Prescription Drug Epidemic / Prevention & Education

Prescription drug prevention

Mon, 24 Jan 2011 05:23:00 +0000

http://www.ncapda.org/

This is your brains on drugs, Dad

Sun, 17 Aug 2008 15:38:40 +0000

		CENTER ON JUVENILE AND CRIMINAL JUSTICE PRESS ROOM

		http://www.cjcj.org/index.php

Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice, 54 Dore Street, San Francisco, CA 94103

Tel: (415) 621-5661 | Fax: (415) 621-5466

The New York Times
HEADLINE: This Is Your Brain on Drugs, Dad

DATE: January 3, 2007
By Mike Males

When releasing last week?s Monitoring the Future survey on drug use, John P. Walters, the director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, boasted that ?broad? declines in teenage drug use promise ?enormous beneficial consequences not only for our children now, but for the rest of their lives.? Actually, anybody who has looked carefully at the report and other recent federal studies would see a dramatically different picture: skyrocketing illicit drug abuse and related deaths among teenagers and adults alike.

While Monitoring the Future, an annual study that depends on teenagers to self-report on their behavior, showed that drug use dropped sharply in the last decade, the National Center for Health Statistics has reported that teenage deaths from illicit drug abuse have tripled over the same period. This reverses 25 years of declining overdose fatalities among youths, suggesting that teenagers are now joining older generations in increased drug use.

What the Monitoring the Future report does have right is that teenagers remain the least part of America?s burgeoning drug abuse crisis. Today, after 20 years, hundreds of billions of dollars, and millions of arrests and imprisonments in the war on drugs, America?s rate of drug-related deaths, hospital emergencies, crime and social ills stand at record highs.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the number of Americans dying from the abuse of illegal drugs has leaped by 400 percent in the last two decades, reaching a record 28,000 in 2004. The F.B.I. reported that drug arrests reached an all-time high of 1.8 million in 2005. The Drug Abuse Warning Network, a federal agency that compiles statistics on hospital emergency cases caused by illicit drug abuse, says that number rose to 940,000 in 2004 ? a huge increase over the last quarter century.

Why are so few Americans aware of these troubling trends? One reason is that today?s drug abusers are simply the ?wrong? group. As David Musto, a psychiatry professor at Yale and historian of drug abuse, points out, wars on drugs have traditionally depended on ?linkage between a drug and a feared or rejected group within society.? Today, however, the fastest-growing population of drug abusers is white, middle-aged Americans. This is a powerful mainstream constituency, and unlike with teenagers or urban minorities, it is hard for the government or the news media to present these drug users as a grave threat to the nation.

Among Americans in their 40s and 50s, deaths from illicit-drug overdoses have risen by 800 percent since 1980, including 300 percent in the last decade. In 2004, American hospital emergency rooms treated 400,000 patients between the ages 35 and 64 for abusing heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine, marijuana, hallucinogens and ?club drugs? like ecstasy.

Equally surprising, graying baby boomers have become America?s fastest-growing crime scourge. The F.B.I. reports that last year the number of Americans over the age of 40 arrested for violent and property felonies rose to 420,000, up from 170,000 in 1980. Arrests for drug offenses among those over 40 rose to 360,000 last year, up from 22,000 in 1980. The Bureau of Justice Statistics found that 440,000 Americans ages 40 and older were incarcerated in 2005, triple the number in 1990.

Yet drug officials seem fixated on paper-and-pencil surveys of drug use by teens. In releasing its survey last week, the Office of Drug Control Policy trumpeted that ?America?s balanced strategy to reduce drug use is working.? Representative Mark Souder, an Indiana Republican who has been a top supporter of federal antidrug efforts, says ?the Bush administration is doing very well? on this front because ?drug use, particularly among young people, is down.?

But, some may say, don?t teenage drug use rates predict future drug problems? To the contrary: 30 years of experience shows that fluctuations in the percentage of youths who report using drugs on surveys has almost nothing to do with the harm that drug abuse causes (addiction, disease, injury, death, crime, family and community distress), either in adolescence or later in life.

I compared teenage drug use trends reported annually by Monitoring the Future since the 1970s with trends for other behaviors and with federal crime, health and education statistics. In years in which a higher percentage of high school seniors told the survey takers they used illicit drugs, teenagers consistently reported and experienced lower rates of crime, murder, drug-related hospital emergencies and deaths, suicides, H.I.V. infection, school dropouts, delinquency, pregnancy, violence, theft in and outside of school, and fights with parents, employers and teachers.

The data also contradict Mr. Walters?s claim that generations reporting lower rates of drug use enjoy ?less addiction, less suffering, less crime, lower health costs and higher achievement.? For example, baby boomers rarely used illegal drugs as youths.

In 1972, the University of Michigan researchers who carry out Monitoring the Future found that just 22 percent of high school seniors had ever used illegal drugs, compared to 48 percent of the class of 2005. Yet as that generation has aged, it has been afflicted by drug abuse and its related ills ? overdoses, hospitalizations, drug-related crime ? at far higher rates than those experienced by later generations at the same ages.

It?s time to end the obsession with hyping teenage drug use. The meaningless surveys that policy makers now rely on should be replaced with a comprehensive ?drug abuse index? that pulls together largely ignored data on drug-related deaths, hospital emergencies, crime, diseases and similar practical measures.

A good model is the California Department of Alcohol and Drug Programs? fledgling drug abuse index, which I helped compile and which aims to pinpoint which populations and areas are most harmed by drugs, both legal and illicit.

Few experts would have suspected that the biggest contributors to California?s drug abuse, death and injury toll are educated, middle-aged women living in the Central Valley and rural areas, while the fastest-declining, lowest-risk populations are urban black and Latino teenagers. Yet the index found exactly that. These are the sorts of trends we need to understand if we are to design effective policies.

The United States? drug abuse crisis has exploded out of control. Scientifically designed strategies are urgently needed to target the manifest drug-caused damage that current policies are failing miserably to address.

Mike Males is a senior researcher at the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice.

This site and its contents ? 2002 Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice

Prevention/Intervention/Treatment by definition

Fri, 01 Aug 2008 23:40:01 +0000

Prevention

Main Entry:: pre?ven?tion
Pronunciation:: \pri-ˈven(t)-shən\
Function:: noun
Date:: 1582

: the act of preventing or hindering

Intervention

Definition

A standard dictionary defines intervention as an influencing force or act that occurs in order to modify a given state of affairs. In the context of behavioral health, an intervention may be any outside process that has the effect of modifying an individual's behavior, cognition, or emotional state. For example, a person experiencing stresssymptoms may find a variety of interventions effective in bringing relief. Deep breathing, vigorous exercise, talking with a therapist or counselor, taking an anti-anxiety medication, or a combination of these activities are all interventions designed to modify the symptoms and potentially the causes of stress-related discomfort.

The term is also used to describe a specific process designed to break through denialon the part of persons with serious addictive disorders. Interventions in this sense of the word involve carefully orchestrated confrontations in which friends, family members, and (in many cases) employers confront the person with the negative impact and consequences of his or her addiction. The goal of an intervention is to bring the addicted person to acknowledge that he or she suffers from a disorder and agree to treatment. This goal, however, is not always realized.

Treatment

Treatment for drug abuse or dependence begins with recognizing the problem. Though "denial" used to be considered a symptom of addiction, recent research has shown that people who are addicted have far less denial if they are treated with empathy and respect, rather than told what to do or "confronted."

Treatment of drug dependency involves weaning off the drug gradually (detoxification), support, and stopping the drug (abstinence). People with acute intoxication or drug overdose may need emergency treatment. Sometimes, the person loses consciousness and might need to be on a breathing machine (mechanical respirator) temporarily. The treatment depends on the drug being used.

Detoxification is the gradual withdrawal of an abused substance in a controlled environment. Sometimes a drug with a similar action is taken instead, to reduce the side effects and risks of withdrawal. Detoxification can be done on an inpatient or outpatient basis.

If the person also has depression or another mood disorder, it should be treated. Very often, people start abusing drugs in their effort to self-treat mental illness.

For narcotic dependence, some people are treated with methadone or similar drugs to prevent withdrawal and abuse. The goal is to enable the person to live as normal a life as possible.

Many government agencies prefer to break prevention into three catagories. Primary Prevention, Secondary Prevention and Tertiary. Their main purpose is to create multiple componets of prevention so they can receive prevention funding for their intervention and treatment services. Above I have listed the definitions of Prevention from a medical dictionary to clarify what each of these arena's truly means. If these difinitions do not fit your needs as with many just pick, choose, and blend in order to receive the most money possible for your agency.

Jim Bettencourt

Why we use, America's best kept secrect.

Sun, 22 Jun 2008 23:52:45 +0000

Why do children / adults use illegal drugs and alcohol? This question would seem to have as many answers as there are children and adults, not true! I have asked this question to thousands of children and adults. Amazingly I hear 99.9% of the time, from thousands of children and adults, the same self comforting eight answers! Also amazing these same self comforting delusional eight answers are nationally proclaimed and accepted.

Not understanding the truth why we use illegal drugs and alcohol is why Americans are and will continue to use and continue to be ravaged by addiction. A problem can not be resolved if you do not understand why the problem exists.

Learn why the problem exists & thrives!

For nearly eight years I have been sharing America?s addiction secret with students from fourth grade to University classrooms, most of my presentations are second, third and fourth time requests. My hope is to continue to disclose the addiction secret, the real reasons why Americans use illegal drugs and alcohol. By understanding why we use our children can begin to reduce the deadly devastation caused by addiction.

Sincerely,
James C. Bettencourt
www.drugpreventioned.com

530-330-3139

jim-bettencourt@sbcglobal.net