The program focuses on giving Icelandic youth “better options” than drugs and alcohol.

In 1999, a study following the long-term impact of D.A.R.E. (Drug Abuse Resistance Education) concluded that the popular anti-drug program did little to prevent American youth from experimenting with drugs and alcohol.

That same year, the Icelandic Centre for Social Research and Analysis (ICSRA) was born. The institute went on to develop Iceland’s own anti-drug strategy, which did away with old and ineffective strategies (like D.A.R.E.) and instead focused on access to sports, music and art, and parental involvement.

A recent feature by AP News explored the impact of Planet Youth, one of the most successful youth drug and alcohol prevention programs in the world.

The Program’s Approach

“The key to success is to create healthy communities and by that get healthy individuals,” said Inga Dora Sigfusdottir, who founded Planet Youth (formerly “Youth of Iceland”).

Iceland has invested in providing activities (sports, music, art) and facilities (youth centers) to “give kids alternative ways to feel part of a group, and to feel good, rather than through using alcohol and drugs,” according to the Planet Youth website.

The program “is all about society giving better options,” said Reykjavik Mayor Dagur B. Eggertsson.

Prior to Planet Youth, Iceland, too, was contending with problematic substance use among its youth. The government tried to discourage drug and alcohol use through anti-drug “education” (like D.A.R.E.) that we’ve seen for a long time in the United States. But after observing the inefficacy of this approach, Iceland changed course. Rather than fixating on the potential harms of using drugs and alcohol, Planet Youth emphasizes interesting activities and better ways to spend one’s time.

“Telling teenagers not to use drugs can backlash and actually get them curious to try them,” said Sigfusdottir.

Today, Icelandic youth have among the lowest rates of substance abuse in Europe.

Other strategies employed by the Icelandic government to address youth substance abuse include imposing curfews for those under age 16, getting parents more involved in their kids’ lives, banning tobacco and alcohol advertising, and evolving the program based on current data.

The success of Planet Youth has gained the attention of other countries.

According to AP News, ICSRA currently advises 100 communities in 23 countries. Cities in Portugal, Malta, Slovakia, Russia and Kenya have also learned from the Planet Youth model.

Source:  https://www.thefix.com/iceland-anti-drug-program-curbed-substance-abuse  8/01/19

NEARLY 800 babies were born suffering the effects of their mother’s drug addiction in the past three years in Scotland – with experts warning the true toll is likely to be higher.

New figures show 774 babies were recorded as affected by addiction or suffering withdrawal symptoms from drugs between 2014 and 2017.

The drugs pass from mother to foetus through the bloodstream, resulting in babies suffering a range of withdrawal symptoms after birth and developmental delays in childhood.

Consultant neonatologist Dr Helen Mactier, honorary secretary of the British Association of Perinatal Medicine, said there was a “hidden” number of women who took drugs in pregnancy and varying definitions of drug misuse in pregnancy which meant figures were likely to be an underestimate.

She said: “The problem largely in Scotland is opioid withdrawal – heroin and methadone.

“The baby withdraws from these substances and they are very irritable, cross, unhappy children who can be quite difficult to feed until they finally get over the withdrawal.”

Dr Mactier said at birth the babies were usually small, and had small heads and visual problems. She added there is evidence they suffer developmental delays in early childhood.

The figures, revealed in a written parliamentary answer, show an increase of 80% in cases from the three-year period from 2006-9, when 427 babies were born with the condition.

However, it said the data over time should be treated with caution as there has been an improvement in recording drug misuse.

The highest numbers over the past three years were recorded in Grampian, which had 169 cases. Glasgow had 137 cases, while Tayside recorded 90, Lanarkshire 78 and Lothian 72.

Numbers have been dropping since 2011-14, when a peak of 1,073 cases were recorded.

Dr Mactier, who works at Glasgow’s Princess Royal Maternity Hospital, said having to treat babies born addicted to drugs was becoming less common in recent years.

She said: “The numbers are coming down, but we are not sure why. It is partly because women who use drugs intravenously tend to be older, so are becoming too old to have children.”

However, she pointed out one controversial area was stabilising pregnant addicts on heroin substitutes such as methadone.

She added: “That may be good for the mum, to keep her more stable and out of criminality. It is not entirely clear if that is safe for the babies, so we need more research.”

Scottish Conservative health spokesman Miles Briggs, who obtained the figures, said: “It’s a national tragedy that we see such numbers of babies being born requiring drug dependency support – we need to see action to help prevent this harm occurring.”

Martin Crewe, director of Barnardo’s Scotland, said: “We know how important it is for children to get a good start in life. We would like to see no babies born requiring drug dependency support.”

Source:   Sunday Post  15^th October 2018

Scientists at the United States National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Nasa) have turned their attention from the mysteries of the cosmos to a more esoteric area of research: what happens when you get a spider stoned.

Their experiments have shown that common house spiders spin their webs in different ways according to the psychotropic drug they have been given. Spiders on marijuana made a reasonable stab at spinning webs but appear to lose concentration about half-way through. Those on Benzedrine – “speed” – spin their webs ”with great gusto, but apparently without much planning, leaving large holes”, according to New Scientist magazine.

Caffeine, one of the most common drugs consumed by Britons in soft drinks, tea and coffee, makes spiders incapable of spinning anything better than a few threads strung together at random. On chloral hydrate, an ingredient of sleeping pills, spiders ”drop off before they even get started”.

Nasa scientists believe the research demonstrates that web-spinning spiders can be used to test drugs because the more toxic the chemical, the more deformed was the web.

The scientists believe their previous work on the geometry of crystals will help them to devise computer programs that can analyse web-building objectively in order to predict the toxicity of new medicines. ”It appears that one of the most telling measures of toxicity is a decrease, in comparison with a normal web, of the numbers of completed sides [of a web]; the greater the toxicity, the more sides the spider fails to complete,” the scientists say.

Paul Hilliard, spider specialist at the Natural History Museum in London, said researchers first discovered the effects of psychotropic drugs on spiders during experiments at the end of the 1960s. The researchers fed caffeine to spiders in the hope of making them spin webs in the late evening rather than the early dawn. The result was eccentric webs rather than earlier spinning, he said.

Source: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/a-spot-of-speed-puts-spiders-in-a-spin-1617194.html April 1995

Fentanyl overdoses share many characteristics with heroin overdoses – with some important differences, according to an addiction specialist at Boston Medical Center’s Grayken Center for Addiction.

“Fentanyl is faster acting and more potent than heroin, so overdoses evolve in seconds to minutes, instead of minutes to hours, as we see with heroin overdoses,” says Alexander Walley, M.D., Director of the Boston University Addiction Medicine Fellowship Program and the Inpatient Addiction Medicine Consult Service at Boston Medical Center. “The window during which a bystander can respond shrinks substantially with fentanyl,” said Dr. Walley, who spoke about fentanyl overdoses at the recent annual meeting of the College on Problems of Drug Dependence. He noted that people may not know they are using fentanyl. In addition to being mixed into heroin, fentanyl can be sold as cocaine or counterfeit prescription opioids.

Dr. Walley was the principal investigator of a study published last year by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that included interviews with 64 people who survived or witnessed an opioid overdose, as well as a review of medical examiner records of 196 people who died of an opioid overdose.

He found 75 percent of people who witnessed a suspected fentanyl overdose described symptoms as occurring within seconds to minutes. Among people who witnessed the opioid overdose antidote naloxone being administered, 83 percent said that two or more naloxone doses were used before the person responded.

When Dr. Walley and colleagues analyzed death records for people who died of an opioid overdose, they found 76 percent tested positive for fentanyl in March 2015 – up from 44 percent in October 2014. They found 36 percent of fentanyl deaths had evidence of an overdose occurring within seconds to minutes after drug use, and 90 percent of people who died from a fentanyl overdose had no pulse by the time emergency medical services arrived.

Only 6 percent of fentanyl overdose deaths had evidence of lay bystander-administered naloxone. “Although bystanders were frequently present in the general location of overdose death, timely bystander naloxone administration did not occur because bystanders did not have naloxone, were spatially separated or impaired by substance use, or failed to recognize overdose symptoms,” the researchers concluded. “Findings indicate that persons using fentanyl have an increased chance of surviving an overdose if directly observed by someone trained and equipped with sufficient doses of naloxone.”

Dealing With the Fentanyl Crisis

The approach to fentanyl overdoses should be similar to heroin overdoses – except that time is especially of the essence, Dr. Walley noted. “The best way to reduce overdose risk is to not use opioids in the first place,” he said. “But if a person is using opioids, he or she should make sure someone else is observing and is prepared to use naloxone quickly.”

He stressed that for people who use fentanyl or heroin and stop because of treatment or incarceration, and then start taking the drug again upon release, the risk of an overdose is especially high because their tolerance for the drug has decreased.

Early treatment for addiction is especially important in the age of fentanyl, Dr. Walley said. “We need to make a better effort to reach people sooner,” he said. “Fentanyl is so deadly we can’t afford to wait.”

As with other types of opioid use disorders, the recommended treatment for fentanyl addiction is medication – methadone, buprenorphine (Suboxone) or naltrexone (Vivitrol).

“We need to figure out ways to make effective treatments work for patients, rather than make the patients work for the treatment,” Dr. Walley said. “That means making treatment more convenient and patient-centered. We also need to start treatment in in-patient detox programs. We know these people are more vulnerable to overdose when they are discharged, so we should start treatment before then. We also need to engage people who seek help in the emergency room in overdose prevention, harm reduction and treatment.”

Source:  https://drugfree.org/drug-and-alcohol-news/featured-news-rapid-response-fentanyl-overdose-critical/?utm_source=pns&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=featured-news-rapid-response-fentanyl-overdose-critical

A new study finds the rise in drug overdose deaths in the United States has contributed to an increase in organ transplants, CNN reports.

Overdose death donors accounted for 1.1 percent of donors in 2000 and 13.4 percent in 2017, representing a 24-fold rise, the researchers report in the Annals of Internal Medicine.

The study also found many organs from overdose-death donors were not used to save lives when they could have been.

“The current epidemic of deaths from overdose is a tragedy. It would also be tragic to continue to underutilize life-saving transplants from donors,” said lead researcher Dr. Christine Durand of Johns Hopkins University. “We have an obligation to optimize the use of all organs donated. The donors, families and patients waiting deserve our best effort to use every gift of life we can.”

Source:   https://drugfree.org/drug-and-alcohol-news/rise-drug-overdose-deaths-contributes-increase-organ-transplants/?utm_source=pns&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=rise-drug-overdose-deaths-contributes-increase-organ-transplants