Thanks to Craigslist, law enforcement agencies are now battling drug dealers in cyberspace.   Each month, more than 50 million free classified ads are posted on one of the Craigslist websites, which serve 570 cities in 50 countries.  Unlike ads in newspapers and magazines that are reviewed by editors, Craigslist ads are for the most part not checked for content.  This allows drug dealers to post ads for both illicit and prescription drugs.  

Gastric bypass and Lap-Band surgery are two increasingly popular procedures that are used to aid in weight loss.  A new study has found a link between gastric bypass surgery and an increased risk of alcoholism. The study's data indicates that people who are treated with gastric bypass are more than twice as likely to later enter into treatment for alcoholism compared to those who have Lap-Band surgery.

According to the National Institute of Health, alcohol is currently the drug of choice among American teenagers.

Although it is illegal for those under the age of 21 to purchase or drink alcohol, teenagers consume about 11% of the alcohol sold in the U.S.

One man takes literal steps to fight his addiction to methamphetamines.

There are many treatment  rograms to help individual with substance abuse, but one man decided to walk 6,500 miles across the nation to fight his drug addiction.

This past weekend two people died, and a third almost succumbed to a fatal overdose one in a separate incident almost died. The city of Banff in Canada had just recently released in the local paper “Bannffshire Journal” a warning of the dangers of a synthetic drug being passed of as heroin.

What do you think of when you read the below lineup.  This is the lineup for a "420 festival" to be held on April 23rd in Silverado (Orange County, California).

Salvia Divinorum is a legal hallucinogenic herb in California, but The National Institute on Drug Abuse repots that the Drug Enforcement Agency has listed the known hallucinogenic as a drug of concern. The DEA has been considering classifying salvia as a schedule 1 drug like LSD or marijuana, and several states have already made the drug illegal.
 

On August 21 of last year police found Nicholas Tyrrell, 51, dead in his apartment. A concerned neighbor, Ronald Potter, called the police after he had not seen Tyrrell for four days. An inquest heard last week said that Tyrrell had fatal levels of morphine in his system, which pointed to the misuse of heroin.

Today the Addiction Reporter discusses "wet houses" which highlight a disturbing reality of alcoholism: it is a fatal disease for many who are unable to recovery.

The "wet house" is a new approach that some states are adopting to deal with long-term problem drinkers.  Alcoholics are given shelter and basic services, but instead of entering a treatment program they are allowed to keep drinking.  They are essentially being warehoused until they die from acute alcoholism.

The New York Times recently reported on a woman in Maine named Tonya who abused OxyContin and other prescription drugs during her first trimester of pregnancy.  She then attempted to detox on her own, causing her unborn baby to experience seizures.  Next she turned to methadone, which she used daily for the remaining months of her pregnancy.  Shortly after birth, Tonya’s baby began to experience opiate withdrawal.  Doctors had no choice but to begin a course of methadone treatment for the newborn.