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An interesting twist in Congressional efforts to ban cathinone derivative drugs

Last week the US House of Representatives voted to approve a ban on several recreational drugs in the two classes we’ve been discussing of late. Namely the synthetic cannabinoids and the cathinones. They slipped the ban into a bill first called the “Food and Drug Administration Safety and Innovation Act” (Senate version; S.3187) and then, apparently the “FDA User Fee Agreement” (House version maybe) so you can tell they were on the hurry-up about it. As noted in this account from the Bangor Daily News:

The measure combines three bills previously introduced by Sens. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn. Among the chemicals it would outlaw are mephedrone and methylenedioxypyrovalerone, known as MDPV, which can be used to make bath salts. The bill carries a penalty of up to 30 years for those caught selling the drug.

The lone dissenter in the Senate vote was Sen. Bernie Sanders, an independent from Vermont.

The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration took emergency action in September 2011 to federally ban mephedrone, Methylone and MDPV and designated the hallucinogenic stimulants a Schedule 1 drug, the same class as heroin and LSD.

I’m having trouble finding anything that specifies exactly what was passed by the House last week but this page S.3190 lists 4-MMC/mephedrone and 3,4-methylenedioxypyrovalerone (MDPV) and then some phenethylamines in the 2C family. These lack the beta-ketone signature of a cathinone so calling them “bath salts” even further confuses the identity issue, I will note. Curiously, methylone (or 3,4-methylenedioxymethcathinone, the MDMA cousin) is not on this list. If anything, the available data tend to suggest this is the one most likely to be a breakout hit in this country…it is already pretty popular in the UK.

Anyway, the news of the day is that Sen Patrick Leahy of VT has blocked the inclusion of the 2C compounds and the resulting bill has passed the Senate with only mephedrone and MDPV included from that class of compounds (apparently all the cannabinoids were included). According to this reporting, a member of his staff said:

“Sen. Leahy has been clear that scheduling controlled substances is not something to be taken lightly.”

“It is not without implication to put a whole lot of chemicals on the federal drug schedule,” he said. “It means putting more people in jail and makes it harder to seek legitimate uses for these drugs. Leahy is most comfortable sticking with what has been carefully considered.”

Here’s how I read this from my perspective as one that has been interested in the effects of the cathinones and has followed the developing scientific literature and, to lesser extent the street seizures and policy initiatives, via published work and discussions with researchers, DEA representatives, NIDA Program Officials and even FDA folks.

I bet they presented actual data on mephedrone and MDPV. Published data and as-yet-unpublished data from laboratories in addition to the public health and law enforcement data. Data that are probably limited but still reasonably convincing. To a CongressCritter. This is the “carefully considered” part.

What I also would predict is that there was comparatively less information about the 2C drugs, if any at all. And the DEA hoped that by calling it all “bath salts” they could criminalize the lot. I would surmise that at best the pro-ban folks based their demands on finding some 2C family compounds in products being sold as bath salts along with, or in a context similar to, substituted cathinone drugs like mephedrone and MDPV.

And I bet Sen Leahy called bullshit on an information disparity.

If this is what happened, I have to issue a pat on the back to him for standing up for the rule of information in making policy decisions.

UPDATE: ok, this appears to be a House bill version that includes a full list. Several cathinones were included in addition to the 2C-? phenethylamines. Interesting. There’s a link which compares it to S.31690 and you can see where the Senate version had just the 4-MMC and MDPV with the 2C-? phenethylamines.

NIDA and NIAAA Kill the K05 Senior Scientist Research Award

Per NOT-DA-12-016,

NIDA and NIAAA will not accept any K05 applications beyond the November 2012/ January 2013 receipt dates.

For those unfamiliar, the latest PA-12-148 FOA for the K05 is here and the purpose is listed as:

The purpose of the Senior Scientist Research (K05) is intended to provide protected time for outstanding senior scientists who have demonstrated a sustained high level of productivity conducting biomedical research relevant to the scientific mission of the appropriate institute to focus on their research and to provide mentoring of new investigators.

The DM Executive Summary is, “Salary support for BigSchwangingTypes to relieve the burden on their research awards, covered by a faked-up need for buyout from local Institutional responsibilities with regard to teaching and service“.

The junior faculty summary is, “What another total scam by which the GoodOldBoyes/Girlz extract yet MORE money out of the NIH grant system!”

Note: If it were ever possible, you are damn right I would have applied for one of these in a heartbeat and I’m bitter that it was never possible for me to get one of these schweeeeet deals :-).

So when I first saw this notice I just thought “Good!” and moved on.

However.

A reader of the blog wrote to ask for my take on this and further observed:

I am curious how this will impact these senior “NIDA” investigators and their current/future grant applications? If these K05 scientist now have to put more of their effort on their NIDA grants, what impact will that have on their grants, their trainees who are funded off their grants, etc.

I guess I am a little shocked, and happy, that they are finally sticking it to the senior scientists a little. This may indirectly help out us younger scientists?

First of all, I should make clear I have no insight into why NIDA and NIAAA have chosen to dismantle this program at this time. Haven’t heard any rumours about it at all.

Charging on over to RePORTER I find that there are only 33 K05s funded between the two institutes (13 NIAAA) at present. This is not a tremendously large number. The total costs seem to run from about $120K per year up to about $250K…over a R03 equivalent on the low end and we’re talking R21 territory for the bigger ones. I guess 30-50 more of the smaller R grants funded every year would be a good improvement.

Alternately, they could use these to offset one-module reductions for a larger number of R01 apps, or get perhaps 15 more R01s funded entirely. NIDA has about 90 new R01s funded in FY2012 (to date) and they funded about 122 new R01s in FY2011. Therefore, adding 10-15 more is a significant improvement. This could very well be the only reason. They are searching under the couch cushions for a way, any way, to keep the R-mech success rates up.

Getting back to the emailer’s suggestion that this is a way to stick it to the senior investigators….well, that isn’t quite clear. The senior investigator salaries have to come from somewhere. And as I alluded to, I think the whole idea of buying out local institutional service time was a bit of a sham. The K05 serves, in part, to relieve the burden on the PIs’ R grants. If they didn’t have the K05 buyout, they’d be looking to land another R grant to get the same percentage of their salary covered.

They will return to doing so (and here we have a nebulous, fluid population “they” which is made up of the current awardees and the next set of potential future K05 awardees). Putting in more R or P mechanism proposals that will compete with, you guessed it, everyone else. Including the junior investigators.

So it isn’t the case that this magically frees up money for the younger set to obtain. It throws the money, yes, but also the Greybearded and Bluehaired Professors back into the R-mech pool.