An epidemic of cocaine associated deaths in Utah

This article describes 15 cocaine associated deaths in Utah in a 3 1/2-month period in early 1984, compared to 6 cocaine associated deaths for all of 1983. Brief case histories of the 15 cases are presented along with data on age, sex, county of death, cause of death, association of the cocaine with the death, cocaine analytical methodology, and a summary of cocaine concentrations in blood and urine. In four of the cases, cocaine by injection was the cause of death, whereas the other cases had cocaine or metabolite detected incidentally. The epidemiology of a single, well-defined cocaine source is described and related to this transient, remarkable increase in cocaine associated deaths.     

How and Why Parties Respond to Membership Decline: The Case of the SPD and the CDU

A dominant assumption in the existing literature on party organisation in Western Europe holds that parties acquiesce in membership decline because modern campaigning is capital- rather than labour-intensive. This article studies eight reform attempts, from 1989 to 2011, by two paradigmatic membership parties, the German SPD and CDU. The examined party documents show that the two parties still value and seek mass membership. Indeed, most of the proposed reforms are not attempts at organisational innovation, but have the intention of consolidating the existing membership organisations. Surprisingly, the parties are concerned about membership decline not mainly for electoral reasons, but because they value and wish to preserve their legacy as membership organisations. Secondly, both the SPD and the CDU documents suggest that the legal-normative imperative of the German Basic Law requiring parties to sustain democratic linkage necessitates a membership organisation. Furthermore, the SPD views mass membership as inherent to social democratic ideology.