Prescription Pills Up, Cocaine And Meth Down, Marijuana Holds Steady
On September 19, 2008 in Research
Nearly 20 million Americans used illicit drugs in the month before responding to an annual national survey last year, according to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA). That figure includes not only illegal drugs, but also prescription drugs used for non-medical purposes. The numbers come from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, which interviewed 67,500 people for its annual report.
The numbers for overall drug use are similar to those for recent years, although the survey reported marginal declines in cocaine and methamphetamine use among young people. Among 18-to-25-year-olds, cocaine use dropped to 1.7%, down 23% from 2006, while meth use dropped to 0.4%, down about a third from 2006. Read the rest of this entry »
Venezuela, US Governments Spar Over Drug Fighting
On September 19, 2008 in Drug War, Government, World
The tense relations between the Bush administration and Venezuela’s President Hugo Chávez grew even more strained this week as Washington and Caracas traded charges and counter-charges over Venezuela’s fight against cocaine trafficking. While it seems indisputable that cocaine trafficking through Venezuela has increased in recent years, the two governments are trading barbs over the extent of official Venezuelan complicity in the trade, whether Venezuela is doing enough to combat trafficking, and whether it needs to comply with US demands in order to effectively fight the drug trade.
Venezuela does not grow coca or process cocaine, but like other countries in Latin America, it has been used as a conduit, especially by traffickers from neighboring Colombia, the region’s largest coca and cocaine producer. The rise of the European cocaine market in recent years has undoubtedly made the country an attractive way station for cocaine headed east. Read the rest of this entry »
On Speed: The Many Lives of Amphetamine
On September 12, 2008 in Book Reviews, Miscellaneous, Research
Almost everybody knows about methamphetamine, that demon drug, that pharmacological equivalent of plutonium, stereotypically favored by toothless, uneducated white guys tweaking in trailer parks out in the sticks. Many fewer people are aware of Desoxyn, which is widely prescribed to treat Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). And even fewer are aware that Desoxyn is nothing other than pharmaceutical grade methamphetamine legally prescribed by doctors across the land.
How can the same substance be both demon drug and miracle cure? Science historian Nicolas Rasmussen of the University of New South Wales in Sydney provides some answers to that question - and much more - in “On Speed: The Many Lives of Amphetamine.” Read the rest of this entry »
BBC Reporter Gets High on Burning Crops
On September 11, 2008 in Drug War, Humor, In The News, Law Enforcement, Video
Bolivia to Fund Own Anti-Drug Unit, Wants to Reduce ‘U.S. Influence’
On August 15, 2008 in Drug War, Government, Law Enforcement, World
The Bolivian government will fund an anti-drug unit for the first time next year in a bid to reduce foreign involvement in its fight against the cocaine trade. The primary foreign country involved in Bolivian anti-drug matters is the United States, although it currently gets some added from the European Union, too.
Bolivia is the world’s number three coca and cocaine producer, behind Colombia and Peru, and has a government sympathetic to coca growers. But it has insisted it is combating the diversion of coca into the illicit cocaine market under the slogan “zero cocaine, not zero coca.” Read the rest of this entry »
