Rain Forest Being Lost to Coca Production

5.5 million acres of devastation.

The vice president of Columbia told a conference of police chiefs in Belfast that drug users in the United Kingdom were responsible for environmental catastrophe in his country.

Citing figures that claim roughly 500,000 acres of Columbian rain forest are decimated each year to make room for the production of coca, vice president Francisco Santos Calderon also claimed that drug gangs now use of land mines to protect their crops, resulting in the accidental maiming of rural Columbians. According to a BBC News report last month, the use of landmines has been described as “similar to a war zone.”

In remarks earlier this year reported in the U.K. Telegraph, Mr. Santos said: "This destruction of the rainforest for coca production and coca plantation has gone on under the radar of the environmentalists. We hope that this will be a wake-up call. We hope that the World Wildlife Fund and Greenpeace will start saying 'what is this?' "

Bill Hughes of the U.K.’s Serious Organized Crime Agency told the BBC that “not only is cocaine ripping the country apart through deforestation, landmines are creating amputees on a scale not recognized.” Moreover, drug operations frequently make us of banned pesticides, thereby endangering soil and water quality.

Over the past 20 years, according to vice president Santos, almost 5.5 million acres of rain forest have been sacrificed to cocaine production in “the world’s second most bio-diverse country.” He urged policymakers to consider such results as a major part of what Home Office Minister Vernon Croaker called the “real price” of cocaine use. According to Mr. Croaker, cocaine was the only drug in the U.K. to have shown an increase in consumption since 1998.

Cocaine remains more popular than marijuana in many areas of the U.K. However, the BBC also reports that the purity of imported cocaine is at its lowest ebb ever—as low as 10%, in some cases. According to Mr. Hughes, “This is being put together by seriously bad organized criminals; they don’t care what they are giving to people.”

Photo Credit: Telegraph.co.uk

Marijuana Panic Revisited

U.K. journal casts doubt on psychosis connection.

In May of this year, The University College of London reports that different strains of marijuana cause different types of psychological maladies. Shortly thereafter, Prime Minister Brown "publically described new strains of cannabis as 'lethal,' as if they could trigger a fatal overdose," according to an editorial in the Guardian. (See "U.K. Marijuana Panic Continues"). And in August, a mental health story run by the London Daily Mail claimed that smoking a single joint of marijuana increased the risk of developing schizophrenia by 41 per cent—an erroneous statistic that was also hotly contested by various U.K. drug experts. (See "Media Suffers Attack of Cannabis Psychosis").

Now comes a review article from the British Journal of Psychiatry, published by the Royal College of Psychiatrists, strongly suggesting that the odds of an association between cannabis and psychosis is “low.”

A group of drug experts and psychiatrists, including scientists from the University of Bristol, Imperial College London, Cambridge University, and Cardiff University undertook to “systematically review the evidence pertaining to whether cannabis affects outcome of psychotic disorders.”

The group searched relevant databases and compiled a list of more than 15,000 relevant references. A total of 13 longitudinal studies were included in the quality assessment.

The authors concluded that, despite prevailing clinical opinion, it remained “unclear” whether cannabis led to worse outcomes for people with psychosis, “or whether this impression is confounded by other factors. Specifically, the review authors noted that “few studies adjusted for baseline illness severity, and most made no adjustment for alcohol, or other potentially important confounders. Adjusting for even a few confounders often resulted in substantial attenuation of results.”

In the end, “confidence that most associations were specifically due to cannabis is low.”

Graphics Credit: COSMOS

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E-Cigarettes and Health

Smokeless nicotine comes under scrutiny.

You may never have heard of it—but it’s the newest drug in town. It’s called an electronic cigarette, or “e-cigarette.” Electronic cigarettes use batteries to convert liquid nicotine into a fine, heated mist that is absorbed by the lungs. No smoke, but plenty of what makes cigarettes go, if you don’t account for taste—or ashtrays and smoke rings.

In an attempt to work around the world’s growing ban on cigarette smoking in public places, a Hong Kong-based company developed the first e-cigarette in 2004. Since then, other companies have done the same, claiming that e-cigarettes are much healthier than regular smokes.

Last month, that claim was vigorously disputed by the World Health Organization (WHO). In fact, WHO said electronic cigarettes can be deadly. Stressing that the device had not been adequately tested, Douglas Bettcher, the director of WHO’s Tobacco Free Initiative, told the Associated Press that “there’s no experience in pharmacology yet of nicotine replacement therapies which actually inhale nicotine in the lungs.” Replacement therapies such as skin patches and gum have undergone thorough clinical testing, Bettcher said. For these reasons, “the World Health Organization does not consider the electronic cigarette to be a legitimate nicotine replacement therapy.”

The anti-smoking group Action on Smoking and Health (ASH) doesn’t think much of e-cigarettes, either. In the U.K. Times Online, ASH director Deborah Arnott said that “at the moment we don’t know enough about this product. Quality control in China is not the highest, and our advice is it’s best to use nicotine products like gums and patches. The electronic cigarettes fall into a regulatory gap and they haven’t been chemically tested.”

So far, electronic cigarettes are being actively marketed in China, Great Britain, Canada, Brazil, Israel, Sweden, and other countries. The cartridges containing the liquid nicotine are available in several flavors, and battery life is estimated at one to three days for most units. The e-cigarette web site www.e-cig.org offers a list of “best places to use your electronic cigarette,” such as airplanes, in church, at the mall, in a restaurant, bar or hospital, or “at your kid’s school recital.”

According to China View News , a “changeable filter contains a liquid with nicotine and propylene glycol. When the user inhales as he would when smoking, air flow is detected by a sensor and a micro-processor activates an atomizer which injects tiny droplets of the liquid into the flowing air, producing a vapour.”

The unit, which looks like a long cigarette, is powered by a rechargeable battery. Propylene glycol is a commercial product sold as a low-toxicity version of antifreeze, among other applications.

E-cigarettes are readily available for purchase online, and at least one American firm has announced plans to market versions of e-cigarettes domestically. However, none of the manufacturers to date seems to be working through the existing regulatory framework, which in most countries calls for toxicity analyses and clinical studies. Jason Cropper, managing director of the Electronic Cigarettes Company, told BBC News that e-cigarettes “are certainly healthier than smoking cigarettes. Tests have been done on mice in the lab and they have shown they are not harmful.” However, Cropper said, no human trials had been undertaken because they are too expensive.

The World Health Organization became involved in the matter after several e-cigarette manufacturers began using the World Health Organization’s logo on advertisements and product inserts. “It’s 100 percent false to affirm this is a therapy for smokers to quit,” Bettcher said. “There are a number of chemical additives in the product that could be very toxic.”

Meanwhile, The Ruyan e-cigarette, a joint effort by Ruyan Holdings Ltd. of Hong Kong and Ruyan America, Inc., won Most Innovative Product of 2008 at the Tobacco Plus Expo in Las Vegas last May.

addiction drugs smoking nicotine

Michigan, Massachusetts Pass Marijuana Proposals

Voters bolster medical marijuana movement—or do they?

On November 4, both Michigan and Massachusetts passed harm reduction measures aimed at eliminating stiff penalties for possession of small amounts of marijuana. Opponents vowed to keep fighting.

In Michigan, on a vote of 63% to 37%, voters passed Proposal 1, allowing for the physician-supervised possession and use of cannabis. However, the initiative did not go as far as allowing for licensed medical dispensaries, as California has done. Nonetheless, this was not a happy outcome for the President’s Office of National Drug Control Policy and its director, John P. Walters, who campaigned strenuously against the measure, calling it an “abomination” and said it was likely to lead to marijuana shops in every neighborhood. For its part, the Michigan Coalition for Compassionate Care said that passage of the proposal would mean that “seriously ill Michiganders who use medical marijuana with their doctors’ recommendation will no longer face the threat of arrest and jail.”

Similar scare tactics failed to deter the electorate of Massachusetts, where 65% of voters came down in favor of Question 2, which calls for rolling back penalties for possession of small amounts of marijuana to traffic-fine levels—a strategy which was adopted successfully, if briefly, by Oregon, Alaska, and other states some 35 years ago.

As in Michigan, a full-on campaign against the measure painted a picture of dire consequences for Massachusetts, such as a surge of workplace safety issues and traffic accidents. According to the Marijuana Policy Project, the state’s District Attorneys predicted an epidemic of teen marijuana use. State authorities have the ability to amend the new statute under state law.

Michigan and Massachusetts now become the 13th and 14th states to offer some protection for the medical use of marijuana. Both propositions were heavily endorsed by major newspapers in both states. The city of Fayetteville, Arkansas, as well as Hawaii County in Hawaii, passed ballot measures designed to make marijuana enforcement a low priority for local law officers.

Meanwhile, in California a proposition designed to divert greater numbers of drug offenders from jail to treatment, while decriminalizing the possession of up to an ounce of marijuana by anybody, went down to defeat. Supporters of Proposition 5 had argued that the change was necessary because of serious overcrowding in California’s state jail systems. (See Addicts, Alcoholics Overwhelm Prison System).

Here's a brief roundup of drug-related propositions on last week's ballots:
Marijuana Policy Project

Graphic Credit: Michigan Coalition for Compassionate Care

medical marijuana

Narcotic Farm: New PBS Documentary

Lexington, Kentucky's notorious treatment center.

From 1935 through the 1960s, if you were famous, and you got busted for serious narcotics, there was a good chance of ending up at the U.S. government's combination addiction hospital and mad scientist's dream factory. Novelist William Burroughs may have been its most famous graduate, but everyone from jazz saxophonist Sonny Rollins to actor Peter Lorre did time there.

"Narrated and scored by former inmate Wayne Kramer," according to the film's website, "the film tells the story of this long forgotten American institution through the voices of the former addicts who spent years of their lives locked within its walls."

Scientific American says the film is "based on rare film footage, numerous documents, dozens of interviews of former staff, inmates and volunteer patients, and more than 2,000 photographs unearthed from archives across the country."

The documentary will be showing on PBS channels throughout November. Check local listings. A companion book of the same title is available.

“More Doctors Smoke Camels”

The good old days of tobacco advertising.

The Transform Drug Policy Foundation of the U.K. has an absolutely first-rate collection of early cigarette advertising on display at their TDPF blog.

I’ve always been a sucker for the ones featuring doctors:

The TDPF blog calls this one “particularly awful, featuring a five year old girl proclaiming to her paternal looking doctor figure and radiant young mother that 'I'm going to grow a hundred years old'. It then goes on to inform us that ‘possibly she may - for the amazing strides of medical science have added years to life expectancy.' You can 'thank your doctor and thousands like him--toiling ceaselessly--that you and yours may enjoy a longer better life.’”

It sounds like something Don Draper and his associates might have dreamed up on "Mad Men."

Yes, toiling ceaselessly—and, one may add, perversely—to convince an increasingly wary public that popular slang like “coffin nails” and “smoker’s cough” were the results of misguided thinking.

The TDPF, in turn, found the extensive collection at Stanford University’s wonderful “Not a Cough in a Carload” site.

The exhibit is intended “to tell—principally through advertising images—the story of how, between the late 1920s and the early 1950s, tobacco companies used deceptive and often patently false claims in an effort to reassure the public of the safety of their products.”

Smoking doctors were everywhere in the ads. The Stanford site states: “Among the more reprehensible tactics was the utilization of the image of the noble and caring physician to sell cigarettes: Doctors were depicted both as satisfied and enthusiastic partakers of the smoking habit ("More Doctors Smoke Camels"). Images of medical men (and a few token women) appeared under soothing reassurances of the safety of smoking. Liberal use was also made of pseudo-scientific medical reports and surveys.”

The print ad above is lamentably undated. The collection covers advertising from the 1930s through the 1950s.

“On first impression,” says the Stanford site, “most viewers will find these images outrageous, humorous, and so blatantly false as to trigger incredulity. But tobacco industry ad men also excelled in creative genius and had high levels of artistic skill. The best talent money could buy was recruited for this effort. Tobacco advertisers faced a daunting challenge: How do you sell a product which shortens the life of the user by an average of about 8 years?”

smoking

Dopamine and Obesity

Overeating, drug abuse, and the D2 receptor.

A genetic variation in the dopamine D2 receptor predisposes women toward obesity, according to a small but potentially significant study published in the October 17 issue of Science.

While numerous twins studies demonstrate the likelihood of biological factors in obesity, there are few rigorous studies that back up the contention. Now researchers from Yale University and the University of Texas have used brain scans to show that a dopamine-rich structure called the dorsal striatum exhibits “reduced D2 receptor density and compromised signaling” in obese individuals.

Why would this matter? The dorsal striatum releases dopamine in response to the consumption of tasty food. Going right to the sugary heart of the tasty food cornucopia, the researchers used chocolate milkshakes. Women volunteers underwent MRI scans while researchers administered either squirts of milkshake or squirts of a tasteless liquid. The lower the dopamine response to the milkshake in the dorsal striatum, the more likely the woman was to gain weight over the following year. Reduced dopamine receptor density in the dorsal striatum “may prompt them to overeat in an effort to compensate for this reward deficit,” the study authors concluded. The all-female study lends more evidence to the notion that dopamine D2 variations “are associated with both obesity and substance abuse....”

Dr. Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), told Associated Press: “It takes the gene associated with greater vulnerability for obesity and asks the question why. What is it doing to the way the brain is functioning that would make a person more vulnerable to compulsively eat food and become obese?”

Historically, however, the D2 allele has been a controversial locus of research in addiction medicine. In 1990, a research team reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association that the A-1 allele controlling production of the dopamine D2 receptor was three times as common in the brains of deceased alcoholics. The aberrant form of the gene was found in 77 per cent of the alcoholics, compared with only 28 per cent of the non-alcoholics. But attempts to replicate the research did not meet with much success. (See Bower, Bruce. “Gene in the Bottle.” Science News, September 21, 1991. p.19). In addition, the findings from the nationwide Collaborative Study on the Genetics of Alcoholism were not supportive of the D2 hypothesis. (“We believe it doesn’t increase the risk for anything,” one researcher said bluntly.) Well-known researcher Robert Cloninger weighed in with a paper demonstrating that when you broadened the samples and took another look, the D2 connection faded away, suggesting that the D2 allele in question may play a second-order role of some sort. (See Holden, Constance. “A Cautionary Genetic Tale: The Sobering Story of D2.” Science. June 17, 1994. 264 p.1696 ).

The current Science study concludes that “individuals who show blunted striatal activation during food intake are at risk for obesity.... behavioral or pharmacologic interventions that remedy striatal hypofunctioning may assist in the prevent and treatment of this pernicioujs health problem.” NIDA’s Volkow, quoted in the Washington Post, said: “Dieting is a complex process and people don’t like it. Physical activity, which also activates the dopamine pathway, may be a mechanism for reducing the compulsive activity of overeating.”

Dr. Eric Stice of the Oregon Research Institute, the lead scientist on the study, told AP that the findings might have implications for parents. Since most parents don’t know if they possess the suspect variation, Stice suggested than parents could start attending more to the diets of children, “and not get their brains used to having crappy food.”


Photo Credit: Cell Science

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