tagged w/ Drug Abuse
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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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Through her music, Whitney Houston spread messages of joy, hope and love. Her career will be celebrated by her spirited discography with #1 hits like "Greatest Love of All," "I Wanna Dance With Somebody" and "I Will Always Love You." On Saturday (February 11), the iconic Houston was found dead in a Los Angeles hotel. Inside the studio, her musical legacy stands as an everlasting ray of light. Outside of it however, Whitney Houston's life was marred by controversy and tabloid fodder. It became increasingly difficult to separate her legendary track record from her troubles.
1992: On July 18, Houston marries R&B star Bobby Brown. Rumors of drug abuse begin to surface in the years to come. In a 2009 interview, two years after their divorce, Houston goes in-depth about the couple's volatile relationship on "The Oprah Winfrey Show."
2000: In the 1980s and 1990s, Houston was an American sweetheart, releasing #1 singles, involving herself in multiple charities and singing the national anthem at the Super Bowl in 1991. Houston's troubles with the law begin at the turn of the new millennium after security in Hawaii's Keahole-Kona Airport finds marijuana in her handbag in January. She is hit with a misdemeanor marijuana possession charge, but it's dropped months later.
2001: Rampant rumors of drug use swirl around Houston, and after she appeared thinner than usual during a Michael Jackson commemorative concert, the tabloids have a field day. Houston's then-publicist refutes rumors that the singer had died of a drug overdose. "Whitney has been under stress due to family matters, and when she is under stress, she doesn't eat," the publicist says in a statement.
2001: Rampant rumors of drug use swirl around Houston, and after she appeared thinner than usual during a Michael Jackson commemorative concert, the tabloids have a field day. Houston's then-publicist refutes rumors that the singer had died of a drug overdose. "Whitney has been under stress due to family matters, and when she is under stress, she doesn't eat," the publicist says in a statement.
2002: In a "Primetime" interview with Diane Sawyer, Houston addresses the rumors of her drug use. While she admits to using alcohol, marijuana, cocaine and prescription drugs, the vibrant vocalist emphatically denies reports that she's addicted to crack. "Crack is cheap. I make too much for me to ever smoke crack," she says. "Let's get that straight, OK? I don't do crack. I don't do that. Crack is whack."
2004: Even after her gut-wrenching interview with Diane, Houston's drug problems persist. In 2004, for the first reported time, she enters a facility for drug rehabilitation. She would once again return to rehab a year later in 2005.
2007: Many attributed Houston's troubles to her rocky marriage to Bobby Brown. In 2006, she filed for divorce, and the next year, she officially splits from the New Edition frontman, winning custody of their daughter Bobbi Kristina.
2009: During a September 2009 sit-down with Oprah Winfrey, Houston opens up about her relationship with Brown. "He was my drug," she tells Oprah. Houston admits to getting high with her ex-husband and even revealed that Brown had slapped her in the past.
2010: In the 2000s, Houston had begun to lose her footing in music, but in 2010, she hits the road on her Nothing But Love comeback tour. The run is marred by bad reviews.
2011: In May, the singer, still battling drug and alcohol abuse, voluntarily enrolls in an outpatient rehabilitation program.
2012: On Saturday, February 11, Houston is found dead at age 48 in a Los Angeles hotel. While her troubles were well-documented, she left behind an equally unforgettable musical legacy.
http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1679038/whitney-houston-timeline-troubles.jhtmlThrough her music, Whitney Houston spread messages of joy, hope and love. Her career... 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
.Los Angeles Times...
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Public viewing scheduled for Etta James
January... more
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After news broke last Friday that former First Lady Betty Ford had died, one of the first statements CNN received was from Stevie NicksAfter news broke last Friday that former First Lady Betty Ford had died, one of the... more
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Free Ebooks about Drugs, Drug Use, Drug Experimentation and Drug Experiences, including The Emperor Wears No Clothes, Cannabis and the Conspiracy Against Marijuana, How to Grow Medical Marijuana and the Diary of a Drug Fiend by Aleister Crowley now available for FREE Instant Download with No Log-In, No Sign-Up and No Obligations of Any Kind, at AssEtEbooks.com.
Check out the Other Side, at http://assetebooks.com/drugs.phpFree Ebooks about Drugs, Drug Use, Drug Experimentation and Drug Experiences,... more
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Is Smoking Pot still Fun? Has smoking weed become too expensive? Has it become an inconvenience? Has it caused you negative consequences? If the answer is not to most of these question, I suggest you read the, Are you using or abusing Marijuana? article, at http://www.addictsnotanonymous.com/2011/05/are-you-using-or-abusing-marijuana.html on the Addicts Not Anonymous blog.Is Smoking Pot still Fun? Has smoking weed become too expensive? Has it become an... more
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"Far from being the safety net it should be, the benefits system has trapped thousands of people in a cycle of addiction and welfare dependency ” Chris Grayling Employment minister
More than 80,000 people in Britain claim incapacity benefit because they are alcoholics, drug addicts or obese, the government says.
The Department for Work and Pensions said more than a quarter of those had not worked for a decade.
David Cameron said many taxpayers would object because they felt recipients should be "people who are incapacitated through no fault of their own".
But campaigners say there are too few treatment facilities for addicts.
The figures released by the DWP are a snapshot of incapacity benefit claimants in August 2010. The government wants to re-assess all current incapacity benefit claimants by 2014.
There have been pilot projects to determine whether people are fit to work immediately, whether they can begin the process of looking for work with support or whether they need constant care and cannot work.
'Left for dead
As part of this process, the government has released details of the 81,670 people it says are claiming incapacity benefit - and its successor, employment and support allowance - as a direct result of alcohol, drug and obesity problems.
As of last August, there were 42,360 claimants with alcohol addiction, 37,480 with drug dependency and 1,800 who were obese, officials said.
The DWP figures indicate that 12,800 alcoholics and 9,200 drug addicts have been claiming the benefit for more than a decade, as well as about 600 people considered obese.
In an interview with BBC Scotland, the prime minister said: "It is interesting as we go through all these cases [we're finding] people who were just frankly left for dead by the last government.
"We are finding a large number of people who are on incapacity benefit because of drink problems, alcohol problems or problems with weight and diet.
"And I think a lot of people who pay their taxes and work hard will think: 'That's not what I pay my taxes for. I pay my taxes for people who are incapacitated through no fault of their own.'"
Cycle of addiction
Employment minister Chris Grayling said private and voluntary organisations had agreed to invest £580m in treating addicts and preparing them for employment.
He said: "Far from being the safety net it should be, the benefits system has trapped thousands of people in a cycle of addiction and welfare dependency with no prospect of getting back to work.
"All of those are conditions which are treatable, which are able to be overcome if we give people the right support."
Alcohol awareness campaigners welcomed the aim of helping people to give up drink and get back to work but warned removing benefits from vulnerable people risked making their situation worse.
Don Shenker, chief executive of Alcohol Concern, said he was concerned the government was not prepared to commit enough funds to tackle a shortage of treatment facilities for those with addictions.
And he told the BBC: "I would imagine that the vast majority would find it quite difficult to go back into the workplace because, first of all, how many employers would take on someone who's been out of work for two or three years because they've been drinking?
"Secondly, the very stressful nature of being in the workplace environment means that for people who are heavily dependent on alcohol it would be difficult for some people to hold down a job."
And a spokesman for the disability charity Scope, said: "Stereotyping IB claimants won't help them find work. The government has to stop over-simplifying welfare.
"It needs to acknowledge that disabled people face multiple, complex barriers to finding jobs and build an assessment and support system based in reality. Otherwise their admirable aim of getting disabled people into work will fail."
Labour said the government's economic policy was self-defeating because spending cuts would increase unemployment levels and push up the benefits bill by £12bn.
"The real problem now is the Tories' decision to cut too far and too fast has meant that unemployment is set to increase every year," said shadow work and pensions secretary Liam Byrne.
"With five people now chasing every job, what we need to get people off benefits and paying tax is more jobs."
Ministers launched what they said was the largest back-to-work programme in modern history earlier this month as part of reforms designed to make work pay and simplify the benefits system."Far from being the safety net it should be, the benefits system has trapped... more
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pdy
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1 year ago
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According to Mexico's La Jornada en Linea, by Wednesday, April 13, the death toll has reached 126 as officials found 13 more victims as they spent the week exhuming bodies from mass graves. The shallow graves were found in the northwestern part of the state of Sinaloa. Forensic experts indicated that the latest victims had been shot execution-style about five or six months ago.
The Mexican government blamed the Zetas cartel who is reported to be one of the most ruthless in the country. A prosecution source indicated that messages authored by Zetas were found on the site, together with messages from members of the Beltran Leyva drug cartel. Mexican authorities have arrested 17 people in connection to the murders, and believe that cartel gunmen dragged the victims off buses passing through the San Fernando area of the state.According to Mexico's La Jornada en Linea, by Wednesday, April 13, the death toll... more
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Former Alice In Chains bassist Mike Starr died Tuesday in Salt Lake City.
About 1:45 p.m., police were called to a house near 2000 South and Richards Street (40 West), where the 44-year-old Starr was found dead, said Salt Lake City police Sgt. Shawn Josephson.
“The cause and manner of death are going to be determined by the medical examiner’s office,” he said.
Police do not suspect foul play.
Starr, a founding member of the popular 1990s rock band, was arrested last month in Salt Lake City on suspicion of drug possession. He had been a participant in VH1’s “Celebrity Rehab” show.
http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/home/51389899-76/lake-salt-alice-bassist.html.cspFormer Alice In Chains bassist Mike Starr died Tuesday in Salt Lake City.
About... more
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If your kid is not being honest with you, there's a good chance he or she is either doing drugs, having sex (most parents only worry about this if the child is a girl), stealing or skipping school... Kids will test your patience, knowledge and trust when it comes to drugs.
Read the whole article on the Addicts Not Anonymous blog, at http://www.addictsnotanonymous.com/2011/03/10-signs-your-kid-is-on-drugs.htmlIf your kid is not being honest with you, there's a good chance he or she is... more
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Staff later told police that they were suspicious of Casareto during the operation because it was unusual for a patient to experience so much pain, and Casareto acted intoxicated, stopped attending her patient and even fell asleep.
more at http://www.startribune.com/local/115663559.htmlStaff later told police that they were suspicious of Casareto during the operation... more
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VIA Kevin Drum, Keith O'Brien reports in the Boston Globe on a new study showing positive results from Portugal's nine-year-old experiment in drug decriminalisation. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, rates of hard- and soft-drug usage in Portugal were soaring, along with hepatitis and HIV rates.
Faced with both a public health crisis and a public relations disaster, Portugal’s elected officials took a bold step. They decided to decriminalize the possession of all illicit drugs—from marijuana to heroin—but continue to impose criminal sanctions on distribution and trafficking. The goal: easing the burden on the nation’s criminal justice system and improving the people’s overall health by treating addiction as an illness, not a crime.But nearly a decade later, there’s evidence that Portugal’s great drug experiment not only didn’t blow up in its face; it may have actually worked. More addicts are in treatment. Drug use among youths has declined in recent years. Life in Casal Ventoso, Lisbon’s troubled neighborhood, has improved. And new research, published in the British Journal of Criminology, documents just how much things have changed in Portugal. Coauthors Caitlin Elizabeth Hughes and Alex Stevens report a 63 percent increase in the number of Portuguese drug users in treatment and, shortly after the reforms took hold, a 499 percent increase in the amount of drugs seized—indications, the authors argue, that police officers, freed up from focusing on small-time possession, have been able to target big-time traffickers while drug addicts, no longer in danger of going to prison, have been able to get the help they need.
Some researchers caution that Portugal's results may be due not so much to tolerance for drug possession as to making more treatment available. But of course these two always go hand in hand, in any harm-reduction strategy for drug use: it's only by decriminalising possession that you get problem users to come in for treatment.
Portugal is far from the only country that's embraced such harm-reduction strategies, and the verdicts everywhere seem to be similar: they may lead to greater usage of soft drugs, they don't seem to lead to significant increases in hard-drug usage, and they significantly reduce the costs of drug addiction to society. That doesn't mean that drug policy disappears from the political agenda in countries that move towards harm reduction. The newspapers in the Netherlands reported today on a very American-seeming scandal: a website set up by an association of heroin users in Amsterdam, intended to provide addicts with advice on health and safe non-infectious usage, could be read as effectively providing how-to advice on how to shoot up, accessible to web surfers of any age. A conservative-leaning Dutch youth expert wants the site to be somehow restricted to those over the age of 12. But it's instructive to read the reaction of a council member from the right-wing, laissez-faire VVD party, which currently leads the Dutch governing coalition:
On the one hand, we must ensure that the lowest possible number of people use that stuff. On the other hand, if they do, they should use clean needles, not borrow them from each other. And they should try to limit the health risks. That's the perspective from which I look at the site.
This is a perfectly rational conservative perspective. And the fact is that Amsterdam's heroin-addict population has been stable or falling for two decades. That's even though, since 2002, the Dutch authorities have been doing something even more radical than Portugal's for heroin users: they've been giving them free heroin, as long as they show up to inject at government-run "safe injection points", under the eyes of police and health staff. Dutch drug researchers now say that the youth population "doesn't relate to hard drugs at all", and that there's no danger that Dutch kids reading the advice site will find heroin use attractive. They're more likely to find it pathetic.
Drug abuse is driven to a significant extent by fashion. If there's one thing government has going for it, it's the ability to make anything unfashionable. This insight into government's jujitsu-like capability to render the cool uncool should be more obvious to conservatives than to liberals. And yet, in America, the very people who are most distrustful of government's ability to do anything right are the ones who are steadfastly opposed to letting the government use its secret power of deadly uncoolness to fight drug abuse. It seems like a huge wasted opportunity.
http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2011/01/harm_reductionVIA Kevin Drum, Keith O'Brien reports in the Boston Globe on a new study showing... more
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Uh-oh, the new years just begun and already youre finding it hard to keep those resolutions to junk the junk food, get off the couch or kick smoking. Theres a biological reason a lot of our bad habits are so hard to break - they get wired into our brains...
http://www.indiareport.com/India-usa-uk-news/ap/Health/76760Uh-oh, the new years just begun and already youre finding it hard to keep those... more
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Mariana van Zeller, a correspondent for Vanguard, is a Peabody Award-winning journalist.
For the source of the nation’s fastest-growing drug problem, you don’t need to look to Colombia or Mexico or Afghanistan -- you need to look in your medicine cabinet.
That’s what the Drug Enforcement Agency says as it marks National Prescription Drug Take-Back Day. Over 3,400 sites nationwide have joined in the DEA’s effort to prevent increased pill abuse and theft by offering a free and anonymous service to collect unwanted, unused, or expired prescription drugs.
The initiative comes after an onslaught of data over the last year that prescription drug abuse is soaring, and that the majority of abused pills are being obtained from family and friends.
Mariana van Zeller, a correspondent for Vanguard, is a Peabody Award-winning... more
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“Highbeams” is a hypnotically engrossing experimental short film by the young English filmmaker Thomas F. Midgley. The film was created to explore the darker notions of habit. Was it all just an ugly nighttime dream, or maybe not?
This piece includes a number of b&w photographs, as well as the captivating short film.
http://disembedded.wordpress.com/2010/08/15/highbeams-the-darker-notions-of-habit/“Highbeams” is a hypnotically engrossing experimental short film by the... more
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The following are a better look at some violations that could get you into some trouble when you didn’t even know you were doing something wrong.
:http://www.criminaljusticeuniversity.net/blog/2010/5-violations-you-didn%E2%80%99t-know-existed/The following are a better look at some violations that could get you into some... more
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Maia Campbell from In the House is back on drugs a year later, new video 2010
VIDEO and PHOTO Slideshow Below
August 1, 2010
Jacksonville Celebrity Headlines Examiner
Rachel Ell
In The House actress Maia Campbell is unfortunately back on drugs. Maia Campbell was in treatment for her drug abuse problem this past year after a tape was released to the public that seemed to depict that the former actress was on drugs at the time.
Click here to Watch...Actress Maia Campbell Back On Drugs (NEW VIDEO)…Plus Topless VIDEO, NSFW PICS...sexy, drugs, show, crack, nude, naked, boobs, drug abuse, topless, meth, LL Cool J, Singing, Singers, Songs, in the house, boobvs, Maia Campbell, Maia Campbell video, Maia Campbell topless, Maia Campbell boobs, Maia Campbell sex, Monte Carlo, Bebe Moore
A family friend stated that she had undergone treatment for her drug addiction. The most recent video posted below shows a frail Maia Campbell yelling and rapping which is causing many to assume that she has begun using again.Maia Campbell from In the House is back on drugs a year later, new video 2010
VIDEO... more
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In this scene from Vanguard's award-winning documentary "The OxyContin Express," correspondent Mariana van Zeller investigates the proliferation of pain management clinics -- where patients can easily acquire prescription narcotics -- especially in South Florida.
"The OxyContin Express" features intimate access with pill addicts, prisoners and law enforcement as each struggles with a lethal national epidemic.
"Vanguard," airing weekly on Current TV Wednesdays at 10/9c, is a 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, Kaj Larsen, 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.
For more, go to http://current.com/vanguard.In this scene from Vanguard's award-winning documentary "The OxyContin... more
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Congratulations to Vanguard on another Emmy nomination!
"The OxyContin Express," last season's investigation into Florida pain clinics has been nominated for a News and Documentary Emmy in the category of Outstanding Informational Programming - Long Form.
Congratulations to Vanguard on another Emmy nomination!
"The OxyContin... more
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shana
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1 year ago
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Marijuana smokers cannabis sativa show. This part has supposed medical facts from the National Institute of Drug Abuse. The we read some viewers comments again plus the final thoughts and show closing.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h-Rhlg8ty_8Marijuana smokers cannabis sativa show. This part has supposed medical facts from the... more
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