Heroin Helper Blog

Courtney Wagner, the daughter of Robert Wagner and Natalie Wood, was arrested Sunday for possession of heroin and cocaine.

There are two things worth noting about this. First, regardless of what punishment Wager gets for this crime, it will not affect her life the way it affects the great many poor drug users similarly caught. After she is out of jail (if she goes), her life will be fine. She probably doesn't need to work, but if she does, there will be many people stepping forward with offers of good jobs.

I feel sorry for Ms. Wagner. Anyone involved in the criminal justice system deserves our pity. But I don't worry about her.

The second thing is far more interesting: the reason the police showed up at Wagner's home. An unspecified man shot off a gun. He was charged with "negligent discharge of a firearm." According to California Penal Code 246.3 PC:


My guess: it will be a misdemeanor. Using drugs is a grave crime, but shooting a gun that could result in death? Boys will be boys!

The Telegraph reports, "Heroin addict awarded £3,000 payout for being denied methadone in prison used it to buy drugs." This is followed by a really offensive subtitle, "A heroin addict handed a £3,000 Government payout after complaining about his treatment in prison used the money to buy drugs when he was released."

This gives the impression that the man purchased heroin. In fact, what he did was buy 8,000 Valium tablets. It is pretty clear that he purchased them as a business investment. From the tone of the piece, we are supposed to be appalled at this. I don't know what people think. Drug users get their drugs for free?

I know far too little about the drug world outside the United States. Two things really shocked me in this article. The first was that the police just happened to storm that guy's home. There is no indication that there was any probable cause. Of course, "probable cause" may just be an American thing; or it used to be.

The other shocking thing was that while in jail, the man wrote a letter to his girlfriend. The police "intercepted" the letter and used it in court against the man. Unbelievable.

As for the original payment to the man: it was for the police forcing him to detox with nothing. Apparently, in U.K. jails they aren't allowed to torture junkies. Chalk one up for the U.K. system.

In my early days of using, I personally saved the lives of about ten people who had overdosed on heroin. As a result, I later acquired a vial of naloxone and always had a syringe filled with it in the refrigerator. I am nothing if not careful, and doing this was just good sense.

Of course, it took a lot of work to acquire the naloxone. I had to acquire it on the black market and once I had, it was far more precious than any other drug. But this is not as it should be. And increasingly, it is not the way things are.

The Washington Post published a sympathetic article about programs throughout the United States that provide naloxone to opioid users. The program started back in 1996 in Chicago, but since then it has expanded to "50 programs in more than 188 locations around the country, including Baltimore, New York and San Francisco, according to the survey, published in February by the CDC."

The article is riddled with factual errors, but as I work on this blog, this seems to be par for the course. In this case, it has to be applauded for countering the most pernicious of myths:


My purpose—in my books and on this site—has always been very simple. On average, a heroin addict is only addicted for three years. That's not a lot of time to keep an addict alive. And that is what I try to do. Depriving them of clean syringes and opioid antagonists (e.g. naloxone) is just a way to assure that they die before they can get clean. Sadly, that is precisely what many people do what. It is nice to see the Washington Post on the right side of this.

Writing this blog is depressing. Every single day. The main thing is that I have to read a constant supply of articles that treat heroin use as though it were worse than rape. It is a constant reminder that our society really doesn't have a clue about drugs or the people who use them. And it wants to punish these people. Harshly. In the name of "protecting" them. There are three such articles today alone.

The Kansas City Star has a particularly offensive story about society's efforts to create three tragedies out of one. A man died due to a heroin overdose. Now the police have arrested a brother and sister with providing the man with the heroin. Why is it that car dealers are never prosecuted after people die in car accidents? Driving is a very dangerous activity. So is rock climbing. And surfing. And...

Death is only one way that a life can be destroyed.

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I am, at core, a nerd. The title is from The Wrath of Khan: "I've done far worse than kill you, Admiral. I've hurt you. And I wish to go on hurting you. I shall leave you as you left me, as you left her: marooned for all eternity in the center of a dead planet, buried alive. Buried alive!" Interestingly, that speech sounds a lot like Dr. Vornoff's speech from Bride of the Monster: "Home? I have no home. Hunted! Despised! Living like an animal! The jungle is my home. But I will show the world that I can be its master! I will perfect my own race of people. A race of atomic supermen which will conquer the world!"

Researchers from the University of California, Los Angeles published a paper in The Journal of Pain. I have no paper name and no authors, because U. S. News and World Report apparently thought that no one would care enough to ask. And they're probably right. As it is, U. S. News seems to be the only major media outlet who have even covered the story.

Basically, the study say that heroin and methadone addicts are more sensitive to pain than non-addicts. From the U. S. News report:


This is not because junkies are a bunch of whiners. The scientists tested responses to electrical stimulation.

The study is interesting, but I fear useless. The problem is that it has long been known that addicts, because they are already on often high doses of analgesics, need more pain medication than non-addicts. However, the vast majority of doctors—despite their many years of education—think just the opposite: junkies don't need as much pain medication because they already have it in their systems. This shows a shocking level of ignorance about how the body processes drugs.

One time when I was on methadone maintenance, I came down with Singles. It was extremely painful—the most pain I have ever experience. The pain was so bad that I went for 3 days without sleeping. When I finally went to the doctor, he wrote me a prescription for Vicodin.

After another day in excruciating pain—the Vicodin did nothing, even though I took 31 at once (Don't do that!)—the doctor at the methadone clinic took pity on me and prescribed 30 mg oxycodone tablets. And that did the trick.

It is horrifying to think that in order to treat the pain of opioid addicts, they must be given medication that no only compensates for their tolerance, but also their increased sensitivity to pain. I'm glad that there are people who care enough to study this issue. Hopefully, we will get to the point where doctors think that treating addicts should be about comfort rather than punishment.

Friday, Fox 21 News in Minnesota reported about five heroin arrests in the small town of Cloquet. But they couldn't do it straight. The title of the article was, "Heroin Arrests Pop in April for Cloquet." And the first sentence was worse, "Injecting renewed alert for Cloquet Police, five arrests for heroin have brought the otherwise unpopular drug back into public consciousness."

Ugh.

And what's this about heroin being "otherwise unpopular"? Justin Bieber sells large numbers of tickets to teenage girls, but is otherwise unpopular.

Yesterday, CNN reported that 8 US soldiers died of opioid overdose in Afghanistan over the last two years:


I will only note that I doubt these soldiers actually tested positive for heroin. I know there are indirect means of testing for it, but I have questions. Regardless, what would be the point? It isn't the heroin that is getting them high.

It strikes me as strange, and I dare say that any objective being would agree, that men employed to kill other men are heroes in our society. But men who want to relax with a drug are not. We are sick, sick culture.

Former New Jersey governor Christine Todd Whitman was on Up With Chris Hayes this morning. I always hate seeing this woman, because she goes around to all the "liberal" media and people make a big deal of how "reasonable" she is.

Except she's not.

I remember back when she was New Jersey governor, she refused to go along with her Governor's Advisory Council on AIDS and its recommendation that syringes should be made available to drug users. You see, Whitman just knew that exchange programs caused people to do drugs. Of course, what they actually do is allow drug users to continue to live. Whitman wants what all those who are against syringe exchanges wants: drug users to hurry up and die so she doesn't have to think about them anymore.

And that means we know one thing about Whitman: she is evil.

On Up With Chris Hayes she played the moderate Republican—the person willing to look at the science of global warming. But when it came to the science that would result in fewer deaths today, Whitman knew it was just wrong. Chris Hayes a good guy; I have no idea why he allowed a fucktard like Whitman on his show.

Update

I found an excellent article from 2006 on City Belt about the status of syringe exchange programs in New Jersey. Whitman was the one who politicized syringe exchanges. At the time of this article, New Jersey was the only state that didn't allow exchanges. That means Mississippi—Mississippi!—was more progressive than New Jersey. Since that time, New Jersey has implemented a very narrow program (PDF).

This is from the City Belt article:

WGN is reporting that 18 people were arrested for drug (heroin and others) distribution in two districts in Chicago—9 in each district. Surprisingly, the article doesn't provide exaggerated cash values for the products seized—no values were provided at all, probably because they would have been low, even if exaggerated. What really bugged me about this news is how different the two districts were treated.

One of the districts is Englewood, which is 98% black. The FBI and Chicago Police spent 3 years working on this case that ended in the arrest of 9 people. The other district is Ogden. I can't seem to find information on this area. But given that it is at the north edge of the city and the names of those arrested (Rodney, Lionel, Kelsey) I'm assuming it is mostly white and affluent. The cops spent just 2 months on this case that also ended in the arrest of 9 people.

As you may know, blacks don't do any more drugs than whites, and yet they are sent to jail for drug laws at a much greater rate. This story seems to be an example of why this is. The police spent 18 times as much time to arrest the black people as they did the white people.

It just gets worse. I looked up information about Claudia A. Chagoya, the Texas Woman who was given 20 years in prison after pleading guity to being a drug mule. She was allegedly paid only $1000 for the work she was doing. In other words, this was no "drug kingpin," whatever that is. According to the St. Charles Patch, she was transporting $2.1 million in heroin. Later the article says she was carrying 7 kg of product. According to the DEA, Mexican heroin sells for between $13,200 and $175,000 per kg. So the worst case scenario is that she was smuggling $1.2 million of product—and perhaps less than $100,000.

This is important, because today the last of five New York men were sentenced to running a heroin lab where 2 kg of product (again, misidentified as $1 million worth) was found. The main thing, however, is that these guys were manufacturing heroin. Yet their sentences ranged from 19 months to 10 years.

How is it that these five guys who were clearly making a lot of money dealing get, at most, half as much time as this poor woman in Texas who seems to be nothing but a victim? Clearly, there is no absolute justice in the country. But as we see here, there is not even relative justice.

Update

There is a comment on the article by "John":


What empathy, huh? And note how John is an expert on the way drug trafficking is done. I'm guessing: 17 year old cop wanna be.

The Times of India is reporting, "Police on Tuesday seized 20 kg heroin worth Rs 100 crore from two persons in a village in Fazilka district of Punjab adjoining Rajasthan border, and a km from Sriganganagar." If you find that sentence a little hard to parse, it may help to know that Rs is short for "Rupees" or the Indian currency. So the sentence means, "Police on Tuesday seized 20 kg heroin worth lots of money..."

According to Jagran Post, Rs 100 crore is worth about $20 million US. But let's figure this out. If we assume a gram of heroin is worth $100 (which is way high, especially at this quantity), that would be $2 million US worth of heroin, one-tenth what The Times of India reported. Even the DEA claims that heroin from Asia costs between $40,000 and $200,000 per kg.

It is possible that because the laws in India are so harsh, heroin there is much more expensive than it is in the United States. If there are any people reading who know about this, please comment. However, my feeling is that just as in the United States, the media in India prefer to grossly exaggerate the value of drug seizures. There are two reasons for this. First, it inflates how important the story is. "Rs 10 crore" just doesn't sound as impressive. Second, it exaggerates how good a job the government is doing keeping drugs away from users. The story claims that ten times as much heroin has been removed from the market as has really been removed. (Most people don't know what to make of kg of a drug.)

For the record, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (PDF), India consumes 17,000 kg of heroin every year. So this seizure is, well, nothing.

Last Night on The Last Word, Lawrence O'Donnell had a surprisingly good segment on the Drug War, which included Neill Franklin, Executive Director of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition. Usually, I hate these kinds of segments, and this one certainly wasn't perfect. As usual, there was too much discussion of cannabis and how safe it is. But overall, the segment was far better than we normally see or read.

One thing that really struck me was that Franklin said that decriminalization was not the answer—that we had to go with full legalization. His reasoning is that law enforcement will just turn all of what are now possession changes into "intent to distribute" and nothing will have changed. This had never occurred to me. I guess because Franklin is a former cop, he knows how those twisted minds work.

What most people don't understand about the "War on Drugs" is that it is actually a "War on Drug Users." My favorite example of this is how much people fight against syringe exchange programs. Being against these programs is the same as being for drug users dying unnecessarily due to preventable diseases. All the time I was a user, I felt that half of the country wanted to see me dead. Of course, now it's more like 90%.

Vive le resistance!

SplitWise has an interactive webpage where you can set tax levels and see what effect they have on revenue. It is fun. I recommend that you check it out. However, it is interesting how it constrains debate. You can only change the top tax rate up to about 48%. Note that only 30 years ago, the top marginal tax rate was 70%. Now, people who create interactive tax tools think that any tax rate above 48% is unthinkable.

The sad thing is that this was probably not intentional. To the creators, a 70% marginal tax rate was literally unthinkable.

The New York Times has reported on the sudden increase in law enforcement deaths despite decreasing crime. Up through 2010, roughly 50 officers died in the line of duty every year—not counting accidents. Last year, the number was 72. It all begs for an explanation, but The New York Times doesn't really provide one.

The article does provide the usual platitudes about how dangerous police work is. It quotes Sheriff Ray Foster saying, "In this law enforcement job, when you pin this badge on and go out on calls, when you leave home, you ain’t got a promise that you will come back." This is true for everyone, of course: "When you go off to work at the teddy bear factory, when you leave home, you ain't got a promise that you will come back." As I've written before, law enforcement is not that dangerous a job and cops should stop whining about how much risk they face. When a convenience store clerk is killed during a robbery, he doesn't get a parade. Given that law enforcement officers do some bad, little good, and a whole lot of nothing, I just don't see why we continue to venerate them.

The Times does provide three potential reasons for the rise in officer fatalities: more invasive procedures, the tough economy, and fewer cops on the street. I only have data on the number of cops on the street through 2009, so I can't speak to that cause. However, it seems clear that there hasn't been that big a change. There has been a tough economy since 2008, and we haven't seen a rise in officer fatalities until now. As for the invasive procedures, the article says:


I don't find this terribly compelling, but there is probably at least a little truth to it. When you pat down every black guy walking down the street, you better expect some push back.

The number of officer fatalities last year is so unusual that it is, just based upon the statistics, not random. However, in the first 3 months of this year, officer fatalities have dropped. This makes me think there is a problem with how fatalities are counted. It would only take single error—an agency reporting 20 instead of 2. Or it could be a statistical glitch because of some big event, like a shoot out that ended in a lot of death. Sheriff Foster lost two officers in a shoot out in Buchanan County, VA where the population is only 24,000.

The main thing to remember is that this is no big deal. The article is just another example of the "Cops Have it Hard" genre of newspaper articles. There were 72 officer deaths last year. This is out of a total of over 700,000 officers (this does not include support staff). That means that a cop has a 0.01% chance of dying in a given year. That means he has about 0.25% chance of dying on the job in his whole career. It isn't surprising that the cops would want to puff themselves up. But why does the rest of the society follow along?

Ezra Klein is discussing the Commerce Clause again. There has been lots of this recently because of the Supreme Court hearing the constitutionality of the ACA. Today, Klein quotes Ben Smith quoting some unnamed conservative lawyer claiming that the Court made a mistake back in 1942 in Wickard v. Filburn. This case should be interesting to readers here because it had to do with the fact that "the federal government fined Roscoe Filburn for growing wheat in excess of the quotas set out in the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1938. They also forced him to destroy the excess wheat, even though he said it was only for personal use." (Italics mine.)

What bugs me about the current debate about the Commerce Clause is that it doesn't go back this far and father still. At least the Democrats are consistent: they think the federal government can regulate anything. And this is certainly the way things have been my entire life. But the Republicans are inconsistent. Take the supposed intellectual heavy weight Antonin Scalia. Back in 2005, Scalia considered the Commerce Clause very broadly. That's because he was arguing against people being able to grow their own cannabis. But when it comes to healthcare, suddenly the Commerce Clause is interpreted very narrowly. Read BuzzFeed's excellent take down of this issue in Justice Scalia Flip Flops.

When it comes to providing 30 million Americans with healthcare, the Commerce Clause is narrow as the Panama Canal. When it comes to allowing individuals to make their own personal decisions, the Commerce Clause is wide as the great blue ocean. With all this water moving, I fear Scalia (and the other conservatives on the Court) will suffer a Moses complex.