Can you name a musician that dies from a drug overdose? If you are over the age of five most likely you can!

The latest of course is Whitney Houston who died earlier this month in Los Angeles, California. Her body was reportedly discovered by a personal assistant at the Beverly Hills Hotel where she was to attend a party for her mentor, music industry legend Clive Davis.

We all know Houston struggled for years with substance abuse. From rehab stints for cocaine and crack to serious battles with alcohol, Houston was a victim of her addictions.

Other pop stars such as Janis Joplin and Jim Morrison, guitar great Jimi Hendrix, and more recently singer Amy Winehouse, had similar problems.

Other lesser-known entertainers suffering from substance abuse are Gregory Isaacs, Ninjaman, Wayne ‘Baby Wayne’ Parkinson all battled drug addiction. Known as the ‘Don Gorgon’ of dancehall, Ninjaman converted to Christianity in 1997 as part of his attempt to fight his addiction.

Throughout his successful career, Isaacs openly battled an addiction to cocaine. Ironically, one of his biggest hit songs was Hard Drugs — a frank look at drug addiction.

Isaacs died from cancer, and in his memory, his widow June, along with music producer/distributor Tad Dawkins launched a drug awareness campaign.

There are different reasons entertainers get hooked on drugs. The consumption of hard-core drugs changes the way an individual feels. As it relates to entertainers, the euphoria of success sometimes takes them into different places where they meet other persons who are sometimes richer than them who are drug addicts. With greater availability and a higher rate of colleagues using drugs it often leads to peer pressure.

Whatever the reasons it is sad to see someone succumb to addiction. Musicians need drug classes just like everyone else. They need people close to them to help keep them sober.

Read more: www.jamaicaobserver.com

Usually with government you know exactly where they stand on drugs and their legality. However, this changed with current US President Barack Obama when he announced that his government would not go after the medical marijuana industry in states where it was legal. Now, that unpopular decision is turning course (like most political issues) and the medical marijuana industry is struggling for survival.

The Obama Administration is not talking about undertaking some unprecedented approaches to addressing drug addiction.

The Department of Justice released new data showing that drug use cost our society about $193 billion a year. Fifty six billion of those dollars can be traced directly back to costs associated solely with the criminal justice system.

Contributing to this immense cost are the more than seven million people in the United States who are under the supervision of the criminal justice system with more than two million behind bars.

For states and localities across the country, the costs of managing these populations have grown significantly. Between 1988 and 2009, state corrections spending increased from $12 billion to more than $50 billion per year.

Breaking the Cycle

Gil Kerlikowske, director of National Drug Control Policy outlined unprecedented actions being undertaken by the Obama Administration to address this challenge by breaking the cycle of drug use, crime, incarceration and re-arrest.

The Obama Administration’s approach to criminal justice drug policy is guided by three facts; that addiction is a disease that can be treated; people can recover and new interventions are needed to appropriately address substance abuse and drug-related crime.

This last fiscal year, the Obama Administration spent $10.4 billion on drug prevention and treatment programs compared to $9.2 billion on domestic drug enforcement. 

Do You Agree With These?

The administration is implementing the Second Chance Act, which provides funding for programs that improve coordination of reentry services and policies at the state, tribal, and local levels, including demonstration grants, reentry courts, family-centered programs, substance abuse treatment, employment, mentoring and other services.
Expansion of drug courts, which place non-violent drug offenders into treatment instead of prison.

Last year, the Department of Justice awarded $100 million to support 178 state and local reentry grants to provide a wide range of services and in late September awarded another $83 million to 118 new grantees.

Encouragement to housing authorities nationally to lease to offenders returning to the community and to ensure that they understand that they have the discretion to lease to all but two specific classes of felon.

I applaud any thinking outside the box when it comes to stopping America’s addiction problem. I respect any feedback any of you loyal readers would like to contribute.

Just about every day you can find a story about the elderly and how it is finally coming out that they have drug and alcohol problems too.

Government inspectors told Medicare officials need to do more to stop doctors from prescribing powerful psychiatric drugs to nursing home patients with dementia, an unapproved practice that has flourished despite repeated government warnings.

So-called antipsychotic drugs are designed to help control hallucinations, delusions and other abnormal behavior in people suffering from schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, but they're also given to hundreds of thousands of elderly nursing home patients in the U.S. to pacify aggressive behavior related to dementia. Drugs like AstraZeneca's Seroquel and Eli Lilly's Zyprexa are known for their sedative effect, often putting patients to sleep.

But the drugs can also increase the risk of death in seniors, prompting the Food and Drug Administration to issue multiple warnings against prescribing the drugs for dementia. Antipsychotics raise blood sugar and cholesterol, often resulting in weight gain.

An inspector has challenged that the Medicare program should begin penalizing nursing homes that inappropriately prescribe antipsychotics. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services provides health coverage to nearly 80 million senior, poor or disabled Americans.

HHS Inspector General Daniel Levinson proposed that Medicare force nursing homes to pay for drugs that are prescribed inappropriately, and potentially bar nursing homes that don't use antipsychotics appropriately from Medicare.

A report issued in May found that 83 percent of Medicare claims for antipsychotics were for residents with dementia, the condition specifically warned against in the drugs' labeling. Fourteen percent of all nursing home residents, nearly 305,000 patients, were prescribed antipsychotics.

Doctors are permitted to prescribe drugs for off-label uses, though it is illegal for drug companies to promote uses that haven't been cleared by the FDA. In recent years several pharmaceutical companies have paid huge fines to the Department of Justice in cases involving off-label marketing of antipsychotics.

In January 2009, Eli Lilly & Co. Inc. agreed to plead guilty and pay $1.4 billion for illegal promotion of Zyprexa, including marketing to nursing home doctors.

Protest Wall Street that! Doctors need to treat patients not medicate them.

When you think of a drug addict does the image of an octogenarian come to mind? Probably not. But this is becoming more common all of the time.

Gladys of Miami, FL became a drug addict at the age of 82 when the pain of arthritis got to be too much for her and she became dependent on opiates to get through the day and to sleep at night.

Frank of Los Angeles, CA became a dangerous, problem drinker at 66 after he retired from his job as a maintenance man in a local school. Every day he drove to a bar where he hung out with a few buddies and drank a few too many beers before he drove home.

Samuel of Houston, TX grew up during the era of drugs, sex and rock and roll. Throughout his adult life, he smoked marijuana after work without problems at work or at home. After he retired at 65 he smoked more often and getting high began to interfere with the life he had hoped for when he retired.

For most of her adult life, Joan of San Jose, CA had had two or three glasses of wine with dinner. In her mid-60s her physical tolerance for alcohol diminished. She drank no more than usual, but by the second glass she began to slur her words and to find it hard to think clearly. She frequently fell asleep right after dinner.

These are just a few of the faces of substance abuse or misuse among older adults. They are not the images that ordinarily come to mind when we think of substance abuse, and this is a major reason why these problems often go undetected in elders.

Of course, there are older adults who are alcoholics and/or addicted to illegal drugs such as heroin, but fewer and fewer as people age, in part because so many people addicted to alcohol or drugs die prematurely and in part because some survivors turn their lives around.

If you or someone you care about has substance abuse issues seek help immediately. There are also online drug classes.

What role does race play with respect to substance abuse?  It may play a larger role than you think.

White children between the ages of 12 and 17 are nearly twice as likely to have a drug problem than African-Americans, despite African-American children being nearly twice as likely to be arrested for a drug charge, separate studies have revealed.

The study on drug abuse, published Monday by the Archives of General Psychiatry, used data from 72,561 youth interviewed by the National Survey on Drug Use and Health. From this data, researchers found that 37 percent of children between the ages of 12 and 17 have used alcohol or drugs in the past year, with nearly 8 percent using drugs or alcohol often enough to have a substance-abuse disorder.

Out of the 8 percent who had a drug problem, the racial breakdown was: 15 percent Native American; 9.2 percent mixed racial heritage; 9.0 percent white; 7.7 percent Hispanic; 5 percent African-American, and 3.5 percent Asian/Pacific Islander.

Nevertheless, arrest rates show a much stronger focus on blacks than whites. In a 2008 study of juvenile arrest trends by the United States Department of Justice data showed that for every 1,000 African-American between the ages of 10 and 17 arrested for a drug abuse violation, less than 600 white children were arrested between 2004 and 2008.

The high rates of drug use among young people also reveals that marijuana and analgesic opioids, or painkillers, were used more often than alcohol, according to the study.

In 2009, the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse (CASA) released a study that found children between the ages of 12 and 17 were increasingly able to get marijuana and prescription drugs than alcohol. Although the study did not reveal why access to marijuana had increased, parents could be partially blamed for the increased access to prescription drugs could be partially due to parents.

A substantial number of American parents have become passive pushers. A few decades ago, parents used to have a lock on the liquor cabinet. Maybe there should be a lock on the medicine cabinet.

Just last week I blogged about the horrible withdrawal symptoms suffered by newborns of moms addicted to prescription medication.

Many states, including Oklahoma are looking to create a committee to study whether stronger laws and policies should be adopted to deal with women who use illegal drugs while pregnant.

Does it take a pickup load of dead babies before we decide to act?  This is a horrible situation where addicted babies enter the world feeling absolutely miserable.

Currently, physicians are granted discretion in deciding whether new mothers and their newborns should be tested for illegal drugs and state child welfare workers have discretion in determining whether an infant should be removed from a mother following a positive drug test. Among issues that need to be considered are:

• Should states pass legislation requiring mandatory drug testing of all newborns?
• Should they pass legislation requiring removal from maternal custody, at least temporarily, of a child who tests positive?
• Should a positive drug test for a new mother be considered the same as the infant testing positive in determining whether the child should be removed?
• Should improperly used prescription drugs be considered the same as illegal street drugs in determining whether an infant should be removed?
• Should states amend legislation that allows criminal prosecution for exposing children to illegal drugs to include exposing a fetus to illegal drugs?
• Should an infant who tests positive for alcohol or illegal drugs automatically be classified as deprived or a victim of child abuse?

From my perspective, pregnant mothers are committing child abuse by continuing to abuse prescription medication.  This is no different than if they were drinking alcohol to excess, smoking marijuana or using harder drugs.  If this problem persists, perhaps a drug test on all pregnant mothers becomes part of the checkups.

Prescription medication addiction is becoming a problem of epidemic proportions in this country. Add fetuses to the growing list of those addicted to prescription medication. No, that is not a typo, and really the only surprise is that obviously fetuses cannot access the Internet – yet!

Medical authorities are witnessing explosive growth in the number of newborn babies hooked on prescription painkillers, innocent victims of their mothers' addictions.

After exposure to months of drugs in the womb, babies experience withdrawal a few days after birth. They scream, twitch and vomit. They have trouble breathing and eating. They rub their noses with their fists so frantically that their skin bleeds.

"It's the newborn equivalent of an adult who goes off the drugs cold turkey. It's really horrible to see these kids. They look in so much pain," says Lewis Rubin, director of newborn services at Tampa General Hospital and chairman of neonatology at the University of South Florida.

To ease their pain and get the babies comfortable enough so they can eat and sleep, doctors give the babies narcotics and sedatives, which can include morphine, methadone and phenobarbital. They basically have to re-addict them using intravenous morphine measured in micrograms. The process can take weeks.

I can guaranty you there is not one parent alive that wishes addiction upon their children, especially newborns. Motherhood is not for the self-centered and selfish. A good online drug class would educate prospective mothers on the dangers of drugs and alcohol on their unborn fetuses.

The recent craze to legalize marijuana, and by recent I mean the past 15 years generally and last 5 specifically, has spawned any number of reasons why the drug has medicinal value.

From chronic pain to stomach trouble, to insomnia to anxiety, to just the stress of worrying about running out of weed, recommendations have been written for its use in a medicinal way. How about this?

The Obama administration calls prescription drug abuse the nation’s most pressing drug problem. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, prescription drug deaths are at an all-time high and account for more deaths and hospitalizations in the U.S. than any other drug. Advocates of affordable health care are decrying the exorbitant price of prescriptions and the toll such costs take on them and their families.

Well, guess what non-toxic and inexpensive medicine patients use as a substitute for those expensive, dangerous pharmaceutical drugs? If you said marijuana, you are correct!

A recent survey conducted by the Berkeley Patients Group and reported in the American Psychiatric Association’s Institute on Psychiatric Services found that 66% of their medical marijuana patient clients reported using marijuana as a prescription drug substitute. Most patients said they used marijuana because it was more effective than their prescribed drugs and was accompanied with fewer, and less severe, side effects.

Unfortunately, the federal government insists that marijuana is a dangerous drug with no accepted medical use. Perhaps if it came in a pill, cost a fortune, and had debilitating side effects, it would sail right through the FDA approval process.

How far do drug users and abuser go to get high? Apparently it is open season on any and every product you can buy legally. From children’s cold medication to baking soda and drain cleaner, there is no limit to how far they will look for the next legal high. Now comes the latest – bath salts.

A delusional man broke into a school in Waterville , Maine while class was under way and screamed that someone armed with a gun was after him, trying to kill him.

A woman in Knox County tried to cut her teeth out with a knife because she thought they were embedded with ticks.

A Clinton woman took off her clothes, ran around, climbed into a drainage pipe and refused to come out.

People in the Howland area have reported seeing little green men or aliens and an Ellsworth-area woman thought she was a grizzly bear when police encountered her.

Those are just a few of the recent accounts of Mainers (people living in Maine) acting strangely while under the influence of the synthetic drug bath salts, which may have an innocent-sounding name but is a very dangerous — often psychosis-inducing — substance.

Bath salts first emerged earlier this year on the streets of Bangor, where it is called “monkey dust” and remains a daily problem. But it quickly has spread throughout the state. No county has escaped its reach.

Maine is not the only state suffering from abuse of bath salts. Its abuse, like prescription drugs, is spreading like wildfire. As usual, I think education is the best thing. Perhaps a good online drug class would educate people prior to them using these toxic and potentially lethal, yet legal, substances.

How many people drugs kill every year, I assure you the problem is bad and getting worse.

In 1979 the U.S. Government began tracking drug-related deaths and for the first time those deaths have surpassed the number of traffic fatalities on an annual basis.

The most recent statistics, taken in 2009, show that 36,284 people died in traffic related accidents while 37,485 people died from drug related activities in a one year period.

For those of you who read this blog regularly you know the primary culprit is prescription drugs, not street illegal drugs.  Some of the medications causing these deaths include Xanax, OxyContin and the main culprit Vicodin which killed more people than cocaine and heroin combined.

The primary lethal drug in the United States is literally right under our noses – on the bathroom sink or in the medicine cabinet.

The study also revealed that traffic related fatalities have actually fallen by a third since the 1970s even as the number of drivers using American roadways continues to increase, while drug related deaths have doubled in the last decade. Deaths among the 50-year-old to 69-year-old crowd have been even worse, tripling during the same time period.

Not all deaths have been related to drug overdoses from drug abuse, in many cases double dosing by adults has been the culprit.

In the meantime parents are urged to speak with their kids not just about street illegal drugs but also the medications found in medicine cabinets which can be just as addictive and just as deadly.

Perhaps a good online drug awareness class is in order.