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National drug strategy household survey detailed report: 2013

Summary

The 2013 National Drug Strategy Household Survey collected information from almost 24,000 people across Australia on their tobacco, alcohol and illicit drug use, attitudes and opinions.

In July 2014, the AIHW released key national findings from the survey which showed:

Smoking—a significant decline in daily smoking between 2010 and 2013 (from 15.1% to 12.8%); younger people are delaying the take up of smoking; and smokers reduced the average number of cigarettes smoked per week.

Alcohol—fewer people in Australia drank alcohol in harmful quantities in 2013; the proportion of young people abstaining from alcohol rose; and there was a decline in alcohol-related victimisation.

Illicit use of drugs—declines in use of some illegal drugs in 2013, including ecstasy, heroin and GHB; while meth/amphetamine use did not increase, there was a change in the main form used with ice (or crystal methamphetamine) replacing powder; and there was a rise in the misuse of pharmaceuticals. (Download PDF)

The Rise and Fall of Cocaine High in Brain

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Two new apps online and trending!

KICK ON http://www.kickon.com/  

LIVR http://livr-app.com/ - You have to be DRUNK to access the app! (comes with own breathalyser.  Has a ‘black out’ button  will ensure that you can go ‘nuts’ and if you’ve blacked out and got messed up and it’s all recorded, you can ‘black it out’

The Cannabis Conundrum!

Busting the Myth That Marijuana Doesn't Kill in 1 minute

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“Vaping” – The Transformation of Marijuana

See attached IBH Commentary

Marijuana Use from Middle to High School: Co-occurring Problem Behaviors, Teacher-Rated Academic Skills and Sixth-Grade Predictors (Download PDF)

Conclusion: This study contributes substantively to understanding marijuana use among adolescents. First, using marijuana was not an isolated or benign event in the life of adolescents. Over a 7 year period, it was associated with multiple negative behaviors, such as alcohol use, smoking and physical aggression. As clearly described in problem behavior theory, multiple health-compromising behaviors tend to co-exist and engagement in one behavior will strongly predict engagement in others. With cigarette smoking and physical aggression as predictors in sixth grade of marijuana use, early adolescence is a salient time to intervene. Marijuana prevention efforts should address multiple substance use and risk behaviors at this period of an adolescent’s life. Increased parental monitoring and feedback from teachers about students’ behavior are effective approaches to decreasing substance use and antisocial behavior (Connell et al. 2007). Interventions that involve parents, schools and community media show promise in preventing marijuana and other drug use for adolescents (Porath-Waller et al. 2010; Riggs et al. 2006; Slater et al. 2006). Finally, based on independent measures of school performance (annual teacher ratings using nationally normed scales and high school dropout records), the findings clearly show that adolescents who used marijuana had worse academic performance. Low study skills, attention problems, and learning problems were present even when marijuana use was very low, suggesting that other problems in the life of adolescents may be influencing youth into a path of problem behaviors.

Second hand Pot Smoke Can Give Not Good For Heart: Blood vessel function in laboratory rats dropped by 70 percent after a half-hour of exposure to second hand marijuana smoke -- similar to results found with secondhand tobacco smoke, researchers from the University of California, San Francisco reported Sunday. Reduced blood vessel function can increase a person's risk of developing hardened arteries, which could lead to a heart attack.

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Predictors of onset of cannabis and other drug use in male young adults: results from a longitudinal study.

Haug S1, Núñez CL, Becker J, Gmel G, Schaub MP.

RESULTS: Not providing for oneself, having siblings, depressiveness, parental divorce, lower parental knowledge of peers and the whereabouts, peer pressure, very low nicotine dependence, and sensation seeking were positively associated with the onset of cannabis use. Practising religion was negatively associated with the onset of cannabis use. Onset of drug use other than cannabis showed a positive association with depressiveness, antisocial personality disorder, lower parental knowledge of peers and the whereabouts, psychiatric problems of peers, problematic cannabis use, and sensation seeking.

For more go to...

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Alcohol Impact in Victoria:

Summary of Alcohol harms in Victoria

The analysis found that alcohol harms in Victoria are significant. The most recent available data indicates that over a one year period there were:

•     21,460 treatment episodes where alcohol was the principal drug of concern (2012-13);
•     8,349 ambulance attendances in metropolitan Melbourne where alcohol was identified as a contributing factor (2011);
•     29,694 alcohol-related hospital admissions (2010-11);
•     6,768 alcohol-related assaults(2010-11);
•     14,015 family incidents involving alcohol (2012-13);
•     1,932 serious or fatal road injuries during high alcohol hours (2010-11); and
•     1,214 alcohol-attributable deaths in Victoria, which accounted for 3.4 per cent of all Victorian deaths in that year (2010).

The state of play: alcohol in Victoria -  FARE September 2014 View Link

 
ICE  - Changing market culture of ‘Meth’ (Download Document - Changing Market Culture for Methamphetamines)

Meth’s devastating effects:
http://www.cbsnews.com/pictures/meths-devastating-effects-before-and-after/4/
 

Blow away the ‘smokes’ – This is a good video resource aimed at helping indigenous people quit tobacco smoking  View Link
 
To summarize WFAD supports the following principles to serve as a platform for the drug policy debate:  (Download PDF)

1. Drug policies should prevent initiation of drug use.
2. Drug policies must respect human rights (for users and non-users alike) as well as the principle of proportionality.
3. Drug policies should strike a balance of efforts to reduce the use of drugs and the supply of drugs.
4. Drug policies should protect children from drug use.
5. Drug policies should ensure access to medical help, treatment and recovery services.
6. Drug policies should ensure access to controlled drugs for legitimate scientific and medical purposes.
7. Drug policies should ensure that medical and judicial responses are coordinated with the goal of reducing drug use and drug-related consequences.

CANNABIS DATA:

Victorian Year 11 Student’s 6 minute speech on Cannabis Legalisation – Very well done! View Link
 
Reefer Madness – See attached from Global leader who discovered the human brain’s dopamine receptor for psychosis: Professor Seeman (Download PDF)

"Teenager accused of murder of homeless man locked himself inside  apartment, where he smoked cannabis continuously"- Earlier this year many reports framed this individual as victim of a crime that acted in self-defence. The Courts have now heard that after leaving high school, he made Dope Smoking and Video games a staple psyche diet. It appears the cannabis induced psychosis produced more than 'humorous stoner delusions', but instead acts of heinous violence that cost an innocent their lives and yet another young life utterly ruined. Legalising this junk would be a policy for securing the future of mental illness for 'Generation Now'. Which government wants to have that in their resume? View Link
 

Parents Against Pot – View Link
 

Effects of Adolescent Marijuana Use - Edmund Silins, Ph.D. (Interview worth listening to) View Link
 

14 Reasons Against Legalizing Marijuana – Alaskan Police Chiefs. (Download PDF or go to  http://www.aacop.org/page-1860812
 
MARIJUANA’S ANTI-ENVIRONMENTALISTS  

“Typically, the growers clear-cut the trees on the land they want to use, then bulldoze it to their specifications. Next, they divert a nearby stream to provide the one to six gallons required daily by each plant. They then fertilize the plants, causing runoff. This is followed by a generous dose of rat poison.
The upshot: The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service a week ago declared that stream diversion by marijuana plantations was robbing the rivers that the streams feed of enough cool water for Coho salmon to breed, thus threatening their survival. California’s north coast is big salmon country, for both sport and commercial fishing…”

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November 2014

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Great New ONLINE RESOURCE: Victorian AOD Statistics – easy to access and evaluate. Perfect to keep across impact of AOD on various demographics and LGA’s in the State of Victoria.
 
www.aodstats.org.au
 
 
Gateway Theory continues to consolidate:
Gateway theory has long persisted in different forms. Further emerging evidence demonstrate that sequencing and timing of use, added to delivery mechanism (mostly via cigarettes) does what Gateway Theory postulates. According to the literature, approximately 100,000 people 'QUIT' tobacco each year, but sadly are replace by the same number taking it up. No prizes for guessing the demographic servicing that statistic - sadly it is this emerging generation that are most susceptible to the drug taking libertarian culture too.. http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMsa1405092  (View Paper)
 
Study: Teens who smoke weed daily are 60% less likely to complete high school than those who never use and seven times more likely to attempt suicide:
Teenagers who smoke marijuana daily are over 60 percent less likely to complete high school than those who never use. They're also 60 percent less likely to graduate college and seven times more likely to attempt suicide. Those are the startling conclusions of a new study of adolescent cannabis use out today in The Lancet Psychiatry, a British journal of health research.

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Young Adult Sequaela of Adolescent Cannabis Use:
Interpretation: Adverse sequelae of adolescent cannabis use are wide ranging and extend into young adulthood. Prevention or delay of cannabis use in adolescence is likely to have broad health and social benefits. Efforts to reform cannabis legislation should be carefully assessed to ensure they reduce adolescent cannabis use and prevent potentially adverse developmental effects. (View Paperr)

When you publicly ‘permit/promote’ drug use, this is what you get!
Yesterday the Quest Diagnostics Drug Testing Index™ (DTI) data was released. Important DTI headlines to note include:

• The percentage of positive drug tests among American workers has increased for the first time in more than a decade, fuelled by a rise in marijuana and amphetamines use
• Marijuana positivity increased 6.2 percent nationally in urine drug tests, but by double digits in Colorado and Washington
• Detection of marijuana continues to increase significantly in oral fluid testing
• Methamphetamine positivity increased across all drug testing types
• Oxycodone positivity declined for the second consecutive year

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Binge drinking ONCE during pregnancy can damage your child's mental health and school results

• Children of mothers who binge drank once or more during pregnancy had lower school results at age 11
• Builds on previous research showing binge drinking in pregnancy leads to children having poorer mental health, especially hyperactivity and inattention
• Binge drinking defined as having four or more units in one sitting- the equivalent of two pints of beer, four single G&Ts or small glasses of wine
• A quarter of mothers reported binge drinking at least once during pregnancy and more than half said they'd done so once or twice in the past month
• Experts said findings highlight the need for 'clear policy messages' around binge drinking when pregnant
• Researchers said that data was collected 20 years ago when attitudes towards drinking might have been different

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Snapshot of Victoria’s Alcohol Culture – Vic Health (View Paper)

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Resources
 

To summarize WFAD supports the following principles to serve as a platform for the drug policy debate:

1. Drug policies should prevent initiation of drug use.
2. Drug policies must respect human rights (for users and non-users alike) as well as the principle of proportionality.
3. Drug policies should strike a balance of efforts to reduce the use of drugs and the supply of drugs.
4. Drug policies should protect children from drug use.
5. Drug policies should ensure access to medical help, treatment and recovery services.
6. Drug policies should ensure access to controlled drugs for legitimate scientific and medical purposes.
7. Drug policies should ensure that medical and judicial responses are coordinated with the goal of reducing drug use and drug-related consequences.

Don’t Be LAB RAT! http://dontbealabrat.com/  (Attempt to educate under 21 year olds away from cannabis use in the States where it has become ‘legal’ for ‘grown ups’ – the insanity grows!
 
“Legalization of Marijuana in Colorado: The Impact/Volume 2”.  http://www.rmhidta.org/default.aspx/MenuItemID/687/MenuGroup/RMHIDTAHome.htm?AspxAutoDetectCookieSupport=1

Section 1 – Impaired Driving:

• Traffic fatalities involving operators testing positive for marijuana have increased 100 percent from 2007 to 2012.
• The majority of driving-under-the-influence-of-drugs arrests involve marijuana and 25 to 40 percent were marijuana alone.
• Toxicology reports with positive marijuana results for driving under the influence have increased 16 percent from 2011 to 2013. 

Section 2 – Youth Marijuana Use:

• In 2012, 10.47 percent of youth ages 12 to 17 were considered current marijuana users compared to 7.55 percent nationally. Colorado, ranked 4th in the nation, was 39 percent higher than the national average.
• Drug-related suspensions/expulsions increased 32 percent from school years 2008/2009 through 2012/2013. The vast majority were for marijuana violations.

Section 4 – Emergency Room Marijuana Admissions:

• From 2011 through 2013, there was a 57 percent increase in marijuana-related emergency room visits.
• Hospitalizations related to marijuana have increased 82 percent from 2008 to 2013.
• In 2012, the City of Denver rate for marijuana-related emergency visits was 45 percent higher than the rate in Colorado

Section 10 – Related Data:

• Overall, crime in Denver increased 6.7 percent from the first six months of 2013 to the first six months of 2014.
• The number of pets poisoned from ingesting marijuana has increased four-fold in the past six years.