• Amanda Knox Bombshell: Coke-Dealer Witness Squelched by Prosecution [National Enquirer]
• A New High: 50% of Americans Favor Legalizing Pot, Gallup Poll Says [Atlantic.com]  
• Cali Doc Group to Feds: "Stop Raids on Pot Clinics, Regulate Weed Like Booze" [Los Angeles Times] 
• Security Guard for Celebs Busted for Oxy RIng, Faking IDs With Wigs, Crutches, Wheelchair [NBC.com] 
• Alcoholism's Health Costs in U.S. Hit a Record $1.90 per Drink, CDC Says [Health News Digest] 
• Robbed of Money, Coke and Pot, Two Men Call Cops for Help—and Get It! [WBTV.com]
• October 29: Next National Drug Prescription Take Back Day Info Online [USDOJ.com]

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Just days after Canada’s Supreme Court smacked down the ruling Conservative party’s attempts to close Insite, the cutting-edge walk-in safe-injecting clinic in Vancouver, comes the latest volley from harm-reduction advocates north of the border. Over the next three years a new trial will test whether giving heroin addicts access to free, clean opiates can be an effective way to stabilize hardcore users and ultimately entice them into drug treatment.

SALOME (Study to Assess Longer-term Opiate Maintenance Effectiveness) grew out of the earlier NAOMI (North American Opiate Maintenance Initiative) study. whose conclusions were similar to those of similar trials in Switzerland, Germany and other highly evolved nations: “Heroin-assisted therapy proved to be a safe and highly effective treatment for people with chronic, treatment-refractory heroin addiction. Marked improvements were observed including decreased use of illicit “street” heroin, decreased criminal activity, decreased money spent on drugs, and improved physical and psychological health,” as NAOMI's authors wrote.

Unlike the earlier trial, the focus of SALOME is not on heroin prescribing. With the Conservative government's panties already in a bunch over injecting rooms, a less controversial alternative to handing out heroin had to be foundt. The solution?  Hydromorphone (trade name Dilaudid), a legally available painkiller whose effects are almost indistinguishable from heroin—not a surprise given that it is synthesized from morphine. “There’s less of a stigma, less of an aura, around hydromorphone, and it’s legally available,” said British Columbia’s medical health officer, Perry Kendall. “In Switzerland and Germany, they don’t have a problem with treating people with heroin, but here we do.”

While it’s certainly cheering to see such progressive measures north of the border, it’s also a little amusing to see the two-step taking place around the heroin vs. hydromorphone issue, as if somehow one drug is “better” because it’s legal. As any junkie worth his salt should know (and I can definitely personally attest, a shot of Dilauded is actually preferable to a hit of street heroin. Indeed, anyone who has read the novel (or seen Gus Van Sant's screen adaptation of) Drugstore Cowboy might remember Bob Hughes’ many soliloquies on the wonders of Dilauded.  

Still, if that's what it takes to get the Canadian government onboard, I’m sure the Vancouver addicts eagerly enrolling in the trial won't argue… And as for our supposedly “progressive” president and his "evidence-based reforms" of drug research and policy?  (Crickets.)

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The announcement last week from Attorney General Eric Holder that US law enforcement had foiled a bizarre plot in which Iranian agents would use the Zeta drug cartel to blow up the Saudi Arabia ambassador in downtown Washington, DC, has been met, by analysts and the media, with widespread skepticism almost to the point of calling it hokum. But wIth a spooky echo of the Bush administration's report about a secret meeting between an Iraqi agent and a Niger operative with yellowcake uranium—a meeting that never occurred—the Obama administration insists that it has “solid evidence” that an Iranian agent working in Texas—described by the New York Times as a “stumbling opportunist”—had made contact with undercover FBI agents posing as members of the Zetas. The Iranian allegedly offered to pay the Zetas $1.5 million to kill the Saudi ambassador. Analysts were baffled, saying that such behavior would be highly unusual for the Quds, the elite military arm of the Revolutionary Guards mandated to export the Islamist revolution. Equally dubious is whether the scheme could have been approved by high-level Iranian authorities, as Holder claims. “It was very extreme and very odd, but it was also very sloppy. If you look at what the Quds have done historically, they can put operatives on their targets and execute," said Juan Zarate, a national security advisor and Quds expert. "They usually don’t outsource, but keep things inside a trusted network.” Iran, for its part, has accused the US of concocting the charges as a diversion from the Wall Street protests. 

Another of the many funky details is the extent of the actual cartel’s involvement. It has been reported that Islamic militant groups have expanded their operations in Mexico; in July, the hacking group LulzSec released a memo it had uncovered that reported Hezbollah had established a base and an arms stockpile south of the border with the protection of the cartels. On NPR, Washington Post foreign policy correspondent David Ignatius said that the whole thing reads like an Elmore Leonard “caper novel." Other skeptics have suggested that this plot is the beginning of a fresh neoconservative push for war with Iran. Reuel Marc Grant, one of the leading neocon cheerleaders for the disastrous invasion of Iraq in 2003, wrote in the Wall Street Journal, "The White House needs to respond militarily to this outrage. If we don't, we are asking for it.” The media, which had been blasted for showing such credulity about the Bush administration's lies serving as a pretext for that war, is showing a distinct distaste for being twice burned. 

If this is hokum, who's behind it? Who stands to benefit from an actual conflation of the War on Drugs with the War on Terrorism? Since this sounds like a distinctly discouraging development for addicts, The Fix will investigate and run an in-depth report soon.

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• Did Drugs Kill Michael Jackson? Sleep Expert Says Yes [AP]
• More Pharmacies Report More Shortages of More Critical Meds [Reuters]
• Justin Townes Earle Out of Recovery, Back Into Music {SFGate]
• Aussie, 14, Tests Positive Pot, May Avoid Brutal Bali Prison [Sydney Herald]
• The UnCoke: Rapper DMX Found God and Beat Addiction [TMZ]
• With Teen Binges Spiking, New EZ Screening Is In Vogue [Time Healthland] 
• Op-Ed: Why the Feds Should Legalize Pot [Mercury News] 
• Wrestling With Booze: Tragic Scott Hall Documentary Airs Wednesday [Miami Herald]             

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A former New York City undercover detective, Stephen Anderson, may have lost a few friends on the force after his testimony last week in a corruption scandal that led to the arrest of eight narc squad cops. Testifying for the prosecution in a plea agreement, the former NYPD detective testified yesterday that it is common practice to plant drugs—known as "flaking"—on innocent people in order to meet arrest quotas. Anderson was busted for planting cocaine on four men in a Queens bar in 2008, to help out another cop whose arrest numbers were low. “It's almost like you have no emotion with it, that they attach the bodies to it," he said nonchalantly to a stunned Brooklyn courtroom. "They're going to be out of jail tomorrow anyway—nothing is going to happen to them.” Yet not only does cocaine possession in New York carry with it a fine up to $500,000 and a minimum four-month jail sentence, it also can stain a person’s record forever, making it difficult or impossible to find employment or to apply for public housing—making it unclear why police would thing that “nothing is going to happen to them.” Just ask the Colon brothers. In 2008, Anderson and his partner were caught on surveillance video dancing on the street in front of the bar in Queens. Then, they arrested four men, including Jose and Maximo Colon. The officers later lied in their court testimony that they had bought drugs from the men. The Colon brothers swore under oath that it didn’t happen, and two hours of surveillance video show no contact between the brothers and the officers, prompting the prosecution to drop the charges and begin to investigate the police. In the six months that it took for the Colon brothers to find justice, they lost their business and all their savings. The city paid a $300,000 settlement to the Colons for false arrest. 

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This story out of Wisconsin about a 26-year-old Madison man who got arrested after overdosing on heroin in a Port-a-Potty reminded me of a similar story I heard a few years back told by a heroin addict I’ll call Dave. Now, Dave used to commute to Philly from Delaware on a daily basis to cop dope. It’s common for addicts in the 50-mile radius of suburban sprawl to flock to the Badlands section of North Philly for its famed 24-hour drive-through service at one of the many heroin corners in the barrio. Police know this, too; anyone with an out-of-state plate in that particular neighborhood on a Saturday night is liable to be tailed, pulled over and then escorted back to the Interstate by Philly’s Finest. So buying drugs for the out-of-towner is a real in-and-out affair; you want to get your shit and roll out pronto so as not to attract too much attention.

But where to shoot up? You’ve got a bundle sitting in your lap, and obviously you don’t feel like waiting an hour until you’re home to get high, especially if you’re dopesick, so where do you get a hit off in the middle of the night when every business with a public bathroom is closed?

A few years back, the answer to that question for hundreds of commuter junkies was the legendary Port-a-Potty on Aramingo Avenue. Aramingo is the main thoroughfare connecting the Interstate with Lehigh Avenue, gateway to the Badlands dope corners. And for many months a big stretch of Aramingo was under construction as a strip mall was being put up. There, at the building site, just off Aramingo, right before the highway on-ramp, basically in the perfect location for an addict who just copped a bunch of Badlands dope, was a single Port-a-Potty. You can imagine the scene there on Saturday nights.

Dave said that often when he pulled up to the Port-a-Potty there was such a long line that you’d think the Thanksgiving Day parade had just rolled past; it was a patently absurd sight for an otherwise remote, quiet part of town at that time of day. Sometimes he stopped by the site and, seeing no line, thought he had the Port-a-Potty all to himself—but when he yanked on the door he found it locked, and there would be a shout from within for him to be patient and wait his turn. One night he found no line for the Port-a-Potty, and the door was unlocked. Jackpot!

Except that the Port-a-Potty was in fact occupied—by a corpse with a syringe still stuck in the crook of its arm. Dave cursed the corpse: What kind of fucking jerkoff ODs in a Port-a-John? This dead guy was preventing him from getting his hit off. Dave was pissed that he would now have to cook and shoot his dope on the side of the road in full view of passing traffic, which he did.

Not surprisingly, after the body was found by construction workers the Port-a-Potty disappeared, much to the dismay of thousands of suburban dopefiends around the Tri-State Area.

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