Smoking A Bug Spray Laced Street Drug Transforms Users Into Zombies

One of the newest and deadliest drugs is also one of the cheapest.  Dubbed “KD” or “Katie” or “Zombie”, the drug turns users into strange crazed zombies reminiscent of the effect of the bath salts drug.

This drug may contain different ingredients, but the common denominator is always bug spray.  According to Natural News, the users take marijuana, banana leaves, tobacco, or spice and lace it with a bug spray, most often Raid. This concoction is then smoked, giving users a 45-minute high that leaves them virtually unconscious and crazed zombies.

While some people choose to make their own drugs, other users simply buy it for around $20 a bag on the black market. Irrespective of where they get it, however, it is incredibly addictive and can be absolutely lethal. In recent weeks, the use of bug spray enhanced drugs has risen dramatically. Since the cost of this drug is so low, expectations that its popularity will fizzle out are also low.

Indianapolis medics have had to deal with around a dozen KD overdoses each day, with some people overdosing repeatedly on the same day. Even for those users who don’t actually overdose on KD, its effects are incredibly disturbing and cause what has been described by authorities as “zombie-like” reactions.  Onlookers have described users saying they become “slow and lethargic,” drool and lose all motor function or the ability to communicate with others.

In short, while in the throes of a high, KD users become totally unaware of and utterly unable to control their actions. “We find them with their clothes off, eating the grass, pulling dirt out of the ground and trying to put it in their mouth,” Fire Department Captain Chris Major told CBS-affiliate WTTV. “You look at what it does to a bug,” firefighter Scott Lebherz told the Indy Star, “and then you got to think what it’s doing to your brain, and your body and everything else.”

Inquisitr reported that these sprays generally contain piperonyl butoxide, permethrin, cypermethrin, and imiprothrin, among others – all of which are incredibly harmful chemicals to the human body. And, when mixed with other ingredients and smoked, this cocktail becomes even more toxic.

Health officials have already warned that smoking this particular “zombie” bug spray laced drug carries an “extreme risk of fatality,” but users become addicted to it so quickly that very few have heeded any of the warnings. One fire department reported that the drug is so fast-acting that many overdose victims are found writhing like a zombie with the drug still in their hands.

Although this may seem obvious to many, smoking bug spray is extremely dangerous, harmful to your health, and could be lethal.

 

Opioid Use Now Tops Tobacco Use in the U.S.

A survey released by the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) shows that more people in the U.S. use opioid painkillers than tobacco, highlighting the tragic opioid crisis gripping the country. [1]

A federal review published in the spring showed that opioid prescriptions in the U.S. decreased for the 1st time in 2 decades, which suggests that doctors are finally starting to heed warnings about the drugs’ addictive properties. However, that decrease has not translated into fewer deaths. The SAMHSA report illustrates just how widespread the problem remains.

The problem is especially severe in Tennessee, where there are more opioid prescriptions written than people actually living in the state. There are 1.18 opioid prescriptions per every resident of Tennessee. More people died from overdoses in the state in 2014 than from car crashes or shootings. [2]

Source: CDC

Nationally, 37.8% of American adults are using some type of opioid painkiller, while 31.1% of U.S. adults use tobacco problems.

According to the 2015 National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH), a division of the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), more than 91.8 million Americans 18 and older used prescription painkillers last year. By comparison, 75.4 million U.S. adults used tobacco products. [1]

Those numbers creep even higher when children 12 and older are included; to 97.5 million and 78.3 million, respectively. And more than 12.5% of those users admitted to misusing the painkillers.

Danny Winder, director of the Vanderbilt Center for Addiction Research in Nashville, said:

“You’d like to think that is good news and reflects a reduction of tobacco use, but unfortunately that’s not the case. It’s a particularly pernicious problem because of its prevalence…Anytime you have a substance that is legally available and has addictive properties, that’s setting up the problem.” [2]

Actually, smoking rates have declined significantly in the U.S. in the last 50 years. From 2005 to 2015, smoking among adults declined from 20.9% to, or 45.1 million, to 15.1%, or 36.5 million. In the last year alone, the overall smoking rate fell 1.7 percentage points, resulting in the lowest prevalence since the CDC began collecting data in 1965.

However, you don’t generally associate tobacco use with hard drugs, yet many people who die from heroin overdoses begin with a dependence on prescription opioids. Even in those who don’t overdose or graduate to heroin, painkiller addiction can be devastating. In 2015, approximately 40% of unemployed people in the U.S. used a prescription opioid. [2]

Another disturbing finding from the survey is that in 2014, 27.0 million people aged 12 and older had reported using an illicit drug (10.2%). This percentage in 2014 was higher than those in every year from 2002 to 2013. [1]

The 2nd most common type of illicit drug use remained nonmedical painkiller use, but the percentage of people aged 12 or older in 2014 who were current nonmedical users of pain relievers (1.6%) was lower than the percentages in most years from 2002 to 2012.

The 2014 NSDUH estimated 66.9 million people aged 12 or older were tobacco users.

Dr. Richard Soper, chief at the Center for Behavioral Wellness in Nashville, said:

“We require tobacco companies to put warning labels on tobacco products; you don’t really see that in opioid products. As long as the FDA is continuing to approve opioids, there will still be access to it. There will still be doctors writing prescriptions.” [3]

In early 2016, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) published draft guidelines outlining testing standards for generic drugs that have been produced to be harder to crush and dissolve or snort. The agency requires that generic drug makers be able to prove that their product is bioequivalent to the name brand drug. But under the new guidelines, manufacturers will also have to prove that their generic drug has the same anti-abuse properties as its name brand equivalent.

However, this is the same agency that approved OxyContin for use in children in August 2015.

Sources:

[1] Newsmax

[2] The Tennessean

[3] The Daily Caller

CDC

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About Julie Fidler:
	Julie Fidler is a freelance writer, legal blogger, and the author of Adventures in Holy Matrimony: For Better or the Absolute Worst. She lives in Pennsylvania with her husband and two ridiculously spoiled cats. She occasionally pontificates on her blog.

This 1980 Letter from Researchers Helped Fuel the Opioid Epidemic

The U.S. opioid epidemic is claiming lives at a breakneck pace. More than 52,000 Americans died of drug overdoses in 2015, according to the CDC – an average of 1 death every 10 minutes. Nearly 33,000 of those deaths involved opioids, including prescription painkillers and heroin. Now we know how the crisis began unfurling: a 101-word letter written by Boston University Medical Center researchers, published in the New England Journal of Medicine. [1] [2]

The scientists raved that “despite widespread use of narcotic drugs in hospitals, the development of addiction is rare in medical patients with no history of addiction.” Hundreds of scholarly articles would go on to quote the researchers’ assertion. Doctors across the country would take those words as gospel truth, and prescriptions for opioids would begin to skyrocket. [2]

Dr. David Juurlink, a scientist with Sunnybrook Health Sciences Center in Toronto, Ontario, and senior author of the report, says:

“The surge in opioid prescribing we have seen over the last 20 years is due in no small measure to doctors being reassured about the safety of opioids.” [2]

Read: Even the “Safest” of Rx Opioids Highly Addictive, Say Experts

Between 1999 and 2015, prescriptions for opioids like OxyContin and Vicodin quadrupled. During that period, more than 183,000 deaths from prescription painkillers were reported in the United States.

Source: attn:

The single-paragraph letter stated that the Boston University researchers found “only four cases of reasonably well-documented addiction” in a review of 11,882 hospitalized patients treated with narcotics.

Juurlink and his colleagues found the letter was forever etched in history without anyone ever questioning or challenging the finding that addiction was rare, and without noticing that the letter had nothing to do with opioids. The fact that the study involved narcotics – not opioids, and in a hospital setting – not a take-home prescription, was glossed over in journal citations.

Samuel Ball, president and CEO of the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse, said:

“The real opioid problem we have now has been created by free prescribing of opioids to outpatients. More than 80 percent of the subsequent articles did not mention the patients were in the hospital.” [2]

A review of medical literature revealed 608 separate mentions of the letter, the report states. Close to three out of four articles cited the letter as evidence that narcotic painkiller addiction is a rarity. This, Juurlink says, suggests that few of the researchers who cited the article ever actually read it.

“Anyone who goes and pulls that original paper will see there’s nothing much to it. There was a mass uncritical citation of this letter. This letter effectively spawned hundreds of publications telling doctors and nurses that addiction was rare. When you hear something that frequently, you come to believe it’s true.” [2]

Read: Major Drug Distributors Flooded West Virginia with Millions of Pain Pills

Source: Charleston Gazette-Mail

Let that sink in. A supposedly scientific paper that had no supporting evidence convinced the nation’s doctors that patients could take opioids for extended periods of time with no risk of addiction.

One citation read:

“This pain population with no abuse history is literally at no risk for addiction.” [4]

Another read:

“There have been studies suggesting that addiction rarely evolves in the setting of painful conditions.” [3]

Oh, and get this one:

“Fear of addiction may lead to reluctance by the physician to prescribe. However, there is no evidence that this occurs when prescribing opioids for pain.” [4]

Ball says the letter was heavily cited as proof of opioids’ safety throughout the late 20^th century and early 21^st century. His best guess is that well-meaning researchers and pain specialists were driven by two powerful forces: the desire to ease suffering, and the fact that opioids were promoted “by companies with money to make if only they can get doctors to prescribe their pills.” [2]

Read: Drug Companies Fought to Delay CDC’s New Opioid Guidelines

Dr. Robert Glatter, an emergency physician with Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City, says:

“It’s clear that the pharmaceutical industry capitalized on poorly substantiated research and conclusions regarding risks of addiction to sell a campaign of influence to physicians and other health care providers.” [2]

Dr. Hershel Jick, a drug specialist at Boston University Medical Center, and a graduate student, agrees.

“I’m essentially mortified that that letter to the editor was used as an excuse to do what these drug companies did. They used this letter to spread the word that these drugs were not very addictive.” [3]

Sources:

[1] The Economist

[2] Health Day

[3] Associated Press

[4] Los Angeles Times

attn:

Charleston Gazette-Mail

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About Julie Fidler:
	Julie Fidler is a freelance writer, legal blogger, and the author of Adventures in Holy Matrimony: For Better or the Absolute Worst. She lives in Pennsylvania with her husband and two ridiculously spoiled cats. She occasionally pontificates on her blog.

Fewer Dying from 3 of the 5 Leading Causes of Death in the U.S.

A study published online in the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report says that fewer people are dying from 3 of the 5 leading causes of death in the United States – heart disease, cancer, and stroke. [1] [2]

Potentially preventable deaths from asthma, bronchitis, emphysema, and other chronic lower respiratory diseases didn’t budge, though.

But, eh, more people died from unintentional injuries, mainly caused by falls and by overdoses from both prescription and illegal drugs.

Former CDC Director Tom Frieden said in a statement:

“Fewer Americans are dying young from preventable causes of death. Tragically, deaths from overdose are increasing because of the opioid epidemic, and there are still large differences between states in all preventable causes of death, indicating that many more lives can be saved through use of prevention and treatment available today.” [3]

The rates of death from each cause vary geographically. Where people live is generally a good indicator of the health problems they face, their access to and use of social services, and public health efforts. Deaths from all leading causes are highest in the South.

Macarena C. García, DrPH, from the Center for Surveillance, Epidemiology and Laboratory Services at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), wrote:

Source: NIDA

“Public health officials can use the decreases observed as benchmarks for improving population health, while using observed increases to direct targeted efforts to reduce the number of potentially preventable deaths.

Specifically, given the reported increase in potentially preventable deaths from unintentional injuries, these findings might inform the selection and implementation of evidence-based interventions to prevent deaths from injuries such as falls and drug overdoses, based on epidemiologic burden.” [2]

For the study, Garcia and her team analyzed mortality data from the National Vital Statistic System, using the same model as that used in a 2010 analysis to allow for comparison.

Overall, the 5 top causes of death in the U.S. – heart disease, cancer, chronic lower respiratory disease (CLRD), stroke, and unintentional injuries – increased from 2010 to 2014, which was consistent with population increases. But the rate of heart disease, cancer, and stroke deaths increased more slowly than the population grew.

Of those who died of heart disease, cancer, CLRD, stroke, and unintentional injuries, the CDC estimates that 15% of the cancer deaths, 30% of the heart disease deaths, 36% of the CLRD deaths, and 28% of the stroke deaths were preventable. A whopping 43% of the unintentional deaths were preventable. [3]

Potentially preventable cancer deaths fell 25% from 2010-2014, driven by a 12% decrease in the age-adjusted death rate from lung cancer. The authors of the study credit the decline in cancer deaths to prevention, early detection, and treatment.

There was an 11% decrease in potentially preventable deaths from stroke and a 4% decrease in potentially preventable deaths from heart disease. The researchers wrote that the reduction in both causes of death is attributable to improved quality of care and a drop in risk factors, including better blood pressure control among people who have hypertension.

In comparison, potentially preventable deaths caused by accidents increased 23%. Those caused by CLRD rose1%, which the CDC said was not considered statistically significant. [3]

Overdose deaths involving prescription opioids have quadrupled since 1999, the CDC said. Nearly two million Americans abused or were addicted to prescription opioids in 2014, and more than 14,000 people died from overdoses involving those drugs.

Source:

[1] Medscape

[2] CDC

[3] Fox News

National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA)

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Russia Just Called Out US/NATO Role in Afghan Drug Trafficking — Media Silent

For many years now, the United States has been fighting, and losing, the violent war to end opiate, opioid, and heroin overdoses. As The Free Thought Project has consistently reported, opiate-related overdoses are now killing thousands of Americans per year, with no real end in sight. Our political foes know this and, according to Russia’s foreign minister Sergei Lavrov, the United States is using its own soldiers to protect the cultivation, production, and exportation of heroin from Afghanistan to other parts of the world.

As late as 2011, Moscow has been voicing its concerns over the drug trade in Afghanistan. Wikileaks published, as part of its Global Intelligence Files database, emails from Stratfor, describing Moscow’s criticism of U.S. foreign policy prohibiting its soldiers from destroying Afghani poppy fields.

In a Stratfor internal email, two Stratfor employees noted the Russian foreign minister’s opposition to U.S. permissiveness in the opium trade. “Lavrov slams USA’s unwillingness to destroy Afghan poppy fields..” That email was dated from 2011.

Also in that same year, Lavrov was an attendee at a multi-national conference on Afghanistan, called the Kabul Conference. There he reportedly made the following statements against Afghani terrorism and drug production. “We are convinced…that the ISAF (international security assistance force), regardless of their withdrawal date, should boost efficiency of their anti-terror and anti-drug efforts and brief the UN Security Council on the implementation of their mandate. A special focus should be placed on combating drugs production, something that stipulates the elimination of poppy fields and heroine laboratories. These topics should be on the radar of our working group that is already being formed,” Lavrov pointed out.

READ MORE:  In the Last 24-hours, Russia Has Destroyed Nearly All ISIS Ammunition & Heavy Vehicles

Later, in an interview in 2012, Lavrov called for NATO to begin destroying poppy fields in Afghanistan. From a Russian government transcription he stated, “For the time being, the terrorist threat has not been reduced, whereas the drug threat has been increasing and intensifying. In response to our numerous appeals, our NATO partners refuse to eliminate the crops of opium poppy, although coca plantations in Colombia are eliminated as a key direction of the anti-drug war. We are also concerned about the still insufficient pace of creating an Afghan.”

In 2011 and 2012, Lavrov’s comments were somewhat veiled and not directed specifically at U.S. foreign policy, reading more like a suggestion than an accusation. However, jumping ahead to 2017, and all thinly veiled comments, innuendos, and cultural nuances have now been cast aside, in favor of a more direct approach.

As late as last week, Lavrov’s comments are much more forthcoming and are aimed directly at U.S. officials. Lavrov recently spoke to senior military officers at Moscow’s Military Academy. After accusing the U.S. of using “managed chaos” tactics to increase U.S. influence in “Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen, and Afghanistan,” Lavrov leveled, one could say, heavy accusations against the U.S. and its foreign policy implementation.

“In the case of Afghanistan…the terrorist threat has not been rooted out, while the drug threat has increased many times over. The drug industry prospered,” he said referencing America’s failure to combat the heroin trade there. Accusing the U.S. of looking away while the country which produces 90 percent of the world’s heroin supply is equated to giving a free pass to the Afghanis to cultivate, manufacture and distribute heroin. “There is factual evidence that some of the NATO contingents in Afghanistan turned a blind eye to the illegal drug trafficking, even if they were not directly involved in these criminal schemes,” Lavrov stated implying the U.S. (being a part of NATO) might actually be involved in the drug trade.

READ MORE:  Deep State War? 7 Russian Officials Murdered or Found Dead Since Election Day

If the U.S. is involved in the flow of opium into the country it may not come as a shock to some. As The Free Thought Project recently reported, infamous drug kingpin Pablo Escobar reportedly worked for the CIA running drugs into the country, according to his son’s new book. TFTP’s Claire Bernish wrote, “If the CIA trafficking cocaine into the United States sounds like some tin foil conspiracy theory, think again. Their alleged role in the drug trade was exposed in 1996 in an explosive investigative series “Dark Alliance” by Gary Webb for the San Jose Mercury News. The investigation, headed up by Webb revealed ties between the CIA, Nicaraguan contras and the crack cocaine trade ravaging African-American communities.”

Lavrov, historically speaking, has been very vocal of the U.S. and its complicit involvement in the heroin trade, which brings up an interesting point. If heroin and its derivatives are responsible for killing thousands of Americans each year, and the U.S. could have destroyed the source of the world’s heroin and chose not to, who’s to blame for the current epidemic separating parents from their children, creating widows, and addicting millions of Americans?