Greetings,
Below you will find resources, events, and articles related to substance use, addiction, drug policy and programming. In addition to Events and New Resources, 13 diverse articles are included at the bottom of this email.
Just Say Know is presented for information only and does not necessarily reflect the views of the Waterloo Region Crime Prevention Council or its community partners. Just Say Know is produced occasionally as time permits
If you have any questions, comments or contributions, please feel free to pass them along.
Enjoy!
Emily and Michael
Waterloo Region Crime Prevention Council
Smart on Crime means…? What do you think?
We're all bombarded by messages about, well... everything, frankly. Do we ever stop to think what these messages are telling us or what they mean? Do we ever get to develop our own messages?
The Waterloo Region Crime Prevention Council thinks you have something to say about what it takes to be Smart on Crime. We're developing our work plan for the next four years and it's going to be SMART. We need your participation!
In 7 words or less… complete the following sentence: "Smart on Crime means……"
Take a creative break in your day to create a "Smart on Crime" message. Click here to make your statement:
http://www.preventingcrime.ca/main.cfm?id=03B97F14-C978-7599-D21B6E788907803A
DID YOU KNOW ?
- The Mexican government’s three-year war on drug cartels has cost nearly
24, 000 Mexican lives. Compare this to 5, 462 total fatalities since 2001from the Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom combined (The Washington Post, May, 2010)
Over 40 years, U.S. taxpayers spent more than:
· $20 billion to fight the drug gangs in their home countries.
· $33 billion in marketing “Just Say No” style messages to America’s youth and other prevention programs. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says drug overdoses have “risen steadily” since the early 1970s to more than 20,000 last year.
· $49 billion for law enforcement along America’s borders to cut off the flow of illegal drugs. This year, 25 million Americans will snort, swallow, inject and smoke illicit drugs, about 10 million more than in 1970, with the bulk of those drugs imported from Mexico.
· $121 billion to arrest more than 37 million non-violent drug offenders.
· $450 billion to lock those people up in federal prisons alone. Last year, half of all federal prisoners in the U.S. were serving sentences for drug offences.
(Martha Mendoza, AP Impact: US drug war has met none of its goals, Associated Press, May 13, 2010)
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iLZNYd6C9SGpa2oeiZIqT-HKVrCQD9FMCM103
- The Costs of Substance Abuse In Canada 2002 estimated the national cost of substance use to be, conservatively, $39.8 billion over a one year period, or $1,267 for every Canadian.
· Tobacco accounts for $17 billion (42.7%)
· Alcohol accounts for $14.6 billion (36.6%)
· Illegal drugs account for $8.2 billion (20.7%).
(Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse, Costs of Substance Abuse in Canada, 2006)
Read the full report at:
http://www.ccsa.ca/2006%20CCSA%20Documents/ccsa-011332-2006.pdf
Or visit: www.ccsa.ca
- According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) January 2005 report, drug overdoses killed more than 33, 000 people in 2005, the last year for which firm data are available.
That makes drug overdose the second leading cause of accidental death, behind only motor vehicle accidents (43, 667) and ahead of firearms deaths (30, 694).
Kung, H., Hoyert, D.L., Xu, J., & Murphy, S.L. (2008) National Vital Statistics Reports- Deaths: Final Data for 2005. V 56 (10) Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
- 2010 In The Mind’s Eye Survey Results
Amongst the top education and training interests in a recent CPC survey were innovative approaches in substance use, housing and homelessness; best practices in harm reduction services; overdose prevention and intervention training; mental health and substance use amongst youth; basic pharmacology and issues of multi-generation addiction in families.
In The Mind's Eye 2010: Issues of Substance Use in Film + Forum is typically offered free of charge at locations throughout Waterloo region. The lineup of events and films will be available online at www.inthemindseye.ca by early September.
Questions and/or offers of assistance are always welcome!
EVENTS and ANNOUNCEMENTS
1. Grounding Trauma 2010- Trauma, The Worker and the Workplace: From Theory to Practice
London, Ontario
Huron University College
June 14&15, 2010
A National Conference on traumatic stress and the Frontline Helping Professional, presented by: CAST Canada
The effects of traumatic stress and loss are a persistent factor for people working in the helping professions. Any lack of acceptance, training or comfort with traumatic stress and loss may cause pain to both clients and workers.
You will
· Gain a better understanding of trauma and its impact on yourself and your clients
· Use this understanding to help yourself and do excellent work with your clients
· Through this understanding, become enabled to help create a healthy, functioning work environment
· Feel more comfortable within yourself and in doing the necessary work with your clients.
Cost: $280 + GST
For more information and registration, visit: http://www.ohpe.ca/node/11339
2. ITME 2010 Call For Films
In The Mind’s Eye 2010: Issues of Substance Use in Film + Forum is seeking films- shorts, features, documentaries etc.- for this unique fall series that combines a film festival with keynote presentations and workshops related to issues of drugs, including alcohol. The series is offered free at venues across Waterloo Region- 1 hour west of Toronto. More than 7,00 people have attended this series.
ITME 2010 seeks films that raise drug-related issues, including stereotypes and stigmatization for people who are, or use substances. Films created by people
most affected by substance use are a high priority for this series as are issues of prevention, harm reduction, treatment and justice systems, including drug policy. We aim to offer a real glimpse into issues of substance use for service providers, those affected and the general public. Visit: http://www.inthemindseye.ca/main2.cfm
for more information.
To submit a film, share a resource or inquire further, please contact:
Michael Parkinson, Waterloo Region Crime Prevention Council,
99 Regina St. S., Waterloo, Ontario, Canada N2J 4V3
Email: michael.parkinson@region.waterloo.on.ca Phone: 519-575-4757 ext. 5016
3. Community Discussion: Housing Options for Persons Experiencing Persistent Homelessness
Topic: An "overview of existing and emerging housing models" and "some of the gaps in our community", as well as a review of harm reduction housing in surrounding areas. There will be a "break out session and discussion", as well as a conversation about next steps.
Date: September 15, 2010
Time: 1:30 p.m.- 4:30 p.m.
Location: 99 Regina Street, Waterloo Room 508
Price: Free
To attend/for more info: Nicole Francoeur at nfrancoeur@regionofwaterloo.ca
4. KW Drug User’s Group
Peer Support & Harm Reduction
*This is not a treatment group*
Current/ Former Drug Users ONLY
Start Date: June 21, 2010
Time: 7:00 pm
Locations: Kitchener and Waterloo (call for details)
The Kitchener location is to start again in the Fall. The Waterloo Location is the third Monday of each month.
For more information and details call: (519) 575-0457 (confidential)
No Agencies, Police, Government or Media please!
LISTEN UP!
1. Supervised injectable heroin or injectable methadone versus optimised oral methadone as treatment for chronic heroin addicts in England after persistent failure in orthodox treatment (RIOTT): a randomised trial
The Lancet, May 29, 2010
An article by Strang and colleagues reports on a recent UK-based randomised controlled trial of injectable heroin for treatment of chronic heroin addiction. The investigators build on past RCTs by employing a novel laboratory measure that distinguishes pharmaceutical from illicit heroin use, and by including an injectable methadone treatment group. The issues raised are discussed further in the following podcast.
http://download.thelancet.com/flatcontentassets/audio/lancet/2010/9729_29may.mp3
READ
Resources
1. The International Doctors for Healthy Drug Policies (IDHDP) network allows medical doctors from around the world to share expertise and good practice to reduce the social, health and economic harms of people who use drugs and create a bridge between practice and drug policy. The network has only recently been established and we are looking for medical doctors who work in the field of harm reduction, drug policy and other issues such as HIV and hepatitis C, which are related to drug use to join. We believe that a sensible dialogue about drug use is a crucial step in creating more effective policies and making such issues more mainstream.
To join this group an applicant must be a medical doctor who is engaged professionally in working in the field of drug use or associated fields.
If you think you qualify to join IDHDP please visit http://www.smmgp.org.uk/html/idhdp.php for membership forms and more.
If you work for an organisation that works with these issues you are encouraged to forward to any relevant doctors who may be interested in joining the IDHDP network.
2. International Centre for Science in Drug Policy (ICSDP)
A new organization called the International Centre for Science in Drug Policy (ICSDP), dedicated to improving community health and safety by conducting research and public education on best practices in drug policy, is being established.
Help us build a network of scientists to speak out about evidence-based drug policy. Scientists, academics, and health practitioners from over a dozen countries have already joined the network in an effort to ensure that illicit drug policies are informed with the best available scientific evidence. If you know someone who has a scientific degree and who is looking to join with other professionals speaking out against the harms associated with conventional drug policies invite them to join the network.
We're excited about our work and look forward to working with the international community to grow our network and this project. Please feel free to circulate this email to your networks.
Check us out at: http://www.icsdp.org/
3. International Report 2010 on Crime Prevention and Community Safety: Trends and Perspectives
ICPC, 2010
Providing a large panorama of prevention in the world, the Report 2010 examines in particular the impact of migration, organized crime and substance abuse on community safety. It highlights the importance of good governance frameworks for prevention and safety, training and capacity building for different sectors of the community, and the evaluation of programmes and strategies. It also emphasizes social and education approaches to crime prevention among vulnerable populations.
http://www.crime-prevention-intl.org/uploads/media/International_Report_2010.pdf
4. Substance Use Resources for Schools, Youth, Health Professionals and more!
Established in 2005, the Joint Consortium for School Health serves as a catalyst to:
- strengthen cooperation among ministries, agencies, departments and others in support of healthy schools;
- build the capacity of the health and education sectors to work together more effectively and efficiently; and
- promote understanding of, and support for, the concept and benefits of comprehensive school health initiatives.
The Consortium facilitates information sharing of better practices, policies, program development and information promoting or supporting comprehensive school health approaches. The Consortium has some great resources on issues of Mental Health, Substance Use and more.
Visit: http://www.jcsh-cces.ca/ and see the links to resources on the left side.
Articles
1. Reform school abuse victim told he’s too late to receive help from special fund
Melissa Tait/Record staff
Jim Brophy
Brian Caldwell, KW Record, June, 2010
KITCHENER – Jim Brophy has needed help ever since he was sexually abused as a young teenager at a reform school more than three decades ago.
He just wasn’t ready to take it.
And now that he is – a lifelong criminal and drug addict finally determined to deal with the past so he has a shot at a future – Brophy has been told it’s too late.
“It’s wrong, it’s wrong,” he said, angry one moment and wiping away tears the next. “They can’t put a time limit on that.”
Brophy, 51, was one of over 1,000 men abused between the 1940s and 1970s at two Ontario training schools run by the Christian Brothers, a Roman Catholic lay order.
After the scandal led to criminal charges and lawsuits in the mid-1990s, the Kitchener man signed on to a settlement negotiated by the provincial government, which funded the schools.
Then in custody, Brophy got $17,000. He gave some of it to his mother, bought a stereo for his prison cell and blew much of the rest on drugs.
It never crossed his mind to get counselling from a fund that was also set aside for victims.
Brophy carried on as he always had – getting high, committing serious crimes and spending most of his life behind bars as a result.
“I just wanted to be loaded since I didn’t have to think about anything, feel anything,” he said. “I just wanted to be numb.”
By his count, Brophy has spent 35 years in custody – group homes, reform schools, federal prisons – for everything from assaulting another kid with a hockey stick, to a home invasion over a drug debt, while armed with a baseball bat.
But when he got out the last time in 2007, something had changed.
Brophy stayed off drugs, met a supportive woman and decided he didn’t want to go back. Almost three years later, a personal record, he is still a free man.
He also began meeting with Alex Smart, a social worker at the John Howard Society, and asked for help to track down the counselling money he had passed on.
“When they finally stop self-medicating their trauma, that’s when they need the help most of all,” Smart said.
Smart wrote letters to the province and enlisted the help of a lawyer, only to hit a dead end. The bottom line was legally clear, but practically frustrating.
Although the settlement included up to $10,000 for counselling, it stipulated Brophy had to use the money within two years of signing the paperwork in 1997.
“I’m devastated by it,” he said. “Who are they to say when I’m ready for counselling? I thought I had that money there.”
With no means of his own to pay a psychologist, Brophy is now struggling to stay clean, adjust to life on the outside and come to terms with abuse he believes is at the root of many of his problems.
“I’m so used to being in prison, being on a schedule, that being out here has got me scattered,” he said. “I just want help, man. I don’t know what normal is anymore, but I want something better than I’ve got.”
A veteran social worker, Smart is confident Brophy is sincere. He is also worried about him.
“He’s got a lot of rage because of that,” he said. “He’s doing well, he’s containing it, but I think without that counselling, something may happen.
“He needs to be able to speak one-on-one with a psychologist. It would help give him some peace – and that’s all he really wants.”
2. The Budgetary Implications of Drug Prohibition
February, 2010 Jeffrey A. Miron Department of Economics, Harvard University miron@fas.harvard.edu, 781-856-0086
http://www.economics.harvard.edu/faculty/miron/files/budget%202010%20Final.pdf
Executive Summary
· Government prohibition of drugs is the subject of ongoing debate.
· One issue in this debate is the effect of prohibition on
· government budgets. Prohibition entails direct enforcement costs
· and prevents taxation of drug production and sale.
· This report examines the budgetary implications of legalizing drugs.
· The report estimates that legalizing drugs would save roughly
· $48.7 billion per year in government expenditure on enforcement of
· prohibition. $33.1 billion of this savings would accrue to state
· and local governments, while $15.6 billion would accrue to the
· federal government. Approximately $13.7 billion of the savings
· would results from legalization of marijuana, $22.3 billion from
· legalization of cocaine and heroin, and $12.8 from legalization of
· other drugs.
· The report also estimates that drug legalization would yield tax
· revenue of $34.3 billion annually, assuming legal drugs are taxed
· at rates comparable to those on alcohol and tobacco. Approximately
· $6.4 billion of this revenue would result from legalization of
· marijuana, $23.9 billion from legalization of cocaine and heroin,
· and $4.0 billion from legalization of other drugs.
· State-by-state breakdowns provide a rough indication of
· legalization's impacts on state budgets, but these estimates are
· less reliable than those for the overall economy.
· Whether drug legalization is a desirable policy depends on many
· factors other than the budgetary impacts discussed here. Rational
· debate about drug policy should nevertheless consider these
· budgetary effects.
· The estimates provided here are not definitive estimates of the
· budgetary implications of a legalized regime for currently illegal
· drugs. The analysis employs assumptions that plausibly err on the
· conservative side, but substantial uncertainty remains about the
· magnitude of the budgetary impacts.
3. Just another casualty in the criminal war on drugs
Dan Gardner, The Ottawa Citizen, May 2010.
Read more at:
http://www.ottawacitizen.com/opinion/Just+another+casualty+criminal+drugs/3015889/story.html#ixzz0npAqOGQG
It's certainly not the worst crime committed in the name of the war on drugs.
That title probably belongs to the countless innocent people killed in botched raids. Or the police officers who died in pursuit of the impossible. Or the lives lost to easily preventable overdoses, adulterations, and blood-borne diseases. Or the funding handed on a silver platter to thugs, terrorists, and guerrillas, like those killing our soldiers in Afghanistan. Or the civil liberties eroded, the corruption fostered, the chaos spread. Or maybe it belongs to the hundreds of billions of dollars governments have squandered in a mad, futile, and destructive crusade.
Next to all that, the extradition of Marc Emery to the United States is no great travesty.
Emery is the Vancouver activist who has spent most of his life campaigning for the legalization of marijuana. To fund his efforts, he ran a little seed company similar to thousands of other little seed companies, except when Emery's seeds were put in soil, watered, and given sunlight, they grew into cannabis plants.
Showing rare good sense, Canadian officials decided that prosecuting a man for selling the seeds of a common plant is not a public priority. In effect, they permitted Emery's business, and others like it, to operate. Health Canada officials were even known to direct those licensed to possess medical marijuana to Emery, so patients could grow their own medicine in the kitchen window.
But such modesty and pragmatism smacks of heresy to the holy warriors of prohibition. Verily, the plant is Evil unto the last seed.
In 2005, Emery was arrested by Canadian police acting at the behest of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. Innocent Americans had been lured into purchasing Emery's wicked wares, the DEA alleged.
Emery fought extradition for five years. On Monday, justice minister Rob Nicholson ordered him handed over. Thanks to the insanely punitive sentencing laws in the Land of the Incarcerated, Emery faced as much as 20 years. He accepted a plea bargain for five.
Emery argued all along that he was a political target, that the DEA was out to get him in order to silence a prominent advocate of marijuana legalization. One might suspect Emery has delusions of grandeur, except the DEA issued a press release in which the agency's chief is quoted saying pretty much exactly what Emery alleges: "Today's DEA arrest of Marc Scott Emery, publisher of Cannabis Culture Magazine, and the founder of a marijuana legalization group, is a significant blow not only to the marijuana trafficking trade in the U.S. and Canada, but also to the marijuana legalization movement."
Incidentally, the DEA posts all its old press releases on its website, but that release has vanished. There is, however, a different press release, which makes no mention of the legalization movement.
But let's not get distracted by the mendacity of the DEA or the embarrassing servility of a Canadian government willing to go along with this farce. Let's stand back and ask the only question worth asking.
What the hell is the point of all this?
Marc Emery will only be the latest of millions upon millions of people to be imprisoned for possessing or selling marijuana. The cost of this effort, in liberty and dollars, has been immense. Is it worth it?
Now, please don't wave around this or that study showing marijuana consumption can elevate this or that risk under certain circumstances. Of course it can. Marijuana isn't "safe." No drug is. No substance is. Drink too much fresh water too quickly and it will kill you. Saying that marijuana isn't safe in no way supports the policy of criminalization.
What would support criminalization is evidence showing that by putting nice, tax-paying businessmen like Marc Emery in prison, we so significantly reduce marijuana consumption and related harms that the benefits of the policy outweigh the costs. Is there such evidence? I've studied the issue for more than a decade and I've never seen anything remotely suggesting this is true. In fact, I've seen plenty of evidence that criminalization has little or no effect on consumption rates and, ipso facto, it does bugger all to reduce related harms.
What criminalization does do is generate a long list of unintended consequences, all of them bad. Take the Taliban. It's well known they fund themselves, in part, by "taxing" opium growers and heroin traffickers. Less well known is that the Taliban make big money from Afghanistan's marijuana growers and hashish traffickers -- which means there's a good chance that when a Canadian soldier loses his legs to a roadside bomb, the components of the bomb and the wages of the man who planted it were paid for by the black market in marijuana.
There wouldn't be a black market in marijuana if it were legal and regulated, and the profits of the marijuana trade would go to nice, taxpaying businessmen like Marc Emery instead of gangsters, goons, and medieval maniacs. Sounds pretty good, doesn't it? You would think politicians would at least want to study the issue.
But they won't study it. They won't even talk about it. Wrapped in a cozy blanket of ignorance and group-think, they're perfectly comfortable with a policy that funds people who blow the legs off Canadian soldiers and puts guys like Marc Emery in prison.
This is no ordinary stupidity. It's criminal stupidity. Which is, come to think of it, probably the worst of the many crimes committed in the name of the war on drugs.
Dan Gardner's column appears Wednesday, Friday and Saturday. E-mail: dgardner@thecitizen.canwest.com. Blog: ottawacitizen.com/katzenjammer
© Copyright (c) The Ottawa Citizen
4. Guns, Gangs and Drugs: Can We Learn?
Craig Jones
Warren Buffet says it’s good to learn from your own mistakes, but it’s preferable to learn from the mistakes of others. Is it possible for Canadians to learn from American experience where guns, gangs and drugs are concerned? Two recently concluded conferences, in Winnipeg and Toronto, suggest we can. But will we? That depends on political decisions at the highest levels, and the indicators are not promising.
Canadians are rightly concerned about inner-city gang violence and mayhem. Gangs are not new. Pirates plundered ships and towns off Newfoundland’s coast in the 17th and 18th centuries, and smugglers, bank robbers and horse thieves terrorized the Canadian west in the 19th century. We cannot completely eliminate gangs because we cannot completely eliminate the circumstances – including the opportunity for fast money – that calls them into being and sustains them. This is particularly true of inner-city street gangs. Opportunity for economic gain, persistent poverty, racism, lack of opportunity and social dislocation are the catalysts and drug prohibition is the fuel. What our political and police leaders seem blind to is that street gangs are an adaptive, even rational, response to circumstances that none of us would choose but that we seem unable or unwilling to address.
Street gangs, their rise and proliferation, can be understood through the lens of supply and demand. Adolescent males demand identity, solidarity, excitement, a role and a purpose. As they transition through their risk-taking years – i.e., historically when we sent them to war – gangs substitute for the kind of pack experience that armed combat used to supply, and still does in many places. What is a military unit but a disciplined, armed and centrally-directed gang? We’re not accustomed to thinking of gangs in this way, but the fact is that gangs supply young men with symbolic, emotional and practical needs that young men demand until they mature into autonomous individuals able to revise their self-image on the basis of fully developed executive functions. Street gangs in the inner cities supply the opportunity to form identity, to gain approval of peers, to generate meaning, to feel solidarity, to experience danger, to flash around cash, to appear relevant and tough to outsiders, and to know the experience of brotherhood. They also provide protection from the predations of other gangs. As the gang culture takes hold, gangs become ‘normal’ and young men and women come to view them as part of the soil in which they take root – as a recent study of Winnipeg’s north end observed. Street gangs, then, can be a rationally adaptive market-driven response to circumstances in which other forms of social advancement -- like law school or business administration -- are impeded.
Typically, an individual’s attachment to a gang is variable. Few gang members are permanently attached for their entire gang career, although this can be a requirement of some gangs. Membership is fluid and contingent as personal circumstances, opportunities and interests change. What a typical gang member is seeking may not be supplied by any single gang affiliation – or the gang may totally consume the individual members’ identity, making it all but impossible for that individual to distance himself from gang affiliations. Gang membership has its benefits and these benefits are undersupplied in ordinary life. Hence their attraction and appeal – and our difficulty in responding to them intelligently. Ironically, police pressure may actually solidify the gang’s internal sense of identity, purpose and mission, especially if the gang is comprised of minority youth who already perceive the cops and the establishment to be their adversaries or indifferent to their circumstances. What police pressure supplies is what the gangs demand: a common adversary to suppress their internal differences and unify them around a shared mission and purpose. Since gangs, like all human institutions, seek to grow and enlarge their influence, it is particularly counter-productive to incarcerate gang members – as we have been doing, particularly on the prairies – since our jails and detention facilities become recruiting centres for the next generation of at-risk minority youth.
Then there is the issue of illicit drugs: the oxygen that fuels the fire of street gangs. It’s not that in the absence of drug prohibition we would have no street gangs, it’s just that no other illicit activity is so lucrative as the illicit drug trade. Defenders of prohibition claim that, were Canada to end drug prohibition, gangs would migrate to other activities. This is partially true, except that gangs already have multiple sources of illicit income – it’s just that nothing else comes close to the profits from drug markets under prohibition. Cracking down on drug suppliers eliminates only the gang members stupid or careless enough to get caught and provokes a lethal contest over the remaining market share. It is a form of natural selection: the surviving drug traffickers have proven themselves more deadly, more flexible and more adept at evading police. So we have gangs controlling drug markets with lethal violence and turning neighbourhoods into “no go” zones. What is to be done?
The federal government has a one-size-fits-all solution: “get tough.” That sounds like what our American neighbours have been doing since the early 1970s. What can we learn from their experience?
A systematic review by the Urban Health Research Initiative at UBC recently concluded that “the existing scientific evidence strongly suggests that drug prohibition likely contributes to drug market violence and higher homicide rates [and] that increasingly sophisticated methods of disrupting drug distribution networks may increase levels of drug-related violence.” That conclusion is based on a review of studies conducted mostly in the United States. The lesson is clear: When police go to war with traffickers, traffickers go to war with each other and citizens get caught in the crossfire.
Why might this be true? Because drug markets operate like markets for any other commodity. When one large market actor is removed, others attempt to fill the vacuum. What is different about the drug market, however, is the context of criminal prohibition. Market participants shoot it out in the streets rather than in courts. Prohibition, re-enshrined in Canada’s National Anti-Drug Strategy, guarantees the high profits from drug trafficking. Whatever we may think of the morality of drugs or drug trafficking, markets everywhere behave according to the iron laws of supply and demand. And there is no evidence that the National Anti-Drug Strategy can repeal or modify these.
Bottom line: drug prohibition creates and sustains criminal gangs, just as alcohol prohibition created and sustained Al Capone, Bugsy Moran and Lucky Luciano. Drug prohibition is currently tearing apart northern Mexico, fuelling a civil war between traffickers and the Mexican army. The bodies are piling up everywhere, but no one is learning. Drug prohibition finances the killing of Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan and gang violence in Vancouver.
So, can Canadians learn? The evidence is not encouraging. Like first-world-war generals, the government claims that all that is needed is more of the same, but harder and tougher. The federal government’s agenda promises “truth in sentencing” and “serious time for serious crime” but fails to acknowledge that none of these strategies, or any combination of “get tough” approaches, worked in the United States. Nor can any degree of toughness repeal the iron laws of supply and demand that drive the drug trade under conditions of prohibition. Drug markets restabilize after temporary spasms of dealer-on-dealer violence and business proceeds as usual. Today, across North America, prices for street drugs continue their downward trend, accessibly continues to trend upward as does purity of product. It is precisely the opposite of what proponents of prohibition have promised since Richard Nixon declared his “war on drugs” in the early 1970s. Drugs are everywhere and so are the gangs that provide them.
Should Canada follow the American example? Can we succeed where the U.S. failed? The evidence says we cannot. Perhaps Canadians are doomed to ignore Warren Buffet’s lesson. Perhaps we must learn from our own mistakes because we refuse to learn from the mistakes of others.
--
Craig Jones is the Executive Director of The John Howard Society of Canada
--
Further sources at:
Urban Health Research Initiative: http://uhri.cfenet.ubc.ca/
Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives: http://www.policyalternatives.ca/publications/reports/if-you-want-change-violence-hood-you-have-change-hood
5. First Canadian guidelines issued for opioid painkillers
Carly Weeks, Globe and Mail, May 03, 2010.
The first Canadian guidelines have been created to keep powerful opioid painkillers out of reach of potential abusers and put them into the hands of patients who need them.
The guidelines urge doctors to thoroughly assess patients before prescribing the painkilling drugs and closely monitor them to mitigate risks of abuse, addiction and overdose. Doctors must also stop prescribing opioids if patients don’t respond to treatment or there is a serious risk of addiction, misuse or other problems.
The guidelines, published yesterday in the Canadian Medical Association Journal, are the first comprehensive attempt at helping health professionals navigate the minefield of prescribing opioids to non-cancer patients who experience chronic pain.
Opioids are a class of powerful painkilling drugs used to treat severe pain. There are several different kinds of opioids, but those made with oxycodone, such as Percocet and OxyContin, have become a source of concern in recent years as prescriptions skyrocketed and countless stories of addiction began to emerge.
But an issue that is often overshadowed by reports of opioid misuse is that many patients who could benefit from the drugs aren’t getting them. Fears of addiction and abuse of opioids has led to the undertreatment of chronic pain in some cases, a problem that helped spark the creation of the new national guidelines.
“Physicians may be uncertain or even afraid to prescribe opioids for chronic non-cancer pain in some cases,” said Clarence Weppler, co-chair of the National Opioid Use Guideline Group and manager of physician prescribing practices with the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Alberta. “The fear is very real.”
But even as undertreatment of chronic pain becomes a growing concern, prescription rates for opioids suggests that in some cases, the drugs are prescribed too liberally and with too few checks to guard against misuse. Spending on opioid prescriptions has increased dramatically in recent years, and Canada has the third-largest per capita consumption of opioids in the world, after the United States and Belgium.
And as the consumption of opioid painkillers grows, so does the rate of problems, including addiction. The drugs are also extremely potent, which increases the risk of potential overdose. A study published last December in the Canadian Medical Association Journal found that Ontario deaths related to drugs made with oxycodone increased fivefold from 1999 to 2004.
However, a commentary published with the article highlighted the fact the increased death rate corresponds to an increase in prescriptions for oxycodone painkillers – meaning the drugs aren’t killing a higher proportion of people than they were a decade ago, but that the volume of people taking them has increased.
The key issue, according to Benedikt Fischer and Jurgen Rehm, authors of the commentary, is that Canada seems to be relying too heavily on opioid painkillers even though health professionals may not fully understand their potential risks or how to monitor patients to prevent potential problems.
Those gaps are addressed by the new guidelines, which offer broad but comprehensive advice for health professionals on best practices for prescribing opioids. The guidelines make 24 recommendations to health professionals, such as:
Consider screening a patient for potential opioid addiction before prescribing the medication.
Thoroughly explain to patients the potential benefits, problems, complications and risks of opioid therapy.
Start patients on a low dose of opioids and monitor its effectiveness.
Change a patient’s prescription or discontinue therapy if the medication is ineffective or the patient experiences unacceptable adverse effects or risks, such as abuse.
Work with pharmacists and take precautions to reduce prescription fraud.
The national guideline group was formed in 2007 to create these recommendations. But the idea of relying on non-binding guidelines has been criticized by some who say more needs to be done to address this issue.
However, guidelines are merely the first step toward what needs to be a wide-ranging plan to help doctors understand how to properly prescribe opioid painkillers and reduce potential risks, Mr. Weppler said.
One of the major issues standing in the way of better policy is that not enough is known about opioid medication. Better research is needed to understand the effectiveness of opioids in patients with various diagnoses, how to properly prescribe opioids in patients with more than one medical issue, such as chronic pain in the elderly or those with a psychiatric condition, as well as understanding the long-term effectiveness of opioid painkillers.
“While waiting for the research that is needed, clinicians can use the new Canadian guideline as a clinically sensible framework for decisions that need to be made now,” Mr. Weppler said.
The group has plans in place to ensure the guidelines are used in practice across the country. They will also be updated by 2015 by McMaster University’sMichael G. DeGrooteInstitute for PainResearch and Care.
Roger Chou, professor of medicine at Oregon Health and Science University in Portland and author of U.S. opioid guidelines, wrote a commentary published alongside the guidelines urging better research. He said significant gaps in knowledge are a major factor that is contributing to problems associated with opioid painkillers.
“In my opinion, it’s really quite shocking that we don’t have a lot of strong research evidence to back up what we’re actually doing for these patients,” Dr. Chou said in an interview.
6. No one should die because someone was afraid to call 911
Kathie Kane-Willis, NorthWest Herald, April 22, 2010
I was in college when I first used heroin. Within six months, I had dropped out of school. Within a year, I had become addicted. My drug use sent me on a downward spiral that left me homeless, squatting in an abandoned building, and involved with the criminal justice system.
Before I reached that point, I used heroin with my boyfriend, who also became addicted. He was the son of a doctor.
Today, he has three children and does Internet security for banks. He tracks terrorist activity through identity theft and banking transactions.
He’s been happily married for more than 15 years. No one would know today that I watched him overdose on heroin, that I had to call 911. But he might not be making the contributions he has made – his children might not be alive, he might have died, he was lucky. But I made an important phone call that night more than 20 years ago. It was a difficult and nearly impossible call to make. It was a Friday night.
David, my boyfriend, had gone out for a couple of drinks with friends before he bought heroin on the street. A number of people came back to our apartment to use these drugs. About three or four, I think. He used the heroin and then started to fall asleep. His head hit the table. It took about one minute from the time that he injected the heroin to when he started to pass out. One of my friends said to take him to the shower; he told me that this was the right thing to do.
As we were leading him there, David collapsed and fell to the floor. I struggled to pull him up and all of us carried him into the bathtub – we didn’t have time to take off his clothes. One of my friends told me to turn on the cold water. David’s lips had started to turn blue. I remember pinching him, trying to get him to wake up. But he didn’t. I decided to call 911.
The other people in my apartment were screaming at me to not call 911. They were terrified. There were drugs in the house. Everyone was yelling at me, and when I made the call, there was screaming – screaming at me for having called, for having put all of those people at danger of arrest. They were college students. They were scared. They didn’t want to go to jail.
I was terrified. My boyfriend’s lips had turned blue. This is something that no one should have to experience in their lives. I had tried to awaken him but to no avail. I was soaking wet. I was crying, screaming myself because it was so scary, so unexpected. I pinched him so hard that the next day his stomach was covered with blue marks.
We were all novice users. We didn’t know then what I know now – that mixing alcohol and opiates can cause a lethal reaction. We didn’t know then what I know now, that there is an opiate antidote, that naloxone can bring someone out of an overdose.
No one should have to be in the position that I was. In an ideal world, no one would use heroin or other drugs. But this is not an ideal world. In fact, research demonstrates – my research and the research of other academics –that heroin use is spreading rapidly to the suburbs and rural areas. And that these users are often young, white, middle-class individuals.
The situation turned out OK for my boyfriend. He regained consciousness just before the paramedics arrived. I am ashamed to admit it – I sent the paramedics away because he woke up. I was dripping wet. I was crying. I told the paramedics that it was a prank call. All because I was so scared of getting arrested, of everyone getting arrested, including my boyfriend.
But the truth is, if he hadn’t woken up, I wouldn’t have sent the paramedics away. I would have risked arrest. I would have done it to save his life.
No one should die because someone was afraid to call 911.
No one should have to weigh the life of another human being against the chance of arrest when they call 911.
Kathie Kane-Willis is the director and founder of the Illinois Consortium on Drug Policy at Roosevelt University in Chicago, a public policy researcher and a professor.
7. Mandatory minimums won't curtail illicit drugs
Evan Wood, Toronto Star, April 15, 2010
Illicit drugs represent one of the greatest threats to community health, and recent examples of drug-related violence across Canada show the toll continues to mount:
A double slaying in picturesque Old Montreal has the hallmarks of a professional hit. Winnipeg police warn of “imminent” violence after a crackdown on a Hells Angels puppet club creates a power vacuum that a rival outlaw motorcycle gang tries to fill. Police directly tie the increase in gang violence on the streets of Vancouver and other Canadian cities to the drug cartel wars terrorizing Mexico.
But even with the rising social costs related to illicit drugs, our response represents Canada’s leading example of ideology triumphing science. And events have recently taken a turn for the worse.
Prior to Stephen Harper’s Conservatives taking power, an exhaustive national consultative process led by Health Canada and the Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse informed the development of Canada’s drug strategy. This inclusive process, which involved all federal political parties and virtually all stakeholder groups, aimed to remove the rhetoric and emotion that have traditionally guided Canada’s response to illicit drugs. Instead, it sought to incorporate the best available scientific evidence into the fight against the drug scourge.
The central aim of the strategy was “to ensure that Canadians can live in a society increasingly free of the harms associated with problematic substance use.” It differed from the U.S. approach in that it put emphasis on reducing harm rather than the less pragmatic goal of making society “drug free.”
However, when the Conservatives assumed power in 2006, the results of this exhaustive effort were thrown out and a new Tory “anti-drug strategy” was soon released. Although the pre-existing drug strategy had been criticized by a 2001 auditor general’s report, which demonstrated that 93 per cent of federal funding already went toward law enforcement, the Tories’ new anti-drug strategy increased the focus on law enforcement. This realigned Canada’s anti-drug efforts with the long-standing U.S. war on drugs. Documents obtained through freedom of information requests have demonstrated the close collaboration between Conservative cabinet ministers and senior bureaucrats from the George W. Bush White House in helping craft the Tories’ anti-drug plans.
Unfortunately, in addition to having been proven entirely ineffective at reducing drug supply, the American approach to dealing with drugs has resulted in a number of severe unintended consequences. Most importantly, the global drug war has created a massive illicit market, with an estimated annual value of $320 billion (U.S.). A closely related concern is the consistent association between drug prohibition and increased drug market violence. The Urban Health Research Initiative, of which I am co-director, recently released a study that clearly demonstrated that these astronomical profits drive organized crime and related violence.
In terms of additional harms, in the U.S., where the war on drugs has been fought most vigorously, the incarceration of illicit drug offenders has helped create the world’s highest incarceration rate. Primarily as a result of drug-law enforcement, one in eight African-American males in the age group 25 to 29 was incarcerated on any given day, despite the fact that ethnic minorities consume illicit drugs at comparable rates to other subpopulations. Although the U.S. is now moving away from mandatory minimum sentences, the mandatory minimum sentences for minor drug offences currently being proposed by the Harper government should help bring this incredible burden to Canadian taxpayers.
Why would we replicate this public policy disaster? Unfortunately, in addition to massive funding directed toward law enforcement and prisons, the war on drugs has also involved an enduring global education effort aimed at reinforcing public support for directing tax dollars toward police funding for dealing with drugs.
This helps makes enforcement strategies politically popular despite their proven ineffectiveness. A Canadian example is the law enforcement lobby group known as the Drug Prevention Network of Canada, which was founded by former Conservative MP Randy White and receives support from the Drug Free America Foundation. The propaganda the Harper government has used in its efforts to close the Vancouver supervised injecting facility was prepared by this group and freedom of information disclosures have shown it was actually funded by the RCMP.
The starting point for reducing drug-related harms while avoiding the enrichment of organized crime and creating associated gun violence is to accept that law enforcement will never meaningfully reduce the flow of drugs. Any economist will explain that the drug seizures we see over and over again as part of police photo-ops have the perverse effect of making it that much more profitable for someone else to sell drugs. The laws of supply and demand have simply overwhelmed police efforts. With youth now reporting easier access to illicit drugs than to alcohol or tobacco, the situation could not get much worse.
Once we accept that the war on drugs has failed to meaningfully reduce drug supply and has resulted in a range of destructive consequences, the next step is to consider the threat of each drug individually, rather than lumping drugs like cocaine and marijuana together, and to look toward international models that point the way forward.
In the Netherlands for instance, the de-facto regulation of marijuana and distribution through licensed coffee shops generates tax revenue for the country rather than profits for organized crime. Interestingly, rates of marijuana use in the Netherlands remain far lower than in the U.S. and Canada. Alternatively, Portugal decriminalized all drugs so that it could focus taxpayer resources on prevention and treatment. Five years into this experiment, Portugal has the lowest rates of marijuana use in the European Union.
A made-in-Canada solution is certainly needed. However, the Harper government’s proposals will only channel tax dollars from health and education into building prisons — a process that will have long-term impacts by turning petty drug offenders into hard-core criminals.
8. More than six in 10 British Columbians support legalizing marijuana, a new Angus Reid poll finds.
Jeff Lee, Vancouver Sun, April 16, 2010
A new poll shows the majority of Canadians support the legalizing of marijuana but not other, hard-core drugs. And nowhere is that support higher than in British Columbia, where more than six in 10 people say having a toke shouldn't earn you a date with the courts.
But the Angus Reid poll, released Thursday, also shows many Canadians believe there is a serious nationwide drug abuse problem and 70 per cent want mandatory minimum prison sentences and fines for drug dealers and marijuana grow operators.
The poll supports the findings of Angus Reid polls in the past that showed most Canadians believe decriminalization of marijuana possession is appropriate, but that other illegal drugs should remain illegal.
The online survey of 1,010 Canadians April 8-9 showed that support for legalization of hard drugs "is negligible," but that the figure had even dropped since the polling company's survey in 2008. The margin of error for the survey is plus or minus 3.1 per cent.
The poll shows 83 per cent of Canadians agree with the federal government's National Anti-Drug Strategy, including an awareness campaign to discourage young Canadians from using drugs. Seven in 10 people also support the call for mandatory prison sentences and large fines for grow operators and dealers.
Conversely, slightly more than a third of Canadians support the idea of eliminating harm-reduction programs such as supervised injection sites and needle-exchange programs. In B.C., where the federal government is trying to close Vancouver's Insite supervised injection site, 64 per cent of respondents said such programs should continue.
Canadians also appear to be more convinced than two years ago that Canada now has a serious drug problem and that the problems are confined to specific areas and people.
In May 2008, 15 per cent believed Canada does not have a serious drug abuse problem, compared to 11 per cent now. Forty per cent of respondents now believe the problem is confined to specific areas and people. In 2008 the figure was 35 per cent.
Overall, the survey shows that 42 per cent of Canadians believe there is a serious drug abuse problem that affects the whole country. In B.C. and Alberta the rate is 48 per cent. Fewer than four in 10 people in Ontario and Quebec believe it's a serious problem. But in Atlantic Canada and Manitoba/ Saskatchewan, the rate is 55 and 56 per cent, respectively.
http://www.vancouversun.com/health/leads+country+backing+legalizing+marijuana/2911052/story.html
** To view the Angus Reid Public Opinion Poll Report visit: http://www.visioncritical.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/2010.04.15_Drugs_CAN.pdf
9. Just say no' doesn't work, say students behind anti-drug website
Faiza Wasim, Canwest News Service, April 13, 2010
A national youth and student drug reform organization says young Canadians don't put much stock in the federal government's anti-drug approach, so it has created a new website it says may better educate young people about the risks they take by using drugs.
Canadian Students for a Sensible Drug Policy designed www.not4me.org, which it says moves away from the government's "just say no" approach, which it calls ineffective.
"One of the biggest failings of previous youth drug education programs is that young people don't take them seriously," said Caleb Chepesiuk, CSSDP staff member.
"We are providing a resource that gives young people serious, honest information on drugs and their risks and tips on how they can keep themselves and their friends safe through either avoiding drugs or by recognizing and preventing problematic substance use patterns before they start. It fails to acknowledge that young people use drugs."
Explaining the government strategy, Tamara Kalnins, 24, and a member of the board of directors for CSSDP said that the definition of insanity is repeating an action and expecting a different result, which is what she says, the government's drug program appears to be doing, with a "just say no" strategy she says is failing to engage young people. The key is to talk with young people, not at them, she says.
CSSDP is particularly concerned with the government's decision to exclude alcohol, tobacco and pharmaceuticals from its prevention strategies.
"By excluding alcohol from its drug strategy, when it is by far, the most common drug used by Canadian youth and is one with the most damaging effects on the brain of adolescents, our government is failing to take its responsibility and is putting our youth at risk," said Dr. Jean-Sebastian Fallu, an assistant professor in the department of psycho-education at the University of Montreal.
"Because alcohol is considered a legal substance in our society, the government wants to target drugs that are known to be illegal. Just telling teens that they shouldn't do drugs because they are bad for you and only mentioning the risks involved, thinking that they will stay away from them, is counterproductive because like cigarette smokers, who know that cigarettes are bad for health, teens also know that some drugs are bad but they will still experiment with them."
The group, which gave a media briefing on Parliament Hill Tuesday, said it expected the website to be up and running late Tuesday.
According to the Ontario Student Drug Use and Health Survey for 2009, the most commonly used drug is alcohol, with 58.2 per cent of students reporting use during the 12 months prior to the survey.
Marijuana is the next most commonly used drug, with 25.6 per cent reporting past-year use.
The non-medical use of prescription opioid pain relievers, such as codeine, Percocet, Percodan, Demerol, or Tylenol No. 3, ranks third at 17.8 per cent. Tobacco ranks fourth, with 11.7 per cent of respondents reporting smoking cigarettes during the past year.
About one-fifth (19.8 per cent) of students said they had used prescription opioid pain relievers non-medically in their lifetime.
"While prevention is the key part of our message, teens will learn about safe drug use and how to think for themselves," Kalnins said.
© Copyright (c) Canwest News Service
To visit the CSSDP website go to: http://not4me.org/
10. Heroin therapy call for 'chronic addicts'
Emma Wilkinson, BBC News, May 28, 2010
Injectable "medical" grade heroin should be offered under supervision to the most hardened addicts, say UK researchers.
A trial in 127 addicts who had persistently failed to quit the drug showed a significant drop in use of "street" heroin after six months.
Writing in The Lancet, the researchers said the "robust evidence"
supports wider provision of heroin treatment.
A spokesman for the government said it would consider the findings.
Around 5-10% of heroin addicts fail to quit despite use of conventional treatments, such as methadone.
Those who took part in the trial had been using the drug for an average of 17 years and had been in treatment for 10 years.
When they took part in the programme they were on methadone treatment but were still taking street heroin on a regular basis.
The researchers - working at clinics in south London, Brighton and Darlington - found that those offered injectable heroin under the supervision of a nurse were significantly more likely to cut down their use of street heroin than those receiving oral or injectable methadone.
Improvements were seen within six weeks of starting the programme, they reported.
In further analysis yet to be published, it was noted that the benefits remained after two years and some patients were able to stop use of the drug altogether.
Treatable
Study leader, Professor John Strang, from the National Addiction Centre at King's College London, said the supervised heroin programme enables patients to start thinking about employment, re-engaging with their families and taking responsibility for their lives.
"This is a treatment for a severe group of heroin addicts that ordinary treatments have failed with and the question we're answering is 'are these patients untreatable?'."
"The very good news is that you can get these people on a constructive trajectory."
He said the latest study plus a series of other trials now provide clear evidence that this type of treatment should be offered more widely.
It was outlined in the UK government's 2008 Drug Strategy, subject to the results from this trial.
He added that although more expensive than conventional treatments, heroin therapy is considerably cheaper than imprisonment.
A Department of Health spokesman said any approach that gets people off drugs for good should be explored.
"We will look at evidence and both the clinical and cost effectiveness of these treatments.
"However, it is vital that we do all we can to prevent people using drugs in the first place."
Dr Roy Robertson a reader in the Department of Community Health Sciences at Edinburgh University, said whilst none of the outcomes are close to achieving abstinence, treatment with supervised injectable heroin "seems to be our best option".
"This is the intensive care for those heroin users who have failed after all sorts of other available treatments and continue to inject."
DrugScope chief executive Martin Barnes added that there is no "magic bullet" and several treatment interventions may be needed before someone becomes drug free or cuts down their drug use.
"On the basis of the outcomes described, there is a strong case for extending heroin prescribing as a carefully targeted and closely supervised form of treatment for chronic addiction."
To access The Lancet article:
http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(10)60349-2/fulltext
11. Ontario’s mental health and addiction services need improvement, Guelph MPP says
Kim Mackrael, Guelph Mercury, May 27, 2010
Gayle Hosking was 10 years old when she first thought about killing herself. Now 43, she’s being treated at Homewood Health Centre in Guelph. It’s the first time in a lifelong struggle with depression that she’s received sustained treatment.
If someone had helped her get treatment when she was younger, she said, “Things could have been different.”
But the availability and quality of mental health care for young people may not have improved enough in the years since Hosking’s childhood.
Guelph MPP Liz Sandals said many children and youth in Ontario still struggle to find the services they need to help them with mental health and addiction.
Sandals was recently made parliamentary assistant to Health and Long-Term Care Minister Deb Matthews.
Speaking to the board of directors for the Waterloo Wellington Local Health Integration Network at Guelph’s Hampton Inn Thursday night, Sandals said the mental health and addiction care system is highly fragmented and needs to be improved.
“The whole landscape is in silos. It’s fragmented. It’s inconsistent from place to place and it’s very difficult for people to navigate,” she said.
As a member of a select committee on mental health and addiction at Queen’s Park, Sandals travelled across the province to examine the state of services for children and young adults, aboriginal people and seniors. The committee will bring its recommendations to the legislature in early fall.
Based on her experiences with the committee, Sandals said many people looking for mental health and addiction treatment are put on waiting lists for multiple agencies, and then simply deal with whichever agency has space first.
“People often get connected to a service because the service is there, not because it’s the service they need,” she said.
She said the problem is particularly serious for young people because they are often lumped into one group when “what’s appropriate for an eight-year-old is not what’s appropriate for an 18-year-old.”
Sandals said there are gaps in mental health and addiction services all across Ontario, including in the Waterloo Wellington area.
There are 35 mental health and addiction agencies in the region. The Local Health Integration Network identified the co-ordination of these agencies as one of its top health priorities for 2010-2013.
“Our ultimate goal is to have improved and seamless access. We want people to have the right care at the right time,” said Sandra Hanmer, chief executive at Waterloo Wellington Local Health Integration Network.
The network helped establish a residential youth addiction treatment program in Kitchener and Elora last year and provided funding for additional mental health beds at Homewood.
Standing outside the Homewood building on Dublin St, Gayle Hosking said she thinks the region still has a long way to go to provide proper care for people dealing with mental health and addiction. But she’s glad she finally made it into a program after so many years on her own.
“I’m doing OK,” she said. http://news.guelphmercury.com/News/article/638403
12. Professionals 'more likely to drink than those in working class jobs'
Middle class professionals who relax with a bottle of wine in the evening are now more likely to drink to excess than those in working class jobs, according to official figures.
Kate Devlin, The Telegraph (U.K.), May 27, 2010
Married couples are also more likely to drink more often than singletons, the figures from the NHS Information Centre show.
Experts warn that a trend towards stronger drinks and larger wine glasses in recent years mean that many midde class people underestimate how much they are drinking.
Sales of wine have increased more than that of any other type of alcohol over the last two decades, up by more than 50 per cent since 1992.
The report also warns that a total of one in four adults are putting their health at risk because of how much they alcohol they consume.
More than 10 million people are drinking at hazardous levels, according to the figures.
There were 6,769 alcohol-related deaths in 2008, says the report, an increase of almost a quarter since 2001.
One in 10 men asked admitted that they had drunk on every single day of the previous week.
Experts said that the report showed that alcohol problems were not limited to alcoholics or young binge drinkers.
And they reiterated calls for the Government to introduce a minimum price for a unit of alcohol.
Last week Sir Terry Leahy, the chief executive of Tesco, broke ranks with other supermarkets to call on ministers to consider a minimum price.
Doctors warn that a string diseases, including heart disease and a numbers of cancers, have been linked to excessive drinking.
The latest report, Statistics on Alcohol: England, 2010, found that those in households classed as managerial were significantly more likely to drink than those in manual homes – 63 per cent said they had drunk in the last week compared to just 54 per cent.
One in seven professionals drank on almost every day in the previous week, that is on five or more, compared to just one in 10 of those from manual households.
They were also more likely to exceed the recommended daily limit and to binge drink.
Married people were are also more likely than single people to say they had drunk in the last week, the survey found, 67 per cent compared to 58 per cent.
They were also more than twice as likely to have drunk on almost every day of the previous week, 18 per cent compared to eight per cent.
The report also shows that one in five of under 15s admit that to drinking in the previous week, although that figure has fallen from 26 per cent in 2001.
Binge drinking is defined as consuming more than eight units in one day for men, the equivalent of four pints of beer, and six units for women.
Prof Ian Gilmore, president of the Royal College of Physicians, said: “These figures produced today make it clear that alcohol misuse is not just about drunk teenagers in city centres.
“The majority of those who regularly exceed the recommended limits are more likely to work in office jobs, and range in ages from their mid twenties to early sixties.
“There has been a big rise in the purchase of alcohol for drinking at home.
“While crime and anti-social behaviour from alcohol misuse are major problem, it is vital that government does not lose sight of this group most at risk of developing serious health complications and the pivotal role of cheap supermarket drink and widespread availability.”
Chris Sorek, chief executive of Drinkaware, which is funded by the alcohol industry, said: "You don't have to be dependent on alcohol to be drinking at levels that put your health at risk.”
He added that it was “shocking” that alcohol –related deaths were on the rise.
Anne Milton, the Public Health Minister, said: “We need to help people who put their health at risk by drinking too much.
“We are going to stop supermarkets and off licences selling alcohol below cost price.
“We need to prevent the harm that alcohol can cause without penalising those who drink sensibly.”
13. Health unit asks province to keep alcohol out of corner stores
Greg Macdonald, Waterloo Chronicle, April 21, 2010
Regional health officials are calling on the province to keep liquor sales under public control. The provincial government has started to look in to expanding the sale of beer and spirits into private businesses, such as convenience stores.
But that could lead to increases in alcohol-related problems, such as traffic accidents and long-term health concerns, said Carol Perkins, a public health nurse with the region.“Under a government-run LCBO, there are controls in place in terms of number of stores, hours of operation and sales,” she said.
“They help decrease the amount of alcohol sold.”
If private retailers were allowed to sell alcohol, those controls would be gone, Perkins added.“The more outlets there are, the more consumption there is and all the problems that go with that.”In addition to liquor being more readily available, controls would also be lessened.
Whereas staff at the LCBO and beer stores are trained to ID customers, it would be harder to enforce those rules at a more informal store, with less rigid rules.The region already has trouble with cigarettes being sold to minors. The same could happen with booze, Perkins said.
The impacts of increased liquor consumption would be immediate, in terms of alcohol-related crashes, but could also have long-term health effects. Long-term alcohol use and abuse is linked to cirrhosis of the liver, cancer and other chronic diseases.
Those effects could be magnified here in Waterloo Region, because alcohol consumption is above average for high school students and adults.
“We don’t know why that is,” Perkins said.
“If we knew why that was the case, we’d certainly be taking steps to deal with it.”
Perkins presented a report at last week’s community services commitee meeting calling on the province to end any discussions of privatizing liquor sales.
After receiving support from regional councillors, the report was forwarded to the province. Provinces such as Alberta and Quebec have privatized alcohol sales.
In Quebec, beer and wine are available at corner stores and groceries, while spirits are sold in their own outlets.
But Ontario shouldn’t follow in their footsteps, Perkins said.
She expects other health units from around the province to release similar reports and send them to the province in the coming months.
Appeals and Alcohol – Can We Be Persuaded to Drink Less?
Erica A. Morris, New York Times, June 1, 2010
Economists are often accused of being a dour lot, whose grubby focus on molding behavior with carrots and sticks ignores what is noble in the human spirit: higher cognition, altruism and innate goodness. Does the fight against alcohol abuse, particularly drunk driving, show that man can be reasoned with, or does economics – aka the “dismal science” — offer a better guide to human nature?
A huge number of studies from around the world have looked at the effectiveness of alcohol control measures. Peter Anderson, Dan Chisholm, and Daniela C. Fuhr have done a nice summary very recently in the medical journal The Lancet. Over the next couple of pieces, I’ll fill you in on what they report. This time, I’ll look at whether it is possible to persuade people to drink responsibly.
Strategy one: can we reach potential DUI candidates when they’re young? Unfortunately, the evidence on teaching sobriety in the classroom is not too encouraging. A large body of research has shown that the vast majority of programs have largely been ineffective. L. Jones and colleagues found that only six of 52 high-quality programs have been able to show results.
Moreover, those results tend to fade over time. For example, one of the success stories – the School Health and Harm Prevention Program – managed to reduce dangerous drinking an impressive 25.7 percent in the short haul, but only 4.2 percent 32 months later (see this from N. McBride and colleagues). Because of this, the program is not particularly cost-effective, with a cost of over $2500 for each case of hazardous drinking averted at 32 months.
If teachers can’t get the job done, can “Smart Mom?” The good news on alcohol-related parenting programs – which are designed to foster parent/child communication or otherwise improve parenting skills through discussions, videos, coaching, internet programs, etc. – is that the evidence on them is brighter. The bad news is that it’s not much brighter. Only six of 14 studies on parenting programs reviewed by J. Petrie, F. Bunn and G. Byrne come up with statistically significant evidence that they have any effect on future drinking.
As M. Stead, R. Gordon, K. Angus, and L. McDermott report, evidence on the effectiveness of social marketing campaigns (which borrow tactics from the private sector like market research and messages designed for the target audience) is also mixed; only about half of the programs they analyzed showed any effect.
Public information campaigns (e.g. advertising about the dangers of alcohol) can focus our minds on the problem but probably don’t have much effect on actual drinking, or so the limited evidence thus far indicates.
C. Wilkinson and R. Room have found that warning labels on alcohol may perhaps make us feel a little guilt, but have little if any effect on actual alcohol consumption (though they do seem to work for cigarettes).
If more persuasion to not drink isn’t too effective, what about less persuasion to drink? It seems self-evident that less alcohol advertising, sports sponsorships, etc. would lead to more sobriety, but here again the evidence is not overwhelming. The bulk of the literature, as reviewed by C. Gallet, shows a surprisingly weak link between alcohol advertising and consumption, though some studies, particularly those that track subjects over time, have shown that less advertising does work, particularly for the young (see this from P. Anderson, A. de Bruijn, K. Angus, R. Gordon, and Gerard Hastings).
However, we are unlikely to see less advertising, particularly if we wait for the alcohol industry to take the lead; self-regulation initiatives have not led to results in the past. Ironically, responsible drinking education programs produced by the alcohol industry have been shown to sometimes have the exact opposite of the (presumably) intended effect: they actually promote positive views about alcohol and its makers.
Workplace policies like interventions have been poorly studied; though G. Webb, A. Shakeshaft, R. Sanson-Fisher and A. Havard find in their review that such techniques have “potential,” there is as yet little reliable evidence that they work.
As E.F.S. Kaner and colleagues report, one form of persuasion has proven to be effective in controlled trials: health provider intervention. In this method, doctors, nurses or psychologists screen patients and identify those who have unhealthy levels of alcohol consumption. Then the medical professionals provide information on alcohol dependence and aid in formulating a plan to cut back. The problem with this method is that it is time-consuming and costly, and does not reach, or work for, all drinkers.
It is much harder to prove that something doesn’t exist than to prove that it does exist, and it is quite possible that there are some persuasion programs out there that might be a silver bullet. Perhaps the fact that half of the programs in some of these studies had an effect is good news, not bad: we can now build on these strategies.
On the other hand, it should be noted that even in cases where statistically significant results can be shown, the actual magnitude of the effects can still be disappointingly small, as in the School Health and Harm Prevention Program cited above.
In all, we’d definitely like to see more conclusive evidence that these methods work, and thus far we don’t quite have it. My two cents is that part of the fun of drinking is knowing that you’re doing something rebellious and vaguely anti-social, and thus societal exhortations to not do it in a way only add to the perverse thrill.
Time to get the dusty old stick and carrot out of the closet? More on this next time.
Michael Parkinson
Coordinator, Community Engagement
Waterloo Region Crime Prevention Council
99 Regina Street South, Main Floor
Waterloo, Ontario N2J 4V3
CANADA
Phone:(519) 575-4757 ext. 5016
Cell: (519) 504-8758
Fax: (519) 883-1672
Email: mparkinson@regionofwaterloo.ca
0 comments:
Post a Comment