Russian politicians say they’re losing their domestic battle against drugs, so they’re ready to get tougher – with suggested measures such as mandatory drug testing in schools and forced labor camps for those convicted of dealing drugs.

According to Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, Russia’s battle against drug addiction is a  catastrophic failure that’s going to cost the nation 3% points of economic growth this year. He’s ready to get tough on drugs, and called in April for measures like mandatory drug testing in schools and the criminalization of the possession of small quantities of drugs.

Boris Gryzlov, speaker of the lower house of parliament, agrees. He called this week for a ‘total war on drugs’ and said that drug dealers should be treated in the same way as serial killers, and sent to serve prison sentences in harsh forced labor camps, arguing, ''The barons of narco-business must be put on a par with serial killers with the appropriate punishment in the form of a life sentence…Felling timber, laying rails and constructing mines - that's very different from sitting in a personal cell with a television and a fridge while you keep up your 'business' on the outside."

According to Gryzlov, Russia has 6 million drug addicts, a number stoked by heroin that flows from Afghanistan through the country, and drugs have killed 100 000 Russians within the last year. Methadone treatment is banned within the country and injection drug use is common. One in 100 Russians is now HIV positive.

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A public health survey reveals that the average Briton consumes more than 20 units of alcohol a day while on summer holiday.

Under the "Know Your Limits" campaign, the British Department of Health surveyed 3,500 adults about their summer holiday drinking habits and found that while away for a bit of fun and sun, British like a bit of drink as well – an average of 8 large drinks per day per person, which equates to about 20 units of alcohol per person per day.

The National Health Service (NHS) advises that men consume no more than 3 or 4 units of alcohol per day (about 2 pints of beer) and that women drink only 2 or 3 units daily, about 1 large glass of wine.

The CEO of the public alcohol charity, Drinkaware, Chris Sorek, commented on the survey results, saying, "Aside from feeling hungover, the short-term consequences of over-indulging include dehydration, low mood and weight gain, as well as ending up in potentially risky situations." He also admonished heavy holiday drinkers about the risks of heavy drinking, saying, "Whether on holiday or back at home, habitually drinking more than is recommended can also lead to major health conditions like liver disease and cancer."

Gillian Merron, British Public Health Minster, empathized with people who cut loose on holiday, but called for people to make a return to health drinking habits, calling "September the new January."

Please, visit the British Department of Health's online drink check calculator if in doubt about your unit consumption.

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Hans Kristian Rausing is worth over 10 billion, he has long battled with addiction issues and he is now on the run after jumping out of an open window as police broke down his bedroom door.

One of Britain's richest men, Hans Kristian Rausing, heir to the over 10 billion dollar Swedish Tetra-Pack fortune, is on the run from police.

Police were dispatched to the billionaire's home after witnesses described his car, an Audi Quattro, as having been driving erratically and involved in a hit and run accident. When London Police Officers arrived at Rausing's Chelsea mansion, they were granted entry by the maid, and went to the man's bedroom to question him.

Although police could hear people conversing behind the bedroom door, Rausing would not emerge or answer questions. Police eventually resorted to a battering ram to bring down the door, only to find Rausing's wife, the American born Eva Rausing, standing alone. Police suspect that Hans Rausing fled out an open window just seconds prior to their entry.

Police are on the lookout for Britain's 7^th richest man, but admit that he could be at any of his many global properties.

The Rausings have had a long and troubled past with drug addiction - the couple in fact met while recovering in an American drug rehabilitation clinic. They have for years generously supported drug treatment charities, including The Mentor Foundation and Project Addiction. They have donated millions of dollars in recent years to these charities.

The Rausings were arrested in April on drugs possession charges after Eva Rausing was caught with heroin and cocaine at the American Embassy in London, and after police also discovered almost $5000 worth of drugs at their residence. The couple is on bail awaiting trial on these earlier drugs charges.

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In a move to promote health and reduce crime, Holland decides to ban tourists from using marijuana at any of their famous cannabis cafes. Dutch citizens who wish to continue to legally buy and smoke marijuana will now have to sign up for a year membership card.

Holland’s liberal soft drug laws don’t sit all that well with the new ruling far right coalition government and they’re already starting out on the changes they’d promised by legislating restrictions on the sale of marijuana in the country’s famous cannabis cafes, or ‘coffee shops’.

Under the new rules, which will go into effect in the new year, cannabis cafes will become private clubs and only Dutch citizens who sign up as annual members will be permitted to purchase marijuana within. Additionally, each club’s membership capacity will be capped at 1500 members. There are currently 750 cannabis cafes in Holland.

The government announced the initiative as part of measures taken to increase health and to reduce crime. In a letter to parliament, the Dutch Health and Justice Ministers wrote, "In order to tackle the nuisance and criminality associated with coffee shops and drug trafficking, the open-door policy of coffee shops will end.” Although many critics have questioned the wisdom of the new legislation, worrying particularly about a potential loss of tourism, the Dutch Ministers say that the impact will be slight, arguing that, ‘We attract other types of tourists apart from drugs tourists.”

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Those in the drug trafficking business have long tried to elude detection on trips north to America through the use of drug-filled homemade submarines, now, taking things one step further, cartels in Mexico are borrowing another page from national military playbooks by constructing homemade narco-tanks.

Mexican police in Mezquitic and groups from various drug cartels fought violently last Friday, and when as the battle drew to a close, police managed to capture a rather unusual vehicle from thecarte; soldiers.

A homemade drug-tank - built on the frame of a Ford F-Series Super Duty pickup truck, the vehicle had been modified to include heavy gauge steel plating around most of the exterior (cut with gun ports for those inside), a retractable battering ram, and even a rotatable gun turret on top.

This is the second drug-tank Mexican police officers have confiscated within a month, and reports indicate that cartels are increasingly constructing heavy duty ‘war vehicles’ for use in battles against local drug rivals, as well as the police and soldiers that pursue them.

In other Mexican drug-war news, 500 rural villagers in Michoacán State have fled from their homes to take refuge in a shelter constructed in a local swimming park; fleeing the increasing violence between rival groups of the ‘La Familia’ drug cartel.

The residents say that frequent gun battles make staying at home too dangerous. Police in the area say there’s not much they can do. Buenavista police chief Othoniel Montes Herrera says that local police lack the numbers or the firepower that would be necessary to head out into the drug traffickers’ rural turf, and that to go out as they are now, “would be certain death, and we're not thinking of putting our personnel at that risk.”

According to the Norway based group, Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre, drug violence has forced 230 000 Mexicans to abandon their homes. Most move to stay with relatives, either in Mexico or in the US.

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New tough laws in China mean jail time for those convicted of DUI offences. Not eager to face the music for his offense, and acting with some pretty questionable judgment, the first man to be charged in Shaxi province under the new law actually bit the arresting officer in a bid to avoid taking the Breathalyzer test.

A man named Hao from Taiyuan in Shaxi province in northern China is the first person to be charged within the province under China’s new stricter drunk driving law. Under the provisions of the new law, a DUI conviction leads to between 1 and 6 months in jail and the cancellation of the offender’s driver’s license for at least 5 years.

The arrested man, however, had no desire to faced such severe punishment and in an attempt to flee the scene, bit police officer who was administering the breathalyzer test.

Hao was pulled over for erratic driving in his off road vehicle. Smelling alcohol, the officer at the scene asked Hao to take a breathalyzer test, but when the officer tried to administer the test Hao responded by biting the hand that help the testing machine.

The two then fought for the next 20 minutes before additional police arrived on the scene to take the man into custody.

When finally tested, Hao measured a 0.129, which is well above the maximum legal limit of 0.08.

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Police in Columbia say they’ve ‘captured’ a pigeon outside of Bucaramanga prison that had 45 grams of marijuana and cocaine paste strapped to its back.

Police say inmates and accomplices outside of the prison have used the specially trained pigeons in the past to smuggle sim cards to those behind bars, but never before have they seen a pigeon get involved in drug trafficking activities.

Police marvel at the ingenuity of the prisoners and their accomplices and at the near successful smuggling attempt. Bucaramanga police commander Jose Angel Mendoza says that the plan was foiled only by the overloading of cargo on the slight carrier, saying, "We found the bird about a block away from the prison trying to fly over with a package, but due to the excess weight it could not accomplish its mission."

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British scientists presented data to European Parliament officials on the dangers of youthful drinking, and called for policy makers to raise the legal minimum to 21, in every country.

If a bunch of British scientists and lobbyists from the New Zealand group, Family First had their way, the drinking age around the world would be raised to 21, at minimum – and to that effect they recently presented The European Parliament Working Group in Brussels with evidence which supports their call for delaying a young adult’s first legal drink.

Dr. Sigman, an expert psychologist from the UK, who compiled the information for Family First, believes in his that laws on alcohol consumption should be based on the well-being and health of young people.

His report, which compiled research evidence from fields as varied as genetics, molecular neurobiology, toxicology and epidemiology, concluded that alcohol use among teenagers results in a higher probability of disease, accidents and impaired mental development than alcohol use by adults, and that if young people had restricted access to alcohol they would do less harm to health and well being at present and would experience reduced long term consequences of youthful experimentation and overindulgence.

In his report, Dr. Sigman warns that the human brain does not fully develop until about age 25 and therefore, drinking prior to age 24 ½ could cause developmental damage.

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Gunmen in Tijuana Mexico burst into a private drug rehab center called El Camino late Sunday night and executed 13 recovering drug users.

According to witness reports, gunmen made the recovering addicts lay on the floor and then fired on them with automatic weapons. The gunfire was said to persist for as long as 2 minutes.

Normally about 45 residents call El Camino home, spending time at the facility to recover from drug addiction and passing the day in therapy sessions and work projects, such as making dog houses for sale. Most of these residents escaped death by hiding on the second floor of the facility.

Mexican cartel experts say that drug treatment facilities are sometimes used by cartel members as hiding locales, or as places for drug distribution, and as such are occasionally targets of the cartels’ extreme violence.  In June of this year a similar attack left 19 people dead at a drug rehab center in the city of Chihuahua.

Tijuana had been touted as a center of progress in the battle against the cartels, and authorities believe that the slaying may have been in retaliation for a record seizure last week of 134 tons of marijuana in the city by the Mexican Army. Shortly after the attack, someone broke onto the police radio frequency to play a narco-ballad (a song about the drug trade) and to say that one person will die for every ton of marijuana seized. The voice also warned that the attack was just “a taste” of Juarez style violence.

In Juarez, three years of drug turf battles have left more than 6500 dead. Since Mexico declared war on drug traffickers more than 3 years ago, 28,228 people have died in related violence. This mass execution was the country’s second of the month. Earlier in October, gunmen in Juarez stormed a teen birthday party and killed 14 people, most of them high school students.

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Human rights groups in Cambodia say health authorities are forcing drug addicts to participate in trials for an experimental Vietnamese detox drug.

The human rights organization, Licadho told reporters that Cambodian health authorties ‘rounded up” drug addicts over the weekend and transported them to a Pnom Penh drug treatment facility. Once at the facility, the addicts were pressured to sign consent forms for a medical trial of a drug under development by a Vietnamese drug company.

Naly Pilorge, the director of Licadhoa, said, “Licadho has great concern about whether people have understood what they have consented to, or what they were coerced into."

The drug, called Bong Sen, is produced by the Ben Tre Fataco General Import-Export and Trading Services out of Vietnam. Health officials in Cambodia say that the drug is approved for use in Vietnam, that it blocks opiate cravings and that all drug addicts participated in the trial on a voluntary basis.

The international community reacted with some alarm to the reports of forced medical testing. The US embassy in Pnom Penh sent officials to discuss informed consent with Cambodian Health Ministry officials and the World Health Organization (WHO) released a statement of concern, saying, "We have yet to understand how this new drug was introduced in Cambodia, apparently without rigorous review and due process on bioethical standards."

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Angie Sanselmente Valencia, a 30 year old ex lingerie model is now a wanted fugitive after police uncovered her drug smuggling empire. Valencia, they say, used beautiful young women to travel the world delivering suitcases filled with cocaine.

A lingerie model drug kingpin who dispatches an army of beautiful young models on a daily basis to courier cocaine from South America to Europe – sounds far fetched, but an international arrest warrant for ex-model Angie Sanselmente Valencia proves that fact is sometimes stranger than fiction.

Angie Sanselmente Valencia is a 30 year old ex lingerie model. A native of Columbia, she was crowned Miss Coffee in the year 2000 and enjoyed a lengthy and successful modeling career before retiring last year. Until last year, she was also the girlfriend of the notorious Mexican drug lord nicknamed, The Monster.

After ending her relationship with The Monster last year, police say Valencia set up her own distribution network – using an army of young beautiful women to act as mules – women she called, “Unsuspicious, beautiful angels.” These young women were told to be nice, but not flashy, as they traveled.

Each drug mule was paid roughly $5000 to ferry cocaine from Buenos Aires Argentina to Cancun Mexico, and from there onwards to cities in Europe. Valencia was reportedly sending women and drugs out across the world on a daily basis.

In December, a 21 year old woman was arrested in Beunos Aires Ezeiza International Airport with more than 100 pounds of cocaine packed in her suitcase. This woman has cooperated with police, revealing details of the drug gang’s operations. Because the apprehended woman made no effort to hide the cocaine in her suitcases, authorities believe that airport officials were in on the smuggling efforts.

Within 12 hours of the arrest, police had 2 further members of the gang in custody, but when they went looking for Valencia at her 4 star hotel residence, they found her already gone.

Valencia is now a fugitive at large. Authorities believe that she is hiding in either Mexico or Argentia.

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The popular and controversial party drug mephedrone (street names of meow meow, drone, etc.) will soon be an illegal substance in the UK.

The government moved to reclassify the drug only hours after receiving a recommendation to do so from an advisory council. A government spokesperson announced that the drug should be banned by law within weeks, after parliamentary action. Mephedrone will become a class B drug throughout the UK, with possession punishable with up to 5 years in prison and the sale of the drug punishable by up to 14 years of prison time.

Mephedrone is a designer drug with effects somewhat similar to those of ecstasy and amphetamines. Mephedrone and similar drugs have been linked to the deaths of 25 within the UK.

Although the Advisory Committee on the Misuse of Drugs did recommend reclassifying the substance, 2 committee members have resigned over the way the government has handled the mephedrone issue.

Eric Carlin, who resigned from the committee yesterday, accused the government of making policy for political points without really listening to what scientific advisors had to say. Carlin said that the Home Secretary, Alan Johnson, had been making speeches about the ban before the committee had made its report or had even finished evaluating the research information. He says that he left the committee to protest the criminalization of what he says are really public health issues, arguing that, "What we fundamentally need to do is get to the root causes of why is it that our 14, 15-year-olds are getting off their faces?"

In his resignation letter, Eric Carlin wrote, “I am not prepared to continue to be part of a body which, as its main activity, works to facilitate the potential criminalisation of increasing numbers of young people."

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A newly released report by watchdog agency "Alcohol Concern" may spark an end to the self regulation by pubs and bars of alcohol promotions, such as happy hours.

A scathing report by British watchdog agency Alcohol Concern over the industry's ability to self regulate its drinks promotions may lead to new governmental regulation – and possibly to the end of promotional happy hours in pubs.

At present, bar and pub companies are permitted to self regulate their promotions, and are expected to act in such a way that promotes responsible consumption.

Don Shenker CEO of the public health agency Alcohol Concern says that that idea is a total failure; explaining, "Self-regulation has clearly failed and we desperately need mandatory codes and an industry watchdog to stamp out the poor practice and complacency that is characteristic of many of these venues."

A government spokesperson responded to the Alcohol Concern report by saying, "The Government has made it clear that alcohol must be sold and marketed responsibly and that new legislation will be introduced if existing voluntary standards are not being met."

Mark Hastings, a spokesman for the British Beer and Pub Association said that his members had no problem with new regulations against discount price promotions, as long as these regulations were applied equally to all alcohol retailers, and not just pubs and bars, saying, "It should not be one rule for pubs and one rule for everyone else."

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Drug traffickers who misplaced 25 kilos of cocaine will be relieved to learn that their drugs have turned up…in boxes of bananas shipped to supermarkets around Spain!

Drug traffickers in Spain were going bananas looking for a misplaced 25 kg of cocaine - that is until someone in a Madrid branch of the supermarket chain Lido found several large bags of white powder…in a box of green tropical bananas.

Police say the drugs started their grocery journey at Madrid’s wholesale market, the Mercamadrid, before radiating out to Lido supermarket branches in Madrid, as well as Caceres, Plasencia and Extremadura.

An employee at a Lido supermarket described the police response, saying, "Two or three police cars arrived and they went straight for the bananas. They tipped them out onto a table and began sifting them."

Lido supermarket officials say their bananas are now safe and cocaine free, saying that ‘the offending bananas’ have been pulled.

Spanish journalists report that shipments of bananas are often used to hide packages of cocaine from overseas.

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Gareth Anderson destroyed his liver over a binge drinking weekend and now needs a transplant to survive; but NHS guidelines prohibit liver transplants to patients without 6 months of consecutive alcohol abstinence. Gareth’s father is fighting in the courts to save his son and Britons are again faced with the tragic consequences of a very big national binge drinking problem.

Only a couple of weeks ago Britons debated organ transplant guidelines after reading the story of 22 year old Gary Reinbach who was denied a liver transplant, and so died of alcoholic cirrhosis.

Now, a 19 year old out of Ulster Northern Ireland, Gareth Anderson, lies in King's College Hospital London, suffering from total liver failure; the result of a mammoth binge drinking session over the first weekend of August. Doctors say that without an organ transplant the teen will die within 2 weeks, but according to transplant guidelines which prohibit the consumption of alcohol for 6 months prior to a transplant, he is ineligible for the transplant waiting list.

Anderson become ill after downing 30 cans of beer over a weekend binge drinking party.

Because available livers for transplant never meet demand, the National Health Service (NHS) has adopted certain guidelines that help doctors with the impossible task of determining which patients get lifesaving operations and which patients don’t.

Gareth’s father, Brian Anderson, says that the guidelines were written for older alcoholics and shouldn’t apply to his son, who is not an alcoholic. He has taken the matter to the courts and to politicians, hoping to circumvent guidelines that he does not consider fair in this case. He describes the urgency he feels, saying, “I'm dealing with a timebomb now. I've basically two weeks to save Gareth…In my opinion Gareth doesn't fit in with the six-month policy.”

Gareth has never before required medical treatment for alcohol use

Family members had pressured Northern Ireland Health Minster, Michael McGimpsey to act on behalf of Gareth, but McGimpsey indicated he could not intervene in a health matter that required the professional judgment of doctors.

The requirement for 6 months of abstinence is only a guideline, and one that doctors can overlook, but an NHS Blood and Transplant Department spokesperson defended the use of the guideline saying, “it (the 6 month guideline) is one that has been adopted following publication in medical journals from various doctors who have recommended it as suitable practice. It is recognized and in use around the world." The spokesperson said that although doctors can disregard the guideline, that they must also, “take into consideration other potential liver transplant patients who are waiting as well."

Dr. Roger Williams, a UK liver specialist, has weighed in on the public debate over the boy’s case, saying that 6 month guidelines should not apply in cases like this.

Brian Anderson says the he feels optimistic about getting Gareth onto the transplant waiting list and says that his son is “doing well” in hospital.

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