Sedatives

Hannibal the elephant reacted adversely to tranquilizers administered in the days before the five-ton animal died at the Los Angeles Zoo during an attempt to move him to a zoo in Mexico, animal activists said Monday.

SEATTLE - U.S. Air Force pilot Patrick Burke's day started in the cockpit of a B-1 bomber near the Persian Gulf and proceeded across nine time zones as he ferried the aircraft home to South Dakota. Every four hours during the 19-hour flight, Burke swallowed a tablet of Dexedrine, the prescribed amphetamine known as "go pills. " After landing, he went out for dinner and drinks with a fellow crewman. They were driving back to Ellsworth Air Force Base when Burke began striking his friend in the head.

The California Board of Dental Examiners voted to propose regulating the use of oral sedatives on children in the wake of a 4-year-old's death after a dental visit. The board on Friday agreed to set up a committee to develop language for proposed state legislation, which would be considered at the board's next meeting in November.

Etta James, the legendary rhythm and blues singer suffering from end-stage leukemia and dementia, is under sedation while being treated at a Riverside hospital, her son said Saturday. The 73-year-old performer, known for hits such as "At Last" and "Tell Mama," will remain hospitalized for at least several days before possibly returning to her Riverside home, Donto James said. If doctors can wean her from her sedation by Sunday, her family will try to hold a small Christmas celebration in her hospital room, he said.

The California Board of Dental Examiners voted Friday to propose legislation designed to regulate the use of oral sedatives in children. This is in response to the death of a 4-year-old Santa Ana boy and others who have died while being given oral sedatives by dentists. The board did not specifically address its own investigation into circumstances surrounding the treatment of Javier Villa, who died Aug. 4, hours after being taken to Megdal Dental Care in Santa Ana.

U.S. immigration officials will no longer sedate foreign nationals against their will without a federal court order, according to an internal memo dated Jan. 9. The government "may only involuntarily sedate an alien to facilitate removal where the Government has obtained a court order . . . " the memo read. "There are no exceptions to this policy. Emergency or exigent circumstances are not grounds for departures from this policy."

Under legislation passed last week by Congress, rapists who use the so-called date rape drugs to subdue their victims could get 20 years added onto their sentences. Illegal use of the two hypnotic drugs--Rohypnol and the newer gamma hydroxybutyrate (GHB)--has been on the rise in recent months. Women across the United States and in Southern California have been coming forward with harrowing stories of waking up the next morning in strange beds with strange men.

After years of decline, the number of prescription drugs used by Americans has begun to rise again as the nation's population grows older, according to a study by the Food and Drug Administration. The study, detailed in Friday's Journal of the American Medical Assn., found that Americans spent about $17.5 billion on prescription drugs in 1982. Consumers paid $14.5 billion for prescription drugs at pharmacies, up 11.7% from the previous year, while hospitals spent $3 billion, a 19% increase.

Traces of a drug used as sleeping pills and tranquilizers have been detected in all seven bodies unearthed from the yard of a downtown boardinghouse, a newspaper reported Tuesday. The Sacramento Union, citing an unidentified source, identified the drug as benzodiazepine. Valium and Dalmane are types of the drug, which can be lethal, especially when taken in combination with alcohol or a sedative.

That familiar feeling was back, the same choking mix of helplessness, depression and uncertainty. It had hit her when NATO bombed this city in 1999, and it came barreling back last week when Serbian Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic was assassinated by sharpshooters. But this time, Emina Cano-Tomic has an extra bit of support at hand: the sedatives she has been taking for the last year. "They're a great help," Cano-Tomic said candidly as she sat smoking in her cozy Belgrade living room.

A veterinary technician at a Los Angeles city animal shelter was fired last week after officials found that he had subjected dogs to inhumane treatment while euthanizing them. Manuel Boado, 64, was discharged by the city's Civil Service Commission, which concluded that he failed to sedate the dogs he was trying to euthanize, brought dogs into a room with other dead animals and inserted euthanizing needles into jugular veins — a practice officials say was not permitted. With allegations reminiscent of a Stephen King novel, case records open a rare window into the most unpleasant task carried out by the Animal Services Department — killing animals that have no owner when its shelters run out of room.

As their case against Michael Jackson's physician neared its end, prosecutors called to the stand medical experts who told jurors of the dangers of the potent surgical anesthetic used by Dr. Conrad Murray to get his famous patient to sleep. Jurors on Thursday heard from the prosecution's final witness in Murray's involuntary manslaughter trial, Dr. Steven Shafer, a leading expert on the anesthetic propofol who devised the dosing guidelines for the drug when it was first introduced.

Fentanyl must be some kind of drug. A Minneapolis nurse was reportedly so taken with the stuff that she kept most of a surgical patient's dose for herself, telling him to "man up. " The Minneapolis Star Tribune begins its account this way: "The patient screamed and writhed in agony during surgery at a Minneapolis hospital. Nurse Sarah May Casareto allegedly told him to go to his "happy place" and to "man up" because she couldn't give him more medication. Casareto had already shot herself up with some of the fentanyl she checked out for the patient, according to charges filed Wednesday.

A new queen is visiting Los Angeles this winter: The Queen Victoria ocean liner. This sedate and oh-so-British Cunard Line vessel, which called Jan. 30 in L.A., will return Feb. 13 for a four-night round trip to Ensenada, Mexico . Her other 2011 sailings from here will be longer. Among them is a 14-night round trip to Hawaii that departs Feb. 17; a 15-night Panama Canal cruise that departs March 3 and ends in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.; a 42-night cruise that extends the March 3 itinerary to other ports in the Caribbean, Portugal and other destinations, ending in England ; and another 14-night round trip to Hawaii, which departs Dec. 21. Art Sbarsky, a correspondent  for Cruise Week , an industry newsletter, who sailed on the the Queen Victoria en route to the West Coast, filed a report this week that said, in part:     "This is a decidedly classy, quiet, elegant ship that attracts an older audience with virtually no kids.

The flashy spendthrift needs his prim, conservative neighbor to bail him out. Such is the situation between debt-ridden Dubai and flush Abu Dhabi, two Persian Gulf emirates with starkly different financial strategies and temperaments that may grudgingly need each other to prevent long-term investor panic from spreading beyond the United Arab Emirates. Dubai's $80-billion debt, nearly $60 billion of it held by the investment conglomerate Dubai World, is testament to the emirate's overextended reliance on a real estate market whose fortunes tumbled in the global downturn.

Anna Nicole Smith consumed increasing amounts of a rare sleep aid in the months after her son's death, eventually drinking the powerful liquid sedative straight from the medicine bottle, her former bodyguard testified Wednesday. The drug, chloral hydrate, was cited as the primary cause of Smith's fatal overdose the following year and her bodyguard said the model often carried a bottle of the drug as she grieved for her son. "I saw her use a spoon maybe twice and after that it was bottle to mouth -- gulp," said Maurice Brighthaupt, a Miami firefighter who moonlighted as Smith's security guard.

A coroner's investigation into the Aug. 4 death of a 4-year-old Santa Ana boy after he passed out at a dental clinic has concluded, but police said Monday that it was too early to say whether it will prompt criminal charges. The results of toxicological tests on the body of Javier Villa were forwarded Monday to Santa Ana police, but detectives on the case "aren't going to comment until they go over it with a fine-tooth comb," Lt. Bob Chavez said Monday evening.

Gov. Pete Wilson signed legislation Monday to prevent insurance companies from risking their financial stability by investing heavily in so-called "junk bonds." The Republican chief executive, wading through hundreds of bills passed at the end of the legislative session, also has signed measures designed to limit the distribution of tranquilizers and sleeping pills, protect stranded motorists, and punish graffiti vandals.

Anna Nicole Smith spent the last days of her life drifting in and out of consciousness under the pale blue comforter of a king-sized hotel bed, too weak to walk, sit up or drink from anything other than a baby bottle, according to court testimony Tuesday. The description of the period preceding the supermodel's 2007 death from an overdose of a sedative and other drugs came on the opening day of a hearing to determine whether there is sufficient evidence to try two physicians and Smith's boyfriend for conspiring to illegally furnish the 39-year-old with prescription medications.

A sleepless Michael Jackson spent his last hours pleading for a dose of a powerful anesthetic, his doctor told police, according to court records unsealed Monday. For six hours, Dr. Conrad Murray said he resisted -- fearful that the pop star had developed a dangerous addiction to propofol. Instead, Murray administered the sedatives Valium, lorazepam and midazolam -- five times over six hours. But none put Jackson to sleep, and he continued to demand his "milk," the word the pop star used for propofol.