Cannabis for Multiple Sclerosis
Nasal spray to be approved in Europe. A cannabis-based nasal spray will receive approval later this month for marketing in the United Kingdom and Spain as a medicine for multiple sclerosis, makers of the compound announced this week. GW Pharmaceuticals, makers of Sativex, won earlier regulatory approval for the use of Sativex in Canada in [...]
Feel Lucky, Drunk?
Sobering stats on alcohol-impaired driving. Somewhere just before the stages veteran drinkers sometimes refer to as “bulletproof” and “invisible” comes a stage known as, “Can I drive home drunk, and avoid arrest?” In the small town where I live, the college kids have it lucky: They can park their cars at the afterparty, and walk, [...]
Al Hubbard, the Johnny Appleseed of LSD
“The Original Capt. Trips.” The scientists, therapists, and artists who experimented with LSD therapy in the late 1950s were not prepared for the likes of Timothy Leary, novelist Ken Kesey, poet Allen Ginsberg, and the assorted freaks, pranksters, con artists and runaways of the Woodstock Generation. Ken Kesey, in particular, delighted in stinging the Feds [...]
Cocaine Treatment and the Stroop Test
Treatment dropouts do poorly on color/word match. It’s commonly used to demonstrate behavioral inhibition, but it’s also a nifty parlor game. It is called the Stroop Test, and it plays off the fact that people are far better at reading words than they are at intentionally ignoring them. To prove it, John Ridley Stroop’s 1935 [...]
What Would a Genuine Drug War Look Like?
An essay on biomedicine and the body politic. Millions of addicts in America want effective treatment, and cannot get it. Funds for research and treatment are still scarce, compared to money for interdiction and law enforcement. What would happen if we took the billions spent on interdiction and let it flow into addiction research and [...]
White House Releases New National Drug Strategy
The official press statement. The White House Office of the Press Secretary For Immediate Release May 11, 2010 WASHINGTON, DC – Today, President Obama released the Administration’s inaugural National Drug Control Strategy, which establishes five-year goals for reducing drug use and its consequences through a balanced policy of prevention, treatment, enforcement, and international cooperation. The [...]
Origins of the Disease Model of Addiction
Roger Williams and “deranged cellular metabolism.” (with Linus Pauling, 1974————–>) The idea of addiction as a disease first began to gain a tentative foothold in scientific and government circles in the early 1960s, after the publication of E.M. Jellinek’s The Disease Concept of Alcoholism. Jellinek [...]
The Bong Water Case Revisited
Minnesota v. Peck. Astute readers will recall the Great Bong Water Decision of 2009, in which the Minnesota Supreme Court determined, 4-3, that water used in a water pipe can be considered a “drug mixture.” Twenty five grams or more of this water, the court ruled, qualified the possessor for a first-degree criminal conviction and [...]
Five Science Blogs You Should Know About
(If you don’t already). Mind Hacks “Neuroscience and psychology tricks to find out what’s going on inside your brain.” Mind Hacks was originally a book by Tom Stafford and Matt Webb, subtitled “Tips and Tools for Using Your Brain.” Mind Hacks the blog has top-notch coverage of everything you can think of having to do [...]
A Shot for Cigarette Addiction?
NIDA’s Nora Volkow on addiction vaccines. Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), predicted in a telephone interview on Friday that a vaccine for cigarettes could be available in as little as three years, if two large ongoing Phase 3 trials—the last major FDA hurdle—prove as successful as earlier studies. NicVax [...]