Cupertino, Sunnyvale law enforcement net DUI arrests for Avoid the 13 campaign

San Jose Mercury News

Santa Clara County law enforcement has wrapped up another round of busting hundreds of drunken drivers. Results released Jan. 2 show that from Dec. 14 through Jan. 1, county law enforcement agencies arrested 432 individuals for driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs. In 2011, 448 DUI arrests occurred during the same holiday campaign time period. The holiday operation saw all 13 county law enforcement agencies on the lookout for drunken drivers. During the campaign, all available officers were out in full force, stopping and arresting impaired drivers. The campaign wrapped up just before midnight on Jan. 1. At press time, the Santa Clara County Sheriff's Office had made 30 arrests Sunnyvale's Department of Public Safety, 22.

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California county fights federal subpoena seeking pot growers' names

Bellingham Herald

One of California's most renowned marijuana-growing counties is fighting a federal grand jury subpoena, seeking to protect the names of pot growers who agreed to let the local sheriff inspect their gardens and count their plants.A federal grand jury in San Francisco has subpoenaed all records for a landmark Mendocino County program, in which the county collected $630,000 in permit fees from as many as 500 people licensed as medical marijuana growers in 2010 and 2011.Mendocino County officials filed court papers Dec. 21 seeking to quash the subpoena as "burdensome and oppressive," saying it violates the county's duty to protect the confidentiality of medical marijuana users and its authority to regulate medicinal cultivation under California state law.

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Ventura homeless court begins as trial run for possible expansion

Ventura County Star

When Anna Vacca walked into Room 37 of Ventura County Superior Court on a recent Wednesday, she was facing drinking-in-public charges. By the time she walked out, she had agreed to participate in a pilot program that could lead to the charges being dropped. Vacca is now part of Community Intervention Court, a program put together by the Ventura Police Department, Ventura County Superior Court and others to get those repeatedly accused of vagrancy-related crimes off the street and into treatment programs.

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U of C researcher turns to Internet to help problem gamblers

Calgary Herald

Finding a game of poker and playing hours of slots has become as easy as booting up the laptop or tapping away on a smartphone, thanks to a proliferation of online gambling sites. Now, one University of Calgary researcher wants to take the villain in this onslaught — the Internet — and leverage it for quite the opposite use. David Hodgins, the head of the department of psychology, is beginning to test whether online treatment programs can help those with a gambling problem kick the habit.

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Health Care: Starting 2013 with 2014 in mind

San Francisco Business Times

For Bay Area employers and health care companies, 2013 looks a lot like a missile aimed at a date less than a year in the future: Jan. 1, 2014. That’s when many key components of President Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act kick in, including the start of Covered California, the health insurance exchange intended to offer health coverage to millions of Californians now uninsured or underinsured. It’s also when we’ll begin to see tangible results of how California’s small businesses are responding to the exchange.

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Medi-Cal rate cuts hurt health care, access

U-T San Diego

Last month, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals gave Gov. Jerry Brown and the Legislature a green light on their plan to balance our state budget by cutting reimbursements in California’s Medicaid program, known as Medi-Cal. The court overturned a ruling that blocked a 10 percent cut to already incredibly low, care-limiting payments to those who provide care to Medi-Cal patients. Physicians believe the state’s action flies in the face of federal laws intended to assure that Medicaid patients have access to medical care and undermines the goals of health reform.

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'Fiscal cliff' deal could drain millions from California budget

Los Angeles Times

Washington's avoidance of the so-called "fiscal cliff" is generally good news for California's finances. But the deal approved by President Obama on Wednesday will still take a bite out of the state budget. The legislation won't allow California and other states to keep a portion of revenue from the federal estate tax, a levy on wealth inheritance. California hasn't received any revenue from the tax since 2004, and analysts doubted that Congress would reverse course and restore the money. But calculations by Gov. Jerry Brown and Democratic lawmakers still included $335 million in such revenue over the next year and a half. They estimated the revenue would soon grow to at least $1 billion annually.

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Educators, politicians have stark reaction to Gov. Jerry Brown school funding revamp

Daily News – Los Angeles

School districts that have long struggled to educate large numbers of poor students or English learners could see a massive influx of cash under a new funding formula expected to be unveiled next week by Gov. Jerry Brown. Public school districts receive the bulk of their funding from the state, mostly in the form of a flat fee based on student attendance. Brown's proposed budget for the 2013-14 budget year, which begins July 1, is expected to include a weighted formula that would pay more for students in districts with high numbers of poor students or students who don't speak English at home.

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Navy’s PSA aims to deter use of bath salts

FOX –Seattle

In the latest effort to combat the synthetic drug epidemic, the Navy released a public service announcement regarding the dangers of bath salts. The P.S.A. is called “It’s not a fad. It’s a nightmare.” In California, dozens of sailors were booted for using the synthetic drug. Here, the Washington Poison Center says they have heard of cases where local servicemen and women are getting high on bath salts. The Navy’s PSA addresses not only the health risk of using bath salts, but also how they can impact a service member’s job and loved ones.

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Painkiller epidemic was driven in part by drug makers' financial relationships with researchers who discounted the risks

Kentucky Health News

For almost a decade, medical officials and experts claimed OxyContin rarely posed problems of addiction for patients. The drug's label, which was approved by the Food and Drug Administration, said addiction risks were small. Research published in the New England Journal of Medicine also said OxyContin wasn't addictive; so did a study in another journal, which OxyContin manufacturer Purdue Pharma reprinted 10,000 times. Since the drug first hit the market, it has fueled a large-scale swath of prescription pain killer addiction, beginning in Central Appalachia, that has grown into a national epidemic, especially in rural areas.

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Cognitive behavioral therapy adds no value to drug treatment for opioid dependence

HealthCanal.com

The study, which could change how such dependence is viewed and treated in the U.S. healthcare system, appears online in the American Journal of Medicine. The medication, buprenorphine, has been in use for a decade, and is now prescribed to treat opioid dependence more than any other medication of its kind. Prescription by primary care and office-based physicians accounts for much of this increase. Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is an intervention that has demonstrated effectiveness for many psychiatric conditions and substance use disorders, even beyond the period of treatment, but the impact of combining it with buprenorphine has not been clear until now.

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Dopamine jolt behind internet addiction

Financial Times

A 24-year-old woman arrives at the psychiatric clinic of the University of Athens school of medicine in Greece. Her symptoms: mild anxiety, sleep disturbance and a loss of interest in hobbies. Instead, she spends five hours a day on Facebook. She was even fired from her job as a waitress because she compulsively left her post to go to an internet café. Her diagnosis: social media addiction. For lots of people – as many as a quarter of youngsters in one Polish study – internet use has grown to the point where they cannot stop themselves from obsessively emailing, advancing to the next level of a FarmVille game or trawling for shoe deals on eBay. Researchers have outlined five different types of internet addiction: computer games, gambling and shopping, pornography, web surfing and online relationships.

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Police: Calif. teens drug parents to use Internet

Sacramento Bee

Police say two California teenagers used a prescription sleeping medication to spike the milkshakes of too-strict parents so they could log onto the Internet. The parents called police and the 15-year-old Rocklin girl and a 16-year-old friend were taken to Juvenile Hall. Rocklin is 20 miles northeast of Sacramento. The Sacramento Bee reports the girls offered to pick up milkshakes at a fast-food restaurant for the parents of one of the girls on Friday night. The drug was mixed into the shakes and the couple fell asleep. The suspicious parents picked up a drug test kit the following day.

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Laughing gas abuser blames head shops for injury

Sacramento Bee

A nitrous oxide abuser is blaming California head shops for injuries during his laughing gas highs. Doctors say Jason Starn, who must now use a walker to get around, suffered degeneration of his spinal cord because of his nitrous oxide use. The 35-year-old former Modesto school teacher filed a Sacramento Superior Court lawsuit last year against head shops in Modesto, Folsom and Foothill Farms, where he bought the drug in the form of gas chargers that go by the trade name Whip-It.

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Officials Say They Lack Resources To Fully Use Prescription Database

California Healthline

California officials say that they lack the resources to use the state's prescription tracking database to identify physicians who might be overprescribing painkillers and other drugs, the AP/U-T San Diego reports. About the Database: The database -- called the Controlled Substance Utilization Review and Evaluation System, or CURES -- tracks patients' prescription drug history in an effort to curb illegal sales and misuse of prescription medication. The state Department of Justice's Bureau of Narcotics Enforcement ran the CURES database until 2011, when Gov. Jerry Brown (D) eliminated the Bureau of Narcotics Enforcement. CURES now is operated by one full-time employee in the state attorney general's office.

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Legalized sports gambling faces challenges

San Francisco Chronicle

With the NFL playoffs starting this weekend and the Bowl Championship Series title game on Monday night, many Northern California sports fans would like to bet on their favorite teams. There's nothing like a wager to add some excitement to the games. The thing is, unless you're planning to travel to Nevada, you either have to forgo betting or do so illegally, via a bookie or website. New Jersey is working to change that: The Garden State is seeking to legalize sports betting. If New Jersey succeeds, other states, including California, may soon allow similar wagering.

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California receives approval for health exchange

Associated Press

The federal government has approved California's plan to run its own health insurance market, a milestone in the state's effort to meet the national health care reform law. U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius announced Thursday that California was among seven new states that received conditional approval to operate their own insurance exchanges. Arkansas was approved to operate a partnership exchange with the federal government. California was the first state to authorize a health insurance exchange after passage of the federal Affordable Care Act in 2010.

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What’s wrong with ‘Avocado’?

Sacramento News and Review

What’s in a name? Plenty if you’re the California Health Benefit Exchange, which pledges to have a website operational by September displaying the various health-care plans more than 3 million individual Californians without coverage and the operators of small businesses can purchase beginning January 1, 2014. To accomplish the exchange’s mission of ensuring more uninsured Californians become insured, a great deal of marketing will be required. Some $90 million is earmarked for “outreach,” which, like “reform,” varies depending on the definer. Part of that outreach is the creation of a name designed to resonate with consumers significantly stronger than “California Health Benefit Exchange.”

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Calif. Could Be Model for Federal Mental Health Efforts, Steinberg Says

California Healthline

Last month, experts and lawmakers said the federal government should consider using California's strategy for mental health care as a model for the U.S., AP/U-T San Diego reports. The suggestion comes after lawmakers and advocacy groups  called for increased focus on mental health care services and funding, following the mass murder at a Connecticut elementary school. California voters in 2004 passed the Mental Health Services Act, which levied a special tax on high-income residents. The money has been used to help 60,000 state residents, with 20% dedicated to prevention and early intervention.

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School health centers get final health reform grants

USC Center for Health Reporting

The last influx of federal funds to boost California’s school health centers came just before the New Year. Through the Affordable Care Act 31 California school health centers received more than $14 million in December. This final round of grants brought California’s total federal funding to more than $30 million since 2011, the most of any state. School-based health centers, which are usually on or adjacent to schools in low- income areas, offer students – and sometimes community members – free primary care. Several also have dental clinics and more than half provide mental health services.

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Federal budget deal could be reprieve for California finances

Los Angeles Times

Gov. Jerry Brown's administration is breathing a sigh of relief this week now that Congress has reached a deal on the federal budget. President Obama signed legislation on Wednesday that will prevent most tax increases and delay or cancel spending cuts. It was sent to his desk by the U.S. House of Representatives on Tuesday night after intense negotiations on Capitol Hill. If a deal wasn't reached, the country could have slid into another recession, costing California an estimated $11 billion in tax revenue over the next year and a half. That would have almost eliminated any gains from Brown's tax hike plan, which was approved by voters in November.

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Consumers to see smaller paychecks despite 'fiscal cliff' deal

Los Angeles Times

Robert Briones weathered the downturn in the economy well, working more than he needed, going on a vacation to Norway with his family and eating out at lunch from time to time. But even the 48-year-old psychologist can't escape the latest blow to consumers' finances: a tax increase that will affect an estimated 160 million workers. As part of the deal on the so-called fiscal cliff, Congress extended tax breaks for middle-income families but did not extend a payroll tax cut that was set to expire this year. As of Tuesday working Americans saw a tax on their paychecks rise to 6.2% from 4.2% last year. Economists estimate that this could strip $115 billion in disposable income from the economy this year.

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California did it; so can D.C.

Los Angeles Times (Opinion)

Congress may have avoided certain disaster on Tuesday, but the plan that was passed does little to get the country back to a functional system of budgeting that doesn't involve chronic deficits. So what would that take? Republicans will have to recognize that raising taxes on high-income earners is a necessity. Democrats will need to agree to budget cuts and entitlement savings. That may sound impossible, but recent history demonstrates it isn't. In California, just four years ago, despite fervent partisanship the equal of that in Washington today, the Legislature made just such compromises.

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Public pension changes take effect

Capitol Weekly

Gov. Brown pushed through legislation that cuts and caps public pensions for new employees, making a fix-it-to-save-it argument while bypassing the bargaining usually demanded by his labor allies for benefit changes. Voters needed assurance the governor’s tax hike on the November ballot would not be eaten up by pension costs, and inaction might fuel an initiative drive for radical change, possibly a switch to a 401(k)-style plan. Brown said the pension reform bill that took effect Jan. 1 was “the biggest rollback of public pensions in California history,” a package that will “save tens of billions of taxpayer dollars” and make pensions “more sustainable.”

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Lawsuit Filed Against DHCS Over Medi-Cal Managed Care Shift

California Healthline

A legal aid group has filed a lawsuit on behalf of five Medi-Cal beneficiaries, alleging that the state violated beneficiaries' rights by forcing them into managed care, the Los Angeles Times reports. Medi-Cal is California's Medicaid program (Gorman, Los Angeles Times, 12/23/12). The group -- Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles -- filed the lawsuit on Dec. 21, 2012, against the California Department of Health Care Services (AP/San Jose Mercury News, 12/21/12). Background: A few years ago, California received federal approval to shift 340,000 Medi-Cal beneficiaries -- specifically, seniors and people with disabilities -- into managed care plans. The shift aims to reduce state spending by $151 million annually and provide the beneficiaries with more comprehensive care.

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Scientists discover gene that may lead to boozing

McClatchy News Service

One in six U.S. adults binge-drinks four times a month, consuming an average of eight drinks per session, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention -- and binge drinking is practically a rite of passage on college campuses nationwide. But why do some people feel so compelled to throw back a few drinks while others have no interest at all? Blame it on the genes. According to a new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers have found a gene that plays a starring role in how alcohol stimulates the brain to release dopamine, triggering feelings of happiness and reward.

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CHP makes 34 DUI arrests in 24 hours

KCRA

With New Year's Eve falling on a Monday this year, many people began to celebrate early. California Highway Patrol officers said they made more arrests in a 24-hour period this weekend than they did during the same 24-hour period, which included New Year's Eve, last year. A toast to the new year means big business for local bars, it also means big responsibility. "We really try to keep an eye out for signs of intoxication," said Misty Martin, manager at MVP's Sports Grill. Martin says safety is always a top priority.

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Drug Makers Losing a Bid to Foil Generic Painkillers

New York Times

Public officials have long urged makers of powerful painkillers to do more to make the medications harder to crush and abuse. But now that some companies have done so, they want something in return — a ban on generic versions of the drugs they make that do not have such tamper-resistant designs. In coming months, generic drug producers are expected to introduce cheaper versions of OxyContin and Opana, two long-acting narcotic painkillers, or opioids, that are widely abused. But in hopes of delaying the move to generics, the makers of the brand name drugs, Purdue Pharma and Endo Pharmaceuticals, have introduced versions that are more resistant to crushing or melting, techniques abusers use to release the pills’ narcotic payloads.

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Pharmacy robberies double in 2012 in Maine

San Francisco Chronicle

Pharmacy robberies in Maine more than doubled last year over 2011, and police are concerned the robberies are becoming more brazen. There were 56 pharmacy robberies last year, with drug addicts taking increasingly desperate measures, said Steve McCausland of the Department of Public Safety. In one instance, a man robbed a pharmacy inside a Wal-Mart filled with customers in broad daylight. "These are desperate acts by desperate people, and from a law enforcement perspective it's extremely troubling because of potential violence," McCausland said.

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Economy During Infancy Linked to Adolescent Substance Abuse

Psych Central

The economic environment during infancy may be associated with subsequent substance use and delinquent behavior during adolescence, according to new research. A research team led by Seethalakshmi Ramanathan of the State University of New York Upstate Medical University examined the relationship between the high unemployment rates during and after the 1980 and 1981-1982 recession, and rates of subsequent adolescent substance use and delinquent behaviors. Researchers used data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997, which included a group of 8,984 adolescents born between Jan. 1, 1980, and Dec. 31, 1984. “The results demonstrate a strong correlation between the unemployment rate during infancy and subsequent behavioral problems,” the researchers said in the study.

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Teen addicts sought for program

Chatham Daily News (Canada)

Health-care professionals in Chatham-Kent are turning to a model developed in California to treat local youth battling addictions. Starting Jan. 28, a team comprised of registered social workers, an addiction counsellor, a child and youth worker and the youth programs co-ordinator at the Chatham-Kent Community Health Centres (CKCHC) will launch Teen Matrix for youth aged 14 to 17. "It's an intensive outpatient active addiction treatment program for youth," CKCHC addictions counsellor Cynthia Perritt told The Chatham Daily News. The 16-week program comprises of an adolescent social activity group, an early recovery group, a relapse prevention group, as well as separate adolescent and parent education groups.

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Fiscal cliff stumble could doom California's budget recovery

Sacramento Bee

Gov. Jerry Brown and California lawmakers struck an upbeat tone in recent weeks as they enjoyed their most positive budget outlook since the economic downturn. Whether that mood survives the winter depends on Washington. State budget experts say the biggest immediate threat to California finances is a recession triggered by automatic federal cuts and tax hikes, absent a political deal to avoid the so-called "fiscal cliff." The state's biggest federal program, Medi-Cal, is spared from automatic cuts. But a new recession could threaten the state tax revenue that serves as the lifeblood for California government.

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Dan Walters: Jerry Brown wins point on budget deficit, but 'wall of debt' looms

Sacramento Bee

Fox News is the media outlet that Democrats love to hate, often calling it "Faux News." When the television network's website published an article that referred to a $28 billion California budget deficit, therefore, Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown's press secretary, Gil Duran, erupted in righteous fury. Duran fired off an email to the network, complaining that the article contained "some major and obvious errors."  "First, the story states that California has a $28 billion deficit," Duran wrote. "This is completely false and is already being mocked by California reporters on Twitter. Please correct the record immediately.

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Primary care doctors growing scarce

San Francisco Chronicle

Roughly 4 million additional Californians are expected to obtain health insurance by 2014 through the federal health law, an expansion that will likely exacerbate the state's doctor shortage and could even squeeze primary care access in the Bay Area, experts say. Even without the Affordable Care Act, a worsening doctor shortage had been forecast as the state's and nation's population ages and grows, and as a generation of older doctors retires. But by mandating that individuals have insurance and expanding Medicaid, the law will extend coverage to an additional 30 million Americans and place a greater strain on the physician workforce, especially for primary care.

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Ruling clarifies health coverage

Sacramento Bee

In a long-awaited interpretation of the new health care law, the Obama administration said Monday that employers must offer health insurance to employees and their children, but will not be subject to any penalties if family coverage is unaffordable to workers. The requirement for employers to provide health benefits to employees is a cornerstone of the new law, but the new rules proposed by the Internal Revenue Service said that employers' obligation was to provide affordable insurance to cover their full-time employees, and offers no guarantee of affordable insurance for a worker's children or spouse. To avoid a possible tax penalty, the government said, employers with 50 or more full-time employees must offer affordable coverage to those employees. But, it said, the meaning of "affordable" depends entirely on the cost of individual coverage for the employee, what the worker would pay for "self-only coverage."

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Unused tool could help state flag reckless doctors

Los Angeles Times Investigation: Dying for Relief Series

Kamala Harris has a powerful tool for identifying reckless doctors, but she doesn't use it. As California's attorney general, Harris controls a database that tracks prescriptions for painkillers and other commonly abused drugs from doctors' offices to pharmacy counters and into patients' hands. The system, known as CURES, was created so physicians and pharmacists could check to see whether patients were obtaining drugs from multiple providers. Law enforcement officials and medical regulators could mine the data for a different purpose: To draw a bead on rogue doctors. But they don't, and that has allowed corrupt or negligent physicians to prescribe narcotics recklessly for years before authorities learned about their conduct through other means, a Times investigation found.

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Alcohol sales enforcers get heavy-duty protection

Sacramento Bee

California's alcohol sales enforcers have gotten $70,000 worth of bullet-resistant vests, helmets and gas masks to protect them during undercover stings at bars, restaurants and retail establishments. The Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control says the equipment is essential for the safety of its 142 sworn agents. Most agency arrests involve selling or giving alcoholic beverages to minors.

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CA shelter rejects man's Christmas cash giveaway

Sacramento Bee

A Southern California man's tradition of handing out cash totaling $1,000 to homeless men was broken when he was turned away by a shelter on Christmas Day. Harvey Youngman said he felt dejected driving home from the Ventura County Rescue Mission's facility in Oxnard with a bag of unopened cards stuffed with $20 bills. The Ventura County Star reports Youngman had been bringing money-filled cards to the mission for about a decade. However, the shelter's new director, John Saltee, said the money can be tempting for the men who are recovering from drug or alcohol addiction.

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Health reform's many unknowns

ErieTimes-News

As California positions itself at the vanguard of the national health-care overhaul, state officials are unable to say for sure how much their implementation of the federal Affordable Care Act will cost taxpayers. The program, intended to insure millions of Americans who are now without health coverage, takes states into uncharted territory. California, which plans to expand coverage to hundreds of thousands of people when the law takes effect in 2014, faces myriad unknowns. The administration of Gov. Jerry Brown will try to estimate the cost of vastly more health coverage in the budget plan it unveils in January, but experts warn its numbers could be off.

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Veterans twice as likely to commit suicide as civilians

Billings Gazette

They return from war traumatized. They have survived the grinding stress of being in constant danger. They have seen the worst. Some have injuries that will never heal. To stay alive, they have learned to trust no one and to never show weakness. It’s something they don’t want to talk about. And it’s killing them. Veterans commit suicide at a rate that is twice the national average. In fact, the annual military death toll from suicides has for several years exceeded the number killed on the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan. For some returning vets, their injuries are obvious. Many others struggle with unseen wounds like post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injuries.

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Why Are so Many Veterans in Prison?

Huffington Post

Following what is quickly becoming a nation-wide trend in the U.S., the Indian Creek Correctional Center in Chesapeake, Virginia, recently opened a veterans-only dorm to house prisoners who are former soldiers. In dedicating the new wing, state correctional officials announced that they hoped that the veterans-only facility will help veterans complete their sentences and avoid prison in future. Along with Virginia, other U.S. states including Florida and Georgia have also opened up veterans-only prison facilities to address the rising problem of returning military veterans who get in trouble with the law.

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Cost of War column: Iraq veteran is trapped in "lonely, dark life" since coming home

Alabama Live (blog)

I am a 28-year-old veteran who had the honorable pleasure of serving with 39 other men -- 39 heroes in my eyes -- of Bravo Company, 1-167th Infantry, Alabama Army National Guard, between May 16, 2005 to May 14, 2006. In the six-and-a-half years since returning home from Iraq, our lives and the difficulties we have faced are as different as our own physical characteristics. In many combat arms veterans' eyes, to speak out about and seek help for issues such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) or depression is forbidden, conflicting with the image of the hard, determined grunt emotionally numb from the horrors of the battlefield. However, no one can go through the day-to-day fear in a true war-zone environment without being somewhat vulnerable to these diseases. So this is my story.

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Epidemic of Painkiller Addiction Strikes Newborns

Live Science

In a phenomenon that reminds some experts of the crack-baby epidemic of the 1980s and 1990s, hospitals across the country are reporting a startling increase in the number of babies born addicted to opioid painkillers like Oxycontin (oxycodone). In 2009, reports the Wall Street Journal, about 13,000 babies were diagnosed as having painkiller withdrawal symptoms — the condition is sometimes referred to as "neonatal abstinence syndrome." The number of babies born with the condition tripled between 2000 and 2009, found a study published this year in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA).

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‘It opens your heart’: Canada approves use of ecstasy in study into post-traumatic stress disorder

National Post

Exactly a century after ecstasy was first patented, Health Canada has approved the drug’s import for the first Canadian study using the illegal substance in trauma survivors’ therapy. The decision to allow two Vancouver therapists to import nine grams of MDMA from a laboratory in Switzerland — one of only two such permitted facilities worldwide — will kickstart the first experiment with the euphoria-and-empathy-producing drug in B.C. on Jan. 1, according to a Health Canada email obtained by the National Post, dated Nov. 23. “I don’t know if we’ll have to wait until the MDMA is actually in our hands, but we’ve got a whole list of people who want to come to do it,” Dr. Ingrid Pacey, one of the researchers, told the Post. “There’s a part of me that still doesn’t quite believe it. When the MDMA arrives from Switzerland … when it finally lands on Canadian soil, then I’ll be certain.”

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Prescription painkiller overdoses surpass 'street' drugs

Today

Jennifer Cassidy still sees a healthy young man when she looks at old photos of her brother, Aaron. “He was that guy in high school that, you know, starting pitcher for the baseball team, starting football defensive end,” she says. “Very popular.” Later on, as a successful insurance salesman who loved to work out, he went to a doctor for help with old sports injuries. Aaron, then 33, was given a prescription for the painkiller Vicodin. Although he did not have a history of drug or alcohol abuse, Cassidy tells TODAY, he developed a powerful addiction to painkillers.

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Studies downplayed risks of OxyContin and other opioids

Bangor Daily News

Over much of the past decade, the official word on OxyContin was that it rarely posed problems of addiction for patients. The label on the drug, which was approved by the FDA, said the risks of addiction were “reported to be small.” The New England Journal of Medicine, the nation’s premier medical publication, informed readers that studies indicated that such painkillers pose “a minimal risk of addiction.” Another important journal study, which the manufacturer of OxyContin reprinted 10,000 times, indicated that in a trial of arthritis patients, only a handful showed withdrawal symptoms.

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Video gaming joins smoking, gambling on list of common addictions

Times Live

"I'm a massive fan," he said. "I've been playing the series since the World War days and absolutely love it." Circumstantial evidence suggests gaming can be as addictive as gambling. In July a Diablo III fan in Taiwan collapsed and died after a 40-hour session at an internet cafe. Australian National University psychologist Olivia Metcalf has found concrete evidence that gaming is indeed addictive. For her research, which showed that addicted gamers had trouble focusing on other tasks, she gathered volunteers representing: those who were addicted; those who were regular players but who were not addicted; and a control group of non-players. They were tested for their responses to gaming-related words.

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Talk to your teens about alcohol ahead of New Year’s Eve parties

Odessa American Online

With school out for the holiday break, teens are gathering at parties where they might be asked to try drugs and alcohol. The Council on Alcohol and Drug Abuse reminds parents how to talk to their kids and safeguard them during the holidays when a higher number of social gatherings are happening. “It’s important for parents to take time during the holiday season to talk to their kids about the dangers of underage drinking and drug use. Parents are still the strongest influencers in their children’s lives, even during the teenage years, and we want to ensure that our most precious resource — our young people — stay safe this holiday season,” said Commissioner Jewel Mullen, with the Connecticut Department of Public Health.

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Which new state and federal laws will affect your family?

Examiner.com

Happy New Year! As strains of "Auld Lang Syne" resound across the country, major new laws affecting your family’s income, healthcare, parenting decisions and daily life will go into effect. While many news reports has focused on gay marriage and legalization of marijuana, there are other new laws parents need to know about. Here are some of the most impactful: Wage slaves get minimal relief.

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