NCADD logo

NCADD logo

Friday, May 3, 2013

ATOD and Advocacy Update - Week-Ending May 3, 2013



Government Hasn’t Made Progress on Most Drug Control Goals: Report
The Government Accountability Office (GAO) found the federal government has not made progress on most goals for reducing drug use, which were outlined in the 2010 National Drug Control Strategy, UPI reports. The strategy included seven goals, including reducing drug use among 12- to 17-year-olds by 15 percent. There has been no progress on this goal, primarily because of an increase in teens’ use of marijuana, GAO reported. Teens have decreased their use of other drugs, the report noted. The GAO noted programs designed to prevent and treat drug abuse are spread over 15 federal agencies, some of which provide overlapping services. “These programs could provide or fund one or more drug abuse prevention or treatment service that at least one other program could also provide or fund, either to similar population groups or to reach similar program goals,” the report stated. “Such fragmentation and overlap may result in inefficient use of resources among programs providing similar services.” Many prevention and treatment programs that GAO surveyed did not report coordination efforts, according to the report. The office noted 40 percent of surveyed programs said there was no coordination with other federal agencies on drug abuse prevention or treatment activities. The Office of National Drug Control Policy has said it will work with agencies administering federal programs that provide drug abuse prevention and treatment activities to enhance coordination, according to the article.


Addiction Treatment: How Can We Make Things Better? A Q&A with Maia Szalavitz, Part IV
When it comes to addiction treatment, too often there is a disconnect between what people with an addiction need — and what they get. Combine that with the stigma, desperation and fear that accompany the disease of addiction, time and again, present seemingly insurmountable odds for the addicted person to overcome. In this, the final installment in a four-part series of my Q&A with award-winning journalist Maia Szalavitz, Ms. Szalavitz weighs in on “Addiction Treatment: How Can We Make Things Better?” Read the rest of this blog here.

The Next Step in Drug Treatment
The mandatory-sentencing craze that drove up the prison population tenfold, pushing state corrections costs to bankrupting levels, was rooted in New York’s infamous Rockefeller drug laws. These laws, which mandated lengthy sentences for nonviolent, first-time offenders, were approved 40 years ago next month. They did little to curtail drug use in New York or in other states that mimicked them, while they filled prisons to bursting with nonviolent addicts who would have been more effectively and more cheaply dealt with through treatment programs. Read the rest of this NY Times Editorial here.

Peer Pressure to Smoke Greater in Middle School Than High School: Study
Parents’ smoking behavior influences their teens’ decisions about cigarette use throughout high school, a new study suggests. Peer pressure to smoke is greater during middle school than high school, according to researchers at the Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California. The findings indicate smoking intervention programs designed to counteract peer pressure to smoke should be aimed at middle school students, instead of high school students, the researchers report in the Journal of Adolescent Health. The findings on peer pressure were surprising to the researchers, HealthDay reports. “We thought friends would have more influence on cigarette use during high school than junior high school,” said study author Yue Liao. “But what we found was friends have greater influence during junior high school than high school. We think the reason may be that friends’ cigarette use behavior may have a stronger influence on youth who start smoking at a younger age,” she noted in a press release. “During high school, cigarette use might represent the maintenance of behavior rather than a result of peer influence.” The study included 1,000 teens who were first questioned in seventh grade. They were reassessed after six months, and then annually until they were in twelfth grade. They answered questions about how many of their close friends and parents smoked, and how many cigarettes they themselves had smoked in the past month. They saw a large decrease in friends’ influence from eighth to ninth grade.


Peer Pressure to Smoke Greater in Middle School Than High School: Study
Parents’ smoking behavior influences their teens’ decisions about cigarette use throughout high school, a new study suggests. Peer pressure to smoke is greater during middle school than high school, according to researchers at the Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California. The findings indicate smoking intervention programs designed to counteract peer pressure to smoke should be aimed at middle school students, instead of high school students, the researchers report in the Journal of Adolescent Health. The findings on peer pressure were surprising to the researchers, HealthDay reports. “We thought friends would have more influence on cigarette use during high school than junior high school,” said study author Yue Liao. “But what we found was friends have greater influence during junior high school than high school. We think the reason may be that friends’ cigarette use behavior may have a stronger influence on youth who start smoking at a younger age,” she noted in a press release. “During high school, cigarette use might represent the maintenance of behavior rather than a result of peer influence.” The study included 1,000 teens who were first questioned in seventh grade. They were reassessed after six months, and then annually until they were in twelfth grade. They answered questions about how many of their close friends and parents smoked, and how many cigarettes they themselves had smoked in the past month. They saw a large decrease in friends’ influence from eighth to ninth grade.


Doctors Treating Alcoholics Should Go to Some AA Meetings
Clinicians who treat patients dealing with alcohol abuse often refer them to Alcoholics Anonymous (AA), but many have never gone to a meeting and are not familiar with what goes on there, according to an expert on Twelve-Step programs. “Any doctor treating addicted people should go to at least a few AA meetings, so they can discuss it with patients in a knowledgeable way,” says Marc Galanter, MD, Professor of Psychiatry and Director of the Division of Alcoholism and Drug Abuse at NYU Langone Medical Center. “It’s very experiential, and doctors should have a sense of it. They should also learn the steps of AA.” Dr. Galanter, who has studied the long-term outcomes of AA and Narcotics Anonymous members, says his findings are encouraging. He discussed them at the recent American Society of Addiction Medicine annual meeting. Marc Galanter, MD, Professor of Psychiatry and Director of the Division of Alcoholism and Drug Abuse at NYU Langone Medical Center In one study, published last year in the Journal of Addictive Diseases, he found that among 266 highly committed young adult AA attendees, the average length of abstinence was 44 months. They had attended an average of 233 AA meetings in the previous year. He found 66 percent had served as sponsors, and 92 percent reported experiencing an AA “spiritual awakening” which decreased the likelihood of alcohol craving. “Their craving for alcohol was inversely related to their involvement in the group, and the degree of spiritual awakening they reported,” he notes. In a soon-to-be-published study, Dr. Galanter found similar results with a group of physicians who were long-term members of AA. He noted that unlike most studies of the AA fellowship, which tend to focus on people who have recently come out of treatment, his research centers on people who are long-term stabilized AA members. “They have been abstinent on average for five years and they go to an average of five meetings a week. Most serve as sponsors for other members. Almost all of them work the AA steps.” “Long-term members constitute the majority of people who are at an AA meeting at any given time—they are the core of the fellowship,” Dr. Galanter observes. “They make AA work because they set the tone for it, and they are very stable.” Doctors should understand the types of people their patients will meet at AA, who will serve as their sponsor, and the nature of the group’s spiritual orientation, he says. “We found that the majority of members we asked said they experience God’s presence on most days—that’s a particular kind of experience that is not necessarily what clinicians would expect. It’s important for them to appreciate it, because that’s what their patients will encounter.”


New Jersey Acts to Save “Good Samaritan” Overdose Measure
New Jersey Governor Chris Christie and Democratic senators agreed on changes to a “Good Samaritan” bill that allows people to call 911 to report a drug overdose, without the fear of getting arrested for drug possession themselves. The governor rejected the Good Samaritan Emergency Response Act last fall, saying it was too focused on reporting drug overdoses, instead of deterrence, NJ.com reports. On Monday (4/29/13), he partially vetoed a bill that makes the overdose antidote naloxone available to spouses, parents and guardians of people addicted to opioid. They would be taught to administer the drug in an emergency. He recommended that measure be combined with the key components of the Good Samaritan bill that protects witnesses and victims from arrest, charge, prosecution, conviction, or revocation of parole or probation, where evidence is obtained as a result of seeking medical assistance. The state Senate and House both overwhelmingly approved the compromise bill. The governor will now review the bill, the article notes. “Governor Christie is grateful that his concerns on this important issue were heard and incorporated in a bipartisan way,” said Colin Reed, a spokesman for the governor. “We look forward to reviewing the reworked bill in its final form.” A growing number of states have passed or are considering Good Samaritan laws. Most of the state laws protect people from prosecution if they have small quantities of drugs and seek medical aid after an overdose. The laws are designed to limit immunity to drug possession, so that large supplies of narcotics would remain illegal.


A Rising Tide of Substance Abuse
America’s 78 million aging baby boomers are heading into retirement with more than their considerable wealth, health and education. They are also bringing into their golden years an epidemic of drug and alcohol abuse and mental illness that has yet to be recognized, according to a recent Institute of Medicine report. The notion that the elderly might be abusing or addicted to alcohol, illicit drugs or prescription medications may strike some as improbable. After all, the common notion is that alcohol and substance abuse are for young people. Read more here.


Which Prescription Drugs Do Americans Abuse Most?
According to a 2010 study by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, approximately 7 million people in the United States -- or 2.7 percent of the population -- annually abuse prescription drugs. This abuse primarily occurs when people take medication not prescribed to them or take their own prescription drugs at a higher dosage than recommended by their doctor.  The most commonly abused prescription drugs fall into three categories: Opioids (pain relievers), depressants and stimulants. Below is a breakdown of each category, compiled using the latest statistics from the National Institute on Drug Abuse. Click here for the rest.



Prescription Drug Abuse: Top 10 Things CDC Says You Should Know
Austin Box "gutted through" pain. Even after a bad blow to his back that ruptured a disc, the linebacker for the University of Oklahoma Sooners played through the pain that lingered after rehab. He was upbeat, alert and seemingly at the top of his physical game on a three-day trip to St. Louis with his father in 2011. But the day after they returned, Austin was found unconscious in a friend's home. He died after being taken to the hospital, at age 22.  The toxicology report showed five different pain medications and an anti-anxiety drug in Austin's system -- a cocktail that ended up stopping his heart. The rest of this story is here.


CDC's study on alcohol use is misleading
The Centers for Disease Control has weighed in very publicly in the debate surrounding the privatization of state liquor stores in Pennsylvania, suggesting that privatization would harm public health. The studies CDC cites as evidence, however, do not support that claim. Robert Brewer, who leads the alcohol program in the CDC's National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, has repeatedly pointed to a review by CDC's Community Task Force. It found a 44 percent median increase in per capita sales of privatized alcoholic beverages within jurisdictions that underwent privatization of retail alcohol sales. Unfortunately, Brewer has never explained what the 44 percent estimate really means. This data, which has been presented out of context, is misleading and useless in the Pennsylvania privatization discussions. Read the rest of this Op-Ed piece here.

Synthetic Marijuana Third-Most Abused Substance by High School Students
Synthetic marijuana was the third-most abused substance by U.S. high school students last year, behind alcohol and marijuana, according to the Center for Substance Abuse Research (CESAR) at the University of Maryland, College Park. The report found 57 percent of high school students reported using alcohol, compared with 39 percent for marijuana and 12 percent for synthetic marijuana. “In reality, youth who report using synthetic marijuana likely have no idea what specific synthetic cannabinoid they are using or what the effects will be,” the report notes. Eric Wish, Director of CESAR, told The Baltimore Sun the federal government has had difficulty cracking down on synthetic marijuana. Makers of the drug continually change the formula to evade laws designed to ban synthetic marijuana and other designer drugs. In July 2012, President Obama signed legislation to ban synthetic drugs. The law outlaws harmful chemicals in synthetic drugs such as those used to make synthetic marijuana and bath salts. Synthetic drugs are readily available online. The law outlaws sales of synthetic drugs by both retail stores and online retailers.


Colleges Tighten Rules on ADHD Drugs
Dozens of colleges are instituting stricter rules for diagnosing and medicating attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), The New York Times reports. The rules are a reaction to the growing overuse of these medications. One study at a large university found 34 percent of students had used a prescription stimulant drug to help them focus when they felt academic stress. Prescription stimulants can cause a variety of health problems if they are misused, including an irregular heartbeat and panic attacks. They can be deadly in rare cases if they are mixed with alcohol or other drugs. Some colleges require students who are prescribed ADHD medications to sign a contract stating they will not misuse or share pills. George Mason University in Virginia does not allow its doctors to make a diagnosis of ADHD, while William & Mary, also in Virginia, forbids its physicians to prescribe stimulants to students; instead, they refer them to off-campus doctors. At Marquette University in Wisconsin, students must sign a release that allows doctors to call their parents for a full medical history, and confirm the student’s symptoms. “We get complaints that you’re making it hard to get treatment,” Dr. Jon Porter, Director of Medical, Counseling and Psychiatry Services at the University of Vermont, told the newspaper. The school does not perform diagnostic evaluations for ADHD. “There’s some truth to that. The counterweight is these prescriptions can be abused at a high rate, and we’re not willing to be a part of that and end up with kids sick or dead.” Ruth Hughes, Chief Executive of the advocacy group Children and Adults With Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder, says these college policies may be discriminatory, because they are not applied to other medical or psychiatric conditions. She says that if students are required to sign a contract for stimulants, they should also do so for commonly abused opioid painkillers.


Sharp Rise in Emergency Department Visits Involving the Sleep Medication Zolpidem
A new report shows that the number of emergency department visits involving adverse reactions to the sleep medication zolpidem rose nearly 220 percent from 6,111 visits in 2005 to 19,487 visits in 2010. The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) report also finds that in 2010 patients aged 45 or older represented about three-quarters (74 percent) of all emergency department visits involving adverse reactions to zolpidem. Read the rest here.

FDA Asks For Additional Data on Implant to Treat Opioid Addiction

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) this week asked for more information on an implant designed to treat opioid addiction, before making a decision on whether to approve the drug, according to Bloomberg News. Probuphine is a long-acting version of the opioid dependence medication buprenorphine. It is implanted under the skin of the upper arm, in a procedure that takes about 10 to 15 minutes in a doctor’s office. It remains in place for about six months. The FDA asked for more information on the effect of higher doses of Probuphine, and on how doctors would be trained to insert and remove the implant. In March, an advisory panel to the FDA recommended the agency approve Probuphine, made by Titan Pharmaceuticals, but voiced concerns about the safety of the manufacturer’s marketing plan. Members of the panel said they were concerned about the safety of the company’s marketing plan, because of the potential for abuse of the drug. They also said they were not convinced the intended dose of Probuphine would be effective enough. Doctors must be trained to implant the drug, and some of the FDA advisors said they were concerned Titan had not adequately planned for the training.

Teen Girls May Have a Harder Time Quitting Methamphetamine, Study Suggests

Teenage girls may have a more difficult time than boys in quitting methamphetamine, a new study suggests. The study by researchers at UCLA found girls are more likely to continue using methamphetamine during treatment. They say the findings indicate the need for new treatment approaches for girls addicted to meth, HealthCanal reports. The study included nine boys and 10 girls, whose average age was 17 ½. All were addicted to meth and were receiving counseling. They were treated with either bupropion (an antidepressant and smoking cessation drug) or a placebo. Teens given bupropion provided significantly fewer meth-free urine samples compared with teens given a placebo, suggesting the drug is not an effective treatment for meth addiction. Boys in both groups provided more than twice as many meth-free urine samples as girls. “The greater severity of methamphetamine problems in adolescent girls compared to boys, combined with results of studies in adults that also found women to be more susceptible to methamphetamine than men, suggests that the gender differences in methamphetamine addiction observed in adults may actually begin in adolescence,” study author Dr. Keith Heinzerling said in a news release. The findings appear in the Journal of Adolescent Health.

New research shows weekend binge drinking could leave lasting liver damage
Long after a hangover, a night of bad decisions might take a bigger toll on the body than previously understood. Described in the current issue of Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research, a study at the University of Missouri has revealed a unique connection between binge drinking and the risk for developing alcoholic liver disease and a variety of other health problems. Read more here.

Rx Abuse Data Tools Sought By Healthcare
A standards development organization focused on pharmacy services is calling on state governments and the healthcare industry to adopt a common communications process to apply existing data in the fight against prescribing fraud and abuse of prescription drugs. Read the rest of this story here.

College Students Tweet More About Adderall During Finals
An analysis of college students’ Twitter use finds mentions of the attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) drug Adderall spikes during finals. Tweets about the drug are most common in the northeast and south. Some students use Adderall and other ADHD medications to help them focus while studying, Researchers at Brigham Young University monitored all public-facing Twitter mentions of Adderall over a six-month period, removing those who indicated they were promoting the drug. They found 213,633 tweets from 132,099 users, MedicalXpress reports. Adderall-related tweets averaged 930 per day, but jumped to 2,813 on December 13, and 2,207 on April 30, they report in the Journal of Medical Internet Research. “Adderall is the most commonly abused prescription stimulant among college students,” lead researcher Carl Hanson said in a news release. “Our concern is that the more it becomes a social norm in online conversation, the higher risk there is of more people abusing it.” Tweets mentioning Adderall were more common in the middle of the week, and declined by the weekend.  “It’s not like they’re using it as a party drug on the weekend,” Hanson noted. “This data suggests that they’re using it as a study aid. Many of the tweets even made a study reference.” Per-capita tweets about Adderall were highest in Vermont, Massachusetts and Alabama. Southeast Texas, central Illinois and northern California had the lowest rates. The study found 9 percent of tweets mentioning Adderall included another substance such as alcohol, cocaine, marijuana or Xanax. Study co-author Michael Barnes said, “Tweets hinting at co-ingestion are particularly troubling because morbidity and mortality risk increases when substances are combined.” Dozens of colleges are instituting stricter rules for diagnosing and medicating ADHD. The rules are a reaction to the growing overuse of these medications. One study at a large university found 34 percent of students had used a prescription stimulant drug to help them focus when they felt academic stress.


People Who Drink to Improve Mood More Likely to Become Alcohol-Dependent
People who drink to improve their mood are three times more likely to become dependent on alcohol, compared with those who don’t use alcohol to feel better or stay calm, new research suggests. Among people with an increased risk of alcohol dependence, those who drink to improve their mood are less likely to become sober several years later, compared with people who don’t drink to ease painful emotions, the Los Angeles Times reports. One new study, published in JAMA Psychiatry, included people who were at increased risk of alcoholism, who were asked whether they drank to improve their mood or reduce tension. They were interviewed again several years later, to determine whether they had become, or stayed, alcohol-dependent. “Drinking to self-medicate mood symptoms may be a potential target for prevention and early intervention efforts aimed at reducing the occurrence of alcohol dependence,” the researchers wrote. A second study, published in the same journal, used brain scanners in 45 people with alcoholism at an inpatient treatment program, while they were in the first four to eight weeks of a 12-step program. They were asked to think about situations when they were relaxed, and then to imagine highly stressful situations or those associated with heavy drinking. Patients who would later relapse were more likely than those who did not return to drinking to show low activity in regions of the brain associated with regulation of mood, emotional arousal and cognitive control when they thought about stressful situations or drinking-related scenarios. When they were relaxed, they showed increased activity in these brain regions. In an editorial accompanying the studies, Nora D. Volkow, Director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, wrote, “A better understanding of a patient’s response to stress and/or alcohol cues is bound to contribute to the design of more personalized and, therefore, effective treatment strategies.”


New Jersey Governor Signs Good Samaritan Overdose Law
New Jersey Governor Chris Christie on Thursday signed into law a measure that encourages people to report drug overdoses. The law allows people to call 911 to report a drug overdose, without the fear of getting arrested for drug possession themselves. Governor Christie was joined by singer Jon Bon Jovi for the signing of the law. Bon Jovi’s daughter overdosed at her college dorm in upstate New York last year, but survived. Prosecutors dropped drug charges against her and another student under that state’s Good Samaritan overdose-reporting law, according to the Associated Press. “What we now have is a comprehensive law we can all be proud of for what it can achieve, the saving of a life to provide the opportunity for individuals, their families, friends and those Good Samaritans involved to reflect on their experience in a way that they probably would have never reflected upon it before,” Christie said in a statement. “A life saved from drug abuse can be a life restored. Families can be spared the anguish of loss, a loss that could have been prevented.” After signing the law, Governor Christie and Bon Jovi visited with patients at a drug rehabilitation center. The governor rejected the Good Samaritan Emergency Response Act last fall, saying it was too focused on reporting drug overdoses, instead of deterrence. On Monday, he partially vetoed a bill that makes the overdose antidote naloxone available to spouses, parents and guardians of people addicted to opioid. They would be taught to administer the drug in an emergency. He recommended that measure be combined with the key components of the Good Samaritan bill that protects witnesses and victims from arrest, charge, prosecution, conviction, or revocation of parole or probation, where evidence is obtained as a result of seeking medical assistance. The state Senate and House both overwhelmingly approved the compromise bill.


Addiction Interaction, Relapse and Recovery
Substance abuse and dependence rarely occur in a vacuum. Today’s addict is faced with a multitude of issues that may co-exist and compromise recovery. Co-existing addictions/compulsive behaviors such as drugs and alcohol, pathological gambling, sex, food, work, internet and gaming can become chronic and progressive if left unidentified and untreated. Many of these addictions don’t only coexist, but interact, reinforce and fuse together becoming part of a package known as Addiction Interaction. The term “Addiction Interaction Disorder” was introduced by Patrick Carnes PhD in 2011. Read the rest of this article here.


Rx Drug Abuse: Addict Turns Life Around With Drug Court
High on painkillers and anti-anxiety medication, Cherre Thompson considered abandoning her daughter when a cashier accused her of stealing from a local restaurant. It wasn’t uncommon for Thompson to nod off from a cocktail of Soma, Xanax and Roxicodone, whether it was at a traffic light, at a restaurant or even when she was driving — often with her daughter Kyyah in the vehicle. On this day, it was just an old-fashioned black-out at Catfish Cove, where she’d taken her daughter for crab legs. Read the rest here.

No comments:

Post a Comment