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CONTENTS

Previous issue of The Observer News 

International Day Against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking

International Day Against Drug Abuse
and Illicit Trafficking

The United Nations celebrates each year the International Day Against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking on June 26th. This year the topic was "Value Yourself... Make Healthy Choices."

United Nation's Information Note

This year's the theme of the United Nations goes in hand with CICAD's declared "Year of Drug Abuse Prevention", and the increased efforts made during this period in prevention, specifically in its program for school-based prevention.

CICAD's school-based prevention program uses the Lion's Club International Foundation's Life-Skills program. This program focuses on helping young people develop a comprehensive set of emotional and social competencies, such as self-confidence and decision-making ability.  The program teaches youth to resist negative peer pressure, manage their emotions, seek healthy friendships and family relationships, and find positive ways of spending free time.  In turn, critical thinking and goal-setting components empower students to make their own educated decisions about substance abuse and other risky behaviors.  Community service through the local Lions Clubs forms an important part of the program.

GRENADA:
Operation Safe Summer 2005

Barbados: NCSA's 10th Year Anniversary

NIDA Notes:
Disparities in the impact of drug abuse and addictions

CESAR Fax:
DAWN implements new system

Announcements and Events from CICAD's Executive Secretariat

 

"OPERATION SAFE SUMMER" IN GRENADA

article by Dave Alexander
Drug Avoidance Officer
Grenada

One of the featured programmes implemented by the Drug Control Secretariat of Grenada every year is, “Operation Safe Summer”.  Operation Safe Summer is a drug and violence resistance education and safety programme.  The programme provides primary and secondary school students with appropriate knowledge and social skills to resist drugs and violence, and to promote their personal safety, primarily during the summer vacation.  The programme is conducted during the period 1 June to 31 August annually.  This is a time when many students experiment in and practice high-risk behaviors (drug use, unprotected sex etc).  Some students sustain physical injuries with can result in loss of limb or life!

 

Participants at the Operation Safe Summer during 2004

Complete article in WORD and PDF

 

 

10 YEAR ANNIVERSARY OF BARBADOS'
NATIONAL COUNCIL ON SUBSTANCE ABUSE
(NCSA)

Tessa Chaderton-Shaw
Director
National Council on Substance Abuse
Barbados

Given the increasing incidence of drug abuse in the Caribbean, Government made a decision in 1995 to create Barbados' National Drug Commission, otherwise known as the National Council of Substance Abuse (NCSA). Its architect was the present Chief Justice, Sir David Simmons, who as Attorney General, ensured that the relevant legislative framework was drafted to legitimize the NCSA’s demand reduction mandate. This ushered in the NCSA Act 1995-13. This significant step received overwhelming support from the United Nations Drug Control Programme (UNDCP), now known as the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).

Complete article in WORD and PDF

To promote sustained action for positive change in the fight against substance abuse and in the facilitation of drug education, prevention, and drug-free lifestyles.

Visit NCSA's Website

NCSA's Newsletter:
Matters of Substance, 10th Anniversary Issue (PDF file)


CICAD's current programs with the NCSA:

 

 

NIDA Notes:
NIDA ADDRESSES DISPARITIES IN THE IMPACT OF
DRUG ABUSE AND ADDICTION
By NIDA Director Nora D. Volkow, M.D.

NIDA has developed a Health Disparities Initiative that will help uncover the reasons why minority populations [in the United States] incur serious health and social problems related to drug abuse at far higher rates than White abusers. African Americans and Hispanics represent roughly 11 percent and 12 percent, respectively, of the U.S. population and similar proportions of the drug-abusing population. Yet African Americans account for 50 percent and Hispanics 23 percent of injecting drug users diagnosed with HIV. Minority drug abusers also have disproportionately elevated rates of other illnesses—hepatitis B and C and tuberculosis, for example—that result from injection drug abuse. And African American cocaine abusers develop more severe drug-related cardiovascular disease than do White cocaine abusers.

Complete article

Complete NIDA Publication (PDF file)

 

 

DRUG ABUSE WARNING NETWORK (DAWN) IMPLEMENTS NEW SYSTEM;
2003 DATA ONWARD NOT COMPARABLE TO PREVIOUS YEARS
 

CESAR FAX
June 13, 2005 -- Vol. 14, Issue 24

Center of Substance Abuse Research
University of Maryland, College Park

Since 1972, the Drug Abuse Warning Network (DAWN) has been collecting data on hospital emergency department (ED) visits and drug-related deaths reviewed by medical examiners and coroners across the United States. In response to a two-year evaluation of design alternatives, a new system for DAWN data collection and reporting was implemented in January 2003. The first reports from this new data, describing national estimates of drug-related ED visits and mortality for 2003, were recently released. Because of the magnitude of the changes made to the DAWN system, data and estimates for 2003 are not comparable to those for previous years.

Complete CESAR Fax publication

Website of the Drug Abuse Warning Network

New DAWN Publications

DAWN: New Design -- Methodology Report

 

 

CICAD's Executive Secretariat
Announcements and News

  • The Inter-American Observatory on Drugs held the First Meeting of Caribbean Observatories on Drugs in Barbados on June 14-16, 2005. Click here to view the presentations and topics discussed during this meeting. (Picture Gallery)

  • The Department of Multidimensional Security of the OAS, and its program on Organized Crime organized the Meeting on Transnational Criminal Youth Gangs: Characteristics, Importance and Public Policy on June 16-17 in Tapachula, Chiapas, Mexico. For further information, please visit click here.

  • The CICAD Executive Secretariat announces the new Chief of the Demand Reduction Unit, Dr. Anna Chisman, appointed in June upon the departure of CICAD's former Demand Reduction Chief, Maria Eugenia Pérez-Madrigal, retiring from service to pursue family obligations.

  • VII Meeting of the Expert Group on Demand Reduction

  • CICAD presented the Multilateral Evaluation Mechanism's Third Round country and Hemispheric reports to the XXXV Meeting of the General Assembly of the Organization of American States (OAS). The Executive Secretariat of CICAD also held a press conference during the OAS General Assembly for the presentation of the Third Round of the MEM. For further information, please view the press release.

  • News and Programs from CICAD's Alternative Development Unit.

  • The Foundation for the Prevention and Treatment of Addictions [Fundación para la Prevención y Tratamiento de las Adicciones (PATIM)] of the Comunidad Valenciana, Spain, announces two scholarships for students in professions related to the field of drug addictions. For further information, visit the following link (information only in Spanish).

This quarterly newsletter is published electronically and  circulated to encourage discussion and comment. The findings, interpretations, judgments, and conclusions expressed in this newsletter are those of the author(s) and should not be attributed to CICAD/OAS.