Featured Articles

Nokia Lumina 920: Most Innovative Smartphone In The World?

September 6, 2012 | More

Let us list the great innovators of our most recent century: In fiction, James Joyce; in popular music, John Lennon; in film, Stanley Kubrick; in pornography, Ron Jeremy; in frozen food, Hot Pockets; in screen savers, the 3D maze with the brick walls that you travel through; in reality television shows, “The Mole” with Anderson [...]
French Alps Shooting: 4 Found Shot Dead In Car Near Chevaline

September 6, 2012 | More

PARIS — Four people were found shot to death on a forest road in the French Alps on Wednesday, their bodies left in and near a car with British license plates, authorities said. A girl discovered at the site with bullet wounds was hospitalized. Police combed the wooded hills around the village of Chevaline into [...]
Costa Rica Earthquake 2012: 7.6 Magnitude Quake Hits Costa Rica

September 6, 2012 | More

CANGREJAL, Costa Rica — A powerful magnitude-7.6 earthquake shook Costa Rica and neighboring countries Wednesday, sending panicked people into the streets and briefly triggering a tsunami alert, but causing little damage. Authorities reported one confirmed death. “When we felt the earthquake, we held onto each other because we kept falling,” said Rosa Pichardo, 45, who [...]
Michael Clarke Duncan Funeral: Public Memorial Service At Forest Lawn Memorial Parks And Mortuaries

September 6, 2012 | More

LOS ANGELES — Michael Clarke Duncan’s life will be celebrated with a public casket viewing and a private service next week. Duncan spokeswoman Joy Fehily said Wednesday that the Oscar-nominated actor’s casket will be on view from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Sunday at the Hall of Liberty at Forest Lawn Memorial Parks and Mortuaries [...]

European Union aims to clamp down harder on designer drugs

Teni Sow | July 12, 2011 | 0 Comments

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – The rise of dangerous designer drugs has pushed the European Union to propose tighter rules to combat their use, the European Commission said on Monday.

The commission is considering various steps in the fight against narcotics such as ‘Spice,’ a synthetic form of cannabis, including bringing drug control measures into line with those dealing with food and product safety.

Some synthetic drugs have been able to avoid prohibition due to their chemical composition being legal or unregulated, and current EU-wide controls have failed to keep up with new substances or deal with permitted compounds that could be harmful if misused.

“New synthetic drugs are becoming widely available at an unprecedented pace in Europe. They can be toxic (and) addictive and have long-term adverse effects,” EU Justice Commissioner Viviane Reding said in a statement.

“The current system of detecting these new drugs is not fit to tackle the large increase in the number of these substances on the market,” she added.

In 2010, 41 new psychoactive drugs entered the market, including plant-based compounds, synthetic derivatives of well-established drugs and designer drugs, up from 24 in 2009, the commission says. A total of 115 have appeared since 2005.

Only twice have EU-wide measures been used to issue a ban. Once they were used to target BZP, or benzylpiperazine, a stimulant which has been linked to psychosis and seizures.

The second time was to outlaw mephedrone, also known as ‘Meow Meow’ and which was falsely marketed as a plant fertilizer. EU justice ministers agreed last December to ban it.

Ireland tops the list of EU member countries in terms of the proportion of young people who have consumed synthetic drugs — 16 percent, according to an EU survey. Poland and Latvia were next with 9 percent, followed by Britain and Luxembourg, with 8 and 7 percent respectively.

Five percent of young people in the EU as a whole said they had used synthetic drugs.