Drug death stats are out and Helium and barbiturates top

Drug death stats are out and Helium and barbiturates top making a nonsense over the moral panic often in the press about the use of ecstasy and legal highs.

More info on recreational drugs...

Full story:

The inert gas helium and barbiturate drugs contributed to more deaths last year than ecstasy, cannabis, mephedrone and GHB, official figures show.

According to Office for National Statistics data released on Wednesday, the number of deaths mentioning barbiturates increased from six in 2007 to 37 in 2011, the highest number since 1996, despite the number of prescriptions for barbiturates more than halving over this period.

Over the same period, deaths involving helium have risen from two to 42. By comparison there were just seven cannabis-related deaths last year while ecstasy was responsible for 13 deaths. Cocaine claimed the lives of 112 people.

Almost all of those who died taking barbiturate and helium were recorded as suicides. Helium in particular has seen a steep rise in its use. Between 1993 and 2007 just 18 people died using the gas. The gas has become a feature of both literature and public policy debate in the last 20 years as the row over right-to-die has become more intense.

Overall, there were 1,772 male and 880 female drug poisoning deaths – involving both legal and illegal drugs – in 2011, a 6% decrease since 2010 for males and a 3% increase for females.

Over half of all the deaths related to drug poisoning involved opiates. In 2011 heroin or morphine, were involved in 596 deaths.

However, there has been a fall in deaths involving heroin or another opiate. For men the mortality rate has fallen sharply in the last two years, down from 27.9 deaths per million population in 2009 to 17.1 in 2011. This is a 39% fall and is the lowest rate since 1997.

The decrease in deaths has many reasons but ONS points to evidence of a "heroin drought" in the UK, "with shortages in the availability of heroin continuing in some areas in 2011-12" with a result that the street purity of opiates sold has dropped.

Despite fears from drug workers that the low purity levels would lead to overdoses, the reduced supply seems to have led to less demand.

Results from the British Crime Survey, the ONS says, suggest there was a significant decline in the proportion of 16-to-59-year-olds reporting use of heroin in the last month between 2009-10 and 2010-11. This is backed up by evidence from the NHS's National Treatment Agency for Substance Misuse which said that the number of adults newly entering treatment for heroin and crack use has fallen by 15% in two years.

"[The data] suggests that this decline is probably due to reduced demand rather than any shortfall in services. These factors may explain the decline in deaths involving heroin/morphine that has been seen over the last couple of years," said the ONS.

Is it already to late to save your intelligence? Cannabis smokers beware...

Is it already to late to save your intelligence?  Cannabis smokers beware... a new report out today based on a study of 1000 young people born in 1972 says that people who smoke cannabis prior to the age of 18 face a  loss in IQ.  Apparently if you start after this age there is no effect on the IQ.   The reports and evidence against dope smoking seem to be building up.  Is this political bias or will it turn out to be true. Time will tell.
Read more about Cannabis:  http://www.fantazia.org.uk/drugs/cannabis.htm
Read the full BBC story:

Young people who smoke cannabis run the risk of a significant and irreversible reduction in their IQ, research suggests.

The findings come from a study of around 1,000 people in New Zealand.

An international team found those who started using cannabis below the age of 18 - while their brains were still developing - suffered a drop in IQ.

A UK expert said the research might explain why people who use the drug often seem to under-achieve.

For more than 20 years researchers have followed the lives of a group of people from Dunedin in New Zealand.

They assessed them as children - before any of them had started using cannabis - and then re-interviewed them repeatedly, up to the age of 38.

Having taken into account other factors such as alcohol or tobacco dependency or other drug use, as well the number of years spent in education, they found that those who persistently used cannabis suffered a decline in their IQ.

The more that people smoked, the greater the loss in IQ.

The effect was most marked in those who started smoking cannabis as adolescents.

For example, researchers found that individuals who started using cannabis in adolescence and then carried on using it for years showed an average eight-point IQ decline.

Stopping or reducing cannabis use failed to fully restore the lost IQ.

The researchers, writing in the US journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, found that: "Persistent cannabis use over 20 years was associated with neuropsychological decline, and greater decline was evident for more persistent users."

"Collectively, these findings are consistent with speculation that cannabis use in adolescence, when the brain is undergoing critical development, may have neurotoxic effects."

One member of the team, Prof Terrie Moffitt of King's College London's Institute of Psychiatry, said this study could have a significant impact on our understanding of the dangers posed by cannabis use.

"This work took an amazing scientific effort. We followed almost 1,000 participants, we tested their mental abilities as kids before they ever tried cannabis, and we tested them again 25 years later after some participants became chronic users.

"Participants were frank about their substance abuse habits because they trust our confidentiality guarantee, and 96% of the original participants stuck with the study from 1972 to today.

"It is such a special study that I'm fairly confident that cannabis is safe for over-18 brains, but risky for under-18 brains."

Robin Murray, professor of psychiatric research, also at the King's College London Institute of Psychiatry but not involved in the study, said this was an impressive piece of research.

"The Dunedin sample is probably the most intensively studied cohort in the world and therefore the data are very good.

"Although one should never be convinced by a single study, I take the findings very seriously.

"There are a lot of clinical and educational anecdotal reports that cannabis users tend to be less successful in their educational achievement, marriages and occupations.

"It is of course part of folk-lore among young people that some heavy users of cannabis - my daughter callers them stoners - seem to gradually lose their abilities and end up achieving much less than one would have anticipated. This study provides one explanation as to why this might be the case.

"I suspect that the findings are true. If and when they are replicated then it will be very important and public education campaigns should be initiated to let people know the risks."