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Real Life “Bling Ring” Leader Ditches Her Inner Bad Girl

Back in May 2010, the then 18-year-old was convicted of felony burglary for her involvement with the group of six other teenagers—known as the “Bling Ring”—that robbed $3 million worth of cash and personal belongings from celebrities including Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan and Orlando Bloom.

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I have a new article up on The Fix, check it out y’all:

Afghan Opium Production Up for Third Year Running | The Fix

Opium cultivation in Afghanistan is up for the third year in a row and heading towards a record high, according to a new UN report. The Afghanistan Opium Risk Assessment 2013, issued by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, attributes the increase to opium’s rising price, making it an even more attractive crop for farmers. The figure for 2013 is expected to surpass the 154,000 hectares planted in 2012, according to the report. Afghanistan is the world’s largest producer of opium, accounting for about 75% of the global supply last year. “The assumption is it will reach again to 90% this year,” says Jean-Luc Lemahieu, head of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime in Afghanistan. “We are looking at a record high cultivation.”

Lemahieu was recently interviewed for The Fix’s exclusive report on the heroin addiction crisis within Afghanistan, which has an estimated 1 million addicts. Earlier this month, the UN also estimated that 1 million deaths worldwide have been caused by Afghan heroin since the US-led “War on Terror” began in 2001, while opium production has increased 40 times. Over 70% of Afthan opium is produced by just three provinces. US troops have attempted to subdue the Taliban influence and find alternative crops for these regions’ farmers. But after the end of the three-year “surge” in 2012, poppy cultivation has soared. It may be that people are turning to illicit markets in greater numbers in anticipation of the predicted withdrawal of foreign forces—and cash—in 2014. “This country is on its way to becoming the world’s first true narco-state,” says an anonymous international law enforcement official. “The opium trade is a much bigger part of the economy already than narcotics ever were in Bolivia or Colombia.”

This is in reference to that time Ron Paul went off on the absurdity of drug prohibition at a Republican debate in South Carolina and got cheers.

Chris Wallace: “I never thought heroin would get applause here in South Carolina.” 

(Source: fareastlibertarianmovement)

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Grandmother strip-searched and jailed for 12 days in Canada after a jar of motor oil in her car was mistaken for heroin | Daily Mail

July 29, 2011—Bound for Sprague, Manitoba, the 66-year-old couldn’t believe it when the jar of brownish liquid in her car tested positive for drugs.

‘They came over and said that the substance in the jar tested positive for — well, she said some chemical term and I didn’t understand.’ 

‘So I asked her to repeat it and she said it tested positive for traces of heroin,’ she said.

She told the authorities that it was actually oil that her son-in-law had used when he had recently done some work on her vehicle.

Nevertheless, she was handcuffed, interrogated and strip searched twice.

[…] After 12 days in custody, further tests by the RCMP lab found the oil was not heroin. +

Krokodil: The drug that eats junkies | The Independent

As efforts to stem the flow of Afghan heroin into Russia bring some limited success, and the street price of the drug goes up, for those addicts who can’t afford their next hit, an even more terrifying spectre has raised its head.

The home-made drug that Oleg and Sasha inject is known as krokodil, or “crocodile”. It is desomorphine, a synthetic opiate many times more powerful than heroin that is created from a complex chain of mixing and chemical reactions, which the addicts perform from memory several times a day. While heroin costs from £20 to £60 per dose, desomorphine can be “cooked” from codeine-based headache pills that cost £2 per pack, and other household ingredients available cheaply from the markets.

It is a drug for the poor, and its effects are horrific. It was given its reptilian name because its poisonous ingredients quickly turn the skin scaly. Worse follows. Oleg and Sasha have not been using for long, but Oleg has rotting sores on the back of his neck.

Just another harmful unintended consequence of prohibition.

The Museum Of Drugs Paraphernalia And Related Antiquities’s Photos

Before the War on Drugs

In turn-of-the century America, opium, morphine, heroin, cocaine, and marijuana were subject to few restrictions. Popular tonics such as Vin Mariani and Coca-Cola and its competitors were laced with cocaine, and hundreds of medicines—Mrs. Winslow’s Soothing Syrup may have been the most famous— contained psychoactive drugs. Millions, perhaps tens of millions of Americans, took opiates and cocaine. David Courtwright estimates that during the 1890s as many as one-third of a million Americans were opiate addicts, but most of them were ordinary people who would today be described as occasional users. Read more