A brief look at the confusing messages emerging from current ‘prevention’ application in Australian drug policy.

Shane Varcoe – Executive Director “Will the real ‘Drug policy’ please stand up!”

Dalgarno Institute | www.dalgarnoinstitute.org.au 2

QUIT – MODERATE – ACCOMMODATE? WHICH EMPHASIS ARE WE FOLLOWING?

What is going on with Australian Drug Policy Prevention application? It appears to be struggling with, what can only be described, as a Dis-associative Identity Disorder (D.I.D). The current interpretation continues to baffle the average Australian, and leaves many of us who are active in the Alcohol and Other Drug (AOD) field scratching our heads in bewilderment and sometimes utter disbelief!

SMOKING – The new leprosy?

The growing and relentless assault against tobacco via the QUIT campaign is something only ‘mushrooms’ would know little of. This vital and effective demand-reduction and education ‘war’ has been clear from its inception, and has continued to burgeon, evermore aggressively to the crusade we now see today.

The message is at the very least unambiguous, at times, bombastic! There is no guessing what the outcome of this endeavour is to be. The message and mandate is not ‘slow down’, it is not ‘moderate’ it is QUIT. The end game is the only game. There are no illusions about the time it may take to reach that goal, but that goal is the only target to aim at and as a consequence measures and outcomes are effective – more and more Australians are quitting!

Let’s commence by acknowledging the following principle, which is all but irrefutable… accessibility, availability and permissibility all increase consumption. When you reduce these, you reduce consumption. For example, the following details shows how education and legislation all reduced demand. Accessibility, availability and permissibility are all restricted and consumption drops.

In 1945 approximately 72% of Australian men smoked. The rate has been dropping ever since then. In 2007 only 18% of Australian males were daily smokers. In 1945 26% of Australian women smoked…In 2007 women were smoking at a lower rate than men with 15.2% still smoking daily. 1

• increases in getting help to quit smoking, especially use of the Quitline (2% to 4%) and nicotine replacement therapy (7% to 10%);

• increase in one year quit rate from 8% to 11% among smokers and recent quitters;

• a statistically significant reduction of about 1.5% in the estimated adult prevalence of smoking. 2

However, as successful as this message has been, the fight is not over yet, as the following excerpt so irrefutably affirms…

“ANTI-SMOKING campaigners have far from finished their battle with the tobacco industry, with some pushing for a ”license to smoke” and many predicting that cigarettes could be outlawed within a decade.” 3

Well so was the bold opening statement in recent article ‘Now butt out: new push seeks to outlaw cigarettes’ in The Age Newspaper.

Fascinating…outlawing cigarettes, even though around 17% of Australians are still smoking – outrageous! The article went on to note that if such a ban were to take place the government would stand to lose around $6 billion dollars in tax revenue, but save an estimated $31 billion dollars currently spent per annum on smoking related health problems.

No doubt to everyone who is not a smoker this makes good health and fiscal sense…maybe even to some smokers too?    So how is that we have managed to convince a society that a ban could actually be possible on a legal drug – tobacco, that in its boom era (during the 40’s, 50’s and 60’s) was a key social accessory, that a legal ban be actually possible? A quick inventory of the processes engaged may give us some insight…

§ A clear and uncompromising acknowledgement from health, government and fiscal sectors that cigarette smoking was damaging our community.

§ The ensuing resolve that this must change for both fiscal, but more importantly, health reasons.

§ The continuing single voice of disapproval of cigarettes from academics, politicians and health professionals. (Stopped the propaganda of the pro-smoking academics/doctors and started the recognition of the undeniable facts that ‘every cigarette is doing you damage’.)

§ The sustained political will to create and implement policies to bring about change, including increased taxation, total advertising ‘blackouts’ and bans on smoking in defined places.

§ These have been followed by the creation and implementation of Demand Reduction strategies that only grow in number and intensity and the relentless public education campaign on the dangers of smoking.

It would appear from both empirical data that such resolute policies work…even with a once widely accepted and socially palatable ‘legal drug’ like tobacco.   In a recent war of words over the zealous, if not poorly thought through, ‘plain packaging’ strategy, the Federal Minister for Health Nicola Roxon was quoted as saying…. “Big tobacco are fighting to protect their profits, but we are fighting to save lives.” 4 If that vitriol wasn’t enough, she was also quoted in the Australian Newspaper, again in regard to challenges to the plain packaging strategy …‘”We’re Australians. We can make laws in Australia to protect Australians…” 5     Feisty! I like it! However, comes the question… protect Australians from what? Well, Captain Obvious may answer that in this context it would be protection from the health and health budget destroying wrecking ball that is tobacco.

But is ‘health’ the real motivator that is underpinning this zeal for the wellbeing of Australians? I hope it is, but the utter inconsistency of this focused passion belies another agenda. Or is it that some people just can’t see the utter inconsistencies or, at worst, hypocrisies of this unbalanced policy focus?

“We’re Australians. We can make laws in Australia to protect Australians…” 

Nicola Roxon – Federal Minister for Health

If ‘health’ was the sole or main issue, then wouldn’t that same zeal, that same passion for justice of Aussie’s Health be mirrored in other areas of drug policy too? I mean, Roxon is pursuing a policy – plain packaging – that has a number of downsides to it, and only small possibility of a reduction in smoking – But that was enough, it seems, for her to implement the policy! Great I say, go for it, but why doesn’t this same ‘doggedness’ apply to the two other big monsters in the drug arena?

The Federal minister seems passionate about the anti-smoking message, passionate enough to make those sweeping statements we just read – ‘fighting to save lives!’ – ‘Making laws to protect Australians!’ and pursuing every possible vehicle to STOP people killing themselves (and our health budgets)on the way.

In a very recent interview published by the Financial Review, we get a glimpse into some of the motivators behind Roxon’s campaign against tobacco – ‘This is a defining moment for Roxon one that transcends politics and is deeply personal. Her father, a one-time smoker, died of oesophageal cancer at the age of 42…“All of us girls keenly felt the loss of not having our father as we grew up but that is not the same as being out on the street as some families are…it has made me very aware of the impact that smoking can have,” Said Roxon. This mother of a 6 year old daughter went on in the interview to declare that, ”This fight is about the past and the future. “We might be making the world a healthier place for our children, and that is very motivating. I don’t think the political gains will be very high or very quick, but the long-term health impact and feeling [that] you are in government to do some good is rewarding.”’*

I have no issue at all with this motivation from Roxon, I mean it is the personal encounter with tragedy and/or the grief of loss/dysfunction that adds undisputable weight to the abundance of health-destroying evidence that exists. But again, why isn’t this same passion for health/safety/future of children applied to the other life and health destroying drugs in the ‘recreational’ arena? Nicola would do well to spend time at Rehabilitation clinics, with families of alcohol and other drug using individuals who have not only shattered their lives but their families. Countless stories of lives and potential ruined at young ages because a drug was accessible, permissible, available and cheap. This very powerful evidence should also inform the prevention focused emphasis of alcohol and other drugs policy platform. All measures including high volumetric tax, plus clear and powerful warning labels should also be taken immediately to further ensure that children and families have the greatest protection from the damage of these drugs.

Alcohol – The protected substance? 

When it comes to the other ‘legal drug’ the (it would appear) culturally entrenched alcohol – options for management have one glaring omission. Can you guess what it might be? No prizes if you said ‘QUIT’. The conspicuousness of the absence of this goal in the strategy is probably the noisiest of all elephants in the ‘Drug policy’ room. So, why is that?

*’Where there’s smoke there’s fire’ – Financial Review 29/7/2011 http://afr.com/p/home/where_there_smoke_nFtdXlsglhsibzQQCzgyDM 

The Globe, Issue 2, 2011 

 

We seem to have no problems creating what ‘defenders of the right to self destruct’ call a ‘Nanny State’ posture when it comes to cigarette smokers or our indigenous communities for that matter – But when it comes to the rest of the population quitting or abstaining from alcohol, then howls of derision chanting anti-‘Nanny State’ mantras are deafening!

James Campbell in his article ‘wowsers enough to drive you to drink’ featured in Herald-Sun 6 drew out, in his classic libertine framework article, some of the same inconsistencies we are bringing to attention in this paper – but I’m quick to add, for very different reasons. (Of course James would never have used the term ‘wowser’ in his title if he had even an inkling of what it stands for – We Only Want Social Evils Rectified – This of course is what all socially responsible people want. Yes, a free society, but a freedom that doesn’t disregard a) the liberty, safety and wellbeing of others b) the protection of the young, and c) bestowal of dignity on every human being… all of which are casualties when the imbibing begins.)

In his article he noted the data and subsequent recommendations recently released by the Cancer Council, but also what he has interpreted their seeming ‘double standard’ on the ‘drink’ issue. Professor Olver was quoted in the Age as saying… ”If you want to reduce your cancer risk as far as possible [abstinence] would be the option you have.” 7     yet in his article, Campbell states they stopped short of recommending abstinence from alcohol and settled for NHRMC recommendations of ‘a couple of standard drinks at any time’.   ‘The point now is what do we do with that information? Certainly promoting abstinence as an option should be absolutely imperative, but that’s the problem, the ‘A’ word isn’t permitted, even in the ‘optional’ category!’

Now whilst I can see the point of incongruence, I would like to challenge Campbell’s ‘framing’ of the response. It is clear that not all cancers are caused or even added to, by alcohol, but it is equally clear, through evidence based science, that alcohol is carcinogenic.*  The point now is what do we do with that information? Certainly promoting abstinence as an option should be absolutely imperative…but that’s the problem… the ‘A’ word isn’t permitted, even in the ‘optional’ category!

Our culture is either so deeply addicted to this drug or so completely gripped by fear at being labeled something less than human because they don’t drink, that they actually cannot see the option of saying ‘No Thank you!’

Now if this was just, fully developed ‘grown ups’ who don’t care about their health or even worse, are self-medicating the vicissitudes of life with the grog, and never venture into the public space and expose others in the community to their less than sober persona, I suppose it would make less difference if one ‘partook’ (except for the medical and health bills the tax payer will have to fund)! However, it is the vulnerable in our society – the young (under 25 – still developing brains), the mentally ill, the socially and relationally isolated, the violent, the elderly, children and often women, who end up casualties of not only their own drinking, but that of others!

Whilst the link between cigarettes and disease is clear, it is no less clear with alcohol…

Alcohol consumption is the world’s third largest risk factor for disease and disability; in middle-income countries, it is the greatest risk. Alcohol is a causal factor in 60 types of diseases and injuries and a component cause in 200 others. Almost 4% (1 in 25) of all deaths worldwide are attributed to alcohol, greater than deaths caused by HIV/AIDS, violence or tuberculosis. 8

 

A couple of questions that are often conspicuous by their absence, when it comes to the inconsistencies in drug policy when dealing with tobacco and alcohol, are to do with impact on others. Yes, it is good to have gone to considerable lengths to minimise ‘passive smoking’, but what of the impact of what Professor Rob Moodie calls ‘passive drinking’? A couple of quick questions to ponder…

The real tragedy in all this ‘cultural reinforcement’ is that the imperative message for this demographic of abstinence, and delayed onset of drinking as long as possible, has completely disappeared.

When was the last time a cigarette caused a man to beat his wife to death?

When was the last time a cigarette caused an automobile accident killing two and disabling one for life?

When was the last time a cigarette caused a pub brawl or ‘glassing’ incident?

 

For the sake of brevity (and being seen to be too merciless on the sensibility of the Aussie imbiber) the following are just some of the long known, but only recently quantified data on this so called ‘social lubricant’….

 

a) Fiscal Cost: The research by the Australian Education and Rehabilitation Foundation (AER Foundation) has now put the total economic impact of alcohol misuse at $36 billion per annum which is over double 2005 estimates. This comprises $24.7 billion in tangible costs, which include out-of-pocket expenses, forgone wages or productivity and hospital and childcare protection costs. There are a further $11.6 billion in intangible costs, which includes lost quality of life from someone else’s drinking

b) Consumption: Drinking more than ever before, at least 10.2 litres pure alcohol per person per annum 10  , mouth, pharynx and larynx. 1 in 5 cases of breast cancer are linked to alcohol”. 11

c) Cancer: “Alcohol use has been linked to thousands of cases of cancers including bowel 9

d) Violence: There are more than 70,000 Australians who are victims of alcohol related assaults each year

e) Emergency Services: Ambulance Call outs in Greater Melbourne alone, for predominantly alcohol abuse have increased almost 600%: 1998-99: 1043 by 2008-09 it was 6924 13

f) Crime – In just one State alone, alcohol-related crime in Queensland has increased by 30 per cent, and public disorder offences by 65 per cent just in the past few years alone…Alcohol abuse in Queensland is now responsible for 100,000 crimes annually, or one-quarter of all offences.14

…alcohol-fuelled violence and abuse affects one in five people 12 You get the point! This is, if not worse, then at the very least as bad as the smoking issue…. So, why aren’t all zeal, all passion and all strategies being implemented to prevent or stop the impact of alcohol on the Australian people and the economy?

So entrenched is the alcohol culture that according to the Australian Drug Foundation, parental supply has eclipsed all other sources of supply of alcohol to children aged 12-17. Now the excuses  tabled for this kind of outrageous conduct are as follows…

a) Parents want to either, initiate their child into alcohol ‘wisely’ or at least ‘know’ how much they are drinking.

b) Parents want to be friends with their child and not parents. Believing they are avoiding stress at home by giving in to negative social influences.

c) Parents believe that if their children are going to ‘experiment’ then it’s better to do so with the legal drug.

d) ‘It’s part of being Aussie, it’s gunna happen, so might as well try and be ‘responsible’ and give them a hand in using this legal drug ‘properly’.’     So, how has that been working for us as a community? Well the evidence seems to correspond with the mindset. Again an Australian Drug Foundation recent release shows that by 16, one in five teenagers regularly binge drinks; by 18 it is 50 per cent.    It would appear this level of permissibility has only added to accessibility and availability and thus consumption has increased. I mean… ‘after all Mum and Dad are giving it to me and they use it, so it must be ok?’        The real tragedy in all this ‘cultural reinforcement’ is that the imperative message for this vulnerable demographic of abstinence and delayed onset of drinking as long as possible, has completely disappeared. All the scientific evidence reveals that their vulnerable developing brains need this option to be aggressively promoted as best practice and their parents, above all, need to get this reality check too.     Again, what continues to generate this disconnect between policy emphasis around the legal drugs of tobacco and alcohol? Both drugs are legal, but perhaps smoking an easy target now that fewer Australians do it, and is marginalised so much that scathing vitriol and uncompromising legislation will have little opposition?

But, not so with alcohol – Whilst approximately 14% of Australians who are legally permitted to drink, don’t, the amount of alcohol being consumed per person, per annum is near record highs. It would seem that challenging this second ‘monster’ can prove a difficulty, if a) votes matter b) the power brokers themselves are unable to say NO to alcohol; c) It has become the central and often sole ‘social amenity’ or even worse, d) it becomes the medication of choice for the ever growing epidemic of community wide psycho-social dysthymia.

Whatever the reason, a clear gulf exists in zeal, attention and endeavour when we juxtapose tobacco and alcohol. A gulf that screams, at best inconsistency, but at worst hypocrisy!

A quick recap… 

When it comes to tobacco the policy aim for smoking is ‘quit’, and we have no problem aggressively challenging ‘smoking’ as a reckless act that needs stronger management. We have used Prohibition in its legal context to prevent smoking in a number of places and breaches of such prohibitions have met with not only social censure, but a fiscal punitive response – fines. And in this framework there appears no fear about attracting the pejorative ‘nanny state’ label.

 

When it comes to Alcohol, the policy aim (at the moment at least) is to avoid the ‘nanny state’ label, calling instead for management, more like a caring friend provoking a peer to a healthier choice. So the push seems to be toward ‘moderation’.

 

But what is happening in the arena of current illicit drug policy?

We appear to be losing the plot – the pro-drug lobby is trying to take over the judiciary, if not legislature!

When it comes to illicit drugs there appears to be a departure from all regulatory sanity. The ‘State’, on whose advice we can easily guess (George Soros funded propagandists) works ruthlessly to assassinate, mutilate and bury all processes that are focused on prevention or abstinence. Such processes the patronizingly dump into the ‘Nanny-State’ model/basket . Nor, would it seem are they interested in a Good Parent model, or even the ‘caring friend’ model… No, it would appear from all current debate this confederacy has opted for the ‘go with whatever feeling grabs you; it’s your ‘right’ and let the State clean up the mess’ approach!

 

There appears little to no censure, no label of ‘bad’ or ‘harmful’ or ‘destructive’ to the conduct that is illicit drug using. In fact great pains are taken to remove all terms from public documents that could potentially ‘marginalise’ the drug user. Whilst ‘name calling’ should never be condoned, conduct that is illegal and destructive needs to be called for what it is and measures taken to change it. Whether the terms are legal or medical, they can never be ‘neutral’, or worse complimentary and condoning.

What is of greater concern is the tacit message oozing through the permissive interpretation of Harm Minimisation policy by the Harm Reduction Only Lobby, which is that the State sanctions and promotes – not challenges or changes – a drug user’s ‘habit’. (Yet it is the ‘habit’ that needs to change – more on that later.)

For example, they seem to be saying :

 

a) Please come to a special place with your illegal substance and we will assist you to take the drug of your choice (Medically Supervised Injecting Centre – MSIC). At no point will anyone ‘judge’ you for your ‘lifestyle choice’. Instead we will ensure you are comfortable and enabled in your drug taking activity whilst funding this process with tax-payer’s money. (No matter that this process breaks international laws on illicit drug use)

 

b) We will give you as many clean ‘needles’ as you like and will not hold you accountable for the return of used ones. In fact we will pay someone to go around and pick up your discarded syringes so you can continue to be free (not irresponsible, that would be pejorative)to continue, unhindered in your substance use, wherever and whenever you choose.

 

c) If the substance user opts to seek a change in conduct, only then may we humbly recommend a referral to a treatment facility. However, after we have just enabled you to continue your substance abuse (in our MSIC) and you are ‘feeling’ better (yet getting worse) after your State assisted ‘fix’, then it is unlikely that you’ll ‘feel’ the need for detox, let alone rehabilitate. So, the passive referral is ignored or forgotten.

 

d) If you are one of the single digit percentage of substance users that actually ‘follows through’ on referral, then no requirement will be placed on you to become drug free. No, we are only interested in trying to minimise your potential to kill yourself and make you as comfortable as possible. We will introduce you to other substances that may, or may not lead you to drug free recovery, but again, that is NOT our aim. This, after all, is only for the ‘problematic’ drug user and we must not have anyone feeling discomfort or distress from the withdrawal from drug use, even if is for a week – That would be ‘unkind’. So rather than treat you like a precious, intelligent, whole human being, we’ll simply treat you like a wounded pet and only treat the symptoms and not address the real problem.

 

e)  The recent aggressive upsurge of promotion and use of, so called, ‘legal highs’ has produced an even clearer manifestation of this policy D.I.D/hypocrisy/inconsistencies. As these synthesized ‘designer’ concoctions started getting a more public profile, several States in Australia were quick to react by imposing age restrictions and then applying significant financial penalties (six figure fines) for those involved in distributing/using these products. Yet in some of these same States the use of current illicit drugs such as cannabis (and other currently illicit drugs that have clearly documented health damaging properties) attracts no more than a slap on the wrist for use and little more for trafficking!

It would seem no effort is spared, to ensure the drug user is rarely, if ever, is called to make changes. More than that, and at any point, an act of horrendous nature can be perpetrated against another citizen as we saw recently in the senseless murder of a deaf octogenarian pensioner, murdered by yet another (it would appear by the new label) ‘problematic drug user’. Diminished responsibility, mitigation, equivocation, even obfuscation, are employed to avoid ownership of the issue by the substance user. What’s more disturbing is that at no point is the abysmally interpreted Harm Minimisation Policy used to bring about change, let alone drug free wellness of these dysfunctional people.

The following (conveniently) long forgotten words of the remarkable Statesmen, Edmund Burke, are even more appropriate today than at any other time in recent history…

 

“Men are qualified for liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites… Society cannot exist, unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere; and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without. It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters.” Sir Edmund Burke

 

The very thing that is needed as outlined by Burke is the very thing the pro-drug lobby works tirelessly to negate. Morality is ‘off the table’ in this arena (The only time morality is invoked these days is when it comes to climate change; nowhere else is this allowed in the public discourse) In this ‘amoral’ space all attempts to impugn drug taking are perceivably removed. Terms like ‘wrong’, ‘bad’ ‘irresponsible’ are no longer permitted. So, if it is no longer referred to as ‘wrong’ then comes the next manipulative question: on what grounds should substance use still be illegal? The next step is to turn the debate into a purely ‘health’ issue. It is true, it is also a health issue, but, it is still a social, psychological and moral issue as well. But even just at the level of health policy, would think that all measures should be taken to rectify the dysfunction /disorder/ailment in order to remove the health damaging substances at least from the patient, even if not the community. Ah, but no, that’s not the agenda of this lobby faction is it!

 

The health issue is invoked only to manage some of the damage of substance taking and other second tier outcomes of these bad health choices, such as blood borne infections and or death. The call now in this decriminalised, so called amoral and consequence avoiding space, is that all health measures be taken to keep the patient alive and as healthy as possible to continue their ‘lifestyle choice’ of drug consumption.

 

This is not Australian – Time to Stand up!

At the moment the vast majority of Australians are still smart enough to know (perhaps drug free enough to know) that ultimately there I absolutely no gain/benefit in illicit drug use for individuals or society;

Ø The current National Household survey (2007) has the vast majority of Australians declaring their disapproval of illicit drugs and their use.

 

99% don’t want use of hard drugs accepted 

95% don’t want hard drugs legalized 

94% don’t want use of cannabis accepted 

79% don’t want cannabis legalized 

Most Australians want tougher penalties for drug dealers.15 

 

Ø The largest youth survey done in our nation with a sample of around 50,000 young people saw alcohol and others drugs as the second highest on ‘what is an important issue for Australia’. This issue is the most worrying to the youngest in this most susceptible to damage of Australia’s demographic – the ones we need most protect – our children 16

 

When the overwhelming majority of people disapprove of illicit drugs, it might just be a cue to do something more significant than concede ground to it. You’d think that even the process (let alone value) of democracy, had any weight then the above mentioned majority opinion would mandate all and every action be taken to eradicate illicit drug use from society. According to collected data, around 6% of the world’s population aged between 15 and 64 currently use illicit drugs. 17 Australia’s stats are only a little higher than that. So here we have a user group that is arguably (at most) between a half or a third of current tobacco users, who are involved in a wilful breaking of the law to their own and the wider community’s detriment generating an exorbitant cost to our community.

So what has the response been to this? Well, it depends on where you look, who you talk to and who is playing the strings of the propaganda harp.

 

In recent years there has been a rising noise, about the need for illicit drug policy change. The standard mantra has been ‘the war on drugs has failed!’ Consequently we need to stop and rethink our processes and priorities.

 

What ‘war on drugs’? Where did this notion come from?

Well, let’s pretend for a moment there actually was a ‘war on drugs’. How could it possibly be won? Well, again it depends on how this ‘war’ was fought and what priorities were set. If the war on drugs simply attempted supply removal and arrest, then it will have limited success. However, as with most ‘battle strategies’, if they only have one tactic, then success will always be limited or the potential for failure increased. If a ‘war on drugs’ isn’t really waged as it should be then it is locked into only limited success and more likely subject to criticism of its limitation. However, as in all wars the first casualty is always truth and that is no different in this theatre of combat, as the following reveals…

The term “war on drugs” was not used in 1971 and is not used today by anyone except those who mischaracterize history and current drug policy in the US. However, if one were going to connect the term to President Nixon, then it would be more accurate to say that Nixon ended, rather than launched, the “war on drugs.”

The Nixon Administration repealed federal mandatory minimum sentences for marijuana, and on June 17, 1971, for the first time in US history, the long-dominant law enforcement approach to

drug policy, known as “supply reduction”, was augmented by an entirely new and massive commitment to prevention, intervention and treatment, known as “demand reduction”. President Nixon announced this new, balanced approach to drug policy and it received full bipartisan support. Since that time, the idea of taking a balanced approach has enjoyed strong and sustained support through the terms of the seven US Presidents that followed. The US drug prevention policy, fully described in the annual National Drug Control Strategy published by ONDCP, maintains this twin-commitment to supply reduction and demand reduction, with the aim of reducing illegal drug use and the corresponding medical and social burdens that drug abuse imposes upon our nation.18

Supply reduction remains a key tactical component and criminalisation will always lend weight to that vital strategy component. Time and space here will not permit us to go into all the local and national impact on drug use that supply reduction has facilitated, but just two examples will give us a clear indication

a) ABS 2000 death stats collection: Heroin: 417; methadone: 118;Benzos: 403; anti-depressants: 268; Cannabis: 49 Note the reduction in Heroin deaths the following year when the heroin drought (for whatever reason) caused availability to dry up, the ABS 2001 death stats collection showed: Heroin: 113; methadone: 107;Benzos: 252; anti-depressants: 194; cannabis: 28!

b) According to the Australian Institute of Criminology, the four top reasons why detained illicit drug users had not used in the previous month 19 was in order of main reason to least.

1) Dealer didn’t have drug of choice (highest reason by far)

2) No Dealers available

3) Poor quality product

4) Police presence

 

 

“When you reduce permissibility, accessibility and availability you reduce consumption.”  

I want you to notice that supply reduction elements are the key factor in reducing illicit drug consumption. Again, when you reduce permissibility, accessibility and availability you reduce consumption. This is why complementary Supply Reduction strategies are imperative in conjunction with Demand Reduction strategies and compulsory detox and rehabilitation strategies.

When Ethan Nadelmann and Dr. Alex Wodak, the well-known supporters/ purveyors of the George Soros brand of cultural chaos, were on the media stage peddling their brand of harm ‘reduction’( (including the decriminalisation of illicit drugs), the voices of dissent from any other quarter were hard to hear, but not because they don’t exist considering over 90% of Australians disapprove of illicit drugs. It was the classic situation where the sane majority simply expect the government to do all that is necessary to eliminate drug use without bothering to mobilise against that small, but very ‘squeaky wheel ‘of pro-drug propaganda at legislators doors. Consequently, the long standing anti-drug movements were given no space at all.

The Nadelmann/Wodak ‘spin’ had people believing prohibition drug policy had failed and therefore the only option left was to decriminalise or legalise. They even used cleverly spun unrelated science and misrepresented data from other nations and calling that ‘enlightened’ (Such as the so called Portugal decriminalisation ‘success’). Or they hijacked the debate away from drug use and placed it in the framework of management of damage caused by drug use, which actually increases dysfunction.

 

It is remarkable that few clinicians or policy makers care to see or even acknowledge that the current illicit drug policy in Australia (among other western nations) has be completely hijacked by the single dimensional ‘harm reduction’ element and that has distanced them even further from the problems of drug use.

This one dimensional focus has barely anything to do with drug use and absolutely nothing to do with reducing drug use. ‘Harm Reduction’ as it currently stands, when it is all distilled down to its core (a one step process) is only focused on the attempted prevention of death and blood borne infections. Whilst this may be a noble aim, we need to move drug policy back to the forgotten reduction or prevention of drug use in our society. We are all for having a policy for reducing the spread of blood borne infections and death, but let’s call it that and move drug policy back to what drug policy is supposed to be about – the prevention and reduction of drug use in our society. Of course, even a ‘blind man’ could see, that if you prevent and/or reduce drug use, you reduce the incidence of the other damage so focused on – but that is the very thing the pro-drug lobby doesn’t want to happen, the reduction of drug use! They advocate continuation of drug use, funded by tax-payer’s who keep them alive and pay for their treatment.

 

So in our mind, an unavoidable question is – Where was Federal Minister for Health, Roxon on these issues? Where was the same zeal that was focused on cigarettes? At the time where this ‘drug reform’ lobby has used special arguments to remove the protection, where was the declaration, ‘making laws that protect Australians’ from substances that have long been banned because of the undeniable damage they do?

 

Is it utter ignorance that generates this silence? Or is it as one prominent AOD Clinician once said ‘Harm minimisation is just a euphemism for ‘we don’t know what the hell to do, so we’ve just given up!’. Or is it, reason spare us, a tacit yet wilful pursuit of cultural sabotage foisted on society because a minority of drug users who believe they can control their ‘habit’ have ‘friends’ in high places?

 

Prohibition is a word that has been marginalised and disparaged, again by hijacking the meaning and reinterpreting it in a different context – the context of purely a moral control of a majority. However, prohibition is, in this context, a matter of law and not a simple moral based endeavour. We prohibit by law things that are injurious to individuals and the community. With Tobacco law, cigarette smoking is prohibited in restaurants, government buildings, some public spaces, inside cars and so on. Illicit drugs are prohibited at a higher level because of the health, family and social damage and the impediment of function and increased danger they that create. The prohibiting is based on minimising the harms done by these toxins to the community and individuals. Decriminalisation will only lead to greater substance use and experimentation and simply bolsters well the ranks of the damaged and dysfunctional. It will perpetuate this damage in an emerging generation that has little capacity to handle it. This is a crime!

Will the real drug policy emphasis, please stand up and will it stand for health, justice, responsibility and protection of the young?

Shane Varcoe – Executive Director, Dalgarno Institute.

*“Alcohol and Cancer in the spotlight: Studies in Europe and Australia confirm alcohol as a cause of cancer, but role of moderate drinking controversial”, The Globe, Issue 2, 2011

 

 

Endnotes

1 http://www.cancercouncil.com.au/editorial.asp?pageid=371

2 CHANGES ASSOCIATED WITH THE NATIONAL TOBACCO CAMPAIGN PRE AND POST CAMPAIGNSURVEYS COMPARED by Melanie Wakefield http://www.health.gov.au/internet/main/publishing.nsf/Content/health-pubhlth-publicat-document-metadata-tobccamp.htm/$FILE/tobccamp_c.pdf

3 Stark , Jill The Age, 22.5. 2011 http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/now-butt-out-new-push-seeks-to-outlaw-cigarettes-20110521-1ey2s.html#ixzz1OBTg5SRQ

4 http://www.smokernewsworld.com/market-cheap-cigarettes/

5 Nicola Roxon solid on cigarette packaging Sallie Don and Sue Dunlevy From: The Australian May 27, 2011 http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/nicola-roxon-solid-on-cigarette-packaging/story-fn59niix-1226063781056

6 James Campbell – wowsers enough to drive you to drink, page 78, Sunday Herald-Sun May 28, 2011,

7 http://www.theage.com.au/lifestyle/wellbeing/quit-drinking-to-cut-cancer-risk-20110501-1e38g.html

8 Global Status Report on Alcohol and Health. Taken from Introduction page x, ISBN 978 92 4 156415 1 (NLM classification: WM 274) © World Health Organization 2011

9 Alcohol Education and Rehabilitation Foundation – Range and Magnitude of Alcohol’s Harm to Others August 2010

10 Wine link to rise in alcohol intake, Sikora, Kate; Page 16, Herald-Sun Edition 1 – 2/11/2010

11 Medical Journal of Australia (published May 2011)

12 Alcohol Education and Rehabilitation Foundation – Range and Magnitude of Alcohol’s Harm to Others August 2010

13 http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/more-news/mateship-abandoned-drunks-left-behind/story-fn7x8me2-1226063706968

14 “Punch Drunk Campaign”, QLD Courier Mail – July 2009

15 The 2007 Illicit Drug Strategy Household Survey of Australian attitudes to illicit drug usage and “Drugs and suicide main worries for the young, says survey, The West Australian, 26/11/2009

16 National Survey of Young Australians 2010 – key and emerging issues; Mission Australia. 2011

17 ‘Should drugs be legalised” by Dr Ian OLIVER is a former Chief Constable of Grampian Police, 2009

18 Global Commission on Drug Policy Offers Reckless, Vague Drug Legalization Proposal; Current Drug Policy Should be improved through innovative linkage of Prevention, Treatment and the Criminal Justice System

(Commentary – IBH (Institute for Behaviour & Health) July 2011

19 Crime Fact Sheet No 152 ‘Reasons for not buying drugs’ ( July 2007)

 

 

 

 

Just another example of how those who want to legalise drugs – especially marijuana

(cannabis) spread their message – this is clearly aimed at teenagers, it is a fun game

to play on their smartphones – and the underlying message is ‘this game is fun – marijuana is fun’………

Game for Smartphones

For those who have always wanted to sell some weed, there is a free game currently climbing the iTunes charts called “Weed Firm,” which is a pot slinging simulator for smartphones that allows users to sell marijuana without running the risk of an actual law enforcement shakedown. The goal of the game is simple: to become the world’s largest black market marijuana mogul, while maintaining a safe distance from anyone with the authority to put you in jail. Starting with a single plant, players care for their precious product in hopes of turning their cannabis investment it into a handful of cash.

In the game, players sell weed to an assortment of characters, including strippers, who will offer you lap dances and pick your cash coffers bone dry. You also have to pay the police to keep the heat off as well outsmart pesky gangsters trying to reign in on your action.

Weed Firm is a fun and highly addictive method of killing time, anyone interested in playing should probably download it right away because we can’t imagine how this game got past the Apple police into the iTunes store.

However, there is speculation that Apple will not inflict its wrath on developer Manitoba Games by getting rid of Weed Firm, simply because the company was smart enough to incorporate a disclaimer at the beginning of the game, which states, “The creators of this game do not encourage the cultivation or use of cannabis. The plot of this game is solely a work of fiction and should be viewed only as such.”

Source:  High Times  May 2014

For those of you looking for a tool to turn back the tide of pro-pot lobbyists and profiteers, I highly recommend this excellent article written by John Walters and Tom Riley.

I have long advocated treating the pot-industry like its kissing cousin – Big Tobacco – and the authors have made the case for doing so now.

The cultural and economic tsunami unleashed upon the American public by the pro-legalization crowd is causing damage in every state, making Big Pot ripe for litigation. So far, the litigation has been one-sided – pot profiteers suing local, county and state governments every time sensible restrictions are employed against them. But how do pot manufacturers and distributors defend themselves against harms caused by defective products that are sold in violation of federal law and without the approval of the FDA? And how do some governmental agencies facilitate these crimes without scrutiny from the courts?

It is time for us to fight back. If our own executive and legislative branches will not protect us from tobacco industry-like tactics, then it is time for the courts to be employed. Monte

Published on The Weekly Standard (http://www.weeklystandard.com)

—————————————————————————————-

Can marijuana retailers survive the tort bar?

John P. Walters. Tom Riley

May 26, 2014, Vol. 19, No. 35

The legalization of marijuana in Colorado and Washington has spawned reports of increased use, declining perception of risk, increased neonatal risk, drug tourism, diversion of public assistance to fund use, creation of significantly more powerful forms of the drug, and new financial rules to permit money from drug sales to enter the banking system. President Obama, moreover, proclaims marijuana use is no more dangerous than drinking alcohol or smoking tobacco—virtually assuring that the legalization of marijuana will be a defining domestic policy of his presidency. That is a matter for politics and history. A more pressing question for us is how families and communities can protect themselves from this unfolding debacle.

Marijuana legalization—and what some now suggest will be the legalization of all drugs—is dangerous, but not unstoppable. Indeed, the dangers can be turned against the forces of legalization. The new drug retailers are known businesses. They sell a dangerous, addictive product, and they need a substantial number of addicted users as their customer base to generate the profits they seek. In other words, addiction is not a byproduct, it is a business plan. 

As these businesses grow more powerful, they deploy lobbyists to pressure government leaders to write laws that improve their bottom lines. Hence recent efforts to eliminate regulations that keep drug money out of our banks. Legislation that improves the viability of these businesses also increases the number of stakeholders with an incentive to boost sales. Even one advocate of legalization admits there will be at least a 50-percent increase in use. This is a public health and safety catastrophe.

President Obama and some other intelligent Americans are eager to deny the overwhelming evidence of the harm illegal drugs do. Yet the harm caused by marijuana is clearer than ever, thanks to research conducted in recent years. Marijuana use is linked to diminished academic achievement, short-term memory loss, and impaired judgment. It impedes motor skills and diminishes impulse control, which contributes to violent behavior and weakened self-control in general. Marijuana use worsens, and perhaps triggers, serious mental illness—including depression, psychosis, and suicidal thoughts and actions. And marijuana users permanently increase their risk of addiction and perhaps the risk of addiction for their children, according to some of the latest research findings.

For years, the federal government has reported that marijuana is the most prominent drug causing individuals to need treatment for addiction. Today, it is the source of more addiction referrals than all other illegal drugs combined. Of the roughly 7 million individuals the federal government estimates need treatment (almost certainly an undercount), over 4 million have a primary or exclusive dependence on marijuana. Moreover, marijuana dependence among teens exceeds even their dependence on alcohol, long more easily available and widely used.

With the open sale of formerly illegal drugs, the number of users will grow. Some advocates expect legalization to destroy criminal markets by providing cheaper drugs, which should boost sales. If the legal market does not produce discounts, however, the black market will continue to operate in parallel with the new higher-end market—a kind of “fast-food” network persisting alongside the new “gourmet” outlets. Either way, the result is increased use and increased profits.

But communities are not helpless before this onslaught. Even when the criminal law has been compromised at the state level, resort to civil procedure might offer protection. Legal or illegal, marijuana injures users—researchers call it a “neurotoxin”—and those who distribute it for profit are liable for its known effects. Its production and distribution, after all, are still federal crimes. America’s tort attorneys could respond by suing drug retailers for the harm done by their product to particular addicts, then collecting damages for the clients and legal fees for themselves. 

This approach would not depend on the president or federal, state, or local government policy. It would require only a victim, a drug trafficker, a capable lawyer, and a sympathetic jury. Some law firms could afford to take such cases as a pro bono service to families. They already see for themselves that growing drug addiction makes their communities unattractive to legitimate businesses. Philanthropies concerned about the disadvantaged could also push this initiative forward. 

Some clever attorneys might partner directly with treatment providers for referrals. Others might advertise on billboards, buses, television, and radio. They might find that YouTube and sites on the Internet are a vast repository of self-incrimination. 

In addition, the retailers of marijuana as medicine—whether for smoking or eating in baked goods, candy, and ice cream—should be easy targets of legal action. There is scant evidence of legitimate medical efficacy and much evidence that “medical marijuana” is a calculated fraud producing large profits. Far from approving it, the FDA has written a letter denying that smoked marijuana is medicine.

If you think trial lawyers made a windfall on tobacco, just wait until they get a handle on marijuana. The scientific and medical evidence against marijuana now dwarfs what we knew about tobacco at the time of the surgeon general’s report of 1964. No warning label in the world could shield marijuana growers and sellers from the tsunami of tort liability they should face from distributing a product with so many known harmful effects.

Everyone loves the tale of Robin Hood because it is a story of justice—taking from oppressors and giving to the oppressed. That story is about to be reenacted with a drug-dealing-retailer near you. The rule of law is a beautiful thing; it can protect our democracy in times of danger even when national leaders and government institutions fail. 

John P. Walters, director of drug control policy for President George W. Bush, is chief operating officer of the Hudson Institute. Tom Riley, director of public affairs in the Office of National Drug Control Policy for President George W. Bush, writes on public policy in Philadelphia.

Source: www.weeklystandard.com     Vol.19 No.35   26th May 2014

A casual marijuana smoker, Kyle Naylor figured he’d give edible marijuana products a try to see if they’d curb his anxiety and insomnia. It didn’t go well.

Eighty minutes into his experiment, Naylor got intensely sick and lost control of his body. By 90 minutes, he was hyperventilating, freaking out and heading to the emergency room.  “For me, the effect from smoking marijuana was completely different than ingesting it,” says Naylor, 30.   On Jan. 1, Colorado became the first state to legalize recreational use of marijuana — Washington state expects to begin legal retail sales this summer — and commercially made edible products have become a popular alternative to smoking pot.

Though brownies laced with illegal marijuana have quietly made the rounds at parties around the USA for decades, adults now can walk into state-licensed stores here and buy professionally manufactured edibles, from candy to soda and granola.

But this is not just a story about happy highs. Two deaths connected with edible marijuana products have Colorado lawmakers scrambling to toughen regulations and experts warning of bizarre behavior as consumers eat powerful pot-infused foods.

Experts say the amount of marijuana in edibles can vary widely, and in some cases, the levels are so high people report extreme paranoia and anxiety bordering on psychotic behavior.

“You can feel like you’re dying,” says Genifer Murray of CannLabs, a Colorado-approved marijuana potency testing lab. Murray says inexperienced users easily can overdose on marijuana edibles because the effects take longer to kick in than smoking.

The concerns follow two nationally prominent incidents. In the first, a college student from Wyoming jumped to his death March 11 from a Denver hotel balcony after eating a marijuana cookie. Witnesses told police that Levi Thamba Pongi, 19, was rambling incoherently after eating a large serving of the doped cookie. The Denver coroner ruled that “marijuana intoxication” was a significant factor in his death.

And Richard Kirk of Denver faces first-degree murder charges stemming from the fatal shooting of his wife inside their home in April. Kirk’s wife called 911 to report he was hallucinating and rambling after eating marijuana candy and taking prescription medication. Kristine Kirk died while on the phone with a police dispatcher.

“On the recorded call, Mrs. Kirk can be heard telling Richard to stay down and yelling for her kids to go downstairs,” according to a search warrant affidavit. “At one point, Mrs.

Kirk tells the 911 operator ‘please hurry’ because he was scaring the kids and he was ‘totally hallucinating.’ ”

Edibles give users a different kind of high than the one they get from smoking marijuana, largely because the pot is absorbed through the stomach instead of the lungs. The effects are slower to arrive, generally last longer and can be more intense because people unwittingly eat more than they intend to. On the other hand, people who smoke pot get high quickly, allowing them to better regulate how stoned they’re getting.

“When you’re smoking, you reach a certain level of highness … and forget to keep smoking,” says Denver forensic psychologist Max Wachtel, who counsels youth offenders. “It’s in our nature to accidentally overuse edibles.”

Naylor says that’s what happened to him: He ate the recommended dose of ¼ of the cookie and waited an hour. When nothing happened, he ate more. “I didn’t realize it would be such an intense and different high after that long,” he says.

Under regulations that took effect last week, edible marijuana products cannot contain more than 100 mg of THC, the compound in marijuana that gets users high. But there’s no standard for the size of those products. That means one candy bar can contain the same amount of THC as an entire bag of cookies.

The regulations apply only to marijuana for recreational use; medical marijuana products can be much stronger but are available for legal purchase only with a doctor’s recommendation.  Colorado lawmakers agreed this week to spend $10 million to study the effects of marijuana use and to require better labeling of edibles, while barring them from being made into products “primarily marketed to children.”

Lawmakers also approved a measure that would lower the amount of marijuana-infused oil or butter that can be sold to consumers. Infused oils and butters contain concentrated marijuana at levels far higher than contained in the plant itself.

State regulators are considering whether to mandate portion sizes, which would help standardize the amount of marijuana in a candy bar or a soda.

Legalization opponents such as state Rep. Frank McNulty say the brightly packaged edibles appeal to kids who might not stop to read the tiny print warning that a Tootsie Roll-size candy contains the equivalent of multiple joints. Opponents also worry about the easy availability of edibles. On April 22, a school in northern Colorado suspended several students who brought both marijuana and pot edibles into the building, which they said they stole from their grandparents.

“They need to stop lacing kids’ snacks with THC … and standardize these servings,” says McNulty, a Republican who represents the Denver suburb of Highlands Ranch. McNulty sponsored two bills that would toughen marijuana regulations this legislative session.

“Whatever is in that brownie, you’re on it for the entire ride. There’s no ability to self-regulate with edibles.”

Wachtel, the psychiatrist, says the difference between smoking a joint and consuming an edible is much like that between drinking hard liquor and beer. You can slam five shots before feeling the effects but can tell you’re getting drunk after drinking five beers.   “You’re getting a ton more THC” in edibles, Wachtel says. “There’s a real potential for danger.”

Murray of CannLabs says Nayor’s experience is fairly typical for first-time users of edible products. CannLabs is one of a handful of labs certified by Colorado to test marijuana edibles for potency and contaminants.

She says scientific testing is an important safeguard for consumers, especially first-time users. “You need to make sure you know what’s in it and how it’s going to affect your body,” Murray says.  Because Colorado is the first state to legalize recreational marijuana, regulators have no best-practice rules to borrow from other states or the federal government, which considers marijuana an illegal drug, says Lewis Koski, director of Colorado’s Marijuana Enforcement Division. “We were really starting from scratch,” he says.

Supermarket foods and meats, along with alcohol and tobacco, are regulated at the state and federal levels. Prescription drugs must undergo extensive safety tests and regulatory scrutiny before being sold to the public, and even then only with a doctor’s guidance.  Manufacturers of edible products say it’s easy to eat too much, but they dismiss the idea that someone who gets high from eating pot candy would grab a gun or jump off a balcony.

“If you eat too much marijuana, you have hot flashes and cold flashes and then you get under the covers and pass out. You don’t start waving a gun around,” says Steve Horwitz of Denver’s Ganja Gourmet. “”Any marijuana user who consumes edibles will, sooner or later, accidentally eat too much. It’s very unpleasant.”

Under the regulations that took effect last week, edible products will be tested for strength and how well the marijuana is dispersed within a batch of brownies or candy. Batches that contain more than 100 mg of THC per package cannot be sold to recreational users. Starting June 1, smokeable marijuana will be strength-tested and the results made public.

Until then, it’s buyer beware.

Source:   USA Today  8th May 2014

Prisoners increasingly using ‘spice’, which is undetectable but has put growing numbers of users in hospital Spice: the drug ‘more devilish than weed’ sweeping British prisons Link to video: Spice: the drug ‘more devilish than weed’ sweeping British prisons

Synthetic cannabis known as “spice” or “black mamba” is a growing problem in UK prisons with serious physical and mental health consequences, the chief inspector of prisons, Nick Hardwick has said.

Its popularity with inmates has surged because the psychoactive designer drug can be passed off as a tobacco roll-up, has no distinctive smell and it evades current drug testing capabilities in prisons.

In a Guardian Films investigation, we spoke to several prisoners, former prisoners and officials and analysed Her Majesty of Prisons Inspectorate (HMIP) reports that revealed it had become a problem in at least 28 prisons in England.

Several former prisoners said the drug was rife inside, having been thrown over the walls or otherwise smuggled in, and one said its lack of smell meant it could be smoked in front of the guards. Another, a remand prisoner currently at HMP Forest Bank near Manchester, said in a telephone interview that some of those using it were “going down like flies”. He said it had led to multiple calls to the emergency services.

“I’ve never seen anything like it in prison. Guys are taking it and having psychotic episodes all over the place. Ambulances are coming in and out of the place more frequently than the escort vans,” he said. It is not clear how many of these incidents involved other drugs in combination. The recent annual Global Drug Survey (GDS), which surveys thousands of drug users on their experiences, indicated that users of synthetic cannabis were seven times more likely to need hospital treatment than users of the natural form of the drug. Several deaths in the US have been blamed on spice, which is made from dried plants sprayed with engineered chemicals.

“What we can say for definitive is that spice is a significant problem in a number of prisons and it is rising,” Hardwick told the Guardian.

“As opiate-based drugs become less popular, spice has become a more favoured option. We’ve seen examples where its affected people’s heart and so have had to have emergency treatment. It has affected people’s mental health and what it it seems to do is exacerbate people’s existing conditions”.

There was currently no effective test for the drug, he said.

The HMIP reports describe prisoners who have taken the drug experiencing seizures, psychosis, loss of motor control and an irregular heartbeat. At HM Prison Ford in West Sussex, the prison’s drugs and alcohol recovery team said 85% of its prisoners were using or supplying spice.

A government ban on spice-like drugs in place since 2009 does not cover many newer and often more potent versions as the chemicals used to synthesise them are different. .

Spice-like drugs can still be bought on the high street and online on the basis that they are not for human consumption.

At HMP Wealstun in West Yorkshire, a notice issued to practitioners and visitors to the prison and made available to the Guardian reveals that in a two-week period in March, 13 prisoners required medical attention after using synthetic cannabis, and five cases were so severe that they were rushed to hospital.

Glyn White, 35, who has served time in more than 15 prisons including Norwich, Leicester, Weyland and Ranby, said he first noticed synthetic cannabis in 2006. He first smoked it in 2012, and said he witnessed grown men experiencing breakdowns. “I saw people pass out. I saw people cut themselves. I took it and had to go to my cell for a couple hours because that buzz is intense when you ain’t had no weed,” he said.

“I went to Weyland. It just exploded there. It was selling for £100 a gram. That is better than selling the buds [natural cannabis]. It don’t smell and is easier to conceal. When I got out of prison I started smoking a bit of it, but I reckon its worse than weed.”

Dr John Ramsey, a toxicologist based at St Georges University London, told the Guardian that testing for drugs such as spice was difficult because manufacturers change their composition changes so often. “The number of chemicals you can think of that would mimic cannabis is a very, very large number. Whatever you do, you can probably tinker with the molecule and find a way around it because they are a very diverse group of compounds.”

The list of drugs prisoners are tested for has not been updated for five years and does not include synthetic agents, but a Ministry of Justice spokesman said it had commissioned scientists to devise a test for new psychoactive substances.

The government has also introduced an amendment to the criminal justice and courts bill to expand prisons’ power to test for non-controlled drugs.

The spokesperson told the Guardian: “Prison staff take the use of any illicit substances in prison extremely seriously and use a range of robust measures to find them, including interrogation, intelligence, searches, specially trained dogs and random drug tests. Anyone caught with them will be dealt with severely and may be referred to the police for prosecution.

“The misuse of new psychoactive substances is an issue affecting many parts of society, including prisons.”

The psychoactive chemicals tend to be imported from pharmaceutical companies abroad, most notably in China, and then blended in the UK.

The terms spice initially referred one brand of synthetic cannabis, but now all forms of the drug. Other names also include K2 and clockwork orange.

Source:   www.theguardian.com  15th  May 2014

Parents’ attitudes toward substance use may help to explain observed racial/ethnic variations in prescription drug misuse among teens, reports a study in the May Journal of Developmental & Behavioral Pediatrics, the official journal of the Society for Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics.

“Our findings add support to growing evidence that parents continue to remain a vital part of adolescents’ decision-making, particularly regarding potentially risky behaviors,” according to the new research by Brigid M. Conn, MA, and Amy K. Marks, PhD, of Suffolk University, Boston.

Parent Disapproval Linked to Lower Rate of Drug Misuse The researchers analyzed data on prescription drug misuse from a national survey of more than 18,000 adolescents. “Misuse and abuse of prescription drugs is one of the fastest growing drug epidemics in the United States,” the researchers write.

As in previous studies, Caucasian teens had the highest rates of prescription drug misuse. For example, 3.4 percent of Caucasian adolescents misused tranquilizers, compared to 2.9 percent of Hispanic and 0.9 percent of African American youth.

In contrast to previous studies, teens from higher-income families had lower rates of prescription drug misuse. Rates were also higher in older adolescents, and in girls compared to boys. The teens were also asked about their parents’ and peers’ attitudes toward specific types of substance use. Parental disapproval was associated with lower rates of prescription drug misuse—although this effect varied by race/ethnicity. Even though Caucasian teens had the highest rates of prescription drug misuse, those whose parents strongly disproved of all types of substance use were at lower risk than teens in the two minority groups.

Strong parental disapproval of alcohol use was linked to lower rates of prescription drug misuse in African American teens, while parental disapproval of marijuana use was a stronger factor for Hispanic teens. Dr. Marks comments, “No matter what the ethnic/racial background of the family, parents’ disapproving attitudes about misusing substances in general—whether alcohol, marijuana, or tobacco—play a strong role in protecting their adolescents from misusing prescription medicine.”

Step toward Understanding ‘Culture-Specific’ Factors in Substance Abuse

Caucasian teens whose close friends disapproved of substance use had lower rates of prescription drug misuse, although peer attitudes had little impact for African American or Hispanic teens. Dr. Marks adds, “Parents can also help their adolescents navigate toward friends with shared substance use disapproval attitudes.”

The study confirms racial/ethnic variations in substance use by adolescents. It also provides initial evidence that disapproval by “important socialization agents”—especially parents—has a significant effect on prescription drug misuse.

That result may provide clues as to how the racial/ethnic variations arise. Past studies of substance use in teens have typically used race as an “explanation” for observed differences.

More recently, researchers are focusing on values and other “culture-specific factors” that may explain risk behaviors, rather than generalizing across groups. “We’re already working on new studies to understand some of the unique socializing factors or agents which seem to be protective for Hispanic and African American adolescents, beyond parental disapproval,” says Dr Marks.

She adds, “As we learn more about what kinds of socializing messages matter most to which cultural groups, clinicians, teachers, social workers, and parents alike can help keep steering their adolescents in meaningful ways to make healthy behavioral choices when it comes to prescription drugs.”

Source:  www.medicalxpress.com   May 2014

More than 3 million people died from using alcohol in 2012, for reasons ranging from cancer to violence, the World Health Organisation said on Monday, as it called on governments to do more to limit the damage.

“More needs to be done to protect populations from the negative health consequences of alcohol consumption,” said Oleg Chestnov, a WHO expert on chronic disease and mental health.

He added there was “no room for complacency”, warning that drinking too much kills more men than women, raises people’s risk of developing more than 200 diseases, and killed 3.3 million people in 2012.

On average, according to the WHO report, every person in the world aged 15 years or older drinks 6.2 liters of pure alcohol per year. But less than half the population – 38.3 percent – drinks, so those who do drink on average 17 liters of pure alcohol a year.

“We found that worldwide about 16 percent of drinkers engage in heavy episodic drinking – often referred to as ‘binge-drinking’ – which is the most harmful to health,” said Shekhar Saxena, director for mental health and substance abuse at the WHO.  Poorer people are generally more affected by the social and health consequences of alcohol, he said: “They often lack quality health care and are less protected by functional family or community networks.”

The global status report on alcohol and health covered 194 countries and looked at alcohol consumption, its impact on public health and policy responses.  It found that some countries are already strengthening measures to protect people from harmful drinking. Those include increasing taxes on alcohol, limiting its availability by raising age limits and regulating marketing.

More countries should take similar action, WHO said. More also needed to be done to raise awareness of the damage alcohol can do to people’s health and screen for those who may need earlier intervention to cut down or stop. Globally, Europe consumes the most alcohol per person. Some of its countries having particularly high rates of harmful drinking.  A study published earlier this year found that a quarter of all Russian men die before they reach their mid-fifties, largely from drinking to excess. Some men in that study reported drinking three or more bottles of vodka a week.

The WHO said global trend analyses showed that drinking has been stable over the last five years in Europe, Africa and the Americas. But it is growing in South-East Asia and the Western Pacific.

Source:  http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/05/12/us-health-alcohol-idUSKBN0DS0QS20140512

Cannabis use in college students with psychiatric disorders is high and appears to have a significantly greater negative impact on function in this population, new research suggests.

Investigators at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, found that almost 25% of college students being treated for a mental illness also abused cannabis, which was linked to significant functional impairment and a greater likelihood of medical leave from school compared with their counterparts who used cannabis but did not have a mental illness.

“These findings suggest cannabis use was associated with increased impairment in function and an increased risk of being on medical leave. Even though this was not a substance abuse clinic, a large number of patients had comorbid substance use disorders. In fact, nearly half of the patients with bipolar disorder also had a cannabis use disorder,” lead investigator Meesha Ahuja, MD, said at a press briefing here at the American Psychiatric Association’s 2014 Annual Meeting.

High-Risk Age 

Most major psychiatric and substance use disorders commonly begin, and are very prevalent, in young adulthood, said Dr. Ahuja. She added that during the past decade, the number of college students presenting for psychiatric care has increased dramatically. Likewise, rates of cannabis use have also increased.

Finally, she noted, the concomitant use of cannabis and other substances in young adults with psychiatric disorders has been linked to poor outcomes, including increased symptomatology and hospitalization, poor treatment adherence, and increased treatment resistance.

Dr. Ahuja also pointed out that cannabis is widely used on college campuses, and the move toward decriminalizing it will make it even more widely available.   However, despite its widespread use by youth, there is no research examining the impact of cannabis on the scholastic or general functioning of college students in psychiatric care.

To look at this, the investigators conducted a cross-sectional study from the Young Adult Behavioral Health Program at Rhode Island Hospital, which receives psychiatric outpatient referrals from 8 colleges in the state.

The charts of 113 young adults (79% white; 67% female; mean age, 21 years) with a primary non–substance use diagnosis were reviewed.

The data included demographic variables, psychiatric diagnoses, including substance abuse and/or dependence diagnoses, student standing (medical leave vs active student), and functional impairment, assessed using the Global Assessment of Functioning (GAF), a 100-point scale with higher scores indicating higher functioning.

Combination Therapy Needed 

The results revealed that 24% of the study sample had a cannabis use disorder, 18% had an alcohol use disorder, 4% had polysubstance abuse, and 3% abused cocaine. In addition, the average GAF score was 63.8.

Overall, 25% of the study sample was on leave from college. However, the investigators found that those with cannabis use disorder were significantly more likely to be on leave compared with their counterparts who did not have a cannabis use disorder ― 46% vs 13%.

In addition, those with cannabis use disorders had a statistically significant lower GAF compared with those without cannabis use disorders ― 56 vs 66 (P < .01). The investigators also found that 47% of students diagnosed with bipolar disorder also had a cannabis use disorder.

Interestingly, said Dr. Ahuja, alcohol use disorder was associated with a lower GAF score, and it was not associated with medical leave.  These findings, she said, suggest the need for a therapeutic approach that combines substance use and psychiatric treatment, which “should be easily accessible to college students throughout the country.

“Additionally, awareness about cannabis and its relationship to decreased functioning and the risk of worsening or contributing to psychiatric symptoms should be raised,” Dr. Ahuja added.

Legalization Dangerous? 

Commenting on the study, press briefing moderator Jeffrey Borenstein, MD, president and CEO of the Brain and Behavior Research Foundation in New York City, said he thought the study was important and that it highlights the potential risks associated with cannabis use.

“Marijuana use is associated with risk not only in people who are in treatment for psychiatric conditions but also for those who are not in treatment. My concern with the move to legalize marijuana is that it may encourage more people to experiment with marijuana, and that may be dangerous for them,” said Dr. Borenstein, who is also chair of the American Psychiatric Association’s Council on Communications.

“The law to legalize marijuana is 21 and above, and the average age in this study was 21 ― which means there are a number [of study participants] younger than that. That said, we don’t want people who use [cannabis] to be sent to jail; we want them to get treatment.

Source:  American Psychiatric Association’s 2014 Annual Meeting. Abstract NR7-1 Presented May 6, 2014.

(New Zealand Health Minister Tony Ryall has welcomed Parliament’s support for the Psychoactive Substances Amendment Act, passed today under urgency by New Zealand parliament. The Act, expected to receive Royal assent on Wednesday and become law on Thursday 8 May 2014, removes all remaining psychoactive products on the New Zealand market. It also bans the use of animal testing data in support of product approvals. “When the Psychoactive Substances Act was passed last year, some products were allowed to stay on the market,” says Ryall. “The amendment means all interim retail and wholesale licences will be cancelled and all psychoactive products given interim approval will be removed from sale. It will also become illegal to possess and supply the products. “While animal testing remains a necessary and important component of the process for developing a number of important products, such as medicines, the government does not believe that such testing was justifiable for the recreational drug market. “The intent of the original Psychoactive Substances Act remains with approved low risk products able to come to market in the future when regulations are made,” Ryall said. All psychoactive products will become unapproved from Thursday and it will be an offence to possess, supply or sell them. Those in possession of products are advised to return them to the retailer they purchased them from. (national.org.nz) *A psychoactive drug is a chemical substance that crosses the blood–brain barrier and acts primarily upon the central nervous system where it affects brain function, resulting in alterations in perception, mood, consciousness, cognition, and behavior.

Source:  www.nation.lk        www.national.org.nz   6th May  2014

There’s a long-standing observation that not everyone who tries drugs becomes addicted. Some people are more vulnerable to addiction and some are more resilient. Our goal is to try to understand the individual differences that contribute to whether or not someone who takes a drug will become addicted to it.

Many factors contribute to those differences, and we break them down into three sets. One set is environmental—how a person’s experiences and exposures to drugs or other influences affect his or her risk for addiction. A simple example would be that if your friends smoke, you might be more likely to become a regular smoker and incur the risk for nicotine addiction that comes with regular smoking.  A second set of factors is developmental. The impact of an experience or an exposure often depends on when in a person’s life it occurs. Because the brain is very pliant from early life through adolescence, exposures during this period can make a profound difference in how vulnerable or resilient we are to addiction in the long run.

And finally, we are working to understand the genetics, epigenetics, and other biological processes that underlie drug use and addiction. Addictive drugs can hijack our brain circuitry and cause a rewiring that motivates a person to take more of the drug or make him crave it. So this area of research focuses on how the brain is constituted and how it works, how its neurons and other cells such as glia communicate with each other in these circuits, and then how drugs infiltrate and divert these circuits.

Do genes play a large role in addiction?

Genetic factors account for about 40 to 60 percent of a person’s vulnerability to drug addiction. Genetic studies have begun to identify gene variants that influence a person’s risk for drug use and addictive behaviors. We’ve made the most progress in relating gene variants to smoking behaviors.

We’re working toward a day when a physician might be able to review a patient’s genetic information and predict how she will respond to a particular treatment, for example an antismoking medication. Is it likely to help her, or will she experience side effects and maybe do better with an alternative treatment? There’s still a lot of work to be done in this area, but the evidence is building up and leading toward that goal.

Genetic studies are also giving us leads to the molecular and biological processes that underlie addiction. When we see which genes are involved, then we know which proteins are involved, and we can look at what those proteins do.

Using gene therapy to actually treat drug addiction is a long way off, however, and probably not a main goal. Studies have shown that addiction is a complex disease, with a large number of genes each contributing a little bit. It’s not like, for example, Huntington’s disease, where a single gene is responsible, and the problem is to find an answer to what that one gene does. And even that is a huge challenge.

What are the most promising pathways to new addiction treatments?

Nongenetic factors offer the most hope. They account for 40 to 60 percent of a person’s likelihood of becoming addicted, and they’re much more malleable than genetic factors.

Our overall strategy is to understand how addictive drugs act in the brain to produce and maintain addiction. We can then look for medications, behavioral therapies, or other interventions that will reverse or overcome those effects. This is how our current medications for smoking cessation and treating heroin dependence were developed. We’re now making a major push to identify molecules and processes involved in cocaine addiction and validate them as potential targets for pharmacological interventions.

A relatively new and very promising line of research looks at drugs’ effects on the activity levels of genes. These effects, called “epigenetic” effects, alter brain structure and function in ways that affect cognition and can give rise to addictive behavior. For example, they contribute to neuronal priming, whereby an initial drug exposure primes the brain’s reward system to react more intensely to subsequent exposures. They also underlie the long-lasting changes that distinguish addicted brains from nonaddicted brains.

Epigenetic studies, by pinpointing which genes drugs activate or silence, can shed light on the specific proteins and processes involved in addiction. And, if we can then prevent or reverse those effects, we may have powerful tools for preventing and treating addiction.

Unlike gene therapy, epigenetic treatment approaches would not involve actual manipulation of the DNA in genes. Instead, they would utilize epigenetic mechanisms that control how accessible genetic DNA is to transcription and translation into proteins. There are a number of epigenetic mechanisms at work in the body at all times. Just as drugs engage them to cause addiction, research may show us how to engage them to combat addiction.

What makes your work exciting?

One reason this is an exciting time to be studying addiction is that researchers are uncovering new knowledge at a truly unprecedented pace. That’s happening in large part because we have many new, truly cutting-edge tools and technologies at our disposal. Optogenetics is a great example. With this technology, scientists are using light to stimulate or shut down specific neurons in the brains of experimental animals. They then can observe the effects of that change on animals’ behavior, or they can track neurocircuitry by observing the fallout in other parts of the brain. We also have the ability to create very fine-tuned molecular tools—for example, molecules that we can use to modulate those epigenetic processes and observe the effects.

We’re also benefiting from the huge advances in data storage and computing power that have taken place. That’s given rise to what we call “Big Science.” The promise of Big Science is that we will be able to integrate all of our behavioral, molecular, genetic, epigenetic, and other findings into a multidimensional, reasonably complete picture of addiction—what it is, and how to prevent and cure it.

Source:  www.drugabuse.gov   May 2014

Abstract

This article discusses addiction and formation of the Addiction Memory. Addiction has been described as a brain disorder involving brain structures and neural circuits. Addiction impacts long term associative memory including multiple memory systems. Addiction has pathological associations with learning, memory, attention, reasoning, and impulse control. People with addictions suffer from high levels of early maladaptive schemas. The Addiction Memory (AM) plays a crucial role in relapse occurrence and maintaining the addictive behavior. Healing the addiction memory is imperative in treating addictions. Pharmacological and psychological methods are being used to treat addictions. Among the psychological interventions Cognitive Behavior Therapy, Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) and Schema-Focused Therapy (SFT) can be used to heal the addiction memory.

Drug addiction has become an increased phenomenon in the modern civilization. Addiction habits have impacted individuals, families and the society. Addiction has been regarded as an individual disease as well as a social condition. Addictions cause structural changes in cultural, social, political, and economic system in society (Ajami et al., 2014). Addiction is almost universally held to be characterized by a loss of control over drug-seeking and consuming behavior (Levy, 2014).

Addiction is defined as compulsive drug use despite negative consequences (Hyman, 2005). Addiction is a multifactorial phenomenon (Shaghaghy et al., 2011). McLellan and colleagues (2000) conceptualize addiction as a brain disease. Leshner (1997) views addiction as a chronic, relapsing brain disorder that involves complex interactions between biological and environmental variables. According to Mate (2014) addictions are experience based and it has close links with pain, distress, negative emotions, loss of meaning and often connected with adverse early childhood experiences.  Drug addiction leads to profound disturbances in an individual’s behavior that affect his/her immediate environment, usually resulting in isolation, marginalization, or incarceration (Volkow et al., 2004).

 Addictions and Brain Structures

There are numerous brain structures and neural circuits involved in the addiction process. Several studies using a whole brain analysis approach have demonstrated how sensorimotor brain networks contribute to addiction (Yalachkov et al., 2010). Drug addiction causes important derangements in many areas, including pathways affecting reward and cognition (Fowler et al., 2007). Tomkins & Sellers (2001) specify that multiple neurotransmitter systems may play a key role in the development and expression of drug dependence.

Studies indicate that The ventral striatum, a region implicated in reward, motivation, and craving, and the inferior frontal gyrus and orbitofrontal cortex, regions involved in inhibitory control and goal-directed behavior become affected in addictions (Konova et al., 2013). A central concept in drug abuse research is that increased dopamine (DA) in limbic brain regions is associated with the reinforcing effects of drugs (Di Chiara andImperato, 1988; Koob &Bloom, 1988; Volkow et al., 2004). Pharmacological and behavioral studies have indicated that modulation of locus coeruleus (LC) (which is the largest noradrenergic nucleus in brain, located bilaterally on the floor of the fourth ventricle in the anterior pons) neuronal firing rates contributes to physical aspects of opiate addiction, namely, physical dependence and withdrawal, in several mammalian species, including primates (Redmond and Krystal, 1984; Rasmussen et al.,1990;Nestler, 1992).

Memory and Addiction

Inter connection between human memory process and addiction has been speculated by numerous researchers in the past few decades. Theories of addiction have mainly been developed from neurobiologic evidence and data from studies of learning behavior and memory mechanisms (Cami & Farre, 2003). Wang and colleagues (2003) hypothesized that addiction can be resulted by the abnormal engagement of long term associative memory. Volkow et al. (2003) highlight that multiple memory systems have been proposed in drug addiction, including conditioned-incentive learning (mediated in part by the NAc and the amygdala), habit learning (mediated in part by the caudate and the putamen), and declarative memory (mediated in part by the hippocampus). According to Hyman(2005)addiction represents a pathological usurpation of the neural mechanisms of learning and memory that under normal circumstances serve to shape survival behaviors related to the pursuit of rewards and the cues that predict them.

The Process of Learning and Memory in Addiction

The process of learning and memory in addiction has been proposed to involve strengthening of specific brain circuits when a drug is paired with a context or environment (Klenowski et al., 2014). Addiction has pathological associations with learning, memory, attention, reasoning, and impulse control. Addiction related behaviors arise as a result of maladaptive learning process. Following learning pathways individuals with addictions become sensitive and strongly respond to drug cues (Robinson & Berridge, 2000). Drug use in the addicted individual is controlled by automatized action schemata (Tiffany, 1990).

Robbins and colleagues (2002) point out that pathological subversion of normal brain learning and memory processes in drug addiction. They further emphasize that drug related habits evolve through a cascade of complex associative processes with Pavlovian and instrumental components that may depend on the integration and coordination of output from several somewhat independent neural systems of learning and memory, each contributing to behavioral performance.

Tiffany (1990) concluded that drug urges and drug use result from distinct cognitive processes. Some experts believe that addiction related behaviors can be explained via the Feeling-State Theory. According to the Feeling-State Theory positive feelings and behavior are fixated in the body during an intense experience such as drug ingestion creating the feeling-state (Miller, 2005).

A considerable number of researchers point out that subcortical brain region plays a key role in formation of normal as well as drug related behavioral habits. Chronic drug exposure causes stable changes in the brain at the molecular and cellular levels (Nestler, 2001). Drug abusing habits can change the structure and function of the synaptic connections allowing synaptic plasticity for long periods even for a lifetime. Synaptic plasticity may play key roles in the addiction process (Winder et al., 2002). Kelley (2004) states that the process of drug addiction shares striking commonalities with neural plasticity associated with natural reward learning and memory.

 Addictions and Maladaptive Schemas

Segal (1988) viewed schemas as the residue of past reactions and experience that often effect subsequent perception and appraisals. Bakhshi Bojed and Nikmanesh,   (2013) pointed out that drug users suffer from some early maladaptive schemas which can be the potential for drugs abuse. A study done by Shaghaghy and colleagues (2011) indicated that people with addictions suffer from high levels of early maladaptive schemas and they had a more pessimistic attributional style. Maladaptive schemas and inefficient ways the patient learns to adapt with others often lead to chronic symptoms of anxiety, depression and substance abuse (Kirsch, 2009: Shaghaghy et al., 2011).

 Memory and Craving

Craving is often depicted as the subjective experience; craving tends to be highly situationally specific, readily triggered by stimuli previously associated with drug use. Secondly, craving can persist well beyond the cessation of addicted substance (Tiffany & Conklin, 2000). Volkow and colleagues (2004) point out that drugs trigger a series of adaptations in neuronal circuits involved in saliency/reward, motivation/drive, memory/conditioning, and control/disinhibition, resulting in an enhanced (and long lasting) saliency value for the drug and its associated cues at the expense of decreased sensitivity for salient events of everyday life (including natural reinforces).

 The Addiction Memory

The Addiction Memory (AM) plays a crucial role in relapse occurrence and maintaining the addictive behavior. The drug-associated cues are highly connected with Addiction Memory and it helps to maintain drug seeking craving. Boening (2001) views the personal Addiction Memory as an individual acquired software disturbance in relation to selectively integrating “feedback loops” and “comparator systems” of neuronal information processing. The Addiction Memory becomes part of the personality represented on the molecular level via the neuronal level and the neuropsychological level, especially in the episodic memory (Boening, 2001).

 Working with the Addiction Memory

Böning (2009) discusses the difficulties in treating Addiction Memory since it is embedded above all in the episodic memory, from the molecular carrier level via the neuronal pattern level through to the psychological meaning level, and has thus meanwhile become a component of personality. Therefore healing the Addiction Memory is challenging and time consuming.

According to Leshner (1997) in addictions the most effective treatment approaches include biological, behavioral, and social-context components. Among the pharmaco-therapeutic methods Sittambalam, Vij, and Ferguson (2014) highlight Suboxone as an effective treatment method for heroin addiction and as a viable outpatient therapy option. In addition they recommend individualized treatment plans and counseling for maximum benefits.

Carroll & Onken (2005) argued that Cognitive behavior therapy, contingency management, couples and family therapy, and a variety of other types of behavioral treatment have been shown to be potent interventions for several forms of drug addiction. Kauer & Malenka (2007) suggest that reversing or preventing drug-induced synaptic modifications such as mesolimbic dopamine system is one of the key ways to treat addictions.

Gould (2010) stated that from a psychological and neurological perspective, addiction is a disorder of altered cognition. Restoration of altered cognition would be essential in working with the addiction memory. von der Goltz and colleagues (2009) conjectured   that disruption of drug-related memories may help to prevent relapses. Growing evidence from preclinical and clinical studies concur that specific treatments such as extinction training and cue-exposure therapy are effective (von der Goltz & Kiefer, 2008).

Recent researches suggest that EMDR is a potent therapeutic method to treat addictions. Addiction memory could be considered as a form of an unprocessed memory. Unprocessed memories stored in networks that govern explicit and implicit memories. EMDR helps to process unprocessed memories stored in networks. EMDR involves the transmutation of dysfunctionally stored experiences into an adaptive resolution (Solomon et al., 2008).

EMDR reprocessing sessions promote an associative process that clearly reveals the intricate connections of memories that are triggered by current life experiences (Shapiro, 2014). EMDR may be used to ameliorate the effects of earlier memories that contribute to the dysfunction, potential relapse triggers, and physical cravings. In addition, EMDR is used to incorporate new coping skills and assist in learning more adaptive behaviors (Shapiro et al. 1994).

Wide arrays of experimental studies are supportive of a working memory explanation for the effects of eye movements in EMDR therapy (de Jongh et al., 2013). EMDR therapy is guided by the adaptive information processing (AIP) model (Shapiro, 2014). Levin, Lazrov & van der Kol,k (1999) found increased activation of the anterior cingulated gyrus and of the left frontal lobe after 3 sessions of EMDR treatment. Brain scans have clearly demonstrated pre-post changes after EMDR therapy, including increases in hippocampal volume, which have implications for memory storage (Shapiro, 2012).

As reviewed by Andrade and colleagues (1997) EMDR reduces the vividness of distressing images by disrupting the function of the visuospatial sketchpad (VSSP) of working memory. Cecero& Carroll (2000) considered drug cravings as a form of disturbing thoughts and they used EMDR to reduce cocaine cravings.

Young, Zangwill,   and Behary,   (2002) proposed combination of Schema-Focused Therapy (SFT) and Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) would give effectual results processing dysfunctional memories. According to Young , Klosko & Weishaar (2003) Schema-Focused Therapy is an integrative form of psychotherapy combining cognitive, behavioral, psychodynamic object relations, and existential/humanistic approaches. Schema-Focused Therapy helps to modify individual’s maladaptive thoughts about self and others and process the emotions connected with schemas, teach coping skills and break maladaptive behavioral patterns (Young et al., 2003).

 Conclusion

Addiction is a chronic, relapsing brain disorder. Addiction related behaviors are complex and these behaviors are strongly connected with the memory system. Formation Addiction Memory helps to maintain the addictive behavior and drug seeking craving. It becomes a component of personality. Therefore working with addiction memory could be challenging. Reduction in maladaptive schema, restoration of drug related altered cognitions help to combat addictions. Pharmacological and Psychological interventions proved to be effective in working with addiction memory. Among the psychological interventions Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT) Eye movement desensitization and Focused Therapy (SFT) seem to be useful in treating addiction memory.

Source:  www.lankaweb.com   4th May 2014

The number of hash explosions in Colorado have skyrocketed in Colorado since the sale of recreational marijuana was legalized on Jan. 1, according to a CBS4 investigation.

A joint task force on drug trafficking says in the first four months of 2014 there have already been 31 explosions, compared to 11 hash explosions the previous year.

There have been four hash explosions in Colorado over the past eight days.

On Monday a hash explosion rocked Clarkson Street near Speer Boulevard in Denver. Fire investigators say people were cooking hash in a basement apartment, sparking the explosion.  The same day the windows were blown out of a home in Leadville in a hash explosion.  Last week three people were injured in a hash explosion in the 1200 block of South Lipan Street in Denver.

On Saturday a Jefferson County man was burned while allegedly cooking hash in his townhouse. Authorities have charged Corbin Brathwaite, 34, with arson and child abuse for an explosion on South Independence Street. Two young children were home at the time.  Mark Techmeyer from the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office says the “legalization of marijuana changed everything.”

“You never know what your neighbors are doing”, he said. “When you are playing chemist with some volatile fuels that can explode you are taking some great risks with others’ safety.”

In each case people were trying to make hash by extracting THC, the active ingredient in marijuana, from the rest of the plant. Typically unlicensed hash makers douse marijuana with flammable butane gas, and then syphon the gas off, leaving a concentrated hash product.

Marijuana concentrates are often referred to by their consistency. Wax, Budder, Shatter, Honey and BHO are all terms for marijuana concentrates that can range in potency from 60 percent to 90 percent THC. Concentrates are much stronger than marijuana flowers sold in Colorado, which typically range from 15 percent to 25 percent THC.

Concentrates are sold legally in Colorado dispensaries. The state also licenses marijuana extractors who make concentrates for the marijuana industry.

The high potency of concentrates have addiction experts like Dr. Christian Thurstone at Denver Health concerned.  “My young patients tell me that it hits them like heroin, like I.V. heroin,” he said.    Thurstone says he is also concerned with a way of ingesting marijuana that is growing in popularity in Colorado, called “dabbing.” He compares dabbing to freebasing marijuana.

“What my patients have told me is that dabbing is similar to using crack cocaine,” he said.

Dabbers often use a blowtorch to heat up a surface called a “nail.” They then add a small dab of concentrate to the heat and ingest the smoke. Dabbing has become so popular there was a three-day festival dedicated to it during the 4/20 weekend called “Dabroots.” At the event users said dabbing was “absolutely stronger” than any other ingestion method.

Drug experts say the price of concentrates is driving the illegal manufacturing market. It sells retail for $65 to $75 a gram. Tom Gorman with the Joint Drug Task Force says some illegal hash makers are making the product for personal use or to share with friends. Other hash makers are selling the finished product on the black market in Colorado and across the country, specifically the Midwest.

Source: http://denver.cbslocal.com/2014/05/01/lives-at-put-at-risk-as-hash-explosions-are-on-the-rise/

 

 

Find out what exactly is in a cigarette. SmokeFreeForsythe.org

Over 3,200 Americans under the age of 18 smoke their first cigarette every day, and most of them are unaware of what they are getting into. Many new smokers may not realize how quickly their new habit can lead to heart disease, stroke, diabetes, lung diseases, and certain types of cancer. If you’re looking for an explanation as to why cigarette smoke results in more than 480,000 deaths each year in the United States, look no further than its ingredients. The average cigarette contains upward of 600 different ingredients on top of over 7,000 chemicals produced by cigarette smoke. Where these ingredients and chemicals also show up may shock some smokers into quitting once and for all.

“One of the issues with cigarettes is that they have hundreds of added ingredients, not just what is naturally in the tobacco plant,” environmental health scientist with Mount Sinai School of Medicine, Dr. Luz Claudio told Medical Daily in an email. “What complicates this even more is that when these chemicals burn, they form other chemicals that may have additional effects on health.” While tobacco companies like R.J. Reynolds insist that a lot of the ingredients found in cigarettes are also found in Food and Drug Administration-approved foods and beverages, a few of these ingredients are also found in products that you would never think to put in your body otherwise. Take for example arsenic, an inorganic substance found in wood preservatives and rat poison. On the FDA’s Established List of Harmful and Potentially Harmful Constituents in Tobacco Products and Tobacco Smoke, arsenic’s dangers include: carcinogen, cardiovascular toxicant, and reproductive or developmental toxicant.

Some of cigarettes’ harmful ingredients and chemicals are more familiar, such as carbon monoxide, which can be found in car exhaust fumes, and nicotine, also found in insecticides. There’s also formaldehyde, a cancer-causing ingredient of embalming fluid. Others may not seem so dangerous by name alone like cadmium, an active ingredient in batteries, or hexamine, sometimes found in barbecue lighters. Approximately 70 of the chemicals and ingredients found in a cigarette are considered carcinogenic, meaning they have the potential to cause cancer. Almost all of these ingredients can lead to death in some way or another.

“Cigarette smoke can affect the flow of oxygen within our bodies in two ways,” pulmonologist specializing in pulmonary rehab with City of Hope, Dr. Brian Tiep told Medical Daily. “First, carbon monoxide grabs on to the hemoglobin molecule, which prevents the transport of oxygen through red blood cells. Secondly, cyanide hinders tissue’s ability to take up and utilize oxygen. Tissue cannot function without this steady flow of oxygen.” According to the American Cancer Society, cigarette smoke accounts for at least 30 percent of all cancer-related deaths in the U.S. This includes 87 percent of lung cancer deaths among men and 70 percent of among women. Cigarette smoke can also lead to certain lung diseases including emphysema, bronchitis, and chronic airway obstruction. There are currently more than 16 million Americans suffering from a disease that was caused by smoking. If appropriate prevention strategies are not put in place to curb the number of young Americans who pick up smoking, an estimated 5.4 million people under the age of 18 will die prematurely due to a smoking-related illness.

Source: www.medicaldaily.com  30th April 2014

Synthetic cannabis products will be pulled from shelves faster than the looming Government ban, after users suffered acute psychotic reaction, nausea and vomiting, insomnia, and prolonged withdrawal.

Retailers can no longer sell the Apocalypse, Outbreak, WTF, Blueberry Crush, White Rhino and Lemon Grass products. Authorities today warned members of the public who may already have the products against smoking them.

The brands were previously assessed by the Ministry of Health and judged low risk enough to be sold to the public.  But they have now been immediately banned after reports of adverse reactions to helplines including that of the National Poisons Centre.

The Psychoactive Substances Regulatory Authority has previously withdrawn five other products that were being sold under interim licences. Suppliers paid $10,000 to register each product.

The manager of the authority, Dr Donald Hannah, said the ban was not related to the recent government decision to bring forward the end of the interim phase of the Psychoactive Substances Act.

Thirty-six products will remain on sale until parliament passes emergency legislation next week to remove the remaining synthetic products which had been given temporary approval while the testing regime was being developed.

Source:  nzherald.co.nz  1st May 2014

Dr. Nora Volkow, Director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), urged lawmakers this week to resist legalizing marijuana. At a House subpanel hearing, she said marijuana can act as a gateway drug.

Speaking before the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s Oversight and Investigations subpanel, Volkow said studies show changes that occur in brain chemistry after people use marijuana, alcohol or tobacco can prime them for harder drugs, The Hill reports.

She told the House panel that many people think marijuana is harmless because they have heard about its potential medicinal benefits, but that more research is needed. In a message on the NIDA website last year, Volkow wrote, “Regular marijuana use in adolescence is part of a cluster of behaviors that can produce enduring detrimental effects and alter the trajectory of a young person’s life—thwarting his or her potential. Beyond potentially lowering IQ, teen marijuana use is linked to school dropouts, other drug use, mental health problems, etc. Given the current number of regular marijuana users (about 1 in 15 high school seniors) and the possibility of this number increasing with marijuana legalization, we cannot afford to divert our focus from the central point: Regular marijuana use stands to jeopardize a young person’s chances of success—in school and in life.”

Source:  drugfree.org/join-together  30th April 2014

By the Substance Abuse and Addiction Committee

The American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (AACAP) advocates for careful consideration of potential direct and downstream effects of marijuana policy changes on children and adolescents, and involvement of the medical and research community in policy-related discussions.  Legalization of marijuana for medicinal or recreational purposes, even if restricted to adults, is likely to be associated with (a) decreased adolescent perceptions of marijuana’s harmful effects, (b) increased marijuana use among parents and caretakers, and (c) increased adolescent access to marijuana, all of which reliably predict increased rates of adolescent marijuana use and associated problems.1,2 Marijuana use during pregnancy raises additional concerns regarding child and adolescent development.3

AACAP is aware that, among hundreds of chemical constituents, marijuana contains select individual compounds that, if safely administered in reliable doses, may potentially convey therapeutic effects for specific conditions in specific populations.  Advocacy regarding potential cannabinoid therapeutics, alongside social justice, public policy, and economic concerns, have contributed to marijuana policy changes.  Amid these factors, AACAP remains focused on the specific issue of marijuana use in adolescence, a critical period of ongoing brain maturation.

Marijuana use is not benign, and adolescents are especially vulnerable to its many known adverse effects.4,5 One in six adolescent marijuana users develop cannabis use disorder, a well characterized syndrome involving tolerance, withdrawal, and continued use despite significant associated impairments.6,7 Heavy use during adolescence is associated with increased incidence and worsened course of psychotic, mood, anxiety, and substance use disorders across the lifespan.7-10 Furthermore, marijuana’s deleterious effects on adolescent brain development, cognition, and social functioning may have immediate and long-term implications, including increased risk of motor vehicle accidents, sexual victimization, academic failure, lasting decline in intelligence measures, psychopathology, addiction, and psychosocial and occupational impairment.11-18

As child and adolescent mental health advocates, AACAP (a) opposes efforts to legalize marijuana, (b) supports initiatives to increase awareness of marijuana’s harmful effects on adolescents, (c) supports improved access to evidence-based treatment, rather than emphasis on criminal charges, for adolescents with cannabis use disorder, and (d) supports careful monitoring of the effects of marijuana-related policy changes on child and adolescent mental health.

Source:  http://www.aacap.org/AACAP/Policy_Statements/2014/aacap_marijuana_legalization_policy.aspx   April 15th 2014

This is your wilderness on drugs.

Starting about 90 miles northwest of Sacramento, an unbroken swath of national forestland follows the spine of California’s rugged coastal mountains all the way to the Oregon border. Near the center of this vast wilderness, along the grassy banks of the Trinity River’s south fork, lies the remote enclave of Hyampom (pop. 241), where, on a crisp November morning, I climb into a four-wheel-drive government pickup and bounce up a dirt logging road deep into the Six Rivers National Forest. I’ve come to visit what’s known in cannabis country as a “trespass grow.”

“This one probably has the most plants I’ve seen,” says my driver, a young Forest Service cop who spends his summers lugging an AR-15 through the backcountry of the Emerald Triangle—the triad of Humboldt, Mendocino, and Trinity counties that is to pot what the Central Valley is to almonds and tomatoes. Fearing retaliation from growers, the officer asks that I not use his name. Back in August he was hiking through the bush, trying to locate the grow from an aerial photo, when he surprised a guy carrying an iPod, gardening tools, and a 9 mm pistol on his hip. He arrested the man and alerted his tactical team, which found about 5,500 plants growing nearby, with a potential street yield approaching $16 million.

“This is unicorns and rainbows, isn’t it?” says wildlife ecologist Mourad Gabriel as he stuffs a garbage bag with trash the growers left behind.

Today, a work crew is hauling away the detritus by helicopter. Our little group, which includes a second federal officer and a Forest Service flack, hikes down an old skid trail lined with mossy oaks and madrones, passing the scat of a mountain lion, and a few minutes later, fresh black bear droppings. We follow what looks like a game trail to the lip of a wooded slope, a site known as Bear Camp. There, amid a scattering of garbage bags disemboweled by animals, we find the growers’ tarps and eight dingy sleeping bags, the propane grill where they had cooked oatmeal for breakfast, and the backpack sprayers they used to douse the surrounding 50 acres with chemical fertilizers and pesticides. The air smells faintly of ammonia and weed. “This is unicorns and rainbows, isn’t it?” says Mourad Gabriel, a former University of California-Davis wildlife ecologist who has joined us at the site, as he maniacally stuffs a garbage bag with empty booze bottles, Vienna Beef sausage tins, and Miracle-Gro refill packs.

According to federal stats, trespass grows in California alone account for more than one-third of the cannabis seized nationwide by law enforcement, which means they could well be the largest single source of domestically grown marijuana. Of course, nobody can say precisely how much pot comes from indoor grows and private plots that are less accessible to the authorities. What’s clear is that California’s marijuana harvest is vast—”likely the largest value crop (by far) in the state’s lineup,” notes the Field Guide to California Agriculture. Assuming, as the guide does, that the authorities seize about 10 percent of the harvest, that means they would have left behind more than 10 million outdoor plants last year, enough to yield about $31 billion worth of product. That’s more than the combined value of the state’s top 10 legal farm commodities.

“It simply isn’t regulated, and the upshot is that nobody really knows what’s in their cannabis.”

Even before voters in Colorado and Washington legalized recreational pot in 2012, marijuana was quasi-legal in California, and not just for medical use. Senate Bill 1449, signed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2010, reclassified possession of an ounce or less from a misdemeanor to a maximum $100 infraction—you’ll get a bigger fine for

jaywalking in Los Angeles. Indeed, many states have eased restrictions on pot use. But with the exception of Colorado and Washington, whose laws dictate where, how, and by whom marijuana may be grown, they have had little to say about the manner in which it is cultivated—which is challenging to dictate in any case, since growers who cooperate with state regulators could still be prosecuted under federal statutes that classify pot as a Schedule 1 drug, the legal equivalent of LSD and heroin. So where is all this legal and semilegal weed supposed to come from? The answer, increasingly, is an unregulated backwoods economy, the scale of which makes Prohibition-era moonshining look quaint.

To meet demand, researchers say, the acreage dedicated to marijuana grows in the Emerald Triangle has doubled in the past five years. Like the Gold Rush of the mid-1800s, this “green rush,” as it is known locally, has brought great wealth at a great cost to the environment. Whether grown in bunkers lit with pollution-spewing diesel generators, or doused with restricted pesticides and sown on muddy, deforested slopes that choke off salmon streams during the rainy season, this “pollution pot” isn’t exactly high quality, or even a quality high. “The cannabis industry right now is in sort of the same position that the meatpacking industry was in before The Jungle was written by Upton Sinclair,” says Stephen DeAngelo, the founder of Oakland’s Harborside Health Center, a large medical marijuana dispensary. “It simply isn’t regulated, and the upshot is that nobody really knows what’s in their cannabis.”

It’s not just stoners who are at risk. Trespass grows have turned up everywhere from a stand of cottonwoods in Death Valley National Park to a clearing amid the pines in Yosemite. “I now have to spend 100 percent of my time working on the environmental impacts of marijuana,” says Gabriel, who showed up at Bear Camp in military-style cargo pants and a kaffiyeh scarf. “I would never have envisioned that.”

Gabriel grew up in Fresno, the son of immigrants from Mexico and Iraq, at a time when the Central Valley city was plagued by turf wars among pot-dealing street gangs, notably the local Norteños chapter and their rivals, the Bulldogs. That world did not interest Gabriel, who spent a lot of his free time catching frogs and crawdads on the banks of the San Joaquin River. His love of the outdoors led him to study wildlife management at Humboldt State University, where he became fascinated with fishers, the only predators besides mountain lions clever and tough enough to prey on porcupines. The fisher, which resembles the love child of a ferret and a wolverine, was nearly eradicated from the West by logging and trapping during the early 20th century. It still hasn’t rebounded. This year, the US Fish and Wildlife Service will consider listing it as a threatened species.

On local blogs, people have threatened Gabriel and his family. In February, one of his dogs was fatally poisoned.

When Gabriel first began venturing into the woods to trap and radio-collar fishers, he assumed that most of them were dying from bobcat attacks, disease, and cars running them over. But then, in 2009, he discovered a dead fisher deep in the Sierra National Forest that showed no signs of any of those things. A toxicology test indicated that it had ingested large quantities of rat poison.

Back in his lab, he tested frozen tissue from 58 other fisher carcasses he’d collected on some of California’s most remote public lands and found rodenticide traces in nearly 80 percent of them. Rat poison isn’t used in national forests by anyone except marijuana cultivators, who put it out to protect their seedlings. Rodents that eat the poison stumble around for a few days before they die, making them easy prey for hungry fishers. In 2012, after Gabriel published his rat poison results, he was the target of angry calls and messages. One person accused him of helping the feds “greenwash the war on drugs.” Another made vague threats against his family and his dogs. Gabriel also

received a prying email, later traced by federal agents to Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, soliciting the locations of his home, office, and field study sites. In Lost Coast Outpost and other local news sites, commenters shared links to his home address. “Snitches end up in ditches,” one warned.

Then, last month, Gabriel’s Labrador retriever, Nyxo, died after someone fed him meat infused with De-Con rat bait.

Check out these 24 mind-blowing facts about marijuana production in America.

The types of threats Gabriel has received are not uncommon, and they have frightened scientists away from studying the environmental impacts of pot farming. “At my university, there is nobody who will even go near it,” says Anthony Silvaggio, a sociologist with the state university’s Humboldt Institute for Interdisciplinary Marijuana Research. Biologists who used to venture into the wilderness alone to survey wildlife now often pair up for protection. In July 2011, armed growers in the Sequoia National Forest chased a federal biologist through the woods for a half-hour before giving up. The following year, researchers surveying northern spotted owls on Humboldt County’s Hoopa Valley Indian Reservation were shot at with high-caliber rifles. Each growing season, a significant chunk of one designated fisher habitat in the Sierra National Forest becomes inaccessible to scientists because it’s dangerously close to illegal gardens.

Gabriel won’t go near a known grow site before it’s been cleared by law enforcement, as Bear Camp has. Scattered across the hillside, his team finds 4,200 pounds of chemical fertilizer, five kinds of insecticide, and three kinds of rodenticide. The stash includes a restricted pesticide capable of killing humans in small doses. Gabriel’s friend and colleague Mark Higley dons a gas mask and seals the canister in a garbage bag. “If it does erupt, I want everyone to be at least 20 to 30 feet away,” Gabriel warns. “It’s aluminum phosphide, and when it hits the air, it turns into phosphine gas.” Breathing it can kill you.

The Emerald Triangle’s pot culture has changed a lot since the hippies drove up from San Francisco in the early 1970s in search of peace, freedom, and blissful communion with nature. At first, the back-to-the-landers grew pot primarily for themselves, but news that the United States was paying to have Mexican pot farms sprayed with paraquat, a toxic weed killer, convinced American stoners to seek out the hippie weed.

Before long, Humboldt had become a name brand, but marijuana might never have come to define the Emerald Triangle had the old-growth timber industry not logged itself out of business by the mid-1990s. In 1996, when California became the first state to legalize pot for medical use, out-of-work loggers took advantage of the opportunity. “Then you had everybody like, ‘Sure, I’ll grow some weed,'” recalls Humboldt State’s Silvaggio. The size of the harvest grew, helped along by post-9/11 border enforcement, which made it harder for Mexican pot to enter the country. The latest leap in production was the result of Prop. 19, California’s 2010 legalization measure; although it lost narrowly at the polls, the Emerald Triangle’s growers boosted output in anticipation of having a mainstream product. Now marijuana “is all we have,” Silvaggio says. “Every other thing is built here to serve that economy.”

Drive around the Emerald Triangle during harvest season with the radio on, and you’ll hear ads openly pitching Dutch hydroponic lamps, machines “for trimming flowers,” and 2,800-gallon water storage tanks—because “you don’t want to be the one that has to call the water truck in for multiple water deliveries late in the season.” Even mainstream businesses like furniture stores get in on the green rush with “harvest sales.” Talk of bud-trimming parties and the going price per pound dominates restaurant conversations. And in backwoods hamlets where you’d expect high unemployment, you come across a lot of $50,000 pickups.

With prices dropping as domestic supply expands, “you’ve got to go bigger these days to make the amount of money you used to make.”

As with much of the state’s agricultural industry, the pot trade is stratified, and much of the labor is done by undocumented farmworkers. The man arrested at Bear Camp confessed to the police that he’d traveled north from Michoacán, Mexico, to pick apples in Washington, but knew he could make more money tending pot in California. Industry observers believe that at least some of the trespass grows are run from south of the border, but Silvaggio adds that many are financed by locals. Either way, the grunt workers tend to be the only ones busted when the grows are raided.

Although the original Northern California growers saw pot cultivation as an extension of their hippie lifestyles, their environmental values haven’t readily carried over to the next generation. “They are given a free pass to become wealthy at a young age, to get what they want,” Silvaggio explains. “And do you think they are going to give it up when they turn 20, with a kid in the box? They can’t get off that gravy train.” But with prices dropping as domestic supply expands, “you can’t go smaller; you’ve got to go bigger these days to make the amount of money you used to make. So what does that mean? You have to get another generator. You have to take more water. You’ve got to spray something because you may lose 20, 30 grand if you don’t.”

Smaller growers operating on their own properties tend to use slightly better environmental practices— avoiding rodenticides, for instance—than the industrial growers who have moved in solely to make money. Even so, Silvaggio says, “we found that it’s just a tiny fraction of folks who are growing organic.”

Among the downsides of the green rush is the strain it puts on water resources in a drought-plagued region. Scott Bauer, a biologist with the state Department of Fish and Wildlife, calculates that irrigation for cannabis farms has sucked up all of the water that would ordinarily keep local salmon streams running through the dry season. Marijuana cultivation, he believes, “is a big reason why” at least 24 salmon and steelhead streams stopped flowing last summer. “I would consider it probably the No. 1 threat” to salmon in the area, he told me. “We are spending millions of dollars on restoring streams. We are investing all this money in removing roads and trying to contain sediment and fixing fish path barriers, but without water there’s no fish.”

 

At Bear Camp, Gabriel leads me to a steep slope where the growers have plugged a freshwater spring with a makeshift dam of logs and tarps, one of 17 water diversions found at the site. Where moisture-loving ferns and horsetails should be flourishing, a plastic pipe leads downhill to a 1,000-gallon reservoir feeding a vast irrigation network. Gabriel unkinks a hose to release an arc of water from a sprinkler. National Guard troops enlisted to help out have already yanked the cannabis plants here, leaving behind a hillside of girdled white oaks and bare soil. “When we have a two-to-four-inch rain, this will just be a mud river,” Gabriel says. Sediment laced with pesticides and other chemicals will find its way into the salmon stream below. We hike down to a clearing where a helicopter is pulling out sling loads of irrigation piping. “Look at this!” Gabriel shouts after plunging into a thicket to help the soldiers rip out another dam. “Insect killer right in the middle of it!”

He and his colleagues have seen much worse. At a grow site in July, he found a fisher that had died from eating one of many poisoned hot dogs strung around the site on a trotline. A state game warden raiding a grow in 2011 discovered a black bear and her cubs convulsing on the ground, having eaten into a stash of pesticides. Two threatened northern spotted owls, the species once at the center of a bitter fight between loggers and environmentalists, tested positive for rodenticides in Gabriel’s lab; he’s now looking into whether toxins from grow sites could be impeding that species’ recovery as well. “When there is no adequate regulatory framework,” Silvaggio warns, “you are going to have nature taking a hit.”

Most growers just want to be left alone, but the small minority who are politically outspoken tend to favor regulation. Kristin Nevedal chairs the Emerald Growers Association, the triangle’s marijuana trade group. The coauthor of an ecofriendly pot-farming guide, she often consults with state and local lawmakers about how to make the industry more responsible. “Prohibition hasn’t curbed the desire for cannabis,” she says. “So we really need to look at changing our policy and starting to treat it like agriculture, so we can manage it.”

“The trespass grows are really an issue because of prohibition,” says one enviro. The growers “are just a symptom. The real disease is the failed drug war.”

One of the most serious efforts on that front was a system put in place by Mendocino County, which as of 2010 allowed the cultivation of up to 99 plants, provided growers registered and tagged each one with zip ties purchased from the county. Sheriff’s deputies monitored the grow sites and checked that they complied with environmental laws. “That program was in a lot of ways fabulous,” Nevedal recalls. Almost 100 growers participated, but the program was shut down in early 2012, after federal agents raided one of the grows and US Attorney Melinda Haag hinted that she might just take the county to court. Later that year, a federal grand jury subpoenaed the county’s zip tie records.

Since then, efforts to regulate pot farming have mostly shifted to the state level. In Colorado, pot vendors are required to list on their packaging all the farm chemicals used to produce their products, and the state recently implemented a “seed to sale” tracking system. Most Coloradans grow indoors due to the climate, which reduces pesticide use and makes it easier to keep pot off the black market, but it’s highly energy intensive. In the journal Energy Policy, researcher Evan Mills estimated that indoor grows suck up enough electricity to supply 1.7 million homes—in California, they account for a whopping 9 percent of household energy use. The newly minted regulations for Washington state allow outdoor grows so long as they are well fenced and outfitted with security cameras and an alarm system.

In the next few years, new legalization measures appear destined for the ballot in California, Alaska, and Oregon. But while it may help create a market for responsibly grown cannabis, legalizing pot in a few states won’t wipe out the black market, with its steep environmental toll. There’s simply too much money to be made shipping weed to New Yorkers at $3,600 per pound, and too few cops to find all the grows and rip them out. “The trespass grows are really an issue because of prohibition,” says Gary Hughes, the executive director of the Environmental Protection Information Center, a 37-year-old Emerald Triangle environmental group that cut its teeth fighting the logging industry. “It is not the growers who are a disease. They are just a symptom. The real disease is the failed drug war.”

Yet without the drug war, the region’s pot sector might fade into oblivion. Take away the threat of federal raids, and to some extent pot becomes just another row crop, grown en masse wherever it’s cheapest. “A shift in cultivation to the Central Valley is definitely possible,” Hughes acknowledges.

There will likely still be a niche for the Emerald Triangle growers who started it all, Nevedal believes, just as there has been for craft whiskey distilleries in post-Prohibition Kentucky. Growing really good weed is simply too much work and too much strain on the environment to make sense on an industrial scale. As it happens, Nevedal speculates, the Emerald Triangle might just end up where it started, providing artisanal dank for a high-end market. “The future,” she says, “is the small family farm.” By Josh Harkinson

Source:     www.motherjones.com | March/April 2014 Issue

 

 

 

Abstract

Marijuana (MJ) remains the most widely abused illicit substance in the United States, and in recent years, a decline in perceived risk of MJ use has been accompanied by a simultaneous increase in rates of use among adolescents. In this study, the authors hypothesized that chronic MJ smokers would perform cognitive tasks, specifically those that require executive function, more poorly than control subjects and that individuals who started smoking MJ regularly prior to age 16 (early onset) would have more difficulty than those who started after age 16 (late onset). Thirty-four chronic, heavy MJ smokers separated into early and late onset groups, and 28 non-MJ smoking controls completed a battery of neurocognitive measures. As hypothesized, MJ smokers performed more poorly than controls on several measures of executive function. Age of onset analyses revealed that these between-group differences were largely attributed to the early onset group, who were also shown to smoke twice as often and nearly 3 times as much MJ per week relative to the late onset smokers. Age of onset, frequency, and magnitude of MJ use were all shown to impact cognitive performance. Findings suggest that earlier MJ onset is related to poorer cognitive function and increased frequency and magnitude of MJ use relative to later MJ onset. Exposure to MJ during a period of neurodevelopmental vulnerability, such as adolescence, may result in altered brain development and enduring neuropsychological changes.

Source: Psychol Addict Behav. 2012 Sep;26(3):496-506. Erratum in Psychol Addict Behav. 201Sep;26(3):506. 

Abstract

PURPOSE:

Colon cancer is a major public health problem. Cannabis-based medicines are useful adjunctive treatments in cancer patients. Here, we have investigated the effect of a standardized Cannabis sativa extract with high content of cannabidiol (CBD), here named CBD BDS, i.e. CBD botanical drug substance, on colorectal cancer cell proliferation and in experimental models of colon cancer in vivo.

METHODS:

Proliferation was evaluated in colorectal carcinoma (DLD-1 and HCT116) as well as in healthy colonic cells using the MTT assay. CBD BDS binding was evaluated by its ability to displace [(3)H]CP55940 from human cannabinoid CB1 and CB2 receptors. In vivo, the effect of CBD BDS was examined on the preneoplastic lesions (aberrant crypt foci), polyps and tumours induced by the carcinogenic agent azoxymethane (AOM) as well as in a xenograft model of colon cancer in mice.

RESULTS:

CBD BDS and CBD reduced cell proliferation in tumoral, but not in healthy, cells. The effect of CBD BDS was counteracted by selective CB1 and CB2 receptor antagonists. Pure CBD reduced cell proliferation in a CB1-sensitive antagonist manner only. In binding assays, CBD BDS showed greater affinity than pure CBD for both CB1 and CB2 receptors, with pure CBD having very little affinity. In vivo, CBD BDS reduced AOM-induced preneoplastic lesions and polyps as well as tumour growth in the xenograft model of colon cancer.

CONCLUSIONS:

CBD BDS attenuates colon carcinogenesis and inhibits colorectal cancer cell proliferation via CB1 and CB2 receptor activation. The results may have some clinical relevance for the use of Cannabis-based medicines in cancer patients.

Source: Phytomedicine. 2014 Apr 15;21(5):631-9. doi: 10.1016/j.phymed.2013.11.006. Epub 2013 Dec 25.