Father Antonio Coluccia is known for his efforts to rescue young people from the drug trade.

Coluccia immediately vowed the assault won't interrupt his work.

"I will continue my fight which I am carrying out against the crime that controls the drug dealing squares ..." he said, referring to neighbourhoods long associated with mafia activity.

Coluccia's assailant, Sergio Del Prete, is a drug user with previous arrests for possession and damage to property, media reports say.

Reportedly, the 28-year-old from Belarus with a criminal record is currently under armed guard in hospital.

Police are now investigating to see if the man acted alone or was commissioned by those controlling the area's drug trade.

Two police officers were reportedly injured in the incident.

Helping addicts

The anti-mafia priest's way of engaging with addicts is to approach young people who serve as look-outs and street-level sellers to invite them to consider other ways of life.

He also leads regular "marches for legality" through the streets of the east Rome suburb, which is synonymous with the drug trade.

In 2012, Coluccia opened a house of welcome for young people seeking to abandon the drug trade or to recover from drug addiction.

He also runs a boxing club and gym to provide youth with alternative activities.

"I go into the peripheries, between cocaine and crack, to pray and to talk," Coluccia says.

"My church is the street."

Civic support

High-ranking Italian officials, including Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi and Deputy Premier Matteo Salvini, have voiced their unwavering support for a priest believed to be the target of mafia reprisal due to his relentless crusade against drug trafficking in Rome.

Minister Piantedosi took proactive steps, directly calling Rome's chief of police to enquire about the well-being of the injured officer involved in the incident.

Salvini, the leader of Italy's right-wing Lega party, did not mince words in expressing his respect for the priest, saying his solidarity with "a man of the Church who fights all kinds of drugs to save young people."

Saluting the injured officer's courage, he expressed disdain for the attacker, condemning the "vile injured criminal."

Rome's Mayor, Roberto Gualtieri, communicated directly with the priest, echoing a city's collective support. He emphasised Rome's stance against the mafia and violence, declaring that "violence and mafia must be opposed by all means."

Sources

• Crux Now
• Wanted in Rome

Associate Professor Chris Wilkins and Dr Marta Rychert of Massey University argue in Addiction that New Zealand's Cannabis Legislation and Control Bill (CLCB) needs to be strengthened in two critical areas:

Set a formal minimum price for cannabis

The legalisation of cannabis in other jurisdictions has resulted in significant declines in the legal price of cannabis.

Minimum unit pricing has been shown to be effective at reducing alcohol consumption levels and related harms.

The CLCB includes a discretionary power to raise the excise tax for cannabis for a maximum of 12 months if the price of cannabis drops below the level consistent with the purposes of the Act.

This discretionary power lacks clear criteria for activation and thus falls short of a clear minimum price provision.

Lower the potency cap for cannabis products

High potency cannabis is associated with increasing first-time cannabis treatment admissions, transition to daily use, cannabis dependence and a higher risk of psychosis and psychosis relapse.

In the proposed cannabis legislation maximum potency levels for cannabis plant (15% THC) appears to be at the higher end of those currently found in the black market in New Zealand.

Potency levels for edibles and extracts are expressed as milligrams "per unit" and "per package" without defining what constitutes a unit or package. (Edibles and concentrates will not initially be sold but they are included in the CLCB for future approval.)

Wilkins and Rychert also argue that there are two public health objectives of the CLCB that will be difficult to achieve:

Difficulties reducing cannabis use over time via a commercial market

The CLCB objective of lowering cannabis use over time appears at odds with the proposed commercial cannabis sector, which will focus on expanding sales.

Non-commercial or not-for-profit operators can provide legal access to cannabis while avoiding profit-driven commercial companies.

Difficulties taxing products by THC potency

Considerable work will be required to implement a potency-based tax, including consistent sampling procedures, certified testing facilities, and effective auditing to prevent producers gaming the system.

Also, the reliability and replicability of testing THC is problematic. A weight-based tax (similar to the taxation of tobacco) may be a more practical alternative for now.

Source

• addictionjournal.org
• onlinelibrary.wiley.com
• Image: referendums.govt.nz

They began their mission last Sunday at their Worship and Community Centre in Moto'otua.

Lat year a delegation from Auckland met with the Prime Minister Tuilaepa Sa'ilele Malielegaoito seeking permission for the Army to establish a presence in Samoa.

As a result of the meeting, Sa'ilele wrote asking the Army to start work in Samoa as soon as possible, saying said he was particularly interested in the Army setting up a drug and alcohol treatment programme.

The Salvation Army has responded to this request by making this programme their first priority.

Lt Colonel Rod Carey told the Weekend Observer that the Army's first social service programme will be to help the growing number of people struggling with such problems.

He said they will be partnering with the Samoa Drug and Alcohol Court to help people overcome alcohol abuse and addiction.

Two qualified and experienced Pacifica Drug and Alcohol clinicians from New Zealand will be arriving in June to begin the treatment programme.

The Salvation Army will also be partnering with the Goshen Trust Samoa Mental Health Services to help people struggling with mental health issues and assist in the development and growth of the Goshen Trust.

Carey said the people in Samoa may not be aware that the Salvation Army is a Church as well as one of the largest providers of social services in New Zealand and Australia.

"Our message is based on the Bible. Our ministry is motivated by love for God. Our mission is to preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ and meet human needs in his name without discrimination," he said.

"Our vision statement is ‘The Army that brings Life'," says Carey.

Source

• sobserver.ws
• salvationarmy.org.nz
• Image: salvationarmy.org.nz

"Maybe when people see a patched gang member like myself doing this kind of thing in the community, they might change their perceptions," said Te Kaipo Ahuriri, Tuhoe.

A Facebook video has reached more than 255,000 views after he and his family spent the weekend tracking down and feeding the homeless.

Ahuriri's childhood friend of 38 years was found dead in Rotorua last year after living on the street for some time.

"He was like a brother to me . . . if I had've known he was living like that, we would've taken him in."

Ahuriri said seeing people living rough was heartbreaking, and he knew what that felt like.

"I was adopted out as a child and raised by a Pakeha family. I've always felt homeless myself so I know what it feels like not to have a home or know where you belong.

Ahuriri acknowledged some of those begging on the streets were using it as a way of getting drugs and alcohol.

But said the people they were engaging with were in genuine need.

"The first thing is to feed them and house them. Then we need to go back and look at the issues they are dealing with."

Since the post was shared, thousands had offered their support with videos of others doing similar acts flooding in.

"We didn't expect this at all; we've had a thousand private messages," Mrs Ahuriri said. "We had a reporter from Taiwan on the phone this morning."

"We've been overwhelmed by it all. We've had so many people send us messages of thanks and make financial contributions."

Supportive words have crossed the oceans, from people in Australia, England, France, Italy and Mexico.

Source

• nzherald.co.nz
• maoritelevision.com
• Image: stuff.co.nz

Plainly dressed in khakis and a large grey cardigan, her fine tawny hair pulled back in a loose bun, she fidgets only slightly, running her long fingers heavy with rings repeatedly around her eyes.

She doesn't feel qualified to talk about getting clean, she says, but the sight of young people queueing alongside her at the chemist every week is enough reason to speak out.

Three days a week Melanie waits for a drink of brilliant green methadone, a synthetic substitute drug used to treat opiate and heroin addicts.

Methadone makes getting up in the morning easier, she says. Less sedative than its illegal opiate cousins, it gives her stability, keeps panic at bay, and takes away the cravings for something worse.

But the 52-year-old Tasman woman knows it's only her latest addiction in a life moulded by substance abuse.

She started with pills and pot when she was 14 before graduating to opiates and methamphetamine.

Drifting around New Zealand's drug-friendly music scene in the 1970s, everyone connected superficially, Melanie says.

She was never sober, nor was anyone she met. Like many others, her main relationship was an intermittent affair with different drugs.

A habit only lasted a week or two at a time.

The addiction to change, though, was persistent. For years she moved constantly, dodging rents, losing friends and scamming doctors for prescriptions.

She and her fellow junkies used "Kiwi ingenuity" to finance their fix, she says.

They visited multiple chemists a day, taking home handbags full of off-the-shelf codeine and cooking it into home bake, a kind of morphine, once the 1980 collapse of the Mr Asia syndicate made heroin hard to find.

It was a closed-off and chaotic time full of lies and devoid of security. Continue reading

Sources

• Article by Adele Redmond in Stuff
• Image: BlueSkies Recovery

That friend handed me two pills, telling me that they would help me get through it.

This was the day I met the love of my life, opiates.

I can remember the feeling I got from taking those two small pills: it was a feeling of complete elation. All of the anxiety that normally consumed me disappeared.

It was as if I was having an out-of-body experience and I somehow morphed into a different person, one who no longer cared about anything. This was a feeling I wanted to feel for the rest of my life. The next day I remember waking up wondering where I could find more of these pills.

When somebody makes the decision to take a drug, they do not intend to become an addict. Still, it wasn't long before I was skimming through the medicine cabinets of every residence I entered to see if they had any narcotic pain medications.

Getting high became more of a priority to me than going to school, and I started leaving after I checked into homeroom. Since I managed to make up all of my missed school assignments, my teachers passed me.

By the end of my senior year, in order to make it through the school day, I would have to stand my textbook up on my desk so I could hide behind it and take pills without being noticed.

When high school ended, finding and using drugs became my main focus. I decided that college would have to wait. Continue reading

• Alisha Choquette is a 2015 graduate of the Community College of Rhode Island where she obtained an associated degree in substance abuse.

According to local law enforcement authorities, he probably died by suicide.

Williams had it all: a rare talent, a great career, family, friends.

However, talent, wealth, fame, family, and friends can mean nothing when you suffer from an acute, deep depression, and believe you have no way out.

Indeed, you may believe that others will be better off without you.

When depression crashes down, escaping this dulling, toxic pain may be all you can think about doing.

Some in depressive pain often want to end the pain, but not necessarily themselves.

However, death may seem like the only way out, especially when they believe they can no longer endure what they feel.

Was this how it was for actor and comedian Robin Williams?

Only Williams knows for sure.

Williams' death was tragic.

It was needless.

What can we learn? Suicide is a belief-related death.

What if the belief is wrong? Depression is not terminal. Suicide is.

Stigmatizing Is Senseless

There should be no stigma for depression.

The ancient Egyptians and Greeks saw this condition as a correctable affliction.

Both cultures reportedly showed tolerance. Today, enlightened people view depression in much the same way.

What Elevates Suicidal Risk?

People who knew Robin Williams reported that he had sunk into depression just prior to ending his life.

If this is so, I can only guess what was going on at the decision point when he ended his life.

I believe he felt great emotional pain.

I suspect that in his mind, he saw no way out.

In this sense, depression warps reality. However, something else may have affected his judgment. Continue reading

Source

• Bill Knaus in Psychology Today
• See also: Farewell to Finn in The Wireless and The Six Reasons People Attempt Suicide in Psychology Today

Bill Knaus is a licensed clinical psychologist and former psychology professor.

The $50 billion includes not only the lost productivity and income of those with the problems, but the indirect costs to families of caring for affected people as well as the drain on the legal, health and policing systems.

Addiction is defined as compulsive seeking and using that has behavioural consequences. It is not about choice. Many people attempting to end an addiction suffer chronic relapses.

While the problem is evidently enormous, there is cause for optimism. Advances during the past 20 years in neuroscience - the study of the brain and nervous system - provide reason to believe the treatment of addiction might be poised for a breakthrough.

"Addiction is a brain disorder, a brain disease. Addiction is about it not being a choice. Addiction is about compulsive use, or a compulsive behaviour, even knowing the negative health and social consequences. So the concept of 'just say no' does not really apply here.

"It is this compulsion to do it even if you have been told and you know and can even enunciate the risks and problem." People can be addicted to alcohol, tobacco, illicit drugs, prescribed pain or sedative medication, and also to behaviours, including gambling and excessive food intake. Currie says Australia has focused on psychological and other counselling to support addicts, and been slow to the point of sclerotic in understanding, let alone embracing, medical treatments". Continue reading

Sources

• Michael Short in The Age
• Image: Facebook
  

Michael Short is editor of The Zone. He also writes editorials and columns.

Their support has added weight to a Palmerston North mother's campaign to stop retailers in the Manawatu from selling legal highs.

Esther McLean has proposed that the city's mayor, Jono Naylor, visits every legal-high retailer in town to encourage them to stop selling the products.

The 11 school principals have signed a letter to the Palmerston North City Council in support of her proposal.

"We are also prepared to be part of a campaign that proposes a boycott against any dairy or store that sells them," the letter says.

Freyberg High principal Peter Brooks spearheaded the move and said the boycott would soon be actively encouraged by all 11 schools.

"The next step is for us to be given the names of the dairies in our areas that sell legal highs. If we get that then we can use our communities and our parents to target [those retailers] by going to other shops," Brooks said.

Last week Police in Hamilton called on the public to boycott Hamilton dairies selling controversial legal highs.

But one dairy owner is still stocking synthetic cannabis products, claiming they are his "bread and butter" and the Government is to blame for not banning them sooner.

Police have launched Operation Dairy in the city's east, hitting the streets to lecture dairies who refused to stop selling legal highs.

Shopowners agreeing not to stock the products were given a large yellow and red poster to display in shop front windows.

Source

• Stuff.co.nz
• Stuff.co.nz
• Image: Static.stuff.co.nz