Along with the nation's sharp jump in heroin overdoses has come a startling revelation, often called "the new face of heroin." It is a white face, mostly middle-class and suburban, "far from the stereotype of the shivering urban junkie," as the Christian Science Monitor put it this year. In an article about a white high school soccer star's ultimate triumph over heroin, the Deseret News in Salt Lake City put the emergence of the new face this way: "Leaving sports and school behind, she morphed, in her own words, from a 'pretty girl' to a 'ghetto Barbie,' sinking into a lifestyle once thought to leave young people like [her] untouched." [continues 621 words]
During a visit with reggae singer Bob Marley in 1978, I asked him about the effects that smoking marijuana had on him. Relaxing in the sunroom of his home in Kingston, Jamaica, he said marijuana clarified his inner vision and inspired songs about peace and justice. Out of the "holy smoke," as Marley called it, came a plume of music that wafted far beyond the Jamaican shores, such as "Get Up, Stand Up" and another, written by fellow reggae singer Peter Tosh, called "Legalize It." [continues 632 words]
Adam Eidinger was flying high. As chairman of the DC Cannabis Campaign, he helped spearhead the push to legalize marijuana in the nation's capital. When the law went into effect Thursday, he retreated to his campaign headquarters and took a victory toke, then another and another. Now, just a few days later, Eidinger is feeling low. On Tuesday, the D.C. Council passed emergency legislation - offered by Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) - that Eidinger says will undermine some provisions of the original law and hamper further liberalization of marijuana use. [continues 631 words]
Whenever a professional athlete is suspended for smoking marijuana, as happened with two players on Washington's football team recently, a question usually arises: Why would they risk so much for so little? Turns out, the benefits of taking a few puffs aren't so little. At the low doses reportedly consumed by the athletes, "smoked cannabis can decrease anxiety, fear, depression and tension," three researchers wrote in the November issue of the American Journal of Sports Medicine. "Furthermore, cannabinoids play a major role in the extinction of fear memories by interfering with learned adversive behaviors. Athletes who experienced traumatic events in their career could benefit from such an effect." [continues 617 words]
Ron Daniels runs what is perhaps the most controversial effort in the District's fight against AIDS: a needle exchange program. Drop off your dirty works at his mobile outreach unit, and he'll give you all this in return: new needles, sanitized cookers, vials of sterile water, alcohol swabs and cotton balls. Everything but the dope. The van was parked in a drug hot spot near 21st and H streets NE one recent afternoon, and about 20 people showed up. They looked like the living dead, some with poorly bandaged abscesses, others with amputated limbs -- all casualties of a heroin, cocaine or methamphetamine addiction that, sooner or later, destroys mind, body and soul. Buy This Photo John Turner, left, an outreach worker, confers with Ron Daniels, director of PreventionWorks!. (By Courtland Milloy -- The Washington Post) Save & Share ArticleWhat's This?DiggGoogledel.icio.usYahoo!RedditFacebook [continues 664 words]
Okay, teachers. It's your turn. The back-to-school pop quiz is not just for kids today. Here are six multiple-choice questions. Answer them correctly, and you'll also be able to answer the one question that boggled the best minds on the D.C. Council this summer: What is a "high-quality" education -- and how do you get one free? Question One: In July, the D.C. Council considered placing on the November ballot a referendum on giving public school students the legal right to a "free, high-quality" education -- "with the term high-quality to be defined by local law enacted by the Council of the District of Columbia." But the idea was scrubbed because: [continues 642 words]
Westley Clark is a doctor and a lawyer, no small accomplishment for a black guy who grew up poor in Detroit. He could have gone on to make plenty of money, no doubt, and never looked back. But he couldn't forget where he came from or ignore the devastated lives of those left behind. Clark, 59, is director of the Center for Substance Abuse Treatment at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. That position gives him a unique perspective on one of the most serious problems ever to plague black America. [continues 664 words]
The vans pulled up alongside McPherson Square in downtown Washington on Saturday afternoon. The back doors swung open and volunteers began passing out plates of food and bags of clothes to homeless people in the park. The scene was at once heartwarming and heartbreaking. "I came to get saved from the devil. That's what I call drugs," said a man who called himself Goldie, flashing gold-capped teeth that revealed not only the source of his nickname but also remnants of the macaroni and beef meal he'd just enjoyed. [continues 620 words]
Well before Nathaniel Jones had his violent and ultimately fatal confrontation with Cincinnati police Sunday, something happened that pretty much sealed his fate. And what we saw on that police video was a predictable result from a drug with its own special ways of killing and getting people killed. The National Institute on Drug Abuse classifies PCP as a "dissociative anesthetic," meaning the user becomes disconnected from his environment; he knows where he is, but does not feel as if he is part of it. [continues 655 words]
The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights held a briefing last week on racial inequality within the American judicial system. I sure wish Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor could have been called to testify. O'Connor had spoken briefly about the same subject during a recent commencement address at George Washington University's law school. But her carefully chosen words seemed calculated to obscure her real feelings. "There is sad evidence all across the nation that a substantial number of our citizens believe our legal and judicial system is unresponsive to them because of racial bias, that too often equal justice is but an unrealized slogan," she said. [continues 661 words]
For months, friends of Carmelita Witherspoon have been looking for a way to thank her for the years she has spent helping people escape the bondage of alcohol and drug abuse. But Witherspoon, 62, just can't understand what the fuss is all about. The latest plans call for a Mother's Day fundraiser next year at Lincoln Theatre, which is near Ben's Chili Bowl, the popular U Street NW restaurant where Witherspoon was working in 1960 when, at 20, she met a customer who turned her on to heroin. [continues 676 words]
Edward M. Toatley, an undercover Maryland state trooper, was killed Monday night trying to help win the "war on drugs." Our community has lost yet another dedicated police officer as well as a loving family man. And because Toatley enjoyed his work and believed he was doing a public service, few will question whether he died in vain. "If anybody out there dealing drugs thinks this will stop our resolve, they are sadly mistaken," Col. David B. Mitchell, head of the Maryland State Police, declared at a news conference yesterday. [continues 643 words]
Put yourself in the shoes of a 25-year-old black man named Prince Jones Jr., I asked readers last week. Imagine being tailed for about 15 miles through three jurisdictions and eventually shot to death by a black, undercover Prince George's County police officer who mistakes you for someone else. "I am as 'WASPy' as they come," one of you replied, "and I'd be petrified if some dude stalked me through three jurisdictions, then, without being in uniform or a patrol car, waved a gun at me and 'claimed' he was a cop." [continues 652 words]
Put yourself in Prince Jones's shoes: You've finished a day's work as a fitness trainer at the Bally's health club in Hyattsville, and you're heading to the home of your fiancee and 11-month-old child in the Seven Corners area of Fairfax County. You've done nothing wrong. Being mistaken for a dope dealer by a Prince George's County cop is the last thing on your mind. Just because you're a 25-year-old black man driving a black Jeep Cherokee with a Pennsylvania tag ought not make you the object of surveillance, harassment and, eventually, a killing by police who are looking for some other black man in some other black Cherokee--with Maryland tags, no less. [continues 687 words]
Joyce Scott recalls using a baseball bat to run drug dealers off the street near her home in Southeast Washington. Among those at whom she swung: her own son. "He used to work for a fast-food restaurant, but then his girlfriend left him for a drug dealer, so he started dealing drugs," Scott recalled. "I just couldn't stand it. He was my heartbreak, so I became his nightmare, running after him with a baseball bat." The bat didn't help, though. Her son eventually went to Lorton Correctional Complex in Virginia and returned to the District unrehabilitated. He became a repeat offender. At 12:30 one morning in January, Scott received a telephone call from D.C. General Hospital saying that her son had come in screaming with five bullet wounds to his upper body. [continues 790 words]
The debate in the U.S. Senate on guns and juvenile crime last week was missing something vital. If only I could amend the Congressional Record ... The presiding officer: The senator from the District of Columbia is recognized. (The first U.S. senator elected from the District rises to address the nation's most elite political body. He is tall and robust, in his late sixties, has a bad back and a shock of gray hair but doesn't need Viagra or want Rogaine.) [continues 863 words]
The new media messages about drugs are really blowing my mind. On the radio, you can hear an anti-marijuana spot warning that the evil weed causes memory loss. That's bad. At the same time, you can read in news magazines that some legally prescribed antidepressants also may have adverse side effects, such as memory loss. But that's okay, because a new pill to enhance memory is in the pipeline. Cocaine and heroin are bad, we are told, because they artificially stimulate or block natural biochemical functions. However, mood drugs such as Zoloft and Prozac are good, even though they do the same thing. [continues 757 words]
For the past eight years, Gary Kettler has pleaded for more police patrols and city services for his neighborhood in Northwest Washington. He has wanted police to stop the drug dealing that goes on near his home in LeDroit Park, to say nothing of catching the people who mugged him recently. Kettler, 47, also hoped that police would apprehend whoever threw a brick through the window of his truck, although he knew that was wishful thinking. The least the city could do, he thought, was to haul away the abandoned automobiles that took up precious parking space on his block. [continues 761 words]
