Summer House

VANCOUVER, British Columbia (CNN) — I didn’t know quite what to expect when I entered the injection room at Insite, the world’s busiest supervised drug clinic.

Inside the Vancouver facility, I found more than a dozen people taking illegal drugs, such as heroin and cocaine, under the watchful eye of trained nurses. These drug users were among the more than 700 people who visit the facility every day, bringing their drugs with them. Insite’s goal is to reduce the risk of overdose and limit the spread of diseases like HIV by giving addicts clean needles and a safe place to use them.

"People need to be kept alive long enough in order to get treatment," said Liz Evans, a nurse and founder of Insite.

The clinic, which is sanctioned by Vancouver’s health department, opens each day at 10 a.m. and stays open until 4 a.m. the following day. Many of the people in the clinic on the day we visited had tattered clothes, missing teeth and glassy eyes. They swayed as they struggled to keep their balance. Video Watch people shoot up in the Vancouver clinic »

Outside of the clinic, police patrolled the streets to keep people from buying and selling illegal drugs. Inside, patrons were given access to Insite’s clean needles, injection booths and nurses. Similar facilities can be found at 65 locations in eight different countries. San Francisco health officials recently held a day-long conference on the Vancouver drug clinic, with an eye toward possibly opening a similar one. But San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom said the city is unlikely to do so.

"You had a lot of health officials there that did participate in the pros and cons. But my director of the department of public health doesn’t feel the city should move forward," Newsom said.

Defenders of the Vancouver clinic say more than two dozen peer-reviewed studies have shown its benefits. One study found a 45 percent reduction in public drug use as a result of the clinic; another showed 33 percent of addicts are more likely to go to drug detox after using Insite. Dr. Thomas Kerr, a University of British Columbia research scientist who has studied the program, believes Insite benefits the wider community.

"In the absence of such a facility, not only would [drug users] be high out on the street, but they would be leaving their syringes in school yards, in parks and on city streets," Kerr said.

Dr. David Murray, chief scientist for the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, opposes opening drug injection clinics in the United States. He believes they do little to help addicts overcome their additions.
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"It is a cruel illusion because they are still addicted, trapped, trying to get out and dying by the virtue of the drug itself," he said.

Nurses at the Vancouver clinic say they get all kinds of people using their facility, from an old grandma who comes to inject her pain medication to men in business suits hiding their addictions from their families.

At the clinic, we met Lorraine Trepanier, 50, a longtime drug user. Trepanier said she used to sell her body for drugs, but now relies on a friend to give her the $20 she uses every day to buy cocaine and heroin.

"I get up in the morning and I make sure I have one down or half a down," she said, referring to her heroin fix. Trepanier believes Insite has helped keep her alive by giving her a supervised setting in which she can take drugs.

Evans and other operators of Insite say that rather than chase addicts from corner to corner and alley to alley, it is more effective to encourage them to use their drugs in a supervised setting.  In the more than four years Insite has been open, there have been roughly 800 overdoses at the facility, but there have not been any deaths. When someone does overdose, nurses try to revive them. If the drug user is in critical condition, they are sent to a hospital.
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Trepanier doesn’t care what critics have to say about Insite. All she wants is a chance to get her next fix in a clean facility, until the day she finally works up the willpower to kick her drug addiction.

"I don’t want to be down here all my life," she said. "I don’t want to be chasing this all my life."

WASHINGTON (CNN) — Methadone-related deaths have skyrocketed, fueled by a jump in theft and misuse of the addiction treatment drug, according to a Justice Department report released Wednesday

The report said methadone-related deaths jumped from 786 in 1999 to 3,849 in 2004. By contrast, during the same period, deaths related to cocaine increased 43 percent from 3,822 to 5,461.

The National Drug Intelligence Center, an arm of the Department of Justice, says it published the assessment because of its concern over the sharp increases stemming from the diversion and methadone abuse.  The center, which analyzes and dispenses strategic drug intelligence, noted methadone is safe and effective when prescribed and used correctly to treat opiate addiction, but is deadly when misused –"particularly in combination with other prescription drugs, alcohol, or illicit drugs."

The report said physicians dispensed the drug more frequently in the management of pain during the years studied.

"Methadone thefts from manufacturers, distributors and retailers have increased the amount of methadone available for abuse," the report said.

"Diversion from pain management facilities, hospitals, pharmacies, general practitioners, family and friends, and to a lesser extent narcotics treatment programs, increased availability, primarily at the retail level," the study said.

The study said Florida had by far the most methadone deaths during the past three years of the study — 2002 to 2004. Four hundred deaths occurred in Florida during 2004. North Carolina was second with 245 deaths, followed by California, New York, Washington, Texas, Virginia and Kentucky. Officials say the problem continues to get worse, with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement reporting as many as 716 methadone deaths in 2006.

OMAHA, Nebraska (AP) — Only an anti-anxiety medication turned up in toxicology tests done on the body of the 19-year-old gunman who fatally wounded eight people before killing himself last month at a shopping mall.

 The autopsy report on Robert Hawkins revealed diazepam in his system. The tranquilizer is better known by its market name, Valium. Douglas County Attorney Don Kleine told the Omaha World-Herald in a copyright story Tuesday that authorities sometimes "see people who have abused drugs or alcohol to give them the ability to carry out their misdeed."

"In this case, it doesn’t appear he had abused either," he said.

The teen’s blood revealed only therapeutic levels of the medication.

The autopsy report also said Hawkins killed himself December 5 by a single shot from his assault rifle from under his chin.

Before committing suicide, Hawkins went into the Von Maur store at Westroads Mall and took an elevator up to the third floor. There he opened fire, fatally wounding eight people. Five other people were hit by bullets or bullet fragments, injuring two seriously.
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Investigators will try to find out whether Hawkins had a prescription for the Valium, he needed Valium Detox, Kleine said.  Diazepam is often given to people who have anxiety attacks or insomnia, said Dr. Todd Stull, director of the University of Nebraska Medical Center’s drug and alcohol program.

"It’s a calming kind of medicine," Stull said. "A lower dose can help with anxiety."

People can get high on it, he said, but "it’s not a very common addiction."

Court records and friends say Hawkins regularly smoked marijuana, but Kleine said there was no evidence of it or any other drugs in his blood.

WASHINGTON (AP) — About 3.1 million people between the ages of 12-25 have used cough and cold medicine to get high, the government reported Wednesday.

 The number of young people who abused over-the-counter cold medicines is comparable to use of LSD and much greater than that for methamphetamine among the age group, according to the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.

The agency’s 2006 survey on drug abuse and health found that more than 5 percent of teenagers and young adults had misused cough and cold medicines and indicated that these people also had experimented frequently with illicit drugs. Nearly 82 percent also had used marijuana. Slightly less than half also used inhalants or hallucinogens, such as LSD or Ecstasy, the agency said.  The cough suppressant DXM is found in more than 140 cough and cold medications available without a prescription. When taken in large amounts, DXM can cause disorientation, blurred vision, slurred speech and vomiting.

Health Library  -  MayoClinic.com: Robotripping — abusing cough medicine

 
Among all persons aged 12 to 25, the rate of past year misuse among whites was 2.1 percent, which was three times higher than the level for blacks, 0.6 percent, and also significantly higher than the level for Hispanics, 1.4 percent.

"While increasing attention has been paid to the public health risk of prescription drug abuse, we also need to be aware of the growing dangers of misuse of over-the-counter cough and cold medications, especially among young people," said Terry Cline, the agency’s administrator.

About 1 in 20 high school seniors now acknowledges taking OxyContin, a prescription drug for managing severe pain that, when abused, can be powerfully addictive. In its annual survey of teen drug use, the National Institute on Drug Abuse reports that OxyContin use by 12th graders is up 40 percent nationwide in just three years. Five times as many 12th graders report using OxyContin than report using methamphetamine. The results have been tragic.

Fast-Forming Addiction

Prescription drugs are the second-most used drugs among teens, behind marijuana. Teens are doing stimulants, barbiturates and painkillers. Many don’t realize how highly addictive and dangerous some of these pills can be — OxyContin in particular.

“I was sick as a dog and I was in bed and I couldn’t believe it. I was actually scared,” recalls 17-year-old Ryan, a high school senior from Tewksbury, Mass.

Ryan, who asked that NPR use only his first name, is enrolled at a drug-treatment clinic at Children’s Hospital in Boston. He says he first tried OxyContin at a party when he was 16. Kids crush up the 12-hour time release pills and snort them, so they get hit with all the opiate at once. Ryan says pot made him feel “weirded out.” OxyContin just made him feel good — warm and relaxed. And it’s easy to get.

“There’s always someone who has it,” he says. “There’s kids selling it. I know alone, like, 10 kids selling it themselves.”

But just a week after he started using OxyContin, Ryan realized that if he didn’t get a pill every day or two, he’d start to feel sick. So he kept using it. He says he had no idea how bad he was hooked until the next time he tried to stop.

“It was like somebody was inside of your head with a hammer,” Ryan recalls. “You feel like you’re going to die. Just laying there in the bed, sweat pouring off of you… Then five minutes later, you’re freezing… then you’d be throwing up.”

A Pricey Habit

OxyContin is very expensive on the street: $80 for one pill. To pay for his habit, Ryan says he cashed $7,000 in savings bonds his aunts had given him on birthdays. He sold his PlayStation, leather jackets, cell phone — everything he had — just to stay high and keep from getting sick. He finally broke down and asked his parents for help. Looking back on it, Ryan says he didn’t think using OxyContin would be that dangerous because it was a prescription pill — that made it seem safe. Many different kids at his high school were playing around with it, he says: “People from every sort of group — the burnouts, athletic kids, the geniuses and, like, girls playing wicked-good softball [who were] offered scholarships to places — they would be using it.”

That sentiment is echoed by 18-year-old Mike, a recovering OxyContin addict in Winthrop, Mass. Mike says he was always an athlete and played football. Until his sophomore year in high school, he attended a prep school with wealthier students; he later transferred to the local public school. He says that, if anything, he saw more OxyContin at the prep school.

“All the popular kids — that was the cool thing to do,” Mike says. “It seemed like it was cool because it was so expensive, this big rich drug. And a lot of rich kids were doing it because the poor kids couldn’t afford it.”

OxyContin is so expensive that many teens turn to stealing to support their habit.

“I stole so much money from my parents,” says Katie, 18, who is also a recovering OxyContin habit. She says she and a friend both stole their parents’ ATM cards to support their habits. “I stole $5,000 from my parents in two months.”

Katie also wrote checks from her mother’s checkbook. Katie’s parents say she and her friends stole cameras and jewelry from their house. Somebody stole her father’s wedding ring out of his top drawer.

“It’s like someone just punched you in the stomach,” Katie’s father said in an interview with NPR. “You know you’re never going to get it back. And what did it get used for? The addiction.”

Gateway to Heroin

Katie’s parents say they feel lucky to still have their daughter. More than a year has passed since they enrolled her into a treatment program. She’s relapsed twice. Doctors say OxyContin addiction can plague people for years. And some users move on to heroin. It is much cheaper than OxyContin, and it satisfies the same craving. Instead of $80 a pill, heroin costs about $5 a bag around Boston. One night when Katie was getting sick and desperate, she called a women she’d used OxyContin with before whom she knew also used heroin.

“I didn’t think if she had heroin I would do it,” Katie recalls, “but then when I had that option — to be sick or do this — I did that.”

Deadly Consequences

All the teens interviewed for this story said they knew at least one young person who had overdosed and died recently either on OxyContin or on heroin after first getting hooked on OxyContin. Cheryl Oates of the middle-class suburb of Burlington, Mass., knows the deadly repercussions of OxyContin addiction all too well. Two months ago, her 19-year-old son, Christopher, died of a heroin overdose.

Oates says her son was not the kind of teen one would expect to become a drug addict. He was a captain of his football and wrestling teams at Burlington High School and popular among his teammates. He got good grades and didn’t have behavior problems, Oates says.

“He was the kind of kid who would walk through the mall with me and hold my hand,” Oates says. “He didn’t care what other people thought and said. Christopher was just his own person.”

But by his junior year, Christopher was experimenting with Percocet, another opioid painkiller. It had been prescribed to him for a football injury. By his senior year, he and some friends were using OxyContin; they got hooked. Soon after he graduated, he started using heroin, too.

“The night before Christopher overdosed, we sat in the kitchen and we talked until three in the morning,” Oates says. “And he said he knew he needed help. He was such a good kid and he loved so much. And he got grabbed by something that was greater than him.”

Oates says she’d tell other parents to keep all prescription medications in a locked cabinet, just to make it harder for teens to start experimenting with them. She says it is frightening that more than 5 percent of high school seniors nationally now report using OxyContin in the past year.