The Archives

Latin America, People, The Media
Mexican crime journalist Enrique Perea Quintanilla murdered
08.13.06 | Permalink | Comment?

All fingers at this stage seem to be pointing at organised crime after the body of Mexican crime journalist Enrique Perea Quintanilla was found last week on a dirt road on the outskirts of Chihuahua City; he had been shot twice with a .45-caliber gun, in the head and back.

The 50-year-old Quintanilla published a magazine called “Dos Caras, Una Verdad” (”Two Faces, One Truth”), which covered issues like unsolved murders, corrupt government officials and the local drug trade. Before that he had been on the police beat for 20 years for various newspapers and radio stations in the area. The July edition of the magazine had apparently run an interview with an unnamed local drug lord who had spilled the beans on his drug-running activities.
North America, Treatment, War on Drugs
Naloxone to be trialled in Boston
08.12.06 | Permalink | Comment?

In a move similar to that undertaken earlier this year in Lanarkshire, Scotland, health authorities in Boston, Massachussets are planning to trial a program that will see heroin addicts be given a supply of a heroin antidote, Naloxone, in case of an overdose.

According to the Boston Globe, the trial, which will start in the Fall (Autumn) and last for a year, is being undertaken to combat an increase in drug-related deaths which has in large part been blamed on stronger and more plentiful heroin. This trend cannot have been helped of late by batches of heroin lined with fentanyl hitting the streets with deadly effects.
Legislation, North America, War on Drugs, Websites
DEA Targets America vs. Target America
08.11.06 | Permalink | Comment?

The indefatigable Pete Guither of DrugWarRant.com isn’t happy with a Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) exhibition that just opened this Friday at Chicago’s Museum of Science & Industry and will run until the third of December. And, in conjunction with Students for Sensible Drug Policy and Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, he has set up a website and will hand out flyers this weekend at the museum to counter what he sees as self-serving DEA propaganda.

“Target America: Opening Eyes to the Damage Drugs Cause” was created a few years ago by the DEA Museum and Visitors Centre as a travelling exhibit. After an initial showing in Arlington, Virginia, it has been open to the public in cities like Dallas, New York City and Detroit.
Kids and Drugs, North America
Museums exhibit is dope!
08.11.06 | Permalink | Comment?

It’s education to some and it’s propaganda to others, but in my mind it’s a really cool idea if for no other reason than the novelty of it all.

Chicago’s Hyde Park museum is hosting an exhibit on the dangers drug abuse pose to us all. It’s meant to educate, entertain and to shock us into seeing how drug use puts us all in jeopardy. Not only that but it displays a tricked out drug surveillance vehicle and mock up display of a Meth lab shown in a common surrounding we can all relate to, and apartment. Just in case the notion of getting blown to kingdom come isn’t enough to grab your attention it also attempts to demonstrate what lousy unclean neighbors meth addicts can be. The display includes a dirty diaper and cigarette butts!
Caribbean, North America, Smuggling, War on Drugs
Prosecution given 45 more days in Shaheed Roger Khan drug case
08.10.06 | Permalink | 2 Comments

It seems that Shaheed Roger Khan will have to wait until late September to have his day in a Brooklyn court on drugs charges, after prosecutors from the Eastern New York District Attorney’s Office requested and were granted another 45 days to build their case, citing its complexity. This was after Khan’s lead defence attorney, John Bergendahl, had filed a motion in a New York court asking for the dismissal of his client’s indictment because of its “cryptic form” and the possibility that Khan could go into the trial “blind”.

Khan, a controversial businessman from Guyana, was indicted in April this year on charges of conspiring to import five kilograms or more of cocaine into the U.S between January 2001 and March 2006. This followed and was then followed up by several run-ins with authorities in Guyana and Suriname, respectively, over alleged weapons and drug smuggling offences. (For the complete details and timeline in this case, see my previous article.)
North America, Studies
Ketamine to treat depression?
08.09.06 | Permalink | Comment?

While ketamine might be more well known for either its illicit use as a recreational drug (”Special K”) or as a general dissociative anaesthetic on animals and occasionally humans, researchers from the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) have recently conducted a study into its utility as a possible treatment for depression. And as the results just published in the medical journal Archives of General Psychiatry have shown, a low dose of ketamine administered to depression sufferers found symptom relief in a matter of hours.

Scientists from the NIMH conducted the study on 18 men and women who were suffering from depression and had previously undergone at least two unsuccessful treatments. In addition, none of them had any substance abuse problems and hadn’t used any drugs for at least a two-week period leading up to the start of the study.
North America, The Media, Treatment, War on Drugs
Better to have brain tumour/heart disease/cancer/AIDS than drug addiction?
08.08.06 | Permalink | 1 Comment
I’d be better off with a brain tumor. That way you wouldn’t put off getting me the help I need. You’d understand that my condition is only going to get worse and not to hope it will go away by itself. If I had a brain tumour you’d understand I need treatment not indifference.

Partnership for a Drug-Free America advertising campaign

The Partnership for a Drug-Free America wants you to know that drug addiction is a disease, comparable to AIDS, cancer, heart disease or a brain tumour. And until it is recognised as such, addicts will continue to be stigmatised, not receive the attention their problem deserves and thus not come forward for help. In fact, right now you’d be better off having those diseases instead of a drug addiction.

As part of their “Hope, Help & Healing: Using the Media to connect people with help for addiction” campaign, a series of advertisements and a public service announcement video containing this message will go national, after being piloted last year in Houston and Cincinnati.

It is sure to annoy or anger quite a few people, including:
- those who don’t think it is a disease and would note that, unlike cancer or AIDS patients, addicts have managed to give up with limited or even no treatment;
- critics of the War on Drugs who see the illegality of drugs as a major reason why addicts are stigmatised and hesitate to come forward for treatment; and,
- AIDS, cancer, heart disease and brain tumour patients who’d rather take their chances with a drug addiction that others have managed to kick (and not die from).
For more about the campaign and the arguments for and against it, see this article from the Houston Chronicle. Below are all the poster ads, with the “quotes” on them duplicated below. The video can be accessed from the Chronicle article.
Legislation, North America, War on Drugs
“BUSTED: The Citizen’s Guide to Surviving Police Encounters”
08.07.06 | Permalink | Comment?

The Flex Your Rights Foundation (FYR), as the tagline on their website indicates, is dedicated to providing information about how to “protect your constitutional rights during police encounters” in the United States, either through their website, blog, or DVD for sale or viewable for free on the internet.
Legislation, North America, Reviews, Studies, War on Drugs
A review of “Overkill: The Rise of Paramilitary Police Raids in America”
08.06.06 | Permalink | Comment?

As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, I’ve been reading through Cato Institute analyst Radley Balko’s new paper, “Overkill: The Rise of Paramilitary Police Raids in America“, on the ever increasing use of heavily armed SWAT teams against non-violent drug suspects.

Now that I’ve had a more detailed read I do have one criticism, but overall I am sticking with my initial impression of Overkill, namely that

“I agree with the thrust of what he is saying, namely that paramilitary tactics are only applicable to extraordinary, violent crimes in civil society - such as hostage-taking and bank robberies - as well as battlegrounds overseas.
Thanks to federal funding, encouragement and support, the militarisation of drug prosecutions is not only unnecessarily endangering and adding turmoil to the lives of countless citizens but is in many cases counter-productive in its aims of preventing violence.”

The thing that struck me the most about the paper is not just the way in which innocent lives were cruelly disrupted and trampled upon, but the cold, casual and even deliberate disregard the police in question had for their victims; it was as if they were seen as enemy soldiers on a foreign battleground. Most people instinctively apologise for bumping into someone on the street, but certain law enforcement officers couldn’t even bring themselves to offer a similar, nominal, apology - let alone a more substantial one - for inflicting on what is for some people the most traumatic moment of their lives.
Asia
Rahul Mahajan drug case: charge sheet filed and hearing date set
08.05.06 | Permalink | Comment?

As I mentioned at the beginning of this week, Delhi police were preparing to file a charge sheet against Rahul Mahajan and four others involved in the high profile drug case that saw Mahajan, the son of former slain senior BJP leader Pramod Mahajan, and his father’s ex-aide, Vivek Maitra, rushed to Apollo Hospital early June, with Maitra dead on arrival.

Police have now done so, although it has been determined that there isn’t enough evidence against Ibririm Ugochukwu Ifeanyi, one of three Nigerians originally in line to be charged. Ifeanyi’s fellow countrymen will remain in prison; all of the other accused are out on bail.