Two States to Consider Banning Powdered Alcohol
By Join Together Staff | May 1, 2014 | Leave a comment | Filed in Alcohol, Community Related, Legislation & Prevention


Legislators in Minnesota and Vermont have introduced measures that would ban powdered alcohol, The Washington Post reports. The federal Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau approved labels for a powdered alcohol product called “Palcohol,” but earlier this month said the approval was a mistake. Lipsmark, the company that makes Palcohol, has resubmitted an application, the article notes.

Lipsmark says it plans to offer powdered alcohol in six varieties, including rum, vodka, Cosmopolitan, Mojito, Powderita and Lemon Drop. According to the company, a package of Palcohol weighs about an ounce and can fit into a pocket. It warns people not to snort the powder.

Minnesota state Representative Joe Atkins this week introduced a bill that would ban powdered alcohol sales in his state. A similar bill is being considered in Vermont. Some health experts are afraid the product could be easily misused or abused.

“Virtually every possible use for powdered alcohol is nefarious, not to mention potentially dangerous,” Atkins said in a news release. “The different flavorings make it appealing to children and students who could easily sneak packets into school. This powder could also be inhaled or snorted, bringing a whole new world of problems into play. With how quickly this is moving, we shouldn’t wait until next session to deal with this issue. We need to move quickly to protect public health.”

Vermont state Senator Kevin Mullin, who introduced the measure to ban powdered alcohol in his state, told VPR News, “You can’t buy a bottle of gin at the liquor store if you’re 16. But there’s nothing that I can see in Vermont statute that would prohibit you from buying powdered alcohol, if it was available. So think about kids walking around with packets of powdered alcohol in their pocket – hard to detect.”

Sales of Drugs on Silk Road Website Bounce Back After Government Shutdown
By Join Together Staff | May 1, 2014 | Leave a comment | Filed in Drugs & Marketing And Media

Six months after the FBI shut down the website Silk Road, which sold illegal drugs, the site has reopened and sales have bounced back, CNET reports.

The findings come from a new report by the group Digital Citizens Alliance. “What we see on Silk Road today is more drugs, increasing vendors, and an even greater commitment by this community to keeping their ‘movement’ alive,” said Digital Citizens’ Senior Fellow Garth Bruen.

The report noted Silk Road 2.0, the new version of the site, had 13,648 drug listings as of April 2, just slightly more than the 13,000 listings before the arrest of Silk Road’s founder, Ross Ulbricht, last fall.

The original Silk Road could only be accessed by using encryption software called Tor, which shields computers’ IP addresses, allowing people to make purchases anonymously. Silk Road facilitated more than $30 million in sales annually. It had been online since February 2011.

The website also sold other illegal items, such as forged documents and untaxed cigarettes. The site did not use credit cards, instead relying on “Bitcoins,” an untraceable digital currency that is available through online currency exchange services. The website told sellers to make shipments using vacuum-sealed bags so that drug-sniffing dogs would not detect the packages.

The Digital Citizens Alliance say Silk Road 2.0 is designed to look and operate much like the original website, but has better security.

Rob Ford, Toronto’s Mayor, Takes Temporary Leave; Cites Problem with Alcohol
By Join Together Staff | May 1, 2014 | Leave a comment | Filed in Alcohol, Community Related & Drugs

Toronto Mayor Rob Ford announced Wednesday he will temporarily be leaving office, citing his problem with alcohol, The New York Times reports. Last November, Ford admitted to using crack cocaine.

His announcement followed the release of a still photograph from a video that appears to show Ford smoking crack last weekend. Two reporters from The Globe and Mail saw the video by a “self-professed drug dealer,” who was trying to sell it.

A video surfaced almost a year ago showing Ford smoking crack. When he admitted using the drug, Ford suggested he had only done so once. Ford has acknowledged he has been drunk and out of control several times since then. He has denied repeatedly that he has used crack again.

In his statement this week, Ford did not mention crack or other illegal drugs. “I have a problem with alcohol, and the choices I have made while under the influence. I have struggled with this for some time,” he said. “I have tried to deal with these issues by myself over the past year. I know that I need professional help and I am now 100 percent committed to getting myself right.”

April 30 v 3 v 4 TWELVE STEPPING WITH POWER IN THE PROVERB

Surely I am more stupid than any man,

And do not have the understanding of a man.

 I neither learned wisdom

Nor have knowledge of the Holy One.

STEP 1  - We admitted we were powerless over our addiction  that our lives had become unmanageable .

Stuck in active addiction . Cant figure out why your life is this way . Hate yourself and everyone around you .Happiness and joy just turns your stomach .Haven't slept good in years ! I could go on because this was me fourteen years ago . Whats it gonna take for you to realize your way is not working .There is only one way and that is coming to the realization that your addiction has control of your life , and addiction wants you dead or behind bars . God has put you on this planet for a reason and a purpose but you and your foolish pride along with your addiction have tricked you into believing you got this , well your wrong and your life is crap and it will always be crap until you realize and commit step one . Commit step one and follow up with step two and never ever ,ever , give up on God or yourself and you will find sobriety , peace , and freedom .

It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery. (Galatians 5:1)

By ; Joseph Dickerson

Expanded Use of Opioid Addiction Treatment Needed: Government Health Officials

By Join Together Staff | April 29, 2014 | 3 Comments | Filed in Drugs &Treatment

Health care providers must expand their use of medications to treat opioid addiction, in order to reduce overdose deaths, according to government health officials. Misperceptions have resulted in limited access to the medications, they argue in The New England Journal of Medicine.

“When prescribed and monitored properly, medications such as methadone, buprenorphine, or naltrexone are safe and cost-effective components of opioid addiction treatment,” said lead author Nora D. Volkow, MD, Director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA). “These medications can improve lives and reduce the risk of overdose, yet medication-assisted therapies (MAT) are markedly underutilized.”

Methadone is usually administered in clinics; buprenorphine can be administered by qualifying doctors; and naltrexone is available in a once-a-month injectable, long-acting form, MedicalXpress reports.

According to Dr. Volkow and her colleagues, the public, insurers, patients and health care providers have misperceptions about these medications. Some people mistakenly believe these medication-assisted therapies simply replace one addiction for another, they wrote.

Many treatment facility managers and staff favor an abstinence model of treatment, the officials note. Or they may prescribe inadequate doses of MAT. “Systematic prescription of inadequate doses further reinforces the lack of faith in MATs, since the resulting return to opioid use perpetuates a belief in their ineffectiveness,” they wrote.

Insurance rules also place barriers to effective MAT treatment, they said. “These barriers include utilization-management techniques such as limits on dosages prescribed, annual or lifetime medication limits, initial authorization and reauthorization requirements, minimal counseling coverage, and ‘fail first’ criteria requiring that other therapies be attempted first.”

The Affordable Care Act can increase MAT use by expanding the number of high-risk people who receive treatment through either public or private insurance, the government officials noted.

High Antidepressant Doses Could Raise Risk of Self-Harm in Young People

By Join Together Staff | April 29, 2014 | Leave a comment | Filed in Mental Health, Prescription Drugs, Research, Young Adults & Youth

When patients under age 24 are prescribed higher-than-recommended doses of antidepressants, they are more than twice as likely to attempt to hurt themselves, compared with their peers who are treated with the recommended dose, a new study concludes.

“If I were a parent, I definitely wouldn’t want my child to start on a higher dose of these drugs,” study author Dr. Matthew Miller of the Injury Control Research Center at the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston told HealthDay.

The findings are published in JAMA Internal Medicine.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued a warning in 2004 about the risk of suicide in children and adolescents treated with antidepressants known as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs). The FDA warning came after a government study found young people who took SSRIs were twice as likely to hurt themselves, compared with those who took placebo pills. In 2007, the FDA expanded its warning to include anyone under age 25.

The new study is the first to look at the rate of suicide risk by drug dosage, the article notes. The researchers evaluated data from more than 162,000 patients with a diagnosis of depression, who began taking an SSRI between 1998 and 2010. The study looked at patients who took Celexa, Zoloft or Prozac. Almost 18 percent of patients began taking SSRIs at doses that were higher than recommended.

The researchers found among patients younger than 24, the rate of self-harm was 32 per 1,000 for those taking a higher-than-recommended dose, compared with 15 per 1,000 for those taking the recommended dose. They did not find a significant increase in the risk of self-harm among patients over age 25 who took a higher-than-recommended dose.