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Salem, MO - Schwag fest
Posted by admin on Friday, July 21 @ 14:42:10 EST (5366 reads) |
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 Schwag fest is just around the corner, Be sure to check out campzoe.com for more info. and directions. The date is 8-11 & 12 , weekend passes are 40 and 35 for just saturday.
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US FL: Movie Brings Back Miami's Drug History
Posted by admin on Friday, July 21 @ 14:40:16 EST (5739 reads) |
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MOVIE BRINGS BACK MIAMI'S DRUG HISTORY
MIAMI - The release of the new "Miami Vice" film conjures up memories of the city's "cocaine cowboy" past, when rival drug traffickers had shootouts with automatic weapons, bags of drugs washed up on beaches and police were outspent, outgunned and sometimes corrupted.
"When the drugs came flowing in, it just changed the landscape here," said Mark R. Trouville, chief of the federal Drug Enforcement Administration field office in Miami.
"It kind of became the Wild West down here for a while," added Trouville, who began his DEA career here in 1979.
Miami remains a key command center for the worldwide cocaine trade, particularly for Colombian cartels, and is still a major drug money-laundering locale. But the violence has largely disappeared as the cocaine kingpins have become less "Scarface" and more corporate.
"They have become more diverse and less flamboyant," said Guy Lewis, a former federal prosecutor in Miami now in private practice. "One thing that has not changed is the money. The trade is still awash in cash."
The "Miami Vice" TV series ( 1984-89 ) accurately reflected those crazy times, according to people who lived through them. The movie, opening Friday and starring Colin Farrell and Jamie Foxx, is set in the present and does not resurrect the old days, according to its producers.
Robert Hoelscher, a Miami-Dade County police sergeant and consultant for the TV show, said: "85 percent of what we put on television was a paraphrase of actual cases."
"There was a constant turf war," said Hoelscher. "We were out-equipped. They had better aircraft. They had bigger, faster boats. They had automatic weapons. We were outgunned in many respects."
Drug traffickers were regularly gunned down on city streets, sometimes in broad daylight, and bullet-riddled bodies turned up frequently in remote locations. One lawyer was shot to death in his office after he was subpoenaed in a drug case. A liquor store at a popular shopping mall was shot up by men wielding submachine guns and driving around in an armored panel truck.
Bryan Page, chairman of the University of Miami's anthropology department, said the "cocaine cowboy period" in the city's history began in the 1970s when an established Cuban network of traffickers and cocaine users attracted the attention of Colombians who saw a potentially lucrative market.
"The violence that was taking place was essentially Colombians taking over Cuban territory," Page said. "They were very bold. People would get shot up sitting at traffic lights. It was that kind of Wild West atmosphere that attracted the attention of the people putting together 'Miami Vice.'"
In the 1983 Brian De Palma film "Scarface" written by Oliver Stone, Al Pacino played Tony Montana, a Cuban immigrant who rises to the top of the Miami criminal underworld then dies a spectacularly violent death.
In between, Montana narrowly escapes a chain saw, watches someone hanged from a helicopter and battles his rivals with ( "Say hello to my little friend!" ) an M-16 assault rifle and other heavy artillery.
The DEA's Trouville said that wasn't too far from the truth.
"They were shooting each other left and right," he said. "It was a time when there were no rules yet. Everybody was trying to establish themselves in the drug world here."
Although cocaine continues to flow into Miami, it has been eclipsed by the U.S. border with Mexico as a drug trade flashpoint. There is far less violence today. And as shown by the recent indictment of members of an alleged drug ring responsible for bringing some 70 tons of cocaine into the United States, the drug lords have blended into South Florida society.
"They used to drive Ferraris and Porsches," Lewis said. "Now they drive Camrys. They've gone from the penthouse to the suburbs."
Colombian-born Pablo Rayo Montano, currently awaiting extradition from Brazil, and 31 members of his alleged drug trafficking organization were indicted in May on various drug charges. Court documents in that case show that family members and associates had businesses and other assets in South Florida, including homes in quiet Broward County suburbs and tried to stay under the radar.
Hoelscher said the drug traffickers learned that violence - besides putting their own lives in constant jeopardy - was bad for business because of the heat it brought from law enforcement.
"There's more sophistication today," Hoelscher said. "You can do it much easier with payoffs and corruption than you can with the gun-in-the-ear kind of thing."
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US: Vicente Fox, Drugs, And The Secular Theocratic State
Posted by admin on Friday, July 21 @ 14:40:04 EST (4658 reads) |
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VICENTE FOX, DRUGS, AND THE SECULAR THEOCRATIC STATE
In 2001, Mexican president Vicente Fox made something of a splash when he, contrary to his campaign rhetoric, came out in support of the decriminalization of small amounts of illicit drugs for personal use. Fox noted that, despite the number of people imprisoned for drug trafficking, and despite the legal penalties for the possession and use of substances, drug use was going up, not down.
Does this scenario sound familiar?
In the United States, at least, the criminalizing of drugs -- and this includes alcohol, too, for the period of 1920 to 1933 -- was very much the product of a religious crusade. This is vital in considering the role religion should play in present-day government, or if it should even play a role at all.
This might sound odd coming from an adherent to a religion that makes little distinction between the civil and the religious. In Judaism, laws concerning property rights are just as much a part of the Torah as laws governing sha'atnez. There are not separate judicial systems for "religious" and "secular" law; rather, Judaism is an all-encompassing system that demands rigorous observance, whether a rule is delineated as between man and man ( bein adom l'chaveiro ) or between man and God ( bein adom l'Makom ).
But the interlocking feature of civil and religious law is very much a characteristic of theocracy, or at least of a self-governing community, such as existed for Babylonian Jewry during the time of the Talmud Bavli, but that we don't have today. Clearly theocracy is not wrong; indeed, observant Jews the world over pray three times a day for the ingathering of the Jewish exiles to the Land of Israel and for the restoration of the Davidic dynasty -- for a time in which theocratic rule will both be the norm and be perceived as just.
In the present day, without the proper conditions, however, theocracy, as I argue in the second chapter of my book Orthodox Judaism, Liberalism, and Libertarianism, is problematic. As I note there:
"When a society moves away from simply protecting the individual's right to act as long as the individual is not harmful to others and protecting people from injurious behavior initiated by others -- from assault, thievery, fraud, deceit, slander, and the like -- and into the realm of the economic and the moral, countless problems result. It is only too easy for a country to enmesh itself in a morass of rules, regulations, expropriations, and programs from which it cannot extricate itself."
But move toward a theocracy it does, albeit something I term a secular theocracy. In a nutshell, from both sides, special interest groups are determined to have their agendas legislated at taxpayer expense, dictate morality, and have us abrogate the use of individual conscience, often in the name of protecting ourselves from ourselves.
In a place and time where the standards of morality may vary from religion to religion, from culture to culture, even from individual to individual, legislating morality is tricky, if not impossible. We may disagree with someone's belief or practice, but we have to be very careful, lest someone disagrees with our belief or practice, and tries to legislate it out of existence. Of course, that is something that has already been done in Switzerland and Sweden with shechita.
While we, as part of a community, may feel something is morally wrong - -- take the illicit drug example above -- it is also important to realize that making laws based on one's religious beliefs has consequences, sometimes quite dire.
Thus, the Harrison Narcotic Act of 1914, while on its face designed to fulfill "international treaty obligations," was spearheaded by the Reverend Charles H. Brent and William Jennings Bryan, men of great religious conviction and prohibitionist tendencies -- in other words, special interests who wanted to ban or regulate substances based on their deeply-held religious beliefs. The United States was now able to regulate opiates and coca-leaf derivatives, but we also got more than we bargained for: black markets in opium, heroin, and cocaine; more addiction; wasted federal funds used to police drug traffic and imprison those who were now criminals; and the introduction of impurities into illegally trafficked substances.
The era of Prohibition, launched by a constitutional amendment no less ( the Eighteenth ), was the product of a very zealous religious Temperance Movement. Widespread sobriety would now become a reality, tipplers would be on their way to reform, and religion would play a much greater role in society. Instead, there was a massive increase of crime, gangsterism, alcoholism, and yet more wasted federal funds.
But, one good law leads to another, and soon such prohibitionist tendencies led to the 1937 Marihuana Tax Act -- which was also adopted partly because of gross misinformation that the use of marijuana led to "murder, insanity and death." Which led to the Controlled Substances Act of 1970, which in turn led to the current "War on Drugs." In fact, some $35 billion are spent on this "war" annually, with more money being expended on nonviolent drug offenses than on violent crime. And people still take drugs.
Today, we take it for granted that drugs are bad. After all, the government says they are, has endless laws and regulations concerning them, and has spent billions of dollars telling us to "just say no." Most are not available on the free market, and if we request too much of the same one, our doctors or pharmacists may get suspicious and turn us down, give us a lecture on the dangers of substance abuse, or inform on us.
Of course, this diatribe isn't meant to convince anyone of the legitimacy of recreational drug use. The Torah itself, in parshas V'eschanan, is explicit in mandating that we guard our health: "Only, take care of yourself, and take care of your life " ( Deut. 4: 9 ); and, "Guard your lives well " ( Deut. 4: 15 ) Regarding smoking, which involves the use of a drug, nicotine, Rabbi Menachem Slae has written an entire pamphlet, "Smoking and Damage to Health in the halacha," while numerous religious authorities have been exceedingly critical of the habit. Kal v'chomer harder substances. Still, alcohol, which is classified as a depressant -- the same drug class as a barbiturate - -- and can at times be more deadly, addictive, and violence provoking than many street drugs, is very much a feature of Jewish life.
And it wouldn't help to know that both George Washington and Thomas Jefferson grew hemp on their plantations -- it's even alleged that Jefferson recommended cannabis to help relieve headaches. Today's authorities would just say that people were not as informed back then as they are now, and didn't realize the danger inherent in the use of such things.
Actually, the danger lies in the pernicious hidden social costs and economic waste wrapped up with the government's taking an active role in trying to stamp out drug use and lay down moral standards. But, one might be led to ask, if it's not the government's responsibility to do so, whose is it? As in the days before hyper-regulation, it's the responsibility of those whom the government would, it seems, like to replace: parents, teachers, peers, and religious leaders.
The benefit of government non-involvement is that communities can regulate themselves. The money expended on ineffective federal efforts can instead be used locally, in a much more efficient fashion. Religious communities can initiate their own education, prevention, and rehabilitation programs. And for those who have no moral problem with substance use, well -- we may not agree with them, but as long as they are consenting adults and do not impinge on our rights, we would have to exercise tolerance.
Those who were looking forward to Vicente Fox's signing into law the decriminalization of small amounts of drugs for personal use were not just people who wanted to take a quick hop over to Tijuana and indulge their yetzer haras for a few days. Many of them saw this as an opportunity for big government to scale back, with the hope that it might continue down the road of allowing people be responsible for themselves, for freely-associating groups to self-regulate their own moral systems. Many saw this as a step in the direction of reducing public expenditures, and of eventually eliminating the profit motive and violence so common in black markets. And it was going to take some of the theocracy out of government.
So it was no surprise that this year, with pressure from some of Mexico's neighbors, that Fox, who had been so intent on Mexico's sovereignty, vetoed the legislation.
One further note, perhaps best left for the linguists: Among the ingredients of the anointing oil found in Exodus ( 30: 23 ) is one called k'nei-bosem, usually translated as "sweet calamus." Calamus is an aromatic plant, which Rashi translates literally as a "reed of spice." Take away the final mem, run the two words together, and you've got something that sounds like "cannabis." Coincidence?
Michael R. Paley is the author of "Orthodox Judaism, Liberalism, and Libertarianism: When Secularism Becomes a Religion" ( PublishAmerica, 2006 ) and an editor for Transaction Publishers.
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US IN: Professor Explores The Mysterious Connection Between
Posted by admin on Friday, July 21 @ 14:39:43 EST (4480 reads) |
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Studies indicate that LSD may help treat alcoholism or improve the quality of life for terminal cancer patients, but historical taboos have hindered the psychedelic's benefits.
David Nichols, professor of medical chemistry and molecular pharmacy, said previous research by another institution explored the administration of LSD to endstage cancer patients. Anxiety and physical pain were alleviated for a majority of the patients, and Nichols traced the relief back to a loss of the fear of death.
"The interesting thing about psychedelics is that they profoundly change the way one views the world," he said. "What part of the brain is so important that it can change the way we perceive reality? That's what keeps me interested."
Nichols has been studying psychedelics' effects on brain chemistry since graduate school in 1969, and explained that LSD serves as a molecular tool to help understand brain functions, which could decipher how emotions are created or find a cure for depression.
"Science is very reductionist. We could say that any feeling is a neurological change," he said.
Nichols' research, a combination of chemistry, pharmacology and neuroscience, is performed by studying a range of subjects such as cloned brain receptors, rats' behavior, molecular synthesis and computer models. Some of his findings were published in 2004, and included information such as how LSD works in the brain.
According to Nichols, brain receptors detect novelty and make people take notice of things, such as when a glass breaks in a quiet room. When a person takes LSD, the same receptors may fire and cause an everyday object to seem interesting.
"It creates novelty where novelty doesn't exist," Nichols said.
In addition to his work with LSD, Nichols performed the earliest work on what effects Ecstasy has on the brain, as well as research to activate receptors in schizophrenics' brains to help improve their memory and cognitive skills. Although the study is in early clinical trials, the results may help those suffering from schizophrenia to function successfully in the workplace or prompt a better treatment for Parkinson's Disease.
The stigmas surrounding the use of psychedelics, however, has prohibited many hypotheses from developing.
"The industry isn't interested," Nichols said. "No one has really cared much about these."
LSD, discovered in 1943, was hailed as a vehicle to understand emotional disorders because of its similarity to the chemical serotonin in the brain. After the Z60s, though, the taboo of LSD's counterculture reputation extinguished serious studies.
Nichols said, "Imagine if someone discovered the transistor and then abandoned it."
Although Nichols said he has a lack of colleagues, recent findings at Johns Hopkins' University, which showed test subjects believed a controlled experience with LSD to be life-changing and spiritual, may help revive and ignite interest in the field.
"What this study will do ... is help this field back up and help it be explored the way it should be."
Nichols, who has a license to test substances deemed to be illegal drugs by the government such as LSD, does not advocate the recreational use of psychedelics.
"I think we should understand what purpose and use they have," he said. "I think they have medical uses, they just haven't been studied."
MAP posted-by: Beth Wehrman
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US NY: Potent Synthetic Drug Found Locally
Posted by admin on Friday, July 21 @ 14:39:31 EST (2968 reads) |
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POTENT SYNTHETIC DRUG FOUND LOCALLY
Fentanyl, a potent synthetic drug similar to morphine, has reached Dutchess County. It is thought to be as much as 200 times as potent as morphine.
The county Department of Health warned local hospital emergency rooms recently to be on alert, because fatal overdoses are common among heroin users lured by the promise of an intense high. Government agencies and nonprofit groups that work are also trying to get the word out on the street.
The Dutchess County medical examiner recently received toxicology results indicating that a man with a history of drug abuse and hepatitis C had the drug in his blood stream when he was found dead in his home.
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