Alcoholism & Drug Abuse Weekly articles from June 2005

Alcoholism & Drug Abuse Weekly archives from June 2005

Providers grapple with medication use for treating dually diagnosed patients.
June 6, 2005... More than a third of alcohol abusers, and more than half of drug abusers, have a serious co-existing mental illness, and of all people with a psychiatric disorder, almost a third abuse alcohol or drugs. The prevalence of these overlapping...

EAPs: getting back to intervention and referral for alcohol problems.(Employee Assistance Professionals Association)
June 6, 2005... If you ask the Employee Assistance Professionals Association (EAPA), alcohol is still--just as it has always been--a province of EAPs. But some experts are concerned that the EAP field has strayed too far from its original focus of intervention...

Vivitrex shows effectiveness over 18-month period.
June 6, 2005... Vivitrex, the injectable form of naltrexone, has passed its second major test as a treatment for alcohol dependence. The first was the main efficacy trial proving that the drug works to reduce the number of heavy drinking days by 25 percent,...

Study shows meth damage reversible after period of abstinence.
June 6, 2005... There was a time when researchers--and those addicted to drugs--thought methamphetamine addiction meant permanent brain damage. This concern, added to the fact that methamphetamine is extremely addictive, created doubt about the effectiveness...

Four percent of pregnant women used illicit drugs in past month.
June 6, 2005... Over four percent of pregnant women ages 15 to 44 used illicit drugs during the past month, according to data released last week by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA). The data show that pregnant women...

Most adolescents in treatment also need psychiatric care.
June 6, 2005... A recent study of adolescents in substance abuse treatment showed that 55 percent had at least one psychiatric diagnosis, indicating that teens in treatment for alcohol or drug use disorders need access to specialized psychiatric care. The...

Methadone treatment in primary care found successful: Seattle hospital first to treat stable methadone patients.
June 6, 2005... Providing methadone treatment in a primary care setting is feasible and can result in healthy outcomes for patients addicted to heroin who are stable on methadone, according to the findings of the first study conducted outside a research...

Studies: Campral well-tolerated for alcohol dependence.(Briefly Noted)(Brief Article)
June 6, 2005... According to Forest Laboratories, its drug Campral (acamprosate calcium) was shown in two studies to be well-tolerated in the long-term treatment of alcohol dependence. The findings were presented at the 36th Annual Medical-Scientific...

Treatment centers may lose certification in N.Y.(Briefly Noted)(Brief Article)
June 6, 2005... State officials intend to revoke the operating certificate for Lake Grove Treatment Centers of New York, a major Long Island alcohol and drug treatment provider, after state inspectors found major violations at its "sober homes," Newsday...

Coming up ...(Brief Article)
June 6, 2005... The 21st Annual National Rural Institute on Alcohol and Drug Abuse will take place June 12-16 at the University of Wisconsin-Stout, Wis. For more information, visit www.uwstout.edu/solutions/ces/ruralaoda. "Managing Individual and Program...

In case you haven't heard ...(Brief Article)
June 6, 2005... Research published in this month's Drug and Alcohol Dependence suggests that health benefits linked to wine consumption actually has more to do with the healthy lifestyle of wine drinkers. The researchers from the Prevention Research Center of...

Supreme Court's medical marijuana ruling doesn't change treatment field's approach.
June 13, 2005... Last week when the U.S. Supreme Court voted 6-3 to prohibit medical marijuana, few observers thought it would have a significant change in most of the handful of states that allow it. Federal drug agents don't get involved in cases involving...

Sentencing disparities between crack and cocaine powder take the forefront in Conn.
June 13, 2005... Federal sentencing guidelines call for a mandatory minimum sentence of five years for 500 grams of cocaine powder. For crack, only five grams trigger the mandatory minimum sentence of five years. Also, under the federal sentencing guidelines,...

DAWN survey reveals state, city data on death rates.(Drug Abuse Warning Network)
June 13, 2005... The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) last week released findings on drug-related mortality from the 2003 Drug Abuse Warning Network (DAWN) that provide a picture of deaths involving recent drug use in six...

SAMHSA announces availability of outcomes measurement benchmarking tool.(Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration)
June 13, 2005... The massive National Outcome Measures (NOMS) project at the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) is going online, SAMHSA announced last week. The NOMS database can be used to benchmark treatment outcomes against...

Delaware school survey finds drug use stable.
June 13, 2005... Results from the 2004 Delaware School Survey were released last week by Delaware Health and Social Services (DHSS) and the University of Delaware (UD) Center for Drug and Alcohol Studies. Overall, it appears that the use of tobacco, marijuana,...

Court invalidates OxyContin patent.(Briefly Noted)(Brief Article)
June 13, 2005... A federal appeals court ruled last week that Purdue Pharma deliberately misled the government to achieve patent approval for the painkiller OxyContin, the New York Times reported. The ruling could spur on generic drug competition and leave...

Coming up ...(Calendar)
June 13, 2005... Haymarket Center will present the eleventh annual Summer Institute On Addictions Conference June 15-17 in Chicago. For more information, contact Carol Blyskal at (312) 226-7984 x314, or visit www.hcenter.org. NAADAC, The Association for...

In case you haven't heard ...(Brief Article)
June 13, 2005... Officials in Minnesota have decided to change the names of street signs that were previously labeled "420th Street" or "420th Avenue", the Associated Press reports. It turns out that the number "420" has significance in the marijuana...

Committee brings back funding for safe and drug-free schools.
June 20, 2005... So far, so-so: that's the news from Capitol Hill for fiscal year 2006. Last week lawmakers began "marking up"--or holding hearings on--spending bills for substance abuse. The good news for drug-free schools groups is that legislators in charge...

OxyContin acting as pathway drug for adolescent heroin addiction.
June 20, 2005... Reports from around the country indicate that teenagers who abuse OxyContin, a powerful prescription narcotic, are switching to heroin, either snorting it or injecting it. When they need more OxyContin than they can afford, they can find...

Providers making strides in keeping clients in treatment.(From the Field)
June 20, 2005... Jamie was only 22, but her life was a downward spiral of both methamphetamine addiction and domestic abuse. She lived with the real possibility that her three-year-old son and the baby she was soon expecting would be lost to her forever. The...

Boston, Boulder, Colorado show highest rates of marijuana use.
June 20, 2005... A new report by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) estimates that Boston and Boulder, Colo., are among the areas with the highest rates of past month marijuana use in the nation. Boston had an estimated...

Primary care providers need empathy when facing relapsing patients.(Brief Article)
June 20, 2005... A substance abuse counselor is no stranger to empathy, or to relapse. But for a primary care physician newly embarking on a program to screen and treat patients for alcohol abuse, the knowledge that relapse comes with the territory may be take...

Non-medical use of prescription stimulants rising.
June 20, 2005... New research published in the journal Addiction, shows that nonmedical use of prescription stimulants is a growing problem among U.S. college students, particularly among college males, white students, and members of fraternities and...

Coming up ...
June 20, 2005... NAADAC, The Association for Addiction Professionals will hold its annual conference July 7-9 in Corpus Christi, Texas. For more information, visit www.naadac.org. The Texas Association of Addiction Professionals will hold its 31st Annual...

In case you haven't heard ...(Brief Article)
June 20, 2005... Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) has named its first male president, Glynn Birch, of Orlando, Fla., the Associated Press reported. Birch became involved with MADD in 1988 after his 21-month old son was killed by a car driven by a drunk...

Pharmacists becoming positive ally in efforts to treat heroin addiction.
June 27, 2005... When pharmacists dispense buprenorphine to former heroin addicts, they often do so with a positive attitude, a recent study has shown. The study, conducted by Dennis W. Raisch, R.Ph., Ph.D., for the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA),...

Substance abuse counselors seeing more patients with a PTSD diagnosis.(post-traumatic stress disorder)
June 27, 2005... Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), as a diagnosis, grew out of the Vietnam War, but has now expanded to apply to the aftermath of many traumatic events, including rape and child abuse. It also applies to soldiers fighting in Iraq today. And...

NAADAC and IC&RC take next step toward unification.(National Association of ADA Coordinators)(International Certification and Reciprocity Consortium)(Association for Addiction Professionals, and the Society of Credentialed Addiction Professionals)
June 27, 2005... Substance abuse counselors are one step closer to getting a certification that they can take with them from state to state--or country to country. After a weekend spent discussing the pending merger between the National Certification Commission...

Methamphetamine maintains grip on Twin Cities region.
June 27, 2005... The consequences of methamphetamine abuse and addiction continued to escalate in the Minneapolis/ St. Paul, Minn. area, although they showed some signs of leveling, according to a report on drug abuse trends released last week by the Hazelden...

Adult antisocial syndromes common among substance abusers.
June 27, 2005... Data from a recent epidemiologic survey of more than 43,000 U.S. adults show that antisocial syndromes--marked by little concern for the rights of others and violations of age-appropriate societal rules--are more common among people with...

Survey: fathers need to talk more to kids about drugs.
June 27, 2005... Survey data released last week by the Partnership for a Drug-Free America reports that fathers talk less often with their children about drugs than do mothers. The data were drawn from the Partnership's latest Partnership Attitude Tracking...

Kaiser survey shows prevalence of abuse.(Briefly Noted)(Kaiser Permanente)
June 27, 2005... A National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion and Kaiser Permanente survey of 17,337 adult health plan members has shown that twenty-five percent of women and sixteen percent of men were sexually abused as children....

Coming up ...(Calendar)
June 27, 2005... NAADAC, The Association for Addiction Professionals will hold its annual conference July 7-9 in Corpus Christi, Texas. For more information, visit www.naadac.org. The Texas Association of Addiction Professionals will hold its 31st Annual...

In case you haven't heard ...(Brief Article)
June 27, 2005... Anti-drug advocates are angered over the appearance of marijuana-flavored lollipops on the shelves of convenience stores, the Associated Press reports. The lollipops are sold under the brand names Purple Haze, Acapulco Gold and Rasta. "It's...