Australian Ecstasy Use
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 1:09 AM

Australia leads the world in the consumption of ecstasy, according to this article. (Thanks for the pointer from the Alcohol and Drugs History Society.) Naturally, the widespread ecstasy use is causing some concern. What it isn't causing, however, is an over-the-top police response. Indeed, undercover officers stay away from raves:

Questioned on the use of undercover officers at rave parties and nightclubs, Mr Overland said police no longer went into these premises to make drug arrests. "We have found from past experience they can be quite volatile and doing that can actually cause more problems than it solves."

What, an accounting of the relative costs and benefits matters in selecting among anti-drug policing strategies? Once such an approach takes hold, there is no telling where it might lead...

PS -- The loyal Vice Squad reader might have noticed that our long national nightmare of Vice Squad dormancy was declared over at the beginning of 2007. Nevertheless, things will be a bit quiet for a week, as we expand our horizons.

Labels: Australia, ecstasy

 
One Difference Between Britain and the US
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 11:44 PM

From this story in the October 8 Observer:

The BBC came to the defence of its star presenter Graham Norton last night, after he admitted that he had taken 'loads of drugs' and that he had really enjoyed taking ecstasy.

Mr. Norton didn't condemn his previous drug use nor suggest that he was led to it by something beyond his control, such as a personal crisis or addiction stemming from prescribed medications. And he remains employed by the TV-taxpayer-funded BBC.

The head of the independent drug policy center DrugScope is quoted in the article, speaking sensibly:

Martin Barnes, chief executive of DrugScope, said: 'It would be naive to deny that people use drugs because they enjoy them but there are risks and many who use drugs do come to harm. It is reasonable to ask that celebrities recognise a responsibility - that for many people there is a downside to drug use.'

Addendum: One more difference between Britain and the US: paying for misused apostrophes would bankrupt the former colonies.

Labels: Britain, ecstasy

 
Funding Drug Research: Paying the Piper and Calling the Tune
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 8:42 AM

The Media Awareness Project (MAP) offers this article on the incentives facing drug researchers. The gist of the story is that government dominated funding of research into currently illicit drugs biases the types of studies that are conducted and publicized. In the US, the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) is the major funder of research involving illicit drugs. The MAP story takes as its point of departure the discredited NIDA-supported ecstasy study headed by Dr. George Ricaurte that helped to promote federal controls over raves: "In his now-retracted study, Dr. Ricaurte was trying to prove something -- that even one dose of ecstasy causes brain damage --which neatly fits drug-war ideology. Not surprisingly, NIDA covered the $1.3 million U.S. cost of the research. In fact, Dr. Ricaurte has been given $10 million U.S. by NIDA over his career. In exchange, NIDA consistently got what it wanted: Research that hyped the dangers of ecstasy."

A major source for the MAP article is Dutch drug researcher Peter Cohen: "In the early 1990s, the WHO asked a group of international scientists, including Cohen, to produce what it billed as 'the largest global study on cocaine use ever undertaken.' In 1995, the study was done. It concluded that most users consume cocaine occasionally, that occasional use usually does not lead to compulsive use, and that occasional use does little or no harm to users. It was a flat contradiction of the drug-war ideology, so the U.S. threatened to pull its funding if the report was released. The WHO buckled. The report was buried."

The problem that the MAP article addresses applies to social scientists working on drug policy, too, it seems to me. Imagine the incentives facing a young PhD in economics (or some other social science) interested in an academic or research career dedicated to drug policy research. It would be very hard for such a person to take a strong legalization position, when research funding is dominated by the National Science Foundation and other organizations that will not be anxious to be associated with what easily can be labeled (or mislabeled) a pro-drug stance. Such a person, sad to say, might even understandably be reluctant to start or participate in a vice policy blog that generally eschews the criminalization of adult vices!

Labels: drugs, ecstasy, WHO

 
The Flawed Ecstasy Study
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 5:29 PM

A few days ago, in passing Vice Squad mentioned the flawed ecstasy study -- where the drug that actually was tested turned out not to be ecstasy at all -- and its lingering effects on our nation's drug policies. The full story, which involves other questionable, government-sponsored research into the harms of ecstasy, is provided in an excellent article in the February 27, 2004 edition of the Chronicle of Higher Education. I think that it is a great article, but OK, I exaggerated when I said it told the "full story." For more of the story, see this post by Mark Kleiman, to which Vice Squad is indebted for alerting us to the Chronicle tale.

Labels: ecstasy, Kleiman

 
Psychedelic Pioneer
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 11:25 AM

Today's New York Times (registration required) contains an obituary of Dr. Humphry Osmond, who invented the term "psychedelic" for drugs such as L.S.D.: "...in his own view and in that of some other scientists, Dr. Osmond was most important for inspiring researchers who saw drugs like L.S.D. and mescaline as potential treatments for psychological ailments. By the mid-1960's, medical journals had published more than 1,000 papers on the subject, and Dr. Osmond's work using L.S.D. to treat alcoholics drew particular interest."

The sort of research the Dr. Osmond conducted, however, withered for decades, in part because of regulatory hostility. Here's the Times take on the research dearth:

"...the combination of flagrant youthful abuse of hallucinogens; the propagation of a flashy, otherworldly drug culture by Timothy Leary; and reports of health dangers from hallucinogens (some of which Dr. Halpern [a substance abuse researcher] said were wrong or overstated) eventually doomed almost all research into psychedelic drugs.

Research on hallucinogens as a treatment for mental ills has re-emerged in recent years, in small projects at places like the University of Arizona, the University of South Carolina, the University of California, Los Angeles, and Harvard. Though such research was always legal, regulatory, financial and other obstacles had largely ended it."

The Times obit concludes with an overview of the late stages of Dr. Osmond's career, which took a different track because of hostility to research on psychedelic drugs:

"He mainly studied schizophrenia but was disappointed he could not pursue his research into hallucinogens, Mrs. Blackburn, his daughter, said.

'I'm sure he was very saddened by it,' she said. 'It could have helped millions of people.'"

The claim that the problems with hallucinogens were exaggerated brings to mind last year's discovery that a much-ballyhooed study finding lasting brain changes from a single night of ecstasy use was off-base: it turns out that the researchers examined the effects of another drug, not ecstasy, during their research. The original, flawed research helped to stoke the flames for the offspring of the RAVE act. Did you notice all of the attention paid to repealing the legislation after the mistake was revealed?

Labels: ecstasy, hallucinogen