10, 11 e 12 de novembro

CLIPPING
10, 11 e 12/11/2012
CLIPPING VIVAVOZ
Fonte: Folha SP
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Data: 12/11/2012
Maconha vendida em São Paulo está mais potente, indica estudo
Análise encomendada pela Folha apontou alta no teor da principal substância psicoativa da
droga
De acordo com médico, maior potência da droga prolonga os seus efeitos e aumenta os
riscos de danos para usuários
MORRIS KACHANIDE SÃO PAULO
A maconha vendida em São Paulo está mais potente. Uma análise do Instituto de
Criminalística em 35 amostras apreendidas entre julho e agosto na capital apontou uma média
de 5,7% no nível de THC, a principal substância psicoativa da droga.
O estudo foi feito a pedido da Folha. Análise semelhante realizada entre 2006 e 2007 mostrou
uma média de 2,5%.
"O resultado pode indicar uma certa tendência no aumento do princípio ativo da maconha
vendida nas ruas, como se tem observado em alguns países desenvolvidos", diz Mauricio
Yonamine, professor de toxicologia da Faculdade de Ciências Farmacêuticas da USP.
O teor de THC aferido é maior do que a média na maconha apreendida no mundo: de 0,5 a
5%, de acordo com relatório da ONU.
Na Holanda e nos Estados Unidos, onde a tecnologia do plantio da droga é mais avançada,
essa escalada atinge níveis médios de 15% e 10%, respectivamente.
A análise do IC mostrou também um baixo teor de canabidiol -0,6%, em média. A substância
presente na planta Cannabis modula o efeito de THC, diminuindo a sensação de ansiedade.
"Para reduzir a chance de delírio e alucinação, a proporção deveria ser de um para quatro",
explica Elisaldo Carlini, da Unifesp.
Quanto mais potente a maconha, mais forte e prolongado é o seu efeito. "Se pensarmos no uso
por adolescentes, os riscos seriam em princípio maiores [de alterações cognitivas, por
exemplo]", afirma o médico psiquiatra Dartiu Xavier, da Unifesp.
De acordo com levantamentos feitos pela Senad (Secretaria Nacional de Políticas sobre
Drogas) em 2010, 13,2% dos estudantes brasileiros entre 17 e 18 anos e 26,1% dos
universitários já tinham fumado maconha pelo menos uma vez na vida.
RESSALVAS
Especialistas ouvidos pela reportagem apontam ressalvas com relação aos estudos, no que diz
respeito à representatividade da amostragem e o tempo de armazenamento das apreensões.
Mas a escassez de estudos mais aprofundados sobre o tema torna as medições relevantes.
A análise feita agora e a anterior adotaram a mesma metodologia e protocolo de medição. O
espaço amostral, porém, foi reduzido. Em 2006 e 2007, foram analisadas amostras de 55
apreensões, contra as 35 da investigação atual.
Em ambos os estudos, a escolha das amostras foi aleatória e sem preocupação com o estado
de conservação da droga. Foram analisados de cigarros prontos a tijolos de 500 gramas os
mais, com apreensões feitas tanto no atacado como no varejo.
Em função da decomposição natural, quanto mais antiga for a apreensão, menor o nível de
THC. José Luiz da Costa, perito do Instituto de Criminalística e presidente da Sociedade
Brasileira de Toxicologia, explica por que a interpretação de resultados com análise de
maconha é mais complexa que a de outras drogas: "Ela é vegetal. Se eu plantar a mesma
semente no pé do morro ou no alto da montanha, o resultado já vai ser diferente", explica.
"Mas a verdade é que a maconha é uma droga tão barata que não justifica você encontrá-la
adulterada", acrescenta Costa.
CLIPPING VIVAVOZ
Fonte: Folha SP
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Data: 12/11/2012
Desafios para 'decifrar' a droga começam antes do laboratório
Na Europa, os testes usam milhares de amostras, colhidas regularmente ao longo do ano
TARSO ARAUJOESPECIAL PARA A FOLHA
Em 2002, o czar antidrogas norte-americano, John Walters, disse ao "Washington Post" que "a
maconha de hoje é diferente daquela de uma geração atrás, com potência 10 a 20 vezes mais
forte". Desde então, esse argumento alarmista tem sido usado com frequência nos debates.
Ora, nenhum traficante quer vender maconha fraca. Logo, é previsível que o plantio se
profissionalize. Assim como buscam tulipas de novas cores e raças de cão mais fortes, quem
cultiva Cannabis quer mais THC, o principal psicoativo da planta. Hoje, para fazer isso, há
luzes e métodos modernos, sementes selecionadas em décadas de cruzamentos. Tudo na
internet.
Mas é pequena a chance de camponeses do Paraguai usarem essa tecnologia na produção
massiva de maconha. O que fazem é o tal "prensado", e a prova de que ele não está tão
potente assim é visível a olho nu: ele tem sementes. Maconha com muito THC raramente tem
sementes, porque, para fabricá-las, a planta usa a energia que precisa para fazer a molécula
psicoativa.
No Brasil, só se faz maconha de "altos teores" em pequenas plantações caseiras. Esse cultivo
"indoor" até tem crescido no país, por causa de usuários que não querem bancar o tráfico, mas
sua produção é irrelevante.
Logo, é preciso cautela na comparação dos resultados dos testes de 2006/2007 e 2012. Por
mais corretas que sejam as análises químicas, a dosagem de THC tem desafios que começam
bem antes do laboratório.
Um fator crucial para medições confiáveis é ter uma amostragem representativa. Para medir a
intenção de voto em São Paulo com algum valor estatístico, não basta entrevistar uns 50
cidadãos em Higienópolis.
No caso da maconha: o THC se decompõe rapidamente exposto à luz e ao ar. Se a pesquisa
de 2006/2007 usou uma droga colhida há meses, apreendida em "trouxinhas" ou "baseados",
sua baixa potência pode ser mera consequência da má conservação. Se a de 2012 usou
amostras novas, lacradas, o THC estava bem preservado.
Na Europa, onde se quantifica THC desde a década de 1990, os testes usam milhares de
amostras, colhidas regularmente ao longo do ano, de várias fontes, para garantir
representatividade.
É preciso ter esse cuidado aqui, antes de disparar o alarme. E fazer testes todo ano, de modo
padronizado. Não nos faltam bons peritos, apenas verba e vontade política.
TARSO ARAUJO é autor do Almanaque das Drogas e editor da revista "Galileu"
CLIPPING VIVAVOZ
Fonte: Guardian
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Data: 11/11/2012
New film prize to curb use of 'club drugs'
Campaigners launch film competition to raise awareness of dangers of legal highs – and
suggest alternatives
'Just because a substance is legal, it doesn't mean it's safe.' Photograph: Alamy
A national film competition has been set up by campaigners raising awareness of the potentially
devastating effects of club drugs and legal highs. The Why Not Find Out campaign by the newly
launched Angelus Foundation will invite young people to make films about the best ways of
getting naturally high, such as sports and music.
Judges will include Lord Puttnam and the winners will be guided by award-winning producers
such as Simon Berthon who produced Wallis Simpson: The Secret Letters. The winning films
will appear on TV.
The campaign is to be launched at the Tricycle Cinema in Kilburn, north London, on 14
November.
Maryon Stewart, who founded the Angelus Foundation in 2009 when her medical student
daughter Hester, 21, died after taking the then legal GBL, said the legal status of a substance
was no guarantee of safety.
Stewart, from Brighton, East Sussex, said: "Our children don't need to die or be harmed for life
by these toxic chemicals falsely disguised as legal highs.
"It's natural for young people to want to have fun, but it's important that they stay safe and fully
understand just because a substance is legal it doesn't mean it's safe."
Almost one-third of young people search for ways of getting legally high, according to a survey
commissioned by the foundation. But two-thirds of the 16-to-24-year-olds surveyed admitted not
being well informed about the risks linked with taking such substances. Side-effects of legal
highs range from psychosis, depression, panic attacks, seizures, coma, loss of use of the
bladder, and death, campaigners warned.
CLIPPING VIVAVOZ
Fonte: Guardian
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Data: 11/11/2012
As US states legalise marijuana, is this the end of the drugs war?
The director of a landmark documentary which chronicles how the current penal approach has
resulted in social disaster says the greatest legacy of the US elections may be shifting attitudes
towards illegal narcotics
Eugene Jarecki
Marijuana plants growing in Seattle, Washington. Photograph: Ted S. Warren/AP
Last week was a momentous week, the beginning of the end, perhaps, of a national depravity –
the "war on drugs". The voters of Colorado and Washington passed measures to
legalise marijuana, amounting to local shifts, for the moment. So we shouldn't delude ourselves
that the country will be transformed overnight, but the public thinking, the public spirit isbeing
transformed. Finally, there is a growing realisation that this "war" has produced nothing but a
legacy of failure. And who wants to be associated with failure?
Let's be clear what we're discussing here. Not in question is the ravaging impact drugs can have
on individuals – too many of us know people who have suffered in this way. But we need to see
addiction for what it is – not a criminal matter but a public health issue, and a huge social issue,
especially for the young. In fact, instead of a "war on drugs", better to call it a war on children.
In many parts of our country, a child strays a little at 14; tries a drug, can't think of any way to
pay for it, and then sinks into the underground economy. Before long, he has a strike on his
record, a strike that will be with him for the rest of his life. So you have a cycle of degradation,
starting at 13, 14, and he never gets out of it. We now know so much about child development,
the importance of the early years, how communities develop. Instead we eviscerate
neighbourhoods, we strip away the infrastructure that once provided towns with resources.
And with this "war", we're talking about the erasure of a population – which was once black
America, now just poor America. These are people removed from the official American story –
just last week the millions of them locked up, often for non-violent drug-related crimes, did not
participate in our democracy. So, at the very minimum, you are taking the poor away from the
levers of power.
There is a new consensus that the economic view is becoming more influential in shifting
attitudes on drugs, that the amount of money saved from policing and the amount gained
through taxing legalised drugs is swaying opinion. Obviously we would all shudder to think we
live in a country where only the economic collapse of a depravity like this should bring about its
end. But I think it's also true that what's happening is more complicated – economic calculations
meeting up with humanitarian concerns. So you have the likes of Grover Norquist, the
conservativefounder of Americans for Tax Reform, and Chris Christie, the Republican New
Jersey governor, finding unlikely bedfellows with Russell Simmons and Danny Glover,
producers on my film. All see a failed approach.
When I set off to make my film, I wanted to speak to people all over the country touched by
drugs. The users and dealers and family members; but also judges and police and wardens. I
expected to be a sort of court reporter, capturing an argument between these two camps.
In fact, everybody sounded like a victim. The people who work in the penal system want those
jobs like they want a hole in the head; they are doing work they take no pride in. Ultimately,
there are very few people who want to work in a system whose success relies on a churn of
your fellow humans to lock up. And, of course – in class terms – there's far more commonality.
Prison guards would tell me that they had relatives in prison, high school friends. And,
hauntingly, everyone had a story about how broken the system was.
But there's a shocking fatalism in play. What I found was lots of people saying: "Eugene, I know
the system is broken and I wish you well. But dream on, it is so vast and has so much
bureaucratic thrust you're deluding yourself if you think it can be fixed." But these wardens
would then say: "But until you do, I have to do my job, and by God, I'm an American and I'm
going to do it better than the next guy."
Admirable in one sense, but it greases the wheels for the continuing operation of the machine.
So a judge will quite sincerely tell you how he has no choice but to imprison a non-violent
person for 20 years because of mandatory sentencing – and he's right – but then, over lunch,
he'll tell you how much he regrets doing so. For a country founded in revolution, we have
become spectacularly unmoored from the notion of revolutionary behaviour. Instead, we keep
the bodies moving through the system.
I'm not going to pretend that the collapse of the "war on drugs" would transform life chances
overnight for those born poorest in America. But, if you were to stop kneecapping many
communities, you would free them to at least get their feet on the ground in normal ways. You
could also save such a tremendous amount of money that you could ask yourself: what could I
do that would plant a tree? What could I do in the neighbourhoods that would actually foster the
values that built civilisation and would help young people find pathways other than those that
end up in addiction?
Progress is not going to be made immediately on the national stage. Obama, I'm sure, would
recognise the logic in the film, and then he would do what he has done for the past four years –
he wakes up with the Washington machine. Four years ago, I met with his team; they said all
the right things. Don't talk about a war on drugs, they said. You don't have a war against
your own people. But, still, they've carried on in the same way.
What will bring about change is public demand. The public has to boo and hiss politicians who
pander in this way – who say they are being tough on crime when they are destroying
communities. We need to tell them that we won't let them vilify our neighbour to keep the penal
system running. We will do that if we recognise that drug-mongering is no more substantial than
WMD-mongering. And we know how that turned out. Americans have been an impressionable
lot, but we're becoming less so. Bit by bit, we're realising that the "war on drugs" makes no
sense. And, if we let politicians know this, they have no choice but to become smarter and
answer our demands.