News and Notes
2007; Wiley; Volume: 102; Issue: 7 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1111/j.1360-0443.2007.01939.x
ISSN1360-0443
Autores ResumoThe National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) Library in Baltimore, Maryland, has been closed due to a lack of funding. The NIDA library had its early roots with the Addiction Research Center founded in 1935 in Lexington, Kentucky, relocating in the early 1980s to the Bayview Medical Center at Johns Hopkins University. Included in the collection are 10 000–12 000 bound volumes of journals, some dating from the 1930s, and approximately 8000 books. A reprint collection contains every article ever published by the research program staff from its inception. Also among the holdings are the entire set of the Committee on Problems of Drug Dependence meetings abstracts/minutes since its inception in 1929, and numerous other government documents and materials only found in such special collections. The National Institutes of Health main library will probably take part of the collection and individual scientists may keep some of the books they have been using in their research. Some of the material may be distributed to other libraries. For the moment, librarians are waiting on rules of ‘federal property distribution’. Commentators have described this as ‘one more sad outcome for yet one more addiction collection, and one more step towards the Googlization of America’. Jim Orford, professor of Clinical and Community Psychology and head of the Alcohol, Drugs, Gambling and Addiction Research Group in the School of Psychology at the University of Birmingham has been awarded an honorary fellowship of the Society for the Study of Addiction. Jim Orford has produced four books and over fifty journal articles on the subject of the family and has been the leader of a national special interest group on the subject at the University of Birmingham for the last ten years. Most recently he has been a principal investigator for the UK Alcohol Treatment Trial. The Society for the Study of Addiction thanks and honours Jim for this work and wishes him many more fruitful years of research. His 2006 Society lecture, ‘Family and Network Treatment: Theory and Practice’, is now available on the SSA website at http://www.addiction-ssa.org/ssa_24.htm A new European information service on alcohol, drugs and addictions has been launched. The ELISAD Gateway, supported by the European Commission, provides users with a searchable catalogue of web-based information resources on these subjects. The portal offers users free access to around 1000 internet sources on alcohol, drugs and addictions from 35 European countries and is searchable in 17 European languages. Visitors to the site can search for information on education and prevention, treatment, policy and research, find resources in their own countries or abroad and identify other European organizations of interest. The ELISAD Gateway can be found at http://www.addictionsinfo.eu The International Harm Reduction Association has launched an online collection of the ‘50 best’ key documents on tobacco harm reduction. The aim of the project is to provide a free resource centre to highlight the evidence base, reasoning and justification for tobacco harm reduction. The collection is designed for policymakers, advocates and smokers themselves and explores the applicability of the harm reduction ideology outside the traditional illicit drug remit. It also explores whether current tobacco policies and strategies are failing a significant proportion of smokers, and investigates potential avenues for reducing smoking-related risk. The collection is fully searchable and augments the existing collection (‘HIV prevention and care for injecting drug users’). The project is funded by the Open Society Institute. Turning Point Alcohol and Drug Centre in Australia has released a new publication ‘Methamphetamine Dependence and Treatment’, the fourteenth in a series of clinical treatment guidelines for alcohol and drug clinicians. The series has been produced in response to the need for standardised, broad-based resources of high quality for use in day-to-day client care. Methamphetamines are the second most commonly used illicit drug in Australia after cannabis. Following the heroin shortage there has been an increase in the availability of methamphetamine, and clinicians are now dealing with a range of complex presentations. These practice guidelines include a set of useful tools to address acute presentations as well as dependence and harms. The publication is available as a free download from the Turning Point website at: http://www.turningpoint.org.au/library/lib_ctgs.html or the Department of Human Services website: http://www.health.vic.gov.au/drugservices/pubs/index.htm The Australian newspaper reports that the petrol sniffing ‘crisis’ in central Australia is over. They report that after ‘years of government inaction, dozens of inquiries and reports, and hundreds of young lives crippled by the debilitating habit’, Aboriginal leaders, social workers and police are cautiously optimistic that petrol sniffing is on the decline thanks to a new type of fuel. The non-sniffable fuel, Opal, subsidised by the federal Government, was introduced to bowsers in Alice Springs in May. Recent data show that only about 20 people are now believed to be sniffing in central Australia north of the Northern Territory border—down from 600 just 18 months ago. In South Australia, the Nganampa Health Council says there has been a 60% reduction in sniffing from September 2006, following a 20 per cent fall the previous year. Local community leaders talk of petrol sniffing trends in remote communities as ‘bushfires raging through communities’, totally devastating lives. While the authorities still report isolated instances of petrol sniffing, it is hoped that with a combination of community action and the new fuel, significant change will give these communities the chance to address some of the underlying problems they face. The general secretary of the UK's National Union of Teachers (NUT), Steve Sinnott, has warned that drinks companies should be banned from sponsoring professional sport because too many children are slipping into alcoholism. Speaking at the NUT's annual conference in Harrogate, he said ‘this exposure to alcohol is damaging young people's lives and their futures’ and called for drinks industry sponsorship of sport to end before the 2012 Olympics (to be held in London). According to the London Metro, Mr Sinnott warned that beer firms which sponsor football are exposing impressionable children to highly damaging messages. Mr Sinnott said ‘when I see a five or six-year-old walking around with the name of a beer on their shirt, because the company that makes it sponsors the team they support, I think that's wrong’. The BBC reported that 20% of pupils excluded from school in the Yorkshire town of Harrogate are thrown out for drinking alcohol, while 16% drink alcohol every day. Government figures showed drink-related deaths among young people were up 60% since 1991. These calls echo recommendations made in a recent report for the European Union 1 which were subsequently diluted after substantial pressure from the drinks industry 2. Policy, Practice and Passion: Driving Drugs Work Forward. DrugScope national conference, Homerton College, Cambridge. 12–13 July 2007. Contact: Peter Jackson, DrugScope, 40 Bermondsey Street, London SE1 3UD; tel. +44 (0)20 7940 7500; fax +44 (0)20 7940 7521; email info@drugscope.org.uk; website drugscope.org.uk Congresso Latino-Americano da SRNT. With Conferência Ibero-Americana sobre Controle do Tabaco. 5–7 September 2007, Hotel Glória, Rio de Janiero, Brazil. Contact: Método Eventos, tel. 21 2548 5141; fax 21 2545 7863; email abead2007@abead2007.com.br; website http://www.srntrio07.com.br Alcohol and Drugs: Taking Care of the Young. XIX ABEAD Congress. 5–8 September 2007, Hotel Glória, Rio de Janiero, Brazil. Contact: Método Eventos, tel. 21 2548 5141; fax 21 2545 7863; email abead2007@abead2007.com.br; website http://www.srntrio07.com.br EAAT 2007. 3rd annual conference of the European Association of Addiction Therapy, 10–12 September 2007, Vienna, Austria. Contact: EAAT Scientific Secretariat, Nottingham, UK. Tel. +44 (0)115 969 2016; fax +44 (0)115 969 2017; email info@eaat.org; website http://www.eaat.org Preventing youngers from smoking; helping smokers to quit. 9th Annual Conference of SRNT Europe. 3–6 October 2007, Madrid, Spain. Contact: Conference Secretariat, Viajes y Congresos SA, tel. +91 547 3747; fax +91 559 5881; vycongremad@viajesycongresos.com; http://www.viajescongresos.com 4th European Conference on Tobacco or Health. 11–13 October 2007, Basel Switzerland. Contact: ECToH 07 Conference, c/o Organizers Switzerland Ltd., Obere Egg 2,,CH-4312 Magden/Basel, Switzerland; tel. +41 (0)61 836 98 76; fax +41 (0)61 836 98 77; email: registration@ectoh07.org ISAM 2007. 9th annual meeting organised by the International Society of Addiction Medicine, 22–25 October 2007, Cairo, Egypt. Contact: http://www.isam2007cairo.com Drugs, Alcohol and Healthcare: systems, scholarship and solutions. 31st AMERSA Annual Conference. 8–10 November 2007, Hilton Embassy Row, Washington DC. Organised by the Association for Medical Education and Research in Substance Abuse. Contact: Doreen MacLane-Baeder, AMERSA, tel. +1 401 243-8460; email: Doreen@amersa.org; website: http://www.amersa.org Is Theory Necessary? Theory and practice in addictions: how are they related? Annual Symposium of the Society for the Study of Addiction. 15–16 November 2007, Park Inn Hotel, York, United Kingdom. Contact: Graham Hunt, SSA Executive Office, 19 Springfield Mount, Leeds LS2 9NG; tel./fax +44 (0)113 295 1345; email graham.hunt@leedsmh.nhs.uk; website http://www.addiction-ssa.org 5th World Assembly on Tobacco Counters Health (WATCH-2000). 2–5 December 2007, New Delhi, India. Call for papers: by 15 October. Contact: Ajay Singh, email ajay@watch-2000.org; website http://www.watch-2000.org Looking Forward: New Directions in Research and Minimising Public Harm. 21–23 February 2008, Auckland, New Zealand. International gambling conference organized by the Gambling Research Centre at Auckland University of Technology, and the Problem Gambling Foundation Foundation of New Zealand. Contact: email info@problem-gambling.info; website http://www.pgfnz.co.nz/2008conference News and Notes welcomes contributions from its readers. Send your material to Peter Miller, News and Notes Editor, Addiction, National Addiction Centre PO48, 4 Windsor Walk, London SE5 8AF. Fax +44 (0)20 7703 5787; email peter@addictionjournal.org Conference entries should be sent to Susan Savva at susan@addictionjournal.org. Subject to editorial review, we will be glad to print, free of charge, details of your conference or event, up to 75 words and one entry only. Please send your notification three months ahead of time and specify in which issue you would like it to appear.
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