As it turns out, you really don't need drugs to get high - in fact both music and a feeling of love can create reactions in the brain similar to the highs of cocaine. Two separate studies over the past few months have produced interesting insights into our emotional brain. The older study, from October, involved showing pictures of someone that the subjects described themselves as being passionately in love with (see the study at the Guardian) to the subject while the subject was administered a...

You may've heard of Fentanyl, or as it is known in the U.S., Duragesic or Durogesic. It is an extremely potent opiate drug, approximately 100 times more potent than morphine, that has been involved in a number of tragic incidents. It has its uses, and can be important in the clinical treatment of cancer. When it crosses paths with heroin and opioid abusers, however, it creates nightmarish scenarios, overdoses and sometimes even dea.

Drug sniffing dogs are a popular icon in the War On Drugs, seen walking around airports or riding around in a K-9 squad car. They reinforce our notion that dogs are man's best friend. Whether or not they reliably succeed in the task of detecting drugs is another question. The Chicago Tribune came out with an analysis yesterday of three years' worth of data on drug sniffing dogs' effectiveness. The news was not great - the dogs were more often wrong than right when they alerted officers to...

2010 has passed and you are probably, like me, struggling to write or type "11" at the end of the year. We saw a lot of interesting things happen in 2010 when it comes to drug-related news. In some cases use took off and in some cases it dropped; drugs were banned, celebrities went in and out of rehab, drawing attention to certain kinds of drug abuse, and marijuana legalization was voted on across the US. What in your opinion were the most interesting drug-related stories of the year? Here are...

[This is the third in a series of articles by Kim Wilbur, operations manager for a local company. To view all of Kim's blogs please visit the Blog Series: Employee Drug Testing homepage.] Federal Laws Now that I want to start drug testing our employees what do I do? Maybe the question is, “what do I HAVE to do?” I thought I had better first find out what the laws and requirements are, so I started doing some research. The federal laws that your business must adhere to will vary depending on the...

In a remarkable study published today by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, it was found that among 12th graders more report past-month marijuana use than they do cigarette use. This is the first time this has happened since 1981. The new statistics are found in this year's Monitoring the Future survey. The study comes out every year. The exact finding was that 21.4% of 12th graders used marijuana in the past 30 days, compared to 19.2% who smoked cigarettes. Other interesting findings...