Activity 6 Post

        The documentary we watched in class, OxyContin Express, was a real eye-opener for me. I knew prescription drug abuse was a common (and dangerous) habit in the United States, but it never occurred to me that Florida is the capital of the whole operation, in a figurative sense. The lack of regulation of prescription drugs has created a massive issue with prescription drug abuse, killing 11 people per day in Florida alone. The transportation and dealing of these drugs across state lines is also becoming very popular because of the ease with which someone can obtain a massive amount of prescription medicine in a matter of days. For those that purchase the drugs for dealing purposes, the rewards can be large in states that regulate prescription drug prescriptions. In those states, addicts will buy prescription drugs for as much as 10 times the cost of the prescription because the addiction is that strong. 

Seeing this epidemic, of sorts, going on in Florida, there are a few measures that can be taken to slow down the prescription drug problem. The first step, as was stated in the video, is the regulation of prescription drugs. There has been a policy put in place, however, it isn’t as strong as it should be. It forces doctors to enter prescriptions into a database that will keep track of patients’ records, but there is a catch: the doctors have several days of leeway to enter the prescription into the database. So in that time, someone could have obtained a large amount of prescription drugs by the time their records are red flagged. Another policy to cut down on Florida’s pill popper reputation would be the strict regulation of pain clinics, especially those that are cash only and don’t accept health insurance. Those places are a breeding ground for illegal drug trafficking, include by the prescribing doctors, who know exactly what people are doing when making purchases of the biggest quantity of the most potent pills they can obtain. Keeping these places under a close watch would make a huge difference in limiting the prescription drug trade in these places. The final initiative I would make in limiting the prescription drug problem is a relatively simple one that goes hand-in-hand with regulating the pills: limit the quantity of pills per prescription. Over-prescribing is a common problem in Florida, and I’ve seen that from personal experience. For example, they’ll give you a bottle of 60 pills and say take 1-2 per day for 2-3 weeks. Based on that, you’re going to have anywhere from roughly 20-40 pills left over, and for what? Prescriptions need to be small in quantity, and if it means making people drive an extra couple of times to pick up their meds, that’s the small cost to discourage statewide prescription drug dealing problems.

This prescription drug problem ties in well with what we’ve gone over in class because many prescription drugs are Schedule II, which means they have a high chance of abuse, but they do serve a medical purpose. We’ve also discussed the various ways in which some can take prescription drugs, including snorting, smoking, injecting, or orally. All of these methods are used for prescription drugs, however, orally is far and away the most common method for normal users. Addicts are the ones that get more into the other methods, depending on the type and onset of the high one looks to achieve.

Activity 5 Post

The author of Cocaine Kids, Terry Williams, used a research method known as ethnography. As Williams explains in the introductory pages of the book, ethnography involves gathering information about the subjects involved, information including behaviors, rituals, languages, gestures, styles, facial expressions, and more. It also involves keen observation of surroundings and social structure. His method to gather data on these particular individuals was to gain there trust, gain inside access to their operation (in this case, cocaine dealing), and using his senses to make observations while taking as few notes as possible.

In reading this book, I was able to take in a lot of new information about the drug culture. The first thing I caught on to was the vast amount of unique terminology in the drug trade. It’s not just a different word hear or there, but it’s like its own lingo that only the insiders understand. Words such as “cop”, “flake”, “rock”, “on the street”, and “comeback” are just a few of the words that have new meaning in the drug culture. “Cop” is not a reference to a police officer, but instead refers to the purchase of drugs, particularly in a “copping zone.” “Flake” and “rock” are direct references to the drugs themselves, with “flake” being the low-quality yellowish-powder that comes off of “rock”, the purest form of cocaine. “On the street” does not entail that drugs are available to the public, but instead that a certain amount is being distributed in a deal. Finally, “comeback” is a type of adulterant that, when cooked with cocaine, it mixes and takes a very similar appearance to cocaine, allowing for greater profits on the mixed product. I think the author’s observation of these terms in the book goes well with how we’ve discussed a variety of terms in class, as well, for many different drugs that would be familiar in the drug culture; terms such as “flyer’s chocolate (a type of meth), “basuco” (coco leaves mixed with gasoline), and others. In covering this terminology in class and in the book, you get a feel for how the drug culture goes beyond the recreational user, and how it has layers that include becoming a lifestyle and occupation for some people.

Another area of drug culture I found interesting was the purity of drugs. Before reading this book and taking ADS, I’d always thought of the purity of a drug as the best coming from the highest quality, healthiest plants, and so on and so forth. I didn’t realize that dealers could mix different substances in with drugs to create a greater profit for themselves by selling less of the actual product. For example, in Cocaine Kids, Max would mix 125 grams of cocaine with 60 grams of baking soda and 40 grams of “comeback.” This formula for his crack cocaine helped him make twice as much money on crack as he would have made making “pure” crack. We further covered this in class discussing the purity and production of a variety of drugs, including cocaine, marijuana, meth, etc. All of them follow the same ideology of looking for ways to provide less of the real product and instead providing a mixture that the user can’t tell the difference in. This is an area we’ve covered class a good bit, including recently talking about how “blue sky”, which is simply meth that is dyed blue, is mistaken as the most pure form of methamphetamine. This is another area in which the author made important observations about the purity of the cocaine in the drug ring he observed, something that ties in well with our course.

A third aspect of drug culture that played a much larger role than I’d imagined was race and ethnicity. Terry Williams refers to the fact that “Dominicans were in charge of 50 of the 53 coke and crack houses” he visited in New York City while conducting his research. This fact stands out because it seems that in our culture, certain races get stereotyped with certain drugs. For example, whites are generally thought of as users (and arrestees) of cocaine and meth. We just recently discussed in class how 71% of meth arrestees are white. African-Americans are more generally associated with (and arrested) with substances like crack and marijuana. It’s strange to think that drugs can be stereotyped to certain races and ethnicities, but there are usually statistics to support those claims, which is why I found it interesting that the author took note of who the leaders of the crack and coke houses were in NYC. This is yet again an area that ties into what we’ve gone over in class, discussing how different races are arrested more for different drugs.

Activity 4 Post

War is a dangerous game. It turns men into pawns with weapons, looking to kill anyone for the other team. It’s an environment that only the bravest of men enter, which is why I’m  not opposed to the use of amphetamines by fighter pilots in the U.S. military. If they want to take the pills, whose to say they shouldn’t be able to? These men risk their lives to protect millions of people they don’t know, so if taking drugs helps keep them alive by preventing fatigue, then take those drugs. Obviously, there can be side affects down the line, but there are side affects from being at war completely sober, I don’t think 5-10 mg of Dexedrine is going to make things much worse. What it can do is prevent those 100+ deaths of fighter pilots who crashed due to fatigue. I believe the military is using every bit of ethics they can in providing these pills. The most ethical thing to do is to provide your pilots with every opportunity to do their job at the highest level, and by beating fatigue, Dexedrine assists in that regard. On top of that, the military takes strict count of how many pills were consumed on the mission and takes back whatever should be leftover from the amount given out preflight. 

When talking about whether or not a pilot’s career will suffer if they do not take amphetamines, it’s really impossible to determine because it’s completely objective. It’s like asking if a baseball player’s career will suffer if they don't take steroids? First off, is “suffer” just saying that they won’t be as accurate in dropping bombs or is saying they’ll give in to fatigue and potentially crash? I think every individual would be affected in their career differently, with those who tire more easily being much more likely to be prone to accident, thus having the greater need for Dexedrine. The consequences of taking Dexedrine in this line of work are directly tied to the side effects, which can include anxiousness, hypertension, elevated blood pressure, restlessness, and nervousness. Obviously these affects can affect someone’s ability to function, as well, but that’s where it needs to be determined which affect can cause greater harm to the pilot and others, the fatigue factor that the amphetamine prevents or the side effects it creates? In the tests with helicopters where pilots were sleep deprived and then asked to do certain aerial tasks, those that took Dexedrine performed better than those that did not, so perhaps that provides an answer. Some strategies to reduce the consequences of amphetamines would include taking the recommended dose, as well as allowing pilots to fly short missions in between those that require drugs to prevent a dependance between flying and a need for the drug.

As we discussed in class, a Schedule 2 drug is one with high levels of abuse potential, but also serves some form of a medical purpose, as is the case for these fighter pilots. The military’s prescriptions for Dexedrine allow them to provide the “go-pills” to fighter pilots to help them stay awake. We also talked about how this type of use is classified as illegal-instrumental, where even though it’s illegal, it’s for a socially accepted reasons. College students are also known for using amphetamines to focus, as is seen with Adderall. Despite the strong chance of abuse with amphetamines, I think they serve an important use for fighter pilots that ultimately need every advantage possible when going into these life-or-death situations.

Activity 3 Post

Upon viewing the research articles by Halpern et al, Mir et al, and Schneir et al, I’ve elected to focus on the findings that the articles came up with. The first article compared illicit ecstasy users and non-users while using a small criteria. The subjects must exclude those with a “significant life-time exposure” to all other drugs and alcohol, they must be a part of the “rave subculture”, and all subjects are to be drug tested to exclude “surreptitious substance use” at the time of evaluation. Ultimately, that field came down to 52 illicit ecstasy users and 59 non-users. The findings came as a bit of a surprise to the researchers, to say the least. After conducting the 15 neuropsychological tests for the participants, it was discovered that there was little to no evidence to support the hypothesis that ecstasy use had a significant effect on the cognitive state of the individual. The only real difference between users and non-users came when navigating a pegboard with the non-dominant hand, a test in which ecstasy users fielded much slower results.

I also found this result surprising because, based on what we learned in class, ecstasy is a Schedule 1 drug, meaning it cannot be given to any individual, even for research purposes. It was already discussed how most countries’ studies do not support the findings that the U.S. bases its views on ecstasy off of, especially considering the scientist admitted to mixing up the vile labels when studying the substance. This research furthers my skepticism as to whether or not ecstasy deserves a Schedule 1 rating.

A strength of this research deals with the actual testing and comparison of results between illicit ecstasy users and non-users to draw conclusions about the effects of ecstasy on the human mind. It uses a variety of different tests and accounts for all the different variables to make some very conclusive arguments. The only weaknesses I found were the sample size and the time frame involved. The sample size, which was slightly over 100, may not provide enough substantial data to provide proper conclusions. The time frame involved is also an issue because the test shows the immediate aftermath of ecstasy, but there’s no data about months and years down the road, something that should be considered.

Each of the other two research articles deals with synthetic marijuana and the medical issues associated based on a few particular cases. The first article about synthetic marijuana (Mir et al) dealt with three individual cases in which each patient suffered from myocardial infarction, the first confirmed cases after use of synthetic marijuana. The second article (Schneir et al) deals with two girls that experienced increased levels of anxiety upon smoking “spice”, a certain type of synthetic marijuana. Both research articles found that this synthetic marijuana could achieve the same euphoric feeling or “high” as natural marijuana, but contrary to natural marijuana, it wouldn’t pop positive on a drug test.

The relationship this has to class goes into our discussion about E-cigarettes, a product that is currently unregulated and features many chemicals, some of which are extremely harmful to humans. It also relates in the way that only one chemical currently found in synthetic marijuana is a Schedule 1 drug, that being HU-210. We discussed how marijuana is a Schedule 1 drug, so it doesn’t make much sense how a synthesized version would not even make the schedule.

I found these research articles had a few weaknesses, first and foremost being the sample size. The first article covered three cases of myocardial infarction, the second covered the two girls. That’s not to say they didn’t provide some very specific scientific data as to the chemical makeup of synthetic marijuana and the effects of these chemicals, but there are going to need to be many more tests conducted to prove that these cases are the norm and not outliers.