having access to the intervention.

Drinking Less is an on-line, interactive programme with no personal therapist input. Aimed at risky drinkers among the general adult population, the intervention is based on principles derived from motivational interviewing, cognitive-behavioural therapies and self-control training. Its home page offers links to alcohol-related information, treatment services, a discussion forum, and the

Drinking Less self-help programme, the core of the intervention. Over a recommended six weeks (though this is entirely up to the user) the programme guides visitors in preparing to change their drinking, setting goals , implementing change, and finally sustaining it, preferably by drinking within recommended limits.

The earlier trial had found that six months later, at least 17% of adult problem drinkers randomly allocated to this intervention had reduced their drinking to within Dutch guidelines, compared to just 5% allocated to an on-line alcohol education brochure. Before the study, both groups had averaged about 55 UK units a week.

At follow-up, the Drinking Less group had cut consumption to about 36 UK units a week, but the brochure group had barely changed.

The featured study monitored what happened when over 10 months spanning 2007 and 2008 the web site was advertised to the Dutch public. During this time round 27,500 people visited the site, of whom 1625 signed up for the self-help programme, accessing it on average 23 times.

Typically they were well educated, employed, middle-aged men. On average they drank about 50 UK units a week, and nearly all who completed the on-line AUDIT screening questionnaire scored in a range indicative of alcohol abuse or dependence.
During the first seven of the 10 months, 378 of site visitors who signed up to the Drinking Less programme also agreed to participate in research to assess its impact. On average they drank roughly the same amount (95% exceeded Dutch guidelines) as all 1625 who signed up and were also similar in age, sex, employment, and motivation to change.

Despite some statistically significant differences, they were also broadly similar to participants in the earlier randomised trial. Over 8 in 10 had never received professional help for their drinking. A few weeks later a survey suggested that after signing up, nearly 9 in 10 went on to use the programme, though generally only a few times.
Of the 378 in the baseline sample, 153 responded to an on-line follow-up survey six months later. Before signing up to the programme, just 4% had confined their drinking within Dutch guidelines; six month later, 39% did so. They had also nearly halved their average consumption from 50 UK units to 27. On the ‘fail-safe’ assumption that the intervention had no impact on people who were not followed up, still the drinking reductions were statistically significant; from 5%, the proportion drinking within guidelines rose to 19%, and consumption fell from 51 UK units to 42.

Next the analysts compared these results with those from the six-month follow-up in the randomised trial. Based only on respondents to the follow-up surveys, and adjusting for differences between the samples, in the ‘real-world’ test over twice as many (unadjusted figures 36% v. 19%) people moved to drinking within Dutch guidelines. When the assumption was made that in both trials the intervention had no impact on people not followed up, the figures still favoured the ‘real-world’ test (15% v. 10%), but the difference was no longer statistically significant.

The researchers concluded that the featured study had shown that the benefits established by the randomised controlled trial would be sustained when the intervention was made routinely and generally available to the public. The expected throughput of 3000 Drinking Less programme users a year would amount to nearly 3% of the country’s problem drinkers who would otherwise not have received professional help. Probably because they require the drinker to take the initiative and visit the site, such interventions reach people who, compared to the totality of problem drinkers, are more likely to be women, employed, highly educated, and motivated to change their drinking. Given its low cost per user, this type of intervention seems to have a worthwhile place in a public health approach to reducing alcohol-related problems.

Though only a minority of site visitors may sign up for web-based alcohol programmes, nevertheless the numbers engaged can be very large, and the risk-reductions seem of the order typical in studies of brief advice to drinkers identified in health care settings. In these settings screening programmes typically identify people who are not actually seeking help for drinking problems – ‘pushing’ them towards intervention and change – while web sites ‘pull’ in people already curious or concerned about their drinking. As such these two gateways can play complementary roles in improving public health and offering change opportunities to people who would not present to alcohol treatment services. However, in Britain and elsewhere, both tactics reach only small fractions of the population who drinking excessively, leaving the bulk of the public health work to be done by interventions which drinkers generally cannot avoid and do not have seek out, such as price increases and availability restrictions.

With its combination of a randomised trial and a ‘real-world’ test, the featured research programme has gone further than any other in establishing the beneficial impacts of web-based alcohol interventions. However, largely because many site users do not complete research surveys, it remains impossible to be sure that the results seen in such studies will be replicated across the entire usership of the sites. Details below.

Strengths and limitations of the featured study
The featured study’s combination of a randomised trial with all its methodological safeguards, and a ‘real-world’ trial approximating normal conditions, affords what seems to be the best indication to date of the contribution web-based self-help interventions could make to reducing heavy drinking and associated health risks. However, its twin pillars are weakened by the fact that many people either did not join the studies or did not supply follow-up data; those who did may not have been typical of all the people who might access such sites.

In the randomised trial, 40% of the baseline sample did not complete the six-month follow-up survey, and in the featured study, nearly 60%. Though on the measures taken by the study the respondents generally seemed typical of the baseline sample, clearly something was sufficiently different to cause them to respond while the others did not. In both studies this problem was catered for by assuming that non-responders were also non-changers. Though this almost certainly underestimated the impact of the intervention, still in both there remained significant and worthwhile improvements.

What could not be catered for in either study was the degree to which people who join such studies differ from the much greater number who would use the web sites, but decline participation in research. This problem was especially apparent in the featured study, in which it seems that around 6% of site visitors signed up for the self-help programme. Of these, perhaps a third or slightly more of the people who signed up for the programme during the relevant period also agreed to participate in the research. In some important ways (including amount drunk and motivation to change) they seemed similar to the bulk of programme sign-ups, though the researchers suspect they were more likely to have engaged with the programme.

Opening more doors to change for more people
A review of computer-based alcohol services for the general public has rehearsed the advantages: immediate, convenient access for people (the majority in developed nations) connected to the internet; consequently able to capitalise on what may be fleeting resolve; anonymous services sidestep the embarrassment or stigma which might deter help-seeking; such services are available to people unwilling or less able to talk about their problems to a stranger; generally they are free and entail no travel costs or lost income due to time off work; very low operating cost per user if widely accessed; easily updated.

In consumption terms, the drinking problems of web site users are comparable to those of drinkers who seek treatment, yet few have received professional help, perhaps partly because their higher socioeconomic status and greater resources have enabled them to restrict the consequential damage. People who actually engage with web-based assessments of their drinking problems have more severe problems than those who just visit and leave. Including the randomised trial which paved the way for the featured study, the review found eight studies which evaluated the effectiveness of computer-based interventions for the general public.

In all but one the users significantly improved on at least one of the alcohol-related measures recorded by the studies.
A particular role for alcohol self-help sites may be to offer an easy, quick and accessible way to for drinkers to actualise their desire to tackle their problems, especially when that desire is allied with the resources to implement and sustain improvements without face-to-face or comprehensive assistance. After conducting the Project MATCH trial, some of the world’s leading alcohol treatment researchers argued that “access to treatment may be as important as the type of treatment available”. The implication is that in cultures which accept ‘treatment’ as a route to resolving unhealthy and/or undesirable drinking, having convincing-looking and accessible ‘treatment doors’ to go through may be more important than what lies behind those doors, as long as this fulfils the expectations of the client or patient. This is likely to be especially the case for people who retain a stake in conventional society in the form of marriages, jobs, families, and a reputation to lose. These populations – the kind the featured study suggests are attracted to self-help alcohol therapy web sites – have more of the ‘recovery capital’ resources needed to themselves do most of the work in curbing their drinking.

The British Down Your Drink site
The best known British alcohol self-help web site is the Down Your Drink site run by a team based at University College London, an initiative originally funded by the Alcohol Education and Research Council and now by the Medical Research Council’s National Prevention Research Initiative. In 2007 this was revised to offer set programmes from a one-hour brief intervention to several weeks, but also to generally give the user greater control over the use they made of the site. The approach remained based on principles and techniques derived from motivational interviewing and cognitive-behavioural therapies.

The previous version had been structured as six consecutive modules to be accessed weekly. An analysis of data provided by the first 10,000 people who registered at the site after piloting ended in September 2003 revealed that most were in their 30s and 40s, half were women, nearly two-thirds were married or living with a partner, just 4% were unemployed, and most reported occupations from higher socioeconomic strata.

As an earlier study commented, site users were predominantly middle class, middle aged, white and European. Six in 10 either did not start the programme, or completed just the first week. About 17% completed the six weeks. Of these, 57% returned an outcome questionnaire. Compared to their pre-programme status, on average they were now at substantially lower risk, and functioning better and living much improved lives.
The sample had been recruited over about 27 months, a registration rate of about 4500 a year. By way of comparison, in England during 2008/09, around 100,000 adults were treated for their alcohol problems at conventional services. User profile and site usage had been similar during the earlier pilot phase. Results from surveys sent to pilot programme completers indicated that three quarters had never previously sought help for their drinking.

Source: Published in Findings 19 May 2010 Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research: 2009, 33(8), p. 1401–1408

Researchers at Uppsala University in Sweden studied the relationship between crime and steroid use in 1,440 Swedish residents tested for the drugs between 1995 and 2001 from clinics, including substance abuse facilities, as well as police and customs stations.

Of those involved in the study, 241 tested positive, with an average age of about 20.
The research team found those who tested positive for steroid use were roughly twice as likely to have been convicted of a weapons offense and one-and-a-half times as likely to have been convicted of fraud.

When the researchers excluded people from substance abuse facilities from their analysis the connection with armed crime remained, but the link between steroid use and fraud disappeared.
While steroids are linked with outbursts of uncontrolled violence known as “‘roid rage,” they did not appear to be connected with sexual offenses, violent crimes such as murder, assault and robbery, or crimes against property such as theft.

This investigation instead reveals that steroid use may be linked with premeditated crimes—those involving preparation and advance planning.
One explanation the researchers suggest for the findings is that criminals involved in serious crimes such as armed robbery or the collection of crime-related debts might benefit from the muscularity, heavy build and increase in aggression that comes with steroid use.

The scientists report their findings in the November issue of the Archives of General Psychiatry.

Source: Fox News Live Science Monday , November 06, 2006

More than 20 children and teenagers are being treated in hospital every day for alcohol-related illnesses, including mental disorders, poisoning and liver disease, according to newly released official data.

The figures, labelled “staggering” by one of Britain’s most senior doctors, show that in the year 2005-6, during which Labour introduced 24-hour drinking, the number of under-18s seeking treatment for alcohol-related health problems leapt by 13% to 8,894, an average of 24 a day.

The research, released in parliament by Caroline Flint, the health minister, shows that the number treated has gone up by 33% since Labour came to power in 1997.

Professor Ian Gilmore, president of the Royal College of Physicians, said: “This is a staggering rise and it is only the tip of the iceberg.
“Drinks sold by supermarkets and off-licences are cheaper than ever, and those shops have been at the front of the queue for 24-hour licences, so it has never been more available.

“The younger they drink, the more likely they are to have alcohol-related problems later in life. It is now commonplace to see men and women in their twenties with end-stage alcoholic liver damage.”
The disease figures released by Flint do not include those people treated for injuries sustained in incidents such as drunken fights or drink-driving.

Separately, the government has released figures for patients treated for alcohol-related conditions in accident and emergency wards, showing that alcohol-related medical emergencies and hospital treatments have doubled since 1997.

In some parts of the country the rise is even steeper. The worst areas include the region formerly covered by Cheshire and Merseyside Strategic Health Authority, where 742 young people were treated last year, a rise of more than 25% in just a year. In Northumberland, Tyne and Wear, the number went up by a quarter.
By contrast, some southern health authorities experienced an improvement. In Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire, for example, there were only 119 cases, a fall of 30%.

In addition to the figures for children and teenagers, the Department of Health data also show that the number of people aged 18 and over treated for alcohol-related illness has gone up from 124,925 to 253,603 since 1997, a rise of more than 100%.
The data, released in a written answer, appear to contradict the government’s claims that the liberalisation of pub opening and supermarket off-sales time would lead to more responsible drinking.

They bear out research published earlier this year by the British Association for Emergency Medicine, which found an increase in alcohol-related injuries treated in hospital among all age groups since the change to the drinking laws.

Ahead of its launch of 24-hour opening in November 2005, the government assured voters that there would be tougher controls on underage drinking.
It announced on-the-spot fines for children buying alcohol and tougher penalties for staff serving them.
Tessa Jowell, the culture secretary, said at the time: “The result will be more freedom for responsible adults and tougher treatment for the yobbish minority.”

Labour’s approach to teenage drinking has not always lived up to the responsible image that it likes to project.
In the run-up to the 2001 general election, the party sent text messages to first-time voters telling them, “Don’t give a XXXX for last orders? Vote Labour”. This was an allusion to advertisements for Castlemaine XXXX, the Australian beer.

Dr Gray Smith-Laing, a consultant at the Medway Maritime hospital in Gillingham, Kent, who treats patients with liver disease, said last week: “What we’re seeing is the numbers going up, the age coming down.

“The idea that (24-hour opening) just smooths out the drinking and people drink the same amount over a longer period of time is complete rubbish.”
The Department of Health says that levels of binge drinking have peaked and new facilities such as walk-in centres could explain the growth in treatment for drink-related injuries.

The department said yesterday: “The increased attendances at A&E departments, as seen in recently published figures, began some years ago. Evidence suggests that increased rate of growth of attendances predates the change in licensing laws by several years. In fact, this year growth has actually slowed.”

SOURCE: POSTED BY ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS UK AT 7:50 AM MON 25.12.06

The history of addiction as a brain disease “looks a lot like the history of atoms or germs, insofar as these were older and controversial ideas for which scientific confirmation later became available,” writes historian David Courtwright, author of Forces of Habit: Drugs and the Making of the Modern World.

In a recent issue of the social science journal BioSocieties, Courtwright surveys the history of the disease paradigm of drug addiction, and, in doing so, brings into focus several key dilemmas related to what former National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) director Alan Leshner once characterized as the “quintessential biobehavioral disorder.”

The scientific evidence available to us at present largely supports a statement like Leshner’s. Researchers have documented long-term changes in brain structure and function due to drug abuse, and neuroimaging technologies have resulted in maps of the abnormal neuronal activity addicts exhibit. Courtwright cites the discovery of the endogenous opioid system, the mapping of receptor pathways, and the growing understanding of the mesolimbic dopamine reward pathway as evidence of clinical confirmation of theories about addictive disease that has been floating around in one form or another for many years.

Why then, Courtwright asks, does the medical profession largely stay clear of issues having to do with our law enforcement-driven drug war? Why are clinical professionals not on the front lines of revolt over this issue? “If addiction was beyond the individual’s control, then criminal punishment was as inappropriate as jailing a schizophrenic who wandered into an emergency room,” the author writes.

The most obvious reason for this conundrum, says Courtwright, is that “the brain disease model has so far failed to yield much practical therapeutic value.” The disease paradigm has not greatly increased the amount of “actionable etiology” available to medical and public health practitioners. “Clinicians have acquired some drugs, such as Wellbutrin and Chantix for smokers, Campral for alcoholics or buprenorphine for heroin addicts, but no magic bullets.” Physicians and health workers are “stuck in therapeutic limbo,” Courtwright believes. “The drug-abuse field is characterized by, at best, incomplete and contested medicalization.”

Moreover, unlike the current situation in the case of, say, diabetes or schizophrenia, “at least four important groups continue to wrestle for control of the addiction field.” (Medical personnel, police, social scientists, and political officials.) Social scientists, in particular, are frequently skeptical about the NIDA disease paradigm “as part of a broader post-World War II pattern of resistance against biological explanations of behavior, genetic research and the neo-Darwinian renaissance.”

Social scientists and neuroscientists “still live in their own gated academic communities,” Courtwright alleges. “There is a lot more at stake in the brain disease debate than our understanding of addiction.”

However, these problems do not mean that valuable findings in one area–addictive disease theory–cannot produce innovations in other research fields as well. In fact, such spinoffs happen all the time. Courtwright points to advancements in our understanding of evolution: “Michael Kuhar has argued that, because the brain co-evolved with neurotransmitters, it can usually manage its internal chemistry quite well. But it did not co-evolve with drugs, understood as recently introduced and wholly exogenous super-neurotransmitters that can override the brain’s control mechanisms.”

The author also cites spinoffs in economic studies: “The permanent alteration of neurons and the development of addiction in some, but not all, users also helped explain the commercial and tax appeal of drugs, insofar as they were nondurable goods with relatively inflexible demand curves. Even non-addicted users tended to consume more over time, because of tolerance.”

In the end, it is just possible to contemplate some sort of fusion, or meeting of the minds, over the disease model. As Courtwright speculates, “it may turn out that the tension between the personality and brain disease models is more apparent than real.” He cites as evidence such connections as the fit between impulsive, thrill-seeking behavior and an associated paucity of dopamine D2 and D3 receptors in the midbrain region. The result? Such people “have less inhibition of dopamine, and experience more reward when stimulated by risky behavior.” A nice fit. And the number of nice fits between social science and brain science continues to accumulate.

“If the brain disease model ever yields a pharmacotherapy that curbs craving, or a vaccine that blocks drug euphoria, as some researchers hope,” Courtwright says, “we should expect the rapid medicalization of the field. Under those dramatically cost-effective circumstances, politicians and police would be more willing to surrender authority to physicians.”

Graphics Credit: http://alcoholanddrugabuse.org

SOURCE:HTTP://ADDICTION-DIRKH.BLOGSPOT.COM/2010/06/ WEDNESDAY, JUNE 23, 2010

Source: www.newson6.com 13th July 2010

Results will be published in the July 2010 issue of Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research and are currently available at Early View.

“In spite of their differences in pharmacology, alcohol and tobacco consumption are often intimately linked,” said Traute Flatscher-Bader, a postdoctoral research fellow at The University of Queensland and corresponding author for the study. “Nonetheless, the molecular mechanisms that underlie alcohol and nicotine abuse, and particularly their co-abuse, are still incompletely understood.”

“One thing that researchers have encountered is that it is often difficult to find ‘pure’ alcoholics, that is, alcoholics that only abuse alcohol and nothing else,” agreed Simon Worrall, director of postgraduate coursework programs in molecular biology at The University of Queensland. “Many alcoholics are poly-drug abusers, with the most common other drug being nicotine. Thus, many studies which have studied the effects of alcohol on the brain and other organs have been compromised because they have not taken account of the effects of nicotine addiction which is often superimposed on the effects of alcohol addiction.”

In the first part of the current study, Flatscher-Bader and her colleagues used DNA microarray technique to study the expression of many thousands of genes in the brains of non-smoking and smoking alcoholics and non-drinking smokers.

“We examined the impact of alcoholism and smoking on gene expression in the NAC in 20 chronic alcohol abusers and controls with and without recent smoking history,” said Flatscher-Bader. “The results revealed that in this brain region, the abuse of alcohol and nicotine had distinct effects on the expression of genes. In addition, altered expression of a number of genes was associated with both alcohol and nicotine abuse. Within the latter group was a set of genes which play a crucial role in a molecular pathway regulating cell structure.”

The researchers then went on to investigate in more detail the altered expression of six selected genes within the pathway regulating cell structure in two brain regions, using 30 cases comprised again of smoking and non-smoking controls and alcohol abusers. For this part of the study they used the method called “real time polymerase chain reaction.”

“This expanded investigation revealed that one of the genes, called RHOA, was elevated by alcohol abuse and its highest expression was evident in the smoking alcoholics in both brain regions,” said Flatscher-Bader. “The RHOA gene had previously been implicated in the initiation of tobacco smoking. In the NAC, the expression of a further four of the six selected genes was increased by alcohol abuse. Interestingly, the highest expression for each of the genes in the NAC was in the smoking alcoholics. In the other brain region called the VTA, alcohol abuse had a similar effect and elevated the expression of all six selected genes. In contrast to the NAC, however, concurrent smoking dampened the induction of five of these alcohol-sensitive genes in the VTA.”

“Many studies have analyzed the changes in gene expression in this brain system to try to untangle the molecular pathology of alcohol addiction,” said Worrall, “but this is amongst the first to take into account the effect of co-administration of nicotine with alcohol.

Flatscher-Bader stressed that there are several cell types in the brain and there are several steps between gene expression and impact on cell structure and function. “It has to be emphasized that our study is important as a first step in identifying molecular pathways underlying the effects of alcohol abuse and smoking and their co-joint abuse on the human NAC and VTA, “she said. “It now needs to be tested if our findings are, indeed, associated with changes to neuronal structure and function.”

“A better understanding of the molecular basis of withdrawal may help in the development of new treatments to ameliorate the symptoms,” added Dr Worrall. “Not many previous studies took into account the potential effects of nicotine addiction that may be superimposed on top of those from alcohol, so these results may help clinicians better use present therapy/drugs to treat patients abusing both alcohol and/or nicotine and may also lead to the development of new drugs.”

Source: www.medicalnewstoday.com 5.5.2010

]]> http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/08/separate-and-joint-effects-of-alcohol-and-tobacco-on-the-nucleus-accumbens/feed/ 0 http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/08/dangers-of-maternal-smoking/ http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/08/dangers-of-maternal-smoking/#comments Wed, 04 Aug 2010 14:56:58 +0000 ndpa http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/?p=7028 It is well-known that maternal smoking during pregnancy can have long-term effects on the physical health of the child, including increased risk for respiratory disease, ear infections and asthma. New research shows that prenatal smoking also can lead to psychiatric problems and increase the need for psychotropic medications in childhood and young adulthood.

Finnish researchers found that adolescents who had been exposed to prenatal smoking were at increased risk for use of all psychiatric drugs especially those uses to treat depression, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and addiction compared to non-exposed youths. The study was presented Tuesday, May 4 at the Pediatric Academic Societies (PAS) annual meeting in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.

“Recent studies show that maternal smoking during pregnancy may interfere with brain development of the growing fetus,” said Mikael Ekblad, lead author of the study and a pediatric researcher at Turku University Hospital in Finland. “By avoiding smoking during pregnancy, all the later psychiatric problems caused by smoking exposure could be prevented.”

Ekblad and his colleagues collected information from the Finnish Medical Birth Register on maternal smoking, gestational age, birthweight and 5-minute Apgar scores for all children born in Finland from 1987 through 1989. They also analyzed records on mothers’ psychiatric inpatient care from 1969-1989 and children’s use of psychiatric drugs.

Results showed that 12.3 percent of the young adults had used psychiatric drugs, and of these, 19.2 percent had been exposed to prenatal smoking.

The rate of psychotropic medication use was highest in young adults whose mothers smoked more than 10 cigarettes a day while pregnant (16.9 percent), followed by youths whose mothers smoked fewer than 10 cigarettes a day (14.7 percent) and unexposed youths (11.7 percent).

The risk for medication use was similar in males and females, and remained after adjusting for risk factors at birth, such as Apgar scores and birthweight, and the mother’s previous inpatient care for mental disorders.

Smoking exposure increased the risk for use of all psychotropic drugs, especially stimulants used to treat ADHD (unexposed: 0.2 percent; less than 10 cigarettes/day: 0.4 percent; and more than 10 cigarettes/day: 0.6 percent) and drugs for addiction. An increased risk for use of drugs to treat depression also was seen (unexposed: 6 percent; less than 10 cigarettes/day: 8.6 percent; and more than 10 cigarettes/day: 10.3 percent).

“Smoking during pregnancy is still quite common even though the knowledge of its harmful effects has risen in recent years,” Ekblad concluded. “Recent studies have shown that smoking during pregnancy has negative long-term effects on the health of the child. Therefore, women should avoid smoking during their pregnancy.”

Source: MediLexicon International Ltd 6th May 2010
American Academy of Pediatrics

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]]> http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/08/dangers-of-maternal-smoking/feed/ 0 http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/08/adverse-effects-of-cannabis-on-health-an-update-of-the-literature-since-1996/ http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/08/adverse-effects-of-cannabis-on-health-an-update-of-the-literature-since-1996/#comments Wed, 04 Aug 2010 14:43:20 +0000 ndpa http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/?p=7025 Recent research has clarified a number of important questions concerning adverse effects of cannabis on health.

A causal role of acute cannabis intoxication in motor vehicle and other accidents has now been shown by the presence of measurable levels of Δ9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) in the blood of injured drivers in the absence of alcohol or other drugs, by surveys of driving under the influence of cannabis, and by significantly higher accident culpability risk of drivers using cannabis.

Chronic inflammatory and precancerous changes in the airways have been demonstrated in cannabis smokers, and the most recent case-control study shows an increased risk of airways cancer that is proportional to the amount of cannabis use.

Several different studies indicate that the epidemiological link between cannabis use and schizophrenia probably represents a causal role of cannabis in precipitating the onset or relapse of schizophrenia.

A weaker but significant link between cannabis and depression has been found in various cohort studies, but the nature of the link is not yet clear. A large body of evidence now demonstrates that cannabis dependence, both behavioral and physical, does occur in about 7–10% of regular users, and that early onset of use, and especially of weekly or daily use, is a strong predictor of future dependence.

Cognitive impairments of various types are readily demonstrable during acute cannabis intoxication, but there is no suitable evidence yet available to permit a decision as to whether long-lasting or permanent functional losses can result from chronic heavy use in adults. However, a small but growing body of evidence indicates subtle but apparently permanent effects on memory, information processing, and executive functions, in the offspring of women who used cannabis during pregnancy. In total, the evidence indicates that regular heavy use of cannabis carries significant risks for the individual user and for the health care system.

Source: Progress in Neuro-Psychopharmacology and Biological Psychiatry, Volume 28, Issue 5, August 2004, Pages 849-863

]]> http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/08/adverse-effects-of-cannabis-on-health-an-update-of-the-literature-since-1996/feed/ 0 http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/07/drugs-figures-paint-incorrect-pictures-of-misuse/ http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/07/drugs-figures-paint-incorrect-pictures-of-misuse/#comments Sat, 31 Jul 2010 13:57:28 +0000 ndpa http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/?p=6951 MULTIPLE DRUG USE NOW THE NORM, HEROIN SHUNNED BY YOUNG
Government drug policy is too centred on heroin abuse, fails to take account of the realities of current usage trends and needs to focus on individual user behaviour if it is to reflect the true picture and formulate meaningful responses, a leading academic at National University of Ireland Maynooth urged.
‘A Dizzying Array of Substances; An Ethnographic Study of Drug Use in the Canal Communities’ is the result of a long-term study which closely examined the realities of drug use in local life of Rialto, Bluebell and Inchicore, three communities served by the Canal Communities Local Drugs Task Force. It was led by principal investigator Dr A Jamie Saris and primary field researcher Fiona O’Reilly at the Department of Anthropology, NUI Maynooth.
The ethnographic research, carried out mostly in 2008 and early 2009, gives the most compelling evidence to date that multiple drug use is the norm amongst drug users in the Canal Communities and, the researchers concluded, most probably in other areas.
“The big problem is that as far as government is concerned, ‘drugs’, from a treatment perspective, has traditionally meant heroin. Thus, the apparent leveling off of the need for a very opiate-centric treatment service in the Canal Communities in recent years is deceptive” said Dr Saris.
Besides the ethnographic work, the study surveyed, on a long term basis, 92 people using either heroin or methadone in the study area. Unsurprisingly most of those surveyed were on methadone (98%). Of those surveyed:
•63% claimed to have used heroin in the previous three months
•30% had used crack cocaine
•22% had used powder cocaine
•46% had also taken street tranquilisers
•50% were on prescribed tranquillisers, and
•60% had also smoked cannabis within the past three months.
“The majority of those registered on the methadone treatment programme are also using a cocktail of other substances, very often including heroin. Multiple drug use is the reality for nearly all users, and official policy needs to have this understanding at its centre”, Saris said.
In the course of their study, the research team also noted a strong stigma against heroin use amongst the 16-25 age group who still regularly used a lot of other substances, including cocaine and off-label prescription medication. “The reality is that these people are difficult for a treatment infrastructure built around opiates to service. If they have issues, they are more difficult to address,” said Saris.
” The stress that policy-makers and community activists place on ‘crack’ or ‘heroin’ or any other single drug as clear and present social dangers obscures the ubiquity of polydrug use. It makes it appear that these users are very different from other drug-users in the rest of society including cannabis and recreational cocaine users, and it also obscures how commonly legal pharmaceuticals, such as benzodiazepines, even methadone itself, are regularly consumed ‘illegally’.”
He said that a focus on drug use alone is the mistake. “The lives we examined, however damaged by an attraction to certain pharmaceuticals, are rarely defined solely by such behaviour. These people are also sons and daughters, fathers and mothers, partners and lovers, as well as employees and community members. This sensibility does in fact inform a lot of local community activities aimed at assisting users, but such work is often difficult to justify to official funders under the rubric of ‘treatment’, as currently understood. Unless we can understand who users are, what they are taking and why, we will not be able to assign the appropriate resources, treatments or management systems.”
Tony MacCarthaigh, chairperson of the Canal Communities Local Drugs Task Force commented that “individuals and not chemicals need to become the focal point of treatment, and treatment needs to assist individuals in developing another orientation not just to drugs, but to life”.
Source: www.addictiontoday.org 9th July 2010
]]> http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/07/drugs-figures-paint-incorrect-pictures-of-misuse/feed/ 0 http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/07/cannabinoid-hyperemesis-high-on-the-differential-for-intractable-vomiting/ http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/07/cannabinoid-hyperemesis-high-on-the-differential-for-intractable-vomiting/#comments Wed, 28 Jul 2010 17:32:38 +0000 ndpa http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/?p=6947 An 18-year-old male presents complaining of crampy abdominal pain, nausea, and intractable vomiting for the past year. The symptoms are episodic, lasting several weeks and remitting for weeks to months.

The patient states that his abdominal pain is 10 out of 10 in severity, and that he has been vomiting up to 20 times each day. He has been evaluated at multiple hospitals, and he has had numerous upper endoscopies, colonoscopies, swallowing studies, and CT and MRI imaging studies, all of which were unrevealing.

He underwent a cholecystectomy, but had no improvement in his symptoms after the surgery. His pain and nausea are unresponsive to antacids and antiemetics.

The patient’s only relief is with hot water bathing: he spends hours each day in the shower with the temperature set as hot as he can bear. The patient’s history is otherwise unremarkable, except that he admits to daily marijuana use beginning at the age of 14.

This patient’s story is typical of cannabinoid hyperemesis, a clinical syndrome characterized by intractable vomiting and abdominal pain associated with the unusual learned behavior of compulsive hot water bathing, occurring in the setting of long-term heavy marijuana use.
Treatment consists of medication for immediate symptomatic relief and marijuana cessation for long-term relief. Symptoms usually remit within weeks of becoming abstinent.

If this disorder is so easily diagnosed and treated, why were the patient’s past doctors confused to the point of performing what might have been an unnecessary surgery? Cannabinoid hyperemesis is a new diagnosis, first described in 2004, and currently sixteen papers on the subject have been published.

Therefore, it is likely that the patient’s prior doctors had never considered this disorder. Second, the pathogenesis of cannabinoid hyperemesis is poorly understood.
How can marijuana, which is used in cancer clinics as an anti-emetic, cause intractable vomiting? And why would symptoms abate in response to high temperature?

The connection between marijuana, vomiting, and heat is non-intuitive, and a medical team unfamiliar with this syndrome would be hard-pressed to reach the diagnosis.
The largest study of cannabinoid hyperemesis to date was the landmark report by Allen et al in 2004 in an area of Southern Australia where marijuana use is largely decriminalized.

The report tracked 10 patients who presented with cyclic vomiting after 3 to 27 years of cannabis abuse and no other history of drug abuse. All but one displayed compulsive hot water bathing; the remaining patient had only experienced his symptoms for 6 months, and the authors theorize that he had not yet learned to associate hot water with symptom palliation.

The 9 compulsive bathers reported that this bizarre behavior occupied hours of their days and said that their symptoms were ameliorated within minutes of bathing and returned when the water cooled. All 10 patients were counseled to cease cannabis use, and 7 did so. Within weeks of cessation, the symptoms resolved for these 7 patients; the remaining 3 patients did not cease cannabis use and continued to have cyclic vomiting and abdominal pain.

After several years of abstinence, 3 patients resumed cannabis use and were hospitalized again with cyclic vomiting and abdominal pain. Once again, 2 of these patients successfully stopped using cannabis, and their symptoms resolved. The remaining patient continued to use cannabis and continued to experience symptoms at the time of publication.
Following the first case report, further cases have been described on three continents.

All patients presented with the classic triad of symptoms described by Allen et al: cyclic vomiting and abdominal pain, an extensive history of cannabis abuse, and palliation with hot water bathing. The fact that this unique triad is preserved in diverse patient populations suggests that there is a pathogenic mechanism that underlies this syndrome.

Several authors have speculated about the pathophysiology of cannabinoid hyperemesis, and though the specifics remain unclear, there is consensus over some of the basic principals: It appears that the high lipophilicity of delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (Δ9-THC, the active compound in marijuana) causes cumulative increases in concentration with chronic use, which may lead to toxicity in susceptible patients.

The abdominal pain and vomiting are explained by the effect of cannabinoids on CB-1 receptors in the intestinal nerve plexus, causing relaxation of the lower esophageal sphincter and inhibition of gastrointestinal motility. This finding is supported by gastric emptying studies performed on one of the patients presented by Allen et al, which revealed severely delayed emptying. While cannabis appears to have anti-emetic effects that are centrally mediated, it is possible that these effects predominate at low doses whereas the gastrointestinal effects predominate at the high concentrations that occur with long-term use.

The proposed explanation for compulsive hot water bathing is based on the fact that cannabis disrupts autonomic and thermoregulatory functions of the hippocampal-hypothalamic-pituitary system. There is a high concentration of CB1 receptors within the limbic system, and the hypothalamus in particular is known to be responsible for integrating central and peripheral thermosensory input. Furthermore, Δ9-

THC induces hypothermia in mice in a dose-dependent manner. While this evidence links cannabis to the hypothalamus and to thermoregulation, it does not provide a causal relationship. Two mechanisms proposed by Chang et al are that (1) cannabinoid-induced hypothermia causes the desire for hot water bathing, or (2) hot water bathing is the direct result of CB1 activation in the hypothalamus.

The true mechanism underlying hot water bathing remains enigmatic, and further studies are needed to elucidate the relationship between this bizarre learned behavior and the other features of cannabinoid hyperemesis.

A timely diagnosis of cannabinoid hyperemesis is essential not only to effect proper treatment but also to prevent iatrogenic morbidity and mortality from unnecessary diagnostic procedures and surgical interventions. There are, however, several obstacles to effective diagnosis:

First, the legal status of marijuana makes eliciting an accurate drug history challenging. Second, the bizarre hot water bathing is likely often attributed to psychological conditions such as obsessive-compulsive behavior. Third, the knowledge of the anti-emetic effects of cannabis likely disguises cases of cannabinoid hyperemesis, leading to the erroneous belief that cannabis is treating cyclic vomiting rather than causing it.

Finally, the fact that this syndrome is so recently described and relatively unknown outside an esoteric subset of the GI literature means that most clinicians are unaware of its existence. The following diagnostic criteria adapted from Sontineni et al can be used to facilitate a diagnosis of cannabinoid hyperemesis syndrome:

ESSENTIAL FEATURES
History of chronic cannabis use
Nausea and cyclic vomiting over months
Relief with cessation of cannabis use
SUPPORTING FEATURES
Compulsive hot water bathing with transient relief of symptoms
Colicky abdominal pain
Exclusion of other etiologies (especially gall-bladder and pancreas)
In the case of the 18-year-old patient presented above, asking the open-ended question, “What makes you feel better?” followed by more focused questions regarding the temperature of the water and the history of marijuana use were sufficient to suggest the diagnosis of cannabinoid hyperemesis.
We propose that these questions be used as a screening tool for all patients presenting with cyclic vomiting. Based on our experience and a review of the literature, we believe that these questions may be both sensitive and specific for detecting this unusual syndrome.
The patient presented in this case was counseled on his likely diagnosis.

Though he was initially skeptical, giving him printouts of case reports on cannabinoid hyperemesis syndrome and discussing the etiology of the disease were sufficient to convince him of the diagnosis. He was treated symptomatically in the hospital. Two weeks after discharge, he remains abstinent from marijuana and reports that his symptoms are improving.
Sarah A. Buckley and Nicholas M. Mark both are 4th year medical students at NYU School of Medicine
Faculty reviewed by Robert Hoffman, MD, Director NYU Poison Control Center, Associate Professor Departments of Medicine and Emergency Medicine, NYU Langone Medical Center

Source http://www.clinicalcorrelations.org/?p=2877 July 15th 2010

]]> http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/07/cannabinoid-hyperemesis-high-on-the-differential-for-intractable-vomiting/feed/ 0 http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/07/some-statistics-on-drug-use-in-europe/ http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/07/some-statistics-on-drug-use-in-europe/#comments Wed, 28 Jul 2010 17:16:06 +0000 ndpa http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/?p=6942  Around 44 0000 people have been recorded as entering specialised drug treatment centres in Europe in 2008 in 29 countries; data mainly cover outpatient and inpatient treatment centers
 Most clients enter treatment on their own initiative or under the pressure of family and friends (43 %); 27 % go to drug treatment through health or social services, including other drug treatment centres; around 20 % are referred to treatment by the criminal justice system, and the remaining through other referral sources
 The most frequent reason for entering treatment in 2008 (or most recent year available), is the use of heroin (48 % of all drug users and around 200 000 people), followed by cannabis (21 % and around 85 000 people) and cocaine use, (17 % and around 70 000 people), use of stimulants other than cocaine (5 % and around 22 000 clients) and other drugs use, which include hypnotics and sedatives, hallucinogens, volatile and other substances
 Among those who have entered treatment for the first time in their life the proportion of heroin users is lower and that of cocaine, cannabis users and clients consuming stimulants other than cocaine (mainly amphetamine and methamphetamine) is higher
 Differences between countries are relevant with 18 countries reporting more than 50 % of primary opioid users among drug clients, 8 countries with more than 20 % of primary cannabis clients and 3 countries with more than 20 % of cocaine clients.
 Stimulants other than cocaine, which will be the subject of one of 2010 selected issue are concentrated in some countries, namely the Scandinavian countries (amphetamine), Czech Republic and Slovakia (methamphetamine)
 Clients are mainly males (4 males for every female), with a mean age 31 years (those who have entered treatment for the first time are on average 1 year younger)
 Most clients start their drug use before the age of 20, around one third of the clients inject their primary drug, and the frequency of use varies by the main drug (the highest proportion of daily users is found among opioid clients and the lowest among users of stimulants other than cocaine)
 Social conditions of drug users entering treatment are generally poorer than in the general population (education, living and labour conditions)
 Differences are reported by primary drug and by country regarding gender, age distribution and patterns of drug use

 Recent comparable data on young people’s use of alcohol and drug come largely from surveys of 15- to 16-year-old school students. The European School Survey Project (ESPAD) conducted surveys in 1995, 1999, 2003 and more recently, 2007. The 2007 survey (Hibell et al., 2009) provides comparable data from 25 EU Member States as well as Norway and Croatia. Five countries conducted their own school surveys in 2008 (Belgium-Flemish Community, Spain, Italy, Sweden, United Kingdom-England)
 The latest ESPAD survey data from 2007 reveal that the highest lifetime prevalence of cannabis use among 15- and 16-year-old school students is in the Czech Republic (45 %) (Figure EYE-1 part (ii)). High lifetime prevalence estimates, ranging from 26 % to 32 %, are also reported in Estonia, France, the Netherlands, the Slovak Republic and the United Kingdom.
 Increases in cannabis use occurred in a number of European countries between 1995 and 2003 but have, in general, come to a halt or decreased more recently. Seven countries mainly located in Northern and Southern Europe (Greece, Cyprus, Malta, Romania, Finland, Sweden, Norway) reported overall stable and low lifetime prevalence of cannabis use during the whole period. Other western European countries, as well as Croatia and Slovenia, have shown a significant increase of lifetime cannabis use up to 2003 and since then nine of these reported a decrease of more than three percentage points, two were stable and none reported an increase. In most of central and eastern Europe the increasing trend observed between 1995 and 2003 seems not to have been reversed yet. In this region, two out of eight countries report increases of more than three percentage points since 2003, six or more a stable situation and none a significant decrease. In the five countries that conducted national school surveys in 2008, all reported stable or lower lifetime prevalence of cannabis use than reported in 2007 (Table EYE-11).
 Increases in lifetime cannabis use between 1995 and 2003 in Europe were in some countries accompanied by increases in the prevalence of cigarette smoking among school students. Since 2003, both trends have reversed, suggesting a possible link between tobacco and cannabis smoking.
 Estimates of the prevalence of other drug use among school students are much lower than those for cannabis use. For example, lifetime prevalence of cocaine use among 15- to 16-year-old school students is between 1 % and 2 % in half of the 28 reporting countries. Most of the remaining countries report prevalence levels of between 3 % and 4 %, while Spain, France, and the United Kingdom report 5 %. Among the five countries that conducted school surveys in 2008, two reported a decrease of 1%, one reported an increase of 1%, and two reported no change since the last survey (Table EYE-11). However, caution is required interpreting trends with such low prevalence.
 In the countries conducting their own national school surveys, drug prevalence questions may be considered comparable to the ESPAD questions but other aspects of the method mean the data are not strictly comparable.
Source: EMDDA July 10 2010

]]> http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/07/some-statistics-on-drug-use-in-europe/feed/ 0 http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/07/parents-know-warning-signs-of-drug-abuse/ http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/07/parents-know-warning-signs-of-drug-abuse/#comments Tue, 27 Jul 2010 15:18:36 +0000 ndpa http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/?p=6937 Q: How can I tell if my child has been using marijuana?
A: There are some signs you might be able to see. If someone is high on marijuana, he or she might:

• Seem dizzy and have trouble walking;
• Seem silly and giggly for no reason;
• Save very red, bloodshot eyes; and
• Have a hard time remembering things that just happened.

When the early effects fade, the user can become very sleepy.

Parents should be aware of changes in their child’s behavior, although this may be difficult with teens. Parents should look for withdrawal, depression, fatigue, carelessness with grooming, hostility and deteriorating relationships with family members and friends.

In addition, changes in academic performance, increased absenteeism or truancy, lost interest in sports or other favorite activities, and changes in eating or sleeping habits could be related to drug use. However, these signs may also indicate problems other than using drugs.

In addition, parents should be aware of:

• Signs of drugs and drug paraphernalia, including pipes and rolling papers;
• Odor on clothes and in the bedroom;
• Use of incense and other deodorizers;
• Use of eye drops; and
• Clothing, posters, jewelry, etc., promoting drug use.

Source: The National Institute on Drug Abuse 2010

]]> http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/07/parents-know-warning-signs-of-drug-abuse/feed/ 0 http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/07/separate-genes-responsible-for-drinking-alcoholism-3/ http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/07/separate-genes-responsible-for-drinking-alcoholism-3/#comments Tue, 27 Jul 2010 15:03:32 +0000 ndpa http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/?p=6933 Some people can drink a lot of alcohol without becoming addicted, and specific genes may help explain why, researchers say.
In a new study of Australian twins, scientists found that separate genes appear to be responsible, to some degree, for dependence on alcohol — addiction — and how much people drink. Understanding how these genetic factors work together should give researchers more insight into treatment of alcoholism in its various forms, said study co-author John B. Whitfield, a researcher at Royal Prince Alfred Hospital in Australia.
Alcoholism and alcohol consumption may appear to be similar, but researchers are increasingly studying them separately. Consumption refers to the amount of alcohol that someone drinks, while addiction refers to a person’s inability to go without a drink.
“The transition from social alcohol consumption to alcohol dependence is a gradual process, and it is often hard to notice it,” said Dr. Alexei B. Kampov-Polevoi, an assistant professor of psychiatry at Mount Sinai School of Medicine. “As a result, many alcoholics and their family members continue to think that a person ‘just drinks too much’ while this person already developed alcohol dependence and requires treatment.”
Whitfield and his colleagues examined statistics about alcohol use from three studies of Australian twins completed between 1980 and 1995. The number of twins in the studies declined from 8,184 in 1980 to 3,378 in 1995.
The findings appear in the August issue of Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research.
The researchers found twins who were genetically similar were more likely to consume similar amounts of alcohol. According to the study, some genes affected both addiction and alcohol intake, while some just affected addiction.
“We found (as others have also found) that alcohol dependence is partly, but not entirely, due to genetic differences between people who are affected by it and those who are not,” Whitfield said. “We also found that variation in the amount of alcohol that people habitually drink is subject to genetic influence, and that there is some — but not complete — overlap between the genes affecting these two things.”
Howard J. Edenberg, professor of biochemistry and molecular biology at Indiana University, said the findings — that genes separately affect alcoholism and drinking — are “reasonable.” But “that is a long way from identifying individual genes that actually are involved,” said Edenberg, whose own research is looking into that area.
So what should ordinary folks take from this study? “There is no direct and new message for people with alcoholism in their families; they are at higher risk than average but this has been known for some time and there is only a statistical risk, not a certainty by any means,” Whitfield said. “The more positive message for such people, and the community at large, is that we are learning more about alcohol use and alcohol-related problems and their causes.”
Source : HealthDay News 18th August 2004
]]> http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/07/separate-genes-responsible-for-drinking-alcoholism-3/feed/ 0 http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/07/smoking-causes-heart-attacks-worldwide-3/ http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/07/smoking-causes-heart-attacks-worldwide-3/#comments Tue, 27 Jul 2010 14:57:57 +0000 ndpa http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/?p=6930 A Canadian-led international study finds that the causes of a heart attack are the same for people throughout the world, with cigarette smoking one of the main risk factors, the “There hasn’t been a study like this ever in the world,” said lead investigator Dr. Salim Yusuf, head of the Population Health Research Institute at McMaster University in Hamilton. “The risk factors that we’ve been able to measure account for 90 percent or more of heart disease. The impact of these risk factors in developing heart disease is global. It’s there in every ethnic group, in men, in women, in every region of the world, in young and old. It means we should be able to prevent the majority of premature heart attacks in the world.”

The research concluded that cigarette smoking and a poor ratio of bad to good cholesterol contribute to two-thirds of all heart attacks worldwide.

The five-year study involved 30,000 people in 52 countries. About half of the participants had suffered a heart attack. They were compared to an equal number of people with no heart disease, matched for age, sex, and city of residence.

“So now we’ll say: What causes the risk factor, not what causes the disease. And from a public-health point of view, there should be no more wallowing about that we need more information. We’ve got it,” said Dr. Sonia Anand, a specialist in vascular medicine and a member of the McMaster research team.

The latest figures show that 15 million people died from heart attacks worldwide in 1998. “The important issue is that the risk factors outlined in this study, the vast majority of them are modifiable,” said Toronto cardiologist Anthony Graham, a spokesman for the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada. “And what it suggests is that tobacco control is going to be as important in the developing world as it is in the western world.”

The study’s findings are published in issue of the British medical journal
Source: The Lancet. Sept. 11 2004

]]> http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/07/smoking-causes-heart-attacks-worldwide-3/feed/ 0 http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/07/smoking-and-binge-drinking-raises-oral-cancer-risk-3/ http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/07/smoking-and-binge-drinking-raises-oral-cancer-risk-3/#comments Tue, 27 Jul 2010 14:52:26 +0000 ndpa http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/?p=6924 New research suggests that people who smoke and drink heavily are more at risk for oral cancer, the Researchers from King’s College in London, England, found an increase in oral cancer among men and women in their 20s and 30s who smoke and binge drink.

The researchers said that when tobacco smoke combines with alcohol, it produces dangerous levels of cancer-causing chemicals that attack the lining of the mouth.

“Our data show that smoking, drinking and poor diet are major risk factors, and that the younger people start smoking and drinking, the higher the risk,” said Newell Johnson, a professor of oral pathology at King’s College

Source: Daily Telegraph, London reported Nov. 9.2004

]]> http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/07/smoking-and-binge-drinking-raises-oral-cancer-risk-3/feed/ 0 http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/07/dutch-law-could-unleash-cocaine-flood-in-britain-2/ http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/07/dutch-law-could-unleash-cocaine-flood-in-britain-2/#comments Tue, 27 Jul 2010 14:36:33 +0000 ndpa http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/?p=6919 A DECISION by the Dutch government to decriminalise the smuggling of hard drugs could leave Britain vulnerable to a flood of cheap cocaine.
Customs officers are allowing traffickers caught at Schiphol airport, Amsterdam, with less than 3kg of cocaine to go free. The only penalty they face is the confiscation of their drugs.

In the first phase of a policy that could soon be extended to other hard drugs, the liberal measures are being applied to 35 so-called “cocaine flights” a week from the Caribbean.
Last year police caught 2,176 smugglers from the region and seized six tons of the drug. But from now on, traffickers no longer have to worry about hefty prison terms or even arrest.
The policy may prove even more controversial than Holland’s infamous “coffee shops”, where soft drugs such as cannabis have been sold openly for decades.
The Dutch authorities claim the measure will allow them to divert money spent prosecuting offenders into drug seizures. However, critics in neighbouring countries, including Britain, fear it will lead to a boom in the number of people ready to act as “mules” for drug cartels.
The National Drug Prevention Alliance in Britain has warned that the policy amounts to a capitulation by the police with consequences that could spin out of control.
“This won’t just hit the UK badly. It will affect the whole of Europe,” said David Raynes, a former chief narcotics investigator for Customs and Excise. “Holland is the drugs warehouse of Europe and by not controlling its problem it’s creating an infection that will spread to all the countries around.”
In Germany the street value of cocaine has already fallen from €150 (£102) a gram to just €50 (£34), raising the prospect of a sharp rise in the number of addicts. The Dutch government has ignored a plea from Otto Schily, the German interior minister, to toughen rather than weaken its deterrent.
However, Ivo Hommes, a spokesman for the Dutch justice ministry, said the initiative could save millions spent on prosecuting and jailing offenders, allowing more funds to go into the detection and confiscation of drugs. “Locking up thousands of smugglers doesn’t solve the problem. There will always be more of them,” he said. “We’ve been honest enough to admit that we only manage to stop 15% of the drugs coming in, so we are trying something new.”
A leaked ministry memorandum, however, has suggested that the policy was adopted because the prosecution service was overburdened. It emphasised that drug-related arrests should not be permitted to “block the justice system”. Britain’s National Criminal Intelligence Service is said to be eyeing the policy “warily”.
Source: February 01, 2004 The Sunday Times

]]> http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/07/dutch-law-could-unleash-cocaine-flood-in-britain-2/feed/ 0 http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/07/two-genes-may-fuel-cocaine-addiction-2/ http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/07/two-genes-may-fuel-cocaine-addiction-2/#comments Fri, 23 Jul 2010 17:41:50 +0000 ndpa http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/?p=6913 Two Genes May Fuel Cocaine Addiction
Removing them caused withdrawal symptoms in mice
– Two related genes that help control signaling between brain cells may play an important role in cocaine addiction, says a study in the Aug. 5 issue of Neuron.
In research with mice, scientists found that deleting either of the two genes in the “Homer” family caused symptoms similar to those of cocaine withdrawal. The finding provides a new research target for trying to understand how both a genetic susceptibility to addiction and environmental factors cause addiction.
The study found the Homer1 and Homer2 genes appear to be specific for cocaine. When the researchers tested the effects of caffeine and heroin on mice that lacked the Homer genes, the rodents’ behavioral responses weren’t the same as they were with cocaine.
“While it can be anticipated that additional genetic models may be discovered that mimic or block behaviors associated with cocaine addiction, the striking concordant neurochemical phenotype between Homer2 deletion and withdrawal from chronic cocaine treatment indicates that Homer is a particularly good candidate to play a central role in cocaine addiction,” the study authors wrote.

Source WEDNESDAY, Aug. 4 (HealthDayNews) 2004

]]> http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/07/two-genes-may-fuel-cocaine-addiction-2/feed/ 0 http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/06/opinions-toughen-on-cannabis-users-and-illegal-drugs/ http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/06/opinions-toughen-on-cannabis-users-and-illegal-drugs/#comments Mon, 14 Jun 2010 15:51:12 +0000 ndpa http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/?p=6869 Support for legalising cannabis has dropped from more than a third of people in Scotland to less than a quarter, a study has suggested.
However, most people made a distinction between cannabis and other drugs.
The findings come in a Scottish government study into the public’s attitudes towards illegal drugs and drug misuse.
It showed 47% of people knew someone who had tried illegal drugs, up from 41% between 2001 and 2009.
Statistics from the British Social Attitudes Surveys in the 1980s and 1990s, along with the Scottish Social Attitudes Survey 2001, indicated an increasingly tolerant attitude towards the legalisation of cannabis.
The results from the Scottish Social Attitudes Survey 2009 have now suggested a reverse in this trend.
Mental health
Support for legalising cannabis fell from 37% in Scotland in 2001 to 24% in 2009. Among those who had themselves tried cannabis, support for its legalisation fell from 70% to 47% over the same period.
The views were accompanied by a hardening of attitudes towards prosecution for the possession of cannabis.
The report found the trend may be linked to the mental health debate surrounding new stronger forms of cannabis, called skunk, or it may reflect a changing trend in attitudes towards illegal drugs in general.
In 2008 the government introduced a new strategy to tackle the nation’s drug problems by focusing on “recovery and helping people live drug-free lives”.
In principle this appeared to be supported by the Scottish public, with 80% saying “the only real way of helping drug addicts is to get them to stop using drugs altogether”.
How this should be done was not so clear, the report found.
There was widespread support for enforcement, with only 16% of people agreeing that personal use of heroin should not result in prosecution.
Although education was generally supported as the focus of drugs policy, only 44% of people believed this “education” should involve young people being given more information on how to use drugs more safely.
The survey also indicated that communities with higher signs of heroin use were more likely to be comfortable living near a recovering heroin user. This may mean that actual contact with such issues helps to allay public anxiety, it suggested.

Source: www.news.bbc.co.uk 25th May 2010



]]> http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/06/opinions-toughen-on-cannabis-users-and-illegal-drugs/feed/ 0 http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/06/hse-statement-on-new-head-shop-drug-%e2%80%9cwhack%e2%80%9d/ http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/06/hse-statement-on-new-head-shop-drug-%e2%80%9cwhack%e2%80%9d/#comments Mon, 14 Jun 2010 15:49:42 +0000 ndpa http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/?p=6867 Over the past ten days, 40 reports were received by the National Poisons Information Centre regarding persons suffering severe adverse reactions attributed to using a new head shop substance “WHACK”.
The majority of these individuals are young males in their twenties. They live in different parts of Ireland with 20 presenting in the mid-Western region. They have suffered a range of symptoms including increased heart and breathing rates and raised blood pressure. Emergency Physicians and GPs have described that the majority suffered from differing levels of anxiety with at least 7 cases experiencing psychotic episodes. This psychosis is severe and is proving difficult to treat.

The National Poisons Information Centre, the Forensic Science Laboratory, the Irish Medicines Board and others are monitoring closely the emergence of any new psychoactive substances.

On the 11th May 2010, the Government brought in new legislation. This legislation has brought under control approximately 200 individual substances and covers the vast majority of products of public health concern, which were on sale in head shops.

In addition to the recent controls on legal highs introduced by the Minister for Health and Children, the Minister for Justice and Law Reform is bringing forward the Criminal Justice (Psychoactive Substances) Bill 2010 which aims to ensure that the sale or supply of substances which may not be specifically proscribed under the Misuse of Drugs Act, but which have psychoactive effects, will be a criminal offence.

The advice from the HSE is not to try this dangerous drug or other similar substances as the effect on an individual can impact significantly on one’s health.

Source: HSE Press & Media, Dr Steevens’ Hospital, Dublin 8, 09/06/2010


]]> http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/06/hse-statement-on-new-head-shop-drug-%e2%80%9cwhack%e2%80%9d/feed/ 0 http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/05/the-spread-of-sleep-loss-influences-drug-use-in-adolescent-social-networks/ http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/05/the-spread-of-sleep-loss-influences-drug-use-in-adolescent-social-networks/#comments Fri, 07 May 2010 13:31:43 +0000 ndpa http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/?p=6698 Troubled sleep is a commonly cited consequence of adolescent drug use, but it has rarely been studied as a cause. Nor have there been any studies of the extent to which sleep behavior can spread in social networks from person to person to person. Here we map the social networks of 8,349 adolescents in order to study how sleep behavior spreads, how drug use behavior spreads, and how a friend’s sleep behavior influences one’s own drug use. We find clusters of poor sleep behavior and drug use that extend up to four degrees of separation (to one’s friends’ friends’ friends’ friends) in the social network. Prospective regression models show that being central in the network negatively influences future sleep outcomes, but not vice versa. Moreover, if a friend sleeps ≤7 hours, it increases the likelihood a person sleeps ≤7 hours by 11%. If a friend uses marijuana, it increases the likelihood of marijuana use by 110%. Finally, the likelihood that an individual uses drugs increases by 19% when a friend sleeps ≤7 hours, and a mediation analysis shows that 20% of this effect results from the spread of sleep behavior from one person to another. This is the first study to suggest that the spread of one behavior in social networks influences the spread of another. The results indicate that interventions should focus on healthy sleep to prevent drug use and targeting specific individuals may improve outcomes across the entire social network.
Source: Mednick SC, Christakis NA, Fowler JH (2010) The Spread of Sleep Loss Influences Drug Use in Adolescent Social Networks. PLoS ONE 5(3): e9775. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0009775
]]> http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/05/the-spread-of-sleep-loss-influences-drug-use-in-adolescent-social-networks/feed/ 0 http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/05/long-term-use-of-ketamine-affects-memory-researchers-say/ http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/05/long-term-use-of-ketamine-affects-memory-researchers-say/#comments Fri, 07 May 2010 13:28:03 +0000 ndpa http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/?p=6696 Research Summary
Frequent, long-term use of the club drug ketamine appears to cause significant impairment in short-term and visual memory, according to researchers from University College London.
Reuters reported Nov. 20 that researchers tracked 150 users of ketamine, a.k.a. “Special K,” for more than a year. They found that while occasional users of ketamine seemed to suffer few ill effects, frequent users of the anaesthetic drug experienced problems with memory and concentration as well as a decline in psychological well-being. Short-term and visual memory problems worsened over time, study author Celia J. A. Morgan and colleagues found.
“Despite the dramatic increase in ketamine use over the past decade, young people who use this drug are still largely unaware of its damaging health properties and its potential for dependency,” the study said. “Health education campaigns should target ketamine users to ensure that people are informed of the negative consequences of heavy ketamine use.”
Source: www.jointogether.org Nov.2009 The findings were published in the journal Addiction.
]]> http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/05/long-term-use-of-ketamine-affects-memory-researchers-say/feed/ 0 http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/05/cannabis-health-woes-for-older-users/ http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/05/cannabis-health-woes-for-older-users/#comments Fri, 07 May 2010 13:23:41 +0000 ndpa http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/?p=6694 A TENFOLD increase in hospital treatment for cannabis poisoning or dependence among people in their 30s and 40s suggests the habit has run out of control for a hard core of long-term users.
Australian research shows that while cannabis consumption overall decreased during the past decade, the rate of hospital treatment rose. Treatment rates are highest among people in their 20s, but the steepest increase has been among older people, with those in their 30s only slightly less likely to seek help than younger people by 2007, the study shows.
Seven years earlier, people in their 30s were being treated at only half the rate of their younger counterparts, according to the findings of the National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre at the University of NSW. Their faster rise in cannabis-related health problems coincided with greater frequency of daily use.
“These people started their use early and have [in some cases] then gone on to develop problems,” the study leader, Amanda Roxburgh, said. “They might not necessarily think that they have a problem with their use until it kicks into crisis mode.” People in their 20s were about 50 per cent more likely to have used cannabis during a one-year period compared with those in their 30s. But of those who did so, nearly 20 per cent of the older age group had developed a daily habit, against about 15 per cent of the younger adults.
Ms Roxburgh, whose results are published in the journal Addiction, said the rise in problematic use might reflect increased cannabis potency, though there was no formal evidence the drug had become stronger. Its falling price suggested it was being produced more efficiently – perhaps through indoor hydroponic cultivation – and this might have made it more accessible.
Jan Copeland, who heads the National Cannabis Prevention and Information Centre, said older people were more likely to consider cannabis safe. “These people come from age groups where cannabis is a benign herb and natural,” she said. “But when you are doing something every day you don’t realise the difficulties when you try to stop”.
Cannabis use among people aged 14 to 19 more than halved between 1996 and 2005, but the study also found pockets of harmful use in that group. Nearly two-thirds of young daily cannabis users reported difficulties controlling their use.
Members of this group were also more likely to report smoking 10 or more cones or joints a day, and if they were treated in hospital for their cannabis use were more likely to be treated for psychosis than older users.
Professor Copeland said young people now understood cannabis could be dangerous, and fewer were experimenting, but dedicated treatment programs were still needed for young people with a serious habit.
Will Temple, chief executive officer of the Watershed drug and alcohol recovery and education centre in Wollongong, said his centre had gone from treating almost no cannabis users to in the past six months treating 30 per cent of clients for cannabis use.
Source: The Sydney Morning Herald 29th March 2010
]]> http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/05/cannabis-health-woes-for-older-users/feed/ 0 http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/05/research-offers-hope-for-alcoholics-2/ http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/05/research-offers-hope-for-alcoholics-2/#comments Fri, 07 May 2010 13:14:38 +0000 ndpa http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/?p=6691 Scientists at Melbourne’s Howard Florey Institute have discovered a system in the brain that stops an alcoholic’s craving for alcohol, as well as prevent relapse once they have recovered from alcohol addiction.
________________________________________
The ‘Orexin’ system is a group of cells in a part of the brain called the hypothalamus. These cells produce Orexin, which was originally implicated in the regulation of feeding, but it soon became apparent that Orexin was also involved in the ‘high’ felt after drinking alcohol or taking illicit drugs.

In studies conducted with rats, Dr Andrew Lawrence and his Florey colleagues used a drug that blocked Orexin’s euphoric effects in the brain and the results were remarkable.
“In one experiment, rats that had alcohol freely available to them stopped drinking it after receiving the Orexin blocker.” Dr Lawrence said. “In another experiment, rats that had gone through a detox program and were then given the Orexin blocking drug, did not relapse into alcohol addiction when they were reintroduced to an environment in which they had been conditioned to associate with alcohol use.

“Orexin reinforces the euphoria felt when drinking alcohol, so if a drug can be developed to block the Orexin system in humans, we should be able to stop an alcoholic’s craving for alcohol, as well as preventing relapse once the alcoholic has recovered,” he said.
Dr Lawrence said that this research could also lead to treatments for eating disorders, such chronic over-eating, which leads to obesity. “Our research shows that alcohol addiction and eating disorders set off common triggers in the brain, so further investigations may uncover drug targets in the Orexin system to treat both conditions,” Dr Lawrence said.

The Florey scientists are now conducting multiple experiments to discover the precise circumstances that activate the Orexin system. “To explore this discovery further we are now investigating how different experimental paradigms and environmental situations impact on the Orexin system, which will hopefully pinpoint therapeutic drug targets,” Dr Lawrence said.
“Before a therapeutic Orexin-blocking drug can be developed, we need to ensure that it will be safe to use in the long-term and that issues surrounding a person’s compliance in taking the drug are considered,” he said.

According to the World Health Organisation, alcohol is one of the most widely used and abused substances in the world and causes as much, if not more death and disability as measles, malaria, tobacco, or illegal drugs.
Dr Lawrence and his colleagues were the first in the world to demonstrate the Orexin system’s involvement in alcohol addiction and their research paper was recently published in the prestigious British Journal of Pharmacology. Dr Lawrence’s paper was downloaded 658 times by researchers from around the world in the first three months of its publication, making it the most downloaded research paper in that issue and supporting the research’s importance.
The Howard Florey Institute is Australia’s leading brain research centre. Its scientists undertake clinical and applied research that can be developed into treatments to combat brain disorders, and new medical practices. Their discoveries will improve the lives of those directly, and indirectly, affected by brain and mind disorders in Australia, and around the world. The Florey’s research areas cover a variety of brain and mind disorders including Parkinson’s disease, stroke, motor neuron disease, addiction, epilepsy, multiple sclerosis, autism and dementia.

Source: ScienceDaily. Retrieved March 28, 2010 Howard Florey Institute (2006, December 13).
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]]> http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/05/research-offers-hope-for-alcoholics-2/feed/ 0 http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/05/brain-abnormalities-identified-that-result-from-prenatal-methamphetamine-exposure/ http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/05/brain-abnormalities-identified-that-result-from-prenatal-methamphetamine-exposure/#comments Fri, 07 May 2010 13:09:19 +0000 ndpa http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/?p=6689 Children whose mothers abused methamphetamine (meth) during pregnancy show brain abnormalities that may be more severe than that of children exposed to alcohol prenatally, according to a study in the March 17 issue of The Journal of Neuroscience. While researchers have long known that drug abuse during pregnancy can alter fetal brain development, this finding shows the potential impact of meth. Identifying vulnerable brain structures may help predict particular learning and behavioral problems in meth-exposed children.
________________________________________
“We know that alcohol exposure is toxic to the developing fetus and can result in lifelong brain, cognitive, and behavioral problems,” said Elizabeth Sowell, PhD, of the University of California, Los Angeles, who led the research team. “In this study, we show that the effects of prenatal meth exposure, or the combination of meth and alcohol exposure, may actually be worse. Our findings stress the importance of drug abuse treatment for pregnant women,” Sowell said. A structure called the caudate nucleus, which is important for learning and memory, motor control, and motivation, was one of the regions more reduced by meth than alcohol exposure.
Of the more than 16 million Americans over the age of 12 who have used meth, about 19,000 are pregnant women, according to data from the National Surveys on Drug Use and Health. About half of women who say they used meth during pregnancy also used alcohol, so isolating the effects of meth on the developing brain is difficult.
Sowell’s team evaluated the specific effects of prenatal meth-exposure by comparing brain scans of 61 children: 21 with prenatal meth and alcohol exposure, 13 with heavy alcohol exposure only, and 27 unexposed. Structural magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) showed that the sizes and shapes of certain brain structures varied depending on prenatal drug exposure.
Previous studies have shown that certain brain structures are smaller in alcohol-exposed children. In this study, the authors found these brain regions in meth-exposed children were similar to the alcohol-exposed children, and in some areas were smaller still. Some brain regions were larger than normal. An abnormal volume increase was noted in meth-exposed children in a region called the cingulate cortex, which is associated with control and conflict resolution.
The researchers were also able to predict a child’s past exposure to drugs based on brain images and IQ information. Detailed data about vulnerable brain structures may eventually be used to diagnose children with cognitive or behavioral problems but without well-documented histories of drug exposure. Christian Beaulieu, PhD, of the University of Alberta in Canada, who was unaffiliated with the study, said this finding will help researchers understand which brain areas are most sensitive to injury during development.
“Ultimately, the goal would be to come up with strategies to first, minimize brain damage in the womb, and second, to improve the child’s cognitive performance,” Beaulieu said.
.

Source: Society for Neuroscience, March 17 2010

]]> http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/05/brain-abnormalities-identified-that-result-from-prenatal-methamphetamine-exposure/feed/ 0 http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/05/substance-abuse-prevention-dollars-and-cents-a-cost-benefit-analysis-u-s/ http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/05/substance-abuse-prevention-dollars-and-cents-a-cost-benefit-analysis-u-s/#comments Fri, 07 May 2010 13:04:54 +0000 ndpa http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/?p=6687 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)

]]> http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/05/substance-abuse-prevention-dollars-and-cents-a-cost-benefit-analysis-u-s/feed/ 0 http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/05/alcohol-binge-drinking-linked-to-increased-hypomania-risk/ http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/05/alcohol-binge-drinking-linked-to-increased-hypomania-risk/#comments Fri, 07 May 2010 12:55:31 +0000 ndpa http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/?p=6685 Young men who report an unstable pattern of alcohol consumption including binge drinking have an elevated risk for experiencing hypomania, study results show. Notably, the effect was independent of total alcohol consumption and the presence of clinical alcohol use disorders.
“This fits with the idea that instability in different biological and behavioral systems is a core feature of risk for hypomania and finally risk for bipolar disorders,” say study authors Thomas Meyer (Newcastle University, UK) and Larissa Wolkenstein (University of Tübingen, Germany) in the journal Comprehensive Psychiatry.
Recent studies have suggested that vulnerability to hypomania is related to instability in certain psychologic processes. For example, individuals at risk for hypomania do not generally sleep less than others, but report a much more unstable sleeping pattern. Similarly fluctuations in self-esteem are much more characteristic of vulnerability to hypomania than are consistently low or high levels of self-esteem.
In the current study, the researchers assessed whether alcohol use might show a similar relationship to hypomania. They recruited 120 male students who completed the Hypomanic Personality Scale and were independently interviewed with the FORM 90 to assess alcohol consumption. The latter comprised an interview about a typical weekly drinking pattern and a calendar to assess drinking behavior over the last 90 days, noting special days with unusual drinking behavior.
The researchers found that intra-individual fluctuations in alcohol consumption predicted hypomania after accounting for clinical diagnoses of abuse or dependency. In addition, vulnerability for hypomania was significantly associated with mean standard ethanol content per drinking day.
Discussing their findings, the researchers note a recent theory that bipolar disorder is related to a hypersensitivity to reward-related cues, which is due to a dysregulation of the behavioral activation system.
“To extend this work further, it would be reasonable to look more closely at the motivational and affective processes associated with drinking alcohol and bipolar disorder and how mood and drinking are related,” Meyer and Wolkenstein comment.
Source: MedWire (www.medwire-news.md) 19 March 2010
]]> http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/05/alcohol-binge-drinking-linked-to-increased-hypomania-risk/feed/ 0 http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/05/teens-who-drink-with-parents-may-still-develop-alcohol-problems-2/ http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/05/teens-who-drink-with-parents-may-still-develop-alcohol-problems-2/#comments Fri, 07 May 2010 12:50:22 +0000 ndpa http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/?p=6682 Parents who try to teach responsible drinking by letting their teenagers have alcohol at home may be well intentioned, but they may also be wrong, according to a new study in the latest issue of the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs.

In a study of 428 Dutch families, researchers found that the more teenagers were allowed to drink at home, the more they drank outside of home as well. What’s more, teens who drank under their parents’ watch or on their own had an elevated risk of developing alcohol-related problems. Drinking problems included trouble with school work, missed school days and getting into fights with other people, among other issues.

The findings, say the researchers, put into question the advice of some experts who recommend that parents drink with their teenage children to teach them how to drink responsibly — with the aim of limiting their drinking outside of the home.

That advice is common in the Netherlands, where the study was conducted, but it is based more on experts’ reasoning than on scientific evidence, according to Dr. Haske van der Vorst, the lead researcher on the study.

“The idea is generally based on common sense,” says van der Vorst, of Radboud University Nijmegen in the Netherlands. “For example, the thinking is that if parents show good behavior — here, modest drinking — then the child will copy it. Another assumption is that parents can control their child’s drinking by drinking with the child.”

But the current findings suggest that is not the case.

Based on this and earlier studies, van der Vorst says, “I would advise parents to prohibit their child from drinking, in any setting or on any occasion.”

The study included 428 families with two children between the ages of 13 and 15. Parents and teens completed questionnaires on drinking habits at the outset and again one and two years later.

The researchers found that, in general, the more teens drank at home, the more they tended to drink elsewhere; the reverse was also true, with out-of-home drinking leading to more drinking at home. In addition, teens who drank more often, whether in or out of the home, tended to score higher on a measure of problem drinking two years later.

The findings, according to van der Vorst, suggest that teen drinking begets more drinking — and, in some cases, alcohol problems — regardless of where and with whom they drink.

“If parents want to reduce the risk that their child will become a heavy drinker or problem drinker in adolescence,” she says, “they should try to postpone the age at which their child starts drinking.”

Available at: http://www.jsad.com/jsad/link/71/105

Source: H. van der Vorst Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs 71 (1), 105-114. Jan 2010

]]> http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/05/teens-who-drink-with-parents-may-still-develop-alcohol-problems-2/feed/ 0 http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/05/monitoring-the-future-survey-shows-that-while-marijuana-continues-to-be-the-most-commonly-2/ http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/05/monitoring-the-future-survey-shows-that-while-marijuana-continues-to-be-the-most-commonly-2/#comments Sat, 01 May 2010 11:58:19 +0000 ndpa http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/?p=6602
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



]]> http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/05/monitoring-the-future-survey-shows-that-while-marijuana-continues-to-be-the-most-commonly-2/feed/ 0 http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/05/prenatal-cocaines-lasting-cellular-effects/ http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/05/prenatal-cocaines-lasting-cellular-effects/#comments Sat, 01 May 2010 11:55:51 +0000 ndpa http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/?p=6598 A recent study by investigators at the Vanderbilt Kennedy Center for Research on Human Development may help explain the long-term behavioral and neurological problems associated with prenatal exposure to cocaine. In a recent issue of the Journal of Neuroscience, Gregg Stanwood, Ph.D., and Pat Levitt, Ph.D., report that prenatal cocaine exposure in rabbits causes a long lasting displacement of dopamine receptors in certain brain cells, which alters their ability to function normally.
Though this effect has not yet been assessed in cocaine-exposed children, the findings give researchers a place to start looking.
“The hysteria surrounding the ‘crack baby’ was sort of overblown,” said Stanwood, research assistant professor of Pharmacology and lead author on the study.
Incredibly high levels of cocaine — usually coupled with the abuse of other drugs — can lead to premature labor, preterm birth and low birth weight, Stanwood said.
“But in women who have abused relatively low recreational doses of cocaine, it is actually very hard to distinguish those children at birth from children born to anyone else,” he said. “However, as those children age, they do develop deficits in their cognitive and emotional development.”
These children often exhibit attention and arousal problems, similar to children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). However, the standard treatments for ADHD — Ritalin and other stimulants — are not always effective in these children.
Studying the effects of prenatal cocaine exposure on the developing brain is difficult in human populations because cocaine abusers often abuse other drugs. Animal models can help determine how prenatal cocaine exposure might influence brain development to cause these subtle cognitive impairments.
“We thought that it was important to set up an animal model that recapitulates a key feature of human abuse — that being intravenous exposure to low doses of cocaine,” Stanwood said.
A few years ago, Stanwood and Levitt, professor of Pharmacology and director of the Vanderbilt Kennedy Center, established such a model in rabbits. They found that exposure to low levels of intravenous cocaine during a very short window of time during gestation — equivalent to the late first trimester and early second trimester in humans — caused specific alterations in brain circuits that use the neurotransmitter dopamine. Additionally, these cocaine-exposed offspring showed attention problems as well as insensitivity to stimulants like amphetamine, suggesting that cocaine exposure had altered the development of the dopamine pathways in the brain.
“In collaboration with Dr. Eitan Friedman of the City University of New York, we had previously shown a decrease in signaling of a particular receptor protein, the dopamine D1 receptor,” Stanwood said. “We know that this receptor is involved in regulating the formation of cortical circuitry. It’s also involved in the behavioral effects of amphetamines and cocaine.”
“The current study was an attempt to look at the mechanism of this decrease in D1 receptor signaling,” he said.
Stanwood examined the levels of D1 receptor in brain cells taken from “teenage” rabbits that were exposed to cocaine during that short, sensitive prenatal period.
He found that cocaine exposure did not alter the total amount of D1 receptor produced in the brain. However, there was a dramatic alteration in the location of the protein within the cell.
“It’s not where it should be,” he said. D1 receptors are normally found at the cell surface, but neurons from the cocaine-exposed animals showed the receptor was predominantly sequestered inside the cells.
“The fascinating thing is that this effect appears permanent,” said Stanwood. This implies that cocaine exposure during a brief, sensitive period of neural development can lead to long-lasting effects at the cellular level.
This change also altered the growth of neuronal processes, suggesting that the altered D1 receptor trafficking may underlie the changes in neuronal architecture and behavior that Stanwood and others have previously observed.
What remains to be determined, he cautioned, is whether D1 receptor localization is affected in humans exposed to cocaine prenatally.
If found in humans, “it gives us a new way to think about helping those children as they continue to mature.” Because cocaine exposure seems to alter the distribution of the D1 receptor, Stanwood suggests that researchers might find a way to “steer” the receptor into the correct cellular location. That could provide new avenues for treating the attention problems in cocaine-exposed children, as well as in children with stimulant-resistant ADHD.
“Neither we nor anyone else has yet identified whether this mechanism occurs in the human population,” Stanwood said, “so that is a critical next step.”
Note: This story has been adapted from a news release issued by Vanderbilt University Medical Center.

Source ScienceDaily.com 13th January 2007



]]> http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/05/prenatal-cocaines-lasting-cellular-effects/feed/ 0 http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/05/people-on-drugs-are-far-more-likely-to-commit-crime-especially-violent-crime/ http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/05/people-on-drugs-are-far-more-likely-to-commit-crime-especially-violent-crime/#comments Sat, 01 May 2010 11:54:53 +0000 ndpa http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/?p=6596 Half of all crime suspects arrested by police admit to recently smoking cannabis, astonishing UK Government research reveals. For younger offenders, the figures are even more stark. Some 57% say they have smoked the drug – which Labour controversially downgraded – in the past month. It proves for the first time a firm link between cannabis and serious offending. It is used by more suspects than any other drug – including heroin and crack cocaine. “We have long said that drugs fuel all sorts of crime. This is because they both undermine a person’s sense of responsibility but also because takers and addicts need money to feed their habit,” said Shadow Home Secretary David Davis.

Source: Daily Mail, January 5, 2007.



]]> http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/05/people-on-drugs-are-far-more-likely-to-commit-crime-especially-violent-crime/feed/ 0 http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/05/smoking-marijuana-during-pregnancy-alters-newborn-behavior/ http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/05/smoking-marijuana-during-pregnancy-alters-newborn-behavior/#comments Sat, 01 May 2010 11:54:15 +0000 ndpa http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/?p=6594 The Journal of Pediatrics has published a new study which brings to light another troubling consequence of smoking marijuana, particularly during pregnancy.
“Barros and her team looked at 561 infants born to adolescent mothers. Twenty-six of them had been exposed to marijuana, as revealed by tests on the mother’s hair and the infant’s stool. Just one of the mothers had reported smoking pot while pregnant.
Trained examiners, who did not know a child’s marijuana exposure status, tested the neurobehavioral responses of all infants. On average, marijuana-exposed infants scored differently on measures of arousal, regulation and excitability compared to the non-exposed infants…
..Infants exposed to marijuana in the womb show subtle behavioral changes in their first days of life, researchers from Brazil report.
These newborns were more irritable than non-exposed infants, less responsive, and more difficult to calm, Dr. Marina Carvalho de Moraes Barros and colleagues from the Federal University of Sao Paulo and colleagues report. They also cried more, startled more easily, and were more jittery. Such changes, Barros and her team say, have the potential to interfere with mother-child bonding.
Here’s the key point: “It is necessary to counter the misconception that marijuana is a ‘benign drug’ and to educate women regarding the risks and possible consequences related to its use during pregnancy,” Barros and colleagues conclude.”

Source: Journal of Pediatrics Vol.149 Issue 6 Dec. 2006



]]> http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/05/smoking-marijuana-during-pregnancy-alters-newborn-behavior/feed/ 0 http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/05/fears-over-drinking-habits-as-liver-disease-deaths-double/ http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/05/fears-over-drinking-habits-as-liver-disease-deaths-double/#comments Sat, 01 May 2010 11:53:32 +0000 ndpa http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/?p=6592 A LEADING medic at the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary today warned of the growing toll of Scots’ drinking habits as new figures showed liver disease deaths at the hospital have doubled in seven years.
The hospital, which is a referral centre for acute cases from across the whole of Scotland, had 67 fatalities from cirrhosis of the liver in 2005. A further 17 people died from the disease at the Western General Hospital in 2005 which, along with 2003, is the highest level for eight years.
Professor Peter Hayes today said there had been an “exponential rise” in cases among middle-aged men, in particular, in recent years which was showing no signs of slowing.
“The main problem is alcohol,” he said. “On the Continent, the problem seemed to peak in the 1970s and 1980s and cases have been falling since. They’re doing something very right, we’re doing something very wrong. I suspect it’s down to culture and the amount we consume.”
Prof Hayes, of the department of hepatology at the ERI, said more than half the cases were due to long-term alcohol abuse, typically people who have drunk a bottle of spirits a day for 20 years.
However, obese people and drug users who contracted hepatitis C by sharing needles in the 1970s and 1980s also account for a large proportion.
Prof Hayes warned that these health problems – although not as high as in some areas such as Paisley, near Glasgow – are growing in Edinburgh and Lothian.
“Deaths from liver disease in the UK, and Scotland in particular – and among middle-aged men in particular – are rising exponentially. Figures published in 2006 showed deaths in Scotland just massively increased, almost rising in a straight line.
“This is a national problem but one we are also seeing in Edinburgh and the Lothians.
“The problem is worse in Paisley, for example, but I’m sure it’s going up in Edinburgh, probably at the same rate just starting at a lower level.”
Some people are showing the signs of long-term alcohol abuse after just a few years of drinking, and there are also more female patients, but the most common sufferers continue to be men in their 50s and 60s.
Prof Hayes said: “We do see people in their 20s, they always catch your eye because they are so young, but the majority are older, and we still get more men than women.
“Alcohol is undoubtedly the most important reason for the rise. Hepatitis C is increasing – it takes a long time to cause sclerosis – but we are seeing a lot of people now who may have experimented with drugs, even just for a short time, 20 or 30 years ago.
“The third factor is obesity and diabetes. People are getting obese younger but living longer because of efforts to stop them dying from heart disease. This is putting pressure on their liver.”
Across Scotland 976 people died from liver disease in 2005, along with the same figure in 2003, the highest in eight years.
The figures, obtained by SNP MSP Christine Grahame, also showed that in 2005, 41,250 people were discharged from Scottish hospitals with an explicit diagnosis of an alcohol-related condition, 5441 in the Lothians.
She said the best way of turning the corner was by targeting the next generation of drinkers.
“We have to go back into schools with a determined education message,” she said.
“We think we’re immortal when we are young. When we do find young people with extreme difficulty with drinking we have to find residential places for them straight away.”

Source: Scotsman.com 27th Jan 2007



]]> http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/05/fears-over-drinking-habits-as-liver-disease-deaths-double/feed/ 0 http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/05/readiness-for-change-and-drug-use-outcomes-after-treatment/ http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/05/readiness-for-change-and-drug-use-outcomes-after-treatment/#comments Sat, 01 May 2010 11:52:52 +0000 ndpa http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/?p=6590 Abstract

Aims
The present study represents the first large-scale test of the capacity to predict illicit drug treatment outcomes of an instrument [Stages of Change and Treatment Eagerness Scale (SOCRATES)] purporting to measure processes underlying stages of change. The main hypothesis was that ‘taking steps’ should be predictive of less frequent use of illicit opiates (heroin and non-prescribed methadone) at follow-up.

Design
The sample comprised 1075 people seeking treatment for drug abuse problems in 54 treatment agencies in England. The study uses a longitudinal, prospective cohort design. Structured interviews were conducted at treatment intake and at 1-year follow-up. Data were collected about illicit drug use (frequency of use of heroin, non-prescribed methadone, cocaine and amphetamines, and non-prescribed benzodiazepines) and other problems.

Findings
Results failed to support the hypothesis that taking steps should be associated with less frequent use of illicit opiates at follow-up. No statistically significant associations of any kind were found between readiness for change measures and use of opiates or stimulants at follow-up. A negative association was found between taking steps and benzodiazepine misuse. Readiness for change measures were correlated with heroin use and psychiatric symptom scores at treatment intake.
Conclusions
Readiness for change measures were not associated with illicit drug use outcomes. Of the 12 hypothesized relationships between readiness for change measures and outcomes, our results show only one ‘hit’ and 11 ‘misses’.

Source: Addiction Volume 102 Issue 2 Page null – February 2007 Addiction 102 (2)


]]> http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/05/readiness-for-change-and-drug-use-outcomes-after-treatment/feed/ 0 http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/05/brain-damage-kills-craving-for-nicotine/ http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/05/brain-damage-kills-craving-for-nicotine/#comments Sat, 01 May 2010 11:51:49 +0000 ndpa http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/?p=6588 SMOKERS who suffer damage to a particular part of their brains appear to be able to quit their nicotine habit easily – a discovery that might open new avenues of addiction research.
A study of smokers who had suffered brain damage of various kinds after a stroke showed that those with injuries to a part of the brain called the insula were in many cases able to quit smoking quickly and easily – saying they had lost the urge to smoke altogether.
The insula receives information from the body and translates it into subjective feelings such as hunger, pain and craving, including craving for drugs.
However, the insula has not attracted much attention in studies on drug addiction, according to the research in the latest edition of the journal Science.
Deliberately damaging people’s insulas is not considered a realistic treatment option, because the risks are too great and the insula also has a role in many essential functions, such as the desire to eat.
But in the long term, the authors said, drugs might be developed to target the insula.
Other techniques for affecting the insula might in future also include electrical stimulation, already used in patients with depression. However, current techniques cannot penetrate the brain deeply enough to reach the insula.
The study was inspired by the experience of a man who had smoked 40 cigarettes a day before his insula was damaged in a stroke. He quit smoking immediately after, telling researchers his body “forgot the urge to smoke”.
Additional reporting: The Times

Source: news.com.au January 27th 2007


]]> http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/05/brain-damage-kills-craving-for-nicotine/feed/ 0 http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/05/tobacco-related-mortality/ http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/05/tobacco-related-mortality/#comments Sat, 01 May 2010 11:50:59 +0000 ndpa http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/05/tobacco-related-mortality/

Fact sheet September 2006

Overall Mortality
• Tobacco use is the leading preventable cause of death in the United States.1 Cigarette smoking causes an estimated 438,000 deaths, or about 1 of every 5 deaths, each year.2,3 This estimate includes approximately 38,000 deaths from secondhand smoke exposure.2

• Cigarette smoking kills an estimated 259,500 men and 178,000 women in the United States each year.2

• More deaths are caused each year by tobacco use than by all deaths from human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), illegal drug use, alcohol use, motor vehicle injuries, suicides, and murders combined.2,4

• On average, adults who smoke cigarettes die 14 years earlier than nonsmokers.5

• Based on current cigarette smoking patterns, an estimated 25 million Americans who are alive today will die prematurely from smoking-related illnesses, including 5 million people younger than 18.6
Mortality from Specific Diseases
• Lung cancer (124,000), heart disease (108,000), and the chronic lung diseases of emphysema, bronchitis, and chronic airways obstruction (90,000) are responsible for the largest number of smoking-related deaths.2

• The risk of dying from lung cancer is more than 22 times higher among men who smoke cigarettes and about 12 times higher among women who smoke cigarettes compared with never smokers.7

• Since 1950, lung cancer deaths among women have increased by more than 600%.1 Since 1987, lung cancer has been the leading cause of cancer-related deaths in women.1

• Cigarette smoking results in a two- to three-fold increased risk of dying from coronary heart disease.7

• Cigarette smoking is associated with a ten-fold increased risk of dying from chronic obstructive lung disease.6 About 90% of all deaths from chronic obstructive lung diseases are attributable to cigarette smoking.1,7

• Pipe smoking and cigar smoking increase the risk of dying from cancers of the lung, esophagus, larynx, and oral cavity.8 Smokeless tobacco use increases the risk for developing oral cancer.8,9
References
1. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Women and Smoking: A Report of the Surgeon General. Atlanta, GA: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, CDC, National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, Office on Smoking and Health; 2001. Available at: http://http://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/sgr/sgr_forwomen/index.htm. Accessed December 2006.

2. CDC. Annual Smoking–Attributable Mortality, Years of Potential Life Lost, and Productivity Losses — United States, 1997–2001. MMWR 2005: 54(25) 625-628. Available at http://0-www.cdc.gov.mill1.sjlibrary.org:80/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5425a1.htm. Accessed: September 2006.

3. CDC. Health United States, 2005 With Chartbook on Trends in the Health of Americans. ( PDF–119KB) Hyattsville, MD: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, CDC, National Center for Health Statistics; 2006. Accessed September 2006.

4. McGinnis J, Foege WH. Actual causes of death in United States. Journal of American Medical Association 1993;270:2207–2212.

5. CDC. Annual smoking-attributable mortality, years of potential life lost, and economic costs—United States, 1995–1999. MMWR 2002; 51(14):300–303. Accessed September 2006.

6. CDC. Perspectives in disease prevention and health promotion, smoking-attributable mortality and years of potential life lost—United States, 1984. MMWR 1997;46:444–451. Available at: http://0-www.cdc.gov.mill1.sjlibrary.org:80/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/00047690.htm. Accessed February 2004.

7. Novotny TE, Giovino GA. Tobacco use. In: Brownson RC, Remington PL, Davis JR (eds). Chronic Disease Epidemiology and Control. Washington, DC: American Public Health Association; 1998;117–148.

8. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Reducing the Health Consequences of Smoking—25 Years of Progress: A Report of the Surgeon General. Atlanta, GA: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, CDC; 1989. DHHS Pub. No. (CDC) 89–8411. Available at: http://profiles.nlm.nih.gov/NN/B/B/X/S/. Accessed September 2006.

9. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The Health Consequences of Using Smokeless Tobacco: A Report of the Advisory Committee to the Surgeon General, 1986. Bethesda, MD: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Public Health Service. NIH Pub. No. 86–2874. Accessed September 2006.
Note: More recent information may be available at the CDC’S Office on Smoking and Health Web site: http://0-www.cdc.gov.mill1.sjlibrary.org:80/tobacco.

Source: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion
Office on Smoking and Health. tobaccoinfo@cdc.gov Sept.2006


]]> http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/05/tobacco-related-mortality/feed/ 0 http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/05/study-marijuana-causes-lung-damage/ http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/05/study-marijuana-causes-lung-damage/#comments Sat, 01 May 2010 11:50:01 +0000 ndpa http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/?p=6585 Research Summary
New research finds that smoking three or four marijuana cigarettes a week for six years could harm lung function and destroy antioxidants that protect cells against heart disease and cancer, Reuters reported Dec. 5.
“Smoking cannabis on a regular basis actually depletes your lung of protective antioxidant substances and this may have chronic long-term implications for young individuals,” said Dr Sarah Nuttall of the University of Birmingham in England.
The study involved a group of 20 people ages 19 to 30 who were either nonsmokers, cigarette smokers, and/or marijuana users. Researchers took blood samples, conducted lung function measurements, and tested for antioxidant markers.
“We found that smokers, compared to nonsmokers, had impaired lung function,” Nuttall said.
Nuttall said that when compared to nonsmokers, marijuana smokers had substantially lower levels of a protective antioxidant and nitric oxide, which is linked to lung function.
“These findings are important in young individuals in which the use of cannabis is increasing and may have serious long-term implications for what is currently regarded as a relatively harmless recreational habit,” she said.
The study’s findings were presented at a meeting of the held recently in London, England.

Source: British Thoracic Society Dec.2003



]]> http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/05/study-marijuana-causes-lung-damage/feed/ 0 http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/05/smoking-marijuana-more-harmful-than-tobacco-2/ http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/05/smoking-marijuana-more-harmful-than-tobacco-2/#comments Sat, 01 May 2010 11:49:21 +0000 ndpa http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/?p=6583 Research Summary
A study by the British Lung Foundation determined that smoking marijuana is more harmful to the lungs than smoking cigarettes, the BBC reported Nov. 11.
According to the study, smoking three marijuana cigarettes a day can cause the same damage as 20 cigarettes. And those who smoke both marijuana and cigarettes are further increasing their risk of lung damage.
Dr. Mark Britton, chairman of the foundation, said that tar from cannabis cigarettes contains 50 percent more carcinogens than tobacco. Since marijuana smokers tend to inhale up to four times more deeply than tobacco users, more poisonous carbon monoxide and tar enter the lungs, he added.
“These statistics will come as a surprise to many people, especially those who choose to smoke cannabis rather than tobacco in the belief it is safer for them,” said Britton. “It is vital that people are fully aware of the dangers so they can make an educated decision and know the damage they may be causing.”
As a result of the study’s findings, the group is urging the British government to implement a public-health education campaign on the health risks of marijuana smoking.

Source: Link from Join Together February 2007



]]> http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/05/smoking-marijuana-more-harmful-than-tobacco-2/feed/ 0 http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/05/marijuana-use-tied-to-cancer-rates-among-maoris/ http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/05/marijuana-use-tied-to-cancer-rates-among-maoris/#comments Sat, 01 May 2010 11:48:35 +0000 ndpa http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/?p=6581 Maoris have the world’s highest lung-cancer rate, and heavy marijuana use could be a culprit, the New Zealand Herald reported Oct. 10.
About one in five New Zealanders are regular users of marijuana. Researcher Richard Beasley of the Medical Research Institute in Wellington, New Zealand, is working on a study that compares cancer rates between marijuana smokers, tobacco smokers, and nonusers. He recently released a research review concluding that marijuana smoking is more cancerous than tobacco smoking.
Beasley performed the research review for a Wellington coroner who has called for a tougher approach than harm reduction to marijuana use in New Zealand.

Source: New Zealand Herald Oct.l7 2005



]]> http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/05/marijuana-use-tied-to-cancer-rates-among-maoris/feed/ 0 http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/05/12-step-treatment-more-effective-than-alternative-study-says/ http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/05/12-step-treatment-more-effective-than-alternative-study-says/#comments Sat, 01 May 2010 11:47:50 +0000 ndpa http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/?p=6579 Research Summary

Researchers from Stanford University found that a *12-step oriented treatment program that included attending Alcoholics Anonymous meetings boosted two-year sobriety rates by 30 percent compared to cognitive-behavioral (CB) programs, the BBC reported Jan. 29.
Twelve-step oriented programs also cost 30 percent less than CB-based treatment for addiction, the researchers said.
Lead study author Keith Humphreys said the spiritual dimension of AA may explain why recovering alcoholics in such programs are better able to resist the temptation to return to drinking.
The study appears in the journal Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research.
*Editor’s Note, Jan. 31, 2007:
As originally published on January 30, the title of the summary read: “AA Boosts Sobriety by 30 Percent, Study Says.” We have changed the title and summary to clarify that the researchers studied 12-step oriented treatment programs — not only AA meetings.

Source: Humphreys, K., Moos, R.H. (2007) Encouraging Posttreatment Self-Help Group Involvement to Reduce Demand for Continuing Care Services: Two-Year Clinical and Utilization Outcomes. Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research, 31(1): 64–68; doi: 10.1111/j.1530-0277.2006.00273.x.



]]> http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/05/12-step-treatment-more-effective-than-alternative-study-says/feed/ 0 http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/05/anterior-cingulate-grey-matter-deficits-and-cannabis-use-in-first-episode-schizophrenia/ http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/05/anterior-cingulate-grey-matter-deficits-and-cannabis-use-in-first-episode-schizophrenia/#comments Sat, 01 May 2010 11:47:07 +0000 ndpa http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/05/anterior-cingulate-grey-matter-deficits-and-cannabis-use-in-first-episode-schizophrenia/ Research Summary

Background

Despite the high prevalence of cannabis use in schizophrenia, few studies have examined the potential relationship between cannabis exposure and brain structural abnormalities in schizophrenia.
Aims To investigate prefrontal grey and white matter regions in patients experiencing a first episode of schizophrenia with an additional diagnosis of cannabis use or dependence (n=20) compared with similar patients with no cannabis use (n=31) and healthy volunteers (n=56).
Method Volumes of the superior frontal gyrus, anterior cingulate gyrus and orbital frontal lobe were outlined manually from contiguous magnetic resonance images and automatically segmented into grey and white matter.
Results Patients who used cannabis had less anterior cingulate grey matter compared with both patients who did not use cannabis and healthy volunteers.
Conclusions A defect in the anterior cingulate is associated with a history of cannabis use among patients experiencing a first episode of schizophrenia and could have a role in poor decision-making and in choosing more risky outcomes.
Philip R. Szeszko, PhD, Delbert G. Robinson, MD and Serge Sevy, MD et al
Correspondence: Dr Philip R. Szeszko, Zucker Hillside Hospital, Psychiatry Research, 75–59 263rd Street, Glen Oaks, NY11004, USA. Tel: +1 718 470 8489; fax: +1 718 343 1659; email: szeszko@lij.edu

Source: The British Journal of Psychiatry (2007) 190: 230-236. doi: 10.1192/bjp.bp.106.024521
© 2007 The Royal College of Psychiatrists

James M. Howard,
Independent Biologist

It is my hypothesis that schizophrenia results from reduced fetal brain growth and development due to low maternal DHEA. This is exposed later in life by hormones that interfere with DHEA availability, that is, cortisol and testosterone, along with the natural decline of DHEA that begins around age twenty. Therefore, schizophrenia often occurs following a stressful event (cortisol) in the late teens or early twenties (testosterone and loss of DHEA) or later in life as DHEA reaches very low levels. Schizophrenia is characterized by low DHEA. Individuals with normal DHEA along with reduced fetal DHEA may not develop schizophrenia.
I suggest that the psychoactive chemicals of cannabis exert their effects by binding to androgen receptors. It has been found that THC and CBN inhibit binding of dihydrotestosterone to the androgen receptor (Endocrinology 1980; 107: 848-50). This binding to receptors in the advanced forebrain would reduce executive function and increase lower brain function by redistributing DHEA. That is, blocking access to upper brain receptors would increase lower brain function and increase lower brain functions such as appetite, etc.
DHEA binds to the androgen receptor. Cannabis use would reduce DHEA binding to the androgen receptor. It is this blocking of DHEA at its upper level receptors and subsequent redistribution of availability for lower brain activity that I think produces the effects of cannabis.
It is known that DHEA directly affects the anterior cingulate cortex (Psychopharmacology (Berl) 2006; 188: 541-51). Interference of DHEA binding in the anterior cingulate cortex of individuals with reduced growth and development in this area may reduce both function and maintenance of this area with the result being the symptoms of schizophrenia.

]]> http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/05/anterior-cingulate-grey-matter-deficits-and-cannabis-use-in-first-episode-schizophrenia/feed/ 0 http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/05/behavioral-response-to-novelty-foreshadows-neurological-response-to-cocaine/ http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/05/behavioral-response-to-novelty-foreshadows-neurological-response-to-cocaine/#comments Sat, 01 May 2010 11:46:06 +0000 ndpa http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/?p=6576 BY LORI WHITTEN, NIDA Notes Staff Writer

NIDA-supported researchers Dr. Cheryl Kirstein and Ms. Kirstie Stansfield at the University of South Florida have found that higher scores on tests of impulsivity and some behavioral responses to novelty correlate with a heightened biological response to cocaine in adolescent, but not adult, rats. The findings accord well with scientists’ widely shared view that developmental differences in brain systems that use the neurotransmitter dopamine underlie age differences in susceptibility to drug abuse.
Dr. Kirstein and Ms. Stansfield conducted a series of behavioral assays to rate rats’ relative responsiveness to novelty, then compared these results with measures of dopamine release in the reward pathway after an injection of cocaine. First, they put adolescent rats (34 days old, which is roughly equivalent to adolescence in people) and fully mature rats (59 days old, equivalent to human young adulthood) through four behavioral protocols. The tests measured activity in a new environment (how much the rat moved around when put into a new cage); impulsivity (how quickly it approached a new object placed into its cage); exploratory drive in response to a new object (how many times it approached the object in a given period of time); and attraction to new objects (what percentage of a given time interval was spent close to the object).
The researchers then injected the animals with saline and then, 2 hours later, with cocaine 20 mg/kg. Every 10 minutes, starting immediately after the saline injection and continuing until 2 hours after administering the cocaine, they measured the concentrations of the neurotransmitter dopamine and its major metabolite in the rats’ nucleus accumbens (NAc). The measurements were made using the technique of in vivo microdialysis. By the time of the last measurement, the drug had cleared the animal’s system.
ON MOST TESTS, AGE MATTERS
In their analysis, the researchers compared cocaine-induced dopamine release in animals that had responded above the mean level on each test (high responders, HR) to those who had scored below the mean (low responders, LR). The results revealed that among both the adult and adolescent rats, those that exhibited greater activity in a new environment also demonstrated enhanced dopamine release following a cocaine injection. This was the only test, however, in which age did not influence cocaine-induced dopamine release. The other behavioral assays revealed interactions between age and the response to novelty on cocaine-induced dopamine release in the NAc:
• Impulsivity—Adolescent rats with above-the-mean impulsivity scores released more dopamine in response to cocaine than their age mates who were LR. Mature rats exhibited no clear relationship between impulsivity and cocaine-induced dopamine response.
• Exploration of a new object—Adolescent rats with above-the-mean scores on this measure released more dopamine in response to cocaine than their age mates who were LR. Adult rats showed the opposite pattern: Animals with above-the-mean scores showed attenuated cocaine-induced dopamine release compared with age mates who were LR.
• Attraction to a new object—Adolescent rats exhibited no clear relationship between reactivity on this assay and cocaine-induced dopamine release. Mature rats with above-the-mean scores released less dopamine in response to cocaine compared with their age mates who were LR.
Dr. Kirstein’s finding that for all the animals, greater activity in a new environment corresponded with increased sensitivity to stimulants is consistent with earlier research. Her team’s mixed findings on the impulsivity and other novelty response tests indicates, she says, that those behaviors arise from different physiological mechanisms than does locomotor activity. “My colleagues and I think locomotor activity may reflect primarily dopamine activity in a brain circuit involved with generating and controlling movement. Novelty may instead differentially stimulate mesolimbic dopamine—a pathway implicated in attention as well as reward and motivation,” says Dr. Kirstein.
In Vivo Microdialysis
The investigators used In Vivo microdialysis to measure dopamine each animal released from its nucleus accumbens (NAc) in response to cocaine. They implanted a probe into the shell area of the NAc. The probe is a fine tube, about the size of a sewing needle, connected to a mini-pump that continuously perfuses it with artificial cerebrospinal fluid. The membrane tip of the probe captures dopamine and its metabolites. The samples collected by the needle are then analyzed using techniques, such as chromatography, that are able to isolate dopamine and its metabolites from other molecules.
INHIBITION DEVELOPS LATER
The findings on the three tests where age affected the relationship between behavior and cocaine-induced dopamine release may reflect maturation of the brain’s reward circuit. When rats are adolescents, dopamine-producing and releasing cells in this circuit may be particularly sensitive both to novelty and to pharmacological stimulation. As part of normal neurological development, areas of the brain that dampen the activity of this circuit come “online” later, explaining the age-related differences observed in Dr. Kirstein’s study. “The mesolimbic pathway and the cortical areas that inhibit it to regulate dopamine release are not yet fully matured in the adolescent, and this may explain why the adolescent brain responds to drugs differently than the adult brain,” says Dr. Kirstein.
“The results of Dr. Kirstein’s study, along with other animal research on the interaction of drugs and developmental stage, indicate that the adolescent brain is more responsive to drugs than the adult brain—both neurochemically and behaviorally,” says Dr. Nancy Pilotte of NIDA’s Division of Basic Neuroscience and Behavioral Research. Studies that identify the physiological and behavioral processes underlying age-related susceptibility to addiction complement epidemiological work on the individual and social factors contributing to adolescent vulnerability to substance abuse.

SOURCE NIDA Notes Vol. 21, No. 2 (February 2007)
Stansfield, K.H., and Kirstein, C.L. Neurochemical effects of cocaine in adolescence compared to adulthood. Developmental Brain Research 159(2):119-125, 2005.



]]> http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/05/behavioral-response-to-novelty-foreshadows-neurological-response-to-cocaine/feed/ 0 http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/05/neurobiological-effects-of-early-life-cannabis-exposure-in-relation-to-the-gateway-hypothesis-2/ http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/05/neurobiological-effects-of-early-life-cannabis-exposure-in-relation-to-the-gateway-hypothesis-2/#comments Sat, 01 May 2010 11:44:51 +0000 ndpa http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/?p=6574 <span style=”font-size: 10pt; font-family: Verdana;”> Abstract: The use of Cannabis sativa preparations, such as hashish and marijuana, is wide-spread among young people, including pregnant women. Despite this concern, the consequences of cannabis exposure on the brain during periods of active brain development, such as the prenatal phase and adolescence, is not well known. Several epidemiological studies support the cannabis gateway hypothesis, where early cannabis use is suggested to increase the risk of initiating use of other illicit drugs, e.g., amphetamine or heroin. However, the nature of such direct links are unclear. Therefore, the aim of this thesis was to test experimentally the cannabis gateway hypothesis, i.e., to determine whether cannabis exposure during periods of active brain development alters reward-related behavior and neurobiology for psychostimulant and opioid drugs by the use of animal models.
In the first study, we examined the effects of early adolescent exposure (postnatal day; PND; 28-32, one injection per day) with the synthetic cannabinoid CB1 receptor agonist WIN55,212-2 and the main psychoactive substance in C. sativa, Δ9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) on amphetamine-induced motor behavior and dopamine release in the nucleus accumbens during adolescence. No alterations were evident in the cannabinoid exposed rats, results which did not support the cannabis gateway hypothesis in relation to subsequent psychostimulant abuse.
Next, we investigated the effects of adolescent exposure on subsequent opioid reward-related behavior and the neurobiology of opioid and cannabinoid systems during adulthood. We studied THC exposure across the full adolescent period (PND 28-49), and administered the drug once every third day in order to better mimic the pattern of intermittent use seen in teenagers. The results revealed discrete opioid-related alterations within brain regions highly implicated in reward and hedonic processing (e.g., increased proenkephalin gene expression in the nucleus accumbens and increased mu opioid receptors in the ventral tegmental area). This was coupled to increased heroin intake in a self-administration paradigm and increased morphine conditioned place preference, indicating altered sensitivity to the reinforcing properties of opioids.
Furthermore, in evaluating the adolescent ontogeny of the opioid and cannabinoid systems within limbic-related brain areas, we found that active endocannabinoid- and opioid- related neurodevelopment takes place to a very high extent during this period. Most pronounced were the alterations in endocannabinoid levels in cognitive brain areas, even though alterations were also apparent in reward-related regions.
Finally, we investigated the effects of prenatal cannabis exposure (gestational day 5- PND 2) on subsequent opioid reward-related behavior and neurobiology of the opioid and cannabinoid systems in adulthood. Similar to adolescent cannabis exposure, prenatal exposure induced discrete opioid-related alterations within brain regions highly implicated in reward and hedonic processing. Moreover, elevated heroin-seeking observed during extinction and after food deprivation was evident in the THC exposed rats, suggesting an increased motivation for drug use under conditions of stress.
Taken together, this thesis presents neurobiological support for the cannabis gateway hypothesis in terms of adult opiate, but not amphetamine, abuse, with underlying long-term disturbances of discrete opioid-related systems within limbic brain regions.

<em>Source: Ellgren, Maria Karolinksa Institute Sweden ISBN: 978-91-7357-064-0  Feb.2007
</em>
<span style=”font-size: 10pt; font-family: Verdana;”>

]]> http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/05/neurobiological-effects-of-early-life-cannabis-exposure-in-relation-to-the-gateway-hypothesis-2/feed/ 0 http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/05/hiv-rates-much-higher-among-daily-needle-exchange-users-than-thosewho-do-not-use-the-exchange-program-according-to-latest-study/ http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/05/hiv-rates-much-higher-among-daily-needle-exchange-users-than-thosewho-do-not-use-the-exchange-program-according-to-latest-study/#comments Sat, 01 May 2010 11:44:07 +0000 ndpa http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/?p=6572 HIV rates much higher among daily needle exchange users than those who do not use the exchange program, according to latest study
HIV incidence was 75 percent higher among daily users of Vancouver’s needle exchange program (NEP) than among drug abusers that did not use the program, according to a new study published in the latest edition of the American Journal of Medicine. Vancouver, Canada boasts the largest NEP in the Western Hemisphere.

Source: The American Journal of Medicine Volume 120, Issue 2, Pages 172-179 (



]]> http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/05/hiv-rates-much-higher-among-daily-needle-exchange-users-than-thosewho-do-not-use-the-exchange-program-according-to-latest-study/feed/ 0 http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/05/patterns-and-trends-in-inhalant-use-by-adolescent-males-and-females-2002-2005/ http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/05/patterns-and-trends-in-inhalant-use-by-adolescent-males-and-females-2002-2005/#comments Sat, 01 May 2010 11:43:16 +0000 ndpa http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/?p=6570 Combined data from SAMHSA’s 2002 to 2005 National Surveys on Drug Use & Health found an annual average of 1.1 million (4.5%) youths aged 12 to 17 used an inhalant in the 12 months prior to being surveyed. About 2.6% of all youth who had not used inhalants before were new users (that is, had used an inhalant for the first time in the past year. The annual average of new users was 600,000 youth (289,000 males and 311,000 females).
The types of inhalants most frequently mentioned as having been used in the past year by new users were: glue, shoe polish, or toluene (30.5%), gasoline or lighter fluid (25.3%), nitrous oxide or “whippets” (23.9%), and spray paints (23.5%).
Among new inhalants users, females were more likely than males to have used: glue, shoe polish, or toluene (34.9% vs. 25.8%); spray paints (26.1% vs. 20.8%); aerosol sprays other than spray paints (23.0% vs. 16.4%); correction fluid, degreaser, or cleaning fluid (23.4% vs. 13.6%); and amy nitrite, “poppers,” locker room odorizers, or “rush” (18.2% vs. 11.6%).
New male inhalant users were more likely than females to have used nitrous oxide or “whippets” (29.0% vs.19.3%). Between 2002 and 2005, use of nitrous oxide or whippets declined among new inhalant users (from 31.6% to 21.3% in 2005). In contrast, use of aerosol sprays other than spray paints doubled from 12.6% of new inhalant using youth in 2002 to 25.4% of new inhalant using youth in 2005.

Source: The NSDUH Report: Patterns and Trends in Inhalant Use by Adolescent Males and Females, 2002-2005



]]> http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/05/patterns-and-trends-in-inhalant-use-by-adolescent-males-and-females-2002-2005/feed/ 0 http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/05/drug-addictionmarijuana-harder-than-thought/ http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/05/drug-addictionmarijuana-harder-than-thought/#comments Sat, 01 May 2010 11:42:20 +0000 ndpa http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/?p=6568 Compared to drugs such as heroin and cocaine, many people consider marijuana a relatively benign substance. But two studies in this issue demonstrate disturbing similarities between marijuana’s effects on the brain and those produced by highly addictive drugs such as cocaine and heroin. One study, described on page 2050, indicates that marijuana withdrawal activates the same stress system in the brain triggered by withdrawal of opiates and alcohol, while the other, reported on page 2048, indicates that marijuana activates the same reward pathway as heroin.

Source : Science 27 June 1997: Vol. 276. no. 5321, pp. 1967 – 1968



]]> http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/05/drug-addictionmarijuana-harder-than-thought/feed/ 0 http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/05/all-relapses-are-not-the-same/ http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/05/all-relapses-are-not-the-same/#comments Sat, 01 May 2010 11:41:05 +0000 ndpa http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/?p=6566 Recurrent drinking is common among patients with alcohol dependence who have received treatment. This study assessed whether certain types of relapses are more likely to recur, are more severe, or are more amenable to a particular psychosocial therapy.
Researchers examined data from 592 of 952 outpatients with alcohol dependence who had been randomized in a larger trial to receive motivational enhancement therapy, cognitive-behavioral therapy, or twelve-step facilitation therapy. These 592 subjects had experienced a relapse (i.e., drinking after being abstinent for at least 14 days) and completed the relapse-onset section of the Relapse Questionnaire, which assesses patient-perceived influences that contribute to relapse.
• Relapses were divided into 3 types: negative affect/family influences, craving/cued, and social pressure. When relapses recurred, they were often (about half the time) the same type as the initial relapse. Social pressure relapses were most likely to repeat (58% of the time). Negative affect relapses were the most severe (i.e., associated with a greater number of drinks consumed per day).
• The 3 therapies affected the overall risk of relapse similarly. However, motivational enhancement therapy offered less protection than the other therapies against social pressure relapse.
Comments:
This study provides a typology that can help clinicians efficiently assess relapse risk among patients with alcohol dependence. Clinicians who understand their patients’ prior types of relapses have the opportunity to provide individualized relapse prevention counseling or referral.
Peter Friedmann, MD, MPH

Source:Zywiak WH, Stout RL, Longabaugh R, et al. Relapse-onset factors in Project MATCH: the Relapse Questionnaire. J Subst Abuse Treat. 2006;31(4):341–345.



]]> http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/05/all-relapses-are-not-the-same/feed/ 0 http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/05/new-study-confirms-dopamine-depletion/ http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/05/new-study-confirms-dopamine-depletion/#comments Sat, 01 May 2010 11:40:20 +0000 ndpa http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/?p=6564 A researcher at the University of Buffalo’s Research Institute on Addictions (RIA) has found a change in the brain that occurs after drug use and that may contribute to drug addiction.
The finding, reported in the January issue of Biological Psychiatry, demonstrates that repeated exposure to different types of drugs of abuse, such as cocaine, nicotine, amphetamine and alcohol, lead to a persistent or long-term reduction in the electrical activity of dopamine neurons in the brain.
Dopamine neurons are the origin of the reward pathway responsible for the “feel good” experience that is such a strong component of drug use and abuse.
“A persistent reduction in dopamine neuron electrical activity after repeated exposure to different types of drugs appears to be the result of excessive excitation of dopamine neurons,” according to Roh-Yu Shen (photo), a neuroscientist and the lead investigator on the study. “This represents a new and potentially critical neural mechanism for addiction and provides a working model that suggests how the reward pathway function is altered and how these changes can be responsible for triggering intense craving and compulsive drug-seeking.”

Source. January 2007 issue of Biological Psychiatry



]]> http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/05/new-study-confirms-dopamine-depletion/feed/ 0 http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/05/brief-skills-training-is-effective-to-curb-college-drinking/ http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/05/brief-skills-training-is-effective-to-curb-college-drinking/#comments Sat, 01 May 2010 11:39:32 +0000 ndpa http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/?p=6562 Brief skills training is effective to curb college drinking
A study in Swedish colleges, where over-use of alcohol is widespread, showed that a Brief Skills Training Program was effective in reducing alcohol consumption over a two-year period.

Students were randomly assigned to a brief skills training program (BSTP) with interactive lectures and discussions, a twelve-step–influenced (TSI) program with didactic lectures by therapists trained in the 12-step approach, and a control group. More than three quarters of the students were rated “high risk” on an alcohol consumption score.

At follow-up two years later, the high-risk students who had received the BSTP program showed significantly better outcomes than high-risk students who had undergone TSI. The TSI students did no better than the control group.

Source:The study results are in the March issue of Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental



]]> http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/05/brief-skills-training-is-effective-to-curb-college-drinking/feed/ 0 http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/05/abstinence-regenerates-alcoholic-brain/ http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/05/abstinence-regenerates-alcoholic-brain/#comments Sat, 01 May 2010 11:38:44 +0000 ndpa http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/05/abstinence-regenerates-alcoholic-brain/ The brains of alcoholics can show measurable improvement in volume, chemical activity, and functionality after as little as seven weeks of abstinence, a new study published in the journal Brain today reveals.

Researchers from Germany, the UK, Switzerland and Italy collaborated on a study of ten men and five women alcoholics who had achieved an average of 38 days abstinence at the time of the study. Alcoholics who used psychoactive medications or who smoked more than 10 cigarettes a day after they stopped drinking were excluded from the data. Researchers used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and proton MR spectroscopy, laboratory tests for levels of brain chemicals that measure nerve integrity and repair, and performance tests for attention and concentration.

Brain volume increased an average of two percent, researchers found, and there were major increases in the substances that measured nerve health and regrowth. There were also improvements in performance. However, in one subject, who had the longest history of alcoholism in the study (more than 25 years), the evidence of brain recovery was not visible within the relatively short time span of the study.

The leader of the research, Dr Andreas Bartsch from the University of Wuerzburg, Germany, said:
“The core message from this study is that, for alcoholics, abstinence pays off and enables the brain to regain some substance and to perform better. However, our research also provides evidence that the longer you drink excessively, the more you risk losing this capacity for regeneration. Therefore, alcoholics must not put off the time when they decide to seek help and stop drinking; the sooner they do it, the better.”

Source. Journal ‘Brain’ SUNDAY, DECEMBER 17, 2006



]]> http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/05/abstinence-regenerates-alcoholic-brain/feed/ 0 http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/05/strategies-teenagers-use-to-minimise-alcohol-related-harm/ http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/05/strategies-teenagers-use-to-minimise-alcohol-related-harm/#comments Sat, 01 May 2010 11:37:48 +0000 ndpa http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/?p=6559 Strategies teenagers use to minimise alcohol-related harm
• Aims: To examine strategies of harm minimization employed by teenage drinkers.
• Findings: The teenagers participating in the present study were more concerned about social than health risks. The informants monitored their own level of intoxication, but in order to reduce alcohol consumption they depended upon support from their peers. The informants preferred drinking in the company of well-known and trusted peers, and during drinking episodes they supervised and intervened in each others’ drinking to the extent that they deemed it necessary and possible. In regulating the social context of drinking they relied on their personal experiences more than on formalized knowledge about alcohol and harm, which they had learned from prevention campaigns and educational programmes.
• Conclusions: The study found that teenagers may help each other to minimize alcohol-related harm, and teenage peer groups should thus be considered a resource for health promotion.
Morten Hulvej Jørgensen, Tine Curtis, Pia Haudrup Christensen, Morten Grønbæk (2007) Harm minimization among teenage drinkers: findings from an ethnographic study on teenage alcohol use in a rural Danish community

Source: Addiction 102 (4), 554–559

Viewing videotape of themselves while experiencing delirium tremens could reduce the relapse rate in alcohol-dependent patients
• The aim of this prospective randomized controlled study was to determine whether viewing videotape of themselves while experiencing delirium tremens (DT) reduces the relapse rate in alcohol-dependent patients.
• Findings: The patients with videotape experience had a significantly lower relapse rate after the first month (0% versus 20%), 2 months (13.33% versus 46.67%) and 3 months (26.67% versus 53.33%). Patients with videotape experience had less severe relapses and consumed fewer units of alcohol than controls.
• Conclusions: Videotape exposure in delirium tremens is an original therapeutic method which seems to be effective in reducing relapse risk in patients with alcohol dependence.
Adriana Mihai, Cristian Damsa, Michael Allen, Bertrand Baleydier, Coralie Lazignac, Andreas Heinz (2007) Viewing videotape of themselves while experiencing delirium tremens could reduce the relapse rate in alcohol-dependent patients

Source: Addiction 102 (2), 226–231.



]]> http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/05/strategies-teenagers-use-to-minimise-alcohol-related-harm/feed/ 0 http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/05/brain-scans-reveal-cause-of-smokers-cravings/ http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/05/brain-scans-reveal-cause-of-smokers-cravings/#comments Sat, 01 May 2010 11:37:05 +0000 ndpa http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/05/brain-scans-reveal-cause-of-smokers-cravings/ Summary

DURHAM, N.C. — Within the mind of every smoker trying to quit rages a battle between the higher-order functions of the brain wanting to break the habit and the lower-order functions screaming for another cigarette, say researchers at Duke University Medical Center. More often than not, that cigarette gets lit.
Brain scans of smokers studied by the researchers revealed three specific regions deep within the brain that appear to control dependence on nicotine and craving for cigarettes. These regions play important roles in some of the key motivations for smoking: to calm down when stressed, to achieve pleasure and to help concentration.
“If you can’t calm down, can’t derive pleasure and can’t control yourself or concentrate, then it will be extremely difficult for you to break the habit,” said lead study investigator Jed E. Rose, Ph.D., director of the Duke Center for Nicotine and Smoking Cessation Research. “These brain regions may explain why most people try to quit several times before they are successful.”
Understanding how the brain responds to cigarette cravings can help doctors change nicotine cessation treatments to address all three of these components of withdrawal, Rose said. Drugs or therapies that target these regions may help smokers stave off the cravings that often spoil their attempts to quit.
The team’s findings are now online in the journal Neuropsychopharmacology. The research was funded by Phillip Morris USA.
Approximately one in five Americans smokes. Even though 70 percent of smokers report that they would like to quit, only 5 percent do so successfully.
In this study, the researchers manipulated the levels of nicotine dependence and cigarette craving among 15 smokers and then scanned their brains using positron emission tomography, or PET scans, to see which areas of the brain were most active.
Three specific regions of the brain demonstrated changes in activity when the smokers craved cigarettes versus when they did not.
One region that lights up, called the thalamus, is considered to be the key relay point for sensory information flowing into the brain. Some of the symptoms of withdrawal among people trying to quit stem from the inability to focus thoughts and the feeling of being overwhelmed, and could thus be explained by changes in this region, according to the researchers. The researchers found that changes in this region were most dramatic among those who said they smoked to calm down when under stress.
Another region that lights up is a part of the pleasure system of the brain. Changes in this region, called the striatum, were most notable in people who smoked to satisfy craving and for pleasurable relaxation, the researchers said.
A third region that lights up, called the anterior cingulate cortex, is vital to cognitive functions such as conflict, self regulation, decision making and emotion. People whose brain scans showed the most differences in this region also reported that they smoked to manage their weight.
“This knowledge gives us new clues about brain mechanisms underlying addiction to cigarettes and could allow us design better methods to help smokers quit,” Rose said.
Rose and his colleagues are now planning to perform brain scans on smokers undergoing nicotine replacement therapy, such as the nicotine patch, to determine how these treatments affect the same regions of the brain.
Other researchers participating in the study were Frederique M. Behm, Alfred N. Salley, James E. Bates, R. Edward Coleman, Thomas C. Hawk and Timothy G. Turkington.

Source: www.dukemednews March 2007


]]> http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/05/brain-scans-reveal-cause-of-smokers-cravings/feed/ 0 http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/05/adolescent-smokers-have-a-greater-risk-of-developing-alcohol-use-disorders-than-nonsmokers-2/ http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/05/adolescent-smokers-have-a-greater-risk-of-developing-alcohol-use-disorders-than-nonsmokers-2/#comments Sat, 01 May 2010 11:36:07 +0000 ndpa http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/?p=6556
* Popular and clinical lore support the strong connection between smoking and alcohol consumption.

* Adolescent smokers appear to have a greater vulnerability to developing alcohol-use disorders.

* Results indicate that smoking “primes” the brain for subsequent addiction to alcohol and possibly other drugs.

Both academic studies and casual observation support the view that smokers tend to drink, and drinkers tend to smoke. New research using nationally representative data from the U.S. finds that smokers – particularly adolescent smokers – clearly have a greater vulnerability to alcohol-use disorders (AUDs) than do non-smokers.

Results are published in the December issue of Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research.

“Smoking and alcohol – separately, or together – account for more than 20 percent of deaths in the United States,” said Richard A. Grucza, an epidemiologist at Washington University School of Medicine and corresponding author for the study. “Cigarettes and alcohol are also known to be ‘gateway’ drugs, that is, the overwhelming majority of illegal drug users begin their use with one or both of these legal drugs.”

“We have known about the link between cigarette smoking and alcohol use for a while, but we have not really asked the question, as the authors here asked, whether use of one could increase the vulnerability of becoming addicted to the other,” said Kevin W Chen, associate professor at the University of Maryland School of Medicine.

“Ours was the first,” added Grucza, “to examine quantity of drinking in relationship to smoking and AUDs. Our central questions were: Can this association be explained by the fact that smokers are heavier drinkers, or is there something else going on? In other words, do smokers appear to be more sensitive to the effects of alcohol?” The short answer appears to be yes.

Researchers examined data from an aggregate of 2002 through 2004 U.S. National Surveys on Drug Use and Health. Randomly selected, household-dwelling adolescents and young adults (n=74,836) were selected from the non-institutionalized and civilian American population and queried about their drinking and smoking practices.

Results indicate that smokers – particularly adolescent smokers -have a greater vulnerability to AUDs than do non-smokers.

“In general, smokers were at more than a 50 percent higher risk, although the differences were larger in younger adolescents and among light drinkers,” said Grucza. “For example, among 15- to 17-year-olds who drank fewer than eight drinks in the month before the survey, more than 20 percent reported an AUD, compared with about five percent among the non-smoking group with the same level of drinking. We conclude that, although smokers do drink higher rates of alcohol, this alone does not explain their higher vulnerability to AUDs.”

Grucza said that these findings go beyond the popular view that bad behaviors like smoking and drinking to excess simply tend to “go together,” especially during adolescence. “It seems that smoking makes the adolescent brain more vulnerable to other addictions,” he said. “Addictive drugs all act on a part of the brain that is described as the ‘central reward circuitry.’” Once this system is exposed to one drug, the brain may become more sensitive to the effects of other drugs, as demonstrated by a number of rodent studies.

“Studies like this will set up an alert – for those who consider adolescent smoking tolerable – to rethink the issue, or perceive the problem differently,” noted Chen. “Although we do not know the exact causal relation between the two, the damage to our health is so severe that we need to create a more objective image to reject both smoking and drinking among adolescents.”

“Ours is the first study to – establish a correlation between adolescent smoking and AUDs that cannot be explained by heavier drinking,” said Grucza. “Now we, and hopefully others, need to investigate whether or not smoking actually causes adolescents to be more susceptible to AUDs. Our results are in line with an emerging literature that shows adolescence may be a unique window of vulnerability for addictions development. If it is proven that nicotine directly impacts vulnerability to alcoholism and other addictions, then that is a new, strong message to add to the health-education arsenal. However, even if this correlation is completely non-causal, these results can help to identify kids who are at risk for AUDs.”

Source:Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research. (ACER) Article Date: 30 Nov 2006 – 13:00 PDT


]]> http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/05/adolescent-smokers-have-a-greater-risk-of-developing-alcohol-use-disorders-than-nonsmokers-2/feed/ 0 http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/05/smoking-ages-skin-across-the-body/ http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/05/smoking-ages-skin-across-the-body/#comments Sat, 01 May 2010 11:35:24 +0000 ndpa http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/05/smoking-ages-skin-across-the-body/ Research in Archives of Dermatology observed the effect by looking at the upper part of the inner arm in smokers and non-smokers.

Previous studies have focused on the face, where skin can also be damaged by exposure to the sun.

But the University of Michigan, Ann Arbour, team say this study shows smoking alone makes the skin age, which may help persuade some to quit.

The researchers photographed 82 people’s upper inner right arms.

Participants were aged 22 to 91. Such a wide age range was used in order to record the natural state of old and young skin.
There is strong evidence suggesting cigarette smoke has a negative effect on the appearance of skin
Indy Rihal, British Skin Foundation

Half of those studied had a history of smoking and had smoked, on average, for 24 years.

The number of packs of cigarettes they smoked ranged from a quarter of a packet to four packs per day.

The team created a nine-point scale to measure damage to skin which is not exposed to the light.

In those aged over 65, there was almost a two-point difference between smokers and non-smokers.

In the over-45s, the difference was around a point.

Writing in Archives of Dermatology, the researchers led by Dr Yolanda Helfrich, said: “We found that the number of packs of cigarettes smoked per day, total years of smoking and pack-years of smoking [an average of packs per day over the number of years of smoking] were correlated with the degree of skin aging.

“After controlling for age and other variables, we found that only packs of cigarettes smoked per day was a major predictor of the degree of photo-protected skin ageing.”

Evidence ‘mounting up’

Dr Helfrich said: “Previous studies have shown that smokers have a greater degree of skin ageing, but those have looked at facial skin.

“There are some sceptics who said the sun was having some of the effect.

“We have demonstrated that there was a significant degree of damage just from smoking.”

She added: “The evidence is certainly mounting up that smoking is not good for you. This just adds to all of that.”

She said more research was needed to show exactly how smoking damaged the skin.

Indy Rihal, of the British Skin Foundation, said: “In addition to UV light from the sun and sun beds, cigarette smoke is a main environmental factor that causes changes in the skin often associated with ‘looking old’ such as coarse wrinkling and a sallow, leathery texture.

“There is strong evidence suggesting cigarette smoke has a negative effect on the appearance of skin.

“Smoking enhances an enzyme in the skin, matrix metalloproteinase-1, resulting in increased collagen breakdown and diminished collagen production. The overall effect causes wrinkling and inelasticity.

“In addition the constriction of tiny blood vessels in the skin caused by smoking reduces the oxygen supply to the skin negatively affecting skin health and appearance in general.”

Amanda Sandford, of Action on Smoking and Health (ASH) said: “This study provides further evidence of the detrimental effects that smoking can have on the skin.

“No amount of anti-ageing cream will remove the wrinkles caused by cigarettes so the best way for smokers to avoid the wrinkled prune look is to stop smoking.”

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/health/6466041.stm

Published: 2007/03/21 00:03:21 GMT

© BBC MMVII


]]> http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/05/smoking-ages-skin-across-the-body/feed/ 0 http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/05/survey-of-high-school-students-finds-significant-drop-in-drug-and-alcohol-use/ http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/05/survey-of-high-school-students-finds-significant-drop-in-drug-and-alcohol-use/#comments Sat, 01 May 2010 11:34:21 +0000 ndpa http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/?p=6553 By RICHARD PÉREZ-PEÑA
Published: March 21, 2007
Teenage use of alcohol and drugs dropped significantly in New York City in 2005 compared with past years, and is lower than the national rate, but it remains disturbingly high, city officials said yesterday, citing the results of a recently released survey.

The city’s biennial survey found that in 2005, fewer students at the city’s public high schools were drinking or smoking marijuana than at any time since the surveys began in 1997. Use of most harder drugs was roughly unchanged.

But 1.8 percent of students surveyed in 2005 said they had tried heroin at least once, triple the number in 2001.

Lorna Thorpe, a deputy city health commissioner, said that it was not clear why there had been an overall drop in drug and alcohol use, but that it might be connected to a decline in teenage smoking. People who smoke are more likely to use other substances as well.

She said officials were equally unsure of the cause of the rise in heroin use, but that it coincided with a rise in emergency room visits and Emergency Medical Services calls involving heroin.

“That has raised a flag for us, and we’re watching it,” she said. She added that while the data are usually compiled slowly, over more than a year, officials will pay particular attention to the heroin figures as they conduct the 2007 survey.

The change could be tied to the fact that the Taliban regime in Afghanistan greatly curtailed the trade in opium, the raw material for heroin. But the drug became more readily available and cheaper after the regime was overthrown in late 2001.

In 2005, 14 percent of the teenagers surveyed said they had engaged in binge drinking — five or more drinks in the space of a few hours — in the previous month, down from 18 percent in 2001. And 35 percent said they had consumed some alcohol in the last month, down from 41 percent.

Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, the city health commissioner, said those numbers, though an improvement, were still worrisome, because using alcohol and other drugs raises the chance of risky behavior like unprotected sex.

White students were far more likely than their black, Hispanic or Asian classmates to engage in binge drinking or to use hard drugs, and a little more likely to smoke marijuana. Staten Island had much higher rates of binge drinking and drug use than the other boroughs.

Marijuana use fell more sharply than use of any other substance: 12 percent of students said they had smoked it in the previous month, down from 18 percent in 2001.

The portion of students who reported using cocaine (1.8 percent) and methamphetamine (2.5 percent) in the previous month was about the same as in earlier surveys.

The city’s survey, conducted jointly by the Department of Education and the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, is patterned on a national survey done by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

National surveys include students at both public and private schools, while the city’s cover only public schools, which include about 80 percent of the city’s high school population. Because use of alcohol and some drugs are more prevalent among white and affluent students, the city’s surveys may understate the overall rate.

But city officials say they are confident that inclusion of private school students would still show lower rates of drug and alcohol abuse in the city than nationwide. In particular, the most recent national surveys show binge drinking almost twice as common nationally as in the city, and methamphetamine use two to three times as common.

The city’s survey is conducted by choosing a sampling of high schools that is representative of all high schools, and then a representative sampling of classrooms within those high schools. In the selected classrooms, all students take the survey on paper, anonymously.

In all, 8,000 students took the survey in 2003 and 2005, with only 1,500 students taking the survey in earlier years.

Next Article in New York Region (15 of 28) »


]]> http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/05/survey-of-high-school-students-finds-significant-drop-in-drug-and-alcohol-use/feed/ 0 http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/05/substance-use-a-major-burden-of-disease-for-adolescents-the-lancet-adolescent-health-series/ http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/05/substance-use-a-major-burden-of-disease-for-adolescents-the-lancet-adolescent-health-series/#comments Sat, 01 May 2010 11:33:02 +0000 ndpa http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/?p=6551 Summary

27 Mar 2007

Death, injury and illness caused by substance use are among the top ten contributors to global disease burden measured in disability-adjusted life-years – what was once seen by many in developing countries as the disease of industrialised nations is now a worldwide trend. Alcohol alone contributed to 27% of all deaths involving 15-”29-year-olds in economically developed countries in 2002, and illicit drugs a further 4%.

John Toumbourou (Deakin University, Australia), Tim Stockwell (University of Victoria, Canada), and colleagues review approaches and strategies to prevent substance abuse in young people and state that rates of tobacco use, harmful alcohol use, and illicit drug use can be substantially reduced through the concerted application of a combination of regulatory, early-intervention, and harm-reduction approaches.

However, the authors note that the current state of knowledge about the extent of adolescent substance use, and what works in reducing problems, is restricted to knowledge from a few high-income countries. Furthermore, investigations to test the efficacy of interventions are scarce, and many interventions have yet to be evaluated in real-world settings.

In an accompanying Comment, Isidore Obot looks at substance-use interventions in developing countries and notes: “Although developing countries have something to learn from the experiences of industrialised countries, success in preventing substance use and reducing related harms will come not in the application of one strategy or group of strategies, but by addressing the issue within the context of developmental planning. These are countries faced with the reality of poverty; where drug policy is often limited to law enforcement, prevention is sporadic. . .resources are limited, and drugs and alcohol problems compete with what policymakers might regard as more immediate problems of survival”.

Source: Article URL: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com 27 March 2007


]]> http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/05/substance-use-a-major-burden-of-disease-for-adolescents-the-lancet-adolescent-health-series/feed/ 0 http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/05/prospective-memory-loss-linked-to-teenage-alcohol-abuse/ http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/05/prospective-memory-loss-linked-to-teenage-alcohol-abuse/#comments Sat, 01 May 2010 11:32:00 +0000 ndpa http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/?p=6549 Summary

Heavy drinking and smoking as teenagers may damage the ability to remember future tasks, according to new research.
The findings are drawn from two studies exploring teenagers’ capacity for prospective memory – the ability to remember something you had intended to do in the future, such as returning a phone call or paying a bill on time.
In one study, 108 students aged 16 to 19 years old were asked to report the number of times that prospective memory had failed them recently. Teenagers who were “excessive” alcohol users were significantly less likely to remember future tasks, the researchers found.
A second study found that teenage smokers reported more memory lapses in general than non-smokers, and also reported fewer items in a prospective memory test.
The findings are being presented today at the British Psychology Society’s annual conference at the University of York.
The society said that although evidence exists suggesting alcohol abuse has a detrimental effect on memory for past events, little was known before now about its impact on prospective memory.
Thomas Heffernan of the University of Northumbria, who led the research, said: “The teenage years are important for structural and functional development of the brain.
“If our findings are confirmed, they suggest that heavy drinking and smoking in the teenage years may impede this important development. This may lead to greater problems with memory later in life.”

Source:Thursday March 22, 2007 SocietyGuardian.co.uk



]]> http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/05/prospective-memory-loss-linked-to-teenage-alcohol-abuse/feed/ 0 http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/05/cannabis-linked-to-lung-cancer-risk/ http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/05/cannabis-linked-to-lung-cancer-risk/#comments Sat, 01 May 2010 11:31:20 +0000 ndpa http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/?p=6547 Cannabis smoking may cause 5 per cent of lung cancer cases in people up to middle age, according to a New Zealand study which challenges international thinking on the drug.  Around 15 per cent of New Zealand adults under 46 use cannabis, drug-use surveys have found.
 
Researcher Dr Sarah Aldington, of the Medical Research Institute in Wellington, presented the new case-control study to the Thoracic Society conference in Auckland yesterday.
 
Cannabis users may have thought they were safe from lung cancer after a Californian study of more than 1600 people last year found no link between the disease and smoking the drug.  Dr Aldington said the evidence on cannabis and the risk of lung cancer was limited and conflicting. Her study found the risk rose more than five-fold among the third of users smoking the most cannabis.
 
“In conclusion there is a relationship between cannabis smoking and lung cancer in this study,” she said. “Approximately 5 per cent of lung cancer cases in those aged 55 and under may be attributable to cannabis…”   This equates to about 15 new cases a year – in 2002, 306 people aged 18-55 were diagnosed with lung cancer in New Zealand.  The study questioned about 60 people with lung cancer from eight health districts between Waikato and Canterbury and more than 200 “controls” – people randomly selected from electoral rolls in the same areas.
 
They were asked about risk factors, including cannabis and tobacco use.   The researchers calculated that the risk of developing lung cancer increased by about 8 per cent a year for people whose cumulative exposure equated to smoking one joint a day. This was about the same as the increase for someone with a one-pack-a-day tobacco habit.   The younger someone started smoking cannabis, the higher their risk of lung cancer.
 
“Long-term cannabis use increases the risk of lung cancer in young adults, particularly in those who start smoking cannabis at a young age,” the researchers conclude.
 
Dr Aldington said cannabis was the most commonly used recreational drug in the world, used by 161 million people, and its use was increasing in many countries. She said cannabis contained 50 per cent more cancer-causing chemicals than tobacco.  The study has found what the University of California researchers had expected to find but didn’t.   A researcher from that study, Dr Donald Tashkin, said in the Washington Post his group had thought cannabis smokers’ deeper inhalation and tendency to hold smoke in their lungs for longer than tobacco users would contribute to an increased cancer risk.
 
He said earlier work had shown cannabis contained cancer-causing chemicals as potentially harmful as those in tobacco. But cannabis also contained the chemical THC, which might kill ageing cells and keep them from becoming cancerous.
 
Middlemore Hospital clinical director of medicine Associate Professor Jeff Garrett, a leader of the Thoracic Society, said the Aldington study was “a good pilot study. It’s early work, it’s interesting, but there needs to be more work done.”

Source:  New Zealand Herald
Tuesday March 27, 2007

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]]> http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/05/cannabis-linked-to-lung-cancer-risk/feed/ 0 http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/05/community-action-reduces-violence-in-high-crime-neighborhoods-study-finds/ http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/05/community-action-reduces-violence-in-high-crime-neighborhoods-study-finds/#comments Sat, 01 May 2010 11:30:29 +0000 ndpa http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/?p=6545 Summary

Mobilized residents work with police, shopkeepers, bar owners to prevent alcohol-related problems in lower-income communities

When residents are actively involved in their neighborhoods, they can clean up the crime and violence. That’s according to a new study that found a significant decrease in assaults, car crashes and other alcohol-related crime with community participation. Calls to police and emergency medical services also dropped with this intervention program that addresses alcohol sales and service.

Researchers at the PIRE Prevention Research Center implemented and tested the program called the Sacramento Neighborhood Alcohol Prevention Project or SNAPP in an effort to reduce access to alcohol and the problems related in two low-income, predominantly ethnic minority neighborhoods. The intervention focused on individuals between the ages 15 and 29, an age group with high rates of alcohol-involved problems. Sacramento-based La Familia Counseling Center Inc. assisted in the project.

This article, published in the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs, highlights the results that show that changing the way alcohol is sold and served can reduce alcohol-related problems – even in high-crime neighborhoods. Researchers selected two economically and ethnically diverse neighborhoods in Sacramento that had high rates of crime and alcohol-related problems.

“These are neighborhoods that are most vulnerable to alcohol-related problems. Even these rather tough neighborhoods can take control of their own environments and reduce the negative effects of alcohol,” said study author, Andrew Treno, PhD.

The project includes five components: mobilization to support the project, community awareness, alcohol server training, underage drinking law enforcement and intoxicated patrons law enforcement. Along with members of community based organizations, the project researchers handed out informational pamphlets and held community meetings to raise awareness about alcohol-related problems. They organized neighborhood committees to mobilize residents. They also provided training at bars and stores selling alcohol to prevent selling alcohol to intoxicated patrons and to minors. Project members worked with local police to increase enforcement efforts of selling alcohol to minors and intoxicated persons. The researchers used these interrelated strategies to change the neighborhood environment with regard to the way alcohol is sold and served.

“Although we developed the overall study design, the communities provided valuable guidance into ways to reach the intervention goals and constituent groups,” Treno said. “For example, strategies for scheduling police stings were worked out based on the needs of the project’s and available police resources. At committee meetings, community members agreed to address alcohol-related issues along with law enforcement and other local authorities. They all worked together for the betterment of their neighborhoods.”

Previous research has shown that if localities change their alcohol environment by more strictly controlling where and how and to whom alcohol is served and sold, alcohol-related problems such as drunken driving can be reduced. The study was intended to show that this type of change in the alcohol environment could work even in difficult settings. Reductions in calls for emergency medical services and police reports of assaults were found in the neighborhoods that participated in the program. Similar reductions were found for illegal sales to minors.

Following the implementation of these strategies, there was a significant reduction in the number of assaults reported by police and a reduction in calls for emergency medical services resulting from assaults and motor vehicle crashes. There was also a significant reduction in sales of alcohol to people who appeared to be minors. No significant changes were found in service of alcohol to patrons who appeared to be intoxicated. Researchers compared these outcomes to the situation prior to the program and to comparison neighborhoods in Sacramento that did not receive the program.

Source: www.pire.org March 2007



]]> http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/05/community-action-reduces-violence-in-high-crime-neighborhoods-study-finds/feed/ 0 http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/05/researchers-say-smokers-cost-employers-in-missed-work-days-poor-performance/ http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/05/researchers-say-smokers-cost-employers-in-missed-work-days-poor-performance/#comments Sat, 01 May 2010 11:29:47 +0000 ndpa http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/05/researchers-say-smokers-cost-employers-in-missed-work-days-poor-performance/ Research Summary
A pair of new studies find that smokers take many more sick days annually than nonsmokers and perform worse when they are on the job, Bloomberg News reported March 29.
A Swedish study by Petter Lundborg and colleagues from Free University of Amsterdam found that smokers took an average of 34 sick days per year, compared to 20 per year for people who never smoked and 25 per year among former smokers.
Sweden has one of the highest rates of sickness absence in the industrialized world; in the U.S., the average worker takes off nine days annually for illness. “The results suggest that policies that reduce and/or prevent smoking may also reduce the number of days of sick leave,” wrote Lundborg.
In a study of women in the U.S. Navy, San Diego State University researcher Terry Conway and colleagues found that smokers were more likely to be discharged for medical reasons, bad behavior, misconduct, drug misuse and personality disorders. Smokers also were more apt to resign from the Navy before serving their full terms, and were paid less.
However, noted Conway, “Cigarette smoking might simply be a marker for other underlying factors such as nonconformity and high risk-taking, that contribute to poorer performance.”
The research was published in the journal Tobacco Control.

Source: Bloomberg News March 29 2007


]]> http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/05/researchers-say-smokers-cost-employers-in-missed-work-days-poor-performance/feed/ 0 http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/05/study-praises-prevention-based-on-competence-skills/ http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/05/study-praises-prevention-based-on-competence-skills/#comments Sat, 01 May 2010 11:28:57 +0000 ndpa http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/?p=6542
April 5, 2007

A new study finds that teaching teens ‘competence skills’ — such as good self-management and positive psychological characteristics — can effectively reduce adolescent alcohol and other drug use.
Health News Digest reported April 4 that the study from Weill Cornell Medical College researchers found competence skills can protect teens from social risk factors for substance abuse, including having friends who use alcohol, tobacco, or illicit drugs.
Researchers who studied a group of 1,500 (mostly Hispanic) adolescents from New York City over a period of three years found that those with high refusal-assertiveness marks and sound decision-making skills were less likely to smoke or use multiple substances, even when they had friends or siblings who did.
“The take-home message from these findings is that competence skills matter in our understanding of substance use,” says study author Jennifer A. Epstein of the Division of Prevention and Health Behavior at Weill Cornell. “They can combat powerful social influences from friends and siblings to use multiple substances, including cigarettes. Moreover, this research provides important support for drug-abuse prevention programs that include the teaching of competence skills, including refusal skills and decision-making skills.”
“Students need to be encouraged to develop competence skills to resist drugs, since social and other risk factors can never be entirely eliminated,” added Gilbert Botvin, senior author of the report and developer of the Life Skills Training prevention program.
The study was published in the issue of the journal

Source: journal: Addictive Behaviors. April 2007

]]> http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/05/study-praises-prevention-based-on-competence-skills/feed/ 0 http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/05/calif-tobacco-prevention-program-credited-with-cutting-smoking/ http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/05/calif-tobacco-prevention-program-credited-with-cutting-smoking/#comments Sat, 01 May 2010 11:28:07 +0000 ndpa http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/?p=6540
Research Summary

Smoking among young adults has plummeted since California implemented a groundbreaking tobacco-control plan 12 years ago, according to new research from the University of California at San Diego.

The California Tobacco Control Program, established in 1989, has been credited with reducing smoking among all adult smokers, but the decline among young adults has been especially striking, researchers said. Notably, cessation rates among young Californians were higher than among young adults in New York and New Jersey, which have similarly high tobacco prices but lack comprehensive stop-smoking campaigns, as well as compared to young adults in tobacco-growing states (TGS).

“We were surprised to find that, since the advent of the California campaign, young people have increased their rate of quitting by 50 percent, far more than their older counterparts,” said study author Karen Messer, Ph.D. “It used to be that smokers over age 50 were the ones quitting because they understood the health consequences of smoking …
“These young adults have grown up in a tobacco-controlled climate, where smoking isn’t the norm and isn’t socially supported. We may be seeing the first generation who believe it’s not cool to smoke, which could pay huge dividends in their future health.”

Another UCLA study focused on tobacco consumption trends. “We found that there is a national trend of declining cigarette consumption for all age groups, but the most significant by far was observed in California smokers over age 35,” noted researcher Wael K. Al-Delaimy, M.D., Ph.D.
“The data suggest that — compared with states with no tobacco control initiatives (TGS) or states with an increased cigarette price as the principal tobacco control measure (NY/NJ) – California’s comprehensive tobacco control program is more effective in decreasing cigarette consumption for those over age 35.”

Source: journal Tobacco Control April 2007


]]> http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/05/calif-tobacco-prevention-program-credited-with-cutting-smoking/feed/ 0 http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/05/adolescent-brains-not-ready-to-avoid-risks-study-says/ http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/05/adolescent-brains-not-ready-to-avoid-risks-study-says/#comments Sat, 01 May 2010 11:26:27 +0000 ndpa http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/05/adolescent-brains-not-ready-to-avoid-risks-study-says/
A Temple University psychologist argues that society would be better off using strict laws to prevent risky behaviors by adolescents rather than education programs, saying that teens’ brains are too immature to avoid risk-taking, USA Today reported April 5.
“We need to rethink our whole approach to preventing teen risk,” said researcher Laurence Steinberg, who drew his conclusions after reviewing a decade’s worth of research on the adolescent brain. “Adolescents are at an age where they do not have full capacity to control themselves. As adults, we need to do some of the controlling.”
Steinberg said society would be best served by raising the driving age, increasing cigarette prices, and enforcing underage-drinking laws than investing in prevention programs. “I don’t believe the problem behind teen risky behavior is a lack of knowledge,” he said. “The programs do a good job in teaching kids the facts. Education alone doesn’t work. It doesn’t seem to affect their behavior.”
“Kids will sign drug pledges. They really mean that, but when they get in a park on a Friday night with their friends, that pledge is nowhere to be found in their brain structure,” agreed psychologist Michael Bradley. “They’re missing the neurologic brakes that adults have.”
Isabel Sawhill, co-director of the Center on Children and Families at the Washington-based Brookings Institution, said the findings are “good research for policymakers to consider, but we shouldn’t infer from this research that all our past efforts have been ineffective. I’m not in favor of just doing education, but I’m also not in favor of not doing it, either. We need to do some of both.”

Source: Current Directions in Psychological Science. April 2007



]]> http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/05/adolescent-brains-not-ready-to-avoid-risks-study-says/feed/ 0 http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/05/u-s-marijuana-grows-stronger-than-before-report-2/ http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/05/u-s-marijuana-grows-stronger-than-before-report-2/#comments Sat, 01 May 2010 11:25:30 +0000 ndpa http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/05/u-s-marijuana-grows-stronger-than-before-report-2/ By Maggie Fox

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The marijuana being sold across the United States is stronger than ever, which could explain a growing number of medical emergencies that involve the drug, government drug experts on Wednesday.

Analysis of seized samples of marijuana and hashish showed that more of the cannabis on the market is of the strongest grade, the White House and National Institute for Drug Abuse said.

They cited data from the University of Mississippi’s Marijuana Potency Project showing the average levels of THC, the active ingredient in marijuana, in the products rose from 7 percent in 2003 to 8.5 percent in 2006.

The level had risen steadily from 3.5 percent in 1988.

National Institute on Drug Abuse Director Dr. Nora Volkow fears the problem is not being taken seriously because many adults remember the marijuana of their youth as harmless.

“It’s really not the same type of marijuana,” Volkow said in a telephone interview. “This could explain why there has been an increase in the number of medical emergencies involving marijuana.”

According to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Administration, marijuana was involved in 242,200 visits to hospital emergency rooms in 2005. This means that the patient mentioned using marijuana and does not mean the drug directly caused the accident or condition being treated, SAMHSA says.

The number is up from 215,000 visits in 2004.

The pharmacy department at Mississippi has compiled data on 59,369 samples of cannabis, 1,225 hashish samples, and 443 hash oil samples confiscated since 1975. “The highest concentration of (THC) found in a cannabis (marijuana) sample is 33.12 percent from Oregon State Police,” the report reads.
Hashish and hash oil concentrations are far higher, as they consist of processed plant product.

“Researchers and treatment experts have argued for some time that today’s more powerful marijuana has more harmful effects on users. This report underscores that we are no longer talking about the drug of the 1960s and 1970s — this is Pot 2.0,” John Walters, director of National Drug Control Policy, said in a statement.

Volkow said demand has driven growers to cultivate the stronger stuff. “It is the market,” she said. “Like in the market you favor the best tomatoes. When people buy marijuana, they don’t want a weak cigarette.”

Volkow’s institute has been studying the effects of cannabis, whose active ingredients are very similar to important brain chemicals called endogenous cannabinoids. “It clearly is addictive,” she said.

If children and adolescents use marijuana, it could affect their still-developing brains, she said.

The report said more than 60 percent of teens receiving treatment for drug abuse or dependence report marijuana as their primary drug of abuse.

“Although the overall number of young people using marijuana has declined in recent years, there is still reason for great concern, particularly since roughly 60 percent of first-time marijuana users are under 18 years old,” Volkow said.

According to the National Survey on Drug Use and Health 4.1 million Americans, or 1.7 percent of the population, report they use marijuana.

Source: Reuters Health. 26th April 2007


]]> http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/05/u-s-marijuana-grows-stronger-than-before-report-2/feed/ 0 http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/05/neurobiological-effects-of-early-life-cannabis-exposure-in-relation-to-the-gateway-hypothesis/ http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/05/neurobiological-effects-of-early-life-cannabis-exposure-in-relation-to-the-gateway-hypothesis/#comments Sat, 01 May 2010 11:24:34 +0000 ndpa http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/05/neurobiological-effects-of-early-life-cannabis-exposure-in-relation-to-the-gateway-hypothesis/ Abstract:
The use of Cannabis sativa preparations, such as hashish and marijuana, is wide-spread among young people, including pregnant women. Despite this concern, the consequences of cannabis exposure on the brain during periods of active brain development, such as the prenatal phase and adolescence, is not well known. Several epidemiological studies support the cannabis gateway hypothesis, where early cannabis use is suggested to increase the risk of initiating use of other illicit drugs, e.g., amphetamine or heroin. However, the nature of such direct links are unclear. Therefore, the aim of this thesis was to test experimentally the cannabis gateway hypothesis, i.e., to determine whether cannabis exposure during periods of active brain development alters reward-related behavior and neurobiology for psychostimulant and opioid drugs by the use of animal models.
In the first study, we examined the effects of early adolescent exposure (postnatal day; PND; 28-32, one injection per day) with the synthetic cannabinoid CB1 receptor agonist WIN55,212-2 and the main psychoactive substance in C. sativa, Δ9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) on amphetamine-induced motor behavior and dopamine release in the nucleus accumbens during adolescence. No alterations were evident in the cannabinoid exposed rats, results which did not support the cannabis gateway hypothesis in relation to subsequent psychostimulant abuse.
Next, we investigated the effects of adolescent exposure on subsequent opioid reward-related behavior and the neurobiology of opioid and cannabinoid systems during adulthood. We studied THC exposure across the full adolescent period (PND 28-49), and administered the drug once every third day in order to better mimic the pattern of intermittent use seen in teenagers. The results revealed discrete opioid-related alterations within brain regions highly implicated in reward and hedonic processing (e.g., increased proenkephalin gene expression in the nucleus accumbens and increased mu opioid receptors in the ventral tegmental area). This was coupled to increased heroin intake in a self-administration paradigm and increased morphine conditioned place preference, indicating altered sensitivity to the reinforcing properties of opioids.
Furthermore, in evaluating the adolescent ontogeny of the opioid and cannabinoid systems within limbic-related brain areas, we found that active endocannabinoid- and opioid- related neurodevelopment takes place to a very high extent during this period. Most pronounced were the alterations in endocannabinoid levels in cognitive brain areas, even though alterations were also apparent in reward-related regions.
Finally, we investigated the effects of prenatal cannabis exposure (gestational day 5- PND 2) on subsequent opioid reward-related behavior and neurobiology of the opioid and cannabinoid systems in adulthood. Similar to adolescent cannabis exposure, prenatal exposure induced discrete opioid-related alterations within brain regions highly implicated in reward and hedonic processing. Moreover, elevated heroin-seeking observed during extinction and after food deprivation was evident in the THC exposed rats, suggesting an increased motivation for drug use under conditions of stress.
Taken together, this thesis presents neurobiological support for the cannabis gateway hypothesis in terms of adult opiate, but not amphetamine, abuse, with underlying long-term disturbances of discrete opioid-related systems within limbic brain regions.
ISBN: 978-91-7357-064-0

Source: Karolinska Institute online 9th Feb.2007



]]> http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/05/neurobiological-effects-of-early-life-cannabis-exposure-in-relation-to-the-gateway-hypothesis/feed/ 0 http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/05/prenatal-cannabis-exposure-increases-heroin-seeking-with-allostatic-changes-in-limbic-enkephalin-systems-in-adulthood/ http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/05/prenatal-cannabis-exposure-increases-heroin-seeking-with-allostatic-changes-in-limbic-enkephalin-systems-in-adulthood/#comments Sat, 01 May 2010 11:23:34 +0000 ndpa http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/?p=6535 Abstract: Spano MS, Ellgren M, Wang X, Hurd YL.

Karolinska Institute, Department of Clinical Neuroscience, Psychiatry Section, S-17176 Stockholm, Sweden.

BACKGROUND: Prenatal cannabis exposure is a growing concern with little known about the long-term consequences on behavior and neural systems relevant for reward and emotional processing.
METHODS: We used an animal model to study the effects of prenatal exposure to Delta(9)-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) on heroin self-administration behavior and opioid neural systems in adult males (postnatal day 62). Rats were exposed to THC (.15 mg/kg) or vehicle from gestational day 5 to postnatal day 2. RESULTS: Both pretreatment groups showed similar heroin intake, but THC-exposed rats exhibited shorter latency to the first active lever press, responded more for low heroin doses, and had higher heroin-seeking during mild stress and drug extinction. THC exposure reduced preproenkephalin (PENK) mRNA expression in the nucleus accumbens during early development, but was elevated in adulthood; no adult striatal changes on preprodynorphin mRNA or PENK in caudate-putamen. PENK mRNA was also increased in the central and medial amygdala in adult THC-exposed animals. THC animals had reduced heroin-induced locomotor activity and nucleus accumbens mu opioid receptor coupling.
CONCLUSIONS: This study demonstrates enduring effects of prenatal THC exposure into adulthood that is evident on heroin-seeking behavior during extinction and allostatic changes in mesocorticolimbic PENK systems relevant to drug motivation/reward and stress response.

Source: : Biol Psychiatry. 2007 Feb 15;61(4):554-63. Epub 2006 Jul 28.



]]> http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/05/prenatal-cannabis-exposure-increases-heroin-seeking-with-allostatic-changes-in-limbic-enkephalin-systems-in-adulthood/feed/ 0 http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/05/jump-in-alcoholic-liver-disease/ http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/05/jump-in-alcoholic-liver-disease/#comments Sat, 01 May 2010 11:22:38 +0000 ndpa http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/?p=6533
The number of people admitted to hospital in England with alcoholic liver disease has more than doubled in just 13 years, figures show.
Between 1989 and 2003 admissions for the disease increased by 116% in men and 108% in women.
The figures, from London’s St George’s Hospital and the Office for National Statistics, were presented at a British Society of Gastroenterology meeting.
They underline just how much of a drain alcohol abuse is on NHS resources.

The figures show that there was a rise in admissions in people of all ages – including young adults.
In the year 2002/03, the admission rate for alcoholic liver disease was 42.4 per 100,000 men, and 27.6 per 100,000 women.
Many health campaigners have voiced concern that changes to licensing laws, allowing more pubs and clubs to stay open for longer, could lead to increases in alcohol-related illness and public disorder in the UK.
Lead researcher Dr Mark Fullard said that with hospitals already struggling to cope with demand, the rising number of cases of alcoholic liver damage was a potentially huge problem.
“The research findings highlight an important problem in public education and health planning and how we are going to manage alcohol related problems in this country.
“If it doubles again, it is going to have tremendous implications for the future burden of care in hospitals.”

The actual number of women admitted with alcoholic liver problems is about half that of men – but the rate of increase in cases is similar.
The diseases included in the study range from mild alcoholic hepatitis – mild inflammation of the liver – through to very severe cirrhosis and liver cancer.
Dr Fullard said: “If you are young and have alcoholic liver disease and carry on drinking, then you will get severe alcoholic liver disease.”
Dr Elwyn Elias, of the British Society of Gastroenterology, said: “It is very important that we are flagging this up at a time when the consumption of alcohol in this country is continuing to increase.
“I think we are unmasking an iceberg effect where we are storing up enormous problems for the NHS in the future.”

Source: BBC News Reported in Daily Dose 15th March 2005



]]> http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/05/jump-in-alcoholic-liver-disease/feed/ 0 http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/05/cannabis-disrupts-brain-centre/ http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/05/cannabis-disrupts-brain-centre/#comments Sat, 01 May 2010 11:20:19 +0000 ndpa http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/?p=6529
Scientists have shown how cannabis may trigger psychotic illnesses such as schizophrenia.
A King’s College London team gave healthy volunteers the active ingredient tetrahydrocannabinol (THC).
They then recorded reduced activity in an area of the brain which keeps inappropriate thoughts at bay. THC levels are thought to have doubled in street cannabis in recent years – at the expense of other ingredients which may have a beneficial effect.

A separate study has shown that one of these ingredients – cannabidiol (CBD) – has the potential to dampen down psychotic symptoms, and could form the basis of new treatments. The research will be discussed at a conference on the impact of cannabis use to be held at the Institute of Psychiatry at King’s College this week.
Dependency
Although figures are not kept, it is estimated that as many as 500,000 people in the UK may be dependent on cannabis. Increasing numbers of people are seeking help for cannabis problems at specialist clinics. In 2005, only heroin users accounted for a greater proportion of patients. Experts are concerned that street cannabis is becoming increasingly potent. It is thought that average THC content has risen from 6% to 12% in recent years.
The Institute of Psychiatry study gave THC, CBD or placebo capsules to adult male volunteers who had not abused cannabis. They then carried out brain scans, and a battery of tests, and found that those who took THC showed reduced activity in an area of the brain called the inferior frontal cortex, which keeps inappropriate thoughts and behaviour, such as swearing and paranoia in check.
The effects were short-lived, but some people appeared more vulnerable than others.
In a second study, a team from Yale University administered THC intravenously. Even at relatively low doses, they found 50% of healthy volunteers began to show symptoms of psychosis. Volunteers who already had a history of psychotic symptoms appeared to be particularly vulnerable.
Side effects
A third study, by the University of Cologne, compared the effect of CBD and a commonly used anti-psychotic medicine, Amisulpride, on 42 patients with a history of schizophrenia.
After four weeks both groups showed a reduction in psychotic symptoms, but the CBD group were less prone to side effects, such as muscle stiffness and weight gain.

The researchers warned that THC and CBD compete with each other biochemically, so a rise in THC levels would blunt any positive impact of CBD. Professor Robin Murray, a consultant psychiatrist at the Institute of Psychiatry, said the research provided the strongest evidence that cannabis had a significant impact on the brain.
He said proving a long-term effect was extremely difficult, as it was not ethical or feasible to stimulate long-term psychosis in volunteers.
However, he said: “If something has an active effect in inducing the symptoms of psychosis after one dose, then it would not be at all surprising if repeated use induced the chronic condition.”
Professor Murray also warned that the high potency cannabis now widely available was likely to pose a much bigger risk to health than the significantly weaker formulations of previous years. “It is similar to comparing the effect of drinking a glass of wine at the weekend with drinking a bottle of vodka every day.”
Marjorie Wallace, of the mental health charity Sane, called the research a “significant contribution” to the understanding of the dangers of cannabis.
“Sane has been saying for years that there is a link between psychosis and the drug, particularly in its more potent forms.
“We strongly urge the government to heed the growing evidence and take urgent action to warn young people that some of them are risking lifelong mental illness – that they are playing Russian roulette with their minds.”

Source: BBC NEWS: 2007/04/30



]]> http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/05/cannabis-disrupts-brain-centre/feed/ 0 http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/05/steady-rise-in-deaths-from-heavy-drinking/ http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2010/05/steady-rise-in-deaths-from-heavy-drinking/#comments Sat, 01 May 2010 11:19:24 +0000 ndpa http://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/?p=6527
A steady rise in long-term heavy drinking has led to a doubling of alcohol-related deaths among men over the past decade, according to official figures.
The study of “preventable mortality” found that the rate of alcohol-related deaths had risen sharply among women too, with two thirds more dying of diseases such as cirrhosis over the period.
The rise in alcohol-related deaths is in stark contrast to sharp falls in the rest of the top five “preventable causes of mortality”.
Lung cancer and other pulmonary diseases are both down by a third, while suicide is down by 14 per cent. The data were released in the Office for National Statistics’ quarterly survey of the nation’s health.
Alcohol Concern said that the biggest increase in alcohol-related deaths was among those aged 35 to 54, a generation of people who started drinking heavily in their youth and carried on into middle age.

Source: From The Times Online May 25, 2007



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