Posted on 08/17/2005 11:44:14 AM PDT by BurbankKarl
Two college coeds used cocaine with a pair of convicted drug dealers and had fresh needle marks on their arms when they overdosed in a lower East Side apartment, sources said yesterday.
Police believe a bad batch of heroin may have contributed to the deaths of Mellie Carballo and Maria Pesantez, both 18 and with promising futures.
It was unclear who supplied the drugs, but heartbroken relatives of the victims blamed Roberto Martinez, 41, and Alfredo (Tito) Morales, 33, who were with the teens Friday when the students apparently overdosed.
"How is it possible that they are free?" asked distraught father Juan Carlos Pesantez outside the family's home in Jackson Heights, Queens. "With those [criminal] records? With two girls dead?"
Carballo, a second-semester student at Hunter College, and Pesantez, an NYU sophomore, were found about 6 p.m. Friday in an apartment at 484 E. Houston St. Carballo died 20 minutes later and Pesantez died Sunday.
The men admitted doing cocaine with the women, who met at St. Vincent Ferrer High School in Manhattan, a law enforcement source said.
Martinez, who placed a bouquet of red roses in front of the E. Houston St. apartment yesterday, told a different story to the Daily News. He said he came to the apartment, where Morales lives, after Morales called him in a panic.
"I saw [Pesantez] in the bedroom catching a seizure," Martinez said yesterday. "I tried to give her mouth-to-mouth and then I called 911."
Martinez said he met Carballo at a bar about a month ago and didn't meet Pesantez until Friday. He denied giving the women drugs, saying they brought drugs to Morales' apartment.
No one has been arrested and toxicology results are pending.
Morales was convicted in 1995 of possession of cocaine with intent to sell. Martinez, whose is on parole, has 13 narcotics arrests.
The coeds' friends told cops the women wanted to try heroin, a police source said. The friends also told police that Carballo, a former MTV intern, and Pesantez, a pianist and National Honor Society member, had done drugs before.
Relatives dispute that account.
"To my knowledge, she had never experimented with anything," said Celeste Carballo, 21, who shared a room with her sister at the family's West Side apartment.
College students Mellie Carballo (left) and Maria Pesantez, both 18, in an undated photo. The coeds died of suspected drug overdoses in a lower East Side apartment
Photos taken from memorial at http://www.lastnightsparty.com/mellie/index.html
According to the drug users in this post.
The 20's were a high point in drug use in America, especially morphine and heroin. Those drugs were not illegal until 1914-1920 depending on the drug and the jurisdiction, and the addictive and dangerous effects were not well known. Kind of like the number of smokers in the 60's. We were just finding out about cigarettes and by then many were already addicted.
Estimates run from 300k to 1.5 million addicts in the US in the 20's. Don't know how that compares with today, but it certainly must have been a hefty percentage.
Have you ever seen the play or the movie "Long Day's Journey Into Night" by Eugene O'Neill? Excellent portrayal of his mother's addiction.
That is not the question here
It is for those like you who argue for banning substances based on the harm done by their use.
No more age limits; it follows logically from the debate you are just itching for
Utter nonsense; nothing in my argument compels me to say that humans have full rights from the moment of birth.
False premise.
No, correct premise: street prices are stable or falling, ever more dangerous drugs are reaching the market (e.g., meth), while billions in WOD-inflated profits are funneled into criminal hands. If that ain't failure then the War On Poverty was a ringing triumph.
There is no profound difference: under the WOD, street prices are stable or falling, ever more dangerous drugs are reaching the market (e.g., meth), while billions in WOD-inflated profits are funneled into criminal hands. Sounds like Prohibition 2 to me.
MJ, meth, cocaine and heroin are still marginal drugs and on the fringes of society, used regularly by a small minority of stupid young people and a very small minority of really, really stupid adults.
I don't have the figures at my fingertips, but I'm sure regular MJ use (while less than that for marijuana) is far from miniscule.
Alcohol, OTOH, is a case study in what happens to drug use if it is legal over time. The result is regular use by large majorities of the adult population
Other drugs have quite different effects, and there's no reason to suppose that those effects are as widely desired as those of alcohol.
Legalization of drugs is one of the unfinished agenda items from the 60's.
Ah, top it all off with a heapin' helpin' of guilt-by-association. Sorry, but just because jeans and Beatles records were popular in the '60s is no reason for me to throw away mine.
Hence, the current laws against it.
So any product that is misrepresented to its purchasers should be banned? I'd prefer the liberty-respecting approach of simply requiring truth in advertising.
So you support banning alcohol?
Which FReepers on this thread are drug users?
You mean like the Yugo? Well, I suppose so.
"I'd prefer the liberty-respecting approach of simply requiring truth in advertising."
I see you've changed your caveat emptor position. Now it's suddenly a caveat venditor one? Whatever helps makes your current point, I guess.
You'd require truth in advertising? With what as a penalty -- prison? death?
Those are your guidelines? That's what you measure to determine success or failure? Geez, supply could be up and prices down because demand is down. That ever occur to you?
Trends don't matter? Number of users don't matter?
Pick a statistic and make a generalization. That's you.
Are you saying they don't?
I suppose so.
That's nuts.
I'd prefer the liberty-respecting approach of simply requiring truth in advertising.
I see you've changed your caveat emptor position.
When did I supposedly take that position?
You'd require truth in advertising? With what as a penalty -- prison?
Fines, mostly; prison perhaps in extreme cases.
I know of no reason to believe that's the case.
Trends don't matter? Number of users don't matter?
All we know is number of self-reported users ... and even that number shows no correlation to taxpayer dollars spent on the WOD.
Yes. Do you disagree?
Poor foolish girls.
My heart goes out to their parents, who tried to raise them right.
Where, exactly, did I say that (even though I do not drink)?
Look, you are not going to change my mind about drugs.
I have seen too many people die as a result of drug use, families messed up, and kids who will have nothing like the opportunities they would have had if their families been reasonably functional. Generations of children best described as damaged goods.
Promising careers have been destroyed, not because of the law, but because of the effects of long term drug use on that person's work, mental attitude, and ability to get along with others.
As for long term pot smokers, yes, I can notice the effects, especially on people I have known for a long time but do not see often.
There may be a few people out there who can "handle it", but most are somewhere between self-delusion and denial, and in reality are not "handling it" worth a d@mn. They are so used to being messed up they cannot even tell it. It has become a normal state of affairs for them.
People are remarkably adaptable.
But watch the heavy weekend drinker who is sweating out metabolites on Monday morning and try to tell me metabloites have no effect. Ditto someone who spent the weekend loaded (grass). The effects are there, for all who are willing to see.
It is just as unlikely I will change your mind on this issue as you will change mine.
I can see that there are some things which are so universally harmful (unlike guns which have a widespread beneficial aspect), or so universally consumed (tobacco, alcohol, coffee) that banning them will cause more problems than the substance does, and even then, most of these substances or devices are regulated and used to gather revenue. I'm not thrilled about the revenue part, but the regulation (to a point) makes good sense. Even those of us who vehemently oppose gun control will not state that we think people who have committed violent crimes or been declared mentally incompetent should be allowed to have them.
Were I to get hyperbolic, I would make assumptive statements that you would like to see meth concessions in schoolyards, etc., but that kind of crap does nothing to contribute to the quality of the discussion.
At some point, neither the revenue generated, nor the assumed benefits, outweigh the high probability that something will be damaging, not only to individuals and those around them, but to our society as a whole. That is when things are regulated, be they explosives, cigarettes, or intravenous drugs.
When I was a child, my parents had rules. When I got a little older and moved out on my own, I was no longer under those rules. I found out in short order that regardless of rules, and no one telling me not to jump off a cliff, that doing so could hurt. There were reasons for their rules. One small part of growing up involves realizing that just because there is no one to tell you not to do something does not mean that you should go out and do it.
Remove all the laws concerning drug use, and I still am not going to use them.
I have difficulty understanding the oblivion mentality, anyway. If things are that bad, get off your butt and fix them. Getting wasted does not change anything for the better. If things are that good, why get messed up to "enjoy" them?
Yes. Humans have full rights from the moment of birth. Some of those rights are protected by the government from the moment of birth, some are not.
The absense of government protection of a right does not deny the existence of the right itself, a common misperception.
It was a Yugo joke, numbnuts. A response worthy of your stupid question.
"When did I supposedly take that position?"
I don't remember. Do you deny that [caveat emptor] was your position? Are you saying that now your position is caveat venditor?
Doesn't feel like your old libertarian, free-wheeling, market viewpoint, but, whatever.
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