Johnny Jolly and Addiction in the NFL

Radiohead - Staircase

Results from the 2010National Survey on Drug Use and Health:Summary of National Findings

Highlights

This report presents the first information from the 2010 National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH), an annual survey sponsored by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA). The survey is the primary source of information on the use of illicit drugs, alcohol, and tobacco in the civilian, noninstitutionalized population of the United States aged 12 years old or older. The survey interviews approximately 67,500 persons each year. Unless otherwise noted, all comparisons in this report described using terms such as "increased," "decreased," or "more than" are statistically significant at the .05 level.

Illicit Drug Use

In 2010, an estimated 22.6 million Americans aged 12 or older were current (past month) illicit drug users, meaning they had used an illicit drug during the month prior to the survey interview. This estimate represents 8.9 percent of the population aged 12 or older. Illicit drugs include marijuana/hashish, cocaine (including crack), heroin, hallucinogens, inhalants, or prescription-type psychotherapeutics used nonmedically.

The rate of current illicit drug use among persons aged 12 or older in 2010 (8.9 percent) was similar to the rate in 2009 (8.7 percent), but higher than the rate in 2008 (8.0 percent).

Marijuana was the most commonly used illicit drug. In 2010, there were 17.4 million past month users. Between 2007 and 2010, the rate of use increased from 5.8 to 6.9 percent, and the number of users increased from 14.4 million to 17.4 million.

In 2010, there were 1.5 million current cocaine users aged 12 or older, comprising 0.6 percent of the population. These estimates were similar to the number and rate in 2009 (1.6 million or 0.7 percent), but were lower than the estimates in 2006 (2.4 million or 1.0 percent).

Hallucinogens were used in the past month by 1.2 million persons (0.5 percent) aged 12 or older in 2010, including 695,000 (0.3 percent) who had used Ecstasy. These estimates were similar to estimates in 2009.

In 2010, there were 7.0 million (2.7 percent) persons aged 12 or older who used prescription-type psychotherapeutic drugs nonmedically in the past month. These estimates were similar to estimates in 2009 (7.0 million or 2.8 percent) and to estimates in 2002 (6.3 million or 2.7 percent).

The number of past month methamphetamine users decreased between 2006 and 2010, from 731,000 (0.3 percent) to 353,000 (0.1 percent).

Among youths aged 12 to 17, the current illicit drug use rate was similar in 2009 (10.0 percent) and 2010 (10.1 percent), but higher than the rate in 2008 (9.3 percent). Between 2002 and 2008, the rate declined from 11.6 to 9.3 percent.

The rate of current marijuana use among youths aged 12 to 17 decreased from 8.2 percent in 2002 to 6.7 percent in 2006, remained unchanged at 6.7 percent in 2007 and 2008, then increased to 7.3 percent in 2009 and 7.4 percent in 2010.

Among youths aged 12 to 17, the rate of current nonmedical use of prescription-type drugs declined from 4.0 percent in 2002 to 3.0 percent in 2010.

The rate of current Ecstasy use among youths aged 12 to 17 declined from 0.5 percent in 2002 to 0.3 percent in 2004, remained at that level through 2007, then increased to 0.5 percent in 2009 and 2010.

The rate of current use of illicit drugs among young adults aged 18 to 25 increased from 19.6 percent in 2008 to 21.2 percent in 2009 and 21.5 percent in 2010, driven largely by an increase in marijuana use (from 16.5 percent in 2008 to 18.1 percent in 2009 and 18.5 percent in 2010).

Among young adults aged 18 to 25, the rate of current nonmedical use of prescription-type drugs in 2010 was 5.9 percent, similar to the rate in the years from 2002 to 2009. There were decreases from 2002 to 2010 in the use of cocaine (from 2.0 to 1.5 percent) and methamphetamine (from 0.6 to 0.2 percent).

Among those aged 50 to 59, the rate of past month illicit drug use increased from 2.7 percent in 2002 to 5.8 percent in 2010. This trend partially reflects the aging into this age group of the baby boom cohort (i.e., persons born between 1946 and 1964), whose lifetime rate of illicit drug use has been higher than those of older cohorts.

Among persons aged 12 or older in 2009-2010 who used pain relievers nonmedically in the past 12 months, 55.0 percent got the drug they most recently used from a friend or relative for free. Another 17.3 percent reported they got the drug from one doctor. Only 4.4 percent got pain relievers from a drug dealer or other stranger, and 0.4 percent bought them on the Internet. Among those who reported getting the pain reliever from a friend or relative for free, 79.4 percent reported in a follow-up question that the friend or relative had obtained the drugs from just one doctor.

Among unemployed adults aged 18 or older in 2010, 17.5 percent were current illicit drug users, which was higher than the 8.4 percent of those employed full time and 11.2 percent of those employed part time. However, most illicit drug users were employed. Of the 20.2 million current illicit drug users aged 18 or older in 2010, 13.3 million (65.9 percent) were employed either full or part time.

In 2010, 10.6 million persons aged 12 or older reported driving under the influence of illicit drugs during the past year. This corresponds to 4.2 percent of the population aged 12 or older, which was the same as the rate in 2009 and lower than the rate in 2002 (4.7 percent). In 2010, the rate was highest among young adults aged 18 to 25 (12.7 percent).

Alcohol Use

Slightly more than half of Americans aged 12 or older reported being current drinkers of alcohol in the 2010 survey (51.8 percent). This translates to an estimated 131.3 million people, which was similar to the 2009 estimate of 130.6 million people (51.9 percent).

In 2010, nearly one quarter (23.1 percent) of persons aged 12 or older participated in binge drinking. This translates to about 58.6 million people. The rate in 2010 was similar to the estimate in 2009 (23.7 percent). Binge drinking is defined as having five or more drinks on the same occasion on at least 1 day in the 30 days prior to the survey.

In 2010, heavy drinking was reported by 6.7 percent of the population aged 12 or older, or 16.9 million people. This rate was similar to the rate of heavy drinking in 2009 (6.8 percent). Heavy drinking is defined as binge drinking on at least 5 days in the past 30 days.

Among young adults aged 18 to 25 in 2010, the rate of binge drinking was 40.6 percent, and the rate of heavy drinking was 13.6 percent. These rates were similar to the rates in 2009.

The rate of current alcohol use among youths aged 12 to 17 was 13.6 percent in 2010, which was lower than the 2009 rate (14.7 percent). Youth binge and heavy drinking rates in 2010 (7.8 and 1.7 percent) were also lower than rates in 2009 (8.8 and 2.1 percent).

There were an estimated 10.0 million underage (aged 12 to 20) drinkers in 2010, including 6.5 million binge drinkers and 2.0 million heavy drinkers.
Past month and binge drinking rates among underage persons declined between 2002 and 2010. Past month use declined from 28.8 to 26.3 percent, while binge drinking declined from 19.3 to 17.0 percent.

In 2010, 55.3 percent of current drinkers aged 12 to 20 reported that their last use of alcohol in the past month occurred in someone else's home, and 29.9 percent reported that it had occurred in their own home.

About one third (30.6 percent) paid for the alcohol the last time they drank, including 8.8 percent who purchased the alcohol themselves and 21.6 percent who gave money to someone else to purchase it. Among those who did not pay for the alcohol they last drank, 38.9 percent got it from an unrelated person aged 21 or older, 16.6 percent from another person younger than 21 years old, and 21.6 percent from a parent, guardian, or other adult family member.

In 2010, an estimated 11.4 percent of persons aged 12 or older drove under the influence of alcohol at least once in the past year. This percentage had dropped since 2002, when it was 14.2 percent. The rate of driving under the influence of alcohol was highest among persons aged 21 to 25 (23.4 percent).

Tobacco Use
 In 2010, an estimated 69.6 million Americans aged 12 or older were current (past month) users of a tobacco product. This represents 27.4 percent of the population in that age range. In addition, 58.3 million persons (23.0 percent of the population) were current cigarette smokers; 13.2 million (5.2 percent) smoked cigars; 8.9 million (3.5 percent) used smokeless tobacco; and 2.2 million (0.8 percent) smoked tobacco in pipes.

Between 2002 and 2010, past month use of any tobacco product decreased from 30.4 to 27.4 percent, and past month cigarette use declined from 26.0 to 23.0 percent. Rates of past month use of cigars, smokeless tobacco, and pipe tobacco in 2010 were similar to corresponding rates in 2002.
The rate of past month tobacco use among 12 to 17 year olds declined from 15.2 percent in 2002 to 10.7 percent in 2010, including a decline from 2009 (11.6 percent) to 2010. The rate of past month cigarette use among 12 to 17 year olds also declined between 2002 and 2010, from 13.0 to 8.3 percent, including a decline between 2008 (9.1 percent) and 2010. Cigar use among youths declined between 2009 and 2010, from 4.0 to 3.2 percent.
Initiation of Substance Use (Incidence, or First-Time Use) within the Past 12 Months

In 2010, an estimated 3.0 million persons aged 12 or older used an illicit drug for the first time within the past 12 months. This averages to about 8,100 initiates per day and was similar to the estimate for 2009 (3.1 million). A majority of these past year illicit drug initiates reported that their first drug was marijuana (61.8 percent). About one quarter initiated with psychotherapeutics (26.2 percent, including 17.3 percent with pain relievers, 4.6 percent with tranquilizers, 2.5 percent with stimulants, and 1.9 percent with sedatives). A sizable proportion reported inhalants (9.0 percent) as their first illicit drug, and a small proportion used hallucinogens as their first drug (3.0 percent).

In 2010, the illicit drug categories with the largest number of past year initiates among persons aged 12 or older were marijuana use (2.4 million) and nonmedical use of pain relievers (2.0 million). These estimates were not significantly different from the numbers in 2009. However, the number of marijuana initiates increased between 2007 (2.1 million) and 2010 (2.4 million).

In 2010, the average age of marijuana initiates among persons aged 12 to 49 was 18.4 years, significantly higher than the average age of marijuana initiates in 2002 (17.0 years).

The number of past year initiates of methamphetamine among persons aged 12 or older was 105,000 in 2010. This estimate was significantly lower than the estimate in 2007 (157,000) and only about one third of the estimate in 2002 (299,000).

The number of past year initiates of Ecstasy aged 12 or older was similar in 2009 (1.1 million) and 2010 (937,000), but these estimates were an increase from 2005 (615,000).

The number of past year cocaine initiates aged 12 or older declined from 1.0 million in 2002 to 637,000 in 2010. The number of initiates of crack cocaine declined during this period from 337,000 to 83,000.
In 2010, there were 140,000 persons aged 12 or older who used heroin for the first time within the past year, not significantly different from the estimates from 2002 to 2009. Estimates during those years ranged from 91,000 to 180,000 per year.

Most (82.4 percent) of the 4.7 million past year alcohol initiates were younger than 21 at the time of initiation.

The number of persons aged 12 or older who smoked cigarettes for the first time within the past 12 months was 2.4 million in 2010, similar to the estimate in 2009 (2.5 million), but significantly higher than the estimate for 2002 (1.9 million). Most new smokers in 2010 were younger than 18 when they first smoked cigarettes (58.8 percent or 1.4 million).
The number of persons aged 12 or older who used smokeless tobacco for the first time within the past year increased from 928,000 in 2003 to 1.4 million in 2010.

Youth Prevention-Related Measures

Perceived risk is measured by NSDUH as the percentage reporting that there is great risk in the substance use behavior. The percentage of youths aged 12 to 17 perceiving great risk in smoking marijuana once or twice a week decreased from 54.7 percent in 2007 to 47.5 percent in 2010. Between 2002 and 2008, the percentages who reported great risk in smoking one or more packs of cigarettes per day increased from 63.1 to 69.7 percent, but the percentage dropped to 65.8 percent in 2009 and remained steady at 65.5 percent in 2010.

Almost half (48.6 percent) of youths aged 12 to 17 reported in 2010 that it would be "fairly easy" or "very easy" for them to obtain marijuana if they wanted some. Approximately one in five reported it would be easy to get cocaine (19.0 percent). About one in seven (12.9 percent) indicated that LSD would be "fairly" or "very" easily available, and 11.6 percent reported easy availability for heroin. Between 2002 and 2010, there were declines in the perceived availability for all four drugs.
A majority of youths aged 12 to 17 (89.6 percent) in 2010 reported that their parents would strongly disapprove of their trying marijuana or hashish once or twice. Current marijuana use was much less prevalent among youths who perceived strong parental disapproval for trying marijuana or hashish once or twice than for those who did not (4.4 vs. 32.8 percent).
In 2010, three quarters (75.9 percent) of youths aged 12 to 17 reported having seen or heard drug or alcohol prevention messages from sources outside of school, lower than in 2002 (83.2 percent). The percentage of school-enrolled youths reporting that they had seen or heard prevention messages at school also declined during this period, from 78.8 to 75.4 percent.

Substance Dependence, Abuse, and Treatment

In 2010, an estimated 22.1 million persons (8.7 percent of the population aged 12 or older) were classified with substance dependence or abuse in the past year based on criteria specified in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 4th edition (DSM-IV). Of these, 2.9 million were classified with dependence or abuse of both alcohol and illicit drugs, 4.2 million had dependence or abuse of illicit drugs but not alcohol, and 15.0 million had dependence or abuse of alcohol but not illicit drugs.

Between 2002 and 2010, the number of persons with substance dependence or abuse was stable (22.0 million in 2002 and 22.1 million in 2010).
The specific illicit drugs that had the highest levels of past year dependence or abuse in 2010 were marijuana (4.5 million), pain relievers (1.9 million), and cocaine (1.0 million). The number of persons with marijuana dependence or abuse did not change between 2002 and 2010, but the number with pain reliever dependence or abuse increased (from 1.5 million to 1.9 million) and the number with cocaine dependence or abuse declined (from 1.5 million to 1.0 million).

In 2010, adults aged 21 or older who had first used alcohol at age 14 or younger were more than 5 times as likely to be classified with alcohol dependence or abuse than adults who had their first drink at age 21 or older (15.1 vs. 2.7 percent).

Between 2002 and 2010, the percentage of youths aged 12 to 17 with substance dependence or abuse declined from 8.9 to 7.3 percent.

Treatment need is defined as having a substance use disorder or receiving treatment at a specialty facility (hospital inpatient, drug or alcohol rehabilitation, or mental health centers) within the past 12 months. In 2010, 23.1 million persons aged 12 or older needed treatment for an illicit drug or alcohol use problem (9.1 percent of persons aged 12 or older). Of these, 2.6 million (1.0 percent of persons aged 12 or older and 11.2 percent of those who needed treatment) received treatment at a specialty facility. Thus, 20.5 million persons (8.1 percent of the population aged 12 or older) needed treatment for an illicit drug or alcohol use problem but did not receive treatment at a specialty facility in the past year.

Of the 20.5 million persons aged 12 or older in 2010 who were classified as needing substance use treatment but did not receive treatment at a specialty facility in the past year, 1.0 million persons (5.0 percent) reported that they felt they needed treatment for their illicit drug or alcohol use problem. Of these 1.0 million persons who felt they needed treatment, 341,000 (33.3 percent) reported that they made an effort to get treatment, and 683,000 (66.7 percent) reported making no effort to get treatment.

The number of people receiving specialty treatment in the past year in 2010 (2.6 million) was similar to the number in 2002 (2.3 million). However, the number receiving specialty treatment for a problem with nonmedical pain reliever use more than doubled during this period, from 199,000 to 406,000.

America’s prisons- A catching sickness
Sep 3rd 2011 - The Economist

A Plague of Prisons: The Epidemiology of Mass Incarceration in America.
By Ernest Drucker. The New Press; 211 pages; $26.95.


IN MAY 1973 New York passed a set of laws that required judges to impose sentences of 15 years to life imprisonment for anyone convicted of selling two ounces (57 grams) or possessing four ounces of “narcotic drugs”—usually cocaine, heroin or marijuana. They came to be known as the Rockefeller laws, after New York’s then-governor, Nelson Rockefeller. They sent New York’s prison population soaring, from an average of fewer than 75 inmates per 100,000 New Yorkers between 1880 and 1970 to five times that rate by the end of the century. Between 1987 and 1997 drug cases accounted for 45% of new prisoners.

Other states followed New York’s lead. They imposed long sentences for non-violent drug crimes and they denied judges the power to consider extenuating circumstances, or indeed anything other than the convict’s criminal history and the amount of drugs, when sentencing.

These laws were a public-policy disaster. Ernest Drucker, an epidemiologist, uses the tools of his trade to examine the laws and their consequences. He writes that America is suffering “a plague of prisons”, and the Rockefeller laws were the outbreak of that plague. Heroin use rose in New York during the 1960s. New York politicians wanting to convince their constituents that they were tough on crime, sent users and sellers to prison for a long time.

The pattern was repeated around the country. As a result, America’s prison population, like New York’s, rose fivefold from 1980 to 2009. The impact has been particularly strong in poor and minority communities: one in 11 black adults are under correctional supervision, compared with one in 45 whites. And 25% of children in much of Harlem and the South Bronx have had one of their parents imprisoned.

This does not indicate a violent-crime problem: in the South Bronx, only 3% of convictions are for felonies. The most common arrests are for loitering, vagrancy or drug use or possession. Collectively, these low-level, “quality of life” crimes account for nearly half of all arrests.

The arrests themselves, in Mr Drucker’s telling, represent an initial infection of sorts. They are “the seeds for most imprisonments”: they result in a suspect being taken to a police station, fingerprinted, jailed (in American parlance, jail is for pre-trial detention or short-term sentences; prison is for longer stays), brought before a judge, and having a criminal record established. Even these short periods of detention can result in losing jobs, housing or, particularly for women, custody of their children. As for those children, they themselves run a far higher risk of ending up in prison than the children of unincarcerated parents. The neighbourhoods in which they live end up permanently destabilised by the frequent circulation of adults in and out of prison.

None of Mr Drucker’s statistics or stories is new, but they bear repeating because they are unjust, unintended and easily remedied. Treating drug addiction as a public-health problem (emphasising treatment and harm-reduction) rather than a crime to be punished would go a long way towards making America’s poor and minority communities stabler and better. It would also save taxpayers money. All that is lacking is political will.

from the print edition | Books and Arts

Soviet-Era Marijuana Still In Demand

--RadiofreeEurope--
Merkhat Sharipzhanov

Kyrgyz officials announced on August 29 that 4.5 tons of marijuana had been confiscated from illegal drug traffickers in the last seven days. It was specifically mentioned that the majority of the marijuana was confiscated in Kyrgyzstan's northern Chui Valley (known as the Chu Valley in Kazakh).

Shared between southern Kazakhstan and northern Kyrgyzstan, the Chu Valley has been one of the most infamous sources of marijuana in the former Soviet Union for as long as anyone can remember.

The Chu Valley's wild marijuana -- well known among drug users in the former Soviet republics as "dichka" -- was always of the "highest quality."

It was prized throughout the vast territory of the Soviet empire, which stretched from Brest (Belarus) to Vladivostok (Russian Far East) and from the Russian town of Salekhard in the north to the Turkmen city of Kushka in the south.

The Soviets did a lot to eliminate wild "dichka" plantations in the region. They burned the fields, used all possible and impossible pesticides, but it grew even better after all those measures.

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Chu's "dichka" continues to be in demand on both the territory of the former Soviet Union and beyond.

August is the month for marijuana harvesting in the region, as that is when the marijuana starts producing the resin that has such a narcotic effect on the human brain.

For mass producers of marijuana, the easiest way to process the drug is to cut the buds in August, dry them, and then sell them as "grass."

Sweating To Make Hash

However, the most concentrated and popular form of marijuana is so-called "plastilin" (plasticine), and the way it is harvested and produced has not changed for centuries.

It begins with a freshly showered person riding naked for hours on a clean, washed horse inside a two-meter-high "forest" of marijuana.

Afterwards, the human body and that of the horse are covered with a thick layer of resin mixed with sweat.

It only takes a few tiny pieces of "plastilin" to get high.

This produces a substance that is usually dark brown in color, which is then thoroughly scraped off the human and horse's bodies.

The mixture is subsequently pressed, molded into bars, and dried.

The "plastilin" that results from this process effectively comprises very concentrated marijuana bars.

A couple of small, pinhead-sized pieces from one of these bars added to a regular cigarette is enough to make the smoker happy.

This sort of marijuana is also very easy to carry or stash and is therefore very popular among drug users.

But it is a lot harder to produce this form of the drug because you need more time to make it.

Imagine 10, 20, or 30 individuals running or riding naked in a field of wild marijuana. It goes without saying that they are more exposed and it is easier to catch them. Nonetheless, people do it and they have been doing it since time immemorial.

And, of course, in Central Asia, there are people who can easily make local law enforcement officials "keep their eyes shut" during the harvest season, sharing with them either "plastilin" or the money earned from its sale.

For former Soviet citizens, it calls to mind a famous quote from the popular communist-era film "The White Sun of the Desert": "The east is a strange place, Pete!" ("Vostok -- delo tonkoe, Petrukha!").

The Doper's Dream by Thomas Pynchon

Last night I dreamed I was plugged right in
To a bubblin' hookah so high,
When all the sudden some Arab jinni
Jump up just a-winkin' his eye.
"I'm here to obey all your wishes," he told me
As for words I was trying to grope.
"Good buddy, " I cried, "you could surely oblige me
By turnin' me on to some dope!"
With a bigfat smile he took ahold of my hand,
And we flew down the sky in a flash,
And the first thing I saw in the land where he took me
Was a whole solid mountain of hash!
All the trees was a-bloomin' with pink'n'purple pills,
Whur the Romilar River flowed by,
To the magic mushrooms as wild as a rainbow,
So pretty that I wanted to cry.
All the girls come to greet us, so sweet in slow motion,
Morning glories woven into their hair,
Bringin' great bigs handfuls of snowy cocaine,
All their dope they were eager to share.
Well we dallied for days, just a-ballin' and smokin',
In the flowering Panama Red,
Just piggin' on peyote and nutmeg tea,
And those brownies so kind to your head.
Now I could've passed that good time forever,
And I really was fixing to stay,
But you know that
jinni turned out, t'be a narco man,
And he busted me right whur I lay.
And he took me back, to this cold, cold world,
'N' now m' prison's whurever I be...
And I dream of the days back in Doperland
And I wonder, will I ever go free?

The Inevitability of Addiction series...

Officials fear for infants born to prescription drug addicts
July 27, 2011
By Steve Turnham and Amber Lyon,
--CNN.com--

According to a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, prescription drug overdose deaths in Florida are up a staggering 265% since 2003. But it's not just the deaths that have Florida officials worried; it's the births.

"We saw the number of crack babies that died, and this is just another version of that," Broward County Sheriff Al Lamberti said. "We all need to be concerned."

According to state health records, 635 Florida babies were born addicted to prescription drugs in the first half of 2010 alone. South Florida doctors and intensive care nurses report an dramatic uptick in babies born hooked on pills that their mothers abused while pregnant.

They go through withdrawal symptoms," said Mary Osuch, the head nurse at Broward General Medical Center's neonatal intensive care unit. "They're crampy, miserable. They sweat. They can have rapid breathing. Sometimes, they can even have seizures."

According to the White House Office on Drug Control Policy, prescription drug abuse is the nation's fastest-growing drug problem.

Marsha Currant, who runs the Susan B. Anthony Recovery Center near Fort Lauderdale, says prescription drug addiction overtook crack in 2009 as the main problem afflicting the pregnant women who are treated there.

"In the very beginning, it was really 100% crack cocaine," said Currant, who started keeping track of drug trends in 1995. "We see a lot more prescription drugs now."

Currant says new mothers who are hooked on prescription drugs are often reluctant to seek help for fear the authorities will take their babies from them.

"We wanted to have a place where women didn't have to chose between getting treatment and having their children go into foster care," she said.

Compounding the problem, women who are addicted to prescription drugs and find themselves pregnant cannot safely go off the drugs without medical supervision. They need to be weaned off slowly, or the baby will go into withdrawal in the womb.

At the Susan B. Anthony Center, one mother who became hooked on prescription drugs after her husband died says she felt her baby suffering while she was getting clean.

"I know that I'm going through stuff getting off the pills. So what's she going through? She can't talk. She's just a baby," Jessica said.

Thanks to the center, Jessica was weaned off oxycodone before her baby, Casey, was born. But she fears the long-term effects of her drug abuse on her daughter, who has been suffering from respiratory problems.

"I want to make sure that she doesn't hurt anymore," Jessica said. "She doesn't deserve that, because she's a princess."

Jessica graduated from the center's recovery program last week.

The Inevitablity of Addiction series....

Newly Born, and Withdrawing From Painkillers
By ABBY GOODNOUGH and KATIE ZEZIMA
--NYtimes.com-- April 9, 2011
BANGOR, Me. — The mother got the call in the middle of the night: her 3-day-old baby was going through opiate withdrawal in a hospital here and had to start taking methadone, a drug best known for treating heroin addiction, to ease his suffering.

The mother had abused prescription painkillers like OxyContin for the first 12 weeks of her pregnancy, buying them on the street in rural northern Maine, and then tried to quit cold turkey — a dangerous course, doctors say, that could have ended in miscarriage. The baby had seizures in utero as a result, and his mother, Tonya, turned to methadone treatment, with daily doses to keep her cravings and withdrawal symptoms at bay.

As prescription drug abuse ravages communities across the country, doctors are confronting an emerging challenge: newborns dependent on painkillers. While methadone may have saved Tonya’s pregnancy, her son, Matthew, needed to be painstakingly weaned from it.

Infants like him may cry excessively and have stiff limbs, tremors, diarrhea and other problems that make their first days of life excruciating. Many have to stay in the hospital for weeks while they are weaned off the drugs, taxing neonatal units and driving the cost of their medical care into the tens of thousands of dollars.

Like the cocaine-exposed babies of the 1980s, those born dependent on prescription opiates — narcotics that contain opium or its derivatives — are entering a world in which little is known about the long-term effects on their development. Few doctors are even willing to treat pregnant opiate addicts, and there is no universally accepted standard of care for their babies, partly because of the difficulty of conducting research on pregnant women and newborns.

Those who do treat pregnant addicts face a jarring ethical quandary: they must weigh whether the harm inflicted by exposing a fetus to powerful drugs, albeit under medical supervision, is justifiable.

“I’ve had pharmacies that have just called back and said: ‘This lady’s pregnant. Why do you want me to fill this scrip? I can’t do that,’ ” said Dr. Craig Smith, a family practitioner in Bridgton, Me. “But when you stop and think about what actually happens during withdrawal and how violent it can be, that would certainly be not in the baby’s best interest.”

Still, even doctors who advocate treating pregnant addicts have had moments of doubt.

“At first I was going, ‘Gosh, what am I doing?’ ” said Dr. Thomas Meek, a primary care physician in Auburn, Me. “ ‘Am I really helping these people?’ ”

There are no national figures that document the extent of the problem, but interviews with doctors, researchers, social workers and women who abused painkillers while pregnant suggest that it has grown rapidly, especially in rural regions, where officials say such abuse is most common.

In Maine, which has been especially plagued by prescription drug abuse, the number of newborns treated or watched for opiate withdrawal, known as neonatal abstinence syndrome, at the state’s two largest hospitals climbed to 276 in 2010 from about 70 in 2005. Hospitals in states including Florida and Ohio reported similar increases, and experts said the numbers were probably higher since pregnant women are rarely tested for drug use and many mothers do not admit to abusing opiates.

Tonya, 24, said she was introduced to painkillers like OxyContin, Percocet and Vicodin while working the overnight shift at an industrial bakery an hour from her home. Everyone — including co-workers, the boyfriend she met on the job and their manager — was taking pills, she said.

“It was a lot easier to get through life and have energy,” Tonya said at Eastern Maine Medical Center here in January, holding Matthew a month after his birth. He was still being weaned off methadone.

Before she was pregnant, Tonya said, she quickly became addicted, spending all of her money on pills bought on the street. She and her boyfriend, Josh, needed to stave off withdrawal and get through the day, she said.

Now that she is in treatment, Tonya, who like most mothers interviewed for this article did not want her last name used, said her focus was on Matthew. “We put him in this situation,” she said, “and we have to help him out of it.”

‘How Little We Know’

Rigorous studies on treating infant withdrawal are scarce, and the American Academy of Pediatrics has not published guidelines since 1998.

“It’s really remarkable how little we know about the effect of prescription drugs and even nonprescription drugs on the fetus,” said Dr. Nora D. Volkow, director of the National Institute for Drug Abuse. “There are real roadblocks in terms of helping us advance the field.”

Dr. Mark L. Hudak, a neonatologist in Jacksonville, Fla., is helping to revise the pediatrics academy’s guidelines. “There are commonalities, but it’s not like you can go to a Web site that says, ‘This is what should be used by everyone,’ ” Dr. Hudak said. “No one knows what the best approach is.”

Within states, every hospital that delivers babies exposed to painkillers may have its own approach. Eastern Maine treats affected newborns with tiny doses of methadone, while Maine Medical Center in Portland uses morphine combined with phenobarbital, a barbiturate that prevents seizures. Some hospitals are also experimenting with clonidine, a mild sedative that can relieve withdrawal symptoms.

There is growing debate over treatment for pregnant women addicted to prescription drugs, in light of concerns over the effects on their babies. Many are slowly weaned from their dependence with methadone, the standard of care for decades. Methadone, when taken in prescribed doses, keeps a steady amount of opiate in the body, preventing withdrawal and drug cravings that occur when levels dip. But it, too, can be addictive and cause nagging side effects like drowsiness. And for addiction treatment, it can be obtained only at federally licensed clinics where most users have to report for a daily dose.

A growing number of addicts are instead taking buprenorphine, another drug used to treat addiction that some studies suggest staves off drug cravings as effectively as methadone but is less likely to cause withdrawal in newborns. In rural areas of the nation, where methadone clinics are few, buprenorphine is considered a promising alternative because it can be prescribed by primary care doctors and taken at home.

But buprenorphine also appears not to work for some addicts.

Still, a study published in December in The New England Journal of Medicine showed that babies whose mothers had taken buprenorphine required significantly less medication after birth and less time in the hospital than did babies whose mothers were treated with methadone. But researchers cautioned that exposure to buprenorphine in utero can still cause withdrawal symptoms and that further study was needed.

“We don’t want it misconstrued that buprenorphine is a miracle drug,” said Hendrée E. Jones, a Johns Hopkins University researcher and the study’s lead author.

Even less is known about longer-term effects on babies exposed to painkillers, though in a second leg of their study, Dr. Jones and her fellow researchers plan to follow the 131 babies in the cohort until they turn 3.

A recent study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that babies exposed to opiates in utero, in this case legally prescribed painkillers, had slightly higher rates of birth defects, including congenital heart defects, glaucoma and spina bifida.

Experts say that since many drug users also smoke and abuse alcohol, not to mention that they face extenuating circumstances like poverty, it is difficult to tease out the effects of each substance on their offspring.

“Most of the literature suggests consistently that the drug exposure itself is not the primary concern,” said Karol Kaltenbach, a professor at Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia who studies addiction in pregnant women. “It’s the cumulative effect of the drug-using lifestyle — poverty, chaos in the home, domestic violence. All those things affect development.”

Not all newborns exposed to opiates have severe enough withdrawal to need medicine; at Maine Medical Center since 2003, about 55 percent of babies exposed to buprenorphine and 80 percent of those exposed to methadone have needed treatment. But it is hard to predict which ones will need it: a newborn whose mother was on a high dose of either drug might need none, while a baby whose mother took a low dose might experience acute withdrawal.

Babies known to have been exposed to drugs are often kept in the hospital for at least five days because withdrawal symptoms usually do not set in immediately. Nurses examine them for a checklist of symptoms every few hours, assigning each baby a score that, if high enough, calls for treatment.

“They don’t stop crying, they can’t settle down, they don’t relax,” said Geraldine Tamborelli, nursing director of the birthing unit at Maine Medical Center, which in 2010 diagnosed opiate withdrawal in 121 newborns. “They’re struggling in your arms instead of snuggling into you like a baby that is totally fine.”

In the neonatal intensive care unit at Eastern Maine, Kendra, 3 days old, was sleeping in a dark, silent room one morning, away from the bustle and bright lights that can be especially irritating to babies going through withdrawal. Nurses frequently crept in to observe her, though, and by the afternoon her limbs had stiffened and she was crying excessively and having tremors; it was enough to begin treatment.

“This seems to be ramping up fairly quickly for her,” said Dr. Mark Brown, the hospital’s chief of pediatrics, “so the decision was to start treatment more quickly.”

On the pediatric ward, Matthew started fussing while his mother, Tonya, talked to reporters that afternoon in January; his cry had a strange, reedy pitch that nurses say is common to babies with his condition. The small dose of methadone he had received gave him gas and heartburn, for which he was given two stomach medications. He also was on clonazepam, a muscle relaxant and anti-anxiety drug that helped him metabolize the methadone more slowly.

Tonya said that at first she “didn’t believe in” methadone treatment during pregnancy and that doctors had to persuade her that it would not hurt her fetus. She had experienced wrenching withdrawal when she stopped using painkillers after learning she was pregnant, she said, and the doctors had warned her that “when I was feeling that bad, he was feeling 1,000 times worse.”

Tonya said that in a previous pregnancy, she quit using drugs altogether and miscarried a month later.

“That was the last thing I wanted to happen this time,” she said.

Avoiding Addicts, and Liability

Treating drug-dependent mothers and babies is often lonely work, with little communication among the doctors who take it on. As Dr. Brown said, “My network for people who do this is really very small.”

Dr. Mark R. Publicker, an addiction medicine specialist at Mercy Recovery Center in Westbrook, Me., is on a mission to get more of the state’s doctors to treat pregnant prescription drug abusers and more hospitals to deliver their babies. Only a handful of doctors here treat pregnant women with buprenorphine, Dr. Publicker said, partly because they fear liability and do not want to deal with addicts.

The fact that most hospitals will not deliver the babies makes doctors even less likely to treat the women.

“It’s mostly ignorance,” Dr. Publicker said. “It’s a concern that it’s a risky proposition and that they’re going to wind up with an ill baby.”

In February, Dr. Smith persuaded Bridgton Hospital, which has only 25 beds, to deliver the babies of women on buprenorphine — a major victory, he said, because until then women in rural southwestern Maine had to drive an hour or more to Maine Medical to deliver.

Courtney, a patient of Dr. Smith’s who discovered she was pregnant while in jail for stealing OxyContin from her landlord, said buprenorphine treatment seemed the best of her bleak options.

“I just don’t want to mess up,” she said.

Tonya, too, said she was determined to make things right for Matthew, who was five weeks old when she took him home to a trailer outside Bangor. He is off the methadone now and appears healthy, but Tonya still has to go to a methadone clinic in Bangor every day for her dose and resist the pressures to return to illicit drug use. Her boyfriend began using opiates as a young teenager, she said, and his father and grandmother abused OxyContin along with him.

“I’m proud that I changed my life,” Tonya said. “But at the same time, when you see your child in pain and you know your child is in pain because of a life decision you made, it’s the hardest thing in the world.”

Investigation into how Vietnamese children trafficked to the UK to work in the cannabis trade are often prosecuted as criminals rather than treated as victims.

Tyranny in NYC: The NYPD's Wasteful, Ineffective, Illegal, and Unjust Targeting of Blacks and Latinos

By Robert Gangi, AlterNetPosted on June 9, 2011, Printed on June 23, 2011

--alternet.org--

Mayor Michael Bloomberg has been the focus of much public criticism in recent months. Elected officials and editorial writers have expressed concern and outrage over matters ranging from the city’s response to snow storms to the appointment of Cathie Black as the city’s Education Chancellor to the payroll scandal at the city’s Department of Employment. A policy area where the mayor has mainly escaped criticism and where it is long overdue is a truly objectionable practice of the Police Department, namely our city’s wasteful, ineffective, unjust, illegal and starkly racially biased arrest methods.

Wasteful

The vast majority of arrests in New York City are for low-level offenses, such as misdemeanors like possessing a small amount of marijuana or violations like selling umbrellas or flowers on the street without a license. By any criteria, almost none of these activities could be considered dangerous or predatory. At worst, most city residents would view them as public nuisances.

Police officers and other criminal justice personnel -- judges, court officers, district attorneys, public defenders and correction officers -- spend hours every day, if not their whole workday, processing these cases. And these law enforcement officials are preoccupied with these seemingly insignificant cases day after day, week after week, month after month and so on.  According to the Drug Policy Alliance, just one category of arrests -- for possessing, not selling, small amounts of marijuana -- costs New York City $75 million per year.
Ineffective

The aggressive arrest-driven policing applied in New York City aimed at minor offenses has effectively caught up hundreds of thousands, perhaps actually millions, of individuals in the criminal justice net in recent years. Last year, for example, the city’s police made over 370,000 arrests. Most of these arrests occurred in New York’s low-income communities of color -- for example, although the majority of people who use marijuana are white, 86 percent of the individuals arrested for marijuana possession last year were black or Latino.

Common sense tells us, as does more and more social science research into the perceptions of “procedural justice,” that the extent to which arrested people see and experience the criminal justice process as fair, respectful, consistent and impartial will determine their willingness in the future to respect the police and to comply with the rule of law. Unfortunately, the way New York City’s justice system processes cases involving minor offenses from arrest to conviction bears few if any of the hallmarks essential to people’s positive perception of procedural fairness.
In other words, most people caught up in this system will emerge from the court room at least somewhat embittered and angered by their treatment and with less regard for law enforcement personnel and procedures and with reduced willingness to comply with authority. Aggressive arrest-driven policing, while aimed at enhancing community safety and well being, actually contributes to the undermining of respect for social norms that is the building block for creating a stable and crime-free community.
Illegal

Many individuals subjected to aggressive arrest-driven police practices and subsequently charged with marijuana possession are coming forward with testimony that their arresting officers engaged in illegal search and seizure methods. According to these accounts heard over and over from people in different communities and who do not know each other, police often stop individuals, usually young black or brown men, for no apparent reason -- the persons involved are not engaged in what could be considered furtive or suspicious activity; they may have been walking to or from their school or workplace or been on a personal errand.
In another clear violation of their rights, the police conduct an aggressive search without asking permission and without any evident indication that the persons detained are carrying a weapon or contraband. The police reach into people’s pockets and crotch areas and/or tell them to remove their shoes. The police then confiscate the hidden marijuana and later claim to the court that the substance was open to public view, the condition necessary to charging the individual with a misdemeanor -- under state law, simple possession only rises to the level of a violation, which is not by legal standards even considered a crime.
These police actions broach provisions of our nation’s constitution and of New York State law. But most victims choose not to contest these illegal practices -- it would usually take 8 to 10 separate appearances at court to fight the charges. They usually accept a plea to a lesser offense, a violation instead of a misdemeanor, and thereby achieve their freedom until the next time the police stop and frisk them on the street.

Unjust

A particularly perverse category of injustice inflicted by aggressive arrest-driven policing takes the form of the collateral consequences arising from contact with the criminal justice system and the criminal record that ensues. The areas where bad consequences can, and often do, result from convictions for a misdemeanor or even a violation include housing, education, immigration, employment, driving, and public assistance.
Regarding immigration, for example, one misdemeanor conviction can lead to deportation. Two convictions for offenses reflecting “moral turpitude” can have a similar outcome; such offenses include shop lifting or turnstile jumping, hardly the kinds of dangerous or socially disruptive acts that should cause a person to be sent out of perhaps the only country that he or she has known to a foreign nation where the deportee has no remaining family or friends.

Criminal justice contact can also limit an individual’s job prospects, especially in New York where over 100 professions, ranging from barber to attorney, require licenses obtained from state authorities. Studies have shown that arrests alone can be an obstacle or even a bar to employment. New York City’s school system, for instance, mandates that an employee report any arrest, even for a violation, and will frequently suspend or reassign a teacher while a case is pending.

Even where arrests do not legally or technically prohibit employment, employers will always prefer job candidates who have had no contact with the criminal justice system. The damage done in depriving people of jobs extends, of course, to the families who will suffer undue hardship when their breadwinners cannot find gainful employment
Racial Bias

• Many recently gathered statistics point to the undeniable conclusion that New York City’s aggressive arrest-driven policing is marked by stark racial bias. In 2009, the city’s officers stopped and frisked over 576,000 individuals -- blacks and Latinos represent 84 percent of the people so treated, although the two ethnic groups make up only 53 percent of the city’s total population.
• In 2009, the city’s officers stopped and frisked over 576,000 individuals -- blacks and Latinos represent 84 percent of the people so treated, although the two ethnic groups make up only 53 percent of the city’s total population.
• Police data also show that young people were stopped at an average of once every 90 minutes in high-poverty, majority black and Latino neighborhoods like East New York and Brownsville, Brooklyn; whiter, wealthier areas averaged one stop every 18 hours.
• Individuals end up detained on Rikers Island or the city’s juvenile facilities as a direct result of whom the New York City Police Department arrests. Over 90 percent of the city’s adult detention population is black or Latino, as is about 95 percent of the juveniles locked up.
• In recent years, the top ten precincts for marijuana arrests in New York City averaged 2,150 marijuana arrests for every 100,000 residents; the populations in those precincts are 90 percent or more nonwhite. The 10 precincts with the lowest rates of marijuana arrests averaged 67 out of 100,000 residents, and are over 80 percent white. This, again, despite the fact that most pot users are white. Experience tells us that the general public, and especially the people that live in disadvantaged inner city communities, know this fundamental sorry truth about local policing: white people can possess marijuana with virtual impunity; if you are a person of color, however, then you must regularly look over your shoulder and watch out for the long harsh arm of the law.

Other strong evidence that aggressive arrest-driven policing has a racist impact comes from representatives of the non-profit prison reform organization, the Correctional Association of New York, which monitors conditions in the city’s court pens that hold recently arrested people just before they are arraigned, or officially charged with an offense, by a sitting judge. The organization’s officials report that on visits to the Brooklyn, Manhattan, and Bronx pens, they usually see hundreds of detainees who were arrested the day or night before and there will only be one or two white faces in the midst of cell after cell of black and brown people. Out of 250 people arrested in Manhattan say on a Wednesday, conditions monitors will note that on the following Thursday they will see 248 or 250 people of color confined in those cells. Such a racial disparity -- not merely disproportionate but virtually exclusive -- is not an accident. It is a function of the policies and practices of the New York City Police Department.
Moving Forward

That the city’s Police Department pursues such a misguided and aggressive arrest-driven policy is disturbing but should not be completely surprising. History and experience tell us that whenever powerful law enforcement agencies, like police or prisons that can forcibly deprive people of their freedom, operate without checks and balances within government or without external, independent oversight, abuses and corruption are inevitable. That is what Attica and Abu Ghraib teach us. That is what recurring police scandals that have blighted New York’s landscape all too often teach us. And at this historical moment, the New York City Police Department is a revered, sacrosanct and politically untouchable agency. It is effectively accountable to no political figure including the city’s current mayor, or any government or civic body. Its commissioner is, for better or worse, an iconic figure; he and his policy setting team have to report or account to no one when they set arrest priorities or any other policy for the Police Department. Such unlimited power is dangerous, and should be unacceptable, to all New Yorkers, not just the black and brown residents of our inner city communities who bear the brunt of the Police Department’s harsh current policies.

It is way past time that the New York City Police Department stop its wasteful, ineffective, illegal, unjust, and racially biased arrest practices. It is way past time that the city’s citizens and elected officials demand transparency from Police Department leaders. New York City should take a page out of the Boston or San Diego Police Departments’ book and engage in collaborative problem-solving policing that cuts crime while stabilizing rather than disrupting communities and fosters adherence to social norms while building positive rather then hostile relationships with local residents. Such an approach would help provide New Yorkers of every race and income level with the chance to fully experience a more safe, livable, and inclusive city.

Robert Gangi is Senior Policy Analyst at the Urban Justice Center. He has been visiting prisons, conferring with officials and inmates, and writing reports on relevant criminal justice subjects for more than twenty years. During this time he has served as the Executive Director of the Correctional Association of New York.

40th Anniversary of the War on Drugs June 17, 2011

Today, June 17th, marks the 40th anniversary of Richard Nixon’s declaration of a “War on Drugs.” To highlight the impact that the drug war has on communities around the world, more than a dozen SSDP chapters are organizing candlelight vigils in cities across the country.

The global war on drugs has failed, with devastating consequences for individuals and societies around the world. Fifty years after the initiation of the UN Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, and 40 years after President Nixon launched the US government’s war on drugs, fundamental reforms in national and global drug control policies are urgently needed.

Vast expenditures on criminalization and repressive measures directed at producers, traffickers and consumers of illegal drugs have clearly failed to effectively curtail supply or consumption. Apparent victories in eliminating one source or trafficking organization are negated almost instantly by the emergence of other sources and traffickers. Repressive efforts directed at consumers impede public health measures to reduce HIV/AIDS, overdose fatalities and other harmful consequences of drug use. Government expenditures on futile supply reduction strategies and incarceration displace more cost-effective and evidence-based investments in demand and harm reduction.

Introduction from Report of the Global Commission on Drug Policy, June 2011

Official High Times Kind Bud Price Index by half ounce 
(including popular strain)

National U.S.  Kind Bud Average - $202.5 ($202.5 last month, $207.5 YTD)
Florida
 *Tallahassee- $200 (Mango)

Colorado
 *Denver-  $150 (Cheese)
*Pueblo-   $137.5 (Blueberry)
                 $162.5 (Kush)
New York

 *New York- $240 (Strawberry Cough)
 *Tarrytown- $200 (Pineapple Express)
                     $190 (Sour Diesel)
California
 *San Fransisco- $125 (Bubba Kush)
 *San Jose- $137.5 (Super Lemon Haze)
 *Sacramento- $137.5 (Grape Ape)
                       $125 (Headband)
 *Los Angeles- $125 (OG Kush)
Hawaii
 *Big Island- $200 (Trainwreck)
                    $125 (Alaskan Thunderfuck)
 *Maui- $150 (OG Kush)
             $187.5 (Organic G-13)
 *Kauai $200 (Chemdog)

Canada

 *Montreal- C$105 (Purple Kush)
 *Ottawa-  C$90 (Wappa)
 *Toronto- C$60 (Regs)

Australia
*Melbourne- AUS$130 (Hydro)

- Courtesy of High Times; prices from April 2011- August 2011
(stats listed are from the July 2011 issue)

Cannabis Eldery

Historically speaking, the fundamental motive for using drugs springs from a desire to understand reality more fully, not escape it. Many human cultures have placed some drug, held to be sacred, at the center of their religious paradigms, considering it the fulcrum of their systems of interpretation of various aspects of life and reality. Used under appropriate conditions-- that is, in particular environmental and psychological settings-- drugs induce experiences accompanied by profound emotional and intuitive states that can be illuminating and revelatory. The elaboration and interpretation of these experiences contribute to the development of both individual and societal interpretations.

Giorgio Samorini
Animal and Psychedelics
"Animals, Humans, and Drugs: The Why of It All"

Drug War Means Boom Times for Armored Car Maker
By Robert Beckhusen --wired.com--
June 3, 2011

SAN ANTONIO, Texas — A 10-minute drive away from the Alamo, small teams on the factory floor of Texas Armoring Corporation work deliberately, turning everyday civilian vehicles into armored workhorses for the world's governments and business executives. The company is growing rapidly, and one reason is Mexico's drug war.

An adjacent building under construction will double available manufacturing space. TAC's workforce grew 30 percent last year to about 40 employees. That's enough to produce around 80 cars per year. Reality television networks have been calling, attracted to the company's tattooed workers, youngish executives and at-risk clientele.

Displayed inside the building's lobby are spiked road tacks that can be dropped out of rear compartments, armor components dented by rounds fired from AK-47 assault rifles, and a black SUV driver's side door with 2-inch thick bulletproof glass chewed up by ballistic impacts. Next, is a tire with a section cut out of it, showing hardened run-flat inserts underneath the rubber.

The armoring process is fairly straight-forward. A vehicle is sawed down to its frame with cutting torches. The frame is then wrapped in a combination of Kevlar, steel and polyethylene composite plates (industry term: "Spectra Shield") before the original fabrics and interior panels are restored. Eventually, at a price of around $80,000 or more — not including cost of the vehicle, and without options like smoke shields and digital video recorder systems — a client should be protected from rounds sized up to 7.62 millimeters.

Company president Trent Kimball boasts about his clients — heads of state, governments, multinational corporations and business executives — in a general way. But he won't name any; these guys like their privacy. International sales must clear U.S. Department of Commerce export controls, which are supposed to keep known drug traffickers and terrorist organizations from buying the armored rides.

Kimball says he's confident the company has never inadvertently sold to a drug lord. Traffickers avoid companies based in the United States, he said, opting instead for in-house armorers. In fact, Mexico's own armored-car industry is now worth $80 million a year and is growing at a brisk 10 percent. Mexican cartels have even begun building their own tanks.

Armoring is happening across the board, and Kimball says his clients — 20 percent either live or work in Mexico — are reacting to a sharp increase in crime and the threat of kidnapping.

An alarming surge in the practice over the past decade has surfaced in Latin America, the long-running leader in kidnapping. In Mexico, a record number of kidnappings happened last year. The country is now the riskiest country in Latin America for kidnapping and world leader in "express kidnapping" – quick, violent attacks that can last just a few hours and involve victims selected seemingly at random.

Kimball admits some of his clients may be a bit too paranoid. But others have to be, he says. Recently, a client in the Mexican city of Monterrey was nearly killed in an attack. The car saved his life. "Monterrey is a hotbed. There are very wealthy people who live in Monterrey," Kimball says. "It's an industrial city, so one of our clients …" he pauses. "We don’t know what the intentions of the people who attacked his vehicle were, but they did."

The spread of crime has spurred a partial restructuring away from high-end luxury vehicles to more compact and mid-sized, low-profile models. In Mexico's northern badlands and border cities, violence is now so widespread residents have depopulated city districts and abandoned entire towns to drug gangs. SUVs and trucks, particularly luxurious and heavy-duty versions, are favored by gangsters and have become frequent targets for carjackings.

An inspection of the U.S. State Department's Bureau of Diplomatic Security last year raised concerns about attacks in Colombia on conspicuous "embassy-owned, white Chevrolet Suburban armored vehicles." Clearly American, the vehicles made tempting prey.

In February, Zetas gunmen ambushed an SUV containing two U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents on a highway between San Luis Potosí and Matamoros. One agent was killed and the other wounded. The Zetas cell leader was later arrested and claimed the agents were mistaken for rival gang members.

In Juárez two weeks ago, three people traveling in a Hummer H3 with New Mexico plates were killed.

"We are definitely seeing a shift," Kimball said. "Not necessarily by politicians or State Department employees, but our clients — which are usually normal businessmen — understand if you drive a long Mercedes-Benz, you make yourself a target."

Let there be no mistake: most of TAC's business is in SUVs and luxury cars. On the floor of the company's factory, however, at least one small sedan could be seen nearly finished with Mexican license plates attached. Other low-profile models could be seen lined up elsewhere. The company has also recently armored relatively low-cost Nissan Maximas, Toyota Camrys and Chevrolet TrailBlazers. Kimball said he recently shipped three unassuming Mitsubishi Monteros.

"2008 models, not new ones," he said. "That's a smart guy."

40th Anniversary of the War on Drugs June 17, 2011

Friday, June 17th, marks the 40th anniversary of Richard Nixon’s declaration of a “War on Drugs.” To highlight the impact that the drug war has on communities around the world, more than a dozen SSDP chapters are organizing candlelight vigils in cities across the country.

When the Police become the Judiciary

Kentucky vs Hollis Deshaun King

Case Summary

 Lexington, Kentucky: Police fabricate a narcotic deal in order to apprehend a suspected drug dealer.  The deal included the complete transaction of illegal narcotics, allowing the suspected dealer to leave without being apprehended.  The undercover officers who posed as “buyers” were shadowed by an additional undercover officer.  The third officer radioed for uniformed officers as he observed the suspected drug dealer entering a specific walkway of the complex.  The uniformed officers approached the front of two doors unsure of which the suspect had entered.  The officers claim to have smelled marijuana at the door of the left apartment.  The officers proceed to bang on the door and alert the tenants of their presence.  The officers testified that immediately after they started to make their presence known, sounds could be heard from inside the apartment.  These audible disturbances led the officers to believe criminal activity may be taking place and the evidence was in jeopardy of being destroyed.  The police crashed the door and apprehended three individuals who were allegedly smoking marijuana. In addition, the officers found marijuana and powder cocaine in plain view.  A more detailed search discovered crack cocaine, cash, and other drug paraphernalia. 

Lower Courts

A Fayette County Circuit Court grand jury charged the accused with trafficking in marijuana, first degree trafficking in a controlled substance and second degree persistent felony offender status.  The accused filed a motion to suppress the evidence based on a warrantless entry.  The Circuit Court denied the motion, judging the police conduct in accordance with the exigent circumstance exception.  [a1] The smell of marijuana, the “alleged commotion in the apartment”, and the “no response” to police alerting their presence and wish to enter the premise, the Circuit Court ruled, all created an atmosphere in which the officers were justified in preventing the destruction of evidence.  The defendant was convicted and sentenced to eleven years in prison.

The Kentucky Court of Appeals affirmed the lower court’s ruling based on the same exigent circumstances argument.  The appeals court deemed the officer’s actions necessary because of the risk to evidence.  In addition, they ruled the police “did not impermissibly create the exigency… because they did not deliberately evade the warrant requirement.” (Kentucky v. King, Pg.7)

The Kentucky Supreme Court (302 S. W. 3d 649[2010]) overturned the lower court rulings.  The Court found questionable the argument that noise in the apartment meant imminent danger to evidence.  Ultimately, the ruling maintained the validity of the exigent circumstances exception.  The court implemented a two part test to determine whether the police created the exigent circumstance.  First, the police may not act with “bad faith intent to avoid the warrant requirement.”  Second, sans bad faith, police may not rely on exigent circumstances if “it was reasonably foreseeable that the investigative tactics employed by the police would create the exigent circumstances .”  Utilizing this test, the police were found not to have acted in bad faith.  The Kentucky Supreme Court ruled that the police failed the second part of the test because it was “reasonably foreseeable that the occupants would destroy evidence when the police knocked on the door and announced their presence (Kentucky v. King, Pg. 7).”

Supreme Court

Scalia authored the majority opinion.  He began by citing the Fourth Amendment:

“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”

He noted that the amendment declares:1) all searches and seizures must be reasonable; and 2) a warrant must not be issued unless probable cause is established, including the specifics of what is to be “searched for” and “seized.”  The Supreme Court has “inferred that a warrant must generally be secured  (Kentucky v. King, Pg. 8).” However, Scalia began his ruling with a discussion of the long list (most recently Brigham v. Stuart [2006]& Groh v. Ramirez [2004]) of Court rulings in which the Fourth Amendment is interpreted as not explicitly mandating the need for a search warrant; regardless,Scalia noted that the court has occasionally overcome the need for a warrant based on the “reasonableness” of the search and seizure.  Payton v. New York and Mincey v. Arizona establish the core of Scalia’s belief that exigent circumstances have become an important factor in the defense of law enforcement officials that conduct a search and seizure without first obtaining a warrant.  

Scalia refers to the police activity prior to the entrance of the defendant's residence as a “controlled buy of crack cocaine outside an apartment complex.”

Kentucky v. King. No. 09-1272. Supreme Court of the United States. 16 May 2011. ONLINE http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/10pdf/09-1272.pdf

 

Medical marijuana patients across the country are under attack!

Despite the Obama Administration's promise to respect state laws, lawyers in the federal government are now threatening to arrest and prosecute people who are legally licensed to grow medical marijuana under state law.  These ideologues are trying to block sensible regulation – and they've already succeeded in Washington State.  We must stop them from erasing all the progress we've made and from leaving patients out in the cold.  Write U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder today to demand that the federal government keep its promise to respect state medical marijuana laws.  Back in 2009, the Obama Administration said they wouldn't use "justice department resources to circumvent state laws" on medical marijuana. They've kept their promise for the past two years, even issuing a memo that made this hands-off approach official policy.
But now, federal government lawyers are intimidating states with new medical marijuana programs in an attempt to end these programs before they even get started. It's already happened in Washington State, where the governor vetoed a promising medical marijuana bill. And if these threats continue, they could jeopardize our efforts in every state where medical marijuana legislation is on the table.

These lawyers are playing politics with the lives of patients who need medical marijuana to cope with debilitating pain and nausea. Take action now and ask the Attorney General to keep the Administration's promise to leave state medical marijuana programs alone. To put a stop to these scare tactics, we don't need any laws changed – we just need the Attorney General to tell the handful of people sending the threats to stop. Write Attorney General Holder today and ask him to keep his word by respecting patients' needs. Then please spread the word – everything we've worked so hard to achieve is at risk!

Thank you again for your help.

Sincerely,
Ethan Nadelmann
Executive Director
Drug Policy Alliance

Mexico's narco blog: Drug deaths in real time. As mainstream media agrees to guidelines for covering the drug war, an anonymous blogger is breaking gory stories. --aljazeera--
Chris Arsenault - Modified: 25 Apr 2011 14:02

The images are gruesome and unedited: a dead man in a sports jersey with his face covered in dried red blood and grey sand; a woman hanging from a rope above a busy urban over-pass and naked bodies lined up on the ground displaying clear, uncensored, signs of torture.

You have reached Mexico's narco blog: Click to continue.

"The narco blog uses much of the information citizens upload to other social networking sites," says Pedro Perez, president of the democratic union of journalists in Tamaulipas, one of the states on the US-Mexico border hit hardest by drug violence. "Organised crime gangs don’t use it [social media] to inform, they use it for issuing threats."

Some recent headlines from the site include: "Entire town taken hostage by Gunmen in Chihuahua"; "Eleven year old arrested in Acapulco with AK 47"; "Sinaloa cartel welcomes new police chief with tortured body"; and "Mass narco grave, 60 bodies found, total 148 corpses". Al Jazeera decided against publishing pictures from the blog.

Violence linked to Mexico's drug war has claimed more than 36,000 lives since President Felipe Calderon declared all-out war on cartels in December 2006.

Media criticism

While much of Mexico's mainstream media, especially television stations and local newspapers, has shied away from covering killings and naming the cartels involved, the narco blog and its anonymous curator, publish graphic details of spiraling violence.

"Individuals journalists are doing the best they can, but in general I don't think the media has done a fair job in covering drug violence," says Lucila Vargas, a professor of journalism at the University of North Carolina who studies Mexico's media landscape. "The media in Mexico are commercial enterprises and their first concern is with the bottom line," she told Al Jazeera.

Like most large scale industries in Mexico, the media - particularly television stations - are highly concentrated in a few hands. Mexicans are more likely to own a television set than to have access to running water but two TV stations - Televisa and TV Azteca - control 94 per cent of television entertainment content, according to the Mexican Right to Information Association.

While experts and average people criticise the mainstream press, there is clearly an appetite for the narco blog's coverage.

"International media outlets use the images and information from the site to report on what is happening," Perez told Al Jazeera. And that isn't surprising; followers of the Twitter page and Facebook group linked to the site include the US FBI, Mexico's Department of Defence and major international news outlets.

The narco blog has broken some major stories, including a video where a prison warden exposed her alleged system for setting inmates free at night to carry out murders for a drug gang. Security forces arrested the warden after the blog published the video.

"I was very impressed with it [the blog], it seems realistic," says Homero Gil de Zúñiga, director of community, journalism and communication research at the University of Texas in Austin, adding that verifying information posted on this and other blogs is difficult.

The curator is allegedly a computer security student in his twenties from northern Mexico, Associated Press reported, based on an interview with the man who answered the blog’s e-mail address.

"We decided to tell people what is actually happening and tell the stories exactly as they happen, without alteration or modifications of convenience," the blog's alleged author told the website Boing Boing.

But that raw methodology has many critics. "The narco blog is available to anyone, even my grandchildren," professor Vargas told Al Jazeera. "It has definitely crossed the line. I don’t know what else you can do that is more graphic.

There is plenty of research showing that prolonged exposure to violence de-sensitises people."

A narco salon

In addition to the occasional scoop, and pictures of pop stars attending lavish parties with alleged drug lords, the blog has plenty of claims and counter-claims from people purporting to represent various cartels.

In mid-April, gunmen exchanged fire and burned buildings in the border towns of Miguel Aleman and Ciudad Mier.

In a message posted on the blog, a purported spokesman for the Gulf cartel blamed soldiers linked to the Zetas - a gang comprised of former military operatives who once provided security and muscle for the Gulf cartel - for the shootings.

"We don’t brag about being brave," said a member of the Gulf Cartel in a separate posting aimed at Heriberto Lazcano, an alleged Zetas leader. "You are the ones who brag [that] roosters are tested [by] fighting, not speaking."

Think of the blog as a 19th century French salon where hit men, bandits, dealers - and the people affected by their violence – congregate to discuss ideas and actions. It is Mexico’s deadly version of "he said, she said". But since other media sources don't usually quote cartel members, citizens seem interested in what the digital hit men are saying.

In March, most of Mexico's news media, including the two leading TV stations Televisa and TV Azteca, agreed to a series of guidelines for reporting on the drug war. The news organisations promised not glorify drug violence, publish cartel propaganda or broadcast information that endangers the operations of security forces.

The Committee to Protect Journalists, (CPJ) supports the reporting guidelines, but three leading Mexican publications, Reforma, Proceso, and La Journada, refused to sign onto the deal, as reporters said it paved the way for self-censorship.

"In terms of the profession, probably the decision [to implement guidelines] was the right one," says Zúñiga from the University of Texas. "But there is going to be a niche for information [about cartel violence] and I’d anticipate that the blog is going to increase its followers."

Felipe Calderon, Mexico’s president, welcomed the agreement, stating that: "Media participation is crucial in building state security policy."

Bad news

Mexico has become one of the world’s most dangerous countries for journalists: Between 2005 and 2010 at least 66 reporters were killed, with 12 more disappeared, according to a report by the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC). There have only been convictions in 10 per cent of the cases.

Violence, fear and impunity don’t just hurt reporters and their families, they decimates the quality of coverage.

"Local journalists have made a pact to just cover official acts like government activities, local policemen and local activities, things that are not dangerous," says Perez, who has been threatened by cartels while working with journalists in one of the most violent border-states. "We would like to be heroes, but we are being shot at by criminals."

A 2010 analysis of drug war coverage from the Fundacion MEPI, and investigate journalism center, found that regional newspapers in Mexico are failing to report most execution style killings linked to cartels. Journalists interviewed for the study said threats, bribes and other forms of pressure influenced their decisions not to cover killings or name the suspected cartels involved.

"Organised crime members have tried to bribe or influence traditional media [and] that is the importance of social media," says Raul Trejo Delabre, an independent media analyst in Mexico City.

"Thirty three million Mexicans use the Internet everyday," he told Al Jazeera, adding that average people use Twitter, Facebook and cellphone text messages to warn their friends about shoot-outs in the neighbourhood. The blog gets at least three million hits per week, the anonymous author told Associated Press in 2010 and the stats are likely higher now.

Regardless of the role of citizen journalism in keeping people informed or the journalistic ethics behind drug war coverage guidelines, Lucila Vargas doesn't think the policy will make much of a dent in the violence engulfing Mexico. "Journalism is only part of the popular culture landscape, which includes film, music and TV programmes and all of these have been glorifying the violence," she told Al Jazeera.

And, as parts of Mexico descend into a real-time version of an uber-violent Quentin Tarintino film, the popularity of sites like the narco blog seems to be increasing.

"Bad news sells newspapers," says Zúñiga, "but good news won't sell as many."

You can follow Chris Arsenault on twitter @AJEchris

Official High Times Kind Bud Price Index by half ounce 
(including popular strain)

National U.S.  Kind Bud Average - $203 ($214 last month)
Florida
 *Tallahassee- $200 (Purple Derb)

Colorado
 *Denver-  $150 (UK Cheese)
*Pueblo-   $175 (Sour Kush)
                 $150 (Cherry Window)
New York

 *New York- $210 (Chemdog)
California
 *San Fransisco- $125 (Blue Dream)

Hawaii
 *Big Island- $200 (Grape Ape)
             $175(G-13)
        
Canada

 *Montreal- $127 (Pineapple Kush)
                   $127 (Master Kush)
 *Ottawa-  $157 (Beasters)
 *Sydney-  $157 (Chernobyl)
*Windsor-  $157 (Tutti Frutti)

- Courtesy of High Times; prices from February 2011- June 2011
(stats listed are from the April 2011 issue)

Fleecing of America takes aim at Morocco
--USTRADEandAIDREPORT--

Posted on 04/19/2011 at 11:30 PM

U.S. Dept. of Homeland Security (DHS) is embarking upon a project to offer training in the Kingdom of Morocco in advanced intelligence-analysis techniques, and intends to outsource that training to a private contractor. The aim of this DHS initiative, which the U.S. Customs and Border Protection's (CBP) Office of International Affairs will oversee, is to reverse Morocco’s position as “the third largest producer of cannabis” and as “the major transit country for transnational criminal organizations moving South American cocaine through Northwest Africa to Europe.”

According to a updated solicitation released late today (April 19) that U.S. Trade & Aid Monitor (USTRAM) located via database research, DHS is calling companies who can deploy instructors with have law enforcement experience in major cities, preferably with an emphasis on organized crime investigation. Vendors also must have significant experience working in conjunction with federal law enforcement agencies as well as a demonstrable record conducting instruction in foreign settings. Ideally, the contractor will already have on hand suitable training materials “ready for CBP to translate into French.”

The selected contractor will travel to Morocco to train that nation’s customs agents in basic intelligence gathering, inferential and critical thinking strategies, and analysis of trends, patterns and relationships, and financial records. DHS will provide air travel, but the contractor “is required to purchase Emergency Evacuation Insurance coverage prior to departure for its instructors,” the solicitation document says.
DHS did not disclose the estimated cost of the endeavor.

...to End Marijuana Prohibition!
By Tony Newman, AlterNet
Posted on April 19, 2011, Printed on April 20, 2011

April 20th is a special day for millions of people around the world, the unofficial “holiday” for marijuana smokers.

Many people mark April 20th, especially at 4:20 pm, with a toke. Some people will mark the day and the occasion with close friends. Others, in cities like Santa Cruz or Boulder, will be part of gatherings of thousands of people to celebrate the occasion. Both the intimate and mass gatherings are fun. It is special to be with a small group smoking a joint: the laughing, discussing, playing and chilling. It is also exhilarating being with thousands of others, all smoking, usually at a beautiful outdoor spot, often with some music.

On 4/20, in certain towns there is an open truce. The police allow the 4/20 gatherings to happen and are reluctant to arrest people. It is worth noting that at these mass gatherings of hundreds or thousands of people smoking marijuana, there is none of the rowdiness or, violence that we often see at alcohol-fueled gatherings.

In addition to the good times, 4/20 is also a time where many people feel free to be open about their marijuana use. There is still stigma and real fear that you may get arrested or lose you job for smoking marijuana. The power-in-numbers, celebratory feel of 4/20 allows people to enjoy their marijuana in the open and with friends and see that there are more of us than we realize.

This is significant because many marijuana smokers don’t feel comfortable admitting to the world that they use marijuana – and this is one reason why marijuana is still illegal and almost a million people get arrested for it every year.

While I appreciate the good times on 4/20 as much as the next toker, I would like to put out a challenge: We Need YOU to Help End Marijuana Prohibition.

While many people associate marijuana with fun times, it also happens to be at the epicenter of a catastrophic war on drugs that is destroying as many lives as ever. If the current rate holds, more than 760,000 people in the U.S. will be arrested for just possessing a small amount of marijuana in 2011 -- twice the amount of marijuana possession arrests as in the 1980s. Once you’re arrested, even for just a small amount of marijuana, you can lose much more than just your freedom – you can lose your job, financial aid, housing, and even custody of your children.
Sometimes it might feel like marijuana is already legal – but it isn’t, especially if you’re black or Latino. Nationally, in virtually every town and city, marijuana arrests reveal stark racial disparities. In 2010, 86 percent of those charged for marijuana possession in New York were black or Latino, even though these groups represent only about half of the city's population. Is this because blacks and Latinos are more likely to use or sell drugs? Not at all – contrary to myths perpetuated in the media, the government’s own data shows that white people are just as likely to use or sell marijuana as black or Latino people. Marijuana use doesn't discriminate, but our marijuana policies do.

In addition to the lives harmed by arrests and incarceration, there are enormous economic costs. The war on drugs costs the government at least $51 billion every year at the state and federal level. And that’s not counting costs at the local level. For instance, according to a recent DPA report, New York City alone spent $75 million dollars arresting more than 50,000 people for marijuana possession in 2010.

The harms of marijuana prohibition are even more devastating to our neighbors to the South. In Mexico, more than 37,000 people have been killed since President Calderon declared war on the drug cartels, who make about half their profits in the marijuana business. It is not marijuana itself that causes violence on U.S. streets or the bloody war in Mexico – it is the policy of marijuana prohibition.

This June will mark the 40th anniversary of Richard Nixon launching the war on drugs. The Drug Policy Alliance will be teaming up with organizations across the country to protest this disgraceful anniversary in cities and towns across the country.

We need you to join us! This war on marijuana – and the people who use it – needs to end!



Tony Newman is communications director for the Drug Policy Alliance.

Robert Nesta on The Herb