\”As Health Minister, I am standing side by side with medical professionals and researchers with a clear message — There are serious health risks for youth associated with marijuana. It is not safe. It should not be promoted or endorsed. Together, with our partners we will work to make sure youth and parents have the right information about the risks associated with smoking and using marijuana.\”
Rona Ambrose
Minister of Health
\”Research has shown the negative impact of marijuana on developing minds. As a child psychiatrist, I have seen firsthand the tragic consequences on young Canadians. We need to do more, and the Canadian Medical Association encourages a public health approach that includes a nationwide marijuana cessation campaign to ensure our youth are aware of the real risks and harms associated with marijuana usage.\”
Dr. Gail Beck
Member, Canadian Medical Association Board of Directors
\”The Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse was pleased to participate in today\’s roundtable with Minister Ambrose and some of Canada\’s leading scientists and researchers to discuss the health risks that marijuana poses for young people. We will continue to work with Health Canada and other partners, and through our Health Promotion and Drug Prevention Strategy for Canada\’s Youth, to provide factual, coordinated and consistent information to help prevent marijuana use among Canadian youth.\”
Michel Perron
CEO of the Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse
For complete Media Release go to… http://news.gc.ca/web/article-en.do?mthd=index&crtr.page=1&nid=844329
\”The new drug retailers are known businesses. They sell a dangerous, addictive product, and they need a substantial number of addicted users as their customer base to generate the profits they seek. In other words, addiction is not a byproduct, it is a business plan.\”
Read this important article on the unfolding issues! http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/first-legalization-then-lawsuits_792870.html
The one dimensional rant from the pro-drug lobby \’policy playbook\’ continues to pop up and continues to ignore the vast majority of non-drug users! Of course, that makes sense when getting \’high\’ is the first, second and third priority of the recalcitrant hedonist or hapless addict!
The Recovery potential is repeatedly sabotaged by entrenched Harm Reduction ideologies and the often \’care-less\’ attitude of career protecting bureaucrats and those \’harm reduction\’ practitioners who care about maintaining job security by insisting the \’disease\’ of drug use is intractable, and all on the NON-Drug users tax payer dollar!
Reform Yes, Revolution NO! http://www.centreforsocialjustice.org.uk/blog/reform-yes-revolution-no
NO QUICK FIX http://www.centreforsocialjustice.org.uk/publications/no-quick-fix-exposing-the-depth-of-britain%E2%80%99s-drug-and-alcohol-problem
This article; \’Medication-Assisted Therapies – Tackling the Opioid-Overdose Epidemic\’ that appeared recently in the New England Journal of Medicine makes some serious omissions in its promotion http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp1402780?query=TOC
The article espouses the value of underutilized OST’s in the USA, and the need to increase use of pharmacotherapies (in some instances over) Talking Therapies and Therapeutic communities.
What, to us, is glaring in its omission is that the authors of the piece seem to willfully avoid ‘sunset clauses’ on such therapies and site lower death rates as key agenda. Whilst that is noble it is not good health practice, let alone good drug policy. If the ‘therapy’ does not facilitate the lessening to cessation of drug use, then it is inadvertently espousing the life-long enabling of the dangerous use of psychotropic toxins; toxins that promote other mental and physical health diminishing issues, and still with no guarantee of ‘death free’ use.
The concerns, as we are all aware, is that ‘drug policy’ is now simply a ‘health policy’ and has next to nothing to do with drug use cessation, that’s why many Rehab providers are cynical of OST’s that are unleashed, unsupervised and with no ‘end date’ prescribed.
We have no problem with pharmacotherapies being engaged for the expressed, planned and determined process of ceasing drug use in a prescribed time period. We are (as should all caring health advocates/providers) very concerned about carte blanche approach to O.S.T/M.A.T. dispensing at taxpayers/healthcare providers expense with no recourse for change/rehabilitation in the drug user.
Another concern is the growing use of ‘medical mantras’ (i.e. ‘drug dependence generally is a NCD (Non-Communicable Disease) that can only be managed’) that continue to dis-empower people and enable ‘victim-hood’ to dependence. These do not only do a great disservice to the hapless drug user, but also make the non-drug using populous ‘responsible’ for, not \’user\’ recovery, but incredulously, their ongoing drug and often, poly-drug use. This is untenable on a number of levels and serious review of any policy that enables unabated drug use is imperative.
Dalgarno Institute.
Statement submitted by IOGT International to the United Nations Commission on Narcotic Drugs Fifty-seventh session, Plenary, Eight meeting, Vienna 18 March 2014
Chairman, Distinguished Delegates, Ladies and gentlemen,This week, as the United Nation’s Fifty-seventh session of the Commission on Narcotic Drugs taking place in Vienna, a new drug policy platform, Drug Policy Futures, today formally has been launched.Drug Policy Futures is a new coalition of organizations including IOGT International, representing over 35 organisations from 21 countries and 5 continents. In addition, we have regional and global partners that represent a large number of organisations across the world.
Drug use is a risk factor for a wide range of negative outcomes including mental and other illnesses, school dropout and academic failure, road accidents, unemployment, low life-satisfaction and relationship problems. Drug use and other social and health problems are intertwined so that drug use is associated with and commonly exacerbates other problems.The first task of a public health-oriented drug policy is to prevent drug-related problems from occurring. Environmental strategies that discourage drug use and reduce the availability of illegal drugs are a central element of prevention. Community-based strategies that promote drug-free environments and supportive social norms are shown to reduce the use of both legal and illegal substances. Environmental strategies should be supplemented by education and evidence-based prevention as well as more targeted interventions that reach high-risk groups and problem drug users.Drug use is particularly harmful to youth. Drug use usually begins in adolescence, making youth the major target for prevention. Drug related harm affects all regions of the world.Drug use does not only affect the drug user. Often, family and friends are the first to experience the problems caused by drug use. In addition drug use has serious consequences for society as a whole, e.g. in the workplace, schools, on the roads, in the criminal justice system and in the health and social services.There is a need for a comprehensive approach to drug-related harm, with a strong focus on prevention and early intervention, as well as control measures, health services, treatment and rehabilitation for users.Drug problems are particularly intractable in the nexus of mental health problems, crime, deprivation and social exclusion. Problem drug users often need comprehensive services including health, housing, education and work. The essential point here is that drug addiction is not only a health problem nor only a crime problem.IOGT International believe that recovery is the best way for individuals who have developed drug-related problems to minimize their risk of further consequences, to enable them to function effectively in society, to take part in education, work or other activities, to mend the relationships with their families and to empower them to take control of their own lives.Alternative sanctions that require enforced abstinence, but also reduce the use of imprisonment for drug-related offenses should be developed, e.g. Drug Treatment Courts. Instead of being an obstacle to recovery, the criminal justice system should become a powerful engine of recovery. Alternative sanctions should empower people to become drug-free, crime-free and integrated members of society.To promote public health and public safety it is essential that governments adhere to the three main drug control treaties of 1961, 1971, and 1988, as well as the Convention of the Rights of the Child. We believe that the UN drug treaties provide the best framework for reducing non-medical drug use and its many negative consequences.
IOGT International urges all member states to recognize that these treaties create a solid foundation on which to build future drug policy innovations. Yes, we need alternatives, but we don’t need to create a public health and safety disaster through legalization. Indeed, we can do much, much better.
Sven-Olov Carlsson – International President
http://www.iogt.org/presidentupdate/329/iogt-statement-at-cnd-2014/
Some Excerpts from Chapter One: Economic Consequences of Drug Use
Relationship with crime
14. A generation of research has defined three major links between drugs and crime. The first drugs/crime nexus relates to the violence that can be associated with the use of drugs themselves: psychopharmacological crime.
15. Crime committed under the influence of drugs is a major problem worldwide. For example, in a study in Dominica, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, as many as 55 per cent of convicted offenders reported that they were under the influence of drugs at the time of the offence, with
19 per cent of the same set of offenders saying that they would still have committed the crime even if they had not been under the influence of drugs.
16. The second drugs/crime link is economic- compulsive crime. This is the result of drug users engaging in crime to support their drug consumption and addiction. In the United States, for example, 17 per cent of state prisoners and 18 per cent of federal inmates said they had committed the offence for which they were currently serving a sentence to obtain money for drugs. In the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, it is estimated economic-compulsive crime costs approximately $20 billion a year, the vast majority of those costs resulting from burglary, fraud and robbery.
17. The third link is systemic crime: the violence that occurs, for example, as a result of disputes over “drug turf ” or ‚fighting among users and sellers over deals gone awry. This has been seen, starkly, in Latin America over the past 10 years, especially in countries such as Guatemala and Mexico, but it is also seen in the streets of every continent throughout the world.
Costs from labour non-participation (lost productivity)
21. Productivity losses are calculated as work that would be reasonably expected to have been done if not for drug use (a loss of potential income and output and therefore GDP) as a result of a reduction in the supply or effectiveness of the workforce. Lost productivity in the United States as a result of labour non-participation is significant: $120 billion (or 0.9 per cent of GDP) in 2011, amounting to 62 per cent of all drug-related costs. Similar studies in Australia and Canada identified losses of 0.3 per cent of GDP and 0.4 per cent of GDP, respectively. In those two countries, the cost of lost productivity was estimated to be 8 and 3 times higher, respectively, than health-related costs due to morbidity, ambulatory care, physician visits and other related consequences.
For complete report go to http://www.incb.org/incb/en/news/AR2013/annual_report_2013.html
Cannabis can kill without the influence of other drugs
- 15:31 20 February 2014 by Helen Thomson
The first full post-mortems of people who died after smoking cannabis suggest that the drug can kill unaided.
Cannabis has been known to cause death when laced with other substances, by triggering a heart condition or by causing respiratory cancers. But whether it can be directly lethal has remained unclear. A 2011 report from the UK Department of Health says no cases of fatal overdose have been associated with cannabis.
Read Full story here… http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn25092-cannabis-can-kill-without-the-influence-of-other-drugs.html#.Uw7BjPmSya_
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