Alcohol: The Most Anti-Social Drug

This week's Lancet, the British medical journal, drives a silver spike into the heart of the undead myth that alcohol is the lubricant of sociability and good fellowship.  A systematic comparative ranking of 20 different addictive drugs found that alcohol is the most harmful drug, more harmful than heroin, crack cocaine, and methamphetamines.

The study, by an industry-independent panel of scientific experts, ranked drugs in terms of their harm to the user and their harm to others.

Heroin, crack, and methamphetamine scored higher than alcohol in harm to the user.  But alcohol's score on the scale of harm to others was double that of heroin and crack, the next leading chemicals, so that when the scores of harm to others and harm to self were combined, alcohol led the sordid parade of harmful consequences by nearly twenty points.

A key point in alcohol marketing is social bonding.  Alcohol is said to promote romantic linkups, male bonding, business networking, and general friendly togetherness.  It's sold as the antidote to the isolation, alienation, and competitiveness that make so many people feel lonely even in crowds.   The industry spends billions every year trying to persuade us that if we'd all drink together, we'd all be happy together.

Not so, found the panel of medical experts.  The group evaluated the harm each drug caused to others in terms of physical and psychological injury, crime, environmental damage, family adversities, international damage, economic cost, and damage to community.  The panel also ranked social harms such as the loss of tangibles and loss of relationships.

Alcohol led all other drugs in measure of injury to others, family adversities, economic cost, and harm to the community. In other words, the person under the influence of alcohol caused the most bloodshed, broken families, and other mayhem to economic and social life.

The Lancet study corroborates other, similar studies conducted by other scientists independent of the alcoholic beverage industry, and cited in the Lancet article.  This relatively recent group of studies moves beyond older research which looked at drug consequences more narrowly, in terms of a single factor, such as drug-related deaths.

The finding that alcohol is a more harmful drug in society than heroin and crack cocaine upsets some deep seated stereotypes.  We've been taught to identify the "drug problem" with hard drug users, and we've been led to believe that most of these are black and socially marginal.

This research says that society's drug problem is really first and foremost an alcohol problem, and that you'll find the most dangerous drug addicts among outwardly respectable middle class whites.

That isn't really news to those who have attended most any addiction recovery support group meeting.  How many stories of hospital visits, court dates, divorces, abandoned children, lost jobs, and other chaos do you need to hear before you realize that the slick TV ads for alcoholic beverages are lies?

Even in parts of the recovery subculture, the alcoholics have tended to turn up their noses at the heroin and crack addicts. This elitist bias underlies the segregation of the legacy support groups into separate alcohol and "narcotics" branches.  (Modern groups such as LifeRing include both alcohol and other drug users.)  Now science is turning this conceit upside down.

True, the heroin and crack users have nothing to be proud of.  But the drug that really tears apart the bonds of society doesn't come in a syringe or a pipe, it comes in a bottle.

[First published in hellowellness.in on Nov. 7 2010]

Congratulations to Barack Obama

As a college student at Wesleyan in '61 (or was it '62?) I joined with other white students to team with groups of black students from Howard University in an effort to integrate lunch counters in Glen Burnie, a suburb of Baltimore.  In some places we sat indefinitely without being served; in one, we were served coffee with salt in it; at another they locked the doors as we approached.  When we picketed the segregated local movie theatre, a mob of white men surrounded us as sheriffs watched.  A providential cloudburst scattered the crowd and allowed us to escape.  

On the night of election day in 1964, I arrived at the civil rights movement headquarters in Jackson, Mississippi, to begin a few months of volunteer work.  Nearly everyone was glued to the TV set to see whether the Democratic Party would seat the elected black delegates running under the banner of the Freedom Democratic Party.  The answer was, no.  

These and other memories came upwelling as I watched the inauguration of Barack Obama.   The party that wouldn't seat elected black delegates had nominated a black man for president.  A man whose father would not have been served at DC area restaurants 60 years ago was taking the oath of office.   Indeed, there has been some changes.

This morning's San Francisco Chronicle editorializes that Obama's new approach is "grounded in sobriety and hard work."  The "sobriety" that's meant here is, I assume, the metaphorical kind -- a pragmatic, realistic attitude -- and not the literal kind, meaning abstinence from alcoholic drink.  Yet there's a connection to reflect on, here.  

For me, personally, my time of active engagement in the civil rights movement was largely a time when my alcoholism (acquired in my freshman year in college) was in remission.  Engagement in life-changing work was hugely more interesting than drink.  My drinking habit only bloomed large during the years of reaction that followed, when it seemed that everything we had done was being undone.  Pessimism, despair, lack of hope were the atmosphere in which this illness flourished.  And I'm not the only one.  Is it an accident that the drug problem grew larger in rough proportion as conditions for the poor and middle class in America stagnated and deteriorated?  

Barack Obama's own history with alcohol and other drugs offers a refreshing contrast to that of his predecessor in office.  Obama has freely and openly admitted experimenting with drugs as a youth, but then stopped; he is trying to quit, or has quit, smoking.  What a contrast to the history of "W," whose claimed mid-life alcohol salvation story is widely believed to be a sham that covered up more than it revealed, notably a long history of cocaine use, some say.  

I've not yet seen anything in the way of Obama's statements so far that gives a clue to his specific policies on alcoholism and other addictions.  The federal government has many levers to pull and many dollars to spend in this area.  On general principles, I assume that Obama will support the recent extension of parity in the treatment of mental health and addiction treatment.  I assume that the federal agencies in this area will continue to be funded.  

The open questions in my mind are (a)  War on Drugs, and (b) Federal excise taxes on spirits and tobacco.  We need "change we can believe in" in the "war on drugs," a criminal exercise in hypocrisy and racial/economic persecution that is long overdue for radical reform.  An even more telling mark of Obama's mettle will be whether he supports Congressional action to raise the excise taxes on liquor and tobacco.  Public health advocates have long maintained that raising these taxes is the single most effective measure to reduce the social impact of these two most murderous addictive drugs.  Needless to say, the pillars of corporate greed stand deeply dug in on this issue.

The largest opening in the clouds under this new administration will be in the area of improving living standards and reducing inequities for the poor and middle class.  If the real and emotional environment of ordinary people in this country becomes infused with progress and hope, the problems of alcohol and other drugs will recede as if of their own accord.  It will take some time, but if the new administration succeeds in this largest and most difficult of goals, we will, in fact, see a new era of "sobriety" in both senses of the word.

Congratulations to President Barack Obama, and best wishes for the future.

P.S.  To date, the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy remains under an interim head, Patrick Ward, a Bush appointee who has held the post a bit over a year.  Obama's choice of Rep. Jim Ramstad to become the new Drug Czar has run into heavy fire for Ramstad's ties to abusive "faith-based" programs, his policy positions on prevention, and his ties to a massive investor fraud.  Read Maia Szalavitz's blog blast and the Drug Policy Alliance editorial.  Ramstad is not change, he's MOTSOS.  

War of the drugged

From the Guardian (U.K.):

The army today admitted that cocaine was becoming the "drug of choice" for British service personnel.

Colonel John Donnelly, who has responsibility for army discipline, said a significant increase in drug taking by soldiers could be linked to stress induced by the demands of combat operations.

More on this topic.

CIA up to its old tricks?

A tantalizing hint that the CIA is up to its old tricks (flying drugs from conflict zones) surfaced in the crash landing of a Gulfstream II business jet in Mexico Sept. 24.

The Florida-based craft carried somewhere between three and six tons of powder cocaine, and either no heroin or up to one ton of heroin, depending on which estimates one believes.

The flight originated in Colombia and was destined for Florida with a stopover in Cancun.

Blogger FrostFireZoo.com reports that the serial number of the craft matches those of a plane used by the CIA on at least three occasions in the rendition of terrorism suspects from Guantanamo to other countries to be tortured.

A Mexican journal accused Mexican and U.S. political authorities of hypocrisy for waging a so-called "war on drugs" on the one hand, and being heavily invested in the lucrative drug trade, on the other.

Foxfire.com observes that the amount of drugs said to be on the plane diminished with every official Mexican press release on the incident, and speculates that the subtracted amounts disappeared back into the market.

The photos of the crash scene, above, originated with Mexican press sources. For a video with commentary on EVTV, click.

P.S. Aug. 26 '08: Someone has removed the photos of the crash scene from this blog, and from the original source website as well. However, a video containing the same or similar still photos is still available online here: http://www.evtv1.com/player.aspx?itemnum=10106 -- See them before they're gone.

State Dept drug report plays politics

The U.S. State Department report on the worldwide illegal drugs trade issued March 1 reads like a political propaganda bulletin more than a real research report. Regimes that have Bush administration support, such as Colombia and Afghanistan, get patted on the head for their alleged drug control efforts, while heads of state that give Bush hell (as in Venezuela, Bolivia, and others) get blasted for alleged complicity in the dirty business.

The facts remain -- and the report admits -- that Colombia produces 90 per cent of the world supply of cocaine, and Afghanistan supplies more than 90 per cent of the heroin, and both are close allies of the Bush administration. Neither Colombia nor Afghanistan could achieve anything remotely near this kind of market domination without at least the active benevolence of their respective governments.

The report, which runs to 9 megabytes in PDF online (Vol. 1 here and Vol. 2 here), shows its political bias most transparently in the summary on Afghanistan. While admitting that Afghan opium production increased 25 per cent last year, the report claims that heroin stemming from Afghan opium is distributed almost exclusively in Europe, Russia, the Middle East and Asia. It claims that most of the heroin sold in the U.S. comes from poppies grown in Colombia and Mexico, which together account for only four per cent of the world supply.

The State Department strains credulity when it asks us to believe that the huge U.S. heroin demand is fed by this relative trickle of supply. The report says in one passing sentence that "Heroin produced from Afghan opium also finds its way to the United States" (Vol. 1, p. 19) but makes no effort to quantify this grudging admission.

The presence of Afghan heroin in the United States is a political landmine for the Bush administration. The bumper crops of opium recorded in Afghanistan since the invasion are unmistakably the administration's baby. To protect the administration, the State Department, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy all repeat the fairy tale that Afghan heroin in the U.S. is insignificant. But local police and treatment staff in many parts of the U.S. know better. Search this blog under "Afghanistan" for a selection of local news stories, many of them from the heartland, about heroin addiction and overdose deaths due to the high-potency white powder heroin made in Afghanistan under the protection of American troops by a regime propped up with American taxpayer dollars.

WHAT war on drugs?" As Gandhi reportedly said about Western civilization, "I think it would be a good idea."

Research: impulsive rats quicker to do cocaine

Rats who rank high in impulsivity -- the abstract doesn't make clear how that was measured -- are more likely to self-administer intravenous cocaine than their less impulsive peers, a group of scientists at Cambridge University has found. The study, led by Jeffrey W. Dalley, is significant because it found that the impulsive rats had a substandard set of dopamine receptors before being exposed to cocaine, thus supporting the hypothesis that dopamine receptor deficiency is a precondition, rather than a result, of chronic stimulant consumption. The study appears in the March 2 issue of Science. Abstract.

While the study sheds light on stimulant use, this model will not transfer so easily to other drug use profiles, particularly opiates and depressants such as alcohol.

Drug dealers high on Bush pardon list

"George W. Bush Likes Those Drug Dealers When It Comes To Pardons," says the Eye on Washington blog. Citing a complete listing of pardons in Wikipedia, the blog says that 14 of 113 Bush presidential pardons were for convicted dealers of marijuana, hashish, cocaine, methamphetamine and other drugs. Source.

Nicotine, cocaine, heroin lead to similar brain damage

A study of the brain tissue of deceased former smokers has found chemical alterations similar to the brain damage that cocaine and opiates cause in laboratory rats, according to researchers at the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA). Abstract. Discussion.

Colombia: Minister resigns over drug gang scandal

The foreign minister of Colombia resigned Monday as the government of President Álvaro Uribe, the Bush administration's closest ally in South America, struggled with a scandal that has disclosed ties between paramilitary cocaine-trafficking squads and some of Mr. Uribe's most prominent political supporters.

The scandal (which surprised nobody) comes at a time when the U.S. Congress is considering extension of the so-called "free trade" agreement with the Colombian government. Blogger Jonathan Tasini (Huffington Post) writes that "free trade" has meant flooding Colombia with cheap imported grains from highly subsidized U.S. agribusiness corporations. This drives local farmers out of business and forces them to switch to growing coca for the well-connected drug gangs. Source.

Parental ATOD use leads to behavior problems in children

Children whose parents used alcohol, tobacco or other drugs including cocaine while pregnant or in their infancy exhibit greater behavior problems through age 7 than other children, a study published in the February issue of Pediatrics has found.

"Our findings highlight not only a need for continued prevention and treatment programs that are directed toward illegal drug use but also a call for increased effort toward prevention of tobacco and alcohol use, which is a more prevalent problem and has as great an impact on childhood behavior problems as prenatal cocaine exposure," the study's authors write.

Source.

Full Nelson: Teacher snorts coke in front of class

A retired elementary school teacher working as a substitute snorted cocaine through a pen cap in front of her 4th-grade class -- and some of the students (aged 10) recognized what she was doing and reported her. Joan M. Donatelli, 59, was charged with criminal possession of a controlled substance and two counts of endangering the welfare of a child. Details.

UK soldiers snorting cocaine on video

GLASGOW, Scotland (UPI) -- The British military is conducting an internal investigation over video of troops in Scotland allegedly snorting cocaine in their Glasgow barracks.

The video was taken by a soldier in the Royal Regiment of Scotland with a cell phone, and given to The Daily Record newspaper, which contacted military authorities. Source.

From one narco-state to another

President Bush has nominated William Wood, the current U.S. ambassador to Colombia, to the same post in Afghanistan. Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the press that the President's intent was to transfer the Colombian model to Afghanistan.

Among the numerous voices questioning the wisdom of this judgment was the New York Times, which editorialized on Feb. 6:

The limited gains Colombia has achieved in recent years have been offset by an overly generous amnesty program for right-wing paramilitary leaders and drug traffickers, which has seriously compromised the rule of law. And American aid has been disproportionately directed into military and police programs, leaving far too little to promote alternative livelihoods for Colombia’s farmers. Despite all the money spent, the amount of land planted with coca crops has risen and the net harvest has been reduced only slightly. Afghanistan’s problems will not be solved by copying these mistakes.

Source. It sounds like, apart from the language barrier, Wood will feel right at home in Colombistan.

A long, insightful piece on the Colombia/Afghanistan parallel by Simon Jenkins in the Sunday Times (London) makes a similar point. In Afghanistan, he says:

Here, too, the West is intervening in a narco-economy that is destabilising a pro-western government. Here, too, quantities of aid have been dedicated to security yet have fed corruption. Here, too, intervention has boosted drug production and stacked the cards against law and order. This year’s Afghan poppy crop is predicted to be the largest on record. European demand has boosted the price paid for Afghan poppies to nine times that of wheat. At this differential a policy of crop substitution is absurd. ...
Some 40,000 Nato troops from more than 30 different countries are gathered in Kabul. Since many of them refuse to fight, the city has become a holiday camp for the world’s military elite. Outside the capital, military occupation acts as a recruiting sergeant for insurgency, leaving Nato bases constantly on the defensive. ...

Jenkins' piece, titled "America is doped up in Colombia for a bad trip in Afghanistan," observes that in Helmand province, a major poppy area, "drug lords are the only counterweight to the Taliban." Source.

Nursing mom kills baby with cocaine in breast milk

A nursing mother in West Branch MI killed her 5-month old baby with breast milk containing cocaine, medical examiners ruled. The mother had been using cocaine two or three times a day while nursing the infant girl, Karie Lee Bowman. The woman was sentenced to nine months in prison. Source.

Research: Effects of prenatal exposure to cocaine

A study on rabbits has found that prenatal exposure to low doses of cocaine causes an unusual, long-lasting change in the functioning of dopamine (D1) receptors in the brain, resulting in developmental and behavioral consequences. The study is published in the current Journal of Neuroscience. Abstract. Lead author Greg Stanwood says that the results are significant because they concern the relatively low levels of cocaine typical of recreational users. Children of these mothers appear to be normal at birth, but Stanwood suggests that they will have cognitive and behavioral deficits later on. Press release.

China huge drug market, chemical exporter

China's official statistics vastly understate the country's drug addiction problem, says an academic study group, and the problem is getting worse. China's growing number of new rich want not only Volvos, Rolexes and premium liquors, they want heroin, cocaine, ecstasy and all the rest -- and suppliers are finding ways to serve them.

Chinese chemical factories are also leading export suppliers of ingredients used to manufacture methamphetamine. Read more.

Bush's cocaine issue resurfaces

A Fox news discussion of undeclared presidential candidate Barack Obama's admission that he used cocaine as a youth has resurfaced the issue of whether the sitting president had made a similar admission. Details. According to political science prof John Seery, there have been persistent and numerous reports of Bush's own past cocaine use -- and the press has not been diligent in digging into them. Bush has danced around the issue, refusing to either confirm or squarely deny his use. Blog, blog.

Obama: You can recover from the stupid things you did as a teen

Senator Barack Obama's (D-IL) 12-year old revelations that he used marijuana and cocaine as a student are in the headlines this week, thanks to a Washington Post story speculating whether the admissions will hurt his not-yet-announced presidential campaign. Source. No previous presidential candidate has admitted to ever using cocaine. President Clinton said he smoked marijuana "but didn't inhale." Pres. Bush has admitted to past abuse of alcohol.

Says the Post:

Obama has not expressed any regrets for his candor. In a preface to the new edition, he says that he would tell the same story today "even if certain passages have proven to be inconvenient politically."

In the book, Obama acknowledges that he used cocaine as a high school student but rejected heroin. "Pot had helped, and booze; maybe a little blow when you could afford it. Not smack, though," he says.

In an interview during his Senate race two years ago, Obama said he admitted using drugs because he thought it was important for "young people who are already in circumstances that are far more difficult than mine to know that you can make mistakes and still recover.

"I think that, at this stage, my life is an open book, literally and figuratively," he said. "Voters can make a judgment as to whether dumb things that I did when I was a teenager are relevant to the work that I've done since that time."

Possibly much more relevant to Obama's campaign than these old revelations of youthful drug use is the senator's current support for the Byrne program on methamphetamine. Read Maya Szalavitz as she rips him a new one over that issue.

Gates, Negroponte: Dirty hands in drug traffic

The recent appointment of Robert Gates Sr. as Secretary of Defense, and today's announcement that John Negroponte will move from head of national intelligence to become No. 2 at the State Department, offer no hope of a cleanup in the Afghan heroin scandal.

Both Gates and Negroponte were involved in the Reagan-era Iran-Contra affair. Source. Part of that sordid scheme was reported CIA support of cocaine gangs in Honduras and Nicaragua to finance the anti-government "Contra" death squads. Wikipedia currently says:

Senator John Kerry's 1988 U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations report on Contra drug links concluded that "senior U.S. policy makers were not immune to the idea that drug money was a perfect solution to the Contras' funding problems."^[37] Kerry was suspicious of North's connection with Manuel Noriega, Panama's drug baron. According to the National Security Archive, Oliver North had been in contact with Noriega and had met him personally.

In 1992 U.S. President George H.W. Bush pardoned persons involved in the scandal.^[38]

The allegations resurfaced in 1996 when journalist Gary Webb published reports in the San Jose Mercury News^[39], and later in his book Dark Alliance^[40], detailing how Contras had distributed crack cocaine into Los Angeles to fund weapons purchases. These reports were initially attacked by various other newspapers, which attempted to debunk the link, citing official reports that apparently cleared the CIA.

In 1998, CIA Inspector General Frederick Hitz published a two-volume report^[41] that substantiated many of Webb's claims, and described how 50 Contras and drug traffickers had been protected from law enforcement activity by the Reagan-Bush administration, and documented a cover-up of evidence relating to these activities. The report also showed that Oliver North and the NSC were aware of these activities. A report later that same year by the Justice Department Inspector General Michael Bromwich also came to similar conclusions.

In 2004, Gary Webb allegedly committed suicide by shooting himself twice in the head. Source, and more.

The current Afghan heroin scandal -- with high-potency low-priced heroin produced in Afghanistan under U.S. and British protection flooding the European and U.S. markets -- calls for a thorough house cleaning at the top of the U.S. intelligence, military, diplomatic, and political establishments. The appointments of Gates and Negroponte say: don't hold your breath.

The dear departed

Tanzania: Seven men were arrested near the border here on charges of attempting to smuggle cocaine hidden in a dead body. When their VW bus was stopped by authorities, they put on a great show of grief for Kombo Silili, 35, whose wrapped body they said they were taking to his home town for burial.

But authorities, acting on a tip, weren't sympathetic. They took Silili's body to Mbeya hospital, where pathologists found 59 balloons of cocaine in his intestine. Police say they believe Silili was a courier hired to transport the drugs from Zambia, but that one of the balloons ruptured and the drug killed him. His associates then tried to complete the deal by taking Silili's body across the border. Source.