ROUNDUP: Finnish customs seized 37 000 Subutex pills in 2003

9.3.2004 at 16:53

Finnish customs seized a record amount of the narcotic substance Subutex last year, the National Customs Board (NCB) said Tuesday.

Customs officers seized over 37,000 pills in 2003, double the number of pills seized in 2002, according to NCB.

The Subutex originates mainly from France and Estonia, where it can be bought over the counter.

Less hasis, heroin and amphetamine and ecstacy were confiscated last year than a year earlier.

Estonian crime leagues also play a major role in smuggling drugs to Finland. Drugs are brought via the sea link between Finland and Estonia as well as especially via Sweden and the Ã…land Island.

However, the drug trafficing trade is being penetrated by the Russians as well. The Finnish customs and police authorities consider the narcotic situation in the Eastern neighbour gravely serious.

“The situation is bad in the vicinity of the border [with Russia] where both consumption and production of opiates and amphetamine are rampant. In addition, the Russians are rather professional in drug trafficing”, Tuija Hietaniemi, Special Investigator of the Central Criminal Police describes.

/STT/

© Copyright STT 2005

So its not detox – its because they sell it in the supermarket in France.

Look, these so called “drug related deaths” are bogus. The number – 88 – is only slightly higher than would be the expected value if drugs had a positive impact on mortality. See for yourself: http://www2.helsinginsanomat.fi/english/archive/news.asp?id=20030509IE3

Now, given that people tend to lie in these questionaires, and the obvious drug-related hazards like having to deal with criminals and being subjected to all sorts of humiliation by the society, drug users are surprisingly safe in Finland.

Mind you, that the number is calculated by doing a tox-screen on the deceased and if the qualitative screen is positive, the death is then categorized as “drug death”. Young people die mostly by suicide and car accidents, not surprisingly, many of these are labelled “drug deaths” even when drugs had very little or nothing to do with the deaths. This is simply a misrepresentation of facts.

Buprenorfine ODs don’t happen, because per se, that drug basically cannot kill you. It is not toxic and it doesn’t have the usual dose-response curve of opiates, instead, it starts to act as an antagonist when you take too much of it. The fact that people are using BPN instead of heroin is, basically, a very good thing. The bad thing about it is, that BPN is out there on the streets and being used by people who would not otherwise be doing drugs. I know a few people that are addicted to this stuff and it’s no picnic, I can tell by looking at them. And also, a lot of people are shooting BPN, which is completely retarded, as it has all sorts of stuff like corn starch that clots up your veins.

And look, detox is one thing, maintenance quite another. Detox means going clean. They don’t do that in Finland even for patients that would prefer it. If you go to treatment, they force that stuff on you, sometimes in doses that are bigger than those that you did before getting treatment!

“The bad thing about it is, that BPN is out there on the streets and being used by people who would not otherwise be doing drugs”

Sure, because it is sold in stores in Tallinn over the counter, so it must be safe, just like the aspirin.

Would making it an over the counter drug in Finland reduce this problem. If I understood correctly from the last drug thread, that’s exactly how you would approach reducing these deaths.

Am I responsible for these deaths too?

Did STT really say that Subutex (Buprenorphine) is sold over the counter in France and Estonia? What a canard! While it is legally available, I am quite sure that prescriptions are required in both countries.

Estonia recently adopted a policy of not allowing doctors to prescribe it to foreign residents, and now Finnish addicts take package tours to a border town in Latvia, where an obliging clinic will accommodate them.

In a sadly related note:

Alcohol-related deaths in Finland jump 20 pct

“The number of alcohol-related deaths leapt a record 20 percent in Finland last year, comprising one-third of all deaths among men aged 45 to 49, the national statistics agency said.”

“drug related deaths” and “alcohol related deaths”;

Isn’t it a little bit naive to implicate that these are two different things? Alcohol is a drug too.

88 vs. 1,860 deaths

It seems to me that Finland needs to be educated about drugs, especially students.

Unbelievable that people are still putting crap like heroin and chemicals on the same page as marihuana.

Death related to pot smoking would mean that one has to smoke so much of the stuff that one would sooner die of lungcancer.

Which is a missing statistics of ANOTHER state sponsored drugs, tabacco/nicotine. Which is a HARD drug.

So it is a lot of storm about nothing; or it is because young adults will try everything they can get their hands on becasue they have been taught that ‘it is all equally bad’

Heroin for all! stupid.

Well, you have to look beyond the numbers to see what is happening here. There wasn’t a single OD for BPN, as far as I can tell. I don’t know if over the counter sales of BPN would make much sense, but as it stands, you can get pharma-grade BPN for a lot cheaper and safer than heroin, so yes, all in all, Finland is way better off than it would, if BPN was not available from France and Latvia.

The thing is, many, if not most, of these 88 drug related deaths would have taken place even without drugs. This is because the expected number of deaths in drug users would not be much less than 88 even if drugs didn’t cause any kind of rise in mortality. Your death is put in this category if you are a passenger in a fatal car crash, if you did drugs two weeks before.

I fail to see the point in Freds rant. Many of these deaths are, by the way, suicides. BPN takes several days to disappear. Chances are, a lot of these deaths are suicides that happen because people are desperate. Desperate, because the prohibitionist hate-mongers prevent them from re-entering a productive life.

Hmm, I would not exactly call drugs illegal in California:

Boomers’ Overdose Deaths Up Markedly

“Baby boomers are the first generation that is facing a drug and overdose epidemic in their middle age,” said John Newmeyer, epidemiologist and drug researcher at the Haight-Ashbury Free Clinics in San Francisco. “They started using drugs recreationally or regularly over 20 years ago, and they aren’t really slowing down.”

To a degree, it seems overdoses are following the same generation through time. In California, the age at which someone was most likely to die from a drug overdose in 1970 was 22; by 1985, it was 32; and today it is 43, according to calculations by Males, based on state health data.

Many of those who die are hard-core drug users who never quit, even when they reached middle age.

As such, they are likely to be in poor health, enhancing their overdose risk.

“…”Using year after year can have a clear and deleterious physical effect. [Drugs] take a toll as people continue to use,” said Dr. Karl Sporer, a San Francisco emergency room physician and drug treatment expert. ”

“…With age, even occasional users grow more susceptible to medical complications such as strokes, heart attacks and respiratory distress. ”

Interesting article.

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it is a nice report i hope this problem should be solved as soon as possible

Firstly, either by innacurate research, or a desire for sensationalism, the journalist’s claim that buprenorphine is sold over the counter in France or Estonia is ridiculous. In both nations BPN is a controlled substance available only on prescription.

Secondly, the article also fails to mention that in most of the 88 deaths the cause was not buprenorphine alone, but BPN and other depressant drugs, mainly benzodiazepines like Valium. Mixing the two drugs together is done t a buzz similar to achieve a heroin like effect. Taken in combination, and especially with alcohol, the risk of a fatal overdose is greatly increased.

The question that as a society we need to be ask is why are people using such high risk combinations for intoxication? If we are prepared for an honest answer, we will find underpinning most of our drug problems are the insidious effects of the prohibition of certain substances. Just as when alcohol was banned, people went blind drinking methanol, the same goes for drugs today. The desire for intoxication is as old as humanity itself, it did not end because we legislated against it; attempting to do so is as futile as King Canute ordering the tide back. Likewise we need not fear that ending prohibition will cause a tidal wave of new drug users; after all are you or anyone else you know waiting for the law to change before trying cocaine?

In 1922 Aldous Huxley wrote to the Times of London commenting on Britain’s new Dangerous Drugs Act. He foresaw that the drugs used would become the most potent and concentrated forms best suited for smuggling, that the numbers of addicts would increase because the law makes drugs into forbidden fruit, tempting vulnerable youngsters, and that organised criminals would use extreme violence to control the drugs trade & consequently grow in power and influence.

All his predictions have now come to pass. Where society once worried about opium eating, today we have heroin injectors & glue sniffers; in ever greater numbers every year. The daily violence of what is in effect a civil war being fought in Afghanistan, Colombia & Mexico is entirely due to the illegality of drugs & the profits available, as is roughly 80% of property crime here in Western societies.

The answer is to admit the criminal law no longer has the ability to control the spread drug use, while the effects of our current drug policy are clearly far worse than the problem they were originally intended to control. It is therefore time for a new policy of controlled availability of drugs to adults under tight government regulation.

Demanding the decriminalisation of drugs does not mean uncontrolled access complete with advertising; but on the other hand, the longer the current unworkable system remains in place, the more it appears that politicians who support continuing the “war on drugs” are subsidising organised crime. It is high time that politicians across Europs stood up & demanded that the UN drug control treaties be renegotiated, regardless of the wishes of the USA.

Valium is a highly dependent drug. Often, Valium addictions happen
accidentally. When used for a prolonged amount of time, the body becomes
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symptoms will occur. This is especially difficult with Valium because
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When taking Valium, the patient needs to do exactly as the doctor says
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Hi,

Thanks guys for sharing information about  illegal drugs were found in the blood of 88 deceased Finns who died under the age of 30.

Use of MDMA can have dangerous & sometimes deadly effects. The greatest danger to MDMA users is over-heating. The drug causes surface blood vessels to constrict, reducing the body’s capacity to shed heat. In users who become dehydrated & cannot sweat, these effects are magnified. If a user is dancing or physically active, the body’s thirst & exhaustion responses can be masked. The inability to maintain a consistent core body temperature may lead to skeletal muscle breakdown, which may cause renal failure or death. Some users drink much water while they are under the effect of MDMA, which may cause hyponatremia. This condition occurs when cellular salt levels are imbalanced & causes nausea, headache, loss of consciousness & sometimes, death. MDMA can also cause users to involuntarily clench their jaw or grind their teeth, which can lead to teeth destroy or mouth ulcers if the cheek is accidentally bitten.

HI, 

Thanks guys for giving information about Finnish drug abuse deaths.

The Finnish Red Cross launched a national anti-drug … substance abuse work as an important part … cause of death of working age men and women