Man Used Heroin, Passed Out While Driving On Beltline

Madison police said a man used heroin and then lost consciousness soon after while he was driving on the Beltline Tuesday afternoon.
Police said Thabang M. Lowe, 29, of Madison, had reportedly shot heroin with a 28-year-old Middleton woman and was driving a Lincoln Continental westbound on the busy West Beltline Highway, nearing the Verona Road exit, when he lost consciousness just before 3 p.m. Tuesday.
As the driver went down, the car accelerated.
The Middleton woman, who was a passenger in the car, reached over and pulled his foot away from the gas pedal, police said.
She put the car in neutral, grabbed the steering wheel and pulled the car over to the shoulder, where it slowly came to a stop, according to Madison police.
Madison Fire Department paramedics arrived to provide aid to the driver.
Officers recovered needles and other drug paraphernalia, Madison police said.
Lowe was arrested on charges of third-offense driving while under the influence, operating while revoked and on a warrant.

 

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poppy fields flourish in Mexico, heroin use surges in U.S.

Mexico's heroin industry has had a bullish few years, and for traffickers the outlook is as uplifting as the scarlet, orange and yellow poppy flowers from which the narcotic is processed.
What was once a problem largely confined to hubs in California and Texas, Mexican traffickers have expanded into the Midwest and the Atlantic Seaboard, narcotics experts say.
Using savvy marketing tactics, they've also repositioned heroin commercially, revamping its image from the inner-city drug of yore, with its junkies and needles, into a narcotic that can be snorted or smoked, appealing to suburban and even rural high school youth.

A coincidental factor has given the drug gangs a tail wind: The epidemic abuse of painkillers has ebbed in the United States, and youth now hunger for a cheaper high.
"We've heard around the country of changes away from prescription drugs, because they are either more expensive or more difficult to obtain, and a movement toward heroin, which is less costly," said Gil Kerlikowske, a former Seattle police chief who's the White House drug czar.
The U.S. State Department said in March that Mexico has surpassed Myanmar as the world's second largest poppy cultivator and produces 7 percent of the world's heroin, mostly for the U.S. market. The State Department and the United Nations say that Mexican poppy production has nearly tripled since 2007, though Mexico strongly disputes that estimate.
What's indisputable is that drug syndicates that produce black tar and brown heroin in Mexico's Sierra Madre mountains are pushing aggressively into areas where they haven't been active before.
Teenagers in Albuquerque, N.M., Milwaukie, Ore., Fenton, Mich., Troy, Ill., La Porte, Ind., and Mentor, Ohio, have died from apparent heroin overdoses in the past nine months. Law enforcement officials warn that heroin has gained a foothold in suburban Atlanta and is the fastest-growing drug in northern Ohio. Prosecutors indicted 20 people in Toledo on May 10 on charges of conspiring to bring Mexican heroin to the city.
A police detective told Charlotte, N.C., council members this week that the city ranks No. 5 among U.S. cities in black tar heroin use.
"You've had a couple of selected cartels move forward very aggressively into the Eastern United States," said Dave Gaddis, a former chief of operations for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration who left the DEA in April and now heads a security consulting firm, G-Global Protection Solutions.
Even in the Western United States, where Mexican heroin has been present for decades, law enforcement officials say they're seeing more of it than ever before.
"The heroin numbers have skyrocketed," said William Ruzzamenti, a former federal anti-narcotics agent who now heads a federally funded regional drug task force in California's Central Valley. "Just in our little area, we've already surpassed all seizures from last year, and we're not even to July yet."
At about $15 a hit, heroin is a lot cheaper than prescription painkillers such as oxycodone (known by its brand name, OxyContin), which can cost $50 to $80 a tablet on the black market. Both opiates, they have similar highs.
The U.S. government once was enthusiastic about bringing poppy to Mexico. During World War II, it encouraged Mexico to plant the opiate-producing flowering plant to ease a shortage of morphine for wounded U.S. soldiers.
Afterward, the poppy stayed in the Sierra Madres of western Mexico. It now stretches from the mountainous junction of Sinaloa, Chihuahua and Durango states in the north down into Nayarit, Michoacan, Guerrero and Oaxaca states.
For decades, less-refined Mexican heroin was a poor cousin to white Asian heroin, and later Colombian heroin. Mexico's black tar heroin gets its name from its dark color and gooey consistency, caused by less-exacting processing. By the 1990s, Mexican traffickers saw opportunity passing them by and took action to catch up.
"They brought in experts, chemists, folks from Asia who taught them how to produce better heroin," said a U.S. law enforcement official based in Mexico City, who spoke only on the condition of anonymity for security reasons. "You saw purity levels climb from 40 to 50 percent up to 90 percent."
He said Mexican heroin now might hold two-thirds of the U.S. market.
"You're seeing it everywhere. It's cheap. The market base is teenagers. They are the target consumers," the official said.
Poppy grows best in warm, temperate climates with low humidity. In Colombia and Mexico, it's cultivated on steep mountain slopes. Poppy fields need irrigation, yet a heavy rainstorm can wipe them out.
"The less sun that hits the poppy plant, the better," said Col. Dante Castillo Calleja, a Mexican army officer who escorted a reporter and a photographer deep into the mountains of Guerrero state to observe soldiers eradicating poppy fields.
Hovering at the edge of a sloping field shrouded in late-afternoon mist, Castillo plucked a poppy to demonstrate the walnut-sized seedpod that contains the latex precious to narcotics traffickers.
"You need a delicate hand to do this," he said, demonstrating how poppy farmers score the seedpods with light incisions, returning after a few hours to wipe away the latex that oozes out. "They often use children to make the incisions. Also women."
Soldiers whacked the brittle poppy stalks with sticks, knocking them flat, while others used machetes to destroy hoses set up as an impromptu irrigation system from a nearby stream.
Guerrero state, which is perhaps best known for the tourist beach resort Acapulco, has among the densest concentration of poppy in Mexico, and the prosperity of the drug trade is evident. Even along remote dirt roads, most houses have satellite dishes on their roofs and recreational all-terrain vehicles parked out front. Farmers ride the vehicles to poppy fields deep in the mountains.
"The peasant farmers get ahead but those who really profit are the middlemen and the owners of the labs," Castillo said.
Despite a broad military presence in the region, the army hasn't destroyed any of the simple field laboratories that can turn the latex gum first into opium, then morphine and finally heroin.
"We haven't found a single laboratory," said Brig. Gen. Benito Medina Herrera, the top military officer in this western region of Guerrero. Asked where the laboratories were, he said: "In Cuernavaca, in the capital, in the United States."
No matter where the heroin labs are, smugglers who take the narcotic across the United States are growing bolder in their tactics. Smuggling vehicles sometimes work in tandem with decoy trailing vehicles, Ruzzamenti said.
When police spot a suspicious car, "the trail vehicles will intercede to get the police to go after them. They'll ram the police car or race by it at 100 miles an hour," he said. "We've even had them shoot at the police."

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Drug addicts are being prescribed heroin on the NHS across London, a BBC investigation has revealed.


There has been a long-running public debate about whether addicts should be widely offered the drug.

Supporters say prescribing diamorphine - pure heroin - stops them committing crime to feed their habit.

They argue a regular supply of pure heroin means addicts can build a stable life and find employment.

In January, Health Minister Anne Milton told Parliament: "The Drugs Strategy sets out the coalition government's commitment to continue to examine the role of diamorphine prescribing for the small number who may benefit.

"We will set out plans in due course."


You don't get someone off drugs by giving them drugs”

Ann Widdecombe
But the BBC has used Freedom of Information requests to all of London's primary care trusts to establish that heroin is already being prescribed across the city - and not just in medical trials.

In exceptional cases, doctors can already gain special approval from the Home Office to issue heroin to addicts.

In the past three years almost 120 addicts have been provided with heroin in this way in London and it was prescribed in 10 of the city's 32 boroughs.

The BBC has learned doctors even have the power to prescribe cocaine, although this is rare.

Some people said they were disappointed with the news.

Former Conservative frontbencher Ann Widdecombe said: "My concern about giving heroin to addicts is you are not tackling the route cause of their problems.

"You don't get someone off drugs by giving them drugs.

"You remove the danger of dirty needles - but not the addiction."

'Costs huge amounts'
Dr Adrian Rogers, a retired GP, said he believed an addict's addiction should never be maintained "in any shape or form".

"The only thing you should offer is detoxification," he said.

"Drugs prevention has grown into a massive industry - costing the taxpayer huge amounts."

He added: "I feel terribly sorry for addicts, but I don't believe they should have drugs provided by the taxpayer."



It costs the NHS about £14,000 to maintain an addict on heroin for a year.

Supporters of heroin prescription say this is dwarfed by the cost of crime users might otherwise commit. Experts have estimated an addict spends £45,000-a-year on average on street heroin.

In 2000, Pauline Holcroft's daughter Rachel Whitear died at the age of 21 from a heroin overdose.

The case hit the headlines when her parents released photographs of the dead student to warn others.

Mrs Holcroft said she "had no idea" that heroin was being prescribed to addicts.

She said: "I thought they could only prescribe methadone.

"It seems to me this has been kept quiet.

Life is not just about drugs - it's about a sunny day, lying in the grass with someone you love”

Dr Costas Agath
"When Rachel's case became public we went to see see clinics [shooting galleries] in Amsterdam - I didn't think it happened here too."

Mrs Holcroft said she supported the idea.

She said: "If my daughter had to use heroin I'd have preferred it in hospital, supervised properly along with a programme to get her off it. I can only see it as helpful.

"Methadone [the most common heroin substitute] does not seem to help.

"In many cases people prescribed methadone go and buy heroin anyway."

Mrs Holcroft added: "I wish Rachel had been given that opportunity."

Addicts prescribed heroin must take it under medical supervision several times a day.

Dr Costas Agath, a Westminster-based practitioner who prescribes heroin to addicts, said: "When people withdraw from heroin they're in a very bad state.


Methadone is a common heroin substitute
"They sweat, throw up, have muscle cramps and diarrhoea - the last thing they can do is focus on recovery.

"The medication helps them regain control over their body."

He continued: "If people don't have these symptoms they can see the way forward more clearly.

"They see the importance of good relationships or employment.

"It helps them realise life is not just about drugs - it's about a sunny day, lying in the grass with someone you love."

The charity DrugScope said prescribing heroin was useful in serious cases.

Chief executive Martin Barnes said: "It can stabilise someone's drug use, achieve positive health outcomes and reduce crime.

"It can put someone on the path to becoming drug-free."

He added: "This is not a heroin free-for-all."

The Department of Health said its position had not changed since the minister's January statement.

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Customs agents at John F. Kennedy Airport found nearly five pounds of cocaine concealed in the soles of sneakers packed in abandoned luggage last week

Customs agents at John F. Kennedy Airport found nearly five pounds of cocaine concealed in the soles of sneakers packed in abandoned luggage last week, Customs and Border Protection Officers said Monday.


The drugs were discovered Thursday when agents were examining leftover luggage that had arrived from the Dominican Republic, authorities said.
The officers discovered the sneakers inside a suitcase, and finding them unusually heavy, examined them more thoroughly.
They found white powdery substance inside, which tested positive for cocaine.
The drugs had a street value of over $107,000, officials said.
It wasn't clear whether the luggage had been abandoned first or whether the owner decided to leave the luggage after sensing agents may have discovered the drugs.
A Customs spokesman

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form of flesh-eating cocaine has afflicted drug users in New York and Los Angeles, causing purple areas of dying flesh.



Cocaine that has been cut with the veterinary drug levamisole appears to be the cause of a grotesque disease that causes patches of dead skin on the ears, noses and cheeks of victims. How revolting! Outbreaks due to flesh-eating cocaine have been reported in both New York and Los Angeles, and according to Dr. Noah Craft of the Los Angeles Biomedical Research Institute, the problem is likely much more widespread. Cocaine may be popular among celebrities and stars, but patches of rotting flesh are not especially attractive.

Dealers commonly cut cocaine with various substances such as baking soda before it is sold to end users, and South American drug cartels are apparently favoring the use of lavamisole for this purpose. Levamisole is a veterinary drug that is used to kill worms in pigs, sheep and cattle. It seems strange that anyone would choose this to mix with cocaine, since baking soda would be much cheaper and easier. However, some research shows that levamisole has an effect on brain receptors similar to that of cocaine, so maybe they figure it will give the cocaine an extra kick.

Although it doesn't seem to affect everyone in the same way, recreational drug users should beware: You never know what is going up your nose, and it could have dire consequences.

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Levamisole has been found in both powder and crack cocaine in the Los Angeles area.

Potential cocaine users are being warned of unexpected side effects because of a cutting agent that's being used in the illegal drug.

Steuben County Sheriff Joel Ordway advised in a news release that a Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology indicates that patients have been visiting emergency rooms complaining of purple blotches on their ears and other areas after using cocaine.

Doctors described, in a June 7 paper, four cases at the University of Rochester Medical School of patients suffering a similar reaction to the veterinary medication levamisole, which is a livestock de-worming drug.

Levamisole is becoming a common cut for cocaine to increase the product, according to Ordway's statement, and dealers find that it is similar to cocaine because it also increases the level of dopamine to the brain.

Dr. Noah Craft, one of the study's authors, said the patients' blotches turn from pink to purple and, once the skin has died, to black, according to Ordway's statement.

Usually these marks are on ears, mouth and cheeks.

In some cases, patients also develop a potentially fatal condition affecting their bone marrow and leaving them vulnerable to infection, according to the statement.

Levamisole has been found in both powder and crack cocaine in the Los Angeles area.

"With over 75 percent of our cocaine coming from the Rochester area, users should be concerned by the four recent cases reported in Rochester," Ordway said in the statement. "Better yet, stop using cocaine."

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Neurosurgeon Dr Suresh Surendranath Nair is charged with supplying drugs to sex worker Suellen Domingues Zaupa who was found dead in his apartment in 2009

LEADING Australian neurosurgeon has praised his former colleague, Suresh Nair, who had two escorts die in his apartment from cocaine overdoses, admitting he was "a bit odd" but a "peaceful sort of soul".

Dr Charles Teo, from the Prince of Wales Hospital in Sydney, today gave evidence at a sentencing hearing for Nair, 42, who last year pleaded guilty to the manslaughter of escort Suellen Domingues-Zaupa, who died at his Elizabeth Bay home in September 2009.

Nair also pleaded guilty to two drug supply charges, one of which was related to another escort, Victoria McIntyre, who died after taking cocaine at his apartment in February 2009.

Dr Teo and Nair worked together in 2000 forming a "very close bond". Dr Teo has visited Nair twice since he was remanded in jail.

"When you first meet him, he's a bit odd, he has an odd personality," Dr Teo told Downing Centre District Court today.




"(He's) a little bit awkward socially . . . difficult to communicate with . . he doesn't wear his his heart on his sleeve . . . so it's hard to break the barrier and get to know him.

"But get through the barrier and I have nothing but good things to say about him . . . a fine person, a good character, a big heart, a peaceful sort of soul."

Dr Teo told sentencing judge Robert Toner that Nair was "very remorseful" about the two women's deaths and had a "great insight" into his substance abuse problem.

He said he first became aware of Nair's cocaine problem in January last year, but that he didn't believe his colleague would attend work at Nepean Hospital while under the influence of drugs because he would never "compromise his patients' care".

If he learned otherwise, Dr Teo said, "I wouldn't have the same opinion of him."

"I hold my colleagues to a very high standard. I would never support that."

Dr Teo said neurosurgery was a demanding job that required doctors to be "physically and emotionally intact" and because of this "highly stressed vocation" about 10 per cent were treated for depression, while others sought relief in illicit substances.

Dr Teo said that because of his "public profile" his friends and family warned him not to speak out on Nair's behalf in such a "controversial case".

The hearing continues.

 

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Alarm sounded over black tar heroin use Cartels find market among young and rich

The escalation of black tar heroin in Charlotte has police worried about growing addiction and dangers for young people.

"It's as serious as the beginning of the crack cocaine epidemic," said UNC Charlotte criminal justice professor Paul Friday. "And the reason it is serious is because it can expand so quickly."

Friday spoke to the Charlotte City Council on Monday, warning about increasing use of the highly addictive drug that seems particularly prevalent in affluent areas and among young people. He was joined by Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police, who told council members that suppliers are Mexican-based cartels that operate as efficiently as a business.

"We take a cell off the street and oftentimes, they'll make another cell in the next five days because they're at the bottoms of the distribution chain," Maj. Glen Neimeyer said at a Tuesday press conference.

Neimeyer said users are typically educated, mostly white and from areas of Charlotte where crime is not prevalent.

Black-tar heroin, made from poppies primarily grown in western Mexico, gets its name from its color and texture. Police provided no statistics this week, but attribute the drug's rise to its relatively cheap price and the well-run supply networks.

Ten years ago, doctors at CMC-Mercy rarely saw a patient addicted to black tar heroin in its detoxification program. Now 40 percent of their patients are being treated for abuse of black tar heroin and related prescription drug abuse, said Robert Martin, the hospital's director of the substance abuse services.

The hospital compiled a breakdown by zip code of where 128 black tar patients lived.

"Do you know zip code 28105?" Martin said. "That's like a really nice area of Matthews and it has 19 of the 128."

The second-highest number of patients came from Mint Hill.

It's common for patients to take between three and nine doses a day, Martin said.

At $9 a dose, usually delivered in small balloons, it would cost an addict $16,400 a year if he or she purchased five balloons a day.

"The kids that we're seeing have disposable incomes," he said. "You have to have money to have opiate dependency because if you don't use, you're going to go into withdrawal."

Police say the Mexican drug organizations are sophisticated operations with managers and distribution supervisors. They have strict rules and keep detailed budgets, including planning for annual losses.

In February, Candelario Gonzalez Rivera was sentenced to 12 years in prison for his role in a major black tar heroin operation in Charlotte.

Federal officials say Gonzalez, known as "Juancho," was a leader of a Mexican-based drug trafficking group that distributed thousands of doses of black tar heroin throughout the region.

According to the U.S. Attorney in Charlotte, Gonzalez was arrested in possession of more than $50,000 in cash, hundreds of balloons used to package heroin, and two firearms.

Friday is working to help study the problem with the federal High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area Program in North Carolina.

He says traffickers like Gonzalez are targeting young people from private schools.

One tactic is to sell them marijuana laced with heroin. The hope is that the student will become addicted.

"Then," Friday said, "they'll come back and get the real thing."

Friday said users often become addicted after abusing prescription painkillers like OxyContin and hydrocodone.

"Kids with scholarships to college, who are from good families, these are the kids who have been targeted. The parents of those kids need to wake up."

 

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new designer drug called krokodil -- a derivative of morphine that can turn an addict's skin greenish, scaly and cause it to rot away

new designer drug called krokodil -- a derivative of morphine that can turn an addict's skin greenish, scaly and cause it to rot away -- is being eyed by officials at the Drug Enforcement Administration, FoxNews.com has learned.

"We're looking at it overseas, but we have not seen it yet in the U.S.," DEA spokesman Rusty Payne told FoxNews.com. "But we would not be surprised when that day comes."

Thus far, users of krokodil -- or desomorphine -- have only been found in large numbers in Russia, where 65 million doses of the opiate have been seized during the first three months of this year alone, Russia's Federal Drug Control Service told Time.


To produce the potentially deadly drug, which has a comparable effect to heroin but is much cheaper to make, users mix codeine with gasoline, paint thinner, iodine, hydrochloric acid and red phosphorous. Codeine, a controlled substance in the United States used to treat mild to moderate pain, is widely available over the counter in Russia.

In 2010, up to a million people, according to various estimates, were injecting the resulting substance into their veins in Russia, thus far the only country worldwide to see it grow into an epidemic, Time reports.

The drug's sinister nickname -- also known as crocodile -- refers to the greenish and scaly appearance of a user's skin at the site of injection as blood vessels rupture and cause surrounding tissues to die. According to reports, the drug first appeared in Siberia and parts of Russia around 2002, but has spread throughout the country in recent years.

Officials at the Washington-based National Institute on Drug Abuse told FoxNews.com that they had not heard of the drug prior to Tuesday's inquiry by FoxNews.com.

Dr. Ellen Marmur, chief of dermatological and cosmetic surgery at the Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York City, told FoxNews.com she had never seen any cases involving krokodil, but said it reminded her of "skin popping," or when intravenous drug users inject a substance directly into their skin due to damaged veins.

"This looks to me a lot like skin popping, what drug users used to do back in the day with heroin and other drugs," Marmur said. "It just kills the skin, that's what you're seeing, big dead pieces of skin."

Those large pieces of dead skin are referred to as eschars, Marmur said, leaving the user prone to infection, amputation and other complications.

Marmur said she was concerned that the drug could eventually make its way into the United States.

"It's horrible," she continued. "These people are the ultimate in self-destructive drug addiction. Once you're an addict at this level, any rational thinking doesn't apply."

Dr. Lewis Nelson, a medical toxicologist at Bellevue Hospital Center in New York, said he doubts krokodil will reach the United States due to the availability of other cheap, powerful drugs such as black tar heroin and Oxycontin.

"It's not going to become a club drug, I can guarantee you that," he said.

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US gambler spent £120,000 on a 30 litre bottle of champagne at a London club, the most expensive ever.

Don Johnson, a professional gambler and businessman, chalked up a £168,118 bill when he paid a visit to Park Lane's OneForOne nightclub on Sunday night.
However, according to a friend, the 49-year-old bon viveur - known as The Champagne King - doesn't even like the taste of champagne.
Mr Johnson, who was in town visiting rock star pal Bon Jovi, heard the nightclub had recently commissioned the biggest bottle of champagne ever made, the Armand De Brignac Midas - equivalent to 40 regular bottles which weighs 45kg.
After polishing off a £25,000 six litre bottle of champage, Johnson moved on to the mammoth Midas, taking up a microphone and whipping the club into a frenzy.
Nik Krasniqi, floor manager at the £950-a-year members club, said: "Everyone was gathered round his table and he was on the microphone singing Bon Jovi songs, screaming I love London.

"He was hugging the bottle and everyone in the club was going wild.
"When he left, the ceiling, the floor and everyone in the club was covered in champagne.
"His goal is to be the biggest spender ever in nightclubs all over the world.
"He is in Vegas and he wanted to do it in London.
"He likes to party very, very hard. He had the microphone and was screaming Don Mother Fucking Johnson over and over."
Johnson's lifestyle manager, Sophie Raibin, said along with champagne, the millionaire loves to shower people with his generosity.
She said: "The last time Don was in London he spent more than £100,000 in a week.
"This time he did it on one night.
"He has spent millions of pounds on champagne in his life, he gives away and just wants people to have fun.
"He doesn't like to drink champagne, although he had quite a lot to drink last night.
"He's not acquired the taste, he prefers to drink vodka.
"His favourite thing is the microphone, he is known for it and he loves it.
"He is very good at getting a crowd going. You've got to see it to believe it."
Sophie said the enormous bottle proved difficult to get into after the cork snapped twice.
Sophie said: "In the end we had to get some pliers to get it out.
"It took a while but when it opened it went everywhere, every single person in the room was sprayed.
"The crowd went ballistic I've never seen anything like it."
The previous record for most expensive bottle of champagne sold at One for One was held by the Armand De Brignac (Ace of Spades) Nebuchadnezzar, a 15 litre bottle, which was bought by an anonymous customer for £80,000.

 

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Smoking tube passenger decapitated after falling onto tracks

It is thought the 52-year-old intended to smoke in the gap between the carriages to avoid attention, but only succeeded in falling onto the tracks.
He was dragged along by the Metropolitan line train between Chorleywood, Hertfordshire, and Chesham, Buckinghamshire, at around 1.30am on Saturday.
His body was removed near Chalfont Latimer Station, Bucks, when officials were alerted and cut the power.
A tube worker on the train at the time told The Sun: 'A passenger was smoking between the carriages. He slipped and fell on to the tracks while the train was moving at 50mph. He was decapitated.
'This shows just how dangerous messing around between the carriages is.'
British Transport Police confirmed a man had died after falling between two carriages on the train.

 

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Tobacco giant Philip Morris is threatening to take the Australian Government to an international court over plain packaging legislation.

Tobacco giant Philip Morris has initiated legal action over the Australian Government's plans to introduce plain cigarette packaging.

The company is threatening to take the Australian Government to an international court and says that removing brands from cigarette packs will lower the value of its trademark and intellectual property.

The federal Health Minister says the Government can withstand an attack from big tobacco, but legal experts say this is just the start of a global legal campaign.

John Stewart reports.

JOHN STEWART, REPORTER: Plain cigarette packaging is due to be phased into Australia from January 2012. It's a world first and the tobacco industry wants to stop it.

Philip Morris Asia says the new laws will breach Australia's investment treaty with Hong Kong, where the company is based. It argues that removing brands from packages will take away its intellectual property and unfairly reduce its cigarette prices and profits.

ANNE EDWARDS, PHILIP MORRIS: I think most people know that brands have value; it's essentially the same thing, anybody walks into the supermarket, you can choose between generic brands are brands with brands.

Everybody knows that generic brands are cheaper. And brands really do have value, and that's why we're pressing forth with this.

JOHN STEWART: The federal Health Minister says the Government is not intimidated by the legal challenge and that international laws allow nations to act in the interest of public health.

NICOLA ROXON, HEALTH MINISTER: The World Health Organisation makes clear and recommends in its tobacco control convention that states should consider taking this step of introducing plain packaging for the sale of tobacco products.

JOHN STEWART: The legal action by Philip Morris opens up a three-month negotiation period between the two sides. If that fails, an international court will hear the company's compensation claim.

ANNE EDWARDS: We estimate that it would be - it may be in the billions. We haven't got a final figure yet and ultimately it's going to be up to the UN trade law court that will hear this.

JOHN STEWART: The dean of Law at Sydney University, Professor Gillian Triggs, says the size of the cigarette market in Australia is tiny compared to other parts of the world and that Philip Morris is more concerned about other countries following Australia's lead.

GILLIAN TRIGGS, DEAN OF LAW, SYDNEY UNIVERSITY: Yes, it is a global matter because they are protecting their intellectual property and the brand globally in very big markets - China, Indonesia, India, Vietnam and other parts of the world, the Middle East, and parts of Latin America.

So, if they were to lose the fight - if they were to lose on the basis that Australia can impose its own health policy in this area, then that is a profound threat to their capacity to market the brand in other jurisdictions.

JOHN STEWART: Philip Morris has also launched a legal challenge against the small South American country of Uruguay for damaging its business prospects. Uruguay has a population of just three and a half million people and is a relatively tiny cigarette market, but it’s been tough on smoking and has placed health warnings on cigarette packs.

GILLIAN TRIGGS: They are currently bringing a very similar action against Uruguay on the basis of a similar treaty, a bilateral investment treaty in that case between Switzerland and Uruguay. But the argument is broadly the same.

JOHN STEWART: Other cigarette companies are also considering taking legal action against the Australian Government, but some legal experts see a problem with Philip Morris' challenge.

DON ROTHWELL, ANU: Philip Morris would have to be able to indicate that they are suffering damage or detriment as a result of the actions of the Australian Government through the enactment of legislation, and I don't believe that at this point in time they can conclusively point to that.

GILLIAN TRIGGS: I think the better part of this global debate is going to be that health policy will trump the rights to intellectual property protection and branding in this case.

JOHN STEWART: The new plain packaging legislation is due to be introduced into Parliament next month.

 

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Fox crime clan are evicted from home in east end of Glasgow

A  crime family have been evicted from the lhouse they used to run their drugs empire.
The Fox family have been dealing in Glasgow's east end and  Calton area since the 1980s.
In tenement block, the only flat still occupied was that of the Fox clan.
But yesterday afternoon authorities were finally able to evict Jean Fox.
One local, who refused to be named, said: "We can only hope that this will finally bring an end to the misery that lot have inflicted on the people in this street for years."
Workers from Thenew Housing Association fitted metal barricades to the outer doors before entering the flat which had been home to the crooked clan's most recent operations.
Most of Jean's furniture and belongings had already been removed but some signs of the criminal enterprise remained.
A broken Samurai sword lay on the living room floor ans two 10in meat cleavers and a baseball bat were hidden in other rooms and a replica gun and a walkie talkie handset were dumped nearby.
As the eviction team left the building, members of the Fox family raced up and down the narrow road in their gleaming, top-of-the-range motors.
Jean's brothers - John, Peter, Andrew and Billy - started out as car thieves. Her sister Irene was a prolific shoplifter.
The family drugs trade was started in the 80s by dad Ronnie Snr and mum Ena. Both have since died.
In 2007, the Record exposed Irene, John and Andrew all peddling drugs from flats in the block Jean was yesterday evicted from.
Last night, a spokesman for Thenew Housing Association said: "Eviction is always a last resort but in this case the removal of this tenant is entirely justified and essential."

 

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Members of Ventura and Santa Barbara county gangs have been sentenced to lengthy federal prison terms for methamphetamine trafficking.



U.S. District Court spokesman Thom Mrozek says 24-year-old David Michael Jiminez of Carpinteria was sentenced Monday to more than 15 years in prison after pleading guilty to a methamphetamine trafficking conspiracy charge.

A federal judge also sentenced 37-year-old Juan Duran Rivas and 35-year-old Jose Anthony Rivas, brothers who led Oxnard gangs, to 10 years each after they pleaded guilty to conspiracy and distribution of methamphetamine.

Mrozek says the trio was snared during Operation Peaceworks, a collaboration between the Department of Justice, the FBI, the Oxnard Police Department and the California Governor's Gang Reduction, Intervention and Prevention Office.

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BALIi Nine ringleader Andrew Chan is said to be relaxed despite losing a final appeal against his death sentence.


Chan will now have to rely on clemency from Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono if he is to have any hope of getting off death row for his part in a 2005 plot to smuggle more than 8kg of heroin from Bali to Australia.

Despite Chan's predicament, the governor of Bali's Kerobokan Prison - where Chan remains in detention - says the 27-year-old Sydney man is surprisingly calm.

"He's not taking it too seriously. He's relaxed about it," Siswanto said after sitting in on a media interview with Chan on Monday.

"Basically, he said he's fine," Siswanto said.

Chan first learned his appeal had been rejected on Friday after the decision was posted on the Indonesian Supreme Court website.



There were few details provided, although the posting did reveal that the decision was made by a panel of three judges on May 10, the same day the court announced it had commuted fellow Bali Nine member Scott Rush's death sentence to life in prison.

Chan, along with Myuran Sukumaran, also considered a ringleader in the drug-smuggling plot, launched his final appeal, known as a judicial review, in August last year.

Sukumaran's judicial review is being conducted by a different panel of judges, whose decision is yet to be announced.

Chan can apply for clemency from Dr Yudhoyono, but the President has made it clear in the past that he is opposed to showing mercy for people sentenced to death for drug trafficking.

Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard and Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd have both said the Australian government would support Chan's likely bid for clemency.

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Plan B has admitted that the first and only time he has taken heroin was during his first Glastonbury.



The 'Strickland Banks' singer, who plays below Pendulum and headliner Beyonce on Sunday night (June 26) at the Worthy Farm festival, has said that he first visited the event was as a 16 year-old and that he was exposed to a lot of drugs.

Speaking to The Guardian, the singer said of his first Glasto visit: "I was 16 and didn't have any money. The first night me and my mate popped a couple of pills. The next night this northerner asked us if he could use our fire and we were too scared to say no."

Plan B: 'I won’t break America as I’m not prepared to suck cock

Plan B: 'I want to release a punk album'


He continued:"He got this foil out and started smoking heroin. Then he asked if we wanted some. So, like idiots we took some of his heroin and on the last night we smoked it.

"It was the first and last time I ever did it. I'm never going near it again. My head was spinning like I was drunk. I was hot then I was cold, I was itching all over, it was horrible."

Plan B is currently preparing to release the sequel to 'The Defamation Of Strickland Banks', titled 'The Ballad Of Belmarsh', it is set to come out later this year.

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Pete Doherty is now linked to three deaths, yet his record label says nothing

Freddy McConnel looked “angelic”: the neighbours say it; the photos prove it. His parents talk tenderly of their “staggeringly bright”, “deliciously naughty” boy, the teenager who had the talent to be a novelist, the baby who would “sing” to them in his cot.
Freddy spent a brief part of his life growing up in an idyllic Norfolk farmhouse, by a flower-studded meadow. He died at the end of last month, aged 18, in a shabby London flat, on a bed surrounded by needles, from a heroin overdose.
Robin Whitehead was also beautiful. A scion of the Goldsmith family, one friend remembered her as “brilliant, vibrant. Hilariously funny, very, very talented.” The 27-year-old film-maker was found in a London flat in January 2010, dead from a heroin overdose.
Mark Blanco, 30: he was a Cambridge philosophy graduate. His mother talks of her “incredibly bright” child, of his “great thirst for knowledge and living”. Found dead in a London street, December 2006, after a mysterious fall from a balcony during a party.
Three children, three bright futures, three pairs of grief-stricken parents. And one man linking them all: Pete Doherty, the singer – the not-so-angelic singer. Thirty-two years old, 15 court appearances in eight years, 25 drugs convictions, plus three more for burglary, driving without insurance and assault.

 

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Sir Richard Branson: Time to start helping drug addicts instead of jailing them

BEFORE joining the Global Commission On Drugs I felt, as many Mirror readers do, that since drugs are dangerous it was best for society to punish anyone who used them.

Now having spent 18 months with commissioners Kofi Annan, George Schultz, Paul Volker, the Prime Minister of Greece and eight former presidents ­examining the facts, each of us decided it was better to treat those who use drugs as a health problem, rather than a criminal problem.

The com­­mission learnt that the current approach to the war on drugs had completely failed. We found those ­countries like Portugal and Switzerland who didn’t send their young to prison for taking drugs but offered them help instead managed to dramatically reduce the overall level of problematic drug use.

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By setting up clinics where heroin users can go to get clean needles and methadone (and get help when they’re ready for it) Portugal reduced the number of users by 50% and the number of new cases of HIV (from dirty needles) by 50%. The number of cannabis users is now the lowest in Europe.

I do understand why Mirror readers would worry when they read the words “celebrities call for drugs to be decriminalised”. They perhaps picture going into their local supermarket and seeing addicts queuing up to buy their next fix.

This is not what the commis-sion is advocating. It is not what is happening in countries such as Portugal.

What they are doing is proving that by ­decriminalising drug use, they can win the war a lot more effectively.

By helping user, rather than ­demonising them, I believe we will see real changes within our society and real decreases in the number of users – and, in turn, a reduction in cost to the taxpayer.

There are other ­advantages of not prosecuting. By treating it as a health issue drug users are more likely to get help. In Britain we give 75,000 young people criminal records every year for taking drugs.

The cost to the taxpayer of keeping people in prison is enormous compared to sending someone to a specialist clinic to help them. And society benefits by weaning people off drugs. In ­Switzer-land, where users participate in a drugs programme, there has been a 90% fall in addicts burgling homes.

Of course, there are people who are addicted to cigarettes and others who suffer from excessive use of alcohol. But such is the physical desperation around drug addict-ion, it often leads to users hurting not only ­themselves but their loved ones. Sometimes it is random strangers.

If they could openly seek help – without fear of jail – I believe the underground world in which they live would soon begin to crumble.

The dealers who exploit this unseen half of life would be out of business. And the crime barons who trade in misery and human suffering from drugs to prostitution to gun-running would be much more vulnerable.

It is the users’ fear of prosecution that helps keep the status quo in this labyrinthine world.

In the past 50 years we have seen increased drug usage. This has filled our jails, cost hundreds of millions of taxpayer pounds, spread avoidable diseases and fuelled organised crime.

It is time we adopted an alternative approach...

The criminal drugs trade rakes in more than £200billion a year and it also kills mill­­ions through murder, dis­­ease and corruption.As one commentator said last week: “In the 10 years to 2008, according to the UN, global use of opiates has risen by 34.5 %, cocaine by 27% and cannabis by 8.5%. If this is a successful policy, what would a failed one look like?”

I believe it is time to end the criminalisation and stigmatising of drug users. People with drug problems need health care, not prison. Where countries treat drug-use as a pub­­­­lic health issue rather than a crime, disease, ill-health and costs have fallen. At the very least we should have an open debate on the subject with the facts laid out for all to see, so the public can give an informed opinion.

It is an open debate the Global Drug Commission has called for and I hope a sensible dialogue on how to finally win this war on drugs can begin.

 

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12-month jail sentence imposed on a drug addict for growing cannabis plants was "manifestly excessive",

12-month jail sentence imposed on a drug addict for growing cannabis plants was "manifestly excessive", the Court of Appeal has ruled.

Judges said that the prison term given to Stephen O'Brien should be switched to three years probation due to exceptional circumstances.

O'Brien, 31, of Cranbrook Street in Belfast was charged following a search of his home in August 2009.

Lawyers argued that reports recommended he should get urgent treatment.

Following the seizure of 23 cannabis plants, growing equipment and a small quantity of the drug, he maintained that he was growing the drugs for his own personal use.

'Psychological issues'

The court heard how he became addicted to alcohol and drugs as a teenager. Psychological issues were also identified.

Allowing the appeal, Lord Justice Coghlin said: "Having taken into account all the factual evidence, expert reports and recommendations we have reached a view that this should be regarded as an exceptional case in which the community might be best served by a non-custodial sentence.

"In our view the sentence was manifestly excessive."

A condition of the decision is that O'Brien must take part in a drug counselling or treatment programme.

Reducing a fine imposed on him from £1,000 to £200, Lord Justice Coghlin also stressed: "Cannabis remains a drug which is capable of causing significant, long-term psychiatric damage.

"That is demonstrated not only by repeated research programmes, but also by the sad individual who is making the appeal in this case."

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Anna Malova was released on Friday by a Manhattan courthouse and headed straight for a year of inpatient addiction treatment at a Bronx drug-treatment program.

former Miss Russia who was jailed by a New York court for forging painkiller prescriptions has walked free from jail after serving less than two months behind bars.

Anna Malova was released on Friday by a Manhattan courthouse and headed straight for a year of inpatient addiction treatment at a Bronx drug-treatment program.

If she succeeds in treatment, the drug charges will be dismissed. If not, she faces trial and possible top charge of up to seven years in prison if convicted.


Released: Anna Malova could still face seven years in jail if she doesn't complete the rehab program

A conviction also could mean deportation for Malova, who has lived in the U.S. for more than a decade.

She was jailed for repeatedly being hours late to appointments for evaluation for treatment

Today she said: 'I feel fantastic, very, very happy. I look forward to getting better.'

The 39-year-old still faces a separate shoplifting charge. Her lawyer, Robert C. Gottlieb, says that incident also stems from her drug problem.

He said: 'She is committed to getting well.'

 

Young 'Barefoot Bandit' who spent two years on the run in stolen planes, boats and cars pleads guilty and now faces 5-6 years in jail
A doctor in her native Russia, Malova became a model and moved to the U.S. after being named Miss Russia and finishing in the top 10 in the 1998 Miss Universe pageant.

She is charged with filling or trying to fill bogus prescriptions for painkillers at New York pharmacies 14 times, some of them even after arrests in February 2010 and May 2010.

Using prescription pads she had taken from the offices of two psychiatrists — one an addiction specialist — she wrote herself prescriptions for the painkiller Vicodin and the anti-anxiety drug Klonopin, the city Special Narcotics Prosecutor’s office said.

A judge approved Malova this week for what’s known as court 'diversion' to treatment, under a New York law that promotes treatment instead of prison for some nonviolent drug offenders whose crimes are seen as products of their addictions.

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A father-of-two infuriated a judge after it had emerged that he has pocketed 16,000 pounds as incapacity benefits because smoking cannabis made him too depressed to work.




Paul Holland revealed that he was on anti-depressants after taking the drug since he was ten.

The 21-year-old's addiction has helped him rake in 60-pound-a-week incapacity benefit on the grounds of depression that deters him from working.

Judge Heather Lloyd condemned the payments while meting out a sentence to Holland for operating a cannabis farm at his home.

"No doubt a significant part of your problems are caused by excessive use of cannabis," the Daily Mail quoted her as saying.

"I'm not a doctor, but there is plenty of medical evidence to show it is not uncommon for depression and anxiety - which could lead to paranoia - to be found with cannabis use," she said.

"You could do something about your problems whilst others who may have been born with health difficulties couldn't. I find it astonishing that somebody who may be self-inflicting these problems upon themselves is able to get incapacity benefits at this level," she added.

Lloyd has sentenced Holland to 26 weeks of imprisonment and suspended for two years. He also must pay 100 pounds as a fine besides

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the overwhelming need for sexual satisfaction so intense that psychologists compare it to crack cocaine.

Addictions to alcohol, drugs and gambling can destroy lives, but less well known and more controversial is the overwhelming need for sexual satisfaction so intense that psychologists compare it to crack cocaine.

U.S. Representative Anthony Weiner stepped down from Congress under pressure from fellow Democrats, including President Barack Obama, after he admitted to "sexting" in which he sent lewd pictures of himself to young women. He said he was seeking treatment for an unspecified problem. [ID:nN16180984]

Golfer Tiger Woods checked into an unspecified rehabilitation center for treatment after admitting to a number of extramarital affairs.

Actor David Duchovny, star of "Californication," is one of the few who has publicly announced his sex addiction. He entered a rehabilitation center for the sex disorder in 2008.

But the sensational nature of the public admissions by the famous and powerful to multiple extramarital affairs, obsession with Internet sexting, or repeated accusations of sexual harassment, draws intense media attention -- and a fair amount of ridicule.

"People joke that if they are going to have an addiction, that's the one they want to have," said therapist Stephanie Carnes, author of "Mending a Shattered Heart."

There is also skepticism among the public and some psychologists that the sexual disorder even exists, but is rather an excuse for infidelity or viewing pornography. There is no diagnosis of addiction at all in the official listing of mental disorders -- the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.

But as not everyone who drinks alcohol is an alcoholic, sex addiction is characterized by out of control compulsive behavior. And it can be more damaging to family life and harder to give up than more typical addictions.

Sex, like food, is a primary need for humans. With the advent of the Internet, it is readily available-- either cybersex or quick hookups arranged through online sites. Cybersex has been called the crack cocaine of the addiction. It is also easier to hide and to deny than the more public evidence of drug or alcohol use.

But the consequences can be as severe -- loss of jobs, damaged health, financial ruin and estrangement from family and friends.

"If you look at their lives, nobody would want that. They are devastated, they lost everything, they hate themselves," Carnes said in a telephone interview.

"They are really suffering."

PERVASIVE, NOT PERVERTED

Sex addiction or compulsion crosses all social lines and all national borders, includes people from all walks of life, cultures and sexual orientations, and is not restricted to any age or gender.

Psychologists estimate that 3 to 5 percent of people are sexaholics, and possibly more given the ease of access on the Internet.

Psychologists also find three times as many men as women are likely to have the problem. "Women are more addicted to romance," said psychologist Steve Eichel who practices in Delaware. And women are less likely to seek help due a feeling of greater shame to admit sex addiction -- until those consequences cannot be ignored.

Just as alcoholism was seen as a moral problem a generation or two ago, sex addiction is now regarded as a character flaw or moral issue -- for men, an overindulgence in "boys will be boys" bad behavior, and for women, "easy virtue."

But there are big differences, psychologists say.

"One or two affairs does not make a person a sex addict," said Carnes.

What does make a sex addict, psychologists say, is the inability to stop, the ever-increasing need for fulfillment, the diminishing room in the sex addict's life for family and work, and the disregard for consequences.

- A middle-aged man fired when his bosses catch him watching online pornography in his office.

- A doctor suspended from hospital practice for repeated charges of harassment because he compulsively gropes female nurses.

- An executive facing embezzlement charges and jail for using company money to pay for prostitutes.

But no frenzy of television cameras follows the vast majority of sexaholics to the rehab centers.

As Eichel said: "No one is interested in the accountant's story."

And, importantly, a person who commits a sexual assault, even multiple times, should not automatically be considered a sex addict, Carnes said. "It's the physician down the street (who is the sex addict), not the Craigslist killer," she said.

TREATMENT POSSIBLE, HIGH RELAPSE

The addiction is both about sex and its ability, like drugs, alcohol or other addictions, to numb psychological pain from other issues in life and mental health problems, addiction specialists say.

Studies of sex addiction patients over the last 20 years have found high rates of childhood trauma, sexual abuse, difficulty forming healthy attachments and struggle with intimacy in real sexual relationships, Carnes said.

"People use sex to escape and medicate," she said. The experience produces the same chemical reaction -- a hit of dopamine (in the pleasure center of the brain) -- that someone who gambles or eats compulsively will receive.

Carnes said there are many parallels with chemical dependency, including a three- to five-year recovery process. Involvement in group therapy or in an Alcoholics Anonymous-type 12-step program is very important, she said.

Residential treatment can cost $4,000 to $6,000 a week and four to six weeks are recommended. Cheaper out-patient therapy is still expensive since it is not covered by most health insurance.

There is no official medical diagnosis of sex addiction, and no good way to test whether it exists. Some call it a compulsion rather than an addiction.

Many skeptics about the existence of this addiction see the diagnosis as enabling the wealthy who can afford treatment to escape sticky situations. The promise of recovery could lead a wife to drop divorce proceedings, an employer to give a second chance and even in some cases no criminal prosecution for crimes such as embezzlement to fund the addiction.

Carnes says recovery is "absolutely" possible.

"There are thousands of recovering sex addicts living healthy, joyous lives," she said.

But as with other addictions, the relapse rate is high. Although no definitive studies are available as yet, Eichel puts short term success at 80 percent, with success defined not as total abstinence but healthy use of the behavior.

Comparing sex addiction to food addiction, Eichel said, "You can't not eat."

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Sly Stone, the reclusive funk legend whose career was crippled by rampant drug abuse, pleaded not guilty to possession of cocaine rocks on Wednesday.


The 68-year-old frontman for Sly and the Family Stone was arrested April 1 when Los Angeles police pulled over a live-in van for a minor traffic violation.
Cocaine rocks were found in the clothing of both Stone, who was a passenger, and the driver, according to the singer's defense attorneys. Both men were arrested.
"A lot of musicians hang out with people who have drugs. How are they supposed to know?" said Peter Knecht, one of his attorneys. He insisted the cocaine did not belong to Stone.
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Stone, whose real name is Sylvester Stewart, is next scheduled to appear in court in the Los Angeles suburb of Van Nuys for a pretrial conference on July 19. His arraignment was originally scheduled for last Friday, but he was hospitalized for heart problems.
Stone, a veteran of the San Francisco power scene, revolutionized soul music with tunes such as "Don't Call Me N-----, Whitey" and "I Want to Take You Higher" that both fed on and fueled the political and social turmoil of the time.
His career, however, was marred by decades of run-ins with the law. Throughout the 1970s and '80s, he was plagued by drug and gun possession charges.
"You can't punish a guy for what he did 40 years ago, 30 years ago," said Knecht.
Stone made his first major public appearance in almost 13 years at the Grammy Awards in 2006 when he was the object of an all-star tribute. Sporting a blond Mohawk and a shiny white jacket, he sauntered out on stage during a performance of "I Want to Take You Higher," but left before the song was over.
Stone just finished recording a new album that will be released on Aug. 16, according to Tim Yasui, general manager for Cleopatra Records. It would mark his first album in almost 30 years.

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Scotland's elite crimebusters are tackling drug dealers by seizing bulking agents they use to drive up profits.


Last year the Scottish Crime and Drug Enforcement Agency grabbed more than 200 kilos of a dental anaesthetic used to cut into cocaine.
The benzocaine could have been used to produce more than 230 kilos of street coke - with a value of £9.5 million.
Detective Chief Superintendent Tony Mole, head of the SCDEA's Investigations Group, warned coke users have no idea what they are snorting as purity levels can be just five per cent.
He told the Record: "The dealers need adulterants to make the money. But by the time people buy it, there might be hardly any cocaine in it.
"The adulterants and mixing agents are designed to look like cocaine and replicate the effect.
"They could be benzocaine, they could be paracetamol, they could even be ketamine, which is a horse drug."
In his first interview since joining the agency, Mole - a former head of Special Branch at Greater Manchester Police - said he knew of cases where brick dust and rat poison were used as bulking agents.
He added: "Your average six kilos of high quality cocaine could be broken down enough to produce 90 kilos.
"Good quality cocaine, say 70 per cent pure, has the potential to be broken down to that level.
"We have seen, on analysis, a five per cent street deal."
But the process of diluting cocaine after it arrives in the UK from South America means users are taking a massive risk.
And he urged them to think of the human misery and environmental damage behind every line of coke.
Mole said: "Some people will drive their eco-friendly cars and use energy saving light bulbs and yet they snort cocaine.
"They are actually doing 10 times more damage when they snort cocaine in producing countries, such as Colombia."
Benzocaine, which is also used in medical and sunburn remedies, is easily available online. Prices range from £1000 to almost £4000 for a 25 kilo drum.
China is a leading producer of the legal drug, which mimics the numbing sensation of cocaine.
This is the first year the SCDEA have recorded the amount of benzocaine seized and the total haul for 2010/11 was 217 kilos.
The UK Border Agency are watching for benzocaine drums at ports and airports, where it is often disguised by false labels.
Demand for cocaine has soared since 2000 and is now cheaper and widely available.
A five gram wrap can now be bought on the streets of Scotland for as little as £9. Last year the United Nations identified Scotland as the country with the biggest per head cocaine habit in the world.
Top cop Mole said the SCDEA are focused on putting criminals out of business.
He said: "If it's best to take the drugs out, we take the drugs out.
"If it's best to take the adulterants out, we do that. If it's best to take the cash, we take the cash.
"Disruption is what we are trying to achieve."
RISKS ARE HUGE
Adulterants found in Scottish cocaine samples include:
Benzocaine - a local anaesthetic. It increase the risk of choking.
Lignocaine - can cause seizures and blurred vision.
Levamisole - livestock wormer.
Procaine - a dental anaesthetic.
Phenacetin - no longer used as an anaesthetic due to adverse effects, such as renal disease, cancer and kidney damage.
Paracetamol - common over-the-counter medicine for headaches and minor aches and pains. Acute overdoses can cause fatal damage to the liver.

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Drug smuggler killed himself with own cocaine in Saughton Prison

DRUGS smuggler killed himself by swallowing a fatal dose of his own high-strength cocaine, a sheriff has ruled.
The findings bring to an end the puzzling case of Philip Saffrey.
He was snared with two other drug barons by the Scottish Crime and Drug Enforcement Agency in Edinburgh last year.
The trio were suspected of importing £4.5million of pure South American cocaine into Scotland, stashed inside plastic packets of Strawberry jam.
They were arrested at Jinglin' Geordie's pub in Edinburgh's Old Town on July 10 last year.
Yet, within five days, 43-yearold Saffrey was found dying in his cell in the city's Saughton Prison.
Last month, a fatal accident inquiry was held into his death by Sheriff Kenneth Maciver.
The lawman has now concluded that Saffrey concealed a pouch of high-strength cocaine within his body and - despite regular searches - retrieved the drug to take his own life.
A suicide note was found in his cell, saying he was going to join "Caty". This was a reference to Saffrey's wife, who killed herself with cocaine in 1999.

 

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former boyfriend of the Goldsmith heiress Robyn Whitehead has said he holds the rock singer Pete Doherty's drug fuelled lifestyle morally responsible for her drug taking which led to her death.

Miss Whitehead filmed herself taking crack cocaine with the former lead singer of The Libertines just hours before she suffered a drug overdose in January last year.
Jake Fior, 47, her former partner, described the 27-year-old’s death as an “obscenity” and blamed the culture of drugs surrounding Doherty – who has a string of convictions for possessing illegal substances – for her early death.
Mr Fior, who produced Doherty’s first top ten hit 'For Lovers’, said that the prevalence of hard drugs amongst the singer’s entourage meant it was very difficult to avoid taking them.
Miss Whitehead, the great niece of the late Sir James Goldsmith, spent the last 10 days of her life making a film about Doherty.
As part of the documentary she filmed herself and Doherty, 32, smoking from a homemade pipe at the flat of his friend Peter Wolfe.
The former Babyshambles singer can be seen smoking from the adapted brandy bottle and then passing it to Miss Whitehead.
The following morning Miss Whitehead was found dead at the Hackney flat, east London. A post mortem examination showed she had cocaine in her body but that she had died from heroin poisoning.
Doherty was sentenced to six months in prison after pleading guilty to possession of cocaine. Wolfe, 42, was sentenced to 12 months after admitting supplying drugs.
The judge ruled that there was no evidence to suggest that cocaine supplied to Whitehead was responsible for her death.
Mr Fior told The Observer: “The media are calling this a tragedy, but for a brilliant, beautiful, vibrant 27-year-old girl to have gone into that flat and not come out, it is not a tragedy, it’s an obscenity.”
“If you have the peer pressure that exists in any situation with Doherty and his entourage then I think that your free will is going to be severely compromised, especially over trying a drug that is being taken openly and almost ritually by people that you might be trying to fit in with.”
Mr Fior, who dated Miss Whitehead but was just friends with the filmmaker by the time of her death, said Doherty and his friends had reduced her to tears on the morning she died.
Talking of photograph’s that she had taken Mr Fior said: “They’re quite horrific. It’s Doherty’s entourage, all the people who hang around him, extraordinary people smoking crack pipes and looking desperate. But because of Robyn’s talent the work is brilliant as well as frightening and truthful. I don’t suppose Doherty liked that for a moment, and I believe that’s why they reduced her to tears the morning of her death.”
He also revealed that Miss Whitehead had grown tired of making the film that Doherty had wanted her to make. “She told me she’d been having a horrible time trying to make 'Road to Albion’ from day one,” he said.
Miss Whitehead’s mother, Dido Whitehead, is a cousin of Jemima Khan, the socialite and free speech campaigner, and Zac Goldsmith, the Conservative MP. Her father is the 1960s filmmaker Peter Whitehead.
Last month the mother of a Cambridge graduate who fell to his death from a balcony after an argument with Doherty and two other men during a party called for the singer to face justice.
The Babyshambles star, his minder Johnny ‘Headlock’ Jeannevol and literary agent Paul Roundhill were told in May that they will not face charges over the death of 30-year-old Mark Blanco at Mr Roundhill's flat in 2006.
Sheila Blanco blamed the decision not to prosecute on the "shambolic" Scotland Yard investigation into the death and she was considering bringing private charges.
She told the Daily Mail: "It is a police cover-up. We have a lot of evidence – medical, scientific and witness statements – which does not seem to have been taken seriously."

 

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Distance traveled: from drug addict to doctor

Among the 104 students graduating from medical school in Portland on Monday are the straight arrows who flew from loving homes across the top of their high school and college classes, past examinations and rotations, to Oregon Health & Science University’s most hallowed stage.

And then there is girl in orange velour hot pants.

Her trajectory began in Eugene where she first snorted black-tar heroin in the spring of eighth grade. She smoked meth, tried speedballs and sold hallucinogenic mushrooms in high school. She started college classes after a stop at a methadone clinic.

At Arlene Schnitzer Hall on Monday, Aleka Spurgeon-Heinrici will be among the 59 women and 45 men who will don the green-trimmed hood, with gold tassel, of a doctor of medicine.

Next week, she begins her residency in family and community medicine at the University of California San Francisco — her first choice.

“Aleka has overcome obstacles, become a medical school success and now wants to go out and make a difference,” says Dr. Molly Osborne, associate dean for student affairs.

Admissions counselors call it the theory of distance traveled, that a student who starts out so much lower and still manages great heights, will continue to rise. Nearly a third of medical students at OHSU are nontraditional in that they didn’t study pre-med or arrive straight from college. Instead, they earned degrees in English, history or music or worked in other careers. Most come with a history of community service.

“We want more than just people who can learn the science,” says Osborne. “We want the people who can bring to the profession an ability to overcome obstacles.”

Still, a doctor with a history of drug addiction challenges some of medicine’s deepest stereotypes. Among them: that addicts bring harm onto themselves and don’t deserve medical treatment. More commonly, “once a junkie, always a junkie.”

“That is why it was important to come to terms with my story and just be open about it,” says the 29-year-old Spurgeon-Heinrici. “I know that people can change. We can recover. We can heal.”

Says her friend, and medical student Ana Hilde: “What she brings to medicine is what medicine needs.”

She was born into an idyllic childhood: a dad who worked in Manhattan, a loving mom at home, two brothers, doting grandparents, dinners together, and on time.

Then when she was 8, her mother moved with the children and a new man to Eugene. A few weeks later Aleka recalls feeling overwhelmed at the raucous Oregon Country Fair.

“Just the smell of patchouli oil and pot and body odor was very distinct, and I remember thinking we had gone somewhere back in time. I had heard about the 1960s and seen pictures, but I was so confused that this existed.”

While her mother pursued a new life, the lonely girl retreated to the Eugene Public Library where she read books on folk medicine, making her own teas and tinctures. Her Austrian grandma called her “Kleine Hexe” — Little Witch.

But by seventh grade, her refuge was middle school outliers with whom she started guzzling Boone’s Farm wine, smoking cigarettes and sleeping every night at the Masonic cemetery. She followed the Grateful Dead and Phish across the country, and by 18, was in California cashing fake checks for gang members and shooting heroin.

Then one day her visiting brother walked in on her shooting up. Her mother got her into treatment. But treatment was no straight line. Altogether, she went to outpatient treatment four times and inpatient treatment three times before she succeeded. OutsideIn and De Paul Treatment Centers repeatedly helped, but she also credits Portland’s 12-step community for the critical support that stuck.

“I remember laughing for the first time, really laughing. We were girls who hadn’t felt emotions wholly in years,” she says. “And we would laugh until our stomach hurt, and when we would cry, it was a real cry. We called it the pink cloud.”

Sober, she enrolled at Portland State University at 19, plunging into biology, chemistry, genetics and anthropology classes, with job training and scholarships from Janus Youth programs. She reclaimed her girlhood dream of becoming a doctor. With a 3.9 grade point average and hundreds of hours of volunteer work, she applied to medical schools. She wrote frankly about her years as a street kid.

Then she and her high school sweetheart went to Costa Rica, where she drank a glass of wine to celebrate.

“I just wanted to be normal,” she recalls. “I didn’t want to start medical school and be who I was.”

Soon she was drinking, then using drugs. Then the letter came. She was accepted to OHSU.

“It was both the happiest and saddest day of my life,” she says. “I’d finally gotten the thing I’d wanted most and I knew it was totally ruined.”

She applied for a deferred entry and left Oregon. She drifted back to New York and became involved with a man who didn’t use drugs but sold them in Harlem. He told her one morning that she didn’t belong on the street. That she had too many gifts to waste them.

Filled with guilt and shame, something profound turned inside. She returned to Portland and went to Hooper Detox. From there, she went into Central City Concern’s recovery mentoring program, where a permanent community of support proved the key. She started OHSU two years later, living in a halfway house. Her medical school classmates seemed from another planet.

“Their parents were still married, I’m like, ‘Are you serious? This is amazing.’ I actually didn’t know those kind of people.”

She made it.

Through that terrifying first year of med school when, $25,000 in debt, she felt the panic of not being able to quit. Through the lectures, exams, then in the third year, intense hospital rotations. Throughout, she kept going to 12-step meetings and kept sponsoring other women in recovery. She found a study group. Her confidence grew as she realized eventually some classmates would face their own addictions, but she was daily handling hers.

And she found mentors.

Dean Osborne says a student’s ability to cultivate a good relationship with a mentor is a strong predictor of who will succeed. It takes students with the charisma to make the mentorship beneficial. Osborne calls it the “sparkle factor.”

“Aleka is brilliant at it,” Osborne says.

She leaned on Dr. Nicholas Gideonse and Dr. Marc Gosselin who saw her connecting to patients and understanding of addiction as a huge plus for a family physician. Gideonse says unlike many students who felt too competitive to admit need, she was open about her struggles. She also scored the highest grade of the year on the family medicine rotation.

Med student Migdalia Ordonez met Aleka in an anatomy lab, drawn by her plunge-ahead attitude and willingess to help.

“She came in with so much street experience, that anyone who took the time to listen to her stories or advice about addiction learned what you can’t learn in a book,” Ordonez says. “Doctors, nurses, patients, we have all learned.”

Cheering her commencement Monday will be mother, family and friends from her 12-step program who say she is a living example that those in recovery can dream big. Says one recovering addict: “Her graduating from medical school is in many ways, like we all have.”

 

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Rocker Phil Varone has turned his alleged sex addiction into a money-spinning venture by bedding five girlfriends for a new x-rated movie.



The former Skid Row drummer has teamed up with adult film company Vivid to show off his sex skills and talk about his 3,000-plus female partners in the two-disc set Phil Varone's Secret Sex Stash.

Varone recruited five women he had never slept with for the film, admitting, "I still feel a charge each time with each new girl."

He adds, "It's a very personal, very explicit experience and never gets old. This was the first time for me with the incredible five girls in the movie and I loved every minute I had with each of them."

And he refuses to apologize to anyone who thinks rock stars shouldn't appear in porn films, stating, "I believe everyone should have sex with as many partners as possible, in as many ways as possible."

Varone has been branded a sex addict and has appeared on reality TV show Sex Rehab with Dr. Drew, but he insists, "I never considered myself a sex addict because sex never screwed up the rest of my life or my ability to function at a high level."

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five vehicles pulled up outside the Victory Center for Alcohol and Drug Rehabilitation in Torreon, Coahuila, in northern Mexico. A gang of heavily-armed men emerged from the cars, and burst into the clinic. Methodically moving from room to room, they opened fire on everyone in sight, killing 13 patients and workers.



According to Mexico’s El Universal, at around 5:30 p.m. on June 7, five vehicles pulled up outside the Victory Center for Alcohol and Drug Rehabilitation in Torreon, Coahuila, in northern Mexico. A gang of heavily-armed men emerged from the cars, and burst into the clinic. Methodically moving from room to room, they opened fire on everyone in sight, killing 13 patients and workers.

Then, as quickly as they had arrived, the assailants climbed back into their cars and fled the scene.


Although such extreme violence at a treatment center may seem incomprehensible, attacks on these institutions are becoming a fairly common phenomenon in Mexico. To date, the bloodiest of these shootings was in June 2010, when a gunman killed 19 people in a drug rehabilitation center in the city of Chihuahua, which borders Coahuila.

Mass shootings of this sort, with a defenseless group of people indiscriminately gunned down, have become common in Torreon, though typically the incidents have occurred in bars.

Prior to the June 7 murders, there had been at least five such incidents, resulting in more than 50 deaths, since the beginning of 2010. In most of the cases, official reports blamed the killings on local representatives of the Sinaloa Cartel, who are based in neighboring Gomez Palacio and have been engaged in a year-long battle with Torreon-based Zetas for control of the area.

Killed to minimize the risk

Gangs frequently target private, unlicensed rehabilitation centers, because they are more likely to take in active gang members seeking to free themselves from an addiction to their own product. In contrast to government-licensed rehabilitation centers in Mexico, private clinics are not associated with the penal system and often have very little security, leaving their patients vulnerable to attacks by gangs seeking to avenge the death of a friend or eliminate a potential police informant. Some unlicensed clinics may also serve as fronts for drug dealing, or even as safe houses for gangsters seeking to lay low.

After a 2009 attack on a center in Juarez, the Chihuahua state Secretary of Public Security, Victor Valencia, said the rehab clinics had become a hotbed of criminal activity, adding that “cartels are using them to recruit young people from 17 to 23 years old.”

According to him, it is difficult for these youths to escape from a life of crime, as they are seen as a “disposable” liability by the leaders of criminal organizations.

Drug cartels cannot afford to have a former member come clean, either about himself or, worse, his bosses. Because these young people can be quickly replaced, they are often killed in order to minimize this risk.

Cartels run their own rehab centers

In some cases, organized criminal groups even run their own rehabilitation centers.

 

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New Jersey motorcyclist who had been stopped along Route 22 because he was operating his vehicle with a suspended license

New Jersey motorcyclist who had been stopped along Route 22 because he was operating his vehicle with a suspended license, fled from police when he was offered a ride because he didn't want his backpack searched, The Morning Call reported today.

Instead, Shawn J. Lombardo, 33, of Philipsburg, is a guest of Lehigh County Prison in lieu of $200,000 bail and faces multiple criminal charges, including possession with intent to deliver cocaine.

Lombardo, who was stopped near the Schoenersville Road exit of Route 22, ran away from troopers and across the highway when he was told they would have to search his backpack before allowing him into the cruiser, according to the news report.

When he reached the other side of the highway, troopers observed him trying to discard a bag that contained 29 grams of the white powder, the news report says.

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mother left her crying one-year-old child locked in the car while she gambled on the pokies.


The 37-year-old mother left her baby girl locked in the parked car outside the MiHi Tavern, at Brassall, west of Brisbane, on February 5 for at least half an hour.

A witness found the sweaty, screaming and crying girl in the car, which had the front windows open only three centimetres, about 9.20pm.

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The tavern's manager forcibly pushed the windows down so he could unlock the car and open the doors.

He then called on the tavern's PA system for the mother to attend the bar but no one came. A short time later, the mum was seen rushing outside to her car.

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Study says caffeine addicts hallucinate

Deprive a coffee addict of their morning fix and you will soon hear about it. But give them too much caffeine, and it turns out that they are the one that will start hearing things.
In the latest addition to the saga of research papers published on the bitter, brown elixir, scientists have found that drinking five or more coffees a day is enough to increase an individual's tendency to hallucinate. Caffeine lovers with high-stress lifestyles were most at risk.

The study, published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences, measured the effect of stress and caffeine on 92 people.

The participants were grouped according to self-reported stress levels and caffeine consumption, with those drinking five or more standard caffeinated drinks a day classed as high caffeine users. Participants were then asked to listen to white noise and to report when they also heard part of Bing Crosby's White Christmas coming through the white noise. The song was never played, and researchers measured the number of false alarms reported. Those in the high-stress, high-caffeine group reported hearing the song three times as often as those in the low-stress, low caffeine group.

Those with a low stress, but high caffeine lifestyle reported the song 40 per cent more often than the low-stress, low caffeine group. ''The combination of caffeine and stress affect the likelihood of an individual experiencing a psychosis-like symptom,'' said the study's lead author, Simon Crowe, a neuroscientist at La Trobe University in Victoria.

Professor Crowe said the mental health risks associated with excessive caffeine use need to be addressed. ''We have a safe drinking guideline for alcohol but we don't have a safe caffeine guideline even though caffeine is a stimulant drug,'' he said.

Food Standards Australia New Zealand does not set limits for naturally occurring caffeine in food, but it does restrict the addition of caffeine to soft drinks, said a spokeswoman.

 

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Regional Police Drug Squad Make Arrests And Seize $6,000,000 Plus In Pot

Waterloo Regional Police have charged three local men in connection with a four month investigation into an alleged marihuana production and distribution operation. 

The investigation by members of the Strategic and Tactical Services Division Drug Branch, with assistance from the Anti-Violence Intervention Strategy Team and Emergency Response Unit, resulted in search warrants being conducted on June 2, 2011 in Kitchener , Cambridge and North Dumfries Township .  A subsequent warrant was executed on June 3, 2011 in Blandford-Blenheim Township with the assistance of the Ontario Provincial Police Drug Enforcement Unit.

George Gobran, 40 years of Kitchener , Kenneth Michael Meaney, 49 years of Cambridge and Martin Kenneth Hackborn, 48 years of North Dumfries Township were arrested without incident on June 2, 2011.  The three were charged with Production of a Controlled Substance and Possession for the Purpose of Trafficking. They were held for an appearance in the Ontario Court of Justice in Kitchener and are remanded in custody. 

In connection with this investigation, Police seized 6,114 marihuana plants; 277 pounds of packaged marihuana and 480 grams of cannabis resin which investigators estimate have a street value of approximately $6,676,950.  Also seized was, approximately $50,000 in equipment, 10 long guns and ammunition, $31,227 cash, seven vehicles and a paraglider.

The Kitchener warrants were executed at a commercial building on Shoemaker Street and at a residence on Knox Crescent in Kitchener .  In Cambridge , police searched two storage lockers on Industrial Road and a residence on Pineview Crescent .  Items were also seized during a warrant at a barn and a residence on Sprague’s Road in North Dumfries Township as well as a barn and residence in Blandford-Blenheim Township .

 

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Underground Website Lets You Mail-Order LSD, Cocaine

Drugs. Let’s face it, who can live without their high? Not you, that’s for sure. Which is why it might delight you to know that there is now a new website where you can buy your drugs of choice without ever having to rely on a scatterbrained drug dealer (don’t you hate it when they say 30 minutes and 3 hours later they have yet to appear?), having to rustle the courage to go some dodgy part of town to get the good sh*t, and of course there’s always that price gouging, which makes life miserable too.

Which brings us to the little gem of a write-up from Gawker.

gawker: Making small talk with your pot dealer sucks. Buying cocaine can get you shot. What if you could buy and sell drugs online like books or light bulbs? Now you can: Welcome to Silk Road.

About three weeks ago, the U.S. Postal Service delivered an ordinary envelope to Mark’s door. Inside was a tiny plastic bag containing 10 tabs of LSD. “If you had opened it, unless you were looking for it, you wouldn’t have even noticed,” Mark told us in a phone interview.

Well, trust Gawker to come up with all this. But who can complain? You’ll take your high any way you can get it. Right? So, now let’s get down to the dirty - how does all this new-age getting high stuff work? Just in case you were interested of course…

Mark, a software developer, had ordered the 100 micrograms of acid through a listing on the online marketplace Silk Road. He found a seller with lots of good feedback who seemed to know what they were talking about, added the acid to his digital shopping cart and hit “check out.” He entered his address and paid the seller 50 Bitcoins—untraceable digital currency—worth around $150. Four days later the drugs, sent from Canada, arrived at his house.

“It kind of felt like I was in the future,” Mark said.

The future? Can you imagine it- in the future when you wake up there will be a big old casket of the good sh*t waiting for you in your mailbox and your mailman wont be the one the wiser. Nor will your neighbors, who have been wondering who that strange dude is who keeps knocking on your door at strange hours of the day. Yes- being  a druggie can be bad news- but since it’s what gets you not through the day- why not make it as unpleasant as possible?

Silk Road, a digital black market that sits just below most internet users’ purview, does resemble something from a cyberpunk novel. Through a combination of anonymity technology and a sophisticated user-feedback system, Silk Road makes buying and selling illegal drugs as easy as buying used electronics—and seemingly as safe. It’s Amazon—if Amazon sold mind-altering chemicals.

Used electronics? Faux Amazon? If you say so Gawker. Now let’s get to the gravy bitches.

Here is just a small selection of the 340 items available for purchase on Silk Road by anyone, right now: a gram of Afghani hash; 1/8th ounce of “sour 13″ weed; 14 grams of ecstasy; .1 grams tar heroin. A listing for “Avatar” LSD includes a picture of blotter paper with big blue faces from the James Cameron movie on it. The sellers are located all over the world, a large portion from the U.S. and Canada.

 

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Twice as powerful as crack cocaine at just a fraction of the price

The snakes come at night, darting out of the shadows and into Marcelo's subconscious. "You start thinking, 'There are people coming! The police are coming! A snake is coming! Everything is coming!' You panic. But there is no snake. No police. There's nobody there. There's nothing. You're just tripping out."

Marcelo is an illiterate 24-year-old drug addict whose home is a sliver of cardboard on the streets of Rio Branco, a riverside city in the Brazilian Amazon. His drug of choice is oxi, a highly addictive and hallucinogenic blend of cocaine paste, gasoline, kerosene and quicklime (calcium oxide) that is wreaking havoc across the Amazon region.

Oxi, or oxidado – "rust" – is the latest drug to surface in the Amazon. It is reputedly twice as powerful as crack cocaine and just a fifth of the price.

"It is terrifying," said Alvaro Mendes, an outreach worker in Rio Branco from the state of Acre's Harm Reduction Association, the NGO that first detected the drug. "The majority of first-time users become addicted on their first contact with the drug. Most of them go seven to 10 days without sleeping, without eating. They start to go into a process of degeneration. After months of use … they go into a state where they look like zombies, wandering … in search of pleasure."

Described as a cheaper and deadlier successor to crack, oxi sells for about R$2 (75p) a rock and is smoked in pipes improvised from cans, pieces of piping and metal taps. According to Mendes, whose support group works with slum-dwellers, prostitutes, transvestites and homeless people who are hooked on the drug, oxi can kill within a year.

"The difference between cocaine and oxi is like the difference between drinking beer and pure alcohol," said a federal police operative on the Peru-Brazil border, who refused to be named.

Oxi surfaced in the Amazonian border region between Brazil, Bolivia and Peru in the 1980s, and is said to have been originally used by a small number of hippies who came to the region to experiment with ayahuasca, a hallucinogenic plant native to the Amazon rainforest.

In the past five years, however, its use has exploded, particularly in the slums and rural communities of Acre state in the western Amazon, where it is peddled in street-corner drug dens known as bocadas. Mendes estimates there are at least 8,000 oxi users in Acre's capital, Rio Branco, a city of 320,000 inhabitants.

But oxi is no longer just an Amazonian drug. A series of recent suspected seizures in cities such as Sao Paulo, Brasilia and Rio de Janeiro have propelled it into the national headlines. Health workers and politicians warn of a catastrophe if its spread is confirmed.

"The Brazilian state is unprepared to face this threat and to help its victims," José Serra, a leading opposition politician and former governor of Sao Paulo, wrote in a recent column in the national daily Estado de Sao Paulo, describing oxi on his Twitter account as a "weapon of mass destruction".

Despite growing concern, authorities admit the exact nature of oxi is a mystery. "Oxi's existence has only come to our attention very recently," said Elenice Frez, the police chief in Assis Brasil, a tiny town on the border between Brazil and Peru that is a notorious route for traffickers. "It is a new thing and we don't yet have all the technical details of what oxi really is and the damage it can cause to someone who becomes addicted and uses it constantly."

Mendes says users often suffer from paranoia, vomiting and uncontrollable bouts of diarrhoea. Tooth loss can happen within months. "I've never seen such violent scenes of drug use," he said. "It is very depressing."

Oxi's route into Brazil begins in small border towns such as Epitaciolândia, next to the dust-clogged settlement of Cobija, in Bolivia, a country that is one of the world's biggest cocaine producers.

On condition of anonymity, an addict agreed to escort the Guardian to his oxi den, hidden in the jungle that encircles the town.

Crouching, he picked his way through a mesh of thorns that cut into his legs. After a five-minute trek he arrived at a clearing. A carpet of torn aluminium cans littered the forest floor and empty cigarette lighters had been tossed under the trees.

Scraping the remains of his last hit from the inside of a drinks can, the addict painted a bleak picture of the drug's powers.

"I cry," he said. "I cry because I want to give this shit up. My family say: 'Get out of it son.' I tell her: 'Mum, in the name of Jesus I will.'"

A short drive away, Epitaciolândia's police chief, Sergio Lopes de Souza, pulled two R$70 rocks of oxi, seized the previous day, from an evidence bag.

"The effects of oxi are so devastating," he said. "When a person starts using oxi they spend days just using, without eating properly. They start to become very thin, almost skeletons, and they want to use more and more. If you do not stop you are a candidate to either die of an overdose or of other consequences of the oxi."

In a shantytown on the outskirts of Rio Branco, dirt-caked fingernails fumbled with a red pipe as another of the city's users prepared yet another hit. Sitting next to a dirty metal spoon and a packet of Paraguayan cigarettes, the 21-year-old user reflected on his lot.

"This is a dog's life. This is the kind of drug that makes you sell your own clothes," he muttered. "My whole family ignores me. I used to be a worker. I liked to have my things. Today they look at me and call me a punk.

"I have lost it all," he concluded as cars raced past on a nearby highway. "I had it all, and in the same moment I lost it. All because of oxi."

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Campaign headed by actors, academics and lawyers says current drugs laws stigmatise people and damage communities

Dame Judi Dench, Sting and Sir Richard Branson are among those who have signed an open letter to David Cameron urging that possession of drugs be decriminalised. Photograph: Jockmans/Rex Features
Dame Judi Dench, Sir Richard Branson, and Sting have joined an ex-drugs minister and three former chief constables in calling for the decriminalisation of the possession of all drugs.

The high-profile celebrities together with leading lawyers, academics, artists and politicians have signed an open letter to David Cameron to mark this week's 40th anniversary of the 1971 Misuse of Drugs Act. The letter, published in a full-page advertisement in Thursday's Guardian, calls for a "swift and transparent" review of the effectiveness of current drugs policies.

Its signatories say that all the past 40 years has produced is a rapid growth in illicit drug use in Britain, and significant harm caused by the application of the criminal law to the personal use and possession of all drugs.

"This policy is costly for taxpayers and damaging for communities," they claim. "Criminalising people who use drugs leads to greater social exclusion and stigmatisation making it much more difficult for them to gain employment and to play a productive role in society. It creates a society full of wasted resources."

The letter launching the campaign, Drugs – It's Time for Better Laws, has been organised by the national drugs charity Release. Other signatories include the film director Mike Leigh, actors Julie Christie and Kathy Burke and leading lawyer Sir Geoffrey Bindman QC. The former Labour drugs minister Bob Ainsworth and three former chief constables, Paul Whitehouse, Francis Wilkinson and Tom Lloyd, have all put their names to the letter.

It points out that nearly 80,000 people were found guilty or cautioned for the possession of illegal drugs – most of whom were young, black or poor – in 2010. Over the past decade, more than a million people have ended up with a criminal record as a result of the drug laws.

The letter coincides with Thursday's New York launch of the report of the Global Commission on Drug Policy, which counts three former South American presidents, the former secretary-general of the United Nations Kofi Annan and Sir Richard Branson among its membership.

"The war on drugs has failed to cut drug usage, but has filled our jails, cost millions in tax payer dollars, fuelled organised crime and caused thousands of deaths. We need a new approach, one that takes the power out of the hands of organised crime and treats people with addiction problems like patients, not criminals," said Branson, founder of the Virgin Group, who is to appear at the launch.

"The good news is new approaches focused on regulation and decriminalisation have worked. We need our leaders, including business people, looking at alternative, fact-based approaches.

"We need more humane and effective ways to reduce the harm caused by drugs. The one thing we cannot afford to do is to go on pretending the 'war on drugs' is working."

Sting, who also signed the letter to Cameron, said: "Giving young people criminal records for minor drug possession serves little purpose – it is time to think of more imaginative ways of addressing drug use in our society."

Ainsworth, the former Home Office drugs minister and defence secretary, last December described the war on drugs as "nothing short of a disaster" and called for the legal regulation of their production and supply.

The campaign defines decriminalisation as a model that adopts civil rather than criminal sanctions such as confiscation and warnings and fixed penalty fines rather than arrest, prosecution and a criminal record.

The high-profile campaigners point to the Portuguese experience as evidence that decriminalisation does not lead to an increase in drug use. Portugal became the first European country in July 2001 to introduce "administrative" penalties – similar to parking fines – for the possession of all illicit drugs.

The immediate reaction from the Home Office last night was to rule out any such move: "We have no intention of liberalising our drugs laws. Drugs are illegal because they are harmful – they destroy lives and cause untold misery to families and communities.

"Those caught in the cycle of dependency must be supported to live drug-free lives, but giving people a green light to possess drugs through decriminalisation is clearly not the answer," said a spokesman.

"We are taking action through tough enforcement, both inland and abroad, alongside introducing temporary banning powers and robust treatment programmes that lead people into drug free recovery."

 

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