| Rockland schools for substance abuse counselors merge
Two Rockland schools that train students to become credentialed alcohol and substance abuse counselors have merged. The CASAC School of the Rockland Council on Alcoholism and other Drug Dependence and the Addiction Counselors Training Program of Rockland County will now operate as the Rockland Chemical Dependency Studies Institute out of the new Haverstraw Center in Haverstraw. "We've had two competing agencies that are now bringing together the finest leaders and instructors in the field under one roof," said Debbie Maidman, operations manager of the new school. "They are coming together with the same mission, the same focus." Accredited counselors who graduate from the school work in outpatient and inpatient treatment centers, the criminal justice system, schools, department of social services and department of transportation evaluations, rehab and halfway houses.
Methadone clients will be told to dose and dash
Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau last week joined the East Side Alliance, police and methadone treatment centers in a policy agreement designed to prevent patients from hanging out and drug trafficking in the East 20s, Gramercy and the East Village.
The four major methadone programs in the area run by Bellevue Hospital Center, Beth Israel Hospital, Gramercy Park Medical Group and Greenwich House East have agreed to require their clients to leave the East Side Alliance area (between E. Third and E. 28th Sts. east of Sixth Ave.) immediately after receiving services. Clients found guilty of buying or selling drugs, including methadone, would be subject to being expelled from their programs.
This initiative will help the community address quality of life crimes, shoplifting, drug dealing and illegal drug use in the neighborhoods streets and many parks, said Morgenthau at the Aug.
More teens raiding the medicine cabinet
U.S. drug czar John Walters was in town on Friday visiting Austin Recovery, a drug treatment center in Northeast Austin. Walters thanked Austin Recovery for standing on the frontlines in the war against drugs. He also spoke about one of the most dangerous emerging drugs among teenagers: the ones in your medicine cabinet. "They get into the medicine cabinet and take pills that are either no longer being used or are left around," John Walters of the National Drug Control Policy said. The government says prescription addiction is at an all-time high among teens. If the teens are lucky, they may wind up in treatment before the problem gets worse. .
Nicotinic receptors may be important targets for treatment of multiple addictions
For years, scientists have known that some people are biologically more susceptible to drug addiction than others, but they have only been able to speculate why. In the August 15, 2007 issue of the Journal of Neuroscience, researchers at the University of Chicago report on a study that may help answer this question. They discovered that rats most likely to self-administer addictive drugs had a particular receptor in the brain that is more responsive than the same receptor in rats least likely to self-administer addictive drugs. This receptor, known as the nicotinic acetylcholine receptor (nAChR), increases excitability within in the brains reward centers. In the animals that were more likely to take addictive drugs, the effects of these receptors were much stronger, leading to more profound excitation of the cells and pathways associated with reward.
2nd blow for rehab center in Bluffdale
Mayor Claudia Anderson's decision to deny a business license for a residential drug- and alcohol-treatment center in Bluffdale was upheld Thursday by the city's Board of Adjustments, setting the stage for a legal battle. The five-resident board unanimously denied an appeal from Renaissance Ranch owner H.R. Brown, who wants to relocate the treatment facility from Park City to Bluffdale. Brown contends the facility qualifies as a "disability group home," making it a permitted use. The board disagreed, supporting the mayor's ruling that the type of facility Brown wants to open requires a conditional-use permit. That leaves Brown to pursue the matter in the courts, which he said he intends to do. "We know this is a permitted use," he said. Ryan Nord, attorney for Renaissance Ranch, cited state law saying that a residential facility for persons with a disability shall be a permitted use in any zone where a dwelling is allowed.
Open verdict on man who fell over a TV
A HEAVY-DRINKING diabetic died suddenly two weeks after banging his head when he fell over a television. A Cardiff inquest heard how David Roberts, 51, started drinking and taking drugs after his brother died from diabetes and had been prescribed methadone for 12 years to treat his addiction. Coroner Mary Hassell was addressed in court by family friend James McLean, a regular visitor to the house in Fairfield Rise, Llantwit Major, which Mr Roberts shared with his mother Melva before he died on November 7, 2006. Mr McLean explained how Mr Roberts refused to admit he was a diabetic and regularly drank a bottle of vodka a day. Mr McLean said: "He suffered a bruised eye after falling over the television a few weeks before he died and was never the same after that." .
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