Alcohol & drug abuse

[waltky]

Granny says, "Dem poor babies...

Doctors see surge in newborns hooked on mothers' pain pills
13 Nov.`11 - Medical authorities are witnessing explosive growth in the number of newborn babies hooked on prescription painkillers, innocent victims of their mothers' addictions.

The trend reflects how deeply rooted abuse of powerful narcotics, such as OxyContin and Vicodin, has become. Prescription drug abuse is the nation's fastest-growing drug problem, classified as an epidemic by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. "I'm scared to death this will become the crack-baby epidemic," says Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi. Last month, she asked the state Legislature to establish a task force to compile data on drug-exposed babies and develop prevention strategies.

National statistics on the number of babies who go through withdrawal are not available, and states with the worst problems have only begun to collect data. Scattered reports show the number of addicted newborns has doubled, tripled or more over the past decade. In Florida, the epicenter of the illicit prescription drug trade, the number of babies with withdrawal syndrome soared from 354 in 2006 to 1,374 in 2010, according to the Florida Agency for Health Care Administration.

In response to the growing severity of the problem, the American Academy of Pediatrics convened a committee this year to revise its treatment guidelines for the babies. The new guidelines are set to be published next year. Mark Hudak, who served on the committee, says the problem is not confined to Florida. The number of drug-exposed babies "has escalated across the country," says Hudak, a professor of pediatrics and division chief for neonatology at the University of Florida College of Medicine in Jacksonville.

Examples:

•Maine Medical Center in Portland treated 121 babies dependent on prescription painkillers in 2010, up from 18 in 2001, says Geri Tamborelli, nursing director at the Family Birth Center and neonatal intensive care unit.

•East Tennessee Children's Hospital in Knoxville adopted a program to treat drug-exposed babies a year ago. Of the 579 babies admitted to the neonatal intensive care unit since then, 106 needed treatment for withdrawal from oxycodone and other painkillers — up from fewer than 40 in 2008. In September, painkiller-addicted babies filled nearly half the neonatal intensive care unit's 60 beds, the highest number ever. "It has just exploded," says John Buchheit, director of neonatology at East Tennessee Children's Hospital. "Narcotic use is just rampant in our society, and our area is particularly bad. The babies are caught in the middle."

•At St. Joseph's Hospital in Tampa, 40 babies born in the first nine months of this year needed special care because of painkiller exposure — a 33% increase over all of 2010, says Ken Solomon, director of neonatology at three hospitals in the Tampa-St. Petersburg area.

MORE

 

[editec]

Here in VacationLand, prescription pain meds are the NUMBER ONE abused drug.

Once one gets addicted to Oxi, it's a real bitch to kick.

Shit folks, its basically articial heroin.

 

[del]

heroin's cheaper

lots of people find that out in detox

 

[Old Rocks]

Does Rush know that?

 

[waltky]

Prescription drug abuse a growing problem...

US Sees Growing Problem With Prescription Drug Abuse
December 28, 2011 - U.S. health officials say drug abuse is a major cause of death in the United States and that prescription drugs are a big part of the problem. Painkillers and mood-altering medications have left many people addicted, with serious results.

At the Malibu Beach Recovery Center, outside Los Angeles, residents learn yoga and other coping skills to deal with anxiety, stress and chronic pain. Yoga teacher Shannon Scott was once hooked herself on the anti-anxiety pill Xanax and the painkiller Vicodin. “Vicodin was a stimulant for me. So I also used Vicodin as something to get my engine going and carry me through the days, and my Xanax would balance me out and bring me down and relax me. But one was to calm me down and the other was to give me the energy to move forward,” said Scott.

Drug poisoning

U.S. health officials say that poisoning was a major cause of death in 2008, and that nearly 9 of 10 poisonings were caused by drugs. The so-called opioid painkillers - morphine, hydrocodone and oxycodone - were involved in more than 40 percent of drug poisonings in 2008. The number has more than tripled in a decade. That's not news to Mary Ann Gunn, a retired drug court judge who now appears on a TV program called Last Shot With Judge Gunn, which shows the real-life effect of drugs on users and their families. “In 1999, the big problem was methamphetamine. And it was a cancer, if you will, throughout our country. And we have addressed that and are continuing to address it. And more and more over the years we began to see people being addicted to prescription drugs.” Specialized drug courts work with the addicts to get them into counseling and rehabilitation.

Powerful painkillers

Pharmacologist James Adams of the University of Southern California says the expanding list of powerful painkillers is snaring many patients, who are usually unaware of the dangers. “I'm not talking about heroine abusers on the streets of LA [Los Angeles]. I'm talking about somebody's grandmother in Fresno dying from oxycodone, dying from hydrocodone, dying from morphine,” said Adams. The recent U.S. government data shows the rate of fatal drug poisonings was highest among people 45 to 54 years old. At the Malibu Beach Recovery Center, the addicted get off drugs, but it's not easy. The regimen includes healthy food and counseling. Joan Borsten, who heads the center, said it's hard because the drugs change the body's chemistry. “In the case of pain pills, the body has stopped producing its natural defenses to pain, and they just have to have more and more and more and more, and finally there's nothing else to take,” said Adams.

Healthy regimen

He said that 90 million people have chronic pain, much of it from arthritis caused by obesity and aging. “And it's a real tough problem for a doctor because here you've got a patient with chronic pain, probably howling pain, reporting pain at 7 out of 10 or something like that, and these patients know exactly how to get what they want," said Adams. "And if that doctor doesn't give it to them, they just go to the next doctor.” He said the solution is using alternative ways to manage pain - losing weight, exercising and receiving physical therapy - and giving powerful drugs only to those who need them. Another solution: a registry of patients being used in California and many other states that lets doctors and pharmacists know what potentially dangerous drugs their patients already are taking.

Source

 

[High_Gravity]

I'm not surprised to hear this, presciption drugs are being abused more by young people than hard drugs like crack and heroin.

 

[random3434]

There is now a " trend" going on of parents getting their kids ADHD/ADD drugs and selling them to college students to make a buck. Some of these are:

Adderall and Adderall XR
Concerta
Dexedrine
Focalin and Focalin XR
Metadate CD and Metadate ER
Methylin
Ritalin, Ritalin LA


They have the opposite effect on adults then they do on children.

 

[Douger]

Never heard of it. Can you send samples ?

 

[waltky]

People droppin' like flies from prescription drug abuse...

US Death Every 19 Minutes From Overdose
Jan. 13, 2012 -- Prescription drug abuse is the fastest growing drug problem in the United States and results in one death every 19 minutes, federal health officials say.

Researchers at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found approximately 27,000 unintentional drug overdose deaths occurred in the United States in 2007. The increase in unintentional drug overdose death rates in recent years has been driven by increased use of a class of prescription drugs opioid analgesics, such as Vicodin or OxyContin. Since 2003, more overdose deaths have involved opioid analgesics than heroin and cocaine combined.

In addition, for every unintentional overdose death related to an opioid analgesic, nine people are admitted for substance abuse treatment, 35 visit emergency departments, 161 report drug abuse or dependence and 461 report non-medical uses of opioid analgesics, the researchers say. Overall, rates of opioid analgesic misuse and overdose death are highest among men ages 20-64, non-Hispanic whites, and poor and rural populations.

The report, published in the CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, said the two main populations in the United States at risk for prescription drug overdose are the approximately 9 million people who report long-term medical use of opioids and the roughly 5 million who report non-medical use -- use without a prescription or medical need -- in the past month, the report said.

Source

 

[waltky]

A pox on all houses...

Drug money damages world economy by $2 trillion annually
Friday 27th January, 2012 - Annual financial damage to the world economy from drug money equals $2 trillion, Russia's Federal Drug Control Service head Viktor Ivanov said.

"Narco-dollars form a market with a volume of over $500 billion annually, while negative consequences for the real economy exceed this amount two or three times over. The annual damage to the world economy amounts to $2 trillion," Ivanov said in his speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, late Thursday.

"This amount equals the levels of gross domestic product in such countries as France and the United Kingdom," he added quoting UN experts' information. Drug money has become a necessary part of the international monetary system and one of the sources of the financial crisis. The world's largest banks depend on "dirty" but liquid money from drug sales and indirectly encourage the further production of drugs.

As for drug trafficking from Afghanistan, Ivanov said that criminals receive $65 billion from Afghan drug sales per year which leads to $200 billion in annual damage to the world economy. "A key point to liquidate international drug production is to reform the current economy and turn to an economy without drug money with guarantees for clear liquid assets, in other words, to the economy of development," the drug service head also said.

Drug money damages world economy by $2 trillion annually

See also:

9 Executions In Monterrey...

9 Killed in Violence-Plagued Northern Mexican City
January 27, 2012 : Nine people were shot to death early Thursday in the center of Monterrey, the third-largest city in Mexico and the scene of rampant drug violence in recent years.

The bodies of eight men between ages 25 and 30 were found on a street corner after neighbors reported hearing gunfire, said Adrian de la Garza, the Nuevo Leon state attorney general. The body of a woman was found nearby. De la Garza said the crimes appeared to be linked by the type of weapon used, but provided no more details. He didn't say if the killings were drug related.

This northern industrial city has been plagued by fighting between the Gulf and Zetas cartels, former allies that split in early 2010. Elsewhere on Thursday, the Mexican army announced the arrest of a suspect in a 2008 bombing attempt aimed at a municipal police official in Mexico City. The army statement said Oscar Santoyo Rodriguez, alias "El Mosco," was captured in the southern state of Oaxaca last week.

Santoyo, an alleged member of the Beltran Leyva drug cartel, is accused of participating in a Feb. 15, 2008, bombing plot in the capital. The attack failed when the homemade bomb detonated prematurely, killing the man carrying it and injuring a woman who authorities said was also involved.

Source

 

[waltky]

Drug traffickers adapt to get around drug laws...

Drug dealers get creative in pursuit of oxycodone
29 Jan.`12 - Drug dealers are finding creative ways around new laws that crack down on "pill mills" dispensing powerful painkillers such as oxycodone.

In Florida, hundreds of people tried to open pharmacies after the state barred doctors from dispensing the narcotics directly from their clinics and forced patients to fill their prescriptions at pharmacies. Others moved their operations to Georgia, state police and federal agents say. "Traffickers adapt to situations," says Mark Trouville, special agent in charge of the Drug Enforcement Administration's field offices in Florida. "We knew once we put pressure on the pill mills, the wrong people would start opening pharmacies." Florida was the nation's epicenter of prescription-painkiller distribution until the state enacted laws last year aimed at pill mills — clinics where doctors perform cursory examinations on people with dubious injuries and dispense addictive painkillers.

Since then, the number of Florida doctors among the nation's top 100 oxycodone-purchasing physicians has fallen to 13 from 90 in 2010, DEA Special Agent David Melenkevitz says. Applications for non-chain pharmacies jumped about 80% in 2011 — to 381 — from a typical year before the crackdown, Trouville says. A pharmacy must register with the DEA and be licensed by the state to dispense controlled substances, which include many drugs that require a doctor's prescription. The DEA can deny a registration if an applicant has been convicted of a drug-related crime or agents find a connection to a pill mill or some other activity that poses a threat to public health and safety. At least 37 pharmacy applicants withdrew their applications in 2011, Trouville says. "They feel the squeeze and move on," he says.

Still, questionable pharmacies are selling thousands of oxycodone and hydrocodone pills to people recruited by drug dealers to get prescriptions from pain clinics. "They're not selling Band-Aids and aspirin," Trouville says. "There's nothing but an empty room with a bullet-proof window." Pharmacy applicants turned down in Florida often try their luck in Georgia, says Rick Allen, director of the Georgia Drugs and Narcotics Agency. Of new non-chain drugstore applications, about 95% have some connection to Florida, he says. "The people come completely out of left field without any pharmacy background and open a pharmacy in a sleazy strip mall right down the road from a pain clinic," Allen says. "You do a cursory background on them, and they're living in a doublewide in Pembroke Pines, Fla." The DEA is working with the state to inspect pharmacies, says Barbara Heath of the DEA's Atlanta field division. She expects problem pharmacies to emerge in North Carolina and Tennessee as they are pushed out of Georgia.

Source

 

[waltky]

Would imagine a family history of drug or alcohol abuse sets the genetic stage...

Brains may be wired for addiction
2 February 2012 - Abnormalities in the brain may make some people more likely to become drug addicts, according to scientists at the University of Cambridge.

They found the same differences in the brains of addicts and their non-addicted brothers and sisters. The study, published in the journal Science, suggested addiction is in part a "disorder of the brain". Other experts said the non-addicted siblings offered hope of new ways of teaching addicts "self-control". It has long been established that the brains of drug addicts have some differences to other people, explaining that finding has been more difficult. Experts were unsure whether drugs changed the wiring of the brain or if drug addicts' brains were wired differently in the first place. This study attempted to answer that by comparing the brains of 50 cocaine or crack addicts with the brain of their brother or sister, who had always been clean.

Both the addicts and the non-addict siblings had the same abnormalities in the region of the brain which controls behaviour, the fronto-striatal systems. The suggestion is that these brains may be "hard-wired" for addiction in the first place. Lead researcher Dr Karen Ersche said: "It has long been known that not everyone who takes drugs becomes addicted." She told the BBC: "It shows that drug addiction is not a choice of lifestyle, it is a disorder of the brain and we need to recognise this." However, the non-addicted siblings had a very different life despite sharing the same susceptibility. "These brothers and sisters who don't have addiction problems, what they can tell us is how they overcome these problems, how they manage self-control in their daily life," Dr Karen Ersche said.

Dr Paul Keedwell, a consultant psychiatrist at Cardiff University, said: "Addiction, like most psychiatric disorders, is the product of nature and nurture. "We need to follow up people over time to quantify the relative risk of nature versus nurture." It is possible that the similarities in the sibling's brains may not be down to genetics, but rather growing up in the same household. Research on the relationship between addiction and the structure of the brain is far from over. However, many specialists believe these findings open up new avenues for treatment. "If we could get a handle on what makes unaffected relatives of addicts so resilient we might be able to prevent a lot of addiction from taking hold," said Dr Keedwell.

The chief pharmacist for Derbyshire Mental Health Trust, David Branford, said the study, "implies that addiction does not produce noticeable changes to brain structure and function which means that there may be provision for looking at new treatment techniques for addiction". Prof Les Iversen, from the department of pharmacology at the University of Oxford, said: "These new findings reinforce the view that the propensity to addiction is dependent on inherited differences in brain circuitry, and offer the possibility of new ways of treating high-risk individuals to develop better 'self control'."

BBC News - Brains may be wired for addiction

 

[High_Gravity]

I abused 3 tall cans of Mickeys last night.

 

[waltky]

Most sop-heads don't care about the shape of the glass - just so long as ya fill it to the brim...

Beer-glass shape alters people's drinking speed - study
31 August 2012: The shape of your glass is probably the last thing on your mind when you are down the pub.

However, researchers at the University of Bristol believe the shape of beer glasses affects the speed people drink. Their study, published in the journal PLoS ONE, suggests people drink more quickly out of curved glasses than straight ones. They argue that the curvy glassware makes pacing yourself a much greater challenge. A group of 159 men and women were filmed drinking either soft drinks or beer as part of the study. The glasses all contained around half a pint of liquid, but some of the glasses were straight while others were very curved.

Slower pace

There was no difference in the drinking time for soft drinks. People drinking from both straight and curved glasses finished after around seven minutes. However, for the beer drinkers there was a large difference between the two groups. While it took around seven minutes for people drinking from a curved glass to polish off their half pint, it took 11 minutes for those drinking from a straight glass. The report said: "Drinking time is slowed by almost 60% when an alcoholic beverage is presented in a straight glass compared with a curved glass."

The researchers thought that curvy glasses made it harder to pace drinking because judging how much was in the glass became more difficult owing to its curved shape. The group of drinkers was shown a variety of pictures of partially-filled beer glasses and asked to say whether they were more or less than half full. The team said people were more likely to get the answer wrong when assessing the amount of liquid in curved glasses. The lead researcher Dr Angela Attwood told the BBC: "They are unable to judge how quickly they are drinking so cannot pace themselves." She suggested that people were not concerned about pacing themselves with soft drinks, which could explain why glass shape had no effect on them.

However, the study looked only at the time taken to finish one drink in a laboratory setting. So it is not certain what happens on an evening out if multiple drinks are consumed. She said altering the glasses used in pubs could "nudge" people to drink more healthily by "giving control back". The shape of a glass has already been shown to affect how much alcohol people pour. A study in 2005 showed people were more likely to pour extra alcohol into short, wide glasses than tall, narrow ones.

BBC News - Beer-glass shape alters people's drinking speed - study

 

[waltky]

Granny says dey learnin' from dey's daddies an' mommas to be the next comin' generation of sop-heads...

CDC: U.S. High School Kids Drink and Drive a Collective 2.4 Million Times Per Month--And That's An Improvement
October 19, 2012 - The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says that over the course of 30 days, there are 2.4 million occasions in the United States when a high school student drinks and drives.

Nonetheless, the CDC determined that drinking and driving among high school students has actually significantly declined over the past two decades. "In 2011, the overall prevalence of drinking and driving was 10.3%, representing approximately 950,000 high school students aged 16–19 years in the United States and approximately 2.4 million episodes of drinking and driving during the past 30 days," says a report in the Oct. 5 edition of the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.

Things were worse in 1991, said the CDC. "During 1991–2011, the national prevalence of self-reported drinking and driving among high school students aged ≥16 years declined by 54%, from 22.3% to 10.3%," said the MMWR.

The CDC said that auto accidents remained the top cause of death for Americans age 16 to 19, and that about 20 percent of the teen drivers involved in fatal accidents had alcohol in their blood. "Motor vehicle crashes are the leading cause of death among teens aged 16&#8211;19 years in the United States," said the MMWR. "In 2010, a total of 2,211 passenger vehicle occupants aged 16&#8211;19 years died in crashes on public roadways; 1,280 (58%) were drivers." "Although every state prohibits persons aged <21 years from driving with any measurable amount of blood alcohol, in 2010, one in five drivers aged 16&#8211;19 years involved in fatal crashes had a positive (>0.00%) blood alcohol concentration (BAC)," said the MMWR.

The CDC's data covered teen drinking and driving in 41 states. Among those states, North Dakota had the highest prevalence of teenage drinking and driving (14.5 percent) and Wyoming had the second highest prevalence (14.3 percent). Utah, which borders on Wyoming, had the lowest prevalence (4.6 percent).

Source

See also:

Heroin killed Garrett Reid, son of Eagles' coach
October 19, 2012 | SOMEONE SOLD Garrett Reid heroin in the days, hours or even minutes before he injected a fatal dose, and authorities are hoping they can figure out who it was.

Toxicology results released Thursday determined that it was heroin that ended Reid's long, public battle with addiction in the early-morning hours of Aug. 5 during Philadelphia Eagles training camp. Police found Reid, 29, dead in his room at Lehigh University, in Bethlehem, a defibrillator still attached to his chest. Thursday's news didn't come as a surprise to many people, including his father, longtime Eagles coach Andy Reid, who alluded to his son's addiction after his death at training camp. "These results sadly confirmed what we had expected all along," the Reid family said in a statement Thursday.

But Northampton County District Attorney John Morganelli said that his office is still investigating the circumstances surrounding Reid's accidental overdose, including where he got the heroin and where he obtained so much drug paraphernalia. Police discovered 47 syringes and 64 needles in a gym bag along with 19 vials of an unknown liquid, he said. "The investigation from this point forward is focused on trying to find the identity of any individuals who may have facilitated Mr. Reid by delivering illegal drugs or drug paraphernalia to him either here in Northampton County or in Philadelphia," Morganelli said at an afternoon press conference in Easton.

Morganelli said that Philadelphia District Attorney Seth Williams pledged his support earlier in the week if the investigation led back to the city. Officials in Montgomery County, where Andy Reid lives, said they have not been contacted by Northampton County. If the person who sold the heroin is caught, he or she could be charged with delivery of illegal drugs that led to a death, Morganelli said. Two empty wax-paper packets typically used to package heroin were found in the room, but investigators said that they were not stamped with labels, which could have tied them to specific drug operations.

Reid's cellphone was analyzed for data, Morganelli said, but hasn't yielded any relevant information. His office has obtained a court order to retrieve any incoming or outgoing calls and text messages that Reid received. "I'm confident that we will be able to at least identify any individuals who may have had texting done with Mr. Reid, if he had any, or phone calls," Morganelli added.

Source

 

[waltky]

A big problem that has gotten much worse quickly...

Drug overdose deaths up for 11th consecutive year
Feb 19,`13 -- Drug overdose deaths rose for the 11th straight year, federal data show, and most of them were accidents involving addictive painkillers despite growing attention to risks from these medicines.

"The big picture is that this is a big problem that has gotten much worse quickly," said Dr. Thomas Frieden, head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which gathered and analyzed the data. In 2010, the CDC reported, there were 38,329 drug overdose deaths nationwide. Medicines, mostly prescription drugs, were involved in nearly 60 percent of overdose deaths that year, overshadowing deaths from illicit narcotics. The report appears in Tuesday's Journal of the American Medical Association.

It details which drugs were at play in most of the fatalities. As in previous recent years, opioid drugs - which include OxyContin and Vicodin - were the biggest problem, contributing to 3 out of 4 medication overdose deaths. Frieden said many doctors and patients don't realize how addictive these drugs can be, and that they're too often prescribed for pain that can be managed with less risky drugs. They're useful for cancer, "but if you've got terrible back pain or terrible migraines," using these addictive drugs can be dangerous, he said.

Medication-related deaths accounted for 22,134 of the drug overdose deaths in 2010. Anti-anxiety drugs including Valium were among common causes of medication-related deaths, involved in almost 30 percent of them. Among the medication-related deaths, 17 percent were suicides. The report's data came from death certificates, which aren't always clear on whether a death was a suicide or a tragic attempt at getting high. But it does seem like most serious painkiller overdoses were accidental, said Dr. Rich Zane, chair of emergency medicine at the University of Colorado School of Medicine.

The study's findings are no surprise, he added. "The results are consistent with what we experience" in ERs, he said, adding that the statistics no doubt have gotten worse since 2010. Some experts believe these deaths will level off. "Right now, there's a general belief that because these are pharmaceutical drugs, they're safer than street drugs like heroin," said Don Des Jarlais, director of the chemical dependency institute at New York City's Beth Israel Medical Center. "But at some point, people using these drugs are going to become more aware of the dangers," he said.

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[waltky]

Americans Still Drink Too Much...

Study says too many Americans still drink too much
February 24, 2013
On any given day in the United States, 18 percent of men and 11 percent of women drink more alcohol than federal guidelines recommend, according to a study that also found that 8 percent of men and 3 percent of women are full-fledged "heavy drinkers."

That means the great majority of Americans stay within the advised limit of two drinks a day for men and one for women, according to the study that appeared in the Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics. "And in fact, most adults don't drink at all on any given day," said lead author Patricia Guenther, a nutritionist at the U.S. Department of Agriculture's (USDA) Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion. "But the fact remains that it is a significant public health problem that many people do drink to excess." Guenther said that members of the committee that drafted the current USDA guidelines on alcohol consumption wanted to know how many adults exceeded the limits. She and her colleagues collected data from a nationally representative survey on health and nutrition, which included about 5,400 adults over age 21. Among other things, each was asked how much alcohol they drank the previous day.

The researchers found that 64 percent of men and 79 percent of women said they drank no alcohol at all that day, and another 18 percent of men and 10 percent of women drank within the recommended amounts. Nine percent of men said they had three to four drinks the day before and 8 percent of women said they drank two to three alcoholic beverages, the researchers said. The heaviest drinkers of all were the 8 percent of men who had five or more drinks, and 3 percent of women who had four or more. "Overall the study confirms that rates of unhealthy alcohol use in the U.S. are significant," said Jennifer Mertens, a research medical scientist at Kaiser Permanente Division of Research in Oakland, California, who was not part of the study.

Regularly drinking more than recommended levels is "linked to increased alcohol-related problems," Mertens wrote in an email to Reuters Health. "Binge drinking (more than four drinks on any one day for men and more than three on any one day for women and older adults) even one time can increase the risk of injury from falls, motor vehicle accidents and other accidents," she added. Among men, the 31-to-30-year-old age group had the most heavy drinkers, at 22 percent. Ammonal women, the heaviest drinkers - 12 percent - were between 51 and 70 years old.

Guenther said that's important to note because it highlights that heavy drinking is not just part of life among the college set. "People need to be aware that there are people of all ages who drink to excess," she told Reuters Health, adding that the new study is also important because it may help people recognize whether they themselves are drinking more than recommended. "There are people who don't realize that they are drinking more than what's beneficial to their health," she said.

Source

 

[whitehall]

Most of the Russian kids put up for adoption were victims of fetal alcohol syndrome. Lucky for us Putin decided to stop shipping them to the US and keep them all to be future KGB members.

 

[waltky]

Granny says the gubmint's right hand don't always know what the left hand is doin'...

Tougher drunken driving threshold recommended
May 14,`13 WASHINGTON (AP) -- States should cut their threshold for drunken driving by nearly half- from .08 blood alcohol level to .05-matching a standard that has substantially reduced highway deaths in other countries, a federal safety board recommended Tuesday. That's about one drink for a woman weighing less than 120 pounds, two for a 160-pound man.

More than 100 countries have adopted the .05 alcohol content standard or lower, according to a report by the staff of the National Transportation Safety Board. In Europe, the share of traffic deaths attributable to drunken driving was reduced by more than half within 10 years after the standard was dropped, the report said. NTSB officials said it wasn't their intention to prevent drivers from having a glass of wine with dinner, but they acknowledged that under a threshold as low as .05 the safest thing for people who have only one or two drinks is not to drive at all. A drink is defined as 12 ounces of beer, 4 ounces of wine, or 1 ounce of 80-proof alcohol in most studies.

Alcohol concentration levels as low as .01 have been associated with driving-related performance impairment, and levels as low as .05 have been associated with significantly increased risk of fatal crashes, the board said. New approaches are needed to combat drunken driving, which claims the lives of about a third of the more than 30,000 people killed each year on U.S highways - a level of carnage that that has remained stubbornly consistent for the past decade and a half, the board said. "Our goal is to get to zero deaths because each alcohol-impaired death is preventable," NTSB Chairman Deborah Hersman said. "Alcohol-impaired deaths are not accidents, they are crimes. They can and should be prevented. The tools exist. What is needed is the will."

An alcohol concentration threshold of .05 is likely to meet strong resistance from states, said Jonathan Adkins, an official with the Governors Highway Safety Association, which represents state highway safety offices. "It was very difficult to get .08 in most states so lowering it again won't be popular," Adkins said. "The focus in the states is on high (blood alcohol content) offenders as well as repeat offenders. We expect industry will also be very vocal about keeping the limit at .08."

Even safety groups like Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) and AAA declined Tuesday to endorse NTSB's call for a .05 threshold. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which sets national safety policy, stopped also short of endorsing the board's recommendation. "NHTSA is always interested in reviewing new approaches that could reduce the number of drunk drivers on the road, and will work with any state that chooses to implement a .05 BAC law to gather further information on that approach," the safety administration said in a statement.

MORE

See also:

Alcohol-related charge against Sinclair is dropped
May 14, 2013 - Prosecutors have agreed to drop an alcohol-related charge against a U.S. Army general accused of sexual misconduct.

The alcohol possession charge against Brig. Gen. Jeffrey Sinclair was dropped during a hearing before a military judge on Tuesday. Sinclair and other staff had received bottles of scotch as gifts for Thanksgiving, and the charge stemmed from the unopened bottle of liquor found in his private quarters.

Defense attorneys also are trying to have a charge of pornography possession dismissed. They say others had access to the computer where the pornography was found, and that the charge violates Sinclair's First Amendment rights.

A court martial for Sinclair is scheduled to begin June 25 on charges that include forcible sodomy, indecent acts, violating orders and adultery. The married father of two faces life in prison. He has thus far deferred entering a plea.

Source

 

[Kooshdakhaa]

Yeah, it pissed me off, I had to go to the ER a couple of months ago for severe abdominal pain. Normally, I refuse to take pain pills. For example, I had a tooth pulled about a week before that and never took a pain pill. Had Advil standing by, but never even bothered with that. I don't like the possible side effects of any of that crap.

Anyway, at the ER I'm in enough pain to take pain meds. In fact, I'm asking for something. I think they got the idea I was just trying to get pain pills. It irritated me, and I told them so. Showed the doctor my prescription for pain meds from the dentist that I hadn't even bothered to fill. They ended up giving me intravenous morphine at the ER and gave me a prescription for 10 pain pills. I still have four of them left. I took six because I needed to. When the pain was gone, I stopped taking them.

My point is, there is so much abuse that now people who really NEED pain pills are suspect. I told the doctor, don't blame me for all the junkies out there. I don't even drink anymore and quit smoking 11 years ago. No way I want to put a bunch of drugs into my system unless I absolutely have to.

It was some bad pain. They thought it was my gallbladder, but an ultrasound did not confirm that. So I'm undiagnosed. Went to a follow-up doctor who wanted to do a cat scan which I refused because of the radiation. If I have another attack, I'll get a cat scan, but otherwise no way, next thing I know I'll have cancer from the radiation.

You have to watch out for those doctors, sometimes they'll just make your situation worse. : (