Eideard

An eighth-grade student in North Carolina was suspended for 55 days for showing another boy a bag of oregano and claiming it was marijuana, his family said.

“It was just a joke,” the boy’s mother told FoxNews.com. “He’s embarrassed that it’s turned into such a big issue. He’s actually said he doesn’t know why he did it. But he didn’t have an illegal substance to begin with.”

The Rutherford Institute, a civil liberties group best known for defending the right to religious expression, has taken up the boy’s cause. John Whitehead, the institute’s president, said the suspension may violate the boy’s constitutional rights…

Under Union County Public Schools policy, students can be suspended for 10 days for possession of a real or counterfeit drug with an additional 45 days possible if the student’s behavior was egregious. Whitehead argues that oregano is clearly not an illegal drug, and the school district does not define counterfeit drugs.

Any schools left in this nation that [a] concentrate on education instead of being nannies – and [b] have a sense of humor?

Archie Wilson [without his bible] awaiting arraignment

Bible toting Clermont County politician Archie Wilson surfaced from substance abuse treatment Tuesday to answer charges he traded prescription drugs for sex at a bed bug infested motel.

Wilson, 60, of Batavia Township, pleaded not guilty in Kenton District Court to soliciting prostitution and trafficking in a controlled substance, both misdemeanors that could send him to jail for up to 12 months.

Wilson, who is married with one son, refused to answer reporters’ questions as he left the Kenton County Justice Center…

Wilson, who was known for bringing his bible to County Commission meetings, resigned as a Clermont County commissioner earlier this month citing health concerns…

Wilson’s troubles began in June when a female inmate at the Clermont County jail, Amanda Lay [I kid you not], saw Wilson’s photo in a newspaper and asked to speak with a detective. She told investigators that Wilson, over a period of several weeks, had paid to have sex with her in Erlanger motels and that he had provided her with cocaine and pills, according to court records.

Lay…introduced authorities to second woman who claimed she also had “performed services” for Wilson in exchange for cash and prescriptions. While authorities have not released the name of the second woman, they said she told them she would “engage in shows or sexual encounters” for Wilson, whom she first met at the Venus adult dance club in Covington four years ago…

As I have been known to say in the past, there is sort of a natural justice to Family Values right-wing politicians getting caught with their pants down – lying about sex and drugs. I realize Christianity may hold the copyright on hypocrisy; but, today’s Republican Party – with appropriate aid from the Kool Aid Party – has perfected the process.

The first international drug treaty was signed a century ago this week. So what was the war on drugs like in 1912?

Today it is taken for granted that governments will co-operate in the fight against the heroin and cocaine trade. But 100 years ago, narcotics passed from country to country with minimal interference from the authorities. That all changed with the 1912 International Opium Convention, which committed countries to stopping the trade in opium, morphine and cocaine.

Then, as now, the US stood in the vanguard against narcotics. While the UK’s position is unequivocal today, a century ago it was an unenthusiastic signatory, says Mike Jay, author of Emperors of Dreams: Drugs in the Nineteenth Century.

The real concern a century ago was over alcohol, he argues. “There was a big debate over intoxication as there was concern about the heavy, heavy drinking culture of the 19th Century…”

And opium use was viewed in the mid-19th Century in a very different way from modern beliefs about drug use. It was possible to walk into a chemist and buy not only opium and cocaine, but even arsenic…

“There were opium dens where one could buy oblivion, dens of horror where the memory of old sins could be destroyed by the madness of sins that were new,” wrote Oscar Wilde in The Picture of Dorian Gray.

But the fashion in drugs was changing from the “downer” of opium to the “upper” of cocaine – hence Arthur Conan Doyle making Sherlock Holmes a cocaine injector…

But in the US, cocaine came to be associated with street gangs, alongside racist propaganda that the drug sent black men insane and put white women at risk…So these domestic concerns helped drive the international agreement in the form of the 1912 treaty. But while it tackled the trade, in the UK at least, the authorities were slow to crack down on individual users…

In reality, there was no “drug scene” in Britain back then, says Jay. What existed was confined to a few streets in Soho and a handful of dealers in Limehouse. And once the drug laws came in banning cocaine and opium, the problem was easily contained by the police…

“The baby boomers were the first generation in history to become real global consumers. People were suddenly going to Morocco to smoke hash, or hitching with lorry drivers who were using amphetamines.”

So the floodgates opened. Where once the authorities were fighting relatively small groups of offenders in a tiny drugs subculture, now they must fight millions of users and powerful international cartels.

RTFA for an understanding of laws and “wars” on drugs in the time when the community of users was small, coppers ruled the streets – instead of gangbangers – and profit hadn’t yet driven drugs into a global economy.

Not that today’s governments seem to be any more capable of understanding changing circumstances.

Taoufik Didi and Marina Gregory, wife #2 – sort of – in 2008 wedding

Home Office lawyers hoped the deportation of foreign criminal Taoufik Didi would be an open-and-shut case. He had been sentenced to three years in prison for selling cocaine to undercover police officers, and so exceeded the criteria for “automatic deportation” under the law.

However, the Moroccan launched a human rights appeal, telling immigration judges he had been in a loving relationship with a British woman, Marina Gregory, for 10 years. He now intended to wed her and start a family.

The judges believed the 47-year-old criminal and, to the disappointment of Home Office officials, granted his appeal under the Human Rights Act – ruling that his “right to private and family life” entitled him to stay on in Britain…

The judges reached their decision despite two surprising admissions made by Didi in court. He told them he already had a wife, who he had married in 1989, and was awaiting a divorce which would free him to remarry. Furthermore, he admitted that he had initially kept his first wife’s existence a secret from Miss Gregory – although he claimed that she had now forgiven his deception.

Now The Sunday Telegraph has established that Didi did not tell the whole truth in the immigration hearing – and that his family life is even more convoluted than the version the judges heard.

In fact, Didi has two “wives”. He committed bigamy by “marrying” Miss Gregory three years ago in an open-air ceremony in Cyprus, while legally wed to his first wife…

Didi came to Britain in 1986 when he was aged 22. Three years later, on May 12, 1989, he married Karen Ann Ridley at the register office in Redbridge, north-east London…Didi was granted indefinite leave to remain in Britain on the basis of that marriage…

He was arrested in 2009 after selling £160 “wraps” of cocaine to undercover police officers on four occasions, and was jailed for three years at Snaresbrook Crown Court in March 2010. The criminal, who has previous convictions for false accounting, criminal damage and perverting the course of justice, served half the sentence and was freed last October.

Apparently, the Home Office will now consider whether or not their kindness has been “abused”. I would say it’s been bloody-well trampled.

Two of Belniak’s victims – Denise and Gerard Bassi, dead

David Belniak had drugs in his system and never braked when he slammed into the back of a family’s car stopped at a red light on Christmas Day 2007. Three people died.

In August, Belniak pleaded guilty to three counts of DUI manslaughter and was sentenced to 12 years in prison. He never said a word in court, not even when the victims’ children begged him for an apology…

Now, he’s saying he’s not responsible for the crash. And he wants to be paid for his suffering…

The suit asks for the victims’ relatives to pay Belniak, 38, for his “pain and suffering … mental anguish … loss of capacity for the enjoyment of life” and the medical bills he got as a result of a crash he pleaded guilty to causing…

Georgette DeFranco lost her mother, Linda McWilliams, 66; her sister, Denise Bassi, 50, and her brother-in-law, Gerard Bassi, 51, in the crash. DeFranco’s stepfather, Ray McWilliams, was injured but survived. Family members said he never fully recovered and he died last March at age 68…

The crash happened about 2:20 p.m. Dec. 25, 2007…Authorities said Belniak was driving between 75 and 85 mph when his pickup smashed into the back of McWilliams’ Chevrolet Tahoe. The SUV crumpled. Gerard Bassi died at the scene. Denise Bassi died in surgery that day. Linda McWilliams was taken off life support a week later.

Authorities said Belniak had alcohol, Xanax and evidence of cocaine in his system.

Belniak had a history of driving infractions. He’d faced DUI charges twice before. One of those times, in 2003, New Port Richey police searching his Ford Mustang found a gallon of the intoxicant GHB, commonly known as the “date rape” drug. Belniak served 17 months in prison after pleading no contest to trafficking the drug…

Maureen M. Deskins, the Tampa attorney representing the estate of Linda and Ray McWilliams, said the lawsuit is “gut-wrenching” and the relatives are “stunned.”

“It seems there is no end to the pain David Belniak is willing to inflict on this family,” Deskins said.

One more case added to the sum of frivolous litigation that has become the American standard for lawyers. My friends who practice that craft with justice and honor are as embarrassed as our whole nation must be – especially by the lack of concern that results from drunk driving convictions.

It’s hard to believe that anyone but scholars of modern literature or paid critics have read W.H. Auden’s dramatic poem “The Age of Anxiety” all the way through, even though it won a Pulitzer Prize in 1948, the year after it was published. It is a difficult work — allusive, allegorical, at times surreal. But more to the point, it’s boring. The characters meet, drink, talk and walk around; then they drink, talk and walk around some more. They do this for 138 pages; then they go home.

From a sufferer’s perspective, anxiety is not epochal. It is always and absolutely personal.

Auden’s title, though: that people know. From the moment it appeared, the phrase has been used to characterize the consciousness of our era, the awareness of everything perilous about the modern world: the degradation of the environment, nuclear energy, religious fundamentalism, threats to privacy and the family, drugs, pornography, violence, terrorism. Since 1990, it has appeared in the title or subtitle of at least two dozen books on subjects ranging from science to politics to parenting to sex…As a sticker on the bumper of the Western world, “the age of anxiety” has been ubiquitous for more than six decades now…

From a sufferer’s perspective, anxiety is always and absolutely personal. It is an experience: a coloration in the way one thinks, feels and acts. It is a petty monster able to work such humdrum tricks as paralyzing you over your salad, convincing you that a choice between blue cheese and vinaigrette is as dire as that between life and death. When you are on intimate terms with something so monumentally subjective, it is hard to think in terms of epochs.

And yet it is undeniable that ours is an age in which an enormous and growing number of people suffer from anxiety. According to the National Institute of Mental Health, anxiety disorders now affect 18 percent of the adult population of the United States, or about 40 million people. By comparison, mood disorders — depression and bipolar illness, primarily — affect 9.5 percent. That makes anxiety the most common psychiatric complaint by a wide margin, and one for which we are increasingly well-medicated…Just because our anxiety is heavily diagnosed and medicated, however, doesn’t mean that we are more anxious than our forebears. It might simply mean that we are better treated — that we are, as individuals and a culture, more cognizant of the mind’s tendency to spin out of control.

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Warfarin “flower”

Blood thinners and diabetes drugs cause most emergency hospital visits for drug reactions among people over 65 in the United States, a new study shows.

Just four medications or medication groups — used alone or together — were responsible for two-thirds of emergency hospitalizations among older Americans, according to the report. At the top of the list was warfarin, also known as Coumadin, a blood thinner. It accounted for 33 percent of emergency hospital visits. Insulin injections were next on the list, accounting for 14 percent of emergency visits.

Aspirin, clopidogrel and other antiplatelet drugs that help prevent blood clotting were involved in 13 percent of emergency visits. And just behind them were diabetes drugs taken by mouth, called oral hypoglycemic agents, which were implicated in 11 percent of hospitalizations.

All these drugs are commonly prescribed to older adults, and they can be hard to use correctly. One problem they share is a narrow therapeutic index, meaning the line between an effective dose and a hazardous one is thin. The sheer extent to which they are involved in hospitalizations among older people, though, was not expected, said Dr. Dan Budnitz, an author of the study…

As Americans live longer and take more medications — 40 percent of people over 65 take five to nine medications — hospitalizations for accidental overdoses and adverse side effects are likely to increase, experts say…

A common denominator among the drugs topping the list is that they can be difficult to use. Some require blood testing to adjust their doses, and a small dose can have a powerful effect. Blood sugar can be notoriously hard to control in people with diabetes, for example, and taking a slightly larger dose of insulin than needed can send a person into shock. Warfarin, meanwhile, is the classic example of a drug with a narrow margin between therapeutic and toxic doses, requiring regular blood monitoring, and it can interact with many other drugs and foods…

One thing that stood out in the data, the researchers noted, was that none of the four drugs identified as frequent culprits are typically among the types of drugs labeled “high risk” for older adults by major health care groups…

Dr. Budnitz said that the new findings should provide an opportunity to reduce the number of emergency hospitalizations in older adults by focusing on improving the safety of this small group of blood thinners and diabetes medications, rather than by trying to stop the use of drugs typically thought of as risky for this group.

Dr. Budnitz thinks it is critical that patients tell their physicians everything they’re taking. Well, presuming that the digitizing program put in place by President Obama is proceeding at least as quickly as anything else that hasn’t been roadblocked by the Party of NO – seems to me it soon should be practical for that physician to have someone on staff run a database check on his patients for exactly these conflicts and dangers.

Leaving the responsibility up to a patient who may not even be able to spell the crap he’s taking ain’t the most reliable approach. Involving doctor and pharmacy database records makes as much sense or more.

Laura Chavez did not pass go. She did not collect $200.

Instead, Santa Fe County Sheriff’s deputies took the 60-year-old directly to jail after they say she repeatedly stabbed her boyfriend Wednesday after arguing during a game of Monopoly.

Police responded to a stabbing call at 1:21 a.m. Wednesday in the Casa Villita Apartments…Deputy Kurt Whyte arrived at the apartment where he says he found the 48-year-old male stabbing victim, “bleeding heavily from his head and right wrist area.”

Chavez, who police say admitted stabbing the man with a kitchen knife, was arrested and charged with aggravated battery on a household member with a deadly weapon, battery upon a peace officer, assault upon a peace officer and resisting or evading a police officer…Her boyfriend, meanwhile, remained hospitalized late Wednesday but was in stable condition, according to Lt. Adan Mendoza.

Police say both Chavez and her boyfriend appeared to be intoxicated.

According to the statement of probable cause filed for Chavez’s arrest drafted by Detective Andrew Quintana, Chavez and her boyfriend were playing a late Tuesday night game of Monopoly with her 10-year-old grandson. The young boy told police the couple began fighting because his grandma thought her boyfriend was cheating at the classic Parker Brothers game…

Investigators say they were not aware of past domestic violence calls regarding the couple, but jail records show Chavez has been booked into the Santa Fe County jail nine times since June 2006, many of which were related to violations of probation and the conditions of her release from a 2009 felony drug possession case in which she eventually received a conditional discharge.

Every aspect of life in a banana republic culture can be exciting. Even a board game can turn into an assault.

An ice cream vendor who peddled prescription painkillers from the same truck he sold frozen treats to kids, was sentenced on Tuesday to three and a half years in prison.

The sentence was part of a plea deal struck by Louis Scala, 30, the head of a $1 million drug-trafficking ring run out of his Lickety Split truck, prosecutors said. He pleaded guilty in August to one count of conspiracy and one count of criminal possession of a controlled substance.

Scala, 30, obtained the drugs with a prescription pad stolen by an accomplice from a Manhattan doctor’s office. Through a network of more than two dozen runners, he was able to get nearly 43,000 oxycodone pills between July 2009 and June 2010, with a street value of $20 apiece…

Scala drove his Lickety Split truck through neighborhoods in Staten Island, selling ice cream to children while inviting adults into the back to buy pills.

American entrepreneurs are truly special.

A federal indictment charges 14 people, including an 88-year-old doctor and two operators of a Los Angeles clinic, with running a scheme to illegally obtain and distribute OxyContin pills, carried out largely through insurance fraud. The indictment stemmed from of a two-year investigation. Ten of the defendants were arrested Thursday morning, officials said.

The distribution ring was allegedly run out of Lake Medical Group, where doctors reportedly wrote prescriptions for the powerful painkiller to uninsured patients who did not need it, federal officials said. Defendants also allegedly obtained the pills from pharmacies by fraudulently billing public insurance programs such as Medicare.

Then members of the organization allegedly resold more than 1 million pills on the street for $23 to $27 a pill, raking in millions of dollars in profits.

The indictment also alleged that in some cases the defendants stole people’s identities and Medicare beneficiary information so they could obtain the OxyContin.

Clinic operators Mike Mikaelian, 43, of East Hollywood and Anjelika Sanamian, 52, of Van Nuys allegedly orchestrated the scheme. Two doctors — Morris Halfon, 88, and Eleanor Santiago, 73 — are accused of prescribing the pills to people who had no medical need for them. The other defendants allegedly assisted in the plot by serving as runners, recruiters or posing as patients.

Throw away the key!