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7A THE DAILY ASTORIAN • FRIDAY, JULY 28, 2017 Ocean: 614,000 Chinook salmon are expected to return this fall Continued from Page 1A The hangover Colin Murphey/The Daily Astorian Kratom is now on sale at several dispensaries in the area. The product, according to information supplied by one local dispensary, has been used for centuries in countries such as Thailand and Malaysia in ways similar to coffee to boost energy and enhance productivity. Kratom: Sales of the plant are booming Continued from Page 1A Drive and sometimes con- sumes kratom himself. “There was, at first, a lot of skepti- cism about it, but there was no actual research done proving anything.” Poison control Along with kratom’s rise in public consciousness came a jump in calls to poison con- trol centers in relation to the drug, from 26 in 2010 to 263 in 2015, according to the fed- eral Centers for Disease Con- trol and Prevention. Florance said first-time kratom users sometimes con- sume the pills in higher doses than what is typically recom- mended, which may explain the rise in CDC calls. In 2014, Portland resi- dent Susan Ash founded the American Kratom Associ- ation to promote and lobby on behalf of those who con- sume the drug. The organiza- tion jumped into its first major battle last year when the DEA announced it would list kratom as a Schedule I drug. The DEA cited 15 deaths linked to kra- tom, though only one instance likely was a direct result of consumption. The DEA argued in a post- ing to the Federal Register that the classification was “neces- sary to avoid an imminent haz- ard to the public safety.” But public backlash was swift and widespread. A petition to stop the scheduling attracted hun- dreds of thousands of signa- tures. A group of scientists wrote a letter in opposition to the ban, as did nine U.S. sen- ators — including U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Oregon — and 51 U.S. representatives — including U.S. Rep. Suzanne Bonamici, D-Oregon. Help for illnesses Anita Baldwin, who works at the Clatskanie Smoke Shop, was told by doctors in May 2016 she had a neuroendo- crine tumor. Most commonly located in the intestines, the cancer can lead to symptoms such as diarrhea, wheezing and abdominal cramping. Baldwin said she would regularly wake up in the mid- dle of the night and need to use the restroom for three to four hours at a time. The constant pain and lack of sleep caused high anxiety, leading her to take five to six decreasingly effective Vicodin pills a day. “I can’t explain what I was going through,” Baldwin said. Baldwin started working at the smoke shop in Octo- ber. Shortly after, a customer walked into the store and told her about kratom. Willing to try any rem- edy, she sampled the drug but was unimpressed. She did not feel any of the effects she had heard about because she mixed it with the Vicodin she had already ingested. But after continued use without the Vicodin, Bald- win said she became much more perky and the pain sub- sided dramatically. An oncolo- gist even told her after a test to keep doing whatever she was recently doing to relieve pain. “It’s completely changed my life,” Baldwin said. Colin Murphey/The Daily Astorian According to information supplied by one local dis- pensary, the leaves of the kratom tree were chewed or steeped as tea in coun- tries like Malaysia and Thai- land. In Clatsop County, the product is sold in pill form. At Baldwin’s urging, the smoke shop began selling kra- tom three months ago. Since then, daily sales at the shop have more than doubled, Bald- win said. “As soon as people heard we were selling this prod- uct, they came flocking to the store,” she said. “I was com- pletely blown away. Baldwin said she soon will switch jobs to work for a kra- tom distributor in the Portland metro area. Legal to sell Warrenton Police Chief Mathew Workman said he was concerned about the abuse of kratom, but he acknowledged that stores have the legal abil- ity to sell the product. “The problem is people are also using it as a recre- ational drug and not in proper amounts,” he said. “People get a false sense of security by thinking, ‘If it’s natural, how can it hurt you?’” Earlier this year, the police chief sent an officer to a local convenience store that sells kratom to ensure the owner was aware of the department’s concerns. The owner had a sur- prising response. “He told us he’d go out of business if he stopped selling it,” Workman said. “There’s a lot of things I’d rather conve- nience stores not sell.” Clatsop County District Attorney Josh Marquis said the plant is considered a drug by law enforcement. Like being under the influence of Benad- ryl or a high-caffeine drink, drivers can be charged with driving under the influence of intoxicants if it is determined that kratom affected their abil- ities to operate a vehicle. Marquis noted at least one ongoing case in Clatsop County in which someone has been charged with a DUII after consuming kratom. Earlier this year, the state Legislature began a process that could place Oregon along- side a handful of states that have banned possession or consumption of the plant. A state Senate bill would direct the state Board of Phar- macy to study whether or not kratom should be scheduled as a controlled substance. The bill was still being examined by the Senate Committee on Judiciary when the Legislature adjourned earlier this month. For the time being, though, kratom sales are booming. “I’ll be surprised if it stays that way,” Marquis said. “There will probably be some pushback on it.” Hospital: 1,800 radiation therapy visits expected Continued from Page 1A Michael Przibilla, one of three engineers with FES Med- ical Australia contracted to help put together the Versa HD at the hospital, said the accel- erator can use up to 18 mil- lion volts of electricity during treatment, putting out a radia- tion beam at nearly the speed of light. The Versa HD includes 160 metal leaves that move to con- form the shape of the beam to the contours of a patient’s tumor, while a specialized, moving couch lifts and turns patients for treatment. The machine specializes in high dosages, which means less time a patient has to remain motionless, and less poten- tial for damage to surrounding health tissues. James Tanyi, a clinical associate professor in OHSU’s Radiation Medicine Depart- ment overseeing testing of the Versa HD, said patients are scanned in advance, after which a customized radiation treatment plan is created to maximize treatment and mini- mize the impact on healthy tis- sues surrounding a tumor. By all accounts, 2017 should have been a good year for salmon and other fish off the Oregon and Washington state coast. After two years of abnormally warm oceans, the region had a long, cold, rainy winter and the water was finally cooling. Upwell- ing had brought important nutrients — food — to the surface. Instead, researchers have seen the opposite. Early salmon runs came in below predictions; strange gelatinous creatures called pyrosomes appeared in unprecedented numbers, clogging fishing nets; and there are Zamon’s missing birds. Researchers are still combing through data they collected in June, comparing it with what groups up and down the West Coast are see- ing, but they have a theory: The past is still present. The years of the Blob — a mass of warm water that persisted off the West Coast from 2013 to 2016 — of drought, of the largest El Nino recorded are gone, but the ocean and its creatures might still be reeling. It’s as if, suggested Elizabeth Daly, a senior faculty research assistant with the Cooperative Insti- tute for Marine Resource Studies, the ocean has been on a bender for the last two years and 2017 is the hangover. Buoy 10 In the last few years, record or near-record runs of salmon returned to the Columbia River. This fall, a total of 614,000 Chinook are expected to return to the river, slightly less than what came in last year. The Buoy 10 recreational fishery that opens Tues- day will be the first fishery to encounter these salmon. Beyond the Chinook return, the numbers for other runs are mixed. Low expected returns of summer steelhead will color how the Buoy 10 fishery rolls out as fishery managers try to reduce the take of these fish. Daly and other research- ers from Oregon State Uni- versity and NOAA predicted that 2015’s historically poor ocean conditions would affect migrating yearling fish, the same fish that com- prised the bulk of this year’s returning spring adult Chi- nook salmon. In 2015, the young salmon entering the ocean for the first time were much smaller and thinner than usual. “It’s inevitable that returns were going to come down,” said John North, Columbia River fisheries manager for the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife. The shocking thing was to have had three big salmon years in a row, North said. To get one or two is not unusual. “But to get three in a row is pretty impressive.” Strange years But even as the Colum- bia River saw huge Chinook returns in past fall runs, peo- ple recorded rare sightings and unexpected declines. Humpbacks breached in the Columbia River estuary in 2015 and have been regu- lar visitors in the years since. That same year there were sightings of the massive, bullet-shaped mola mola, or ocean sunfish — rare this far north. Skinny coho and Chi- nook foraged for food off the Oregon and Washington state coasts. In Alaska, 3-year- old adult sockeye were extremely small and Oregon and Washington state saw the lowest coho returns since the 1990s. In 2016, lobster-like pelagic crabs more at home near the equator landed in Oregon. The Fraser River saw the highest return of chum salmon in 20 years but record low returns of sock- eye. Then in 2017, just when everyone thought conditions might be returning to nor- mal: pyrosomes, another ani- mal more common in warm water, were everywhere. Big picture Zamon finished crunch- ing her numbers recently for the birds: This year the shearwater numbers were the fourth lowest she’s recorded in 13 years and she has never recorded such low numbers of common murres. She saw the most birds — 97 percent of the shearwa- ters she recorded — between Washington’s Willapa Bay and Grays Harbor. This is also where the research- ers were seeing the most anchovies. She believes lack of food in the area, as well as some disturbance from bald eagles, could be driving the birds elsewhere. This type of information and the 2017 salmon runs are just the first reports back, said Laurie Weitkamp, a fish- eries biologist with NOAA. She and others expect the coming years will reveal even more about just how bad things were in ocean in the last three years. Crab off the Oregon and Washington state coasts are usually 4 years old when they are harvested, she said. So the crab that were born during the years of the Blob are about 2 years old now. “It’s going to be another two years before we really find out what happened,” Weitkamp said. And the ocean is a big place with many factors at play. Things no one expects to happen occur constantly. This year it’s pyrosomes. In 2009, it was an invasion of Humboldt squid. “More than anything,” Weitkamp said, “you don’t understand how a system works if it’s more or less the same every year. If you shake it up hard” — and the past three years have made for some strong convulsions — “you learn a lot. If you’re paying attention.” Store: Location will have health coach working on-site Continued from Page 1A Colin Murphey/The Daily Astorian Michael Przibilla explains how the linear particle accelerator at the new cancer center at Columbia Memorial Hospital will work to treat cancer patients when the center opens. Przibilla was one of three engineers contracted by the company that built the $3 million machine to install it at the cancer center. Kyle Gallagher, a medi- cal physicist and dosimetrist employed by OHSU, will pro- gram the linear accelerator to create a targeted radiation therapy based on the treatment plan from a radiation oncolo- gist. He said the cancer cen- ter will start with more basic cases such as brain, prostate and breast cancer and add fea- tures and more advanced treat- ment as time goes on. The cancer center is planned to open in the fall, offering radiation and expanded che- motherapy infusions. The hos- pital expects 1,800 radiation therapy visits after the first year of operation at the cancer center. store Payless shuttered hun- dreds of locations nation- wide earlier this year, includ- ing one at Youngs Bay Plaza. Clothing store Maurice’s relocated to the North Coast Retail Center. Former tenants Wauna Federal Credit Union and Gannaway Brothers Jewelry also moved to newer buildings. Started in Colorado, Nat- ural Grocers has more than 140 locations nationwide, including nine others in Ore- gon. Krystal Covington, a spokeswoman for Natural Grocers, said the store usu- ally hires around 18 people at each location. She said the grocer stands out by selling only organic produce, free-range eggs, pasture-raised dairy and naturally raised beef. The store doesn’t carry bags, but donates 5 cents to the local food bank each time a cus- tomer brings their own, while also providing used boxes for customers to take groceries home. Covington said the store will also have a health coach working on-site and in the community organizing nutri- tion classes and working with people on their health goals.
