Pacific Standard July-August 2013 Cover

Bath Salts, Zombies, and Crossbows: An Update

hannibal-poster

It’s been about a year since the dangerous new synthetic drug, packaged and disguised as “bath salts,” entered America’s mainstream consciousness. Last summer the drug was blamed for a series of bizarre, violent, and seemingly random attacks of cannibalism; it felt, for a few weeks there, like the beginning of a zombie apocalypse. It should be noted that the drugged-out perpetrator of the first and most well known of these attacks, on a homeless man on a Miami highway overpass, later turned out to not actually have been on bath salts. But still: local news sites across the country ... Read More

The Only Place Where They’ll Inject You With Heroin for Free

SALOME

Every day, Randy McKinley walks into a nondescript building located in downtown Vancouver to shoot up. For no cost at all, an examiner provides him with a sterilized syringe and pure narcotic, which he then injects into his blood stream. After about 20 minutes or so, McKinley gets up and leaves, only to return two more times before the day is over. Throughout his 50 years of life, McKinley has experienced multiple ups and downs. He has a university degree, but began struggling with drug addiction as a teen. He has a daughter, but lost his second spouse to a heroin overdose. He's worked as a ... Read More

Should We Dump the DSM?

dsm-dump

Editor's Note: The post originally appeared on The Fix, a Pacific Standard partner site. On May 22, the American Psychiatric Association will release the fifth version of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders—the DSM-5. The last version, the DSM IV, was published in 1994 and has provided the clinical terms for diagnoses that allow for insurance payments, treatment costs, and public support for such afflictions as Asperger's and grief—all of which, among a host of established disorders, are set to be altered by the new version. Last week, Blue Rider Press published ... Read More

Psychiatry’s Contested Bible: How the New DSM Treats Addiction

addiction-fix

Editor's Note: This post originally appeared on The Fix, a Pacific Standard partner site. This month a hotly anticipated book will hit the shelves, and its publishers already know it will sell big. Likely to clock in at 1,000 pages, it's not one of the thrillers, sizzlers, or self-helpers that typically populate bestseller lists. The fifth edition of the DSM, or Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, will find a waiting nook in the library of any individual or organization paid to provide mental health and addiction care, including doctors and therapists, treatment programs, ... Read More

Weed Makes Kids Better Drivers, According to Kids

marijuana-car

Teens are teens. They smoke weed—and duuuude—they think it makes them better drivers because, like, my haaaaands are clear bro, and it feels like I'm one with the car—yoooooo—does that say something about the human-industrial-car complex or am I just suuuuuper high, according to a recent survey of high school juniors and seniors from Liberty Mutual. Zachary Tracer—Churnalism disclaimer: Zach is a friend—has the report over at Bloomberg: Thirty-four percent of those who have driven while high say the drug makes them a better motorist, and 41 percent said it had no effect, ... Read More

750,000 Arrested for Marijuana – Though Most Americans Want It Legalized

Here are a few numbers that don't add up. Just-released stats from the FBI show that about three-quarters of a million Americans were arrested on marijuana charges last year—most of them for simple possession, as StoptheDrugWar.org reports. Meanwhile, a brand-new Huffington Post poll finds that nearly 60 percent of Americans want the weed legalized. Okay, you might expect such news from the liberal cabal at HuffPo, but their survey comes on the heels of a Gallup poll that declared 50 percent—the highest total ever—supported legalization. The gap between public policy and public ... Read More

Junkies Get a Break in France

Life may soon get a little easier for French intravenous drug users, AFP reports: France's Socialist government plans to test launch a series of "shooting galleries" by the end of the year where addicts can inject illegal drugs under medical supervision, the health minister said. Why? Because providing junkies with a clean, safe place to get high cuts down on overdoses and HIV transmission. Sounds a little crazy at first blush. But in fact, such "safe injection sites" are already operating in half a dozen countries, including Canada, as we reported in this feature on Vancouver's experiment ... Read More

The Bitterest Pill: Maybe China Isn’t Counterfeiting Drugs

Bitterest Pill

Are unscrupulous pharmaceutical companies in China and India really to blame for fake malaria pills showing up in Asia and Africa? Probably not. This past May, the prestigious medical journal The Lancet published findings that 30 percent of 1,700 malaria pills tested in Southeast Asia and West Africa didn’t work. In one-in-three cases, a box labeled as treatment for the mosquito-borne plague actually contained pills made with inert chemicals, expired active ingredients, or ingredients cut to stretch one pill into several—enough to fill the box, each scantly more medicinal than an ... Read More

New Statin Warnings Include Brain-Related Effects

Since 2009, Miller-McCune has taken a couple bites of the apple surrounding statins – a class of drugs used to lower cholesterol in the bloodstream – and whether there might be some unacknowledged health concerns for some users. Just about anything a human might ingest, from aspirin to water, might prove harmful in some cases, but we looked at statins because they were so popular (in 2009, we estimated 13 million in the U.S. alone were prescribed statins, and that figure is now believed to be north of 20 million) and yet there was little discussion of the drugs’ risks. And there are ... Read More

Do You Know Where Your Medicine Came From?

Foreign, Inspection-Free Drugs in Your Medicine Cabinet

Headaches. Insomnia. Anxiety. American medicine cabinets are packed with remedies for these common maladies. And up to 40 percent of them are manufactured overseas (along with 80 percent of active ingredients for pharmaceuticals). But a recent report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office estimated that in fiscal year 2009, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration visited just 11 percent of the 3,765 foreign factories it is responsible for inspecting — compared to 40 percent of domestic factories. In 2008, the GAO found that the FDA took two to five years to follow up with foreign plants ... Read More