Australian Federal Police seizures of illicit crystalline methamphetamine ('ice') 1998-2002: impurity analysis

Nineteen crystalline methamphetamine ('ice') seizures captured by the Australian Federal Police (AFP) at the Australian border between 1998 and 2002 were analysed. Using a modified gas chromatograph-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) impurity profiling approach of these samples we have identified >30 compounds associated with methamphetamine and/or its synthetic route. Major impurities detected include 1,2-dimethyl-3-phenylaziridine 8, dimethylamphetamine 14, N-formylmethamphetamine 24, N-acetylmethamphetamine 25, 1,3-dimethyl-2-phenylnaphthalene 32, 1-benzyl-3-methylnaphthalene 33 and methamphetamine dimer 34. These data are suggestive of ephedrine/pseudoephedrine as the main precursor of the 'ice' samples seized during 1998-2002. Additionally the two naphthalenes 32 and 33 further identified that 15 items in 9 seizures were produced via the more specific ephedrine/hydriodic acid/red phosphorus method. One sample comprised 75% dimethylamphetamine and 9.7% methamphetamine, representing the first Australian seizure of imported dimethylamphetamine reported.     

Collective capabilities, culture, and Amartya Sen’sDevelopment as Freedom

Conclusion Sen showed his usual wisdom and astute judgement in keeping his argument carefully focused and, therefore, elegant and compelling. Nonetheless, the understanding and pursuit of “development as freedom” must go beyond the arguments he lays out. As the global political economy moves with ever greater determination toward the implantation of more thoroughly marketized economic relations, analysts must correspondingly focus more closely on how to prevent market-based power inequalities from undermining “development as freedom.” Centralization of power over the cultural flows that shape preferences is a more subtle form of “unfreedom” than those which Sen highlights, but no less powerful for being subtle. Institutional strategies for facilitating collective capabilities are as important to the expansion of freedom as sustaining formal electoral institutions. Indeed, without possibilities for collective mobilization formal elections too easily become a hollow farce. Sen’s capability approach provides an invaluable analytical and philosophical foundation for those interested in pursuing development as freedom, but it is a foundation that must be built on, not just admired. Peter Evans is professor in the Sociology Department at the University of California, Berkeley. His current research interests focus on globalization and global governance institutions, and their effects on ordinary citizens. He has written numerous articles and books on subjects ranging from globalization, the role of the state in industrial development, and urban environmental issues. A current project supported by the Russell Sage Foundation examines possibilities for constructing North-South links between labor movements as a strategy for increasing the bargaining power of labor movements in the global South.     

Predicting adult approval of corporal punishment from childhood parenting experiences

This study explores the relationship between mothers' approval of corporal punishment and the degree to which they themselves were subjected to violence as children. Considered as additional contributing factors are: (1) whether the mothers as children were punished by their own parents, (2) whether they perceived such punishment as unfair, and (3) the degree of parental nurture they experienced as children. The sample consisted of 330 new mothers whose mother and father both lived in the home when they were 14 years of age. Respondents were interviewed at home one to two months following their infants' discharge from the hospital. After controlling for race and income, no relationship was found between approval of corporal punishment and the violence to which mothers were subjected as children. However, significant associations were found between such approval and: (1) whether mothers were punished by their parents, and (2) maternal (but not paternal) nurture. Perceptions that parental punishment was unfair failed to contribute to such approval. Altogether, parental factors in mothers' childhoods, excluding race and income, accounted for 8.9% of the variance in approval of corporal punishment.     

Barriers to services for rural and urban survivors of rape

A significant proportion of survivors of rape do not utilize formal services to cope with the aftermath of rape. Understanding victimization experiences in environments that differ on resources, such as rural versus urban areas, may be an important dimension to consider in understanding barriers. Thirty women (18 rural and 12 urban) were recruited from rape crisis centers to participate in focus groups. Study results suggest that (a) survivors of rape experience many barriers to service utilization, (b) there were some differences in barriers to service utilization that were mentioned only in rural areas and some that were mentioned only in urban areas that may suggest that community context is important to consider in understanding barriers to service use, and (c) barriers to health and mental health services overlap with barriers to criminal justice system services.     

Illusions of necessity: evading responsibility for choice in health care

Discretionary power is commonly defended by denial of its existence, the allegation of inevitability. Objective external conditions and forces are claimed to dictate policy decisions with tangible distributional effects. In health policy, such forces include the aging of the population, the extension of technology, and the demands of ethical standards. Taken together, these forces create relentless upward pressure on costs, to levels which society "cannot afford," necessitating sacrifice of the interests of the "less eligible." Yet quantitative analysis of these forces does not sustain the argument; in each case the source of cost escalation is not external pressure but the way in which the health care system itself reacts. Less costly and equally effective options are demonstrably available, but would threaten provider interests and broader ideologies. A spurious cloak of inevitability serves to promote and justify political choices.