For decades, traffic accidents have been the biggest cause of injury-related death in the U.S., and they are still No. 1. But drug overdoses are pulling ahead in one state after another.

"People see a car accident as something that might happen to them," said Margaret Warner, an epidemiologist with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But as for death from a drug overdose, "maybe they see it as something that's not going happen to them."

The drug-related death rate roughly doubled from the late 1990s to 2006, according to the most recent CDC data.

The number of states in which drug-related deaths have overtaken traffic fatalities has gone from eight in 2003 to 12 in 2005, and 16 in 2006. They are: Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Illinois, Colorado, Utah, Nevada, Oregon and Washington.

It's not clear why those states have seen such a shift, but experts said certain drugs may be more of a problem in some states than in others.

While cocaine and heroin continue to be significant killers, most of the increase is attributed to prescription opiates such as the painkillers methadone, Oxycontin and Vicodin.

From 1999 to 2006, death rates for such medications climbed for every age group. Deaths from methadone alone increased sevenfold, according to the CDC.

The CDC spokesman says that the decline in road fatalities is "considered one of the great public health triumphs" of the past few decades. Presumably meaning that drug policy is one of its greatest failures...

DJ AM died accidentally from a lethal cocktail of prescription drugs and cocaine, the medical examiner’s office ruled Tuesday.

The toxicology report showed the 36-year-old had in his system
cocaine, OxyContin, Hydrocodone or Vicodin, antianxiety drugs Xanax and Ativan, Klonopin which also controls anger, Benadryl, and Levamisole, a drug apparently used to cut cocaine.

The cause of death was acute intoxication due to the combined effects the drugs, the medical examiner’s office said. The dosage of each drug was not released.

"It was subsequently reported by some association members working here that the inmates had been incorrectly using them, for want of a better phrase. "

via Nerdcore.de

LSD, the drug that launched the psychedelic era and became one of the resounding symbols of the counterculture movement of the '60s, is back in the labs.

Nearly 40 years after widespread fear over recreational abuse of LSD and other hallucinogens forced dozens of scientists to abandon their work, researchers at a handful of major institutions - including UCSF and Harvard University - are reigniting studies. Scientists started looking at less controversial drugs, like ecstasy and magic mushrooms, in the late 1990s, but LSD studies only began about a year ago and are still rare.

The study at UCSF, which is being run by a UC Berkeley graduate student, is looking into the mechanisms of LSD and how it works in the brain. The hope is that such research might support further studies into medical applications of LSD - for chronic headaches, for example - or psychiatric uses.

"Psychedelics are in labs all over the world and there's a lot of promise," said Rick Doblin, director of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies in Santa Cruz. "The situation with LSD is that because it was the quintessential symbol of the '60s, it was the last to enter the lab."

...

Researchers at UCLA were among the first to return to hallucinogen studies, starting with the drug ecstasy about 10 years ago. Research into psychedelic drugs expanded, with prominent labs around the country studying ecstasy and natural hallucinogens like psilocybin, or magic mushrooms, and peyote.

But LSD, still in disrepute, remained off-limits. The first studies involving LSD in human subjects started last year at Harvard University, and the UCSF study is only the second in the country. At Harvard, scientists are studying potential uses of LSD to treat cluster headaches - chronic headaches that affect sufferers during months-long cycles several times a year...

It still isn't easy to get an LSD study off the ground. Researchers must get permission from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the Drug Enforcement Administration plus state regulators, and they need approval from the institution they work for. Then they have to get approval for the source of the actual drug - in the case of UCSF, researchers are using LSD that was manufactured years ago in Switzerland.
Regulatory maze

"Getting through the regulatory maze is quite daunting. It's taken me years to build a system where the FDA and DEA and everyone are happy with how we do our work," Mendelson said. "You have to have a very safe protocol. It's a very cautious system."

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Thanks Ross!

Hundreds of thousands of children worldwide are thought to be working full-time on tobacco farms, suffering from toxic levels of nicotine exposure and abusive labor conditions.

In Malawi alone there are an estimated 78,000 boys and girls employed in tobacco harvesting. On average they earn 17 cents for a 12-hour day of back-breaking, bare-handed work, according to a recent report from Plan International.

Handling burley tobacco leaves without gloves, in unwashed clothes and rarely bathing, these children can absorb the same amount of nicotine in one day of harvesting that they would from smoking 50 cigarettes.

"Sometimes it feels like you don't have enough breath...You reach a point where you cannot breathe because of the pain in your chest. Then the blood comes when you vomit. At the end, most of this dies and then you remain with a headache," the report quoted one child describing how he felt at the end of the day.

"Nicotine is water soluble and can enter via the skin, so if it has recently rained, or there is heavy dew, the nicotine migrates into the water on the leaf. If that water gets on to your shirt it essentially becomes a giant nicotine patch," explained Henry Spiller of the Kentucky Regional Poison Center.

After reading the Plan report, Spiller, who has researched Green Tobacco Sickness (GTS) in children working on tobacco farms in the U.S., told CNN that the Malawi children's symptoms were "absolutely" consistent with GTS.

The Minister of Labor for Malawi, Yunnus Mussa, has denied the findings of the Plan report and told CNN their figures were "absolute trash."

Madera County supervisors have voted unanimously in favor of banning medical marijuana dispensaries in the county, including three already in operation.

The supervisors voted Tuesday to approve the ordinance, arguing that the dispensaries become magnets for crime, such as robbery, loitering and illicit drug dealing.

Supervisor Frank Bigelow said the three existing medical marijuana dispensaries in Madera County have been operating without a permit and will be shut down because the ordinance takes effect immediately.

The use of marijuana for medical purposes is legal in California, but Madera County officials said nothing in state law explicitly authorizes dispensaries.

Marijuana use, possession and sales are illegal under federal law.