![\"DRUGS](\"http://www.dontdecriminalize.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Libro-Drogas-Derechos-Humanos-tapa.jpg\" "\\"Libro")
Brazilian Association of Writers and Journalists, speaking about our new book: Drugs and Human Rights. The book, with the encouragement and support of the Stockholm Carnegie Institute, the Mariten Institute and BRAHA, was co-edited by me and my Argentinian colleague from Cordoba, Luis Viale, a specialist drug prevention with youth at risk.
The other co-authors, besides the two already mentioned, are very well known people in their specific fields such as Manuel Pinto Coelho from Portugal (our colleague at DWI and the WFAD), Padre Pepe (a renown Catholic priest who works in the slums of Argentina with youth in danger), the daring and effective Rio de Janeiro State Security Secretary, the Head of the DARE Program in México, a specialist in Human Rights, Saúl Takahashi , Miguel Angel Dahbar, a member of the Córdoba Science Academy who directed for many years an excellent Institute at the University on Drug Prevention of addictions, etc.
The book (already the fifth of our informal collection), edited in Spanish is intended (as the others too) for the regular citizen, in simple language, and short chapters, shows some of the absurd inconsistencies there are many times, when dealing with this subject, between what is said and what happens in practice.
Mina Seinfeld de Carakushansky
www.braha.com.br
It\’s an amazing story.
Since 2003, folks in Canada\’s most drug-infested neighbourhood have been buying heroin, cocaine and crystal meth on the street, strolling into InSite and shooting-up under the watchful eye of government nurses. All in the name of harm reduction, a philosophy of addiction treatment through enablement.
How\’d they do it?
For rest of story go to http://drugpreventionnetworkofcanada.blogspot.ca/
Students from Comet Bay College, Secret Harbour, have been busy film making and marketing to educate other young people about the consequences of using illegal drugs. The new innovative project called Students Advising Youth (S.A.Y) was recently launched by the Peel Crime prevention and diversity unit in conjunction with established partners, Murdoch University, local drug action groups inc. (LDAG) and School Drug Education & Road Aware (SDERA).
Film making, guerrilla marketing and social media are all weapons of choice that Peel Youth are deploying in the quest to educate other young people in the State about the dangers and consequences of using illegal or synthetic drugs, as part of the new innovative Students Advising Youth (S.A.Y) project recently launched by the Peel crime prevention and diversity unit and partners.
![\"Students](\"http://www.police.wa.gov.au/Portals/11/Images/SAY.jpg\")
The S.A.Y. project is curriculum based with a strong emphasis on research, marketing and communication by the participants. All valuable skills the students will call upon during their future career paths. As part of the project students have to research their anti-drug topic, which is an anti-drug theme and then compile at short TV style advert highlighting why illegal and synthetic drugs have no place in our community. The student’s films are then uploaded onto YouTube and communicated through out social media. The participants and partner agencies play an active part in marketing their films to youth everywhere. The top 10 films with the most YouTube ‘hits’ over a predetermined period then make it to the grand final. All finalists will be professionally judged by an expert in the media industry. Several winners will then get the chance to win a work experience placement in the media sector.
Senior Constable Tam McKeown who created the S.A.Y. project said “Young people are often reluctant to take onboard the advice delivered to them by adults, whether it is about the use of illegal drugs, road safety or any other community safety topic. Many young people perceive this type of educational medium to be ‘preaching’ in nature. The S.A.Y. project aims to harness the youth enthusiasm and creativity to empower them to be the educators of other youth. He also said “All participating students gained a strong anti-drug education during the research component of the project. The students will actively promote and market their anti-drug films through main stream media such as doing radio interviews etc, as well as utilising social media where they and their fellow youth do most of their social networking. We have high hopes that this project will benchmark itself and hopefully be open to all high schools students to participate in as a statewide project in the near future”.
See Short Films HERE http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PEHywrMyox0&list=PLKM6pfyI0drWn_u8HRFJFjS-X8hfu_VAL
Children are always the casualty of ever increasing liberal approaches to drugs.
UNODC has developed International Guidelines for Prevention that provide guidance matching current research of effectiveness across different age groups and in different sectors you can access it at the UNODC website or at this link – http://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/prevention/prevention-standards.html
Trajecotory of Adolescent cannabis use on addiction vulneratility
Click here for article
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0028390813003456
Big marijuana grows moving into foothills, bringing environmental damage by HEATHER HACKING-Staff Writer POSTED: 08/25/2013 09:17:32 PM PDT
While one pot garden isn\’t a problem, having many grows in one area adds up, wildlife watchers said.
The public has heard horror stories from the worst scenarios – where people hike into the back woods, haul backpacks filled with chemicals, then hope there isn\’t a raid before harvest. Often, Mexican nationals are arrested.
Yet, the trend has been for marijuana growers to move into better growing areas, particularly elevations of 500-1,500 feet, closer to roads and communities. Some might even look like legal grows, and have Proposition 215 signs posted, but too many plants.
Brad Henderson, an environmental scientist with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, has studied Google Earth satellite images to spot marijuana grows.
\”If you look at aerial photographs and see 50 grows in a watershed,\” it\’s an environmental problem, Henderson said.
Fifty grows isn\’t an exaggeration, he noted
Landowners duped, more growers migrate
In areas where marijuana growing looks hospitable, people have been known to come in and lease or pay a low down payment for purchase of a property, then make no other payments, said Clint Snyder, assistant executive officer of the Central Valley Regional Water Quality board.
By the time the landowner checks in, the pot has been grown and the people have left a mess behind.
This becomes a cleanup nightmare for the property owner….
General mess
Snyder, of the state Regional Water Quality board, said the very remote grows usually result in a pile of trash left behind – car batteries, fecal matter, leftover chemicals.
To get to these areas and do cleanup is more than agencies can afford. Agencies already know many areas that haven\’t been cleaned up. But even more grow sites are unknown, and canisters of chemicals are slowly degrading.
\”I\’m not trying to overstate this, but we don\’t have a clue\” how much damage is being caused…We will be paying for these grows for years to come.\” Little said.
Full Article at http://www.orovillemr.com/news/ci_23940712/big-marijuana-grows-moving-into-foothills-bringing-environmental
Reach Heather Hacking at 896-7758, [email protected], or on Twitter @HeatherHacking.
Marijuana legalization wrong way to end war on drugs
By Robert L. DuPont 2 p.m. Sept. 4, 2013
The Department of Justice recently announced that it will not uphold federal drug laws in the face of marijuana legalization in Washington state and Colorado, giving these states the green light to move forward with their regulatory plans for marijuana. The United States is now the only country in the world to legalize the commercial production, sale and use of marijuana.
Legalization promises an end to the “war on drugs,” to stop the violence on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border, empty prisons and,through taxation and regulation, yield much-needed government revenue. But trafficking is two-way. Drugs flow into the United States to feed American drug demand, while guns flow out. Why is no one suggesting that because of Mexican demand for guns that country must legalize the sale of guns from the United States? Simple: a free flow of weapons would be too dangerous – just as would a free flow of drugs. Before jumping on the legalization bandwagon, serious consideration must be given to the resulting social costs.
Thanks to a well-funded and impressively executed, decades-long campaign to normalize marijuana use, much of the public believes that marijuana use is harmless. A national poll reports that more than 50 percent of respondents support marijuana legalization. What the public does not hear – or believe – is the truth shown by a growing body of scientific evidence about the negative effects of marijuana use.
The human brain is exquisitely vulnerable to drugs, including marijuana. Drugs hijack the brain’s reward system, producing a more powerful reward than any natural behavior. Nine percent of all marijuana users become addicted; this figure increases to 16 percent when use begins in the teen years. There is a bidirectional relationship between substance use, including marijuana, and academic failure and dropout from both high school and college. Heavy marijuana use in the teenage years is associated with an eight-point loss in IQ. The highest rates of marijuana use are among young people, the most vulnerable to its negative effects. Two-thirds of teens who have used marijuana and more than three-quarters of teenage heavy marijuana users said that marijuana legalization would make them more likely to use it.
It is clear that legalization increases drug use. In 2011, 52 percent of Americans ages 12 and older used alcohol in the last 30 days. The equivalent figure for tobacco is 27 percent. For all illegal drugs combined the figure is just 9 percent (for marijuana it is 7 percent). Drug legalization will push the use of currently illegal drugs into the usage patterns of the two legal drugs. What sort of country will we have then?
Colorado and Washington are now serving as test cases for marijuana legalization. Legalization will extend the damage done by the proliferation of “medical” marijuana that is now available in Colorado, Washington and 18 other states and the District of Columbia. Rates of marijuana use by both youth and adults have increased. Colorado has seen widespread diversion of medical marijuana among adolescents in drug-abuse treatment as well as increases in pediatric emergency-department visits for marijuana. National trend data shows that from 2006 to 2011, overall traffic fatalities have decreased, but marijuana-related fatalities in Colorado have increased each year. These changes are but the tip of the iceberg. The crisis caused by marijuana legalization will be hastened by the certain entry of big business into marijuana production and sale to create powerful economic interests to reinforce current political interests, a pattern that mirrors the current status of alcohol and tobacco.
Given the federal government’s response to legalization, it is nearly certain that other states will legalize marijuana. But the end of this drug-policy story is not the legalization of marijuana across the United States. It is the legalization of all drugs of abuse – the end-goal of the pro-drug lobby that is working hard to legalize marijuana today. Every argument used in support of marijuana legalization is used to support the legalization of the other drugs.
The solution to the modern drug epidemic is not to surrender by legalizing marijuana or other drugs. These policies increase drug use,addiction and the related social costs. To protect the health, welfare and economic well-being of the entire nation, the goal of drug policy must be to find effective and affordable ways to reduce drug use that are compatible with modern values and laws. Reducing the demand for illegal drugs will improve public health and safety and reduce drug trafficking and the related violence.
DuPont, M.D., is president, Institute for Behavior and Health, and former director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse.© Copyright 2013 The San Diego Union-Tribune, LLC. An MLIM LLC Company. All rights reserved.