Drug WarRant

Viagra and not opioids is the winner of the unpopular drug contest when it comes to international drug smuggling, according to Kaiser Health News (KHN).

Despite evidence to the contrary, the FDA has long defended its efforts to prevent opioids from entering the country by intercepting prescription drug packages delivered through international mail….

…the agency’s own data revealed that confiscated packages did not contain significant amounts of opioids. The FDA said that just 33 packages of opioids and no fentanyl were found in the 53,000 drug shipments its investigators examined in 2022, which amounts to roughly 0.06% of the total packages searched, KHN reported.

Because the FDA has claimed that confiscating these international packages was preventing the import of opioids, pharmaceutical companies have used this claim to lobby against proposals in Washington, D.C., to allow Americans to buy their prescription drugs from countries where those drugs are cheaper, such as Canada.

The FDA often stops prescription drug shipments, even when no opioids are found, because of improper U.S. drug labeling and packaging.

The report noted that of the drugs confiscated by the FDA in 2020, the number one most common item was sildenafil, a generic form of the erectile dysfunction drug Viagra. Other common medications seized included those for asthma, diabetes, cancer, and HIV.

According to KHN, the FDA has been given millions of dollars to fight the shipment of opioids into the U.S., despite the limited evidence that these drugs are entering the country this way. […]

For decades, millions of Americans seeking to save money have bought drugs from foreign pharmacies, with most sales done online. Although the FDA says people are not allowed to bring prescription drugs into the United States except in rare cases, dozens of cities, county governments, and school districts help their employees buy drugs from abroad. […]

Neurologist Holly Elser, MD, PhD; and Keith Humphreys, PhD; Mathew V. Kiang, ScD; Swapnil Mehta, MD; Jong H. Yoon, MD; William O. Faustman, PhD; at the Department of Neurology, Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, have debunked prohibitionist propositions familiar to many readers here at Drug WarRant which implied that smoking marijuana leads to or causes schizophrenia:

Question: Is state cannabis legalization or commercialization associated with increased rates of psychosis-related health care claims?

Exposure: State cannabis legalization policies were measured for each state and month based on law type (medical or recreational) and degree of commercialization (presence or absence of retail outlets). […]

Main Outcomes and Measures: Outcomes were rates of psychosis-related diagnoses and prescribed antipsychotics. […]

Conclusions and Relevance: In this retrospective cohort study of commercial and Medicare Advantage claims data, state medical and recreational cannabis policies were not associated with a statistically significant increase in rates of psychosis-related health outcomes. […]

Findings: In this cohort study of claims data from 63,680,589 beneficiaries from 2003 to 2017, there was no statistically significant difference in the rates of psychosis-related diagnoses or prescribed antipsychotics in states with medical or recreational cannabis policies compared with states with no such policy. […]

Meaning: The findings of this study do not support an association between state policies legalizing cannabis and psychosis-related outcomes […]

A few California police officers are undergoing withdrawal-like symptoms from the drug war due to being denied any opportunity to enforce a failed crusade against cannabis:

…a grand jury added four new criminal counts against Joseph Huffaker, including impersonating a federal officer and falsifying records in a federal investigation.

Prosecutors say Huffaker and at least one other officer posed as ATF agents during traffic stops where they illegally seized weed from drivers on the side of the highway and later falsified records to cover up the corruption.

“It’s been a long time, five years ago this month,” said Zeke Flatten [a former Texas cop], who says Huffaker and a yet unidentified second individual robbed him of three pounds of marijuana in December 2017 while impersonating ATF agents during a traffic stop along Highway 101. “I’m satisfied. I’m satisfied that they’re being held accountable.” […]

Prior to legalization, the police could steal part or all of a suspect’s marijuana supply simply by seizing it and making certain it never reached an evidence storage locker. No complaints about lost or misplaced evidence were likely to emerge from the accused. Times change, and in this case, drug enforcement crooks need to accept that weed is legal in California.

The City of Berkeley wants to decriminalize tripping:

A project to decriminalize natural psychedelics that lingered for three years in the Berkeley City Council will come back to life in a few weeks. But unlike other jurisdictions that have taken steps to chip away at the national and state ban on psychedelics, Berkeley is about to consider an even broader proposal: one that could make it the first in the U.S. to decriminalize LSD.

Of the 15 U.S. cities that have softened restrictions on psychedelics, none has included this synthetic hallucinogen. Berkeley Community Health Commissioners Joseph Holcomb Adams and Karma Smart explained that the logic for decriminalizing LSD is that it meets the technical definition of psychedelics. And in their view, said Smart, “nobody deserves to go to jail for having a psychedelic experience.” […]

A new study coming out of the Columbia Mailman School of Public Health confirms Pink Floyd’s iconic suggestion from Another Brick in the Wall that inflicting totalitarianism onto kids will have an equal and opposite social reaction:

In new research in the journal Addictive Behaviors, public health researchers find that the prevalence of school discipline and school policing—core elements of the school-to-prison pipeline—predict subsequent school-average levels of substance use and developmental risk.

First author Seth Prins, PhD, a researcher at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, and co-authors analyzed 11 years of data from 4,800 schools and more than 4,950,000 students in California. They found that the prevalence of exclusionary school discipline (suspension and expulsion) and school-based police contact predicted higher school levels of binge drinking, drinking, smoking, using cannabis, using other drugs, and violence/harassment. They found also that the prevalence of school discipline also predicted lower levels of reported community support, feeling safe in school, and school support.

“Our findings are surprising to nobody who has been on the front lines of the fight against the mass criminalization of kids, especially in communities that have faced systematic disinvestment in social infrastructure and enormous investments in policing,” says Prins, an assistant professor of epidemiology and sociomedical sciences. […]

Did anyone else suspect kids would use drugs in rebellious retaliation to the repressive antics of crazed morality police? Many public school systems apparently didn’t.