But here’s the truth: drug abuse isn’t a poor people thing. It’s a “broken people doing whatever it takes to feel better,” thing. It’s a disease, and it’s about time that we started treating it like a public health matter, as opposed to being a criminal issue where the only treatment can be found in prison.

Speaking of which, I have to say I found it shocking that there have been four arrests made in connection to Hoffman’s death. According to CNN, the NYPD has arrested three men and one women in connection to the 50 bags of heroin found in Hoffman’s home, when his body was discovered. How the police were able to make this connection I have no idea, but allegedly they did.

Four people thought to be connected to the drugs found in Philip Seymour Hoffman’s apartment were arrested late Tuesday night, law enforcement officials told CNN.

 

During the raid that led to the arrest of the three men and one woman, police recovered 350 glassine-type bags of what is believed to be heroin, the officials said.

 

No additional information was released.

 

When police were called to Hoffman’s fourth-floor Manhattan apartment Sunday, they found the actor lying on the bathroom floor with a syringe in his left arm. He was wearing shorts and a T-shirt, his eyeglasses still resting on his head, according to law enforcement sources familiar with the inquiry.

 

Investigators discovered close to 50 envelopes of what they believed was heroin in the apartment, the law enforcement sources said. They also found used syringes, prescription drugs and empty glassine-type bags, the sources said.

 

[…] Preliminary tests Tuesday showed the heroin recovered from the apartment does not contain fentanyl, a law enforcement official told CNN. More testing will be done.

 

Fentanyl is a powerful narcotic used to treat cancer patients’ pain.

 

Last week, Maryland officials said heroin tainted with fentanyl had claimed at least 37 lives since September. And last month, at least 22 people in western Pennsylvania died after using heroin mixed with fentanyl.

The fact that the NYPD was rigorous in its pursuit of the alleged drug dealers in this instance, to me, speaks to the height of privilege in this country. What it says to me is that unless you’re a rich person in America, you’re not a priority. If Philip Seymour Hoffman was a regular guy, and he was found dead with 100 bags of heroin and a needle in his arm, he’d be tossed to the side as just another dead junkie.

Good riddance…

But this isn’t the America within which we live. Philip Seymour Hoffman’s death and its circumstance is yet another in a long list of cautionary tales. How we decide to walk away from it is really a matter of choice. For me, however, as someone who dabbled heavily in drugs at one point I’d like to see a shift in paradigm as already stated. But, I guess now that four people are arrested for selling drugs to Philip Seymour Hoffman, the problem is solved. Which of course is bullshit; but, it’s obvious that the War On Drugs is still profitable as a war on people; and that rich people get better treatment.

Watch the video below:

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One of the bigger issues that concern me is the needle that has been said to be found in his arm. This signals that there is a drug use/addiction issue.

The problem with this type of situation is that people are quick to dismiss it. As soon as they see “drug use”, they may say things like “Oh, well” or “This is what he deserves”. You see, as Americans, we tend to have quite the dismissive attitude toward those that have addictions to controlled/uncontrolled substances. Many of us tend to have no sorrow for the user under any circumstance. At the end of the day, it is the user’s fault right?

This is true: it IS his fault.

But to act as if one shouldn’t be troubled about a man’s well-being within addiction is inhumane. Then again, many Americans are known for the inhumane and callous for the sake of their egos and ideals.

So, to hell with what all of you “holier-than-thou” asshats think.

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Phillip Seymour Hoffman

There are some things that we need to have an understanding about when it comes to drug use:

1.) On average, drug use is pretty high in the entertainment industry: many have suspected this and I have given it further confirmation. From a study done in the early-mid 2000’s, the entertainment industry was 3^rd in illicit drug use amongst its workforce of 18-64 [1]. This should be alarming on its own. However, the industry is 2^nd when it comes to heavy drinking [2]. So, are we going to actually show some cause of concern?

2.) There is a lot to be said about the addictive personality: some of us are more susceptible to addictions than others. Otherwise, we would have a lot more people looking like Pookie from New Jack City or Gator from Jungle Fever. So, there needs some understanding as to why there is such strong addictions associated with certain personality types and functions (compulsive behavior, family history, lack of self-control) [3].

3.) Never toss out the humanity of any addict: humanity is something for the flawed in action. No one gets it right all the time. So, people thinking that someone is “less than” because they have hit a road block or hurdle on their road of existence is rude, crude, and mentally screwed. Humanity over everything for all of you idealistic asses.

4.) We need to understand what is going on with people: Philip Seymour Hoffman had his reasons for doing drugs (qualified and/or unqualified). Yet, too many times people never work to understand WHY so many people feel compelled to go to drugs. The reasons behind the addiction, and behind the initial use, have to be understood. Otherwise, how are we to help anybody make it nowadays?

5.) At the end of the day, drug use claimed another life: I don’t care if it is an actor or someone that lives on your street. Drug use just helped cause another death. Instead of ignoring the situation, we all can use this to learn something about death and drug use. We can also use it as a tool to prevent lives being lost. All bad situations need to be moment of either learning or motivation in the right direction.

‘Nuff Said and ‘Nuff Respect!!!

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The article can be found here  I am More than Just A Naked Prostitute Who Smokes Crack

Yes it is an industry it always has been in one way or another. AS long as women have to find ways to survive and do not always have the benefit of a family or significant other or conventional support system you will always have this as an industry.
In any case the story really resonated with me on so many levels. The story talks to one particular individual who discusses how she got into the sex trade and ultimately wound up self-medicating with hard drugs like heroin to cope. Starts out like most she was actually in foster care and ran away. She had been molested in all the homes that she had been placed in (6) and finally just ran away. She wound up on the streets turning tricks at an early age and not even realizing what it was (prostitution) that she was doing, to her she was just trying to get money to survive.

Ultimately she would wind up addicted to heroin and crack cocaine – as she says one to forget and the other to wake up. I cried while reading this because my life has on a few occasions placed me in situations where I need to cope and I need to make money to survive.  Haven’t taken the route of selling my body or doing drugs or drinking, however I felt an invisible blow while reading about what she had to do to survive and recalled an unofficial experiment that I had done a while back – mainly for my own edification.

I actually posted an ad on a so-called “Adult” dating site (think over 18) and at the same time waded through the long sign up process at e-harmony.com

The idea was to see what the responses were like and was more on a whim at the time. It was definitely eye opening to say the least. In a 30 day period I actually received over 500 emails from the “Adult” site ad from men all over the place who wanted to hook up for sex. Half of them were married or at least would admit to being married or in a relationship. Not one response or message or interest on the e-harmony site. My initial thinking was ok let me redo my profile on e-harmony and see what happens. The silence was stultifying. Meanwhile the ad over on the other site had my email jumping of constantly.

It would take a lot of mental gymnastics not to wonder why men would overwhelmingly want your body for sex but express no interest in the actual person. It would take even more feats of mental mendacity not to find some fault within one’s self for the response or to start looking in the mirror and thinking there must be something wrong.

Never took up any of the offers made via the adult site. I have in fact been celibate for close to two years now. I have however removed the ad from e-harmony as it was serving no useful purpose. The adult ad I removed just because I got tired of saying no. I cannot recall the last time I was asked for my phone number or out for dinner (it’s been many years).

AS I read this story I thought how close I have come to being where she is today strung out on drugs and selling her body. I thought of even now how the struggle keeps me perilously close to having to do whatever to survive.

The struggle is real for women like me with no family and no husband or male person in my life. WE are of course not supposed to speak on that. Feminist leanings aside – the quintessential black woman is supposed to be beyond such mundane things. At least that is what society says. We are supposed to overcome all obstacles and all challenges and always keep our hair did and our nails and feet did and show no signs of the struggle. We definitely are not supposed to speak on it because it files in direct opposition to the happily single meme that is keeping traffic flow to many a website and filling pockets of self-proclaimed life-coaching gurus.

There is a poem that she writes in this article where she says, “Don’t worry about me I will survive”. When juxtaposed next to the images captured by the photographer it breaks your heart to see that her words don’t match the reality. She gave up on love a long time ago in her words.

I am still fighting not to.

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Many make a connection between poverty and education, and suggest that for poverty, education is the panacea. In the case of Chicago especially such a notion begs the question: if school funding is directly tied to neighborhood property values, how then can we expect education to solve the conundrum that is poverty in America and how the many social ills closely tied to it are exacerbation? Having said that, it is good to know that people like Bill O’Reilly exist. At a time where many attribute much of the violence in Chicago — a byproduct of poverty — to bad parenting. It is good to know that someone like Bill can step in and clear up the debate as to what exactly is happening in Chicago. I’m not the smartest guy in the world, but I believe Bill is on to something. Forget about teacher strikes and education solving poverty in urban centers.

Clearly what has to happen as a quick fix (at least in the case of Chicago) is that more white folks need to purchase drugs like they once did. Isn’t that right, Bill O’Reilly? I mean then and only then will the violence, poverty, and the problems of shitty schools go away, right?

Heck, at least he didn’t blame the violence on bad parenting…

The post Bill O’Reilly: Blacks in Chicago are Killing Each Other Because Whites No Longer Buying Drugs appeared first on Madness & Reality.

So umm, the “War in Drugs” turns 40-years-old this month, and……
Since 1971, more than 40 million arrests have been conducted for drug-related offenses.

And no group has been more targeted and suffered more damage than the black community. As the A.C.L.U. pointed out last week, “The racial disparities are staggering: despite the fact that whites engage in drug offenses at a higher rate than African-Americans, African-Americans are incarcerated for drug offenses at a rate that is 10 times greater than that of whites.”

[…] Last week, the Report of the Global Commission on Drug Policy, a 19-member commission that included Kofi Annan, a former U.N. secretary general; George Shultz, President Ronald Reagan’s secretary of state; and Paul Volcker, a former chairman of the Federal Reserve, declared that: “The global war on drugs has failed, with devastating consequences for individuals and societies around the world. Fifty years after the initiation of the U.N. Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, and 40 years after President Nixon launched the U.S. government’s war on drugs, fundamental reforms in national and global drug control policies are urgently needed.”

The White House immediately shot back: no dice. The Obama administration presented a collection of statistics that compared current drug use and demand with the peak of the late 1970s, although a direct correlation between those declines and the drug war are highly debatable. In doing so, it completely sidestepped the human, economic and societal toll of the mass incarceration of millions of Americans, many for simple possession.

No need to put a human face on 40 years of folly when you can swaddle its inefficacy in a patchwork quilt of self-serving statistics. (source)I’m not going to say the obvious as the current administration’s desire to escalate the war on drugs by an increase in funding in 2012 bringing spending to $26 billion. We out here in the streets are all aware that this is yet another investment in the very profitable Prison Industrial Complex. I mean why else is there a proposed increase in funding for federal prisons, right? So no, I’m not going to state the obvious. The important question, is just why did Barack change his stance on the war on drugs? What happened to the guy in 2004 who supports the decriminalization of certain illegal substances and doing things differently? Anyone wanna take a stab at answering this question?

The post The War On Drugs Is A Failure, So Why The Flip Flop, Barack? [VIDEO] appeared first on Madness & Reality.

Some of the most ingenious individuals walking the earth, are drug addicts; no bullshit, I’m for real. I mean when you’re a slave shackled to a drug addiction, you’ll do just about anything you can to get your hands on money to get high. You’ll lie, cheat, and steal all in the name of chasing that elusive first hit. No seriously, spend some time around your crackhead cousins and they’ll tell you all about it, folks.

Now I’ve personally heard some stories and have met my share of addicts in my time. But nothing I’ve ever heard can compare to the following story of Angie Boyd from Richmond, Indiana. Not even on A&E’s weekly show Intervention, will you hear anything remotely close to anything like this woman has done. I’m serious; this shit takes selling VCRs at 4am to get high to a whole new level:

As elaborate a scheme as she attempted to pull off, one has to wonder if she was trying to go for the motherload (um, no pun intended). She lied about the death of her daughter. And even went as far as to say that she was murdered by her ex-boyfriend. I know Richmond Indiana is a small town and all, but I’d like to think that people would have known about the death of her daughter prior to this.

But hey, dope fiends are some of the most convincing people in the world, so, it’s easy to see how she would be able to pull something like this off, had her brother not decided to drop a dime on her. I’m not sure if what she did was a crime, that is, if she hasn’t defrauded anyone of any funds as a result of her scheme. However, I do hope they find her, and get her the help she needs.

(STORY HERE)

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Oh well, so much for that “King Kong ain’t got shit on me,” line of thinking:

Obviously this is one time that the “Stop Snitching” movement didn’t interfere with getting someone off the streets. And a police officer at that? How exactly do you do your job while having to get on your knees and loook for rocks in the carpet of your squad car? Obviously this is a small town and crime isn’t exactly high with only 20 people making up the police department. But damn, you can’t tell me that nobody noticed that this woman had a problem? This isn’t exactly funny, but after watching it for the first time, all I heard was the voice of Morgan Freeman as “Joe Clark” in Lean On Me doing the interrogation:

“You smoke crack, don’t you, boy? Don’t you smoke crack? Yeah, I thought so. And you know what that does to you? You don’t? It kills your brain cells, son. It kills your brain cells! Now when you’re destroying your brain cells, you’re doing the same thing as killing yourself. You’re just doing it slower! Now, I say if your wanna kill yourself, don’t fuck around with it, do it expeditiously!”

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Can any of you clue me in on that one?

I mean I really would like to know because I’d hate to continue believing that they’ve all been employed by BET (Blaxploitation Everyday Television). Speaking of which, checkout a now famous ex-crackhead who happens to be employed by a certain network at a recent red carpet affair hosted by said network:
Now look, the last thing I’d like to do is make fun of the personal triumph of an individual unless his name is R. Kelly. And yes, R&B sensation Keyshia Cole’s mother Frankie is an ex-crackhead who makes it hard to believe that she actually is a recovering addict. But I have to wonder how in the hell was she able to wear platinum gold fronts in her mouth when she doesn’t have any teeth? No seriously, when did they start making platinum dentures? This is disturbing folks, and I hope it doesn’t become a trend. Lord forbid if someone at Viacom gets the bright idea to give Frankie and Flava Flav a new reality show… together.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad that she’s able to bounce back as many recovering addicts have; and I see her emotional meltdown on the red carpet as evidence of just how much she is aware of her blessings. Yes, it’s very unlikely for a recovering addict to walk out of prison to become a mainstream star on television with her own show. But am I wrong to see her as being the victim of exploitation by the corporate executives at BET similar to the drug dealers with whom she had dealings?

Surely there is a symbiotic relationship…

But is it right?

You tell me…

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Supposedly Latoya Jackson and her dad Joe are of the opinion that there’s some f*ckery afoot concerning his death. From the looks of it they’re suspicious of his private physician (as well as others) who he himself resided at the Jackson home. I don’t know how true this may be as an official cause of death has yet to be released. Amid this allegation the stories of drug use has ran rampant. Which is pretty sad because it paints the picture of Michael Jackson as an understudy for Pookie from the movie New Jack City, and damn near worse than my man Gator from Jungle Fever.

Look, I don’t know what killed the man, and yes I can say the media had a hand in his death as I have before. However, I’ve been thinking about this for some time now, and I have to say that: Michael Jackson would probably still be alive today had he started smoking weed. Yes, Michael Jackson would be alive today if marijuana were legal in this country. Supposedly he became addicted to pain medication, and was an insomniac who cried for nothing but sleep. If Michael Jackson smoked a blunt, his ass would not have been up all night in pain. Had Mike smoked weed — I’m talking that Grade-A shit you see on the cover of High Times magazine — he would be alive.

I mean think about it: Willie Nelson smokes hella weed and he’s still kicking up dust. You think Willie Nelson has trouble sleeping at night? Willie Nelson is 120yrs old and still going strong and everybody knows why. Have you looked at him recently? He doesn’t quite look like a stressed out kinda guy now does he? See? That could have been Michael Jackson. With the money Mike had, he would have never left the country pissed off and stressed after his trial amid all the accusations of child molestation. Nope, Mike would have been in California probably blowin’ that Piff with Snoop Dogg and George Clinton. Yes, he would have probably bought Humboldt County California, sold Neverland Ranch, and reopened a new spot called Never Comedown Ranch. When you consider that California cannot even balance their budget and Los Angeles had to beg for donations to pay for his memorial, weed being legal sorta makes sense.

People say marijuana is a gateway drug, but that’s bullshit. I have yet to meet people hooked on pain pills (and I know a few) who got there after smoking a joint. Jokes aside, prescription drug abuse in this country is far worse than perceived in this country all while authorities criminalized marijuana. Maybe what LaToya Jackson said is true. Maybe what she said is just emotional speculation in the wake of the death of her brother. However, there were in fact people around Mike that were enabling him in more ways than one.

In a recent press release by ABC news right here, one can see never before released pictures of Mike from 2002 which shows just how his body was ravaged by intravenous drug use. Now that he’s dead it’s sad that these pics are released. Personally I wish they had pics of him taking a toke on a bong or smoking a joint. If they did, I think it would have been easier to stomach than what the current pictures show. Michael Jackson was in pain, and just like a cancer patient I wish he was able to use weed legally. I say legally because it would be kinda hard for him to don a surgical mask as he did and ride up to one of the spots in the hood trynna cop a sack. Yes, the cops would have loved to have someone like him doing the perp walk.

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