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Cocaine Trade Fuels Guerrilla
Movement In Columbia
A February 20th article by Jared
Kotler for the Associated Press, exploits the deepening involvement of the
Cocaine Trade with the Arms Trade. In his article, Kotler describes a recent
operation near the Brazilian border that helped to reveal the connection
between the country's 37-year war and the illicit market for Cocaine. The
operation turned up such articles as notebooks that recorded transactions
between cocaine traffickers in Brazil and the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces
of Columbia). Among officials present at the raid, General Peter Pace, a US
Forces commander in Latin America, said, "FARC and narco-trafficking were one
in the same in this region." The troops that performed the commando raid turned
up 12 labs for manufacturing the coca leaf into cocaine, airstrips, rebel camps
and 25,000 acres of coca. Kotler states that official sources quote 2 tons of
cocaine could be produced in one week at this installation.
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Discoveries Made On the
Neurobiological Origins of Dependence
A recent article by Sharon Begley,
published in Newsweek, revealed new information about the neurobiological
changes that occur in the addict's brain and how these overall affect the cycle
of addiction. Until now doctors and treatment professionals have only guessed
at the complete neurobiological effects drugs have on the addict. As Begley
points out: "A cascade of neurobiological changes accompanies the transition
from voluntary to compulsive drug use, but one of the most important is this:
cocaine, heroin, nicotine, amphetamines and other addictive drugs alter the
brain's pleasure circuits." Her article goes on to point out that however
different substances of abuse make this change in slightly different ways, they
all reduce the number of dopamine receptors. Dopamine is the brains own
neurochemical that governs the body's reward system. And without it a person
becomes less responsive to real life stimulators, like getting new job, a new
promotion, having lasting relationships and in general functioning at a normal
level. Not only do these changes begin to effect the persons life, but to get
the same stimuli-response the addict got the first few times they used the
drug, they have to use more of the drug. So when a person stops taking a drug
like heroin, cocaine or alcohol, they are completely deprived of the body's
usual feel-good reward system and the addict feels an acute apathy or
life-not-worth-living attitude, which makes for the reason most people who
attempt to recover without effective and reliable treatment prone to consistent
relapse.
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OxyContin Use Spreading Among
Addicts
Usually reserved for terminally
ill patients, drugs like OxyContin are becoming increasingly popular among drug
addicts. OxyContin, a strong and long lasting narcotic painkiller that is
similar to morphine, has become the latest addition to the pharmacopoeia of
illicit drugs for sale on the black market. It may seem that with all the
federal regulations barring anyone less than terminally ill to be prescribed
the drug that this wouldn't happen. Although, as drug pushers find new ways to
get the drug, either through using terminally ill patients to "farm" the drug
from numerous doctors or through more direct means such as breaking into
pharmacies or intercepting shipments of the drug, it is becoming increasingly
available. According to a recent New York Times article by Francis X. Clines
and Barry Meier, in one area of Kentucky 85 to 90 percent of the police field
work is now related to OxyContin. The article also states that the drug is a
morphine-like substance also found in drugs like Tylox and Percodan, although
in those drugs the active ingredient, oxycodone, is concentrated in as little
as 5 milligrams, in OxyContin it is as high as 160 milligrams. This increases
the danger of lethal overdose in inexperienced users and in Kentucky the death
toll has numbered 59 since last January, according to a quote from the US
attorney from the eastern district of that state in the New York Times. The
National Drug Intelligence Center has issued a recent bulletin in which it is
stated that the drug's spread on the illicit market is concentrated primarily
in the Eastern States but is surfacing as far west as California.
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Heroin Gaining Popularity,
Especially Among Teenagers
According to studies done by the
U.S. federal government heroin production in the world has more than doubled
since the 1980's. This has resulted in much lower street prices for very pure
heroin, as well as a much wider availablity. Heroin abuse, originally only
noticeably problematic and wide spread in densely populated urban areas, has
now spread to much smaller cities, suburbs, and rural areas. This recent
explosion in wide spread availability has caused an increase in the popularity
of smoking or snorting the drug, and without the stigma that goes along with
intravaneous use, more and more people are experimenting with heroin. Research
done by the National Household Survey on Drug Abuse in 1999 has reported that
almost 50 percent of new heroin users are under the age of 25, and half of
these are under the age of 18. This is an insidious trend, most likely caused
by the increase in popularity of smoking or snorting heroin, this usage being
deemed "safe" by most users. |
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