Pacific Standard March-April 2013 Cover

Solo Rock Stars Die Young

December 19, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment
Amy Winehouse (PHOTO: SHUTTERSTOCK)

Do you dream of being a rock star? Do you hope to live a long life? If so, you’d better start prioritizing—or, at the very least, join a band. Because from Elvis Presley to Amy Winehouse, solo pop superstars are disproportionately likely to die young (although not necessarily at age 27). That’s one finding of a study just published in the British journal BMJ Open, which takes a close look at mortality among rock and pop icons of the past half-century. And just like the rest of us, it finds, famous musicians are more likely to die from substance abuse if they had troubled ... Read More

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Feds Poke Hole in Needle Exchange Funding

December 20, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment

The U.S. Congress passed a sprawling spending bill over the weekend — a massive piece of legislation that will fund the federal government for the next nine months — that contained a number of social riders that have gone largely unnoticed in this holiday season of tax standoffs and shutdown threats. One in particular should trouble advocates of evidence-based policy: Congress has once again banned federal funding for sterile syringe exchange programs. Public health advocates consider such harm-reduction programs a crucial tactic in halting the spread of HIV/AIDS. Research suggests ... Read More

More like this: Health, The Idea Lobby
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War on Drugs Remains at Stalemate After 40 Years

June 24, 2011 • By •

The headlines, commission reports and op-eds have been singing in chorus this month around the 40th anniversary of Richard Nixon’s declaration of a national war on drugs. “Panel Calls War on Drugs a Failure," reads the Wall Street Journal headline on a new high-profile report from the Global Commission on Drug Policy. “Law Enforcement Study: War on Drugs is a Failure,” announced the release of another analysis from Law Enforcement Against Prohibition. Next came “U.S. Mayors Call U.S. ‘War on Drugs’ a Failure.” And just to underscore the bipartisan nature of all this ... Read More

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Supervised-Injection Site in Vancouver Meets Big Hurdle

May 11, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment

This week, the Supreme Court of Canada will hear a case that could come to affect drug policy in the United States. At issue: Is the use of hard drugs necessarily a matter for federal criminal law? Or can cities and provinces (or states, if you prefer) handle it foremost as a health issue — in accordance with science that finds the approach protects the lives and safety of drug users? The question has been playing out since 2003 in British Columbia, just steps from some of the toniest areas in one of the world's most expensive cities. In Vancouver's Downtown Eastside, the poorest urban ... Read More

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Is a Dip in Cocaine Use a War on Drugs Victory?

April 13, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment

When The New York Times ran a review last summer of a book about legalizing coke, Tom Feiling's Cocaine Nation, the head of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy wrote an old-fashioned letter to the editor. The review "correctly states that the Obama administration has moved beyond 'war on drugs' rhetoric to a comprehensive public health and public safety approach ... to reduce drug use and its consequences," Gil Kerlikowske wrote. "What is not mentioned is the fact that since 2007, cocaine use has decreased sharply in the United States, while in Europe it has ... Read More

More like this: Culture, Culture & Society, European Dispatch
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Marijuana Use Hastens Onset of Schizophrenia

March 26, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment

Honing in on the risks of cannabis, scientists have found that marijuana use hastens the onset of schizophrenia by nearly three years for those already at risk for the disorder. In the Archives of General Psychiatry, a team of researchers reports that the onset of psychosis occurs about 2.7 years earlier for people who use marijuana than for those who don’t. And the loss of even 2.7 symptom-free years can worsen a patient’s prognosis for life, they say. “We’ve known for many years that people who develop schizophrenia earlier have a number of poorer outcomes,” said Michael ... Read More

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Don’t Legalize Drugs, Decriminalize ’em

March 16, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment

When Portugal took a leap into the unknown in 2000 and decriminalized drugs, people howled. Abuse would soar, they said, and the little nation on Europe’s Iberian coast — already a summer dumping ground for drunken Germans and Brits — would become a haven for drug tourism. “I am against liberalization of drugs,” one conservative opposition leader in Portugal told a documentary maker at the time. “Why?” “Because I am against,” he repeated. “I don’t want the state giving signs of weakness [on] drug policy.” But in 2000, the Casal Ventoso slum in Lisbon — ... Read More

More like this: European Dispatch, Politics
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Drug Testing Welfare Recipients in Vogue

February 25, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment

State houses across the country have been taking up a controversial proposal the last few weeks to drug test welfare recipients. The Missouri house passed such a bill. West Virginia just voted one down. Kentucky, Nebraska, Oregon and Indiana have mulled the idea as well. Last summer, U.S. Sen. Orrin Hatch even floated it at the federal level as an amendment to the jobs bill that extended unemployment. "This amendment is a way to help people get off of drugs to become productive and healthy members of society, while ensuring that valuable taxpayer dollars aren't wasted," the Utah ... Read More

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Can Drug Policy Prevent Reefer Madness?

February 7, 2010 • By • 6 Comments

Raise your hand if you've consumed an alcoholic beverage or smoked marijuana in the last month. Raise your hand if you abstained from using alcohol until you were of legal age. Now, raise your hand if you refrained from smoking pot in the last month because it's illegal. Anyone? Do strict alcohol and marijuana laws actually prevent their use? That's the question a team of researchers set out to answer in a recent paper published in the International Journal of Drug Policy. Their cross-national comparison of drinking and cannabis use among 10th-graders indicates that although strict alcohol ... Read More

More like this: CAROUSEL, Culture, Culture & Society, Legal Affairs
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Ink on Skin Doesn’t Necessarily Indicate Sin

January 4, 2010 • By • 37 Comments

Dear Dr. Research: My college-student daughter arrived home for Christmas vacation sporting a variety of tattoos and body piercings. Should I be concerned? -- Worried in Wichita Dear Worried: Body art is like real estate. The key factors are density and location, location, location. * * * That's the conclusion of the latest research from a group of scholars at Texas Tech University that has spent much of the past decade studying the phenomenon of piercings and tattoos. The paper, just published in The Social Science Journal, suggests the relationship between body art and ... Read More

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