The United States is in an epidemic of prescription drug abuse with about seven million people using them for non-medical purposes, according to the National Survey on Drug Use and Health. Prescription drugs are now causing more deaths than illegal drugs such as cocaine and methamphetamine, and the number of Americans dead from drug overdoses recently surpassed the number killed in automobile accidents.

Florida is the nation’s number-one supplier of prescription pain drugs used for nonmedical reasons. The most frequently abused of these drugs are OxyContin, Viocodin, and other potent painkillers. One of the most popular drugs now being abused is oxycodone, a painkiller related chemically to heroin. Of the 53 million oxycodone doses sold last year to medical practitioners, about 45 million were bought in Florida. Seven people die of prescription drug overdoses every 24 hours in Florida.

Dealers and drug tourists are traveling from other parts of the country to obtain prescription drugs in Florida that cost about a dollar a pill. They are able to sell them in their home states for $20-$30 a pill. Recently a man arrested in Connecticut with 8,000 pills in his possession admitted to police that he had gone to Florida 65 times in the past five months and obtained thousands of drugs each time. He was able to bribe airport authorities to let him smuggle the drugs into Connecticut.

The reason that drugs are so easy to get in Florida is that laws are lax enough that unethical doctors can set up “pain clinics” where people can obtain prescriptions simply by saying they are in pain, and without undergoing medical tests or examinations.

“People literally line up in the morning and wait for the doors to open, and then they swarm inside,” said Pinellas County Deputy Bob Gualtieri. “I hate to even call them doctors. Because they are not really doctors. They are people who hold a medical license, but they are not really practicing medicine, and you pay a cash fee. They’re drug dealers.”

Lt. Richard Pisanti of the Broward County’s Sheriff’s office said that people were doing drug deals right outside the pain clinics.

“We had burglaries, thefts of pills from cars, and one incident even resulted in murder,” he said.

The new legislation will require doctors to use electronic prescription pads or tamper-proof pads, and will increase penalties for overprescribing painkillers. Most doctors will be unable to dispense painkillers under the new regulations.

Florida legislators tried in the past to establish a drug database to keep track of which patients are obtaining which drugs and in what amounts. However, the state had trouble getting the measure funded, even though Purdue Pharma, the manufacturer of OxyContin, offered to pay $1 million to set it up.

The new law establishes the Electronic Florida Online Reporting of Controlled Substances Evaluation, enabling doctors to request patients’ drug histories. Pharmacists, and anyone who prescribes or fills prescriptions for narcotic drugs will have seven days after dispensing these painkillers to report information to the data system. The system should cut down on “doctor shopping,” which refers to patients who go from one doctor or clinic to another in order to obtain pills.

The National Association of Boards of Pharmacy already have a national database that doctors or pharmacists can use to retrieve information on painkiller prescriptions from any state participating in the database. Ohio, Indiana, Virginia, and 20 other states have agreed to participate in this database.

Many experts believe that national electronic databases for prescription drug abuse will only increase the problem of drug addicts turning to heroin. Because of earlier crackdowns, prescription drugs have already become more expensive and harder to get in certain parts of the country, including Kentucky, Ohio and Tennessee, and parts of the west coast. For example, a typical dose of heroin costs $25 compared to $80 for an oxycodone pill in places like Oregon, where there is stricter enforcement of drug laws. The manufacturers of OxyContin have also produced a new version of the drug that is harder to abuse, in that it cannot be smoked, snorted or injected.

Even before the new laws go into effect in Florida, heroin abuse already is starting to increase. In Palm Beach County, for example, the amount of heroin seized by authorities so far this year is three pounds, up from 20 grams last year. The latest national statistics from the U.S. Department of Justice indicate that heroin abuse increased 342% between 2004 and 2008. Heroin dealers are convincing more people that heroin is not only cheaper than prescription pills, but it is just as safe if you smoke it, rather than inject it, according to addiction expert Dr. Terry Alley.

If heroin abuse becomes more widespread in the United States, more Americans will develop liver or kidney diseases, skin abscesses, collapsed veins, and infections of the heart lining and heart valves. One of the biggest dangers will be increased numbers of people with HIV/AIDS, because most heroin addicts use needles. Since the HIV/AIDS virus is a blood-borne disease, the infection can be spread by sharing needles. Heroin used to be imported from Columbia or Asia, but the kind most prevalent today is a very pure variety from Mexico.

Actions to Shut Down “Pill Mills” Result in Increased Heroin Addiction is a post from: Drug Addiction Treatment

According to a recent article in The Chicago Tribune, the newest trend in drug users is they are increasingly white from suburban and upper-middle class homes and are both older adults and teenagers looking for a quick high. Prescription drug deaths have tripled nationwide from the beginning of the millennium to 2008 and have exceeded deaths from cocaine and heroin combined. In 2009, drug deaths reached an all-time high of nearly 37,500, killing more people than automobile accidents.

Experts say prescription drugs and heroin abuse are intertwined. They are so similar that the user will substitute one for the other when they run out. Many users have begun their addiction to prescription meds because they believe they are safer. Once hooked on them, they may move on to heroin.

Both of these drugs have similarities in that they are depressants that can kill. They suppress breathing especially when mixed with other downers or alcohol. Teenagers are finding these drugs easy to get their hands on because they are often in their parents’ medicine cabinet at home. The DEA says that 1 in every 6 adolescents under 20 years old have tried a prescription drug in order to get a quick high. A special agent in the Chicago area also says many gang members are sending in members to fake illnesses in order to obtain these prescriptions.

The DEA stresses that it will take law enforcement, educators and parents to crack down on those involved with prescription drug abuse because it is such a huge problem.

White Suburbanites Are the New Drug Addicts is a post from: Drug Addiction Treatment

According to a recent article in the Prague Post, the prescription pill Subutex is being injected intravenously. Many are shooting up with it instead of weaning themselves from their heroin habit. Subutex is used as a low threshold type of treatment for addiction to heroin and can be prescribed by any type of general practitioner without prior therapy or counseling. It has become increasingly popular on the black market due to addicts misusing the drug , leading to a widely publicized crisis in Prague.

Prague police and city officials say the prescription pill has become the main source of problems for their city center area, where between 70 and 80 percent of the drugs sold in are Subutex. It is easy for people to obtain more than one prescription because they can visit several doctors and it is much cheaper than illicit heroin.

Officials believe the drug should be dispersed in a much more controlled environment, like that of methadone, and should only be administered in clinics where patients must visit daily in order to receive their doses. Outreach workers in Prague are fully aware of the problem with Subutex and are working to develop newer approaches and develop informational campaigns about the drug and its risks.

Drug Used to Treat Heroin in Prague May Be More Problematic Than Heroin is a post from: Drug Addiction Treatment

This results in needless tragedy. Let’s consider the facts.

According to information from the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP), more than 38,000 people died of drug-induced causes in 2007, the latest year for which data are available. In 1999, there were 19,128 drug-induced deaths, or 6.8 deaths per 100,000 population. In 2007, it grew to 12.6 per 100,000. This only comprehends deaths due to drugs, such as accidental poisoning or overdoses, and not as result of deaths indirectly caused by drugs, such as homicides, accidents, AIDS or other causes.

In the U.S., there is a drug-induced death every 15 minutes, four per hour, 96 per day, and an average of 2,920 per month. That’s an incredible waste of lives.

As for drugged driving, the statistics are similarly alarming. The ONDCP cites results from a 2009 self-report survey included in the 2009 Substance Abuse and Mental Health Survey (NSDUH) findings that approximately 10.5 million Americans reported driving under the influence of an illicit drug during the past year. Also in 2009, stats reported by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) revealed that one in three drivers killed in motor vehicle crashes (who were tested for drugs and the results known) tested positive for at least one medication or illicit drug. One in 10 high school seniors in 2008 reported in the two weeks prior to their interview that they had driven a vehicle after smoking marijuana. That’s from the 2008 Monitoring the Future Study conducted by the University of Michigan.

Where the Drugs Come From

Mexico is the principal transit country for the cocaine entering the United States from South America. It is estimated that 70 percent of the cocaine shipments bound for the U.S. pass through Mexico’s borders. In addition, Mexico is also the leading foreign source of marijuana consumed in this country, and, together with Columbia, is one of the principal heroin sources. Mexico is also a major production and transit point for methamphetamine and other synthetic drugs.

Marijuana

Marijuana, also known as pot, is the most commonly used illegal drug in the United States. There is much debate over the increased levels of marijuana potency in more recent years. Some pro-marijuana advocates state that federal reports of increasing potency are overblown and/or complete fabrications. Due to disparities in additives and source of origin, there is no definitive way to determine potency or concentration of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the active ingredient in marijuana. Marijuana laced with PCP and other potent chemicals is extremely dangerous.

Over the past few years, synthetic marijuana, also called Spice, Blaze, Red Dawn and K2, has become increasingly popular among teens. It is available over the Internet and is sold in retail shops labeled as incense to mask the true intent. These smokable herbal blends provide a marijuana-like high. They consist of plant material that has been coated with research chemicals that mimic THC.

Late in 2010, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), under its emergency scheduling authority, began the process of classifying the five chemicals used to make synthetic marijuana as controlled substances.

This follows numerous reports since 2009 of serious adverse events and hospitalizations among people using synthetic marijuana. For at least the next year, while the DEA studies and classifies the five chemicals, it is now illegal to possess or sell these chemicals.

Data from the 2009 NSDUH released by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) show that there is a sharp increase in marijuana use among teens and they are beginning use at younger ages. There were 2.9 million new past-year users of marijuana in 2009, and their average age of initiation (first-time use of the drug) dropped from 17.8 to 17.0 years (2008 to 2009). There was also a nine percent increase (to 7.3 percent from 6.9 percent) of current marijuana users age 12 t 17 from 2008 to 2009.

Looking at dependence and addiction statistics, marijuana tops the list of illicit drugs with the highest rate of past year dependence in 2009. Of 7.1 million persons aged 12 or older classified with dependence on or abuse of illicit drugs in 2009, 4.3 million were dependent upon or abused marijuana or hashish.

With marijuana use so widespread, the risks of higher potency THC cannot be minimized. Marijuana use is associated with dependence, cognitive impairment, poor motor performance, respiratory and mental illness, among other potentially negative effects. Although chronic use of drugs can lead to addiction at any age, research shows that the earlier a person begins drug use, the more likely they are to move on to more serious abuse and addiction. This can happen even later in life, long after drug use has been discontinued, and reflects the long-lasting harmful effects of early initiation of drug use. Teen use of drugs, such as potent marijuana, is particularly dangerous because research shows teen brains are still maturing into their 20s.

Heroin

Heroin is a highly addictive drug and is the most widely used and rapidly acting of the opiates (painkillers). Heroin is processed from morphine, a naturally occurring substance that is extracted from the seed pod of certain types of poppy plants.

Pure heroin is a white powder with a bitter taste and is rarely sold on the streets. Most of the heroin sold on the street is a powder ranging in color from white to dark brown. What accounts for the color differences is what’s left behind in the form of impurities or chemical or other additives. There is another form of heroin, “black tar” heroin, which is primarily available in the western and southwest parts of the U.S. Black tar heroin comes from Mexico. The reason it is called black tar is that its consistency may be like that of black tar, sticky like roofing tar and hard like coal. Black tar heroin, widely available, is much higher in potency and concentration, and that, coupled with the fact that it is less expensive than illegally-obtained prescription opiates and therefore more attractive to buy, makes it much more dangerous for users due to the potential for overdose.

Heroin may be injected, smoked, or snorted. Injection is the most efficient way to administer low-purity heroin. What’s happened recently, however, is that the availability of high-purity heroin – and the fear of HIV/AIDS infection due to needle sharing – has made smoking and snorting the drug more common. No matter which route of administering heroin is used, however, the fact remains that all forms are highly addictive.

The 2009 NSDUH data shows an increase in the number of heroin initiates, with 180,000 persons age 12 or older who had used heroin for the first time within the past 12 months, compared with the average annual number of 100,000 first-time heroin initiates in the 2002 to 2008 period. Of the 7.1 million persons aged 12 or older classified with dependence on or abuse of illicit drugs in 2009, 399,000 were dependent on or abused heroin (up from 213,000 in 2007).

Cocaine and Crack Cocaine

Cocaine is the most potent stimulant of natural origin. It can be snorted, smoked, or injected. When it is snorted, it is inhaled through the nose where it is absorbed into the bloodstream through the nasal passages. Injection delivers the drug directly into the bloodstream. Smoking involves inhaling the smoke or cocaine vapor directly into the lungs, with the effect of getting into the bloodstream as rapidly as by injection.

Crack cocaine is cocaine base that has not been acid neutralized to make hydrochloride salt. Crack cocaine comes in a rock crystal that is heated to produce vapors which are then smoked.

Price and purity studies have shown that as prices of cocaine decline, purity levels increase. In 2001, the purity of powder cocaine ranged from 55 to 65 percent pure. In 2009, it ranged from a low of 55 percent to a high of 75 percent. The price in 2007 was down to $125 per gram from $145 in 2001.

With crack cocaine, the purity level was highest with lowest quantities (below 1 gram) and lowest with the highest quantities (above 15 grams). In the past five years, adjusted prices for crack cocaine shifted downward from about $180 to $170 per gram, while retail purity remained approximately constant in the 75 to 80 percent pure range.

In 2009, according to data from the 2009 NSDUH, there were 617,000 persons age 12 or older who had used cocaine for the first time within the past 12 months. This averages approximately 1,700 initiates per day. The number of cocaine initiates is a decline from the 1.0 million in 2002. Crack cocaine initiates saw a similar decline in the 2002 to 2009 period, from 337,000 to 94,000.

Of the 7.1 million persons aged 12 or older classified with dependence on or abuse of illicit drugs in 2009, 1.1 million were classified with dependence on or abuse of cocaine.

Prevention Efforts on the Southwest Border

The Southwest Border High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area (HIDTA) is one of the most diverse of the HIDTA areas that is overseen by the ONDCP. The vast area covers about 2,000 miles of international border between Mexico and the United States, and stretches from San Diego, California to Brownsville, Texas. This area is critical to combating the drug threats arriving in the U.S. including Mexican-produced methamphetamine, cocaine and heroin produced in South America, as well as other dangerous drugs such as marijuana and precursor chemicals used to produce meth.

There are five regions in the Southwest Border HIDTA: Southern California, Arizona, New Mexico, West Texas and South Texas. There are 45 counties, five federal judicial districts, and includes representatives from 115 federal, state and local agencies.

While each region faces unique challenges, they have adapted to meet changing needs. In Southern California, the California Border Alliance Group (CBAG), one of four California HIDTAs, supports drug intelligence, investigative and interdiction operations, and coordinates efforts to stop drug use before it starts. Through its community-based Demand Reduction program, CBAG brings together community institutions to prevent drug use. One of their projects, “Forces United,” brought together all four California HIDTA regions in 2010 and played a key role in educating the public on the dangers of methamphetamine, marijuana and prescription drugs in local communities.

The Arizona HIDTA recognizes that law enforcement alone isn’t enough to combat the proliferation and potency of street drugs. They have also developed demand reduction programs to educate the citizenry about the dangers of drug use and abuse. Their goals include reducing pharmaceutical substance abuse and related crimes, raising awareness of the prescription drug problem in the state, and partnering with DrugFreeAZ to develop an effective demand reduction program to educate parents and children about drug abuse dangers.

In New Mexico, the Investigative Support Center (ISC) is the go-to organization that works to help get things done for the state’s drug task forces and supports all New Mexico’s law enforcement agencies.

In West Texas, the drug trafficking in the region and the escalating drug and gang violence from Juarez, Mexico spilling over into El Paso, Texas has resulted in law enforcement agencies being on high alert for the past several years. Similarly, in South Texas, despite low population density in some areas, drug trafficking and related crime in the area impacts the U.S. nationally. The South Texas HIDTA utilizes a balanced counter-drug strategy that includes law enforcement action and drug education and prevention efforts.

New England HIDTA

The major threat to the six-state (Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Vermont, Maine and New Hampshire) New England HIDTA is heroin, followed by cocaine and crack cocaine. In recent years, however, drug trends have centered on the increasing use of opioids, including diversion of prescription pharmaceuticals.

In 2009, the largest cocaine seizure in the history of New Hampshire was conducted by the North Shore HIDTA. In the operation, a multi-million dollar international drug trafficking organization (DTO) was identified and dismantled and 45 kilos of cocaine worth an estimated $4 million on the street was seized. The New England HIDTA also focuses on prevention efforts. One of the newest prevention initiatives involves working with the Essex County Massachusetts Sheriff’s Office (ESCO) in its Youth Leadership Academy. This is a program designed to involve at-risk children, aged 12 to 15, in challenging, fun, and safe activities in a drug-, tobacco-, alcohol- and gang-free environment. It also provides instruction in anger management, peer counseling, teamwork, ethics, and cooperation.

Street Drugs are No Picnic

Any involvement with illicit street drugs is a very risky endeavor. In addition to being against the law to buy, sell, use or transport them, their potency is always unreliable and could be life-threatening to certain individuals in certain circumstances. Thus, getting involved in street drug use is a zero-sum game. There’s just no point in putting yourself in such harm’s way.

The illicit drugs available on the street today could come from Mexico (very likely), South America (also a high probability), or some poppy fields in Afghanistan. But they are all potentially deadly and, if nothing else, could lead to a life-long addiction.

The Pure and Deadly: Concentrations Higher in Today’s Street Drugs is a post from: Drug Addiction Treatment

No other country in the world produces as much heroin, opium, and hashish as Afghanistan, according to the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).

The steady rise in the number of domestic drug users belies the argument by some Afghans that drug consumption is a non-Afghan problem and that the drugs trade brings money to the country.

"There is the Coca-Cola effect between production of drugs and consumption and addiction; supply inevitably does create demand," said Jean-Luc Lemahieu, UNODC’s country representative.

"The distinction between producing and consuming countries has blurred. Traditionally, consuming countries have become producers of synthetic drugs. In turn, producing countries have become consumers. What remains is a shared international responsibility. No country should be left alone," he said.

"There is a risk Afghanistan could become the world’s top drug-using nation – albeit proportionate to its population – if the current addiction trend continues and we fail to stop it," said MCN’s Afzali.

Addiction, not production, is Afghanistan’s biggest problem, experts say. "If each addict spends $1 a day on his/her addiction it is waste of $45 million a month," Tariq Suliman, director of a drug users’ rehabilitation centre called Nejat, told IRIN.

He said addicts seeking treatment at his centre come from all walks of life but most are young men who could otherwise be of use to their family and country.

Officials at the MCN said drug addiction was having a devastating impact: "Drug addiction adds to insecurity, social crimes and communicable diseases and undermines Afghanistan’s development efforts," said Afzali, adding that providing free treatment and rehabilitation services for the addicts was an unnecessary financial burden.

Transmission of communicable viruses – particularly HIV – among injecting drug users is a serious health risk. Awareness about sexual diseases is very low.

At least 3 percent of injecting drug users in Kabul were diagnosed HIV positive, according to a 2006 World Bank study in Kabul.

"Drug addiction and HIV/AIDS are, together, Afghanistan’s silent tsunami," said Suliman of the Nejat Centre.

There are about 40 treatment centers for addicts, but most are very small and under-resourced.

Over the past few years, donors have disbursed hundreds of millions of dollars to counter Afghanistan’s drug problem.

However, officials concede that counter-narcotics efforts have been concentrated on poppy eradication and interdiction but little attention has been paid to the rising addiction crisis.

"Donors logically adopted counter-narcotics policies based on their own national interests," said UNODC’s Lemahieu, adding that Afghanistan’s addiction and HIV problems were increasingly being acknowledged by donors and the government.
MCN’s Afzali praised US support for counter-narcotics efforts but said other donors, particularly European ones, have not properly understood the country’s drug problems.
 

Drug Addiction Growing in Afghanistan is a post from: Drug Addiction Treatment

"This was just totally unexpected. No one has ever seen this type of exposure in young children. It’s never been documented. And it’s laying a foundation for drug abuse for a whole generation,” he said.

Matthew Mosk and Brian Ross of ABC News report that this first-ever look at household exposure to opium and heroin is not yet complete, but State Department officials and contractors shared preliminary findings exclusively with ABC News in hopes of drawing attention to a problem they say has been largely overlooked. The researchers said what they uncovered is both shocking and tragic.

Their field testing of homes of known drug users found that small children, even infants, have been passively exposed to heroin and opiates by the adult users in their homes. Some have inhaled dangerous quantities of second-hand smoke. Others have ingested traces of the drugs settling all around them, coating their pillows and blankets and leaving a film atop carpets and furniture. The chronic exposure is leading to levels of addiction rarely seen in children so young, the researchers told ABC News. If the problem is left unaddressed, they said, the consequences could be dire.

"This is a doomed generation of children," Goldberger said. "These children are classic opium or heroin addicts. They crave the drug. If the drug is withdrawn, they go through withdrawal."

Goldberger said he believes similar levels of narcotics in the bloodstream of pregnant women may help explain why Afghanistan has one of the highest rates of infant mortality in the world.

How many children are affected is not known. U.S. officials said 2005 estimates that there are 900,000 drug users among Afghanistan’s 30 million people are outdated—and that the numbers of heroin and opium users in particular have grown dramatically. So far, the samples collected by teams of American scientists have only been focused on answering the question of how adult drug use impacts children in the home.

A former top U.S. Drug Enforcement official who helped the scientists gather hair, blood, and urine samples from homes around the country told ABC News that his teams found high levels of addiction flowing from one generation to the next. A fact sheet prepared by the State Department has some of the raw numbers: In 31 of 42 homes where adult addicts lived, children tested showed signs of significant drug exposure.

Both American and Afghan counter narcotics officials said this is a new problem for the country. Afghanistan has for many years been a primary source of opium for the rest of the world. But only in recent years, as refugees from war fled to Pakistan and Iran, did a significant number of Afghans start using the drugs themselves. When they returned home, they brought both drug use and its noxious byproducts back with them, said Doug Wankel, who spent decades as the DEA’s top man in Afghanistan and is now based in Kabul for the U.S. consulting firm, Spectre Group International.

Compounding the problem, Wankel said, is that the drug traffic originating in Afghanistan has changed, with more opium being converted into heroin before it leaves the country’s borders.

Now, he said, "you’ve got enough heroin available to more than meet the demand of the international market… You actually have supply creating demand in a place like Afghanistan."

Dr. Mohammed Zafar, an Afghan counter narcotics official, confirmed that his country "did not have such a problem as we have it presently." And he said his government has few resources to fix it. "We have a very limited drug specialization centers, which is not enough for the drug population of Afghanistan which is more than one million," he said.

U.S. State Department officials have begun to establish drug treatment facilities in the most hard hit parts of the country. The Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs has established three programs in Afghanistan for addicted women and children, and expect three more to open their doors within the next month. An international team that includes World Health Organization officials and experts from Johns Hopkins University and the Medical University of Vienna have designed the first-ever treatment regimes for young children.

But U.S. officials say there remain an array of challenges in treating a population that has be resistant to the physical and psychological rigors involved in kicking such highly addictive drugs.

Wankel said he believes the growing rate of addiction will increasingly prove to be a challenge for American troops who are attempting to stand up a police force and dissuade Afghans from becoming radicalized.

"It plays well into the hands of those who want to continue insurgency, certainly corruption, criminality," he said. "It’s a serious, serious problem."
 

High Levels of Opium and Heroin Detected in Very Young Afghan Children is a post from: Drug Addiction Treatment

Reuters reports that a "critical health problem" is growing in places like Russia, China, Malaysia, and Thailand, they said, where drug users are a neglected population in the fight against AIDS and the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) that causes it.

Injecting drug use is an increasingly important cause of HIV transmission in many countries around the world. Users can spread the virus in blood by sharing needles with an HIV-infected person, and pass it on by having unprotected sex.

Of the estimated 16 million injecting drug users worldwide, 3 million are thought to be HIV-positive, and drug users are thought to account for 10 percent of all those living with HIV.

In Russia, for example, around a million injecting drug users are living with HIV and some 65 percent of new HIV infections there are thought to come from injections.

"Although the number of countries with core HIV prevention services is growing, the level of coverage in injecting drug users is poor in many countries," said Bradley Mathers of the University of New South Wales, Australia, who led a study on prevention efforts published in The Lancet medical journal.

Infection prevention steps like providing needles, condoms and substitute drugs like methadone — collectively known as "harm reduction" — are seen by many experts as key to halting the spread of HIV and AIDS, but some governments are reluctant to provide them for fear of being seen to condone drug use.

Gerry Stimson, director of the International Harm Reduction Association, accused such states of "playing politics with people’s lives" and said millions were at risk as a result.

UNAIDS estimates that around 30 percent of HIV transmission outside sub-Saharan Africa is driven by unsafe injecting practices. Stimson also pointed to Russia as a particular problem, saying injecting drug use in the region was now driving the fastest-growing HIV/AIDS epidemic in the world.

Mathers and his team of researchers looked at the provision of services to prevent HIV spread injecting drug users.

They found global coverage is very poor, but also varies widely. Worldwide, only 8 percent of injectors have accessed needle and syringe programs in the past year, but that ranges from an estimated 100 percent in Ireland and the Czech Republic to under 3 percent in China, Malaysia, and Thailand.

"HIV prevention treatment and care services for injecting drug users are clinically effective, but to exert a population-level effect they need to be delivered to scale," they wrote.

The current level is "not sufficient to prevent, halt or turn around the HIV epidemic among this at-risk population."

Don Des Jarlais of the Beth Israel Medical Center in New York said the poor coverage suggested some authorities should work to bring their policies "in line with scientific evidence."

"Long-term sustained efforts to protect the health of individuals who use both licit and illicit drugs might require that policy makers acquire a basic scientific understanding of drug use and addiction," he wrote.

Failure to Help Drug Users Leads to Spread of HIV is a post from: Drug Addiction Treatment

Tom Balmforth of the Moscow News writes that more than 90 percent of the world’s heroin comes from Afghanistan, and the drug then floods into Russia across Central Asia’s borders. President Dmitry Medvedev has called the drug trade from Afghanistan “a threat to national security.”

With an estimated 2.5 million Russian addicts, heroin has created a “lost generation” here, Federal Drug Control Service chief Viktor Ivanov said last week. The UN findings prompted discussion of several new anti-narcotics bills in the Moscow City Duma and the Federation Council, but many remain skeptical that the bills will go through.

An estimated 30,000 Russians die from heroin overdoses each year. Given Russia’s demographic crisis, this has serious implications for the country’s economy, since the victims are mostly of working age.

A demographic report by the United Nations Development Programme earlier this month suggested that by 2025, Russia’s population will have dropped below 140 million, and could fall to as low as 128 million. Although the report cited alcohol abuse and a low birth rate as major factors, Russia’s HIV/AIDS epidemic “due to the high levels of drug addiction” was also cited as a contributing factor.

“The main point is that too many drug addicts are victimized in Russia. They don’t have the means to get treatment and rehabilitate themselves, because state programs and money are practically non-existent. So it’s very difficult for a person to give up,” said Sergei Polyatykin, head of the No to Alcohol and Drugs Programme Fund.

The Federation Council proposed that teenage addicts be legally required to follow anti-addiction courses until the age of 18 (up from 16). The rationale is that “doctors and teachers believe that ages 16 to 18 are the most dangerous for developing a dependency on harmful drugs,” Federation Council Senator Lyudmila Narusova told Kommersant.

But Polyatykin said, “Up until 18, it’s not about treatment, but rather about providing people with a social purpose for a sober way of life, skills, alternative behavioural stereotypes and the ability to live without drugs.”

Other anti-narcotics proposals submitted to the City Duma by the capital’s police force included making healthy lifestyle advertising at nightclubs mandatory, and introducing regular drug testing for nightclub staff. Increasing public awareness is clearly important, but testing is unfeasible. “Testing staff for drugs would simply be illegal,” anti-narcotics campaigner Lev Levinson told Kommersant.
Reducing heroin addiction, however, also requires reducing supply. Narcotics traffickers are able to take advantage of rampant border corruption. Ivanov recently highlighted the lack of effective border control as a major problem, but also blamed NATO forces for doing “next to nothing” to halt drug production.

The spike in heroin production in Afghanistan since the US-led invasion in 2001 has been a major source of tension between Moscow and Washington. While eradicating opium fields deprives Taliban forces of funding for their insurgency, it also drives local farmers toward the Taliban, since it deprives them of their main source of livelihood.

Washington said in August that it would be targeting Afghan drug lords, rather than poppy eradication. But it remains to be seen whether this will reduce the flow of heroin into Russia.

One in Three People Killed by Heroin are Russian is a post from: Drug Addiction Treatment

CNN reports that in a squalid ruin in Kabul, heroin addicts can get hits for less than $4. The government estimates that as many as 5 percent of the 25 million people in Afghanistan could be addicts.

Although some efforts are being made to tackle the problem, funding shortfalls have prompted the United Nations to warn that drug use will escalate, potentially creating an HIV/AIDS crisis as addicts move from smoking drugs to sharing needles.

The last United Nations survey of Afghanistan’s drug problem four years ago estimated the country’s addicts to number about 200,000. According to Afghan Counter Narcotics Minister Khodaidad, the figure is now far greater. "More than 1.2 million people in Afghanistan are addicts. It’s a very huge number and every year it increases," he told CNN.

Khodaidad says the Afghan government is largely powerless to control the production of opium while Taliban extremists, who now control and draw funding from drug crops, control cultivation areas despite major international military efforts to push them back.

"We did very little due to weakness of governors, due to insurgents, due to pressure of terrorism in the area," he added. "We don’t have sufficient law enforcement agencies—the police, the border security force, and other special forces to control this area—so it will take time."

Jean-Luc Lemahieu, head of the UN’s Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) in Kabul, says time is something Afghanistan does not have. As intravenous drug use takes hold, raising the prospect of needle sharing, he says HIV/AIDS will follow quickly.

"The little data we have at the moment are very alarming," he told CNN. "They tell us that we should not wait longer and if not, this country will be saddled with another burden it just cannot afford. I think it is already happening today. We have seen, now, a few HIV/AIDS cases. Hopefully we can contain the problem, although it is unlikely given the problems with the health structures."

Drug Addiction in Afghanistan Could Lead to AIDS Epidemic is a post from: Drug Addiction Treatment

"One friend would do it. They would pass it on. It would just get bigger and bigger. Now the monster is out of control," Piirainen said. "They always chose the drug over friendship and family. They didn’t care."

Heroin use in northern Nevada is climbing at an alarming rate, but the Regional Street Enforcement Team says the situation is even more concerning because more and more young people are turning to the drug.

"We used to see a heroin addict be a 30- or 40-year-old person who has been using for a couple of years, and they inject it or IV-use heroin. But today, a lot more young people are using it," said Sgt. Mac Venzon of the Street Enforcement Team. Venzon says they are seeing people ages 17 to 20 "stuck in the heroin loop that they just can’t get out of."

The Street Enforcement Team has been recovering more and more heroin from the streets over the past couple of years. In 2006, they seized 6.4 grams. It climbed to 59.1 grams and 195 grams in 2007 and 2008, respectively.

The amount of heroin recovered has skyrocketed so far in 2009. The Street Enforcement Team seized 513.9 grams of heroin in the first half of this year alone, which is on pace for 2009 to have more than a 400 percent increase from 2008.

Data also shows the number of arrests for heroin charges in Washoe County is rising. Arrests doubled from 19 in 2007 to 46 in 2008. 56 heroin arrests are in books through the first half of 2009.

The Street Enforcement Team believes there is a link between prescription drug abuse and heroin. Heroin and many painkillers are opiate-based drugs, so once a user becomes addicted to the prescription drug, the "turn to heroin is not that far away,” Venzon said.

Venzon says the street price of heroin can actually be cheaper than buying pills. A small balloon of heroin goes for about $10, according to Venzon.

Piirainen says the problem is spiraling out of control. "Don’t think you can try it once and not do it again. It’s not even worth it," he said.
 

Nevada’s Youth Turning to Heroin is a post from: Drug Addiction Treatment