Dannis Billups' addiction nightmare began with an actual nightmare when he was about 4 years old. His daddy sat him on his knee and gave him a half-can of Pabst Blue Ribbon beer to soothe him.

In the 1980s, he joined the "family trade," a young black man peddling crack cocaine on the streets of Newark, New Jersey, profiting from other people's addiction and pain.

Within a few years, he became his best customer. His life became a never-ending ride on the criminal justice carousel: arrests, jail, probation and then back in the system for another spin, some two dozen times, on and off the ride he went.

"They would never offer you treatment," said Billups, now 53. "They would just lock you away and forget about you."

[end]

LONDON - Homeless drug users in Scotland will be allowed to inject pharmaceutical-grade heroin twice a day under the supervision of medical officials as part of a new program intended to reduce drug deaths and H.I.V. infection.

From 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. seven days a week, a $1.5 million facility in Glasgow that opened on Tuesday will allow a handful of drug users to receive doses of the drug alongside other treatment for their physical and psychological health, according to Glasgow City Council.

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SAN ANTONIO, Guatemala - Surrounded by green fields of potatoes, oats and corn on his small farm, Carlos Lopez recalled the decent money he was earning before last year, cultivating a different crop he referred to simply as "the plant."

The plants, ones with the bright red flowers, "are worth a lot more than these other crops," Lopez said, wearing a blue baseball hat, sitting on a plastic chair behind his two-room, mud-splattered house.

"Amapola," said Lopez, speaking the Spanish word for poppy.

[end]

Wow! Are you kidding me? This is the most fantasized assessment of Seattle's drug epidemic I've ever seen. In actuality, we are spiraling toward complete social meltdown here, and Nicholas Kristof thinks we've figured out how to end the war on drugs?

As a three-decade resident of Seattle, I can tell you that from the sprawling homeless camps ringing the city, to the bedraggled hordes of dead-eyed addicts on Second Avenue, to the piles of human feces in Pioneer Square, there is no progress being made to end the heroin epidemic in this city. Whatever actions local governments are taking only make things worse.

Seattle is becoming a wasteland of crime, refuse, excrement and addiction. It's disgusting to watch and it gets worse every year.

Bryan Gruner Bellevue, Wash.

[end]

BALTIMORE - Heroin has ravaged this city since the early 1960s, fueling desperation and crime that remain endemic in many neighborhoods. But lately, despite heroin's long, deep history here, users say it has become nearly impossible to find.

Heroin's presence is fading up and down the Eastern Seaboard, from New England mill towns to rural Appalachia, and in parts of the Midwest that were overwhelmed by it a few years back. It remains prevalent in many Western states, but even New York City, the nation's biggest distribution hub for the drug, has seen less of it this year.

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TORONTO - An aging construction worker arrived quietly in the building's basement, took his seat alongside three other men and struck his lighter below a cooker of synthetic heroin.

A woman, trained to intervene in case of an overdose, placed a mask over her face as his drug cooked and diluted beneath a jumping flame. He injected himself, grew still and then told of the loss of his wife who died alone in her room upstairs - an overdose that came just a few months before this social service nonprofit opened its doors for supervised injections.

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Teachers at Northwest High School near Dalton, Ga. first became concerned when their colleague, 28-year-old cheer coach and English teacher Raquel Spencer, seemed to have trouble carrying on a coherent conversation, according to the Times Free Press.

Alarmed by her "unusual behavior," she was escorted to an office and consented to a search of her belongings, Whitfield County Schools spokesperson Eric Beavers told the Dalton Daily-Citizen.

That's when the school resource officer found heroin in her belongings, the paper reported.

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After a car crash Saturday in Manchester, Maine, police seized 48 grams of a white powdery substance found in the glove compartment.

It looked like heroin to them.

It was a dead man's ashes.

They were the cremated remains of Robert Clinton Curtis Sr., the father of Kevin Curtis, the owner of the car.

Robert Curtis, a native of Maine, was 75 when he died on March 12, 2013, at his home in Florida after a brief illness, according to his obituary. A fan of the outdoors, he had eight sons, three daughters, 29 grandchildren and 16 great-grandchildren.

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Studies show controlled drug use can reduce consumption of street drugs

As the opioid crisis rages on across North America, a number of recent studies are pointing to cannabis and prescription heroin as viable options in curbing the consumption of lethal street opiates, reducing long-term medical and policing costs and extending the lives of users.

An analysis of opioid prescriptions in the U.S.published on Monday by the American Medical Association showed a significant decrease in opioid prescriptions in states that have adopted some sort of cannabis legislation. Using data from 2010 to 2015, the analysis counted 3.7 million fewer daily doses of opioids prescribed in states that allow weed dispensaries, while states that allow only home cultivation saw a decrease of 1.8 million daily prescribed doses.

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LIHUE - Kauai police have seen an increase in the use of black tar heroin over the last two years.

The Kauai Police Department seized less than a gram of black tar heroin in 2015. But in 2017, the department seized a total of 526 grams, the Garden Island reported Sunday.

The department has already amassed 80.8 grams this year, said Bryson Ponce, Kauai Police Department's Investigative Services Bureau assistant chief.

Ponce said the increase is a serious concern because heroin use is linked to violent crime.

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Every morning, Kevin Thompson takes a short stroll from his apartment to the Crosstown Clinic, where he signs in, gets his prescription medicine, then sits in a small room and injects it before heading off to work.

He follows this routine up to three times a day and has done so virtually every day for more than a dozen years.

The medicine is diacetylmorphine, the medical term for prescription heroin.

"It saved my life. No question, it saved my life," Mr. Thompson, 47, says emphatically.

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A Philly nurse on safe injection sites

"You want me to do what?" "Where's your compassion?" "What a waste of resources!" "I have an obligation to help people stay healthy."

These are conflicting responses I imagine nurses and health-care professionals may have when asked to provide care at safe injection sites, places where people can use drugs under medical supervision. There aren't any such sites right now. But the City of Philadelphia announced that it will encourage setting them up. Should health-care professionals participate? It's a dilemma wrought with ethical, moral, legal, and regulatory issues and more questions than answers. As a nurse, I can understand and appreciate both sides.

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My hope is that the supervised injection sites recently approved at four locations in Edmonton will become a jumping-off point for heroin-assisted treatment (HAT) in our province.

In my opinion, it is the only way to tackle the opioid scourge that is leaving a trail of bodies in its wake. Countries like Switzerland have experienced rates of homelessness and property crime associated with problematic drug use approaching zero per cent after approving the use of HAT by qualified doctors.

This approach is counter-intuitive to many, but the numbers speak for themselves. The health authority in the United Kingdom figures that for every dollar spent on harm reduction, it saves $3 in health services and enforcement.

Steven Zerebeski, Beaumont

[end]

Democrat Larry Krasner, the front-runner to become Philadelphia's next district attorney, says he supports city-sanctioned spaces where people addicted to heroin can inject drugs under medical supervision and access treatment, a move advocates see as a promising step toward making the city the first in the U.S. to open such a site.

His Republican opponent, Beth Grossman, says she's open to discussions on the matter.

For those on the front lines of the heroin crisis in Philadelphia, both are encouraging stances in a political arena where the idea can still be dismissed out of hand. But recently, cities across the country have begun to consider the possibility of instituting supervised injection sites; several nations, including Canada, have used the approach for years.

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The Taliban in Afghanistan is now running significant heroin production lines in the war-torn country to provide jihadists and insurgents with billions of dollars, western law enforcement officials

And much of that heroin is flowing into Canada.

"More than 90 per cent of all heroin consumed in the US is of Mexican origin. But in Canada more than 90 per cent of the heroin consumed is of Afghan origin," said William Brownfield, US Assistant Secretary for Drugs and Law Enforcement when addressing reporters in the Afghan capital Kabul recently.

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The deadly painkiller fentanyl, thrust under a spotlight by a rare warning by three health agenices and city police, isn't the only dangerous street drug raising eyebrows in London.

Heroin is also showing up, in levels-those who work with addicts say they haven't seen before.

One agency blames the spike on the province tightening the prescription drugs it covers under a program for people on social assistance and seniors, which has driven some users to heroin instead.

"I've never known it (heroin) here. Now it is," said Karen Burton, needle and syringe program coordinator at Regional HIV/AIDS Connection in London, whose work includes a drug needle exchange program. "Heroin is here and I don't see it disappearing anytime soon."

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NEW YORK -- A safe haven where drug users inject themselves with heroin and other drugs has been quietly operating in the United States for the past three years, a report reveals.

None were known to exist in the US until the disclosure in a medical journal, although several states and cities are pushing to establish these so-called supervised injection sites, where users can shoot up under the care of trained staff who can treat an overdose if necessary.

In the report released Tuesday, two researchers said they've been evaluating an underground safe place that opened in 2014. As a condition of their research, they didn't disclose the location of the facility -- which is unsanctioned and potentially illegal -- or the social service agency running it.

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Cleanup of the Gurney Street railroad gulch in Fairhill, a campground for heroin users and a dumping site for needles and garbage, didn't start Monday as was initially planned.

The city came to an agreement with Conrail last month to fence and clean up the property. A contract calls for work to start by July 31, but Conrail planned to start work Monday.

Jocelyn Hill, a spokeswoman for Conrail, said that fabricating the fencing that will secure the area took longer than anticipated and that the company had hired a second contractor to speed things up. She said the work still will begin before July 31.

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Colby Wilde and Lacey Christenson welcomed their third child into the world on April 9 at Utah Valley Hospital.

The doctors, nurses and medical staff eventually cleared out of the room, giving the parents a few moments alone with their new daughter. Unlike most new parents, they did not hold the newborn child, overcome with emotion.

Instead, Wilde quickly crushed pills of Suboxone, an FDA-approved drug used to treat heroin addiction and withdrawal, police say.

He moistened his finger and dipped it in the resulting powder. Then he stuck his finger in his daughter's mouth, smearing it along her tiny, tender gums. Though she had been in the world less than half a day, the baby, like thousands others in the United States, was already addicted to opioids.

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A special legislative task force formed to examine the effect of the opioid addiction scourge on Long Island and elsewhere throughout the state is scheduled to meet Wednesday in Mineola.

The State Senate's Joint Task Force on Heroin and Opioid Addiction meeting will be held at 4 p.m. at the NYU Winthrop Hospital Research and Academic Center in Mineola, a hospital spokesman said.

Similar meetings have been held around the state as the task force seeks to understand how the increase in overdoses and addiction connected to heroin and other opioids is impacting communities.

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