Drug Policy Facts Podcast for Sept 2 2014: Research news and new drug czar is named

A new drug czar is nominated, the International Cannabis Business Conference is coming to town, and a conversation with NORML's Paul Armentano. It's the drug policy facts podcast.

Drug Policy Facts Podcast for 08-26-14: Research news plus the future of medical cannabis in WA.

This week: research on the impact of medical cannabis laws on opioid overdose deaths, and part two of our special coverage of Seattle Hempfest. It's the drug policy facts podcast for August 26, 2014.

New Drug Policy Facts Podcast Available - Hempfest Special Part One

This week: It's the Drug Policy Facts Podcast's Hempfest Special Part One. We hear from Vivian McPeak, Congressman Dana Rohrabacher, the ACLU and New Approach Washington's Alison Holcomb, SSDP's Betty Aldworth, and more. Listen or download from http://www.podcastgarden.com/episode/drug-policy-facts-38_24401 Drug War Facts is the premier source for information on drugs and drug policies in the US and around the world. Direct quotes, full citations, and links to the original materials, Drug War Facts is the dream of every drug policy reformer, student, journalist, or politician - and the nightmare of every prohibitionist. Continuously updated and constantly expanding, Drug War Facts is an indispensable part of every reformer's toolbox. Check it out today.

"Century Of Lies" Hempfest Special Part One From Drug Truth Network

The Drug Truth Network's "Century Of Lies" for this week is Part One of our coverage of Seattle Hempfest. Give it a listen at http://www.drugtruth.net/cms/node/4973 or download it directly from http://www.drugtruth.net/cms/audio/download/4973/COL081714.mp3.

More Than 46,000 Federal Drug Prisoners May Soon Be Eligible For Sentence Reductions

The US Sentencing Commission today adopted an amendment which could reduce the sentences of thousands of federal prisoners serving time for drug offenses. Read about it at the Common Sense for Drug Policy website http://www.csdp.org/cms/node/63#sthash.98uS3GFF.dpbs

"From Thought To Action" for July 15, 2014 is Online!

The "From Thought To Action" show for July 15, 2014, with my special guest Doug Fine is online at http://www.spreaker.com/user/time-4-hemp/from-thought-to-action-07-15-14 @OrganicCowboy #Hemp #mmot #DrugWar

Drug Policy Facts Podcast for July 1, 2014

Political pressure stops research, and the CDC is talking again about prescription drug overdoses - it's the Drug Policy Facts for July 1, 2014.

Drug Policy Facts Podcast for June 24, 2014

A House subcommittee looks at federal marijuana policy, and we look ahead to Thursday's Global Day Of Action Against the War on Drugs. It's the Drug Policy Facts podcast for June 24, 2014.

Drug Policy Facts Podcast #31 Is Now Online!

This week: Dean Becker of the Drug Truth Network talks about his new book and a debate challenge, plus it's the 43rd anniversary of methadone maintenance in the US. It's the drug policy facts podcast for June 17, 2014.

Drug Policy Facts Podcast #30 Is Online!

The feds tell Georgia they can't urine test recipients of food stamps. The New York state legislature looks at heroin. It's the Drug Policy Facts podcast for June 10, 2014.

Drug Policy Facts Podcast #29 Is Available Now!

The House of Representatives votes to forbid the Justice Department from going after state-legal medical cannabis facilities, and the European Union's drugs monitoring agency reports on rates of drug use in the EU – it's the Drug Policy Facts podcast for June 3, 2014.

Drug Policy Facts Podcast #27 Available For Download

This week: Hemp seeds are going to Kentucky; the constitutionality of cannabis scheduling is going to federal court; urine testing in the cannabis industry is going nowhere, so far; and the Oregon Medical Marijuana Program goes ahead with dispensaries. It's the Drug Policy Facts podcast for May 13,2014.

Drug Policy Facts Podcast #23 Is Available For Download!

This week: Our 420 Activism Special, featuring audio from organizers and activists including Vivian McPeak, Kari Boiter, Ed "New Jersey Weedman" Forchion, and Ngaio Bealum.
Download/listen/subscribe from http://www.podcastgarden.com/episode/drug-policy-facts-23_15586.

Drug Policy Facts Podcast #22 Is Available For Download!

This week: US Attorney General Holder said he'd be glad to work with Congress to reschedule marijuana. Or did he? Always looking behind the headlines, it's the Drug Policy Facts podcast. Download/listen/subscribe from http://www.podcastgarden.com/episode/drug-policy-facts-22_15141
Knowledge is power. Stay informed. Get the facts.
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Drug Policy Facts Podcast #21 Is Online!

This week: Congressional drug warriors have a love-fest on Capitol Hill with acting drug czar Michael Botticelli; research indicates that medical marijuana legalization may have a positive impact on lowering crime rates; the UN Human Rights Committee criticizes the US's human rights performance; and we look at a couple of good new books on drug policy.

 

Download/Listen/Subscribe from http://www.podcastgarden.com/episode/drug-policy-facts-21_14676

We're on Youtube! Drug Policy Facts Podcast #20 - March 25, 2014

Drug Policy Facts Podcast 20 Now Available - Part 2 of the #CND2014 Special

This week: Part 2 of our coverage of the UN's Commission on Narcotic Drugs annual meeting in Vienna, including the voices of Eliot Albers from INPUD, author Doug Fine, and actor/comedian Russell Brand.
Download, listen, and subscribe from http://www.podcastgarden.com/episode/drug-policy-facts-20_14177

Drug Policy Facts Podcast #19 Available For Download!

This week: Part 1 of our coverage of the 57th Session of the United Nations Commission on Narcotic Drugs meeting in Vienna, Austria. We hear from Mike Trace of the International Drug Policy Consortium; UN Deputy Secretary General Jan Eliasson; Guatemalan Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs Carlos Raul Morales Moscoco; and Diego Canepa, Vice Secretary of the Office of the President of Uruguay.
Download, listen, and subscribe from http://www.podcastgarden.com/episode/drug-policy-facts-19_13675

Drug Policy Facts Podcast #18 Is Online!

This week: The UN's Commission on Narcotic Drugs holds its annual high-level meeting in Vienna, and we have audio from one of the opening sessions; there's a new report on what Americans spend on illegal drugs; the drug czar's office releases its annual national drug control budget estimates; and Washington DC decriminalizes marijuana – if Congress will let them. It's the Drug Policy Facts Podcast for March 12, 2014!
Download, listen, and subscribe from http://www.podcastgarden.com/episode/drug-policy-facts-18_13325

The New Drug Policy Facts Podcast Is Online!

The UN's International Narcotics Control Board releases its annual assessment of the international drug war; the US State Department releases its annual assessment of the international drug war; and members of Congress grill a DEA agent to a crisp on capitol hill at another subcommittee hearing on federal marijuana policy - it's the Drug Policy Facts Podcast for March 4, 2014.

The URL to download, listen, and subscribe is http://www.podcastgarden.com/episode/drug-policy-facts-17_12785

Drug Policy Facts Podcast #16 Is Online!

Drug Policy Facts Podcast #16 is online!

This week: Russian drug policies drive record high rates of HIV and Hepatitis C related to injection drug use; a police chief proves the value of accurate factual information; and we get to kick Dick Nixon around a little bit more. Listen, download, and subscribe from here: http://www.podcastgarden.com/episode/drug-policy-facts-16_12152

Drug Policy Facts Podcast #15 Is Online!

The new Drug Policy Facts Podcast is online!

 

This week: Oregon moves closer to putting marijuana on the 2014 ballot; the monitoring the future survey looks at drug use among today's high school students; and members of Congress leading the efforts to end prohibition and reform U S drug policies. Download/listen/subscribe!

Drug Policy Facts Podcast #14 Is Online!

The new Drug War Facts podcast is online. This week's installment is #14 in the series.

This week: Preventing overdose deaths; Sweden begins to reluctantly embrace harm reduction; and Attorney General Eric Holder talks about criminal justice reform and the injustice of felony disenfranchisement.

Download, listen, and subscribe from http://www.podcastgarden.com/episode/drug-policy-facts-14_11043

Drug Policy Facts Podcast #13 Is Online!

Let nations rejoice, the new Drug Policy Facts Podcast is online!
This week features audio from a landmark hearing on Capitol Hill on federal marijuana policy, a report on the environmental impact of drug trafficking and transshipment, and a look at the lessons we can learn from the death of Philip Seymour Hoffman.
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Drug War Facts Podcast #12 Is Online!

The new Drug War Facts Podcast is online! This week we speculate about tonight's state of the union address, hear from US Attorney General Eric Holder about federal sentencing reform, learn how states are reducing their prison populations, and find out about sexual violence behind bars. Download, listen, and subscribe from:
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The RSS feed to subscribe is
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And the URL to listen to and download the new podcast, Ep #12, is
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Drug Policy Facts Podcast #11 Is Online!

The new Drug Policy Facts Podcast is online! Listen, download and subscribe from http://www.podcastgarden.com/episode/drug-policy-facts-11_9613
This week's show: Washington and Colorado reach the Super Bowl; President Obama admits marijuana is no more dangerous than alcohol; NIDA's drug facts week is Jan 27-Feb 2; and more Nixon White House tapes, this week discussing heroin and the creation of the first drug czar's office, the Special Action Office for Drug Abuse Prevention.
Knowledge is power. Get the facts.

Drug War Facts Newsletter Vol. 4, No. 1, Jan. 2014

What's New At Drug War Facts - Vol. 4, No. 1, January 2014

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Issue In Focus

The new Monitoring the Future Survey results for 2013 were released recently.
In discussing the new data in a video released on YouTube, Dr. Nora Volkow, the director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, said this: “If we compare the numbers that were, for example, in 2000 regular users, and now in 2013, we have seen increases in those numbers. But in 2000, at the 2000 level of 9 THC was at least half of the levels that we observe now, at least half. So that means that not just were there less kids taking the drug regularly, but even those that were taking it regularly were taking a much less potent drug.”

It almost sounded like she was asserting that THC levels have doubled but that's not what she said. She did definitely assert that in 2000, cannabis was much less potent.

The short version of this report is, she was wrong. This isn't just some political hack, or an uninformed blogger. She's the director of the government's National Institute on Drug Abuse, she's supposed to be the government's science person on drugs. That's not acceptable.

Let's look at what's known. These data are available through drugwarfacts.org, in the marijuana section, where you can find a table of average THC levels of seized samples of cannabis as reported by the University of Mississippi's Potency Monitoring Project.

These are the only data on this, they're the same data Nora Volkow has. The Project stopped testing domestic samples a few years ago, the last domestic cannabis data are from 2010. Samples of non-domestic cannabis – imports from Mexico, Jamaica, Canada, and so many other countries – continue to be tested, but only preliminary data for 2012 are currently available.

Average THC potencies are given for two grades of cannabis: low-end commercial grade – what they call simply “marijuana” - and high-end sinsemilla-type cannabis. The overall combined average they report includes a few samples of ditchweed, so we'll stick with specific data for “marijuana” and “sinsemilla”, and since 2010 is the last year with domestic data, we'll use it for comparison.

In 2000, non-domestic commercial grade marijuana averaged 5.10% THC. The non-domestic sinsemilla type averaged 12.87%. Domestic commercial grade marijuana averaged 3.96% THC, and domestic sinsemilla type averaged 12.72%.

In 2010, non-domestic commercial grade marijuana averaged 6.69% THC. Non-domestic sinsemilla type averaged 12.81% THC. Domestic commercial grade marijuana averaged 2.79% THC, and domestic sinsemilla type averaged 11.84%.

So only one category shows an increase in average potency from 2000 to 2010 is for non-domestic commercial grade cannabis – an increase of 31%, going from 5.1 to 6.69% THC. The others all show decreases, in fact the average THC of domestic commercial grade dropped by 29.5%.

There are fluctuations: In 2011, the average THC in non-domestic commercial marijuana was down to 5.6%, the average for non-domestic sinsemilla type was 13.47%. They stopped testing domestic samples in 2010, remember, and for what it's worth those numbers were much lower in 2009, when domestic commercial averaged 2.43% THC and domestic sinsemilla type averaged only 7.37%.

So, Nora Volkow's statement? Maybe not a flatout lie, but inaccurate and misleading at best. The point is, don't just trust authority. Always question, always check, and the fact-checker's best friend is Drug War Facts. Eventually, hopefully, we'll get complete potency data for 2012, and when that's available, you'll find it at drugwarfacts.org.

Help Spread the Word!

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More graphics will be available soon, including data tables from the pages of DWF!

Notable New Facts

(Drug Offenders in US Prisons 2012)
Federal: On Dec. 31, 2012, there were 196,574 sentenced prisoners under federal jurisdiction. Of these, 99,426 were serving time for drug offenses, 11,688 for violent offenses, 11,568 for property offenses, and 72,519 for "public order" offenses (of which 23,700 were sentenced for immigration offenses, 30,046 for weapons offenses, and 17,633 for "other").
State: On Dec. 31, 2011, there were 1,341,797 sentenced prisoners under state jurisdiction. Of these, 222,738 were serving time for drug offenses, of whom 55,013 were merely convicted for possession. There were also 717,861 serving time for violent offenses, 249,574 for property offenses, 142,230 for "public order" offenses (which include weapons, drunk driving, court offenses, commercialized vice, morals and decency offenses, liquor law violations, and other public-order offenses), and 9,392 for "other/unspecified".
Source: E. Ann Carson and Daniela Golinelli, "Prisoners in 2012: Trends in Admissions and Releases, 1991-2012" (Washington, DC: US Dept. of Justice Bureau of Justice Statistics, Dec. 2013), NCJ243920, Table 5, p. 3, and Appendix Table 10, p. 43.

(US Population Under Community Supervision Declining) "During 2012, the number of adults under community supervision declined for the fourth consecutive year. At yearend 2012, an estimated 4,781,300 adults were under community supervision, down 40,500 offenders from the beginning of the year (figure 1). About 1 in 50 adults in the United States was under community supervision at yearend 2012. The community supervision population includes adults on probation, parole, or any other post-prison supervision. (See BJS definition of probation and parole.)
"The decline in the total number of adults under community supervision is attributed to the drop in the probation population as probationers accounted for the majority (82%) of adults under community supervision. The decline of 38,300 offenders in the probation population (from an estimated 3,981,000 to 3,942,800) accounted for about 95% of the decline in the overall community supervision population. The parole population declined by about 500 offenders during 2012, falling from an estimated 851,700 to 851,200."
Source: Laura M. Maruschak and Thomas P. Bonczar, "Probation and Parole in the United States, 2012" (Washington, DC: US Dept. of Justice Bureau of Justice Statistics, December 2012), NCJ243826, p. 1.

"Any Illicit Drug. The index of any illicit drug use tends to be driven by marijuana, which is by far the most prevalent of the many illicitly used drugs. In 2013, the proportions of students indicating any use of an illicit drug in the prior 12 months are 15 percent, 32 percent, and 40 percent in grades 8, 10 and 12, respectively—higher than a year ago by 1.5, 1.6 and 0.6 percentage points for the same grades (only the change at 8th grade is statistically significant). For the three grades combined, the rate is up by 1.3 percentage points, also a statistically significant increase. The percentages indicating any use in their lifetime are 20 percent, 39 percent and 50 percent. In other words, half of America's high school seniors have tried an illicit drug by the time they graduate and four in 10 have used it in just the past year.
"But it should also be noted that fully half of today's seniors have not tried an illicit drug by the end of high school," said Lloyd Johnston, the principal investigator of the study.
Source: Johnston, L. D., O'Malley, P. M., Bachman, J. G., & Schulenberg, J. E. (December 18, 2013). "American teens more cautious about using synthetic drugs." University of Michigan News Service: Ann Arbor, MI, p. 2.

"Originally approved for use in the treatment of opioid dependence by the United States Food and Drug administration (FDA) in 1984, naltrexone is a competitive μ-opioid receptor antagonist with negligible agonist effects, blocking euphoric and physiological effects of opioid agonists.11,12 Naltrexone does not cause the development of dependence or tolerance over time, and dosing cessation does not result in withdrawal.13
"Orally dosed naltrexone is subject to first pass metabolism, where it is converted to active (6-β naltrexol) and inactive metabolites.14 ­First-pass metabolism of orally dosed naltrexone is high, evidenced by the peak dose of naltrexone and its ­metabolites 1 hour after oral dosing.15 Serum ­half-life for chronic oral administration is approximately 10 hours.15 The half-life, when compared to naloxone, another μ-opioid antagonist, is longer, and naltrexone is able to block the agonist effects of other opioids for 48 hours.16 Oral dosing is accomplished by either 50 mg daily dosing or three times weekly dosing with two 100 mg doses and one 150 mg dose."
Source: Kjome, Kimberly L. and Moeller, F. Gerard, "Long-Acting Injectable Naltrexone for the Management of Patients with Opioid Dependence," Substance Abuse: Research and Treatment 2011:5 1–9, doi: 10.4137/SART.S5452.

Notable New Sources

E. Ann Carson and Daniela Golinelli, "Prisoners in 2012: Trends in Admissions and Releases, 1991-2012" (Washington, DC: US Dept. of Justice Bureau of Justice Statistics, Dec. 2013), NCJ243920, Table 5, p. 3, and Appendix Table 10, p. 43.

Laura M. Maruschak and Thomas P. Bonczar, "Probation and Parole in the United States, 2012" (Washington, DC: US Dept. of Justice Bureau of Justice Statistics, December 2012), NCJ243826, p. 1.

Johnston, L. D., O'Malley, P. M., Bachman, J. G., & Schulenberg, J. E. (December 18, 2013). "American teens more cautious about using synthetic drugs." University of Michigan News Service: Ann Arbor, MI, p. 2.

Kjome, Kimberly L. and Moeller, F. Gerard, "Long-Acting Injectable Naltrexone for the Management of Patients with Opioid Dependence," Substance Abuse: Research and Treatment 2011:5 1–9, doi: 10.4137/SART.S5452.

Walmsley, Roy, "World Prison Population List (Tenth Edition)" (Kings College, London, England: International Centre for Prison Studies, 2013), p. 1.

Media

Check out the new Drug Policy Facts podcast! You can download and subscribe from
http://www.podcastgarden.com/podcast/drugwarfacts.

Drug Truth Network Radio segments:
Full half-hour news programs:
Century Of Lies, 12/15/13, White House drug policy conference http://www.drugtruth.net/cms/node/4647
3-minute news segments:
420 News, 12/1/13, Interviews with Ethan Nadelmann and Neill Franklin: http://www.drugtruth.net/cms/node/4627
420 News, 12/7/13, MDMA, Emergency Room Visits, and Young People: http://www.drugtruth.net/cms/node/4640
420 News, 12/27/13, New Monitoring the Future survey http://www.drugtruth.net/cms/node/4662
420 News, 12/30/13, Correcting NIDA Director Nora Volkow http://www.drugtruth.net/cms/node/4667

Doug McVay is also a regular blogger at CelebStoner dot com.

 

- See more at: http://www.drugwarfacts.org/cms/node/3520#sthash.BPHQSUNH.dpuf

Drug Policy Facts Podcast #9 Is Online!

The new Drug War/Drug Policy Facts podcast is dedicated to the 55,014 people now in state prison serving time for drug possession. This week: a new prisoner report; survey shows majority support for marijuana legalization; Playing Safe(ly) with Eddie Einbinder; harm reduction & drug user organizing with Ruth Kanatser; and talking weed with Mickey Martin. Download and subscribe from http://www.podcastgarden.com/episode/drug-policy-facts-9_8866