Salon.com > Drugs http://www.salon.com Sun, 27 May 2012 00:00:00 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 Pick of the week: An early-’60s hipster time capsule http://www.salon.com/2012/05/04/pick_of_the_week_an_early_60s_hipster_time_capsule/ http://www.salon.com/2012/05/04/pick_of_the_week_an_early_60s_hipster_time_capsule/#comments Fri, 04 May 2012 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=12914461 A time capsule loaded with smack from the bohemian underbelly of JFK-era America, Shirley Clarke's 1961 film "The Connection" is an illustration of how much things change, and how much they stay the same. I'd be stretching to call "The Connection" a great film -- it's mannered and edgy, in a way that's partly deliberate but also distinctive to its period -- but it's an important one in cultural and historic terms, despite being largely unknown. Watching this ensemble drama about a multiracial group of New York jazz musicians and beat philosophers in a run-down apartment, waiting for their drug dealer to show up, is like traveling back 50 years in time, only to encounter the same people you might meet on the street today (at least, in certain neighborhoods of Brooklyn, San Francisco, Austin and so on). At one point, the characters even debate the illusory distinctions between "hipsters" and "squares."

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/05/04/pick_of_the_week_an_early_60s_hipster_time_capsule/feed/ 4 Drug-personality misconceptions http://www.salon.com/2012/04/19/debunking_drug_personality_misconceptions/ http://www.salon.com/2012/04/19/debunking_drug_personality_misconceptions/#comments Thu, 19 Apr 2012 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=12882401 Here’s Ernest Hemingway, dead drunk on a stool in Cuba with his face on his hand and his hand on an ever-present mojito. He's the tormented writer, hard at work at the daily scrubbing of his sins. Like the Hard-Drinking Writer, we've come to expect certain personality types to have certain habits: The Morose Musician with Keith Richards' appetite for heroin; the Insecure Starlet with Marilyn's taste for pills; the Monomaniacal Money Manager with a nose for cocaine. They are generalizations that have been imprinted by generations of popular culture. But the types don't necessarily line up.

the fixThe logic of associating personalities with specific drugs seems natural. A German-British psychologist named Hans Eysenck spent the mid-20th century turning the eye of the scientific community from Freud’s behavior-based theories to individualized psychology—pioneering the science of personality. He considered this pursuit of matching personalities with drugs a pet project.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/04/19/debunking_drug_personality_misconceptions/feed/ 12 My suburban pot secret http://www.salon.com/2012/04/17/life_as_a_suburban_pot_grower/ http://www.salon.com/2012/04/17/life_as_a_suburban_pot_grower/#comments Tue, 17 Apr 2012 14:26:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=12879171 It was sometime around 2 a.m. when I heard the car doors slam. I live on a very quiet street in Fort Collins, Colo., surrounded by working families who are usually falling asleep under the blue glow of their TVs by 10 p.m., and any noise in the night usually means that something is about to happen. And on that night I was certain it was about to happen to me.

Six marijuana plants were growing in my basement and because of shortsighted planning on my part, their odor had gotten completely out of control. Having never grown pot before, I foolishly overlooked the prominent admonitions printed in every growing guide I relied upon to help me with my harvest, that odor control was of the utmost importance. But equipment designed to mask the smell (ozone generators, activated carbon filters) is expensive. How much stench could six little plants really produce? I remember thinking. Well, a lot.

As I lay there in bed night after night praying that sealed doors and windows would at least contain the eau de cannabis indoors and not alert the neighbors to what I was up to, I inevitably questioned my wisdom. I’m not a drug dealer or suffering from some crippling illness. I don’t even smoke marijuana for fun; if I did, I’d at least have a better excuse for subjecting not only myself but my wife and son to the stress of running a clandestine suburban marijuana farm.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/04/17/life_as_a_suburban_pot_grower/feed/ 75 America’s pill-popping capital http://www.salon.com/2012/04/11/americas_pill_popping_capital/ http://www.salon.com/2012/04/11/americas_pill_popping_capital/#comments Wed, 11 Apr 2012 11:45:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=12846541 KERMIT, W.Va. -- It takes less than a minute to drive past Kermit, five to tour the place entirely. An old coal mining town with barely 300 residents and one blinking light between the train tracks, Kermit has no supermarket, no clothing store, no main drag. Main Street is really a side street with rows of cottages, its biggest building, the Kermit community center, empty and boarded.

Yet in this tiny town, the Kermit Sav-Rite Pharmacy used to be as busy as a New York deli. Six employees worked the counter, lines at the drive-through window snaked around the square cinder-block building, and the parking lot was full day and night.

Of course, everyone in Kermit — just about everyone in the wooded hollows of Mingo County — knew the Sav-Rite was a pill mill. It handed out Xanax, Lortabs, Vicodin — all manner of the prescription painkillers and anti-anxiety drugs that are crippling Appalachia like a rogue disease — to anyone with an excuse. Kermit, which sits in the poorest, most remote corner of southwest West Virginia at the Kentucky border, was drawing pill addicts from all over the Eastern seaboard. People were throwing pill parties in the parking lot. Trading pills, buying, selling, injecting, snorting, the works.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/04/11/americas_pill_popping_capital/feed/ 120 Recovery’s new poster boy http://www.salon.com/2012/04/07/recoverys_new_poster_boy/ http://www.salon.com/2012/04/07/recoverys_new_poster_boy/#comments Sat, 07 Apr 2012 22:00:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=12815001 Two years ago, Bill Clegg's first memoir dropped like a bombshell on the New York media world. "Portrait of an Addict as a Young Man" chronicled the handsome and hugely successful book agent's descent into a harrowing crack addiction that cost him his career, his boyfriend and his savings -- and left him broke and in rehab. In one harrowing part of the book (excerpted in New York magazine) Clegg decides to blow off a first-class flight to Berlin after a week without sleep for a crack binge and sex with the cabbie driving him to his airport hotel. Staring at his pile of drugs, he wrote, "I wonder if somewhere in that pile is the crumb that will bring on a heart attack or stroke or seizure. The cardiac event that will deliver all this to an abrupt and welcome halt."

In the years since the events of the first book, Clegg has rebuilt his career as an agent and become one of the best-known faces of addiction recovery. (He is also the rumored muse for "Left-handed," a recent book of poetry by Jonathan Galassi, and the supposed inspiration for one of the lead characters in "Keep the Lights On," Ira Sachs' well-reviewed new film about a troubled gay relationship).

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/04/07/recoverys_new_poster_boy/feed/ 26 Growing up drugged http://www.salon.com/2012/04/07/growing_up_drugged/ http://www.salon.com/2012/04/07/growing_up_drugged/#comments Sat, 07 Apr 2012 19:00:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=12806011 I fall hard for coming-of-age stories, and my list of favorite books and movies contains many in this genre, from "Pride and Prejudice" to "The Catcher in the Rye." The movie "Garden State," which starred Zach Braff and Natalie Portman, also struck a chord with me when it came out in 2004. It dramatizes a few days in the life of Andrew Largeman, a twenty-six-year-old struggling actor in Los Angeles who returns to his native New Jersey for his mother’s funeral. Andrew is nothing if not alienated: he feels disconnected from celebrity-studded Hollywood as well as from his old hometown, which he hasn’t visited since leaving for boarding school nearly a decade earlier.

For the first time in sixteen years, Andrew has stopped taking the psychotropic medications his psychiatrist father prescribed after ten-year-old Andrew caused an accident that rendered his mother a paraplegic. Like the illegal drugs his high school buddies take, Andrew’s meds serve as a metaphor for the feelings of inadequacy, disappointment and rootlessness endemic to my generation of twenty-somethings. Judging from the film’s cult-hit success, its target audience of my peers apparently found the metaphor apt. When Andrew falls in love with a quirky, vibrant girl he meets in a doctor’s waiting room, she shows him how to reengage with his feelings—and the world. Presumably, he leaves the medications behind.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/04/07/growing_up_drugged/feed/ 39 The boom in “Himalayan Viagra” http://www.salon.com/2012/03/11/the_boom_in_himalayan_viagra/ http://www.salon.com/2012/03/11/the_boom_in_himalayan_viagra/#comments Sun, 11 Mar 2012 15:00:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=12665271 CHAME, Nepal – In a dim, dusty stockade in this small Himalayan town, Krishna Lama contemplated his ruined life – a dead father, a college career cut short and criminal charges, all because of a potent fungus that promises the vigor of youth and sexual prowess for men.

A devout Buddhist, Lama was a 20-year-old college student home on holiday in 2009, when he was compelled to join a posse protecting the lucrative fields near his home village of Nar, at altitude 13,450 feet and a steep two-day trek from the Annapurna trail in the Manang district.

What ensued was one of Nepal’s most gruesome mass killings – over the fungus called yarsagumba.

Fearing their fields had been poached by interloping yarsagumba pickers from Gorkha, a mob from Nar beat two men to death and threw their bodies into a deep crevasse. They rounded up the five other men and savagely beat them to death with sticks and stones. To conceal their crime, they cut the corpses into small pieces, wrapped them in plastic and threw them into a glacial torrent. The killers, 65 men and boys, swore an oath never to tell anyone what happened, not even their wives. 

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/03/11/the_boom_in_himalayan_viagra/feed/ 11 Lessons from a celebrity rehab clinic http://www.salon.com/2012/02/28/lessons_from_a_celebrity_rehab_clinic/ http://www.salon.com/2012/02/28/lessons_from_a_celebrity_rehab_clinic/#comments Tue, 28 Feb 2012 01:00:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=12442051 the fixI’d been sober a little over a year when I got the job. That was the minimum requirement: You had to at least have a year clean if they were going to hire you. I had achieved a year clean off IV crystal meth and heroin, and I saw the job at the posh rehab in Malibu as basically the best opportunity I was gonna get. After all I was just 21 at the time — a college dropout who’d already been in and out of four different rehab programs. My last job had been working at the juice bar of a funky, not-too-clean health food store in one of the sketchiest neighborhoods in L.A. They’d paid me whatever minimum wage was back in the early 2000s and, believe me, it wasn’t enough.

But the chichi treatment center in the Malibu hills promised to pay more than twice that salary, and, besides, it would afford me a certain kind of cachet — one lacking in the kitchen of the health food store I had recently abandoned. I mean, I was gonna be working at this rehab full of celebrities. That was something I could tell people with pride when they ask the first question everyone always asks in L.A., “So, what do you do?”

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/02/28/lessons_from_a_celebrity_rehab_clinic/feed/ 29 Reefer madness http://www.salon.com/2012/02/22/reefer_madness_3/ http://www.salon.com/2012/02/22/reefer_madness_3/#comments Wed, 22 Feb 2012 13:00:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=12398821 It's a middle-school rite of passage. One day, you're sitting in class learning about Alexander the Great and wondering how to grab the optimum real estate in the lunchroom. The next, you're getting the drug and alcohol awareness lesson. For my 12-year-old, that day just arrived. "We saw a movie in school today," she drawled over dinner recently, eyes already engaged in full eye roll. "It was called 'Pot, the Party Crasher.'" Then she made a familiar sputtering sound of contempt.

We live in a world that is changing at a breakneck pace. Yet drug awareness is still stuck somewhere around the "Saved by the Bell" era. And it was lame back then too.

Though "Pot, the Party Crasher" sounds like a lesser-known B-side by the Wiggles, it is in fact an educational film developed by Project Alert, a substance abuse prevention curriculum that also incorporates classroom activities and exercises. It was developed by the think tank RAND Corp. and boasts "measurable results" in reducing drug, tobacco and alcohol use that are "grounded in solid science."

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/02/22/reefer_madness_3/feed/ 56 What Whitney’s death should have us talking about http://www.salon.com/2012/02/22/what_whitneys_death_should_have_us_talking_about/ http://www.salon.com/2012/02/22/what_whitneys_death_should_have_us_talking_about/#comments Wed, 22 Feb 2012 01:00:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=12399061 the fixJust minutes after Whitney Houston was found dead in a bathtub at the Beverly Hilton last Saturday at the age of 48, a caravan of network trucks began slowly encircling the plush hotel, morbidly eager to document her untimely demise. Since then, it's been nearly impossible to turn on the TV or log on to the Web without witnessing a tribute to the singer, often including depressing video footage of her long, painful decline. Her memorial on Saturday had the pomp and pageantry of a state event—complete with dignitaries, crying onlookers and flags at half-mast.

But while speakers talked movingly about her battles, mention of the word "addiction" was curiously scrubbed from the event.

It’s no surprise that the singer's death has struck such a chord in the country. Incredibly talented, beautiful and ambitious, Whitney Houston was a rare kind of legend who changed the face of American pop music. In her later life she also became an addict whose cruel struggle with the disease unfolded in full public view. That she lay dying for hours in a luxe bathroom suite while her bodyguards cooled their heels outside is a sad commentary on the state of modern celebrity. That it took less than 10 minutes for the press to begin broadcasting her death is an even more searing indictment of contemporary media culture.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/02/22/what_whitneys_death_should_have_us_talking_about/feed/ 33 How Americans really feel about drugs http://www.salon.com/2012/01/04/how_americans_really_feel_about_drugs/ http://www.salon.com/2012/01/04/how_americans_really_feel_about_drugs/#comments Wed, 04 Jan 2012 16:36:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=11797211 Almost exactly eight years ago, I wrote an essay for the Nation magazine looking at how terms such as "centrism" and "moderate" were beginning to be deftly manipulated to shape the parameters of America's political discourse. In almost every policy debate, these words were being used in with-us-or-against-us fashion to delineate what was -- and what was not -- acceptable. Through such linguistic propaganda over the last decade, America was gradually taught that anything called "centrist" or "moderate" was Good and Serious because it supposedly represented "mainstream" thinking in America -- even as "centrism" was being used to describe policies and politicians that, based on empirical data, increasingly diverged from the actual center of our nation's public opinion. By contrast, anything positioned in opposition to that branding was wild-eyed "leftist," "extremist," "ideological," "fringe" -- and most of all, Evil and Unserious.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/01/04/how_americans_really_feel_about_drugs/feed/ 90 Adventures in drug war logic http://www.salon.com/2011/12/05/adventures_in_drug_war_logic/ http://www.salon.com/2011/12/05/adventures_in_drug_war_logic/#comments Mon, 05 Dec 2011 17:24:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=10292573 It's time for an important lesson in proper, civilized behavior. Drug war soldier Gallant launders vast sums of money for the Mexican drug cartels. Drug war soldier Goofus expresses skepticism at the size and scope of this expensive and deadly boondoggle. Goofus gets canned. Gallant is the Drug Enforcement Agency.

Sorry, what's our DEA doing this time?

Today, in operations supervised by the Justice Department and orchestrated to get around sovereignty restrictions, the United States is running numerous undercover laundering investigations against Mexico’s most powerful cartels. One D.E.A. official said it was not unusual for American agents to pick up two or three loads of Mexican drug money each week. A second official said that as Mexican cartels extended their operations from Latin America to Africa, Europe and the Middle East, the reach of the operations had grown as well. When asked how much money had been laundered as a part of the operations, the official would only say, “A lot.”

“If you’re going to get into the business of laundering money,” the official added, “then you have to be able to launder money.”

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2011/12/05/adventures_in_drug_war_logic/feed/ 33 On “Weed Wars,” drug clichés go up in smoke http://www.salon.com/2011/12/01/on_weed_wars_drug_cliches_go_up_in_smoke/ http://www.salon.com/2011/12/01/on_weed_wars_drug_cliches_go_up_in_smoke/#comments Thu, 01 Dec 2011 12:45:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=10265478 "I run a family business, and the business is cannabis," says Steve D'Angelo, a central character in Discovery's new series "Weed Wars" and the co-founder and executive director of Oakland's Harborside Health Center, which distributes medical marijuana to almost 100,000 customers. D'Angelo's matter-of-fact statement sums up the tone of this series, which treats the Harborside Heath Center as just another family-owned (albeit nonprofit) business, ultimately not too different from a veterinary clinic, a hair salon or a tattoo parlor.

Well, OK, there is one major difference: Although the clinic's main product can be sold legally to any California resident with a medical permit to buy it, the federal government still considers marijuana a Schedule 1 narcotic, as dangerous to the republic as crack cocaine. That means that in addition to the usual entrepreneurial headaches, D'Angelo and his brother Andrew, the clinic's general manager, live in fear of a massive bust by the DEA on whatever pretext -- a catastrophe that would wipe out everything they've built.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2011/12/01/on_weed_wars_drug_cliches_go_up_in_smoke/feed/ 13 Newt Gingrich talks about inventive new ways to punish drug users http://www.salon.com/2011/11/28/newt_gingrich_talks_about_inventive_new_ways_to_punish_drug_users/ http://www.salon.com/2011/11/28/newt_gingrich_talks_about_inventive_new_ways_to_punish_drug_users/#comments Mon, 28 Nov 2011 20:51:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=10270023 The thing reporters always loved about Newt Gingrich -- and the thing that led many of them to mistake his free-associative rambling for intellect -- is that he will just babble, at length, on any given topic, to any reporter who'll listen. So Yahoo's Chris Moody chatted with the unlikely GOP nomination front-runner at a Books-a-Million in Florida, and Moody got Gingrich to go on for a while about drugs, for some reason, which I'm guessing is not at the top of the Gingrich campaign's list of issues to hit in interviews. (At the top of that list is actually "The Battle of the Crater," a powerful Civil War historical novel by Gingrich and William F. Forstchen, available now at fine booksellers everywhere.)

Here are Newt Gingrich's nuanced, compassionate drug policy ideas: Constant drug testing for everyone (especially poor people) and stiff "economic penalties" for use. (Yes, obviously, what poor people need are more ways to incur economic penalties and more barriers to either aid or employment. Newt Gingrich has so many IDEAS.) Also, the U.S. should be more like Singapore, where people carrying enough drugs to qualify for "trafficking" charges are put to death.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2011/11/28/newt_gingrich_talks_about_inventive_new_ways_to_punish_drug_users/feed/ 57 “El Narco”: The drug war next door http://www.salon.com/2011/11/13/el_narco_the_drug_war_next_door/ http://www.salon.com/2011/11/13/el_narco_the_drug_war_next_door/#comments Sun, 13 Nov 2011 22:00:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=10206015 Among the many striking facts that journalist Ioan Grillo recounts in his new book, "El Narco: Inside Mexico's Criminal Insurgency," is that the Mexican city of Juarez became the murder capital of the world last year, beating out Mogadishu and Cape Town, South Africa, for per-capita homicides. Some 3,000 people were killed in Juarez in 2010, yet in El Paso, Texas, the U.S. city right across the river -- almost a literal stone's throw away -- there were only five murders.

Some would say this proves that better law enforcement is all Mexico needs to end the drug-cartel violence currently drenching its northern states in blood. Or maybe, as Grillo suggests, it merely shows that when the cartels and their associates want to kill someone in El Paso, they first take their victim across the border where, chances are, the murder will never be properly investigated.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2011/11/13/el_narco_the_drug_war_next_door/feed/ 40 Our militarized police forces http://www.salon.com/2011/11/08/our_militarized_police_forces/ http://www.salon.com/2011/11/08/our_militarized_police_forces/#comments Tue, 08 Nov 2011 22:40:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=10179807 The Atlantic has a good piece on one of those subjects that I am slightly obsessed with, the ongoing militarization of American police forces. As a New Yorker, I am accustomed to being greeted by cops bearing assault rifles bravely monitoring the morning commute, which is more than slightly jarring, but the depressing thing is that that sort of sight quickly becomes normalized.

As former peace officer and Iraq veteran Arthur Rizer and co-author Joseph Hartman write, the police arms race has very clearly spread well beyond the urban borders of the only cities to actually be targeted by foreign terrorists.

Now, police officers routinely walk the beat armed with assault rifles and garbed in black full-battle uniforms. When one of us, Arthur Rizer, returned from active duty in Iraq, he saw a police officer at the Minneapolis airport armed with a M4 carbine assault rifle -- the very same rifle Arthur carried during his combat tour in Fallujah.

The extent of this weapon "inflation" does not stop with high-powered rifles, either. In recent years, police departments both large and small have acquired bazookas, machine guns, and even armored vehicles (mini-tanks) for use in domestic police work.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2011/11/08/our_militarized_police_forces/feed/ 43 Should teens be screened for drug use? http://www.salon.com/2011/11/01/should_teens_be_screened_for_drug_use/ http://www.salon.com/2011/11/01/should_teens_be_screened_for_drug_use/#comments Tue, 01 Nov 2011 19:00:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=10160394 This just in: Teenagers experiment with sex, alcohol and drugs. But for the first time, the American Academy of Pediatrics now boldly recommends that adolescents be routinely screened for illicit-substance use and HIV. The policy statements suggest doctors test kids 16 and up for HIV in communities where more than 0.1 percent of the population has the virus -- regardless of whether the patient admits to being sexually active. It also states that doctors should ask teens about drug, alcohol and nicotine use at every visit. But while a routine HIV test is a fairly straightforward, judgment-free process, frank conversation is another one altogether. Are parents and pediatricians ready to get frank with teenagers about their recreational activities?

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2011/11/01/should_teens_be_screened_for_drug_use/feed/ 37 Rick Perry: Elect me because I am incapable of communicating clearly http://www.salon.com/2011/11/01/rick_perry_elect_me_because_i_am_incapable_of_communicating_clearly/ http://www.salon.com/2011/11/01/rick_perry_elect_me_because_i_am_incapable_of_communicating_clearly/#comments Tue, 01 Nov 2011 17:06:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=10160294 Last weekend, Rick Perry gave a bizarre, rambling speech in New Hampshire that quickly became an "Internet sensation." It is sort of like BadLipReading come to life.

"This is such a cool state," Perry says, referring to New Hampshire, not "intoxication."

How to explain this? Perry isn't a great public speaker, but he's usually not a slurring, incoherent one. At a National Journal panel, Democratic consultant Steve McMahon thought perhaps Perry was drunk. He sounds a bit drunk. But who gets drunk before giving a speech in New Hampshire? This isn't the Golden Globes, this is a presidential campaign.

Republican Charlie Black suggests a different substance:

"It's odd," Black said of the speech. "I haven't asked anybody in Governor Perry's campaign about it. Look, he's got a back problem, maybe it was back medicine ... ."

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2011/11/01/rick_perry_elect_me_because_i_am_incapable_of_communicating_clearly/feed/ 24 Obama’s crackdown on medical marijuana http://www.salon.com/2011/10/15/obamas_crackdown_on_medical_marijuana/ http://www.salon.com/2011/10/15/obamas_crackdown_on_medical_marijuana/#comments Sat, 15 Oct 2011 13:00:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=10112784 Back in July, I interviewed a drug policy expert about an apparent change in Justice Department policy that suggested a crackdown on medical marijuana -- which is legal in many states but illegal under federal law -- might be coming.

Now, with the announcement last week by California's four U.S. attorneys that pot dispensaries will be targeted with harsh criminal sanctions, the shift feared by drug policy reform advocates appears to have come to pass. The rhetoric from candidate Barack Obama about not prioritizing medical marijuana cases now seems a distant memory.

To learn more about what's happening in California, I spoke to Bob Egelko, a veteran reporter who covers courts for the San Francisco Chronicle and has been following the story.

Starting with the basics, what is the medical marijuana law in California and what does it allow for?

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2011/10/15/obamas_crackdown_on_medical_marijuana/feed/ 70 As abuse mounted, DEA boosted painkiller supply http://www.salon.com/2011/10/11/as_abuse_mounted_dea_boosted_painkiller_supply/ http://www.salon.com/2011/10/11/as_abuse_mounted_dea_boosted_painkiller_supply/#comments Tue, 11 Oct 2011 11:45:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=10106339 An epidemic of Oxycodone abuse has struck America in the last decade. The number of emergency room visits stemming from non-medical abuse of the narcotic prescription painkiller drug rose by 256 percent between 2004 and 2009, according to the U.S. government's Drug Abuse Warning Network.

In March 2010, Washington state Attorney General Rob McKenna said his state was “losing more people to prescription drug overdoses in a typical year than to traffic accidents.” In Florida, the Medical Examiners commission found more than 1,500 people died of Oxycodone overdose  in 2010, a four-fold increase over the 350 who died in 2005. The supply of Oxycodone, says Jim Hall, director of the Center for the Study and Prevention of Substance Abuse at Nova Southeastern University, went “far beyond the legitimate medical need of the state.”

The epidemic is not likely to abate soon. The explosion of pain management clinics in Florida, dubbed “pill mills,” prompted the state Legislature last year to close a loophole that had allowed physicians to fill Oxy prescriptions on the spot. Authorities say a half-billion doses of Oxycodone and its generic equivalents were distributed in the state during 2009 alone. An unknown number wound up in the hands of “patients” who had come from out of state to have prescriptions filled by multiple pill mills, before driving home to resell the pills on the black market.

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