Category Archives: Other Drugs

In Quest for ‘Legal High,’ Chemists Outfox Law

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ANTWERP, Belgium—When the housing market crashed in 2008, David Llewellyn’s construction business went with it. Casting around for a new gig, he decided to commercialize something he’d long done as a hobby: making drugs.

But the 49-year-old Scotsman didn’t go into the illegal drug trade. Instead, he entered the so-called “legal high” business—a burgeoning industry producing new psychoactive powders and pills that are marketed as “not for human consumption.”

Mr. Llewellyn, a self-described former crack addict, started out making mephedrone, a stimulant also known as Meow Meow that was already popular with the European clubbing set. Once governments began banning it earlier this year, Mr. Llewellyn and a chemistry-savvy partner started selling something they dubbed Nopaine—a stimulant they concocted by tweaking the molecular structure of the attention-deficit drug Ritalin.

Nopaine “is every bit as good as cocaine,” says Mr. Llewellyn, who has lived in Antwerp on and off since the late 1980s. “You can freebase it. You can snort it like crack.” Still, he emphasized, “Everything we sell is legal. I don’t want to go to jail for 14 years.”

Mr. Llewellyn is part of a wave of laboratory-adept European entrepreneurs who see gold in the gray zone between legal and illegal drugs. They pose a stiff challenge for European law-enforcement, which is struggling to keep up with all the new concoctions. Last year, 24 new “psychoactive substances” were identified in Europe, almost double the number reported in 2008, according to the Lisbon-based European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction, or EMCDDA.

Wall Street Journal

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Britain’s first drug ‘shooting galleries’ hailed a success

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A trial scheme which set up “shooting galleries” in three cities, enabling heroin users to obtain drugs and inject them under supervision, has dramatically cut crime rates and stopped addicts buying their supplies on the streets.

Yesterday’s preliminary results from the £2.5m pilot project sent a ripple of excitement through the treatment community, because long-term heroin users are among the hardest addicts to treat. They lead chaotic lives, often robbing and stealing to fund their habits. According to official figures, 10 per cent of drug addicts commit 75 per cent of the acquisitive crimes in the Britain. But the number of offences committed by the heroin addicts taking part in the shooting gallery scheme fell from an average of 40 each per month before they were admitted to “about half a dozen a month” after six months of intensive therapy, according to Professor John Strang, the head of the National Addiction Centre at the Maudsley Hospital, who is leading the study.

Instead of buying street heroin every day, the 150 volunteers are now buying it only four or five times a month on average – while a third of them have completely stopped “scoring” the drug on the streets.

The Independent

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World Biggest Problem: Organized Crime

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cocain cartel
Organized crime may have brought in more than $2 trillion in revenue last year, about twice all the military budgets in the world combined, according to the “2007 State of the Future” report, published by the Millennium Project of the World Federation of United Nations Associations, by Jerome C. Glenn and Theodore J. Gordon.

The report called organized crime one of the most pressing global issues that needs to be addressed in the next 10 years, along with global warming, terrorism, corruption, unemployment, and income disparities.

But the report noted success in tackling other issues, saying the world has made progress on ending poverty, improving access to education and settling conflicts. It also says the prevalence of HIV/AIDS in Africa has begun to level off.

KurzweilAI

A Healthy Cup of Coffee

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coffeeCoffee is among the most widely consumed beverages in the world, and that the preponderance of scientific evidence suggests that moderate coffee consumption (3-5 cups per day) may be associated with reduced risk of certain disease conditions, such as Parkinson’s disease. Some research in neuropharamacology suggests that one cup of coffee can halve the risk of Parkinson’s disease. Other studies have found it reduces the risk of Alzheimer’s disease, kidney stones, gallstones, depression and even suicide.

American Society for Nutrition’s panel chair Dr. James Coughlin, a toxicology/safety consultant, says that recent advances in epidemiologic and experimental knowledge have transformed many of the negative health myths about coffee drinking into validated health benefits.

biosingularity

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Long Term Caffeine Use Linked to Psychiatric Disorders

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As Starbucks expanded into its 38th country (Brazil) on Wednesday, new research from a Virginia scientist shows prolonged use of caffeine—the world’s most popular drug, used daily by four out of five people globally—might literally drive you insane.

Five cups of brewed coffee per day, or the equivalent caffeine intake in tea or cola, made people more than twice as likely to exhibit adult antisocial personality disorder, and abuse of alcohol, cannabis or cocaine, according to Kenneth Kendler, director of the Virginia Institute for Psychiatric and Behavioural Genetics.

These heavy caffeine users were also almost twice as likely to exhibit panic disorder, generalized anxiety disorder and major depression.

Even among moderate users, the odds of exhibiting one of these illnesses were increased across the board, according to Kendler’s survey of more than 3,600 adult twins, which appears in the December issue of Psychological Medicine.

canada.com

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Bush ‘Stays the Course’ On Another Futile Front: Columbia

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U.S. President George W. Bush will ask Congress to maintain current aid levels to Colombia, running more at than US$600 million (€478 million) a year in mostly military aid, an administration official said Tuesday.

The call for continued funding is a major boost to President Alvaro Uribe, Washington’s staunchest ally in Latin America, and comes despite the failure of record drug eradication efforts to reduce the cocaine trade in the South American nation.

U.S. military and anti-narcotics officials have said recently that aid for the drug eradication and counter-insurgency strategy known as Plan Colombia, which has cost American taxpayers more than US$4 billion (€3.2 billion) since 2000, should be gradually reduced as Colombian authorities take over more duties.

international herald tribune
Thanks to Verena Martin @ stopthedrugwar.org

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Mexican Lawmakers Pass Bill to Legalize Drugs

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The federal legislature of Mexico has passed a bill to legalize “small amounts of cocaine, heroin, even ecstasy” for personal use. President Vicente Fox’s signature is expected to be forthcoming since his office has voiced support for the measure.

Currently, Mexican law leaves open the possibility of dropping charges against people caught with drugs if they can prove they are drug addicts and if an expert certifies they were caught with “the quantity necessary for personal use.”

The new bill drops the “addict” requirement, allows “consumers” to have drugs, and sets out specific allowable quantities, which do not appear in the current law.

Specifically, the new law would allow a person to carry the following:

  • - Marijuana (5 gms),

  • – Heroin (25 mgms),
  • - Cocaine (0.5 gm),
  • - Peyote (2.2 lbs), and
    • – An array of other drugs, including:
  • - Methylenedioxyamphetamine (MDA),
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Beverage Creates a Buzz

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INZA, Colombia — Call it the “Real Thing.”

Indians in this remote mountain village in southern Colombia are marketing a particularly refreshing soft drink that harks back to Coca-Cola’s original formula, when “coca” was in the name for a reason.

Advertising posters here describe the carbonated, citrus-flavored Coca-Sek as “more than an energizer” — a buzz that just might be provided by a key ingredient, a syrup produced by boiling coca leaves.

Since January, the Nasa indigenous community has been offering the soft drink locally and in neighboring Popayan, where it is bottled. By the end of the year, the Nasa hope to sell Coca-Sek nationwide, targeting the same consumers who drink Gatorade or Red Bull, both highly popular with Colombians.

For six years, the Nasa have been quietly selling coca-flavored cookies, aromatic teas, wines and ointments at informal sidewalk stalls and in health food stores. They say they’re trying to capitalize on a plentiful resource — and remove the stigma from a leaf that for them is sacred.

LA Times

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All the Pleasures of Alcohol, With No Downsides

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CASUAL drinkers are unlikely to have raised their glass to the news last month that most people who suffer severe alcohol-induced liver disease are social drinkers not alcoholics. Nor to the finding that moderate drinking might not, after all, help prevent heart disease.

There may, however, just be a solution to our drinking woes – one that will allow us to go to a bar and drink as much as we want; get merry, not legless; wake without a hangover; and never have to worry that one of our favourite pastimes may be killing us. It’s a cocktail of drugs that mimics the pleasurable effects of alcohol without the downsides. The idea is only on the drawing board, but there is no scientific reason why it could not be made right now, says psychopharmacologist David Nutt of the University of Bristol in the UK.

NewScientist

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Problems After 40,000 Ecstasy Pills (Kouimtsidis 2005)

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Mr. A, 37 years old, used ecstasy between the ages of 21 and 30. For the first 2 years, he took 5 tablets every weekend, escalating to an average daily use of 3.5 tablets for the next 3 years, and further escalation to an average of 25 tablets daily over the next 4 years. An estimate of lifetime consumption yielded a total intake of more than 40,000 tablets. At the time of his presentation, Mr. A reported current cannabis consumption, together with a previous history of polydrug misuse (i.e., solvents, benzodiazepines, amphetamines, LSD, cocaine, heroin). After three episodes of “collapsing” at parties, Mr. A finally stopped his ecstasy use. For a few months, he felt as if he was still under the influence of ecstasy and suffered several episodes of “tunnel vision.” He eventually developed severe panic attacks, recurrent anxiety, depression, muscle rigidity (particularly at the neck and jaw levels), functional hallucinations, and paranoid ideation. His family and before-drug-use psychiatric history were negative. The Mini-Mental State Exam revealed disorientation to time, poor concentration, and short-term memory difficulties. Decrease in level of cannabis intake led both to disappearance of his paranoid ideas and hallucinations and reduction of his panic attacks, but remaining symptomatology persisted. Administration of the Wechsler Memory Scale (3rd Edition)3 suggested the existence of global memory-function impairment, with no subtest score being above the 10th percentile. Assessment of daily functioning skills identified major behavioral consequences of his memory loss (i.e., repeating activities several times). Although Mr. A was able to fully understand the instructions given, his concentration and attention were so impaired that he was unable to follow the sequence of the tasks required. A structural MRI brain scan revealed no focal cerebral lesions; specifically, both temporal lobes showed normal symmetrical hippocampal areas. The structural areas of the “Dealy-Brion” system were normal. There was no evidence to suggest atrophy. Mr. A was then prescribed olanzapine 10 mg and admitted to a brain-injury unit, where there was some improvement of his memory skills as a result of the use of compensatory strategies.

psychiatryonline

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America’s Most Dangerous Drug: How meth quietly marched across the country

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It creates a potent, long-lasting high?until the user crashes and, too often, literally burns. How meth quietly marched across the country and up the socioeconomic ladder?and the wreckage it leaves in its wake. As law enforcement fights a losing battle on the ground, officials ask: are the Feds doing all they can to contain this epidemic?

NewsWeek

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Cocaine residue in Italian water reveals more users than official estimates

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The levels of cocaine residue in flowing water in Italy suggest that many more people take the drug than official national estimates previously suggested. A study published today in the open access journal Environmental Health reports on a new tool used to measure the levels of a cocaine by-product excreted in urine, and present in rivers and in flowing sewage water. This new method provides evidence that about 40,000 doses of cocaine are consumed every day in the Po valley – according to official estimates for this area, only 15,000 users admit to taking the drug at least once a month.

EurekAlert

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