"Health & Medical News"

A $10-million grant to the Canadian Center on Substance Abuse will support a national campaign to discourage illicit-drug use among 10- to 24-year-olds, the Canwest News Service? reported Jan. 31.

Canada’s new Drug Prevention Strategy for Youth (PDF) aims to reduce youth drug-use rates, delay the onset of use, reduce drug-use frequency, and cut the use of multiple substances among those who do take drugs. It is part of the conservative government’s National Anti-Drug Strategy released in the fall and will include a two-year media campaign.

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Nearly one in ten first-year college students at a mid-Atlantic university have a cannabis use disorder (CUD), according to a National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) funded study of drug use conducted by Center for Substance Abuse Research (CESAR) investigators.

First-year students attending new student orientation were randomly selected to participate in a multiyear follow-up study. Overall, 9.4% of first-year students met the clinical definition for cannabis abuse (5.4%) and/or dependence (4.0%).

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Some people mistakenly believe that the human stomach can handle just about anything, but this is actually far from true. Digestion is something which is governed by physiological chemistry, and so it is very important that you take care in what you eat so that your body’s digestive system can stay in proper working order and avoid complications.

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An Ohio man whose house was robbed had more than $400,000 confiscated by the FBI as a result of an investigation of the crime, the Lima News reported Dec. 18.

Luther Ricks Sr. said the money, which had been stored in a safe and eluded the thieves’ grasp during a summer 2007 break-in, was his life savings. But officers from the Lima Police Department who were investigating the robbery seized the money and turned it over to the FBI. Now, the agency is telling Ricks he must prove he earned the money legally if he wants it back.

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Washington — The Dept. of Health and Human Services is appealing a court order that it release Medicare physician claims data to a consumer group.

The HHS appeal in late October blocks for now a plan by Consumers’ Checkbook/Center for the Study of Services to use the claims data to provide patients with more detailed information about the quality of physician care. The nonprofit organization had planned, as a first step, to create a free online public resource listing how many times in one year individual physicians had performed certain Medicare procedures in the District of Columbia and the four states covered by the order: Illinois, Maryland, Virginia and Washington.

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An anti-psychotic drug already approved in the U.S. to treat adults and adolescents with schizophrenia may soon be available for youngsters age 10 to 17 years of age suffering from bipolar disorder.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has given priority review status to the drug Abilify which is manufactured by Bristol-Myers Squibb and Otsuka Pharmaceutical.

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A federal judge has ordered the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) to reimburse an Alaska man whose assets were seized in a raid of his marijuana-growing operation, the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner reported Sept. 22.

The DEA raided John Collette’s property in 1992 and seized two aircraft, a dump truck, snow machines, a computer, and about $40,000 in cash. Collette was arrested and later pled guilty to charges of manufacturing and distributing marijuana.

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