The Newest Excuse To Put Your Children On Drugs
March 18, 2010
Mail Online
By: Daily Mail Reporter
Children who are hooked on computer games, the internet and mobile phones are to be offered help at what is thought to be the first dedicated technology addiction service for young people in Britain.
The Capio Nightingale Hospital in central London – where singer Amy Winehouse was treated for drug addiction – launched the new service for patients as young as 12 following calls from parents concerned about their children’s obsession.
Youngsters will be weaned off their gadgets in a residential unit and will also be taught face-to-face social skills.
Consultant psychiatrist Dr Richard Graham said parents had told him their children flew ‘into a rage’ when they were asked to turn off their computers and police had even been called to settle the rows.
Dr Graham, who is leading the new addiction treatment, said rehab services need to ‘adapt quickly’ to help young people affected by technology addiction – who he dubbed ’screenagers’ – rather than sticking with the same treatment models used for substance abuse.
‘Mental health services need to adapt quickly to the changing worlds that young people inhabit, and understand just how seriously their lives can be impaired by unregulated time online, on-screen or in-game,’ he said.
‘We have found that many of the existing services fail to recognise the complexity of these situations, borrowing from older models of addiction and substance misuse to very limited effect.
‘This is why Capio Nightingale Hospital has launched the first Young Person Technology Addiction Service, which we hope will address the underlying causes of this addiction to transform screenagers back into teenagers.’
The treatment aims to increase off-screen social activities and improve the person’s confidence in face-to-face situations, the lack of which may have made them more susceptible to technology addiction.
It also encourages them to think about their relationship with their phone, computer games or social networking websites like Facebook and teaches them skills to help them to switch off.
The treatment package may also include a look at body image and physical health if the addiction has affected the child’s confidence, activity levels or diet.
Strategies to deal with online problems, like cyber bullying, may also be part of intensive in-patient care, group or individual therapy.
Dr Graham told the London Evening Standard the technology addicts – who he compared to gambling addicts – were hyper-stimulated so they were ‘always on the alert’ and could suffer withdrawal symptoms like agitation.
‘I’ve been contacted by parents who see their children going into a rage when they’re told to turn off their computer. Some end up having to call the police,’ he said.
Dr Graham said children played some computer games for the social contact, adding: ‘It gives them a sense of connection so they end up playing all the time.’
He said: ‘What we need are official guidelines now on what counts as healthy or unhealthy use of technology.’
Other clinics, including The Priory, offer treatment for internet addiction but have no dedicated service for young people.
A spokeswoman for Capio Nightingale Hospital said the service will be offered for children as young as 12 but those aged 15 to 17 are expected to be the main target group.
She said the service did not aim to make children give up technology use completely, instead they are encouraged to cut out any problem use – like computer games – and restrict the time spent using their phone or computer.
Click here for the full report.
Obama Grows The Drug War
February 3, 2010 by Andrew
Filed under Government
February3,2010
The Raw Story
By Stephen C. Webster
It was not long ago when President Barack Obama’s new drug czar, former Seattle police chief Gil Kerlikowske, swept into Washington, D.C. and declared the “drug war” a public policy relic.
The Obama administration, he said, would move toward handling drug addiction as a medical problem, moving away from the brash enforcement tactics that hallmarked prior administrations.
“We’re not at war with people in this country,” Kerlikowske told The Wall Street Journal in May.
However, if the Office of National Drug Control Policy’s (ONDCP) budget for fiscal year 2011 is to be believed, Kerlikowske was full of hot air.
According to 2011 funding “highlights” released by the ONDCP (PDF link), the Obama administration is growing the drug war and tilting its funds heavily toward law enforcement over treatment.
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The president’s National Drug Control Budget also continues the Bush administration’s public relations tactic of obscuring the costs of prosecuting and imprisoning drug offenders. “Enron style accounting,” is how drug policy reform advocate Kevin Zeese described it, writing for Alternet in 2002.
The budget places America’s drug war spending at $15.5 billion for fiscal year 2011; an increase of 3.5 percent over FY 2010. That figure reflects a 5.2 percent increase in overall enforcement funding, growing from $9.7 billion in FY 2010 to $9.9 billion in FY 2011. Addiction treatment and preventative measures, however, are budgeted at $5.6 billion for FY 2011, an increase from $5.2 billion in FY 2010.
In short, the Obama administration’s appropriations for treating drug addiction are just short of half that dedicated to prosecuting the war.
A ONDCP press release describes these figures as “balanced.”
“The new budget proposal demonstrates the Obama Administration’s commitment to a balanced and comprehensive drug strategy,” Kerlikowske added, in the advisory. “In a time of tight budgets and fiscal restraint, these new investments are targeted at reducing Americans’ drug use and the substantial costs associated with the health and social consequences of drug abuse.”
“It sure was an encouraging signal when Drug Czar Kerlikowske declared that the ‘war on drugs’ was over shortly after he took the job last year,” commented Tom Angel, spokesman for Law Enforcement Against Prohibition. “But until the budget numbers match up with rhetoric, it looks like the war is still being waged.”
Used Syringes Replaced on Patients by Drug-Addicted Surgical Technician
December 15, 2009
NaturalNews
by David Gutierrez
A Colorado hospital technician has admitted to stealing syringes from the facilities where she worked and replacing them with needles that she had previously used, thus exposing patients to hepatitis C.
Hepatitis C is a contagious disease of the liver that can lead to scarring or even failure of the organ. Kristen Diane Parker, the technician, said she probably contracted the disease in 2008 while using heroin and sharing needles in New Jersey.
From October 2008 to April 2009, Parker was a surgical technician at Rose Medical Center in Denver. She has admitted that she stole syringes filled with the opioid painkiller fentanyl and replacing them with used syringes filled with saline solution. She then injected herself with the fentanyl secretly in the hospital bathroom.
Nine patients who underwent surgery at the hospital while Parker worked there have tested positive for hepatitis C, and investigators are performing genetic tests to determine if they were infected by Parker. The hospital has contacted another 4,700 patients who underwent surgery at that time to warn them that they might have been infected, even though the odds are slim.
“We are taking a very conservative and cautious approach by contacting everyone who had surgery during this broad time period,” the hospital said. “It is likely that most of the patients who receive letters will not have been exposed to hepatitis C.”
Audubon Ambulatory Surgical Center in Colorado Springs is also contacting 1,200 patients who received injections there while Parker was an employee between May and July 2009.
Parker has been charged with three drug-related offenses. If she is found to have actually infected anyone with hepatitis C or otherwise caused harm to a patient, her maximum sentence will be 20 years. If any of the patients dies from the disease, she could serve life in prison.
Anxiety Vaccine? What Next?!
October 23, 2009
Natural News
By Mike Adams
There’s a new vaccine for nicotine addiction, and another one for drug addiction. There’s an AIDS vaccines (which doesn’t work) and a vaccine for cervical cancer that’s been approved for use on boys (boys don’t have a cervix). Through the pharmaceutical industry, the big push for vaccines is on!
But why, exactly? Is there suddenly a new rash of epidemic disease requiring vaccine treatments? No, not really. What’s new is the way Big Pharma is latching on to these diseases as new opportunities to sell more drugs.
There’s a huge shift underway from drugs designed for sick people to a whole new class of drugs manufactured for healthy people. The new paradigm is that people need drugs before they get sick, as a sort of “protection” against sickness. Drugs, in essence, are being positioned as nutrients — things the human body needs in order to be healthy. And from the moment you’re born, you’re considered deficient in these drugs. That’s why babies are injected with vaccines within minutes after being born. There’s a strong belief in the medical industry that babies are born deficient in vaccines and that such deficiencies must be “corrected” as soon as possible.
This simple but powerful shift in the marketing strategy of Big Pharma has expanded the potential customer based from a subset of the population (people who are sick) to the entire world population. Now, everybody needs a vaccine for something say the drug companies. All that’s necessary for the financial success of these scheme is to convince sick people that they need more drugs (or vaccines), and that’s easily accomplished through disease mongering campaigns (like the current fear push over H1N1 swine flu).
Bypassing the need for scientific evidence
There’s another important shift taking place alongside the big vaccine push: A shift away from “evidence-based medicine” to a new medical paradigm of “dogmatic belief.”
Medicines that treat sick people, you see, have to be proven to work. There have to be clinical trials, and some percentage of those sick people (only 5% or so, typically) have to show some sort of improved response after taking the medicine. This is the so-called “gold standard” of modern medicine. But with vaccines, no proof of efficacy is required. No placebo-controlled studies need to be conducted at all. Vaccines can be openly marketed and prescribed without any evidence that they actually work.
This is the new “free pass” for Big Pharma — a class of medicine that requires no proof! They merely need to be injected into a few hundred people who are observed for as little as two weeks to see if anybody died or collapses into a coma. That’s all the testing that’s required (and sometimes even less). No long-term safety tests are required or pursued, and, importantly, there is no requirement that the vaccine proves it actually works to reduce flu infections (or HPV infections, etc.).
In essence, by pushing for a vaccine approach to virtually everything, including nicotine addictions, the pharmaceutical industry has transformed itself from a small industry that only served sick people with scientifically-proven medicines to a huge global industry that sells vaccines to everyone and needs no proof that they even work. By any assessment, it’s a brilliant strategy for increasing pharmaceutical profits.
