From Eurthisnthat

There usually isn’t any laws in crime, but there are certain unsaid blasphemous commandments.  And one of them is, “Thou shalt not text the crime you’re committing.”

According to The Smoking Gun, Samantha Kurdilla, 22, was just on a leisurely walk back into the U.S. from Tijuana, Mexico, “arm-in-arm” with what we assume is her partner in crime, James Perry.  Well, once the Border dogs alerted police to a smell emanating from Kurdilla’s “groin area” Perry immediately disassociated himself from her yelling “I’m not with her!”

Read more at Eurthisnthat.com.

Source: Shutterstock

In the midst of fact-checking our post on celebrities who beat addictions today, we were all a bit surprised to read of Oprah doing coke quite regularly back in the ’80s. This was a tale I’d heard once before, the details of which had escaped my memory, so I decided to do a little more investigating to see just what Oprah had said about her prior drug use, and more importantly, if she ever explained why she started using in the first place. That’s when I came across this January 14, 1995 article in the Observer-Reporter that relayed the details of Oprah’s confession on her talk show as she spoke with a guest who, too, had been addicted to the drug. After describing the drug use as her life’s “great big secret,” Oprah admitted that she was introduced to coke by a former boyfriend and started using because of their relationship, adding:

“I can’t think of anything I wouldn’t have done for that man.”

Almost gives you chills, right? As I looked that quote over and over again I thought really, anything? You can’t think of anything you wouldn’t have done for that man? But then I had to be real with myself for a second and think, am I so far removed from that?

While I can certainly think of a host of things I wouldn’t and didn’t do for my ex, it likely wouldn’t take much effort for me to come up with an equally long list of things I told myself — and him — that I wouldn’t do and couldn’t tolerate, yet ended up participating in and putting up with anyway. Sure, I was young — or younger — as Oprah would likely say of herself if she ever chose to speak on her past relationship again. But when is youth ever an excuse for compromising your personal values? You don’t have to be old to stay true to yourself. It’s just supposed to be easier to do after you have several years under your belt — theoretically.

I’ll spare myself some of the guilt and embarrassment of sharing the details of those things I accepted in the name of love and desperation, but they all fall under the general categories of dishonesty, disrespect, and disconcern for my general well being. Like lying about the role, shall I say, of certain women in his life, or calling me a half-a**ed b***h during an argument in public, or asking me to do things that could put me in jeopardy.  I can puff out my chest and say I exited stage left once some of these things happened, but I can just as easily put my head down and think of how long it took me to decide to leave — for the last time. Truth be told, my list of things I wouldn’t have done for that man wasn’t all that long, and it appeared to get shorter and shorter as time, and our relationship ,went on. So yeah, I’m not so different from Oprah after all. We all have our drugs of choice, hers just happened to be a literal one.

Unfortunately, almost every woman has wasted a “there is nothing I won’t do for him” attitude on the wrong type of man and gotten ourselves caught up into some mess that makes us one of those but now, born-again relationshipers. And though we all like to think we could never, ever, ever find ourselves traveling back down that road again — and hopefully most of us won’t — some of us will. For some reason, those cliche sayings, like “never cry over someone who won’t cry for you” or “never make someone a priority who only treats you as an option,” are coming to mind right now, but the issue here isn’t really the other person. Whether the individual you’re involved with is worth readjusting your moral compass isn’t what’s up for debate. What needs to be assessed is your self-worth and whether you value yourself, the person you have to live with every day, more than another person who may be in you life for nothing more than one reason, maybe a season, and likely not a lifetime. This is why so many relationships books start with chapters on self-love and knowing oneself because peer pressure is very much alive in relationships and if you haven’t already established who you are and what you stand for, well, that’s how you end up doing coke with your boyfriend of six months, or taking someone back umpteenth times after they’ve already showed you who they are is not a good match with who you are.

Oprah and I may have dropped the ball in our “younger” years but I think we can both say that now we can not only think of a laundry list of things we won’t do for a man but also know that we really won’t do them.  Let’s hope most women out there can also say the same.

Source: DIYtrade.com

First it was mold inside of a tampon, now it’s cocaine?

A Salt Lake City woman found an interesting surprise after she purchased a sealed box of sanitary supplies from a local store over the weekend. After opening the box, Cindy Davidson immediately suspected some of the applicators had been tampered with, and after noticing a powdery substance inside she called the police. HazMat investigators came out to determine just what the powder was—like if it was anthrax— but in the end it was (just?) cocaine.

“It appears to be a highly sophisticated way of attempting to smuggle or get drugs though to some place or another,” a police detective told KSL.

The store has since stopped selling the particular brand of contaminated tampons, although they haven’t released that information to the public. Investigators are also trying to figure out exactly where the drugs came from and just how elaborate of a drug scheme this singular box could be apart of. Meanwhile Cindy is still a little shocked at the situation but thankful the substance was just drugs and not a terrorist attack.

“I really couldn’t wrap my head around it,” she said. “I was just thinking it was crazy. I couldn’t believe it had happened. It was just crazy to me.”

Thank God she noticed the tampered applicators before putting them to use.

Brande Victorian is a blogger and culture writer in New York City. Follower her on Twitter at @be_vic.

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People.zap2it.com

The details of Whitney Houston’s death as noted in the LA County Department of Coroner Final Report are quite different from initial information that was shared about the singer’s passing. Yesterday, E! News obtained the official report, and it reveals the sad circumstances of how Whitney was found.

The report states that she was discovered face-down in “extremely hot water,” and there was a scald burn on her back. A small spoon with a “white crystal like substance,” as well as a “white powdery substance” on the counter and a portable mirror with traces of the same powder on it were also found in the bathroom.

“possibly overdosed on a narcotic substance, prescription medications, over the counter medications and alcohol.”

Toxicology testing turned up cocaine, Benadril, the muscle relaxer Flexeril, marijuana, Xanax, cocaethylene (produced when cocaine mixes with alcohol) and benzoylecgonin (a primary metabolite of cocaine).

Brande Victorian is a blogger and culture writer in New York City. Follower her on Twitter at @be_vic.

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We can thank Nobanda Nolubabalo for officially giving the TSA a legitimate reason to search natural hair from here on out.

The 23-year-old South African woman was caught attempting to smuggle 1.5 kilograms of cocaine in her dreadlocks on a flight to Bangkok. Authorities arrested her and held her in the capital yesterday after customs officers noticed a suspicious white substance in her hair, according to the Daily Mail. After a search, it was discovered that she matted the drug into her dreads before boarding a flight from Brazil.

The amount of cocaine was worth roughly $144,000. Nolubabalo claimed she was hired by a Thailand-based businessman to smuggle the drugs for about $1,800. The amount is far less than the price the woman may have to pay for the failed smuggling attempt, including the possibility of the death penalty. Thailand has some of the toughest anti-drugs laws in the world, and just this week another South African was executed for drug smuggling in China after an unsuccessful attempt by South Africa’s president to convert the sentence.

You can view a video of the search here. How do you think this woman’s actions will affect hair searches in the U.S. going forward?

Brande Victorian is a blogger and culture writer in New York City. Follower her on Twitter at @be_vic.

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I always say drug dealers are just intelligent people — who are misguided. A few cocaine bosses in Spain just proved me right once again after they smuggled cocaine from Colombia to Spain in the form of fake Manolo Blahniks. This worked for years.

According to the New York Post, the operation was run by a Colombian man and his wife, who molded paste-like cocaine into the shape of shoes “carefully sculpted to look like the high-heeled, luxury women’s footwear” and placed a Manolo Blahnik label on it. When the fake shoes arrived in Spain, several men would be in charge of returning the paste to its original white powder form and distributing the drugs.

The Telegraph said each coked-up heel had a street value of 50,000 euros a pair, or about $69,000.  I don’t even know how people come up with these ideas but they certainly get points for creativity.

I wonder if the shoes were cute.

Brande Victorian is a blogger and culture writer in New York City. Follower her on Twitter at @be_vic.

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Last year,President Obama signed into law the Fair Sentencing Act, which sought to institute a more rational approach to drug policy by scaling back the harsh mandatory sentences for federal crack cocaine offenses. The new law modifies the 25-year-old statute that has sent thousands of African Americans to prison for crack cocaine convictions while giving lesser sentences to whites arrested with the same amount of cocaine in powder form.  Those convicted of possessing five grams of crack-cocaine under this new law could now expect an average two-year sentence reduction from the five years mandatory sentence. That is, of course, if you qualify.

As welcome as the reforms are, the new change will only benefit about new 3,000 cases a year and 12,000 people, who have already been convicted of drug offenses.  Moreover, much of the law still leaves in place the broad structure of mandatory sentencing for most non-drug offenses, which sometimes accompany those arrested for drug offenses.  Things like mandatory gun sentencing, three-strike laws and the ever-obscure school-zone drug laws all involve stiff penalties, which means that those prosecuted could receive an unfair and long sentencing for even the most minor of drug offenses.

Take for instance, the case of Reynolds Wintersmith, a Illinois resident whose first time drug arrest in 1994 at 17-years of age led him to a federal life sentence.  It was a mandatory sentence that troubled even the judge, who questioned if lawmakers really intended this kind of outcome for someone so young. Although the Fair Sentencing Act applied to all defendants sentenced after that date, regardless of when the criminal conduct occurred, Wintersmith’s drug case did not qualify for sentencing reduction because of the way in which his case was prosecuted.

Although Wintersmith was a street dealer, his case was bundled into a larger drug conspiracy case involving the entire network of the Gangster Disciples. The bundling meant that Wintersmith was among several others to be held accountable for being a leader in the gang, using weapons to protect its drug trade and pushing large quantities of cocaine and crack on the street.  It all added up to mandatory life, a sentence in which the original judge had no wiggle room to exercise leniency and in which the appellate courts no cause to hear his case.

Courts are using this gray area of the law to get around the new required sentencing guidelines. Take for instance the case of Felix Booker, who was nabbed earlier this year in Tennessee with 10.2 grams of crack cocaine hidden inside of him.  Although an original search of Booker at the time of his arrest, yielded only a small quantity of marijuana, authorities, on suspicion that Booker was hiding drugs in unseen places, used a life-threatening medical procedure, which caused temporary paralysis, to physically extract the drugs out of his body.   Questions about violation of his 4th Amendment rights against unreasonable search and seizures aside, the federal court still sentenced Booker to a mandatory prison term for five years because he was convicted before the Fair Sentencing Act was passed but not yet sentenced.

There are currently two others bill before Congress, which seek to clarify the original Fair Sentencing Act including the Fair Sentencing Clarification Act of 2011, which, if it passes, would make the new guidelines for mandatory minimums, another exemption from the original law, retroactive.   There is also the bipartisan supported Fairness in Cocaine Sentencing Act of 2011, which seeks to totally eliminate the disparity between powder and crack cocaine sentences (The Fair Sentencing Act only reduced the disparity down from 100 to 1 to 18 to 1). However, both of these bills have languished in Congress and the second bill is not even retroactive, which means that we might see another bill just to correct the inequalities in this clarifying bill.  And so goes Congress. If anything, this patchwork effort to correct drug sentencing laws further seek to illustrate just how decriminalization of drugs, in any regards, will never be a full substitution for legalization.

Charing Ball is the author of the blog People, Places & Things.

By Charlotte Young

West Africa’s Guinea Bissau may be small in size, but it’s big on the market for drug traffickers.

Originally intended as the crossroads for Africa’s drug trade, a Christian Science Monitor reports that the country’s capital “has become a place to sling crack and hook users.”

Regional Representative Alexandre Schmidt for the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime says there’s been a huge increase in cocaine addiction throughout West Africa. According to the UN, West Africa partook in about 13 metric tons of cocaine in 2009. That’s about “$800 million snow worth,” which also equals the entire gross domestic product of Guinea Bissau.

Those tons weren’t originally intended for the region. The UN believes they represent a third of the 35 tons of cocaine headed to Europe that were unloaded on the docks of Guinea Bissau. Amine Michel Saad, Guinea Bissau’s Attorney General calls them “other people’s problems that have been loaded onto our backs.”

And other people’s problems have now become a huge public health concern for the small country. While the cocaine addiction continues to grow, a rural clinic run by an elderly priest serves as the country’s only treatment center.

(Wall Street Journal) — Frustrated by the high relapse rate of traditional addiction treatments, scientists are working on a strategy that recruits the body’s own defenses to help addicts kick drug habits.  The new approach uses injected vaccines to block some addictive substances from reaching the brain. If a vaccinated addict on the path to recovery slips and indulges in a drug, such as tobacco or cocaine, no pleasure will result.  ”You still have to mentally say to yourself, ‘I’m not going to do this,’ but it’s so much easier to say it when you know if you light a cigarette, you’re not going to get any pleasure out of it,” says Stephen Ballou, a 56-year-old banker who got a nicotine vaccine in a 2007 clinical trial to help kick his pack-a-day habit. He says he hasn’t smoked since.  Some medications currently available to treat addictions typically work by mimicking a drug in the brain. For example, methadone stands in for heroin and the nicotine patch for cigarettes. Other medications block activity in the brain’s reward system. Alkermes Inc.’s once-monthly Vivitrol injection does this for alcoholics and opioid addicts, while PfizerInc.’s Chantix pills block the brain’s pleasure receptors activated when people smoke.

Read More…

Surprise, surprise. The 24-year-old New Yorker who quickly found success with her techno album, “Fame Monster” and distinct sense of fashion, admitted to using drugs.

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