Strategies to Control Bupe Abuse OutlinedAmid growing illegal sales and abuse of buprenorphine, top federal officials outlined yesterday action they might take to curb problems with the addiction-treatment drug, including more precise detection methods, improved training of doctors and stronger warning labels for patients. "The issue of diversion has been out there since 2004," said Dr. H. Westley Clark, director of the Center for Substance Abuse Treatment, which oversees the federal government's buprenorphine initiative. "We've been concerned about that, and we will continue to be concerned about that."
Oakland Trade School Teaches People How to Grow PotOAKLAND, Calif. - You know you're in a different kind of college when a teaching assistant sets five marijuana plants down in the middle of a lab and no one blinks a bloodshot eye. Welcome to Oaksterdam University, a new trade school where higher education takes on a whole new meaning. The school prepares people for jobs in California's thriving medical marijuana industry. For $200 and the cost of two required textbooks, students learn how to cultivate and cook with cannabis, study which strains of pot are best for certain ailments, and are instructed in the legalities of a business that is against the law in the eyes of the federal government.
The Hunt for an Addiction VaccineAlthough the American Medical Association recognized addiction as a disease back in 1956, only now are we beginning to see treatments that target the underlying biochemistry of that disease, Newsweek reports in the March 3 cover, "The Hunt for an Addiction Vaccine" (on newsstands Monday February 25). Health Reporter Jeneen Interlandi reports that this emerging paradigm treats addiction as a chronic, relapsing brain disorder to be managed with all the tools at medicine's disposal. The addict's brain is malfunctioning, as surely as the pancreas in someone with diabetes. In both cases, "lifestyle choices" may be contributing factors, but no one regards that as a reason to withhold insulin from a diabetic. "We are making unprecedented advances in understanding the biology of addiction," says David Rosenblum, a public-health professor and addiction expert at Boston University. "And that is finally starting to push the thinking from 'moral failing' to 'legitimate illness'."
The Politics of PainWhen pain medications double as dangerous party drugs, doctors are left to balance the well being of their patients with an accountability to society.
Camden's Needle Exchange Hobbled by Lack of FundingThe program lacks adequate means to fulfill its mission to stop addicts from spreading HIV through infected syringes. If more money is not put into Camden's fledgling needle-exchange program, it could fail to cut the transmission of AIDS as it was intended to do. After years of debate, New Jersey legislators finally approved needle-exchange programs for four cities, including Camden and Atlantic City. It was the last state in the union to recognize that needle exchanges didn't encourage crime. Rather, such programs help break the link between the sharing of dirty needles among addicts and the transmission of the AIDS virus. New Jersey has the fifth highest number of AIDS cases in the nation, but is second in people who contract the virus through injection-drug use.
Federal Drug Budget Defies Policy Priorities, Critic ContendsThe War on Drugs is being fought much as it was during the Reagan administration -- when most of the money and attention was focused on interdicting boatloads of cocaine coming north from Colombia -- even though most of nation's current drug problems are domestic in origin, according to budget analyst John Carnevale. Carnevale Associates recently released an analysis of the proposed FY2009 drug budget which states that the Bush administration continues to favor supply-reduction programs over demand-reduction programs, with the former receiving at least two-thirds of all federal antidrug funding.
Cheap Cocaine Floods a Slum In Argentina, Devouring LivesBilma Acuña has two drug-addicted sons and roams the streets of the Ciudad Oculta slum here with a purpose: to save others from the same fate. She and the group of mothers she helps organize have become the only bulwark, it seems, against the irrepressible spread of paco, a highly addictive, smokable cocaine residue that has destroyed thousands of lives in Argentina and caused a cycle of drug-induced street violence never seen before in this country.
Sheriffs across the US brace for cuts in federal funding for drug-fightingFrom Arizona to Oregon and east to Kentucky, county sheriffs are bracing for stiff cuts in a federal funding program that has helped them battle drug cartels. Congress in January cut funding for the Byrne Justice Assistance Grant by two-thirds, from $520 million to $170 million for fiscal 2008. Local agencies say that's a threat to the officers who do much of the law enforcement spadework.
Politics and Needle ExchangesNeedle exchange programs save lives. They slow the spread of H.I.V., the virus that causes AIDS, and they help get addicts into treatment. Yet when it comes to supporting these programs, it seems that the political cowardice never ends. For the last 20 years, Congress has blocked the use of federal money to pay for needle exchange programs in the United States or abroad. For 10 years, Congress banned Washington from using tax dollars raised in the District of Columbia to pay for needle exchange efforts. Congress finally lifted Washington's ban in December, stripping that provision in the federal budget that President Bush had signed. The District of Columbia has now allocated $650,000 that will, among other things, pay to open a clinic that combines needle exchanges with H.I.V. testing. In what would be an unconscionable reversal, President Bush's new budget request would reimpose that ban.
Needle exchange program struggles in last state to adopt practiceCAMDEN, N.J. - New Jersey has become the last state where intravenous drug users can legally get clean needles, but two of the state's three needle exchanges are struggling to get clients. An underlying problem is funding. While state authorized exchanges in 2006, it has not helped pay for them. One program in Camden distributes needles out of the back of a blue van that sets up Tuesday afternoons on a gravel parking lot attached to an overgrown vacant lot, where bottles of all types, trash, condoms and clothing are strewn.
