Free Republic

Long Island Lawmaker Saladino Wants Parents To Drug Test Teens AnnuallyAssemblyman's Proposal States If You Don't Comply You Can't Go To School August 2, 2011 10:30 PM NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) – With drug abuse on the rise, should parents be required by law to test their children? One Long Island lawmaker says yes. Assemblyman Joseph Saladino (R-Massapequa) has introduced a bill that would require parents of high school students to give their children annual drug tests. “If they dont do it, the student would not be allowed into school,” Saladino told CBS 2′s Jennifer McLogan. The proposal would mandate that...

Washington - Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Deputy Commissioner David Aguilar told CNSNews.com that Mexican drug cartels control “several areas along our border with Mexico.” In Washington, D.C., on Tuesday, CNSNews.com asked Aguilar, “Do you think Mexican drug cartels have taken control of the human trafficking that takes place from Mexico to the U.S.?” Aguilar said, “There are several areas along our border with Mexico where in fact we believe that the drug cartels not only have taken control, but control the areas by which the illegal crossings occur.”

On Sunday a Kern County, California, sheriff's deputy shot and killed David Lee "Deacon" Turner, a 56-year-old former running back for the Cincinnati Bengals, outside a convenience store in Bakersfield. Police questioned Turner, who was coming out of the store with his 19-year-old son, while investigating reports of teenagers asking adults to buy them alcohol and cigarettes. The Kern County Sheriff's Office says Deputy Wesley Kraft fired twice at Turner after the former football player hit Deputy Aaron Nadal over the head with a bag containing two 24-ounce cans of beer. Turner's son offered a strikingly different account: Turner's son was too shaken...

Another Mexico Drug Cartel Lead Has Been Arrested And He Says The Cartel’s Guns Have Been Supplied Directly By The U.S Government, And The CIA Has Infiltrated (AKA RuA leader of another Mexico Drug Cartel has been arrested and says U.S government supplied gunsnning) The Columbia Drug Cartels. As previously reported, a hacker data release revealed the arrested leader of the La Familia drug cartel in Mexico was in fact the feds point man for the U.S government drug smuggling operation to Mexico drug cartels. As Obama supplies the cartels with guns he uses the cartel’s violence as a justification...

GALLIPOLIS FERRY, W. Va. (WSAZ) -- A beloved father and a man friends call a known drug dealer is dead--shot to death at his own home. Now, police are on the hunt for a killer. Police say Rene Gonzalez was shot twice in the doorway of his home. While he's been convicted on drug charges--pleading guilty to a drug possession a couple of years ago, everyone we spoke to told us you couldn't find a nicer man or a better father to his little girl. Click here to find out more! “It wasn't true, I said no, no, it's not...

The Danish pharmaceutical firm H. Lundbeck A/S has announced it will no longer provide U.S. prisons with a drug used in lethal injection executions. “Lundbeck adamantly opposes the distressing misuse of our product in capital punishment,” said Lundbeck CEO Ulf Wiinberg according to a company statement. The drug in question is the barbiturate pentobarbital, know by its brand-name Nembutol, which was developed as a treatment for controlling epilepsy and is sold for that purpose. But this past spring, European exporters stopped the sale of sodium thiopental, which had been the drug of choice at U.S. prisons in 14 states where...

Wachovia apparently funneled enormous amounts of drug money form Mexico. Cenk Uygur breaks it down.

Ten years ago this month, Portugal rejected the conventional approach to drug policy–more laws, stiffer prison sentences, more police–and went the other way by decriminalizing all drugs, even cocaine and heroin. The drug warriors predicted a disaster. They said drug use would spike and there would be a public health crisis. That did not happen. As Glenn Greenwald showed in a 2009 Cato report, Portugal is doing better than before and in many respects is doing better than other countries in the European Union

The U.S. Medicaid program is likely paying far more than necessary for medications and not offering patients the most effective ones available, by ignoring international evidence-based lists of safe and effective medications, according to a new study by researchers at University of California, San Francisco. The study, which compared the Medicaid program's Preferred Drug Lists in 40 states nationwide against the World Health Organization's 2009 Essential Medicines List, found that the medications that are automatically paid for by the state-run Medicaid programs vary widely from state to state, with few consistent protocols or rationales for their selection, including cost, safety...

 1" thick armor... gun turrets... built-in battering rams (!) What to do when RPG's, AR-15s, and land-mines can't kill your rivals fast enough? When the mass-graves and gory piles of severed heads don't spook 'em like they used to? How about some narco tanks, vato...? In a multi-lateral conflict that keeps getting worse as Mexican drug cartels war over control of lucrative smuggling routes, government forces have captured two jerry-rigged "tanks" in separate incidences: built on American truck chassis and protected by heavy, sloping armor and bulletproof glass, the media in Mexico has been quick to dub them the "Monsters". Although they more...

Federal authorities have seized bottles and drums of elderberry juice concentrate from a Kansas winery, contending that the company's claims of its benefits for treating various diseases make the product a drug. (snip) The government contends the juice concentrate is an unapproved and misbranded drug because the winery claims it is used to treat diseases such as the flu, cancer and AIDS. "Products with unapproved disease claims are dangerous because they may cause consumers to delay or avoid legitimate treatments, Dara Corrigan, the FDA's associate commissioner for regulatory affairs, said in a news release. "The FDA is committed to protecting...

I've followed with great interest the debate raging in Florida over the new law signed by Governor Rick Scott that mandates drug testing for welfare recipients. The ACLU is, of course, challenging this law because according to the ACLU welfare babies should get anything and everything they want without strings attached! They also make several strawman arguments in opposition to the law: * "Welfare recipients are no more likely to use drugs than the rest of the population." This isn't the point. If even ONE person is receiving public aid and using that aid to purchase drugs, it's one person...

HHS this month sent a letter to 83-year-old Forest Labs CEO Howard Solomon, announcing it would henceforth refuse to do business with him. What earned Mr. Solomon the blackball? Well, nothing that he did—as admitted even by HHS. In any case, the federal complaint contained no suggestion that Mr. Solomon was involved with, or even aware of, misconduct. And the question of his continued leadership was never part of the plea deal. Only after a federal court ratified the deal in March did HHS drop its intent-to-ban bomb. Mrs. Sebelius unearthed a dusty provision in the Social Security Act that...

N. Korea detains 2 Japanese for suspected drug smuggling BEIJING, April 20, Kyodo North Korean authorities are currently detaining two Japanese men, apparently on suspicion of drug smuggling, it was learned Wednesday. A total of three Japanese men were initially taken into detention in mid-March, but one of them has since been released and returned to Japan, sources familiar with the case said. Japanese officials have knowledge about the matter and are prudently examining the situation, the sources said.

The other day it was announced that a well known, mega-company discovered a new way to destroy antibiotic resistant bacteria, such as MRSA. Using nanoparticle technology – which is 50,000 times smaller than a hair’s width – the company’s researchers were able to target an electrical charge on the bacteria’s surface, bursting the membrane open to bring about its demise. According to the Wall Street Journal, “if successful, [the discovery] would offer a fresh strategy against a worrisome public-health problem of possibly deadly bacteria evolving to become impervious to antibiotics.” Nearly 19,000 people in the U.S. each year die from...

Legalization of drugs in Mexico would not only lead to lowered violence and drug consumption but also boost its economy, former Mexican President Vicente Fox said Wednesday during a speech to a convention of newspaper editors from the United States and Latin America. “Things are going very badly for Mexico with the issues of organized crime and violence,” Fox said in Spanish. “We’re losing large volumes of tourists, if not in the interior, then at the border. We’re losing a great number of investments.” Fox — a member of the conservative National Action Party, or PAN — made history in...

On the eve of his execution, a Texas death row is saying that he does not want to be the state’s guinea pig for the use of a new drug for lethal injection. Cleve Foster, who is accused of murdering Sudanese refugee Nyaneur Pal in 2002, is set to be executed on Tuesday, but he doesn’t want to be the first Texan to be executed with the new drug pentobarbital.

Bills would require welfare applicants to take, pay for drug testsTHE ASSOCIATED PRESS By WILLIAM MARCH | The Tampa Tribune Updated: 03/24/2011 12:05 pm TALLAHASSEE - Bills are advancing in both houses of the Florida Legislature requiring applicants for welfare benefits to take and pay for drug tests, despite Democratic and even some Republican opposition. In House committee hearing Wednesday, the bill's sponsor revised it to make it tougher, applying to all applicants, not just those with criminal records for drug offenses. That brings it in line with the Senate version of the bill, which already applied to all applicants,...

CHANDLER, Ariz. — Authorities have determined a man who was stabbed and beheaded in a suburban Phoenix apartment was killed for stealing drugs from a Mexican cartel, in a gruesome example of drug cartel violence spilling over the border. The cartel found out Cota-Monroy had actually stolen the drugs and hired men to kidnap and kill him in Nogales, Mexico. But Cota-Monroy was able to talk his way out of being killed, saying he'd pay back the money and use his house for collateral, the report says. But the house wasn't Cota-Monroy's and he fled to the Phoenix area, leading...

PhRMA’s quiescence on Obamacare badly hurt the industry — and all those who depend on medical innovation. With the release of the president’s budget, it is now beyond dispute — Beltway spin notwithstanding — that the decision by the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) to support the health-care bill was one of the worst self-inflicted wounds in the history of lobbying. For biotech and pharmaceutical companies, the president’s budget repudiates one of the most important benefits of their “deal” with the White House: the ability to market biotech drugs without generic competition for twelve years. The president would...