Free Republic

Hip Hype Justice? by: Brittany Fortier, July 13, 2009 The ongoing debate concerning the disproportionate presence of African-Americans and other minorities in the criminal justice system has become crucial as the United States tries to find an approach to fund its prisons in an ailing economy. Paul Butler, a former prosecutor and author of the book Let’s Get Free: A Hip Hop Theory of Justice, spoke about this issue at the Center for American Progress (CAP) on July 1, 2009. He believes the criminal justice system needs to undergo major reform. “I didn’t go to law school to put anybody...

Hackers last week broke into a Virginia state Web site used by pharmacists to track prescription drug abuse. They deleted records on more than 8 million patients and replaced the site's homepage with a ransom note demanding $10 million for the return of the records, according to a posting on Wikileaks.org, an online clearinghouse for leaked documents. Wikileaks reports that the Web site for the Virginia Prescription Monitoring Program was defaced last week with a message claiming that the database of prescriptions had been bundled into an encrypted, password-protected file.

An explosive video being shopped to media outlets has plunged the White House and Vice President Joe Biden into a cocaine scandal, RadarOnline.com has learned exclusively. The video shows a woman, who is represented by the seller and his attorneys to be Biden’s daughter Ashley, snorting several lines of cocaine. The tape has been viewed by a RadarOnline.com freelance reporter who confirms the woman looks identical to Ashley Biden. Tom Dunlap, an attorney for Dunlap, Grubb and Weaver in Washington D.C. is representing the seller of the tape in brokering a deal and several news organizations have seen the footage....

After spending $5 million on its five automated public toilets, Seattle is calling it quits. In the end, the restrooms, installed in early 2004, had become so filthy, so overrun with drug abusers and prostitutes, that although use was free of charge, even some of the city’s most destitute people refused to step inside them. The units were put up for sale Wednesday afternoon on eBay, with a starting bid set by the city at $89,000 apiece. The dismal outcome coincides with plans by New York, Los Angeles and Boston, among other cities, to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars...

An argument at a south Hilton Head Island nightclub spilled over to a north-island all-night breakfast restaurant, where a group of up to 15 women fought, some using their high heels as weapons, according to a Beaufort County sheriff’s report released today. The fight occurred just after 5 a.m. Saturday in the parking of Huddle House, 40 Palmetto Parkway. Several of the women had been in an argument earlier in the evening at Club Life, 81 Pope Ave., the report stated. When officers arrived, the people involved in the fight were uncooperative with the deputies and left the area, authorities...

RIVERTON — Tie dye, tee-pees, and cries for free love and world peace. If it sounds like an image of the 1960s, residents near Pinedale may believe they've traveled back in time next week when a large band of "hippies" hold their annual gathering at a national forest near Pinedale. Federal officials began arriving in Riverton earlier this month to prepare for the arrival of the group, which calls itself the Rainbow Family of Living Light. Anywhere between several hundred to a few thousand members of the group are expected, and their arrival has already drawn the ire of some...

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Vermont leads the United States in marijuana use, while Utah has the highest number of people reporting mental health problems, U.S. government researchers said on Thursday, based on a new state-by-state report. They said substance abuse and mental health issues vary widely by state, but all struggle with these problems to some degree. "This report shows that although states may be uniquely affected by serious public health problems like underage drinking, every state and region must confront these issues," said Terry Cline, chief of the U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, which compiled the study....

For Immediate ReleaseOffice of the Press SecretaryMarch 1, 2008 President's Radio Address   President's Radio Address  Audio  En Español       2008 National Drug Control Policy (PDF, 6.73MB, 79 pages) THE PRESIDENT: Good morning. Today, my Administration is releasing our 2008 National Drug Control Strategy. This report lays out the methods we are using to combat drug abuse in America. And it highlights the hopeful progress we're making in the fight against addiction. When I took office in 2001, our country was facing a troubling rate of drug abuse, particularly among young people. Throughout America, young men and women saw their dreams disrupted...

If this is true Obama is done. There have been rumors about Obama experimentig with drugs as a teen. Even people from Hillary Clinton's camp have said that something big was coming out about Obama back around Christmas. Could this be it? I don't really care for Obama but I don't like Hillary Clinton. Eventually Obama will have to respond.

Heath Ledger's death on Jan. 22 was due to an accidental mixture of prescription drugs, the Office of Chief Medical Examiner for the City of New York has concluded. "Mr. Heath Ledger died as the result of acute intoxication by the combined effects of oxycodone, hydrocodone, diazepam, temazepam, alprazolam, and doxylamine," said an announcement released Wednesday morning by office spokesperson Ellen Borakove. Oxycodone is a pain medication, hydrocodone is a cough suppressant, diazepam is commonly called Valium, temazepam treats anxiety or sleeplessness, alprazolam is known as Xanax, and doxylamine is a sedating antihistamine.

Los Angeles - Eva Mendes has checked into Utah’s Cirque Lodge, the substance abuse treatment centre where Lindsay Lohan recently completed a rehabiliatory stint. The Hitch actress’ rep confirmed that Mendes has been seeking treatment for the last several weeks for a substance abuse problem. -snip-

Ahh, cancer. One learns so much from being diagnosed with a death-sentence disease. Of course, 95% of it is stuff you would rather not know, but that other 5% is downright interesting. For example, "America's Next Top Model" is much more fun to watch when you've lost 15 pounds without trying. During chemotherapy, vanilla smells good, but vanilla wafers taste disgusting. And eyelashes really do have a purpose; without them, my eyes are a dust magnet. But the most compelling fact I learned was about my friends. Not just what you would expect: how they cooked for my family and...

AP Medical Writer WASHINGTON --Improper use of patches that emit the painkiller fentanyl is still killing people, the government said Friday - its second warning in two years about the powerful narcotic. Some of the deaths came after doctors prescribed the patches to the wrong patients, the Food and Drug Administration said. The drug is only for chronic pain in people used to narcotics, such as cancer patients, and can cause trouble breathing in people new to this family of "opioid" painkillers. Yet the FDA found cases where doctors prescribed it for headaches or post-surgical pain. The FDA said patients...

Download entire report including names of players implicated here.

Sociologists Discover Religion by: Heyecan Veziroglu, October 16, 2007 Religious belief and practice helps people prevent conflict by showing them a mutual sacred purpose and vision, leading sociologists said recently in a conference session hosted by the Heritage Foundation. Associate Professor Dr. Jeffrey Ulmer from Pennsylvania State University examines the degree to which religiosity increases self-control. He points out that religious observance builds self-control and substance use is lower in stronger moral communities. Dr. Ulmer argues that self-control is a cognitive resource and that it is a product of social learning. Psychologists have developed a ‘muscle’ or a ‘strength’ model...

They tell us he was steaming, but San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom shouldn't have been too surprised when The Chronicle reported that Golden Gate Park was littered with used drug syringes. After all, his own Public Health Department spent $800,000 last year to help hand out some 2 million syringes to drug users under the city's needle exchange program -- sometimes 20 at a time. Although Health Department officials say 2 million needles were returned, the fact is they don't count them and can only estimate how many are coming back. And from the looks of things, a lot of...

New York would become the first state requiring all addiction treatment programs to help their clients quit smoking under a proposed rule to be announced today. Pointing to the high number of tobacco-related deaths among former addicts, the state’s Office of Alcoholism and Substance Abuse Service said that by July 24 of next year, all facilities treating drug or alcohol addiction would have to have programs in place to encourage clients to stop smoking. Under the plan, all treatment centers would have to be smoke-free, and staff members would also have to abide by the ban. Treatment for nicotine addiction,...

On April 14, 2005, the day Dr. William E. Hurwitz was sentenced to 25 years in prison, Karen Tandy called a news conference to celebrate the sentence and reassure other doctors. Ms. Tandy, head of the Drug Enforcement Administration, held up a plastic bag containing 1,600 opioid pills. “Dr. Hurwitz prescribed 1,600 pills to one person to take in a single day,” she announced. This bag showed that he was “no different from a cocaine or heroin dealer peddling poison on the street corner,” she said, and made it “immediately apparent” that he was not a legitimate doctor. “To the...

Ronald McIver is a prisoner in a medium-security federal compound in Butner, N.C. He is 63 years old, of medium height and overweight, with a white Santa Claus beard, white hair and a calm, direct and intelligent manner. He is serving 30 years for drug trafficking, and so will likely live there the rest of his life. McIver (pronounced mi-KEE-ver) has not been convicted of drug trafficking in the classic sense. He is a doctor who for years treated patients suffering from chronic pain. At the Pain Therapy Center, his small storefront office not far from Main Street in Greenwood,...

ALEXANDRIA, Va. —William E. Hurwitz, the prominent doctor on trial here for drug trafficking, spent more than two days on the witness stand last week telling a jury why he had prescribed painkillers to patients who turned out to be drug dealers and addicts. But the clearest explanation of his actions — and of the problem facing patients who are in pain — came earlier in the trial. It occurred, oddly enough, during the appearance of a hostile witness, Dr. Robin Hamill-Ruth, one of the experts who was paid by the federal prosecutors to analyze Dr. Hurwitz’s prescriptions for OxyContin...

The young father told police that he was alone with his newborn son when he inhaled the spray from a can of electronics cleaner, an increasingly popular choice for those seeking a cheap high Moments later, he went on to tell investigators, he awoke from a brief blackout to find his 15-day-old son bruised and disfigured. Kenneth George Ryan said he does not remember how the baby was hurt, but yesterday police announced that the 20-year-old Baltimore County man had been charged with murder. Young people call the practice "dusting," a name taken from the "Dust-Off" brand product that uses...

A Huff Equals a Puff By Rhitu ChatterjeeScienceNOW Daily News10 January 2007 Sniffing, or huffing, glue, paint, cleaning fluids, and nail polish remover may appear relatively harmless, but it is physiologically no different from other forms of drug abuse. That's the conclusion of a new study that shows that toluene, the solvent in many of these inhaled substances, has the same effect on our brains as notorious drugs like cocaine and methamphetamine. The findings explain a long-standing mystery about the impact of this addictive substance on the brain and suggest ways of developing treatments for addiction. Solvent abuse increases a...

ST. PAUL, Minn. -- Eric Clapton is playing "Cocaine" in concert again. The recovering drug addict and alcoholic, who founded the Crossroads Centre addiction recovery center on the Caribbean island of Antigua, stopped performing the song written by J.J. Cale when he first got sober. "I thought that it might be giving the wrong message to people who were in the same boat as me," Clapton recently told The Associated Press. "But further investigation proved ... the song, if anything, if it's not even ambivalent, it's an anti-drug song. And so I thought that might be a better way to...

Commentary Mel Gibson is the latest reminder of the perils of drunken driving. But in his case it was talking while intoxicated that attracted so much attention. Typically, of course, it is not what someone says under the influence that concerns the public, but what he does. Safety is our main worry. And the goal is to keep the person from driving while intoxicated. That was the aim of the judge who in June handled the case of another high-profile arrestee, Representative Patrick J. Kennedy of Rhode Island. Mr. Kennedy pleaded guilty to driving under the influence after crashing his...

SAN FRANCISCO, July 3 — The newest attraction planned for Fisherman's Wharf, San Francisco's most popular tourist destination, has no sign, no advertisements and not even a scrap of sourdough. Yet everyone seems to think that the new business, the Green Cross, will be a hit, drawing customers from all over the region to sample its aromatic wares. For some, that is exactly the problem. "The city is saturated with pot clubs," said T. Wade Randlett, the president of SF SOS, a quality-of-life group that opposes the planned club. "Fisherman's Wharf is a tourism attraction, and this is not the...

Last month, the Picower Institute for Learning and Memory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology was host to a conference about addiction for a small, invitation-only crowd of neuroscientists, clinicians and public policy makers. It was an unusual gathering. Addiction conferences are usually sober affairs, but M.I.T. offered a lavish cocktail reception (with an open bar, no less). More important, the conference was a celebration of the new ways scientists and addiction researchers are conceptualizing, and seeking to treat, addiction. While many in the treatment field have long called addiction a "disease," they've used the word in vague and metaphorical...

A HUMILIATING accident. An apparent memory lapse. A sudden, emotional confession. Representative Patrick Kennedy's car crash on Capitol Hill early Thursday and a news conference a day later had a familiar rhythm, especially for those who study addiction or know it firsthand. Mr. Kennedy, a six-term Democrat from Rhode Island, said that his addiction was to prescription medication and that he planned to seek treatment at an addiction clinic, as he had done before. "I struggle every day with this disease, as do millions of Americans," said Mr. Kennedy, who is 38. But will a cure that apparently didn't take...

When writer Marcia Segelstein headed to the bookstore to scout out books for her 12-year-old, she wasn’t sure what to expect. But she certainly didn’t expect rampant drinking, drug use, profanity, and explicit descriptions of sex and nudity. Nevertheless, that’s exactly what she found. Segelstein’s daughter had been clamoring to read the Gossip Girl series, which “‘all’ of her friends were reading,” she said. After seeing what was in the books, Segelstein was floored. But a school librarian confirmed, “They’re very popular among sixth and seventh graders.” Even worse, the librarian added, “Some parents are so happy that their kids...

Prescribing of hyperactivity drugs is out of control 31 March 2006 NewScientist.com news service Peter Aldhous Rise in ADHA? THE figures are mind-boggling. Nearly 4 million Americans, most of them children and young adults, are being prescribed amphetamine-like stimulants to treat attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Up to a million more may be taking the drugs illegally. Now, amid reports of rare but serious side effects, leading researchers and doctors are calling for a review of the way ADHD is dealt with. Many prescriptions are being written by family doctors with little expertise in diagnosing ADHD, raising doubts about how...

Former Full House cutie Jodie Sweetin has earned herself a spot on the lengthy list of child stars gone wrong. During an appearance on Good Morning America Wednesday, Sweetin, who played middle sister Stephanie Tanner on the hit sitcom, revealed that she is a recovering meth addict and once battled a daily drug habit. The ex-actress, 24, said she had trouble figuring out how to adjust to a regular childhood existence after Full House ended its run in 1995. "There is a certain sense of loss when a series ends," Sweetin said. "It is kind of hard to figure out...

A man pursued by police in northeastern Wyoming said he thought he had been driving around Minnesota. Wyoming authorities said the 24-year-old Belle Plaine man admitted he had been using methamphetamine and marijuana.

....The presidential son, who moved to Las Vegas in 2003 and campaigned for John F. Kerry last year, said he's about to embark on a ''listening tour" of Nevada to find out ''if my fellow citizens feel the same way about me as I feel about them." Carter, an equities investor who lives with his wife in fast-growing northwest Las Vegas, said he's been contemplating a bid against Ensign for a while. ... ....Ensign spokesman Jack Finn said the senator doesn't know much about Carter and couldn't comment on a possible opponent. Ensign told a local journalist that he didn't...

Abortions and drug abuse once again have been linked, according to a study co-sponsored by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the National Institute on Drug Abuse, and reported by Christian Wire Service. Drug abuse is three times more common during a subsequent pregnancy among women who have had abortions in the past than among those who have never ended a pregnancy. However, there is no evidence of the trend among women who experienced miscarriages or stillbirths. Research suggests that subsequent pregnancies may cause women to experience unresolved grief about past abortions. To mask such feelings, these...

NAPLES, Italy — The Navy’s message on drug use and alcohol abuse is clear: no second chances. With the service drawing down its forces, and no worries over meeting retention and recruiting goals, the Navy can afford to be picky about the quality of sailors it keeps around, officials said. They’re weeding out the “fungus” that threatens to infect the service’s “garden of beautiful flowers,” said Lt. Cmdr. Tony Kapuschansky, officer-in-charge of the Norfolk, Va.-based Center for Personal Development Detachment, Drug and Alcohol Program Management Activity. Commanding officers not only are giving the boot to those who violate anti-drug use...

When the Supreme Court ruled in June that states could not legalize marijuana for medical uses, Justice Stephen Breyer voted with the majority. But during oral arguments, he suggested an alternative way for patients to get it: let the federal Food and Drug Administration decide if marijuana should be a prescription drug. "Medicine by regulation is better than medicine by referendum," he said. In theory, that sounds reasonable. But what if the officials doing the regulation are afflicted with a bad case of Reefer Madness? If you doubt this possibility, you should have been at a hearing that began this...

HOUSTON -- Houston has become known nationally as the "City of Syrup" because the abuse of codeine-fortified cough syrup among the city's youth is so widespread, a local researcher says. The reputation is reflected in a trial that begins Tuesday of six pharmacists charged with illegally dispensing the highly addictive prescription cough syrup codeine with promethazine.

America has a serious drug problem, but it's not the "meth epidemic" getting so much publicity. It's the problem identified by William Bennett, the former national drug czar and gambler. "Using drugs," he wrote, "is wrong not simply because drugs create medical problems; it is wrong because drugs destroy one's moral sense. People addicted to drugs neglect their duties." This problem afflicts a small minority of the people who have tried methamphetamines, but most of the law-enforcement officials and politicians who lead the war against drugs. They're so consumed with drugs that they've lost sight of their duties. Like addicts...

Analysis of waste water in Italy shows a startlingly high level of drug abuse THE rivers of Italy are flowing with cocaine, say scientists who have adopted a new approach to measuring the extent of drug misuse. The biggest river, the Po, carries the equivalent of about 4kg (8lb 13oz) of the drug a day, with a street value of about £20,000. Cocaine users among the five million people who live in the Po River basin in northern Italy consume the drug and excrete its metabolic by-product, benzoylecgonine (BE). This goes from sewers into the river. So a team led...

Burbank Councilwoman Arrested # For Alleged Cocaine Possession, Child Endangerment Jul 15, 2005 7:40 am US/Pacific BURBANK, Calif. (AP) A city councilwoman was arrested for investigation of cocaine possession and child endangerment by members of a task force that recently raided a notorious street gang blamed in the shooting deaths of two police officers, authorities said Thursday. Councilwoman Stacey Jo Murphy, 47, was arrested Wednesday night at her home, where law enforcement agents served a federal search warrant, police said. She posted $100,000 bail and was released from jail Thursday. A phone call left for Murphy at her office Thursday...

WASHINGTON - Whether it's smoked, snorted, swallowed or injected, methamphetamine is more addictive and more damaging to the brain than cocaine, heroin and most other illegal drugs. It's also unusually efficient at ruining lives, ensnaring entire families and turning parents and children into addicts fixated only on their next euphoric high. "If the adults use it, the kids are going to be around it and get roped in," said Dr. William Haning, director of the Addiction Psychiatry Residency Program for the University of Hawaii's medical school. "As crazy as this sounds, the parent won't necessarily see this as a bad...

RELIEF for medical marijuana patients was snatched away this week. In Gonzales v. Raich, the Supreme Court ruled that such patients will be subject to federal prosecution even if their own state's laws permit use of marijuana. Now, short of Congress legalizing medical marijuana, the only way that its users can avoid stiff financial penalties or jail is if it is turned into a prescription medicine approved by the Food and Drug Administration. Justice Stephen G. Breyer said as much during oral arguments last November with his comment that "medicine by regulation is better than medicine by referendum." Fair enough....

Liberals and libertarians like to ask, "How can the relationship of two people who love each other but are the same sex be detrimental to society?" How does porn hurt you or me? How does smoking pot hurt my community? What is the impact of casual sex or general filth on TV to my family? Perhaps George Will said it best when he wrote, "Some pleasures are contemptible because they are coarsening. They are not merely private vices; they have public consequences in driving the culture's downward spiral." All the vices listed above in some way do touch our lives....

Cocaine users face a newly discovered and possibly fatal risk: coronary aneurysms, a ballooning of the walls of coronary arteries. The condition increases the chance of suffering a heart attack, even years after users stop the drug, researchers in Minnesota are reporting. The risk of developing an aneurysm was four times as high among cocaine users in their mid-40's as among nonusers in the same age group, according to the study, reported yesterday in the journal Circulation, which is published by the American Heart Association. Aneurysms occurred in 30.4 percent of cocaine users in the study compared with 7.6 percent...

The face of substance abuse may be growing older. A new report shows the number of adults over age 55 entering treatment centers for drug and alcohol abuse rose by nearly a third from 1995 to 2002. While most people entering rehab clinics are still younger adults, researchers say alcohol and drug abuse presents a growing threat to America's burgeoning elderly population. The number of adults over 55 is expected to mushroom from about 62 million in 2002 to 75 million by 2010. If current trends continue, researchers say the number of adults over 50 with substance abuse problems will...

Teacher Jolene Cortez tried making ends meet on her $30,841-a-year salary. Cortez, 33, of 3660 Orchard Ave., was charged this week with possession of methamphetamine with intent to deliver. Police allegedly found two ounces of meth, a scale, drug records and $2,775 in cash when searching Cortez's apartment, garage and vehicle. Police said the second-grade teacher at Omaha's Conestoga Magnet Center told them she was selling the meth for extra money. "It's hard to make it on the salary that they gave us," Cortez said. "I don't want to live lavishly, but I would like, if my son needs a...

WASHINGTON, April 4 - The Supreme Court in recent years has drawn constitutional rules for the use of newly popular law enforcement techniques. The police need a warrant before aiming a heat-detecting device at a private home in an effort to find out whether marijuana is growing inside under high-intensity lights. The police do not need a warrant before permitting a trained dog to sniff a car, or a piece of luggage at an airport, in order to detect drugs. Those precedents converged in a case from Texas that posed this question: Can the police bring a trained dog to...

SEATTLE, March 2 - The drugs move across the Canadian border inside huge tractor-trailer rigs, pounds and pounds stashed in drums of frozen raspberries, tucked in shipments of crushed glass, wood chips and sawdust, or crammed into hollowed-out logs, in secret compartments that agents refer to as "coffins." Kayakers paddle them south from British Columbia across the freezing bays of America's northwest corner, and well-paid couriers carry up to 100 pounds at a time in makeshift backpacks, hiking eight hours over the rugged mountainous terrain that forms part of the border between the United States and Canada. Small planes drop...

DENVER - Hunter S. Thompson, the "gonzo journalist" with a penchant for drugs, guns and flamethrower prose, might have one more salvo in store for everyone: Friends and relatives want to blast his ashes out of a cannon, just as he wished. "If that's what he wanted, we'll see if we can pull it off," said historian Douglas Brinkley, a friend of Thompson's and now the family's spokesman. Thompson, who shot himself to death at his Aspen-area home Sunday at 67, said several times he wanted an artillery send-off for his remains. "There's no question, I'm sure that's what he...

AP News Alert ASPEN, Colo. (AP) -- The son of Hunter S. Thompson says the author shot himself to death at his Aspen-area home.

Reports that a New York man may be carrying a rare and possibly virulent strain of H.I.V. have focused new attention on the biological relationship between the virus and methamphetamine, a drug that has become increasingly entwined in the spread of sexually transmitted diseases in cities from San Francisco to Miami to New York. Although methamphetamine, often called crystal meth or speed, is most troubling to health officials because of its role in blotting out inhibitions and fueling high-risk sexual behavior, experts say they are also grappling with mounting evidence that the drug by itself may increase a person's susceptibility...