In a study of Texas children with Medicaid coverage, the latest in a series of analyses of state Medicaid records, foster care youth received at least three times more psychotropic drugs than comparable children in poor families.

But there is no clear treatment advantage to the foster children, according to Julie Zito PhD, professor of pharmacy and psychiatry at the says a University of Maryland, Baltimore researcher.

Of 32,135 Texas foster care children enrolled in Medicaid from September 2003 to August 2004, 12,189 (38 percent) were dispensed one or more psychotropic medications. Among those receiving psychotropic medications, 41.3 percent of a random sample of 472 youths received three or more psychotropic drugs daily.

The medicated children were most likely to be Caucasian males, and 10 to 14 years of age. This sizable proportion of youth receiving drug combinations poses questions about appropriateness, benefits and risks, says Zito.

The Texas study also indicated that decisions to give some children three or more psychotropic drugs may be largely based on behavioral and emotional symptoms rather than conclusive diagnosis of a specific mental condition.

“These data do not provide sufficient information to address questions of severity and impairment that might explain such complex drug regimens,” Zito suggests.

Emphasizing symptoms can lead to the diagnosis of more than one mental disorder in a patient, leading to greater use of combinations of drugs, said the study, which was published earlier this year in the journal Pediatrics.

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By RICK NAUERT, PH.D.
Senior News Editor

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Many of the problems the drug war purports to resolve are in fact caused by the drug war itself. So-called “drug-related” crime is a direct result of drug prohibition’s distortion of immutable laws of supply and demand. Public health problems like HIV and Hepatitis C are all exacerbated by zero tolerance laws that restrict access to clean needles. The drug war is not the promoter of family values that some would have us believe. Children of inmates are at risk of educational failure, joblessness, addiction and delinquency. Drug abuse is bad, but the drug war is worse.

Few public policies have compromised public health and undermined our fundamental civil liberties for so long and to such a degree as the war on drugs. The United States is now the world’s largest jailer, imprisoning nearly half a million people for drug offenses alone. That’s more people than Western Europe, with a bigger population, incarcerates for all offenses. Roughly 1.5 million people are arrested each year for drug law violations - 40% of them just for marijuana possession. People suffering from cancer, AIDS and other debilitating illnesses are regularly denied access to their medicine or even arrested and prosecuted for using medical marijuana. We can do better. Join us.

Visit these pages to see how the drug war affects all aspects of our lives:

Drug War Funding
Pain Underprescribing
Terrorism
Informants
Environmental Consequences
Economics
Mandatory Minimum Sentences
Voter Disenfranchisement
Public Health Crisis
Access to Treatment
Higher Education Act
Public Benefits
Forced Evictions
Alternatives to Prohibition

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Paul Joseph Watson & Alex Jones/Prison Planet.com

A Scanner Darkly chronicles how power interests exploit the drug war in order to create unthinking armies of drone servants and erect police state measures to prevent the people from ever glimpsing the dark truth behind a highly mechanized surveillance panopticon.

A Scanner Darkly is a powerful dystopic film set in the terrifying near future-- a world controlled by high-tech surveillance and ruled by a liberty-destroying police state. Director Richard Linklater picks up where he left off with his ground-breaking Waking Life-- its rotoscoped look has now advanced exponentially into a startling visual element which only supports the themes of this new film. A Scanner Darkly is a heavily researched, amazingly conceived blend of Phillip K. Dick’s acclaimed novel and the frightening real technology emerging in our threatened world.

The film stars Keanu Reeves, Robert Downy, Jr., Woody Harrelson, Winona Ryder and features Alex Jones himself-- still bullhorning the truth in the future nightmare world. The Warner Brothers film is currently slated for release on July 7, 2006.

This movie brilliantly exposes the fraud of the drug war and how governments and power interests engender chaos in order to maintain their stranglehold on the human population.

Set in suburban Orange County California in the near future, undercover cop Keanu Reeves is ordered to start spying on his friends. A leviathan corporation, New Path, controls a drug named substance D, which causes its users to experience paranoid delusions and fantasies and eventually turns them into zombies.

An iron fist police state, a multi-tentacle surveillance grid and the abolition of freedom of speech protects the truth behind Substance D, a reality the characters seek to quantify in the midst of their hallucinogenic haze.

Society is managed similar to the tyranny of Communist China, where protesters are simply grabbed off the street and disappeared, as encapsulated by Alex Jones’ role.

The final unveiling of the scope of how New Path exploits the addiction of Substance D users for its own purposes will leave the viewer reeling from a volcanic blast of contemporary social commentary.

If you enjoyed the rotoscoping effects seen on Waking Life then prepare yourself to be blown away by the visual appeal of this masterpiece. Every single frame is a work of art. The creators have managed to produce a graphic novel come to life, without losing one iota of the facial characteristics and body language encountered through standard cinematography.

The film is a multi-layered waterfall of refreshing ideas and concepts. Running parallel is a strong and consistent element of humor throughout.

A Scanner Darkly represents the latest example of a refreshing and burgeoning trend in Hollywood that seeks to enlighten the viewer into recognizing the real world prison barriers being erected around society today.

The contribution A Scanner Darkly will make to the alternative truth movement cannot be understated. For those who believe in the possibility of the 100th monkey syndrome and how the collective unconsciousness can be changed through popular culture, Scanner stands out as a watershed moment in the desire to lift the human spirit and create a better world not just through deeds but the very act of thought and understanding alone.

A Scanner Darkly is a ripple in the fabric of human awakening and its impact will send shockwaves through the New World Order architects and make them fully understand that a growing majority are becoming aware of their machinations and plans.

This isn’t airy fairy nebulous wishful thinking, it is historically visible that revolutions in the way we perceive the world around us and thus change it occur simultaneously and as a result of positive viral injections, whether they come from science, religion, technology, maverick individuals or popular culture. Film is still the zeitgeist of the human psyche.

A Scanner Darkly is a prescient warning of the near-term world that awaits us all unless we stand in the way of those who would seek to crush the human soul and shackle an infinite ball and chain around our feet.

The sheer genius behind the creation of the Scanner website is a joy to behold. This is the most ‘leap off the monitor’ website you are ever likely to see. It puts you in the position of the Scanner, able to cycle through different surveillance subjects and overview their connections to each other.

Also featured is New Path’s psychological evaluation tool. What will a Scanner see in you? It depends on what you see in the images provided. You will soon learn that Substance D causes enough confusion for you to be labeled with a level of brain dysfunction that requires at least observation if not immediate treatment.

The website tracks the number of mouse clicks you make, eerie instant messages pop up, and you can put your own live image on the website with a webcam.

There is even an option to upload your own artwork, using either templates provided by the website or entirely your own creation from scratch. Screensavers, wallpaper, buddy icons, trailers, audio files and e-cards are just some of the other great features offered.

The appeal and ’stickability’ of this website will keep you clicking round for at least an hour to make sure you sample the full smorgasbord of what it has to offer. Click hereto visit the website now.

If the quality of both the trailer and the website are any indication, this film is likely to blow open previous movie conventions and deliver a powerful warning of a not-so-distant world that we can only hope will not solidify into a permanent prison planet.

Philip K. Dick was a visionary decades ahead of his time. A Scanner Darkly represents both a warning and a shining tribute to the abilities of a prominent new crop of producers and directors.

A Scanner Darkly must be commended for its artistic flair and bold intellectual stance. We are sure that it will join the tide of change in making Americans think for themselves and devise creative new ways to reach new people and spread the truth about what is taking place in our world.

It is important to support this film in every way possible and open the door for other similar creations to follow in its footsteps.

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A report by the Florida Medical Examiners Commission has concluded that prescription drugs have outstripped illegal drugs as a cause of death.

An analysis of 168,900 autopsies conducted in Florida in 2007 found that three times as many people were killed by legal drugs as by cocaine, heroin and all methamphetamines put together. According to state law enforcement officials, this is a sign of a burgeoning prescription drug abuse problem.

“The abuse has reached epidemic proportions,” said Lisa McElhaney, a sergeant in the pharmaceutical drug diversion unit of the Broward County Sheriff’s Office. “It’s just explosive.”

In 2007, cocaine was responsible for 843 deaths, heroin for 121, methamphetamines for 25 and marijuana for zero, for a total of 989 deaths. In contrast, 2,328 people were killed by opioid painkillers, including Vicodin and Oxycontin, and 743 were killed by drugs containing benzodiazepine, including the depressants Valium and Xanax.

Alcohol directly caused 466 deaths, but was found in the bodies of 4,179 cadavers in all.

While the number of dead bodies containing heroin jumped 14 percent from the prior year, to a total of 110, the number of deaths influenced by the painkiller oxycodone increased by 36 percent, to a total of 1,253.

Across the country, prescription drugs have become an increasingly popular alternative to the more difficult to acquire illegal drugs. Even as illegal drug use among teenagers have fallen, prescription drug abuse has increased. For example, while 4 percent of U.S. 12th graders were using Oxycontin in 2002, by 2005 that number had increased to 5.5 percent.

It’s not hard for teens to come by prescription drugs, according to Sgt. Tracy Busby, supervisor of the Calaveras County, Calif., Sheriff’s Office narcotics unit.

“You go to every medicine cabinet in the county, and I bet you’re going to find some sort of prescription medicine in 95 percent of them,” he said.

Adults can acquire prescriptions by faking injuries, or by visiting multiple doctors and pharmacies for the same health complaint. Some people get more drugs than they expect to need, then sell the extras.

“You have health care providers involved, you have doctor shoppers, and then there are crimes like robbing drug shipments,” said Jeff Beasley of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. “There is a multitude of ways to get these drugs, and that’s what makes things complicated.”

And while some people may believe that the medicines’ legality makes them less dangerous than illegal drugs, Tuolumne County, Calif., Sheriff’s Office Deputy Dan Crow warns that this is not the case. Because everybody reacts differently to foreign chemicals, there is no way of predicting the exact response anyone will have to a given dosage. That is why prescription drugs are supposed to be taken under a doctor’s supervision.

“All this stuff is poison,” Crow said. “Your body will fight all of this stuff.”
Tuolumne County Health Officer Todd Stolp agreed. A prescription drug taken recreationally is “much like a firearm in the hands of someone who’s not trained to use them,” he said.

While anyone taking a prescription medicine runs a risk of negative effects, the drugs are even more dangerous when abused. For example, many painkillers are designed to have a delayed effect that fades out over time. This can lead recreational users to take more drugs before the old ones are out of their system, placing them at risk of an overdose. Likewise, the common practice of grinding pills up causes a large dose of drugs to hit the body all at once, with potentially dangerous consequences.

“A medication that was meant to be distributed over 24 hours has immediate effect,” Stolp said.

Even more dangerous is the trend of mixing drugs with alcohol, which, like most popularly abused drugs, is a depressant.

“In the case of alcohol and drugs, one plus one equals more than two,” said Tuolumne County Sheriff’s Office spokesperson Lt. Dan Bressler.

Florida pays careful attention to drug-related deaths, and as such has significantly better data on the problem than any other state. But a recent study conducted by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) suggests that the problem is indeed national. According to the DEA, the number of people abusing prescription drugs in the United States has jumped 80 percent in six years to seven million, or more than those abusing cocaine, Ecstasy, heroin, hallucinogens an inhalants put together.

Not surprisingly, there has been a corresponding increase in deaths. According to the Drug Abuse Warning Network, the number of emergency room visits related to painkillers has increased by 153 percent since 1995. And a 2007 report by the Justice Department National Intelligence Drug Center found that deaths related to the opioid methadone jumped from 786 in 1999 to 3,849 in 2004 - an increase of 390 percent.

Many experts attribute the trend to the increasing popularity among doctors of prescribing painkillers, combined with a leap in direct-to-consumer marketing by drug companies. For example, promotional spending on Oxycontin increased threefold between 1996 and 2001, to $30 million per year.

Sonora, Calif., pharmacist Eddie Howard reports that he’s seen painkiller prescriptions jump dramatically in the last five years.

“I don’t know that there is that much pain out there to demand such an increase,” he said.
The trend concerns Howard, and he tries to keep an eye out for patients who are coming in too frequently. But he admits that there is little he can do about the problem.

“When you have a lot of people waiting for prescriptions, it’s hard to find time to play detective,” he said.

Still, the situation makes Howard uncomfortable.

“It almost makes me a legalized drug dealer, and that’s not a good position to be in,” he said.

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ISLAMABAD: After the fall of Taliban government, Afghanistan has again become a hub of narcotics cultivation and smuggling. Thanks to protection, being provided by the US troops, western forces and the Afghan government which are fully involved in the business in the name of war on terror.

The poppy cultivation that came to an end during Taliban period has risen to its highest level as the farmers have cultivated opium in a vast area of 477,000 acres of land in 2007, a 14 per cent increase over the previous year and total production, spurred by unusually high rainfall. Last year it was cultivated on 165,000 hectres, which is 60 per cent more than that of the previous year while Drug Enforcement Agency has the capacity to eliminate only one per cent of the production in the country.

Afghanistan supplies 93 per cent of the world’s opium, the main ingredient of heroin and cultivation of poppy has reached at unprecedented level as the opium harvest jumped 34 per cent last year to an estimated 8,200 tonnes. Most of the fields of opium in Afghanistan are owned by the pro-government people specially the warlords who also control various areas and promote poppy cultivation there under the protection of US and allied forces. The US and western forces for certain reasons have given a free hand to the Afghan farmers to cultivate opium therefore turning the country into the biggest opium producer in the world.

There are also reports that the US forces are exporting drugs in collaboration with these warlords who also provide handsome money to the US forces. According to a recent report published by The New York Times, John Schewit a senior US official who had been posted in Afghanistan during the past five years as the Chief of US Anti-Narcotics Agency in an article of 12000 words has confirmed that the US forces and Afghan government have done nothing to control and stop poppy cultivation. Even the US Congress has also criticised the US AID for not providing alternative sources of income to the Afghan people.

The Golden Crescent drug trade, launched by the CIA in the early 1980s, continues to be protected by US intelligence, in liaison with NATO occupation forces and the British military. In recent developments, British occupation forces have also been found involved in promoting opium cultivation through paid radio advertisements.

According to reports, the Karzai government officials have also close links with drug smugglers and the government is totally helpless before these warlords. A chain has been made for narcotics smuggling from Afghanistan and opium first product of poppy is first sent to the north of the country for its procession and then smuggled to Central Asian states from where it travels to Europe via Iran.

Afghanistan’s economy has become a criminal economy and narcotics or drug smugglers have so permeated into the Afghan society that no force can control them. The independent observers are of the view that drug business is the major component of the Afghan economy and it is being run under the umbrella of US agencies working in the country in the name of socio-economic revival but to cover their illicit activities the US agencies specially CIA is blaming ISI for helping warlords to promote terrorism there. ISI that played tremendous role in Afghan war against Soviet aggression in 90s is now under fire from the US agencies as it has become main obstacle in their way to promote drug smuggling from Afghanistan via Pakistan and now they have to adopt alternative routes for this purpose.

The Afghan government and allied forces have miserably failed to control internal security situation as they are more interested in the business other than bringing normalcy in the war-torn country and blaming ISI to protect their hidden agenda and Afghanistan is a golden arrow for them due to expanding drug business that is even stronger than the oil economy.

It is matter of fact that it was the ISI that helped Taliban government to control drug business who had imposed a complete ban on poppy cultivation seven years ago and ISI shut all doors for drug smuggling from Afghanistan via Pakistan but it is not acceptable for the USA and its allied forces to control the business that provides them huge money to fulfill their hidden agenda that could not be implemented through legal resources.

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