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  • Mexico May Allow Cocaine Use For Two People

    Mexico May Allow Cocaine Use For Two People

    Mexico did not legalize cocaine. But that could change for two unidentified individuals if a court ruling is upheld.

    No, Mexico did not legalize cocaine. However, a tribunal may decide to uphold a Mexican court’s decision seeking to allow possession, transport and use of cocaine for two people.

    The court’s ruling would only take effect if confirmed by the tribunal. The case could end up in Mexico’s Supreme Court, USA Today reported. And it would only apply to the two individuals who have not been identified.

    The reason behind the court’s ruling to allow cocaine for the two is also unknown.

    In May, the court ordered Mexico’s health authority—COFEPRIS (the Federal Commission for the Protection against Sanitary Risk)—to allow the two people to possess, transport and use cocaine—but not buy or sell it.

    So far COFEPRIS said it has moved to block the court order.

    Drug Policy Reformers Speak Out

    Mexico United Against Crime (MUCD), a drug policy reform group, said it is hoping the court’s decision will spur the government to focus more on preventing violent crime. In 2018, Mexico counted a record 33,341 homicides. In the first half of 2019, Mexico has already seen 17,608 homicides.

    “We have been working for a safer, more just and peaceful Mexico for years, and with this case we insist on the need to stop criminalizing users of drugs other than marijuana and design better public policies that explore all available options, including the regulation,” said Lisa Sánchez, director of MUCD.

    The group helped influence the Supreme Court’s ruling in 2018 that an absolute ban on the recreational use of marijuana was unconstitutional.

    Mexico has been grappling with unprecedented violence for years now. Drug policy experts point to the fallout of former President Felipe Calderon’s war on drug cartels that he waged over his six-year term (2006-2012). In that time period, about 120,000 homicides were logged in Mexico.

    Decriminalization

    Now, under President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the country is considering drug decriminalization. The policy was proposed under the administration’s National Development Plan released this year.

    The text signals a desire to move away from long-held prohibitionist policies, and toward a new strategy that won’t repeat past mistakes.

    “In the matter of narcotic drugs, the prohibitionist strategy is already unsustainable, not only because of the violence generated by its poor results in terms of public health,” according to the translated text provided by Marijuana Moment.

    “Worse still, the prohibitionist model inevitably criminalizes consumers and reduces their odds of social reintegration and rehabilitation.”

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Sweden Rethinks Zero Tolerance Drug Policy as Cocaine Use Rises

    Sweden Rethinks Zero Tolerance Drug Policy as Cocaine Use Rises

    Swedish authorities are trying to learn what factors are contributing to the rising rates of use (and overdose), including the way they police.

    Officials in Sweden are rethinking their policies as cocaine use, and overdoses, continue to rise despite their hard-line stance on drugs.

    According to SVT, Sweden’s national public news broadcasting service, the drug has only grown stronger, more common, and cheaper in the last few years.

    Police and customs have seized 300% more cocaine since 2012. Swedish customs reports seizing as much as 485 kg of the stuff. Cocaine was also found to be the cause of death in 20 cases last year, a massive increase from a few years ago with just one reported case.

    While such numbers may seem small in relation to other countries, such a significant spike has caused concern in Sweden and a scramble to find out why.

    “Cocaine has increased at least four-fold. This indicates that usage has increased,” said Robert Kronstrand, of the Swedish National Board of Forensic Medicine. “Blood samples have improved, which may explain more positive tests, but that’s not the reason for the sharp increase.”

    Even the police agree that better testing doesn’t account for the sharp rise in cocaine cases. They’ve seen a significant shift in who is dying, and where: past cocaine deaths were associated with social gatherings, but almost all 2018 deaths were at home.

    Sweden’s drug policy is being called into question as it is among one of the most hard-line policies in Europe. Police have the authority to urine test anyone they suspect of using drugs, and pretty much no distinction is made between hard and soft drugs. The policy’s aim was to squash all use of drugs.

    “Prohibiting both personal use and the possession and sale of drugs in Sweden makes it harder for ‘open drug scenes’ to arise, i.e. places where drugs are used and sold more or less openly. This is an important element in systematically reducing access to drugs and preventing people from using drugs,” the policy reads.

    In a grim sense, the policy succeeded, leading people to use and die in their own homes. It’s a policy that has come under criticism by the United Nations.

    Sweden’s laws stand in stark contrast to its neighbor Norway, which is moving towards the decriminalization of all drugs. The intention is to “stop punishing people who struggle, but instead give them help and treatment,” said Nicolas Wilkinson of Norway’s Socialist Labour Party. The end goal is to divert the handling of drug cases away from the justice system to the health care system.

    In Sweden, multiple parties in parliament have banded together to take on the problem. This isn’t the first time Sweden has swiftly responded to substance abuse issues, having restricted the sale of hand sanitizer in 2016 after a rash of teenagers showed up in emergency rooms from drinking the alcogels.

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Cocaine Exposure In London River Triggers Eels

    Cocaine Exposure In London River Triggers Eels

    A study found that exposure to cocaine in the water can make fish and eels “hyperactive,” and deteriorate their bone structure. 

    London residents use so much cocaine that the drug is often found in the waters of the River Thames, possibly affecting eels and other wildlife in the river. 

    Researchers from King’s College London said that cocaine and other class A drugs were detected in the water 24 hours after sewer overflow events, according to The Independent.  

    During those events, the city’s water purification system can’t keep up, meaning that some raw sewage can make it into the river. Cocaine and other drugs from people’s urine can thus end up in the water. 

    James Robson, a senior curator at the SEA LIFE London aquarium, said the drugs likely have some effect on wildlife. 

    “Drugs which affect us will almost always affect all animal life, and invertebrates a little bit more because their biochemistry is much more sensitive,” he said. “Essentially everything in the water will be affected by drugs like these. A lot of the triggers and the ways that cocaine affects the system is really primal.”

    A study found that exposure to cocaine in the water can make fish and eels “hyperactive,” and deteriorate their bone structure. 

    “This study shows that even low environmental concentrations of cocaine cause severe damage to the morphology and physiology of the skeletal muscle of the silver eel, confirming the harmful impact of cocaine in the environment that potentially affects the survival of this species,” study authors wrote. 

    However, Robson said it wouldn’t be accurate to say that the wildlife is getting high. 

    “You haven’t got a lot of disco-dancing fish down the bottom of the Thames,” he said. Although authors of the hyperactivity study said that the fish they studied were exposed to similar levels of cocaine that are found in the water, Robson said that the fish in the study were exposed to higher levels of cocaine, which may explain their greater reactions. 

    London has high rates of cocaine use, and European studies have found that sewage in the city has high levels of the drug. In addition to cocaine, London waters also contain lots of caffeine, which researchers said “was so high that it lay outside of the quantifiable range.”

    While the research about cocaine and caffeine in the waters has spawned some interesting headlines, Robson said that it is relatively unimportant compared to other issues affecting the health of the River Thames and other waterways. 

    He said, “Before you would worry about something like caffeine increasing the heart rate, I would be much more concerned about things like climate change affecting the temperature and plastics pollution. Those do much more significant damage to the ecosystem.”

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Soulja Boy Denies Drug Use After Fan Accusation

    Soulja Boy Denies Drug Use After Fan Accusation

    The “Crank That” rapper shot back at a Twitter user who accused him of using crack cocaine. 

    People across social media are comparing their photos today with pictures from 10 years ago as part of the viral “how hard did aging hit you” challenge. After a fan used the challenge to compare two photos of Soulja Boy and suggest he was using drugs, the rapper reacted angrily this week. 

    The mashup included an old headshot of the rapper alongside a more recent selfie where Soulja Boy was looking haggard. 

    “I said Soulja Boy looking mad cracky now,” the fan wrote on Twitter. “DIS IS CRACK.”

    Soulja Boy wasted no time responding to the allegations, saying that he is not doing cocaine and that he looked rough in the picture because he was recently in a serious car accident, Vibe reported.  

    “First of all, I want to say, for everybody that’s saying, ‘Soulja Boy look like he’s on drugs. Soulja Boy look bad. Soulja Boy look like he’s on crack, on powder.’ Bitch, don’t play with me like that!” the rapper said in a live video posted to social media. “I ain’t never did crack in my life, bitch. I’m worth muthafucking $30 million… I never did cocaine in my life.”

    He seemed personally offended by the suggestion that he might be doing drugs. 

    “Don’t be making fun of my fucking appearance and my fucking looks,” he said. “I’m worth 30 million, google that shit. Y’all got me fucked up.” 

    Soulja Boy posted on January 6 that he had been in a car accident during mudslides in California and said that could explain the difference between the two pictures that the fan posted. 

    “I was just in a bad car accident two days ago, bitch, I almost lost my life,” he said. “I hit my fucking face on the fucking dashboard on the car, bitch, and my shit swollen and my teeth, I need surgery and shit.”

    Soulja Boy, who is 28, became a household name back in 2007 when his song “Crank That (Soulja Boy)” topped the charts. Although his name was out of the press for years, he claimed on Twitter that he was the biggest comeback story of 2018, Billboard reported. 

    “I had the biggest come back of 2018 big facts,” Soulja Boy tweeted. “Signed a record deal. Did four new tv shows and signed an endorsement deal with Fashion Nova release my own smart watch and video game console n—az thought it was over for me after all that beef shit. Never count a real one out!”

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Fisherman Reels In Cocaine

    Fisherman Reels In Cocaine

    The fisherman found a bale of cocaine worth a reported $500,000.

    A south Florida fisherman got a surprise catch when he spotted a bale of cocaine after returning from a day on the ocean. 

    According to the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office, which covers the Florida Keys, a fisherman noticed something floating beneath the docks when he returned from a day out at sea. When he cut into the package and saw white powder, he alerted authorities. 

    Sheriff’s Office Deputy Martin Digrius and Coast Guard officials responded, and the US Border Patrol also arrived on the scene. Inside the plastic package, authorities found 25 smaller packages, which contained 40-60 pounds of cocaine, the sheriff’s department said. According to The Miami Herald, the cocaine was worth about $500,000. 

    Cocaine use has been rising, especially as the drug becomes more commonly used alongside opioids. The amount of cocaine seized by the Coast Guard has been increasing: In 2015, the agency seized 145 tons of the drug and detained 503 people; by 2017 those numbers had risen to 225 tons and 708 suspects, according to The Miami Herald.

    Intercepting cocaine in the ocean — or even washed up on beaches — isn’t wholly unusual in Florida and on the West Coast, but it still makes headlines. 

    In December of 2017, Coast Guard sailors rescued a sea turtle that was floating amid 1,800 pounds of cocaine, worth about $53 million. 

    “After a period of lengthy questioning, it was determined the turtle did not have any useful information. We released him on his own recognizance after he agreed not to return to these waters again. #turtlesmuggler,” the agency posted on Twitter. 

    They followed up with a more somber note:

    “In all seriousness, we love our sea creatures and do everything we can to help them when we see them in distressed situations. Additionally, during this patrol nearly seven tons of illicit narcotics with a street value over $135 million was confiscated.”

    Intercepting cocaine in the ocean before it lands in the US can help save lives, Acting US Attorney Alana Robinson said in September 2017. 

    “The seizure of this cocaine means tens of thousands of pounds won’t make it to our communities and hundreds of millions of dollars won’t make it into cartel coffers,” she said. 

    “To drug traffickers who may think they are invisible in the middle of what seems to be a vast, empty ocean: You are not alone. We are doing everything we can to prevent you from using the high seas as your personal freeway.”

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Cocaine Deaths Are On The Rise

    Cocaine Deaths Are On The Rise

    “From 2014 through 2016, the number of drug overdose deaths involving cocaine nearly doubled from 5,892 to 11,316,” states a recent report on cocaine-related deaths.

    Overdoses caused by cocaine have increasingly been in the news cycle, and a new report released this week shows just how dangerous cocaine abuse has become, with overdose deaths linked to the drug rising almost 18% each year between 2011 and 2016. 

    According to the National Center for Health Statistics’ “Drugs Most Frequently Involved in Drug Overdose Deaths: United States, 2011–2016” report, cocaine-related overdoses have been increasing sharply.

    “Throughout the study period, cocaine ranked second or third among the top 15 drugs,” the report authors wrote. “From 2014 through 2016, the number of drug overdose deaths involving cocaine nearly doubled from 5,892 to 11,316.”

    Of course, that still pales in comparison to the number of people killed by opioids. Deaths involving fentanyl, for example, rose from 1,662 in 2011 to 18,335 in 2016, when 29% of fatal overdoses involved the drug. 

    Still, researchers found that cocaine was a significant danger, involved in nearly 18% of overdose deaths in 2016. That could be due in part to the fact that fentanyl is increasingly being found in the cocaine supply. 

    “Drug combinations often involved drugs of different drug classes,” study authors wrote. “For example, the opioid fentanyl and the stimulant cocaine were mentioned concomitantly in nearly 4,600 deaths.”

    In those cases, authors counted the deaths in both categories. 

    The report also showcased how the opioid epidemic has changed over time. In 2011, the prescription opioid oxycodone was present in the most deaths (5,587). By the next year, heroin was the most deadly drug in the country, present in 6,155 overdoses. Heroin remained the most deadly drug for 2013 (8,418 deaths), 2014 (10,882 deaths) and 2015 (13,318 deaths).

    In 2016, fentanyl was the most deadly drug in the country, present in 18,335 deaths. This data mirrors the progression that researchers have talked about: The opioid crisis started with prescription drugs, and when those were too expensive, users turned to heroin. When fentanyl entered the drug scene, providing a cheaper and more powerful hit, it was widely used. 

    However, cocaine has consistently been causing overdose deaths, either as the second or third most deadly drug each year for the time period researchers measured. 

    Meth — another stimulant whose use has been increasing — has gradually become involved in more deaths. In 2011 and 2012 it was the eighth most deadly drug; in 2013 and 2014 it was the seventh. In 2015 it rose to the fifth spot when it was involved in 5,092 overdoses, and in 2016 it was the fourth most deadly drug, involved in 6,762 deaths.

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Cocaine Cut With Deworming Drug May Cause Brain Damage

    Cocaine Cut With Deworming Drug May Cause Brain Damage

    In 2017, close to 90% of seized cocaine bricks were cut with the deworming drug. 

    A pet dewormer commonly used to cut cocaine may cause brain damage, according to a team of Swiss researchers. 

    Known as levamisole, the anti-parasite drug can lead to changes in the brain’s structure and also hurt cognitive performance, the University of Zurich team of scientists wrote in the October issue of Translational Psychiatry.

    “We can assume from our findings that it is not just cocaine that changes the brain, but that the adulterant levamisole has an additional harmful effect,” said Professor Boris Quednow, the group’s lead researcher. “The sorts of cognitive impairment often exhibited by cocaine users may therefore be exacerbated by levamisole.”

    The anti-worming drug isn’t a new addition to coke supplies; it started popping up in illicit powders more than a decade ago, the DEA reported at the time. Swiss authorities began noticing it sometime around 2008, the researchers wrote. 

    It’s recently become less pervasive in drug supplies there, but in U.S. close to 90% of cocaine bricks seized in 2017 contained the dewormer. 

    But researchers aren’t entirely clear on why it’s so popular as a cocaine additive, according to a university press release. It may draw out or heighten the effects of blow—but previous research has already shown a number of negative side effects, including a linkage to skin necrosis. 

    And, animal testing shows it can impact the nervous system. In part that’s why researchers with the Psychiatric Hospital and the Institute of Forensic Medicine of the University of Zurich decided to take a closer look at the effects of levamisole, by testing drug users’ hair to figure out who had consumed the deworming agent with cocaine and who hadn’t. 

    In one study, researchers compared 26 regular coke users with low levels of levamisole exposure, 49 users with high levels of exposure and 78 non-users in cognitive functioning tests. 

    Both groups of coke users showed “significant impairments” in attention and memory—neither of which should come as any surprise to anyone who’s done a line or two. But the researchers also found that the group with more exposure to the dewormer showed much worse executive function—even though they weren’t doing more blow.

    A second study used MRIs to look at how levamisole-laced cocaine affects the brain’s structure, finding that it thinned a region associated with executive functions. 

    Given the findings, researchers suggested that the most immediate solution might be better purity testing, a harm-reduction approach to help users screen out tainted supplies. 

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Dennis Quaid Revisits "White Light" Moment That Spurred His Recovery

    Dennis Quaid Revisits "White Light" Moment That Spurred His Recovery

    “I was basically doing cocaine pretty much on a daily basis during the ‘80s.”

    Since kicking off his acting career in the ’70s, former Hollywood “bad boy” Dennis Quaid has come out on the other side of cocaine addiction—“my greatest mistake.” Quaid, now 64, revisited the height of his cocaine use and the turning point that made him want to quit, during a recent interview.

    “I grew up in the ‘60s, ‘70s, and there was a completely different attitude about it then. Even in some movie budgets. I kept roaring on,” he told Megyn Kelly.

    “I was basically doing cocaine pretty much on a daily basis during the ‘80s. I spent many, many a night screaming at God to please take this away from me, I’ll never do it again because I’ve only got an hour before I have to be at work.”

    But by the afternoon, the young actor would change his mind, and the cycle would continue.

    By the time he was filming The Big Easy (1986), he’d sleep for just one hour a night. “Doing blow just contributed to me not being able to handle the fame, which, at the time, I guess I felt I didn’t deserve,” he wrote in a 2011 Newsweek essay. “I was doing my best imitation of an asshole there for a little while, trying to pretend everything was okay.

    “Meanwhile my life was falling apart, and I noticed myself, but I was hoping everyone else didn’t.”

    Quaid struggled to quit until the late ’80s, when he finally sought help. “I had a white light experience where I saw myself either dead or losing everything that meant anything to me,” he told Kelly.

    He provided more detail about his moment of clarity in his Newsweek essay: “I had a band then, called The Eclectics. One night we played a show at the China Club in LA, and the band broke up… because it all got too crazy. I had one of those white light experiences that night where I kind of realized I was going to be dead in five years if I didn’t change my ways. The next day I was in rehab.”

    But even after rehab, Quaid recalled that things got worse before they got better.

    “It was one of those times when you think, ‘Well, if I do the right thing and clean up my life, it’ll get better.’ No, it got worse! In 1990 I did Wilder Napalm, which came out and went down the tubes. But that time in my life—those years in the ‘90s recovering—actually chiseled me into a person. It gave me the resolve and a resilience to persevere in life,” he wrote. “If I hadn’t gone through that period, I don’t know if I’d still be acting. In the end, it taught me humility. I really learn to appreciate what I have in this life.”

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Is Social Media As Addictive As Cocaine?

    Is Social Media As Addictive As Cocaine?

    One expert suggests that media-stoked fears about addictive technology only serve to divert attention from pressing problems like online privacy and user consent.

    Following a recent spate of headlines likening social media to hard drugs, some psychologists deny they’re similar at all. According to Business Insider, scientists from the Oxford Internet Institute believe it’s not only irresponsible to compare the two, but doing so actually distracts from far more serious problems plaguing the tech world.

    The media, though, makes it difficult to separate founded fears from the unfounded ones. The BBC recently reported that social media companies were actively addicting their users through a variety of psychological techniques—an alarming claim that, if true, makes social media addiction more controversial than it already is.

    “It’s as if they’re taking behavioral cocaine and just sprinkling it all over your interface and that’s the thing that keeps you coming back and back and back,” Aza Raskin, a former Mozilla engineer, said of the industry. “Behind every screen on your phone, there are generally like literally a thousand engineers that have worked on this thing to try to make it maximally addicting.” 

    Raskin says that he’s the one who conceived of “infinite scrolling,” where users endlessly swipe down through online content (think Instagram) without ever having to click anywhere. It’s a trick that keeps people glued to their devices, Raskin told the BBC, as it prevents a user’s brain to “catch up” with their impulses.

    Andrew Przybylski, however, doesn’t believe that Silicon Valley’s engineers can successfully incorporate psychology into any of their social media designs. Przybylski, the Oxford Internet Institute’s director, balked at the BBC story and labeled Raskin’s research as “very sloppily done.”

    He added that if Raskin “actually knew anything” about the psychology behind addictive technology, the much-reported dangers of social media would be frighteningly accurate.

    A number of stories continue to portray digital screens no differently than addictive chemicals. And while there is evidence that the brain releases dopamine when people check their Facebook account, Przybylski insists that it’s not remotely the same thing as getting high from a drug.

    “Dopamine research itself shows that things like video games and technologies, they’re in the same realm as food and sex and learning and all of these everyday behaviors,” he told Business Insider, “whereas things like cocaine, really you’re talking about 10, 15 times higher levels of free-flowing dopamine in the brain.”

    Przybylski suggests that media-stoked fears about addictive technology only serve to divert attention from pressing problems like online privacy and user consent. They also distract from the most important objective: good research.

    Przybylski is skeptical that enough research data exists in the first place, let alone social media companies regularly using it in their work.

    “The main takeaway here is that we don’t actually know these things,” said Przybylski, calling for more collaboration with research. “It is important for these large companies to share their data with researchers, and share their data with the public. This research needs to be done transparently. It can’t just be a bunch of Cambridge Analyticas and one-on-one relationships between social media companies and researchers.” 

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Using Smartwatches As Harm Reduction Is Misguided, Expert Says

    Using Smartwatches As Harm Reduction Is Misguided, Expert Says

    “If someone says, ‘Let’s do a line,’ I’ll look at my watch. If I see I’m at 150 of 160, I’ll say, ‘I’m good.’ That’s totally fine. Nobody gives you a hard time,” said one man.

    Can a Fitbit or Apple Watch keep you safe while you use drugs? That’s the idea presented by some people, according to CNBC.

    “If someone says, ‘Let’s do a line,’ I’ll look at my watch. If I see I’m at 150 of 160, I’ll say, ‘I’m good.’ That’s totally fine. Nobody gives you a hard time,” said one individual called “Owen,” a tech worker in San Francisco.

    It’s his way of being safe and not overdoing it, he tells CNBC. He’ll check his Fitbit at parties, nightclubs, even Burning Man. And if his heart rate gets too high, he’ll slow down.

    “I don’t really know what’s happening in my body when I smoke some weed or do some cocaine. I can read information online, but that’s not specific to me. Watching your heart rate change on the Fitbit while doing cocaine is super real data that you’re getting about yourself,” said Owen.

    According to CNBC, there are “dozens” of accounts of this activity across social media and Reddit forums.

    One Redditor posted snapshots of her heart rate data via her Fitbit. “Sometimes I go for 3 days straight if I have an 8-ball to myself,” she wrote, according to Mashable. “And yes, I do all that with no sleep whatsoever until all the coke is gone. I wear a Fitbit Charge HR and it’s been fascinating seeing my heart rate during these coke binges.”

    However, one medical expert was not impressed with this approach, instead painting it as misguided. “Taking drugs is always a risk, whether you’re monitoring a tracker or not,” said Ethan Weiss, a cardiologist and associate professor at the University of California, San Francisco.

    He says this use of smartwatch devices is hardly a foolproof harm reduction measure, even going so far as to suggest that “it’s possible this is leading people to do more cocaine.”

    Devices like the Fitbit and Apple Watch are only getting “smarter.” A team at the University of Rhode Island is working on developing software that would allow a person’s vital signs to be measured via a smartwatch. The idea is to make this information available to doctors, who may then adjust the patient’s medication or treatment regimen. 

    Perhaps this will catch on with “tech-savvy” drug users as well.

    View the original article at thefix.com