"Health & Medical News"

Major League Baseball is supposed to have random, unannounced drug testing of players, but team officials are routinely notified in advance about the arrival of testing experts, the New York Times reported Oct. 31.

The lawyer for the Major League Baseball Players Association, Michael Weiner, said that, under the league’s drug-testing program, “our players do not get advance notice about tests.” But testing officials call club officials in advance in order to make arrangements such as getting parking passes. One club official said that he knows about testing up to two days in advance, and that trainers are informed so that they can set up for testers in the team’s clubhouse.

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Heroin use is rising in Wisconsin, and increased drug purity is causing a spike in overdoses, but more addicts are being saved from death by use of the opiate antidote Narcan, the Capital Times reported Oct. 22.

Groups like the AIDS Resource Center of Wisconsin have trained hundreds of addicts to self-administer the antidote in case of an accidental overdose, as well as training emergency-services personnel on how to use Narcan. In south-central Wisconsin alone, at least 86 overdose victims have been saved by Narcan — the trade name of the opiate agonist naloxone — during the past two years.

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By Bob Curley

Fewer adolescents are telling federal researchers that they use marijuana, but the 2006 National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH) reported that most indicators of alcohol, tobacco and other drug use remain relatively unchanged from 2005.

The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) unveiled the survey results on Sept. 6, with federal officials touting a 25-percent reported decline in marijuana use among male youths between 2002 and 2006 but fretting over the 2.2 million new nonmedical users of prescription drugs, including narcotic painkillers. Most users of prescription drugs for recreational reasons reported getting the drugs free from friends or family members.

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