http://www.cnsproductions.com/drugeducationblog Addiction and Drug Education Blogs and Podcasts, looking at drug use trends and treatment, and how addiction is tied to the brain as well as the body Tue, 07 Sep 2010 22:29:50 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0.1 Copyright © 2010 Addiction Education Blog - www.cnsproductions.com service@cnsproductions.com (CNS Productions) service@cnsproductions.com (CNS Productions) Addiction education 1440 http://www.cnsproductions.com/144logo.jpg http://www.cnsproductions.com/drugeducationblog 144 144 A leader in the creation of drug education books and videos for educators, health care professionals and the public --- used by treatment facilities, counselor-training programs, law enforcement, and businesses and industries concerned about drugs in t... Addiction and Drug Education Blogs and Podcasts, looking at drug use trends and treatment, and how addiction is tied to the brain as well as the body addiction, drugs, education, recovery, substance abuse education, prevention, chemical dependency, AOD CNS Productions CNS Productions service@cnsproductions.com no no http://www.cnsproductions.com/drugeducationblog/podcasts/800/ http://www.cnsproductions.com/drugeducationblog/podcasts/800/#comments Thu, 24 Jun 2010 21:41:11 +0000 CNS http://www.cnsproductions.com/drugeducationblog/?p=800 http://www.cnsproductions.com/drugeducationblog/podcasts/800/feed/ 0 00:01:01 As our understanding of the reward-reinforcement systems and other brain functions increases, more medications are being developed for the treatment of addictions - naltrexone and ... As our understanding of the reward-reinforcement systems and other brain functions increases, more medications are being developed for the treatment of addictions - naltrexone and buprenorphine for opiods,  bupropion  for tobacco and others.  And they hold promise for help with more than just drug addiction. Dr Inaba comments. Demand reduction, Dr. Darryl Inaba, Harm Reduction, In the News, Podcasts, Recovery & relapse, Treatment & Testing, Understanding Addictions & Brain Chemistry CNS Productions no no http://www.cnsproductions.com/drugeducationblog/podcasts/779/ http://www.cnsproductions.com/drugeducationblog/podcasts/779/#comments Fri, 21 May 2010 22:14:18 +0000 CNS http://www.cnsproductions.com/drugeducationblog/?p=779 http://www.cnsproductions.com/drugeducationblog/podcasts/779/feed/ 0 21:01 As President Obama and Mexican President Felipe Calderón met in Washington this week, drug cartel continue their terrorist war with the Mexican Army and ... As President Obama and Mexican President Felipe Calderón met in Washington this week, drug cartel continue their terrorist war with the Mexican Army and just about anyone else in Mexico, including American diplomats and tourist. Estimates put the casualty rate at over 23,000 since Calderón began fighting the drug lords after his 2006 election. Meanwhile a retired LA Sheriff says Mexican drug cartels have been infiltrating several small cities in Los Angeles County, including city councils and political campaigns. On Tuesday the new US "drug czar" Gil Kerlikowske announced the Obama administration's new National Drug Control Strategy, a five-year plan to reduce drug use that already has disappointed some who had hoped for a bolder shift toward prevention and treatment. Dr Inaba offers his comments and stresses the need for more resources for treatment, education and "demand reduction." Listen to podcast Transcript (edited): CNS:    Welcome to the CNS Podcast featuring Dr. Darryl Inaba, research director for CNS Productions. CNS:    Hi and welcome once again to the CNS Addiction Podcast.  I am Howard LaMere, here with Dr. Darryl Inaba.  The visit of Mexican President Calderon to the U.S. is in the news and there are lots of stories about the war on drugs once again.  Since he was elected in 2006, there have been tens of thousands of drug related deaths in Mexico, tourists kidnapped and held hostage and so he is here talking with President Obama about the new drug policy and what the US can do to assist in Mexico’s war on drugs.  The Obama Administration has a new policy that focuses less on enforcement and punishment and more on reducing the demand, but the budget doesn’t support that. There is more money for law enforcement and less for treatment. DARRYL:    You know it’s just extremely frustrating. It’s the same old story, going back to when Nixon coined the term “war on drugs”, but I think the concept goes as far back as Abraham Lincoln’s time - that’s when the U.S. government started to recognize that addiction posed a serious threat to our country and started to spend some federal monies to deal with the situation.  There are 2 fronts - supply reduction versus demand reduction.  Regardless of who is president, what the rhetoric is, who controls Congress we’ve had the same formula.  We spend anywhere from 2/3 to 80% of the money set aside for the war on drugs on the supply reduction side of the equation.  The interdictions, the policing, the, you know, trying to keep drugs from making it to the borders and streets of our cities while only 30% gets spent on demand reduction in terms of treatment prevention.  And the irony of that is that today, or even way before today, pretty much everyone is convinced that the war on drugs is a dismal failure from the supply reduction standpoint or strategy.  We keep doing a lot of things to try and prevent drugs from entering the country and making it to our streets…including international treaties and funneling monies to international governments to try and eradicate growing or development of drugs, but the more we do, the more drugs get onto our street. CNS:    It seems to have universally failed. DARRYL:    Everyone agrees. It’s interesting that the current administration wants to put a new face on it by saying, well we’re not going to call it the war on drugs anymore so no one can say that we failed it, we’re going to call it something else.  We’re going to make up a new phrase.  It bothers me to no end that when you actually look at the budget numbers the current administration is going to much continue the  formula of spending more for interdiction, supply reduction and spend much less for demand reduction, treatment and prevention.  Not only the percentage, but also the dollars are going up, so even though the government is spending more on whatever they’re going to call it – the war on drugs or Addiction Education / Prevention, Decriminalization / Legalization, Demand reduction, Dr. Darryl Inaba, In the News, Podcasts CNS Productions no no http://www.cnsproductions.com/drugeducationblog/podcasts/608/ http://www.cnsproductions.com/drugeducationblog/podcasts/608/#comments Fri, 13 Nov 2009 20:08:24 +0000 CNS http://www.cnsproductions.com/drugeducationblog/?p=608 http://www.cnsproductions.com/drugeducationblog/podcasts/608/feed/ 0 00:01:01 Is America poised to shift into a more enlightened phase where treatment of addicts gains favor over imprisonment -- this is question that starts a ... Is America poised to shift into a more enlightened phase where treatment of addicts gains favor over imprisonment -- this is question that starts a recent AP story (by David Crary published Nov 8, 2009) on changing attitudes about conducting the War on Drugs. The overall cost saving to government, and society of treating people with substance abuse addictions, rather than incarcerate them, and  the increasing acceptance of addiction as a mental and biological condition are part of the discussion on this weeks Addiction Podcast, featuring Dr. Darryl Inaba. Listen to podcast Transcript: CNS: Hi and welcome once again to the addiction radio podcast from CNS. I’m Howard LaMere here with Dr. Darryl Inaba. Darryl in the news this week a good story written by an associated press reporter on the shift in perception on treatment of addiction and it looks like it is shifting, if gradually. Darryl: Well, it’s such an exciting and inspiring story. It’s what we’ve all been talking about for at least forty years and now in the White House, Tom McLellan, the Deputy Director for the Office of National Drug Control Policy, put in there by Obama, seems to be moving us in the direction, everybody has evaluated to be the proper direction, but nobody seemed to have the courage to really take us -- and that’s a real focus toward treatment, rather than incarceration and also interdiction … investing again in the demand side of the war on drugs rather than the supply side of the war on drugs, and what’s so exciting about this, in a funny way is its capitalistic, the way they’re presenting this thing is purely from a capitalistic point of view, that looks at hey, it’s a lot cheaper and more effective to treat addicts than it is to lock them in jail. Which has been a total failure for all this period of time, so why not invest in seeing if we can actually make a dent in things by providing more access to treatment by individuals and taking the money we can save by not incarcerating addicts and put that into treatment and if that comes to play that’s really great; they’re all citing the New York experiments, that New York went this way recently where they’re putting much more emphasis than even California’s proposition did, of putting convicted drug users who are not, or who haven’t had any kind of violent crime… to put them into treatment rather than to put them into jail and they’re looking at that as a test case, but I think that there’s a whole wealth of data. I remember the University of Pennsylvania meta-study of over a thousand treatment programs that looked at this issue and all concluded, the outcomes all concluded, that every dollar you spent treating an addict and an alcoholic is going to make money for you in terms of the savings it will bring about, in terms of criminal justice system, social costs and other costs. So why we haven’t done this before, I don’t get it, but now the top drug people in the country are citing the evidence and citing from a capitalistic point of view, this makes sense. Let’s start spending money for treatment and less money for incarceration. He quotes, Thom McLellan, does that about sixteen per cent of people who needed treatment last year where able to access treatment. There’s the University of Marilyn study that came up that actually shows it might higher if you look at not only those people who wanted treatment but you also looked at those people who met criteria for this disorder and needed treatment but weren’t able to access it, that the number might be considerable into five, one in five based treatment, its only one in about twenty or thirty were able to access treatment. So certainly there’s a treatment gap in place, there’s people who want treatment that need to get into treatment, and pretty much they’re stating that treatment is fairly effective although we’re only getting fifty per cent of those people who enter treatment, completing treatmen Addiction Education / Prevention, Decriminalization / Legalization, Demand reduction, Dr. Darryl Inaba, In the News, Podcasts, Treatment & Testing CNS Productions no no http://www.cnsproductions.com/drugeducationblog/podcasts/595/ http://www.cnsproductions.com/drugeducationblog/podcasts/595/#comments Wed, 28 Oct 2009 19:01:09 +0000 CNS http://www.cnsproductions.com/drugeducationblog/?p=595 http://www.cnsproductions.com/drugeducationblog/podcasts/595/feed/ 0 00:01:01 Although it is coerced treatment, drug courts around the country are proving to be extremely effective in helping people get treatment, and stay out of, ... Although it is coerced treatment, drug courts around the country are proving to be extremely effective in helping people get treatment, and stay out of, or not return to jail for drug offenses. Dr Inaba comments further. Decriminalization / Legalization, Demand reduction, Dr. Darryl Inaba, In the News, Podcasts, Treatment & Testing CNS Productions no no http://www.cnsproductions.com/drugeducationblog/podcasts/586/ http://www.cnsproductions.com/drugeducationblog/podcasts/586/#comments Wed, 14 Oct 2009 21:24:13 +0000 CNS http://www.cnsproductions.com/drugeducationblog/?p=586 http://www.cnsproductions.com/drugeducationblog/podcasts/586/feed/ 1 00:01:01 A cocaine vaccine has been being tested, and shows some promise. Addiction Radio looks at this and other cocaine related news. Listen to podcast Transcript of podcast: CNS: ... A cocaine vaccine has been being tested, and shows some promise. Addiction Radio looks at this and other cocaine related news. Listen to podcast Transcript of podcast: CNS: Hi and welcome once again to the addiction radio pod cast from CNS Productions. I’m Howard LaMere here with Dr. Darryl Inaba. Darryl, cocaine is in the news again, this week with something interesting, in the form of a vaccine? Darryl: Yeah, you know that, its just amazingly how long its taken the vaccine to even get to this stage, because I remember during the height of the cocaine epidemic during the 80’s they were talking already about the development of a vaccine and there was a leakage of it and there was this, it didn’t hold, so its just been a long haul, finally they published a report saying they think they have something that has value now but if you read the report its only about 38% effective in ways you have antibodies high enough to really create a package that is, lops onto cocaine as it enters the blood stream so that it becomes unabsorbable - it cant go through the blood-brain barrier to enter the brain, it cant go into the heart, so it renders cocaine harmless by virtue of an anti-body, antigen reaction where this vaccine just latches onto the cocaine. Now if only about 38% of people get effective cocaine blockage that way I’m not sure how valuable it is; they also mention that, they in this study, had to give five shots of the vaccine in a twelve week period so its almost every two weeks you have to get a shot in order for the vaccine to work. Its interesting to me also that a two week period is about the time where payday occurs, and its about the time one of the obscure metabolites of cocaine sort of degrade and many people believe that metabolite as it degrades actually is one of the reasons why people crave cocaine every two weeks or you get a greater amount of craving every two weeks. I always thought it had more to do with the fact that people get paid usually around the world on a two week basis and you get into this you get into this rhythm you know where every payday you’re going to present yourself with this little gift for having to slave away and work so hard by getting a little bit of cocaine.  It just doesn’t seem to me that it’s going to be that much of a benefit or that much of a boon people fighting cocaine. I believe still that with the current treatments that we have and unfortunately expensive but starting off with residential treatment going on to maybe day care or intensive out-patient treatment that we get a good rate, at least close to a 50% rate anyway of people being able to remain cocaine free for a while, then there’s the anti-craving medicines like bupropion or wellbutrin or the other types of a anti-depressants that are helpful in decreasing cravings. So, how much of a boon is this vaccine’s going to be, I really can’t tell. CNS: Yeah, at the rate of only a little over a third and that I also read that it seems to decrease in efficacy after a couple of months. Darryl: I’m not sure if that’s the case or if the case was they quit injecting it. I think it showed to get the highest amount, well first of all, even though they injected everybody with five shots over twelve weeks, some people only 30% got the high antibodies and most of the other people got much lower antibodies and its just something, yeah, it didn’t work for everyone and in fact also it made it sound, I haven’t read the actual study itself, just the reports on the study from the BBC and others but it made it sound like they had to keep injecting it in order to continue maintaining levels and I don’t know if that’s worth it. CNS: So, from what you know about the physiology of the human and the pharmaceutical function of the cocaine alkaloids, is there something that would make it particularly difficult to present an interaction to or an antagonist, something in the chemical structure that’s particula Cocaine, Demand reduction, Dr. Darryl Inaba, In the News, Podcasts CNS Productions no no http://www.cnsproductions.com/drugeducationblog/podcasts/516/ http://www.cnsproductions.com/drugeducationblog/podcasts/516/#comments Wed, 16 Sep 2009 20:13:31 +0000 CNS http://www.cnsproductions.com/drugeducationblog/?p=516 http://www.cnsproductions.com/drugeducationblog/podcasts/516/feed/ 0 00:01:01 With college starting up, the issue of selling beer at football games as a revenue source has caused some concern. Also we are seeing marijuana ... With college starting up, the issue of selling beer at football games as a revenue source has caused some concern. Also we are seeing marijuana being grown on many more national forests than 10 years ago. Dr Darryl Inaba offers comments on this weeks Addiction Radio podcast. Addiction Education / Prevention, Alcohol, Decriminalization / Legalization, Demand reduction, Dr. Darryl Inaba, In the News, Marijuana, Podcasts CNS Productions no no http://www.cnsproductions.com/drugeducationblog/podcasts/477/ http://www.cnsproductions.com/drugeducationblog/podcasts/477/#comments Wed, 26 Aug 2009 19:21:58 +0000 CNS http://www.cnsproductions.com/drugeducationblog/?p=477 http://www.cnsproductions.com/drugeducationblog/podcasts/477/feed/ 0 00:01:01 Our addiction radio podcast this week looks at news of increased coca growing in Bolivia and its complications, the War on Drugs and reports of ... Our addiction radio podcast this week looks at news of increased coca growing in Bolivia and its complications, the War on Drugs and reports of more opium being grown in Afghanistan on less acres,  and differences in efforts at supply reduction vs. new ideas on demand reduction. Transcript of podcast (click to listen): CNS: Hello and once again welcome to the internet radio addiction pod cast from CNS. I’m Howard LaMere here with Dr Darryl Inaba and Darryl … a variety of interesting things in the news starting off, I was watching John Stewart show last night and there was a comment about cocaine - nine out of ten dollar bills or, US currency apparently have cocaine residue on them, which is really amazing. Darryl: That, that’s actually, that’s actually a very old story and one of my favorite stories that dates back to the peak of the cocaine epidemic and the starting of freebase and all that back in the mid to late 1980’s and it does lead to the questions about cocaine. Behind all this meth and ecstasy, and heroin increasing, prescription drugs, you know in a way people have forgotten a little bit about cocaine. But cocaine is also on the rise I believe in, in the United States and in the rest of the world. The DEA and the office of National Drug Control Policy made the war on drugs (into a) war on cocaine and that was under General Barry McCaffrey and may have put in a lot of money and put all their efforts not at all drugs, but they said lets really concentrate on cocaine and they went to Columbia, got the government to basically outlaw any cocaine. Cocaine became outlawed in Columbia the largest growing region and, and people forget that the South Americans from the Incas on down have a real cultural tradition of chewing coca leaves. CNS: Hundreds of thousands of years. Darryl: Yeah, and they, they pick the leaves and they don’t extract the cocaine from it they just chew the leaves with some sort of alkaloid. I really like it because in the old days with the Incas they used to mix it with a bird crap and strangely enough I think there’s a lot of evidence that show that, that was a lot healthier than, than what they evolve into and that’s mixing it with lime or soda-lime or mixing it with ashes, now they mix burnt palm leaves that they burn down to ashes and they mix with it, and that the guano, the bat crap was actually organic. It was actually balanced, it was an actual alkaline substrate that in, in your mucus membranes it didn’t have that much damage to your gums and to your teeth and things like that where as now days using much more hygienic, they say and sterile things they’re getting all kinds of denture problems and gum problems from chewing the coca leaves. But this is as you say, for thousands of years it’s been part of the culture.  And to think that we can just eradicate it overnight just by making it illegal in Columbia and that people won’t want to do it anymore and not that I’m saying it’s addicting it’s just like coffee or um, it’s, it’s a cultural… CNS: Norm. Darryl: People chew coca leaves and they don’t go crazy, they don’t rob other people for it, they don’t have paranoid dilutions, they don’t crave it when they’re taken into the armed services for six or eight years to serve as, as a citizen and they don’t go through withdrawal or anything. So it, it has been a culturally  accepted norm thing but eradicating it for Columbia, stimulated Bolivia and the Bolivian President Evo Morales came in, he avowed that this, this is such an important thing to my people we are going to be, I am going to be more liberal and allow coca growing especially targeted for commercial purposes for the chewing of the leaves. I think he chewed the leaves with Oliver Stone on TV just to show, you know, how he’s behind that and it’s not a major addiction issue. For shampoos some of the ingredients, are good in shampoo, and for even tooth paste and things l Decriminalization / Legalization, Demand reduction, Dr. Darryl Inaba, Heroin & opiates, In the News, Podcasts CNS Productions no no