LEGAL ACTION CENTER – Webinar Archive.
Wonderful ON THE WEB series about your rights as a person with addiction and a whole section about people utilizing MEDICATION ASSISTED TREATMENT and their “special” obstacles.
I am very excited about this series!
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Drug addiction can happen to ANYONE!!
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/baltimore-city/bal-md.overdose01oct01,0,6643662.story
By Peter Hermann
October 1, 2009 – Marianne Woessner is a North Carolina nurse and midwife who sees drug addicts with good jobs and from families every day. They occupy a hidden world that belies the stereotype of rail-thin junkies stumbling from one street corner to the next in search of a fix.
Woessner was the mother of one such drug addict. She made the discovery Sunday night, when a Baltimore police officer called to tell her that her daughter, Carrie Elizabeth John, died that evening after apparently injecting herself with buprenorphine while trying to get high with her boyfriend. Clinton Blaine McCracken, in their rented rowhouse near downtown.
The couple was postdoctoral fellows at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, working in labs on the same floor, studying the effects of drug addiction even as, police said, they grew marijuana inside their home and used narcotics purchased over the Internet from a Philippine pharmacy that shipped pills hidden in stuffed animals.
“These are two brilliant people who made a stupid error in judgment,” Woessner said in a telephone interview Wednesday, as she prepared to bury her 29-year-old daughter in the town where she grew up. Woessner said she doesn’t think McCracken either injected her daughter or forced her to do drugs.
“He loved her and she loved him,” she said. “I know this. They’re humans, just like all of us. We all have our faults. Just because drugs is what they studied doesn’t mean anything. Addiction is addiction, no matter what we do, what race we are, what occupation we have.”
Baltimore police have charged McCracken, 32, with several drug violations, and a department spokesman said federal authorities have expressed interest in pursuing the case. McCracken is free on bail and declined to comment when reached at his home on Wednesday.
McCracken told police, according to court documents, that he and John “thought they could control the morphine and buprenorphine” and that he thought marijuana should be legalized.
Dr. Donald Jasinski, chief of the center for chemical dependency at John Hopkins Bayview Center, said it should come as no shock to see doctors or other medical professionals addicted to drugs, especially those who study narcotics and are around the chemicals daily.
“Anybody who handles drugs think they know how to control it,” he said. “Perhaps the risk group for opiate dependency is doctors.”
Buprenorphine is commonly used to ease heroin addicts off the drug, and is prevalent in Baltimore and other cities as an alternative to methadone. A 2007 Baltimore Sun series described the growing use of “bupe” but noted that it too can be addictive and, while helping some addicts, could create another group of drug dependents.
Jasinski said doctors “who you think would know better” sometimes like to experiment like everyone else . “How many people try to quit smoking and know that it’s bad for them and want to quit but can’t”? he said.
Woessner drove from High Point, N.C., to Baltimore early Monday and spent Tuesday talking to her daughter’s friends and co-workers. She toured the place where John worked and gathered her personal belongings.
She said she was angry to discover that lab workers for the medical school, said drug tests are administered to “certain employees as required by law,” but she confirmed that workers in the lab where John and McCracken worked were not monitored regularly.
Woessner described her daughter as a “superstar” and said “everything she did, she did well.” She started playing softball at age 7 and continued on a team in Baltimore. She played the clarinet in her high school band and embraced the Native American heritage of her father’s family. She graduated from high school early and enrolled in Cornell University at the age of 17, majoring in biology.
She met McCracken at Wake Forest University as they worked toward doctorates in their shared field of interest, drug addiction. She earned a doctorate in physiology and pharmacology.
She moved to Baltimore in 2006. McCracken left the university at Pittsburgh three months ago to join her. John worked on projects involving schizophrenia and drug use, and last year led a neuroscience discussion on “This is your brain on drugs.”
Woessner said she met McCracken several times and that she regarded him as “polite, intelligent, articulate” and someone “who loved my daughter.” They planned to live together for a year before marriage, and, she said, McCracken would have made a “perfect son-in-law.”
He wasn’t passionate or romantic, she said, but worked hard and seemed happy to be in the same profession as his girlfriend. Their red-brick Dover Street rowhouse was just a few blocks from the university.
It is there that police said John and McCracken led a life that the young woman’s mother never saw. McCracken told authorities that he and John injected themselves with buprenorphine and morphine. Police said they had turned their unkempt house into an indoor marijuana farm, with grow lights and fans vented with aluminum dryer hoses. Police said they found pills in bags, at least 20 bongs, 30 marijuana plants growing up to two feet high and more packed and stored in Mason jars.
According to court documents, McCracken gave police a detailed account of what happened Sunday, saying he and John soaked two buprenorphine pills in water before filtering and filling two syringes each with 1 mg doses of the drug. He said John, who has asthma, injected first and immediately had trouble breathing. He helped her use her inhaler, and then dialed 911.
She got to the hospital at 6 p.m. and dies 49 minutes later. McCracken said he didn’t get a chance to shoot up because John had already gone into distress. Police found her syringe in the living room of the house.
McCracken told police that he didn’t think John overdosed, but instead injected a bad batch of drugs. Police said results of toxicology tests to determine how John died are pending.
Woessner said she met with McCracken on Tuesday and described him as “very upset, because they were playing, they were doing what couples do. This was not an intentional thing.”
Just the same, she does not want him at her daughter’s funeral on Saturday. She said some relatives are angry with hi, and with what happened, and wants the service to be a place “where I hope to celebrate her life.”
Woessner repeated that she doesn’t blame the boyfriend but said, “I say to God, ‘I hope that Clint can someday find some peace with this.’ “
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http://morningsentinel.mainetoday.com/view/columns/7014571.html
Everything wrote in this article is the opinion of the author , NOT me.
Kennebec Journal Morning Sentinel
Question #5: An Act To Establish the Maine Medical Marijuana Act. “Do you want to change the medical marijuana laws to allow treatment of more medical conditions and to create a regulated system of distribution?”
We recommend a “no” vote on this measure.
Medical marijuana poses a series of difficult legal and ethical questions. The medical and law enfrocement communities are opposed to its use, while some patients swear that it helps them.
And while Maine and other states have legalized medical marijuana through citizen-initiated referendums, having it and selling it remains a violation of federal law.
The measure before Maine voters would create a system of dispensaries to distribute medical marijuana and extend the number of illnesses it is authorized to treat.
We are concerned about the opportunity for diversion that this would create. What we’ve seen in recent years with prescription drugs and clinic methadone is that any medication distributed for legitimate use can end up in the wrong hands.
While doctors, pharmacies and clinics have made great strides toward cutting down diversions, we are afraid that a seperate medical marijuana distribution system would create a conduit for drugs to reach the rest of the community.
While some patients, parti9cularly those on chemotherapy who have lost their appetite for food, say they benefit from medical marijuana, we are skeptical of supporters’ claims that it is a good medication for a dozens of illnesses.
Ultimately, this is a federal issue and should be resolved in Washington, not Maine. Mainer’s should vote “no” on this measure.
Everything wrote in this article is the opinion of the author, NOT me.
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This is a sad story. The saddest part of it is that it’s happening all over the world! Not enough treatment centers, too many “new” people becoming addicted to heroin. It’s all very frustrating. A friend of mine showed me this article. He thought it would be good to post it here on our Blog.
http://www.juneauempire.com/stories/100409/sta_500793495.shtml
Part of overcrowding problem is a surge in heroin in the region.
October 4, 2009 Anchorage – The only methadone clinic in Anchorage has stopped accepting new patients.
The Narcotic Drug Treatment Center told The Anchorage Daily News it has 87 patients but is only funded for 75. 12 people are on a waiting list.
Clinical director Ron Greene says it will continue to add to the waiting list and treat new patients when space becomes available.
Part of the problem is a surge in heroin available in the Southcentral Alaska, Greene said.
“It’s in such abundance and it’s so cheap out there that everything else is secondary,” Greene said. “We don’t even have a close second running drug of choice on this program. Right now, it is heroin and has been for the past three years.”
Sgt. Kathy Lacey, supervisor of the vice unit, agreed it’s a huge problem.
“It used to be that every prostitute that we arrested on the street had a crack pipe, and now they’re all hooked on heroin.”
Many of them also say they want help, “which we would never hear with crack-cocaine,” Lacey said. “Heroin addiction is so dramatic and so compelling that it completely takes over their lives and they want to quit.”
Police have arrested more than 60 heroin dealers in the past year, but Lacey said the drug remains cheap and available.
The Drug Treatment Center gives patients liquid methadone to ease withdrawal symptoms. It’s one of just two methadone programs in the state. The other is the Interior AIDS Association in Fairbanks. Executive director Anna Nelson said it’s at capacity with 32 people and more on the waiting list.
Greene said some counts have estimated there are 16,000 opiate addicts in Alaska.
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Some motorists awaiting trials are still getting behind the wheel
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DOVER-FOXCROFT, Maine — A Levant motorist who was involved in two motor vehicle accidents a month apart this past spring and tested positive for drugs after both accidents is still behind the wheel driving today.And she’s not alone. Police and prosecutors are seeing a surge in people driving while under the influence of drugs, whether the drugs are legal or illegal, and it has them worried. Like the Levant woman, some are driving pending their trials.
“There are more and more people driving under the influence of drugs,” Piscataquis County District Attorney R. Christopher Almy said Tuesday. “The Legislature needs to do something about their licenses prior to them actually going to court, the way we do with people driving while under the influence of alcohol.”
Almy said the Levant motorist tested positive for drugs in the first accident, which involved a telephone pole, and for three different drugs, including opiates, in the second accident, which involved two vehicles.
Have you ever driven while under the influence of drugs or alcohol?
While state law enables the Bureau of Motor Vehicles to suspend a driver’s license immediately if a motorist’s blood alcohol level tests 0.08 percent or more, even before the case gets to court, there is no law to do the same for a motorist driving under the impairment of drugs, Almy said.
“You can’t do that with people who are driving under the influence of drugs. There’s no mechanism to get them off the road while their cases are pending,” Almy said. He pointed out that he forwarded a copy of the Levant woman’s case to the secretary of state in an attempt to get the “menace” off the road.
Bob O’Connell, director of legal affairs in the state Bureau of Motor Vehicles, said Tuesday the process used by Almy is in place to address specific motorists. He said the bureau conducts a review and then decides whether to suspend a motorist’s license. O’Connell explained that the science for testing drugs hasn’t developed enough to allow for the enactment of a statute along the lines of what is in place for alcohol.
But Investigator Dave Wilson of the Piscataquis County Sheriff’s Department, who is trained in drug recognition, hopes that will soon change. Wilson said he has seen a “huge increase” in motorists driving under the impairment of drugs in the past six months alone and blames it on the availability of more drugs. In addition, he said some motorists have the mindset that an OUI charge applies only to alcohol.
The majority of the cases Wilson has been involved in stem from the abuse of prescription drugs. For example, he said a motorist may have taken more than the prescribed dose of a drug, not followed a warning on the label, or combined the prescription drug with alcohol or narcotics.
Wilson said that when police officers stop an impaired motorist but can’t detect alcohol, they call for a drug recognition specialist to respond. “We can very accurately pinpoint a drug category” from the testing, he said.
Typically, people on narcotics have constricted pupils, high blood pressure and an elevated body temperature. Motorists on depressants have dilated pupils and a lower blood pressure, and those on marijuana will have bloodshot eyes.
‘“Sometimes, just with the eye test alone you can make a preliminary assumption of what type of drug they are on, but of course we don’t just base it on that,” Wilson said.
Wilson said a field sobriety test is conducted and a urine sample taken to confirm the presence of a drug. The worst case for Wilson is people who take drugs and cause an accident. He said that when motorists start combining one or two depressants, it causes sleepiness. “I’ve had people fall asleep constantly during my tests, and I have to keep waking them up,” Wilson said. If they are sitting in a controlled environment and falling asleep, one can only imagine what they are like behind the wheel of a vehicle, he said.
“I’ve seen the narcotics and the depressants and the combination that people will take —it’s just frightening,” Wilson said.
He said methadone — a drug used to manage opiate addiction — and hydrocodone — a narcotic pain medication — play a big role in the increased rate of drugged driving, an observation reiterated by Almy. “A lot of the cases we have are people who say they are on methadone and they are either going to the clinic or are leaving the clinic,” Almy said. “The thing is when they drive, usually there’s a very significant impairment in terms of their driving; it’s not just because they had a taillight out or something like that. Usually their driving is so atrocious that they’re not only driving under the influence but they’re erratic and dangerous.”
Motorists convicted of operating under the influence of drugs face the same sentence as they would for an OUI, Wilson said. That could range from fines of $500 and up and possible jail time depending upon the circumstances.
“I think a lot of these people don’t even realize they are impaired, just like a lot of people who have drunk too much alcohol but don’t think they’re impaired,” Wilson said. “All the education is primarily on drinking and driving [now], but I think the more we see this explosion of drugs, especially prescription medications, the more education you’re going to see on this type of prevention.”
People taking prescription medications should be aware of what the side effects are, Wilson said. “Read the labels” before getting behind the wheel, he urged.
876-4579
http://www.bangordailynews.com/detail/123089.html
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