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.