Month: July 2022

Points: H1 2022 in Review

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I write this as the UK is experiencing extreme heat and record temperatures of 41 Celsius. Summer has arrived and for some this means a break – for others it’s about playing ‘catch up’; for the UK it means moaning about the weather and lamenting our lack of air conditioning.

It’s been six months since I took the reins from Greg Bond and started editing Points, and thus far I hope I’ve continued its legacy to deliver thought-provoking content. I wanted to take the opportunity to provide some quick reflections on must-reads from the past six months, in-case you’re playing catch-up on Points articles:

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How can Pharmacists improve gender-affirming care? An insider’s perspective

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Editor’s note: Maeleigh Tidd continues to explore the role of pharmacists in the provision of gender-affirming care for LGBTQ+ people, and return to the Pharmaceutical Inequalities series with an interview of Dolyn Salm, a transgender pharmacy student at the University of Wisconsin Madison School of Pharmacy. They discuss Dolyn’s experiences of navigating the US healthcare system during his transition, and his views on how pharmacists can be better prepared to support the needs of LGBTQ+ patients. The Pharmaceutical Inequalities series is funded by the Holtz Center and the Evjue Foundation.

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History of LGBTQ+ Health and Ongoing Health Disparities & Inequalities

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Editor’s note: Maeleigh Tidd returns with another contribution to the Pharmaceutical Inequalities feature, this time co-authored with a graduate student colleague, Lucy Abrams. Mae and Lucy discuss the history of LGBTQ+ health in the USA, and situate existing LGBTQ+ rights within the international context. They subsequently discuss how pharmacists play a key role in providing gender-affirming care, and how this can be improved upon. The Pharmaceutical Inequalities series is funded by the Holtz Center and the Evjue Foundation.

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ADHS Presidential Address: “Why are We in México? 5,000 Years of Pivotal Drug Histories in Las Américas”

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Editor’s Note: This is an edited version of Paul Gootenberg’s Presidential Address at the Alcohol and Drugs History Society 2022 Conference, delivered at Universidad Nacional Autónima de México (UNAM) on 15 June 2022.

Welcome

Thank you/mil gracias for the kind introductions and especially to UNAM and and its renowned Instituto de Investigaciones Sociales for hosting and welcoming us to our international biennial ADHS conference.

It is a deep privilege to deliver this ADHS Presidential Address, particularly here at UNAM, the intellectual heart of Mexico, and even of “las Américas”

So, why are we here in Mexico?

The easy answers, being a beautiful, peopled, world cosmopolis, wonderful food and tequila, and everyday links with drug wars, need not be addressed!

Of course, we’re here mainly for the serious biennial purpose of intellectual exchanges — through new papers, roundtables, and exciting keynotes — around our booming, increasingly recognized field of global drug and alcohol history.

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The Indigenous Medicine Conservation Fund: a new paradigm of benefit-sharing in the burgeoning psychedelic science ecosystem

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Editor’s Note: Anny Ortiz returns with a third contribution to our Pharmaceutical Inequalities series with reflections on her recent trip to the Medical Psychedelic House of Davos to co-present alongside her colleagues from the Indigenous Medicine Conservation Fund and launch their ‘Grow Medicine’ project. The Pharmaceutical Inequalities series is funded by the Holtz Center and the Evjue Foundation.

I recently returned from a 10-day trip to Switzerland and Canada. I was in Toronto, Canada at a conference called “From Research to Reality” co-presenting a poster titled “5-MeO-DMT: Synthesis and therapeutic potential for treating psychological disorders”. It was surprising to see that there were two separate presentations by personnel from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), one of which was titled “Challenges in Conducting Clinical Research with Schedule I Psychedelics: From the 1960s to the Present”, presented by Dr. Katherine Bonson, and the other titled “World Regulatory and Policy Discussion: A Pathway Forward”, presented by Javier Muniz. If FDA staff presenting at a psychedelic science conference is not a sign of the times, I don’t know what is.

Immediately preceding the Toronto conference, I was in Davos, Switzerland, as part of the Indigenous Medicine Conservation Fund (IMCF), which was a sponsor of a landmark event titled “Medical Psychedelic House of Davos” (no connection to the World Economic Forum, usually hosted in Davos). I would like to share some highlights of what transpired there.

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Resisting the pathologisation of women in research of alcohol and pharmaceuticals

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I was recently reading Dr Jessica Taylor’s latest book Sexy but Psycho: How the Patriarchy Uses Women’s Trauma Against Them. Taylor is a working class, radical, lesbian feminist who has a proven track-record working with traumatised women and girls. In this book she argues for a trauma-informed approach to working with women and girls and documents the long-standing tendency by the patriarchy (systems that uphold male power) to pathologise them as a result of their traumas, reframe them as mental illness, and unnecessarily medicate them for these ‘disorders’.

Pre-existing research shows that women are more likely to be diagnosed with depression, anxiety and somatic disorders, borderline personality disorder, panic disorder, phobias, suicide ideation and attempts, postpartum depression and psychosis, eating disorders and PTSD (Riecher-Rossler, 2016). Furthermore, women are more likely to be diagnosed with multiple psychiatric disorders at one time (Anxiety and Depression Association of America, 2019).

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Pharmacy stakeholders’ perceptions of opioid use disorder vaccines

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Editor’s Note: Amanda Pratt’s first contribution to our Pharmaceutical Inequalities series offers this insightful interview with Vincent Wartenweiler PharmD, an independent community pharmacist and Master’s student in Psychoactive Pharmaceutical Investigation at UW-Madison. Amanda (AP) and Vincent (VW) sat down on March 24, 2022 to discuss a qualitative project Vincent published in 2021 to determine perceptions of pharmacy stakeholders around opioid use disorder vaccines. In addition to providing a glimpse into a significant milestone for the history of alcohol, drugs and pharmacy–the development of substance use disorder vaccines–this interview sheds light on potential methodologies for understanding vaccine hesitancy. The Pharmaceutical Inequalities series is funded by the Holtz Center and the Evjue Foundation.

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