Drug Policy Question of the Week – 8-23-10

As answered by Mary Jane Borden, Editor of Drug War Facts for the Drug Truth Network on 8-23-10. http://www.drugtruth.net/cms/node/3031

Question of the Week: Does student drug testing achieve drug free students?

As described in the July 2010 report from the U.S. Department of Education, entitled “The Effectiveness of Mandatory-Random Student Drug Testing,”

“One approach to address student substance use is school-based mandatory-random student drug testing (MRSDT). Under MRSDT, students and their parents sign consent forms agreeing to the students’ random drug testing as a condition of participation in athletics and other school-sponsored competitive extracurricular activities.”

These programs have the goals of (1) identifying students with substance use problems for referral to counseling or treatment services, and (2) deterring substance use among all students.

Unfortunately, MSRDT has produced few results. Seven years ago, the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University found,

“Drug testing is not associated with either significantly lower risk scores or lower estimates of student body drug use.”

That same year, researchers in a Journal of School Health article concluded,

“drug testing (of any kind) was not a significant predictor of student marijuana use in the past 12 months. Neither was drug testing for cause or suspicion.”

A 2007 study in the Journal of Adolescent Health questioned deterrence, finding that,

“No Drug and Alcohol Testing deterrent effects were evident for past month use.”

The conclusions in the aforementioned 2010 Department of Education report mostly mirrored those of the prior studies, stating that mandatory random student drug testing has,

“had no “spillover effects” on the substance use reported by students who were not subject to testing and had no effect on any group of students’ reported intentions to use substances in the future.”

These facts and others like them can be found in the Drug Testing chapter of Drug War Facts at www.drugwarfacts.org.

Questions concerning these or other facts concerning drug policy can be e-mailed to [email protected].

Drug Policy Question of the Week – 8-7-10

As answered by Mary Jane Borden, Editor of Drug War Facts for the Drug Truth Network on 8-7-10. http://www.drugtruth.net/cms/node/3010

Question of the Week:  Is there a relationship between HIV/AIDS and drug policy?

The most recent annual statistics concerning HIV/AIDS come from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It reported that, from the beginning of the epidemic through 2007, an estimated 583,298 persons in the US have died from AIDS. A total of 1,030,832 persons reportedly had AIDS in 2007.

AIDS is prevalent in Europe where 48,892 newly diagnosed HIV cases were reported in 49 of the 53 EU countries. The situation in the Russian Federation is particularly dire as detailed in a Human Rights Watch report that determined

“being in prison or other state detention is an important risk factor for HIV in Russia.”

Prison is a risk factor in the United States as well. The Bureau of Justice Statistics estimated that,

“At yearend 2008, a reported 21,987 inmates held in state or federal prisons were HIV positive or had confirmed AIDS.”

Another risk factor for HIV/AIDS is race. The CDC concluded that HIV was the 22nd leading cause of death in the US for whites, the 13th leading cause of death for Hispanics, and the 9th leading cause of death for blacks.

These factors and more served as the basis for the Vienna Declaration, which was launched at the 18th International AIDS Conference held recently in Vienna, Austria from July 18th to 23rd. The declaration was drafted by a team of leading international HIV experts. It stated simply,

“The criminalisation of illicit drug users is fuelling the HIV epidemic and has resulted in overwhelmingly negative health and social consequences. A full policy reorientation is needed.”

These facts and others like them can be found in the HIV/AIDS, Race & HIV, and European Union chapters of Drug War Facts at www.drugwarfacts.org.

Questions concerning these or other facts concerning drug policy can be e-mailed to [email protected].

Drug Policy Question of the Week – 7-19-10

As answered by Mary Jane Borden, Editor of Drug War Facts for the Drug Truth Network on 7-19-10. http://www.drugtruth.net/cms/node/2984

Question of the Week: Is alcohol a dangerous drug?

Let’s look at some statistics.

A 2009 report from the National Center for Health Statistics estimated that about 22,000 people died of alcohol-induced causes in 2006.

Numbers from 1993 quoted in a 2009 study from the Journal of Psychopharmacology stated,

“Four per cent of the global burden of disease is attributable to alcohol (about as much as that to tobacco and hypertension) and causally related to more than 60 medical conditions.”

An editorial in the New Zealand Journal of Medicine calculated that

“The lethal dose of alcohol divided by a typical recreational dose [in other words, its safety ratio] is 10, which places it closer to heroin [safety ratio – 6), and GHB [safety ratio – 8] in terms of danger from overdose”

The editorial further asserted that alcohol is considerably more dangerous than LSD [with a safety ratio of 1000] or cannabis, whose safety ratio is greater than 1,000.

A 1998 Bureau of Justice Statistics analysis found that,

“Federal statistics show that a large percentage of criminal offenders were under the influence of alcohol alone when they committed their crimes (36.3%, or a total of [1.9 million] offenders). Federal research also shows for more than 40% of convicted murderers being held in either jail or State prison, alcohol use was a factor in the crime.”

That Journal of Psychopharmacology study compared alcohol to GHB and concluded,

“the degree of danger to public health caused by ethanol is similar to that caused by GHB.”

In the United States, GHB is a Schedule 1 drug, the same classification as heroin.

These facts and others like them can be found in the Alcohol chapter of Drug War Facts.org.

Questions concerning these or other facts concerning drug policy can be e-mailed to [email protected].