UNITED NATIONS - The first U.N. special session to address global drug policy in nearly 20 years bristled with tension Tuesday over the use of the death penalty for drug-related offenses, as countries wrestled over whether to emphasize criminalization and punishment or health and human rights. The outcome document adopted by member states included no criticism of the death penalty, saying only that countries should ensure that punishments are "proportionate" with the crimes. "Disproportional penalties create vicious cycles of marginalization and further crime," Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto told the gathering. He also called for the decriminalization of marijuana for medical and scientific purposes and said the international community's responses to drug issues are "frankly, insufficient." [continues 103 words]
UNITED NATIONS (AP) - The first U.N. special session to address global drug policy in nearly 20 years bristled with tension Tuesday over the use of the death penalty for drug-related offenses. The outcome document adopted by member states included no criticism of the death penalty, saying only that countries should ensure that punishments are "proportionate" with the crimes. "Disproportional penalties ... create vicious cycles of marginalization and further crime," Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto told the gathering. He also called for the decriminalization of marijuana for medical and scientific purposes and said the international community's response to drug issues is "frankly, insufficient." [continues 140 words]
UNITED NATIONS (AP) - The first U.N. special session to address global drug policy in nearly 20 years bristled with tension Tuesday over the use of the death penalty for drug-related offenses, as countries wrestled over whether to emphasize criminalization and punishment or health and human rights. The outcome document adopted by member states included no criticism of the death penalty, saying only that countries should ensure that punishments are "proportionate" with the crimes. "Disproportional penalties ... create vicious cycles of marginalization and further crime," Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto told the gathering. He also called for the decriminalization of marijuana for medical and scientific purposes and said the international community's responses to drug issues is "frankly, insufficient." [continues 165 words]
Managing Social Norms Is As Important As Rewriting the Rules of Cannabis Consumption in Canada, Conference Hears As the Trudeau government prepares to draw up legislation that would legalize marijuana for recreational use, leading policy experts in the United States have some pointed advice for Canada: Rules are important, but cultivating unwritten social standards around how people use the drug are just as crucial. In states such as Colorado and Washington, where prohibition of cannabis has been lifted, lawmakers have seen recreational marijuana use soar. While that has pumped welcome tax dollars into government coffers, it has also led to problems with public consumption, overuse and intoxicated driving. [continues 704 words]
UNITED NATIONS - Canada has promised to legalize marijuana. Mexico's highest court has allowed some citizens to grow cannabis for personal use. Colombia has reversed its decades-long policy of aerial spraying against coca, the raw ingredient in cocaine. Even in the United States, once the chief architect of the global war on drugs, four states permit recreational marijuana sales. Other states have pro-legalization ballot measures pending. And a heroin epidemic has prompted the mayor of at least one city to propose establishing a supervised injection clinic. [continues 888 words]
A U. N. Special Session Will Examine the Effects of the Hard- Line Approach and Will Study Alternatives. At what is being billed as the most significant high-level gathering on global drug policy in two decades, the stage will be set for world leaders to discuss what would have once been unthinkable - reversing course in the war on drugs. The United Nations General Assembly Special Session on the World Drug Problem, which begins Tuesday in New York, will bring together government, human rights and health leaders to discuss whether the hard-line tactics of combating drug trafficking and money laundering have failed. [continues 800 words]
Santa Barbara, Calif. - I'M 74 years old, and I have smoked marijuana almost every day since dinosaurs roamed the earth in the early '70s. When my awareness is heightened, I'm on my game - the best I can be at thinking creatively, making decisions, focusing on my work, seeing the big picture ... and caregiving. For 20 years my wife, Anne, has struggled gallantly against the physical, cognitive, emotional and spiritual depredations of Parkinson's disease. For the first 15, I took care of her myself. Now I have lots of help. Either way, enjoying a hit or two on the pipe every couple of hours has granted me tens of thousands of sweet clemencies that keep me from burning out as a caregiver. [continues 804 words]
WHEN Attorney General Loretta Lynch decided late last year that the Justice Department would end the federal civil-asset forfeiture program, criminal-justice reform advocates proclaimed it a "significant deal." But late last month, less than four months later, the Obama administration reversed itself and reinstated the Asset Forfeiture Fund's Orwellian "equitable sharing" program. That's a shame, particularly when the only supporters of the policy are the law-enforcement agencies that directly benefit from it. Indeed, the federal program's combined annual revenue has grown more than 1,000 percent in the last 15 years, filling the coffers of federal, state and local police departments. [continues 577 words]
Lee Carroll Brooker, a 75-year-old disabled veteran suffering from chronic pain, was arrested in July 2011 for growing three dozen marijuana plants for his own medicinal use behind his son's house in Dothan, Ala., where he lived. For this crime, Mr. Brooker was given a life sentence with no possibility of release. Alabama law mandates that anyone with certain prior felony convictions be sentenced to life without parole for possessing more than 1 kilogram, or 2.2 pounds, of marijuana, regardless of intent to sell. Mr. Brooker had been convicted of armed robberies in Florida two decades earlier, for which he served 10 years. The marijuana plants collected at his son's house - including unusable parts like vines and stalks - weighed 2.8 pounds. [continues 468 words]
We at the Erie County Board of Health feel compelled to bring more attention and awareness to the imminent public health epidemic currently upon us. Opioids - both prescription drugs and drugs of abuse, such as heroin and fentanyl - are killing residents at an unprecedented rate. Opiate addiction is affecting residents of all ages and from all walks of life; the disease does not discriminate and has no socioeconomic boundaries. In 2014, 127 residents' deaths were attributed to opioids of all types. As of March 28, there have been 219 deaths attributed to opioids in 2015, and there is still a backlog of bodies waiting to have the cause of death cleared through results of toxicology screens. [continues 176 words]
Howard Marks, an Oxford-educated drug trafficker who at his peak in the 1970s controlled a substantial fraction of the world's hashish and marijuana trade, and who became a best-selling author after his release from an American prison, died on Sunday. He was 70. His death, from colorectal cancer, which he disclosed last year, was confirmed by Robin Harvie, publisher for nonfiction at Pan Macmillan, which released Mr. Marks's final book, "Mr. Smiley: My Last Pill and Testament," in September. No other details were provided. [continues 735 words]
If there's a feeder system for developing future opioid addiction, it includes narcotic treatment for back pain without medical justification. More than 80 percent of adults will experience lower back pain at some point in their lives, according to a Univera Healthcare review of upstate New York population data. Among the report's findings is that medical professionals often focus on treating the pain, rather than addressing quality of life or ability to function. The result is that prescription painkillers, including opiates, are widely prescribed, despite medical evidence that they rarely hasten recovery and carry with them the substantial risk for long-term abuse. [continues 320 words]
The practice of medicine and the humane treatment of patients would take giant steps backward if policy solutions to the opioid addiction "crisis" did not guarantee that people who need opioids for pain relief will still be able to access these critically important medications in sufficient amounts without additional hardship. We raise this issue because already some doctors have said they will avoid prescribing these medications in response to new laws and rules. There is reason to be concerned that the response to this latest drug crisis will involve policy mistakes. After all, that's the history of the entire war on drugs. It was recently reported that John Ehrlichman, a top aide to President Richard Nixon, admitted that Nixon initiated the "war on drugs" in the early 1970s as a political maneuver to use law enforcement to arrest and imprison hippies, protesters and African-Americans. Since then, literally $1 trillion has been spent on this ill-conceived failed "war" that has ruined countless lives, causing so much more harm than good. [continues 85 words]
When it comes to the epidemic of African-Americans dying at the hands of police, people who are asked to consider the issue often get stuck on whether the person in question had it coming. What was he or she doing at the time? Running away? Resisting arrest? And if so, doesn't that prove he or she was guilty of something? And from there, it's a short hop to the conclusion that if only this person had been doing the right things - staying off the streets, keeping out of trouble, not hanging around with the wrong people or doing exactly as the police demanded at the moment of a heated encounter - tragedy could have been averted. Yeah, right. In a perfect world, mothers and fathers living in low-income communities with crumbling schools and few employment opportunities would heroically manage to raise children who were able to stay away from trouble with alcohol, drugs or gang-type behavior even though these things are all around them. [continues 510 words]
This letter was intended as a response to the Feb. 9 News article about 23 people dying from opiate abuse in 11 days. Shortly after taking pen to paper, news surrounding and involving the opioid epidemic became a daily topic in the media. I commend The News for being a leader in exposing this epidemic, and devoting the time and attention that the issue so desperately needs. How addiction is viewed plays largely in how successful we will be at overcoming this epidemic. There is a stigma attached to addicts, even to those who obtain treatment. While we may be slowly moving away from our "shaming and blaming" of people who suffer from addiction, public views are not changing fast enough. We must remember that addiction is a disease, affecting people of all races, socioeconomic status and geographic locations. [continues 114 words]
Devolution is when the federal government relinquishes responsibility, intentionally or unintentionally, for something it was previously responsible for to local governments. An example of this can be seen in the way the heroin and opioid epidemic is being addressed in Erie County. Gridlock in Congress prevents meaningful federal action, despite the efforts of our elected leaders. They include Sen. Charles Schumer's role in the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act, which would provide communities additional funding for prevention efforts, and Rep. Brian Higgins' introduction of the Recovery Enhancement for Addiction Treatment Act, which would allow physicians to dispense maintenance medications to more patients. [continues 305 words]
The 55-year-old crack addict counted his change outside a Harlem liquor store. He had just over a dollar, leaving him 35 cents short of the cheapest mini-bottle. The 21-year-old heroin addict sat in a McDonald's on the Lower East Side, wondering when his grandmother would next wire him money. He was homeless, had 84 cents in his pocket and was living out of two canvas bags. Each was approached by someone who asked the addict for help buying drugs. Using the stranger's money, each addict went to see a nearby dealer, returned with drugs, handed them over and was promptly arrested on felony drug-dealing charges. The people who had asked for drugs were undercover narcotics officers with the New York Police Department. [continues 1442 words]
How a Shift in Health-Care Delivery and Big Pharma's Hunger for Profits Have Driven the Opioid Epidemic I was walking past, and happened to see him behind the partially drawn curtain. There he was, lying on the gurney, head back, mouth gaping. White, 25, covered in tattoos, not breathing, his lips a fine pale blue. We ran into the room. The nurse pushed Narcan, a drug that reverses opiates. And 30 seconds later he woke up as if a switch had been flipped. Narcan is like magic; it literally raises people from the dead. [continues 1658 words]
To the Editor: Re "A Strong Response to the Opioid Scourge" (editorial, March 17): The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has done a disservice to people living with intractable chronic pain with its latest one-sided recommendations for reducing opiate overuse - recommendations that you praise. I worked in a drug treatment facility and have seen the ravages of addiction, and I know the risks of opiate use. When I suffered multiple severe injuries from a fall, I tried every treatment I could find to reduce my suffering without narcotics. None came close to reducing it to a tolerable level. Grudgingly, I came to the conclusion that pain medicines were going to have to be part of my comprehensive approach to pain management. [continues 70 words]
To the Editor: Re "Obama Takes Crusade Against Opioids on Road" (news article, March 30): While I was heartened to see that, finally, the administration is stepping up to face the dire epidemic of drug overdose deaths in America, I cannot help but wonder why it took so long. My 22-year-old son is part of the grim 2014 statistic: 28,648 drug deaths from opioids. He died from an accidental heroin overdose in September 2014. His story echoes a familiar tale of the progression from easily accessible prescription painkillers to heroin. And, like many others, he was a sweet, handsome and intelligent young man whose life, dreams and soul were ripped away by the disease of addiction. He was also part of a treatment process that criminalized him - in and out of treatment programs, finally receiving medication for his addiction but unsupervised. [continues 89 words]
To the Editor: Re "Heroin Yields Ground to Fentanyl, Its More Potent Killer Cousin" (front page, March 26): The influx of fentanyl as an additive to heroin and as a free-standing active killer is a scary reminder that the drug epidemic must be addressed from the demand side as well as the supply. Supply-side strategies that rely on law enforcement, opioid prescription restrictions and international cooperation are necessary but not sufficient to reduce and reverse our national scourge of substance use disorder. [continues 155 words]
To the Editor: Re "Town's Anti-Drug Plan: Safe Site to Use Heroin" (front page, March 23), about a proposal by the mayor of Ithaca, N.Y., to establish the first site in the United States where people could legally inject heroin: Supervised injection facilities, or SIFs, are a longstanding public health tool in several countries and are rapidly gaining support elsewhere, including in the United States. Advocates like me understand why people have questions about something that at first pass looks as if it enables destructive behavior. [continues 117 words]
Patients and Doctors Discuss the Management of Drugs That Can Be Helpful or Harmful. To the Editor: Re "A Strong Response to the Opioid Scourge" (editorial, March 17): There are longtime users of low-dose opioids, like me, who never require an increase in dose and who find that this medication provides quality of life. How? By addressing chronic pain, sleep disorders and associated depression. The alternatives proposed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, like aspirin and ibuprofen, can cause long-term damage to body organs and short-term stomach pain. For many of us, spare use of a low-dose opioid is the very best alternative. [continues 79 words]
Patients and Doctors Discuss the Management of Drugs That Can Be Helpful or Harmful. To the Editor: Re "New Standards for Painkillers Aim to Stem Overdose Deaths" (front page, March 16): The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has been doing a commendable job monitoring and controlling the prescription opioid drug overdose epidemic. But other federal government agencies can and should do more to address this public health crisis. Specifically, the Drug Enforcement Administration should increase its crackdown on physicians running pill mills, and Congress should open an investigation into the role of the Food and Drug Administration in this completely man-made epidemic and hold hearings on the marketing approaches and other business practices of pharmaceutical companies that may have contributed to the skyrocketing increase in opioid drug prescriptions. New York The writer is a professor of epidemiology and director of the Center for Injury Epidemiology and Prevention at Columbia University. [end]
Patients and Doctors Discuss the Management of Drugs That Can Be Helpful or Harmful. To the Editor: The proper treatment of pain disorders by physicians should not be directed by the fear of lawsuits or pressure by insurance payers but rather by sound guidelines developed by organizations like the American Academy of Pain Medicine. The news media has readily noted a "prescription drug epidemic," but overdoses mainly result from drug diversion and misuse rather than from taking an opioid as prescribed. Epidemiological data has reported up to 16,500 deaths a year from the aspirin-ibuprofen family of medicines, which can cause ulcers, kidney failure and liver inflammation, none of which occur with opioids. [continues 68 words]
Patients and Doctors Discuss the Management of Drugs That Can Be Helpful or Harmful. To the Editor: Re "States Push to Curb Painkiller Overuse" (Business Day, March 12): As an orthopedic surgeon in Massachusetts, I applaud the efforts of my state to limit patients' excessive opioid use. Every year in this country, more than 70 million post-surgical patients receive opioids, and research shows that one in 15 will go on to long-term use, indicating that the surgical setting has become an inadvertent gateway to the overall societal epidemic. [continues 129 words]
Patients and Doctors Discuss the Management of Drugs That Can Be Helpful or Harmful. To the Editor: The number of deaths directly attributable to opioids far exceeds the incidence of fatalities associated with several other epidemics that we have experienced in this country in past years. More than a half of 460 autopsies I performed last year for coroners in southwest Pennsylvania were drug related, and a substantial percentage were people who got started on powerful analgesics prescribed by their physicians. [continues 51 words]
Patients and Doctors Discuss the Management of Drugs That Can Be Helpful or Harmful. To the Editor: For many people with chronic pain, opioid painkillers are a lifeline. The new guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, while perhaps reasonable as a first approach, are unrealistic for patients who have done well (sometimes for years) on carefully monitored opioid doses under continuing medical care. As The Times has reported, these longtime patients must now be subjected to humiliating "pain contracts" and random drug tests. [continues 127 words]
The Supreme Court has handed the marijuana-legalization movement an important victory. Two states - Nebraska and Oklahoma - sought to invalidate the landmark Colorado measure known as Amendment 64, which legalized recreational marijuana in that state. But the challenge fell flat when the Court announced last week that it wouldn't hear their case. That means the Colorado law will remain in effect - and more states can opt to legalize also. No one can deny the gathering momentum behind the legalization movement. Since 2012, four states have approved referenda that essentially legalize marijuana for recreational purposes: [continues 571 words]
ITHACA, N.Y. - Even Svante L. Myrick, the mayor of this city, thought the proposal sounded a little crazy, though it was put forth by a committee he had appointed. The plan called for establishing a site where people could legally shoot heroin - something that does not exist anywhere in the United States. "Heroin is bad, and injecting heroin is bad, so how could supervised heroin injection be a good thing?" Mr. Myrick, a Democrat, said. But he also knew he had to do something drastic to confront the scourge of heroin in his city in central New York. So he was willing to take a chance and embrace the radical notion, knowing well that it would provoke a backlash. [continues 1204 words]
Slowly we are coming to realize the foolishness of our national "war on drugs" policy and that there is a more effective way to deal with the issue. Erie County's recent efforts to deal with the heroin issue are significant. Putting people in jail and demonizing drug usage has only allowed criminals to make billions of dollars and increase violence in our country. In his book, "Chasing the Scream," Johann Hari laid out some alternatives to our current policies. Switzerland, Canada and Portugal are just a few of the countries trying to establish policies that have not only decreased gun violence but decreased drug addiction. [continues 67 words]
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. - Sure, let's just hoist the white flag of surrender in the war against heroin addiction. That's what Assemblywoman Linda Rosenthal (D-Manhattan) would effectively do with her bill to legalize "supervised injection facilities" for people to self-administer illegal narcotics under the supervision of medical staff. If it's not the dumbest proposal we've heard to battle drug addiction, it has to rank pretty close to the top of the list. And yet we keep hearing it. [continues 505 words]
William F. Buckley said it first and he had it right. To paraphrase Buckley: "Legalize everything, legalize all drugs." As a nation, the United States has thrown billions of dollars down an unquenchable rat hole in an effort to end the flow of drugs streaming in from Mexico, Afghanistan, wherever. The efforts have failed. Corner drug shops, similar to OTBs, should be erected and staffed so that addicts are able to satisfy their needs easily and at moderate cost. This will keep them out of my face during the day and out of my house at night. It will also relieve users of criminal, furtive behavior, of worrying about making a contact, having enough money for a buy and being arrested. Let's release the thousands doing time for minor drug offenses. Will it ever happen? Of course not. There's too much money being made and changing hands. But Buckley had it right. George D. Poe Williamsville [end]
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention this week released well-reasoned guidelines for how doctors should prescribe opioid painkillers. The voluntary standards could make a difference in curbing the alarming increase in prescription drug deaths. In 2014, overdoses of opioids, like oxycodone and hydrocodone, and related drugs like heroin were responsible for 28,647 deaths, up 14 percent from the year before. About one in 550 people who received opioids for chronic pain not linked to cancer died from an opioid-related overdose a median of 2.6 years after their first prescription. "We know of no other medication routinely used for a nonfatal condition that kills patients so frequently," Dr. Thomas Frieden and Dr. Debra Houry of the C.D.C. wrote in The New England Journal of Medicine on Tuesday. [continues 384 words]
I congratulate the mayor on the plan to provide safe refuge for heroin injections. There may need to be changes to provide safety for all involved. He will and has received many criticisms, but what has worked over the past 100 years? Nothing. His plan deserves a chance; after all, it can be discontinued if there is an insurmountable problem. ITHACA [end]
ITHACA, N.Y. - A bustling economy. Record-low unemployment. A ballooning heroin problem. That's how Mayor Svante Myrick describes Ithaca, where he hopes to open the nation's first safe injection facility - a place where heroin users can shoot their illegal drugs under medical supervision and without fear of arrest. His proposal, part of a plan to address drug abuse in the college town of 31,000 in central New York, is not a novel idea. Safe injection sites, which also connect clients to treatment programs and offer emergency care to reverse overdoses, exist in 27 cities in other parts of the world. Some have been around for decades. [continues 592 words]
To the Editor: The recent increase in heroin use in Boston and throughout the country should come as no surprise to anyone. Following an increase in the prescribing of opioid painkillers, a number of steps were taken to reduce such prescribing markedly, but with no attention whatever paid to the patients who had become dependent, not even offers of detoxification. Many, predictably, turned to the much cheaper and widely available alternative of heroin. The only tangential reference to treatment in your article is the statement that a particular stretch of Massachusetts Avenue is known as Methadone Mile. Would that it were so! Along with all other forms of treatment, methadone maintenance - the gold standard of care - should be readily available to all who want and need help for their dependence, and who with tragic frequency die without it. The writer is a health care consultant. [end]
To the Editor: It's not easy to understand heroin addicts. They eschew replacement drugs like methadone and Suboxone that reduce sickness and cravings so they can shoot up and experience that momentary rush and ephemeral bliss. Many of them know that they are chasing that "first high," that first time that opened the door to heaven and hell. Shooting up is an extraordinary experience, but as much as they try, addicts will not get that first high again. For these people, life holds little meaning or joy outside of getting high. Their addiction gives them a reason to exist, a focus and its rewards. [continues 84 words]
To the Editor: Re "Use of Heroin in Public View Across the U.S." (front page, March 7): Until they are ready for treatment and have access to it, people with an addiction to heroin will find a place to inject, whether it's in a fast-food restaurant bathroom, a church basement, a public bus or an abandoned building. Making restrooms inaccessible will only push the problem elsewhere. Nurse-supervised safe injection sites like Insite in Vancouver, Canada, have been demonstrated to save lives and provide a pathway toward recovery. We need to follow suit. Brookline, Mass. The writer is a doctor of internal medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital and on the faculty of Harvard Medical School. [end]
In the first 10 days of March, heroin and other opiates are believed to have claimed as many as 10 lives in Buffalo. But that's only a portion. Since the beginning of the year, city detectives have determined at least 25 individuals died from overdoses. "We are at epidemic levels and there is no end in sight," Buffalo Police Commissioner Daniel Derenda said Thursday. "Sadly, it is probably going to get much worse before it gets better." But the epidemic goes beyond Buffalo. [continues 321 words]
Addicts' Families Form Web of Support Families of heroin and other opiate addicts started meeting last year in Amherst and the Town of Tonawanda to offer each other support. Some 500 people last week packed Buffalo's North Park Theatre for a town hall-style meeting on the deadly epidemic. And as many as 200 people are expected to attend a meeting in a Depew church Wednesday in search of answers. All of this represents a grassroots response to the epidemic killing hundreds of local residents and a belief that government alone cannot solve the problem. [continues 443 words]
After federal prosecutors declined this week to file criminal charges against a white New York City police officer who fatally shot an unarmed black teenager in the Bronx four years ago, the Police Department's long-delayed internal case against him will proceed. The mother of the teenager, Ramarley Graham, stood at City Hall on Thursday and called on Officer Richard Haste, who shot her son, to be fired along with other officers of the Street Narcotics Enforcement Unit involved in the episode. [continues 316 words]
To the Editor: Re "Governors Will Create Plan to Curb Opioid Use" (news article, Feb. 22): The alarming rise in prescription drug abuse, particularly opioid abuse, is attracting increased attention from public officials and dominated discussions at the recent National Governors Association meeting. The epidemic in drug overdose deaths has led to calls for new treatment protocols, limits on prescriptions and expansion of treatment services. Also needed is a significant expansion of prevention efforts. Over 30 years of rigorous scientific research has identified a growing number of prevention approaches that are effective, produce lasting results and can save taxpayers a good deal of money. [continues 132 words]
To the Editor: Re "Governors Join the War Against Opioids" (editorial, Feb. 25): Everyone is talking about opioid prescribing best practices: the National Governors Association, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and dozens of national and state public and private organizations. But I haven't heard any talk about the need for improved security in retail dispensing standards. It has been over 45 years since Washington last took action with the Poison Prevention Packaging Act of 1970, which mandated child-resistant standards for dispensing prescription medication. This is unforgivable. [continues 110 words]
The Feb. 23 editorial, "Revisit medical marijuana," should've held Gov. Andrew Cuomo and federal lawmakers more accountable for perpetuating irrational policies toward cannabis plants. Many advocates who worked so hard to pass the 2014 Compassionate Care Act blame Mr. Cuomo alone for strictly limiting public access to medical cannabis. The governor means well to prohibit marijuana smoking for medical purposes, which is legal in other states. Lighting any dried plant material on fire and inhaling the smoke risks damage to lung tissue, so recommending it would violate an oath taken by medical professionals to do no harm. [continues 185 words]
New York's medicinal cannabis program was drafted and designed primarily to be politically expedient, not to adequately serve the state's patient population ("Revisit medical marijuana," Feb. 23). Specifically, the program fails to acknowledge chronic pain or neuropathy as a qualifying condition, despite the reality that there exist numerous U.S. Food and Drug Administration-approved clinical trials finding the plant to be safe and efficacious as an analgesic agent. A review published earlier this year in the Canadian Journal of Anesthesia assessing the clinical use of cannabinoids for pain in more than 1,300 subjects concludes, "The recent literature indicates that currently available cannabinoids are modestly effective analgesics that provide a safe, reasonable therapeutic option for managing chronic non-cancer-related pain." [continues 165 words]
Program's Expansion Targets Opioid Overdoses Over the weekend, three people died in Buffalo from opiate overdoses. On Monday, a woman barely survived an overdose. With the death toll increasing by the day, Buffalo Police on Monday announced that they are co-sponsoring with the Erie County Health Department more free classes throughout the city to train citizens in how to use Narcan, the opiate antidote. "We are concerned about the health and safety of city residents," Deputy Police Commissioner Kimberly L. Beaty said. "Opioids do not discriminate. That is why we are making this extra effort with the classes." [continues 571 words]
The national media, yea, the international media is abuzz about the proposed legal heroin injection facility that is included in the "Ithaca Plan" released by the Municipal Drug Policy Committee (MDPC) put into motion by Mayor Svante Myrick. The focus is on the "shooting gallery" because, as U.S. law stands now, it would be illegal to set up such a place without the declaration of an emergency by the governor or the President. Isn't it just like the national and international media to make a big deal about something that has so much prurient interest and yet is really just a small part of a much broader, more ambitious, more practical campaign? [continues 869 words]
A Four-Pillar Plan The supervised injection facility for heroin users proposed as part of Ithaca's new municipal drug policy garnered lots of media attention, but not much in the way of praise from local law enforcement leaders. Tompkins County Sheriff Kenneth Lansing said his department was not consulted in the development of the drug plan. "We all know that people that are doing things they shouldn't be doing are paranoid, and I'm just not sure how safe they're going to feel going to a facility that's going to allow them to do this," Lansing said about the injection facility. "There are hurdles with the legality to look at. Nothing against the mayor; I think he's doing a hell of a job, no doubt about it, and the plan has some great ideas. I just can't accept [the injection facility], and I can't support it." [continues 581 words]
On Feb. 23, the night before Mayor Svante Myrick officially announced the city's new drug plan, there was a panel discussion on the history of municipal drug policy. Ithaca resident Herebeorht Howland-Bolton, 26, surprised the audience of about 150 people gathered at Cinemapolis when he spoke up during the question-and-answer period. He told the audience he had overdosed just four hours earlier in his apartment on the Commons. His girlfriend, Janice, 20, who asked that her last name not be printed in this article, found him unresponsive on the floor and called 911. [continues 1717 words]
Inside New York
