Why don't more jails use them? After Neila Rivera began using heroin as a teenager, she fell into a predictable and depressing pattern. She'd get locked up and go through detox, only to return to drugs as soon as she got out. It's a routine that has become more dangerous as heroin, now commonly mixed with powerful synthetic opioids like fentanyl, has become more unpredictably potent: Studies show that people released from incarceration, their drug tolerance lowered from abstinence, are far more likely than others to overdose. [continues 1565 words]
Tim Ryan, a Former Heroin Addict Who Lost His Son to the Drug, Aims to Bring Users into Rehab and Recovery, but Some Question His Methods Two years after emerging from prison on drug-related charges, Tim Ryan has become a beacon for families scarred by Chicago's heroin crisis. The brash and salty former corporate headhunter has launched a public crusade to take addicts "from dope to hope" by running recovery groups, performing interventions and handing out advice via Facebook. He claims he ushers hundreds of people a month into rehab, and that he does it with remarkable speed. [continues 2910 words]
Officials Say Relaxing Penalties Wrong Signal, Wouldn't Help Addicts Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel's proposal to change the terms of the drug war by lessening the penalties for low-level possession is getting blowback from the suburbs, with some prosecutors and police chiefs saying it sends an unhelpful message at a time when heroin overdoses are claiming hundreds of lives. Emanuel said this week that he wants the state legislature to change the possession of 1 gram or less of any controlled substance to a misdemeanor from a Class 4 felony, which can bring prison time and lessen the chances of future employment. [continues 1034 words]
Devices make it easier to for student to hide use of possibly more harmful marijuana derivative Vape pens and hash oil sound like a match made in teenage stoner heaven. They let people consume marijuana so discreetly that some kids are supposedly doing it in the middle of class, with their teachers none the wiser. That was the gist of a recent television report from Denver, epicenter of the ganja revolution, but the evidence was hardly ironclad. The story featured an interview with one student who claimed he saw others doing it, and a YouTube video of a college-looking guy allegedly taking classroom hits from a vape pen. [continues 719 words]
Expert Says Communication Between Parents, Children Is Best Education Against Abuse I dropped by my son's elementary school the other morning for D.A.R.E. graduation, a ceremony that capped weeks of anti-drug lessons taught by a local police officer. There were awards, speeches and a printed program for which each kid had penned a few sentences about why he or she would stay away from drugs. As part of their Drug Abuse Resistance Education, the kids wrote mostly about their visions of adult life, and how drugs would derail their dreams of becoming scientists, singers or professional athletes. As a dad, I was glad to hear their confidence. But as a journalist who has written a lot about substance abuse, I was a little uneasy. [continues 637 words]
Euphoric Drug Often Isn't Pure, and It Can Be Deadly CHICAGO( MCT)- Molly is known as the drug of laser rave tents, a euphoria producing chemical ideal for loud music and wild nights. But when Alex Place took a form of the drug in February, he was just hanging out with buddies in a Streamwood, Ill., house, watching movies and texting his girlfriend. Place, 23, an aspiring restaurateur from Kenosha, Wis., had a rough time that night, throwing up continually, his friends told police. He fell unconscious in the morning and an hour later was pronounced dead, felled by a combination of the drug and a heart condition he never realized he had. [continues 1161 words]
Officials: It's Not Pure or Safe, and ER Visits Rising Molly is known as the drug of laser-washed rave tents, a euphoria-producing chemical ideal for loud music and wild nights. But when Alex Place took a form of the drug in February, he was just hanging out with buddies in a Streamwood house, watching movies and texting his girlfriend. Place, 23, an aspiring restaurateur from Kenosha, had a rough time that night, throwing up continually, his friends told police. He fell unconscious in the morning and an hour later was pronounced dead, felled by a combination of the drug and a heart condition he never realized he had. [continues 1192 words]
Gabrielle Abesamis said she and her classmates at Niles West High School in Skokie receive plenty of information about marijuana from their health teachers, but when it comes to using the drug, some of her peers shrug off the lessons and just say YOLO - "You Only Live Once." With medical marijuana now encoded into Illinois law, she said, that attitude will only strengthen. "Even though it's for medical use, I don't think that matters to them," said Abesamis, 17. "The fact that it's legal for some people to possess it, they feel it's OK for them to have it too." [continues 614 words]
Report Says in Illinois, Blacks Nearly 8 Times More Likely to Be Arrested The American Civil Liberties Union said Tuesday that Illinois has one of the worst racial disparities in the nation when it comes to marijuana possession arrests, with blacks nearly eight times more likely than whites to be arrested despite using pot at roughly the same rate. The report, titled "The War on Marijuana in Black and White," found that blacks nationwide are nearly four times more likely than whites to be arrested for marijuana possession. One of the report's authors said that discrepancy illustrates the unfairness of the nation's drug policy. [continues 594 words]
I got a whiff of the future the other day, and it smelled like fertilizer. That was the scent drifting from the doorway of a hydroponic gardening store inmy hometown of Fort Collins, Colo. I had returned there for a Thanksgiving visit just two weeks after the state became one of the first in the nation to legalize the cultivation, sale and recreational use of small amounts of marijuana. What I found was an entire community that seemed ready for the harvest. [continues 736 words]
As Fatal Overdoses Surge, Those Left Behind Try to Make a Difference Gathered beneath a pale moon at Roosevelt University's Schaumburg campus, the parents, siblings and friends of those who died of heroin overdoses created a scene of almost unbearable sadness. They bore photos of the dead, startlingly young men and women frozen in moments of happiness. They lit candles in remembrance. And they swore that somehow, in the face of a crisis that seems to be getting worse, they would find a way to turn the tide. [continues 925 words]
A Study Says The Chicago Region Leads The Country In Abuse Of The Drug. We Talk To An Addict, A Cop, A Grieving Mother, A Landlord And A Survivor Fighting To Stay Clean If you want to understand why Chicago has the nation's most severe heroin problem, drop by a small West Side office that's right at the epicenter. It's a clinic run by the University of Illinois at Chicago that offers clean syringes, HIV tests and other services to those buying $10 baggies of dope on the drug-soaked streets nearby. Some of its patrons are old-timers, weary and bedraggled, their forearms misshapen with the knots and abscesses from years of shooting up. When you imagine an addict, they're probably what comes to mind. [continues 220 words]
Heroin abuse in the Chicago area has gotten worse over the last decade, creating a crisis that is perhaps more extreme than anywhere else in the country, Roosevelt University researchers conclude in a new study. The report, to be released Monday, finds that the area has seen an increase in people admitted to emergency rooms for heroin-related problems. It now has more than any other metropolitan area. [continues 382 words]
Family struggles with the death from huffing, a popular substance abuse for kids Dale Hunt spent part of his Sunday trying to revive a 1987 Pontiac Trans Am with a blown transmission. It was supposed to be a project he shared with his son, Aaron. It turned out to be a memorial. Aaron Hunt, a Wonder Lake teenager with a magnetic personality and a charming smile, died Friday night, four days after he apparently chased a dangerous high by huffing propane fumes. [continues 771 words]
Museum, Activist Clash Over Pamphlets Pete Guither's attempt to criticize the war on drugs has become a war of its own. When an exhibition sponsored by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration opened at the Museum of Science and Industry in August, Guither showed up with a sack full of pamphlets denouncing the government's anti-narcotics strategy. But soon after he began handing the pamphlets out, museum officials confined him to what he said was an almost deserted stretch of sidewalk. Then a lawyer for the Chicago Park District told him the pamphlets were "commercial in nature" and that he needed a permit to distribute them at all. [continues 698 words]
Study: Possession Tops Sales As a Charge; Big Racial Disparity After two decades of steadily toughening laws, Illinois now puts more people in prison for drug crimes than any state except California, according to a study released Tuesday by Roosevelt University. The report also found that more people are being incarcerated for possessing narcotics than for selling them and that the state's prisons hold about five black inmates convicted of drug offenses for every white inmate--one of the largest racial disparities in the country. [continues 1219 words]
While Illinois clamped down on the sale of cold medicine, a teen says she repeatedly gamed the state's safeguards to buy powerful painkillers When Victoria Squire, 17, was on the prowl for high-powered narcotic painkillers, she had little trouble finding a pharmacist willing to hand them over. Using a fake name and a prescription forged on a computer, the Villa Park teen went into one drugstore after another and emerged with a bottle of Vicodin, usually with no questions asked. On the rare occasions when pharmacists detected her scam, she said, they'd tell her to leave rather than call police. [continues 1061 words]
Joe Ortman's Drug Use Got So Bad, It Even Alarmed A Street Dealer. But No One Around Him Saw The Danger When Joe Ortman began using heroin, the only person who seemed to understand the danger ahead was a dope dealer. Ortman was a wire-thin white boy from Naperville, but he was nervy enough to buy drugs inside Chicago's forbidding Stateway Gardens housing project. He'd even hang out after getting high, charming the gang-bangers with his playful personality until one finally gave him an exasperated scolding. [continues 1597 words]
Recovery Programs, Clinics Jammed By Patients Set Adrift At the Baton Rouge Treatment Center, people suffering a unique, hurricane-related misery have poured in by the hundreds, waiting as long as two hours each day for relief. The center is one of the few places remaining in Louisiana where they can get methadone, a medication given to those addicted to heroin or other opiate drugs. Without it, they face a harrowing withdrawal certain to compound their already considerable despair. The suffering of drug addicts might not garner much public sympathy in the face of the overwhelming agony stirred by Hurricane Katrina, but some say it's a plight not to be ignored. [continues 588 words]
Training Helps Put Treatment On Streets Street lore holds that in case of a heroin overdose, the victim should be made to walk, placed in a cold shower or shot up with everything from salt water to milk. But on Tuesday, a Chicago health organization tried to spread the word about the remedy that works best: a drug called naloxone. It's a clear liquid that reverses the potentially fatal effects of opiate drugs. The Chicago Recovery Alliance, which has trained 5,000 people in how to use naloxone, says the instruction has saved at least 336 lives over the last four years. [continues 383 words]
