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Europe

Europe, People
Where to next for evicted Roma?
07.03.06 | Permalink | Comment?

Authorities in Kaliningrad - the Russian exclave between Lithuania and Poland on the Baltic Sea - have recently demolished 40 homes that housed about 150 Roma - or “Gypsies - in the village of Dorozhny, leaving them homeless.

According to a Russian news report that only detailed the government line on the matter, it was done for two main reasons:

1) The village had “had a reputation for a long time as a local center of drug-dealing. According to the police, the majority of drugs originated from this area. Local authorities came to the conclusion, that there was no other way to stop the criminal business.”

2) The “majority of Roma live here illegally, without registration, and without anywhere to work. Out of fifty private residences only three were built legally.”
Europe, Legislation
Russia faces imported alcohol shortage
07.02.06 | Permalink | Comment?

Russia faces a huge shortage of imported wine & liquor, and many alcohol distributors face financial ruin, after legislation calling for a new excise stamp to be displayed on imported bottles came into force Sunday.

The problem is that the issuing of government-issued stamps has been delayed through bureaucratic bungling and so many importers, who must put the stamps on themselves, have not actually been able to conform to the new regulations. Calls for the delaying of the legislation’s implementation have been rejected. In addition, importers are required to purchase thousands of dollars of new equipment and software to carry out the stamping job. The equipment must then be installed and certified by a company with links to the FSS - the new KGB - in a special room with a certain temperature, a prescribed amount of space and the right size of dust particles in the air.
Europe, People
Andy Ivison
07.01.06 | Permalink | Comment?

Andy Ivison was so afraid of becoming addicted to the easily available drugs in prison, that he escaped!

Ivison was recently re-apprehended after spending four days on the run and had this very curious, if somewhat alarming excuse.

The former heroin addict was intially jailed for robbery and was unhappy with his accommodations in Sping Hill prison in Buckinghamshire, UK.
Europe, The Media
Abstinence Only Solution for Drugs
07.01.06 | Permalink | Comment?

A prominent UK psychiatrist has stoked the flames of the drug debate there by claiming that the only “solution” to the drug problem is abstinence.

“If I am on methadone, I can’t practice as a doctor, I can’t drive a railway train. You might not want me as your car mechanic or teaching your children in school,” said Dr Alasdair Young.

Young goes on to make the argument that reforming addicts with methadone treatement does still not allow the individual to lead a normal existence in society in any conventional sense.
Europe, North America, People, Treatment
Free to Choose?
06.29.06 | Permalink | 1 Comment

There was a story recently in The Indianapolis Star about the murder of 54-year-old James Reese, a homeless man with a long history of drug & alcohol abuse and arrests, after he was attacked in his wheelchair by a cellmate in a county jail.

His death saddened those who knew him. Byron Davenport, a resident of Indianapolis who first met Reese playing baseball and basketball before both went on to attend the same high school in the late 60s, remembered him back then as having an affable outgoing person with great athletic abilities. It was when he got involved with a gang at school, and started consuming drugs and alcohol, that he reportedly went off the rails.

For the next thirty years after leaving high school he was constantly arrested for disorderly conduct and public intoxication, living and begging off the streets when he wasn’t in jail. During this time he was offered various opportunities by people and organisations that dealt with the homeless and drug & alcohol addictions, but spurned many of them.
Europe, Middle East, War on Drugs
Iran Plays Their Drug Card
06.26.06 | Permalink | Comment?

In an announcement, presumably timed to coincide with International Drugs Day, the Iranian Secretary General, Fada Hossein Maleki, has announced that the illicit drug confiscations by Iranian authorities for the year had amounted to 360 tons.

The fact that this amount is more than the annual production of Myanmar (according to UN figures) puts the scale of the achievement into perspective as well as the vast problems that Iran is facing.
Europe, Oceania, People
Former Australian rugby star returns after two-year ban for cocaine use
06.25.06 | Permalink | Comment?

Andrew Walker, the former Australian international rugby union and league player who was banned from both codes two years ago for cocaine use, will make his comeback next month for the second division rugby union club Gaillac in France, instead of with the Queensland Reds with whom he had been recently linked. The 32-year-old was busted in August 2004 after testing positive for cocaine use during his return to rugby league with Manly. Both codes have been rocked with drugs scandals of late, most recently with rugby union player Wendell Sailor testing positive for cocaine.
Europe
World Cup violence linked to heavy drinking
06.25.06 | Permalink | Comment?

German riot police arrested about 500 English men and women on the weekend during the build up to England’s World Cup game against Ecuador on Sunday, after two nights of clashes with German fans; between five and 10 Germans were also arrested. England went on to win the game 1-0 after a David Beckham free kick special in the second half. With a total of 60,000 England fans being present in Stuttgart, English authorities quite rightly pointed out that it was a small minority of troublemakers responsible for the bottle, chair and table throwing, along with their counterparts on the German side.
Europe
Some cement with your heroin?
06.23.06 | Permalink | Comment?

The BBC has reported that police in County Durham and Teesside in the north of England have warned heroin users that they are at risk of being poisoned after batches of heroin mixed with cement were discovered in the region. Police found the particular batches after conducting raids on 24 properties, in which 19 people were arrested on various drug offences.

While the news report refers to “contaminated heroin” being discovered, heroin on the street is never pure anyway and is always adulterated with some kind of substance - for example, talcum powder, chalk, powdered milk or flour. Nevertheless, one can only imagine what damage a significant enough amount of cement mixed with heroin can do.
Europe, Smuggling
£2.9 billion not collected by UK government due to cigarette smuggling
06.21.06 | Permalink | Comment?

The UK government’s Public Accounts select committee has wrapped up an investigation into tobacco smuggling and concluded that £2.9 billion worth of potential Value Added Tax (VAT) and excise duty revenue for the government has not been collected as a result of the illicit trade in contraband cigarettes and rolling tobacco.

In announcing the results the miffed committee chairman, Edward Leigh, declared that “[t]obacco smugglers cheat the taxpayer”. The taxpayers, that is, who haven’t bought the smokes.