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Bellatrix

WHO : Legal Drugs Pose Greatest Health Threat
MSNBC | 4:44 p.m. ET March 18, 2004

BRASILIA, Brazil - The health threat from legal drugs like alcohol and tobacco is much greater than that from illegal narcotics, the World Health Organization said Thursday.

The first report of its kind by the global body found that dependence on alcohol and cigarettes has a much greater cost for societies than illegal drugs like cocaine and crack.

Bellatrix- I wonder how long it'll take for the UNDCP to force the WHO to bury this report.[/i]

The Neuroscience of Psychoactive Substance Use and Dependence report said that drug addiction is a growing problem, especially in poor countries that have rising rates of alcohol consumption and smoking.

There are about 200 million illegal drugs users worldwide, or 3.4 percent of the world population, it said. Illegal drugs contributed 0.8 percent to global ill health in 2000, while alcohol accounted for 4.1 percent and cigarettes 4 percent.


Premature deaths and disability

The percentages are based on a measurement used by WHO that gauges the burden that premature deaths and years lived with disability impose on society.

The “main global health burden is due to licit rather than illicit substances,” the report said.

Men in rich countries are especially vulnerable to suffer from alcohol- and cigarette-related bad health.

“Health and social problems associated with use and dependence on tobacco, alcohol and illicit substances require greater attention by the public health community,” WHO Director-General Dr. Lee Jong-Wook said in a statement.

The report also found that it may not be possible to fully cure drug dependence because of long-term changes to the way the brain works.

Bellatrix : this defies the "forced treatment works" argument.


Better treatments needed

Health experts need to consider a range of factors in treating drug dependence because it is a disorder caused by genetic disposition, as well as psychological and cultural factors, it said.

“Like major psychiatric disorders, substance dependence may not be curable but improved effectiveness of available treatment has contributed significantly to recovery,” said Dr. Catherine Le Gales-Camus, assistant-director general of noncommunicable diseases and mental health at WHO.

The global launch of the report took place in Brazil, a country with spiraling drug-related violence, which has in the past led to rough treatment of drug users.

Any person can become a drug addict and that dependence is a disorder, making it crucial to eradicate the stigma suffered by drug users that can make treatment more difficult, the report said.

Bellatrix - the Drug War must end to further remove the stigma of addiction and make treatment available to anyone anytime they need it. Fear of prosecution and lack of resources has made seeking treatment extremely difficult for far too many. Often it is a life or death situation. Read on for a bit from the lighter side of legal addiction....

You Really May be Addicted to Chocolate

WASHINGTON - People who say they are addicted to chocolate or pizza may not be exaggerating, U.S.-based scientists said on Tuesday.

A brain scan study of normal, hungry people showed their brains lit up when they saw and smelled their favorite foods in much the same way as the brains of cocaine addicts when they think about their next snort.

Bellatrix - is it possible that we're just getting "addiction" mixed up with enthusiastic anticipation? Why is it not okay to just "crave" or "really like" something? The word "addiction" gets tossed around far too carelessly, like "commie" or "nazi", without real regard for it's meaning. Another interesting implication here - the term cocaine addict. What's the difference between a casual user and an "addict"? The implication is, of course, that all "users" are "addicts."

“Food presentation significantly increased metabolism in the whole brain (by 24 percent) and these changes were largest in superior temporal, anterior insula, and orbitofrontal cortices,” they wrote.

These areas are associated with addiction. For instance, the orbitofrontal cortex has been seen to activate in cocaine users when they think about the drug.

Bellatrix - so?? This is some twisted logic. Is this all it took for the scientists to conclude that this part of the brain responds to addiction? Do people get the shakes and sweat uncontrollably if they can;t get the slice of pizza they're craving?

The study, published in the April issue of the journal NeuroImage, may support the argument that food advertising is helping drive the U.S. obesity epidemic.

Bellatrix - it's not YOUR fault that your fat - you're ADDICTED. Sheesh! Do I sense a bit of hysteria here? There's another buzzword - epidemic. Has obseity mutated into a virus recently?

“These results could explain the deleterious effects of constant exposure to food stimuli, such as advertising, candy machines, food channels, and food displays in stores,” Dr. Gene-Jack Wang of Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, New York, who led the study, said in a statement.

“The high sensitivity of this brain region to food stimuli, coupled with the huge number and variety of these stimuli in the environment, likely contributes to the epidemic of obesity in this country.”

An estimated 30 percent of Americans are obese, meaning they have a body mass index of more than 30. This ratio of height to weight usually works out to being about 30 pounds (14 kg) overweight for a woman and 35 to 40 pounds (16 to 18 kg) overweight for a man.

Wang and colleagues studied 12 men and women with an average age of 28. The volunteers fasted for just under a day and then underwent positron emission tomography, or PET scans, which measure brain metabolism.

They were asked to describe their favorite foods and how they like to eat them while they were presented with some of those foods.

“A cotton swab impregnated with the food was placed in their tongues so they could taste it,” the researchers wrote.

Bellatrix - oh, what toture! Amnesty International should hear about this! ;-)

“The favorite food items most frequently selected by the subjects were bacon-egg-cheese sandwich, cinnamon bun, pizza, hamburger with cheese, fried chicken, lasagna, Bar-Be-Que rib, ice cream, brownie, and chocolate cake.”

Bellatrix - so, does this mean John Ashcroft is going after the 7-11 chains next? :-p

Several leading addiction experts worked on the report including Dr. Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse.

Bellatrix - ahhh, good ol' NIDA - the organization that refuses to fund any study of marijuana unless it aims to be negative. Speaking of marijuana, we just saw two articles about the addictive properties of several substances and our happy herb wasn't mentioned even once. Funny that...

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WNB

As a law abiding citizen, I find this study offensive. I smoke a pack a day of cigarettes and drink every day, all day, and I'm nowhere near as depraved as the lunatics who smoke the demon weed.

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Kannibal

Bellatrix - so, does this mean John Ashcroft is going after the 7-11 chains next? :-p

heheh you laugh now but...

BoomBoomCrew

hey man, yall ever seenbeavis and butthead!?