Colombia’s capital banks on marijuana cure for hard drug addicts

Colombia’s capital banks on marijuana cure for hard drug addicts

BY JIM WYSS

JWYSS@MIAMIHERALD.COM

BOGOTA, Colombia -- Marijuana has long been accused of being a gateway to deadlier vices. But could cannabis be a swinging door that might also lead people away from hard drugs? That’s what this capital city is trying to find out.

In coming weeks, Bogotá is embarking on a controversial public health project where it will begin supplying marijuana to 300 addicts ofbazuco — a cheap cocaine derivative that generates crack-like highs and is as addictive as heroin.

Bogota has 7,500 bazuco users among its 9,500 homeless population, said Ruben Dario Ramirez, director of the Center for the Study and Analysis of Coexistence and Security, which is spearheading the project.

Addicts are often driven to panhandling and crime to support their habit, turning pockets of this thriving city into bazuco wastelands where junkies huddle to smoke the drug. In the last three years, 277 homeless people have been murdered, he said.

For the most desperate users, the cannabis cure may be the only way out.

“People accuse us of turning bazuco addicts into marijuana addicts but that’s an urban myth,” he said. “This program is about reducing personal harm and the risks to society.”

Authorities believe that by supplying addicts with quality-controlled medical marijuana with a high THC content (the mind-altering component of marijuana) and that is specifically selected to relieve the anxiety that comes with kicking bazuco, they might be able to rescue some of them.

The idea is controversial. Critics have accused Ramirez and his colleagues of smoking their own medicine and say the project risks making city government an enabler.

“This plan is completely absurd,” said Augusto Pérez, the director of Nuevos Rumbos, a Colombian think-tank that researches drugs and addiction. “It’s as if they didn’t know that everyone that smokes bazucoalready smokes marijuana. By giving them marijuana, all they will be doing is saving the (addicts) money so they can buy more bazuco.”

Bazuco is made from the residue left over after processing cocaine and it’s often mixed with kerosene and sulfuric acid. Smoked, it provides a powerful high that’s whiplash brief. Pérez said the only thing harder to kick might be heroin. And abandoning the vice usually requires interning the addict in a treatment facility and providing intensive therapy.

“I give this program zero probabilities of working,” he said.

But advocates say the traditional medical community is stuck in its thinking.

Julián Andrés Quintero, the head of Acción Técnica Social, a non-profit that is working with the district on the initiative, said most medical professionals think of drug cessation as the only answer.

“This project is not aimed at getting people to quit using,” he said. “This is about reducing risks and mitigating the damage. We want people to quit a substance that is very, very damaging and transition to something less dangerous and which will allow them to function in society.”

Marijuana has already been used as a hard-drug alternative in Canada, Brazil and Jamaica, he said. A 2002 ethnographic study of Jamaican crack users by the dean of the Iowa College of Nursing, for example, found that of 14 women who gave up the drug, 13 attributed their success to using marijuana.

And while marijuana has been getting most of the attention in Bogotá’s drug initiative, it’s just part of the equation. Addicts will also be receiving counseling, job training, emergency shelter and other services that are already part of the city’s social safety net.

Colombia isn’t known for having liberal views on drugs. The world’s top cocaine producer, the nation has, with U.S. backing, been engaged in one of the most aggressive, bloody and expensive drug wars in the hemisphere.

But domestically, its laws can seem a bit more like Amsterdam. While smoking and selling weed are illegal, Colombians are allowed to carry small amounts of cocaine and marijuana — or what’s called a “personal dose” — and are also allowed to grow up to 20 marijuana plants for personal consumption.

There are also laws that allow marijuana and other drugs to be prescribed by doctors.

While the mechanics of growing and distributing the medical marijuana for the city’s project haven’t all been worked out, Ramirez said one idea is to create a type of match-making service, where “personal dose” home-growers provide portions of their harvest to help bazuco addicts. But the city cannot legally hand out marijuana.

Camilo Borrero is one of the driving forces behind the program and perhaps its best advertisement. Now 40, Borrero said he grew up in a family full of addicts. By the age of five, he’d had his first drink, by seven he’d smoked pot, and by 12 he was using cocaine regularly. He managed to clean up for a few years until he accidentally smoked bazuco believing it was marijuana. Within two years, he went from being a university student with his own business to living on the streets and wandering the city looking for his next fix.

In 1999, he hit bottom and decided to kick the habit. He said he cycled through almost 20 drug-treatment programs, clinics and psychiatrists but never managed to give up bazuco for more than three months. Desperate for a solution, he recalled that in his younger years he’d kicked cocaine by smoking pot. He tried the therapy again and it worked, he said. He’s been off bazuco for three and a half years, and he gives credit to his carefully regimented marijuana consumption.

“When I cured myself, I said ‘I have to share this with everyone,’” he said. “My life began three and a half years ago.”

Borrero’s company, Cannamedic, grows medical-quality marijuana to make pomades and oils for arthritis, among other products. Cannamedic will also be one of the cannabis growers for the city’s program.

Quintero, with the Acción Técnica non-profit, said the first phase of the project needs to be successful to silence the critics. He has a tattoo running down his right arm that reads: “Nice people take drugs.” It’s his answer to those who criticize the initiative on moral and ethical grounds.

“For us,” he said, “there’s nothing more ethical than offering someone a solution who has never been able to find one before.”

Read more here.

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/05/07/v-fullstory/3385818/colombias-capital-banks-on-marijuana.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/05/07/v-fullstory/3385818/colombias-capital-banks-on-marijuana.html#storylink=cpy

Five myths about legalizing marijuana

By Doug Fine

Doug Fine is the author of “Too High to Fail: Cannabis and the New Green Economic Revolution,” in which he followed one legal medicinal cannabis plant from farm to patient.

With 16 states having decriminalized or legalized cannabis for non-medical use and eight more heading toward some kind of legalization, federal prohibition’s days seem numbered. You might wonder what America will look like when marijuana is in the corner store and at the farmers market. In three years spent researching that question, I found some ideas about the plant that just don’t hold up.

1. If pot is legal, more people will use it.

As drug policy undergoes big changes, I’ve been watching rates of youth cannabis use with interest. As it is for most fathers, the well-being of my family is the most important thing in my life. Whether you like the plant or not, as with alcohol, only adults should be allowed to partake of intoxicating substances. But youth cannabis use is near its highest level ever in the United States. When I spoke at a California high school recently and asked, “Who thinks cannabis is easier to obtain than alcohol?,” nearly every hand shot up.

In Portugal, by contrast, youth rates fellfrom 2002 to 2006, after all drugs were legalized there in 2001. Similarly, a 2011 Brown University-led study of middle and high school students in Rhode Island found no increases in adolescent use after the state legalized medical marijuana in 2006.

As for adult use, the numbers are mixed. A 2011 University of California at Berkeley study, for example, showed a slight increase in adult use with de facto legalization in the Netherlands (though the rate was still lower than in the United States). Yet that study and one in 2009 found Dutch rates to be slightly lower than the European average. When the United States’ 40-year-long war on marijuana ends, the country is not going to turn into a Cheech and Chong movie. It is, however, going to see the transfer of as much as 50 percent of cartel profits to the taxable economy.

2. Law enforcement officials oppose legalization.

It is true that many law enforcement lobby groups don’t want to end America’s most expensive war (which has cost $1 trillion and counting), but that’s because they’re the reason it’s so expensive. In 2010, two-thirdsof federal spending on the drug war, $10 billion, went toward law enforcement and interdiction.

But law enforcement rank and file know the truth about the drug war’s profligate and ineffective spending, says former Los Angeles deputy police chief Stephen Downing, one of 5,000 public safety professionals who make up the group Law Enforcement Against Prohibition. “Most law enforcers find it difficult not to recognize the many harms caused by our current drug laws,” he wrote to me in an e-mail. Those harms include, according to a new ACLU report, marijuana-possession arrests that are skewed heavily toward minorities.

Since marijuana prohibition drives the drug war, these huge costs would end when federal cannabis law changes. Sheriff Tom Allman in Mendocino County, Calif., helpedpermit, inspect and protect local cannabis farmers in 2010 and 2011. When I asked him why, he said: “This county has problems: domestic violence, meth, poverty. Marijuana isn’t even in the top 10. I want it off the front pages so I can deal with the real issues.”

3. Getting high would be the top revenue generator for the cannabis plant.

I called both of my U.S. senators’ offices to support inserting a provision into this year’s farm bill to legalize hemp for domestic cultivation. Based on my research on industrial cannabis, commonly called hemp, I’m staggered by the potential of this plant, which is not the variety you smoke.

In Canada, where 90 percent of the crop is bought by U.S. consumers, the government researches the best varieties for its hemp farmers, rather than refusing to issue them permits, as the United States tends to do. In a research facility in Manitoba, I saw a tractor whose body was made entirely of hemp fiber and binding. BMW and Dodgeuse hemp fibers in their door panels, and homes whose insulation and wall paneling are made partially of hemp represent a fast-growing trend in the European construction industry.

Jack Noel, who co-authored a 2012 industrial hemp task force report for the New Mexico Department of Agriculture, says that “within 10 years of the end of the war on drugs, we’ll see a $50 billion domestic hemp industry.” That’s bigger than the $40 billion some economists predict smoked cannabis would bring in.

Foods such as cereal and salad dressing are the biggest U.S. markets for hemp today, but industrial cannabis has the brightest future in the energy sector, where a Kentucky utility is planning to grow hemp for biomass energy.

4. Big Tobacco and Big Alcohol would control the legal cannabis industry.

In 1978, the Carter administration changed alcohol regulations to allow for microbreweries. Today the craft-beer market is worth $10.2 billion annually. The top-shelf cannabis farmers in California’s Emerald Triangle realize this potential. “We’re creating an international brand, like champagne and Parmigiano cheese,” says Tomas Balogh, co-founder of the Emerald Growers Association in Humboldt, Calif. Get ready for the bud and breakfast.

When America’s 100 million cannabis aficionados (17 million regular partakers) are freed from dealers, some are going to pick up a six-pack of joints at the corner store before heading to a barbecue, and others are going to seek out organically grown heirloom strains for their vegetable dip.

As Balogh puts it: “When people ask me if the small farmer or the big corporation will benefit from the end of prohibition, I say, ‘Both.’ The cannabis industry is already decentralized and farmer-owned. It’s up to consumers to keep it that way.” So Big Alcohol might control the corner store, but not the fine-wine shop or the farmers’ market.

5. In the heartland, legalization is a political nonstarter.

President Obama, in an interview last December, for the first time took seriously a question about the legalization of cannabis. He said that he didn’t yet support it but that he had “bigger fish to fry” than harassing Colorado and Washington.

In Colorado in 2012, 40 percent of Republican voters chose to legalize cannabis, and a greater share of Coloradans voted for legalization than voted for Obama.

In Arizona, a pretty conservative and silver state, 56 percent of those in a poll last month supported regulating cannabis for personal use. Maybe fiscal conservatives know about the $35 billion in annual nationwide tax savings that ending prohibition would bring. In Illinois, 63 percent of voters support medicinal marijuana, and they’re likely to get it. Even 60 percent of Kentuckians favor medical cannabis.

I’m not surprised. I live in a conservative valley in New Mexico. Yet as a woman in line at the post office recently told me: “It’s pills that killed my cousin. Fightin’ pot just keeps those dang cartels in business.”

Complete article, click here.

Respondendo aos Mitos II – Programa Roda Viva

Respondendo aos Mitos II – Programa Roda Viva

A Rede Pense Livre promove um debate amplo e qualificado sobre políticas de drogas. Fomos além e respondemos às principais afirmações e questões debatidas durante o programa do Roda Viva com o dr. Ronaldo Laranjeira, exibido pela TV Cultura no dia 20/05/20131 e preparamos o documento Respondendo aos Mitos II – Programa Roda Viva.

Este documento é baseado em pesquisas científicas nacionais e internacionais, relatórios de organizações internacionais e em experiências de outros países. As fontes e informações contidas neste documento são reconhecidas e amplamente utilizadas nos principais fóruns internacionais sobre política de drogas.

Para baixar o documento clique aqui.

Congressmen Help Launch Drug War Exit Strategy Guide

Bill Piper

Drug Policy Alliance, Director of National Affairs

On Thursday, the Drug Policy Alliance will release An Exit Strategy for the Failed War on Drugs. This comprehensive report contains 75 broad and incremental recommendations for legislative reforms related to civil rights, deficit reduction, law enforcement, foreign policy, sentencing and re-entry, effective drug treatment, public health, and drug prevention education. The guide will be released at a forum on the Hill cosponsored by Rep. Beto O'Rourke (D-TX) and Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), both of whom fought for major drug policy reform at the local level before running for Congress and winning. This new generation of legislators has demonstrated that support for drug policy reform is no detriment to electoral success -- and in fact that it can be a key asset.

As a New York Assemblyman, Jeffries was a leader in opposing New York City's racially discriminatory marijuana arrest practices. He was the sponsor of legislation that would have ended arrests for possession of small amounts of marijuana for personal use. As an El Paso councilmember O'Rourke sponsored a resolution calling on the federal government to rethink the war on drugs. The resolution was unanimously supported by his colleagues on the council but vetoed by the mayor. Then-U.S.-Representative Silvestre Reyes threatened to withhold federal funding if the city adopted the resolution. O'Rourke subsequently ran against Reyes, an eight-term incumbent, and won his Congressional seat.

The Drug Policy Alliance's federal legislative guide does what the Obama administration has failed to do -- it lays out a roadmap for treating drug use as a health issue instead of a criminal justice issue. Upon taking office, President Obama announced that he would shift the federal government's drug control resources from a criminalization-centered approach to one based on public health. Drug Czar Gil Kerlikowske even announced that he would end the war on drugs: "Regardless of how you try to explain to people it's a 'war on drugs' or a 'war on a product,' people see a war as a war on them," he said. "We're not at war with people in this country."

This rhetoric, however, does not match the "lock 'em up" reality experienced in communities across the country, where the criminal justice system remains the primary means of addressing drugs. The Obama administration's budget continues to emphasize enforcement, prosecution and incarceration at home -- and interdiction, eradication and military escalation abroad. Even what the government does spend on treatment and prevention is overstated, as many of its programs are wasteful and counterproductive.

In 2011, the last year for which data are available, the U.S. arrested more than 1.5 million people for a drug law violation - and more than 80% of those arrests were for minor possession, not sales or manufacturing. On any given night, 500,000 people go to sleep behind bars in the U.S. for nothing more than a drug law violation.

Among the recommendations included in the Exit Strategy:

• Allow states to reform their drug policies without federal interference.
• Shift the focus of the federal drug budget from failed supply-side programs to cost-effective demand and harm reduction strategies.
• Repeal federal mandatory minimum sentencing.
• Repeal the federal syringe funding ban.
• Eliminate federal possession and paraphernalia laws.
• Declare a moratorium on creating new drug crimes, increasing existing drug sentences, or criminalizing more drugs.
• Eliminate or cut drug war subsidies to the states to reduce incarceration and civil rights abuses.
• Ensure the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act's essential health benefit rule guarantees access to evidence-based drug treatment options, such as methadone and buprenorphine, in the plans offered in the individual and small group markets, both inside and outside the ACA Exchanges.
• Establish federal funding for state, county, tribal and non-profit recipients who provide overdose prevention training and resources to communities.
• Encourage and allow for the establishment of supervised injection facilities, which are proven internationally to save lives, save money and increase participation in drug treatment without increasing drug use.

It's time we developed a comprehensive strategy for dealing with substance misuse in the 21^stcentury by focusing on what works and what doesn't. There are no perfect solutions to drug misuse and addiction, but it's time we put all options on the table.

Complete article, click here.

Provar álcool antes dos 12 anos eleva em 60% risco de abuso na adolescência

Estudo da Unifesp foi feito com base em entrevistas com 17 mil adolescentes do ensino médio de 789 escolas públicas e privadas do Brasil.

Davi Lira - O Estado de S.Paulo

João tinha 11 anos quando experimentou vinho oferecido pelos pais, em 2008. Aos 15, foi a vez do primeiro pileque, causado pelo consumo excessivo de vodka com energético numa festa com amigos. "Agora, quando chego meio bêbado em casa minha mãe sabe que eu bebi, mas finge que não sabe", diz o jovem de 16 anos, aluno do 2.º ano do ensino médio de um colégio tradicional de São Paulo. Hoje, ele diz que consome frequentemente álcool com os colegas.

Lucas Barros/Estadão

Antonio experimentou vinho com o tio aos 13 anos: 'Bebia golinhos, não passava disso'

A primeira experiência do estudante com vinho pode explicar e até justificar o seu hábito de consumo atual. É o que revela uma pesquisa inédita da Universidade Federal de São Paulo (Unifesp) feita com base em entrevistas realizadas com 17 mil adolescentes do ensino médio de 789 escolas públicas e privadas de todo o País.

O estudo, feito pelo Centro Brasileiro de Informações sobre Drogas Psicotrópicas (Cebrid) da Unifesp, constatou que um simples gole ou experimentação de qualquer bebida alcoólica feita por crianças menores de 12 anos aumenta em 60% as chances de elas, quando adolescentes, consumirem álcool abusivamente.

"O contato que a criança tem com bebidas na infância pode não gerar apenas um adolescente que ocasionalmente fica de porre. Ela pode acabar adquirindo o padrão abusivo de consumo de álcool", afirma Zila Sanchez, professora do Departamento de Medicina Preventiva da Unifesp, uma das pesquisadoras responsáveis pelo estudo.

A pesquisa também constatou que, dentre os estudantes que afirmaram ter consumido algum tipo de bebida alcoólica na vida (82% dos entrevistados), 11% experimentaram antes dos 12 anos.

Para a nutricionista Camila Leonel, o consumo precoce tem um impacto claro na saúde do jovem. "O álcool causa modificações neuroquímicas, com prejuízos na memória, aprendizado e controle dos impulsos. O sistema nervoso dos menores ainda está em desenvolvimento", afirma.

E para evitar o contato inicial com a bebida não basta apenas que os pais proíbam o acesso ao álcool, segundo Ilana Pinsky, vice-presidente da Associação Brasileira de Estudo de Álcool e Drogas (Abead). "Se os pais têm o hábito de beber todos os dias para relaxar, por exemplo, não adianta conversar muito sobre como beber de forma responsável", diz ela.

Ilana critica a "enorme" quantidade de bebidas que há dentro dos lares de muitos brasileiros. "Os pais têm de ter cuidado com os bares que ficam dentro das próprias casas, para que as crianças não tenham acesso a eles", diz.

Na casa da empresária Cláudia Silva, que tem uma filha menor de idade, não há esse risco. "Aqui em casa é zero álcool. Nada disso de dar só um golinho para experimentar", diz a mãe.

Propaganda. Mesmo com o controle dos pais, há outros fatores que podem influenciar a entrada precoce do álcool na vida dos menores. "A propaganda de cerveja na televisão, mesmo não sendo direcionada à criança, influencia o consumo. Ela acaba se associando com atividades esportivas, coisas que o adolescente gosta", afirma Edgard Rebouças, coordenador do Observatório da Mídia da Universidade Federal do Espírito Santo (Ufes) e conselheiro do Instituto Alana.

Segundo a Ambev, uma das maiores empresas de bebidas do mundo, o consumo de bebidas por menores é algo que a marca quer evitar. "Esse lucro não nos interessa. Fazemos de tudo para que essa relação do menor com a bebida não aconteça", diz Ricardo Rolim, diretor de relações socioambientais da Ambev. Ele cita programas da empresa, como o Jovem Responsa, que, em parceria com 21 ONGs de todo o País, já levou orientações de consumo consciente a mais de 57 mil jovens direta e indiretamente.

Para Betânia Gomes, que pesquisou o tema na Escola de Enfermagem de Ribeirão Preto, da Universidade de São Paulo (USP), faltam políticas públicas mais efetivas sobre a questão. "Precisamos de mais iniciativas oficiais de promoção e campanhas educativas para que esses meninos e meninas não comecem a beber tão cedo", diz a pesquisadora. 

Para ver o artigo do Estado de São Paulo completo, clique aqui.