tagged w/ Heroin
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Vanguard Correspondent Mariana van Zeller investigates how and why the number of addictions has spiked considerably in the last decade, and discovers a disturbing trend: addicts are switching from prescription drugs to heroin, a cheaper and more potent alternative to OxyContin. Today, Boston and its surrounding communities are home to the highest opiate (heroin, oxycodone) addiction and overdose rates in the country. As OxyContin has evolved into a gateway drug to heroin, the sleepy suburbs and bucolic seaside hamlets outside of Boston have now become a frontline in a new heroin epidemic.Vanguard Correspondent Mariana van Zeller investigates how and why the number of... more
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This video is my proposal to the 2012 Presidential Candidates, Congressional Lawmakers, and members of the Media to save the United States $2.02 Billion per year, and over 16,000 drug related deaths annually. The solution is simple, but you have to watch the video to see what it is.This video is my proposal to the 2012 Presidential Candidates, Congressional... more
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Los Angeles Times...
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Public viewing scheduled for Etta James
January 25, 2012
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A public viewing will be held Friday in Inglewood for R&B great Etta James, who died last week at the age of 73, a family representative said.
The viewing will be from 5 p.m. to 10 p.m. in the Manchester Chapel at Inglewood Cemetery Mortuary, 3801 W. Manchester Blvd.
The Rev. Al Sharpton will lead a private memorial service for the singer Saturday.
—Phil Willon
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http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/21/arts/music/etta-james-singer-dies-at-73.html
The New York Times...
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Etta James, Powerful Voice Behind ‘At Last,’ Dies at 73
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PHOTO:
Etta James in the studio in Chicago with the Chess Records founder Phil Chess, left, and the producer Ralph Bass in 1960.
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By PETER KEEPNEWS
Published: January 20, 2012
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Etta James, whose powerful, versatile and emotionally direct voice could enliven the raunchiest blues as well as the subtlest love songs, most indelibly in her signature hit, “At Last,” died Friday morning in Riverside, Calif. She was 73.
Her manager, Lupe De Leon, said that the cause was complications of leukemia. Ms. James, who died at Riverside Community Hospital, had been undergoing treatment for some time for a number of conditions, including leukemia and dementia. She also lived in Riverside.
Ms. James was not easy to pigeonhole. She is most often referred to as a rhythm and blues singer, and that is how she made her name in the 1950s with records like “Good Rockin’ Daddy.” She is in both the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the Blues Hall of Fame.
She was also comfortable, and convincing, singing pop standards, as she did in 1961 with “At Last,” which was written in 1941 and originally recorded by Glenn Miller’s orchestra. And among her four Grammy Awards (including a lifetime-achievement honor in 2003) was one for best jazz vocal performance, which she won in 1995 for the album “Mystery Lady: Songs of Billie Holiday.”
Regardless of how she was categorized, she was admired. Expressing a common sentiment, Jon Pareles of The New York Times wrote in 1990 that she had “one of the great voices in American popular music, with a huge range, a multiplicity of tones and vast reserves of volume.”
For all her accomplishments, Ms. James had an up-and-down career, partly because of changing audience tastes but largely because of drug problems. She developed a heroin habit in the 1960s; after she overcame it in the 1970s, she began using cocaine. She candidly described her struggles with addiction and her many trips to rehab in her autobiography, “Rage to Survive,” written with David Ritz (1995).
Etta James was born Jamesetta Hawkins in Los Angeles on Jan. 25, 1938. Her mother, Dorothy Hawkins, was 14 at the time; her father was long gone, and Ms. James never knew for sure who he was, although she recalled her mother telling her that he was the celebrated pool player Rudolf Wanderone, better known as Minnesota Fats. She was reared by foster parents and moved to San Francisco with her mother when she was 12.
She began singing at the St. Paul Baptist Church in Los Angeles at 5 and turned to secular music as a teenager, forming a vocal group with two friends. She was 15 when she made her first record, “Roll With Me Henry,” which set her own lyrics to the tune of Hank Ballard and the Midnighters’ recent hit “Work With Me Annie.” When some disc jockeys complained that the title was too suggestive, the name was changed to “The Wallflower,” although the record itself was not.
“The Wallflower” rose to No. 2 on the rhythm-and-blues charts in 1954. As was often the case in those days with records by black performers, a toned-down version was soon recorded by a white singer and found a wider audience: Georgia Gibbs’s version, with the title and lyric changed to “Dance With Me, Henry,” was a No. 1 pop hit in 1955. (Its success was not entirely bad news for Ms. James. She shared the songwriting royalties with Mr. Ballard and the bandleader and talent scout Johnny Otis, who had arranged for her recording session. (Mr. Otis died on Tuesday.)
In 1960 Ms. James was signed by Chess Records, the Chicago label that was home to Chuck Berry, Muddy Waters and other leading lights of black music. She quickly had a string of hits, including “All I Could Do Was Cry,” “Trust in Me” and “At Last,” which established her as Chess’s first major female star.
She remained with Chess well into the 1970s, reappearing on the charts after a long absence in 1967 with the funky and high-spirited “Tell Mama.” In the late ’70s and early ’80s she was an opening act for the Rolling Stones.
After decades of touring, recording for various labels and drifting in and out of the public eye, Ms. James found herself in the news in 2009 after Beyoncé Knowles recorded a version of “At Last” closely modeled on hers. (Ms. Knowles played Ms. James in the 2008 movie “Cadillac Records,” a fictionalized account of the rise and fall of Chess.) Ms. Knowles also performed “At Last” at an inaugural ball for President Obama in Washington.
When the movie was released, Ms. James had kind words for Ms. Knowles’s portrayal. But in February 2009, referring specifically to the Washington performance, she told an audience, “I can’t stand Beyoncé,” and threatened to “whip” the younger singer for singing “At Last.” She later said she had been joking, but she did add that she wished she had been invited to sing the song herself for the new president.
Ms. James’s survivors include her husband of 42 years, Artis Mills; two sons, Donto and Sametto James; and four grandchildren.
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Though her life had its share of troubles to the end — her husband and sons were locked in a long-running battle over control of her estate, which was resolved in her husband’s favor only weeks before her death — Ms. James said she wanted her music to transcend unhappiness rather than reflect it.
“A lot of people think the blues is depressing,” she told The Los Angeles Times in 1992, “but that’s not the blues I’m singing. When I’m singing blues, I’m singing life. People that can’t stand to listen to the blues, they’ve got to be phonies.”
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http://collegecandy.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/etta-james.jpg?w=600&h=337
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Public viewing scheduled for Etta James
January... more
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12 January 2012 Last updated at 19:49 ET Help
In a new survey, the UN Office on Drugs and Crime says income received by opium farmers in Afghanistan rose by 133% and that poppy cultivation has also increased.
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I like how she says the profits fund the insurgency. No, the profits fund the UN, CIA, military and pharmaceutical industrial complex. The local poppy farmer does not ship product internationally or have the refining facilities linked with the mob in Turkey or Corsica. They don't put the morphine in with the soldiers survival kit.
Many top American families got their riches via the British East India Company, running opium as far back as the 1600s, such as the Delanos, Kerrys and Bushes. Wars were fought from then til now and a major underlying factor is heroin, which makes a lot more money off the books than oil does on. By making it illegal, its easier for these monopoly men to gain more power and wealth.
The drug laws are a joke and the wars are a disgrace. Ron Paul is the only hope we got!12 January 2012 Last updated at 19:49 ET Help
In a new survey, the UN Office on... more
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http://candiceslosthighway.wordpress.com/2011/12/15/legal-drug-pushers-turn-bigger-profits/
Supply versus demand will reflect a product’s value in any market. An immensely addictive substance will consequently reflect a high value.
Opiate narcotics create a lucrative industry for both the legal and illegal markets. Former underground dealers from South Jersey recently gave interviews about the consumer demand for opiate narcotics such as Percocet, Oxycontin, and heroinhttp://candiceslosthighway.wordpress.com/2011/12/15/legal-drug-pushers-turn-bigger-prof... more
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Everyone picks a poison throughout life. Those who chose vicodin or codeine, pick more than they bargain for. Breaking the whole into details is the best way to understand this issue.
The mental activity of opiate usage is vital to comprehensive addiction analysis, which requires expert knowledge. Three South Jersey specialists explain the opiate’s physiological effects and the difficulty in getting clean.
http://candiceslosthighway.wordpress.com/2011/11/05/the-science-of-getting-high/Everyone picks a poison throughout life. Those who chose vicodin or codeine, pick... more
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Narcotic pills are as addictive as heroin, despite pill popping being more accepted in mainstream society.
A South Jersey resident explains the physical withdraw endured from prescription pills without ever escalating to heroin. Dr. Michael Mirmanesh, MD, who has a practice in Marlton, NJ, also provides insight into legal and illegal opiate addiction.
http://candiceslosthighway.wordpress.com/2011/11/05/488/Narcotic pills are as addictive as heroin, despite pill popping being more accepted in... more
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A user’s perception of addiction is similar to viewing one’s house from one’s own window. People who are close to the users offer extensive understanding of the opiate lifestyle.
Brittany Hickman and Robert Rivera, both from South Jersey, grew up around opiate
addicts, which gave them deep insights of the drug and its consequences.
http://candiceslosthighway.wordpress.com/2011/10/22/to-love-an-opiate-addict/A user’s perception of addiction is similar to viewing one’s house from... more
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The highway from percocet to heroin.
Hardly anyone starts getting high with the intention of becoming a full-blown heroin addict. The chicken-versus-egg approach of blaming marijuana as “the gateway drug” could ramble on forever, as could defining alcohol and nicotine as “drugs”. http://wp.me/p1RkpB-1The highway from percocet to heroin.
Hardly anyone starts getting high with the... more
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The New Jersey drug culture experiences a strong influx in opiate addiction. Percocet addiction is accelerating, which adds to the heroin epidemic in the area. Most people are naive to the powerful addictive attributes of pharmaceuticals upon initial usage. These are their stories. http://candiceslosthighway.wordpress.com/The New Jersey drug culture experiences a strong influx in opiate addiction. Percocet... more
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Northshore Recovery High is a school outside Boston that is dedicated solely to students dealing with drug and alcohol addiction. This is the story of a year in the life of that school, as told through the eyes of three students and the guiding force behind the school, Principal Michelle Lipinski.Northshore Recovery High is a school outside Boston that is dedicated solely to... more
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A new twist on addiction. Make the addicts unable to get high from the natural stuff: opium based substances. But make sure they can still get high from the man made opiates -- oxycodone and friends.
Make sure the factory gets it's cut. It's good business.A new twist on addiction. Make the addicts unable to get high from the natural stuff:... more
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Soon helmet giveaways at the ballpark won’t just be novelty promotions, but mandatory equipment given out before every game to protect lunatics from accidentally murdering themselves diving from rafters for collectible garbage.
I don’t know if you’ve heard the news, but there’s a hot new trend at the nation’s basedballing sport complexes: face diving onto cement from heights unsurvivable!
Last week at a Texas Rangers game, nearly seventy-five percent of the fans in attendance fell to its death from the upper deck. I’m sorry, I read that wrong, one man at a Texas Rangers game last week fell from the upper deck to his death. I apologize, that’s closer to 50%. Then, yesterday, during the Homed Running Derby of Hitting Competitions in someplace called “Phoenix” another idiot tried to hurl himself at a $5 souvenir laughably out of his reach and was only saved by the mistaken instinctive actions of those around him trying to protect him from his own unbridled stupidity as if his life were worth preserving.
Sports memorabilia is a very big, very dumb obsession, I know; I still have the bandana full of bottle openers that Charlie Hough hit me with at a Scottsdale Rite Aid back in ’98, and I cherish it as if it shattered my very own ocular bone: which it did. But these aren’t a home run ball that Mark McGwire kept his used steroid needles in after he’d already filled up the cat litter bucket he used to dispose of them in but before he had a new empty to fill, or the ball that Babe Ruth choked to death on when he mistook it for a heroin caked cheeseburger. The guy at the Rangers game was diving for a foul ball that Rangers outfieldman Josh Hamilton was throwing into the crowd and the idiot that tried to kill himself yesterday was at least ten rows away from a meaningless homerun derby dinger. Both of which, on the open market would fetch just about as much as any slightly used baseball listed on craigslist right now: “free, you pick up”.
Naturally, people hurtling themselves over railings, thirty or more feet above anything at all, is causing Major League baseball to look into the safety and security of their ball parks. Rather than simply, say, holding up these cases of the dip shitity of launching yourself from your insanely priced seats and understanding that the ball that the player that time will never remember just leisurely lobbed in your direction is the exact same one as those in the souvenir stand and probably isn’t worth a shattered face and traumatic, nationally televised orphanism.
And think of the players; won’t you? A quote from an actual article reporting the Rangers fan’s death:
There is also concern for Josh Hamilton, the player who tossed the ball. He’s battled his way back from addiction, and now has to deal with potential feelings of guilt over what happened.
Now please, don’t get me wrong, I understand that a professional atheletist must naturally feel some level of personal guilt that comes from shorting a throw, but I think the main thrust of the story is that a man just threw himself to his death in front of his six year old son in pursuit of a sports sphere of zero importance. Yes, it’s sad that the man DIRECTLY RESPONSIBLE for this otherwise perfectly dexterous and well reasoned bat bases swing ball enthusiast’s untimely spine compression might want to have a drink after witnessing, someone so willing to put their life at risk, trusting completely in his ability to competently do what he is paid millions of dollars to do just a single time in a way that the recipient would not have to put himself in mortal danger, be so terribly wrong; but the story is about this suddenly shorter ex-father and his inability to see the ball into his glove like a four year old t-ball player. Focus up news story. If anything, this experience should certainly make Mr. Hamilton an infinitely better fielder as from now until he exhales his final dying breath he will envision every recipient of his throw as potentially falling to their untimely, comical death directly in front of their barely comprehending toddler as a direct result of his precision or lack thereof. That’s gonna make him throw all the way through from here on out I think.
I don’t blame Josh Hamilton for one Texas man’s lack of a self preservation instinct, that’s dumb. I also don’t blame baseball stadiums. I, as usual, blame idiots. They come in all shapes and sizes and they’ll accidentally assassinate themselves no matter how impossible the world tries to make it. Admittedly, a thigh high railing over a 30 foot fall is not the BEST tool to fight tools, but what WILL keep the stupid from jumping after the pretty approaching orb? As we have continued to moron proof the world, I don’t doubt at all that in the near future all baseball stadiums will be built with chain link enclosed bleachers, locking the crowd in like the animals they are for their own good. And of course, it still won’t be enough, because as any Giants fan at Dodger Stadium will tell you once they’ve regained the ability to speak, not all of the danger is on the field.
So over react as quickly as you can baseball. Encase the stands in memory foam and packing peanuts double time, because before you can say “problem solved” some forehead is going to choke to death on a hunk of NASA technology that his buddies bet him a beer he couldn’t snort.
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For all of your rickety, windowless, primered comedy needs, visit:
vanfullofcandy.comSoon helmet giveaways at the ballpark won’t just be novelty promotions, but... more
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Boston is now home to the highest rate of opiate (heroin, oxycodone) addiction and overdose in the US. Vanguard correspondent Mariana van Zeller investigates the story behind the dramatic spike in drug abuse over the course of the last decade and along the way uncovers a disturbing new trend: an alarming escalation among addicts from prescription drugs to heroin, a cheaper and more potent alternative to OxyContin that's all too readily available on the streets.
Gateway to Heroin
Monday 11th July at 10pm
Sky 183, Virgin 155
http://current.com/shows/monday/
Vanguard is Current TV's no-limits documentary series whose award-winning correspondents put themselves in extraordinary situations to immerse viewers in global issues that have a large social significance. Unlike sound-bite driven reporting, the show's correspondents, Adam Yamaguchi, Christof Putzel and Mariana van Zeller, serve as trusted guides who take viewers on in-depth real life adventures in pursuit of some of the world's most important stories.Boston is now home to the highest rate of opiate (heroin, oxycodone) addiction and... more
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Krokodil is ten times harder and three times cheaper than heroin. Its usage is reportedly reaching epidemic levels in Russia, and only in Russia.
Russia has more heroin users than any other country in the world – up to two million, according to unofficial estimates. For most, their lot is a life of crime, stints in prison, probable contraction of HIV and hepatitis C, and an early death. As efforts to stem the flow of Afghan heroin into Russia bring some limited success, and the street price of the drug goes up, for those addicts who can't afford their next hit, an even more terrifying spectre has raised its head.
*Warning, pictures are graphic*
http://animalnewyork.com/2011/06/flesh-rotting-cheap-heroin-alternative-is-hot-in-russia/
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/krokodil-the-drug-that-eats-junkies-2300787.htmlKrokodil is ten times harder and three times cheaper than heroin. Its usage is... more
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In 2009, I filed a report called "The OxyContin Express," detailing the rampant over-prescription of opioids by many Florida doctors and the impact that this was having, not only in Florida, but also Appalachia and the tri-state area. We saw users from Tennessee, West Virginia, Kentucky, and Ohio all journeying to Florida painclinics, attracted by promises of lax regulations. In Florida, doctors prescribe Oxy at five times the national average.
This year, I travelled to Massachusetts to investigate a heroin epidemic that has Boston, and its suburbs, in its grip. I was not surprised to find painkillers, specifically OxyContin, once again at the heart of the problem.
Talking to Boston natives in the trenches of addiction and to the dealers that serve them, I realized that what might have started out as a small-time hustle has evolved into a large-scale operation, a corporation of sorts, with connections reaching back to a familiar place—Florida.
Prescription pills have become as much a part of the street dealing landscape as cocaine or crack. OxyContin pills have traveled all the way up the Eastern coastline, and by the time they make it to Boston, one pill can be sold for as much as $80. A bad Oxy habit can cost up to $800 a day. This is a habit often too expensive for young users to maintain, and in most cases it isn’t long until they develop a cheaper, yet more lethal addiction to heroin.
It was so devastating to see how a person’s life could be so quickly derailed, simply by getting prescribed a painkiller after an injury. People who never would have envisioned putting a needle in their arm just a year ago are now full-blown heroin addicts. It’s an addiction that crept up on many in Boston. Those who abuse pills often times think that they are different than your average heroin addict on the street and feel invulnerable to a possible heroin addiction. But as Rebecca, a heroin addict herself, so grimly told us, "I always say to my friends, keep doing this for a bit longer and you’re going to be a heroin addict." Most don’t listen.
Officials in Massachusetts recognize that the painkiller problem is no longer one with a localized solution. Drowning in a sea of prescription pills and unwilling to resign themselves to the role of damage control they, along with officials from other states affected by the lack of regulation in Florida, have increasingly vocalized their frustrations. In the meantime however, behind the doors of suburban middle-class Boston, a new heroin epidemic is ravaging a community, and creating addicts on every block.
"Gateway to Heroin," the follow-up report to the award-winning "The OxyContin Express," premieres on Monday, June 20 at 9/8c on Current TV.
Watch a trailer here or below:
In 2009, I filed a report called "The OxyContin Express," detailing... more
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