THE ice epidemic has emerged as a key driver of this year's horror New South Wales road toll, which has shot back up to the highest level since 2013. Almost 50 per cent of motorists who failed roadside drug tests in 2015 took ice, while 72 per cent took cannabis, 6 per cent took ecstasy - and a whopping 97 per cent had a combination of drugs in their system. After years of falling crash rates, including a record low in 2014, this year's road toll has spiked 12 per cent with 333 deaths so far in 2015, up from 298 last year. Back in the 1970s around 1300 people died each year on NSW roads. [continues 321 words]
Experts Want More Data on Effects of Medical Marijuana Even though Maryland is following the lead of 23 other states in setting up a medical marijuana industry, the collective experience of those states has translated to relatively little understanding of how the dozens of active substances within the plant affect health. As a result, Maryland will launch what likely will become a multimillion-dollar industry to make a psychoactive drug more available statewide without the benefit of proven information about the health implications. [continues 1288 words]
Santa Ana police officers responded in the predawn hours of Nov. 2 to reports of shots fired in the parking lot of South Coast Safe Access, the first medical marijuana dispensary - among 20 winners of a lottery for a chance at a handful of permits - to open for business in the city. According to the Register, "when [officers] arrived, they found a man in his late 40s with a gunshot wound to his stomach." That man has since told his story to the OC Weekly, which noted that, "Standing at the entrance to the dispensary when the attack occurred was a security guard, but in compliance with Santa Ana's regulations for licensed pot clubs, he wasn't armed." [continues 196 words]
The "Just Say No" campaign kept me off drugs. NOT! Still, I appreciate Nancy Reagan for using ignorant scare tactics to at least try to keep kids like me away from the Devil's Lettuce. Drugs are for adults, and having a dialogue about that notion is important. The conversation does not, however, require a sizzling egg to represent your brain on drugs. Drug Abuse Resistance Education campaigns, aka DARE, were all the rage in the 1980s and '90s, sucking up hundreds of millions of tax dollars on TV spots, branded backpacks, stickers, and even cartoons featuring Daren the Lion. At its peak, the program was deployed in 75 percent of American schools, with police officers leading classroom discussions and assemblies that students absolutely loved-not because of the content, but because it got us out of math class. [continues 751 words]
Back in my misspent youth, I was a registered nurse for a nanosecond. Then I realized that real nurses had something I didn't have ... a desire to be a nurse. So I got out of the profession. But before I did, I spent more than my fair share of nights in the emergency room of Long Island College Hospital, a hospital that handled some of the meaner streets of Brooklyn. Overdoses were pretty much a daily routine. On the weekends, overdoses became something close to a marathon. [continues 634 words]
A Montreal police officer, who was charged on Thursday with drug trafficking and other criminal offences, will face a judge on Friday to seek bail. The Montreal Police Department suspended Philippe Bonenfant, a patrol officer with downtown Station 21 with six years' service, without pay after he was charged at the Montreal courthouse, said Cmdr. Khanh Du Dinh, who handles community relations for the Montreal police. Bonenfant faces charges of trafficking ecstasy and speed, counselling someone to commit a criminal act, possession of a prohibited weapon, which in this case is a pair of brass knuckles, and fraudulent use of a computer, Dinh said. The latter charge concerns the use of the Quebec police information centre, a database housing information for use only in the course of police work, he said. [continues 221 words]
While some may view the government dishing out of tips on howto get high safely as cynical and degenerate, surely this is a health issue rather than a moral one? Last week's announcement by Associate Health Minister Peter Dunne that government experts may be able to offer advice on recreational drug-taking will probably go down like a cup of cold sick with conservative Kiwis. In Dunne's time as associate minister, the very flexible centrist politician who prides himself on his common sense has been learning on the job, his rocky journey into legal highs taking him to professional lows. [continues 579 words]
While some may view the government dishing out of tips on how to get high safely as cynical and degenerate, surely this is a health issue rather than a moral one? Last week's announcement by Associate Health Minister Peter Dunne that government experts may be able to offer advice on recreational drug-taking will probably go down like a cup of cold sick with conservative Kiwis. In Dunne's time as associate minister, the very flexible centrist politician who prides himself on his common sense has been learning on the job, his rocky journey into legal highs taking him to professional lows. [continues 583 words]
Scotland's war on drugs amounts to a war on the poor, according one of the country's leading authorities on substance abuse. In a new paper, Dr Iain McPhee, from the University of the West of Scotland's Centre for Alcohol and Drugs Studies, calls the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971, "unjust, unfair and unworkable." McPhee was Project Leader of the National Drugs Helpline and the National AIDS Helpline, and has worked as a drugs specialist with social work and Scottish police. [continues 1137 words]
My personal drug guru is an avuncular Briton named David Nutt, a neuropsychopharmacologist and a professor at Imperial College in London. His 2012 book Drugs Without the Hot Air is the most rational and comprehensive approach to public health and drug use I have come across. A cheat sheet: Drug abuse can be a problem, but it is never a crime. Marijuana may as well be sold in cafes; heroin and cocaine are extremely harmful; LSD and ecstasy have untapped medical potential, if only researchers could study them. [continues 677 words]
Well, it's almost over. My class at TMCC called "Welcome to Wonderland-The Golden Age of Psychedelia '65-'67," which wraps up on Wednesday the 18th. This is the second time I've conducted this nostalgic bus ride back to a time that was just a little more remarkable than most, and it leaves me with some unanswered questions. In the class, we re-live the lysergically enhanced music of that rich era (Beach Boys, Stones, Beatles, Dylan, Pink Floyd, etc.) that's now 50 years old. Fifty freakin' years! [continues 418 words]
Six years ago the Government's chief drugs adviser, David Nutt, alerted us to a frightening addiction called "equasy". Equasy, as Nutt described it, was a pursuit that released adrenaline and pleasurable endorphins into the brain. It was also extremely dangerous, often fatal. Nutt reckoned that around one in every 350 usages of equasy resulted in acute physical harm. Worse still, this was an addiction that had in its grip tens of thousands of people across Britain, including small children. Equasy was horse-riding. Nutt's point was that, objectively speaking, riding a horse is a far more dangerous hobby than taking little MDMA pills, or ecstasy, in nightclubs. While he calculated that 1 in 350 horseriding episodes resulted in harm, that was only the case with 1 in 10,000 episodes of ecstasy use. And yet ecstasy was a Class A banned drug and the object of great waves of concern from the media and politicians, while horse-riding was not. [continues 967 words]
There can be no doubt that the daft war on drugs is devastating many of the world's poorest countries, from Africa to Latin America. But this has been ignored by major charities that claim to campaign for international development, presumably for fear of upsetting their donors. Now one has broken ranks, with the release of an important report from Christian Aid condemning what it calls "a blind spot in development thinking". Christian Aid deserves credit for taking a stand, one which has caused internal palpitations. The report itself highlights the hypocrisy of successive British governments that have poured money into aid yet supported the prohibition ripping apart poor communities. One day they will see that sanctimonious talk of saving the world is not a solution to complex problems. [continues 474 words]
It was the first time in his life Brad Christianson truly feared going to jail. He was 23 years old on the cold January morning when he walked into court, knowing his fate was sealed. By that time in his young life, Christianson was no stranger to incarceration. He was first locked up when he was 12, after pulling a pocket knife on an older kid. This time around, he was truly frightened. This time, he wouldn't have the protection of his gang to see him through the hard days ahead. [continues 945 words]
Every year, Ottawa emergency rooms on Halloween are a scary sight -- filled with alcohol and drug-related incidents -- and this year doesn't plan on being any different. Ottawa Police and Ottawa Public Health are warning partiers of an alarming trend surfacing in the city, the increase in use of MDMA bath salts and the emergence of "unusually strong" magic mushrooms. "People aren't generally concerned when they drink too much," said Nancy Langdon, supervisor of the substance misuse program at Ottawa Public Health. "But they may also have the opportunity to experiment with an illicit drug that they may or may not have tried before. But even if the person had a reasonable experience before, there's really no guarantee that what they used the last time isn't in any way similar to what they're using this time and that their reaction will be the same." [continues 130 words]
Tune in and turn on: new studies are exploring the benefits of psilocybin and party drugs as possible therapies for addiction, anxiety and depression While pot has attracted most of the headlines on the issue of drugs as medicine, awareness seems to be - shall we say? - mushrooming on the potential healing benefits of psilocybin and similar psychoactive drugs. Experimental research on psilocybin, the active compound responsible for the "magic" in magic mushrooms, suggests it has potential for treating alcohol and tobacco addictions, obsessive-compulsive disorder and end-of-life anxiety. [continues 672 words]
Every year, thousands of Canadians are deeply affected by the damaging effects of drugs. Many have died from drug related overdoses while others may contract HIV or hepatitis C from injection drug use. Many more are arrested for possession or trafficking, leaving them with a criminal record. Drugs have ended friendships, caused job loss and destroyed families. A group of community volunteers recently helped to launch the Reality Tour for Vankleek Hill and Surrounding Communities. The Reality Tour is a consequence-driven drug awareness and prevention program for parents and their children, aged 10-17. The presentation includes guest speakers, videos and live re-enactments to show the effects and consequences of drugs. [continues 248 words]
The UN wants its members to decriminalise drugs, and Sir Richard Branson thinks that is just great. Well, it is not quite like that; as so often, the story is more nuanced than the headline. The paper Sir Richard leaked, which urges "decriminalising drug use and possession for personal consumption", was drawn up for a conference in Kuala Lumpur on harm reduction by Dr Monica Beg, an official at the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) in Vienna. It has since been withdrawn and, as you can gather from the outcry, it is certainly a "third-rail issue" you touch it at your peril. [continues 907 words]
ALFALFA - Michael Hughes could grow pot in his Bend backyard if he wanted to. As long as they were out of view, he could grow the plants, cut and dry the flowers, smoke them and get high. But he can't grow hemp there. He bought a license to grow hemp, but a variety of factors has made it more difficult to grow hemp than marijuana and other crops in Oregon. Hemp, a cannabis plant with virtually no psychoactive ingredients that traditionally was grown for its strong fibers and edible seeds and oils, has been legal in Oregon for six years. [continues 2787 words]
GOVERNMENT FUNDING, LACK OF RESTRICTIONS SLOW PROGRESS ON MEDICAL MARIJUANA RESEARCH Research on marijuana's potential for medicinal use has been hampered for years by federal restrictions, even though nearly half of the states and the District of Columbia have legalized medical marijuana in some form. An analysis by News21 shows that $1.1 billion of the $1.4 billion that the National Institute of Health spent on marijuana research from 2008 to 2014 went toward research on marijuana abuse and addiction. Only $297 million was spent on its effects on the brain and potential medical benefits for those suffering from conditions like chronic pain. [continues 755 words]
