On the surface, [Nathaniel] Colleton seemed an unlikely drug dealer. He had grown up in a solid home. His mom was a paralegal and church pastor, his dad a longtime employee of The Citadel.

Colleton was a high school graduate. He played music for church services and volunteered to teach underprivileged kids how to read, his attorney, Dale Cobb, said.

Cobb said his client turned to selling drugs after he lost his construction job and couldn’t find work. Whether it was that or the lure of easy money, as police suspect, Colleton’s new occupation would short-circuit whatever future he had planned for himself.

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Americans consume a lot of prescription drugs. And they seem especially fond of those to lower their cholesterol, relieve their heartburn, cheer them up and take away pain. Overall, however, their spending on such drugs is slowing.

A new report from consulting firm IMS Health offers a quick, but thorough, look at Americans’ consumption of, and spending on, prescription drugs. In 2010, the report says, we spent more than $307 billion on medication. That’s up over 2009, but only by 2.3%.

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Caught this on the morning run today–very enjoyable. Watch it all.

You can also read an article about the interview here.

Airman [Anthony] Mena died instead in his Albuquerque apartment, on July 21, 2009, five months after leaving the Air Force on a medical discharge. A toxicologist found eight prescription medications in his blood, including three antidepressants, a sedative, a sleeping pill and two potent painkillers.

Yet his death was no suicide, the medical examiner concluded. What killed Airman Mena was not an overdose of any one drug, but the interaction of many. He was 23.

After a decade of treating thousands of wounded troops, the military’s medical system is awash in prescription drugs ”” and the results have sometimes been deadly.

By some estimates, well over 300,000 troops have returned from Iraq or Afghanistan with P.T.S.D., depression, traumatic brain injury or some combination of those. The Pentagon has looked to pharmacology to treat those complex problems, following the lead of civilian medicine. As a result, psychiatric drugs have been used more widely across the military than in any previous war.

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This program really scared me–I was not aware of this. Take the time to watch it all–KSH.

There has been a lot of speculation about whether Jared Lee Loughner, the man arrested for the Arizona shooting, has a severe mental illness. But is mental illness a sufficient explanation for his actions? Recent research has found that mental illness is, in fact, tied to an increased risk of violence””but it is not a simple relationship….

…the vast majority of patients with severe mental illness are not violent during their lifetimes. The largest and longest study of schizophrenia and violence, conducted in Sweden over the course of 30 years, found that only 13% of patients had violent convictions after receiving their diagnoses. For most patients, the risk of becoming a victim of violence is higher than the risk that they will commit violence.

Nor should we make the mistake of assuming that a correlation between mental illness and violence somehow establishes a causal connection between them. It may be that schizophrenia is simply a marker for other factors that increase the risk of violence. Of these factors, one of the strongest is alcohol and drug abuse. Estimates from the U.S. indicate that around half of patients with schizophrenia also have problems with substance abuse. One study in American urban centers found that nearly a third of patients who were discharged from the hospital and also diagnosed with substance abuse were violent within one year.

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It all began last Thursday, when a group of prospective jurors in Missoula were seated for a two-day trial of a repeat offender by the name of Teuray Cornell, whom the local police had arrested and charged with selling marijuana, a felony, and possession of a small amount of the drug, a misdemeanor.

To seat a 12-person jury, Judge Robert L. Deschamps III of Missoula County District Court had called a passel of Montanans to serve, and 27 had arrived at court on Dec. 16. So far, so good.

But after the charges were read, one of the jurors raised a hand.

“She said, ”˜I’ve got a real problem with these marijuana cases,’ ” Judge Deschamps recalled on Wednesday. “And after she got through, a couple more raised their hands.” All told, five jurors raised questions about marijuana prosecution.

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A new report out today from the National Institute of Drug Abuse shows teenage drug use is up, especially among eighth-graders, the primary culprits: marijuana, ecstasy, and prescription drugs. Teenagers are also now less likely to believe that marijuana use is dangerous.

At the same time, previously reported declines in cigarette smoking have stalled. There was some good news. The rate of binge drinking, consuming five or more alcoholic drinks in a row, is down.

Here to discuss the findings is Gil Kerlikowske, the director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy.

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The 17 masked men pulled two teenage boys off the Rev. David Beaumont’s truck in northern Mexico, forced them to the ground, and put guns against their heads as their mother screamed to the priest that her sons were about to be killed.

Beaumont, who was born in Hempstead and grew up in Commack, has spent the last 20 years as a Franciscan missionary in one of the most dangerous and violent areas of the world. On this day last April, he had to make a split-second decision.

“I was saying to myself, ‘Well, now either I’m really going to be a missionary and be prepared to give my life for the people, or run and hide,’ ” Beaumont recalled in a telephone interview. “I felt it was a pivotal moment in my life. When I walked out to them [the masked men], I realized that the last thing I might see would be the bullets coming at me.”

The men did not fire at the American priest in his tattered brown friar’s habit, and he was able to get the boys back in the truck and leave with their mother. But for the next several days they were all so shaken they lost their appetites and could not eat.

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Bruce Holloway was turning into his driveway in Mount Juliet, Tenn., in April 2009, when he was struck and killed by Brian Duffey.

Duffey was driving 80 mph with alcohol and painkillers in his system, according to police and court records.

“He was already home,” said Holloway’s fiancée, Mary Loving. “It’s so unfair.”

Duffey pleaded guilty to aggravated vehicular homicide and was sentenced to 22 years. He was one of a growing number of heavily medicated Americans who get behind the wheel every day.

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California voters on Tuesday rejected a ballot measure that would have made their state the first in the union to legalize the personal use and possession of marijuana.

Voters there also considered whether to make it easier for state legislators to pass a budget, to suspend a state-passed global warming bill and to hand over the role of creating legislative districts to a nonpartisan commission.

The measures were among 160 put to voters around the country, on issues ranging from the new health-care law to ideas for balancing state budgets.

California was not the only state dealing with marijuana-related questions. In South Dakota, voters rejected an effort to legalize medical marijuana – which California and 13 other states have done over the past 15 years. Arizona voters were considering a similar measure.

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According to Webb and Maher, Clawson’s view that speaking is educational is not at all accidental. Drug companies train representatives to approach a narrow set of doctors in a very specific way, using language that deliberately fosters this idea that the doctors who speak are educators, and not just educators, but the smartest of the smart.

For example, every drug representative interviewed for this story used the exact same phrase when approaching a doctor with a pitch to become a speaker: Each doctor approached to speak was told that he was being recruited to serve as a “thought leader.”

This phrase, Webb says, seems to have incredible psychological power.

“When you do say ‘thought leader’ I think it’s a huge ego boost for the physicians,” Webb says. “It’s like a feather in their cap. They get a lot from it.”

What a brilliant selling scheme to use the phrase “thought leader.” Read or better listen to it all–KSH (my emphasis).

Mexican President Felipe Calderon has told the BBC the US should do more to reduce the demand for drugs that is fuelling violence in Mexico.

He told the HARDtalk programme that more should also be done to stem the flow of illegal weapons from the US.

More than 28,000 people have died in drug violence in Mexico since 2006.

Meanwhile, President Calderon and other regional leaders have urged Californian voters to reject moves to legalise marijuana in their state.

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Police departments have collected thousands of handguns through buy-back programs in communities throughout the country. Now they want the contents of your medicine cabinet.

Opiate painkillers and other prescription drugs, officials say, are driving addiction and crime like never before, with addicts singling out the homes of sick or elderly people and posing as potential buyers at open houses just to raid the medicine cabinets. The crimes, and the severity of the nation’s drug abuse problem, have so vexed the authorities that they are calling on citizens to surrender old bottles of potent pills like Vicodin, Percocet and Xanax.

On Saturday, the police will set up drop-off stations at a Wal-Mart in Pearland, Tex., a zoo in Wichita, Kan., a sports complex in Peoria, Ariz., and more than 4,000 other locations to oversee a prescription drug take-back program. Coordinated by the Drug Enforcement Administration, it will be the first such effort with national scope.

The take-back day is being held as waves of data suggest the country’s prescription drug problem is vast and growing. In 17 states, deaths from drugs ”” both prescription and illegal ”” now exceed those from motor vehicle accidents, with opiate painkillers playing a leading role. The number of people seeking treatment for painkiller addiction jumped 400 percent from 1998 to 2008, according to the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.

read that second to last sentence again and think about its implications–it simply boggles my mind. Now read the whole article–KSH.

She lived a double life. At the border crossing, she was Agent Garnica, a veteran law enforcement officer. In the shadows, she was “La Estrella,” the star, a brassy looker who helped drug cartels make a mockery of the U.S. border.

Martha Garnica devised secret codes, passed stacks of cash through car windows and sketched out a map for smugglers to safely haul drugs and undocumented workers across the border. For that she was richly rewarded; she lived in a spacious house with a built-in pool, owned two Hummers and vacationed in Europe.

For years, until an intricate sting operation brought her down in late 2009, Garnica embodied the seldom-discussed role of the United States in the trafficking trade….

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The U.S. is giving $1.3 billion in military and judicial aid to Mexico to help Calderon’s battle against the drug mafias. Mexico’s drug cartels are the major foreign supplier of marijuana and methamphetamines to the United States, and Mexico is a main conduit for cocaine coming mainly from Colombia.

An NPR News investigation in Ciudad Juarez ”” ground zero of Calderon’s cartel war ”” finds strong evidence that Mexico’s drug fight is rigged, according to court testimony, current and former law enforcement officials, and an NPR analysis of cartel arrests.

In that border city, federal forces appear to be favoring one cartel, the Sinaloa (named after the coastal state in northwestern Mexico), which the U.S. Justice Department calls one of the largest organized crime syndicates in the world.

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A major motive for being a Christian and participating in its rituals and disciplines is about to collapse. This is going to make a lot of Christians panic, but I believe the recent development will be all to the good.

The development is the discovery that hallucinogenic drugs can give people an experience seemingly identical to powerful religious experiences. A recent New York Times article by John Tierney describes the experience of retired clinical psychologist Clark Martin. Martin had been treated for depression for years, but counseling and antidepressants did nothing to help. At age 65, he enrolled in an experiment at Johns Hopkins medical school that gave people psilocybin, a psychoactive ingredient found in some mushrooms.

When Martin was administered the drug, he says, “All of a sudden, everything familiar started evaporating ”¦ . Imagine you fall off a boat out in the open ocean, and you turn around, and the boat is gone. And then the water’s gone. And then you’re gone….”

His experience, writes Tierney, is not all that unusual, and he says, “Scientists are especially intrigued by the similarities between hallucinogenic experiences and the life-changing revelations reported throughout history by religious mystics and those who meditate.”

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No more letting industry help pay for developing medical guidelines. Restrictions on consulting deals. And no more pens with drug company names or other swag at conferences.

These are part of a new ethics code that dozens of leading medical groups announced Wednesday, aimed at limiting the influence that drug and device makers have over patient care.

It’s the most sweeping move ever taken by the Council of Medical Specialty Societies to curb conflict of interest ”” a growing concern as private industry bankrolls a greater share of medical research.

The council includes 32 medical societies with 650,000 members, from neurologists and obstetricians to family doctors and pediatricians. They include the American College of Physicians, the American College of Cardiology and the American Society of Clinical Oncology, the largest group of cancer specialists in the world.

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It’s been two years since HBO aired the final episode of The Wire. Critics praised the TV show for its realistic portrayal of drug culture and its far-reaching influence.

But now a handful of colleges across the country — including Harvard, Duke and the University of California, Berkeley — offer courses built around the show.

Jason Mittell teaches one of those classes, “Watching The Wire: Urban America in Serial Television,” at Middlebury College in Vermont. He’s an associate American studies professor, and he thinks the show’s creator, David Simon, tapped into a crucial American subculture.

Simon is exploring another subculture, post-Katrina New Orleans, in his latest series, Treme, which just debuted on HBO.

Read or listen to it all. If you do not know about The Wire, ou should, it is one of the very best shows to be on television in recent years–KSH.[/i]