moonbuggy

`Police said the robbers had pretended to be carabinieri, Italian police, to gain access to the laboratory, then asked two medics to accompany them to the room where the cocaine was stored, wrapped in individual parcels.

There, they tied up the medics with plastic tape, snatched the cocaine parcels and left the laboratory, police said. [..]’

`A man made a mockery of the justice system when he tried to get removed from a jury pool in a death penalty case by claiming he is a heroin addict and a killer, a judge said.

Benjamin Ratliffe, 21, of Columbus, was charged with contempt of court and obstruction of justice and ordered to spend a night jail.

Ratliffe filled out a questionnaire form for potential jurors and professed to having a “bad jonesin’ for heroin.” When asked if he had ever fired a weapon, he wrote, “Yes. I killed someone with it, of course. Right.”‘

`Neuroscientists have proposed a simple explanation for the pleasure of grasping a new concept: The brain is getting its fix.

The “click” of comprehension triggers a biochemical cascade that rewards the brain with a shot of natural opium-like substances, said Irving Biederman of the University of Southern California. He presents his theory in an invited article in the latest issue of American Scientist.

“While you’re trying to understand a difficult theorem, it’s not fun,” said Biederman, professor of neuroscience in the USC College of Letters, Arts and Sciences.

“But once you get it, you just feel fabulous.”‘

`A contractor late last week discovered two 50-pound “bricks” of marijuana wrapped in plastic bags inside a bathroom vanity he had purchased at a Home Depot store in Tewksbury, said Chief of Detectives Lt. Dennis Peterson.

The estimated street value of the marijuana is around $145,000, Peterson said.

Similar incidents have occurred in other parts of the state.

A plumber purchased a vanity in western Massachusetts on Monday in which he later found 3 kilograms of cocaine and around 40 pounds of marijuana, with a total estimated street value of $250,000, according to the Southwick Police Department.’

`On April 16, the New York Times ran a full-page ad from contact lens producer Bausch and Lomb, announcing the recall of its “ReNu with MoistureLoc” rewetting solution, and warning the 30 million American wearers of soft contact lenses about Fusarium keratitis. This infection, first detected in Asia, has rapidly spread across the United States. It is caused by a mold-like fungus that can penetrate the cornea of soft contact lens wearers, causing redness and pain that can lead to blindness—requiring a corneal replacement.

That same week, the House of Representatives passed a provision to a bill requiring that the very same fungus be sprayed in “a major drug-producing country,” such as Colombia. The bill’s sponsor was Rep. Mark Souder (R-Ind.) and its most vocal supporter was his colleague Dan Burton (R-Ind.), who has been promoting the fungus for almost a decade as key to winning the drug war.’

`Police raided a huge marijuana plantation in northwestern Bosnia and found it guarded by a family of wolves and 150 dogs, Bosnian media said Saturday.

They seized 2,300 plants intended for the production of at least 800 kg (1,760 lb) of the drug, as well as hunting guns and rifles Friday, the Bosnian Serb news agency SRNA quoted regional Interior Minister Stanislav Cadjo as saying.’

`The prohibition of psychoactive substances has evolved gradually in the United States and in Europe. The opium-containing preparation laudanum had been widely available since the 18th century. Morphine, cocaine, and even heroin were seen as miracle cures when they were first discovered. During the mid to late 19th century, many manufacturers proudly proclaimed that their products contained cocaine or opium. A few, like Mrs. Winslow’s Soothing Syrup for infants which contained morphine, were more guarded in divulging their principal ingredients. By the beginning of the 20th century, problems with habitual use of cocaine and opiates was becoming increasingly apparent. This led to the removal of these substances from some products (e.g., Coca Cola) and to the introduction of the Pure Food and Drug Act (1906) in the United States which required the listing of ingredients on product labels. Nonetheless, standard narcotic remedies like paregoric remained readily available into the early 20th century, and Benzedrine inhalers were marketed without prescription until the early 1950s. Codeine wasn’t removed from most over-the-counter cough suppressants until the early 1980s.’

`While most Canadians are aware that medicinal marijuana is legal in Canada, many may not know that there is a product available that also offers cannabis health benefits for your pets.

Med-Marijuana’s newest product, Medi-Paws, is being used by Canadian pet owners for a host of animal issues such as cardiac health, arthritis, liver and kidney functions.’

`A Michigan woman is charged with involuntary manslaughter after prosecutors say her 5-month-old daughter died from drinking breast milk containing cocaine.

Sara Shelby was arraigned Thursday. If convicted, she faces up to 15 years in prison.

Prosecutors claim Shelby used cocaine and the drug was passed on to the baby through her breast milk.

Shelby’s lawyer said that he and his client disagree with the prosecution’s theory about what caused baby’s death last year.’

`Terrified drug dealers committed a serious error by calling police for help with their hallucinations.

A group of friends were partying on drugs when they saw a group of tiny, white men coming up out of the fjord. This terrified them so much they rang police to ask for protection, newspaper Bergensavisen reports.

Police responded to the call from a cabin in Fusa. They found no little white men, but rather three confused Bergen residents and a pile of drugs.’

`The manager of a charitable fundraising enterprise in Davenport has been fired for alleged financial mismanagement, drug use and having sex with a woman on his desk.

Chris T. Coppinger of Davenport was fired in March from Mohassan Grotto 22, where he worked as co-manager of the organization’s charitable bingo operation.

He was fired after his supervisors allegedly found $1,000 in cash and checks in his office, along with a condom and a jar of urine that appeared to have been hidden. Coppinger was subsequently accused of smoking marijuana and drinking alcohol in the building; having pornography on his work computer; having sex with another person on his desk; and ordering a 15-year-old co-worker to urinate in a jar. He also was fired for failing to deposit cash and checks the organization had collected.’

`Pete Doherty has sunk to a new low of disgusting behaviour.

The Babyshambles singer squirted a syringe-full of his own blood at two MTV News cameramen after injecting heroin in view of the production team.

The camera lens was splattered with Pete’s claret — leaving a horrified crew scared of infection and needing to sterilise thousands of pounds worth of filming equipment.

Doherty’s own bandmate Drew McConnell was so angry with the singer that he stormed off.

It is only a fortnight since The Sun printed pictures of Pete sticking a syringe into a young girl fan’s arm.’

`A “cowardly” Edmonton man who “scalped” his sleeping girlfriend while using a power drill to style her hair avoided being sent to the slammer yesterday.

Shee Theng, 30, was handed a nine-month conditional sentence to be served in the community and eight months of probation on his assault with a weapon conviction.

“You’re like a shadow on the wall,” said provincial court Judge Shelagh Creagh, referring to his detailed evasiveness in a pre-sentence report and psychiatric assessment. [..]

Court heard the attachment caught in Rose’s hair and pulled out a clump, leaving her bleeding, screaming and terrified while Theng took off. Court also heard Theng knew it was a dangerous idea because he had earlier scalped himself the same way.’

`The cave had it all, everything Fred Strunk and his work crews needed to grow 100 pounds of marijuana every two months.

Row after row of white-bright grow lights were powered by “free” electricity via an illegal splice into utility lines. An indoor irrigation system was nearly an engineering marvel. A ventilation system controlled humidity, while a security system featured a bank-vault-like entrance, with security cameras placed everywhere.

And there was the cave itself, a rock fortress shielding the illegal activity.

Strunk’s pot harvests, without a doubt, replaced tobacco and vegetables as Trousdale County’s biggest cash crop, investigators said.’

follow up to Men Grew Pot Inside Cave.

`Governments in Canada should steer completely clear from adopting or emulating any current drug policies in the United States, an outspoken New York state prosecutor said Tuesday.

“My advice to Canada is stay as completely far away from U.S. drug law policy as possible,” said David Soares, the district attorney for Albany County in the state of New York. “You (Canada) are headed in the right direction.”

In a blunt and scathing condemnation of his state and country’s ineffective drug war, Mr. Soares said lawmakers, judges and prosecutors in the U.S. know their system is ineffective.

But they support it anyway because it provides law enforcement officials with lucrative jobs.’

`Scientists have discovered a bacteria-fighting compound 100 times more effective than penicillin – in wallaby milk.

Researchers found the highly-potent compound, tagged AGG01, was active against a wide variety of fungi and bacteria including antibiotic-resistant superbugs.

Research team leader Dr Ben Cocks said the discovery could have a profound impact on both human and animal health.

“This compound has the potential to be commercially synthesised and may prove vital in the war against increasingly resistant human and animal diseases,” Dr Cocks said.’

`Two men have suffered terrifying visual and auditory hallucinations after eating a popular local seafish in Mediterranean restaurants.

According to a clinical study on the patients, which is due to be published in the journal Clinical Toxicology, the men started seeing and hearing things after contracting a rare form of hallucinogenic poisoning from the Salema fish they were dining on.

The species is a popular food fish and is not normally hallucinogenic.

Ichthyoallyeinotoxism, or hallucinogenic fish poisoning, is caused by eating the heads or body parts of certain species of herbivorous fish and has previously only been recorded from the Indo Pacific.

The effects of eating ichthyoallyeinotoxic fishes, such as certain mullet, goatfish, tangs, damsels and rabbitfish, are believed to be similar to LSD, and may include vivid and terrifying auditory and visual hallucinations. This has given rise to the collective common name for ichthyoallyeinotoxic fishes of “dream fish”.’

`An intruder has been found dead and naked in the house he broke into after apparently overdosing on prescription drugs he had found inside.

The 60-year-old resident of an Adelaide property found the body yesterday after being away for two days.

Police said the dead man appeared to have taken the resident’s diabetes tablets, vomited in the toilet and then used the shower before collapsing.

Detective Senior Sergeant Brian Kimber, of Elizabeth, said the intruder, aged in his 20s, had been known to police.’

`Pharmaceutical companies are systematically creating diseases in order to sell more of their products, turning healthy people into patients and placing many at risk of harm, a special edition of a leading medical journal claims today.

The practice of “diseasemongering” by the drug industry is promoting non-existent illnesses or exaggerating minor ones for the sake of profits, according to a set of essays published by the open-access journal Public Library of Science Medicine.

The special issue, edited by David Henry, of Newcastle University in Australia, and Ray Moynihan, an Australian journalist, reports that conditions such as female sexual dysfunction, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and “restless legs syndrome” have been promoted by companies hoping to sell more of their drugs.’

`Jeffrey Doles wants his bongs back.

He owns a store in Gillette, Wyo., called Hip Hop Hippie. Doles has been acquitted of drug paraphernalia charges.

Now, he wants authorities to return about 130 brightly colored pipes and bongs that were confiscated when he was arrested last summer.

But prosecutors said they’ll file a civil lawsuit seeking permission to destroy the items. Doles charges prosecutors are just mad because they didn’t win the criminal case against him.’

`At the warehouse, agents found bricks of cocaine packed inside tombstones, some decorated with figures of the Virgin Mary, the DEA said.

“Like grave robbers who have no respect for the dead, this drug organization used revered tombstones to smuggle millions of dollars worth of cocaine into New York City,” said John Gilbride, the special agent in charge of the New York DEA office.

At the Brooklyn warehouse, agents found eight tombstones, five of which were packed with 20 to 25 kilograms each of cocaine. They also found remnants of smashed tombstones.’

`Buzzaire is, quite simply, a caffeine inhaler. One squeeze, one inhale, and you’ve just rushed 150mg of caffeine into your blood stream. Mints or drinks have to go through your digestive tract first before partying in your blood (or through your skin, in the case of caffeinated soap). But the lung/blood barrier is the fastest way (other than injection or IV) to get caffeine into your system. Not only will you get one heck of a rush, but you’ll also freshen your breath! A hint of peppermint oil in each puff will give you a little extra perk with its peppy zing. Buzzaire can beat up your air!’

`An incinerator, where one of Africa’s biggest hauls of narcotics is being burnt in Kenya, has exploded, delaying the process, police say.

No-one was hurt in the blast but it will now take 11 hours – three more than initially expected – as only one incinerator is working.

Police seized the 1.1 metric tons of cocaine worth $88m in December 2004.’

`Superstar Whitney Houston has spiralled into a world of squalor and degradation on deadly crack — as the shocking pictures in today’s Sun newspaper reveal.

It shows the disgusting mess in the singer’s bathroom after a drug binge.

Drug paraphernalia including a crack-smoking pipe, rolling papers, cocaine-caked spoons and cigarette ends are strewn across the surface tops.

But Whitney, 42, no longer cares.

She was one of the biggest female artists of her generation — with a string of ’80s and ’90s hit singles like I Wanna Dance With Somebody and more than 100million albums sold.

Now she is a paranoid wreck hopelessly hooked on crack.’

`A Boston detective searching the apartment of a drug suspect wound up wrestling a sack containing 108 bags of marijuana out of the clenched jaws of a pitbull named Prada.

The dog was running around carrying a tan-colored bag Tuesday as police were searching the apartment, where they had already found a loaded gun, $1,000 cash and 14 bags of marijuana.

Prada did not give up without a fight.’

`Many Americans are sleep-deprived zombies, and a quarter of us now use some form of sleeping pill or aid at night.

Wake up, says psychiatry professor Daniel Kripke of the University of California, San Diego. The pill-taking is real, but the refrain that Americans are sleep-deprived originates largely from people funded by the drug industry or with financial interests in sleep-research clinics.

“They think that scaring people about sleep increases their income,” Kripke told LiveScience.

Thanks to the marketing of less addictive drugs directly to consumers, sleeping pills have become a hot commodity, especially in the past five years.’

`Taking the drug Ecstasy can impair memory and learning, but giving up the drug can stop the slide in mental capacity, a new study shows. However, researchers also found evidence that in heavy Ecstasy users, the effects on memory may persist even after they quit.

“The message should be loud and clear that if you’re using a lot, you’re not going to recover learning and memory,” Dr. Konstantine K. Zakzanis of the University of Toronto at Scarborough, the study’s lead author, told Reuters Health.

Zakzanis and his colleagues had previously shown that people who used Ecstasy, also known by the chemical name MDMA, experienced a decline in their memory over a one-year period. The 15 study participants’ reported using the drug from 3 to 225 times over the course of the year.’

`Phillip Williams doubted whether he was being sold actual crack cocaine, police say. So he approached two uniformed Tampa officers and allegedly asked them to test his crack pipe so he could be sure.

Turned out Williams, 47, was getting the real thing, and he was arrested shortly after approaching the officers Tuesday morning.’

`A German court ordered viagra to be given to a stallion after his new owner claimed he was impotent and refused to pay the full asking price.

The buyer of the horse called Vedor paid just a tenth of the price of over 4,000 euros ($6,700), claiming it had only one testicle and failed to get frisky with a female pony.’

`Dutch schoolchildren as young as 12 are being treated for addiction to a powerful home-grown marijuana which is up to 20 times stronger than imported varieties, an addiction clinic in the Netherlands has revealed.

But while the age of regular and dependent cannabis users has dropped sharply in recent years, the dangers and health hazards of soft drugs have been “completely underestimated” by parents caught “in a flower- power time warp”, Dr Romeo Ashruf, an addiction specialist, said.’