I would dress like a dork. A collegiate dork to be exact. A denim-collar-down-jacket-waffle stomper, outdoorsy-but-clean-REI-kind of dork to be real exact. I would paste down my bleached-blond spikes into a forced-part comb-over. I was Sunny Jim come to life. I would stand on the corner of the major strip in this particular university area armed with my Mead binder full of $10 gram-bags and eighths. [continues 384 words]
Paul just sat there. I've never seen a dead person sit, but I have a nasty hunch a dead man sitting would appear much like Paul did that day in the pizza place - minus the monkey on his back. "I tried to kick a couple of weeks ago," he started in. "I was sick for 15 days with no sign of it letting up, so I just said, 'Fuck it.'" I was saddened, but somehow fascinated - impressed, even - that this lab rat of a person was still alive. "Can I git a pull from yer Pepsi?" he said as he simultaneously snatched and sipped from my wife's Big Gulp. "Keep it," she said. He might as well have had a neon sign on his forehead that flashed "HEPATITIS HEPATITIS HEPATITIS." He scared the shit out of her. He scared the shit out of me. [continues 689 words]
AN international drugs gang, suspected of having mutilated, shot and burned three Irishmen found in their gutted luxury apartment near the Hague at the weekend, could be holding two other hostages. Last night, Dutch police said they had discovered five passports in the apartment where the savage butchery took place. The three men's genitalia were understood to have been cut off before they were shot and burned. Passports found at the scene of the grisly murders were the property of Damien Monaghan from Ennis and brothers Vincent and Morgan Costello from Bansha, County Tipperary. Dutch police, with the co-operation of the garda authorities, were still trying to establish if the passports were those of the murdered men. [continues 458 words]
ABOUT 20 people die each day in Europe due to drug abuse and the highest fatality rate is in Ireland and Greece, a major EU wide survey has found. More than 35% of Irish schoolchildren between the ages of 15 and 16 use cannabis, the second highest figure among the EU states. England and Wales top the league in the use of ecstasy, amphetamines and LSD, followed by the Republic of Ireland and the Netherlands. Almost five million teenagers in the EU have used heroin at least once, according to the 1999 report of the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA). [continues 271 words]
A GROUP seeking damages from tobacco firms because of health damage caused by smoking wants Government backing to fight the case. News of a record settlement in the United States - where tobacco firms have paid $6.1 million compensation in Minnesota - has buoyed the Irish campaign. Last night, Peter McDonnell, a solicitor representing a group of Irish people seeking damages from cigarette manufacturers, said the US settlement was another significant blow to the industry's position. "The action provides further momentum to our own efforts to take the tobacco companies accountable for their 40-year-old conspiracy of lies," he said. [continues 170 words]
GARDAI in Co. Cork yesterday seized cannabis resin with a street value of £140,000. Late last night two men were still being held at Midleton Garda station following the operation. At 9 a.m. yesterday, Cobh gardai, under the direction of Supt Kieran McGann, swooped on a remote woodland in the Leamlara area of Co. Cork and arrested two men, who were moving the drugs from a hiding place in the forest to a nearby car. The men, who are believed to be part of a Cork criminal gang, were understood to have been under Garda surveillance for some time before the operation swung into action. [continues 132 words]
ONE of this country's most effusive journalists has said his views on illegal drugs, quoted in a newspaper, were irresponsible and should not have been uttered in the public domain. Last night, Eamon Dunphy, anchorman with Today FM and presenter of the popular The Last Word programme, withdrew the comments which appeared in Ireland On Sunday. "There is no one else to blame, not the newspaper and not the journalist who interviewed me. I am the one to blame, the buck stops here," he said. [continues 243 words]
