Attached two interesting articles of concern:
1. Wall Street Journal, 07/03/2010: Out in the Open: Raves and Ecstasy http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704699604575343133677383828.html#
"Twenty years after their heyday as an underground phenomenon, the drug-fueled dance parties known as raves are making a comeback as massive, commercial events. But a recent wave of ecstasy-related deaths and hospitalizations tied to such events have left some officials skeptical about their makeover.Unlike the original raves in the late 1980s and early '90s, which were often staged without permits in hard-to-find patches of desert or abandoned industrial warehouses, today's version has gone aboveground. The drug of choice for many attendees is still ecstasy, an illegal stimulant/hallucinogen also known as MDMA that is often cut with other substances. Taken as a pill or powder, the drug, whose full chemical name is 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine, can induce euphoria and doesn't typically cause the kind of traumatic overdose symptoms associated with drugs such as heroin. But ecstasy can cause dehydration—potentially a serious health problem for people dancing all night in hot, cramped conditions. Doctors say many ecstasy-users end up in emergency rooms because they try to combat dehydration by drinking too much water, causing water intoxication—which can lead to seizure and coma.
This represents another challenge for physicians to diagnose and treat. Hopeffully, we can reduce the adverse publich health effect by educating adolescents in schools and at home.
2. Miami Herald, 07/01/2010, Experts fear new wave of addiction, http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/07/01/1709624/experts-fear-new-wave-of-addiction.html
While drug-related deaths across Florida rose an alarming 20 percent last year over 2008, South Florida saw a notable decrease in two key areas of substance abuse: cocaine and heroin.
Still, addiction experts say, there is an indication that the nation's sixth-largest metro area could be on the verge of a new wave of addiction unseen since the cocaine craze of the early 1980s. Two separate reports released this week by James C. Hall, director of Nova Southeastern University's Center for the Study and Prevention of Substance Abuse, and the Florida Medical Examiners Commission, show more than 8,600 deaths in Florida in 2009 in which victims had at least one prescription drug in their system that contributed to their passing. That's up from about 6,200 drug-induced deaths in 2008.
What's more, both reports say almost all the increase in drug deaths -- especially in Broward and Miami-Dade counties -- is due to a disturbing and relatively new trend of drug abusers mixing opiates and narcotics like heroin and cocaine with opioids -- prescription drugs like oxycodone -- or simply switching indiscriminately from one to the other.
Fort Lauderdale and St. Petersburg far outpaced every other city in Florida in terms of prescription drug deaths.
In Broward County last year, 225 people died with large amounts of oxycodone in their bodies; 57 had morphine in their systems, 60 were high on methadone, 46 on hydrocodone, and 27 on propoxyphone, for a total of 415 opioid-related deaths in Broward, compared to 342 such deaths in 2008.
Among the 2009 Broward County totals, 62 percent took lethal doses of opioids before their deaths, and 91 percent had at least two drugs in their systems at the time of death -- typically a combination of opioids and cocaine.
We must continue to push for a moratorium on narcotic dispensing in doctors offices and support revocation of licensure for ANY physician who prescribes or dispenses scheduled drugs in LARGE quantities WITHOUT treatment rationale. For example: its almost routine for certain "doctors" - or better drug dealers in a white coat- to prescribe 180-500 Oxycontin Tablets for one patient on one prescription for one month!!!
How is that possible? Because everyone involved in this process makes big $$$$.
This has to stop but obviously nobody has the will to stand up and call it what it is: drug dealing!!
Yours
Bernd
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