The Drug War's Invisible Victims
There are also war tolls beyond the body counts. The homicide number
misses the disappeared, the thousands whose bodies – dead or alive – are never found, never counted. And it hides the mutilation of lives caused by “collateral damage”: the loss of loved ones, families forced from their homes, permanent injury, orphans and widows, sexual abuse, lives lived in fear.
These costs fall primarily on the shoulders of women–the mothers, daughters, and sisters who are left with the nearly impossible task of seeking answers and redress in a justice system outpaced by violence and overrun by corruption. They are often re-victimized by government agencies that ignore, reject, or stifle their pleas for justice.
Read the full article at:
CIP Americas
North America
Pot-based Prescription Drugs Are On Their Way
A British company, GW Pharma, is in advanced clinical trials for the world's first pharmaceutical developed from raw marijuana instead of synthetic equivalents — a mouth spray it hopes to market in the U.S. as a treatment for cancer pain. It hopes to see FDA approval by the end of 2013.
Sativex contains marijuana's two best known components — delta 9-THC and cannabidiol — and already has been approved in Canada, New Zealand and eight European countries for relieving muscle spasms associated with multiple sclerosis.
Read the full article at:
Seattle Times
Welfare Drug-testing Bill Passes Indiana House
Rep. McMillin
withdrew his bill on Friday, saying
Dvorak's amendment likely violated the Constitution. On Monday, he came back with a new version of the legislation that softened the lawmaker drug testing provision. Instead of blanket testing for every member of the General Assembly, the new version of the bill lets lawmakers opt in to a system of random screening similar to the one for families seeking cash assistance. (If they don't consent, they lose their parking spaces and other perks.)
Read the full article at:
Huffington Post
Critics Counter County's Claim of Ecstasy Epidemic
If anything, Sibley says, it’s the drugs that aren’t MDMA or ecstasy that can do the most damage. MDMA, colloquially referred to as Molly, often comes in through black-market shipments of pills or capsules containing powder, Sibley says, which can lead to the drugs being cut with methamphetamine, ketamine, benzopiprozene (BZP), or dextromethorphan (DXM).
According to county figures, five people have died from taking drugs they thought were ecstasy since 2009.
“The frightening thing, when you look at it, is that so few of them actually contain [MDMA],” Sibley says. Of the tablets seized by law enforcement, Sibley estimates that as few as one in four may actually contain MDMA.
Read the full article at:
SanJose.com
Europe/UK
Is Banning Legal Highs Effective? Learning From the Hungarian Experience
This current epidemic of legal highs was partly caused by the collapse of the European Ecstasy (MDMA) market in 2008. That is, the (at least temporarily) successful efforts of our politicians to prevent the large scale production of MDMA led to the rise of new legal substitutes to fill the gap in the recreational stimulant market. So now, instead of one relatively less harmful substance (MDMA) dominating the night life we have many new substances with unknown risks and harms. Governments try to respond the crisis of prohibition with more prohibition: restrict drug legislation and prohibit new substances as fast as they can.
Read the full editorial at:
European Drug Policy Initiative
Fixerum: The Mobile Injection Room in Copenhagen
Most injecting drug users has been using drugs in dark alleys where there is no access to sterile injection equipment and nobody helps if they overdose - but this situation is changing now. Harm reduction activists were tired of many years of debate so they went ahead and set up a new mobile injection room, Fixerum. This van aims to reach out people who use drugs on the streets and let them use drugs under medial supervision.
Read the full article accompanying the video at:
International Drug Policy Consortium (IDPC)
Drugs Mule Terms Cut in New Sentencing Guidelines
Under the new guideline, which comes into force on 27 February, the starting point for sentencing drug mules guilty of carrying crack, heroin and cocaine will be six years, before judges take into account aggravating and mitigating factors.
Those found guilty of a much higher level of involvement in the drugs trade will face longer sentences.
Read the full article at:
BBC News
Latin America
The State of Mexico's Major Cartels
Global intelligence organization STRATFOR released its annual analysis of the state of the Mexican drug cartels, and forecasts their activities in 2012. It's a comprehensive primer for anyone interested in the narco-war and its social and political implications for the violence-plagued country.
Read the full report at:
The Cutting Edge News
Organized Crime Sets Its Sights on Peaceful Uruguay
While the scale of drug trafficking in Uruguay is nowhere near that which exists in Mexico, its remote borders with Argentina and Brazil and its 600 kilometer-long coast make the country a significant transshipment point for foreign drug smugglers. A comparison could be drawn with
Ecuador, which is used by criminal groups of various nationalities
, drawn by its convenient location bordering Colombia and Peru.
Read the full article at:
InSight
Other News
The Neuroscience of Pot: Why Marijuana May Bring Serenity or Psychosis
In the
new study
, the researchers had 15 men who were relatively unseasoned pot users take capsules containing THC, CBD, and flour (placebo) on each of three occasions. The participants then took simple computer tests in which arrows, pointing either left or right, flashed on the screen; the men had to respond based on their direction. Occasionally, an “oddball” arrow was thrown in to the sequence, which was at a 23-degree angle. This setup allowed the researchers to compare the men’s reactions to usual vs. oddball stimuli, and to see how the various chemicals affected it.
Read the full article at:
Forbes
Jean Marlowe is known as the Godmother of Medical Cannabis in the State of North Carolina. In this wildly entertaining interview, the feisty Marlowe gives her irreverent take on the hypocrisy of cannabis prohibition, and gives moving testimony about the damage done to medical patients caught up in the criminal justice system.
The Exile Nation Project - Interview with Jean Marlowe from
Charles B Shaw on
Vimeo.
Newsletters and Weekly Features
can't look any worse, Ricky Santorum proves that he's an even bigger asshole than we thought.
One of the feistiest exchanges came in response to a young child's question on the cost of medical care in America. Urged on by his mother, a boy asked what Santorum would do to lower medical costs, but before he could finish his question, the candidate said such things should be left up to the market.
"We can make medicine cheaper by using markets," Santorum said. "That's how you make medicine cheaper is that you have free people going out there and competing against each other and competition drives up quality and drives down costs."
Competition? Okay, great! So we can import cheaper drugs from Canada then, have them compete in the open market?
"The only reason new drugs are developed is because Americans actually do pay for the cost of that research," Santorum said. "And so when you say oh, I'll go and get my drugs in Canada, that's great. Go get your drugs in Canada and if everybody did that, you'd have no new drugs. You have that drug and maybe you're alive today because people have a profit motive to make that drug."
Okay, so forget the open market. Really, only people who can afford to deliver profits to drug companies should be able to use them, huh?
"People have no problem going out and buying an iPad for $900," he said. "But paying $900 for a drug, they have a problem with it. It keeps you alive. Why? Because you have been conditioned to thinking that health care is something that you should get and not have to pay for. Drug companies, health care companies need to have a profit motive, because if they don't, then how are we going to regulate costs? We are gonna ration care."
iPads start at $500, by the way. And unlike life saving drugs, you buy it once. If you had to pay $900 for an iPad every month, or even every year, you better believe sales would crater.
And while iPads are a completely optional purchase, life-saving drugs are not. Unless, of course, you can't afford to deliver profits.
The mother of the original questioner tried once more to plead her case, explaining that she's paid $1.3 million a year to keep her son alive, and while she's willing to go bankrupt for her child, it pains her to see his friends die in the hospital because their parents cannot afford the treatment.
Finding himself in the unenviable position of defending oft-derided drug companies, Santorum stuck to his guns.
"He's alive today because drug companies thought that they would make money in providing that care and if the drug company didn't think they could make any money by providing that care, I hate to put it in these terms, but that drug wouldn't be here," he said, adding that he sympathized with the mother, "we either believe in markets or we don't."
And oh, he's totally in favor of allowing insurance companies to discriminate against people with pre-existing conditions, so if you're already sick, he doesn't want you to get health insurance.
So you got it? If you can afford $1.3 million every year to deliver profits to big pharma and the insurance industry, then your kid can live. If you can't, then your kid dies, and that's okay, because if it's not, then you don't believe in free markets. Unless you're Canadian. Because if you are, then your kid gets to live.
USA! USA! USA!
CHILE likes to see itself as a model of free-market efficiency in a region hamstrung by protectionism and collusion. That makes a ruling on January 31st by the country’s anti-trust regulator particularly embarrassing. After a three-year investigation, the regulator concluded that the pharmacy sector, supposedly a free market, was nothing of the sort. For four months from December 2007 to March 2008 (and perhaps for years before that) Chile’s three big pharmacy chains, which between them control 90% of the market, fixed the prices of 222 medicines, the regulator found. They included treatments for serious chronic diseases like epilepsy and diabetes. On average, the price of the drugs rose by 48% during the four-month period, while the cost of manufacture rose by just 1%. Some of the medicines tripled in price.
The regulator fined two of the companies, Cruz Verde and Salcobrand, $19m each, the heaviest penalties it’s ever imposed for price-fixing. The firms deny any wrongdoing and will appeal. The third company, Farmacias Ahumada, accepted a $1m fine in 2009 after turning whistleblower and providing evidence to damn its rivals. The companies are now likely to face a barrage of compensation suits from angry customers claiming, quite rightly, that they were overcharged for everything from anti-depressants to contraceptives.
Apologists may try to paint this as a one-off case, but that seems unlikely. In December state prosecutors asked the regulator to investigate alleged collusion between the country’s three biggest poultry producers, Agrosuper, Ariztia and Don Pollo, which breed 93% of the chickens eaten in Chile. The prosecutors say the companies agreed on quotas, deciding how much meat they would each supply to market. The companies deny the charges. And Three weeks after the alleged “chicken scandal” came to light, the regulator fined four bus companies for price-fixing. Others were accused of colluding to prevent new operators entering the market.
The government welcomed the antitrust ruling, saying it was proof the regulator was doing its job. “The social market economy that we’re building only makes sense…if the sacred rights of the consumer are respected,” said Sebastian Pinera, the president. But the proliferation of such cases will probably erode confidence in the private sector. Most Chileans take medicine, eat chicken and travel by bus. They can surely be forgiven for wondering if they’re being ripped off every time they do so.
GlaxoSmithKline Plc (GSK), which is paying $3 billion to resolve government claims that it illegally marketed drugs such as the Avandia diabetes medication, agreed to settle more lawsuits over the pills, a lawyer said.
Glaxo, the U.K.’s biggest drugmaker, agreed last month to resolve more than
20,000 cases alleging Avandia causes heart attacks, said
Paul Kiesel, a lawyer for former users. The accord, reached in court-ordered mediation, included a case that was set for trial in state court in Los Angeles, he said.
“We are pleased the mediation has successfully resulted in the settlement of a significant number of the remaining cases,” Kiesel, one of the lead lawyers for plaintiffs in the Avandia litigation, said yesterday in a telephone interview.
The settlements are part of London-based Glaxo’s efforts to resolve legal issues stretching back more than a decade. Executives announced in November that the drugmaker will pay $3 billion to settle U.S. criminal and civil probes into whether Glaxo illegally marketed Avandia and other medications.
The company already has agreed to pay at least $700 million to settle more than 15,000 patients’ claims that Avandia caused heart attacks and strokes, people familiar with the accords said last year.
The most-recent settlements of Avandia patients’ suits “are covered by existing provisions and those payments will be funded through existing cash resources,”
Bernadette King, a U.S.-based Glaxo spokeswoman, said in an e-mailed statement yesterday.
New heart disease, diabetes and dementia drugs could emerge from new insight into the benefits of resveratrol - a chemical contained in red grape skin that is found, in small quantities, in red wine.
Resveratrol's health-giving properties have already been studied in depth but it's only now that scientists know that, not only does it promote energy in human cells, it does so by fooling them into thinking they haven't got enough to begin with.
Armed with this knowledge, a research team based at the US National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute (NHLBI) believe drug manufacturers could draw on resveratrol to produce a new range of treatments for a whole range of conditions.
Red Wine Drugs
Details of their red wine drugs work appear in the Cell publication and, separate to this, a UK-based source described its benefits to The Telegraph.
"Although you can get resveratrol from red wine, you would need to drink about 700 bottles to get a meaningful dose", Cambridge University's Doctor Andrew Murray explained, adding: "This study is important because the effects of resveratrol on the cell were identified, so that more potent drugs could be developed to mimic its effects."
The basis of the new study were tests carried out with mice but it emphasises that animal-based research doesn't necessarily yield results that will be mirrored in humans.
Wine Drug Treatments
Therefore, further research will be required, probably involving human subjects, before the advent of market-ready wine-based drug treatments.
"Resveratrol has potential as a therapy for diverse diseases such as type 2 diabetes, Alzheimer's disease and heart disease", Doctor Jay Chung, from the NHLBI's Laboratory of Obesity and Aging Research explained in a press statement. "However, before researchers can transform resveratrol into a safe and effective medicine, they need to know exactly what it targets in cells."
"This result underscores the need for careful, well-controlled studies to illuminate how these natural products operate", his colleague Robert Balaban added. "As Dr. Chung's work suggests, the effects of resveratrol seem to be more complicated than originally thought.
"However, this new insight into the phosphodiesterases might prove an interesting avenue to pursue."
Feb. 2 (Bloomberg) -- Johnson & Johnson hid studies showing its Risperdal anti-psychotic drug caused diabetes to protect billions of dollars in sales, a lawyer said in the first personal-injury claim over the medication to go to trial.
Researchers at J&J’s Janssen unit knew as early as 1999 that a study found Risperdal caused diabetes at a higher rate than a competing drug and failed to hand over the results to regulators probing links between the disease and anti-psychotic medicines, Fletch Trammell, a lawyer for a former Risperdal user, told a New Jersey jury today in opening statements.
“The evidence will show Janssen buried studies for a competitive advantage,” Trammell told jurors in state court in New Brunswick, New Jersey. J&J, the world’s second-largest health-products maker, is based in the city.
The trial of Gary Skala’s claims that his 14 years’ worth of Risperdal use caused his diabetes began two weeks after J&J agreed to pay $158 million to settle Texas officials’ claims that it fraudulently marketed the drug.
Today, almost 1 million packets of birth control pills were recalled because they may not have enough contraceptive in them to prevent pregnancy. The recalled birth control pills include 14 lots of Lo/Ovral-28 tablets and 14 lots of Norgestrel and Ethinyl Estradiol tablets that were manufactured by Pfizer and marketed by Akrimax Pharmaceuticals. The recalled pills were shipped to warehouses, clinics and retail pharmacies nationwide.
In a remarkable few hours, the prestigious and well respected Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure has blown away its name, just as
Joan Walsh predicted above. Women all over the country today are outraged about this decision, and it's showing up in the office, on Facebook, Twitter and on the blogs.
What were they thinking, beyond whatever politics are involved? When you've gone as solidly corporate as Susan G. Komen has, it's a bit unusual to engage in such risky behavior.
Sure, we know that Komen, based in Dallas, has become much more closely associated with the George W. Bush library (the founder and CEO, Nancy Brinker, is ex-Ambassador to Hungary), but cutting off the only source of medical and gynecologic care to women without means and health insurance is a guaranteed PR black eye.
You can find the damage control story
here, but I wanted to focus on the blowback. From
Kivi Leroux Miller:
See this fromYesterday afternoon, and continuing into today, I believe we are witnessing the accidental rebranding of what is surely one of America’s biggest and most well-known, and even well-loved, nonprofit brands.
Komen for the Cure, it seems, is no longer a breast cancer charity, but a pro-life breast cancer charity.
Business Week
:
Most online comments about the Komen Foundation’s decision were downbeat, according to NetBase Solutions Inc., a Mountain View, California-based company whose software reads and interprets 50,000 sentences a minute from billions of social media sources. Two-thirds of more than 3,600 sentiments expressed online about the split were negative, with people calling it “outrageous,” and saying it did “irreparable harm” to the organization, NetBase said.See this from
Eve Ellis:
It is with a heavy heart and an angry mind, that I have raised and donated my last dollar for Komen. I served on the Komen Board for 6 years, and Komen has been near and dear to me and our family in our fight against breast cancer. The stand that Komen National has taken on Planned Parenthood is not only misguided, but--contrary to their stated remarks-- is political, or at the very least, gives the impression of being political.See
Huffington Post:
Dr. Kathy Plesser, a Manhattan radiologist on the medical advisory board of Susan G. Komen for the Cure's New York chapter, said she plans to resign from her position unless Komen reverses its decision to pull grant money from Planned Parenthood. "I’m a physician and my interest is women’s health, and I am disturbed by Komen’s decision because I am a very strong advocate for serving under-served women," Plesser told The Huffington Post. "Eliminating this funding will mean there’s no place for these women to go. Where are these women to go to have a mammography? Do they not deserve to have mammography?" With her decision, Plesser joins Komen's top public health official, Mollie Williams , and the executive director of Komen's Los Angeles County chapter, Deb Anthony, both of whom also resigned in protest.There are so many different places who are doing stellar coverage of this, but I have to include this from
Balloon Juice:
Check out list after list after list of Komen’s corporate sponsors. Do you think New Balance, Ford and Georgia-Pacific signed on for a public fight over Planned Parenthood? When Yoplait put a pink lid on its yogurt, did they do it to make it easier to boycott their products? Because that’s what’s going to happen. Unlike most boycotts, it’s easy to figure out which products you shouldn’t buy: anything that displays a pink ribbon with the Komen name.Anyone want to make a case for good planning on Komen's part? Make your argument here, because I don't think you could have planned for this much damage in so short a period of time from a self-inflicted wound.
Private jets? $200 million paintings? Zuckerberg's salary? Here are few things the financial analysts won't be talking about this morning.
By now, you've probably seen
all the (impressive) basics about Facebook's S-1 filing. The company made $3.7 billion in 2011, saw yearly revenue growth of 88 percent, has 845 million users (about 12 percent of the world's population), blah, blah, blah.
But upon closer inspection, the S-1 reveals some pretty insane facts about the company. Here's what people are actually going to be talking about on the social network's road to IPO:
- Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sanderberg, the company's COO, are allowed to use company money to fly in private jets. Perks abound for family members too: "On certain occasions, Mr. Zuckerberg may be accompanied by family members or others when using private aircraft."
- Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase, is possibly the only person in financial services whose reputation was actually enhanced by the financial crisis of 2008. Now the JPMorgan side of the business, never a tech powerhouse, has snagged the number two slot co-managing the Facebook IPO.
- "Facebook was built to accomplish a social mission." Just as Google, upon its IPO, enunciated its goal as "Don't be evil," Facebook also claims a higher mission. Wall Street doesn't. This can lead to problems.
- Mark Zuckerberg still has 57 percent of the voting rights of his company.
- The float. Facebook is only selling 5 percent of the company. Most start-ups would be scared to do that, for fear they'd be caught in a short-squeeze. But the Facebook offering is so big that Zuckerberg can't be worried. The choice of underwriters shows Facebook also isn't terribly worried about impressing institutional shareholders.
- So many people wanted to read Facebook's offering documents that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission website crashed.
- The company is embroiled in tons of lawsuits. "We are involved in numerous class action lawsuits...and, if resolved adversely, could harm our business," notes the S-1.
- The company has nearly $4 billion in cash...just sitting in the bank.
- The graffiti artist David Choe, who took stock in place of cash for painting murals on the Facebook office walls six years ago,
is expected to be "worth upward of $200 million when Facebook stock trades publicly."
- There were more than 100 billion friend connections on Facebook as of December 31, 2011.
- Sheryl Sandberg, with 1,899,986 shares of Facebook common stock, and 39,321,041 options,
will be worth nearly $2 billion, making her one of the wealthiest women in the world. Some said Facebook was cheating her by not offering her a board seat. Ha.
- Zynga, the social gaming company, accounted for 12 percent of Facebook's annual revenues in 2011.
- In 2013, Zuckerberg will take a $1 annual salary.
- The IPO could make magnate-slash-investor Peter Thiel (also know as a Seasteading advocate and artificial-intelligence aficionado who last year paid 20 students to drop out of college and start companies) about $2 billion (based on an initial $500,000 investment).
- Yuri Milner, the Russian billionaire, owns roughly a 7 percent stake in the company.
- Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz, who is now an angel investor, owns 7.6 percent of the company, putting his net worth around $6.7 billion.
- Bono, the U2 frontman, paid $120 million for company stocks in 2010 to own about 1.5 percent of the company. After the company goes public, he could see his investment rise to over $1 billion.
- The lock-up. After an IPO, company insiders are generally prohibited from selling shares for 180 days. So they can't just dump their shares into the IPO. Facebook insiders are looking to get liquid much faster—their lock-up lasts only 90 days. Thank SecondMarket for that.
- Zuckerberg gets his own security detail—or whatever a "Comprehensive Security Program" to "Protect Mark Zuckerberg" means.
- Mr. Zuckerberg's father, a dentist living in New York,
was given two million shares of stock "in satisfaction of funds provided for our initial working capital."
- Zuckerberg has retained the right to choose his successor after his death.
No comments:
Post a Comment