See Table 1 for all measures in the baseline and year 1 substance use module. Additional measures will likely be added starting at year 2 follow-up sessions.The first portion of the ABCD substance use protocol includes a brief introduction that operationalizes the term “drug use,” repeats that all answers are confidential, and then proceeds to ask the youth if they have heard of specific substances. The description of drug use, confidentiality, and substance use category wording was adapted for 9 and 10 year olds from existing national studies on substance use, including the Collaborative Studies on Genetics of Alcoholism , National Survey on Drug Use and Health , the PhenX Patterns of Substance Use module for adolescents, and the MTF Study .At baseline, lifetime patterns of substance use are assessed in detail. This interview was developed in order to comprehensively measure substances that may lead to substance use disorders, or neurocognitive, psychiatric or health consequences in youth. The lifetime interview ) assesses whether they ever used each drug. If they used a substance, then follow-up questions are given to assess 1) age of first use, 2) age of first regular use , 3) lifetime total quantity in standard units, 4) lifetime maximum dose in standard units, and 5) last date of use . For any drug used in the past 6 months, a detailed Timeline Follow back interview is also administered . Questions are only administered if the youth has heard of each substance.At baseline, a 6-months web-based modified Timeline Follow back is administered . Consistent with the original TLFB , the ABCD TLFB uses a calendar-based interviewer-administered retrospective report of detailed quantity/frequency substance use patterns during the past 6 months. The TLFB is a psychometrically sound instrument used to measure both alcohol and other drugs , demonstrating reliability and validity for intervals up to 1 year in adolescents and adults .
For example, reliability indices are high for measuring cannabis use in the past year, including total joints used , greatest number of joints on any day ,heavy duty propagation trays and number of joints used per using day . As with the original TLFB, the ABCD TLFB utilizes memory cues, such as holidays and personal events elicited from the youth that may improve substance use recall and these are populated onto the web-based calendar. The site-based research assistant collaborates with the youth to review each week of potential use, and all substance use within that week. To facilitate accurate labeling and dose quantification, if a youth endorses using a substance, the research staff presents visual pictures depicting standard units and modes of use . As outlined in the next section, follow-up questions assess routes of administration , flavoring , typical dosing , product content/potency , subjective effects , and where youth get their drug . The implementation of the calendar-driven ABCD TLFB instrument was done in JavaScript with the software packages bootstrap for design and the full calendar plugin. The server component of this tool was written in php and interfaces with our electronic data collection system for retrieval of enrolled participant information such as participant ID , longitudinal event name and attempt number.Source code of the application is available online in the public ABCD software repository . For each annual follow-up, the TLFB will cover time since last assessment to ensure continuous coverage of substance use patterns over the longitudinal study. As noted above, once youth have access to mobile technology that they can use in a confidential environment , a 6-month TLFB interview will be administered by research staff directly with the adolescent via web and/or phone. These data will facilitate generation of overall metrics of adolescent substance use for each endorsed category, total substance used , number of binge drinking episodes, drinks per binge episode, age of first use, age of first regular use , dose per occasion, and total number of co-use days .The consumption of cocaine and marijuana has long been a concern of modern society. Starting with Richard Nixon’s declaration of a “War on Drugs” in 1971, the United States has been fixated on the correlation between illicit drugs and crime rates, incarceration, and societal health. The impacts of illicit drugs however, have rarely been addressed in their relation to the environment. Revelations of the severe damages incurred on the environment as a consequence of cannabis and cocaine production will be necessary for the revision of bureaucratic frameworks and societal perspectives.
Once the public has been properly informed of the issues at hand, they subsequently will be able toappeal to their legislators for legal reform. Government agencies, both environmental and enforcement, must also contribute to anti-drug efforts by taking on the responsibility of incorporating their knowledge and resources with their counterparts, both domestic and international, in order to adequately address this global issue. Toxification of the environment, resulting from the plantation, growth, and harvest of cocaine and cannabis occurs in a variety of methods. Toxification, classified in this paper, refers to the improper or illegal usage and disposal of fertilizers, pesticides, rodenticides, and chemical compounds employed during the production of cannabis and cocaine. Unregulated usage of illegal fertilizers and pesticides in illicit crop growth results in the direct poisoning of wildlife and the indirect toxification of watersheds. One calendar year in Colombia saw “81,000 tons of fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides” used in the cultivation of coca crops. Toxification of watersheds, occurring either due to the disposal of cocaine, or of the chemical compounds used in its formation, raises a serious concern for the health of aquatic ecosystems and species biodiversity. A major waterway purity study conducted in Brazil revealed that cocaine occurred in higher concentrations than any other pharmaceutical compound detected. Alone this study does not hold much substance, however, a controlled experiment conducted on the critically endangered, European Eel Anguilla anguilla, revealed that amphibious species sustaining prolonged exposure to cocaine in their aquatic ecosystems may suffer species decline. It is worth noting that a combination of the European Eel’s physiology and behavior place the species at a substantial risk for aquatic toxification. European Eels are sedentary, frequently residing within a constrained geographical area for up to two decades, a trait that increases their probability of bio-accumulation.Eels also have relatively large fat deposits, and even at extremely minute concentrations of cocaine, such as “picograms per gram”, if allowed enough time, significant bio-accumulation of cocaine into the eel’s tissue can occur.However, the threat of waterway toxification is still applicable to migratory species as well due to the short time frame required for bio-accumulation to occur. In as short of a time-span as a single month, cocaine was revealed to be present in the tissue of EuropeanEels. Prolonged exposure to waterborne cocaine particles has the potential to severely impact the dopamine receptors of European Eels, inhibiting their reproductive processes and reducing the overall reproductive fitness of the species.
While the effects of the study conducted by Capaldo et al. were focused solely on the European Eel, a species which does not occur in the Amazon, the study reveals the risks associated with cocaine that indigenous bottom dwelling species of the Amazon Basin face. The five families of catfish in the Amazon Basin, are therefore threatened by cocaine runoff due to the comparative physiological structures and behaviors that they share with Anguilla; including their excessive intake of environmental particles, as a consequence of filter feeding, and substantial bio-accumulation of ingested pollutants, due to sizable fat deposits. Additionally, a recent controlled study analyzing the effects that cocaine-polluted waters had on Zebra mussels, revealed that damage to mussel hemocytes and chromosomal aberrations begin occurring within an exposure time as short as 72 hours.Exposure to the cocaine-polluted waters also induced an increase in the number of apoptotic cells and levels of necrosis.Similarly to the European Eel, while Zebra mussels are non-indigenous to South America, their shared physiology with native freshwater South American mussel species reveals the potential impacts of cocaine pollution. While more data needs to be collected to establish a substantial relationship between the effects of cocaine runoff on a wider variety of native species, there exists significant evidence of the threats that aquatic species face in areas toxified by cocaine. The most immediate threat facing wildlife, due to illicit drug production, is the usage of rodenticides by crop growers. Cocaine,vertical cannabis and especially marijuana growers, frequently employ anticoagulant rodenticides in an attempt to protect their crops from “pest” species. While rodenticides are commonly used in regulated crop production, the type of second-generation anticoagulant formulas illegally possessed by cocaine and cannabis cultivators have the potential to produce devastating ecosystem level impacts. The risks posed by second-generation rodenticides occur in forms of direct and indirect mortality, as well as, direct and indirect poisoning. Direct mortality of wildlife occurs through the actual consumption of these anticoagulant rodenticide compounds, which even at very low levels of exposure, can result in internal hemorrhaging and organ failure. Non-lethal exposures still frequently result in indirect mortality as a side effect of lowered immunological abilities, development of neurological disorders, and failure of thermoregulatory control. The extreme potency of second-generation rodenticides can produce a high risk for secondary poisoning to animals that scavenge on or consume poisoned individuals. A recent study conducted by the California Department of Fish and Wildlife found that 70% of animals sampled “tested positive for AR exposure.” Risks to wildlife also exist through the consumption of over-fertilized vegetation, which absorbs rodenticide compounds, and thus exposes herbivores to the threat of secondary-poisoning as well. During the United States’ Drug Enforcement Administration’s, Operation Full Court Press, over 5,445 pounds of fertilizer, and 260 pounds of rodenticides were discovered in grow sites in Northern California alone.
Overall, there exists an immense difficulty in the ability to discriminate between the detrimental effects of pesticide usage between legal and illegal marijuana cultivators. This challenge arises from the discrepancy in the legal status of marijuana harvesting, which, while legalized in numerous states, remains classified as illegal in Federal law. As a result of the conflicting legal interests, the Environmental Protection Agency has not processed, identified, or approved any pesticides for usage on marijuana crops and as such there is an occurrence of unregistered pesticides on marijuana crops which “may have unknown health consequences, as no pesticides have undergone complete risk assessments for use on marijuana at this time.”Laws governing the usage of pesticides on marijuana crops are instead constructed through various state agencies that follow different procedures and regulations. However, in their legalization processes, many states “do not explicitly mention pesticides in their legislation on cannabis” and therefore different administrative actions and legislation must be retroactively enacted. While there exists incomplete and easily accessible data referring to the differentials of pesticide usage between illegal and legal producers of marijuana, especially due to the concealed operations of illicit growers, recent bans of the most toxic rodenticides in California will help reveal the variations as illegal growers will still be utilizing banned compounds. In 2014, California banned rodenticide materials containing the active ingredients brodifacoum and bromadiolone. The importance of this legalization is revealed in the fact that the California Department of Pesticide Regulation, when conducting their analysis of toxified wildlife, found 69% of affected individuals containing residues of brodifacoum and 37% containing bromadiolone residues.However, to realize the full impacts of this decision an updated survey of poisoned California wildlife would be needed, The results of this survey would then help to reveal the discrepancies between the different detrimental effects that pesticide use in regulated marijuana crops produce when compared to their illegal counterparts who are operating without regulation and likely still utilizing these compounds. Illicit drug production is associated with greenhouse gas emissions and toxification, both of which result in ecosystem degradation, however, habitat destruction as I refer to it in this paper, focuses on the removal and destruction of physical habitat within ecosystems. Specifically, I am interested in revealing the effects of “clear cutting” and “slash and burn” practices utilized when clearing areas for marijuana and coca crops. Processing land for drug crops frequently involves the clear-cutting of intact forests in order to open up areas for plantation.