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
Too many monikers to search through.
Prove it.
I don't have a dog in this fight. I'm a historian just giving perspective.
Prove it.
Ken H has repeatedly posted those stats. Ken?
seemoAR, you haven't answered my question: Who here likes drugs?
If I am wrong then I am wrong. However, I would want to know who would benefit by those stats, who did the research and who financed them. Then I could know who to believe.
So you can rule out any stats that indicate WOD failure, because WOD opponents are "who would benefit by those stats"? Nice dodge.
Many soldiers on both sides of the Civil War who were given morphine for their wounds became addicted to it, and this increased level of addiction continued throughout the nineteenth century and into the twentieth.
In 1880, many drugs, including opium and cocaine, were legal — and, like some drugs today, seen as benign medicine not requiring a doctor's care and oversight. Addiction skyrocketed. There were over 400,000 opium addicts in the U.S. That is twice as many per capita as there are today.
[My note: The 1880 census showed a US population of ~50,000,000. This works out to an opium addiction rate of 0.8%]
By 1900, about one American in 200 was either a cocaine or opium addict. [end excerpt]
[My note: This works out to an addiction rate of 0.5% to either opium or cocaine. Therefore, there was at least a 37.5% decline in addiction. If the number of cocaine addicts in the 1900 were not included (making it an apples to apples comparison) the decline would have been even greater.]
http://www.usdoj.gov/dea/demand/speakout/06so.htm
_______________________________________
For 2000:
"There were an estimated 980,000 hardcore heroin addicts in the United States in 1999, 50 percent more than the estimated 630,000 hardcore addicts in 1992."
--www.usdoj.gov/ndic/pubs07/794/heroin.htm
"The demand for both powdered and crack cocaine in the United States is high. Among those using cocaine in the United States during 2000, 3.6 million were hardcore users who spent more than $36 billion on the drug in that year."
--http://www.usdoj.gov/ndic/pubs07/794/cocaine.htm ____________________________________
Using figures from the USDOJ, and a population of 280,000,000, the rate of addiction to either cocaine or heroin in 2000 is about 1.6%, or just over 3X the 0.5% rate cited for 1900.
Oh! I have got to run and hide. The big, bad, boogie person is demanding an answer. I do not know you well enough to know if you are telling the truth anyway. I do believe there is a reason if a person jumps at the mention of some drugs being illegal. I do hope for your sake that you are not a user. Can you tell me what other reason there might be for you to do that?
It might be a surprise to you, but I also don't believe that it is any business of the Federal Government. It should be up to the individual states. If you are going to use this as your reason, please tell me what else you are opposed to the Feds doing and how many threads you have been on showing your opposition.
I'm not, thanks.
Can you tell me what other reason there might be for you to do that?
Drug criminalization is the most glaring example I know of FReepers championing big government.
please tell me what else you are opposed to the Feds doing
About 90% of what they're currently doing ... most everything except national defense, producing currency, and preventing trade wars between states.
I agree with you on most of the things you have written. Years ago I took an oath to protect the Constitution and I took that very seriously. The crap that the Feds are doing is overriding the rights of the individual States. The Feds role in our life was supposed to be minimal. Every state should be able to govern its individual citizens. I do not know the answer to the problem of drugs. I do not believe that people should be allowed to peddle drugs to children or people that do not have the maturity or common sense to handle them. Are we supposed to sit back and let the lives of innocent children be destroyed? Somebody needs to help. Who else will try? Do we sacrifice the children because it would infringe on our individual freedoms? There is a war being waged for control of the minds and souls of our children and many are lost.
The drug war is the catch 22 that will be used to destroy this nation. Drug use is under cutting the morals of our young people and is being used to control them. I wish you would read the history of cocaine. When Cocaine use was sharply curtailed in South America, the people became a lot harder to control since they were finally able to think for themselves. The governments problems diminished when the people were allowed to use the drug. Parts of our society seem to be trying to force feed that poison to the kids. Gee,I wonder why.
In MHO, the drug war is being used as an excuse for the Feds growing police powers. Is that in the Constitution?.
Amen!
I do not believe that people should be allowed to peddle drugs to children
Nor do I.
or people that do not have the maturity or common sense to handle them.
How would we decide who those people are? And what other liberties may they justly be denied?
Are we supposed to sit back and let the lives of innocent children be destroyed?
No ... but criminalizing drugs for adults isn't working to protect children. Let's try giving those who sell to adults an economic incentive to not sell to children by legalizing only the former.
Yeah, we love that thrill of wasting 1% of the federal budget on overseas drug interdiction, U.S. border patrol, drug education, drug treatment, and anti-drug advertising.
Yeah, we love that thrill of wasting 1% of the federal budget on overseas drug interdiction, U.S. border patrol, drug education, drug treatment, and anti-drug advertising.
Nothing you say contradicts what I said ... so to what end did you say it?
Certainly take away their drug-sale license, which is the economic incentive I referred to. Probably other punishments as well.
Do you plan to open up some kind of flop house if drugs were to become legal?
No, why would I?
No more than people who lose their liquor licenses sell that drug on the street. Legalize a drug and it becomes cheap enough where any discount illegal dealers can offer is insufficient to tempt users into the risk of using an unregulated product.
If it were to be legalized there would be a tax put on it. The price would rise a whole lot. It would still be sold on the street. You do know about bootleg cigarettes don't you?I any case, I am done with you. No matter what you say, I will always believe that you are wrong. Adios
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