1. Surrey Now (Canada) – No room for ideology at Insite. “The clock is ticking on the future of one of Canada’s most important and unique attempts to deal with drug addiction, and perhaps that’s a good thing. It may very well be good that the federal government is sending signals it will soon no longer support Vancouver’s supervised injection facility (Insite). Getting Ottawa out of the picture may actually create some certainty and stability for the controversial facility in Vancouver’s notorious Downtown Eastside.”
2. icWales (UK) – Jamie’s Addiction Story. “AT the height of his addiction to heroin, Jamie was spending over £400 a week to get the drug that his body craved. He was just 15, still at school, and shoplifting daily to finance both his habit, and that of his girlfriend Sarah (name changed to protect her identity). “I was doing about half a gram a day,” says Jamie, now 17.
“That was costing me £30 and then Sarah was using the same amount. Your whole life is about getting money to get your next bag.”
3. The Hindu (India) – UN joins OPEC partner to curb HIV among drug users. “The United Nations anti-narcotics agency has joined forces with the OPEC Fund for International Development (OFID) in a bid to rein in the spread of HIV among drug users.”
4. Etalaat (India) – Conflict blamed for drug addiction among women in JK. “The armed conflict in Kashmir has eaten into the very vitals of the society and it is one of the main reasons for drug addiction among women, according to a study. “With search operations, crackdowns, firing incidents and grenade blasts being a regular feature, the women folk were all the time worried about the safety and security of their dear ones. Taking to drugs in the form of cough syrups and other sedatives was the only option left for them to come out of the mental tension,” Dr Ghulam Nabi Wani, founder HNSS De-addiction Centre, Khanyar, who carried out the study told Etalaat on Wednesday.”
5. Wall Street Journal – New Version Of OxyContin Raises Concern. “A Food and Drug Administration panel expressed deep concerns about a purported abuse-resistant form of the painkiller OxyContin, saying there is a “striking” lack of data about the drug’s abuse-prevention qualities. “I’m fascinated with the poor scientific rigor” of the data presented by Purdue Pharma LP, maker of OxyContin, FDA panel member Jeffrey R. Kirsch said. “It’s almost insulting.”
6. Islamic Republic News (Iran) – Number of drug-related deaths up in Germany in 2007: report. “The number of drug-related deaths rose by 98 people or 7.6 percent to reach 1,394 last year, according to the annual report released Monday by the government’s anti-drug commissioner Sabine Baetzing.”
7. The Age – Barnes’ binge: cheap wine and 10 grams of cokemebeli. “JIMMY Barnes can’t believe he lived through a death-defying drug-and-booze binge, which, by rights, should have killed him. The rock icon has revealed the extent of his drug use, in which he consumed a daily cocktail of cocaine, ecstasy and vodka for four years.”
8. The New York Times – Reports Find Racial Gap in Drug Arrests. “More than two decades after President Ronald Reagan escalated the war on drugs, arrests for drug sales or, more often, drug possession are still rising. And despite public debate and limited efforts to reduce them, large disparities persist in the rate at which blacks and whites are arrested and imprisoned for drug offenses, even though the two races use illegal drugs at roughly equal rates.”
9. The Ottawa Citizen – An addict’s White knight. “Ottawa police chief Vern White demonstrated leadership this month by travelling to Toronto and personally making the case for proper drug treatment facilities in Ottawa. In the policing world, there are probably still a few old-timers who think substance abuse is mainly a law enforcement issue and that the principal problem facing drug addicts is a flawed moral character. Chief White, it appears, is not one of them. His efforts to bring residential drug treatment services to Ottawa suggests he understands that addicts might need help more than handcuffs.”