Ecstasy and cannabis can cause memory loss and impair a person’s ability to conduct a conversation, research shows. A study found drug users often drifted off in the middle of sentences and would repeat a joke or story they had told already. The more cannabis people used, the more they lapsed in their everyday memory, scientists conclude. The findings come from one of the largest studies carried out into the impact of recreational drugs on psychological function. However, it is not representative of all drug takers and involved more than 700 people taking part in an online questionnaire. The snapshot survey looked at drug taking habits and whether they affected people’s ability to remember simple tasks.

Ecstasy users reported similar memory lapses to those taking cannabis. Dr Andrew Scholey, a psychologist from the University of Northurabria, said: The more they had taken ecstasy in the past, the more their long term prospect of memory failed. “This was down to the amount they had used, not the frequency.” The other thing we recorded was the number of errors they made when submitting the questionnaire. “The more people had taken ecstasy, the more errors they made on the form.”

Brain damage
The research team suggest ecstasy targets the frontal lobes of the brain, which are related to memory and organising responses. People with frontal lobe damage caused by accidents often find difficulty concentrating and are more easily distracted, research shows. Psychologists are intrigued that ecstasy users continue to take the drug, despite knowing it is damaging their brain. Dr Scholey said: “It’s bizarre. People are aware of what’s happening to them in terms of deteriorating mental function and don’t seem to do anything about it.” The team recognises the weaknesses of the study.
Scholey said: “We have to be cautious in interpreting these types of data… We are relying on self reports of memory failures in groups with memory problems.”

“However, it’s difficult to see why cannabis and ecstasy users would try to exaggerate these psychological problems.” The study was devised and conducted by UK scientists from the universities of Newcastle, Northumbria, Teeside, East London and Westminster. The majority of those who took part in the questionnaire (75%) were aged between 21 and 25. About 80% came from Europe and 16% were from the USA.
Source: BBC News, 14 March 2002

After years of dismissing cocaine as a U.S. problem, Mexicans are finding that its their problem too. Government drug treatment clinics that saw 3 000 abusers a year in the 1990s now see 50 000 a year. Abuse used to be largely confined to the northern Mexican states from which U.S. cocaine smuggling operations were launched. Now it has spread south to larger cities such as Mexico City and Guadalajara.

Source:  http://www.miami.com/ July 2002

Physicians should consider the possibility of cocaine use as a culprit when young adults are brought to emergency rooms for nontraumatic chest pains, according to researchers at the UT Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas. Chest pain is the most common complaint of cocaine users, and in 1999 cocaine use was cited in 30 percent of all drug-related emergency department visits. In a review article published in today’s issue of The New England Journal of Medicine, Drs. Richard Lange and L. David Hillis report on the cardiovascular complications associated with cocaine use and effective treatments. “Death from cocaine abuse is on the rise in the United States,” said Hillis, who is vice chairman of internal medicine. “Early identification and understanding of cocaine-related cardiovascular complications are essential to their proper management.”

Lange and Hillis suggest that emergency medical physicians consider cocaine use in young patients with conditions such as arrhythmias, heart attack, inflammation of the heart muscle or dilated cardiomyopathy, a heart defect characterized by increased thickness of the wall of the left ventricle.
In 1999 an estimated 25 million Americans admitted that they had used cocaine at least once; 3.7 million had used cocaine in the past year; and 1.5 million were current users. In addition, medical examiners report that cocaine is the most frequent cause of drug-related deaths. Both Lange and Hillis have published extensively and made novel observations regarding cocaine-related heart disease.
In 1990 the researchers reported that beta-blockers, which are commonly administered to patients with chest pain, were not only ineffective but also detrimental in patients with cocaine-related chest pain. In a 1991 study Hillis and Lange reported that nitroglycerin, which dilates and relaxes blood vessels, had a beneficial effect on patients with cocaine-related chest pains. In 1994 the researchers found that verapamil hydrochloride, a calcium blocker, alleviated cocaine-induced constricted blood vessels. ‘Most cocaine-related chest pains are due to the fact that the blood vessels have been constricted,’ Hillis said. “The most effective treatment for this is nitroglycerin or calcium blockers.”

Source: Authors Dr. Richard Lange and L. David Hillis, published in The New England Journal of Medicine.

In the first such case in New Jersey, federal authorities yesterday charged an Atlantic County man with possessing a large amount of the hallucinogen ‘Foxy Methoxy,’ which is said to be similar to ecstasy.

It was one of the largest such seizures in the nation. Foxy is so new and seizures so rare that nationwide statistics are not readily available, Ed Childress, a spokesman for the federal Drug Enforcement Administration in Washington, said yesterday. Every bit as rare, authorities said, is the manner in which they got hold of the drugs: The defendant, from Absecon, notified them and led them straight to the stash. The man is in federal custody and undergoing psychiatric evaluation.
Foxy began appearing at all-night dance parties in 1999, and municipal police departments began seize amounts in 2001 Only a handful of large seizures have followed.

Source: www.momstell.com, Oct 2003

Cocaine use among young adults in Britain is expanding faster than anywhere else in Europe, according to a new Drug misuse report. The annual report from the Lisbon based European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction, giving figures for 2000, shows that 5% of people in England and Wales between the ages of 16 and 29 took the drug at some point during the previous 12 months compared with 1% in 1996.

“Overall, the drug situation in the United Kingdom is very stable, but we have seen a sharp increase in the use of cocaine as it becomes more acceptable on the recreational scene, said Mike Trace, the United Kingdom’s former deputy drugs ‘tsar’ who now chairs the centres management board. Throughout Europe cannabis remains the most popular illegal drug. While 30% of British adults and 25% of Danes have smoked a cannabis cigarette at some point in their lives, just 10% of Finns have done so.

Source: The 2002 Annual Report on the State of the Drugs Problem in the European Union and Norway Reported in BMJ 2002; 325:794.

Monkeys exposed to cocaine during pregnancy give birth to Infants whose brains contain fewer
that half the neurons needed in the cerebral cortex.

Source: Author M.S.Lidow and Zan-Min Song, Published in Journal of Comparative Neurology Vol 435, Issue 3, 2001.

Addiction specialists at Harvard University think they have found one reason that cocaine users seem to get sick so often; The drug restricts production of a body protein that triggers immune responses. Doctors have often noted that cocaine users suffer more infections, including the AIDS virus. One theory holds that this is because cocaine users are more likely to engage in dangerous behaviour such as unsafe sex. But a study published in this months Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism suggests that cocaine also has a direct effect on the body’s infection-fighting chemistry. The study is one of a handful in the U.S. in which doctors injected human volunteers, rather than rats, with cocaine.

Source; ONDCP News Briefing, Reported in The Wall Street Journal June 2003.

Researchers have now discovered another danger of cocaine use. For the first time, scientists have found cocaine significantly accelerates HIV infection. After infecting mice with the HIV virus, UCLA researchers injected half with liquid cocaine daily, while the other half received a placebo injection. Researchers counted the HIV-infected cells after 10 days and found a 200-fold increase in AIDS viral load in mice injected with cocaine compared to those that did not receive the drug. Gayle Baldwin, MD., from the UCLA AIDS Institute, says, ‘In only two weeks, the drug radically stimulated the production and spread of HIV.” In addition, mice with cocaine in their system had more than double the number of HIV-infected cells than cocaine-free mice.

Another significant finding shows a nine-fold decrease in immune cells in the cocaine-exposed mice. Dr. Baldwin says the drug increased HIV’s efficiency so much it nearly destroyed the immune cells HIV targets to destroy the immune system. She says, “Not only did the drug double the number of HIV-infected cells, it produced a nine-fold plunge in the number of T-cells that fight off the virus.” Researchers believe the animal study could  lead to additional studies to examine the effects of diet, alcohol and other drugs on the spread of HIV infection.

Source: Author Dr. G. Baldwin. Published in  Journal of Infectious Diseases, 2002.

According to a new study by the National Centre on Addiction and Substance Abuse: Alcohol is the leading drug abused by U.S. teens. Under age drinkers account for 19.7 percent of alcohol consumed in U.S. 78 percent of high school students have tried alcohol. 30 percent of them admit to binge drinking at least once a month. Average age of first drink among 12-20 year olds is 14.

Source: www.CNN.com, Feb 2003

By Christian Fraser

Under the new legislation, people found in possession of cannabis could risk having their passport and their driving licence suspended.

The government has forced through this new legislation with a confidence vote.

The move has been greeted mostly with dismay by opposition MPs and drug treatment professionals.

Under the new rules, dealing and trafficking in drugs – whether heroin, cocaine or cannabis – will be punished with jail sentences of between six and 20 years and a fine of up to 260,000 euros (£180,000).

People who ignore repeated warnings to stop using cannabis will face a driving ban and be forced to stay at home at night.

According to recent statistics, a third of teenagers in Italy have smoked marijuana at least once, and 10% of adults are said to smoke it on a regular basis.

On Wednesday more than 200 protesters and at least one opposition MP smoked cannabis joints in protest outside parliament.

Opposition leaders said it would be one of the first laws they abolish if they win power in April.

Source: BBC News, Rome Feb.2006

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Source: www.studentdrugtesting.org

By Sally Satel M.D.

One hundred years ago, German chemists introduced heroin to the world. On Saturday the New York Academy of Medicine held a conference celebrating the drug’s latest use, “heroin maintenance”: medically supervised distribution of pure heroin to addicts. The academy’s First International Conference on Heroin Maintenance introduces to our shores the latest example of the pernicious drug-treatment philosophy known as “harm reduction.”

Harm reduction holds that drug abuse is inevitable, so society should try to minimize the damage done to addicts by drugs (disease, overdose) and to society by addicts (crime, health care costs). According to the Oakland, Calif.-based Harm Reduction Coalition, harm reduction “meets users where they are at . . . accepting for better or worse, that drug use is part of our world.”

Its advocates present harm reduction as a rational compromise between the alleged futility of the drug war and the extremism of outright legalization. But since harm reduction makes no demands on addicts, it consigns them to their addiction, aiming only to allow them to destroy themselves in relative “safety” — and at taxpayer expense.

The recent debate over needle exchange illuminates the political strategy of harm reductionists. First, present the public with a specious choice: Should a drug addict shoot up with a clean needle or a dirty one? (Unquestioned is the assumption that he should shoot up at all.) Then misrepresent the science as Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala did when she pronounced “airtight” the evidence that needle exchange reduces the rate of HIV transmission. In fact, most needle exchange studies have been full of design errors; the more rigorous ones have actually shown an increase in HIV infection.

And so it is with heroin maintenance. First, the false dichotomies: pure vs. contaminated heroin; addicts who commit crime to support their habit vs. addicts who don’t. Then the distortion of evidence. The Lindesmith Center, one of the conference sponsors, claims that “a landmark Swiss study has successfully maintained heroin addicts on injectable heroin for almost two years, with dramatic reductions in illicit drug use and criminal activity as well as greatly improved health and social adjustment.”

In fact, the Swiss “experiment,” conducted by the Federal Office of Public Health from 1994 to 1996, was not very scientific. Addicts in the 18-month study were expected to inject themselves with heroin under sterile conditions at the clinic three times a day. They also received extensive counseling, psychiatric services and social assistance (welfare, subsidized jobs, public housing and medical care). Results: The proportion of individuals claiming they supported themselves with illegal income dropped to 10% from 70%; homelessness fell to 1% from 12%. Permanent employment rose to 32% from 14%, but welfare dependency also rose to 27% from 18%. The rate of reported cocaine use among the heroin addicts dropped to 52% from 82%.

These numbers may look promising, but it’s hard to know what they mean. Verification of self-reported improvement was spotty at best. And addicts received so many social services — five times more money was spent on them than is the norm in standard treatment — that heroin maintenance itself may have played no role in any overall improvement.

Definitions of success were loose as well. Anyone who kept attending the program, even intermittently, was considered “retained.” By this standard, more than two-thirds made it through — a much higher retention rate than in conventional treatment. But considering that the program gave addicts pharmaceutical-grade heroin at little or no cost, it’s astonishing that the numbers weren’t higher. It turned out that the patients who dropped out were those with the most serious addiction-related problems — those who had been addicted the longest, were the heaviest cocaine users, or had HIV — the very groups that are of the greatest public-health concern.

What’s more, the researchers did not compare heroin maintenance with conventional treatments such as methadone or residential, abstinence-oriented care. They abandoned their original plan to assign patients randomly to heroin maintenance or conventional methadone — because, among other reasons, the subjects, not surprisingly, strongly preferred heroin.

“The risk of heroin maintenance is the incentive it provides to `fail’ in other forms of treatment in order to become a publicly supported addict,” says Mark Kleiman of UCLA School of Public Policy. And in fact, once the heroin maintenance project started, conventional treatment facilities reported a sharp decline in applications, even though the rate of drug use remained steady.

The Swiss heroin experiment was born out of desperation. In the mid-1980s, the Swiss government became disenchanted with drug treatment and turned to a policy of sanctioned drug use in designated open areas. But this was unsuccessful; the most visible failures being the squalid deterioration of Zurich’s Platzspitz Park (the notorious “Needle Park”) and the syringe-littered Letten railway station.

It is telling that harm reduction efforts have evolved in countries that provide addicts with a wide array of government benefits. Rather than throw up their hands at the poor record of drug rehabilitation, the Swiss and others should acknowledge the extent to which welfare services enable addiction by shielding addicts from the consequences of their actions, financing their drug purchases and encouraging dependency on public largesse.

Nonetheless, Switzerland has ardently embraced heroin maintenance. The Federal Office of Public Health plans to triple enrollment next year to about 3,000; and in 2004 the Swiss Parliament plans to decriminalize consumption, possession and sale of narcotics for personal use.

Not everyone shares Bern’s enthusiasm. Wayne Hall of Australia’s University of New South Wales was an independent evaluator for the World Health Organization who assessed the experimental plan of the Swiss project. “The unique political context . . . of the trials . . . meant that opportunities were lost for a more rigorous evaluation,” he wrote. In February, the International Narcotics Control Board of the United Nations — a quasijudicial body that monitors international drug treaties — expressed concern that “before {completion of} the evaluation by the World Health Organization of the Swiss heroin experiment, pressure groups and some politicians are already promoting the expansion of such programmes in Switzerland and their proliferation in other countries.”

And indeed, the trials’ principal investigator and project directors have traveled to Australia, Austria, Germany, the Netherlands and elsewhere promoting heroin maintenance. They won a sympathetic hearing in the Netherlands, which plans to begin a heroin experiment next month. This isn’t surprising; after all, this is a country that has a union for addicts, the Federation of Dutch Junkie Leagues, which lobbies the government for services. In Rotterdam last month, I visited a Dutch Reformed church where the pastor had invited two dealers in to sell discounted heroin and cocaine. He also provided basement rooms where users could inject or smoke heroin.

Even if heroin maintenance “worked” — if it could be proved that heroin giveaways enhanced the addicts’ health and productivity — we would still have to confront the raw truth about harm reduction. It is the public-policy manifestation of the addict’s dearest wish: to use free drugs without consequence. Imagine extending this model — the use of state-subsidized drugs, the offer of endless social services and the expectation of nothing in return — to America’s hard-core addicts.
Today the U.N. General Assembly opens a special session on global drug-control policy. Harm reduction advocates will tell the world body that drug abuse is a human right and that the only compassionate response is to make it safer to be an addict. The Swiss and the Dutch seem to view addicts as irascible children who should be indulged, or as terminally ill patients to be palliated, hidden away and written off. But heroin maintenance is wrong. As an experiment, thus far it is scientifically groundless. As public-health policy it will always be a posture of surrender.

Source: www.sallysatelmd.com

By Alberto Carosa
Rome

“I also continue to follow with great appreciation your commitment to the promotion of moral values in American society, particularly with regard to respect for life and the family”: John Paul II was quoted as saying these words, among other things, when he received President George W. Bush in the Vatican  June 4th, 2004. “Our thoughts also turn today to the 20 years in which the Holy See and the United States have enjoyed formal diplomatic relations”, he also said, “established in 1984 under President Reagan”.

Nobody could envisage at that moment that Ronald Regan would pass away the following day. Yet, he is poised to go down in history as the leader who paved the way for the above promotion by being the first president who openly supported the culture of life, after almost a decade of living under the Roe v. Wade decision. Reagan was the only sitting president to write a book while in office and, fittingly, Abortion and the Conscience of a Nation, was a celebration of the pro-life perspective and an encouragement for the pro-life community to never give up. Congressman Henry Hyde, himself a pro-life champion, says Reagan “gave the right to life position stature and legitimacy”, while nationally syndicated columnist Fred Barnes calls Reagan the “father of the pro-life movement”.

But there is another much less known, albeit no less important, aspect of Reagan’s siding with the culture of life: his war on illicit drugs. He was the first western politicians to make the fight on drug addiction a basic points of his agenda, already in his 1970 campaign, when this public commitment contributed to the overwhelming consensus with which he commenced his political career as governor of California. He was one of the few leaders who grasped the ideological roots underpinning the spreading of drug addiction: the 1968 anti-prohibitionist philosophy with its far-reaching social and cultural implications, rather than being merely and/or primarily health-related. If until 1962 only less than 1% of the entire US population had smoked pot, albeit occasionally, in 1979 and therefore in the peak of the hippy movement, drug addiction involved some 70% of US young adult aged 18-25. Set to fend off the “counter-culture” based on the “free drug America” principle, he reacted by forcefully launching a “drug free America” initiative through an effective synergy between public institutions and the vast sector of civil society, which was in the forefront of the anti-drug fight against the powerful lobby of drug liberalisers.

A typical case in point was the spontaneous establishment of thousand parents associations and family-related NGOs around the country precisely in the late Seventies, to which President Reagan gave his institutional blessings, co-opting them in what he launched as the “War on Drug”. Parents mobilisation had started on earnest in early 1977, when Sue Rusche in Atlanta (Georgia) established the organization “Families
in Action” (FIA), because of their concern about the influence of the drug culture on the young people. FIA is credited with the first parental assault on the community drug culture. The snowball effect was compelling: other anti-drug personalities of the calibre of Betty Sembler (founder and president of Drug Free America Foundation and wife to the present US Ambassador to Italy, Melvin Sembler), Calvina Fay (a pioneering expert on workplace drug abuse prevention programs presently executive director of Drug Free America Foundation) and Stephanie Haynes (president of Drug Prevention Network of the Americas), among countless others, followed suit and anti-drug parent associations mushroomed countrywide. In May 1980 a national parent organization, the National Federation of Parents for Drug Free Youth was established in Silver Springs, Maryland.

This involvement of families for a sound co-operation and interaction between local communities and federal government was legally and initially entrenched in the 1982 Federal Strategy for Prevention of Drug Abuse and Drug Trafficking. And this was only the beginning. In 1984 an unprecedented National Family Partnership was launched under the supervision of the embattled first lady Nancy Reagan with the slogan “Just say no”. For this purpose she invited in Washington hundreds of representatives of over 2000 parent groups, who travelled at their own expense, and board members of the above National Federation of Parents for a discussion which was to formally launch the war on drugs. More in detail, this plan was aimed at beefing up protection for the youth not to be lured into drug addiction by anti-prohibitionist propaganda, through educational programmes and ad-hoc seminars in schools and workplaces nationwide in close co-operation with the Movement of Anti-Drug Parents, health and social services, and the other competent federal agencies.

For its part, the government did not directly fund any portion of the parent movement , but facilitated the movement’s goals and activity in a variety of ways, ranging from public endorsement by the President and the First Lady to making parent-oriented prevention material available for distribution to the public. The role of the state governments varied from one state to another, but generally there was mutual support and collaboration. In April ’85 Nancy Reagan expanded her drug awareness campaign to an international level by inviting first ladies from around the world to attend a two day briefing on the subject of youth drug abuse. The White House commitment culminated with the Anti-Drug Abuse Act, an exemplary milestone on the legislative front of the anti-dope fight, which was signed into law by President Reagan in 1986.

This strategy produced almost immediate results, for the first time reversing the trend: the war on drug managed to slash US illicit drug consumers by a stable 70%, both among teens (12-17) and youth, minimizing related social costs in terms of crime and death. Moreover, the free drug lobby ran into serious difficulties and had to reshape its strategy, by switching from an aggressive to a defensive approach. In other words, drug liberalisers had to start speaking of a “reformist” and no longer “revolutionary” effort to legalise drugs, as aptly pointed out by Sue Rusche in her “Guide to the Drug Legalisation Movement and how you can stop it” (Published by the “National Families in Action”, Atlanta, October 1997), chapter sixth, “The second effort to legalise drugs”.

In particular, this second effort was based on two main pillars:

– Harm reduction philosophy inspired by the 1993 Frankfurt Resolution;

and

– injection of fresh funds by billionaire George Soros, who revived the US drug legalisation movement with millions of dollars.

George Soros seemed to have learnt Reagan’s lesson when he made available $ 6 million “to promote alternatives to the war on drug”, which could not but have been premised, in his own words, on an all-out “war on the war on drugs”.

Source: Drug Free America FoundationAugust 2004

A new study supports what judges throughout the country have believed for years: non-violent drug offenders benefit from judge-supervised treatment programs. The study of New York’s drug-court system, conducted by an independent research arm of the New York State court system, found that offenders assigned to drug courts are less likely to commit future crimes compared to those in prison. The study by the Center for Court Innovation examined six jurisdictions, including three in New York City. The research shows that over three years, the re-arrest rate for individuals who received court-monitored treatment was 29 percent lower than that of drug offenders who chose prison time without treatment.
“These are very positive findings, I think, getting to the answer of whether drug courts work in reducing recidivism,” said Deborah J. Daniels, an assistant United States attorney general in charge of the Justice Department’s grant-making arm. “It shows that drug courts continue to be a very promising way of dealing with a first-offender or nearly first-offender population.”

Source:New York Times  Nov. 2003

The following is the gist of a programme broadcast on Radio 4 – it clearly shows the problems resulting from the re-classification of cannabis.

Update from 2 parents since last November.

Parent 1. Boy had now “totally flipped” Came into parents’ room in the middle of the night totally petrified and convinced that someone had a gun to kill him. He blames Blunkett. It must be safe or he would not have downgraded it.

Parent 2. The worst time was New Years Eve when parents came home from a party to find him smashing up the house. Had to call police, he was uncontrollable.

Interviewer: Because there is an increased usage at an earlier age are we looking at a mental health time bomb?

Angie, mother of Daniel, interviewed last December:

From the age of 14 to 18, he smoked around 1 joint per hour and developed serious mental problems. Now 27, 6’2” tall, has got worse. For last year has been “on the edge”. Main problem is getting his money for dope. Gets manic, extremely forceful, extremely overbearing and demanding. Lives in Lambeth.

Angie says children of 11 and 12 smoke it in skate parks etc. Used to be a Brixton problem, now can smell it in any town centre. She spoke to youth workers. 13 year olds sit around all day smoking dope, no crack.

Met. Police: Youngsters think it’s legal, they are confused.

Ros. Griffiths, Community worker in Brixton for 20 years.

Attitudes have changed since down-classification. She has seen more experimenters in playgrounds, estates, streets, as young as 9 to 10. Even more alarming is to see them dealing at that age. They are not aware of the side effects and don’t care. Cannabis is “soft”, reinforced by downgrading so it’s OK. They think it’s legal.

Terry Hammond, Rethink.

Agrees this is reflected nationwide. Last year Rethink had over one third of a million phone calls and hits on their website about cannabis. Therefore have a large base to draw on. All is obviously anecdotal at this time that it is on the increase. But young people believe they have been given the green light about pot. Agreed that the starting age for using is 11 to 12, but some much younger.

Prof Robin Murray

Last November several studies linked cannabis with psychosis. If they are daily smokers by age 15, risk psychosis by age 26 is 4.5 times. Start at 18, risk is 1.5 times of psychosis by 26.

Starting young they may get hooked earlier, brain changes at puberty so brain development may be affected. Not all of them become psychotic. Smokers don’t all get lung cancer but a quarter of cannabis users are probably at risk if they take enough. We know now there is a greater risk if they have a family history, have had a bad trip or tend to have suspicious or strange beliefs. Now found that genes are different to the norm in those who become psychotic.

Interviewer: Any truth in the idea that children predisposed to mental illness will take cannabis? Murray: Some: Children at 11 with mental problems are more likely to have taken it by age 15. Maybe they find it reduces anxiety, or they fit in better and are not so isolated. They use it to “get in”.

Interviewer: Would you say that cannabis is one of the biggest problems faced psychiatric wards? Murray: I have been saying it for some time! It’s worse now, it’s VERY difficult to convince patients that cannabis is causing their problems. They say that’s not what the government says. Their general understanding is that it is safe. It’s difficult to get them to stop. Now if they find them dealing cannabis on the wards the police WON’T come  –  they used to.

Eden Ward, Lambeth Hospital

12 beds – small unit, acutely ill, need intensive and individual care. Julian, an outpatient since 1983. Main reason for illness, smoking substances like cannabis. Paranoia, voices, hallucinations, (speech was very slurred). In 1997 spent 15 months in hospital.

Doctor: 70% of patients are users of cannabis and/or/other substances eg crack. He guesses that in 20 to 25% of them their problems are caused by cannabis. Patient, now 31, using since 19. diagnosed as a bipolar manic depressive. Due to cannabis being smoked all day and at night too. Addicted. The “high” often gives him problems.

Tracy, a senior clinical nurse on the ward: “You can often tell when patients have been smoking cannabis. Their behaviour changes, their mental health goes and they can be agitated and violent, often paranoid.”

Contribution from a medical person on the ward: “Last weekend a patient had gone out and smoked cannabis and the ward became chaotic. They get very aggressive. The law has changed and you can’t do much if they have small amounts of cannabis on them, as long as it’s not much. All you can do is tell them not to smoke it on the ward. They had to stop a mother bringing it in to the ward for her daughter”.

Lambeth Police

Have close liaison with the hospital and will campaign and support them. They have a partnership with the hospital.

John Power, Detective superintendent, Yorkshire Police

Police don’t turn a blind eye. Says that there is no significant problem with hospitals in the Sheffield area. The police would liaise with the hospitals.

Prof. Murray:

No doubt that police policy is that the top brass co-operate with the hospitals. But try phoning them on a Saturday night or early Sunday morning. They will NOT come for possession they have other priorities.

John Power:

We would send someone if it was possible.

Interviewer: WHO says two fifths of UK 15 year olds have smoked cannabis, ECMDDA says one tenth have used it 40 times in the past year. Caroline Flint was not available! But Gov. statement put out:  “All controlled drugs are harmful. Young people and families need credible and realistic information about the dangers of drug misuse. The Gov. continues to highlight the health risks associated with cannabis use and ensures that information is distributed to young people, parents and teachers”. Michael Howard has said that from day 1 he would reclassify cannabis back to B.

Andrew Mitchell, Shadow Police Minister

Drug use is a serious curse. Signals of semi-decriminalisation – worst possible signals. If reclassified to B they would know where they stand. All police units have different messages, it’s very difficult to see what is going on.

Terry Hammond, son has cannabis psychosis. It would not help him. Must take the criminal aspect out of it, it is wrong. Shift the focus from the moral criminality debate to a health debate. Good gov. would deal with the issues of health.

Prof. Murray

Agrees. Down-classification was done because no one paid attention to the law. The Gov., Flint and Blunkett at the time effectively said that there were no harmful consequences. Now they have rowed back from that position. In the buildup to down-classification, the true extent of psychosis wasn’t known. Now it is so I think they are moving back to decent education.

Terry Hammond

Involved with Home Office education programme. Gov. only budgeted £230,000. USA, Australia, Sweden all spend millions of pounds. Home Office needs to SPEND.

Met Police say they have saved 180,000 hours/year in Met alone.

John Power

It has released lots of manpower. Takes 4 to 5 hours to arrest for possession of small amount, a few minutes for a caution, the time saved is a great benefit. Possibly a few more have been arrested but not significant. Not significant increase in drugs being seized.

Prof Murray

Not a good argument. If police were to reclassify burglary and make it legal, even more time would be saved. It’s been disappointing as it hasn’t separated the trading of cannabis from the trading of other drugs. The same people trade in cannabis as trade in the others and will move you on to them There is much more visible trading.

Terry Hammond

Agrees. Police time saved is not the best way to look at it. Gov. have placed a burden on the NHS. Mental Health costs Britain a massive £77 BILLION per year. This is taken from the Sainsbury report. It is not acknowledged. Cannabis exacerbates the problem. Gov. needs to get a grip. We need to get ourselves into gear. Need to get energy from Gov. Re-focus, take away the criminal issue, make it a health education issue.

Prof. Murray

Great sadness. Mental health services are overwhelmed. People are arriving with cannabis psychosis. They don’t get good treatment, nor do these with problems unrelated to cannabis. Mental health services in big cities cannot cope. Recently talked to 100 psychiatrists. Asked them who would invite relatives or friends in to see their units. Only one would be prepared to do this. We are awash with mental health problems and cannabis is a big contributor.

Dear Mr. Soros:

I had the opportunity to attend your very interesting presentation on October 28th at the National Press Club in Washington D.C., and thereafter read your book, ‘The Bubble of American Supremacy.’ While there is considerable validity, in my opinion, to many of your concepts and philosophies, there is one area where I think you radically depart from reality and from your own guidelines for an open society. Drug policy!

My purpose in writing is not to critique your book, but to seek a better understanding of your position on the issue of Drug Policy Reform. One of your concepts of an open society is that “.…We must treat our beliefs as provisionally true while keeping them open to constant reexamination.” First hand experience of the death and destruction of numerous family members from drug dependence has led to my own rather extensive involvement in drug prevention activities. I have learned a lot about the causes, consequences and solutions to substance abuse. But, to the extent my beliefs are erroneous, maybe you can enlighten me. To the extent your position stems from only a superficial understanding of the devastating impacts of drugs on all societies in the free world, maybe my comments will change your position.

I would like to challenge the following comments or points in your book.

• Drug Policy of The United States – On Page 26 and 27 of your book, your wrote “…When I decided to extend the operations of my Open Society Foundation to the United States, I chose drug policy as one of the first fields of engagement. I felt that drug policy was the area in which the United States was in greatest danger of violating the principles of open society. I did not claim that I had all the right answers, but I was sure of one thing: The war on drugs was doing more harm than the drugs themselves – and on that point the evidence is clear. Drugs kill a few people, incapacitate many more, and give parents sleepless nights. On the other hand, the war on drugs has put millions behind bars, disrupted entire communities, particularly in the inner cities, and destabilized entire countries.”

Substance abuse kills Americans at a rate in excess of 1,000 people per week. Drug induced deaths alone account for almost half. 9.4% of the population over 12 years old (almost one in ten) are dependent on drugs or alcohol. The parasitic nature of their existence and the wreckage they impose on society in the form of crime, health care, welfare, mental health, child care and education costs the other 90% of the taxpayers roughly $294 billion per annum. That’s about $1,000 for every man, woman and child in the country. The average addict commits 100 crimes per annum. 70% to 80% of crime is committed while people are under the influence of drugs or alcohol.

Mr. Soros, nothing in modern history compares with this rate of death and destruction. In comparison, it took 18 months to claim 1,000 American soldiers in Iraq. We lose that many Americans every week because of substance abuse. We lost roughly 3,000 people on 9/11. That many Americans die every three weeks from substance abuse. Drugs don’t just “…..kill a few people.” Drugs kill more people than any event in modern history. They kill more people than all other forms of terrorism combined.

Drugs don’t just “…..give parents sleepless nights.” Drugs cause immeasurable pain and suffering for parents whose children have died, and for those of us who endure the endless agony of watching our beautiful young people lose all of their potential for life, as drug addiction turns them to trash and leads them to an early grave. 5 million Americans today are raising their grandchildren, because their own adult children are incarcerated or otherwise incapable of raising their own children. Sleepless nights? Indeed!

Drugs are this nation’s biggest weapon of mass destruction. Why shouldn’t people who sell illegal weapons be incarcerated and treated as any other terrorist whose sole intent is to profit by killing or destroying others? This particularly pertains to those who market drugs to children.

Legalizing the sale of illicit drugs will not fix the problem of death and destruction. Making drugs more readily available will just exacerbate the problem, as we have seen from alcohol, which conquers more people than drugs.

Nor does providing clean needles to heroin addicts prevent the spread of sexually transmitted diseases. It only enables drug addicts to expedite their own demise, as 80% of them die from drug overdose. In the heat of feeding their passion for more and more of what is killing them, they frankly couldn’t care less about contracting a lesser disease. To use tax dollars to enable druggies to self exterminate is morally and legally wrong. And, for those who encourage and augment the addiction in the first place to claim some later form of compassion by helping addicts continue their addiction is highly hypocritical.

It is not the war on drugs that has caused this problem. It is the drugs, and those who sell them, that have caused this problem.

There are several concepts in the following quotes from your book that seem to be in direct conflict with your financial support to organizations that are trying to legalize and proliferate the use of drugs …. such as The Drug Policy Alliance. You stated:

• The Responsibility to Protect: Core Principles (Pages 104 and 105)

I.1. Basic Principles

A. State sovereignty implies responsibility, and the primary responsibility for the protection of its people lies with the state itself.

B. Where a population is suffering serious harm, as a result of internal war, insurgency, repression or state failure, and the state in question is unwilling or unable to half or avert it, the principle of non-intervention yields to the international responsibility to protect…

I. 2. Elements

A. The responsibility to prevent: to address both the root causes and direct causes of internal conflict and other man-made crises putting populations at risk.

B. The responsibility to react: to respond to situations of compelling human need with appropriate measures, which may include coercive measures like sanctions and international prosecution, and in extreme cases military intervention.

C. The responsibility to rebuild: to provide, particularly after a military intervention, full assistance with recovery, reconstruction and reconciliation, addressing the causes of the harm the intervention was designed to halt or avert.

I.3. Priorities

A. Prevention is the single most important dimension of the responsibility to protect:< prevention options should also be exhausted before intervention is contemplated, and more commitment and resources must be devoted to it. …..

You have assailed the Bush Doctrine with regard to Iraq. Perhaps the Bush Doctrine with regard to Drugs deserves some accolades. Since the President has been in office, drug use has declined. Supply lines have been seriously interrupted in several key locations, such as Columbia and Mexico. Drug legalization efforts have been thwarted in many locations, in spite of being outspent 30 to 1. There are now more than 1500 Drug Courts whereby arrestees receive treatment in lieu of incarceration. Of greater importance, the President has recognized and allocated funds for drug prevention where it begins, with school age adolescents.

The President and John Walters, the Drug Czar, are responding to the compelling need to reduce harm by encouraging prevention activities that are known to work, where they need to work; with school age children. The Supreme Court decision in 2002 cleared the way for schools to implement random drug testing programs for athletes and extra curricular activities.

Random Drug Testing has reduced drug use by between 67% and 90% in the work place, schools (where tried) and the military. The vast majority of all those who die or have been destroyed by drugs got hooked between ages 12 to 17, according to the experts, where their bodies and brains are much more susceptible to harm and addiction than adults. Research has shown that if we get kids to adulthood prior to first significant use of alcohol or drugs, they should never have a problem. It behooves us then “…..to respond to situations of compelling human need with appropriate measures.” That would certainly include take all measures possible to safe guard our young people, and in turn the future of our nation.

If, as you have pointed out, “… Prevention is the single most important dimension of the responsibility to protect,” then it follows that our governments at all levels should mandate or at least encourage the use of the best known prevention tool ….. random drug testing.

“…To address both the root causes and direct causes of internal conflict and other man-made crises putting populations at risk…,” does it not follow that we, as a nation, must scrutinize closely not only those who are selling weapons that kill and destroy, but also those who actively corrupt the legislative process based on bribes and false pretenses?

Only in the last few months, actively working against California Senate Bill 1386, did I learn of the existence of the Drug Policy Alliance, and of your financial backing of this organization. This bill was corrupt in its origin (The Drug Policy Alliance) and its intent, which was to prevent local school districts from implementing random drug testing. Fortunately, Governor Schwarzenegger vetoed the bill, so more kids can be saved from the ravages of drugs.

The justifications given for SB 1386 were false. If as you say, “….The war on terrorism as pursued by the Bush administration cannot be won, because it is based on false premises,” than I would say to you that the subversive efforts of the Drug Policy Alliance to legalize and proliferate the use of drugs will not prevail either, because their arguments are based on false premises.

America, and all populations in the free world are “…..suffering serious harm.” The “….primary responsibility for the protection of its people does lie with the state itself.” If, however, the governing bodies in the United States don’t follow the President’s lead to preserve the health and safety of its young people and the future of this nation, ultimately the population will revolt. That would include the 5 million Americans raising their grandchildren; all those who have had children needlessly die or be destroyed because safeguards were not put in place; all those who are victims of the crimes associated with substance abuse; and the unwitting taxpayers who don’t yet understand that conservatively, on the average 13% of their state taxes are wasted on the painful aftermath of substance abuse, while only 1% is spent on prevention. This is horrible economic and social policy, and must change.

In your book, you said you were referred to as a “…..statesman …..a person with principles but no interests.” I have no doubt that in many cases your philanthropy has helped people. But I find it unimaginable that anyone as obviously successful as you could believe in and financially support organizations that promote death and destruction to a nation you have chosen as your primary home.

Please help me to understand.

Sincerely,

Roger D. Morgan

ROGER MORGAN, Co-Founder of Californians For Drug Free Schools, is a San Diego businessman and entrepreneur, and former corporate executive with Volvo of America and Caterpillar Tractor Company. He was Founding Chairman of the Coronado SAFE Foundation, a non-profit dealing with drug prevention, and prior Board Member of the San Diego Prevention Coalition. Armed and repulsed by his experience with two stepchildren who became drug addicted at age 12 and 14 years old, roughly 25 years ago, and two newphews who died of drug related causes, he believes the only thing that could have saved these young people, and others, would have been drug testing. Unfortunately, this prevention tool was not understood or available back then.

Real estate agents aren’t the only ones alarmed by the increasing number of quiet, suburban homes being used to grow lucrative crops of high-quality marijuana. No longer solely the concern of law enforcement, the rapid spread of such grow-ops is changing the way agencies from insurers to municipalities do business.

“What originally started as a B.C. problem has spread Canada-wide,” said Dave Way, standards and practices co-ordinator for the Insurance Bureau of Canada. It’s becoming a familiar sequence from coast to coast, says Const. Richard Baylin, RCMP national co-ordinator for marijuana grow-ops: the empty house on the nice suburban street, the quiet new neighbours, the cop cars, the TV crews. Then it’s back to the empty home – this time full of toxic mould from high humidity, its foundation chipped away to get at power lines, its drywall damp and crumbling. As far as grow-ops are concerned, British Columbia, Quebec and Ontario are “the Big Three,” Baylin said.

A March RCMP report estimates the number of Ontario grow-ops grew 250 per cent between 2000 and 2002, a year in which there may have been up to 15,000 of them active in the province. Now they’re showing up in Halifax. Winnipeg has called Baylin’s office for advice. A little over a year ago, seven homes on the same upscale Calgary suburban street were busted. Edmonton has increased the number of police officers working on grow-ops to six from four. Experts offer a variety of reasons for the increase from organized crime exploiting a high-profit enterprise to low prison terms for those caught. But for Canadian business, the bottom line is that it’s starting to affect the bottom line.

Real estate agents, who may unwittingly sell a former grow-op or sell to someone wanting to build one, may have the most at stake. “A realtor is the one stuck in the middle,” says Bob Linney of the Real Estate Association of Canada. Agents are obliged to disclose anything that may affect the integrity of the house, he says. But sellers may not tell their agent everything. As well, a house’s grow-op history may be several buyers in the past. And telling a buyer his or her prospective home used to be a grow-op may be slanderous unless a criminal conviction was actually obtained.

“The realtor walks a very fine line,” Linney says. The B.C. Real Estate Association now includes a clause on its listing form that specifically asks the seller if he knows if the building has been used as a grow-op. The national association now publishes a 24-page book on how to recognize a grow-op house, or spot a possible customer who plans to build one. “If someone’s more interested in the basement than the kitchen, that could be the first sign,” says Linney, who has distributed 50,000 copies of the book. Most Canadian insurers now put specific riders in their homeowner policies that absolve them of any liability if a property has been used as a grow-op, says May. Power companies are also stinging from the growing grow-ops. Ontario police estimate Ontario Hydro lost anywhere between $3 million and $36 million per month in 2002 from stolen power – losses that get passed on to other consumers. As well, grow-op homes are typically bought with little cash down. A few crop cycles are usually enough to create serious damage, and mortgage-holders lose big when the property re-enters the market. The Insurance Bureau estimates the average repair bill for a former grow-op house is between $60,000 and $80,000. A profitable sideline has appeared for environmental consulting companies in certifying the rehabilitation of former grow-op houses.

Municipalities are also starting to feel the strain. “The workload is becoming an issue,” says Glenn Jenkins, an environmental health inspector with the City of Edmonton. His job is supposed to centre on inner-city housing, but since January he’s been inspecting former grow-ops on an almost weekly basis. “The first thing you notice is the smell,” says Jenkins, who’s seen one home so mouldy that brown stalactites hung from it. “It has a kind of skunk cabbage smell.” Jenkins says he’s training a second inspector to deal with the problem.

After years of cleaning up hundreds of grow-ops at a cost of about $2,500 each, the city of Surrey, B.C., passed a bylaw making owners of such homes liable for the costs. The bylaw, passed in 2001, also gives city health inspectors the right to enter a house where a grow-op is suspected. The spread of grow-ops comes at the same time as Canadians are becoming increasingly liberal in their attitude to marijuana use. But police officers such as Cpl. Lorne Adamitz, a member of Edmonton’s so-called Green Team of municipal and RCMP officers, strive to separate the two issues. “It’s not a victimless crime,” he says. “It’s not just somebody wanting to smoke a joint. “I do believe attitudes toward simple possession of marijuana, those attitudes have changed,” Adamitz says. “But I don’t believe that commercial production of marijuana has been accepted by the general populace.”

In a pilot scheme to test offenders as young as 14 for class A drugs, in a bid to give them swift treatment for their habit, youths in 10 pilot areas across England will be obliged to take part in the testing if charged with offences such as burglary, car theft and begging. They will be tested for heroin, crack and cocaine and anyone who tests positive will receive specialist help. The Home Office hopes the scheme will help break the crime-drugs link. Courts will be able to take test results into account when sentencing. Drug support groups said in order to succeed the idea needed to be accompanied by appropriate treatment.

The pilot expands an existing scheme introduced three years ago to drug-test adults. Fourteen to seventeen year-olds who are charged for a “trigger offence” such as burglary, car crime and theft, will be tested. The Home Office pilot is being run by the Metropolitan Police in three London boroughs – Camden, Newham and Southwark. Commander Alf Hitchcock, in charge of Criminal Justice for the Met, said: “Drug testing young offenders in these circumstances is an excellent first step in stopping many young people from slipping into what is essentially career criminality.

“We believe that if you can remove the root cause for crime you can stop the crime from being committed.”

‘Intervene’
He said the young people from the three London boroughs who test positive for class A drugs will go onto specialist drug treatment programmes. In announcing the scheme earlier this week, Home Office Minister Caroline Flint said: “We know that young offenders are more likely to use drugs than other young people. “We need to intervene and stop class A drug abuse as early as possible.” UK drugs information charity DrugScope warned that any testing had to be backed up with investment in prevention and treatment. Martin Barnes, chief executive, said drug testing could be effective to pinpoint those at risk of future drug misuse, but he warned that the “limits” of using the criminal justice system had to be considered.

Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/3943259.stm August 2004

Message from Secretary-General Kofi Annan on the Occasion of the International Day
against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking
26 June 2004

One of the most damaging misconceptions about drug use is that it is a permanent problem. The truth is that treatment for drug abuse can work, and can restore value and dignity to a person’s life. The theme for this year’s International Day against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking, ‘Drugs: Treatment Works’, aims to correct this misconception, and convey the facts about drug abuse treatment, based on the latest and most reliable evidence and research. Millions of people worldwide have been directly affected by drug problems – those who are dependent, as well as their families. Their lives have been disrupted, their health undermined, their education interrupted, their jobs lost, their families broken. People with drug-related problems, and their families and friends, need to know that there is a way out, and that effective help is available in different forms, depending on the needs and situation of each individual.

Today we have a better understanding of the mechanism of dependence. We know that dependence is a chronic and, in many cases, relapsing disorder. We know that, like many other chronic disorders, there are effective interventions that can help those affected to adopt productive lifestyles, avoid and reduce physical and mental health problems, improve family relationships, regain and retain child custody, and find better housing and employment opportunities. We also know that drug-abuse treatment helps communities, by reducing criminality and the risks of transmission of blood-borne infectious diseases, particularly HIV/AIDS, and by allowing them to benefit from the contributions of healthier, more productive and better-integrated individuals and families.

Policy makers need to bear in mind that treatment is a cost-effective way to tackle not only the health and social consequences of drug abuse, but also to reduce the associated costs of medical care, social welfare and criminal justice interventions. The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime has a variety of tools available at www.unodc.org to help clarify the facts about drug-abuse treatment. On this International Day against Drug Abuse, I call on everyone to examine and take into account the strong evidence about drug-abuse treatment and its effectiveness. When treatment works, it benefits us all.

The National Drug Prevention Alliance would concur with the sentiments above – but would add that as well as supporting drug treatment, drug prevention should have a much higher priority. Prevention Works! has been the strap line for our organisation for eleven years. Proof that prevention works can be found in an article from The Weekly – between 1979 and 1992 drug prevention programmes in the USA cut use by 50% – from 25 million to 11 million users – as a result crime, drug related hospital admissions and road deaths also declined.

With the No Child Left Behind Act increasingly focusing schools’ attention on test scores alone, programs that stress behavior, social development and commitment to school have sometimes gotten left behind.

But a new study indicates that schools adopting programs that target antisocial behavior are also likely to boost their students’ academic performance. The study of nearly 600 children by the University of Washington’s Social Development Research Group found that risk factors such as substance use, delinquency and violence that can be identified and counteracted in elementary school also are good predictors of later academic achievement.

“The implications are that prevention programs that address specific risk factors, curb antisocial behavior such as alcohol and cigarette use, stress a greater connection to school and promote social and emotional skills also contribute to academic achievement,” said Kevin Haggerty, a co-author of the study.

Haggerty also is director of the Raising Healthy Children Project, an intervention program that is following the progress of two groups of students in the Edmonds School District, a suburban area north of Seattle. One group received the intervention while the other did not.

The new study indicated that higher levels of school attachment and better social, emotional and decision-making skills in the seventh grade were related to higher grades and test scores on the Washington Assessment of Student Learning (WASL), given to 10th graders in 2002 and 2003. The WASL is a standardized test administered to students to comply with the No Child Left Behind Act.

The study, being published in the November issue of the Journal of School Health, also found that lower student test scores and grades were predicted by higher levels of attention problems, disruptive and aggressive behavior and negative behavior by peers. In addition, early use of alcohol and cigarettes predicted lower test scores.

“There is no stronger predictor of future problems than past ones,” said Charles Fleming, lead author of the study and a research analyst with the Social Development Research Group, which is part of the UW’s School of Social Work. “These findings show that if you make some difference in correcting negative behavior you can have a positive effect on school performance. This provides support, for instance, for programs being implemented in many elementary and middle schools to curb bullying behavior.”

Fleming noted that the researchers collected data from multiple sources – from the students and their parents and teachers – and that they got the same predictive outcomes from all of them. The researchers controlled for the students’ scores on a standardized test given in the fourth grade, parents’ level of education and socioeconomic level. “We wanted to see if the different behaviors that our prevention programs target also predict academic achievement, and they do,” he said.

The Raising Healthy Children program ran from the first or second grade through the 12th grade. The intervention included instructional workshops to help teachers become more effective in the classroom, workshops to teach parents better family management and monitoring skills and summer camps and study clubs for students.

“Targeted school-based prevention programs can contribute to student academic achievement,” Haggerty said. “We can’t eliminate these programs because of claims that ‘we don’t have time for them during the academic day in the classroom.’ These programs are important and they teach skills that children need to negotiate in the classroom and the school environment. When we teach them to children they are more successful academically.”

### Co-authors of the paper are Richard Catalano, director of the Social Development Research Group, and professor of social work; Tracy Harachi, UW associate professor of social work; James Mazza, UW associate professor of educational psychology, and Diana Gruman, an assistant professor of psychology at Western Washington University. The National Institute on Drug Abuse funded the research.

For more information, contact Fleming at (206) 685-8497 or cnbflem@u.washington.edu or Haggerty at (206) 543-3188 or haggerty@u.washington.edu
Source: Eurekalert. Nov.2005

A new approach to tackling heroin addiction is about to be tried out in the United Kingdom.

Health authorities in Scotland are planning to phase out methadone treatment programmes for heroin addicts and offer instead alternative therapies and residential rehabilitation programmes.

The change in policy follows mounting evidence which has shown that methadone programmes, first introduced in the 1970s, have failed to reduce addiction rates or cut the number of drug-related deaths.

The shift in policy indicates a radical change in attitude from using the heroin substitute to wean addicts off heroin – to encouraging abstinence by offering support via a range of other treatment options.

Methadone is also an addictive opiate and costs the government around £12m a year and research suggests that five years after starting the treatment, 90% of addicts are still taking methadone.

Recent government figures show that drug-related deaths rose to a record high of 421 in 2006 and methadone was present in 97 of those recorded deaths, 25 more than in the previous year.

The new drug strategy, the first significant change in policy in almost a decade, will be unveiled in Scotland this week and is expected to include a multi-million-pound expansion in the range of alternatives to methadone to help addicts back into society.

These are expected to include psychological therapies, residential abstinence programmes, support for families and children and education and employment training – all designed to help addicts live a drug-free life.

A recent study by the Centre for Drug Misuse at Glasgow University revealed that whereas one in three heroin users who received residential treatment was drug free after three years, only 3 per cent of those who were placed on methadone were drug free after the same period.

Source:   www.Mews-Medical.Net  27th May 2008

A trend to serving wine in larger glasses has added to public confusion over how much alcohol is safe to drink, the British government said on Monday.

Nearly four out of five British drinkers were unaware that a large glass of wine contains three units of alcohol — the maximum recommended daily limit for women, a Department of Health survey found.

It released the findings as it launched a national advertising campaign – Know Your Limits – to promote alcohol awareness.

“Glass sizes have grown larger and the strength of many wines and beers has increased, so it’s no wonder some of us have lost track of our alcohol consumption,” said Public Health Minister Dawn Primarolo.

The government is under pressure to combat rising levels of binge drinking, particularly by young people, blamed for aggravating anti-social behaviour and violence.

The Department of Health is spending £6 million ($11.74 million US) on its awareness campaign, and the Home Office will follow up with a £4 million campaign against binge-drinking next month.

But researchers questioned how much notice young people would take.

Bath University psychologist Andrew Bengry-Howell said he had found that young people took no account of unit limits.

“Monitoring your drinking in that way went totally against their objective, which was primarily to go out and get drunk,” he told the BBC.

The government says women should drink no more than 2-3 units of alcohol a day, while the daily limit for men is 3-4 units, the equivalent of 1.5 pints of medium strength beer.

Its survey found that three-fifths of women were aware of their guideline, compared to just half of men.

The government used to publish recommended weekly limits, but changed to a daily measure after it found many people were storing up their quota for the weekend.

It said drinkers regularly downing more than the advised limit greatly increase their risk of contracting illnesses such as liver disease, mouth cancer and stroke.

The awareness campaign includes a website – https://www.nhs.uk/units – with a downloadable alcohol units calculator.

Source:   www.ReutersLife.com  May 2008

The public health impact of the Government’s decision to downgrade cannabis is disclosed today in official figures showing a 50 per cent rise in the number of people requiring medical treatment after using the drug.

Since cannabis was downgraded from a Class B to a Class C drug, the number of adults being treated in hospitals and clinics in England for its effects has risen to more than 16 500 a year. In addition, the number of children needing medical attention after smoking the drug has risen to more than 9 200.

Almost 500 adults and children are treated in hospitals and clinics every week for the effects of cannabis.  Its health toll is revealed in official data compiled by health authorities and obtained by The Daily Telegraph.

Drug campaigners last night said the figures proved Labour’s decision to reclassify cannabis in January 2004, which made the penalties for its possession less severe, was badly mistaken and had sent out the wrong signals about it being a “soft” drug.  Doctors say cannabis abuse can contribute to mental health problems including forms of psychosis, paranoia and schizophrenia. There can be harmful physical side-effects, disrupting blood pressure and exacerbating heart and circulation disorders.

The data will add to the pressure on Gordon Brown to reverse its reclassification when a review of the decision by Home Office scientific advisers concludes in the Spring.  Elizabeth Burton-Phillips, a leading campaigner on drug issues since her son, Nick Mills, killed himself in despair at his addiction four years ago, said: “These results are shocking and dreadful. What more evidence do you need? You cannot sweep this under the carpet any longer. Children have to be told of the dangers of this what is wrongly called a soft-drug. It is extremely dangerous and it is destroying healthy, young minds.”

James Clappison, a Conservative member of the Commons home affairs committee, said: “The reclassification of cannabis sent the wrong message and was clearly the wrong decision. These figures show the evident dangers of cannabis abuse and support the case for the drug being restored to Category B.”  The health authority figures show that 16 685 adults were treated by English hospital trusts after abusing cannabis in 2006-07. The previous year, it was 14 828 – up from 11 057 in 2004-05.

The data also shows that the number of children treated for using cannabis has risen from 8 014 in 2005-06 to 9 259 last year. In total, 25 944 people were treated for cannabis use last year – around 498 a week. In addition, around 70 000 people are treated for mental disorder as outpatients each year.

The figures suggest health authorities are treating more people for cannabis abuse than there are patients who have heart bypass operations or treatment for colon cancer. Some 21 000 people a year have a bypass operation and colon cancer is contracted by some 22 000 people a year.

Downgrading cannabis to a Class C drug placed it alongside steroids and some prescription anti-depressants. Possession of them can lead to a two-year prison sentence, but charges are rarely brought against people found with small quantities of such drugs.  Class B drugs however, include more dangerous substances such as amphetamines. People found in possession of Class B drugs can face a five-year jail term and an unlimited fine.

There is no “substitute medication” available to treat cannabis problems, so the majority of National Health Service treatment is carried out by psychiatrists, therapists and counsellors. The independent review into its reclassification, by the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, was prompted by growing concern about the increasing prevalence of new high-strength forms of cannabis. So-called “super-skunk” leaves can be twice as potent as more traditional cannabis resin.

Advocates of downgrading or legalising cannabis say the risks are low compared to those of alcohol and tobacco. Some sufferers of chronic conditions like multiple sclerosis say the drug provides vital pain relief.

Many doctors say the risks outweigh the benefits, and the British Medical Association yesterday said the latest treatment figures strengthened its opposition to the decision to downgrade the drug.  A BMA spokesman said: “This is drug that is mostly smoked, so that can cause lung damage and cancer. There are also concerns about the potential negative effect cannabis has on users’ psychiatric state.”

Addaction, a charity that treats people with drug problems, warned that children suffered particularly from cannabis abuse. “Young people often use cannabis at crucial development stages in their lives, and it does have serious impacts on mental health and physical development,” a spokesman said.

Last night, the Department of Health insisted that the rising numbers of treatments reflect improvements in drug treatment and not rising cannabis use.  However, the department also announced yesterday that the budget for the National Treatment Agency, which co-ordinates drug treatment, will be frozen at 2007 levels for the next three years. The agency will also be expected to find “efficiency savings” of £50 million a year from its £398 million annual budget.

Despite the freeze in his budget, Paul Hayes, the head of the agency, insisted that the number of drug treatments it can fund will rise.  “By becoming more efficient at delivering the best outcomes for individuals we will be able to continue to increase the number of people into treatment, while increasing treatment effectiveness,” he said.

Andrew Lansley, the Conservative health spokesman, said Labour was wasting vast amounts of money. “The Government is ignoring the fact that its drug treatment policy is fundamentally misguided. Conservatives have promised to introduce abstinence-based treatment for drug addicts to help them get off drugs for good,” he said.

Source: Telegraph.co.uk  13th Jan 2008