Tag: the war on (some) drugs

Some Drug Warriors Just Won’t Concede Defeat

There’s a fine art to refusing to learn lessons that are right in front of your eyes. A recent newspaper column demonstrated mastery of that art, managing to simultaneously acknowledge the failures of America’s drug policy while calling for more of the same. The author acknowledged that mandatory minimums do no good and then suggested that the right course of action is to prosecute drug dealers harder. But harder drug law enforcement gets you harder drug problems.

“News coverage of a Mesa police officer losing consciousness in his patrol car from an overdose certainly highlights, if sensationally, the crisis that is opioids, in particular fentanyl,” wrote Abe Kwok, editorial page planner for the Arizona Republic. “As critics such as the libertarian think tank Cato Institute note, harsh mandatory sentencing laws do nothing to blunt narcotic drugs’ effects.”

He added that “the institute pointed to a 1,500% spike in methamphetamine deaths in the United States between 2006 and 2021, following voter-approved Proposition 301 in Arizona that imposed mandatory minimum prison sentences for possessing, transferring, selling, distributing or manufacturing meth.”

Kwok also acknowledged that other restrictive policies, especially limitations on opioid prescriptions “did little to slow deaths from overdoses but created their own set of problems, such as blocking access to relief for chronic pain sufferers.” This is an important point championed by the late Siobhan Reynolds and the Pain Relief Network over a decade ago and still a matter of serious concern for many Americans. Last year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention finally acknowledged that opioid guidelines are being interpreted inflexibly. The CDC emphasized that “some policies purportedly drawn from the 2016 CDC Opioid Prescribing Guideline have been notably inconsistent with it and have gone well beyond its clinical recommendations” resulting in “untreated and undertreated pain.”

So far, so good for Kwok. Except, he refuses to take these arguments to their logical conclusion.

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Fleeing Bronx drug suspect dies when cop knocks him off scooter with cooler; sergeant suspended by NYPD

A scooter-riding suspect fleeing a Bronx buy-and-bust drug sting was killed when an NYPD sergeant smacked him with a cooler grabbed from a local family’s outing, sending the victim tumbling to his death, an eyewitness and police sources said Thursday.

NYPD Sgt. Erik Duran, an NYPD Bronx narcotics veteran who joined the force in 2010, was suspended without pay just hours after the lethal encounter, police said.

An eyewitness, a 25-year local resident, was with relatives when the clash began on Aqueduct Ave. near W. 190th St. about 5:30 p.m. Wednesday in Kingsbridge Heights.

The 30-year-old suspect, Eric Duprey, “was on the bike, moving north when the cops started chasing him,” said the 42-year-old witness, speaking on the condition of anonymity. “Then he took a U-turn and was riding on the sidewalk… The cop then took my cooler, which was filled with soda cans, water bottles, and hit him.”

The victim’s wife Orlyanis Velez said police were providing her with no details of the deadly encounter.

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Former Trump Drug Czar Says Top Federal Officials Stopped FDA From Scheduling Kratom Amid Concern About Agency’s ‘Bias’

As the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) under the Trump administration prepared to propose federal restrictions on kratom, a number of top officials intervened, criticizing the agency’s “bias” and stopping it “on the spot” from moving ahead with scheduling, a former White House drug czar said in a new interview.

“They did not give—did not have—the entire facts. They didn’t have the science,” said Jim Carroll, who served as director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, or drug czar, under President Donald Trump from 2018 to 2021. “FDA did not paint the entire picture. Maybe they didn’t have the entire picture, but everyone else did.”

Carroll, who now works as a private lawyer and consultant, made the comments during a discussion with Mac Haddow, senior fellow at the American Kratom Association (AKA), during the National Conference of State Legislatures summit in Indianapolis earlier this month.

The former White House official said that as the Trump administration was considering whether to schedule kratom under the Controlled Substances Act, around 2018, FDA gave a presentation to his office that misstated the drug’s risk profile and potential benefits.

The agency was “talking about kratom being an opioid. We know that’s wrong, it’s flat-out wrong,” Carroll said. “They said that it’s highly addictive. Johns Hopkins [and] other medical, independent researchers have said it’s no more addictive than a cup of coffee in the morning, which I had before this interview.”

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U.S. Citizens Were 89% of Convicted Fentanyl Traffickers in 2022

Fentanyl overdoses tragically caused tens of thousands of preventable deaths last year. Many politicians who want to end U.S. asylum law claim that immigrants crossing the border illegally are responsible. An NPR‐​Ipsos poll found that 39 percent of Americans and 60 percent of Republicans believe, “Most of the fentanyl entering the U.S. is smuggled in by unauthorized migrants crossing the border illegally.” A more accurate summary is that fentanyl is overwhelmingly smuggled by U.S. citizens, almost entirely for U.S. citizen consumers.

Here are the facts:

  • Fentanyl smuggling is ultimately funded by U.S. consumers who pay for illicit opioids: nearly 99 percent of whom are U.S. citizens.
  • In 2022, U.S. citizens were 89 percent of convicted fentanyl drug traffickers—12 times greater than convictions of illegal immigrants for the same offense.
  • In 2023, 93 percent of fentanyl seizures occurred at legal crossing points or interior vehicle checkpoints, not on illegal migration routes, so U.S. citizens (who are subject to less scrutiny) when crossing legally are the best smugglers.
  • The location of smuggling makes sense because hard drugs at ports of entry are at least 96 percent less likely to be stopped than people crossing illegally between them.
  • At most, just 0.009 percent of the people arrested by Border Patrol for crossing illegally possessed any fentanyl whatsoever.
  • Each individual busted for fentanyl by Border Patrol possessed, on average, half as much fentanyl as each person busted at ports of entry in 2023 (10 versus 20 pounds).
  • The government exacerbated the problem by banning most legal cross‐​border traffic in 2020 and 2021, accelerating a switch to fentanyl (the easiest‐​to‐​conceal drug).
  • During the travel restrictions, fentanyl seizures at ports quadrupled from fiscal year 2019 to 2021. Fentanyl went from a third of combined heroin and fentanyl seizures to over 90 percent.
  • Annual deaths from fentanyl nearly doubled from 2019 to 2021 after the government banned most travel (and asylum).

It is monstrous that tens of thousands of people are dying unnecessarily every year from fentanyl. But banning asylum and limiting travel backfired. Reducing deaths requires figuring out the cause, not jumping to blame a group that is not responsible. Instead of attacking immigrants, policymakers should focus on effective solutions that help people at risk of a fentanyl overdose.

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EXPLORING SEX AND PSYCHEDELICS

The connection between sex and psychedelics dates back to the sexual liberation movement throughout the 1960s and 70s. Psychedelics, in particular LSD, were associated with loosened sexual inhibitions and the resolution of past sexual trauma. Inspired by Timothy Leary’s infamous calls to ‘turn up, tune in, drop out’, psychedelics appeared as a tool for pleasure, love and self-expression. 

For sex guru Annie Sprinkle, using psychedelics through the 60s, 70s and 80s had profound positive impacts on her sex life. From opening doors to alternative realities, to increasing connectedness and sexual satisfaction between partners, Annie calls them her ‘greatest sexual educators’. 

She notes that the connection between sex and psychedelics is much deeper than arousal. Through each experience the user gains new information, allowing them to see themselves from a new perspective. This, in turn, can inform the individual’s sexual life.

Even though psychedelics remain illegal across much of the world, anecdotal evidence suggests that using psychedelics to enhance sexual experiences is still just as popular as it once was. However, as sex on drugs has inevitably been labelled a high-risk activity , there is a clear lack of hard-line statistics to back up such an assumption. 

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How Cartels Infiltrate The Border Patrol

Goat Canyon is a dry valley of crystalline rocks in the east of San Diego county named after the desert bighorns that roam. It was the perfect spot, Border Patrol agent Noe Lopez told his contact, to move dope through. “Honestly, the thing is that there aren’t—there aren’t any cameras,” Lopez said. “Nothing, nothing, nothing.”

Lopez went himself to the store and purchased three backpacks for the smugglers to use. On the first night, he collected one at the border fence with a glint of crystal meth inside. He stashed it in his Border Patrol truck, drove to base, switched it to his private car and then handed it to his connect in a parking lot in exchange for three grand in cash.

The second night he grabbed a bag with seven kilo bricks with the markings of cocaine. His source gave him $7,000 but said the smugglers were uneasy about going over the fence. Lopez said there was nothing to worry about. “If I’m saying, ‘cross now,’ that means that I am taking the responsibility for them to cross.”

But Lopez never made it to the third drop. He was arrested and charged with attempted cocaine and meth trafficking. The source, he discovered, was a DEA informant who had him on tape and the drugs were fake. He plead guilty and got seventy months in prison in 2017.

It was no freak case. In 2023, a judge sentenced agent Oberlin Cortez Peña for waving cars of cocaine through a checkpoint north of McAllen, Texas. In 2014, customs agent Lorne “Hammer” Jones got seven years for letting trucks of dope through San Ysidro. And that’s the tip of the iceberg.

Since the Department of Homeland Security was created in 2002, incorporating Customs and Border Protection, well over a hundred agents and officers have been convicted of trafficking dope or running undocumented migrants. This usually means working with cartels and their affiliates who control drug and human smuggling over the border.

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How the FDA approved an antipsychotic that failed to show a meaningful benefit but raised the risk of death

In trials, brexpiprazole failed to provide a clinically meaningful benefit and it increased mortality, but the FDA fast tracked its approval and the sponsor predicts $1bn in annual sales. Robert Whitaker investigates the first licensed antipsychotic for treating agitation in elderly patients with dementia

For years, health officials have tried to rein in the prescribing of atypical antipsychotics to elderly patients with dementia. The practice has been entirely “off label” yet widespread. The US Food and Drug Administration reports that around 60% of patients with Alzheimer’s dementia in residential care have received an off-label prescription for an antipsychotic, benzodiazepine, antidepressant, or anti-epileptic drug. After a 2005 FDA warning that cited a 60-70% increased risk of death associated with antipsychotic drug use, the US Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services established the National Partnership to Improve Dementia Care in Nursing Homes, a public-private collaboration that sought to “reduce the use of antipsychotics” and “enhance the use of non-pharmacological approaches.”1

But a May 2023 FDA approval of the antipsychotic brexpiprazole for agitation in patients with Alzheimer’s dementia may reverse all of this. At a cost of around $1400 (£1102; €1280) a month, the manufacturers Otsuka and Lundbeck, which jointly brought the “first in class” approval to market, are forecasting an additional $1bn in annual sales of Rexulti.2

Serious questions remain, however, about the harm-benefit balance of Otsuka and Lundbeck’s drug. The drug carries a “boxed warning”—the FDA’s most serious type of warning, informing prescribers of increased mortality. And among four efficacy evaluations across the three prelicensure clinical trials, the highest efficacy observed was a 5.3 point improvement over placebo on a 174 point scale. In the two trials that assessed quality of life, no benefit for either the patient or the caregiver was demonstrated.

“The small benefits do not outweigh serious safety concerns,” said Nina Zeldes, health researcher at the consumer advocacy organisation Public Citizen, addressing the FDA’s advisory committee at its 14 April meeting before the approval.3 “Like other antipsychotics, this is a drug that can kill patients without providing a meaningful benefit.”4

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A Netflix Drama Reinforces Pernicious Misconceptions About Pain Treatment

Former New York Times reporter Barry Meier, whose book about OxyContin is the main basis for the Netflix drama Painkiller, acknowledges that the drug is “valuable for treating severe pain caused by cancer or chronic health issues.” The problem, he says, was that OxyContin’s manufacturer, Purdue Pharma, “could only make billions from it by lying, by saying it was good for everyday, common pain.”

Netflix’s six-part miniseries highlights that second point, vividly portraying Purdue Pharma’s reckless marketing of OxyContin. But it dismisses the caveat: that there are legitimate medical uses for this drug and other prescription opioids, which can make life bearable for patients who otherwise would suffer from excruciating pain.

Like the 2022 Hulu drama Dopesick, Painkiller embraces an indiscriminate aversion to opioids. The same attitude has inspired ham-handed restrictions on pain medication, which have helped drive drug-related deaths to record levels while leaving millions of patients to suffer needlessly.

Although Meier’s take on opioids is more nuanced than the one presented by this adaptation of his book, he shares with the screenwriters a desire to pin a complex, long-running social problem on a single villain. That much is clear from the subtitle of his book: “An Empire of Deceit and the Origin of America’s Opioid Epidemic.”

As Meier’s former employer frequently puts it, OxyContin is “widely blamed” for “igniting the opioid crisis.” But is it rightly blamed?

OxyContin, which was introduced in 1996, is an extended-release version of oxycodone, a semisynthetic opioid that had long been available in products such as Percocet and Percodan. OxyContin contained a larger dose of oxycodone, which was supposed to be gradually released over a 12-hour period, such that a patient could obtain steady pain relief by taking two pills a day.

That safeguard, according to labeling approved by the Food and Drug Administration, was “believed” to reduce the drug’s abuse potential. As it turned out, the original design could be readily defeated by crushing the tablets and snorting the powder.

According to federal survey data, however, nonmedical use of prescription pain relievers rose for 11 consecutive years before OxyContin was introduced. And regardless of how appealing it may have been to drug users, OxyContin never accounted for a very large share of the opioid analgesic market.

During litigation, Purdue presented data indicating that OxyContin accounted for just 3.3 percent of pain pills sold in the United States from 2006 through 2012. After adjusting for potency, ProPublica calculated that the product’s “real” market share was more like 16 percent.

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Did a dose of LSD spawn some of cinema’s greatest films?

Federico Fellini, one of the greatest filmmakers of the 20th century, attributes much of his success to a single dose of LSD he took in the summer of 1964 ​“during a time of creative crisis”. According to a recent study looking into how this experience influenced his work, the dose was administered by Dr Emilio Servadio, one of the most prominent Italian psychoanalysts of the time. It induced a trip so intense that the filmmaker later needed sedative medication to put it to an end.

Fellini took part in the psychotherapy session directly after he had finished working on his masterpiece 8 ½, and before he started writing his next film Giulietta degli Spiriti. The talking therapy that occurred after the LSD dose was recorded with a magnetophone. The tapes have never been found by researchers, but in an interview with the BBC a year later, Fellini explained how the experience stimulated his creativity by altering his perception of colour and allowing him to perceive colours in an entirely different light.

“The doctor gave me an explanation and I agree with him,” he told a reporter in 1965. ​“He said that an artist lives always in the imagination so the barrier between sensorial reality and his imagination is very vague… I saw colours not like they normally are – we see colours in the objects, you know; we see objects that are coloured. I saw colours detached from the objects. I had for the first time the feeling of the presence of the colours in a detached way.” Fellini’s work after the acid trip was later praised for having ​“supernaturally brilliant colours”.

Fellini’s perception of time was also altered during his trip, which was was reflected in his work post-LSD trip – the authors of the study said his films started to incorporate plots involving ​“puzzling and disorienting flashbacks”. The filmmaker was also said to have had epiphanies during the trip involving space and perception of self, both of which were apparent in his subsequent work. ​“The world depicted in his post-LSD movies includes major changes in the perception of space, time and others,” the study concluded.

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World Anti-Doping Agency Experts Say Marijuana Use Violates The ‘Spirit Of Sport’ And Makes Athletes Unfit Role Models

Members of a World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) panel say that marijuana use by athletes violates the “spirit of sport,” making them unfit role models whose potential impairment could put others at risk.

In an editorial published in the journal Addiction, several members of WADA’s Prohibited List Expert Advisory Group summarized the reasons that the body decided to continue prohibiting cannabis use by athletes in competitions last year amid growing calls to end the policy.

Perspectives were “mixed” over whether marijuana “enhances or has the potential to enhance sport performance,” they wrote. And the group also acknowledged that athletes have reported that cannabis benefits them by “facilitating recovery and reducing pain.”

But in the end, they said that the use of marijuana in competitions violates ethical standards, justifying the ban.

Specifically, the editorial says that cannabis consumption runs counter to the “spirit of sport,” which “encompasses a number of universal values of sport, and four aspects that were particularly relevant to the discussion on cannabis remaining in the list.”

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