Lowering drinking age to 18 would be giant step backward.
Byline: STRAIGHT STUFF By Jerry Gjesvold For The Register-Guard In July, a group of college presidents announced that they wanted to start a national conversation on the drinking age. Their "Amethyst Initiative" suggests that we lower it to 18. First, they say, people younger than...

"This is not a rave!" Changes in the commercialised Melbourne rave/dance party scene.
Raves have been the subject of sociological research for many years, with their increasing commercialisation being a key topic of interest. However, little attention has been paid to how young people attending raves view the changes in rave culture. This article examines four of the changes associated with the...

Police checkpoint set up in Uxbridge.
Byline: Kim Ring UXBRIDGE - The man in the passenger's seat of a small green station wagon smoked a cigarette and grinned, admitting he'd made a bad decision when he climbed into the car with a friend who'd been drinking Saturday night. "I didn't think...

Three charged for running alleged ecstasy ring.
Byline: John Weeks CLINTON - Police shut down a New Hampshire-based ecstasy ring on Saturday that had plans to expand its business in Massachusetts. Suny Chanthapho, 19, of 5 South St., New Market, N.H., Michael Nouchanthavong, 22, of 38 Folsom Drive, New Market, N.H., and...

Collateral damage: drug informant outrage.
EARLIER this year, police in Tallahassee, Florida, raided the home of college student Rachel Hoffman. Her friends say Hoffman was a bit of a hippie-ish free spirit, and they concede that she shared and sold small amounts of marijuana and ecstasy within her social circle. Hoffman was at the...

Acid test: clinical studies are reviving interest in mind-bending drugs, this time with a serious purpose: to soothe difficult-to-treat psychic suffering, such as anxiety, trauma, and obsessive-complusive disorder.
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Lou Genise, a compact man with a shorn head and Fu Manchu mustache, sat propped up on a mattress in a hospital room tucked away on the fifth floor of HarborUCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles. Wearing an eyeshade and listening to music through a...

Minimal ecstasy use linked to cognitive deficits.
VIENNA -- Even a few low doses of the drug ecstasy were associated with a decline in verbal memory function in a unique prospective study of first-time users, Thelma Schilt said at the annual congress of the European College of Neuropsychopharmacology. Carriers of the methionine allele of...

Meth-laced ecstasy coming from Canda.
Ecstasy--or MDMA, a synthetic, psychoactive (mind-altering) drug with hallucinogenic and amphetamine-like properties--laced with methamphetamine (meth) has been entering the U.S. illegal drug markets, particularly in northern border states, warns the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, Washington, D.C. The combination of Ecstasy and methamphetamine can...

Verbal memory decline seen after ecstasy use.
VIENNA -- Even a few low doses of the drug ecstasy were associated with a decline in verbal memory function in a unique prospective study of first-time users, Thelma Schilt said at the annual congress of the European College of Neu-ropsychopharmacology. Carriers of the methionine allele of...

Data on ecstasy problematic.
We would like to add perspective to your coverage of data presented by Thelma Schilt from the Netherlands XTC Toxicity Study about the use of ecstasy and cognition ("Minimal Ecstasy Use Linked to Cognitive Deficits," January 2008, p. 27). The controversy over whether ecstasy use produces long-term...