What’s the Right Schedule?

The Controlled Substances Act instated in 1970 is a piece of drug regulation legislation we still use today. This act organizes almost any prescription or illegal drug you can think of into categories. Marijuana is a schedule one drug. A schedule one drug is described as, “hav[ing] a high potential for abuse, have no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States, and there is a lack of accepted safety for use of the drug or other substance under medical supervision.” Schedule one drugs may not be prescribed for any medical purposes. Examples of other schedule one drugs are: heroin, lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), peyote, and ecstasy.

Schedules 2-5 can be prescribed. Each schedule has different levels of potential for abuse. Schedule two drugs, for example morphine, have the highest potential that are still prescribed; while schedule five drugs, for example Lunesta, have the lowest. I believe marijuana should be moved to one of these lesser categories.

The Drug Enforcement Agency’s Office of Diversion Control paraphrases the Controlled Substances Acts’ placement policy in the following way: “A controlled substance is placed in its respective schedule based on whether it has a currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States and its relative abuse potential and likelihood of causing dependence.” This definition not only answers almost no questions about the placement policy, it actually gives us more questions than it answers.

The first of which is, what are abuse and dependence, and what’s the difference? Most of us assume abuse and dependence go hand in hand although, this is not always true. The CSA is placing substances according to the potential for abuse. Abuse is misuse in a dangerous way. I do not, however believe using marijuana is abuse just because it’s illegal. The fact of the matter is anything and everything has potential to be abused; from razors to sleeping pills.

Though razors may seem innocent, they are misused by children who use them to cut themselves. According to Webmd.com, children as young as 9 are taking part in this self-destructive behavior. Sleeping pills are also abused when users take more than prescribed. This can certainly take a toll on one’s body.

Dependence is relying on something. Dependence is not necessarily a bad thing. Having arthritis can make you dependent on pain killers. You rely on them to make you feel better. Another form of dependence, the form the CSA is looking at is if a sufferer is dependent with or without symptoms. If I use Xanax for my anxiety and my anxiety goes away but I continue to use it, that’s dependence as well. This is what the CSA is trying to protect us from.

Psychologytoday.com tells us the amount of marijuana that counts as abuse varies from person to person. One person can use a gram and be fine whereas with another person, it would be too much. This depends on the person and how often they use. A good general rule to go by is when marijuana begins to interfere with your normal life, it’s too much and therefore abuse. Interfering can be getting worse grades for a student or decreased efficiency at work. Another excerpt from Pschologytoday.com says, “The proportion of drug users that become addicted, or dependent, on drugs is relatively small (10%-15%).”

Works Cited: 

“Controlled Substances Schedules.” The Drug Enforcement Agency’s Office of Diversion Control. 23 February, 2012.

Davis, Jeanie Lerche. “Cutting and Self-Harm: Warning Signs and Treatment.” WebMD. 27 March, 2012.

Gumbiner, Jann. “How Much Pot Is Too Much Pot?”. Psychology Today. 27 March, 2012.

Hodgson, Ally. “White Paper: Marijuana as a Schedule One Drug.” WordPress.com. 29 February, 2012. 27 March, 2012.

Jaffe, Adi. “Is Marijuana Illegal? You can bet your heroin on that!” Psychology Today. 2010. 27 March, 2012.

In the modern American society, the increasing percentage of citizens reaching obese and overweight BMI indexes is startling. At some point, these unfortunate men and women reach a threshold at which diet and exercise may become too difficult and even dangerous. For this reason, pharmaceutical companies have been researching chemicals that will help significantly reduce weight, but most have been met with opposition by the FDA due to the dangerous effects so many of these chemicals have on the heart. The most recent of these drugs trying for FDA approval is Vivus’s Qnexa; a combination of the FDA approved drugs, Phentermine and Topiramate. For those unfortunate and sick people plagued by obesity, Qnexa could be the deciding factor between life and death. For that reason, the FDA should approve Qnexa since the risk of taking Qnexa is very nominal, especially compared to the life-threatening risks of being obese.

Qnexa is not the heart hazardous drug the FDA has previously suspected it of being. Phentermine is unlike most previously banned drugs called amphetamines that increased chance of heart attack, caused dangerous increases in blood pressure, and eventually yielded heart valve damage. One of the reasons why Phentermine was denied approval by the FDA may be its affiliation with a banned drug, Fen-Phen. Interestingly enough, the reason why Fen-Phen was banned is because of its other component, Fenfluramine, which was banned for causing 30% testers to develop very abnormal cardiograms (FDA). Phentermine has not yielded kind of hazardous effects to the heart and is safe to use, and its safety is probably why the FDA approves it. However, the other component of Qnexa, Topiramate, has been found to cause negative side effects for pregnant women. Qnexa shouldn’t be taken by women who are pregnant due to Topiramate’s effect of doubling the likelihood of having a child born with a cleft palate from .7% to 1.4% (Roth). In that circumstance, an operation would have to be performed to correct the abnormality. This effect on pregnant women is the only risk a person would have to weigh before taking Qnexa and this applies to a very small fraction of obese people. Based on the results of its test trials, the drug is very safe and effective.

Being obese is like having a ticking time bomb to one’s chest since it poses so many risks in such a broad spectrum of bodily functions. Within the cardiovascular system, obesity causes plaque to build up in the arteries. This plague leaves an obese person susceptible to high blood pressure, coronary heart disease, and even stroke. For a woman in her childbearing years, an obese woman faces a plethora of long-term complications for both herself and the child. One of the largest issues occurs due to the heightened blood pressure of the mother, which results low birth weights from the restricted blood flow to the fetus. Oppositely, if Gestational Diabetes is developed, the child gains too much weight in development and is born with a predisposition to childhood obesity. Another issue the mother faces is the difficulty to gather fine details on the development of the child during ultrasounds. Since the high amount of fat obstructs the waves, the view of the child is often blurry and chances of picking up problems in fetal development are decreased. Due to the risk of having a child born with a cleft palate, Vivus has excluded pregnant women in its filing for FDA approval. Women in their child bearing years should keep in mind that remaining obese can endanger the life of their child if they should ever conceive and that taking Qnexa would unlikely affect a future child.  Losing weight should be priority for women planning on having a child in the future and pregnancy should be avoided before reaching a healthy BMI.

The only possible way Qnexa could pose a danger to one’s health would be in the case of misuse. As with all drugs, it’s a chemical that should be taken responsibly. Obesity is much more detrimental to the lives of people it has taken hold of than just the heart and pregnancy risks. With enough time, obesity can indirectly cause a variety of issues to arise. Type 2 diabetes is another dangerous risk of having so much excessive weight. In this case, the individual’s body has become unable to produce insulin at sufficient levels or at all. Having diabetes only increases the risk of heart disease and stroke risk, but also predisposes individuals to kidney disease and blindness (National Heart Lung and Blood Institute). The increase weight also has a great toll on the support system for the body, the skeleton, since the bones experiences much more wear and tear. Finally, studies conducted by the National Caner Institute have shown that obesity increases the risk of cancers of the esophagus, pancreas, colon, rectum, breast, endometrium, kidneys, thyroid, and gallbladder (National Cancer Institute).

The FDA is supposed to be monitoring the safety of food and drugs available for commerical purchase. While it has done a great job at removing many dangerous chemicals from being ingested by so many Americans, the FDA needs to re-assess the ruling on Qnexa. At worst, Qnexa only affects a small number of women. It should not be denied approval just because of that small percentage. Qnexa should be approved based on the fact that it has not posed any serious risk for obese people who are living with biological time bombs strapped to their waists other than pregnant women.

The FDA should approve Qnexa since it has been proven to effectively combat the dangerous disease, obesity. The growing epidemic that the United States faces with the growing number of patients reaching obese BMI could finally start to reverse with Qnexa.  Obesity is a serious condition that clearly endangers a person’s life with every single beat their heart makes, while Qnexa is a drug designed to safely and effectively reduce weight. Americans should have the option to treat the disease before it progresses and causes more problems in their lives.

Works Cited

“ FDA Announces Withdrawal Fenfluramine and Dexfenfluramine (Fen-Phen)” FDA.gov. Web. 08 Mar. 2012.

“Obesity and Cancer Risk.” National Cancer Institute. Web. 08 Mar. 2012.

Roth, Jeffrey J. “FDA Warns Against Use of Topamax by Women of Childbearing Age.”Las Vegas Plastic Surgery. Web. 08 Mar. 2012.

“What Are the Health Risks of Overweight and Obesity?” – NHLBI, NIH. Web. 08 Mar. 2012.

Bibliography

“”Fen-Phen” Update (Fenfluramine, Phentermine, Dexfenfluramine).” FDA.gov. Web. 08 Mar. 2012.

“Obesity During Pregnancy.” Pregnancy-Info.net. Web. 08 Mar. 2012.

“Phentermine.” Drugs.com. Web. 08 Mar. 2012.

Invasion of Privacy?

In a highly social society, we tend to separate ourselves into multiple personalities. We have a professional side, which we share in the workplace and with acquaintances; we have an informal side, which we share with friends and family; and we also have a personal side, which we share with only ourselves. All of these separate aspects of our personalities make up who we are as individuals. But when these different personalities are shared with an unintended audience, it can sometimes lead to trouble. And with the emergence of higher technology and social networking, it has become a lot easier for others to view a glimpse of parts of our lives that we may not want them to see. Businesses use social networking sites to prescreen candidates for employment at their companies, schools use these sites to intervene with student conflicts, and law enforcement officials use them to dig up information on certain cases or to find a basis for targeting a group of people in an investigation. The use of social media profiles for purposes such as these may seem to be an invasion of privacy, but that accusation is entirely dependent upon what one defines to be an “invasion of privacy.”

Generally, an invasion of privacy is considered to be the act of prying into someone’s private life without their permission or consent; but if someone signs up for a social networking account and provides all their information on a public website, regardless of their “privacy settings,” can it truly be considered an invasion of privacy for an unintended audience to access that information? According to a 2010 article in Computers and Composition, Gina Maranto and Matt Barton report that, “both Facebook and MySpace (and their parent companies) are far more concerned with profits than privacy. Neither site claims to keep user information confidential; indeed, their profits come from exchanging this data with companies who are exploiting these sites” (Maranto and Barton). This means that essentially, no matter what kind of privacy settings or blocks that someone may place on a social networking account, the expected level of privacy is never truly enforced. This doesn’t necessarily mean that Facebook or MySpace sell out all of their users’ personal information to anyone who wants it; what they do, however, is allow outside advertising agencies to access their users’ basic information and interests in order for these companies to provide targeted advertising to as many people as they can.

With the introduction of the Beacon advertising program on the Facebook website in 2007, Facebook essentially has “empower[ed] advertisers to target … ads using the information on the personal profiles that members supply to Facebook. A national advertiser could sell ads to a huge group (all women between 25 and 40), or a local advertiser, like a restaurant, could pay much less to reach a microgroup (Ivy League-educated Indian-food lovers in a specific ZIP code). You could even target people who work for a specific company,” according to Stan Levy in his Newsweek article “Do Real Friends Share Ads?”. The use of these advertising schemes are inversely related to the loss of privacy privileges on the internet; the less privacy we have, the more money advertisers accumulate. However, Facebook’s privacy officer at the time, Chris Kelly, assured users of the site that personal data is never given to the advertising agencies (Levy). As long as personal information is not exposed by Facebook, an advertising agency’s access to a person’s interests or recent web searches doesn’t really affect their lives in any other way other than the fact that agencies are able to deliver more targeted advertising to Facebook users.

Many people don’t even feel as though this access to their interests and activity on the internet is really that detrimental; by entering this information into a public website such as Facebook, users immediately give up their threshold for an expected level of privacy. Acohido Byron reported in his USA Today article“Frequent users less wary of Facebook” that “only 26% of respondents who use Facebook at least daily said they were ‘very concerned’ about privacy, compared with 35% who use the social network at least once a week, and 39% who use Facebook less often” (Byron). Forty-six year old Facebook user Danny Jackson of Maine told Byron, “I really don’t care if people know about the stuff I like” (Byron). USA Today partnered with Gallup Poll to survey a group of 2,000 adults, in which they concluded that the more that users actually use Facebook, the less likely they are to be concerned with their privacy. Yet even still, “technologists worry about Facebook, Google, Apple, Microsoft and others racing to develop businesses based on amassing vast amounts of data about what people do on their PCs and mobile devices” (Byron).

This potential “invasion of privacy” that is imposed on users by Facebook, however, is still not nearly as invasive as the Intercept Modernisation Programme proposed in the Communications Data Bill in the UK in 2008. According to Becky Hogge in her article inNew Statesmanin 2008, the program’s intent was “to log details about every web page [they] visit, every SMS message [they] text and every e-mail [they] send. And not only that, but to store all this ‘communication traffic’ information in a central database.” While this program is incredibly intrusive in the private lives of all UK citizens, its intent was for the purpose of national security and protection after the 2005 terrorist bombings in London. This program would ultimately “dramatically reduce the cost of mass surveillance, and allow the security services and other law enforcers to trace friendship trees … and thereby to hunt for potential conspirators as yet unknown to the authorities, subjecting them in turn to more intrusive surveillance techniques” (Hogge). The entire concept is a catch-22 because although it invades the private lives of UK citizens tremendously, it also allows for more extreme safety measures to be enforced by the government in order to protect the public.

While the bottom line definition of an “invasion of privacy” will vary from person to person, most will agree that our lives have become significantly less private with the introduction of new technology and social networking. It is unnerving to imagine that all information that we may have ever entered into any online program or website can be available to almost anyone that tries to access it, but if there is a beneficial way to use that information — focused advertising, national security, etc. — the “invasion” isn’t so much a danger as it is a revolutionary tool for social and technological innovation.

• Works Cited
  1. Frequent users less wary of Facebook 
  2. Do Real Friends Share Ads?
  3. Facebook for snoopers
  4. Paradox and Promise: MySpace, Facebook, and the Sociopolitics of Social Networking in the Writing Classroom

Walking: It’s Harder Than You Think

Anybody who has ever played pin the tail on the donkey knows how hard it is to walk in a straight line blindfolded, especially while dizzy. It is actually impossible for us to stay on a straight path while blind-folded. Jan Souman, a German scientist, conducted an experiment to see if someone could walk in a straight line while blind-folded. He found that when the participant had no visual landmarks to work off of they ended up walking in circles, even though they thought that they were staying on a straight path.

But what exactly is a straight line? Well, according to the free dictionary, “a line…traveling in a constant direction.” In other words, having zero deviation throughout the entirety of the trip. In Jan Souman’s large scale experiment, where people were told to walk for up to an hour in a wide open area, a straight line meant not going in circles and staying in relatively one direction. However, in my much smaller scale experiments, where the participants will walk across a gym or small park area, a straight line will be the shortest distance between two points. In other words, if the participant takes a curved path and still reaches the target area it will not be considered a straight line. This is because my participants will be traveling a much shorter distance, and will have less room for error.

In my experiment I will be measuring how far the participant deviates from their path. They will have a four foot wide end point and in order to hit it they will have to remain on a near perfectly straight path. After each trial it will be measured, in feet, how far they deviated from the target area. I will do four total trials on each person, two without sound and two with the sound. I will then compare to see if there is any real effect of having the sound versus no sound.

So far I have talked a lot about walking in a straight line, but what exactly is walking? According to the free dictionary it is “To move over a surface by taking steps with the feet at a pace slower than a run.” Walking is a type of controlled falling where you let your body fall but catch yourself with your leading leg. It is also described as an“inverted pendulum” by F. Lacquaniti, R. Grasso, and M. Zago in the article Motor Patterns in Walking where we see the center of mass almost vault over the supporting leg. However, walking in itself is not perfect. Walking is a fluid motion where a lot of muscles have to make a lot of movements. Some of them are bound to make mistakes. If you are not blind-folded you could easily fix these errors and stay straight. However, once you are blind-folded fixing these mistakes doesn’t happen quite as often and you will veer off path. Even if you don’t have a blindfold on, if there is no clear visual landmark for you to work off of, i.e. the sun, you will veer of path just as easily.

If possible my experiment will be done indoors to avoid then sun piercing through the blindfold and acting as a visual landmark. If this is not possible then I will attempt to do my research on a cloudy day, or account for the sun in the results. Also, if I can not preform mt experiment in a gym I will attempt to do it on a flat surface such as a football field. The definition of walking noted above will be the same I will be using in my tests, a slow controlled movement over a surface.

In my experiment I will be using sounds in an attempt to replace the visual aid that is needed to stay straight. However, I will only be using distinct sounds, such as an alarm beeping. The sounds I will use will be as clear and distinct as possible in an attempt to set it apart from any background or white noise. I will do multiple trials on each participant with the noise coming from the middle of the target area. I will then mark down how far they missed the target by, and if there is any difference whether or not there is a sound.

Works Cited

F. Lacquaniti, R. Grasso, M. Zago. Motor Patterns in Walking. August 1999. 7 March 2012.

Krulwich, Robert. A Mystery: Why Can’t we Walk Straight. 7 March 2012.

Gangs are all around the world, but majority of the gangs are being increased by recruiting teens that are already on the streets trying to find the path way to living a life of crime. Most of the teens that find their way to having a criminal lifestyle are the main ones who grew up living in a house of confusion or discomfort. Some teens that isn’t getting the full effect of unconditional love can be emotionally unstable and put their trusting into gangs to seek the extra love they desire for. Things that teens look for in gangs are the bond that they can receive form a brother or sister as well as the love of a guardian or parent type of comfort. The specific bond that a mother or father or both can give their child is special to them, and without that they can go astray which can lead them to the bad decision making of living a life of crime.

The teen rate for violence is increasing and most of the teens in gangs are being locked up due to gang violence. There are about 1 million gang members in the U.S today, and about 400,000 of them are juveniles under the age of 18, there is also about 25 million teens in the United States so that makes around 14 percent of the teens in the United States are gang members. A major question being researched is, how many male juveniles are joining gangs and what is the main reason that’s pushing them towards this way of life? Well after doing research on teenage boys in gangs, I found that 360,000 teenage boys are in gangs right now. The rate of teens in prison that are in gangs have increased since the year 2009 which was 7 out of 10 boys. Now the rate of teen boys in prison is 9 out of every 10 boy in prison have some gang affiliation. Another number to follow up on is that 89 percent of crimes committed by teensare committed by gang members.

Teens joining gangs today are influenced because they grew up with in a broken household. A broken household could be multiple things such as one parent because the other one never comes around, or it could be that they have both parents with split custody. It could also be that they have one parent because the family is going through a divorce. Even with all of those situations my research is based on the percentage of gang members, which are teens, that is in gangs because they lack the pleasure of having a father in their life. The statement of not having a father in their life is generally broad. I’m focusing on not having a male role model in their life at all. This is a big cause that leads teens to joining gangs today because of the lack of affection that they are not getting from a father that they need in their life. Studies show that about two-thirds of all first marriages in the United States end in a divorce, so about half of all the children in the United States go through a divorce at some point in their teenage life. With that being said research shows that about 70% of all children that are incarcerated come from a home without a father. After researching I found that for young black males that live in a single parent home whether with just father or mother, the likely hood of them committing a crime is twice as much as a young black male that live with both parents.

I hope that the ratings are to decrease in every area, but it has been proven due to research that teenagers male or female that grow up without a father are more likely to live in a life of crime than teens with both parents in their life. But from what I’m trying to find I think it is good enough evidence to say that teens of both sex are reaching the path of being in a gang because they lack the presence of having a male role model in their life. It brings me to the conclusion that even though that isn’t the only reason kids join gangs, it does play a major factor in their life causing them to be recruited by certain gangs.

WORK CITED

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