Site Map - Drug Control

04/28/2008 - 93The percentage of the world’s opium poppies grown in Afghanistan last year, according to the U.S. government’s International Narcotics Control Strategy Report. Poppy production soared in the southern provinces, where Taliban-led insurgents use drug trafficking to finance their operations. Poppy cultivation is declining in poorer, but more secure, northern and central provinces.

04/21/2008 - The BBC reports that the first cloned detection dogs are being trained in South Korea.

02/29/2008 - A law (P.L. 339) recently enacted in Maine would allow temporary employment agencies to obtain a waiver allowing them to forego drug testing on an employee as long as the client company has a drug testing policy that includes the temporary worker.

01/08/2008 - Major League Baseball has drawn up a new security plan to block performance-enhancing drugs from entering team clubhouses.

11/09/2007 - Antidrug chief says the increase in price of cocaine is evidence the U.S. strategy is working.

11/06/2007 - During a state hearing in Alaska, experts outlined the harm caused by marijuana. The Governor of Illinois has expressed concern that the video game NARC encourages drug use because, for example, game characters who use crack are able to inflict more damage on enemies. And new research suggests that pot use may lead to schizophrenia in young people. These are three recent entries in a new Web log (blog) established by the White House’s Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP). John Walters, director of the ONDCP and the President’s “Drug Czar,” says in a statement that the blog is designed to “provide Americans with direct updates and links about the latest efforts to ‘push back’ against drug use in America and abroad.” Go to SM Online to check out the blog.

11/01/2007 - RAND report find that strategies on drug policies need to be reassessed.

10/31/2007 - A bill (H.R. 2345) introduced by Rep. Steve Israel (D-NY) is designed to combat the counterfeiting and adulteration of prescription drugs.

09/24/2007 - The FDA has announced new steps to strengthen existing protections against the growing problem of counterfeit drugs.

09/24/2007 - Use of synthetic drugs—such as methamphetamine, prescription medications, and Ecstasy—has become such a concern that the White House has released a specific national strategy to control synthetic drugs. It represents the first time that a national drug control strategy has focused on a single class of drugs. A tailored approach to these substances was necessary, according to the Synthetic Drug Control Strategy: A Focus on Methamphetamine and Prescription Drug Abuse, because these drugs or their ingredients are designed for legal use and due to “extreme health and environmental problems associated with the production of drugs such as methamphetamine and the indisputably destructive nature of methamphetamine use itself.” @ The strategy is on SM Online.

09/20/2007 - A GAO report says more cooperation with Mexico needed.