The Heroin Challenge

[DdC]

Heroin maintenance programs - a discussion here in the U.S.?
Drug WarRant by Pete Guither October 9, 2006

A rather surprising article in the Connecticut Post today: Regulating heroin trade suggested. What's surprising is that a media source in the U.S. actually has the guts to discuss the subject.

(I wonder if Cliff Thornton's run in that state has opened some discussion topics?)

The article is a well-written piece about former drug warrior, now attorney, Sylvester Salcedo's proposal to have Bridgeport administer heroin to addicts. Go and read it -- it's an article that I think will connect with people who would normally block out such arguments.

At the close of the story, a local resident asks why the paper is taking pictures of Salcedo, and they explain his proposal to her...

"Now let me get this straight: What you are telling me is that they'd give out heroin at the community center and make sure people took their fix there, nothing left over?" she asks. Salcedo nods and waits for her reaction. McBride, who appears to be at least a half-foot taller than Salcedo, stares him down for a moment, trying to figure out whether he is serious.
"You know, this idea of yours is kind of out there," McBride says, her face breaking into a smile that reveals a few missing teeth. "But, hey, like sometimes you got to think outside of the box."

Related: Via Blog ReLoad -- In the five years since Sydney Australia's heroin safe injection site opened (a different kind of program from the one discussed above), heroin deaths in the state have dropped dramatically.

Update: This might be an appropriate time to note the basic differences between safe injection sites and heroin maintenance programs.

Safe injection sites -- like the program in Sydney (and also in Vancouver in North America) -- are harm reduction programs. Essentially heroin users are provided a safe, monitored, and controlled environment to inject heroin that they have purchased elsewhere. This dramatically reduces blood born diseases, overdoses, etc. Think greatly enhanced needle exchange programs.

Heroin maintenance programs -- like the one started in Switzerland in 1994 -- have one major difference. While they also provide a safe, monitored, and controlled environment, they actually dispense the heroin to those already addicted to it. The big advantage is that it drives the drug dealer out of the heroin addiction business (why get someone addicted to your product if they'll then be able to get their fix for free at the community center?)

DEA Success Update: Let's see. After 20 years of relentless federal Drug War activity, while the price of world-class marijuana has gone from $60 an ounce to $450, the price of quality cocaine has plummeted from $125 a gram to $30, and 30%-pure heroin has dropped from $700 a gram to about $100. Way to go, boys! High Times, April 1995

Think of the message being sent to the kids?

Study Turns Pot Wisdom on Head By Dawn Walton
CN Source: Globe and Mail October 14, 2005 Calgary  
Most "drugs of abuse" such as alcohol, heroin, cocaine and nicotine suppress growth of new brain cells. However, researchers found that cannabinoids promoted generation of new neurons in rats' hippocampuses.

Prescription drug abuse rises in 2001
More die in Florida from prescription drug overdoses than illegal drugs, such as heroin.

Gateway To Nowhere? Pot Doesn't Lead To Heroin July 20, 2006
It's a theory that has long seemed to make intuitive sense, but remained unproven. The federal government's last National Survey on Drug Use and Health, conducted in 2004, counted about 97 million Americans who have tried marijuana, compared to 3 million who have tried heroin (166,000 had used it in the previous month).

Deaths in the United States in a typical year are as follows:
* Tobacco kills about 400,000
* Alcohol kills about 80,000
* Workplace accidents kill 60,000
* Automobiles kill 40,000
* Cocaine kills about 2,500
* Heroin kills about 2,000
* Aspirin kills about 2,000
* Marijuana kills 0

Legalise Cannabis To Cut Heroin Addiction By Liam McDougall
Posted by Staff onat 10:26:44 PT
, Home Affairs Editor 
CN Source: Sunday Herald October 23, 2005 UK  
The debate over drug laws will be reignited next month when one of the world’s leading experts is to argue that Scotland should legalise cannabis to dramatically cut the country’s soaring heroin addiction rates. Ethan Nadelmann will warn that the current UK drug policy is “damaging” and that the Scots should embrace the Dutch “coffee shop” model, under which cannabis is legally sold over the counter in licensed outlets.

George and Félix: the tale of two old friends
"In 1970, Bush stood as a Senate candidate. He failed to get elected. That same year, Félix Rodríguez joined Air America, another CIA front company, trafficking heroin from Laos to the U.S. drugs network of former Havana godfather Santos Traficante. The purpose of the smuggling was to influence the Laotian conflict by winning the support of isolated communities. The operation was led by Donald Gregg, who took his orders from Theodore Shackley. It was on this job that George’s buddy learnt the trade he was to practice years later in Central America.



DEA Agent Celerino Castillo testimony
Celerino "Cele" Castillo III

For several years, I fought in the trenches of the front lines of Reagan's "Drug War", trying to stamp out what I considered American's greatest foreign threat. But, when I was posted, in Central and South America from 1984 through 1990, I knew we were playing the "Drug War Follies." While our government shouted "Just Say No !", entire Central and South American nations fell into what are now known as, "Cocaine democracies."

While with the DEA, I was able to keep journals of my assignments in Central and South America. These journals include names, case file numbers and DEA NADDIS (DEA Master Computer) information to back up my allegations. I have pictures and original passports of the victims that were murdered by CIA assets. These atrocities were done with the approval of the agencies.

CIA Report on Contras and Cocaine

"A little sunlight is the best disinfectant."
--U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis

The Iran-Contra Hearings Trading Cards

Iran-Contra: White House e-mail

And Ye shall know the Truth,
And the Truth shall set you free!
--St. John the Gospel



Ye shall know the truth,
And the truth shall make you angry.
Aldous Huxley

Cover-Ups, Prevarications, Subversions & Sabotage
excerpted: The death in 1953 of a government scientist, Frank Olson, in a fall from a New York hotel window, is one of the most notorious cases in CIA history.

The documents show that two of the key officials involved in the decision to withhold that information were White House aides Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, today the nation's vice president and secretary of Defense.

``These documents show the lengths to which the government was trying to cover up the truth,'' said the scientist's son, Eric Olson, who gave them to the Mercury News. ``For 22 years there was a coverup. And then, under the guise of revealing everything, there was a new coverup.''

Kathmandu and the Black Prince

CIA AND DRUGS READING LIST
1. The Politics of Heroin by Alfred W. McCoy (1972, 1991)
Lawrence Hill Books - ISBN 1-55652-125-1
2. Cocaine Politics by Peter Dale Scott & Johnathan Marshall (1991)
U.C. Press - ISBN 0-520-07781-4
3. The Iran-Contra Connection by Scott, Marshall, and Hunter (1987)
South End Press - ISBN 0-89608-291-1
4. The Big White Lie by Mike Levine (1993)
Thunder's Mouth Press - ISBN 1-56025-064
5. Compromised by Terry Reed (1995)
Penmarin Books - ISBN 1-883955-02-5
6. Powder Burns by Clerino Castillo (1994)
Mosaic Press - ISBN 0-88962-578-6
7. The Underground Empire by James Mills (1974, 1978)
Doubleday - ISBN 0-385-17535-3
8. Inside The Shadow Government by the Christic Institute (1987)
Declaration of Plantiff's Counsel Filed by the Christic Institute -
U.S. District Court, Miami, FL.
9. Kiss The Boys Goodbye by Monika Jensen-Stevenson and Wm
Stevenson (1990)
Dutton - ISBN 0-525-24934-6
10. Defrauding America by Rodney Stich (1994)
Diablo Western Press - ISBN 0-932438-08-3
11. Desperados: Latin Drug Lords, U.S. Lawmen, and the War America Can't Win
- by Elaine Shannon (1988)
Viking Press

THESE BOOKS NAME NAMES, DATES AND PLACES WHERE THE CIA DEALT DRUGS. NOT ONE OF THE ABOVE AUTHORS HAS BEEN SUED FOR LIBEL -- EVER!
Almost all of these books are available by mail or phone order from:
THE CENTER FOR THE PRESERVATION OF MODERN HISTORY
(805) 899-3433

United Nations Drug Report “Disappointing”
Yesterday (September 23, 2003) the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime released its report Ecstasy and Amphetamines - Global Survey 2003. The report estimates that worldwide 7.7 million people used the drug ecstasy from 2000-2001.

This figure is approximately one-half the number of people who used cocaine during that time period, and approximately one-fourth fewer people than used heroin during that same time period.

According to the report, ecstasy users risk “suffering the effects of early decline in mental function and memory, or Alzheimer-type symptoms.”

The report was released just weeks after scientists at Johns Hopkins University retracted their research findings that suggested that a single evening's use of ecstasy could cause permanent brain damage and Parkinson's disease. The scientists admitted that they utilized the wrong drug in their studies.

The UN report makes no mention of the retracted studies.



Demonising Druggies Wins Votes June 15, 2001
Until the early 70s, Britain was a haven of enlightenment: every doctor in the country had the right to prescribe heroin for the welfare of patients. This reflected the idea, powerfully proposed by the Rolleston committee in 1926, that drug use should be seen as a problem which needed help, not as a sin which needed punishment.

Hepatitis C Information Board

The Heroin Challenge

Make Heroin Legal - Part I

"Marijuana is rejected all over the world. Damned. In England heroin is alright for out-patents, but marijuana? They'll put your ass in jail. I wonder why that is?... The only reason could be: To Serve the Devil - Pleasure! Pleasure, which is a dirty word in Christian culture."
- Lenny Bruce

DEATH TO THE DRUGGIES February10, 1998

State Tax on Illegal Drugs Sought
CN Source: TMCNet January 20, 2006 Olympia, WA  

Crime doesn't pay? Well, Tom Campbell thinks it ought to.

The Republican state lawmaker wants to start taxing drug dealers. Legislation he introduced this week would require dealers and users to pay taxes on their illicit inventories by purchasing state tax stamps for all cocaine, heroin, pills, other drugs and bootleg liquor intended for sale in Washington.

Seize This!

I could abide---though I would still oppose---our current intransigence if we applied the principle of total interdiction to all harmful drugs. But how can we possibly defend our current policy based on a dichotomy that encourages us to view one class of substances as a preeminent scourge while the two most dangerous and life-destroying substances by far, alcohol and tobacco, form a second class advertised in neon on every street corner of urban America? And why, moreover, should heroin be viewed with horror while chemical cognates that are no different from heroin than lemonade is from iced tea perform work of enormous compassion by relieving the pain of terminal cancer patients in their last days?
-- Stephen J. Gould, evolutionary biologist, Taxonomy as Politics, Dissent, winter 1990, p73

Ibogaine's/Addiction Treatment Strives for Legitimacy

The Staten Island Project: The Ibogaine Story

Scientists Test Hallucinogens for Mental Ills

For Heroin Addicts, A Bizarre Remedy

DEA Success Update: Let's see. After 20 years of relentless federal Drug War activity, while the price of world-class marijuana has gone from $60 an ounce to $450, the price of quality cocaine has plummeted from $125 a gram to $30, and 30%-pure heroin has dropped from $700 a gram to about $100. Way to go, boys!
High Times, April 1995



Ayahuasca Tourism in South America by John N. Grunwell
Written for Anthropology of Tourism, University of Maryland at College Park

Google: Ayahuasca Tourism in South America

Mexico Lawmakers Work To Revive Drug Bill By Ioan Grillo
CN Source: Associated Press June 15, 2006 Mexico City  
Mexican lawmakers are working to revive their bill decriminalizing the possession of small amounts of marijuana, cocaine and heroin, and hope to override a veto if necessary, saying the reform will help curb drug-related violence that has killed more than 600 people this year.
President Vicente Fox called on Congress to drop decriminalization from the drug-law overhaul after intense lobbying from the U.S. State Department and mayors of several U.S. border cities, who called it a disaster that would encourage hordes of young Americans to cross the border for "drug tourism." Mexico's Roman Catholic Church also opposes it.

Yeah, the Free Mexican Air Force is flyin' tonight

Heroin prescription scheme call

Mrs. Winslow's Soothing Syrup was an indispensable aid to mothers and child-care workers. Containing one grain (65 mg) of morphine per fluid ounce, it effectively quieted restless infants and small children. It probably also helped mothers relax after a hard day's work. The company used various media to promote their product, including recipe books, calendars, and trade cards such as the one shown here from 1887 (A calendar is on the reverse side.)