From Words to Action: Comparing the Disparities Between National Drug Policy and Local Implementation in Tijuana, Mexico and Vancouver, Canada

In 2009, Mexico passed a national drug policy reform decriminalizing the possession of small amounts of certain drugs for personal use with the aim of diverting drug-dependent individuals from prison and towards addiction treatment. However, the public health approach codified by the reform has not yet led to a meaningful change in local police practices nor contributed to the meaningful scale-up of harm reduction and addiction treatment services in many Mexican cities. Specifically, in Tijuana, Baja California, there continues to be a variety of local level barriers – including arbitrary police behaviours – that hinder the ability of people who inject drugs (PWID) from accessing vital harm reduction services. This has implications for the growing HIV epidemic in Mexico’s northern border region, given that access to harm reduction interventions has been shown to effectively reduce the risk of HIV infection among PWID. In contrast to the largely enforcement-based local response seen in Tijuana, the municipal Four Pillars approach implemented in Vancouver, Canada in 2001 was passed as a public-health oriented response to the rising prevalence of HIV/AIDS among PWID in the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver. Centered on the balancing of four approaches – harm reduction, treatment, prevention and enforcement – the Four Pillars approach in Vancouver has led to a well-resourced local harm reduction and addiction treatment system. This local emphasis on harm reduction contrasts with the Canadian Conservative federal government’s opposition to harm reduction approaches. However, police-public health partnerships along with strong political support have led to the substantial scale up of harm reduction services as well as the reduction of HIV/AIDS among PWID in Vancouver, unlike what has been observed in Tijuana. This commentary therefore aims to assess the discrepancies between federal policy and local responses to drug-related harms in order to fully understand the impact and implications of national drug policies in shaping local response to drug related harms among populations of PWID. Through a comparison of the drug policy landscape in two cities linked by a large North American drug trafficking route - Tijuana, Mexico and Vancouver, Canada, - this commentary suggests that drug policy reform in and of itself will have little impact at the local level unless it is appropriately resourced and meaningfully supported by key stakeholders

Lethal Injections: The Law, Science, and Politics of Syringe Access for Injection Drug Users

ENSURING THAT INJECTION drug users who cannot or will not stop injecting have access to sterile syringes is an important part of a comprehensive approach to reducing the transmission of viral and bacterial infections associated with injection drug use. I Seen purely in terms of public health science and prevention practice, ensuring syringe access for injection drug users is clearly an appropriate strategy: both evaluation research and experience in the field show that adequate syringe access produces positive health effects without negative social side effects

Drug use and harm reduction in Afghanistan

Opium has been cultivated in Afghanistan since 1100 A.D., although production has steadily increased since 1979. Currently, Afghanistan produces three-quarters of the global opium supply, with injection drug use and HIV currently following the opium trade route through Central Asia. Although systematic studies are lacking, heroin use appears to be on the rise in Afghanistan. The purpose of this paper is to briefly provide historical background and current statistics for drug production and use in Afghanistan, to discuss the new government's policies towards problem drug use and available rehabilitation programs, and to assess Afghan harm reduction needs with consideration of regional trends

Dissociative Autoionization in (1+2)-photon Above Threshold Excitation of H2 Molecules

We have theoretically studied the effect of dissociative autoionization on the photoelectron energy spectrum in (1+2)-photon above threshold ionization(ATI) of H2 molecules. We have considered excitation from the ground state X-singlet-Sigma-g+(v=0,j) to the doubly excited autoionizing states of singlet-Sigma-u+ and singlet-Pi-u+ symmetry, via the intermediate resonant B-singlet-Sigma-u+(v=5,j) states. We have shown that the photoelectron energy spectrum is oscillatory in nature and shows three distinct peaks above the photoelectron energy 0.7 eV. This feature has been observed in a recent experiment by Rottke et al, J. Phys. B, Vol. 30, p-4049 (1997).Comment: 11 pages and 4 figure

Tuberculosis from Mycobacterium bovis in Binational Communities, United States

The incidence in San Diego is increasing and is concentrated mostly in persons of Mexican origin

Stigma as a fundamental hindrance to the United States opioid overdose crisis response.

Alexander Tsai and co-authors discuss the role of stigma in responses to the US opioid crisis

Years of life lost to prison: racial and gender gradients in the United States of America

© 2008 Hogg et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Licens

BLACK HOLE MULTIPLETS AND SPONTANEOUS BREAKING OF LOCAL SUPERSYMMETRY

We classify states saturating a double or a single supersymmetric positivity bound of a four-dimensional N=4 supersymmetry. The massive four-dimensional double-bound states (Bogomolny states) are shown to form a light-like representation of ten-dimensional supersymmetry. The single-bound states form a massive representation (centrino multiplet) of a four-dimensional supersymmetry. The first component of the centrino multiplet is identified with extreme black holes with regular horizon which have one quarter of unbroken supersymmetry. The centrino multiplet includes a massive spin 3/2 state, the centrino, as a highest spin state. Existence of massive black hole supermultiplets may affect the massless sector of the theory. Assuming that gluino condensate is formed one can study its properties. The bilinear combination of covariantly constant Killing spinors supplies the possible form for a gluino condensate. The condensate has null properties, does not introduce a cosmological constant, and may lead to a spontaneous breaking of local supersymmetry. This suggests that centrino may provide a consistent super-Higgs mechanism.Comment: 15 pages, LaTe