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Transcript Of Press Briefing By Jeremy Travis On Radio Address (A Lengthy
'US Newswire' Release From The White House With The Text
Of The Press Conference Yesterday Featuring Jeremy Travis,
Director Of The National Institute Of Justice, And Jack Riley,
Director Of ADAM, The Arrestee Drug Abuse Monitoring Program)
Date: Mon, 13 Jul 1998 02:01:16 -0400
To: mapnews@mapinc.org
From: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org (MAPNews)
Subject: MN: US: Transcript: Transcript of Press Briefing
by Travis on Radio Address
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Organization: Media Awareness Project http://www.mapinc.org/lists/
Newshawk: Frank S. World (compassion23@geocities.com)
Source: U.S. Newswire
Pubdate: 11 Jul 1998
TRANSCRIPT OF PRESS BRIEFING BY TRAVIS ON RADIO ADDRESS
WASHINGTON, July 11 /U.S. Newswire/ -- Following is the transcript of a
White House press briefing on Friday, July 10, by Jeremy Travis, director
of the National Institute of Justice, and Dr. Jack Riley, director of the
Arrestee Drug Abuse Monitoring Program, released today by the White House:
PRESS BRIEFING ON THE RADIO ADDRESS
BY JEREMY TRAVIS, DIRECTOR OF NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF JUSTICE; DR. JACK
RILEY, DIRECTOR OF THE ARRESTEE DRUG ABUSE MONITORING PROGRAM
The Briefing Room
MR. TOIV: Our briefers are Jerry Travis, who is Director of the National
Institute of Justice -- that is the research arm of the Department of
Justice -- Dr. Jack Riley, who is the Director of the ADAM program in the
National Institution of Justice, and that is the Arrestee Drug Abuse
Monitoring program. And they will brief on the study that is going to be
released tomorrow, as well as on some grants that the President will be
announcing. And also available to answer questions on some elements of
that will be Harry Kramer, Director of Congressional and Public Affairs for
the Office of Justice Programs.
Jeremy Travis will begin.
MR. TRAVIS: Thank you. Good afternoon. I'm very pleased to be talking
this afternoon about three initiatives that the President will be speaking
about in his radio address tomorrow morning. First he'll be announcing two
grant awards that will be made by the Department of Justice, one having to
do with the very serious problem of methamphetamine abuse that is
particularly plaguing the western and southwestern parts of this country.
And second, an announcement that he'll be making regarding enhancements to
the Drug Court Initiative that have been one of the keystones of this
administration's overall program against drug abuse.
And then I'll be taking you through the ADAM research report that will also
be released tomorrow that's being put out by the National Institute of
Justice that shows the levels of drug use around the country and in
particular the connection between drugs and crime.
First, on the methamphetamine initiative, the Congress this year
appropriated $34 million in the budget of the Community Oriented Policing
Services office within the department to provide direct assistance to law
enforcement agencies that are dealing with the very serious problem of
methamphetamine influx in their communities. The COPS office will be
announcing tomorrow $5 million that will be set aside for direct assistance
to a number of jurisdictions that are responding to the problem of
methamphetamine. Those jurisdictions that will be invited to participate
in this grant program are Phoenix, Arizona; Salt Lake City, Utah; Oklahoma
City, Oklahoma; Dallas, Texas; Little Rock, Arkansas; and Minneapolis,
Minnesota.
The specific purposes of these grants will be to assist these agencies in
-- particularly dealing with the public health and public safety hazards
that are posed by methamphetamine to allow for a better coordination
between law enforcement and fire departments and environmental protection
agencies and the like, because, as you know, the methamphetamine problem
requires a coordinated law enforcement and public safety response. The
amount of the grants will be up to $750,000 and other jurisdictions, in
addition to the six that I mentioned will be also invited to participate.
Secondly, the President will be announcing a significant expansion of the
Drug Court Initiative of the administration. The specifics of this
announcement are that the 150 jurisdictions will receive grants totaling
about $27 million to plan, implement and enhance and track the progress of
drug courts.
Drug courts, as I mentioned at the outset, one of the very important, very
significant, very effective innovations that's come about by virtue of the
1994 Crime Act. The first drug court was the brainchild of Attorney
General Janet Reno in Dade County in 1989, and since that time the number
of drug courts have grown exponentially to the point now where there are
well over 270 drug courts in operation around the country. The
announcement being made by the President tomorrow will bring that number up
to 400.
This is a significant use of the criminal justice power, the power of
judges to coerce behavior, to encourage individuals who abuse drugs and
plague our communities to seek treatment and to stay in treatment. So this
announcement will be a major milestone in the use of the federal funds
under the Crime Act to provide direct assistance to localities around the
country.
Third and finally, I'd like to talk a bit about the ADAM research report
that were releasing tomorrow from the National Institute of Justice, and
I'd like to put this in context a bit. In this briefing room, a number of
you have heard about different ways that we have as a country to monitor
trends in drug abuse, perhaps best known to the public are two national
surveys: the National Household Survey that is based on face-to-face
interviews with randomly selected households across the country; and
secondly, the Monitoring the Future Survey that is based on interviews with
students from a randomly selected sample of high schools. Every year,
these surveys give us a picture of increases or decreases in drug abuse at
the national level.
The ADAM program, the Arrestee Drug Abuse Monitoring research program of
the National Institute of Justice, is different from these national surveys
in three important ways. First, we collect data at the local level, on a
quarterly basis. We do not, and indeed cannot, present a single national
picture of drug abuse trends. So the 1997 ADAM Report presents 23 distinct
portraits of drug abuse trends in 23 participating cities.
Second, although we measure drug abuse in the traditional ways; we ask
people -- what is your drug abusing behavior -- as do those other surveys,
we also take urine samples to determine the presence or absence of drugs in
a person's system at the time of his arrest. So unlike the other surveys,
the ADAM data are much less susceptible to both exaggeration and denial of
drug use.
Third, the people we interview are all arrested and charged with crimes.
So even at the local level, our sample is not representative of the overall
population, but of the arrestee population. But this third attribute of
the ADAM program is, in fact, its greatest strength, because it provides a
window on the world of crime.
In other words, we are able to track drug use within a specific
subpopulation, the criminal population, that is very important to this
country for public policy purposes. For example, there as the ADAM program
that has enabled researchers to document the decline in the crack cocaine
epidemic in our large cities, we have been able to show, for instance, that
in Manhattan, crack use among young adult arrestees dropped from 80 percent
in 1989 to 33 percent in 1997.
We have also been able to show the strong correlation between homicide
trends and cocaine positive trends in many ADAM cities. So without this
rich data source, the rise and fall of the crack epidemic that is one of
the good news stories in our country and its relationship to changing crime
trends would be mostly conjecture. So in releasing today's 1997 ADAM
report, we wish to reaffirm two central findings of this research program.
First, the ADAM data remind us powerfully that there is no single national
drug problem in this country. The drug problem of one community is very
different from the drug problem of another community, and consequently, the
strategies that work in one community may not be right for another
community. We need only compare San Diego, California with Washington,
D.C. In San Diego, we see that the levels of positive tests among the
arrestee population, both for males and females, are at about the 40
percent rates. So methamphetamine is a significant problem in San Diego
and in much of the Western to Southwestern part of this country, as shown
in the ADAM data.
Compare that to the city that we're in -- the Nation's Capital, Washington,
D.C. -- the methamphetamine rate is less than one percent, is barely a blip
on the screen. So if you are a law enforcement official or a treatment
provider or a public health officer or an education leader or a community
activist, your drug problem in San Diego is very different from the drug
problem that we face here in the Nation's Capital. This is the power of
the ADAM data is that we can make those distinctions.
The second central finding of the ADAM report is the strong nexus between
crime and drug abuse. In all 23 cities included in this study, between
one-half and three-quarters of the people charged with crimes had drugs in
their system at the time of their arrest. In most cities, 20 percent had
multiple drugs in their system. This finding -- when combined with a solid
research consensus, that treatment within the criminal justice system can
significantly reduce both drug abuse and criminal behavior -- this finding
provides the foundation for a number of the initiatives of the Clinton
administration.
The Drug Court program that I just spoke about, the prison-based treatment
program of the Justice Department, the breaking the cycle initiative
supported by the Office of National Drug Control Policy, the criminal
justice treatment networks funded by the Center for Substance Abuse
Treatment of Health and Human Services Agency -- all of these are premised
on the idea that the coercive powers of the criminal justice system can be
used to keep drug users in treatment and thereby reduce drug abuse and
reduce crime.
General Barry McCaffrey sums up this policy rationale with a simple phrase:
"If you hate crime, you'll love treatment." Now, one final word about the
ADAM program. Ultimately, ADAM's greatest value is that it can serve as a
useful, practical tool for communities across this country to help them
develop effective anti-drug strategies at the local level.
Under the leadership of Attorney General Reno and with the very strong
support of General McCaffrey and Dr. Alan Leshner of NIDA and Tom
Constantine of the Drug Enforcement Administration, we at NIJ have
developed a five-year plan to expand the ADAM program, which now exists in
a total of 35 cities -- 23 original cities and 12 new cities -- to expand
that to every city throughout the country over 200,000 in population, for a
total of 75 to 80 cities. We will also ask each of those cities in the
year 2000 to conduct annual outreach surveys in the rural and suburban and
tribal communities that they neighbor so that we can finally develop an
understanding of the crime and drug connection in rural, suburban, and
tribal America.
This is particularly important because of the methamphetamine problem that
is being faced by a number of rural communities throughout the country.
Now, consistent with the belief that ADAM is ultimately a tool for local
policy development, we've also established in all 35 cities currently
participating a local coordinating council that represents criminal
justice, treatment, and public health agencies to use the ADAM data to
develop local drug strategies.
As a research agency, we believe that knowledge is power, and by giving
hundreds of communities throughout this country a clear picture of the drug
problems in their neighborhoods, we believe that the ADAM research program
will empower those communities to develop effective strategies to reduce
drug abuse and enhance public safety.
I would now like to ask Dr. Jack Riley to present some of the findings in
the 1997 ADAM report by focusing on four specific drugs. What have we
learned about changes in use patterns in methamphetamine use, cocaine use,
particularly crack cocaine use, marijuana, and opiates, particularly
heroin. And then we'll both be available for questions.
Dr. Riley.
DR. RILEY: Thank you, Director Travis. My name is Jack Riley and I'm the
Director of the ADAM program. The report which I'm going to attempt to
summarize is the green-covered document that should be part of your
package. I want to speak briefly about the results from our 1997 study.
If I can leave you with one thought, it is that we are dealing with
multiple drug epidemics among the arrested population, and that these
epidemics vary in their intensity, their direction, as well as by location,
drug, age group, gender, and race. You may not be able to see the detail
presented in the chart up here, but you can probably see how the height of
the bars differs by color, which represents the drug, as well as how the
height of the bars differ by community. These differences and patterns
suggest that community-specific interventions will be required to
effectively reduce drug use.
To illustrate that point, let's consider the complexity of the cocaine
problem, and to a lesser extent, the heroine and marijuana problems here in
the Unites States here in these 23 cities. Together, these drugs illustrate
some of the variation associated with age groups, as well as the variation
in the timing and intensity of drug epidemics that our communities are
experiencing.
If these 23 sites were ranked in order by percentage of adult males testing
positive for cocaine, marijuana -- excuse me, Manhattan would be at the top
of the list, with nearly 58 percent of the males testing positive; San Jose
at the bottom with about 14 percent, and Philadelphia in the middle with
about 34 percent. Within each of those sites, however, it is usually
evident that the oldest males, those 36 and older, are far more likely than
the youngest males in the adult population, age 15 to 20, to test positive
for cocaine.
In Detroit, for example, only five percent of the 15-20 year olds tested
positive; while nearly 50 percent of the oldest group among males in
Detroit tested positive. This age pattern is held in many sites for a
number of years. And since younger arrestees are coming into cocaine use
at low rates, at least among the arrested population, and older cocaine
users are aging out or dying out of cocaine use, we are seeing overall
declines in the cocaine positives in these communities among arrestees.
In other words, many of the communities to which we are referring today are
past the peak of the cocaine epidemic and are increasingly dealing with a
problem that is concentrated among older users who may be less criminally
active and may have starkly different treatment needs than their younger
counterparts.
As Director Travis mentioned earlier, and as other NIJ and ADAM
publications have demonstrated, the waning of the cocaine and particularly
crack epidemic has a clear relationship to violent crime in our
communities. Measuring cocaine use among arrestees at the local level is
thus one important mechanism for monitoring and predicting violent crime
movements.
It is important to note that cocaine use is not declining in all sites. A
number of communities, primarily in the southwestern United States, are
showing increases in cocaine positives. In some cases, young adult males
are more likely than the oldest males to test positive for cocaine.
Communities where cocaine use among arrestees may still not have reached
its peak include Houston, Miami, San Antonio, Dallas, New Orleans, Omaha,
Phoenix, and San Jose.
In some ways the opiate problem is distinct from the cocaine problem, while
in other ways it is similar. One way that the opiate problem, which
includes heroin, is different is that only eight communities show more than
10 percent of the arrestees testing positive for opiates, including 22
percent in Chicago and 19 percent in Manhattan.
However, the problem is similar to cocaine in that older arrestees are
usually far more likely to be involved with heroin use than younger
arrestees. Again similar to cocaine, however, there are a number of
communities where the younger age groups are starting to catch up, and
indeed in some cases exceed the older groups in terms of involvement with
opiates, including Philadelphia, New Orleans, and St. Louis. Trends in
these cities should be monitored carefully, as they may be indicative of
future heroin problems in these communities.
Marijuana, in contrast, exhibits the opposite pattern. That is, marijuana
is found extensively among younger arrestees but relatively infrequently
among the older offenders. Thus while the numbers have leveled off for
marijuana in many of our communities, even among the younger offenders, the
age structure pattern suggests that these communities, indeed most of the
communities in our 23-site system that we're reporting on, will be dealing
with substantial marijuana-using populations for many years to come.
Let's consider now how drug epidemics can vary by geographic location and
subpopulation and how local knowledge of substance abuse trends can be
useful for crafting an intervention. Methamphetamine remains a problem
primarily in the western United States. The green bars that you see are
almost exclusively found on the left side of the map, and the green bars
represent methamphetamine.
San Diego, where nearly 40 percent of the adult males and females combined
tested positive for methamphetamine, has been extraordinarily hard hit. In
fact, methamphetamine is now the most prevalent drug among arrestees in San
Diego, surpassing that of both cocaine and marijuana.
City and county leaders in San Diego responded to this problem by
developing a cross-agency task force to address methamphetamine in their
community. The ADAM data were a critical component to the development of
this response and to monitoring ongoing progress.
Other sites with substantial fractions of arrestees testing positive for
meth include San Jose at about 18 percent, Portland and Phoenix at about 16
percent, and Omaha at 10 percent. These levels are near or exceed the
previous peaks recorded in 1994 and 1995. In addition, methamphetamine
remains primarily a problem among white arrestees and among female
arrestees. There are some sites where the overall methamphetamine rate is
very low, but the level among whites and among females has become notable,
including Atlanta, where six percent; Chicago, where three percent; and St.
Louis, where three percent of the whites have tested positive for
methamphetamine.
Since meth use is found primarily among whites and females, these are
examples of subpopulations that must be carefully monitored to assess the
geographic spread of a drug problem both within and across communities.
In summary, these findings in this chart suggest that drug use patterns
among arrestees are diverse and locally specific. These findings reinforce
the need to be able to monitor the drug use problems at the local level, to
provide policymakers with specific guidance about how their programs and
interventions are succeeding. Over the coming years, we will have the
opportunity to test for a wider range of substances at our sites, and in
certain subpopulations. And with these advances, we will improve our
ability to help communities understand their specific drug problems and
consequently, to develop appropriate community-specific responses.
Thank you.
Q The release here says that the study shows that in 9 of 23 cities, the
number of arrestees testing positive remain the same or decrease. So, in
the majority, in other words, the testing is increasing. Secondly, how
would you compare the increase in opiate testing with the decrease in
cocaine? I mean, are these offsetting each other -- is the problem still
the same level, just different drugs?
MR. TRAVIS: The first comment you made is sort of the overall number of
individual who test positive, is that up or down? There's some small number
-- nine cities where, overall, that number is down. The rest is -- or
holding constant -- the rest is up. So we measure for any drug that's in
the system, and so we -- that finding looks at any or any multiple, of
drugs. So the general statement is that there's some that are going up and
some that are going down in terms of any drug.
The second question is about substitution effects, whether there are
changes from one population that is at one point in time using drug A to
drug B is complicated, because we find that with some drugs -- for example,
the methamphetamine numbers that we are reporting that is, in fact, a very
different population, so that the presence of methamphetamine, we're
finding, is more often in whites and more often in females than for cocaine
or heroin or other drugs. There's clearly some multiple drug use, there is
clearly some substitution -- we don't know exactly how much -- but overall,
we're finding differences in the populations that are testing positive for
different drugs.
Q But it's not possible to conclude in this data whether the drug problem
is getting worse or better in terms of --
MR. TRAVIS: I think the clear implication of the ADAM report is that there
are different drug problems; they're different by type of drug and they're
different by locality. If you look at the use of cocaine, particularly
crack cocaine, this is clearly an area where there has been significant
change in a positive direction in a large number of particularly large
cities across the country with very beneficial effects.
The numbers that we show in Manhattan, for example, where, as we know,
there is a near miracle in terms of crime reduction there, show that the
levels of crack use have been going down particularly in the younger
population, and our report shows that the older population is now becoming
the more predominant drug using population for crack cocaine.
On the other hand, the meth problem is going in a direction that causes
concern. So the announcement today of assistance for local law enforcement
is bringing some much-needed relief to those police agencies because the
methamphetamine problem is going up. So different drug problems in
different communities.
Q Since fads and trends often start in the west and go east, including fads
and trends in drugs, should there be a national concern about meth usage in
the rest of the country since it is so high in places like San Diego now?
MR. TRAVIS: We're not showing levels of methamphetamine use in the eastern
cities; we are showing it in some of the midwestern cities. I'll have to
ask Jack whether it's gone up in those midwestern cities or not.
Q Well, he said it was very high in San Diego, for instance.
MR. TRAVIS: It's clearly very high, disproportionately high in the western,
southwestern cities where we're testing.
Q Since these trends often move from west to east, I'm asking you is, is
there concern about meth gaining in popularity in other cities from west to
east.
MR. TRAVIS: The concern that we hear from law enforcement and from
communities around the country is both that concern, that it's moving from
where it's now, in some cases, the predominant drug, as in San Diego within
our population, to midwestern cities. But there's also a very real concern
about the spread of methamphetamine use in rural communities. And we don't
now test for levels of methamphetamine use in rural communities, but the
new program will allow us to do that.
Q Is that because it's so easy to manufacture?
MR. TRAVIS: It is easy to manufacture. Why it's picking up in rural
communities, I think we need to know a lot more about that. Let me just ask
Jack if he can add to that.
DR. RILEY: Only that I think we might begin to develop some additional
information on potential spread to the eastern United States as we bring on
the 12 new cites that are identified on the cover of this year's report.
But when I spoke about Atlanta, Chicago and St. Louis, which are the
easternmost sites, those numbers, while relatively significant among the
white offender population in those cities, represent a small number of
individuals. So, to date, I don't think we're seeing any compelling
evidence that methamphetamine is spreading eastward, only that it has a
very solid hold in the western United States.
Q Do you know why it is that these communities have such different usages
of the various drugs? Is it that the supply of methamphetamine is great in
the southwest, or is it that tastes vary in drugs just like they do in food
-- they have Philly cheese steaks in Philadelphia and tacos in San Diego.
What's the reason?
MR. TRAVIS: Well, in terms of methamphetamine production, there is good law
enforcement evidence that much of the production of methamphetamine is
connected to activities south of the border in Mexico. So I think that
there is sort of an international issue there that General McCaffrey is
very concerned about as well as Administrator Constantine.
I think some drug epidemics come and go. That's certainly what's happening
with crack. And they take hold in places in some places and not in others.
The good news that we've talked about in terms of the crack use shows that
there is also an intergenerational difference in terms of these use
patterns. So that we're seeing younger people who are now coming of the
age where they might engage in risky behaviors, including drug use,
including crack cocaine use, who are using at much lower rates than their
slightly older brothers or brothers' and sisters' friends.
In the research literature, this is called sort of the "big brother"
syndrome, where the younger brother looks at what's happening to his older
brother, who is now either in jail or a crackhead or engaged in some risky
and unproductive behavior, and says, I don't want that to be me. So we
have not only these regional differences but these generational differences
in terms of drug epidemics.
And part of what we believe is happening with the crack epidemic is this
combination of very effective law enforcement -- law enforcement,
problem-solving policing has figured out how to deal much more effectively
with the violence associated with crack markets -- and a different message
that's being perceived and acted upon by younger people in terms of that
very risky behavior.
Q Could you repeat, is there any correlation between the type of drug use
and the type of crime committed?
DR. RILEY: We executed the study at the National Institute of Justice,
published last year, looking at homicide trends in eight cities across the
United States, six of which are cities that are part of this network. And
in cases where both the homicide trends were declining and the homicide
trends were increasing, there is relatively clear correlation between that
homicide trend and the percentage of homicides and the percentage of adult
males testing positive for cocaine.
We can't distinguish in the testing between powder cocaine and crack
cocaine, but we do know from our self-report information that most of those
individuals are, in fact, crack users rather than powder cocaine users.
And so --
Q But it hasn't been taken beyond that level?
DR. RILEY: We've also extended that analysis to the other 17 cities that
are part of the system, and again, that same relationship holds. But as far
as relationship to other types of violent crime, that type of analysis was
a little more difficult. Homicide was chosen because you have effective
reporting; it's very easy to find a victim and the counts and the quality
of the information on the homicide are much clearer.
Q But there's no cross-reference between a test for marijuana or
methamphetamine and robbery or --
DR. RILEY: No, we tested methamphetamine, marijuana and heroin, or the
opiate class, against homicide rates. There was some correlation between
heroin and homicide rates, but it turns out that a lot of heroin users are
poly-drug users, including testing positive for cocaine. People that test
positive only for opiates, not for cocaine, there is no relationship.
Q With methamphetamine use growing in the white and female population, does
that correspond to a growth in arrests among whites and females, or are the
arrest rates the same, it's just more of them have used drugs?
DR. RILEY: I don't think our data are showing changes in underlying arrest
rates. What we typically get is approximately 20 percent of the
individuals in any given jurisdiction are arrested on drug charges. So
they could be arrested on a cocaine charge, they could be arrested on a
methamphetamine charge. The other 80 percent of the offenders are in there
for a variety of other charges -- prostitution, property offenses, and so
forth. So the mix of people that we interviewing as part of this program
is probably not changing. How that translates into --
Q -- just as many women and just as many whites as always, -- they're not
going up?
DR. RILEY: Correct. I believe so, but whether the underlying arrest
patterns in those communities are changing, I have less information at this
point.
Q Did you add together all the arrests in all the cities and come up with a
percentage of positive results as an aggregate?
MR. TRAVIS: A methodological question.
DR. RILEY: The answer is no, we don't do that at this point. I would
venture --
Q Why not?
DR. RILEY: It's relatively difficult to be able to compare
cross-communities. To give one example, at this point, what we call our
catchment area, which is the underlying population of arrestees, in some
communities, it's a city; in other communities, it's a county; in some
communities, we're only one of the jails that might be in the county. As
we progress methodologically through the next couple of years, I think
we'll be able to provide that picture. But then you get into problems of,
particularly with lower-level offenses, whether the underlying offenses
that you're putting together are truly comparable across jurisdictions.
MR. TRAVIS: I think the idea of using these data to create a single
national picture is a tempting idea. I understand that. But I think the
power of what we've been able to demonstrate through this research report
is that, in fact, there are very different pictures of drug abuse patterns
and trends and problems at the local level. So the national data have some
value. I'm not discounting the importance of understanding at the national
level whether marijuana use, cocaine use, heroin use, methamphetamine use
is up in an aggregate sense. But to say that heroin use is up three
percent doesn't really help a police commissioner in Baltimore, where they
have a very significant heroin problem and wants to know whether the heroin
problem in Baltimore is moving in the right direction.
So it may be possible, methodologically, at some point, to aggregate those
data and control for the variables. But I think the policy picture that is
very evident and clear and comes in focus when you look at the ADAM data
is, in effect, there is no single national drug problem. We have lots of
very different local drug problems, and if we give this information about
those local problems to those local communities on an ongoing basis with
regular feedback as to whether they're making a difference, whether
community policing strategy is working, whether the drug court is working,
whether the epidemic is waning or waxing, this information is very
important and not previously available to local communities.
Q Is it fair to conclude, then, that there's limits on how broad a national
drug policy can be? If we've got all of these different local problems,
then a national role would seem to be limited in how it --
MR. TRAVIS: Well, I think, in fact, the other two announcements that the
President is making tomorrow that are expansion by nearly 40 percent of the
number of drug courts and the award of $5 million of grants to local law
enforcement agencies in the communities that are affected by the
methamphetamine problem, that type of federal assistance coming out of this
administration is exactly the type of support that is needed for
communities to be able to do something about their drug problems at their
local levels.
So a methamphetamine grant to a city that is plagued by methamphetamine
problems is -- that is real assistance from the national level, and that's
the role that the federal government is trying to play.
MR. TOIV: Great. Thank you.
END 1:45 P.M. EDT
-0- U.S. Newswire 202-347-2770/ 07/11 10:15
Copyright 1998, U.S. Newswire
-------------------------------------------------------------------
One Dose Of This Drug Could Cure Any Addiction . . . (Britain's 'Times'
Recounts The Long Struggle By Howard Lotsof In The United States
To Introduce Ibogaine As A Treatment For Addiction To Heroin
And Other Hard Drugs)
Date: Mon, 13 Jul 1998 19:02:40 EDT
Errors-To: manager@drcnet.org
Reply-To: HSLotsof@aol.com
Originator: drctalk@drcnet.org
Sender: drctalk@drcnet.org
From: (HSLotsof@aol.com)
To: Multiple recipients of list (drctalk@drcnet.org)
Subject: Text London Times Ibogaine article
(c) 1998 Times Newspapers. All rts. reserv.
ONE DOSE OF THIS DRUG COULD CURE ANY ADDICTION ...
Times of London
Saturday, July 11, 1998
By: Simon Witter Section
Features Word Count: 2,804
...or so some scientists claim. Others fear that this so-called
wonderdrug is more destructive than the substances it hopes to replace
Suzie's head felt like it had been split open. She could see her
cleansed brain, and it shone with a brightness that was hard to look at.
But she knew she must try. Images flickered around the screen of her
consciousness, illuminated one by one by a dazzling beam of light which
speedily picked out new memories with a relentlessness that she could not
control.
She was entering the second phase of a 36-hour experience that could
cure her addictive behaviour for ever. A few hours earlier she had taken a
dose of ibogaine, and now she lay in a waking dream, being ravished by
dramatic visions that she would then interpret to make sense of the way her
life had turned out. Suzie's hope was that, without suffering the pain of
withdrawal, she would wake from this trip and never feel the need to take
heroin again. According to the evidence of scientists who administered the
drug, and many of their patients, her chances were good.
Ibogaine, an alkaloid derived from the root of the African plant
tabernanthe iboga, is a hallucinogenic substance used in the initiation
ceremonies of the Gabonese Bwiti society. Its supposed ability to block
opiate withdrawal symptoms and take away the desire of addicts to use drugs
again has now put it at the centre of a raging scientific debate. If it can
be brought to the mass market at an affordable price, and if it works as
well as its advocates claim, ibogaine's potential is extraordinary. It
would, they say, painlessly cure opiate addiction and could also be highly
effective in curing cocaine, alcohol and even tobacco addiction as well as
a variety of other addictive behaviour patterns. Its detractors argue that
no drug could ever deliver the therapeutic effects claimed.
Only 300 people have been treated with ibogaine this decade, clearly too
few to form a basis for any meaningful research. It is certainly an
expensive affair. The drug is illegal in the United States, where it is
classed in the same category as the hard drugs from which it is claimed to
provide relief (a result of the post-psychedelia 1970 Controlled Substances
Act). But its protagonists in America managed to gain FDA (Food and Drug
Administration) and DEA (Drug Enforcement Agency) approval for testing on
humans as well as persuading NIDA (the National Institute on Drug Abuse, a
branch of the National Institute on Health in Maryland) to spend millions
of dollars on research into the drug. In Britain and most of the rest of
the world, ibogaine is simply not registered on classified drugs lists. As
a result, treatments such as the one Suzie undertook, are available - at a
price - across the world.
American Howard Lotsof, the man initially responsible for the interest
in ibogaine, occasionally treats people in a seven-day hospital programme
in Panama at a cost varying from $8,000 to $20,000. University of Miami
neuro-pathologist Dr Deborah Mash has established a competing 14-day
programme in St Kitts ($10,000), while devout ibogaine advocate Eric Taub
used to treat people on a boat in international waters. He now has clinics
in Costa Rica and Italy which offer programmes starting at $2,200.
There may be up to a dozen outfits in the Taub mould, but unless
ibogaine becomes legal and affordable, the people taking it will be paying
through the nose to be research guinea pigs.
"I remained at each level until I was comfortable with it," remembers
Bob, one of Taub's patients. "Then a very strong wave hit me and things
began to escalate rapidly. There were sapphire blue tendrils that moved up
the wall and became flowers. I began to hear music, voices, a cacophony of
other whirring, drumming, and creaking, rushing sounds. Although I was
scared, I liked it. It seemed that things remained awhile until I got
comfortable, then went beyond anything I had ever experienced. I was
floating in a sea of physical sensations and I closed my eyes. My eyelids
were the window to an array of visions floating in a void.
"I felt that iboga was teaching me. I began to sense a threshold that
would totally disconnect me from this reality and I would resolve my
deepest conflicts; I would see the face of God. I became terrified. Fearing
for my life and sanity, I vomited, which immediately pulled me back from
the threshold."
Bob says that the experience cured him of his heroin addiction. His
account is one of scores of first-hand testimonies to the powerful and -
some claim - beneficial effects of a drug that is provoking a flood of
scientific interest. More than 4,000 research papers have been written on
the subject, including snappy, layman-friendly stuff like: "Quantum
Coherence in Microtubules: A Neural Basis For Emergent Consciousness?" Some
recent medical research suggests that ibogaine has a number of wondrous
physical properties. Many patients have described the experience as being
like a resetting of their controls. Ken Alper, assistant professor of
psychiatry and neurology at New York University, found that, effectively,
it did just that to the abnormal brainwaves of crack addicts he monitored
before and after ibogaine ingestion. "Drug addiction is nature's sadistic
joke," he says. "The addictive brain is out of balance, its chemistry
deviates from the normal. Ibogaine normalises the EEG (brainwave readings),
it resets the brain."
In the 1950s, American psychologist Leo Zeff and psychiatrist Claudio
Naranjo were using ibogaine in their practice, and the CIBA corporation
(now CIBA-Geigy) was investigating its usefulness as an anti-anxiety drug,
but its potential to painlessly release people from the craving for drugs
was discovered quite by accident.
In 1962, Howard Lotsof, then a film student from New York, was offered a
single dose of ibogaine. Deciding that a 36-hour hallucinogen sounded too
exhausting for him to want to take, he gave it to a much more experienced
friend, who came back and told him that this was a completely new kind of
drug. Lotsof was part of a group of 20 or more friends experimenting with
psychoactive drugs such as Mescaline, DMT, psilocybin and LSD (all legal at
the time). He had also been taking heroin for some time. They took ibogaine
as part of that experimentation, with no intention whatsoever of giving up
any kind of drug use, but 33 hours later Lotsof discovered that he was no
longer dependent on heroin. For six months after that one dose he also
stopped taking cocaine and all other drugs. The effect on the rest of the
group was much the same.
Lotsof was 19 at the time and knew very little about pharmaceutical
development, so nothing became of this accidental revelation. He spent the
Sixties as an active member of the counterculture and Free Speech Movement
in Berkeley, California. Ibogaine didn't stop him re-acquainting himself
with heroin in 1969, but he finally went through detox and stabilised his
life in one of the first methodone programmes in 1970, after which he ran a
plumbing business in New York and worked as a line producer for Rock
Against Racism concerts. In the Eighties he began to feel that his
discovery was too important not to pursue, and started hunting for
pharmaceutical-grade ibogaine with which to conduct research. In 1986 he
founded a New York corporation, NDA International Inc, partly as a
humanitarian mission and partly to market a proprietary pharmaceutical
preparation, "Endabuse", composed of capsules of ibogaine hydrochloride. He
filed patents for the use of ibogaine to treat addiction and started to
seek FDA approval to test the drug.
Initial, over-simplified reports of the way ibogaine works suggested
that patients relive their entire childhood in 36 hours, during which they
identify the holes they are filling with their addictive behaviour. Having
understood why they're behaving this way, they are said to wake up cured of
those urges. If one dose of ibogaine really did deliver a lifetime of
therapy, it would be one of the greatest pharmaceutical breakthroughs of
the late 20th century. But even Lotsof concedes that ibogaine treatment
needs to be backed up by therapy.
But many are still highly doubtful of the claims made for the drug. Tony
Dickenson, professor of neuro-pharmacology at University College London, is
sceptical. "From a neurological point of view, it's highly unlikely that a
substance can make you re-run childhood memories," he says. "The brain
matures for a long time, and the view you have of the world - and the way
you store it - before you're 12 years old is pretty immature. Most people's
memories of early childhood are pretty skimpy, as the controversy
surrounding dishonest repressed memory therapy has shown us. And the idea
that some really early event puts you on the road to drugs later on isn't
that tenable."
Many reports of the ibogaine experience, principally posted on the
Internet, are positive, but the drug does create very different experiences
in different people, and some recipients have been terrified by the
results. Janet, a Californian alcoholic who paid $10,000 to undergo
ibogaine treatment (along with ten heroin addicts) as part of Dr Mash's St
Kitts programme last December, remembers it not working at all.
"I was told ibogaine was not a hallucinogen - bullshit. It's like acid
times one million," she recalls. "I was also seeking 'God in a pill' along
with the other addicts. I saw God all right - I talked to him. And I was
sure it was real. But it wasn't an all-loving God. It was someone who
scared the hell out of me. Some of the addicts became Jesus Christ and were
crucified or had aliens rape them. Ibogaine worked for me for a month
because it makes you so physically sick you can't even stand the thought of
eating, much less drinking or doing drugs. The visions were so
excruciating. The embarrassment of paying such a price for a bogus deal was
the reason I was able to go a month without a drink."
No illicit ibogaine drug market currently exists between the clinics
carrying out official treatments and home chemists trying to isolate the
active metabolite from bark scrapings bought via the internet. One reason
is that extracting the plant's active ingredients is a difficult chemical
process too complicated for illegal drug dealers.
Ibogaine has had fleeting appearances on the illegal drug market. It was
reportedly used by young addicts in San Francisco as a substitute for LSD
but it suddenly disappeared from the market. It seems that some drug
dealers thought that its use could deprive them of part of their clientele.
It has also been reported that a Mexican clinic refused to carry out
ibogaine research for fear that it would provoke the wrath of local drug
lords.
But this doesn't mean that ibogaine - which until 1995 was well on its
way to public availability - will be used by the medical establishment in
the near future. One of the principal reasons, ironically, is a bitter
legal row between its two leading protagonists, Lotsof and Mash.
According to Lotsof, the critical toxicity studies that were required
for FDA approval (without which no new drug can be marketed) have been
stopped by Deborah Mash, who has now patented several ibogaine-like
substances -Trycyclic Ibogaine Analogs - which she is developing under the
auspices of the Universities of Miami and Minnesota. Lotsof sued her for
breach of contract, both for stopping the tests and patenting analogs which
(under the terms of the contract) he claims should belong to NDA.
Mash countersued, but Lotsof didn't have enough money to go to court.
One day before he lost the case by default, he was offered the services of
an attorney on a no-win, no-fee basis. The trial is now set to go ahead in
the next few months, but for Lotsof it may already be too late.
"Putting myself aside," he says, "the way the FDA development of the
drug has been held up for years is terrible. Though ibogaine is a
restricted substance in the US, the FDA gave a go-ahead for human testing
and the DEA is co-operative on the matter. That work should have been
completed by now. It has simply been stopped while competing products have
been developed."
Dr Mash insists her Tryclic Ibogaine Analogs are a whole new class of
compounds synthesized by a collaborator of hers at the University of
Minnesota, independently from her clinical trials or from the Endabuse
procedure. She also claims that when she, Juan Sanchez-Ramoz and Dr Lee
Hearn discovered an active metabolite called Nor-ibogaine (a wholly new
molecule) and disclosed their findings, Lotsof came down to Miami and
agreed on a 50-50 split with the university.
"Here's the only academic environment that has offered him the chance to
test his drug in a scientifically credible way, and he immediately turns
round and bites the hand that's feeding him," she says.
On top of the bust-up with Dr Mash, NIDA, which has already pumped
millions of dollars in grants into many ibogaine research groups, seems to
have gone cold on the whole idea. One of the many theories as to why this
has happened is that there is a "methadone mafia" entrenched in both NIDA
and the scientific-medical community that feels threatened by the prospect
of a cure to addiction. But Lotsof is not so sure about this conspiracy
theory. "Even some of the methadone people are beginning to swing around,"
he says. "The responsible ones would like every tool at their disposal to
help people dependent on drugs. Any new technology is met with resistance
by the old guard."
Dana Beal, Aids activist and co-author of The Ibogaine Story, feels that
NIDA has a problem with Howard Lotsof's roots in the counterculture, making
him someone they would rather demonise than help. "Things Deborah Mash said
to me indicated that NIDA had a problem with Lotsof," she says. "Howard was
too close to people like me. ONDCP (Office of National Drug Control Policy,
or America's drug tsar equivalent) has been under instructions not to deal
with legalisers since mid 1993 at least."
Not true, says Frank Vocci, director of the Medication Development
Division at NIDA. "I spent four years working with Howard Lotsof, there's
no way I would spend several million dollars of taxpayers' money - and we
did - just to parry someone off in a clever fashion. I'd tell them to get
lost.
"In 1995 we asked a group of outside clinicians if we should go ahead
with this drug. We got nine serious no replies and four tentatively saying
yes."
Vocci says NIDA was presented with ibogaine as a total cure, but without
therapy the ratios went down to about one in eight patients totally cured.
"We can do that well with non-pharmacological treatments that are a lot
less risky. We gave it our best shot. It was a major project here."
And if ibogaine works as well as its protagonists claim, why aren't
pharmaceutical corporations falling over each other to invest in a slice of
what could be a very big pie? Apart from George Soros, the billionaire
financier, who sponsors ibogaine seminars in New York, big business backing
is noticeably lacking.
"The pharmaceutical industry is marketing-led," says Dr Dickenson. "It's
not the extent of the disorder that counts, it's the amount of money they
can make. Most prescription drugs are administered daily over a period of
weeks, months or years. Ibogaine is generally used once in a single dose,
and then followed up with several months of psychotherapy. And for a drug
to get FDA approval for marketing, it has got to be pretty benign. There
are a lot of drugs that we already use that wouldn't make the market now,
as things have been tightened up. So a drug with the powerful psychoactive
actions of ibogaine is going to find it hard."
Lotsof has spent 15 years approaching pharmaceutical companies,
investment houses and venture capitalists for funding, but the stumbling
block has always been FDA approval. He is sceptical that they will ever
show interest in developing medications to treat addiction.
But that does not mean that ibogaine use won't grow beyond the clinics
of Lotsof, Mash and Taub. "The ibogaine movement should be less bitter,"
says Ken Alper. "That an informal self-help culture of addicts has got this
far is amazing. These people have no political power, no big industry
connections. It takes $20-$50 million to bring a drug to the market.
They're halfway through that phase with no sponsor. That's not bad. And
it's not over yet."
to 1998 Daily News index for July 9-15