Daily Archives: March 21, 2017

It was still only early, not long past midnight and we had a tip there was another drug related killing, number four of the night.

The body lay in front of a car, handcuffed, with a single gunshot to the head. It wasnt what youd think.

This wasnt a drug dealer executing a rival.

His wallet had been emptied and inside was a note that read Sorry I destroyed my life because of drugs, sorry Im a pusher.

Executions like this began as soon as Rodrigo Duterte was inaugurated as President of the Philippines last June. During his campaign he pledged to rid the country of drugs by killing anyone involved in them. Since Duterte took power over 7,000 people have been killed.

I joined the night crawlers, local journalists whose main job has become tracking and documenting the killings, sometimes up to 20 a night.

On my first night I didnt have to wait long until the first killing was reported.

Two men lay dead covered in blood under a bridge. The killers were still at the scene. They were the police. They claimed the two drug suspects had attempted to shoot first.

This became a familiar story.

Across Manila I met countless families, who said their loved ones were unarmed and gunned down by police, often in their own homes.

The police version was always that the suspect had fired first. In many cases a .38 calibre pistol was found at the scene.

The families view was usually that these guns had been planted on their loved ones by the police.

Many of the bereaved families told me they were too scared to report killings by police to the police. And there seemed little hope of justice for those families who did.

When I was in Manila, I learned that the police had found evidence of their own wrong-doing in just two out of 1,200 cases.

I met with a specialist team from the Commission on Human Rights. Desperate families turn to him to investigate the extra judicial killings. But in such a climate of fear it seemed that even he was not safe.

About two weeks into my stay, president Duterte made yet another extraordinary and controversial speech. This time he threatened the lives of human rights activists, for protecting the rights of drug dealers.

Most of the dead in this war are killed, after being added to a sinister sounding drugs watch list.

I joined an operation known as Toak Hang which means Knock and Surrender to find out how names end up on this list.

The police, working with local residents, knock on the doors of supposed drug users, who are invited to take a drugs test.

Anyone who tests positive is marked down. It was alarming to witness unsuspecting people picked out on the basis of rumours.

I watched their faces contort in angst, as they awaited the results of the tests. In this climate, fear pushes neighbour to report neighbour.

Some are exploiting the Presidents war on drugs to frame enemies, who are innocent of any crimes. North of Manila I met the Jebulan family, who had lost their 20 year old son, Yanis, just months earlier.

He was out celebrating his exam results with a friend when he was gunned down in the way many drug pushers have been. But his family say Yanis had absolutely nothing to do with drugs. They believe he was executed, simply because of a dispute with a local man.

Duterte has not only encouraged police to carry out extrajudicial killings. Since he took power, over 4,000 of these executions have been committed by vigilantes.

In a decaying slum, I met one of these vigilantes, who claimed to have executed 12 people in recent months. He told me that the police were providing the vigilantes with names of those to be eliminated.

When the killings started, drug users and dealers were given an ultimatum by the authorities; Surrender or Die. According to the police over 790,000 people surrendered, promising never to touch drugs again.

Prisons and rehabilitation facilities were not prepared for the enormous rush. I visited prisons where inmates take shifts to sleep on any space they could find.

The rehab facilities were so busy that local authorities have resorted to bizarre alternatives. Some drugs users have been ordered to attend Zumba classes. Failure to turn up, results in a visit from the police.

The funeral parlours are also overrun. Some even have contracts with the police to retrieve the bodies from crime scenes. But surprisingly I was told that the killings havent been good for business.

Most of the dead in this war come from the 40% of Filipinos, who live below the poverty line.

For many families the costs of a funeral are simply unaffordable. I sat through a number of wakes where families were running around, desperately trying to raise money for a burial. Often their loved one was already in an open casket in the home.

Staff at funeral homes told me that in other cases bodies are never even claimed. To deal of the ever-mounting body count, funeral parlours have resorted to mass burials in mass graves.

So what drives people to keep dealing in this country? I managed to find one dealer, willing to tell me.

She explained that selling shabu, the Filipino name for crystal meth, was the only means of putting food on her familys table.

Already known to police, she felt she had no option but to keep tempting fate. The sheer terror in her eyes is something Ill never forget.

When I asked the spokesperson for Philippines National Police to account for this extraordinary wave of police killings, he again insisted most were the result of suspects refusing to surrender to police.

But President Dutertes sister and official spokesperson, Jocelyn, took a different approach.

When I asked her if Filipinnos really wanted so many extra judicial killings, she responded; If they elected a president like him and thats the way they want it done, thats the way it will be done.

And its hard to argue with her. Polls suggest over 80% of Filipinnos support President Duterte. Most surprising and shocking for me that even users and families of the dead claimed to support the President's brutal war on drugs.

Deadliest Place to Deal is available on BBC iPlayer from 10am on Wednesday.

Excerpt from:

City of blood: Manila's merciless war on drugs where police and vigilantes have executed 4000 - Mirror.co.uk

Germany joined a growing list of countries and groups expressing concern over the antidrug campaign of the Philippine government which, to the international community, was focused on putting offenders to death instead of instituting massive reforms that would disable, if not eliminate, the drug menace.

Germanys human rights commissioner cited the passage in the House of Representatives as one of the highly regrettable actions being taken by the administration of President Rodrigo Duterte in the fight against drugs.

Brbel Kofler, federal government commissioner for human rights policy and humanitarian aid at the German federal foreign office, said in a statement that the push to revive the death penalty ran counter to the Philippine signing of a second optional protocol of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

The covenant binds the Philippine government to a commitment to shun executions of convicts as a penalty for grave crimes.

Since the signing of the international agreement, Kofler said Germany considered the Philippines as a close partner of those who, like the federal government [of Germany], reject this inhumane punishment under all circumstances.

This situation is highly regrettable, said Kofler, adding that Germany and the Philippines had been closely cooperating in the United Nations on many campaigns, among them on human trafficking, poverty reduction and climate change.

In her statement, Kofler also called on the Duterte administration to withdraw conditions it had set for the visit of the UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial killings to take a closer look at Dutertes war on drugs.

With at least 8,000 deaths in the drug war, Kofler said it was important for the UN special rapporteur to visit the Philippines.

The German official also called for a speedy and fair trial of Sen. Leila de Lima, who had been sent to jail by Duterte administration officials for alleged involvement in the drug trade.

This article appeared on the Philippine Daily Inquirer newspaper website, which is a member of Asia News Network and a media partner of The Jakarta Post

Read more:

Germany joins clamor against Philippines' bloody war on drugs - SE ... - Jakarta Post

A look at the painkiller abuse that's now reached epidemic levels in the US, and could also be heading for Australia.

Americas war against opioids is being lost, and many people as well as authorities are deeply concerned. Picture: Brad Horrigan/The Hartford Courant

THE United States is experiencing a drug addiction crisis of rare proportions.

An estimated 2.6 million people are hooked on prescription opioid painkillers like oxycodone and hydrocodone, or on heroin and fentanyl, an extremely potent synthetic opioid.

The Straits Times reports that of the 2900 babies born last year in Cabell County, West Virginia, 500 had to be weaned off opioid dependence. So severe is the addiction in Ohio, that counties have been renting refrigerated trailers to store the mounting number of bodies of overdose victims.

The website reports that 33,000 people died from opioid overdose in the US last year, including 10 people last Friday in Florida where Donald Trump spends a lot of his spare time.

There are now 10 times the level of drug-related deaths than in 1971 when America first declared its war on drugs.

Michael Jackson became addicted to painkillers after being caught in an on-stage fire in 1984. Picture: AFP/Kevin MazurSource:AFP

Former heroin addict Courtney Love lost custody of her daughter in 2003 after claims she overdosed on painkiller OxyContin. Picture: AFP/Max NashSource:AFP

Veteran comic Jim Carrey was sued last year for allegedly procuring drugs under a bogus name for his ex-girlfriend, who died of an overdose. Picture: AFP/Justin TallisSource:AFP

Last week lawyer Paul Farrell filed a lawsuit for Cabell County, and neighbouring counties, seeking damages from drug companies for fuelling the addiction epidemic.

My community is dying on a daily basis, Mr Farrell told straitstimes.com.

Every sixth baby born locally suffers from neonatal abstinence syndrome, in which a mothers addiction is passed on to her child.

The hospital has to rock these babies 24 hours a day as they scream their way through addiction, he said.

What were asking for is not only to hold (the firms) responsible for blatantly violating federal and state laws, but also to fix the damage they caused, so that we stop creating another generation of addicts, he said.

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio recently announced a new plan to cut addiction, after the citys overdose death toll hit 1075 last year.

The pharmaceutical industry for years has encouraged the overuse of addictive painkillers, said Mr de Blasio.

The surge in deaths follows a shift in the nature of the crisis. After the Drug Enforcement Agency last year ordered a 25 per cent cutback in the distribution of prescription opioids, addicts turned to heroin. But that drug is frequently cut with fentanyl, which has caused even more overdoses.

Everybody is starting to see a slowdown of prescription opiates. As you see supply drop, what we are seeing is an equal rise in heroin, said Mr Farrell.

We are going to see an all-time-high transition to heroin abuse in the next five years.

Sue Kruczeks 20-year old son Nick died of an overdose. Several US states are considering legislation to create a non-opioid directive that patients can put in their medical files. Picture: Brad Horrigan/The Hartford CourantSource:AP

SOME KEY FACTS

How many Americans are addicted to opioids?

In 2015, an estimated two million Americans were addicted to prescription opioid painkillers, and 591,000 to heroin. But the tightening of supplies of prescription opioids has sent many opioid addicts moving to heroin. Heroin producers and dealers in turn are increasingly cutting their drug with fentanyl, which is so potent that a minuscule amount can turn a standard heroin dose deadly.

Four out of five heroin users started out addicted to prescription opioids. Picture: AP/Elaine ThompsonSource:AP

How are prescription drugs and heroin use linked?

Experts say four out of five US heroin users started with prescription opioids like oxycodone and hydrocodone. A new study ties the likelihood of addiction to the amount and strength of the opioid painkiller first prescribed by a doctor. Patients who are given a prescription lasting more than three days, or who get a second prescription, or who are prescribed longer-lasting painkillers, are significantly more likely to be using the drug a year later.

How many people are dying from opioid overdoses?

The latest US data show that in 2015, 33,091 people died from overdoses tied to prescription opioids, heroin and fentanyl. That was up 15.5 per cent from the previous year, and four times the number of deaths in 1999. Experts say the surge continued last year.

Prince died from an overdose of painkillers, according to reports. Picture: AFP/Robyn BeckSource:AFP

Which states have the highest levels of overdose deaths?

The national average for opioid overdose deaths in 2015 was 10 for every 100,000 people. In West Virginia, the figure was 41.5 per 100,000; New Hampshire, 34.3 per 100,000; Kentucky and Ohio, 29.9 per 100,000; and Rhode Island, 28.2 per 100,000. Nineteen of 50 states saw significant increases in overdose deaths that year.

Meantime, a new cholesterol-slashing drug that has shown promise for high-risk patients does not impair brain function, according to a study out Saturday.

Previous research had raised the possibility that evolocumab, sold under the brand name Repatha by Amgen, may have a damaging effect on memory and cognitive function.

Evolocumab is part of a new class of cholesterol-lowering drugs called PCSK9 inhibitors, which dramatically lower bad cholesterol, or low-density lipoprotein (LDL).

The drug has been shown to significantly reduce the risk of heart attack, stroke and death in patients who have severely clogged arteries or previous cardiac problems.

But it comes at a hefty price tag of more than $14,000 per year, raising concerns about how many patients could benefit.

Repatha cuts the chances of having a heart attack or some other serious problems by 15 to 20 per cent in a big study of people at high risk for those problems. Picture: Robert Dawson/AmgenSource:AP

Aiming to address questions about its cognitive effects, researchers at Brigham and Womens Hospital in collaboration with Brown University and the University of Geneva ran cognitive tests on nearly 2000 people enrolled in a two-year study of the drug.

Researchers assessed the executive function, working memory, episodic memory and psychomotor speed of patients at six, 12, and 24 months after starting treatment.

After an average of 19 months of treatment, our data show that changes in memory and cognitive function were very small and similar between patients treated with evolocumab and those treated with placebo, said Robert Giugliano, a cardiac doctor at BWH.

These data should reassure physicians and patients who may have had questions about the safety of this drug as it pertains to cognitive impairment. The research, funded by Amgen, was presented at the American College of Cardiology annual meeting in Washington.

Full results are expected to be published in a peer-reviewed journal in the coming months.

Original post:

America's drug problem now 10 times worse than in 1971 the year it declared a war on drugs - NEWS.com.au

A second former senior Tasmania Police officer has thrown his support behind a national push for drug law reform.

YOUR SAY: Tasmanians react to a new report pushing for drug decriminalisation.

Another former Tasmania Police officer has thrown his support behind a national push for widespread drug law reform.

Former police commander Ivan Dean said it was time toaddress what he described asone of the biggest issues facing the country.

The current strategies arent working - we just need to take a very strong look at this whole thing and try and make changes that are contemporary, he said.

It would need to be a fairly widespread reform - there are some drugs we can never accept and never decriminalise, but there are areas in which we need a different perspective.

There oughtto be some sort of committee, in my view it needs to be a body of people with the background and the knowledge to be able to look at this issue very closely.

Mr Deans comments followthe launch of a new report pushing drug decriminalisation, which has been supported by senior police, prison officers and lawyers includingformer Tasmania Police Commissioner Jack Johnston.

The Australia 21 report, officially launched on Monday, recommends national change which wouldreduce criminal control of the drug market.

The report claims that Australias current war on drugs approach is flawed, and failing to achieve its intended results.

While law enforcement will always be important to managing illicit drug use the focus should not be on whether a user has taken or possesses these drugs for personal use but rather on associated criminal or antisocial behaviour, the report read.

Original post:

Tasmanians react to drug decriminalisation calls - Tasmania Examiner

In the last four years, Illinois, like many states, has been loosening its drug laws: legalizing medical marijuana, allowing universities to research industrial hemp, and decriminalizing the possession of small amounts of recreational marijuana. At the same time, a surge in heroin and prescription drug abuse and overdoses has left ruined lives and death in communities across the United States. In the following Q&A, Ralph Weisheit, a Distinguished Professor of Criminal Justice, talks about these trends and the peculiarities of American drug laws.

Weisheit has been researching illegal drugs and rural crime since the early 1980s. He is the author of eight books, including Domestic Marijuana (1992) and Methamphetamine: Its History, Pharmacology, and Treatment (2009). His recent scholarly work includes a new edition of the textbook Pursuing Justice (2015) and the research article Rural Crime: A Global Perspective, which was published last year in the International Journal of Rural Criminology.

This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.

What did you think about the legal expansion of medical and recreational marijuana across the country in the November election?

The election set the stage for an interesting clash between state and federal laws regarding marijuana. At the state level, both medical and recreational marijuana expanded dramatically. Voters in four states approved recreational marijuana, bringing the total to eight, covering 21 percent of the U.S. population. At the same time, voters in five states approved medical marijuana, bringing the total to 28 states covering 62 percent of the U.S. population. This is an unprecedented level of public support for access to marijuana.

At the federal level, the attorney general sets the tone for drug law enforcement, and the new attorney general (Jeff Sessions) has been a passionate opponent of any access to marijuana. Complicating matters is that a Republican Congress in the previous administration explicitly forbade the federal government from enforcing federal laws against marijuana when individuals were properly following state laws. Thus, the stage is set for a legal and ideological battle between states rights and federal authority. How that plays out remains to be seen.

A lot of people take one side or the other in the drug war debate. Has it been important to you to be impartial?

It has been enormously important to me. It depends on the drug, but in the case of marijuana, I really do have mixed feelings. I will say the current move toward legalizing marijuana is something I never would have dreamed of 10 or 15 years ago. This is not because I think marijuana is evil. I see good and bad. I just never would have thought that would happen, because we are in a time when people want to know whats in their food. They dont allow tobacco smoking within so many feet of a building. And it just never seemed consistent that you would then loosen up on something like marijuana, even if it was proper and deserved. I couldnt have been more wrong.

One of the things about studying the drug issue that makes it a challenge is that its an emotional issue. For some people, its up there with abortion, or the death penalty, or other things that people get very passionate about.

Why do you think marijuana laws have been changed the last few years?

I think some of it has to do with an aging population. A lot of the things that medical marijuana is useful for are things that people who are getting older can relate to. And aging is important in another way. Older people vote. But these older people were around in the 60s, and they saw marijuana and they heard government proclamations that it wasnt much different than other illegal drugs. And they thought, thats not quite right. Even if they werent using it, they saw it as different from other drugs.

Then, as medical marijuana goes in, people look and say, Gee, the sky is not falling. We havent had the end of times because medical marijuana has come to our state. Maybe it is not as bad as we thought and maybe we need to talk about changing how we view it. I think what you are finding on marijuana legalization is not so much a call to make it completely free and available, but a call for dramatically reduced penalties, particularly for small amounts. You are seeing a lot of support for that from around the country.

Where are we at in Illinois with medical marijuana? Its legal now. Are there placesfor people to get it? Do we have dispensaries all across the state?

We have dispensaries, but a few words about the Illinois law. It is probably one of the more restrictive in the nation. It literally costs multimillions of dollars just to get permission to grow, and it costs hundreds of thousands of dollars to set up a dispensary.

And you might think thats going to be a problem for the people who want to do this. My experience has been that they are pleased that Illinois has such restrictions while possessing and distributing marijuana continues to be a federal crime, because the federal government is not going to step in as long as you are following state law. But if the state law is fuzzy as it is in California, the DEA (federal Drug Enforcement Administration) can more easily justify going in and arresting people.

The law is so strict in Illinois thatto get an ID to legally buy medicinalmarijuana is not only expensive, but you have to have a meaningful relationship with a doctor. You have to have a verylimited number of conditions for which you can get marijuana, and the amount you can possess is limited. In California there are no conditions. You can literally say that your toe hurts and it would feel better if I used marijuana, and a doctor who has never seen you before and who has done no thorough physical examination can say, OK.

In your book on marijuana, you note that Illinois was the eighth largest producer of marijuana in the country and Missouri was the top producer. It was a big Midwestern thing. Is that still who is producing marijuana?

No, the illegal production has changed dramatically. Its still an issue in the Midwest, but large-scale production is going on in California. In California it is not being done on a large scale by the burned out hippies who were doing it in the 90s. Now the largest operations are run by Mexican drug organizations that are using remote public lands, and they are bringing in crews just to do that.

Where is the marijuana coming from forthe medical marijuana here?

By law all legal medical marijuana inthe state must be cultivated in the state. The Illinois law is extremely detailed in terms of the circumstances under which cultivation can occur. There has to be 24-hour video surveillance of the facility that the state police can access remotely. There must be a rigorous security system in place.

The other interesting twist on thisin Illinois and other states where they have medical marijuana, is that one of the big employment opportunities for retired cops is to become security people for medical marijuana operations. In Illinois, for example, the former head of the state police is doing just such work. I think this would be an interesting group to talk to because they have spent their career fighting marijuana, and now they are getting paid handsomely to protect the operations.

Are Illinois farmers or anyone in the agriculture industry looking toward theday marijuana is legalized here?

Indoor nursery for the cultivation of medical marijuana.

I havent heard of farmers talking about that. Im sure there is interest in hemp because it is a plant that is easy to grow, will grow in a wide range of soil and climate conditions, and can be rotated with other crops. I know that farmers in the Dakotas are very interested in it because it is being grown as a hemp product across the border in Canada. The Dakota farmers are saying, Why cant we do that? They are making a lot of money growing this stuff.

And the industrial applications are really quite massive. Hemp oil can be used as a paint thinner or as a lubricant. It is used to make cloth. It is used to make rope. Its enormously useful for paper.It grows quickly, and for paper it would be much more practical as a renewable resource than trees.

(Editors note: Hemp is a term commonly used for a type of marijuana that has industrial applications and low levels of the psychoactive agent THC.)

Have you researched synthetic marijuana?

Ive done some work with a group in Franklin County that had a treatment program for kids on meth. A large number of those kids were into K2, Spicestreet names for synthetic marijuana. Thats really nasty stuff. And its nasty for a couple of reasons. First, like a lot of the underground drugs, you dont know whats in it. The user cant necessarily anticipate the effects of a given batch. Second, some of the stuff thats in it is really powerful, and so the user cant necessarily know what their dose is going to be.

You are hearing less about synthetic marijuana. I dont know if its because its less of an issue or that the media has gone on to something else, like opiates. We have no shortage of drug problems, and over time the public shifts a bit in what it worries about.

The reality is that it is human nature to want to alter your consciousness. Ive had people tell me that someone must have a mental problem if they think they have to use drugs, and my response is no. Do you say they have a mental problem if they like riding roller coasters? Because a roller coaster serves no other function than to alter your consciousness. Is that pathological?

The difference, of course, is thatdrugs have other negative consequencesphysical, social, and legal. But the principle is the same. We dont know why some people like having their consciousness altered more than others, but it appears to be something that is common among human beings. The trick is to get them to alter their consciousness in the least destructive way.

You talk about drug panics in your marijuana book. Do you think we are in a drug panic now with heroin?

There is no question that as a society we are in a panic about opiates. The question is, Should we be? My answer is I dont know. Because its such an emotional issue, only with hindsight can we look back and say, We exaggerated the true extent of the problem. We shouldnt havent done that. Unfortunately, sometimes we underestimate the extent of the problem. Hindsight doesnt help you in the moment.

Thats one of the problems with drug policy. One of the things that is sometimes forgotten is the idea of unintended consequences. And unintended consequences run through the history of our efforts to control drugs.

One of the things that has happened as a result of places like Colorado, Washington, Oregon not only loosening up on medical but on recreational marijuana is Ive seen reports that marijuana production in Mexico has dropped dramatically because the price has gone down. They cant get as much for it, and as a result, the traffickers have moved more of their focus to methamphetamine and heroin because they are business people. You start selling less of this, and you make up for it by selling more of that. I dont think anyone thought that marijuana legalization might have had an impact on meth or heroin coming in from Mexico. It appears it probably does. It doesnt mean we were wrong to change our policies on marijuana. It just means these things happen. Who would have thought?

Did the crackdown on meth in Illinois have something to do with the uptick in heroin use and overdoes?

Yes, I would agree with that. First, beforethe crackdown on meth, much of the meth in rural Illinois and the rural Midwest was mom-and-poppeople making it in their kitchens, or in motel rooms, or whatever in relatively small-scale operations. You had enormous problems with damage to the environment, with explosions, all of those things that were undesirable side effects. Further, with fires, explosions, and the dumping of toxic waste from these local labs, it was difficult to deny that meth was a problem.

On the other hand, there was almost no violence. You didnt have people fighting over turf. Seldom did you find money being changed hands. You did see some domestic violence, and part of that iswhen you are coming down from meth, you tend to be very irritable and you are on edge. But you didnt see gang involvement. You didnt see people fighting over money or turf.

You can crack down on home meth production, but the desire for the drug doesnt go away. What you have now is Mexican meth coming in. And you dont have the meth trash and other visiblesigns that the drug is present in your community. And so you trade that you no longer have all of these environmental damages, but now you have this other social consequence. Now you have Mexican trafficking organizations bringing in methand meth is still a big problem in this state. These are business people. They are in this to make money. The same networks that are bringing in meth can start bringing in heroin.

Professor Weisheit teases out what is true and false in popular TV series.

Now Im going to mix history into it. My co-author on the meth book (William L. White) is just a walking encyclopedia of drug history. And he said when we started the project, You wait, eventually you will see these meth areas becoming heroin areas because historically there is this cycle between stimulants and narcotics. You may turn to something like heroin to come down from a meth run because heroin is a depressant. So you have this tendency over time to go back and forth between stimulants and narcotics. The reality is someone who is an addict may prefer a particular drug but they will use the drug that is available. Now that you have Mexican distributors in the mix they determine what is going to be available.

Another example of an unintended consequence is the shift from prescription pain pills to heroin. When the government started cracking down on pills, the pills became more expensive, and the heroin by comparison was even cheaper. From the perspective of the user, there isnt much difference between a prescription narcotic and heroin. And now you have a heroin problem. Except the heroin problem now gets worse when they start cutting it with fentanylthat is said to be some 50 times more potent than heroin. Addicts are now overdosing because they cant know the potency of any one batch.

Here is the weird part. Fentanyl is essentially heroin on steroids. Its possible for doctors to prescribe fentanyl to cancer patients as a painkiller. Those same doctors cannot prescribe heroin as a painkiller. Thats considered unsafe. Our drug laws are very curious in that way.

Most people dont realize that. They may realize that marijuana is Schedule 1, which means you cant use it for medicine. So is heroin. So is LSD. But Schedule 2, which means doctors can prescribe it, includes methamphetamine, according to the DEA. It includes cocaine. Most people dont realize those are drugs that can be prescribed. In effect, the DEA has decided that methamphetamine is less risky than marijuana.

In your meth book, you write that under medical supervision, properly prescribed methamphetamine can have a positive effect on a person.

There are three conditions under which it can be used. It can be used for extreme obesity because it suppresses the appetite just as any stimulant will do. It can be used for narcolepsypeople who fall asleep at a stop sign for example. Or it can be used for attention deficit disorder. We can give it to children. Wait a minuteif this is the most dangerous drug on earth and is instantly addictive, why are we giving it to children? In reality it is rare for children to be prescribed meth, but it can be. Methamphetamine is what doctors may turn to when the other treatment drugs (such as Dexedrine or Ritalin) dont seem to be working.

One of the things about studying the drug issue that makes it a challenge is that its an emotional issue. For some people, its up there with abortion, or the death penalty, or other things that people get very passionate about.

That makes it hard to sort out the truth from fiction because you get exaggerations. In the case of marijuana, you get exaggerations on both sides. I saw someone on campus with a sign that said marijuana cures cancer. No, it doesnt. It may ease the symptoms of cancer and its treatment, but it does not cure cancer. But thats no more outrageous than claims it has no medical value.

In the case of drugs, sometimes we think its this horrible crisis, and it turns out that it is not that big of deal. Other times we dont realize how big the problem was until we look back.

Kevin Bersett can be reached at kdberse@IllinoisState.edu.

Read the rest here:

Q&A with Ralph Weisheit: Where does the war on drugs go from here? - Illinois State University News (press release) (blog)