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 DRUG ADVISORY COUNCIL OF AUSTRALIA COMMENTS:
 
Self-medication is bad medicine.  Any decent health practitioner and responsible government understands this fact. The AMA has commented saying that “any therapeutic potential of cannabis requires more research!”1 This statement by our leading medical body is important to note on two levels.
 
Firstly, the ‘self-medication’ experiment has been run and done! The USA had its highest number of registered addicts in the late 19th Century for one reason only - Substances such as opium and cocaine were ‘peddled’ as medicine without regulation or testing. Bought and sold on the free market as one would purchase an analgesic at a supermarket. People determined their own dose, according to their felt need, and perceived benefit, unaware of side effect or long term impact – This failed experiment led to the commencement of prescription processes and the regulation and classification of current illicit drugs.
 
Secondly, is that foundational principles of good healthcare/practice dictate that untested and unregulated psychotropic substances be kept from the community as their potential for damage and/or dysfunction of users is high. The two foundation principles of disease and/or dysfunction management are to
1) reduce/minimise susceptibility and
2) reduce/minimize exposure.
Taxpayer funded healthcare initiatives will also insist on these measure for best practice. Any practice or medication that can potentially increase either, susceptibility or exposure to further disease/dysfunction, cannot be permitted in patient care – Self-determined ‘experimentation’ on patients, by even the best medical practitioners with substances (let alone an unqualified parent), would be an outrage.
 
Proper testing and regulation of all potential medicine is imperative and any mechanism that negates these protective processes must be scrutinized fully and carefully.  Good science and wise socio-political policy making cannot be ‘over-ridden’ by emotional vitriol and manufactured media consensus. One does not ‘vote’ on which chemicals should be made freely available to the population. To do so is to set a disturbing precedent that will ultimately unleash a ‘self-medication tsunami’.
 
It is vital to note that in the USA ‘medical opium’ (prescribed regulated opiates) is now killing four times the number of people (over 16000 in 2010) than the illegal form; heroin.3 This is the result of ‘self-medication’.
 
Cannabis is not a benign substance with some therapeutic values; it has a significant number of physiological, biological and psychological negative impacts. “Although the general public may perceive cannabis to be the least harmful illicit drug, there has been a noticeable increase in the number of persons seeking treatment for cannabis use disorders over the past decade, particularly in the Americas, Oceania and Europe.”2  Cannabis is a complex substance with what is known as an ‘entourage effect’, which makes it near impossible to extract the potential ‘beneficial’ constituents from the other toxic elements of the plant. Having said that, Cannabis derived and tested/regulated medications are already in the market place to manage pain and other medical conditions, i.e. dronabinol (Marinol), nabilone, nabiximols (Sativex) and rimonabant.
 
References
1The Daily Telegraph, page 2, 23/7/14
2 Executive Summary:World Drug Report 2014
3 100 Americans die of drug overdoses each day. How do we stop that? February 2014 The Washington Post
 
 
DACA Recommendations
For compassion and wisdom sake DACA recommends

Full investigation and testing of potential therapeutic components of Cannabis to ensure short and long term safety for patients. (Let’s not repeat the Cigarette ‘health promotion messages’ of the past)
Proper regulation and management of any therapeutic derivations from Cannabis through the T.G.A (Therapeutic Goods Administration)
Candidates eligible for use of these medications to be given low cost access to them as soon as possible.
That all and every measure be taken to ensure the pro-cannabis lobby and their parliamentary backers do not manipulate/hijack this health agenda to simply further the agenda of legalizing cannabis for ‘recreational’ use.
 
 
THE DRUG ADVISORY COUNCIL OF AUSTRALIA SUPPORTS: More drug rehabilitation that gets illicit drug user's drug free. Court ordered and supervised detoxification & rehabilitation. Less illicit drug users, drug pushers and drug related crimes. 

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1) The world’s second most popular drug – Tobacco!– Some good news! The Global state of Tobacco consumption is changing for the better. As you can see the US, is reducing smoking, and of course Australia has one of the lowest (if not the lowest) smoking rates of the OECD nations http://m.us.wsj.com/briefly/BL-263B-1434. However, what is bewildering to us, and any policy maker who cares to look, is that whilst we have driven down the rates of usage of this legal drug from around 75% of the population in 1945 to around 17% now, we are told, it is ‘impossible’ to reduce illicit drug use which has around 11% use at the moment? It is clear that, when governments/ policy makers, health practitioners and bureaucrats are serious, focused, and on the same page, culture change can begin. When the policy, message and practice have the same end – cessation/abstinence, we know that what follows will go a long way to produce that end. The real problem is the conflicting agendas in ideology, intent and consequently, policy. For a more in depth look into policy inconsistency go to… http://www.dalgarnoinstitute.org.au/images/resources/pdf/Will-the-real-drug-policy-emphasis-please-stand-up.pdf

2) Cannabis Conundrum: When young people are not taught ‘how to think’, but rather encouraged to ‘run with what they feel’, the 140 character sound-byte of a ‘Tweet’ can push reams of evidence based data aside… we need to help them get it. Cannabis IS NOT YOUR FRIEND!
a) NIDA's Dr Nora Volkow Discusses Marijuana's Effects on the Brain, Body & Behaviour http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=RSDnLSU3owc
b) The World's Favourite Drug Is More Dangerous Than You Think, UN Says http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/06/27/un-world-drugs-report_n_5534768.html?utm_hp_ref=mostpopular

3) ISABELLA’S LIST – There are some developments and new resources to check out..
a) Check out our latest updates/data at http://www.dalgarnoinstitute.org.au/index.php/dalgarnotice/isabella-s-list Alcohol & Violence, particularly against women and the sexual assault as a disturbingly and high proportion of that. Download the PDF’s and share it amongst your networks. Keep advocating for change. You will also note that warnings about F.A.S.D (Foetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder) is not getting through to female drinkers… This has to change. Please continue to advocate with your peers and networks on this. “The first 8 weeks of pregnancy is when all the organs are forming and the foetus is most vulnerable to impact from alcohol.” Dr M Ask.
b) We now have new Isabella’s List business cards, which we are happy to distribute to those who are ambassadors for Isabella’s List. Please contact I.L Coordinator, Mallini Richard for your cards – 1300 975 002 or This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Keep building – Generation Next needs proactive and protective boundaries.

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People who regularly use marijuana show significant abnormalities in areas of the brain associated with motivation and emotion, a team of Swiss researchers has found. The scientists discovered changes in the volume of grey matter — the tissue containing brain cells — in regular marijuana users compared with occasional ones.

Marijuana, the most commonly used illicit drug in the United States, is associated with various cognitive impairments. Animal studies have uncovered structural changes in brain regions rich in cannabinoid CB1 receptors, but little is known about how the drug affects the structure of the human brain.
In their study of 47 marijuana users, which was published in
​ ​
Neuropsychopharmacology, the researchers used Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) technology to compare the brains of regular and occasional users. Regular users smoked a joint at least 10 times a month, while occasional users smoked at least one joint per month but not more than one joint per week.

“Brain structure changes were investigated in a group of regular cannabis smokers and compared with a group of occasional smokers enrolled in our previous functional study,” the researchers wrote. “The subjects in the two groups did not use any drug other than cannabis and were free from psychiatric disorders. We then stratified the two groups according to the age of first cannabis use in order to assess the effect of cannabis on the developing brain.”

In some brain regions, the regular users showed decreased gray matter compared to occasional users, while in other regions the regular users showed increased gray matter.

The researchers found lower gray matter volume in regular marijuana users in the medial temporal cortex, temporal pole, parahippocampal gyrus, left insula, and orbitofrontal cortex. These brain regions are associated with decision making, emotion, and motivation.

Changes to the insula “have also been confirmed in alcohol addiction where the decrease in insular activation seems to reflect an inability to switch from interoceptive cravings to cognitive control for suppressing internal needs,” the researchers explained.

The researchers found higher gray matter volume in regular marijuana users in the cerebellum — the brain’s motor control center. The finding suggests that marijuana use could impair the normal “pruning back” of nerve cells in the cerebellum during adolescence and early adulthood.

“One possible reason for abnormal pruning could be the toxic effect of THC at a critical period of brain maturation,” the researchers explained. “Exogenous cannabinoids might disturb this system by competing for the receptors, thus inhibiting the pruning particularly in receptor-rich areas like the cerebellum or the prefrontal cortex.”

A similar brain imaging study, published in The Journal of Neuroscience, found the nucleus accumbens of marijuana users was abnormally large compared to non-users.

Some studies have found the brain abnormalities associated with marijuana use return to normal after periods of abstinence. The Swiss scientists called for longitudinal studies to better understand these brain changes.

“The design of our study cannot address whether the structural alterations observed are permanent or reversible,” they wrote.
 
http://www.psypost.org/2014/07/magnetic-resonance-imaging-study-finds-brain-abnormalities-regular-marijuana-users-26679

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Decreased dopamine brain reactivity in marijuana abusers is associated with negative emotionality and addiction severity

Author Affiliations
Contributed by Joanna S. Fowler, June 20, 2014 (sent for review April 9, 2014; reviewed by Bertha Madras, Harvard University Medical School, and Karen Berman, National Institute of Mental Health)
 
Significance
Marijuana abusers show lower positive and higher negative emotionality scores than controls, which is consistent, on one hand, with lower reward sensitivity and motivation and, on the other hand, with increased stress reactivity and irritability. To investigate this aspect of marijuana’s impact on the human brain, we compared the brain’s reactivity in marijuana abusers vs. controls when challenged with methylphenidate (MP). We found that marijuana abusers display attenuated dopamine (DA) responses to MP, including reduced decreases in striatal distribution volumes. These deficits cannot be unambiguously ascribed to reduced DA release (because decreases in nondisplaceable binding potential were not blunted) but could reflect a downstream postsynaptic effect that in the ventral striatum (brain reward region) might contribute to marijuana’s negative emotionality and addictive behaviors.
 
Abstract
Moves to legalize marijuana highlight the urgency to investigate effects of chronic marijuana in the human brain. Here, we challenged 48 participants (24 controls and 24 marijuana abusers) with methylphenidate (MP), a drug that elevates extracellular dopamine (DA) as a surrogate for probing the reactivity of the brain to DA stimulation. We compared the subjective, cardiovascular, and brain DA responses (measured with PET and [11C]raclopride) to MP between controls and marijuana abusers. Although baseline (placebo) measures of striatal DA D2 receptor availability did not differ between groups, the marijuana abusers showed markedly blunted responses when challenged with MP. Specifically, compared with controls, marijuana abusers had significantly attenuated behavioral (“self-reports” for high, drug effects, anxiety, and restlessness), cardiovascular (pulse rate and diastolic blood pressure), and brain DA [reduced decreases in distribution volumes (DVs) of [11C]raclopride, although normal reductions in striatal nondisplaceable binding potential (BPND)] responses to MP. In ventral striatum (key brain reward region), MP-induced reductions in DVs and BPND (reflecting DA increases) were inversely correlated with scores of negative emotionality, which were significantly higher for marijuana abusers than controls. In marijuana abusers, DA responses in ventral striatum were also inversely correlated with addiction severity and craving. The attenuated responses to MP, including reduced decreases in striatal DVs, are consistent with decreased brain reactivity to the DA stimulation in marijuana abusers that might contribute to their negative emotionality (increased stress reactivity and irritability) and addictive behaviors.

Footnotes
• To whom correspondence may be addressed. Email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..
• Author contributions: N.D.V., G.-J.W., and J.S.F. designed research; G.-J.W., F.T., D.A., and M.J. performed research; D.A. contributed new reagents/analytic tools; M.J. recruited and screened volunteers; N.D.V., G.-J.W., J.L., C.W., and D.T. analyzed data; and N.D.V. and J.S.F. wrote the paper.
• No author conflict of interest response is available.
• http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2014/07/10/1411228111