Sleep Driving and new warning labels

Earlier in the week we talked about the issue of driving under the influence of other drugs besides alcohol. One of the cautionary points included sleeping medication – sedative drugs such as Ambien, Restoril and Lunesta.

Just a couple of days ago, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) requested that all manufacturers of these types of drugs strengthen their product labeling to include stronger language concerning potential risks. These risks include severe allergic reactions and complex sleep-related behaviors, which may include sleep-driving. Sleep driving is defined as driving while not fully awake after ingestion of a sedative-hypnotic product, with no memory of the event.

Steven Galson, M.D., MPH, director of FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research was quoted in an FDA release as saying, "…after reviewing the available post-marketing adverse event information for these products, FDA concluded that labeling changes are necessary to inform health care providers and consumers about risks."

Other recorded incidents from taking these drugs included making phone calls and even cooking and eating – all with no recollection afterward due to the hypnotic state.

The medications that are the focus of the revised FDA labeling include the following 13 products:
Ambien/Ambien CR (Sanofi Aventis)
Butisol Sodium (Medpointe Pharm HLC)
Carbrital (Parke-Davis)
Dalmane (Valeant Pharm)
Doral (Questcor Pharms)
Halcion (Pharmacia & Upjohn)
Lunesta (Sepracor)
Placidyl (Abbott)
Prosom (Abbott)
Restoril (Tyco Healthcare)
Rozerem (Takeda)
Seconal (Lilly)
Sonata (King Pharmaceuticals)

Aside from individuals asking for and receiving prescriptions from their doctors for these drugs, especially when seeing the clever marketing campaigns on television, more than a quarter million people used the drug non-medically in 2004. Nearly 60 percent of people who used these drugs without prescriptions said they got them from a friend or relative for free.

Despite some of these drugs seeming relatively benign in concept and promotion, this is yet another example of dangerous side effects being found after being released on the market.

Do you have any examples of things like this happening to people you know?

Article by Eric

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10% of kids have tried abusing cough medicines

Prescription and over-the-counter (OTC) drug abuse continues to spread throughout America. According to some recent surveys though, most parents aren’t aware that ten percent of kids (2.4 million) have tried abusing cough medicines that contain dextromethorphan (DXM).

Community Anti-Drug Coalitions of America (CADCA) recently launched a new campaign designed to educate communities about how to prevent cough medicine abuse among teenagers. The alliance produced a website called Dose of Prevention and released a toolkit that is designed to arm parents, educators, retailers, healthcare providers, law enforcement officials, and other community leaders with critical information to address the problem of cough medicine abuse.

According to the Drug Abuse Warning Network (DAWN), an estimated 12,584 emergency department visits in 2004 involved pharmaceuticals containing DXM. Nearly half of these visits involved young people between the ages of 12 and 20.

A 6-year retrospective study from 1999 to 2004 of the California Poison Control System showed a 10-fold increase in the rate of DXM abuse cases in all ages and a 15-fold increase in the rate of cases in adolescents, accounting for about 75% of all of the cases.

The Consumer Healthcare Products Association (CHPA) has members who make the cough medicines containing DXM. Do you think their recent efforts after such a huge increase are enough, or should some other regulatory agency step in?

Article by Eric

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Alcohol Advertising and College Athletics

The American Medical Association (AMA) has been placing targeted ads in college publications asking them to "Stop the Madness" with regards to taking money from the alcohol beverage industry for ads during college athletics.

The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) responded to the ad by saying that reports show the age of people watching events such as the NCAA basketball tournament are largely adults, and they are limited to only one commercial per hour.

Is this a true enough statement to ignore the issue, or is it simply a justification for the money these schools get in return, which can range from the thousands to the millions, for alcohol-related sponsors?

The AMA maintains that alcohol ads undermine efforts to prevent campus binge drinking and alcohol-related deaths, accidents and sexual assaults.

"Universities have finally gotten past the `bad apple' theory -- that it's just a few students," said Laurie Leiber, spokeswoman for the Marin Institute, an alcohol industry watchdog group in California. "They're trying to get away from an alcohol-saturated environment."

The new mood comes as public awareness of binge drinking on campuses has heightened in recent years. Colleges have come under fire for largely turning a blind eye to abusive drinking on their campuses, often by underage students.

Statistics from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health report that over 7 million young people under the age of 21 are current binge drinkers, which is defined as having five or more drinks on the same occasion in the past month.

In addition, the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) concluded that 30 percent of Americans aged 18-20 were binge drinkers in the past month. Frequent binge drinkers were eight times more likely than non-binge drinkers to miss a class, fall behind in schoolwork, get hurt or injured, and damage property.

College campuses have been notorious for heavy alcohol consumption, and in recent years several schools made national headlines because of deaths on campus due to alcohol poisoning.

Does it really have to come to a point where kids are dying before colleges take a stand?

Article by Eric

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Marijuana with glass in it - stay away from Grit Weed

The illegal drug market has never been a trusted source for safe products of course, but recent reports of some contaminated marijuana in England have had many health officials and drug users worried in recent months.

Apparently, there have been reports of what is being called “grit weed”, which has tiny glass beads sprayed on it with glue to appear better and weigh more (increasing the price).

Pro-marijuana sites and users’ message boards are filled with posts of people confirming these reports, which have spread throughout the UK. “It seems to be being done on an industrial scale,” said Harry Shapiro of Drugscope, which is a major charity in the UK.

Drugscope also issued a warning about the substance, stating, “We want to make people aware of it from a public health point of view. If you are smoking this stuff and taking it into your lungs it’s not good news.”

Because the market is driven by basic supply and demand principles, money is the root of the underground trade industry. The concern for adverse health effects doesn’t even come into play when the sellers can get top dollar for a dangerous product.

In a similar vein, but a different drug in the U.S., heroin suppliers had mixed in amounts of the opiate Fentanyl, which is much stronger than morphine. The idea was to save money on the amount of heroin, while increasing potency and using other powder fillers instead. The result was a serious outbreak in overdose deaths from the Midwest to the East Coast.

If enough glass from the grit weed were ingested into the lungs of a marijuana user, the result could be very hazardous and even deadly over a period of time if use continued.

Article by Eric

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