ONDCP synthetic drug strategy

http://www.whitehousedrugpolicy.gov/news/press06/060106.html

For more information about the Synthetic Drug Control Strategy, please visit: http://www.whitehousedrugpolicy.gov/publications/synthetic_drg_control_strat/index.html

U.S. RELEASES FIRST-EVER SYNTHETIC DRUG CONTROL STRATEGY
Bush Administration Calls for 15 Percent Reduction in Methamphetamine and Prescription Drug Abuse in Three Years; Cooperation with Mexico Key to Supply Reduction Efforts

WASHINGTON—Rachel Brand, Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Policy, and John Walters, Director of National Drug Control Policy, today joined other high-ranking U.S. anti-drug officials and the Deputy Chief of Mission of the Embassy of Mexico, Ambassador Eduardo Ibarrola, to release the Nation's first Synthetic Drug Control Strategy.
The Synthetics Strategy, a companion document to the President's National Drug Control Strategy, details plans for unprecedented cooperation with Mexico and other international partners to drastically reduce the flow into the United States of both methamphetamine and the precursor chemicals used to produce the drug. The Synthetics Strategy calls for 15 percent reductions in methamphetamine use and prescription drug abuse over the next three years and a 25 percent reduction in domestic meth labs.
The Synthetics Strategy outlines a three-tiered approach to the United States's international efforts: improving intelligence and information on the global market for precursor chemicals; effective implementation of the Combat Meth Act, signed into law by President Bush this March, which sets a national standard for restricting the retail sale of precursor chemicals within the United States; and strengthening law enforcement and border control activities, particularly with Mexico.
"Although teen drug use in the United States has dropped by nearly 20 percent over the last three years, meth is a particularly devastating drug threat that requires a specific, balanced response," said Director Walters. "We will not let up on the pressure being applied to the methamphetamine market. The aggressive measures called for in the Synthetics Strategy build upon significant progress already made as a result of law enforcement efforts and legislation enacted at the state and federal levels. We are actively working with our allies in the global community—most importantly Mexico, India, Germany and China—to toughen our collective resolve to implement meaningful international supply controls. Already, the international community has agreed to tighten control on precursor shipments by enacting a U.S. drafted resolution at the United Nations Commission on Narcotics Drugs conference in March."
The Department of Justice and the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) are key components in the effort to work more closely with Mexican law enforcement. Intelligence, investigation and enforcement efforts will focus on large-scale methamphetamine trafficking organizations operating in Mexico and the United States. In addition, the DEA and Mexican law enforcement officials will establish specialized methamphetamine enforcement teams on their respective sides of the border.
"The Synthetic Strategy is a comprehensive plan that focuses on reducing the supply of methamphetamine and controlled substance prescription drugs through aggressive enforcement efforts and on reducing the demand for these drugs by supporting prevention and treatment programs to stop first-time use and to help those struggling to overcome addictions," said Assistant Attorney General Brand.
Echoing the balanced approach taken by the President's National Drug Control Strategy, the Synthetics Strategy also highlights the importance of prevention and treatment in the effort to reduce methamphetamine use and prescription drug abuse.
The National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign, in conjunction with the Partnership for a Drug-Free America, has launched the first meth-specific television advertising campaign. The ads are being disseminated in 23 cities across the country that have been particularly hard-hit by methamphetamine, and will include Spanish language content within the month.
The Synthetics Strategy calls for continued research and support for effective treatment protocols specific to methamphetamine addiction. Through programs like drug courts and the President's Access to Recovery treatment voucher plan, state and local jurisdictions can directly meet the unique needs of those struggling with addictions to synthetic drugs.
The Synthetics Strategy is the result of a coordinated interagency process. Officials from the Department of Justice, the Department of Health and Human Services, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of State, the Department of Transportation, and the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, in consultation with state and local leaders, conducted a thorough examination of the Nation's methamphetamine and controlled substance prescription drug abuse problems. Additionally, they developed recommendations for administrative, legislative and enforcement action, as set forth in the National Synthetic Drugs Action Plan of October 2004; and reported progress on those recommendations in the Interim Report of May 2005. The 2006 Synthetics Strategy provides a final status report on the recommendations and charts new strategies for further domestic and international progress against synthetic drugs trafficking and abuse. Participants in the release of the Synthetic Drug Control Strategy included Brand, Walters, and Ibarrola, along with Anne Patterson, Assistant Secretary of State for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs; and Uttam Dhillon, Director of Counternarcotics Enforcement for the Department of Homeland Security.



sober hipsters
http://villagevoice.com/nyclife/0622,romano,73365,15.html
The Sober Bunch Life's a Party for New York Nightlife's Sober Hipsters
by Tricia Romano May 30th, 2006 12:01 PM Village Voice
It's somewhere between 2 and 4 a.m. and everyone is wasted. It could be any night, any club, anywhere. But tonight, it's a freakishly cold March evening during the Winter Music Conference in Miami, at a club called the Pawn Shop. Beyond the main dancefloor, where hundreds of revelers groove, in the darkened corners of the gargantuan club, you can see people doing drugs. Their heads bob over their hands as they take a sniff off a key; they scamper behind the DJ booth for a quick bump before going out for another grind. In the V.I.P. section — an actual school bus — if you know where to look, cocaine flows almost as freely, if more discreetly, than champagne.
In the side room, where a band named Booka Shade plays, girls dance in ecstasy, clearly on Ecstasy, their eyes rolling in the back of their heads, their mouths fixed in a clenched-jaw, pleasure-filled grimace.
Though it's Miami, the club is filled with familiar faces from New York's club scene. DJ Justine D. of Motherfucker, one of the most notorious nightlife events in Manhattan, carries a clipboard and walks briskly through the crowd. Princess Superstar, the bottle-blond bad babysitter cum rapper cum DJ, climbs into the booth and gives German superstar DJ Hell a friendly bite on the head. As the French DJ duo Justice pummel the crowd with the Prodigy's "Smack My Bitch Up," promoters Michael Cohn and DJ Patrick "the Captain" Rood literally whoop it up on the dancefloor, shouting and hollering.
Around 4 a.m., DJ Tommie Sunshine turns up just in time for Hell's set. The crowd has started to thin and you can sense the collective comedown. Sunshine is hard to miss: Standing over six feet tall, he has long blond hair and a bushy beard that makes him look like a disco Jesus, his ever present suit and sunglasses completing the look. He's dancing furiously in the center of the room, his hair flying in his face, his hand gripping a bottle of water.
There's a quote painted on the wall above the bar. It reads: "I feel sorry for people who don't drink. When they wake up in the morning, that's as good as they're going to feel all day."
"Oh yeah," Sunshine says, his voice simultaneously registering sarcasm and sincerity, "Dean Martin. I used to live by that."
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Correction: Not everyone is wasted. Sunshine, like Princess Superstar, Justine D., Cohn, and Rood, is stone-cold sober. Sunshine, after nearly 15 years of drinking and doing drugs, quit a year ago, just after the last Winter Music Conference—a marathon of debauchery that followed a trip to the South by Southwest rock festival in Austin. Princess stopped a few years before Sunshine, and the other three have never really been partiers, imbibing once or twice a year—if at all.
They are sober hipsters—flipping the image of a nondrinking person as a boring, uptight Goody Two-shoes on its head. They host the best nights, spin at the choice clubs around town, and book the post-gig after-parties that start at 11 and end at 4 a.m. Fashionable and popular, they are the epitome of downtown cool. They are the people crowds pay to be entertained by—the same crowds ironically are getting lit while watching sober DJs, cabaret performers, and burlesque stars.
The sober hipsters are the minority in a world where drinking and doing drugs are par for the course. They are people like comic performer Murray Hill, clean since September 2004; the bodacious burlesque performer known as the World FamousBOB*, a New York club veteran who quit nine years ago; Mike Nouveau, a 22-year-old promoter who's never touched a drop of anything. Elhaam Yavari, 24, who works for addVice, a marketing division of Vice Publishing Inc. (whose very name invites you to think about getting smashed), has never used drugs or drunk more than twice a year. Kenny Kenny, a renowned club doorman turned promoter who survived the '80s, the '90s, and Michael Alig, has been dry as the Nevada desert for 11 years. Actor, DJ, and sometime drag diva Michael Cavadias, who spun at decadent parties like Squeezebox in the late '90s, finally excised the excess in his life. Larry Tee, the elder statesman of New York's dance world, who lived through the Atlanta club scene in the '80s, the Disco 2000 era in the '90s, and electroclash in the '00s, has turned eight years of sobriety into nine nightlife nightlives.
Some of the people interviewed never drank or did drugs in the first place, or maybe they'd dabbled here and there before deciding it wasn't for them. Others— ex-ravers or refugees of the mid-'90s club-kid scene—hit a bottom so deep, they'd reached Middle-earth. All of them have the commonality of being one of the few straight people in the room—even though it's their job to show people a good time, in an industry where a good time is usually equated with being wasted. "It's just such an occupational hazard that after a while you just either stop or something bad is going to happen," says Cavadias.
Hill, who cribs from Dean Martin and makes alcohol a part of his shtick, adds, "When your social life is your business, there's no separation of boundaries. It's all mixed together. I never thought I'd be able to quit. It's so part of my show."
In John Leland's book Hip: The History, he writes about the connection between hipsters, counterculture, and drugs. Hipsters deliberately set themselves apart from society: They dress differently, listen to edgier music, and do drugs. Writes Leland: "Drugs are the product, hip is the marketing plan. Decades before the advent of lifestyle advertising, hip linked drug use to a lifestyle that is sexy, rebellious, and streetwise. . . . To be hip or high is to be outside the authority of church, state, work, school, and the law. . . . It is the elitism of last resort."
But what if everyone is doing drugs? What if being high becomes the status quo and loses its mystique? In the club world, it's the clean kids who are the rebels.
"My life is so much more exciting," says Larry Tee. "I get to travel around the world. I get to make music with my idols. Really, I can do whatever I want to now, but I'm not high. It was just the opposite of what I thought. Because the culture said, 'If you're cool, you get really high, and if you're lucky, you get can get high all the time, because then you're really living.' But I found out that that was the big lie. Once I got clean, my life really started."
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If you believe Tommie Sunshine, there are only three reasons people go to clubs and bars: "They either go out for the music, which is incredibly rare," he says, "they go out to get laid, or they go out to get fucked-up."
As we talk in a café near Union Square, George Michael, the formerly pretty pop star who once crooned "I Want Your Sex," is on TV after being arrested for alleged possession of pot and GHB in London. He looks bloated and is nearly unrecognizable.
Everyone who's quit drinking or doing drugs has a bottom. Michael may not have reached his bottom yet, but Sunshine recounts his: "After doing five days of South by Southwest and seven at the Winter Music Conference, bumper to bumper—after 12 days of drinking till you black out and snorting half of Bolivia, when you feel like a piano has been dropped on your face every morning for 12 mornings—at what point is it enough?"
For Princess Superstar, it was after a three-week tour. She'd stopped drinking but, using some perverse reasoning, still did drugs. "I was like, 'I'm an alcoholic, but yeah, pass the blow,' " she says. "I did drugs every day. I was on codeine, all this shit, and mushrooms. I recorded fucked-up. I played live fucked-up. I DJ'd fucked-up."
Larry Tee calls himself "a classic garbage head"—somebody who does everything. Combining "ketamine and crystal meth is a recipe for the inside of Satan's bowels," he says. "I literally ran to St. Vincent's once all the way from Twilo. Literally ran."
Addiction is the white elephant in rooms filled with white lines. Not even the recent drug-related deaths of two college students, Maria Pesantez and Mellie Carballo, or the passing of high-profile hipsters like skateboarder Harold Hunter give clubbers pause. Murray Hill, who calls himself "the hardest working middle-aged man in show business," unsurprisingly counted beer as his vice of choice. "I hit rock bottom eight, nine times." he says. "I would tell my therapist, 'Oh, I had seven, eight beers. It was a pretty light night out.' And she was horrified. But that's normal for us in the nightlife scene. You lose sight of the real world. You're going home tanked in the cab and the sun's coming up and everyone else is waiting for the bus to go to work."
BOB*, who started drinking when she was 14, says that after a while, partying loses its luster: "By the time I was 25, I felt like I'd been waiting in line for 12 years for the same ride."
So nine years ago, she stopped waiting in line. Now she goes to "meetings." Like Princess Superstar,BOBtook a structured self-help path to sobriety. Murray Hill, Sunshine, and Kenny Kenny went their own way. But whether they did it themselves or in support groups, going out sober means relearning how they live and work. For some people, getting sober means leaving bars behind, but DJs and promoters don't have the option of staying home, nor would they want to.
"I go to bars to socialize. I go to bars to celebrate life, to see my friends perform. I go to bars to perform, myself," saysBOB*.
After Kenny Kenny swore off his favorites, whiskey and beer, 11 years ago, he went back to work. "It was like hyper-realism," he says. "I normally go to the bar. Now I'm not going to the bar. Now I pass the bar. Now I don't have a bottle in my hands. So now I have to walk to the club without the beer, and now I go to the club, so what do I do? It was like learning to walk."
In the ultimate test of faith, Superstar, after a month of sobriety, had a gig in— of all places—Amsterdam.
But the nightlife business can make it almost impossible to stay clean. Professional clubbers are given fistfuls of drink tickets and offered drugs as if they were hors d'oeuvres—sometimes even in lieu of cash. Justine D., who has seen a guy shoot up heroin in the DJ booth while she was trying to spin, recalls when an out-of-town promoter palmed her a bag of coke as a bonus: "She said, 'This is for you. I don't know whether you do it, but thank you so much.' That makes me feel so uncomfortable. This is illegal and I don't want anything to do with it."
The normalcy of substances can make abstinence, or even moderation, difficult, if not impossible. "If you like Ho Hos and you're sitting at a table and there's a plate full of Ho Hos, you're probably going to eat them," says Sunshine. "If there's a plate full of Ho Hos following you around 24-7, like what essentially happens when you're a musician, you're gonna be eating a lot of Ho Hos."
Over chocolate cake at Le Gamin in the East Village, Superstar says, "I love free things! I get in the fucking car of the promoter, and it's like, 'What do you want? What do you need?' And I'm like, 'Oh my God, a kid in a candy store.' I get backstage and there's like a bottle of champagne —and it's always about champagne too. And you know, I'm 10 thousand trillion times more sparkly now when I'm clean than I ever was when I was drinking champagne and I was sloppy. Totally."
She takes a bite out of the gooey center of the cake, mixes it with the vanilla ice cream, and sighs heavenward. "Larry. Larry fucking saved my life," she says. "So I love Larry. He just told me, 'You can do this. There's a lot of people that are sober. You don't have to live like that anymore.' "

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Larry Tee is making a cappuccino in his Williamsburg loft. His dog Nelson, a rambunctious white-and-brown rat terrier, bounces like a jumping bean around the kitchen while Tee heats up milk and pours a round of espresso into his mug. The ceaseless self-promoter, known to the most recent batch of clubbers for electroclash, is never one to pass up credit for a trend. "I invented this!" he quips in his trademark squeaky voice, only partially joking. Tee helped Princess kick and lent support toBOB*; he takes friends to NA or AA meetings. Sometimes people ask him about the meetings and never go.
During Disco 2000's heyday, Tee lived above Twilo, another debaucherous super- club of a bygone era, where he enticed pretty straight boys with pills in exchange for thrills. In those days, he'd wake up at two in the afternoon, crawl to the post office, do a bump of ketamine, and call it a successful business day. "I was wasted and pathetic," he says. "I couldn't make music."
Tee says that after he quit drugs, his career went from being on life support— provided by the royalties of his biggest hit, RuPaul's "Supermodel"—to the kind of career every DJ dreams of: getting songs in movie soundtracks and jet-setting around the world. Now he plays not one but three of the city's biggest parties every week. Those who still indulge, he says, are missing out on the most fabulous moments of their lives. "They won't appreciate it when it's really gorgeous, when life is just sumptuous," he says. "They're sleeping before their big gig in Brazil, like with a million people wanting to meet them and fuck them. And they've got their hands in their heads going, 'Oh, my life is so hard.' "
He makes another cup of coffee. "One of the fears that I had is that getting clean would be miserable, that it'd be like the end of the road," he says. "The party's over, because it's so much a part of being a rebel and all my rock-star heroes were drug addicts."
With that he echoes a common sentiment and an accepted fallacy—propagated by popular wisdom and the work of bohemian heroes like William Burroughs, Jack Kerouac, and Hunter S. Thompson—that the best art is made under the influence, that cool is derived from drug counterculture. So many musical subcultures are intertwined with drug use; so many records are made high or are best experienced while high. Try to separate the druggy associations from records like Guns N' Roses' Appetite for Destruction (an hour-long love song to dope), Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon, the Velvet Underground's "Heroin," and every jazz record ever made. And would the rave revolution ever have happened without Ecstasy? Tommie Sunshine admits that his first drug experience was sitting at home stoned, watching The Wall. "So stereotypical," he says.
"I allowed myself to be an addict because I saw it advertised as part of the counterculture that was part of my being an outsider," says Kenny Kenny. "Really, in the end, that was a fool's game."
If drug addicts want to suspend time, as Leland purports, sober hipsters want to make as much use of it as possible. They are making up for lost time. Once they quit, their careers take off: "Opportunities have opened up for me that I couldn't have imagined before I got sober," saysBOB*. "I went from being a nightclub personality to a performer. I used to go to Squeezebox and go-go dance and be drunk out of my mind and have so much fun. But in the middle of the night, when the drag queens got up and sang with the band, I was sitting there thinking, 'I wish I could do that.' But I could never remember a song. I could never sing with a band. I could never practice. It was too much of a commitment. I'd be too hungover. I'd be too scared."
The best part of clean living is the next day. Promoter Patrick Rood, 25, who's never drank in his life and goes out as many as five nights a week, says, "I don't know what a hangover feels like." Like Rood, promoter Mike Nouveau never drank and has no regrets. "If I see someone passed out on a cold sidewalk in their own vomit," he says, "I'll be like, 'And people ask me why I don't drink'—or when my female friends end up naked on Last Night's Party."
While their partying counterparts are nursing hangovers by sleeping in all day, taking more pills, resorting to hair-of-the-dog strategies, and downing greasy burgers, sober hipsters wake up—if not exactly bright eyed—clear minded. "I go out so much for work, and I see the same people every time I go out, and they are all drinking and doing drugs," says Yavari. "How do they do it every night? I come to work so tired and exhausted and feeling like crap, and I didn't even do anything."
Murray Hill cautions, "There are kids, who shall remain nameless, that haven't got off the express train and they don't look so good after six years. You notice that. The kids that are doing the coke—there are a few more wrinkles than I remembered."
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The first time I met Michael Nouveau, he was holding a tray of Jell-O shots. He was at the Lower East Side bar Fat Baby for one of his parties, called Nouveau, where Larry Tee was DJ'ing. Nouveau works in advertising at Rolling Stone and has to be at his desk by 9 a.m. He's like the younger version of Steven Lewis, the nightlife veteran who designed clubs like Marquee and ran Limelight in the '90s, who says, "I think it's important to be sober. Many people disagree, and if many people didn't disagree with me, I would never have made any money. So I'm glad that nobody agrees with me." Ironically, Lewis served nine months for conspiracy to traffic narcotics (he maintains his innocence).
Like Nouveau, addVice's Elhaam Yavari, who is of Persian descent, never tried drugs. When she was a teen, her semi-strict parents grilled her after she came home from parties. Today, she goes out an average of three nights a week—including her DJ gigs at East Village Radio and the Dark Room. A teetotaler surrounded by people who partake, she says, "I have so many really good friends and they just equate coke with a good night. I think doing coke is like admitting defeat. It's like a drug to keep you awake. Like, are you that old?"
When she first started her job at addVice, bands would ask her to find drugs, but she was useless: "Dammit," she remembers thinking, "I'm going to lose a client because I can't get them high?" It never happened, but she quickly learned what 53-year-old Steven Lewis has known for years—that being the only sober person in a roomful of drunks has its advantages. "It's a business," he explains. "And if you're a business person, no matter what the job is, if you're selling doughnuts or tropical fish, if you're drunk and on the job you're not going to do such a good job."
Justine D. got her start working for Lewis at the club Life in the '90s. After getting sick for several weeks, she decided she wasn't going to drink anymore. "If I wanted to be taken seriously I had to be sober," she says. "I was coming across so many casualties, nightlife casualties, fucked-up party dolls." She imbibes a couple of times a year, usually on vacation, but never on the job. "I'm not falling off a wagon," she says. "I mean, I don't even own a fucking wagon. Some people don't even have that luxury."
At the end of a Motherfucker event, Justine D.'s sober state of mind allows her to take over the most sobering of duties: counting the money. Her partners in Motherfucker are all partiers. Michael T., the embodiment of glam-rock decadence, has been quoted in the Voice half-joking about his own habits, usually involving boots, boys, and bathroom lines.
While she finds the act of people doing cocaine "alien," her partners' partying doesn't bother her. Still, she gets a bit of a ribbing for being the odd one out. "Yeah, we make fun of her sometimes, because she can be a little bit rigid," says Michael T. "But I don't like people that are messy—and I don't consider myself to be messy."
The sober clubbers—no matter how they arrived at living the clean life—have experienced similar awkward situations. When they ask a bartender for water or soda, they get the cold shoulder. They aren't invited to the after-after-parties. But then, the after-after-parties are a drag anyway. Justine D. recalls one event thrown by a member of a prominent local band. "Everyone was a fucking mess, one girl was puking out of a window, there was wall-to-wall people," she says.
But they say they don't feel uncomfortable around people who drink or do drugs—it's the other way around. Lewis once faked doing rounds of grappa to please some buddies of his; Yavari's copped to holding a beer just so she doesn't have to answer questions. "I still have people who still insist on putting their drinks up to my mouth," says Kenny Kenny.
"I think people feel awkward around us sometimes," says Cohn. "They don't say it, but you can tell. Some people are wasted and they apologize. A lot of people apologize. 'I'm so sorry I'm drunk.' And we're like, 'Good, that's what we're partying for. That's what we want.' It was funny, one of the first places we did our night at turned out to be a really big spot to get drugs at. And we didn't know. We didn't care."
The sober hipsters say they are frequently mistaken for being wasted anyway. Says Lewis, "I'm hyperactive, I'm bug-eyed and sometimes prone to fits." Tee describes himself as "a 33 record spun on 45," and Hill says, "I still am a party animal. There's barely any difference except that I'm healthier and I've lost 35 pounds."
When people learn they don't drink or do drugs, the sober hipsters are asked questions that seem silly: "How do you do it?" "You must be so bored," "Why not?" And dumbest of all: "What do you do for fun?"
"I'm a fuckin' lame knitter," cracks Justine D.
Says Rood, "They think it's like we have an extra head. That they think we can't go anywhere without a drink—that's incredible. That's horrible."
"I probably have a lot more fun than you think," says Yavari. "I'm always having a good time no matter where I am. I'll be at the same places you are. I just won't be having an alcoholic drink. I'll be drinking water. I'll be dancing and meeting people and telling jokes—and remembering it."

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Michael Cavadias once starred opposite Robert Downey Jr., one of the most public faces of addiction in recent memory. Since quitting a few years ago, he's bloomed creatively—writing a screenplay, DJ'ing around town, and performing with the Citizens Band. Throughout the conversation at Café Mogador, he's nervous—it's almost like coming out, publicly admitting that he's sober. After a few fits and starts, he eloquently explains why being dry is the biggest high. "Not doing drugs is the most unpredictable and totally psychedelic experience I have ever had. It's an amazing existence," he says and smiles. "Life on its own is really wild."
Not that there aren't moments of regret and pangs of temptation. Tee can still smell coke at the mere mention of it, and Kenny Kenny says that when he catches a whiff of beer from a tap, he has to walk away. But sometimes it's just the feeling of being left behind that hurts most.
"I went to Paris, and I had a boyfriend, I was dressed up, and the waiters were like, 'Oh mademoiselle, Marilyn Monroe!' and they gave me complimentary champagne," recallsBOB*, who with her curled blond hair, heart-shaped lips, and pink sweater set, looks like a bosom buddy of the late actress. "And I bit my lip and started crying. Because it was in Paris, I was with the guy I was in love with. And I couldn't drink the champagne. When I got home I made a list of why I miss champagne."
She ticks off the reasons on her fingers: "It's celebratory. It's bubbly. It's glamorous. I realized these are things that I am to myself if I don't drink it. Those are things I naturally am." She says trium-phantly, "I am pink champagne."



boomer drug use
http://www.cesar.umd.edu/cesar/cesarfax/vol15/15-21.pdf
Projected data that adults age 50+ in 2020 (who are now 36) will be using more drugs than 50+'ers now.




anti-drug overdose?
http://www.latimes.com/features/health/la-he-drugs15may15,0,7772461.story?coll=la-home-health

Anti-drug overdose? Many school prevention programs don't help, scientists say, and may even do harm.
By Marnell Jameson Special to The LA Times
May 15, 2006

LIKE millions of kids across America, ninth-grader Mariana Kouloumian was taught in elementary school not to drink or use drugs — ever. To her, the message seemed clear except for one hitch: It didn't square with what she saw in the real world, or even at home.
"When I told my parents what I learned in [school], that drinking was bad, they said they knew that, but that a drink once in a while was OK," Mariana says.
Today, at 14, the Los Angeles girl dismisses much of what she learned in the drug-education program, saying that when she's older she plans to follow the more moderate example set by her mother and father.
"My parents know how much alcohol they can handle. They only drink socially — and wouldn't drink and drive." Further, she credits her parents, not school lessons, with helping her turn down tobacco, alcohol and drugs — all of which she's been offered. "I learned what I know at home," she says. To her, the anti-drug program seemed out of touch.
Increasingly, many academic scholars and government researchers agree. They point to a growing body of evidence that supports Mariana's instincts. One-size-fits-all lessons do little to prepare kids for the real drug choices they're likely to face, these experts say. By condemning all drugs as bad — not distinguishing between legitimate medications and, in moderation, alcohol — such programs can confuse kids and ultimately cheapen their own messages.
"Oversimplification is just one reason most school-based drug-prevention programs don't work," says David Hanson, professor emeritus of sociology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, who has spent the last 30 years studying alcohol use, abuse and education. "The decisions kids face are more nuanced than most drug programs make them appear."
The few programs shown to be successful are often not the ones used in schools. In a 2002 study from the North Carolina university, researchers looked at a national sampling of drug-prevention programs at public and private schools. They found that although 82% of schools used some kind of program, only 35% of public schools and 13% of private schools were using one that researchers had found effective.
Some researchers even suggest that school drug-prevention programs could do harm, particularly to younger students. Not only might they give kids a message that's so simplistic it isn't true, but the programs can also encourage kids to view themselves as potential drug users.
They can also portray an exaggerated view of the prevalence of drugs (thereby implying use is more accepted), and, sometimes, even offer technical information that kids could use on the street.
Nonetheless, every year, U.S. schools pour millions of dollars into substance-abuse education that hasn't been shown to be effective — $750 million to $1 billion alone for DARE, or Drug Abuse Resistance Education, by far the nation's largest school-based drug-prevention program, but one that is not on federally approved lists. The 16-week curriculum brings local police officers into classrooms to give lessons and share off-the-street experiences, driving home the point that drug use is wrong.
Under the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, which includes a component known as Safe and Drug-Free Schools, every public school is supposed to provide some kind of drug-prevention education. If the schools use federal funds for such efforts, they must use programs on the government's lists of those with "demonstrated effectiveness." Schools may use programs not on the list if they use local funds, which many choose to do.
Support for DARE, for example, is still high. The program is used in 70% of school districts, says Dale Brown, regional director of Los Angeles-based DARE America, although the Department of Education took the program off its approved list in 2001.
Richard Clayton, associate dean of research at the University of Kentucky College of Public Health, who has studied drug-education programs, says DARE has been effective in other ways. "More kids showed up to school on DARE days, and DARE had and still has the best infrastructure of any drug program. We need to fix the message, not change the messenger."
Despite the mixed track record, many parents, teachers and school administrators maintain that such programs are crucial if children are to learn to resist peer pressure down the road.
"We need to take a preventive approach and help kids as early as possible to stay away from drugs and alcohol," says Lori Vollandt, coordinator for health education programs for the Los Angeles Unified School District. "The sooner kids learn to take care of their bodies the better."

Popular, but questionable
The real worry is that the science-based research to date has found that most anti-drug education programs don't reduce the rate at which kids abuse drugs and alcohol.
According to Monitoring the Future, a study funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse that since 1976 has been tracking illicit drug use (not including alcohol) among high schoolers, 58% of 12th-graders had used an illicit drug in 1976. Use peaked in 1980 at 68%, then dropped to a low of 40% in 1992. By 1998 it was back up to 1976 levels, and for the last few years use has dipped to around 52%.
"The trend rises and falls, and we have no clue why," Clayton says.
Drug-education advocates say the success of the programs should be measured in terms of the kids who don't use drugs — and thus don't show up in these numbers — not those who do.
Individually, some programs help; some hurt. And many simply haven't been scientifically studied, says Liz Robertson, chief of prevention for the National Institute on Drug Abuse's research branch.
DARE gets singled out because it's the biggest in the country and therefore the most studied. But many other programs are not science-based either.
In one landmark study, funded by the National Institutes of Health, University of Kentucky researchers examined DARE's effect over a five- and 10-year period. Both times, no significant differences were found between the behaviors of kids in control groups and those who had participated in DARE, says Clayton, who led the study.
In 2004, Steve West and his colleagues at Virginia Commonwealth University, in Richmond, Va., analyzed all the DARE studies done to date and published their findings in the American Journal of Public Health. "Our study," the authors wrote, "supports previous findings indicating that DARE is ineffective. This is not surprising given the substantial information developed over the past decade to that effect."
"We weren't saying the program wasn't well intentioned," says West, a professor of rehabilitation counseling. "Just that as a prevention effort, it was a huge waste of time and money. There are better programs."
Other popular, approved programs also have fared poorly. The National Institute on Drug Abuse has performed randomized controlled studies on the Families and Schools Together (FAST) program, and found it had no positive effect. The widespread Reconnecting Youth program initially proved effective, but failed to produce positive results in two independently replicated studies, says Robertson. In fact, many of those on the approved lists haven't been studied as stringently as Robertson would like.
Most drug-prevention programs don't work because they use scare tactics, Hanson says. "They tell kids things they will later find out aren't true, like alcohol is a gateway to drugs and will seduce you into trying more dangerous substances. Also, by saying all alcohol is bad, they send kids home thinking that if their parents have a glass of wine with dinner or a beer with their pizza, they are abusing drugs. If a child's father happens to tend bar, they come home and ask why he's a drug dealer. Then what happens when the child sees the off-duty DARE officer having a beer at the local bowling alley?"
Further, drug-prevention programs often make drugs sound more prevalent than they are. Studies show that when middle school students report what percentage of kids they think are using drugs, their estimates top the actual numbers.
When you give kids the true perspective, that not everyone is doing it, they don't feel as much pressure to try, Robertson says. "That's a lot more beneficial than a five-hour blitz of information that covers every drug and how they're used, and that glorifies and exaggerates them."
Some researchers and scientists worry about the harm some programs may be doing to kids. A 1998 Illinois study, for example, found that DARE inadvertently encouraged a few students to try drugs.
DARE responded to such findings by revamping, says Brown. "The program now focuses on teaching kids how to make good decisions, how to avoid drugs and violence, and how to stand up to peer pressure," he says. "There's a lot less officer lecturing and a lot more role-playing and interaction."
While the experts sort out what works and what doesn't, many worry that the effects of some of the programs could be particularly harmful to younger students. Although many prevention programs start targeting fifth-graders, others such as the widespread Red Ribbon Week are popular in kindergarten through fourth grade.
Red Ribbon Week campaigns are often loosely implemented. Schools get an information packet that they often turn over to volunteer parents who organize a program in which kids wear red ribbons and learn not to put bad stuff in their bodies — which likely wasn't on their minds in the first place.
"The harm is that kids don't need these messages yet, and by making them too simplistic, they will dismiss them when they're older and do need this message," Robertson says. She adds that these programs make kids who have never considered using drugs see themselves as potential drug users.
"We know that making kids more aware can be dangerous, especially if these are high-sensation-seeking kids," she says. "When kids are ready, they really will ask the right questions. Don't give them more information than they ask for. I don't understand people who give third-graders all the street names for drugs. Why would anyone do that?"
Others strongly disagree: "Early and often. That's our cardinal rule," says Judy Cushing, past president of the National Family Partnership, the organization that founded and oversees Red Ribbon Week. "It's never too early to tell kids what's healthy and what isn't to put in their bodies."
Parents, teachers and kids love Red Ribbon Week, she adds. "Red Ribbon stands for hope and gives kids the incentive to make healthy choices. And it's something people can wrap their arms around."
LAUSD's Vollandt also thinks that forewarned is forearmed. She advocates beginning drug-awareness programs in pre-kindergarten classes. "We shouldn't wait to introduce this education in response to an event," she says.
Many educators, officers and parents agree. LAUSD offers Too Good for Drugs in lower schools, Project Alert in middle schools and Project Toward No Drug Abuse in upper schools. They are on the U.S. Department of Education's approved list and are considered model programs by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, or SAMHSA. The programs stress drug resistance skills in a realistic way.

Some educators and parent groups insist that even programs not labeled as effective can work. They point to how much kids have learned about drugs by the end of the program and indications that students, parents and teachers liked it.
But the only criterion that matters, scientists counter, is behavioral change.

Tailored lesson plans
Nobody is suggesting schools cut out drug-prevention education altogether. Not only does the government mandate it, society places a moral obligation on schools to do something to prevent future drug use.
But to get the right program, school officials need to first know what their school needs, says Robertson. Not all schools warrant the same level of intervention. Some just need good universal programs in peer refusal skills. Others with a drug problem need an intensive intervention program such as Project Toward No Drug Abuse. This interactive course strives to teach high schoolers the misperceptions that may lead to substance use, how substance abuse starts and progresses, the myths and consequences of drug use, and the coping and self-control skills they'll need to refuse.
Unfortunately, Hanson says, when schools choose, they pit anecdotes against scientific research. "Often the anecdotes win," she says.
To find out whether a program is deemed worthwhile by the government or to learn more about effective interventions, parents and educators can go to the SAMHSA site, http://www.modelprograms.samhsa.gov . Other federal agencies have lists of approved programs, but SAMHSA's is the most comprehensive.
The site features the National Registry of Evidence-based Programs and Practices. These model programs have been tested in communities, schools, social service organizations and workplaces across America, and have provided proof that they have prevented or reduced substance abuse and other related high-risk behaviors. Programs are listed as either promising, meaning they have shown some positive outcomes, or effective, meaning that they have shown consistently positive outcomes.
Finally, teachers must implement the program the way it was designed. "Many teachers take a curriculum and teach only parts of it — or teach it the way they want — and the program doesn't work," Robertson says. For example, in the recent NIDA study, teachers were taught the basics of LifeSkills Training, a proven, science-based program, and were then allowed to implement it as they wanted. The program failed to show a positive effect.
Drug educators also need to stop exaggerating, Hanson says. Painkillers can be appropriate, antidepressants can be beneficial, and moderate drinking can be socially acceptable. In short, he says, messages need to be nuanced to fit social norms — in other words, actual behavior.
And individual kids at risk need to be identified early. Aggressive or withdrawn youths — and those who struggle in school — are more likely to abuse drugs, research has shown. Helping them become more socially competent or overcome learning problems can go a long way toward reducing drug use.
Furthermore, the consensus among researchers is that the programs should incorporate more role-playing with peers — and less lecturing about the varieties and dangers of drugs. Most kids who experiment with drugs do so for emotional reasons, often to be accepted.
"Emotions drive most kids," Clayton says. "When working with these developing brains, prevention experts have to consider that cognitive reasons, such as the behavior is illegal and might harm your body, don't matter as much."
Regardless of which program schools ultimately choose, Hanson offers some more immediate perspective: "The overwhelming evidence supports that the modeling that happens at home will still have the greatest effect on how kids ultimately behave."


Toad Licking Dogs
doesn't this kind of fly in the face of decades of studies showing animals won't self-administer hallucinogens?
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http://coloherp.org/cb-news/Vol-32/cbn-0511/ToadLicking.php
The Cold Blooded News The Newsletter of the Colorado Herpetological Society Volume 32, Number 11; November, 2005
No Good Toad Licking Dogs
Reprinted from Notes from Noah, the newsletter of the Northern Ohio Association of Herpetologists, Vol.32, No.8, May 2005. Originally from World News.
Dogs in Australia's Northern Territory are becoming addicted to hallucinogenic cane toad poison, according to local vets. Desperate for a canine high, dogs have been seen licking the backs of cane toads for the poison secreted from their glands.
Megan Pickering, a veterinarian in the town of Katherine, claims to have seen many cases of dogs affected by the deadly toad poison. "There seems to be dogs that are licking the toxin to get high," she told the local newspaper. "They lick the toads and only take in a small amount of the poison. They get a smile on their face and look like they are going to wander off into the sunset." She said she has recently treated dozens of dogs suffering from the effects of bufotoxin.
Ms. Pickering said she believes some of the dogs are becoming addicted, as she has seen them "going back to have a second go." It seems some of them have tasted it in small doses, but there are others that have had more toxin. Despite this, they go back and do it again. Evidence of "tripping" dogs include fitting, running in circles, having bright red gums, and frothing at the mouth.
Wildlife officers have advised owners to wash their pet's mouth out with water as quickly as possible if they exhibit these symptoms. They say they get more inquiries about safeguarding pets from toads than on any other wildlife topic. Owners are advised to keep dogs and cats inside at night, warn and train them against tackling toads, and keep toads out of the yard.
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