Prescription heroin offered in Vancouver outside of a clinical trial #drugpolicy

Thursday, November 27, 2014 | | 0 comments

 

 



Prescription heroin offered in Vancouver outside of a clinical trial
Treatment will be provided from Nov. 26 for 120 people with a severe addiction to heroin
CBC News
November 26, 2014



 

 

Merry marijuana: New recreational pot industry courts holiday shoppers #drugpolicy

Tuesday, November 25, 2014 | | 0 comments

Vancouver addicts soon to receive prescription heroin #drugpolicy #heroin

Monday, November 24, 2014 | | 0 comments

Vancouver addicts soon to receive prescription heroin

VANCOUVER — The Globe and Mail

Published Saturday, Nov. 22 2014, 11:42 AM EST

Last updated Saturday, Nov. 22 2014, 11:51 AM EST

 

In a North American first, heroin addicts in Vancouver will soon receive prescription heroin outside of a clinical trial.

Doctors at the Providence Crosstown Clinic received shipment of the drug this week for 26 former trial participants and will begin administering the drugs next week. In all, 120 severely addicted people have received authorization from Health Canada to receive the drugs; the rest are expected to get them soon.

This development comes after more than a year of battles between Vancouver doctors and federal Health Minister Rona Ambrose. Doctors who had been prescribing heroin within the trial sought authorization to continue prescribing it afterward to keep the addicts from illicit heroin use and associated harms. But in October, 2013, Ms. Ambrose objected to Health Canada’s approval of the treatment and introduced regulations to make prescribing the drug (chemical name diacetylmorphine) outside of a clinical trial illegal.

Providence and five plaintiffs, represented by the Pivot Legal Society, launched a constitutional challenge and sought an injunction while the case is before the courts. After a three-day hearing in May, B.C. Supreme Court Chief Justice Christopher Hinkson granted the injunction, saying risks associated with severe heroin addiction “will be reduced if [the addicts] receive injectable diacetylmorphine treatment from Providence physicians.”

David Byres, vice-president of Acute Clinical Programs at Providence Health Care, said it is “exciting” to be able to move forward with a course of action that has been proven effective in clinical trials not only in Canada, but around the world.

“The patients are so desperate for treatment, so desperate to be able to no longer be addicted,” Mr. Byres said Friday. “It’s a great thing to be able to help them, and help with the addiction that has taken over their entire lives.”

With prescription heroin, patients attend the clinic two or three times a day, at set times, to receive the pharmaceutical-grade drug and sterilized supplies with which to inject it. They then must sit in a lounge-like area for 20 minutes so nurses can monitor them for adverse effects.

Several European studies have shown that for the small subsection of severe addicts who do not respond to repeated attempts at more common treatments, such as methadone, prescription heroin resulted in a reduction of illicit drug use and criminal activity and physical and mental health improvements. Employment satisfaction and social reintegration also improved.

The 2005-2008 North American Opiate Medication Initiative (NAOMI), led by researchers from Providence and the University of British Columbia, produced the same results. A follow-up study by the same researchers called the Study to Assess Longer-term Opioid Medication Effectiveness (SALOME) seeks to find whether hydromorphone – a powerful but legal pain medication – is as effective a treatment as prescription heroin. The double-blind trials’ severely addicted 202 participants were split in half, with one half receiving hydromorphone and the other heroin.

As participants cycled out of SALOME, some had stabilized enough so that methadone became a sufficient treatment. For the others, doctors applied to Health Canada to continue prescribing heroin outside of the trial, as it has already been proven effective and hydromorphone is still being studied. Health Canada sought the advice of an independent expert on opioid dependence and in September, 2013, began approving the trial doctors’ requests.

Since Ms. Ambrose banned the use of prescription heroin in October, about 30 of the severely addicted patients have left the Providence doctors’ care, with some relapsing into illicit heroin use. However, the clinic is optimistic it can re-engage them, Mr. Byres said.

Adrienne Smith, a health and drug policy lawyer with the Pivot Legal Society, said Pivot is looking forward to making arguments at trial about the plaintiffs’ constitutional rights to access life-saving treatments.

“The minister made the decision to change the regulations preventing them from getting this medication based on ideology and not evidence,” Ms. Smith said. “The minister’s decision put the lives of heroin users in jeopardy.”

 

 

FW: World Aids Day event

Thursday, November 20, 2014 | | 0 comments

See attached poster

USA cannabis legalization process - powerpoint slide

Wednesday, November 19, 2014 | | 0 comments

Hi all,

I have put together a powerpoint slide of the current situation of cannabis legalization in the USA and as I like to share, it is attached.

Cheers,

Mark Haden

Adjunct Professor UBC School of Population and Public Health

Mark@markhaden.com

 

 

 

Potent Pot: How marijuana got so strong and what it means for legalization #drugpolicy

| | 0 comments

FW: Cannabis hedge funds join the green rush #drugpolicy

Monday, November 17, 2014 | | 0 comments

Los Angeles Times
Saturday, November 15, 2014
http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-pot-venture-capitalists-20141116-story.html

Cannabis hedge funds join the green rush

By Evan Halper contact the reporter

The frenzy in the cavernous Green Valley Ranch Resort ballroom might have passed for any confab of entrepreneurs pitching their business plans to pokerfaced angel investors — until an organizer took the podium for a public service announcement.

Please stop smoking weed out by the parking lot, he implored. Hotel security did not approve.

The gathering last week of several hundred Wall Street types, tech industry disrupters, agricultural enthusiasts and assorted others shrugged and went back to the business at hand: leveraging the legalization of marijuana into a windfall.

The pot business is exploding. The devotees and Deadheads toiling away since states started legalizing medical marijuana nearly 20 years ago now must compete in a radically different business culture.
There is a massive potential. It is untapped. It is just sitting there below the surface and it is ready to come above ground. - Emily Paxhia, co-owner of pot hedge fund Poseidon Asset Management

The rapid spread of laws permitting recreational pot is enticing hedge fund managers, venture capitalists, software developers and many others to get in on what inevitably is being touted as a green rush.

They are particularly motivated after Oregon, Alaska and Washington, D.C., this month joined Colorado and Washington state in legalizing recreational pot, with California and others girding to follow in 2016.

"There is a massive potential," Emily Paxhia, who co-owns one of the new pot hedge funds, Poseidon Asset Management, told the gathering. "It is untapped. It is just sitting there below the surface and it is ready to come above ground."

The inventiveness of the new entrepreneurs was on full display here at the "shark tank" conference organized by the ArcView Group, a San Francisco firm that helps deep-pocketed investors find promising cannabis startups.

Several entrepreneurs armed with PowerPoints had gotten involved only months ago. They included data wizards who talked of "disrupting" the industry with apps to make ordering God's Gift or Fogg Kush for home delivery as hassle-free as buying dinner on GrubHub, the online food delivery service.

A former NASA scientist hawked next-generation grow technology. Plans for a cannabis soda that promoters said could be as ubiquitous and consistent as Coca-Cola were unveiled, as were plans to open "the nation's first private membership [country] club to support the cannabis lifestyle."

Hallway chatter was rich with talk of convertible notes, rates of return, incubators and other investor jargon.

By late afternoon, everyone stopped working and engaged in a group yoga stretch.

"It is important we acknowledge the relentless work we have been putting our bodies and our minds through," said Jessica Dugan, who led the session. "In order to maintain our sector's growth, it is important to have some kind of mindfulness practice."

But it was all business when pot market analyst Patrick Rea unveiled the first "seed-stage mentorship-driven accelerator" for fledgling cannabis-related firms.

Those who cared to fund the program were promised a stake in each of the dozen or so startups it guides through a three-month boot camp in Boulder, Colo., and infuses with $20,000 cash.

"We will surround them with mentors, pressure test their business plans and help them get their financials in order," Rea said.

With all the regulatory and political uncertainty around marijuana, it is one of the riskier sectors in which to launch a company.

But you wouldn't know that talking to John Strickler, a longtime management consultant in established industries who decided three months ago to move his career to cannabis. Now he works for Ebbu, a Denver startup seeking to parse the chemical components of pot with unprecedented precision.

"What we are trying to do is create different feelings depending on what mood you want to be in and how you want to feel," he said. "We have an 'energy,' a 'create,' a 'bliss,' a 'chill' and one other one. What was it? Oh yes, 'giggle.' How could I forget 'giggle'?"

The "artisanally distilled" feelings would be sold in the form of liquid vapor, dissolving strips "similar to Listerine strips," gel caps or pre-rolled joints.

"Want to stay out late with your friends?" an Ebbu brochure asks. "We have an Ebbu for that. Want to focus on creative pursuits? There's an Ebbu for that too."

During the conference, entrepreneurs buzzed from table to table in several rounds of "speed dating" with some 200 members in the ArcView network, each of whom pledges to invest at least $50,000 in the pot startups.

Most stuck around for a few days to attend the colossal Marijuana Business Conference & Expo at the Rio resort off the strip in nearby Las Vegas, where 142 companies promoting products such as Peanut Budda Buddha cannabis candy bars and FunkSac child resistant pot pouches tried to lure business.

Some of the more popular booths were staffed by models in slinky dresses. More than 3,000 people attended. Last year's conference drew
700 people.

Not everyone is on board. Pot critics say the thirst for high returns has the marijuana industry starting to resemble Big Tobacco, with profit-hungry companies using the kind of marketing imagery and sales tactics that entice children and glamorize drug use.

Regulators are also concerned. In Washington state, officials banned nonresidents from investing in pot businesses — though some have already found workarounds, such as having out-of-state partners spin off into separate companies that lease real estate back to their colleagues permitted to work directly with the pot.

There was no shortage of ambition at the conference. There was, though, a scarcity of diversity.

Social justice activists bemoan that after decades in which minorities were jailed at astoundingly lopsided rates for using and selling pot, the money to be made in legalized marijuana seems to be headed toward affluent whites.

"There are no Hispanics here," said investor Silvia Orizaba, a rare exception. "It's all whites. So I have to invest with the whites."

Orizaba, a Chicagoan who says she has invested nearly $5 million into cannabis-related companies since 2008, is seeking to draw more Latinos into the business through a nonprofit she runs.

"This industry has gotten so far," she said. "But we need to get minorities involved to move further."

ArcView's founders, whose involvement in the cannabis business predates the days when there was big money to be made, are struggling to keep the new players focused on the political and social concerns that drove legalization and spawned the industry.

They implored investors to pledge big donations to several advocacy groups that gave presentations at the conference. The response was fairly muted.

So by late afternoon, ArcView cofounder Troy Dayton tried a more direct appeal. Help these groups with their political campaigns, he said, and maybe next time you come to Nevada you won't have to worry about being arrested for lighting up in the hotel parking lot.

Said Dayton: "That is another reason to make sure you donate to legalization."

Twitter: @evanhalper

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a conversation with mark haden

Thursday, November 13, 2014 | | 0 comments

FW: UK/CO: Nick Clegg and Juan Manuel Santos to lead global initiative on drugs reform #drugpolicy

Tuesday, November 11, 2014 | | 0 comments

The Guardian - The Observer
November 08, 2014

Nick Clegg and Juan Manuel Santos to lead global initiative on drugs reform http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/nov/08/nick-clegg-juan-manuel-santos-global-initiative-drugs-reform?CMP=share_btn_tw

Deputy prime minister and Colombian president to seek allies in advance of UN special session on drugs policy in 2016

President Santos, left, and Nick Clegg at Admiralty House on Friday.
Photograph: Facundo Arrizabalaga/EPA

Nick Clegg wants the UK to take a lead role in forging an alliance between European and Latin American countries aiming to reform global drugs laws focused on prohibition.

The deputy prime minister believes that the UN special session on drugs in 2016 offers a "unique opportunity" to push for alternatives to the current system. "We need to seize it," Clegg said. "The war on drugs has failed and there are now a large number of states who agree on the need for change."

Clegg was speaking after meeting Colombia's president, Juan Manuel Santos, for talks about his country's peace negotiations with the Farc guerrillas and what both see as an emerging international consensus for reform of international drugs policy.

The talks between Santos and Clegg will be seen as a significant strengthening of the emerging liberal alliance on drugs reform, a move heavily resisted by the Lib Dems' coalition partners.

Last week the Liberal Democrat Home Office minister resigned from the government, partly due to his frustration with the Tories' drugs policy.
Norman Baker said the government should abandon the "inappropriate rhetoric of the 1950s" and focus more on treatment, but the Home Office said policy would not change.

Clegg said he and Santos had agreed on a need to reform a system under which addicts were punished rather than treated and which benefited only drug traffickers and organised criminals. "President Santos and I have agreed to lead the charge and work to build an international coalition to take our case to the UN and start to properly address the suffering caused by drugs."


--
Transnational Institute (TNI)
Drugs & Democracy Programme
De Wittenstraat 25
1052 AK Amsterdam
The Netherlands
Tel: + 31 20 662 66 08
Fax: + 31 20 675 71 76
Email: drugs@tni.org
http://www.druglawreform.info/en/home
http://www.tni.org/work-area/drugs-and-democracy

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NOTICE: talk by Dr. Brian Rush on Ayauasca as a treatment for addiction - next Monday 17th 7-9pm PLEASE CIRCULATE

| | 0 comments

 

 

Please see attached a flyer for a talk at SFU Harbour Centre, Room 2270-515 West Hastings, next Monday 17th November 2014.  This event is being co-sponsored by MAPS Canada and the Canadian Drug Policy Coalition. 

 

Please forward to all your networks and social media outlets.  Thank you!  GILLIAN

 

ABOUT THE PRESENTER

Dr. Brian Rush is well known for his work as the Senior Scientist in the Social and Epidemiological Research Department of the Centre for Mental Health and Addictions in Toronto (CAMH).

 

He is also a Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Associate Professor in Public Health Sciences at the University of Toronto. In 2005, Dr. Rush was granted an "Award of Merit" for his work in support of the Anti-Drug Secretariat Brazil in recognition to the significant contribution to the reduction of drug demand in Brazil.

Dr. Rush has worked for over 30 years in a research and evaluation capacity in problematic substance use and mental health fields. He has a background of addiction and community mental health services and systems research, social /psychiatric epidemiology, with a focus on co-occurring mental and substance use disorders, evaluation and planning of community prevention, program and policy evaluation, and community needs assessment. He is consulted widely on regional, provincial, and national issues related to the integration of mental health and problematic substance use services. 

 

 

GILLIAN MAXWELL

www.gillianmaxwell.com

Integration Coach/Public Speaker/

Knowledge Exchange Broker

604.253.7792

604.728.7792 cel

skype: gillian maxwell

"Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find

all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it."   Rumi

 

 

 

FW: LAR/US: US Marijuana Reform: Impact in Latin America?

Monday, November 10, 2014 | | 0 comments

InSightCrime
07 November, 2014

US Marijuana Reform: Impact in Latin America?
http://www.insightcrime.org/news-analysis/marijuana-reform-us-impact-latin-a
merica-stand


Written by Elyssa Pachico, David Gagne and Kyra Gurney

Drug Policy Tools and Data

Medical marijuana for sale in Oregon.

Oregon, Alaska, and Washington D.C. have become the latest places in the US
to legalize marijuana, providing another push towards drug policy reform in
the hemisphere and prompting questions over what these changes could mean
for organized crime in Latin America.

The panel of high-profile political figures who make up the Global
Commission on Drug Policy said earlier this year that the global taboo
around discussing drug policy reform has been "broken." The election results
in the US -- including California, where voters approved an initiative that
reduces penalties for drug crimes -- could prompt more prominent figures
across Latin America to speak out on alternative ways to approach the drug
issue.

Here are three ways that these latest reforms in the US could impact its
neighbors further South:

1. It makes it harder for the US to push for a more traditional approach to
the so-called "drug war." William Brownfield, assistant secretary of state
for international narcotics and law enforcement affairs, said as much in a
press conference some weeks ago at the United Nations. "How could I, a
representative of the government of the United States of America, be
intolerant of a government that permits any experimentation with
legalization of marijuana if two of the 50 states of the United States of
America have chosen to walk down that road?" he said at the time.

In an e-mail to InSight Crime, Institute for Policy Studies Fellow Sanho
Tree noted that with more states passing US drug reform laws, foreign
governments no longer see a "strong domestic consensus" when it comes to
drug policy.

"Since our own citizens are coming out against the drug war on a
transpartisan basis, it erodes the legitimacy of our drug war bureaucracy
overseas," he wrote.

John Walsh, the Senior Associate for Drug Policy at the Washington Office on
Latin America, echoed Tree's remarks.

"The US is no longer in the position it once was as the international drug
policeman," he said. "If the US tries to denounce other countries for trying
to legalize marijuana, their leaders can easily accuse the US of hypocrisy."

2. Legal marijuana in the US could hit Mexico criminal groups hard and
prompt them to rely more on heroin or methamphetamine exports. Crime analyst
Alejandro Hope has previously hypothesized how a chain of marijuana reform
in US could devastate Mexican suppliers and prompt a new model of regulation
in Mexico. However, the issue of harder drugs -- methamphetamine, heroin,
cocaine -- would remain.

Alejandro Madrazo, a law professor and drug policy expert at Mexican
research center CIDE, told InSight Crime that these recent reforms in the US
could accelerate trends already evident in Mexico, including the increased
importance of poppy production and heroin production for criminal groups.
Heroin use is booming in the US -- and to a certain extent in Mexico as well
-- evidence that Mexican drug traffickers are increasingly relying on this
product in order to turn a profit.

Meanwhile, Mexico criminal groups producing methamphetamine at an industrial
scale continue to impact states across the US. It's possible this could be
exacerbated if Mexico marijuana suppliers are impacted. One study in 2012
calculated that if marijuana became legal in three US states, Mexican
cartels could see their profits drop by up to 30 percent.

But when it comes to policy reform within Mexico, Madrazo said that may
depend somewhat on whether California votes on the issue in 2016.
"California is very close to Mexico both physically and culturally and so it
carries particular symbolic weight in the political imagination," he said.
The reforms in Oregon and elsewhere created "pressure, but were unlikely to
be the tipping point yet."

3. Popular support for marijuana reform in the US provides a contrast to
some Latin American countries, where majority popular opinion doesn't yet
favor legalization. In Uruguay, for example, where legalization of
consumption and production is underway, polls consistently show that the
majority of the population opposes the country's landmark laws.

"The state level-initiatives have really pushed the issue forward in the
United States," said Walsh. "It's a popular issue in that sense, so the
political leaders are playing catch-up for the most part... In Latin
America, and other countries where there is a vigorous debate over drug
policy, it tends to be elite-led, rather than a popular opinion question."
What Next?

As the chart below shows, the push for alternative drug policies in Latin
America is picking up steam, but while many countries are in the midst of
debating proposals for reform, legalization remains a distant reality for
many.

Read more:
http://www.insightcrime.org/news-analysis/marijuana-reform-us-impact-latin-a
merica-stand



--
Drugs & Democracy Info <drugs@tni.org>
Transnational Institute (TNI)
De Wittenstraat 25 1052 AK
P.O.Box 14656 1001 LD
Amsterdam - The Netherlands
Tel: +31 20 662 6608 / Fax: +31 20 675 7176 http://www.tni.org/drugs


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Voters back legal marijuana in Oregon, Alaska, Washington, D.C.

Wednesday, November 5, 2014 | | 0 comments

Chicago Trbunes
November 5, 2014

Voters back legal marijuana in Oregon, Alaska, Washington, D.C.
http://my.chicagotribune.com/#section/-1/article/p2p-81873295/

GARY CAMERON / REUTERS

Melvin Clay of the DC Cannabis Campaign holds a sign urging voters to
legalize marijuana, at the Eastern Market polling station in Washington
November 4, 2014.

Residents of Oregon, Alaska, and the nation's capital voted to legalize
marijuana on Tuesday, in key victories that could fuel the legalization
movement as cannabis usage is increasingly recognized by the American
mainstream.

The Oregon and Alaska measures would legalize recreational pot use and usher
in a network of retail pot shops similar to those operating in Washington
state and Colorado, which in 2012 voted to become the first states to allow
marijuana use for fun.

A less far-reaching proposal in the District of Columbia to allow marijuana
possession but not retail sales won nearly 65 percent of the vote with all
precincts reporting, unofficial results showed.

The referendums come amid shifts in American opinions on marijuana in recent
years that have energized efforts to legalize cannabis, a drug that remains
illegal under federal law even as Colorado and Washington state have been
given the go-ahead to experiment with legalization.

"In 2016 we're going to push the ball forward in several states until we end
prohibition," Leland Berger, a Portland attorney who helped write the new
law, told Reuters outside a packed Portland nightclub where advocates
declared victory amid pot-centric revelry.

Advocates have portrayed the District of Columbia measure as a civil rights
issue, saying studies have shown that African Americans are
disproportionately more likely to be arrested on marijuana charges than are
people of other races.

The D.C. measure had been strongly favored to pass but could still be halted
during a review by the U.S. Congress, which has constitutional oversight
over the capital. The measure would allow adults 21 and older to possess up
to two ounces of cannabis and grow up to six plants.

Pot opponents to fight on

The Oregon law, which drew 54 percent support in preliminary returns, takes
effect in July 2015 and stores could open the following year.

The Alaska measure was leading by about 52-48 percent with nearly 97 percent
of precincts reporting preliminary results late on Tuesday, and groups for
and against the initiative said it had passed.

If given official approval, a regulatory body would have nine months to
write regulations after the election is certified and the measure becomes
law, with stores likely coming at some point in 2016.

Opponents of legal weed in Oregon say they would take their fight to the
Oregon legislature, pushing for stricter laws designed to limit access to
pot by children, among other efforts.

Kevin Sabet, co-founder of anti-legalization group Smart Approaches to
Marijuana, said his group would redouble its efforts to build a broader
coalition to beat back better-funded pro-cannabis groups ahead of what is
expected to be an expanded fight in 2016.

"Tonight is going to inspire us to do better and to try harder and go after
the donors we have to go after in order to level the playing field," Sabet
said. "The more people that hear about legalization, the more people are
uncomfortable with it. For us it's about getting our message out."

Meanwhile, a proposed constitutional amendment to make Florida the 24th
state and the first in the South to allow medical marijuana was defeated
after falling short of the 60 percent support needed to pass, according to
groups both for and against the measure.

In Maine, a proposal to legalize the possession of small amounts of
recreational marijuana failed in Lewiston and passed in South Portland,
advocacy groups said. In Guam, unofficial results indicated it became the
first U.S. territory to approve medical marijuana, an election official
there said.


--
Transnational Institute (TNI)
Drugs & Democracy Programme
De Wittenstraat 25
1052 AK Amsterdam
The Netherlands
Tel: + 31 20 662 66 08
Fax: + 31 20 675 71 76
Email: drugs@tni.org
http://www.druglawreform.info/en/home
http://www.tni.org/work-area/drugs-and-democracy

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collection of research articles

Tuesday, November 4, 2014 | | 0 comments

Hi all,

For those who don’t know, I have spent a number of years collecting and organizing the research on a wide variety of drug and drug policy issues.  This collection is available to you if you would like to access this significant collection.   A “yes please” response to this email will result in a dropbox invitation.

For your reading pleasure,

Cheers,

Mark