Friday, February 17, 2012

News and Events - 14 Feb 2012




12.02.2012 18:34:27
Can we chalk this one up to the grieving process affecting his judgment? In the wake of Whitney Houston's death, Tony Bennett performed in tribute to her at Clive Davis' pre-Grammy gala. And while I believe his heart was in the right place, he had some
baffling things to say about the way we treat drugs in this country.
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13.02.2012 23:49:32
?Surprise, surprise. Members of two local "drug-fighting" agencies in Ohio are going public with their opposition to two possible statewide ballot issues in November, either of which would legalize the use of medical marijuana for certain types of illnesses with a doctor's authorization. Job security, anyone?"We wanted to take early action to get our position out there," said Brian Kress, chairman of the Alcohol, Drug Addiction & Mental Health Services Board of Tuscarawas and Carroll counties.Joining Kress in opposing the use of medicinal cannabis is the Anti-Drug Coalition of Carroll County, reports Jon Baker of the Dover-New Philadelphia Times Reporter.The Ohio Alternative Treatment Amendment, a medical marijuana ballot issue, was approved by the Ohio Ballot Board in October. In January, Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine certified the petition for the proposed Ohio Medical Cannabis Amendment to the Ohio Constitution.
Continue reading "Clueless Anti-Drug Agencies Oppose Medical Marijuana In Ohio" >



13.02.2012 10:43:59
The leader of a ring that shuffled illegal drugs and related proceeds between the United States, Mexico and Canada has pleaded guilty last week to conspiracy and money laundering charges in federal court in Seattle. Drew Yim, 38, of Burien, Washington, also agreed to forfeit $1.4 million in cash and several pieces of real estate seized by authorities. According to Yim's plea agreement, he led a criminal ring involving dozens of conspirators. He used more than a dozen cell phones to direct the shipment of cocaine and methamphetamine from California into Washington State and across the border into Canada. He also directed the importation and distribution of ecstasy and marijuana from Canada into Washington. "This criminal group is a classic example of drug traffickers who run business type models distributing multiple illicit drugs such as marijuana, cocaine and ecstasy,” said Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA Special Agent in Charge Matthew Barnes. "Millions of dollars of drug



13.02.2012 22:03:11
Guatemala's president says U.S. refusal to deal with its drug consumption problem has left the tiny Central American country with no option but to consider legalizing drugs.



13.02.2012 8:00:00
Legal limits for twenty illegal drugs and medicines with an abuse potential have been introduced by the Norwegian government. Norway is the first country to define both impairment-based legislative limits and limits for graded sanctions for drugs other than alcohol. The Norwegian Institute of Public Health participated to provide the scientific basis for the new limits.



12.02.2012 9:00:00

The regretful passing of an American entertainment icon -- Whitney Houston -- marks yet another sad milestone in the devastating body count of the prescription drug industry. TMZ is now reporting that Whitney Houston was found not with illegal drugs, but prescription...



13.02.2012 12:00:00
Despite the cliches surrounding the habits of adolescents, the results of a study by the University of Seville show that most young people do not fit the risk profile of taking substances. Some 60% of Spaniards aged 13 to 18 say they do not take drugs and rarely drink alcohol - only in moderation - and at the same time, less than 10% admit to have taken some form of illegal drug...



14.02.2012 0:15:52



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13.02.2012 21:37:08



Delaware's legalization of medical marijuana has fizzled in the wake of legal opinions that growers, distributors and state employees could be prosecuted under federal drug laws.

Gov. Jack Markell has suspended the regulation-writing and licensing process for medical marijuana dispensaries -- effectively killing the program -- and criticized the federal government for sending mixed signals on law enforcement, The News Journal has learned.

read more

http://www.cannabisculture.com/v2/content/2012/02/13/Delaware-Medical-Marijuana-Law-Busted#comments



12.02.2012 7:57:51

10-FEB-2012

With the Supreme Court issuing notice to the Central government on the matter of illegal drug trials, the sordid state of human clinical trials is all set to be exposed. For multinational companies eager to cut corners, India offers an attractive package of weak laws, lax and almost non-existent oversight of trials, a huge illiterate, vulnerable population that can be easily exploited, very little volunteer protection and a sizeable number of unscrupulous doctors willing to compromise on ethics for gain. Recent reports of 42 mentally ill patients in Madhya Pradesh being enrolled in a trial held between 2008 and 2010 for testing the efficacy of dapoxetine in curing premature ejaculation highlights the scant regard for ethics. Mentally ill patients can be enrolled only in trials involving drugs that would directly benefit them or reduce the harm they cause to society. In fact, around 230 such patients were enrolled in several trials that do not benefit them. Cases of patients becoming a part of a study without knowing it, and of children being enrolled without obtaining informed consent from parents, have also been reported from the State. It will not be wrong to assume that in other trials the poor, unlettered parents who had signed the informed consent form — the most sacrosanct document of a trial — were ignorant or misled and misinformed of the contents. Individuals subjected to multiple trials, and principal investigators being involved in many studies have also been reported from Madhya Pradesh. The situation may be the same in other States as well. The 2010 expose of human papilloma virus (HPV vaccine trials conducted without proper consent on nearly 23,500 girls in the 10-14 age group in Vadodara, Gujarat and Khammam district of Andhra Pradesh is a case in hand.

It is essential that the Central and State governments put a quick end to this sordid state of affairs. Ensuring the safety of patients is paramount as more than 1,700 persons have died in clinical trials across the country between 2007 and 2010. Doctors go scot-free despite failing to follow up serious adverse events, including deaths. Having amended the patent laws in 2005 to make India an even more attractive destination for trials, the government is duty-bound to put in place a proper regulatory and monitoring mechanism that would prevent unethical trials from being initiated and flagrant violations from taking place. Doctors and companies earning handsome profits by throwing ethics and procedures to the winds and turning vulnerable people into guinea pigs will then, hopefully, become a thing of the past.

http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/editorial/article2876316.ece

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13.02.2012 16:10:14
Part of a Roma village on the outskirts of Lithuanian capital of Vilnius was demolished Monday as city authorities launched a campaign to crack down on illegal construction and alleged drug trade.



12.02.2012 8:00:31

Pritha Chatterjee

10-Feb-2012

New Delhi : Delhi government’s Institute of Human Behaviour and Allied Sciences (IHBAS has been awarded a quality assurance stamp by the National Accreditation Board of Hospitals (NABH . This makes it the first neurosciences and psychiatry facility to get this recognition. Almost two years since they first began the application procedure, IHBAS has addressed many of the shortcomings pointed out to them during their inspections, NABH authorities said. NABH is the health services arm of the Quality Council of India (QCI . It provides renewable certification to health facilities, which meet certain standards in patient care services. For mental health institutions, standard NABH guidelines for general hospitals have been modified.

Dr Nimesh Desai, Director, IHBAS, said, “It has been a painstaking process to develop separate ethical guidelines for patients who voluntarily seek treatment, those who are brought by families and homeless mentally ill and those sent to us by judicial orders. For those who are not in a state to make sound decisions, NABH guidelines have been modified.”

The right of a patient to reject treatment, sharing patients’ records and the options available to patients to chose treatment modalities, have been changed for mental health institutions. Requirements like a central sterilisation unit—mandatory for NABH accredited hospitals to sterilise equipment and instruments— have been omitted considering the limited use of instruments in such units.

The autonomous institute under the Delhi government has followed the example of two other mental health institutions — at Vadodara and Ahmedabad — that provide dedicated psychiatry services.

These institutions were accredited by the NABH in November last year.

According to authorities, legal requirements, like the mandatory clearance from Atomic Energy Regulatory Board (AERB for running radiological diagnostics, and licences for using certain narcotic drugs, which were not available with IHBAS earlier, have been procured.

Quality standards for services essential to psychiatric set-ups— like long-term rehabilitation of patients, psychiatry ICU and psychiatry emergency —have been added to the NABH guidelines for mental health institutions.

For neurosurgery and neurology departments, existing guidelines have been incorporated.

Delhi Health Minister Dr A K Walia said, “There has been a conscious change in management of psychiatric patients from custodial to rehabilitation based treatment. IHBAS has tried to address these needs while ensuring the highest quality standards.”

Dr Zainab Zaidi, Assistant Director, NABH, said after 18 months, authorities will conduct another follow up inspection at the institute.

http://www.indianexpress.com/news/quality-assurance-stamp-for-delhis-human-behaviour-institute/910342/0

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12.02.2012 3:05:33

Nick Cohen's timely polemic exposes the myth of freedom of expression in Britain with great insight and verve

One of the comforting myths of our times is that we have seen a massive expansion of freedom of expression. Perhaps a price has been paid in the explosion of inequalities between and within nations and in religious wars harking back to the 17th century. But, what the heck, these are regrettable side-effects of a much freer, better informed world.

Twitter and Facebook, together with fearless journalists and human rights lawyers, have massively expanded the boundaries of freedom, so the argument runs. Look at Iran, Egypt, Libya or China. Surely social media and the inventors of Google and Wikipedia have dumped the censor in the dustbin of history.

Nothing could be further from the truth, argues Nick Cohen in the latest of his counterblasts to conventional wisdom. Cohen is the most stimulating – if at times infuriating – columnist in our national press, largely because you never quite know where he is going to end up. He lashes the stupid left as much as the smug right. He ferrets about in the lower reaches of politics to find disturbing symptoms of what should not be happening. He has a sense of history and literature, in contrast to the dominant political generation of PPE graduates who have read every page of the
Economist
since they were at Oxford, but have never opened a novel.

In this vigorous polemic (which everyone involved with the
Leveson inquiry should read , Cohen exposes the new censorship. At University College London, a speaker declared that Jews "have monopolised everything: the Holocaust, God, money, interest, usuary, the world economy, the media, political institutions". When some protest was made against this inflammatory 1930s-style antisemitism, the university's response was to seek to silence the protesters, accusing them of "Islamophobia".

Or take
Roman Polanski, who drugged and sodomised a 13-year-old girl and fled the US rather than face justice. When
Vanity Fair
published a report about Polanski's behaviour, the film director sued the magazine in a London court.
Vanity Fair
is written and published in New York but
Polanski preferred London – "a town called sue", as it is known in the global libel trade. London is where Russian oligarchs, Middle East arms salesmen and, above all, the very upstanding members of the new rich in Britain exercise the new censorship courtesy of our courts.

This is not just a narrow book on the sort of issues being dealt with by Leveson. Cohen also excoriates the liberal intelligentsia for their mealy-mouthed failure to support
Salman Rushdie when Islamists started burning his books. To the shame of British freedom,
John le Carre and Roy Hattersley found excuses for the mullahs. And can it be true that Ian Buruma, a writer I admire, called Ayaan Hirsi Ali an "Enlightenment fundamentalist" because she repudiated the censorship of the Muslim Brotherhood and its Islamist epigones? Surely there is no greater badge of honour than to stand with the giants of the 18th century, who insisted rationality should be given equal status to superstition.

In the name of 21st-century faith, gay people are murdered, women are stoned, girls made ill as religious garb denies sunshine to their face and bodies and doctors killed in "civilised" America if they help women control their fertility. After "Islamophobia" was invented as a concept two decades ago, the Vatican launched a campaign for the UN to recognise "Christianophobia". The right of men (always men dressed in long robes to censor words and thought is increasing, not diminishing.

In the end, Cohen rightly argues, we have to assert the Enlightenment values of both Voltaire and Mill as they argued for free speech. That is not to be confused with freedom of information, a process that, in the US, has been hijacked by corporate interests to prevent any public discussion that might challenge their power. In Britain, we have the wondrous example of the information commissioner refusing to tell the victims of illegal media intrusion that they have been targeted.
Christopher Graham, a former BBC bureaucrat, holds 4,000 names of those targeted by the media. He has sent these names to the media owners and the police, but not the victims themselves. Only in Britain would the man appointed to uphold the Freedom of Information Act as a censor.

The new authoritarianism combines religious supremacists, Chinese communists, Russian kleptocrats, "Davos men" and the
Fortune
500 super-rich in a new network of postmodern censorship. We have more information than ever, but truth is harder to find and easy to suppress. Increased freedom and increased censorship co-exist. This wasn't meant to happen. Cohen asks worrying questions that offshore proprietors and their editors do not want raised and lawmakers have no easy answer to.

Denis MacShane is MP for Rotherham



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