A flakka attack... no, is not about politics

"It is very bizarre behavior, and it does concern us," says Commander Danial Lynch of the Melbourne [Florida] Police Department. (news video at the link)

A 17-year-old female was arrested at 2:30 in the morning Saturday after police said she jumped through the window of a home on the 1600 block of Sycamore Street in Melbourne, according to her arrest report.

The residents of the home say they were terrified after following the incident. The arrest report states that the girl, covered in broken glass and blood, slapped one of the residents of the home, and then ran outside. When police arrived, the report says she charged the officer while screaming, "I am God, I am Satan!" The officer wrote that he backed up at first, but then Tasered her and took her into custody.

Melbourne Police say this behavior is indicative of someone high on "flakka," a relatively new synthetic designer drug that burst onto the scene in 2012 in South Florida.

"Danial" is probably a misspelling of Daniel.

 

ht Rabel

"Even if it is not very solid data...

"... we can say definitely that there are drug problems in most parts of the world," said Theo Vos, of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington, the study's senior author."

LONDON (AP) — Marijuana is the most popular illegal drug used worldwide, but addictions to popular painkillers like Vicodin, Oxycontin and codeine kill the most people, according to the first-ever global survey of illicit drug abuse.

In addition to cannabis and opioid painkillers, scientists analyzed abuse of cocaine and amphetamines in 2010, largely based on previous studies. Ecstasy and hallucinogens weren't included, because there weren't enough data. The researchers found that for all the drugs studied, men in their 20s had the highest rates of abuse. The worst-hit countries were Australia, Britain, Russia and the U.S. The study was published online Thursday in the journal, Lancet.

But there were few concrete numbers to rely on and researchers used modeling techniques to come up with their estimates.

Global burden of disease attributable to illicit drug use and dependence: findings from the Global Burden of Disease Study 2010

Background:

No systematic attempts have been made to estimate the global and regional prevalence of amphetamine, cannabis, cocaine, and opioid dependence, and quantify their burden. We aimed to assess the prevalence and burden of drug dependence, as measured in years of life lived with disability (YLDs), years of life lost (YLLs), and disability-adjusted life years (DALYs).

Skipping all the way down...

Funding:

Australian National Health and Medical Research Council, Australian Government Department of Health and Ageing, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.