"As heroin use spreads, a more aggressive stance; Police, parents take action amid rise in overdoses" by Jim Salter and Jim Suhr | Associated Press, April 15, 2012
ST. LOUIS - With heroin becoming cheaper than a six-pack of beer and as easy to obtain as pot, police and prosecutors are turning to more aggressive tactics against the drug, dusting off little-used laws to seek murder charges against suspected dealers and provide for longer prison sentences.
It's fascism on every front in the fraud called the "war on drugs."
Angry suburban parents are joining the effort, too. They have organized antidrug rallies and founded organizations to spread the word about heroin in affluent areas where it is usually considered a distant, unlikely threat.
Oh, I see. The problem seeps into the elite areas and all of a sudden it's the concern of a Sunday Globe piece.
The more assertive approach is not entirely new to the drug war, but it’s being adopted more widely and in more areas that have rarely been so bold - comfortable residential communities.
Once associated with rock stars and inner-city junkies, heroin has become far more dangerous and accessible in recent years. A half-decade ago, Mexican cartels created a form of the drug so pure it can be snorted or swallowed instead of injected, making heroin more appealing to teenagers and suburbanites who don’t want the stigma of shooting up.
The extreme purity - often 50 percent or higher - means heroin is far deadlier today than it was in the past. As a result, heroin deaths have jumped over the past few years in some parts of the country.
Just say no, kids.
Few places have been as devastated as the St. Louis area, where the city and county reported 116 heroin deaths in 2010 and 194 last year. The increase was even more pronounced across the Mississippi River in Illinois’s Madison County, where the death toll has climbed from just five in 2008 to 26 last year.
No disrespect intended because every life lost is precious; however, don't tobacco-related products kill over hundreds of thousands a year?
The distorted, agenda-pushing focus of the piece is enough to make me reach for a smoke -- except that and heroin don't go to well with playing basketball.
Part of the problem is availability.
“Heroin is easier to get than marijuana now,’’ said Jim Shroba, the Drug Enforcement Administration agent in charge of the St. Louis office.
Related: Obama Administration Goes to Pot
You know, maybe it is TIME TO LEGALIZE and start treating this as a HEALTH PROBLEM, 'eh?
Oh, right, if we DID WHAT I SAY the DRUG-RUNNING GOVERNMENT INTELLIGENCE AGENCIES and the MONEY-LAUNDERING BANKS would be losing out on a whole pile of boodle.
It’s also cheap: A “button’’ of heroin - enough for one person to get high - can cost as little as $6.
In the St. Louis suburb of Troy, Ill., young Shannon Gaddis finished off a snow day last year by snorting heroin. The overdose killed her.
The death of the animal-loving high school cheerleader “put this issue sharply into focus,’’ said Madison County State’s Attorney Tom Gibbons. “It showed us this was really happening in a way that would have the most serious and unfortunate consequences.’’
About a year ago, St. Louis County police began warning of the drug’s risks at heroin town hall forums, which were held in small meeting rooms. The response was so great that the gatherings now fill high school auditoriums. Similar meetings are being conducted throughout the region....
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Where is that stuff coming from?
"US, Canada alone at summit in Cuba stance; Others want ban from Summit of Americas to end" by Frank Bajak and Vivian Sequera | Associated Press, April 15, 2012
CARTAGENA, Colombia - A summit of 33 Western Hemisphere leaders opened Saturday with the United States and Canada standing firm, but alone, against everyone else’s insistence that Cuba join future summits.
Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos, a US ally, opened the summit with a criticism of Cuba’s exclusion, calling it an unjustified anachronism of the Cold War.
He also urged a reconsideration of the war on narcotics that he said began a century ago, referring obliquely to growing suggestions that the hemisphere’s nations consider ending a prohibition of many drugs that has fed violence and crime.
Running into $ome powerful intere$t$ there. Better watch your back.
“This is the last Summit of the Americas,’’ Bolivia’s foreign minister, David Choquehuanca, told the Associated Press, “unless Cuba is allowed to take part.’’
The fate of the summit’s final declaration has been thrown into uncertainty as the foreign ministers of Venezuela, Argentina, and Uruguay said Friday their presidents would not sign it unless the United States and Canada removed their veto of future Cuban participation.
Vigorous discussion is also expected on drug legalization, which the Obama administration opposes. And Obama will be in the minority in his opposition to Argentina’s claim to the British-controlled Falkland Islands.
Also see: Why Bother Voting in Britain? for more on the Falklands flap.
Obama may be able to charm the region’s leaders as he did in 2009 with a pledge of being an “equal partner,’’ but he will also have to prove the United States truly values their friendship and a stake in their growth.
“The United States should realize that its long-term strategic interests are not in Afghanistan or in Pakistan but in Latin America,’’ Santos said in a speech to business leaders at a parallel CEO summit on Friday.
In large part, declining US influence comes down to waning economic clout, as China gains on the United States as a top trading partner. It has surpassed the United States in trade with Brazil, Chile, and Peru and is a close second in Argentina and Colombia.
See: The Two Faces of China
“Most countries of the region view the United States as less and less relevant to their needs - and with declining capacity to propose and carry out strategies to deal with the issues that most concern them,’’ the Washington-based think tank the Inter-American Dialogue noted in a pre-summit report.
It's called END of an EMPIRE SYNDROME!
Ecuador’s president, Rafael Correa, was boycotting the summit over Cuba’s exclusion, while moderates such as Santos and President Dilma Rousseff of Brazil said there should be no more summits without the communist island.
Obama’s administration has greatly eased family travel and remittances to Cuba but has not dropped the half-century US embargo against the island, nor moved to let it back into the Organization of American States, under whose auspices the summit is organized.
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Better get a hotel room if you are going to shoot up:
"Secret Service agents under scrutiny" by Charlie Savage and Eric Schmitt
CARTAGENA, Colombia — An embarrassing scandal involving prostitutes and Secret Service agents deepened Saturday as 11 agents were placed on leave, and the agency designed to protect President Obama had to offer regrets for the mess overshadowing his diplomatic mission to Latin America.
The controversy also expanded to the US military, which announced that five service members staying at the same hotel as the agents in Colombia may have been involved in misconduct as well. They were confined to their quarters in Colombia and ordered not to have contact with others.
All the alleged activities took place before Obama arrived Friday in this Colombian port city for meetings with 33 other regional leaders.
Put together, the allegations were an embarrassment for an American president on foreign soil and threatened to upend White House efforts to keep his trip focused squarely on boosting economic ties with fastgrowing Latin America. Obama was holding two days of meetings at the Summit of the Americas with leaders from across the vast region before heading back to Washington on Sunday night.
The Secret Service did not disclose the nature of the misconduct. The Associated Press confirmed on Friday that it involved prostitutes....
Representative Peter King, the New York Republican and chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, said he was briefed on the investigation on Saturday and said he was told that anyone visiting the hotel overnight was required to leave identification at the front desk and leave the hotel by 7 a.m. When a woman failed to do so, it raised questions among hotel staff and police, who investigated. They found the woman with the agent in the hotel room and a dispute arose over whether the agent should have paid her.
That's why they have pimps.
King said he was told the agent did eventually pay the woman....
Ah, justice! She got her money!
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Representative Peter King, the New York Republican and chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, said he was briefed on the investigation on Saturday and said he was told that anyone visiting the hotel overnight was required to leave identification at the front desk and leave the hotel by 7 a.m. When a woman failed to do so, it raised questions among hotel staff and police, who investigated. They found the woman with the agent in the hotel room and a dispute arose over whether the agent should have paid her.
That's why they have pimps.
King said he was told the agent did eventually pay the woman....
Ah, justice! She got her money!
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Gee, that was one heck of a journey, wasn't it?
