Drug smugglers who race across the Caribbean in speedboats will typically jettison their cargo when spotted by surveillance aircraft, hoping any chance of prosecuting them will vanish with the drugs sinking to the bottom of the sea.

That may be a less winning tactic in the future. The U.S. Navy on Friday began testing two new aerial tools, borrowed from the battlefields of Afghanistan and Iraq, that officials say will make it easier to detect, track and videotape drug smugglers in action.

One of the devices on display aboard the High Speed Vessel Swift is a large, white balloon-like craft known as an aerostat, which is tethered up to 2,000 feet (600 meters) above the ship's stern. The other tool on board for tests in the Florida Straits is a type of drone that can be launched by hand from the deck.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Drugs/Drug Addiction • Law & Legal Issues • Police/Fire • Science & Technology • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A. • Caribbean

This week, legislators here will consider excise and sales taxes on marijuana of up to 30 percent combined. The proposal emerged from a task force of health officials, representatives of the state’s rapidly developing marijuana industry and others that was commissioned last year to help develop rules for marijuana.

The goal, task force members and lawmakers say, is to set taxes high enough to finance the administration of new laws, but not so high that customers are driven back to the black market.

“We should see a financial benefit as a state that can help pay for enforcement and other fundamental issues,” said Christian Sederberg, a Denver lawyer on the panel whose firm helped draft Amendment 64, the measure legalizing recreational marijuana. “The other side is that if you tax something too high, then you simply crowd out the regulated market. We’re confident we’ll find the right balance.”

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Drugs/Drug Addiction • Health & Medicine • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • Corporations/Corporate Life • Taxes • Politics in General • State Government

M. had been in prison for about three years. He was normally a regular at morning Mass, skinny and skittish, with light eyes, and he had recently grown a scruffy beard. “You look like you belong on ‘Lost,’ ” [the Rev. Robert Coogan] said when he greeted him. Unlike other prisoners, M. actually had a family of some means, and in a prison system without uniforms, his style often seemed more appropriate for an indie rock club. His sneakers were clean and hip; his jeans had designer labels.

Inside maximum, M. shared space not just with hard-core Zetas but also with inmates too insane to be kept anywhere else — including one who refused to wear clothes and spoke to angels. He slept little, like any prey encircled by predators, and that morning he anxiously greeted Coogan’s arrival, signaling immediately with darting eyes that he needed to talk privately. Coogan followed him into the yard, where M. pulled out a Bible for cover and positioned himself near a faraway wall. There, he explained that the Zetas wanted him to pay them 2,000 pesos ($165), with the first half due at noon the next day. Coogan, brightening the dusty pen with his purple robes, nodded as M. spoke. He had paid small ransoms to keep M. safe from the Zetas twice already, but this latest demand was larger, more than a week’s pay. He wasn’t sure whether the Zetas were serious or if they were just toying with M. He also didn’t know if M. could be trusted. M. claimed to be locked up because a friend stole a television and he was taking the rap, but other inmates doubted his story and said he was a schemer. Coogan considered his options. Paying the Zetas would encourage extortion, but ignoring the threat, or confronting the Zetas directly, could get M. beaten or killed.

Read it all from the New York Times Magazine.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Drugs/Drug Addiction • Prison/Prison Ministry • Religion & Culture • * International News & Commentary • Mexico • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • Roman Catholic • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology • Pastoral Theology

The tell-tale empty box of decongestant pills lay crumpled and damp in the woods behind an abandoned trailer, and the people who used it to make methamphetamine were long gone.

Their trash pile was evidence of a quick method of cooking methamphetamine that is gaining popularity in South Carolina – causing the number of meth cases to skyrocket and allowing “cooks” to be more mobile.

Last year, six years after South Carolina made people show an ID to buy pseudoephedrine, the key ingredient in meth, the State Law Enforcement Division reported 538 meth-related incidents in the state. That’s four times the number reported in 2010.

Read it all--makes the heart sad; KSH.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Drugs/Drug Addiction • Law & Legal Issues • Church/State Matters • * South Carolina

...unlike other holdups, this robber isn’t after cash. He wants painkillers, primarily oxycodone, and the pharmacist is the only one who can access it.

Unprepared for such a threatening scenario, the pharmacist complies, and the robber flees with hundreds, if not thousands, of pills.

This scenario happened at least 13 times at Lowcountry pharmacies in 2012, up from about four in 2011. It’s a trend that’s been spreading across the country over the past few years, and it’s indicative of just how addictive these drugs can be and the profits thieves stand to make by stealing them.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Drugs/Drug Addiction • Health & Medicine • Law & Legal Issues • Police/Fire • * South Carolina

We are all sinners, the Bible says and everyone knows. But not everyone is as accomplished a violator of the Ninth Commandment as Lance Armstrong, who is finally admitting this week after years of vociferous denials that he doped himself up to win the Tour de France seven times.

Mr. Armstrong has decided to admit his deceptions at America's secular confessional, the Church of Oprah. No doubt the TV ratings will be huge, as the cancer survivor turned champion cyclist tries to salvage what he can of his reputation. If he really wants to atone, however, he'd be better off following the example of the late Chuck Colson.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Drugs/Drug Addiction • Law & Legal Issues • Sports • * Theology • Anthropology • Ethics / Moral Theology • Pastoral Theology

Steroid-tainted stars Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens and Sammy Sosa were denied entry to baseball's Hall of Fame, with voters failing to elect any candidates for only the second time in four decades.

Bonds received just 36.2 percent of the vote, Clemens 37.6 and Sosa 12.5 in totals announced Wednesday by the Hall and the Baseball Writers' Association of America. They were appearing on the ballot for the first time and have up to 14 more years to make it to Cooperstown.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Drugs/Drug Addiction • History • Men • Sports • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology

Most adolescents who plan or attempt suicide have already received at least some mental health treatment, raising questions about the effectiveness of current approaches to helping troubled youths, according to the largest in-depth analysis to date of suicidal behaviors in American teenagers.

The study, in the journal JAMA Psychiatry, found that 55 percent of suicidal teenagers had received some therapy before they thought about suicide, planned it or tried to kill themselves, contradicting the widely held belief that suicide is due in part to a lack of access to treatment.

The findings, based on interviews with a nationwide sample of more than 6,000 teenagers and at least one parent of each, linked suicidal behavior to complex combinations of mood disorders like depression and behavior problems like attention-deficit and eating disorders, as well as alcohol and drug abuse.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Drugs/Drug Addiction • Health & Medicine • History • Psychology • Suicide • Science & Technology • Teens / Youth • * Theology • Anthropology • Ethics / Moral Theology • Pastoral Theology

It has been his life's work. Now, Russell Portenoy appears to be having second thoughts.

Two decades ago, the prominent New York pain-care specialist drove a movement to help people with chronic pain. He campaigned to rehabilitate a group of painkillers derived from the opium poppy that were long shunned by physicians because of their addictiveness....

Opioids are also behind the country's deadliest drug epidemic. More than 16,500 people die of overdoses annually, more than all illegal drugs combined.

Now, Dr. Portenoy and other pain doctors who promoted the drugs say they erred by overstating the drugs' benefits and glossing over risks. "Did I teach about pain management, specifically about opioid therapy, in a way that reflects misinformation? Well, against the standards of 2012, I guess I did," Dr. Portenoy said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal. "We didn't know then what we know now."

Read it all (this was also referenced in yesterday's sermon by yours truly--KSH.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Drugs/Drug Addiction • Health & Medicine • Science & Technology • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology

Over the years [when asked this question about using marijuana], my default answer has been Romans 13:1–7, which basically says that believers must submit to the laws of government as long as there is no conflict with the higher laws of God in Scripture. This was a simple way to say “no” to recreational pot smoking. But now that recreational marijuana use is no longer illegal (according to my state laws, at least), the guiding question is now twofold:

Is using marijuana sinful, or is it wise?

Some things are neither illegal (forbidden by government in laws) nor sinful (forbidden by God in Scripture), but they are unwise. For example, eating a cereal box instead of the food it contains is not illegal or sinful—it’s just foolish. This explains why the Bible speaks not only of sin, but also folly, particularly in places such as the book of Proverbs. There are innumerable things that won’t get you arrested or brought under church discipline, but they are just foolish and unwise—the kinds of things people often refer to by saying, “That’s just stupid.”

Read it all.

Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • Ministry of the Ordained • * Culture-Watch • Drugs/Drug Addiction • Law & Legal Issues • Men • Urban/City Life and Issues • Young Adults • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • Evangelicals • * Theology • Anthropology • Ethics / Moral Theology • Pastoral Theology

How did we get here? From "say no" to "yes" votes in not one but two states?

The answer goes beyond society's evolving views, and growing acceptance, of marijuana as a drug of choice.

In Washington — and, advocates hope, coming soon to a state near you — there was a well-funded and cleverly orchestrated campaign that took advantage of deep-pocketed backers, a tweaked pro-pot message and improbable big-name supporters.

Good timing and a growing national weariness over failed drug laws didn't hurt, either.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Drugs/Drug Addiction • Health & Medicine • Law & Legal Issues • * Economics, Politics • Politics in General • State Government

Tony Dokoupil..likes.the for-profit regulatory model in Colorado [going forward]...

"There's a ban on advertising," he explains. "There are cameras that track the marijuana from bloom to end-consumer, so the diversion into the black market is limited. There are extensive background checks on people who are part of the marketplace — so if you want to open a marijuana shop, you have to go through an extensive background check."

Once that model is in place, the consumer side of things might look a lot like Starbucks.

"I think you will have a variety of products at different levels of intensity, exactly like Starbucks," Dokoupil says. "You might be able to walk in there and in the case they'll have 12 different strains of cannabis. Behind the counter there might be hash. There might be edibles, like fizzy drinks or brownies. There could be a hot dog wheel turning. You could put THC in anything."

Read or listen to it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Drugs/Drug Addiction • Law & Legal Issues • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • Corporations/Corporate Life • Politics in General • State Government

This month, two US states voted to legalise, regulate and tax marijuana. From advertising and marketing to drugged-driving enforcement, we ask what's ahead.

The 6 November votes in Colorado and Washington left a lot of marijuana users happy and a lot of police officers nervous. And they set the two states up for a confrontation with the federal government, as marijuana is still illegal under federal law.

Marijuana is the most widely used illicit drug in the US. Legalisation advocates say the recent votes mark the beginning of the end of the drug's prohibition.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Drugs/Drug Addiction • Health & Medicine • Law & Legal Issues • * Economics, Politics • Politics in General • State Government

Caught this over the weekend, really worth the time. If you do not know the story, you need to--KSH.

Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • Death / Burial / Funerals • * Culture-Watch • Children • Drugs/Drug Addiction • Education • History • Marriage & Family • Men • Teens / Youth • Urban/City Life and Issues • Violence

There is no excusing Armstrong's behaviour. He shouldn't have taken the drugs and he shouldn't have compelled others to do the same. But the latest revelations do show how a beautiful sport had been corrupted and how anyone seeking to succeed could have been drawn into such behaviour.

But there are still reasons to admire this obviously deeply flawed man. Armstrong has done wonderful things - on and off the bike - and given me memories that I still savour.

On drugs or not, he was capable of magnificent and daring feats. On stage nine of the 2003 Tour de France, Armstrong swerved to avoid a fellow rider, Joseba Beloki, who had crashed badly on a descent. The American was forced to ride across a steep paddock, jump a drainage ditch and rejoin the race on the road below. It was dramatic, bold and impressive.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Drugs/Drug Addiction • Sports • * International News & Commentary • Australia / NZ • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology

Jaclyn Kinkade, a 23-year-old doctor's-office receptionist and occasional model, was a casualty of America's No. 1 drug menace when she overdosed and died, alone, in a tumbledown clapboard house in Dunnellon, Fla.

The drugs that killed her didn't come from the Colombian jungles or an Afghan poppy field. Two of the three drugs found in her system were sold to Ms. Kinkade, legally, at Walgreen Co. and CVS Caremark shops, the two biggest U.S. pharmacies. Both prescription drugs found in her body were made in the U.S.—the oxycodone in Elizabeth, N.J., by a company being acquired by generic-drug giant Watson Pharmaceuticals Inc., and the methadone in Hobart, N.Y., by Covidien Ltd., another major manufacturer. Every stage of their distribution was government-regulated. In addition, Ms. Kinkade had small amounts of methamphetamine in her system when she died.

The U.S. spends about $15 billion a year fighting illegal drugs, often on foreign soil. But America's deadliest drug epidemic begins and ends at home. More than 15,000 Americans now die annually after overdosing on prescription painkillers called opioids, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention—more than from heroin, cocaine and all other illegal drugs combined.

Read it all (emphasis mine).

Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • Death / Burial / Funerals • * Culture-Watch • Children • Drugs/Drug Addiction • Health & Medicine • Marriage & Family • Psychology • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A.

An experimental drug appears to preserve and possibly even improve the ability of boys with Duchenne muscular dystrophy to walk, according to the results of a clinical trial announced on Wednesday, raising hopes that the first effective treatment for the disease may be on the horizon.

Boys with the disease who received the highest dose of the drug had a slightly improved ability to walk after 48 weeks of treatment, the drug’s developer, Sarepta Therapeutics, announced. By contrast, the boys who received a placebo suffered a sharp decline in how well they could walk.

The drug, called eteplirsen, also appeared to restore levels of the key protein that muscular dystrophy patients lack to about half of normal levels, Sarepta said.

Read it all. The blog has been following this story for a while now--keep your eye on it, it is a potnetially once in a lifetime event; KSH.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • Drugs/Drug Addiction • Health & Medicine • Science & Technology • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Corporations/Corporate Life

A decade after his military service, McLean faces 15 years to life in prison if he’s convicted of first-degree burglary. He makes no excuses for the addict he’s become.

Six months in jail awaiting a court date have provided him some quality detox time. Abusing alcohol and crack cocaine, McLean was homeless when he was arrested.

“I’ve never gotten into trouble except when drugs and alcohol were involved,” he says.

He admits he needs help.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Alcoholism • Drugs/Drug Addiction • Law & Legal Issues • Poverty • Prison/Prison Ministry • Psychology • * Economics, Politics • Defense, National Security, Military • Iraq War • War in Afghanistan • * South Carolina • * Theology • Pastoral Theology

Our nation is in the midst of a public health emergency the likes of which we have not seen since the first decade of AIDS' spread across America. And much like the early years of the AIDS epidemic, the victims of the current crisis are both vilified and ignored, the families of the victims are shamed into silence, and the public at large doesn't know enough to protect itself.

I am speaking of drug overdose, which is now killing tens of thousands of Americans annually, while leaving many thousands more mentally and physically disabled for the rest of their lives. The vast majority of drug overdose deaths are the result of two types of highly addictive, and highly profitable, prescription drugs: opiates and benzodiazapenes. In 2010, one of the more than 25, 000 Americans who died as the result of drug overdose was someone I adored with all my heart: my 18-year-old firstborn, my son Henry.

Before I learned that Henry was addicted to pills, I simply had no clue that the problem of pill addiction and overdose was quietly yet savagely ripping apart the East Tennessee community in which we make our home.

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Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • Death / Burial / Funerals • * Culture-Watch • Children • Drugs/Drug Addiction • Health & Medicine • Marriage & Family • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology

Even with Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy, there's no stopping 12 year old Justin Trovillion. We met Justin last year just before he took part in a trail involving an experimental drug.

His mother Carrie Trovillion says she feels since the trial, Justin has a new energy for life.

"Now I'm pulling him inside at night trying to make him go to bed!," said Carrie. "He doesn't want to sit on the couch anymore!"

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • Drugs/Drug Addiction • Health & Medicine • Marriage & Family • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Corporations/Corporate Life

Melky Cabrera, whose breakout season with the San Francisco Giants was highlighted by his MVP performance in the All-Star Game, has been suspended 50 games for testing positive for testosterone, Major League Baseball announced.

Cabrera, a 27-year-old outfielder, has produced a major league-leading 159 hits this season, along with 11 home runs and 69 RBI. Acquired by the Giants in the off-season from the Kansas City Royals, Cabrera was on his way to a career year prior to being eligible for free agency this winter....

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Drugs/Drug Addiction • Health & Medicine • Men • Sports • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology

The most eye-opening and persuasive parts of the book explore the revenue and benefits to be had from cannabis without a single joint’s being lighted. Throughout human history, cultures from Mongolia to Peru have used the non-psychoactive cannabis plant for food, shelter, clothing and medicine. Early drafts of the Declaration of Independence were written on hemp paper, and the covered pioneer wagons that took America westward were made of cannabis fiber. In 1942, cannabis prohibition was suspended because of a shortage in industrial supply during the war, and the government actually encouraged farmers to grow it, using a propaganda film, “Hemp for Victory.”

The place industrial cannabis is not found yet, Fine points out, is in the above­ground American economy, thanks to its listing as a Schedule I narcotic. The Drug Enforcement Administration’s official stance is that it has no medical value at all: “Smoked marijuana has not withstood the rigors of science — it is not medicine, and it is not safe.” O.K., Fine seems to say, but tell that to the doctors with evidence of its ability to shrink tumors and ease the effects of chemotherapy; or to the seniors of Orange County who depend on medical marijuana to treat their arthritis, and the doctor who uses it to treat his glaucoma; or to the 30-year-old Iraq war veteran with the shrapnel injuries who thanks God every day for this drug. It is prescription drugs that are now the leading cause of fatal drug overdoses — more than 26,000 each year. Also each year, over 23,000 Americans die of alcohol-related causes. None have died from cannabis alone.

As I said, the issue is loaded. And yet the side that has all the load never seems to win in America....

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Books • Drugs/Drug Addiction • Health & Medicine • Law & Legal Issues • Psychology • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • Taxes

Illinois Medicaid recipients have been limited to four prescription drugs as the state becomes the latest to cap how many medicines it will cover in the state-federal health insurance program for the poor.

Doctors fear the state's cost-cutting move could harm patients, who have to get state permission to go beyond the limit.

"We understand the state is trying to get its Medicaid budget under control, but our concern is it not be a hardship for patients and a hassle for doctors in the execution," says William Werner, president of the Illinois State Medical Society.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Drugs/Drug Addiction • Health & Medicine • * Economics, Politics • Politics in General • State Government

When a pharmacy sells the heartburn drug Zantac, each pill costs about 35 cents. But doctors dispensing it to patients in their offices have charged nearly 10 times that price, or $3.25 a pill.

The same goes for a popular muscle relaxant known as Soma, insurers say. From a pharmacy, the per-pill price is 60 cents. Sold by a doctor, it can cost more than five times that, or $3.33.

At a time of soaring health care bills, experts say that doctors, middlemen and drug distributors are adding hundreds of millions of dollars annually to the costs borne by taxpayers, insurance companies and employers through the practice of physician dispensing.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Drugs/Drug Addiction • Health & Medicine • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Corporations/Corporate Life

After years of stalled efforts, Connecticut is close to legalizing medical marijuana.

The state Senate approved the bill early Saturday morning following nearly 10 hours of debate. The measure passed the House of Representatives in April, and Gov. Dannel Malloy, a Democrat, has said he would sign it. The move would make Connecticut the 17th state, along with the District of Columbia, to legalize medical marijuana.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Drugs/Drug Addiction • Health & Medicine • Law & Legal Issues • * Economics, Politics • Politics in General • State Government

Singing, strumming guitars and trying to shield themselves from a searing sun, tens of thousands of Mexican Catholics came together Saturday nearly 24 hours before an open-air Mass with Pope Benedict XVI.

They walked miles and took up positions in Bicentennial Park, a short distance from a hilltop monument that honors the 1920s Cristero War by Catholic counter-revolutionaries.

But as religious fervor was on display in Silao, in central Mexico's Guanajuato state, a sexual-abuse scandal involving a notorious Mexican priest threatened to cast a pall over the pope's first visit to the Spanish-speaking Americas.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Drugs/Drug Addiction • Religion & Culture • * International News & Commentary • Mexico • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • Roman Catholic • Pope Benedict XVI

"Pope Benedict XVI comes during a very different time [than his predecessor]. With a country wounded, depressed by the prolonged violence," [Bernardo ] Barranco says, "a country that doesn't have a clear vision of its own future."

Speaking with reporters on his flight from Rome to Mexico, Benedict denounced the drug violence that's claimed almost 50,000 lives here over the last five years.

This is expected to be one of the leading themes of his visit to Mexico. He's also expected to call for a return to traditional Catholic values.

Read or listen to it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Drugs/Drug Addiction • Religion & Culture • * Economics, Politics • Politics in General • * International News & Commentary • Mexico • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • Roman Catholic • Pope Benedict XVI

Watch it all.

Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Missions • Parish Ministry • Evangelism and Church Growth • * Culture-Watch • Drugs/Drug Addiction • Urban/City Life and Issues • * International News & Commentary • Africa • South Africa • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • Baptists • * Theology • Pastoral Theology • Soteriology

A cheap antibiotic normally prescribed to teenagers for acne is to be tested as a treatment to alleviate the symptoms of psychosis in patients with schizophrenia, in a trial that could advance scientific understanding of the causes of mental illness.

The National Institute for Health Research is funding a £1.9m trial of minocycline, which will begin recruiting patients in the UK next month. The research follows case reports from Japan in which the drug was prescribed to patients with schizophrenia who had infections and led to dramatic improvements in their psychotic symptoms.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Drugs/Drug Addiction • Health & Medicine • Psychology • Science & Technology

She told ABC's Diane Sawyer in 2002: "The biggest devil is me. I'm either my best friend or my worst enemy."

Houston tried to stage a comeback with the 2009 album I Look To You, but things fell apart when a concert to promote the album was clearly off-key.

Broadcaster and music journalist Paul Gambaccini described Whitney Houston's voice as "the template for female vocal performers for the last 30 years".

But in the end, he told the BBC, she became the victim of a "self-administered decline" and, sadly, threw all it all away.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • Death / Burial / Funerals • * Culture-Watch • Drugs/Drug Addiction • Movies & Television • Music • Psychology

Whitney Houston, the multimillion-selling singer who emerged in the 1980s as one of her generation’s greatest R & B voices, only to deteriorate through years of cocaine use and an abusive marriage, died on Saturday in Beverly Hills, Calif. She was 48.

Her death came as the music industry descended on Los Angeles for the annual celebration of the Grammy Awards, and Ms. Houston was — for all her difficulties over the years — one of its queens. She was staying at the Beverly Hilton hotel on Saturday to attend a pre-Grammy party being hosted by Clive Davis, the founder of Arista Records, who had been her pop mentor.

Ms. Houston was found in her room at 3:55 p.m., and paramedics spent close to 20 minutes trying to revive her, the authorities said. There was no immediate word on the cause of her death, but the authorities said there were no signs of foul play.

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Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • Death / Burial / Funerals • * Culture-Watch • Drugs/Drug Addiction • Music • Women

Nearly one in nine high school seniors have gotten high in the past year on synthetic drugs, such as "K2" or "Spice," second only to the number of teens who have used marijuana, a new survey shows.

"Monitoring the Future," the nation's most comprehensive survey of teenage drug use, found 11.4% of the high school seniors had used the synthetic substances, often packed as potpourri or herbal incense and sold in convenience stores, which mimic the effects of marijuana.

"It is astounding," said Rep. Tom Latham, R-Iowa. "I don't think they have any idea how dangerous these synthetic drugs are."

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Drugs/Drug Addiction • Education • Health & Medicine • Teens / Youth • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A.

Pseudoephedrine is found in over-the-counter cold medicines such as Sudafed. While these pills may provide relief to cold sufferers, to criminals who are in the business of making meth, these pills are gold. Meth-makers legally buy as much of the raw product as they can at local pharmacies and drug stores.

A federal law designed to crack down on methamphetamine abuse sets a hard limit on pseudoephedrine: No more than nine grams, or about seven packs, per customer each month. But to get around that limit, which is electronically tracked by drug stores in certain states, meth users will team up so that each can buy the maximum at once. [Deputy director Dan] Smoot explained that it's a practice known as "smurfing," named after the little blue cartoon characters, Smurfs, who are small, but mighty as a team.

Caught this one on the morning run. The video is highly recommended if you have time. Did you know that Kentucky is number 3 in America in Methamphetamine production? I didn't. Read it all--KSH.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Drugs/Drug Addiction • Law & Legal Issues • Police/Fire • Rural/Town Life • * Economics, Politics • Economy • The Credit Freeze Crisis of Fall 2008/The Recession of 2007-- • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A.

How do you ask a room full of executives, actors, writers and producers expecting humor to forgive someone of an offense? That was exactly what happened recently at the Cinematheque Award Ceremony when Robert Downey Jr. received the prestigious honor.

During Downey Jr.’s acceptance speech, he said. “I asked Mel to present this award for me for a reason. When I couldn’t get sober, he told me not to give up hope and encouraged me to find my faith. It didn’t have to be his or anyone else’s as long as it was rooted in forgiveness. And I couldn’t get hired, so he cast me in the lead of a movie that was actually developed for him. He kept a roof over my head and food on the table and most importantly he said if I accepted responsibility for my wrongdoing and embraced that part of my soul that was ugly – hugging the cactus he calls it — he said that if I hugged the cactus long enough, I’d become a man.

“ . . he asked in return that someday I help the next guy in some small way. It’s reasonable to assume at the time he didn’t imagine the next guy would be him or that someday was tonight. So . . . I would ask that you join me, unless you are completely without sin . . . in forgiving my friend his trespasses and offering him the same clean slate you have me.”

Who would have thought 10 years ago that Robert Downey Jr. would have such care for another actor to plea for someone else’s forgiveness, and such respect in the community that the audience would respond in applause and thereby give forgiveness implicitly.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Drugs/Drug Addiction • Movies & Television • Psychology • Religion & Culture • * Theology • Pastoral Theology

Abuse of prescription painkiller have reached "epidemic" levels in the US, a government report says.

Overdoses of pain relievers cause more deaths than heroin and cocaine combined, the report has found.

It says sales and prescriptions of the drugs rose sharply in recent years and this was linked to the rise in overdoses.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Drugs/Drug Addiction • Health & Medicine • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A.

As more Americans turn to government programs for refuge from a merciless economy, a growing number are encountering a new price of admission to the social safety net: a urine sample.

Policy makers in three dozen states this year proposed drug testing for people receiving benefits like welfare, unemployment assistance, job training, food stamps and public housing. Such laws, which proponents say ensure that tax dollars are not being misused and critics say reinforce stereotypes about the poor, have passed in states including Arizona, Indiana and Missouri.

In Florida, people receiving cash assistance through welfare have had to pay for their own drug tests since July, and enrollment has shrunk to its lowest levels since the start of the recession.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Drugs/Drug Addiction • Law & Legal Issues • * Economics, Politics • Economy • The Credit Freeze Crisis of Fall 2008/The Recession of 2007-- • Politics in General • State Government

Recent studies are showing how tumors sidestep targeted cancer drugs by activating other growth-promoting molecules. The findings may help doctors develop new drug combinations that squelch the resistance, said Pasi Janne, senior author of the study and a medical oncologist at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School in Boston.

“Until now we didn’t know what caused acquired resistance to Erbitux,” Janne said in a telephone interview. “Our hope is that this will very rapidly translate into clinical trials” of new drug combinations. The study, done in collaboration with researchers at Kinki University School of Medicine in Osaka, Japan and other universities, is published today in Science Translational Medicine.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Drugs/Drug Addiction • Health & Medicine • Science & Technology

Two Charleston-based Coast Guard cutters helped in the recovery of 15,000 pounds of cocaine from a submarine-type craft in what's believed to be the first time the stealth vessels increasingly favored by drug runners have been spotted in the Caribbean.

The Cutters Oak and Gallatin both took part in the effort to find and secure the wreck after the semi-submersible's crew scuttled the boat in 75 feet of water near the Honduran-Nicaraguan border.

The crew of the Oak located the sunken vessel on the sea floor while the Gallatin participated in security and the overall effort, officials said.

Read it all from the local paper.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Drugs/Drug Addiction • * Economics, Politics • Politics in General • City Government • * South Carolina

Middle-class, high-earning professionals are more tolerant of casual cannabis and cocaine use than the rest of the population, according to the first official study of British attitudes toward illegal drugs.

Adults in their 30s, those who live in cities, and those who are educated to degree level also have a more relaxed approach to the “occasional” use of drugs than other groups, such as low-earners with no qualifications.

The latest findings from the British Crime Survey (BCS), a study of 26,000 households, also show that the recently banned drug mephedrone, or “meow meow”, is as popular as cocaine among young people.

Read it all (requires subscription).

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Drugs/Drug Addiction • * International News & Commentary • England / UK

Amy Winehouse will have a funeral in the Jewish tradition once her body is released for burial after...[its] post mortem. If the tradition is followed strictly her grave, likely to be in North London, will not to have a tombstone until a year has passed. Her place of burial is likely to become a shrine like the graves of other pop stars such as Jim Morrison, who also died at 27 and is buried in Paris.

Rabbi Dr Jonathan Romain, of Maidenhead synagogue, said: “As someone with Jewish parents and brought up Jewishly, Amy Winehouse never lost her sense of Jewish roots in later life. She still saw herself as part of the Jewish community, while the Jewish community always regarded her as one of its talented but wayward members.”

Read it all (requires subscription).

Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • Death / Burial / Funerals • * Culture-Watch • Drugs/Drug Addiction • Music • Religion & Culture • Young Adults • * International News & Commentary • England / UK • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Faiths • Judaism

The vast majority of U.S. hospitals have restricted the use of life-saving chemotherapy drugs and other critical-care medications in the past six months to cope with unprecedented shortages, according to a survey released Tuesday.

More than 80% of hospitals surveyed by the American Hospital Association reported they had to delay treatment, and nearly 70% said patients received less effective substitute drugs.

Three out of four hospitals reported rationing or restricting the use of drugs in short supply. For some drugs, such as a leukemia drug called cytarabine, there are no effective substitutes.

Read it all

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Drugs/Drug Addiction • Health & Medicine • * Economics, Politics • Economy

In just four years, Monterrey, a manufacturing city of 4 million people 140 miles from the Texan border, has gone from being a model for developing economies to a symbol of Mexico's drug war chaos, sucked down into a dark spiral of gangland killings, violent crime and growing lawlessness.

Since President Felipe Calderon launched an army-led war on the cartels in late 2006, grenade attacks, beheadings, firefights and drive-by killings have surged.

That has shattered this city's international image as a boomtown where captains of industry built steel, cement and beer giants in the desert in less than a century -- Mexico's version of Dallas or Houston.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Drugs/Drug Addiction • * International News & Commentary • Mexico

On the surface, [Nathaniel] Colleton seemed an unlikely drug dealer. He had grown up in a solid home. His mom was a paralegal and church pastor, his dad a longtime employee of The Citadel.

Colleton was a high school graduate. He played music for church services and volunteered to teach underprivileged kids how to read, his attorney, Dale Cobb, said.

Cobb said his client turned to selling drugs after he lost his construction job and couldn't find work. Whether it was that or the lure of easy money, as police suspect, Colleton's new occupation would short-circuit whatever future he had planned for himself.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Drugs/Drug Addiction • Education • Teens / Youth • * South Carolina

Americans consume a lot of prescription drugs. And they seem especially fond of those to lower their cholesterol, relieve their heartburn, cheer them up and take away pain. Overall, however, their spending on such drugs is slowing.

A new report from consulting firm IMS Health offers a quick, but thorough, look at Americans' consumption of, and spending on, prescription drugs. In 2010, the report says, we spent more than $307 billion on medication. That’s up over 2009, but only by 2.3%.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Drugs/Drug Addiction • Health & Medicine • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • Corporations/Corporate Life • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A.

Caught this on the morning run today--very enjoyable. Watch it all.

You can also read an article about the interview here.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • Drugs/Drug Addiction • Marriage & Family • Middle Age • Movies & Television

Airman [Anthony] Mena died instead in his Albuquerque apartment, on July 21, 2009, five months after leaving the Air Force on a medical discharge. A toxicologist found eight prescription medications in his blood, including three antidepressants, a sedative, a sleeping pill and two potent painkillers.

Yet his death was no suicide, the medical examiner concluded. What killed Airman Mena was not an overdose of any one drug, but the interaction of many. He was 23.

After a decade of treating thousands of wounded troops, the military’s medical system is awash in prescription drugs — and the results have sometimes been deadly.

By some estimates, well over 300,000 troops have returned from Iraq or Afghanistan with P.T.S.D., depression, traumatic brain injury or some combination of those. The Pentagon has looked to pharmacology to treat those complex problems, following the lead of civilian medicine. As a result, psychiatric drugs have been used more widely across the military than in any previous war.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Drugs/Drug Addiction • Health & Medicine • Military / Armed Forces • Psychology • * Economics, Politics • Defense, National Security, Military • Iraq War • War in Afghanistan

This program really scared me--I was not aware of this. Take the time to watch it all--KSH.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Drugs/Drug Addiction • Psychology • Science & Technology • Teens / Youth

There has been a lot of speculation about whether Jared Lee Loughner, the man arrested for the Arizona shooting, has a severe mental illness. But is mental illness a sufficient explanation for his actions? Recent research has found that mental illness is, in fact, tied to an increased risk of violence—but it is not a simple relationship....

...the vast majority of patients with severe mental illness are not violent during their lifetimes. The largest and longest study of schizophrenia and violence, conducted in Sweden over the course of 30 years, found that only 13% of patients had violent convictions after receiving their diagnoses. For most patients, the risk of becoming a victim of violence is higher than the risk that they will commit violence.

Nor should we make the mistake of assuming that a correlation between mental illness and violence somehow establishes a causal connection between them. It may be that schizophrenia is simply a marker for other factors that increase the risk of violence. Of these factors, one of the strongest is alcohol and drug abuse. Estimates from the U.S. indicate that around half of patients with schizophrenia also have problems with substance abuse. One study in American urban centers found that nearly a third of patients who were discharged from the hospital and also diagnosed with substance abuse were violent within one year.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Alcohol/Drinking • Drugs/Drug Addiction • Health & Medicine • Prison/Prison Ministry • Psychology • Mental Illness • Stress • Violence

It all began last Thursday, when a group of prospective jurors in Missoula were seated for a two-day trial of a repeat offender by the name of Teuray Cornell, whom the local police had arrested and charged with selling marijuana, a felony, and possession of a small amount of the drug, a misdemeanor.

To seat a 12-person jury, Judge Robert L. Deschamps III of Missoula County District Court had called a passel of Montanans to serve, and 27 had arrived at court on Dec. 16. So far, so good.

But after the charges were read, one of the jurors raised a hand.

“She said, ‘I’ve got a real problem with these marijuana cases,’ ” Judge Deschamps recalled on Wednesday. “And after she got through, a couple more raised their hands.” All told, five jurors raised questions about marijuana prosecution.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Drugs/Drug Addiction • Law & Legal Issues

A new report out today from the National Institute of Drug Abuse shows teenage drug use is up, especially among eighth-graders, the primary culprits: marijuana, ecstasy, and prescription drugs. Teenagers are also now less likely to believe that marijuana use is dangerous.

At the same time, previously reported declines in cigarette smoking have stalled. There was some good news. The rate of binge drinking, consuming five or more alcoholic drinks in a row, is down.

Here to discuss the findings is Gil Kerlikowske, the director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Alcohol/Drinking • Drugs/Drug Addiction • Psychology • Teens / Youth • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A.

The 17 masked men pulled two teenage boys off the Rev. David Beaumont's truck in northern Mexico, forced them to the ground, and put guns against their heads as their mother screamed to the priest that her sons were about to be killed.

Beaumont, who was born in Hempstead and grew up in Commack, has spent the last 20 years as a Franciscan missionary in one of the most dangerous and violent areas of the world. On this day last April, he had to make a split-second decision.

"I was saying to myself, 'Well, now either I'm really going to be a missionary and be prepared to give my life for the people, or run and hide,' " Beaumont recalled in a telephone interview. "I felt it was a pivotal moment in my life. When I walked out to them [the masked men], I realized that the last thing I might see would be the bullets coming at me."

The men did not fire at the American priest in his tattered brown friar's habit, and he was able to get the boys back in the truck and leave with their mother. But for the next several days they were all so shaken they lost their appetites and could not eat.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • Ministry of the Ordained • * Culture-Watch • Drugs/Drug Addiction • Religion & Culture • Violence • * International News & Commentary • Mexico • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • Roman Catholic

Bruce Holloway was turning into his driveway in Mount Juliet, Tenn., in April 2009, when he was struck and killed by Brian Duffey.

Duffey was driving 80 mph with alcohol and painkillers in his system, according to police and court records.

"He was already home," said Holloway's fiancée, Mary Loving. "It's so unfair."

Duffey pleaded guilty to aggravated vehicular homicide and was sentenced to 22 years. He was one of a growing number of heavily medicated Americans who get behind the wheel every day.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Drugs/Drug Addiction • Travel • Violence

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Drugs/Drug Addiction • Health & Medicine • Law & Legal Issues • Psychology • * Economics, Politics • Politics in General • State Government • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A.

California voters on Tuesday rejected a ballot measure that would have made their state the first in the union to legalize the personal use and possession of marijuana.

Voters there also considered whether to make it easier for state legislators to pass a budget, to suspend a state-passed global warming bill and to hand over the role of creating legislative districts to a nonpartisan commission.

The measures were among 160 put to voters around the country, on issues ranging from the new health-care law to ideas for balancing state budgets.

California was not the only state dealing with marijuana-related questions. In South Dakota, voters rejected an effort to legalize medical marijuana - which California and 13 other states have done over the past 15 years. Arizona voters were considering a similar measure.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Drugs/Drug Addiction • Law & Legal Issues • * Economics, Politics • Politics in General • State Government

According to Webb and Maher, Clawson's view that speaking is educational is not at all accidental. Drug companies train representatives to approach a narrow set of doctors in a very specific way, using language that deliberately fosters this idea that the doctors who speak are educators, and not just educators, but the smartest of the smart.

For example, every drug representative interviewed for this story used the exact same phrase when approaching a doctor with a pitch to become a speaker: Each doctor approached to speak was told that he was being recruited to serve as a "thought leader."

This phrase, Webb says, seems to have incredible psychological power.

"When you do say 'thought leader' I think it's a huge ego boost for the physicians," Webb says. "It's like a feather in their cap. They get a lot from it."

What a brilliant selling scheme to use the phrase "thought leader." Read or better listen to it all--KSH (my emphasis).

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Drugs/Drug Addiction • Health & Medicine • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • Corporations/Corporate Life • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology

Mexican President Felipe Calderon has told the BBC the US should do more to reduce the demand for drugs that is fuelling violence in Mexico.

He told the HARDtalk programme that more should also be done to stem the flow of illegal weapons from the US.

More than 28,000 people have died in drug violence in Mexico since 2006.

Meanwhile, President Calderon and other regional leaders have urged Californian voters to reject moves to legalise marijuana in their state.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Drugs/Drug Addiction • * Economics, Politics • Defense, National Security, Military • Foreign Relations • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A. • Mexico

Police departments have collected thousands of handguns through buy-back programs in communities throughout the country. Now they want the contents of your medicine cabinet.

Opiate painkillers and other prescription drugs, officials say, are driving addiction and crime like never before, with addicts singling out the homes of sick or elderly people and posing as potential buyers at open houses just to raid the medicine cabinets. The crimes, and the severity of the nation’s drug abuse problem, have so vexed the authorities that they are calling on citizens to surrender old bottles of potent pills like Vicodin, Percocet and Xanax.

On Saturday, the police will set up drop-off stations at a Wal-Mart in Pearland, Tex., a zoo in Wichita, Kan., a sports complex in Peoria, Ariz., and more than 4,000 other locations to oversee a prescription drug take-back program. Coordinated by the Drug Enforcement Administration, it will be the first such effort with national scope.

The take-back day is being held as waves of data suggest the country’s prescription drug problem is vast and growing. In 17 states, deaths from drugs — both prescription and illegal — now exceed those from motor vehicle accidents, with opiate painkillers playing a leading role. The number of people seeking treatment for painkiller addiction jumped 400 percent from 1998 to 2008, according to the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.

read that second to last sentence again and think about its implications--it simply boggles my mind. Now read the whole article--KSH.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Drugs/Drug Addiction • Law & Legal Issues • * Economics, Politics • Politics in General • City Government

She lived a double life. At the border crossing, she was Agent Garnica, a veteran law enforcement officer. In the shadows, she was "La Estrella," the star, a brassy looker who helped drug cartels make a mockery of the U.S. border.

Martha Garnica devised secret codes, passed stacks of cash through car windows and sketched out a map for smugglers to safely haul drugs and undocumented workers across the border. For that she was richly rewarded; she lived in a spacious house with a built-in pool, owned two Hummers and vacationed in Europe.

For years, until an intricate sting operation brought her down in late 2009, Garnica embodied the seldom-discussed role of the United States in the trafficking trade....

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Drugs/Drug Addiction • Law & Legal Issues • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A. • Mexico

The U.S. is giving $1.3 billion in military and judicial aid to Mexico to help Calderon's battle against the drug mafias. Mexico's drug cartels are the major foreign supplier of marijuana and methamphetamines to the United States, and Mexico is a main conduit for cocaine coming mainly from Colombia.

An NPR News investigation in Ciudad Juarez — ground zero of Calderon's cartel war — finds strong evidence that Mexico's drug fight is rigged, according to court testimony, current and former law enforcement officials, and an NPR analysis of cartel arrests.

In that border city, federal forces appear to be favoring one cartel, the Sinaloa (named after the coastal state in northwestern Mexico), which the U.S. Justice Department calls one of the largest organized crime syndicates in the world.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Drugs/Drug Addiction • * Economics, Politics • Defense, National Security, Military • * International News & Commentary • Mexico

A major motive for being a Christian and participating in its rituals and disciplines is about to collapse. This is going to make a lot of Christians panic, but I believe the recent development will be all to the good.

The development is the discovery that hallucinogenic drugs can give people an experience seemingly identical to powerful religious experiences. A recent New York Times article by John Tierney describes the experience of retired clinical psychologist Clark Martin. Martin had been treated for depression for years, but counseling and antidepressants did nothing to help. At age 65, he enrolled in an experiment at Johns Hopkins medical school that gave people psilocybin, a psychoactive ingredient found in some mushrooms.

When Martin was administered the drug, he says, "All of a sudden, everything familiar started evaporating … . Imagine you fall off a boat out in the open ocean, and you turn around, and the boat is gone. And then the water's gone. And then you're gone...."

His experience, writes Tierney, is not all that unusual, and he says, "Scientists are especially intrigued by the similarities between hallucinogenic experiences and the life-changing revelations reported throughout history by religious mystics and those who meditate."

Read it all.

Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Liturgy, Music, Worship • Parish Ministry • Evangelism and Church Growth • * Culture-Watch • Drugs/Drug Addiction • Psychology • Religion & Culture • Science & Technology • * Theology • Pastoral Theology

No more letting industry help pay for developing medical guidelines. Restrictions on consulting deals. And no more pens with drug company names or other swag at conferences.

These are part of a new ethics code that dozens of leading medical groups announced Wednesday, aimed at limiting the influence that drug and device makers have over patient care.

It's the most sweeping move ever taken by the Council of Medical Specialty Societies to curb conflict of interest — a growing concern as private industry bankrolls a greater share of medical research.

The council includes 32 medical societies with 650,000 members, from neurologists and obstetricians to family doctors and pediatricians. They include the American College of Physicians, the American College of Cardiology and the American Society of Clinical Oncology, the largest group of cancer specialists in the world.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Drugs/Drug Addiction • Health & Medicine • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Corporations/Corporate Life • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology

It's been two years since HBO aired the final episode of The Wire. Critics praised the TV show for its realistic portrayal of drug culture and its far-reaching influence.

But now a handful of colleges across the country -- including Harvard, Duke and the University of California, Berkeley -- offer courses built around the show.

Jason Mittell teaches one of those classes, "Watching The Wire: Urban America in Serial Television," at Middlebury College in Vermont. He's an associate American studies professor, and he thinks the show's creator, David Simon, tapped into a crucial American subculture.

Simon is exploring another subculture, post-Katrina New Orleans, in his latest series, Treme, which just debuted on HBO.

Read or listen to it all. If you do not know about The Wire, ou should, it is one of the very best shows to be on television in recent years--KSH.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Drugs/Drug Addiction • Education • Movies & Television • Teens / Youth • Young Adults

"I write everything as a wake-up call," she says. "To myself and others, to anyone who may have gotten tired of hitting the snooze button." Imperfect Birds is a well-informed wake-up call. Lamott is a recovering alcoholic, sober since 1986, and has just ushered her son Sam through his high school years in a bohemian enclave of Marin where drugs are there for the asking. Kids who remind her of Rosie are everywhere she turns. On this Sunday morning, she has just returned from a hike to the ocean, where she watched a search-and-rescue team look for a 17-year-old girl from Mill Valley who disappeared during an overnight party with her friends. Inside St. Andrew, Lamott's beloved church, she offers prayers for the search. Later that day, the girl is found in the Pacific, dead.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Books • Children • Drugs/Drug Addiction • Marriage & Family • Teens / Youth

James Gray once saw himself as a drug warrior, a former federal prosecutor and county judge who sent people to prison for dealing pot and other drug offenses. Gradually, though, he became convinced that the ban on marijuana was making it more accessible to young people, not less.

"I ask kids all the time, and they'll tell you it is easier to get marijuana than a six-pack of beer because that is controlled by the government," he said, noting that drug dealers don't ask for IDs or honor minimum age requirements.

So Gray — who spent two decades as a superior court judge in Orange County, Calif., and once ran for Congress as a Republican — switched sides in the war on drugs, becoming an advocate for legalizing marijuana.

"Let's face reality," he says. "Taxing and regulating marijuana will make it less available to children than it is today."

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Drugs/Drug Addiction • Law & Legal Issues • * Economics, Politics • Politics in General • State Government

In launching its needle-exchange program last week, the Catholic Diocese of Albany, N.Y., said the decision came down to choosing the lesser evil. Illegal drug use is bad, but the spread of deadly diseases is worse.

The medical evidence is clear, the diocese argued on Feb. 1, when it began "Project Safe Point" in two Upstate New York locations through its local branch of Catholic Charities. Public health studies document that exchanging used syringes for new ones can effectively stanch the spread of blood-borne diseases such as AIDS, and even lead drug abusers to treatment and recovery.

"To guide us, the church provides us with the principles of licit cooperation in evil and the counseling of the lesser evil," the Albany diocese said in a statement.

"The sponsorship of Catholic Charities in Safe Point, then, is based upon the church's standard moral principles."

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Drugs/Drug Addiction • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • Roman Catholic • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology • Pastoral Theology

Meanwhile, California’s largest cash crop is being largely ignored in the frenzied search for politically-viable revenue. The state’s marijuana yield is conservatively valued at $14 billion annually – nearly double the combined value of our vegetable and grape crops. The state Board of Equalization estimates that taxing adult marijuana consumption like alcohol would generate $1.4 billion in new revenue for the state. While that’s only a modest contribution toward our fiscal woes, it’s one more incentive to end decades of failed marijuana prohibition. In fact, the financial and human price that we currently pay for criminalizing pot is far too high.

California, which decriminalized low-level marijuana possession in 1975, arrested more than 78,000 people for marijuana offenses last year alone, a nearly 30 percent increase since 2005. Of those arrested, four out of five were for simple possession, and one in five was a child under the age of 18. Police disproportionately arrest young people of color, many of whom permanently enter the criminal justice system and suffer severe limitations to their educational and employment opportunities.

California spends hundreds of millions of dollars to enforce marijuana prohibition. While law enforcement focuses ever-increasing resources on arresting marijuana users, there were 185,173 reported violent crimes in California in 2008, but only 125,235 violent crime arrests. Where are our priorities?

Read it all.

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Episcopal Church (TEC) • TEC Parishes • * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • Ministry of the Ordained • * Culture-Watch • Drugs/Drug Addiction • Law & Legal Issues • * Economics, Politics • Politics in General • State Government

Marijuana advocates are cheering the Assembly's Public Safety Committee for voting out a measure Tuesday designed to legalize, tax and regulate the sale of the drug to adults 21 and over. The bill is being marketed as a revenue raiser; the Board of Equalization estimates that the state could reap up to $1.3 billion in sorely needed tax revenue, and proponents have skillfully wielded the budget crisis to boost support for the measure.

Polls show that 56% of Californians back legalizing marijuana. Across the country, the numbers are somewhat lower, but nevertheless momentum is building for a reconsideration of marijuana laws covering both medicinal and recreational use. Many states now treat marijuana offenses as mere infractions, not subject to jail time. The American Medical Assn. recently reversed its long-held position and urged more research into the drug's properties.

Still, for California to purport to legalize marijuana unilaterally raises several serious concerns. For one thing, to do so simply because the state faces a budget crisis would be a rash and reckless way to make public policy.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Drugs/Drug Addiction • Law & Legal Issues • * Economics, Politics • Politics in General • State Government

Behind barbed wire and heavily secured gates, the women housed at the Mark H. Luttrell Correctional Center fixate on the days left until they're up for parole.

But for many, the real hurdles lie beyond prison fences.

"The biggest problem is they don't have the support system out there," said Patrisha Bridges, pre-release coordinator for the East Memphis prison.

Too often, that means returning to drugs and prostitution and eventually back in jail.

But a faith-based program out of Nashville, which helps women with a history of prostitution and addiction turn their lives around, visited Memphis inmates on Monday to show there's another way.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • * Culture-Watch • Drugs/Drug Addiction • Prison/Prison Ministry • Women

Britain faces a surge in drug addiction, alcoholism and domestic violence as the second wave of the recession and rising unemployment take a grip, the leading public sector watchdog warns today.

Councils are not doing enough to prepare their communities for the fallout as the impact of more business failures, bankruptcies and the soaring jobless toll leads to deepening social and human problems, the Audit Commission reports. The watchdog, which monitors the performance of local councils and services, says that most authorities already face extra demands for benefits, welfare and debt counselling. One in three has extra pressure on social and mental health services, and on state school places from parents who can no longer afford to educate their children privately.

Official figures today are expected to show unemployment among young people breaking the million mark. Some 30 per cent of 16 and 17-year-old school-leavers are unemployed, the highest level since records began in 1992. Overall unemployment is expected to have hit a 14-year high of 2.5 million in the three months to June.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • Drugs/Drug Addiction • Marriage & Family • * Economics, Politics • Economy • The Credit Freeze Crisis of Fall 2008/The Recession of 2007-- • * International News & Commentary • England / UK

David Ortiz, the greatest single-season home run hitter in Red Sox history, yesterday acknowledged testing positive for a performance-enhancing drug in 2003 as he launched his golden era as one of the game’s premier power hitters.

Manny Ramírez, with whom Ortiz formed a fearsome 1-2 punch that helped catapult the Sox to world championships in 2004 and ’07, also tested positive for performance-enhancing substances in ’03, The New York Times reported.

Ortiz and Ramírez became the first Sox stars identified as purported drug cheats in a decades-long scandal that has sapped the integrity of the national pastime. Ortiz said he was unaware of the positive test until a reporter informed him an hour before yesterday’s game between the Sox and Oakland A’s at Fenway.

“The news blindsided me,’’ Ortiz said in a prepared statement after he hit a three-run home run to propel the Sox to an 8-5 victory.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Drugs/Drug Addiction • Sports • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology

Caught this one on the morning run. Take the time to watch it all. Those of you with connections to youth ministry, this video is the kind of thing all youth groups needs to be challenged to watch and discuss.

Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • Youth Ministry • * Culture-Watch • Drugs/Drug Addiction • Teens / Youth

When you begin watching this lovely piece, guess where the featured man lives. His home will be shown toward the end--watch it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • Drugs/Drug Addiction • Men • Poverty • Sports • Violence

As the Administration and the Congress consider health care reform and work to expand access to the 45 million Americans without coverage, it is worth noting that the largest amount of federal and state spending on the burden of substance abuse and addiction--$207.2 billion, or 58 percent—was for health care, and that health care is 74.1 percent of the federal shoveling up burden. With health care costs by far the biggest cost of shoveling up, for the Administration and Congress to attempt health care reform without providing for prevention and treatment of substance abuse and addiction is like trying to make a Reuben sandwich without corned beef and sauerkraut.

Some key 2005 findings of the report are:

* For every dollar federal and state governments spent to prevent and treat substance abuse and addiction, they spent $59.83 in public programs shoveling up its wreckage.
* If substance abuse and addiction were its own state budget category, it would rank second just behind spending on elementary and secondary education.
* If substance abuse and addiction were it own federal budget category, it would rank sixth, behind social security, national defense, income security, Medicare, and other health programs including the federal share of Medicaid.
* Federal and state governments spend more than 60 times as much to clean up the devastation substance abuse and addiction visits on children as they do on prevention and treatment for them.

This report is the second in CASA’s analysis of the impact of tobacco, alcohol and other drug abuse and addiction on government. Our first report, Shoveling Up: The Impact of Substance Abuse on State Budgets, was released in 2001 and was limited to state spending. Such spending has increased since CASA’s 2001 report. In 2005, states spent 15.7 percent of their budgets on substance abuse and addiction compared with 13.3 percent in 1998, up more than 18 percent.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Drugs/Drug Addiction

Army commanders are failing to punish or seek treatment for a growing number of soldiers who test positive for substance abuse, possibly because they don't want to lose any more combat troops, the Army's vice chief of staff has warned.

In a May 8 memo to commanders provided to USA TODAY, Gen. Peter Chiarelli said hundreds of soldiers involved in "substance abuse-related misconduct (including multiple positive urinalyses)" were not processed for possible discharge. He also noted that many are not referred to the Army Substance Abuse Program for help.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Drugs/Drug Addiction • Military / Armed Forces

Manny Ramirez has tested positive for performance-enhancing drugs and will be suspended 50 games starting today, The Times has learned.

The test result and suspension is expected to be announced later today. The Dodgers informed triple-A outfielder Xavier Paul this morning that he was being promoted to Los Angeles.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Drugs/Drug Addiction • Sports

Eighth-grader Savana Redding was scared and confused when an assistant principal searching for drugs ordered her out of math class, searched her backpack and then instructed an administrative aide and school nurse to conduct a strip search.

"I went into the nurse's office and kept following what they asked me to do," Savana, now 19, recalls of the incident six years ago that she says still leaves her shaken and humiliated. "I thought, 'What could I be in trouble for?' "

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Drugs/Drug Addiction • Education • Teens / Youth

Watch it all--very sobering.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Drugs/Drug Addiction • Violence • * International News & Commentary • Mexico

In 2003, when he won the American League home run title and the AL Most Valuable Player award as a shortstop for the Texas Rangers, Alex Rodriguez tested positive for two anabolic steroids, four sources have independently told Sports Illustrated.

Rodriguez's name appears on a list of 104 players who tested positive for performance-enhancing drugs in Major League Baseball's '03 survey testing, SI's sources say. As part of a joint agreement with the MLB Players Association, the testing was conducted to determine if it was necessary to impose mandatory random drug testing across the major leagues in 2004.

When approached by an SI reporter on Thursday at a gym in Miami, Rodriguez declined to discuss his 2003 test results. "You'll have to talk to the union," said Rodriguez, the Yankees' third baseman since his trade to New York in February 2004. When asked if there was an explanation for his positive test, he said, "I'm not saying anything."

SI has too much of a reputation and this is too well sourced not to be taken seriously.Read it all--KSH.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Drugs/Drug Addiction • Sports

Christopher Kennedy Lawford's first book was about his recovery from alcohol and heroin.

Now, Lawford has a new book out, Moments of Clarity: Voices From the Front Lines of Addiction, a compilation of 42 essays by ordinary people and celebrities including Martin Sheen, Susan Cheever, Alec Baldwin and Judy Collins, describing moments that led them to reach out for help.

In it, he describes his own "moment of clarity" on Feb. 17, 1986. He was standing at the windows of a brownstone in Boston and realized his addiction had reached the point of hopelessness.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Drugs/Drug Addiction

Decrying the violence that Mexicans are enduring, the Vatican has suggested excommunication as a possible punishment for drug traffickers whose war with the government has led to the deaths of thousands of people in the last year.

But the Roman Catholic Church's severest form of rebuke would probably have little effect on traffickers and killers who lack a religious conscience, the Vatican's No. 2 official, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, acknowledged.

Speaking to Latin American journalists at the Vatican before traveling to Mexico on Monday, Bertone said it was a "duty" to fight drug gangs because their actions represent "the most hypocritical and terrible way of murdering the dignity and personality of today's youth."

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Drugs/Drug Addiction • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • Roman Catholic

The number of soldiers seeking help for substance abuse has climbed 25% in the past five years, but the Army's counseling program has remained significantly understaffed and struggling to meet the demand, according to Army records.

About 13,500 soldiers sought drug counseling this year and 7,200 soldiers were diagnosed with an abuse or dependency issue and enrolled in counseling, Army data show. That compares with 11,170 soldiers reporting to drug counseling in 2003, when 5,727 enrolled.

Army records show 2.38% of all soldiers had positive results on routine drug urinalysis screening, a 10-year record. In 2004, when combat troops returned from Iraq in large numbers, 1.72% had positive results.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Drugs/Drug Addiction • Military / Armed Forces

Watch it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Blogging & the Internet • Drugs/Drug Addiction • Teens / Youth

College students today celebrate 21st birthdays with an average of 12 drinks for men and nine for women, finds the most in-depth picture yet of the consequences of extreme partying.

The University of Texas-Austin research found 78% of students cited ill effects, including hangovers (54%). Of 44% who had blackouts, 22% found out later they had sex, and 22% got in a fight or argument. And 39% didn't know how they got home.

Although the study focused on only one campus, researchers say the new level of "extreme drinking" goes way beyond "bingeing" — four or five drinks in one sitting. And it's a phenomenon probably being repeated at schools across the country, researchers say. Studying 21st-birthday celebrations is a new area of research, and no national studies have been done, but studies on a handful of other campuses have found similar extremes.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Drugs/Drug Addiction • Education • Young Adults

The recent movement by some college presidents to reduce the legal drinking age to 18 is shortsighted. Trying to lower the drinking age is a superficial response to a deep issue ("College presidents want lower drinking age," USATODAY.com, Aug. 18).

It is unlikely that the law would be changed, no matter how many college presidents join this movement. So why are they getting involved?

Know this: Not all students go to college to drink. I've talked to countless students across the country who long for their college experience to be different. They are developing virtues of delayed gratification, self-control and sacrifice. They are students who want to think more deeply about the goal of education and the meaning of life. Some are students who have been hurt by the effects of alcohol abuse. Many didn't mind waiting a few years to drink legally and have learned to do so responsibly.

Developing students such as these will require college presidents with the moral clarity and courage to make strong decisions about what is acceptable behavior at their colleges.

What is needed is an atmosphere on our nation's campuses conducive to shaping students' character so that waiting to drink until the age of 21 wouldn't seem like such a sacrifice.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Drugs/Drug Addiction • Education

National Guard and Reserve combat troops in Iraq and Afghanistan are more likely to develop drinking problems than active-duty U.S. soldiers, a new military study suggests.

The authors speculate that inadequate preparation for the stress of combat and reduced access to support services at home may be to blame.

The study, appearing in Wednesday's Journal of the American Medical Association, is the first to compare Iraq and Afghanistan veterans' alcohol problems before and after deployment.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Alcoholism • Drugs/Drug Addiction • Military / Armed Forces • * Economics, Politics • Iraq War

The actress Tatum O’Neal was arrested recently on charges of buying crack cocaine from a man on the street near her New York City home. She is a 44-year-old mother of three. She has spent years in and out of drug abuse treatment (which she chronicled in her 2004 memoir), and according to her publicist she will continue to “attend meetings” for drug and alcohol abuse.

Ms. O’Neal illustrates a disturbing trend among those being admitted to substance abuse treatment services: a growing percentage of older women are being treated for harder drugs.

Data from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration revealed that the total number of admissions to treatment services from 1996 to 2005 (the last year for which detailed data are available) stayed about the same among people under 40, but jumped 52 percent among those 40 and older. Of the 40 and older group, the rise in admissions among men was 44 percent. Among women, it was 82 percent.

I confess that the 82 percent figure blew my mind. Wow. Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Aging / the Elderly • Drugs/Drug Addiction

Legislation soon to be before the Michigan House of Representatives may create a moral dilemma for Catholic pharmacists.

House Bill 6049, which passed the house judiciary committee last week, would prohibit pharmacists from using ethical, moral or religious standards to decide whether to dispense a prescription. If passed into law, pharmacists would be forced to dispense drugs that their consciences and ethical standards dictate they should not distribute — such as pills that cause abortion.

We are asking for Catholics to contact their state representative to oppose legislation that would violate an individual's right to conscience as well as the religious freedom clauses of the first amendment to the U.S. Constitution," said David Maluchnik, spokesman for the Michigan Catholic Conference, the Church's public policy voice in Michigan.

"Individuals enter the health care profession to heal," he added, "not to be forced by law to disperse controversial and unproven medications that fail to promote the dignity of life and respect for women."

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Drugs/Drug Addiction • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • Roman Catholic • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology

Depression, teens and marijuana are a dangerous mix that can lead to dependency, mental illness or suicidal thoughts, according to a White House report being released Friday.
A teen who has been depressed at some point in the past year is more than twice as likely to have used marijuana as teens who have not reported being depressed — 25% compared with 12%, said the report by the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy.

"Marijuana is a more consequential substance of abuse than our culture has treated it in the last 20 years," said John Walters, director of the office. "This is not just youthful experimentation that they'll get over as we used to think in the past."

Smoking marijuana can lead to more serious problems, Walters said in an interview.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Drugs/Drug Addiction • Teens / Youth

Warning: some blog readers may find this story of teenage misbehavior disturbing.

I am not going to spoil it you need to read it for yourself.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Drugs/Drug Addiction • Teens / Youth

Police have arrested 96 people – 75 of them students – in the largest campus drug bust in the country at San Diego State University, law enforcement sources say.

Police picked up the individuals for charges stemming from possession and sales of cocaine, marijuana, ecstasy and other drugs, which Damon Mosler, chief of narcotics for the San Diego District Attorney's Office, estimated was worth approximately $100,000.

In addition to criminal charges, SDSU students arrested were immediately suspended from the university and evicted from all campus-managed housing, said the president of the university, Stephen Weber.

Authorities say among those arrested was a student who was a criminal justice major and was found with 500 grams of cocaine and two guns. Another suspect worked as an employee of the campus police and was one month away from graduating with a masters degree in Homeland Security.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Drugs/Drug Addiction • Education • Young Adults