June 2012 Archives

By MICHAEL ARKUSH

RANCHO PALOS VERDES, Calif. -- The ball was nowhere to be found when he reached the green, and Oscar De La Hoya assumed it must have spun back into the rough. Too bad. He had nailed a gorgeous 9-iron approach from 135 yards right at the flag on Trump National Golf Club's opening hole, an uphill par 4. He deserved better. One of his playing partners, who knew the course well, then offered a possibility De La Hoya had yet to consider: "It's in the hole."

That's exactly where it was, prompting De La Hoya, the former boxing champ, to celebrate his stunning eagle earlier this month as if he had just registered another knockout. Such is the joy De La Hoya, 39, derives when his game is on, which is often the case -- he is a 7-handicapper.

"Oh, my God," he said in the cart on the way to the second tee. "I've got to call the wife."

The rest of the day went downhill from a scoring standpoint -- how could it not? -- though De La Hoya recorded a splendid eight-over-par 79 on a course that can be quite punishing. More important, his mood never wavered, a man finally at peace with himself 20 years after he captured a gold medal at the Summer Olympics in Barcelona, Spain, and became known as the Golden Boy.

The reason for his serenity is not difficult to figure out. De La Hoya, who took his first drink at the age of 9, checked himself into a Malibu, Calif., treatment center in May 2011. He has not had a drop of alcohol since, he said. He also came clean on using cocaine and cheating on his wife, Millie.

Continue Reading: nytimes.com

June 27, 2012 /24-7PressRelease/ -- Probation officers across South Texas will soon be embracing new technology as a way to keep tabs on DWI offenders. A new portable breathalyzer, the SoberLink, will enable officers to administer tests and learn the offender's location at any time during the day. The device can also take a user's picture, and the built in GPS device provides the location of where the test was taken.

Unlike ignition interlock devices, Soberlink provides a number of user conveniences that make BAC testing easier and discreet. It includes text message reminders for testing, real time testing reports, as well as a web portal with detailed instructions. Users will pay on average $80 per month in operating costs for the device. Soberlink is currently being used on a limited basis, but it could be used regularly as law enforcement looks for different ways to monitor offenders.

With rising budget cuts, client loads for probation officers have steadily risen. In Nueces County, Adult Probation Director Javed Syed explained to KZTV News that some officers have as many as 140 offenders to monitor. As such, the Soberlink provides an accurate, cost-effective way to ensure that clients are following the terms of their probation.

Under Texas law, drivers face a number of penalties for refusing alcohol breath tests, including license suspension. However, if alcohol monitoring is part of a court order, offenders risk violating their probation agreement if they do not meet their testing requirements. Probation violations could result jail time and further penalties.

If you have questions about your probation requirements, or are facing revocation, contact an experienced criminal defense attorney to learn about your rights and options.

Article provided by Law Office of Larry P. McDougal

Continue Reading: 24-7pressrelease.com

VIENNA -  Drug abuse worldwide is stagnant but still kills about 200,000 people a year, the U.N.'s drug-fighting agency said in a report released Tuesday.

Based on 2010 figures, the United Nations Office for Drugs and Crime also said global treatment for drug abusers would cost to $250 billion a year if everyone needing help received the proper care.

But the report noted that far less than that is being spent, meaning fewer than 1 in 5 people needing help actually get it. Also, it said, loss of productivity and crimes committed by those needing to finance their habit result in additional huge costs for many countries.

In its annual report, the U.N. body said that about 230 million people -- or 5 percent of the world's population -- used illegal drugs at least once in 2010. But the agency noted significant gender gaps among them depending on where users came from, with female consumption in the United States about two-thirds that of males and as low as one tenth in India and Indonesia.

Continue Reading: foxnews.com

By Catherine E. Shoichet

(CNN) -- Dealing with deep drug war wounds is a top issue on Mexico's presidential campaign trail, but the election results could have an impact on both sides of the Mexico-U.S. border.

As candidates across party lines suggest new strategies, like reducing violence and taking troops off the streets, some U.S. lawmakers say they're nervous that cross-border cooperation could wane after Mexican voters pick a new president July 1.

Last week, a Republican congressman told the head of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration that he was concerned about Mexico's "impending change in power."

And Sen. John McCain, R-Arizona, said in February that he feared at least one Mexican presidential candidate was not committed to continuing his country's campaign against organized crime.

Worries in Washington as Mexico's election looms are a reminder of the close ties binding the neighboring nations. The two countries share billions of dollars in trade and a border that stretches for nearly 2,000 miles. Millions of U.S. citizens travel to Mexico every year, and millions of Mexican immigrants -- legal and illegal -- live in the United States.

"Almost no other country affects the United States as much on a day to day basis as Mexico," said Shannon O'Neil, a Latin American studies fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.

"What happens in Mexico is hugely important for the United States."

For nearly six years, a brutal drug war in Mexico with a staggering death toll of more than 47,500 people has dominated discussions between the two countries.

Continue Reading: cnn.com

While marijuana use by teens has been increasing since 2005, an analysis of data from 1993 through 2009 by economists at three universities has found no evidence to link the legalization of medical marijuana to increased use of the drug among high school students.

"There is anecdotal evidence that medical marijuana is finding its way into the hands of teenagers, but there's no statistical evidence that legalization increases the probability of use," said Daniel I. Rees, a professor of economics at the University of Colorado Denver.

Rees co-authored the study with Benjamin Hansen, assistant professor of economics at the University of Oregon and D. Mark Anderson, assistant professor of economics at Montana State University.

They examined the relationship between the legalization of medical marijuana and marijuana consumption using nationally representative data on high school students from the Youth Risky Behavior Survey (YRBS) for the years 1993 through 2009, a period when 13 states, including Alaska, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, Nevada, Oregon and Washington, legalized medical marijuana. Seventeen states and the District of Columbia now have such laws with legislation pending in seven others.

"This result is important given that the federal government has recently intensified its efforts to close medical marijuana dispensaries," said Hansen, who studies risky behaviors of adolescents and adults. "In fact, the data often showed a negative relationship between legalization and marijuana use."

Federal officials, including the Director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, argue that the legalization of medical marijuana has contributed to the recent increase in marijuana use among teens in the United States and have targeted dispensaries operating within 1,000 feet of schools, parks and playgrounds.

Continue Reading: medicalnewstoday.com

By: Join Together Staff

Almost half of adults with a drunk driving conviction said they had been struggling with heavy drinking for a long time, or had resumed heavy drinking after trying to quit or reduce their alcohol use, a new study finds.

The study of 696 adults with a drunk driving conviction found 19 percent reported a lifetime of heavy drinking, while 25 percent had resumed heavy drinking again after at least one period of abstinence or moderate drinking, Reuters reports.

The researchers write in the journal Addiction that there could be long-lasting benefits from using heavy drinkers' convictions to get them into treatment.

The researchers found 13 percent had varying drinking patterns throughout their lives, while 14 percent had successfully cut down from heavy drinking to more moderate drinking. In addition, 21 percent had stopped drinking after some period of heavy drinking. Between one-fifth and one-third of chronically heavy drinkers met the definition for alcohol or drug dependence, or for mental health disorders such as depression.

Continue Reading: drugfree.org

Two parents were arrested after allegedly trying to frame a volunteer at their son's elementary school.

By Rheana Murray

Photo: Kent and Jill Easter planted a bottle of prescription pain medication and marijuana on a volunteer from their son's school in Orange County, Calif., police say.

A California couple is accused of planting illegal drugs on an elementary school volunteer because they weren't happy with how the woman was supervising their son.

Jill and Kent Easter, both attorneys, were arrested Tuesday after they allegedly hatched a plan to frame the woman at Plaza Vista School in Irvine, Calif., KABC-TV reports.

Police say Kent, 38, put a bag of prescription painkillers, marijuana and a marijuana pipe in the volunteer's car, then called police to say he had seen her hide the drugs in her car.

Cops responded to the scene and found the drugs in the woman's car. Surveillance footage shows Kent calling Irvine police from a hotel near his office in Newport Beach.

"She [the volunteer] was shocked," Irvine Police Lt. Julia Engen told KABC-TV. "She had no idea where those items came from. Things just didn't seem to add up."

The Associated Press reports investigators began to eye the Easters when they learned the volunteer had been in class at the time Kent said she was hiding the drugs.

Continue Reading: nydailynews.com

The Huffington Post

By Kiki Von Glinow

Adele was once close to "rolling in the deep" with an alcohol problem, according to a new biography.

In Marc Shapiro's "Adele: The Biography," the author details a time when the singer struggled with a drinking problem that left her visibly intoxicated while performing onstage.

"I got so drunk by the time I went on at 2 a.m. I had forgotten the words to my own songs ... It was the worst thing ever," the 24-year-old singer told Shapiro in an interview, according to In Touch. "Midway through her first tour, she allegedly had a drinking problem," he says.

But according to Shapiro, it was the heartbreak that made Adele a global household name that fueled her alcohol dependence -- an addiction her estranged father similarly suffered from.

Continue Reading: huffingtonpost.com

By: Yardena Schwartz

Chicago Police Capt. John Roberts never thought that moving to the suburbs would mean that his 14-year-old son Billy would immediately be introduced to drugs. And never did he ever imagine that Billy, a high school athlete, would even think of touching heroin.

After 33 years in the Chicago Police Department, Roberts was finally ready to retire. He couldn't wait to move his family out to the suburbs, where he thought his kids would live in a safer environment, attend better schools and be sheltered from some of the ugly realities of city life.

But after growing addicted to prescription painkillers, Billy and his friends could no longer afford their habit. They soon turned to heroin, which they could buy for a tenth of the price of their favorite pill, Oxycontin. Billy was 19 when he died of a heroin overdose, but he wasn't the only one of his friends to suffer that fate.

At first, Roberts couldn't believe what was happening to his family , and that heroin could affect a good kid like Billy. But then he realized he wasn't alone.  

Across the country, heroin use is growing at an alarming rate and is affecting a surprising segment of the population.

"Kids in the city know not to touch it, but the message never got out to the suburbs," said Roberts, who founded the Heroin Epidemic Relief Organization to help other families cope with the shock of teen heroin use. Like most parents in upper-middle class neighborhoods, Roberts said, "We didn't think it would ever be a problem out here."

Continue Reading: msnbc.com

NEW YORK (AP) - Amy Winehouse's father says he has a hard time enjoying her breakthrough Back to Black album because the songs are about her ex-husband.

Mitch Winehouse blames Blake Fielder-Civil for leading her into drug abuse, and he details her long decline in a new memoir, Amy, My Daughter. His views on the British singer's ex-husband have been stated before and are well known.

Amy Winehouse, whose Back to Black disc sold more than 20 million copies worldwide and won a Grammy Award for album of the year in 2008, died of accidental alcohol poisoning in July. The British singer was 27.

Mitch Winehouse, a former taxi driver and aspiring singer, writes in the memoir that it recently occurred to him that one of the biggest-selling albums of the 21st century is all about Fielder-Civil, whom he disparages. He prefers his daughter's jazzy first album, Frank, which wasn't released outside England until after her later success.

His memoir is scheduled to come out June 26. The Associated Press bought a copy on Monday.

Winehouse recalls his daughter as a girl writing into a notebook phrases that later turned up in songs and his pride as her singing talent became evident. But most of the book is about a seemingly endless cycle of attempted recoveries and relapses as she battled drugs and alcohol.

Winehouse also says that his daughter suffered from stage fright throughout her career. She had breast enlargement surgery more than a year before her death and considered plastic surgery on her nose.

Amy Winehouse's strong will may have helped her during her career, but it didn't help with substance abuse, her father writes.

"Long before Amy was an addict, no one could tell her what to do," he writes. "Once she became an addict, her stubbornness just got worse. There were times when she wanted to be clean, but the times when she didn't outnumbered them."

Continue Reading: usatoday.com

By Alex Crees

A new study has found that adults who undergo a common type of bariatric surgery to lose weight appear to have a significantly higher risk of abusing alcohol two years after the procedure, according to researchers the University of Pittsburgh.

The study investigated alcohol consumption and abuse in nearly 2,000 patients across the United States.  Researchers surveyed bariatric patients on their alcohol consumption 30 days before surgery, then again one and two years after surgery.

Nearly 70 percent of the participants had gastric bypass surgery - which reduces the side of the stomach and shortens the intestine - and were most at risk for alcohol disorders.  Another 25 percent had laparoscopic adjustable gastric banding surgery, which uses a band to make the stomach smaller, and the remaining 5 percent had other, less-common surgeries.

Of those patients who had gastric bypass, 7 percent reported symptoms of alcohol disorders before surgery.  That rate increased to 10.7 percent two years after surgery - a relative increase of more than 50 percent.  Translated to the entire population of people who undergo gastric bypass in the U.S., this could mean an increase of 2000 people suffering from alcohol disorders per year.

Though a prior problem with drinking was one of the best predictors of having a disorder later, more than half of the participants who developed disorders two years after surgery did not have a prior history of alcohol abuse, according to the researchers.

"There have been several studies showing if you give gastric bypass patients a standard amount of alcohol, they reach a higher peak alcohol level, they reach the level more quickly, and they take longer to return to a sober state - they're experiencing alcohol differently after surgery," study researcher Mary King, an assistant professor of epidemiology at the Graduate School of Public Health at the University of Pittsburgh, told FoxNews.com.  "So we weren't entirely surprised to find a significant increase.  It could be a combination of the change in alcohol sensitivities coupled with higher levels of drinking."

Continue Reading: foxnews.com

By PETER LARSEN

Christian Hosoi once blazed through life like a rock star.

As one of the world's best skateboarders in the 1980s, when the world started to care about that, Hosoi, by his mid-teens, had it all -- girls, drugs, fame. He was the center of a party that ran, nonstop, from bars in Hollywood to skate parks in Marina del Rey to sidewalks in Huntington Beach and beaches in Rio de Janeiro.

He had grown-up money and grown-up craziness. He once rented W.C. Fields' old house in Echo Park and built a skate ramp near the place's original gin-bottle-shaped pool.

Ego? Hosoi took on the nickname "Christ," and invented a skateboard trick called "Christ Air" that included a mid-air pose that brought to mind an image of a crucifix.

"If you wanted to be anyone," Hosoi says as he talks about his new memoir, "Hosoi: My Life As A Skateboarder Junkie Inmate Pastor." "You wanted to be me."

Then, in short order, you didn't.

As the skate boom went bust in the '90s endorsements and exhibition fees dried up. The kid who was making $2,000 a month as an eighth grader and $350,000 a year in his 20s was often broke. He traded the mansion for Mom's house and, eventually, a van, in which he lived but on which couldn't - or wouldn't - make payments.

And the guy who was just positive he didn't have any substance problems (Coronas? Pot? They don't count, right?) was addicted to methamphetamines.

Which, in January of 2001, led him to a very bad place indeed -- a windowless cell in a Hawaiian jail. Hosoi was convicted to transporting a pound-and-a-half of meth to Hawaii from California. He was sentenced to 10 years in prison.

"I just remember being... really desperate to get out of this situation," an older, sober Hosoi recalls. "But there was no way out."

Tony Hawk is a few months younger than Hosoi and, when they first hit the skate scene as teenagers, it wasn't clear which of the two would become the better known skater.

Fans, back then, were split into two camps: Hawk came to personify skating's technical school while Hosoi was all about freedom.

Continue Reading: ocregister.com

The state Senate approved a measure Thursday making it easier for people convicted of drunken driving and other offenses to reduce their jail time, which Republican lawmakers opposed as "decriminalization" of driving under the influence of alcohol.

The bill was introduced by Assemblyman Roger Hernandez (D-West Covina) a month before his arrest in March for drunken driving. Hernandez has pleaded not guilty and is awaiting trial, but the Senate amended the measure to take his name off the bill.

 Even so, Sen. Joel Anderson (R-San Diego) repeatedly referred to the bill during the floor debate as "Roger's Law," and said it would jeopardize public safety and reverse direction after decades of adding teeth to DUI laws.

 "Today sadly we are faced with a bill that would start pulling those very same teeth from California drunk driving laws," Anderson said, joining opponents including Mothers Against Drunk Driving and the California District Attorneys Assn.

Requested by the San Bernardino County sheriff, AB 2127 would allow sheriffs to give convicts credit against jail sentences for participating in educational programs and vocational training as well as life-skills, parenting and substance-abuse classes, as an alternative to the current manual labor work release.The bill does not mention drunk driving or any offense by name, but would broadly apply to offenses eligible for jail sentences.

Continue Reading: latimes.com

Photo: Mexican soldiers standing by the site where three dismembered bodies linked to drug violence were found in Acapulco in March.

By RANDAL C. ARCHIBOLD and DAMIEN CAVE

MEXICO CITY -- The top three contenders for Mexico's presidency have all promised a major shift in the country's drug war strategy, placing a higher priority on reducing the violence in Mexico than on using arrests and seizures to block the flow of drugs to the United States.

The candidates, while vowing to continue to fight drug trafficking, say they intend to eventually withdraw the Mexican Army from the drug fight. They are concerned that it has proved unfit for police work and has contributed to the high death toll, which has exceeded 50,000 since the departing president, Felipe Calderón, made the military a cornerstone of his battle against drug traffickers more than five years ago.

The front-runner, Enrique Peña Nieto, does not emphasize stopping drug shipments or capturing drug kingpins as he enters the final weeks of campaigning for the July 1 election. Lately he has suggested that while Mexico should continue to work with the United States government against organized crime, it should not "subordinate to the strategies of other countries."

"The task of the state, what should be its priority from my point of view, and what I have called for in this campaign, is to reduce the levels of violence," he said in an interview.

United States officials have been careful not to publicly weigh in on the race or the prospect of a changed strategy, for fear of being accused of meddling. One senior Obama administration official said on Friday that Mr. Peña Nieto's demand that the United States respect Mexican priorities "is a sound bite he is using for obvious political purposes." In private meetings, the official said, "what we basically get is that he fully appreciates and understands that if/when he wins, he is going to keep working with us."

Continue Reading: nytimes.com

Rather than gaining "liquid courage" to let loose with friends, teenage drinkers are more likely to feel like social outcasts, according to a new sociological study.

Published in the June issue of the Journal of Health and Social Behavior, the study shows alcohol consumption leads to increased social stress and poor grades, especially among students in schools with tightly-connected friendship cliques and low levels of alcohol abuse.

For their study, Robert Crosnoe, a professor of sociology at the University of Texas at Austin, Aprile Benner, an assistant professor of human ecology at the University of Texas at Austin, and Barbara Schneider, a professor of sociology and education at Michigan State University, analyzed National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health) data on 8,271 adolescents from 126 schools. Add Health, which began in 1994, is the largest and most comprehensive survey of health-related behavior among adolescents between grades 7 and 12.

The researchers, who also drew on Add Health's companion Adolescent Health and Academic Achievement transcript study, found a correlation between drinking and feelings of loneliness and not fitting in across all school environments. But these feelings were especially significant among self-reported drinkers in schools where fellow students tended to avoid alcohol and were tightly connected to each other. When not surrounded by fellow drinkers, they are more likely to feel like social outcasts, said Crosnoe, who, along with Benner, is a research affiliate at the University of Texas at Austin's Population Research Center.

"This finding doesn't imply that drinkers would be better off in schools in which peer networks are tightly organized around drinking," Crosnoe said. "Instead, the results suggest that we need to pay attention to youth in problematic school environments in general but also to those who may have trouble in seemingly positive school environments."

Continue Reading: medicalnewstoday.com

Students have been taking stimulants to get ahead since the 1930s. Is there any reason to believe the problem is bigger today than ever before?

By Maia Szalavitz

There's an epidemic afoot in the country's selective high schools: ambitious students under pressure to succeed are increasingly abusing stimulants like Ritalin and Adderall, which they consider as essential as SAT tutors for getting into an Ivy League college. At least that's the case according to a most-emailed front page story in Sunday's New York Times. But the data on stimulant use from national surveys tells a very different story.

The Times' Alan Schwarz writes:

    "At high schools across the United States, pressure over grades and competition for college admissions are encouraging students to abuse prescription stimulants, according to interviews with students, parents and doctors. Pills that have been a staple in some college and graduate school circles are going from rare to routine in many academically competitive high schools, where teenagers say they get them from friends, buy them from student dealers or fake symptoms to their parents and doctors to get prescriptions."

The story contends that an estimated 15% to 40% of students at high-achieving high schools use prescription stimulants to get ahead; these drugs, designed to ease symptoms of ADHD, can sharpen focus and enhance performance in people without the disorder. But national statistics don't really support the idea that misuse of these drugs among high-school students is growing. Indeed, according to the data, it would be hard to believe that modern-day kids are even approaching the rate of misuse of their parents' or grandparents' generations.


Continue Reading: time.com

By Karen Kaplan, Los Angeles Times/For the Booster Shots blog

Drug czar Gil Kerlikowske says the Obama administration has changed its thinking about people addicted to drugs -- and you should too.

In a speech Monday at the Betty Ford Center in Rancho Mirage, Kerlikowske said it was time to stop believing that the millions of Americans who abuse drugs are moral failures and instead realize that they have a disease.

"We know from scientific research conducted by some of the world's leading neuroscientists that drug addiction is not a moral failing on the part of the individual. It's a chronic disease of the brain that can be treated," said Kerlikowske, director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy since 2009. "This is not my opinion or a political statement open to debate -- it is a clear and unequivocal. It's a fact borne out by decades of study and research. And it is a fact that neither government nor the public can ignore."

Efforts to "arrest our way to a drug-free society" are doomed to fail, he said. Likewise, he added, simply legalizing drugs of abuse will not solve the problem. What works is to get people into recovery programs and then support them as they fight their daily battles against addiction, he said.

For instance, there are more than 38,000 state and local statutes that make it harder for people in recovery to stay off of drugs, according to research from the National Institute of Justice. Even after someone has served a sentence for a drug-related crime, he or she may still be cut off from student loans, affordable housing, certain kinds of jobs and maybe even a driver's license.

"I've met with so many people who talk about, 'Once we're in recovery and once we're doing better, why are we continually punished?'" Kerlikowske said. Obstacles like these prevent people from rejoining society, which isn't helpful to anyone, he said.

Since treatment works, the federal government is trying to make it more available to the people who need it. In his speech, Kerlikowske cited an estimate from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health that about 21 million people who needed substance abuse treatment at a specialty facility in 2010 were not able to get it. That worked out to 8% of Americans over the age of 11.

The Obama administration has responded by expanding a voucher program that allows people to use funds to get treatment or to help them stay off drugs after treatment ends, Kerlikowske said. For example, recipients could use their vouchers for child care, so that they could hold down a job. They could even use the funds to buy clothing and shoes that are appropriate for the workplace.

Continue Reading: latimes.com

By CLAIRE NOVAK

Dale Romans stood on the apron at Belmont Park on Wednesday morning and offered his assessment of Kent Desormeaux, the Hall of Fame jockey who will not be riding Romans's horse Saturday in the Belmont Stakes.

"You can tell when he's not acting right -- he doesn't ride right," Romans said. "But when the good Kent shows up, he's the best rider in the country, and one of the best of all time. That's what the shame of it is."

Kent Desormeaux is an alcoholic. He has fought the battle long and hard, and although he is a brilliant rider, his personal struggle has cost him much throughout the years.

In the past few weeks, it cost him more: a ride on Tiger Walk in the Preakness Stakes and now, with Romans's decision, any chance of riding Dullahan in the Belmont Stakes. Dullahan, trained by Romans, was made the favorite to the win the final leg of the Triple Crown after I'll Have Another was declared out.

Desormeaux failed a May 18 Breathalyzer test in New York, a requirement for jockeys on every race day at Belmont. "It was a tough decision on the personal level because we're friends," Romans said. "But it wasn't a tough decision on the business level because he just wasn't in the right frame of mind."

Desormeaux, 42, is a three-time Eclipse Award winner, and horsemen do not doubt his ability. The numbers speak for him; his mounts have earned $243,232,266 in 5,451 victories, including three Kentucky Derby wins, two in the Preakness Stakes, and one in the Belmont (in 2009 with the 11-1 shot Summer Bird). He was on top of his game with Dullahan when he won the Blue Grass Stakes on April 14 and gave his all driving toward a third-place finish by one and three-quarter lengths in the Derby.

Continue Reading: nytimes.com

DEA: Detainees among 45 indicted for smuggling 61,000 pounds of cocaine into U.S. since 1999

By Tom Brown

Thirty-six people were arrested on Wednesday in a crackdown on a drug trafficking ring that used Puerto Rico's main airport to smuggle large quantities of cocaine off the island aboard U.S.-bound passenger flights, authorities said.

The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration said the 36 detainees, including 22 suspects rounded up at San Juan's International Airport, were among 45 people indicted for smuggling more than 61,000 pounds of cocaine out of the U.S. territory on commercial flights to the U.S. mainland since 1999.

"It's an important blow," said Laila Rico, a spokeswoman for the DEA's Caribbean Division, which is headquartered in Puerto Rico.

"The Puerto Rico airport is sought-after by drug dealers because it's basically a mid-point between South American countries and the United States and offers an easy entry point," Rico said.

She was referring to the Luis Munoz Marin International Airport in San Juan, the point from which the bulk of the drugs were flown to Miami and Orlando, in Florida, and Newark, New Jersey, aboard flights operated by American Airlines.

The DEA said in a statement that some suspects caught up in the drug bust were current or former American Airlines employees and airport personnel, who used a designated bathroom to hand over cocaine to couriers preparing to board U.S.-bound flights.

Cargo handlers on the payroll of the drug ring also worked to ensure that drug-laden suitcases were placed aboard U.S.-bound flights, the DEA said.

Continue Reading: msnbc.com

Barbara Theodosiou

When someone visits http://www.addictsmom.com they can tell their story and find support from this community. A visitor can also post photos of their children on The Wall of Hope. Recently added was The Gone to Soon Wall that tells stories of those lost to addiction who require addiction recovery.

Davie, FL (PRWEB) May 30, 2012
Most mothers hope for the best for their children and do their best to give them the tools they need to become productive members of society so they can have the good life that they desire. However, along the way many children fall into the devastating illness known as addiction. Families of addicts often feel ashamed and don't know where to turn. That was the case 5 years ago for Barbara Theodosiou,the Founder of the Addict's Mom, who found out that both of her sons were addicted to drugs. She felt ashamed and withdrew from society, desperately searching for addiction help for her children.

As a result she lost her very successful business groups. Barbara made a courageous decision to go public with the fact that she was an Addict's Mom and announced it to over 450 people at a luncheon she was hosting. Filled with support, she began The Addict's Mom as a Facebook group which has grown tremendously and has sprouted the Addict's Dad Group, and The Addicts Group. Due to the success of these groups a new resource was launched-- http://www.addictsmom.com which now has 1,420 members and growing every day. Members share without shame and show that together we are stronger while also reminding the mother of an addict that she is special.

When someone visits the membership site they can tell their story and find support from this community. A visitor can also post photos of their children on The Wall of Hope. Recently added was The Gone to Soon Wall that tells stories of those lost to addiction who require addiction recovery. The goal of the site is to create a community of mothers of addicted children to come together and help each other. There will also be many resources for those who join the site such as low cost rehab centers, books, and blogs.

Barbara Theodosiou said in a recent interview to encourage mothers of addicts to join the site. "Deep inside I knew I was not the only mom suffering. I knew there had to be other mothers who were going through the same emotional pain that I was. I wanted to create a place for mothers of addicts to have the freedom to share". The impact of the Addict's Mom has been tremendous, as evidenced by the many letters and comments in the forum area of http://www.addictsmom.com. Barbara is also forming The Addict's Mom Scholarship Fund, which will assist moms of addicted children to obtain treatment for their children. Plans are being made to host several support group meetings.

Continue Reading: yahoonews.com

By David DiSalv

I know you've probably already read a few articles about the deceptively named drugs called "bath salts" and their effects (or alleged effects, i.e. zombie cannibalism) so in this one we're going to get right to the point.  Bath salts are dangerous for chiefly two reasons, and neither have anything to do with addiction or hallucinations.

The first reason is dosage, and the second is sleep deprivation.

Before addressing each of those in more detail, let's quickly go over what bath salts are and are not, and how they affect the brain.

First, the name "bath salts" doesn't refer to any single drug, but rather a group of substances with similar chemical properties.  Most varieties contain either mephedrone or methylenedioxypyrovalerone (MDPV).  Both drugs are related to khat, an organic stimulant found in the Middle East and East African countries. Khat is illegal in the US because it contains cathinone, a Schedule 1 controlled substance according to the DEA.

Neither of these drugs are new; mephedrone has been bouncing around laboratories since the 1920s, MDPV since the late 1960s. Recreational use of the drugs is relatively new, dating back just a decade or so. Mephedrone is a stimulant and MDPV is both a stimulant and psychoactive drug. The qualifier "psychoactive" means that the drug crosses the blood-brain barrier and causes changes in neurochemical function, resulting in amplifying effects on mood, thought, perception and behavior.

Neither of these drugs are hallucinogens like LSD. Hallucinogens are psychoactive drugs, but not all psychoactive drugs are hallucinogens -- the primary difference being that hallucinogens induce changes in perception that are significantly different than normal consciousness, not merely an amplification of conscious states we already experience.

So, for example, someone who takes MDPV may find himself feeling extremely paranoid and panicky, but he's unlikely to believe that a giant lizard wearing a tuxedo is about to eat his cat.

Continue Reading: forbes.com

By: Sheila Marikar

Demi Moore's daughter is in trouble. Scout Willis, 20, was arrested for allegedly drinking a beer and handing cops a fake ID in New York City's Union Square subway station Monday night in New York City.

According to WABC, when Willis was stopped by police at around 6:50 p.m., she gave officers a New York State ID with the name Katherine Kelly. After further questioning, she gave them her real California ID with the name Scout Willis.

According to the criminal complaint, she told police, "My name is Scout Willis. The first ID isn't mine. My friend gave it to me. I don't know Katherine Kelly."  People magazine reported that she was charged with two misdemeanors.

Willis was released without bail Tuesday morning; she'll return to Manhattan Criminal Court on July 31. Willis, the second daughter of Moore and Bruce Willis, is a student at Brown University.

Continue Reading: abcnews.com

In 2004, Judge Spencer Letts gave Michael Banyard a new chance at life -- and became his mentor. With Letts' help, Banyard has found an unexpected source of strength.

By: Kurt Streeter

Where was Michael Banyard?

I couldn't find him. Nobody could. Not his family. Not his friends. Not the federal judge who had set him free from prison and then become his friend.

"Is Michael still alive?" I wondered. This was last summer, and I was talking to the judge.

"All we can do during times like this is hope for the best," the judge replied, resignation in his voice. Once again this thin-boned, elderly man was looking for the addicted ex-gangster.

I had written about them two years ago. None of this was a surprise. Michael, a strikingly smart, sensitive man, had been addicted to drugs most of his life. Cocaine drove him to homelessness and by the mid-1990s led to a rap sheet loaded with relatively benign crimes -- like the time he got into a car wreck and stole $6 from the other driver.

In 1996, when he was arrested with what was literally a sliver of crack, California's unforgiving three-strikes law kicked in. Convicted of his third felony, Michael received the mandatory sentence: 25 years to life.

His last chance came down to an appeal filed in federal court that landed on the desk of Judge Spencer Letts. Federal judges are inundated with such appeals and almost never reverse convictions. But Letts, then near 70, isn't known for following the pack. In 2004, calling the punishment "cruel and unusual" for such a small amount of drugs, he ordered Michael freed.

The judge did something else too: He asked Michael to meet with him in chambers. Letts wanted to know more about the man he'd pulled from prison. The upshot: Letts became Michael's mentor.

Continue Reading: latimes.com

Best practices in continuing care discussed by leaders from CRC Health, Hazelden, Caron and Sierra Tucson

More treatment centers are recognizing that primary treatment is just one facet of patient care. The next step starts the minute patient walks out the door. While most facilities understand why, many are still challenged by how to keep track of clients and keep them engaged.

At the 2012 NAATP Conference in Phoenix, leaders from four treatment centers discussed strategies for keeping in touch with their alumnae and increasing the use of technologies such as text messaging and social media portals to facilitate continuing care.

A few thoughts from the panel members include:

Phil Herschman, Chief Clinical Officer, CRC Health Group: I've been in this business for 30 years, and virtually the entire time we've been talking about chemical dependency as a chronic disorder. But we don't treat it as such on a regular, consistent basis. We talk about it, we give it lip service, but we don't do it. The next evolution of treatment will be an increased focus on what happens post discharge.

In my conversations payers are willing to pay for it, though it's not clear what the best form is yet. So if we start talking about recovery and actually start practicing disease management concepts in a continuing care environment, we'll be able to dramatically increase the likelihood of recovery. Then, we don't have to talk about our stories; we can talk about recovery.

Janelle Wesloh, Executive Director, Recovery Management, Hazelden: We need to keep doing what we're doing, but do it better in regard to the things we do with people after treatment. In many cases, it's horribly difficult for a person leaving treatment to return to their home environment. Things that were messy and awful when they left are still there. If they don't have the support that they need, any continuing care plan goes in a drawer because life hits them full in the face.

If someone's not calling them to connect, check if they've made appointments, and ask if they're meeting up with alumnae, all the things we did in treatment were a waste of time. I know that's a provocative thing to say, but you spend all this time doing all this great work in treatment, then basically throw them to the wolves.

We need to set them up in a supportive way and not leave them to figure it out for themselves. We don't want to set up barriers for our clients, we want to remove them. That's where we'll see our outcome rates change because these things do make a difference. But we need to figure out ways to make it work, ways to get reimbursed for it--especially for treatment centers that don't have as many resources.

Continue Reading: addictionpro.com

By: Joseph Nowinski

This is a question that I'm often asked: "Where is the fine line that separates normal drinking from problem drinking?"

People ask this question for a good reason: They want to know if their own drinking qualifies a "normal" or "abnormal." This thinking also reflects the way we've traditionally come to think about drinking, which has been in black-and-white terms. Ever since medical professionals came up with a set of symptoms that they labeled alcohol dependence, or, more simply, "alcoholism," it has been popular to see the "drinking world" in terms of two categories: Either you are an alcoholic, or you are not. The implication here is that if you do not qualify for a diagnosis of alcohol dependence, you are "okay."

Although the intention of creating an official diagnosis of alcoholism was to allow a group of men and women who satisfied that diagnosis to get help, it has also led to a dangerous oversimplification of the real "drinking world." It has also given rise to a problematic concept called denial. People are said to be "in denial" when someone else -- a spouse, a doctor, a therapist -- says they are an alcoholic and they argue that they are not. It has also given rise to the mistaken belief that before an alcoholic can recover they must, first, accept denial and admit their alcoholism and, second, to accept that they have to abstain from drinking for the rest of their lives. In reality, I personally know many people who are in recovery who have not had a drink in many years, who have admitted that they were never really sure they were alcoholics but decided that abstinence was a better way of life for them. This give rise to the question: "Is there really a fine line that people cross into alcoholism?"

The Real Drinking World

Dr. Rob Doyle and I have recently proposed a way of viewing "the drinking world" that we believe to be more accurate than the black-and-white thinking that is represented by he above diagram. Specifically, we believe that the real drinking world looks something like this:

Continue Reading: huffingtonpost.com

Recreational users and hard-core addicts in the U.S. give little thought to the violence by Mexican cartels that is consuming our southern neighbor.

By: Steve Lopez

Illegal drugs by the tons are smuggled into California each year by sea, by land and by air. Cocaine, marijuana, methamphetamine and heroin are either produced in or pass through Mexico, where 50,000 people have been killed in the last six years in an escalating war among cartels. Some of the victims have been beheaded, mutilated or left hanging from bridges, not necessarily because of their involvement in the trade, but as a diabolical demonstration that the drug lords will stop at nothing to dominate the market.

Those drugs end up in every neighborhood in Southern California and every city in the United States, feeding a never-ending hunger. But few people north of the border seem to make the connection. The Mexican carnage is conveniently distant. It's Mexico's problem, not ours.

When a 24-year-old Echo Park illustrator and recreational drug user goes to a warehouse party or a dance club, she told me, cocaine, Ecstasy and other drugs are always available and often used openly. Given the horrific stories from Mexico, I wondered if the price of those drugs is ever a consideration.

"I do definitely realize that I have a connection to it, and it's sad," said the illustrator. "It's one of those things I'll try not to think about. It'll cross my mind and I'll push it out."

In 2011, the Los Angeles Police Department seized 11,378 kilos of cocaine, 3,426 kilos of marijuana, nine kilos of heroin and 304 kilos of methamphetamine, along with $16.3 million in suspected drug money, according to the department.

When you walk through the terminals at LAX, not everyone is carrying toiletries, socks and underwear in their suitcases. Several million dollars in cash was seized last year, officials said, much of it stuffed into luggage carried by couriers who were transporting drug payments.

Continue Reading: latimes.com

By Patrick Manning

Hiding drugs or people in the back of a truck just isn't cutting it anymore. As security has tightened on the border, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents have seen an uptick in creative, even bizarre ways to smuggle drugs and people into the country.

"Anywhere there's a natural void in a vehicle, or a secret compartment can be hidden, smugglers will try and take advantage of that to hide contraband and people," said Chris Maston, Director of CBP Field Operations in San Diego. "We've seen people hidden in gas tank compartments -- dangerous, specially-built compartments affixed to the under carriage of a vehicle."

Fox News Latinos spoke to border patrol agents along the U.S.-Mexico border and here is our Top 10 list of the most creative -albeit unsuccessful- smuggling attempts.

While some smuggling methods look silly, it's important to remember that these are serious crimes and can have extremely dangerous consequences.

10. A Bouncing Baby...Whoa!

As anyone who has travelled with a little one knows, you need plenty of baby supplies --baby bottles, diapers, baby wipes, and a pacifier --in a diaper bag. But one woman crossing at California's San Clemente Border Patrol checkpoint threw in a more unusual item --six bundles of cocaine. Authorities also found three more bundles in her purse. All told, the drugs held a street value of around $218,000. She was arrested, but presumably the baby didn't squeal.

9. These Vegetables Will Make Your Teeth Fall Out

What appeared to be a man headed home from the grocery store turned into a major methamphetamine bust when a K-9 unit sniffed out cans of vegetables that were filled not with green beans but with crystal meth. The 42-year-old U.S. citizen was arrested by U.S. Border Patrol agents in Pine Valley, CA. The 10 lbs of veggie-meth cans were estimated to be worth more than $192,000.


Continue Reading: foxnews.com