MORE people are admitted to hospital because of alcohol-related problems in the North East than any other region, new figures have revealed.

But other figures showed that less crime was linked to alcohol in the region than anywhere else.

Leading alcohol campaigners last night called for action after alcohol- related hospital admission numbers soared in every part of the country.

In the North East, there were 2,406 admissions for alcohol per 100,000 people compared with a national average of 1,743. This was up by almost 900 compared with five years ago.

The director of Balance, the North East Alcohol Office, called for Government action to stop the worrying trend.

Colin Shevills said: “We need the Government to provide the right kind of action to help people reduce their drinking.

“Alcohol needs to be priced more sensibly, promotions need to be restricted, as does advertising. Alcohol is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week which is adding to the problems we are facing.


“The region has had the highest alcohol-related hospital admissions for some time, so these latest figures are no surprise but worrying.

“The fact is that there are too many people drinking too much, too often.”

In our region, the highest rate of hospitalisations was in the local authority area of North Tyneside, with 2,654.

The report, from the North West Public Health Observatory at Liverpool John Moores University, showed there were 1.1 million admissions in England relating to alcohol in 2009/10 – 879 more per day than five years previously.

North Tyneside was also ranked as the area with the most estimated binge drinkers in the country, with research showing 33.2% of people are considered to binge on alcohol.

Other detail, drawn from official crime statistics, shows that nationally there were 7.6 crimes per 1,000 people committed that were linked to alcohol.

The North East had the lowest figures for any region though with an average of 5.7.

A MAN died after suffering brain damage caused by drinking too much water

A MAN died after suffering brain damage caused by drinking too much water, his family have claimed.

Matthew Ellis, 29, downed at least 20 pints of water after a night out before collapsing at his father’s home.

His heartbroken family believe his drink was spiked with ecstasy, leaving him desperate for “pints and pints” of water the next day.

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They said the liquid he drank caused salt levels in his body to dive, bringing on a rare brain condition called extrapontine myelinolysis.

Matthew, from Gleadless, Sheffield, collapsed the day after a Boxing Day night out last year and spent 32 weeks in hospital before dying of a chest infection on August 4.

An inquest into the heating engineer’s death has been opened and adjourned.

His grieving mum, Maureen Ellis, 62, said: “He never took drugs. We are told drinking lots of water is good for you but what happened should be a warning.”

A sweeping new definition of addiction stakes out controversial positions that many, including the powerful psychiatric lobby are likely to argue with.

If you think addiction is all about booze, drugs, sex, gambling, food and other irresistible vices, think again. And if you believe that a person has a choice whether or not to indulge in an addictive behavior, get over it. The American Society of Addiction Medicine (ASAM) blew the whistle on these deeply held notions with its official release of a new document defining addiction as a chronic neurological disorder involving many brain functions, most notably a devastating imbalance in the so-called reward circuitry. This fundamental impairment in the experience of pleasure literally compels the addict to chase the chemical highs produced by substances like drugs and alcohol and obsessive behaviors like sex, food and gambling.

The definition, a result of a four-year process involving more than 80 leading experts in addiction and neurology, emphasizes that addiction is a primary illness—in other words, it’s not caused by mental health issues such as mood or personality disorders, putting to rest the popular notion that addictive behaviors are a form of "self-medication" to, say, ease the pain of depression or anxiety.

Indeed, the new neurologically focused definition debunks, in whole or in part, a host of common conceptions about addiction. Addiction, the statement declares, is a “bio-psycho-socio-spiritual” illness characterized by (a) damaged decision-making (affecting learning, perception, and judgment) and by (b) persistent risk and/or recurrence of relapse; the unambiguous implications are that (a) addicts have no control over their addictive behaviors and (b) total abstinence is, for some addicts, an unrealistic goal of effective treatment.

The bad behaviors themselves are all symptoms of addiction, not the disease itself. "The state of addiction is not the same as the state of intoxication," the ASAM takes pains to point out. Far from being evidence of a failure of will or morality, the behaviors are the addict's attempt to resolve the general "dysfunctional emotional state" that develops in tandem with the disease. In other words, conscious choice plays little or no role in the actual state of addiction; as a result, a person cannot choose not to be addicted. The most an addict can do is choose not to use the substance or engage in the behavior that reinforces the entire self-destructive reward-circuitry loop.

Yet ASAM pulls no punches when it comes to the negative consequences of addiction, declaring it an illness that “can cause disability or premature death, especially when left untreated or treated inadequately.”

The new definition leaves no doubt that all addictions—whether to alcohol, heroin or sex, say—are fundamentally the same. Dr. Raju Haleja, former president of the Canadian Society for Addiction Medicine and the chair of the ASAM committee that crafted the new definition, told The Fix, “We are looking at addiction as one disease, as opposed to those who see them as separate diseases. Addiction is addiction. It doesn’t matter what cranks your brain in that direction, once it has changed direction, you’re vulnerable to all addiction." That the society has stamped a diagnosis of sex or gambling or food addiction as every bit as medically valid as addiction to alcohol or heroin or crystal meth may spark more controversy than its subtler but equally far-reaching assertions.

The new definition comes as the American Psychiatric Association (APA) is undertaking a highly publicized, decade-in-the-making revision of its own definition of addiction in its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders—the bible of the mental health profession. The APA’s DSM will have a larger effect on public health policies that guide addiction treatment, largely because insurance companies are mandated by law to use the DSM diagnostic categories and criteria to decide which treatments they will pay for.

 

More than a third of British adults who own a smartphone have admitted they are "highly addicted" to it and cannot bear to put it down, not even in the toilet.

Research for the broadcasting watchdog Ofcom has found new evidence of how devices such as iPhones, Blackberrys and Androids affect our behaviour.
Smartphone users are more likely to have their phones switched on 24 hours a day and would wake up in the night to answer or use it.
Social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter have also lead to owners cutting down on their TV viewing and reading.
Six out of 10 smartphone users aged 12 to 15-years-old, or 60%, said they had a high level of addiction, compared to 33% with a regular mobile phone.
The Ofcom communications market report for 2011 says 18% of users will use their device in a theatre or cinema despite knowing it should be switched off - this compares to 10% of other mobile phone users.

Amy Winehouse's death prompts review of drug rehab waiting times

The star’s father claimed to mourners at her funeral yesterday that addicts face a two-year wait for rehab on the NHS.
In an emotional eulogy to his 27-year-old daughter, Mitch Winehouse said he hoped her death would prompt greater awareness of addicts’ plight.
Keith Vaz, chairman of the Home Affairs Select Committee, today pledged to back Mr Winehouse’s campaign and investigate the speed of access to rehab.
Paying tribute to his daughter yesterday at Edgwarebury Cemetery, north London, Mr Winehouse, 58, said: “Three years ago, Amy conquered her drug dependency, the doctors said it was impossible but she really did it.
"In this country, if you cannot afford a private rehabilitation clinic, there is a two-year waiting list for help. With the help of Keith Vaz MP, we are trying to change that."

Mr Winehouse gave evidence to the Home Affairs committee two years ago on the cocaine trade, claiming that many drug users were so desperate for treatment that they committed crimes so they would be fast-tracked into rehab.
Mr Vaz said today: “Mitch Winehouse gave powerful evidence to the Home Affairs Select Committee during our inquiry into drugs in 2009.
“Drawing on his personal experience he highlighted the long delay in accessing treatment for those with addiction. Two years on we need to revisit this issue to see if anything has improved.
“I am very happy to help Mitch in any way I can with his important campaign to help rehabilitate those most vulnerable in our society."
The claims over waiting times are disputed by the National Treatment Agency for Substance Misuse (NTA), which is part of the NHS.
It claims that in 2009/10, 94 per cent of patients waited less than three weeks for drug rehabilitation.
During that period, the NTA dealt with nearly 207,000 addicts, official figures show.
Winehouse was admitted to private rehabilitation clinics on a string of occasions during her battle with alcohol and drug addictions. The Grammy-award winning singer was found dead at her home in Camden, north London, on Saturday.
At a private funeral for close friends and family yesterday, Mr Winehouse said the singer was the happiest she had been for many years in the run up to her death and had managed to stop drinking.
"She said, 'Dad I've had enough of drinking, I can't stand the look on your and the family's faces anymore'. She was not depressed,” he said.
Referring to the night she died, he added: “She was in her room, playing drums and singing. As it was late, her security guard said to keep it quiet and she did.
“He heard her walking around for a while and when he went to check on her in the morning he thought she was asleep. He went back a few hours later, that was when he realised she was not breathing and called for help.
"But knowing she wasn't depressed, knowing she passed away, knowing she passed away happy, it makes us all feel better.
"I was in New York with my cousin Michael when I heard and straight away I said I wanted an Amy Winehouse Foundation, something to help the things she loved – children, horses, but also to help those struggling with substance abuse.”
Among the guests at the service were her boyfriend Reg Traviss, stylist Alex Foden, who has been credited with creating Winehouse's trademark beehive hairdo, producer Mark Ronson and singer Kelly Osbourne.
Following the service, Winehouse's body was taken to Golders Green Crematorium, where her grandmother was cremated in 2006.
A spokesman for the family said he understood Winehouse's ashes would be placed next to those of her grandmother. The singer had a close relationship with her grandmother and had a tattoo of her name – Cynthia – on her right arm.
The family began Shiva – a traditional period of mourning in the Jewish faith – after the service.
Relatives and friends congregated at the Southgate Progressive Synagogue in north London last night.
The funeral comes after police revealed they will have to wait up to four weeks for the results of toxicology tests to establish her cause of death.
A post-mortem examination has proved inconclusive and an inquest has been opened and adjourned with no cause of death given.
Mr Winehouse told the Home Affairs committee in 2009 that addicts he had interviewed a television documentary claimed they waited a year on average for rehab.
He said: "People are definitely committing offences so they can have a chance, and it's only a chance, of receiving treatment.
"The biggest impact on families is that there is very little help available to them, especially if their relative is a non-offending addict.
The problem we found in our research in London is that it's a year before any treatment can be given. It's very difficult and the reason for this is the majority of funding is taken up by the criminal justice system."

 

Successful lab tests on a potential vaccine for heroin addiction

Scientists are reporting development and successful initial laboratory tests on the key ingredient for a much-needed vaccine to help individuals addicted to heroin abstain from the illicit drug. Their study appears in ACS' Journal of Medicinal Chemistry.

Kim D. Janda and colleagues note that heroin use cost the United States more than $22 billion in 1996 annually due to medical and law enforcement expenses and productivity loss. Although behavioral therapy and certain medicines help heroin-addicted patients, many experience relapse, lack access to treatment, or develop unwanted side effects from the treatments themselves. To overcome these challenges, the researchers made and tested a new vaccine formulation that might serve as an additional tool in helping addicts maintain abstinence. Janda's team previously reported development of vaccines for cocaine, methamphetamine, and nicotine.

Thus with laboratory rats that were given the vaccine they showed less willingness to self-administer heroin and other signs of its effectiveness. The report explains why the potential new vaccine is an improvement over previous experimental vaccines. "In conclusion, a vaccine for heroin addiction could prove to be a useful tool for combating heroin addiction, wherein it exploits a motivated recovering addict's own immune system to blunt heroin's psychoactive effects in the case of relapse," the researchers say.

 

Rethinking Addiction’s Roots, and Its Treatment

There is an age-old debate over alcoholism: is the problem in the sufferer’s head — something that can be overcome through willpower, spirituality or talk therapy, perhaps — or is it a physical disease, one that needs continuing medical treatment in much the same way as, say, diabetes or epilepsy?


Dr. Christine Pace helps Derek Anderson manage his heroin addiction at Boston University Medical Center. With the help of medication, Mr. Anderson has been clean for six years.

Increasingly, the medical establishment is putting its weight behind the physical diagnosis. In the latest evidence, 10 medical institutions have just introduced the first accredited residency programs in addiction medicine, where doctors who have completed medical school and a primary residency will be able to spend a year studying the relationship between addiction and brain chemistry.

“This is a first step toward bringing recognition, respectability and rigor to addiction medicine,” said David Withers, who oversees the new residency program at the Marworth Alcohol and Chemical Dependency Treatment Center in Waverly, Pa.

The goal of the residency programs, which started July 1 with 20 students at the various institutions, is to establish addiction medicine as a standard specialty along the lines of pediatrics, oncology or dermatology. The residents will treat patients with a range of addictions — to alcohol, drugs, prescription medicines, nicotine and more — and study the brain chemistry involved, as well as the role of heredity.

“In the past, the specialty was very much targeted toward psychiatrists,” said Nora D. Volkow, the neuroscientist in charge of the National Institute on Drug Abuse. “It’s a gap in our training program.” She called the lack of substance-abuse education among general practitioners “a very serious problem.”

Institutions offering the one-year residency are St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital in New York, the University of Maryland Medical System, the University at Buffalo School of Medicine, the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine, the University of Minnesota Medical School, the University of Florida College of Medicine, the John A. Burns School of Medicine at the University of Hawaii, the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, Marworth and Boston University Medical Center. Some, like Marworth, have been offering programs in addiction medicine for years, simply without accreditation.

The new accreditation comes courtesy of the American Board of Addiction Medicine, or ABAM, which was founded in 2007 to help promote the medical treatment of addiction.

The board aims to also get the program accredited by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education, a step that requires, among other things, establishing the program at a minimum of 20 institutions. The recognition would mean that the addictions specialty would qualify as a “primary” residency, one that a newly minted doctor could enter right out of school.

Richard Blondell, the chairman of the training committee at ABAM, said the group expected to accredit an additional 10 to 15 institutions this year.

The rethinking of addiction as a medical disease rather than a strictly psychological one began about 15 years ago, when researchers discovered through high-resonance imaging that drug addiction resulted in actual physical changes to the brain.

Armed with that understanding, “the management of folks with addiction becomes very much like the management of other chronic diseases, such as asthma, hypertension or diabetes,” said Dr. Daniel Alford, who oversees the program at Boston University Medical Center. “It’s hard necessarily to cure people, but you can certainly manage the problem to the point where they are able to function” through a combination of pharmaceuticals and therapy.

Central to the understanding of addiction as a physical ailment is the belief that treatment must be continuing in order to avoid relapse. Just as no one expects a diabetes patient to be cured after six weeks of diet and insulin management, Dr. Alford said, it is unrealistic to expect most drug addicts to be cured after 28 days in a detoxification facility.

“It’s not surprising to us now that when you stop the treatment, people relapse,” Dr. Alford said. “It doesn’t mean that the treatment doesn’t work, it just means that you need to continue treatment.” Those physical changes in the brain could also explain why some smokers will still crave a cigarette 30 years after quitting, Dr. Alford said.

If the idea of addiction as a chronic disease has been slow to take hold in medical circles, it could be because doctors sometime struggle to grasp brain function, Dr. Volkow said. “While it is very simple to understand a disease of the heart — the heart is very simple, it’s just a muscle — it’s much more complex to understand the brain,” she said.

Increasing interest in addiction medicine is a handful of promising new pharmaceuticals, most notably buprenorphine (sold under names like Suboxone), which has proved to ease withdrawal symptoms in heroin addicts and subsequently block cravings, though it causes side effects of its own. Other drugs for treating opioid or alcohol dependence have shown promise as well.

Few addiction medicine specialists advocate a path to recovery that depends solely on pharmacology, however. “The more we learn about the treatment of addiction, the more we realize that one size does not fit all,” said Petros Levounis, who is in charge of the residency at the Addiction Institute of New York at St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital.

Equally maligned is the idea that psychiatry or 12-step programs are adequate for curing a disease with physical roots. Many people who abuse substances do not have psychiatric problems, Dr. Alford noted, adding, “I think there’s absolutely a role for addiction psychiatrists.”

While each institution has developed its own curriculum, the basic competencies each seeks to impart are the same. Residents will learn to recognize and diagnose substance abuse, conduct brief interventions that spell out the treatment options and prescribe the proper medications. The doctors will also be expected to understand the legal and practical implications of substance abuse.

Christine Pace, a 31-year-old graduate of Harvard Medical School, is the first addiction resident at Boston University Medical Center. She got interested in the subject as a teenager, when she volunteered at an AIDS organization and overheard heroin addicts complaining about doctors who could not — or would not — help them.

This year, when she became the in-house doctor at a methadone clinic in Boston, she was dismayed to find that the complaints had not changed. “I saw physicians over and over again pushing it aside, just calling a social-work consult to deal with a patient who is struggling with addiction,” Dr. Pace said.

One of her patients is Derek Anderson, 53, who credits Suboxone — as well as a general practitioner who six years ago recognized his signs of addiction — with helping him kick his 35-year heroin habit.  

“I used to go to detoxes and go back and forth and back and forth,” he said. But the Suboxone “got me to where I don’t have the dependency every day, consuming you, swallowing you like a fish in water. I’m able to work now, I’m able to take care of my daughter, I’m able to pay rent — all the things I couldn’t do when I was using.”

 

Illegal drink theory in fatal blast

Investigators are today trying to find out if an industrial unit where five men were killed in an explosion was being used to brew alcohol illegally.

Firefighters found the men inside the unit after the blast at the Broadfield Lane industrial estate in Boston, Lincolnshire, yesterday evening.

A sixth man was taken to hospital suffering from severe burns.

Teams of emergency workers were scrambled to the 30ft by 15ft unit shortly before 7.30pm after several 999 calls from members of the public.

Firefighters found the casualty outside, but had to cut their way into the unit after intense heat melted its doors.

Police, who last night said five men died in the explosion, would not confirm reports that the explosion occurred because of illegal alcohol brewing, but said investigators were keeping an "open mind and following up all relevant lines of inquiry".

A police spokeswoman said: "There has been all sorts of rumours along those lines. It is far too early for us to speculate."

She said the sixth man was taken to Boston Pilgrim Hospital with serious injuries, before being transferred to the Queen's Medical Centre in Nottingham.

The spokeswoman said inquiries were ongoing and would involved a "full forensic examination of the unit" and finger-tip searches of the cordoned-off unit to establish what was inside.

Ian Nuttall, 42, who lives 200 yards from the scene, said he noticed a commotion and smoke coming from the "lock-up" at about 7.30pm.

He said he did not know anyone who used it, or the other units, or what they used it for, but said: "There was a rumour going round that it was some Polish nationals who have been brewing their own vodka which is a bit of a problem around here at the moment."

Earlier this year, raids by HM Revenue and Customs, police and Lincolnshire trading standards seized goods including fake vodka from six international stores in the town.

HMRC said forensic testing of the counterfeit alcohol, seized in March, showed it contained chemicals often unsafe for public consumption.

Since then, at least one store has had its alcohol licence revoked by the council, and another has had it suspended.

Police and fire investigators are expected to continue searching the unit today for evidence of the cause of the blaze.

Steve Moore, area manager from Lincolnshire Fire and Rescue Service, described the incident as one of the worst he had seen in his 28-year career.

"It was a really hot, intense fire," he said.

The officer said the fierce flames set alight a car outside the unit and also buckled its roller shutters, meaning crews were forced to use hydraulic equipment to cut their way into the block.

Mr Moore said six firefighters wearing breathing apparatus searched the unit and found five more casualties.

"As far as the crews I have spoken to, its the single greatest loss of life in fire in their experience," he said.

Boston Central councillor Peter Bedford said he was shocked by the news.

"I don't know the cause or even which unit it was in but this is a real shock. We don't expect that kind of thing to happen in Boston. It's a small market town, predominantly agricultural.

"There is heavy industry in that industrial estate, there's a scrapyard, there's joinery works, it's a real mix."

Boston East councillor Mike Gilbert added: "I'm very anxious to find out exactly what's happened. It's a lot of people dead and a great tragedy.

 

cannabis social clubs in Spain

The room looks like the office of any small membership organisation: old worn furniture, jammed bookshelves, promotional posters, dented filing cabinets, random boxes of materials that have never been filed. What stands out, though, is the cloying smell of marijuana that permeates the room of the Pannagh Association in the city centre of Bilbao in northern Spain. Pannagh’s president, a young, energetic Martín Barriuso Alonso, brings out the source of the odour from the locked filing cabinets. Inside metal boxes are neatly labelled plastic bags: Critical Mass, White Widow, Medicine Man, New York Diesel, Aka 47, all ready for distribution.

It’s six o’clock on a Thursday, and soon Pannagh’s members start arriving to pick up their bags. The first is Miguel Angel, who has HIV and recently underwent a liver transplant. Then Javier, who just consumes because, hey, he enjoys it. Pannagh (which means cannabis in Sanskrit) has 300 members who each pay 40 euros a year membership and then four euros per gram, about half the rate on the black market. Some take a bag of five grams, others 10. The maximum allowed is 60 grams per month.

Legal grey area

The existence of Pannagh and up to 300 similar clubs throughout Spain is down to a quirky grey area in Spanish law. It is also the product of a determined group of activists who have pushed at the openings in the law to try to formalise their existence. In 1974 the Spanish supreme court judged that drug consumption and possession for personal use was not a crime, while still deeming drug trafficking an imprisonable offence. This created a jurisprudence in which providing drugs for compassionate reasons, and joint purchase by a group of addicts – as long as it did not involve profit-seeking – were not crimes either.

It was in 1993, however, that the law was really put to the test, when the Asociación Ramón Santos de Estudios Sobre el Cannabis (Ramon Santos Association for the Study of Cannabis, ARSEC) caught the media spotlight by publicly and openly growing cannabis for 100 of its members. The crop was confiscated, only for the provincial court to acquit those involved before the supreme court eventually ruled that although it was clear that ARSEC did not intend to traffic drugs, the cultivation of cannabis was dangerous per se and therefore should be punished.

This legal cat-and-mouse game continued as other marijuana associations forced a series of contradictory legal decisions, sometimes leading to arrests and at other times prompting no legal intervention. In the case of Pannagh, Martín Barriuso and two other members of the association were detained for three days in 2006 and had their crop confiscated.

A few months later, however, the courts ruled that there had been no crime as ‘it concerned consumption between addicts in which there was no transmission to other parties’ and ordered the police to return the confiscated plants. Seventeen kilograms of marijuana that had been rotting behind bars was returned. Although completely unusable, Barrioso still has it, a decomposing trophy of his minor victory against the system.

The legal uncertainty is far from over, as arrests of members of cannabis clubs continue to occur from time to time. However, decisions by the supreme court in October 2001 and July 2003 contradicted its initial ARSEC judgement and established that possession of cannabis, including large quantities, is not a crime if there is no clear intention of trafficking. This has made possible an explosion of cannabis user associations.

Clubbing together

Due to the lack of clear regulation, associations have had to improvise and invent solutions in order to standardise their activities. The main pioneering groups came together in 2003 as the Federation of Cannabis Clubs (FAC), which initially included 21 clubs. All are non-profit and member-run, and most have similar guidelines, keeping strict and thorough records of cultivation, distribution and costs in case there is any investigation.

As Barriuso recounts, fear of arrest is still there, but most cannabis user associations are now more afraid of thieves stealing their valuable stocks. Some even have their building alarms linked up to the local police station.

There are still many unresolved questions in terms of regulation. Nevertheless the gradual normalisation of these clubs has already marked out Spain as different to that other bastion of European drug liberalism, Holland. As Tom Blickman, a drugs policy researcher for the Transnational Institute explains: ‘The unique nature of cannabis social clubs is that they have legalised both production and consumption of cannabis within a closed club and non-profit system.

Dutch liberal cannabis policy may have minimised criminalisation of users, but it has not resolved the core contradiction known as the back door problem: coffee shops are allowed to sell up to five grams of cannabis to consumers (the front door) but have to buy their stock on the illegal market (the back door). To draw coffee shops out of the criminal sphere entirely, the cultivation of cannabis needs to be regulated.’

The grey area of the law in Spain has led to the development of an economic and social model for drug consumption that might offer a more economically and socially just alternative to market legalisation. ‘I used to think our clubs were just one step towards full legalisation, but now I am not so sure,’ says Martín Barriuso. ‘When the debate is polarised between total prohibition and almost total liberalisation, it seems people have not stopped to think that there are other ways of doing things.’

Legalisation debate

The legalisation of drugs has moved from a fringe demand to an increasingly mainstream concern over the past decade. Advocates of legalisation range from ex-Home Office minister Bob Ainsworth to the former president of Mexico to the Economist. A referendum to legalise cannabis in California in November 2010 was only narrowly defeated.

However the case for legalisation has often been pitched as bringing drugs into the capitalist open market – in the words of some advocates, to start selling heroin as if it was Coca-Cola. Yet that would turn drugs into commodities, subject to the same manipulations and abuses of the international market as other legalised drugs, such as alcohol. A legalised cannabis market, driven by profit, would soon lead to drugs supply controlled by a few, driven by profit, involving unethical promotional practices and with little concern for the health of its users – in many ways a mirror image of the illegal drugs market.

As Martín Barriuso argues, cannabis social clubs provide a viable alternative not just to the illegal but also a legalised ‘free market’ in drugs. ‘What we have found is that the limits imposed by the current legal framework, in particular the obligation to produce and distribute within a closed circle, the control of all production by members, and, above all, the absence of profit, has created a framework of relations that is different and, for us, fairer and more balanced.’

Alternative economy

Barriuso points to the way that direct contact between producers and consumers has made it easier to find a balance between dignified salaries and reasonable prices, replacing competition with a desire for mutual benefit. Direct control of production means that members have full control of the origin, quality and composition of what they are consuming, while generating legal economic activity and tax collection. Accountability within the group means that health concerns (and many of Pannagh’s members consume cannabis for health reasons) are primary.

Given those results, it is not surprising that Barriuso concludes, ‘Now that we have succeeded in obtaining our supply directly and under better conditions, why would we fight for a capitalist market for cannabis, where the power of decision is once again in the hands of a few people and where we no longer control how substances we consume are produced?’

While the future of the Spanish model of cannabis social clubs is by no means guaranteed, it is an idea that is spreading. The Dutch city of Utrecht announced in early 2011 that it plans to experiment with a closed club model for adult recreational cannabis users and other Dutch municipalities have expressed interest in doing the same.

The European Parliament recently heard proposals for an extension of cannabis social clubs across Europe. Pannagh presented evidence, based on its own financial records, that this could create 7,500 direct jobs and around 30,000 indirect jobs in Spain alone. At a European level, it could create 8.4 billion euros additional income for member governments, an attractive proposition at a time of austerity budgets.

‘It could hardly have been expected,’ says Martín Barriuso smiling, ‘but by some strange legal fate, the global prohibition of drugs applied by the Spanish courts has given place to a strange protectionist market for cannabis, where there is economic activity but no profit, entrepreneurs but no businessmen, consumers but no exploitation of producers, and the existence of a legal economy entirely separate from the major distribution outlets and the mainstream economy. In a society such as Spain, facing a deep economic and social crisis after years of speculation, extreme consumerism and easy money, this parallel economy seems now more of an advantage than a disadvantage.’

Martín Barriuso Alonso’s briefing, Cannabis Social Clubs in Spain: a normalising alternative under way, is available at www.tni.org

Fifty years of the ‘war on drugs’

2011 marks the 50th anniversary of the 1961 UN Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, the agreement that cemented global drug control into an international legal framework that has remained largely unchanged to this day. The subsequent ‘war on drugs’ has led to most countries worldwide using largely military and criminal-justice means in a completely unrealistic attempt to eradicate drugs use.

A coalition of international organisations, including Transform UK, the International Drug Policy Consortium and the Transnational Institute, have joined forces to launch a ‘Count the Costs’ campaign. They argue that while it was no doubt implemented with good intentions, it is now possible, reflecting on the experiences of the past half-century, to conclude that the policy has failed to achieve its goal of reducing or eliminating drug production, supply and use. In fact, drug supply and use has risen dramatically. It has also come at great social costs, fuelling conflict and insecurity in many countries, criminalising vulnerable groups of users and growers, diverting massive resources away from proven public health interventions, and rewarding violent criminal groups.

They campaign is calling on all UN member governments to make a proper assessment of the costs of the ‘war on drugs’ and to use the 50th anniversary to radically reform UN drugs conventions to focus on evidence-based drugs policies that minimise harm for drug users and do not infringe human rights.

 

The number of drug deaths in Britain is among the highest in the world, new figures show.

llegal substances killed 2,278 people in a year, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.
It ranks Britain sixth in the world, with only the US, Ukraine, the Russian Federation, Iran and Mexico having more.
Most of these deaths were caused by opioids, such as heroin, followed by sedatives, cocaine, amphetamine-type stimulants and ecstasy.
The  report also warned that, while drug use across the world remained stable, ‘demand soared for substances not under international control’ – so-called legal highs.
It added: ‘These markets continue to evolve and every year new products are manufactured to supply an increasingly diversified demand for psychoactive substances.’
The figures are from the year 2008 and the UN says drug deaths are recorded differently in different countries.
The British deaths are among a population of 61million and compare to 1,638 deaths in Spain, which has a population of 46million, 1,449 in Germany (population 81million) and 484 in Italy (population 60million).
The US, home to 308million people, had 38,396 drug-related deaths.
Britain, the Russian Federation, Ukraine, Spain and Germany account for 80 per cent of all drug-related deaths in Europe, the report shows.
Crime prevention minister Baroness Angela Browning said in the year to March officials seized 1,951kg of cocaine or crack, 473kg of heroin, and 1,012kg of other class A drugs.
‘This report demonstrates the need for a renewed focus in dealing with the global drugs market to properly protect our communities,’ she added.
Michael Linnell, from the drug and alcohol charity Lifeline, said he had seen a ‘dramatic’ fall in the number of young people taking heroin.
He added: ‘Most of the people who are heroin addicts are in middle age and have been taking the drug for many years which takes its toll on their health and kills them.
‘But by far the biggest problem we face is from alcohol, both from the number of deaths and the impact it has on society.’

 

Hundreds of clandestine drug labs uncovered in Western Australia have all been "addiction-based", not organised crime operations, Police Commissioner Karl O'Callaghan says.

The commissioner told a parliamentary estimates hearing on Monday there hadn't been "one single clan lab detection which can be classed at an organised level for the widespread distribution of drugs".

"Every clan lab found in WA has been an addiction-based clan lab, in other words it's not an organised crime lab," he said.

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"It's a lab that can generate very small amounts of meth for a user or a couple of users."

Mr O'Callaghan said organised crime operations were not easily detected and were much more sophisticated than what was being found currently.

"One of the things contributing to the increase in clan labs is that many people are now finding our how it's done and they find out what pre-cursor chemicals that are required to create meth.

"They are generally available easily over the counter at a hardware store and the pre-cursor chemicals that are required, the actual extraction chemicals that are required, they can be bought at a chemist."

Mr O'Callaghan said people were beginning to realise they could make the substances quite simply with not much equipment.

"We're seeing an upward trend but at the same time the community are also becoming more aware of it.

"I do point out not all clan labs are set-ups that are found in houses.

"Some are just cobbled together in the back of cars or in the bush, we're just finding more and more of these."

Meanwhile, the WA Police Union conference on Monday heard that 696 clandestine drug laboratories had been uncovered in WA since 1998, out of around 4000 found nationally.

Chemist Paul Newell, from the contaminated sites branch of the WA Department of Environment, told the conference that those were only the labs detected by police.

"We might be generous in saying we are catching something like five to 10 per cent," he said.

WA was on track to break last year's record number of lab busts, Mr Newell said.

Drug labs ranged from very simple "box labs" that could be taken by motorcycle into remote bush areas to large, sophisticated operations that had been found in the eastern states run by trained chemists, he said.

The hazards involved in clandestine labs included the risks of explosion, toxic fumes, poisoning and chemical burns, and things could go wrong very quickly, Mr Newell said.

Houses used as drug labs could remain contaminated for many years, posing very real health risks to occupiers, he said.

Police lobbying since 2005 had resulted in national guidelines being released in April this year to promote safe dismantling of labs and the decontamination of premises used as labs, Mr Newell said.

oldies are drinking secretly at home, cunningly hiding our addiction from the world, and quietly going gaga as a result.

Were you Russian, you might not have to worry about the problem of alcohol misuse in your retirement because you would probably already be dead. The average man born in Russia today cannot expect to live beyond 63, so much vodka is he likely to have consumed by then.

Surprisingly, we are not an especially boozy people and so live much longer than many others. The life expectancy at birth of a British man is now 78, and of a woman 82. So most of us will still have several years of retirement ahead in which to try to amuse ourselves.

And the evidence shows that we do this rather well. Experts on ageing have concluded that older people are generally happier than the young, in better mental health, and suffer fewer negative emotions.


To stop us falling over and other such things that happen as a result of alcohol, we must prepare ourselves for a bleak and puritanical old age

This, you would have thought, would be cause for great satisfaction. But, of course, the authorities never like to look on the bright side of life: they're forever seeking out flaws in our lifestyle and urging us to eliminate them.

And so the Royal College of Psychiatrists has come up with a new health scare — that of 'hidden' alcohol addiction among the over-65s.

 
The fact that not even doctors have noticed this problem does not mean it doesn't exist, says the College. We oldies are drinking secretly at home, cunningly hiding our addiction from the world, and quietly going gaga as a result.

We may not drink very much, it says, but we hold our liquor worse as we get older, and so should drink even less than what is considered safe for everyone else.

Whereas current official advice is that no man of any age should drink more than 21 units of alcohol a week, and no woman more than 14, the Royal College of Psychiatrists would like the Government to issue separate guidelines for the over-65s, demanding that they drink a great deal less even than that.

It wants us to have no more than 1.5 units of alcohol a day — the equivalent of about half a pint of beer or a small glass of wine.

Why? Because the elderly, it says, find it harder than the young to get rid of alcohol from the bloodstream. We are therefore more likely to fall over, lose our memories and generally make fools of ourselves.

So to stop such things happening — which amount, in the College's view, to 'a burgeoning public health problem' — we must prepare ourselves for a bleak and puritanical old age.

Now, no one needs being reminded that too much heavy drinking is bad for you. It is linked to some cancers and it doubles the risk of death by stroke. Plus, it makes you feel rotten.

But we are talking about heavy drinking — not, say, two glasses of wine or a pint of beer a day.


Mr Cameron must remember his promise to lead our lives, and accept that whatever we do, provided it is legal, is nobody's business but our own

Age UK defines 'heavy drinking' as five or more units a day (two or more decent glasses of wine) and says — encouragingly — that anything less than this 'can have health benefits, especially for the heart'.

Yet the College says drinking even a third of what Age UK still considers beneficial will do old people serious harm. I don't believe it for a moment, but just imagine that the College is right and Age UK wrong.

It would still be intolerable for the Government to boss us around in this way. If you can't drink what you want at the age of 65, what's the point in staying alive? You have worked hard all your life — and now you are free to relax and have fun.

One way to do this is to meet friends for a drink in the pub. You might want to stay there for an hour or two. Is it proposed that you spend that time nursing one little glass of wine or a half-pint of beer? It's hardly a festive scenario.

When Treasure Island author Robert Louis Stevenson wrote 'Wine is bottled poetry', or the 17th-century monk and champagne pioneer Dom Pérignon announced over a glass of vintage bubbly 'Come quickly, I am tasting the stars', do you think either of them was counting their units?

And what if you do find yourself getting a little tipsy? Why would that matter? One thing to be said for the old is that they don't go around pulling knives on people or beating them up. The worst that could happen is that you might stumble a little on the way home — which is hardly a 'burgeoning public health problem'.

When the 17th-century monk and champagne pioneer Dom Pérignon announced over a glass of vintage bubbly 'Come quickly, I am tasting the stars', do you think either of them was counting their units?

Since Mr Cameron came to power promising to do away with the culture of the nanny state, you might expect the Coalition to treat the College's advice with indifference. But no. A Department of Health spokeswoman said 'alcohol misuse is a major public health issue — no matter what age you are.

'Everyone should drink responsibly, within the recommended alcohol limits,' she went on. 'We welcome any addition to the evidence base in this area, and will consider this report carefully.'

Well, let's hope not too carefully. Old age brings trials enough without the added humiliation of being told by the Government to drink much less than what is considered perfectly all right for a teenager.

The Department for Work and Pensions, too, is concerned that 'alcohol misuse' may be increasing among the over-65s, blaming it for every kind of ailment from blood clots in the brain to dementia and depression. But, surely, one would have to consume a great deal more than one glass of wine a day for it to have any such consequences.

The phrase 'alcohol misuse' is itself seriously misused if it is applied to virtual teetotallers. And while there are many people whose lives have been ruined by heavy drinking, there are others for whom, one suspects, it has been essential to their success.

Old age brings trials enough without the added humiliation of being told by the Government to drink much less than what is considered perfectly all right for a teenager

Queen Victoria famously enjoyed a lethal mix of claret and malt whisky in the same glass — and in some quantity. Below stairs, her servants averaged eight pints of beer every day. Yet Victoria lived until she was 81 and her household was the cornerstone of the world's greatest empire.

Those nannying government departments must have reached for the smelling salts after the beans were spilled this month on the Queen Mother's daily consumption even as a centenarian: a gin and Dubonnet before lunch, wine during lunch and, in the evening, a dry Martini followed by champagne.

Mr Cameron should not forget his promise. He must resist every attempt by his ministers and civil servants to tell us how to lead our lives, and accept that whatever we do, provided it is legal, is nobody's business but our own.

And while this freedom is everybody's right, it is especially important to the old. For they have not much time left in which to enjoy it.

Plan B’s heroin hell

PLAN B is a bloke who doesn't mince his words.
He has admitted smoking heroin when he was a teenager during a weekend at the Glastonbury Festival.

The rapper, now 27, revealed: "I was 16 and didn't have any money.

"The first night we were there me and my mate popped a couple of pills.

"The next night this northerner asked us if he could use our fire and we were too young and too scared to say no.

"He got this foil out and started smoking heroin. We started asking him about it and then he told us that he did heroin because he was abused as a child.

"Then he asked if we wanted some. So, like idiots we took some of his heroin and on the last night we smoked it.

"It was the first and last time I ever did it. I'm never going near it again.

"My head was spinning like I was drunk.

"I was hot then I was cold, I was itching all over - it was horrible."

You've got to admire his honesty...

 

Taxpayers foot £3.6billion bill for drug addicts

Doctors and health workers should be paid by results in ­helping drug users beat their addiction, according to a shock report out today.

The Centre for Policy Studies claims the present approach has proved to be nothing but a costly f­ailure.

In its report called ­Breaking The Habit, the right-wing think-tank points out there are as many addicts today as there were six years ago.

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And author Kathy Gyngell says the Government should urge medics to move away from simply prescribing methadone to addicts and instead refer them to rehab units.

She says the policy of prescribing methadone – a heroin substitute used to treat addicts – has been extremely expensive and has failed to cut the rising number of drug-related deaths.

Her report recommends a system of paying ­organisations, doctors, pharmacists and drug workers for their success rate in getting addicts off drugs.

She adds: “This approach would also be consistent with the Prime Minister’s vision for a Big Society.

“It would involve a real ­transfer of power from large distant organisations to small innovative ­providers.”

The report says looking after the ­country’s drug addicts costs ­taxpayers £3.6billion every year. ­Almost half of that is made up of state benefits paid to drug users.

It costs £730million to prescribe methadone to recovering addicts and a further £1.2billion is spent looking after their ­children.

Yet less than four per cent of England’s estimated 320,000 drug addicts ­manage to stay clean after treatment, says the CPS.

Government sources said ministers would be studying the report.

But a source close to Health ­Secretary Andrew Lansley warned ­that providing a host of new drug treatment centres would be ­“extremely costly” at a time when ­Whitehall ­departments were making cuts.

 

Cardiff scheme to cut alcohol-related violence injuries has provided such dramatic results that cities around the world are being encouraged to adopt a similar mode

l.


Research suggests the Welsh capital has seen a 42% drop in hospital admissions from violent incidents.
The project involves information sharing between the police and casualty departments and uses details given anonymously by injured patients on where, when and how violence occurs.
This allows police and other agencies to predict the nature and time of potential violence and then target resources at 'hotspots' highlighted by the data.
Cardiff University's Professor Jonathan Shepherd, who led the research, said he wanted to do something about the endless stream of facial injury victims who end up on NHS operating tables after a night's drinking.
If subsequent studies also find the significant reductions found in Cardiff, it would increase confidence in the value of this new tool to prevent violence.
Alexander Butchart, WHO prevention of violence co-ordinator
He found that only 23% of accident and emergency cases where people were treated after attacks in Cardiff, Swansea and Bristol were recorded by the police.
Hospital data going back a number of years also suggested that seven out of eight incidents on licensed premises did not appear on police records.
"It came as a real surprise to me to find that I was treating cases week in, week out, where the cause of the injury was simply not being investigated, let alone brought to book," Prof Shepherd said.
"These attacks were just not being reported. My reaction was one of shock. It seemed like such an injustice.
"I felt there was scope here for prevention by working in an integrated way with the police, the hospitals and the local authorities to identify and target the violence hotspots.
"I felt it was essential to integrate the police and A and E data, particularly on locations and weapons."
In Kent, the data collected has helped identify high levels of domestic violence, leading to a new advisory service on the issue.
In Portsmouth, details fed into the Licensed Premises Management system have enabled police and the local authority to restrict the opening times of certain clubs and bars.
The data-sharing model is being implemented across the UK because of its success, a report in the British Medical Journal said.
And the World Health Organisation has suggested the Cardiff model should be emulated across the world.
Alexander Butchart, the WHO's prevention of violence co-ordinator, said: "If subsequent studies also find the significant reductions found in Cardiff, it would increase confidence in the value of this new tool to prevent violence."

Children who see their parents drunk are twice as likely to regularly get drunk themselves, a survey of young teenagers has suggested.

Poor parental supervision also raises the likelihood of teenage drinking, said the Joseph Rowntree Foundation.

The Ipsos MORI survey found the behaviour of friends is also a powerful factor in predicting drinking habits.

The more time teenagers spend with friends, the more likely they are to drink alcohol, it suggested.

In a survey of 5,700 children aged 13 to 16, carried out for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, researchers found one in five claimed to have been drunk by the time they were 14.

By the age of 16, half of those questioned said they had been drunk.

Influences
But the study also looked at what influences excessive teen drinking - and the habits of parents seem to be particularly powerful.

The odds of a teenager getting drunk repeatedly is twice as great if they have seen their parents under the influence, even if only a few times.

And the authors say that parental supervision is also important - if parents don't know where their children are on a Saturday night, or let them watch 18 certificate films unsupervised, they are more likely to have had an alcoholic drink.

Continue reading the main story
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Both what parents say, and how they behave, have a strong impact on their teenagers' drinking, drinking regularly, and drinking to excess”

Claire Turner
Joseph Rowntree Foundation
Teenagers' friends also have a significant impact on drinking behaviour.

The odds of a teenager drinking to excess more than double if they spend more than two evenings a week with friends.

Spending every evening with friends multiplies the odds of excessive drinking more than four times.

Pamela Bremner from Ipsos MORI, the lead author of the report, said: "For the first time in the UK, this study ranks what most influences young people's drinking behaviour.

"It found that the behaviour of friends and family is the most common influential factor in determining how likely and how often a young person will drink alcohol."

Conflicting evidence


Click to play

A mother and daughter from Bury on the impact alcohol has had on their family
But there is conflicting evidence on how to introduce young people to alcohol - leaving parents with some difficult questions unanswered.

Researchers found mixed messages about the ideal age and ways of introducing teenagers to alcohol.

Generally, those introduced to alcohol at a very young age had greater odds of being a regular drinker and of having been drunk multiple times.

But there were differences in the pattern for young people of different ages.

"This research shows that parents can have more influence on their teenagers' behaviour than perhaps many assumed," said Claire Turner, Programme Manager for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation.

"Both what parents say, and how they behave, have a strong impact on their teenagers' drinking, drinking regularly, and drinking to excess.

"Being introduced to alcohol at a very young age - for example, under 10 years old - makes it more likely that they will drink and drink to excess as teenagers.

"But there are differences in patterns across the group. So for the older teenagers, if they are introduced to alcohol later in life via friends, away from adult supervision, they are also more likely to drink to excess."

Don Shenker, Chief Executive of Alcohol Concern, said the report confirms that from the beginning of a child's life parents have a strong influence on their children's future drinking patterns.

"Parents have to realise and accept that whether intended or not, their own attitudes towards drinking, their own rate of drinking and any drunkenness are clear signals to children that this is acceptable and standard behaviour.

"In addition parents must accept that allowing children to drink unsupervised can increase the risk of their children being drunk and this can have harmful consequences.

"Government ministers must also look at some of the causes of why it is so easy for children to obtain alcohol, usually from the home.

"Government should look to see if they've done everything they can to stop the large supermarkets from continuing to heavily promote cheap alcohol which incentivises more alcohol purchases and therefore results in more alcohol being stored in the home."

The Royal College of Physicians also said it was not surprised that being able to access alcohol easily was an important influencing factor on current drinking patterns and drunken-ness of teenagers.

A statement said: "This shows that the government needs to concentrate on increasing the price per unit of alcohol and reducing its availability as their main priorities, and in addition to increase education and national campaigns for both young people and their families on the dangers of alcohol."

A HOST of celebrities and three ex-chief constables have signed an open letter urging the PM to decriminalise drug possession.

Dame Judi Dench, Julie Christie, Kathy Burke, Sting and Sir Richard Branson are joined by ex-drugs minister Bob Ainsworth in asking David Cameron to look again at the current legislation to mark this week’s 40th anniversary of the 1971 Misuse of Drugs Act.

With the three former chief constables Paul Whitehouse, Francis Wilkinson and Tom Lloyd, they claim all the legislation has done is lead to a growth in the illegal drug trade. “This policy is costly for taxpayers and damaging for communities,” they said.

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“Criminalising people who use drugs leads to greater social exclusion and stigmatisation making it much more difficult for them to gain employment and to play a productive role in society.

But the Home Office insists it has “no intention” of liberalising drug laws. A spokesman said: “Drugs are illegal because they are harmful – they destroy lives and cause untold misery.”

Today we look at both sides of the drugs debate..

Ann Widdecombe is against decriminalisation

There are two ways of ­decriminalising drugs. One is to decriminalise just soft drugs, the other is all drugs.

If you decriminalise soft drugs but not hard drugs, all the profits for the drug barons will be in the hard drugs and those drugs will therefore be pushed to an even greater extent.

Secondly, for a percentage of people who start off on soft drugs, it is a gateway into hard drugs.

If you decriminalised cannabis, more people would try it because it would be lawful and there would be no reason why they would not.

Therefore, on the basis of the same percentage, far more people would then go on to hard drugs.

In other words, 10% of 1,000 is greater than 10% of 100, so more people would go through the gateway on to hard drugs.

If these drugs were lawful, it would be very difficult for teachers and parents to say: “This is a bad idea, don’t start it, don’t try it,” because the retort would be: “Well, it wouldn’t be legal if it was that harmful.”

So you would get far greater usage. Indeed, there was a study by the University of Amsterdam following the relaxing of the drug laws there, which ­actually showed that as soft drug use went up so did hard drug use.

Then, of course, there is the effect of cannabis use on mental health and there is now a great deal of evidence of cannabis psychosis.

Cannabis can actually adversely affect mental health, it can cause psychosis, and it can accentuate conditions that already exist. That is now pretty well documented, so there would be that impact as well.

All that is if you decriminalise just the soft drugs. If the state should make legal the use of heroin, people would be able to have their first experience of what is a killer drug simply by walking into a shop and buying it off the shelf.

Is that really what you want? I don’t think it is. So no, don’t do it.

Look at the problems we have with the legal drugs, with alcohol and cigarettes, for example. I think there’s no doubt at all that if we knew at the time what we know now, there would have been a lot more ­argument against making either of those legal. Now, the fact that they are legal doesn’t mean that they haven’t caused a huge amount of suffering.

Alcohol causes crime, it causes mental illness, and it causes family break-ups if abused. Yes, I (like many others) drink, but ­nevertheless alcohol is now a huge social evil and we know it.

Cigarettes are not a social evil but they are an enormous medical evil and we know it.

Why introduce a third?

You have no criminals in alcohol and you’ve got a little bit of ­bootlegging with cigarettes, but it’s not the biggest problem on earth.

The problem is in the actual substances themselves.

If you make drugs legal, you may not have the criminals but you have still got the big social and health problems.

And the criminals will find some other shocking substance to sell.Former chief constable Tom Lloyd says drugs should be decriminalised

I JOINED the police to help people and catch criminals.

Yet I found myself dealing with people for drug possession who needed help, not locking up.

So many of those caught up in drugs have been ­physically, mentally or sexually abused as children.

Prosecuting them does more harm than good.

The Misuse of Drugs Act was a well-intentioned but flawed attempt to control drug use.

We couldn’t be more out of control now – drugs are probably available in every secondary school.

The disaster predicted by those so resistant to change is already with us and the current system has to take a lot of the responsibility.

Drug abuse is a health not ­criminal justice issue.

And police need to focus on ­criminals, the people who do real damage to society.

As Tim Hollis, from the ­Association of Chief Police Officers, said this week, police resources are not best focused on drug possession.

With police budgets being heavily cut, the money we waste arresting users could be much better used.

It is not fair that so many of those caught up in the criminal justice system for drug possession are young, black or poor.

This unfairness gets in the way of policing in some of our most ­troubled communities.

It makes the police’s job harder, wasting even more resources. The step of decriminalising drug use would undo so much of this harm.

It would allow the police to focus on serious criminals who we really need them to catch. It is not true that drug use will necessarily go up at all. When cannabis was ­downgraded to class C, its use continued to fall.

In Portugal, where they ­decriminalised drug possession 10 years ago, fewer young people take drugs and more people are seeking treatment.

Drug deaths and HIV transmission have fallen.

This is what really matters – reducing harm.

Remember that decriminalising possession isn’t legalising drug dealing.

This change would give the police a much better chance of pursuing those who prey on others.

Drug use is so much better tackled by education and access to treatment and support.

When I was chief constable, we tried to tackle prolific offending by heroin users with health and social services using treatment and support.

Crime dropped. It was tough love that convinced an initially sceptical, seasoned older detective that it was “the best way to prevent crime he had ever come across”.

Ultimately this is what matters. Improving the quality of life by cutting crime and the harm ­associated with drugs.

We can only do this through ­practical, pragmatic, evidence-based steps like the decriminalisation of drug possession.

We all want to reduce addiction, death, disease and crime.

The clear lesson from 40 years of failure is that we must change and change now.

An autopsy has determined that a Florida man died after ingesting "bath salts,"

An autopsy has determined that a Florida man died after ingesting "bath salts," just two days after Gov. Rick Scott signed a state law banning the synthetic drugs, which had been sold legally in stores and on the internet.

A toxicologist with the medical examiner's office of Hillsborough County, Florida said that Jairious McGhee, 23, died from an overdose of methylone, one of the chemicals sold as bath salts and used as a form of imitation cocaine. Julia Pearson said methylone was found in McGhee's blood after tests for other better known drugs were negative.

An ABC News investigation to air on "20/20" Friday found that "legal drugs" like bath salts, "K2" and "spice" that mimic the effects of cocaine and marijuana were widely available on the internet and in suburban malls and convenience stores. Bath salts. which have nothing in common with the products long used in bathing, are legally sold in more than 30 states, and there is no federal ban on them. The Florida law banning six different chemicals sold as bath salts was signed Tuesday, but an emergency rule issued in January by the state's attorney general had already made it a felony to possess or distribute them.



McGhee died in Tampa on April 3 after an April 2 altercation with police. Officers described him as behaving erratically, walking in traffic, and beating on cars. He was initially diagnosed with viral meningitis, and when he died his body temperature had risen to more than 105 degrees. Though McGhee, who had been fighting with officers, had been tased, the medical examiner's office said the prongs never touched his skin and the tasing did not contribute to his death.

Bath salts have been linked to 2,500 calls to poison control centers nationwide, and can produce paranoia, hallucinations and rapid increase in heart rate and body. Washington state authorities are investigating whether a soldier who shot and killed his wife and then himself during a high-speed car chase in April was using bath salts. In May, when 19-year-old Mark Thompson of West Virginia was found wearing women's underwear and standing over a goat's dead body, he told police he had been using bath salts.





"I hesitate to even hold some of this stuff in my hands for fear that it could cause a problem," said Dr. Mark Ryan, director of the Louisiana Poison Control Center. Louisiana has been an epicenter of bath salt abuse, with 221 calls to the state's Poison Control Center since Dr. Ryan saw his first case last September. "We've had some people show up who are complaining of chest pains so severe that they think they're having a heart attack. They think they're dying."

Congress is currently weighing a federal ban on bath salts, which are still sold legally in most states and via the web. "Our teens and young adults need to understand that just because something's legal doesn't mean it's safe," said Drug Enforcement Administration special agent Gary Boggs. "Our parents need to -- to pay attention to what our kids are -- are ordering over the internet."

Is Claiming You’re a Sex Addict Just an Excuse for Bad Behavior

As powerful, international figures Dominique Strauss-Kahn and Arnold Schwarzenegger deal with the fallout of their various sexual exploits -  ranging from sexual assault to chronic infidelity – the question “is it just bad behavior or a real disorder” often comes barreling to the forefront.

Another common thought is: sex addiction sounds like the kind of problem most guys would love to have.

Well, here is the truth about living with shame, secrecy, narcissism, and other words that accompany the behavior of someone with sexual addiction and intimacy disorders: for the sex addict is about as much fun as alcoholism is for the alcoholic. Many adults enjoy drinking now and then; and while some people drink socially, others drink a bit at the end of the day to relax and some even get drunk once in a while (New Years, etc). For these people, which means most drinkers, drinking alcohol is both fun and optional.

But there are others for whom drinking is neither fun nor optional: people who have no control over where their first drink will lead them AND who have a history of negative consequences related to past alcohol abuse. We call those people alcoholics, and for them (estimated at 6-8% of the population) alcohol is not a good thing. These individuals have to be very careful and persistent about not drinking because, if they start, alcohol will eventually destroy their lives.

Similarly, most healthy adults enjoy sex – many as a form of recreation or distraction. Both single and married adults may occasionally or frequently view porn, have sexual dalliances, affairs or even see prostitutes without it being a problem for them. Right or wrong it’s not anyone’s job to call these people ‘sex addicts’ or to judge their sexuality or relationships. However, for approximately 3-8% of the adult population, having recreational sex is not a good thing. Single, dating or married, when these people begin having disconnected intense sexual experiences, particularly sex that involves secrecy or shame, they also begin to experience negative consequences.

Once these particular individuals start using sex as a means of emotional distraction they have trouble putting the breaks on their behavior. In the behavioral health and addiction treatment industry, we call these people sex addicts; unlike the rest of us, when sex addicts have sex primarily for recreation and emotional distraction their sexual choices can end up destroying their families, careers, reputations and relationships. These particular individuals have to be very aware of how they live their lives around sex, romance and intimacy so they don’t return to the kinds of sexual situations and patterns that can very quickly ruin the good things we all work so hard to create and maintain.



So, all of that being said – it is my belief, as well as all sex addiction treatment professionals and those that accept sexual addiction as a valid diagnosis – living a life of secrecy (a “double life”) is not fun, NOR is claiming to be a sex addict an excuse for bad behavior; rather it is the acknowledgment that there is an aspect of one’s life they cannot control and they need treatment in order to regain what has been lost or displaced because of their addiction.

Robert Weiss is Founding Director of The Sexual Recovery Institute and Director of Sexual Disorders Services at The Ranch Treatment Center and Promises Treatment Centers. These centers serve individuals seeking sexual addiction treatment and porn addiction help.

 

new face of drug addiction

The face of drug addiction has changed, and the government is working to adapt.
The 21st-century drug addict is more likely to get a fix from a medicine cabinet than from a needle. More than 5 million Americans misused prescription painkillers in a one-month period in 2009, according to a National Survey on Drug Use and Health from that year.

And a huge majority - more than 70% - of those prescription-drug abusers said they got the drugs from friends and relatives.
"We believe there are two unique reasons for the growth in prescription drug abuse - easy accessibility to the drugs and the diminished perception of risk," Gil Kerlikowske, the director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, told a Senate Judiciary subcommittee Tuesday.
Kerlikowske joined a slate of witnesses to describe the skyrocketing addiction statistics and a host of federal and state initiatives designed to stem the tide – several of which are still in the planning stages.
A White House plan released last month to confront prescription drug abuse emphasizes spreading public awareness of the problem by mandatory education of physicians who prescribe painkillers and also for people who receive the prescriptions.
"In many cases, prescription drugs remain in household medicine cabinets well after medication therapy has been completed, thus providing easy access to non-medical users for abuse, accidental ingestion or illegal distribution for profit," said Michele Leonhart, head of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).
Officials are crafting regulations to carry out a law Congress passed last year that will allow states to enable pharmacies to accept people's unused prescription drugs for disposal. In the meantime the DEA has organized two national prescription drug take-back days to collect unused or expired medications. On the most recent take-back day, Americans turned in 188 tons of unused or expired drugs at sites across the country for disposal.
Another measure awaiting a DEA final rule would allow electronic tracking of prescriptions, partly in the hopes of preventing forgeries and "doctor shopping," when an addict receives multiple prescriptions from different physicians.
Leonhart said she hoped both measures would be operational by the end of this year.
But Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-Rhode Island, complained at the slow pace of reforms and asked panel members to pull any strings they could.
"It has been astounding to me as a newly-elected senator to see the pace at which federal rulemaking slogs forward," he said. "I've become - I don't know what you call it but - impatient, I guess, with the pace of federal rulemaking, and you may be in the position to expedite it a bit."
Another witness underlined the urgency.
"Daily, 50 people in our nation die from unintentional prescription opioid overdoses and, daily, 20 times that number are admitted to hospital emergency departments for opioid overdoses," said John Eadie, director of the Prescription Monitoring Program Center of Excellence at Brandeis University.