Drugs have a habit of making their way from our bodies into the environment: they’ve frequently been found in waste water, drinking water, and rivers (not to mention on dollar bills). But they could also be rising into the air, and a new study suggests their aerial concentrations could give scientists a clue to what, exactly, is happening on the ground below. Following up on earlier research showing that cocaine was present in the air above the cities of Taranto and Rome, Italian researchers at the Institute of Atmospheric Pollution Research in Rome took about 60 samples of air in various regions and tested for a number of contaminants, including cocaine, cannabinoids (chemicals found in marijuana), and more common pollutants, like ozone and hydrocarbons. When they looked to see whether there was a correlation between cocaine concentration and addicts’ requests for treatment in particular geographical areas, they found a very strong relationship. Weaker correlations existed between cocaine concentration and police seizures of cocaine and concentration and seizure of all kinds of illicit substances.

The team is excited about the possibility of using aerial cocaine concentration to get a sense of drug use levels, a notoriously slippery thing to measure, and possibly other activities that sometimes occur in tandem with drug use, like robberies. However, their approach didn’t turn up any significant correlations between crime-related activities and cannabinoids, which is interesting—what does that mean about the social correlates of marijuana use (or, alternatively, about the fraction of cannabinoids that actually make into the air)? If you’re worried about getting high from the air, it seems unlikely that concentrations are high enough to have an effect. But who knows—that’s a question that has yet to be addressed.

[via ScienceNOW]

Image courtesy of Adam Swank / flickr

If you remember anything from statistics class, it’s probably that correlation ain’t no causation. Just because two numbers happen to go up at the same time doesn’t mean that one is causing the other to rise (or fall, or hold steady, or whatever). If there isn’t a plausible explanation for how the two might be connected, and proof that that explanation is indeed the cause, all you have is a couple of lines on a chart.

So it’s a move in the right direction when people try to suss out connections between two variables they have a hunch are related. But seeking such a connection can lead to some pretty convoluted reasoning. A new paper—unpublished, but released for discussion—claims that the passage of states’ medical marijuana laws cause decreased traffic fatalities, following on the researchers’ intuition that people might smoke pot instead of drinking alcohol if marijuana were more readily obtainable, and that driving while high is less dangerous than driving drunk. Their logic goes like this: if medical marijuana laws make pot more easily available, and people smoke more pot after laws are passed, and they buy less alcohol because of that, then there would be fewer traffic deaths.

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What’s The News: Three 16-year-old  teenage boys in Texas had heart attacks shortly after smoking a product called k2, or Spice, according to a study published this month in the journal Pediatrics. The report highlights a growing public health problem: the increased availability and use of synthetic cannabinoids, which when smoked mimic the effects of marijuana but typically can’t be detected in drug tests. While the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency secured an emergency, one-year ban of five synthetic cannabinoids in March of this year, most of the hundreds of such chemicals remain basically legal, widely available, little understood, and potentially harmful.

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When rats were injected with a chemical similar to marijuana’s main ingredient, THC, shortly after a undergoing a severely stressful event, they showed a significant reduction in symptoms like those seen in people with post-traumatic stress disorder. The study tested a synthetic cannabinoid called WIN 55,212-2, which was injected directly into the animals’ amygdala, a brain region involved in the regulation of emotions like fear and anxiety. Timing was important. Rats given the drug two and 24 hours after the stressor—being forced to swim for 15 minutes—appeared less “traumatized” when tested a week later, compared with those given the drug 48 hours later or given no drug at all. While the study adds to the already large and complex pile of evidence that the cannabinoid system has a vital role in regulating emotions like anxiety, it’s far from proving that cannabinoids will be useful for treating PTSD in humans.

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New sea creatures, humongous stars, and cockroach antibiotics: Those are just a few reader favorites from this year in science. As 2010 comes to a close, we bring you a dozen of the most popular 80beats posts of the year.

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For more great stories from the year in science, check out DISCOVER’s Top 100 Stories of the Year.

California’s Proposition 19, a November ballot initiative to legalize marijuana, has fueled the ongoing fight over the drug’s health risks. While that battle has a month to go, a new study out in the British Journal of Psychiatry this backs up the idea that pot’s cognitive impairment is all about the makeup of the marijuana you’re smoking.

Valerie Curran and colleagues studied 134 volunteers as those volunteers smoked from their private stashes in their homes. The scientists had their subjects take a series of cognitive tests, both high and sober. They then took a small portion of the pot to the lab for analysis.

Curran found striking differences in the chemical compositions of different users’ marijuana, and those differences appeared to play a large role in how well the smokers performed on the tests while high.

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Around the United States, state governments are rushing to enact bans on K2, the hot new (and still mostly legal) drug made with synthetic cannabinoids: lab-created compounds designed to mimic the effects of THC, the active ingredient in marijuana.

Often marketed as incense, K2 — which is also known as Spice, Demon or Genie — is sold openly in gas stations, head shops and, of course, online. It can sell for as much as $40 per gram. The substance is banned in many European countries, but by marketing it as incense and clearly stating that it is not for human consumption, domestic sellers have managed to evade federal regulation [The New York Times].

Missouri is the most recent state to move against K2, the origin of which dates back to the work of Clemson University scientist John Huffman, who was developing these synthetic compounds in the 1990s. Scientifically, the chemicals are interesting for their potential to mimic some of the pain-relieving aspects of marijuana, which advocates of medical marijuana legality point to, without the negative health effects that come with setting a plant on fire and inhaling the smoke. The chemical used in most varieties of K2 is called JWH-018.

Huffman was interviewed by The Guardian last year when K2 was spreading around Europe. Now in his late 70s, he seems to understand something that many politicians can’t seem to get through their heads: Risk-taking teenagers will go to about any length, legal or illegal, to get high. Huffman says he wouldn’t oblige the numerous enterprising types who asked him how to make his substances, and that the substances are always labeled not for human consumption. But he figured someone was going to figure it out sooner or later, especially considering the chemical doesn’t show up on drug tests.

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Even as California sinks under a massive budget crisis, the $8.7 million the state used to research the use of marijuana for medical purposes now seems money well spent. The state-funded Center for Medical Cannabis Research at the University of California, San Diego has confirmed that pot is effective in reducing muscle spasms associated with multiple sclerosis and pain caused by certain neurological injuries or illnesses, according to a report issued Wednesday [The New York Times].

In four clinical trials, participants suffering from multiple sclerosis, AIDS or diabetes, along with healthy volunteers injected with a chili pepper substance to induce pain, were randomly assigned to receive cigarettes filled with marijuana [The New York Times]. The researchers reported that not everybody who smoked marijuana felt better–but a substantial percentage of those who were in pain said they felt better, and the figure was comparable to the percentage of people who experienced relief after taking other pain medications. “I think that clearly cannabis has benefits,” said Dr. Donald I. Abrams, a San Francisco oncologist who led that study. “This substance has been a medicine for 2,700 years; it only hasn’t been a medicine for 70″ [Los Angeles Times].

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The U.S. Justice Department has officially instructed federal prosecutors around the country to stop going after medical marijuana users who are complying with state laws. A total of 14 states now have some provisions for medical marijuana use.

A memo from Deputy Attorney General David Ogden said it was “unlikely to be an efficient use of limited federal resources” to prosecute “individuals with cancer or other serious illnesses who use marijuana as part of a recommended treatment regimen” [The Wall Street Journal]. The memo emphasized, however, that prosecutors should continue to target drug traffickers and distributors who use state laws as a cover for illegal activity.

Supporters of the policy change say it represents a new emphasis on violent crime and the sale of illicit drugs to children…. But some local police and Republican lawmakers criticized the change, saying it could exacerbate the flow of drug money to Mexican cartels, whose violence has spilled over the Southwestern border [Washington Post].

Related Content:
80beats: Medical Pot Clubs Get a Reprieve From Raids Under Obama
80beats: A Toke a Day Might Keep Alzheimer’s Away

Image: flickr / Neeta Lind

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder announced yesterday that the federal government will not prosecute all sales of medical marijuana, marking another stark change in policy from the days of the Bush administration, which conducted frequent raids under a zero tolerance policy.

Medical marijuana distributors were targeted by federal officials under Bush even in states that had passed laws allowing use of the drug for medical purposes by cancer patients, those dealing with chronic pain or other serious ailments. Holder said the priority of the new administration is to go after egregious offenders operating in violation of both federal and state law, such as those being used as fronts for drug dealers [Los Angeles Times]. Under the new policy, medical marijuana dispensaries that abide by state laws will be left alone.

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