UN Drug Report Favors Shift from Mass Arrests
June 29th, 2009 by Russ
The blogosphere is all atwitter after a first perusal of the UN’s World Drug Report 2009 (warning: PDF). Usually playing the role of a global cheerleader for interdiction and incarceration efforts, this year’s report strongly indicts lazy low-level incarceration policies that have done nothing but increase the world’s relative prison population.
Released by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, the report presents a highly wonky, statistics-driven approach to tracking drug production around the world, as well as assessing some of the more popular drug policies around the international sphere. One major conclusion of the report was that enforcement policies of blindly increasing arrests, incarcerations, and seizures is a dead end:
Resources that could have been focused on these individuals are often wasted on the opportunistic arrest and incarceration of large volumes of petty offenders. In the case of casual users, the sanction of imprisonment is excessive.
The report rightly notes that the addicts themselves are not the enemy in the War on Drugs, and that police and prison systems are ill-equipped to deal with them. It continues:
In the end, the criminal justice system is a very blunt instrument for dealing with drug markets. As necessary as the deterrent threat remains, the arrest, prosecution, and incarceration of individuals is an extremely slow, expensive, and labour intensive process.
Any shift in the UN’s position is surprising, given that World Drug Czar, Antonio Maria Costa, an old-world drug warrior, has been in office since 2002. This also explains why the report at no point attempts to make any real distinctions between the different types of drugs, and their relative levels of harm. Not a single thought is given to actually developing different policies based on what type of substance a country is dealing with. This is because, in the eyes of Costa, drugs are a scourge, and the question is never whether to control them, but simply how to control them most effectively. From such a myopic perspective, it’s very surprising to see any innovative suggestions at all.
The fun in all of this is watching the War on Drugs’ right wingers as they are violently dragged back towards the center by the ever-mounting evidence of a reality that doesn’t meet with their ancient world views.
Fox News Relays “Weed Causes DNA Damage”
June 18th, 2009 by Russ
Fox News is about the last organization on the planet to willingly affiliate itself with genuine scientific inquiry. Except when it serves Fox’s agenda, that is. That’s why, this week, Fox News gleefully announced a study cleverly entitled, Marijuana Not Only Gets You High, It Damages Your DNA.
NORML’s blog was quick to offer a counterattack, though. They point out that not only are the claims made by the Fox article far stronger than those that the scientists made themselves, there is a huge body of countervailing evidence that has shown that weed not only is far less harmful than tobacco, it actually contains several cancer-preventing and regenerative compounds.
The study itself (cited by Fox News) is almost impossible to penetrate — it’s written entirely in lab-work jargon, obviously never intended for an average audience to interpret. Fortunately, we here at tFS specialize in sniffing-out bunkum and hooey from jargon-based sources.
The entire study that Fox News is so proud of, studies not the effects of cannibis per se, but of a compound called Acetaldehyde. In fact, the first sentence of their study says that:
Acetaldehyde is an ubiquitous genotoxic compound that has been classified as a possible carcinogen to humans.
Did you notice the word “ubiquitous” in there? Yeah, in plain human speak, the study is granting that this Acetaldehyde element is literally everywhere. It’s in ripe fruit, coffee, bread, and virtually all plant matter. So, you’re just as likely to consume Acetaldehyde from car exhaust, or sitting by a campfire, than from smoking marijuana.
And yet, Fox News didn’t title their story, Campfires Can Damage Your DNA. This is because Fox News has no particular agenda against campfires. But it does have an agenda against pot. It’s a good thing that the Fox folks don’t seem to be particularly literate when it comes to science, or they could be a lot more effective at spreading around their propaganda-fueled bullshit.
Tobacco Company Spins Wheels with New Prototypes
June 16th, 2009 by Rick
According to Join Together, British American Tobacco (BAT) has developed prototypes of cigarettes with different filters and tobacco that burns less toxic smoke, by treating it with special enzymes.
That’s actually scary that they could place enzymes into a cigarette that changes it’s properties… makes you wonder what else they could add. Apparently a shitload of ingredients because it’s already been done.
200 very lucky people in Hamburg, Germany will get the chance to try these bad boys while they are exposed to various scientific tests measure their biological reactions as well as to ascertain if they will consume less toxins with these prototypes.
Editor’s note: I doubt reinventing the way a cigarette burns and changing a filter will reduce the toxins. The key to reducing the toxins is eliminating the sheer number of chemical additives that are in a cigarettes that become toxic when they burn And why is it that cigarettes are the only product that exists that doesn’t list ingredients? Perhaps it’s just the reality of Big Tobacco.
Study Suggests Weed Causes Cancer & DNA Damage
June 15th, 2009 by Rick
According to one of the American Chemical Society’s journals, Chemical Research in Toxicology, in the June 15 issue it says that Rajinder Singh and researchers at the University of Leicester “discovered” information that the drug warriors have been searching high and low for: marijuana damages DNA and may cause cancer. Eep!
Researchers wrote:
These results provide evidence for the DNA damaging potential of cannabis [marijuana] smoke, implying that the consumption of cannabis cigarettes may be detrimental to human health with the possibility to initiate cancer development. [...] The data obtained from this study suggesting the DNA damaging potential of cannabis smoke highlight the need for stringent regulation of the consumption of cannabis cigarettes, thus limiting the development of adverse health effects such as cancer.
Now let’s take a closer look at the words used:
- potential
- implying
- possibility
- suggesting
A study should be factual, ensuring every possible angle is covered and this one doesn’t seem to be very bullet-proof in their findings. The claim that smoking marijuana has the potential to cause cancer is interesting seeing how another study done in Spain says that components of marijuana actually slow tumor growth. In fact that study was first conducted in 1974 but like anything that places marijuana in a positive, medicinal light, the journals were suppressed.
Which study was/is more scientific? How can this plant cause cancer and then turn around and fight tumor growth? I’m no rocket scientist (although I play one on TV) but I’m fairly sure that the cancer might be connected somehow to tar intake… from burning the plant, not the plant itself.
Why then wouldn’t they run studies with vaporizers (alternate forms of marijuana intake) and see if marijuana was still damaging DNA… and had the “potential” to “initiate cancer development”?
Stoner States are Smarter, Maybe
June 12th, 2009 by Russ
This week, the Marijuana Policy Project released its analysis of The National Survey on Drugs and Health, the definitive government report on illicit drug use over the last year. In examining the government’s appraisal of weed smoking trends, MPP’s Bruce Mirken concludes that there is absolutely no correlation between states with lenient medical marijuana laws and increased rates of weed smoking amongst young people. However, tFS found one interesting correlation that you may find enlightening…
There seems to be a strange correlation between the ’smartest states’ (states with higher educational rankings according to the 2006-2007 Smartest State Award), and those states that the Survey on Drugs and Health list as those with teens who smoke weed the most often.
Of the ten smartest states: Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Jersey, Maine, Virginia, Montana, Wisconsin, Iowa, and Pennsylvania; seven of those states also rank as some of the highest incidences of teen weed smoking in the country (Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Maine, Virginia, Montana, and Wisconsin).
Among the ten least smart states: Arizona, Nevada, Mississippi, California, Alaska, Alabama, Louisiana, New Mexico, Hawaii, and Georgia; only two of those states rank as high in marijuana use among teens (New Mexico, and Alaska).
While no relationship can be found between medical marijuana law and an increase in weed use, some correlation can be found between weed smoking teens and improved scholastic achievement in their respective states.
Cocaine Study Suppressed By U.S. Government
June 11th, 2009 by Rick
In a bombshell of a suppressed March 1995 study of cocaine by the UN World Health Organization (WHO), it is now confirmed that the U.S. government forced WHO to suppress their publication by threatening to withhold funding, because it directly contradicted the myths that have perpetuated the war on drugs for years.
Two of the main points of the report:
Health problem; from the use of legal substances, particularly alcohol and tobacco, are greater than health problems from cocaine use.
Few experts describe cocaine as invariably harmful to health. Cocaine-related problems are widely perceived to be more common and more severe for intensive, high-dosage users and very rare and much less severe for occasional, low-dosage users. [See Page 1]
So, legal drugs such as alcohol and tobacco create greater health problems and generally cocaine problems are more common for the sniffing veterans than the social snorters. That just sounds like common sense and now we have a WHO report (warning: PDF) to support it.
The Transform Drug Policy Agency cites many other examples in the report, which leaves the government with egg on their face and both feet in their mouth. Unfortunately, this report was never published and is denied to even exist. Project advisors from the report are now trying to have it published, much to do with the fact that it has already been leaked.
Warning: Use Ketamine and Kidneys Say Sayonara
June 9th, 2009 by Rick
Some people really go out of their way for a high, trying all kinds of things but when it comes to Ketamine (an anesthetic/tranquilizer for animals), the cost of using this as a hallucinogenic drug doesn’t seem to be worth it health-wise. The medical community is now starting to see a link between Ketamine use and serious bladder and kidney conditions with prolonged exposure to the substance.
Lead researcher Dr. Angela Cottrell at the Bristol Urological Institute at Southmead Hospital said:
There is a worrying link between Ketamine use and urinary tract pathology that is proving difficult to manage. A multidisciplinary approach involving psychiatrists, drug workers, pain consultants, urologists and GP is needed to tackle this growing problem. A harm reduction strategy to increase awareness of the risks and help people reduce their intake is also needed.
With reports of cocaine possibly being contaminated with Levamisole, and now Ketamine being bad for the human body, weed may just be the breakout safe alternative!
Canada to Conduct Research for Heroin Replacement
June 4th, 2009 by Rick
Free heroin is planned to be given to over 300 addicts in the Canadian cities of Vancouver and Montreal, as part of a three year project called Study to Assess Longer-term Opioid Medication Effectiveness, research designed to find drug replacements to the highly addictive opiate.
In the first stage of the study, researchers plan on injecting some addicts with Dilaudid — a prescribed painkiller that derives from the same opioid family while a control group receives heroin. In the second stage they plan to give the addicts a pill form of Dilaudid and heroin — eliminating the need for nursing assistance.
Trish Walsh, executive director of the InnerChange Foundation, an advocacy group for addicts that funds drug research, said:
We have the potential to revolutionize treatment on an international basis. [...] It gives addicts the opportunity to move from a very unsafe, back-alley drug to taking an oral tablet.
Dr. Martin Schechter, who works at the the School of Population and Public Health at the University of B.C. said the Canadian Institute of Health Research is going to fund the research costs for the study, while the Vancouver Coastal Health and the Quebec Ministry of Health are to fund the clinical costs of the study.
