/drugs

Why Are So Many People Dying from Opiate Overdoses? It’s Our Broken Society | Alternet
▻http://www.alternet.org/drugs/why-so-many-people-dying-opiate-overdoses-broken-society

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Most drug-related deaths result from the use of opioids, the molecules that are marketed as painkillers by pharmaceutical companies and heroin by drug lords. Opioids, whatever their source, bond with receptors all over our bodies. Opioid receptors evolved to protect us from panic, anxiety and pain – a considerate move by the oft-callous forces of evolution. But the gentle impact of natural opioids, produced by our own bodies, resembles a summer breeze compared to the hurricane of physiological disruption caused by drugs designed to mimic their function.

Most street opiates (including heroin) are now laced or replaced with fentanyl – the drug that killed the singer Prince – and its analogues, far more powerful than heroin and so cheap that drug-dealing profits are skyrocketing at about the same rate as overdose deaths.

But the peculiar appeal of opioids tells us more about ourselves as a society, as a culture, than the tumultuous ups and downs of addiction statistics. Today’s young people come of age and carve out their adult lives in an environment of astronomical uncertainty. Corporations that used to pride themselves on fairness to their employees now strive only for profit. The upper echelons of management are as risk-infected as the lowest clerks. Massive layoffs rationalised by the eddies of globalisation make long-term contracts prehistoric relics. I ask the guys who come to the house to deliver packages how they like their jobs. They can’t say. They get up to three six-month contracts in a row and then get laid off so the company won’t have to pay them benefits.

People pour out of universities with all manner of degrees, yet with skills that are rapidly becoming irrelevant. But people without degrees are even worse off. They find themselves virtually unemployable, because there are so many others in the same pool, and employers will hire whoever comes cheapest. The absurdly low minimum wage figures in the US clearly exacerbate the situation. As hope for steady employment fizzles, so does the opportunity to connect with family, friends and society more broadly, and there is way too much time to kill. Opioids can help reduce the despair.

#Opiod_crisis #santé_publique

Study Finds Magic Mushrooms Are the Safest Recreational Drug | Alternet
▻http://www.alternet.org/drugs/strudy-finds-magic-mushrooms-safest-recreational-drug

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Mushrooms are the safest of all the drugs people take recreationally, according to this year’s Global Drug Survey.

Brad Burge from the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (Maps) urged caution on relying on people’s self reports for data as people often take multiple drugs at the same time, so you can’t be sure which one is causing the problem.

He also highlighted that seeking emergency medical treatment means different things for different drugs. With a drug such as heroin, a trip to the emergency room is a life-or-death situation requiring resuscitation and medication. With LSD or mushrooms, there is no toxicity and the effects wear after a few hours.

“There is no known lethal dose for LSD or pure psilocybin,” he said.

Both Winstock and Burge said that the findings indicate a need for drug policy reform, with a focus on shifting psychedelics off the schedule one list of the most dangerous controlled substances.

#psychédéliques

Distorted Science: Does CBD Change to THC in the Stomach, and Who Benefits By Claiming It Does? | Alternet
▻http://www.alternet.org/drugs/gut-check-does-cbd-change-thc-stomach

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In 2016, a new journal Cannabis and Cannabinoid Research published a paper suggesting that non-psychoactive cannabidiol (CBD) converts to psychoactive tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) in the stomach. The controversial paper was coauthored by several scientists employed by Zynerba Pharmaceuticals in Devin, Pennsylvania. It was not the first time that researchers addressed this issue.

But the authors may have succeeded in advancing the agenda of Zynerba Pharmaceuticals, the company that funded their research. Zynerba disclosed in a press release (April 12, 2016) that it was developing a transdermal delivery system that “avoids the gastrointestinal tract and potential stomach acid degradation of CBD into THC (associated with psychoactive effects).” In other words, Zynerba has a financial interest in depicting oral CBD, which is well tolerated in clinical research, as potentially harmful.

#recherche_médicale #pharmacie #conflit_interêt

LSD Microdosing Is Trending in Silicon Valley, But Can It Actually Make You More Creative? | Alternet
▻http://www.alternet.org/drugs/lsd-microdosing-trending-silicon-valley-can-make-more-creative

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Microdosing LSD also purportedly enhances overall well-being, helping to reduce stress and anxiety while improving sleep and leading to healthier habits. Although a widely reported phenomenon in the media, the lack of scientific studies on microdosing makes the prevalence near impossible to estimate. Reports suggest that what started off as an underground practice in Silicon Valley may be spreading rapidly to other workplaces.

It is currently unknown how such low doses of psychedelics act in the brain to produce these intriguing self-reported effects on creativity. Like all classic hallucinogens, LSD produces its potent mind-altering effects primarily by mimicking the effects of the brain chemical serotonin, which regulates our mood. In particular, LSD activates 5-HT2A receptors in the pre-frontal cortex, which increases activity of the chemical glutamate in this region. Glutamate enables signals to be transmitted between nerve cells, and plays a role in learning and memory.

In humans, two distinct effects of recreational doses of LSD have been reported. Initially, people experience psychedelic and positive feelings of euphoria. This may be followed by a later phase characterised by paranoia or even a psychotic-like state. LSD at low doses may produce mood elevation and creativity, mediated by the serotonin-mimicking effects. Actions on both glutamate and serotonin may also act to improve learning and cognitive flexibility, necessary for creativity, in the workplace. These findings could partly help to explain the microdosing phenomenon.

Clinical research with psychedelics is currently undergoing a major revival after having been brought to a halt in the 1960s. One of the benefits of conducting research into psychedelics is their potential to help deepen our understanding of consciousness. In 2016, researchers from Imperial College London were the first to use brain scanning techniques to visualise how LSD alters the way the brain works. One key finding was that LSD had a disorganising influence on cortical activity, which permitted the brain to operate in a freer, less constrained manner than usual.

In a small pilot study, LSD in combination with psychological therapy also led to a slight improvement in anxiety experienced by terminally ill cancer patients. Many of these psychiatric disorders are characterised by inflexible, habitual patterns of brain activity. By introducing a disordered state of mind, LSD and other psychedelics may help to break these inflexible patterns.

In an increasingly competitive world it is tempting to find a quick fix to help us achieve more, better and faster. Yet, is this right? As a society we should consider the reasons as to why healthy people choose to use drugs in the first place. A reliance on cognitive-enhancing technologies to cope with demanding working conditions may ultimately reduce the health and well-being of individuals. So we must take care to ensure that enhancement is not seen as a substitute for a healthy working environment.

It is therefore important that more research is done on the safety and efficacy of microdosing. In the meantime, physical exercise, education, social interaction, mindfulness and good quality sleep have all been shown to improve cognitive performance and overall well-being.

#psychédéliques #LSD #études_médicales #santé_publique

Egged on by Sheriffs, Trump Endorses Police Practice of Taking Property from Innocent People | Alternet
▻http://www.alternet.org/drugs/police-take-property-innocent-people

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n 2014, for the first time ever, law enforcement officers took more property from Americans – $4.5 billion – than burglars did. Law enforcement agencies have grown dependent on this easy, no-strings-attached source of revenue, especially regional “anti-narcotics” task forces, SWAT teams, and other paramilitary groups. In many cases, agencies get to keep forfeiture proceeds for their own budgets and spend them as they see fit. Factoring profit into public safety decisions creates an atmosphere ripe for abuse within law enforcement agencies.

Defenders of the current system often claim that the status quo is necessary to combat major cartels and criminal organization, as the Texas Sheriff did. However, this claim is belied by the fact that most forfeitures are for relatively small sums of cash. In fact, a 2014 Drug Policy Alliance report found that the average value of state seizures in California was $5,145 in 2013 and another report by the Institute for Justice found that the median value of property forfeited in 2012 in 10 states ranged from $451 (in Minnesota) to $2,048 (in Utah).

These values do not come anywhere close to the level of “kingpin.” Most often the police simply shake down people they find suspicious, most of whom do not have the resources or the will to fight back, especially when the potential legal fees are greater than the money seized. As with everything else that is wrong with the criminal justice system, civil asset forfeiture disproportionately affects those with low income and people of color.

#police #USA #inégalités

Psychedelic Researcher: How Drugs Like LSD Can Change Your Life | Alternet
▻http://www.alternet.org/drugs/psychedelic-researcher-how-drugs-lsd-can-change-your-life?akid=12803.10880

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The most cynical response I’ve received is: why would you pursue an area of research that doesn’t yet have federal funding? That’s a common response I get given the grant-focused nature of our positions. I understand that concern. … But I think there’s a sense among people doing this line of work that this could be such a game-changer that we owe it to ourselves, to humanity, to the field to pursue this kind of work whether that federal funding is there or not. … Obviously we would like to see that funding in the future because it’s necessary to run the sort of large-scale studies necessary to determine the efficacy of these substances. But I think for many of us this is a labor of love, and we’ll pursue this work without it.

The idea here is that psychedelic-occasioned mystical experience can be life changing or transformative. You can use these substances just one time and experience what one of my favorite psychologists William Miller calls “quantum change”: the idea that someone can change very suddenly, very dramatically—and permanently. So the question is: could using these substances just one time have put you on the path to better mental health?

AK: So this is a unique feature of psychedelics compared to other kinds of drugs? Nothing else has that kind of life-changing effect on people?

PH: To the best of my knowledge, that’s correct. It is a unique characteristic of psychedelics, classic psychedelics in particular, to provide these sorts of experiences. There are examples of these transformative mystical experiences across the world’s great religions and in fiction. …The metaphysics of it are beyond my ability to comment on, but we know that these sort of life-changing experiences happen to people and they happen organically. And here we have a class of substances that can occasion this sort of transformative experience in a good percentage of those who use them. … What we found in our study is that those who’d used them were less likely to report psychological distress in the past month, and less likely to report suicidal thoughts, planning and attempts in the past year.

PH: I think a key part of what were trying to do is change public opinion. It’s important for people to know that those of us who are working in this area are dispassionate scientists who are trying to study this in an objective manner. …We’re not interested in legalization or widespread use.

If you really think about it, there’s nothing provocative about what we’re doing. We’re clinical scientists who would like to see the interventions we have be more effective. We’d like to see an alleviation of human suffering, and the scientific data would suggest that these substances might be very effective in that regard. It’s that simple. Were just pursuing a line of work that might make a real difference in terms of the pain that people have to endure. I would hope that everyone would agree with us in that regard, right? We’re trying to make the world a better place.

10 Shocking Examples of Police Killing Innocent People in the “War on Drugs” | Alternet
▻http://www.alternet.org/drugs/10-shocking-examples-police-killing-innocent-people-war-drugs

Below are 10 innocent victims who became collateral damage and lost their lives in the war on drugs (there are many, many more).

1. Kathryn Johnston; Atlanta, Georgia, 2006.

Narcotics officers who kill innocent people in the war on drugs often don’t even face suspensions, let alone criminal charges. But the conduct of three Atlanta police officers in the killing of 92-year-old Kathryn Johnston was so unscrupulous that all three faced criminal charges.

On November 21, 2006, plainclothes officers Jason R. Smith, Gregg Junnier and Arthur Tesler carried out a no-knock drug raid on Johnston’s Atlanta home based on bad information from an informant/marijuana dealer named Alex White. When they broke in, Johnston (who lived alone in a high-crime area of the city and kept a gun in her house for protection) assumed she was being the victim of a home invasion and fired a shot. But a lot more shooting was done by the officers: a total of 39 shots were fired, several of which hit her. And while Johnston was lying on the floor dying, Smith handcuffed her.

An investigation revealed that after Johnston’s death, a major coverup was attempted, including planting bags of marijuana in her house and trying to bully White into lying and saying that Johnston was selling crack cocaine. Smith, Junnier and Tesler faced a variety of charges from both the federal government and the state of Georgia. Smith and Junnier both pled guilty to charges of voluntary manslaughter; Smith also pled guilty to perjury and admitted he planted the marijuana in Johnston’s house. And all three of them pled guilty to federal charges of conspiracy to violate her civil rights. In a civil suit, Johnston’s family was awarded a $490,000 settlement.

2. Tarika Wilson; Lima, Ohio, 2008.

On January 4, 2008, narcotics officer Joseph Chavalia shot and killed 26-year-old Tarika Wilson in Lima, Ohio. Wilson, a single mother, had been romantically involved with a suspected drug dealer named Anthony Terry (who later pled guilty to selling drugs). When Chavalia and other narcotics officers raided the house where Wilson was living, Terry was nowhere to be found. Wilson, however, was in one of the bedrooms; when Chavalia fired shots into that bedroom, she was killed. Wilson’s one-year-old child was also shot but survived, although one of his fingers needed to be amputated.

Scandal Rocks Boston as City Realizes that Thousands of People Were Falsely Convicted for Drugs
►http://www.alternet.org/print/drugs/scandal-rocks-boston-city-realizes-thousands-people-were-falsely-convicted

Scandal Rocks Boston as City Realizes that Thousands of People Were Falsely Convicted for Drugs
October 4, 2012 |

Court administrators in Massachusetts are scrambling to set up special court sessions to address the cases of more than a thousand people imprisoned after being convicted of drug crimes based on lab evidence submitted by Annie Dookhan, the now disgraced former state crime lab analyst. Dookhan herself was arrested last Friday for her fraudulent work at the lab, as the scandal continues to reverberate across the state’s criminal justice system.

According to State Police reports obtained by the Boston Globe [3], Dookhan has admitted not performing proper lab tests on drug samples for “two or three years,” forging colleagues’ signatures, and improperly removing evidence from storage. Citing the same reports, the Boston Herald [4] reported that Dookhan had admitted to “intentionally turning a negative sample into a positive a few times” and to “dry-labbing” samples, where she classified samples as drugs without actually testing them.

“I messed up bad, it’s my fault,” Dookhan told police, explaining that “she did what she did in order to get more work done.”

Dookhan’s misconduct, which first came to light in June 2011, has already shaken the Dept. of Public Health, whose commissioner, John Auerbach, has resigned, as have two other managers at the Hinton Laboratories facility in Jamaica Plain where the lab was located. The crime lab was consolidated earlier this year into the Dept. of Public Safety as part of a budgetary move.

The incident has also raised the question of systemic issues [5] affecting the crime lab. In internal emails leaked to the Globe [6], laboratory staff went on record as far back as 2008 describing “the situation in the evidence office [as] past the breaking point.” That was before some of the now former management at Hinton took those positions, though not before Dookhan. The Globe article describes “a staff drowning in work, instances of misplaced evidence in crime cases, and mounting frustrations over the Patrick administration’s seeming indifference.”

Attorney General Martha Coakley and the State Police charge that Dookhan’s mishandling of drug evidence is a crime under the state’s broadly written witness intimidation law. She is also charged with falsifying academic credentials for claiming a master’s degree in chemistry from the University of Massachusetts-Boston, a degree which the school said it never issued.

Dookhan tested some 60,000 drug samples in 34,000 criminal cases during her nine years at the now shuttered lab. Some 1,141 people are currently serving drug sentences in state prisons or county jails in cases where she had a hand in testing the drug evidence. It is not known how many of those cases have been tainted by Dookhan’s actions.

Now, the state court system is beginning to deal with the fallout. Twenty defendants jailed pending trial have already been released, and hearings will begin in mid-October to hear motions to put the sentences of already-convicted inmates on hold and to request bail.

One defense attorney, Bernard Grossberg, who has already seen one client’s sentence put on hold because Dookhan was involved in his case, told the Associated Press [7] that judges hearing the cases in the special sessions would need to hear little more than that Dookhan was involved in the testing.

“My feeling is as soon as they call the case, if Dookhan’s name is on the drug certificate, nothing further needs to be asked and the sentence should be put on hold immediately,” Grossberg said. “Later on, you can figure out motions to withdraw guilty pleas or upset convictions.”

The cases of the people currently serving time after conviction where Dookhan was involved are only the beginning. Gov. Patrick Deval (D) has said he wants to deal with them first, then the cases of people who have already done their time and those currently awaiting trial.
See more stories tagged with:
drugs [8],
boston [9],
marijuana [10],
lab [11],
test [12],
scandal [13],
fraudulent [14],
annie dookhan [15],
analyst [16]
Source URL: ►http://www.alternet.org/drugs/scandal-rocks-boston-city-realizes-thousands-people-were-falsely-convicted

Links:
[1] ►http://stopthedrugwar.org
[2] ►http://www.alternet.org/authors/phillip-smith
[3] ►http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2012/09/27/special-courts-hear-cases-drug-lab-scandal/ye4hm5OJQhC8AiyUm62jCP/story.html
[4] ►http://bostonherald.com/news/regional/view/20220927police_report_colleagues_detail_chemists_breakdown
[5] ►http://www.boston.com/lifestyle/health/health_stew/2012/09/john_auerbachs_departure.html
[6] ►http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2012/09/14/chemist-closed-state-lab-allegedly-tampered-with-evidence-bags-defense-attorneys-group-says/S26z5hS5qsqP20RmX4qA0O/story.html
[7] ►http://seattletimes.com/html/nationworld/2019315931_apusstatepolicelabshutdown.html
[8] ►http://www.alternet.org/tags/drugs-0
[9] ►http://www.alternet.org/tags/boston
[10] ►http://www.alternet.org/tags/marijuana
[11] ►http://www.alternet.org/tags/lab
[12] ►http://www.alternet.org/tags/test
[13] ►http://www.alternet.org/tags/scandal
[14] ►http://www.alternet.org/tags/fraudulent
[15] ►http://www.alternet.org/tags/annie-dookhan
[16] ►http://www.alternet.org/tags/analyst
[17] ►http://www.alternet.org/%2Bnew_src%2B

Among Isbell’s reports of his chemical experiments, he boasted, according to Marks, of having kept seven [prisoners] on LSD for 77 straight days. And in cases where the response was not all that he hoped for, he doubled, tripled, even quadrupled the dose, noting that some of the subjects seemed to fear the doctors. My god, who wouldn’t have feared them? Such torment hardly bears imagining.

[...] the CIA experimenters would prey on “mental patients, prostitutes, foreigners, drug addicts, and prisoners, often from minority ethnic groups” (most of the Lexington subjects were black). Mentally defective persons by the very nature of their affliction could never have given fully informed consent, yet they too became subjects for some of the mind-control tests. In the end the CIA zanies would violate every precept of the Nuremberg Code.

[...] the CIA’s director, vividly recalled a wartime meeting with Dr. Albert Hofmann, the Sandoz chemist who discovered LSD. Hofmann told Dulles that after inadvertently dosing himself with the drug he became so terrified that he “would have confessed to anything.” On the basis of that admission, Dulles authorized his CIA people to cooperate with U.S. military intelligence and British and Canadian teams in a behavior-control program

Holy shit.

►http://www.alternet.org/drugs/how-cias-lsd-mind-control-experiments-destroyed-my-healthy-high-functionin
#cia #lsd #drogue #folie