Category Archives: Drugs
Priti Patel orders review into effects of nitrous oxide
Possession could be criminalised as home secretary vows to ‘take tough action’ on use of laughing gas
Possession of nitrous oxide, one of the most popular drugs among 16- to 24-year-olds, could be criminalised after the home secretary ordered experts to review its effects.
Priti Patel said she was ready to “take tough action” on the widespread use of laughing gas, which is taken mostly through balloons filled from small metal cylinders often seen littering areas around nightclubs and music festivals.
Continue reading...‘Swazi gold’: grandmothers in Eswatini growing cannabis to make ends meet
In the poverty-stricken kingdom, an older generation rely on growing marijuana to feed children orphaned by Aids epidemic
In Nhlangano, in the south of Eswatini (formerly Swaziland), the illegal farming of the mountainous kingdom’s famous “Swazi gold” is a risk many grandmothers are ready to take.
In what is known locally as the “gardens of Eden”, a generation of grandparents are growing cannabis, many of them sole carers for some of the many children orphaned by the HIV/Aids epidemic that gripped southern Africa.
Continue reading...Sydney Covid patient in Westmead hospital after overdosing on ivermectin and other online ‘cures’
Patient, who suffered vomiting and diarrhoea, part of trend hospital is seeing of people taking unproven substances
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A Covid-positive person in Sydney was admitted to Westmead hospital suffering from vomiting and diarrhoea after overdosing on ivermectin and other drugs ordered online, as Australia’s chief medical officer pleads with the public not to take unproven medicine.
Westmead hospital’s toxicologist, Naren Gunja, said the case was part of a growing trend the hospital was seeing of people taking unproven online cures for Covid. The patient didn’t get severe toxicity from taking the ivermectin cocktail, “but it didn’t help their Covid either”, he said.
Continue reading...Spanish couple arrested over toad-venom and ayahuasca rituals
Pair allegedly charged €150 for ‘ancestral’ ceremonies involving psychotropic substances
Spanish police have arrested a couple over accusations they were carrying out rituals – billed online as “international ancestral medicine” – involving an array of banned substances ranging from toad venom to ayahuasca.
The couple, aged 42 and 38, allegedly ran an association that performed ceremonies involving psychotropic substances for as much as €150 (£129) a session. Weekend retreats were also on offer at a cost of up to €350 (£300).
Continue reading...Born to be wild: India’s first captive-bred endangered vultures are set free
Numbers of the country’s carrion-loving birds dropped by over 97% in the 1990s. Now, a successful breeding scheme is giving them a boost
In February, the doors of an aviary in West Bengal’s Buxa tiger reserve were flung open. Eight critically endangered captive-bred white-rumped vultures cautiously emerged and within minutes were mingling with wild vultures, devouring the meat of carcasses left out by a team of researchers from the Bombay Natural History Society (BNHS).
The birds were raised in a nearby breeding centre by BNHS, led by assistant director Sachin Ranade, as part of efforts to save India’s Gyps vultures. Gradually, some of the released vultures perched on trees with their wild cousins, while others returned to the wire-mesh aviary where they had spent the previous few months getting acclimatised to their surroundings.
Continue reading...Drug poisoning deaths in England and Wales reach record high
Charities warn of a public health emergency after data shows 4,561 deaths in 2020 – up 3.8% on previous year
Deaths due to drug poisoning in England and Wales have reached a record high, with a growing number of people dying after using cocaine and opiates, data shows.
Charities warned the figures showed there was a public health emergency, with the pandemic negatively affecting those with addiction problems. In 2020, 4,561 died from drug poisoning– the equivalent of 79.5 deaths per million people. This is 3.8% higher than figures for 2019 and the highest number since records began in 1993.
Continue reading...Barcelona cannabis clubs face closure in new legal setback
Police and city authorities agree that ‘pioneering’ model has reduced street dealing and consumption
Barcelona’s 200 cannabis clubs face closure after the supreme court shut a legal loophole that has seen the city become Spain’s marijuana capital.
It is the latest in a series of setbacks for the asociaciónes, as they are popularly known. In 2017, the court overruled a law passed by the Catalan parliament which said “private consumption of cannabis by adults … is part of the exercise of the fundamental right to free personal development and freedom of conscience”.
Continue reading...Is medical cannabis really a magic bullet?
Research increasingly suggests that extracts from the plant are effective in treating pain, anxiety, epilepsy and more, but experts still preach caution around recreational use
In 2017, Mikael Sodergren, a liver and pancreatic cancer surgeon at Imperial College healthcare NHS trust, was finding himself becoming increasingly interested in the potential role of medical cannabis in treating pain, especially the discomfort experienced by patients after complex operations.
“I hope that I do a lot of good, but unfortunately in the short term, I inflict a lot of pain with cancer surgery,” says Sodergren. “So we’re reliant on pretty nasty painkillers, such as high-strength intravenous opioids, which we’re trying to move away from. They slow patients down and they cause complications.”
Continue reading...The top journalist, the mafia boss and the gunman: Dutch fear the rise of ‘narco crime’
While Peter R de Vries fights for life in an Amsterdam hospital the nation reflects on how to end the grip of drug gangs
Five gunshots blasted like fireworks on a sunny evening, just behind Amsterdam’s busy Leidseplein. To the horror of the Netherlands, a cold-blooded shooting has left prominent Dutch crime journalist Peter R de Vries fighting for his life in hospital.
Everyone from European leaders to the Dutch king Willem-Alexander and Amsterdam mayor Femke Halsema have expressed their shock at the ambush of “national hero” De Vries as he walked back to his car on Tuesday after recording a chatshow, on a busy street in broad daylight.
Continue reading...My summer of love: ‘Under the spell of ecstasy, strangers went straight to limitless intimacy’
We danced in water features, stupefied with drugs. And while my big crush was unrequited, the whole season was irresistible fun
A summer of love is predicted when – if – we emerge from the Babylonian captivity of lockdown in a frenzy of courting. It will be the third summer of love in recent years. The first occurred, in a cloud of hashish and patchouli, around San Francisco in 1967. I was five and living on the outskirts of Kettering, untouched by those events, although I have heard it said the Skew Bridge Ski Club could get quite racy.
The second summer of love I can talk about because I was in it. It was 1990, I was 28, and recently retired from pop music. It arrived on the back of a new party drug, ecstasy. I had come across E – more properly MDMA – in the United States, in the clubs of the east and west coasts, where enterprising leisure professionals realised that its effect on the neurotransmitters responsible for the experience of pleasure could make every venue a Xanadu of irresistible fun.
Continue reading...Coastguard seizes half a tonne of cocaine floating off Algeria coast
Fishermen alerted authorities to ‘suspicious’ items floating in the sea
The Algerian coastguard has seized almost half a tonne of cocaine after fishers alerted authorities to “suspicious” items floating off the north-west coast.
The coastguard fished out 490kg (1,080 pounds) of cocaine split up into 442 packages from the water six nautical miles (11 kilometres) off Oran’s Cap Carbon on Saturday evening, a defence ministry statement said on Monday.
Continue reading...Mexico supreme court strikes down laws that ban use of recreational marijuana
Adults will be able to apply for permits to grow and consume cannabis after decision that moves country toward legalisation
Mexico’s supreme court has struck down laws prohibiting the use of recreational marijuana, moving the country toward cannabis legalisation even as the country’s congress drags its feet on a legalisation bill.
In an 8-3 decision on Monday, the court ruled that sections of the country’s general health law prohibiting personal consumption and home cultivation of marijuana were unconstitutional.
Continue reading...Eighteen bodies found after suspected drug cartel shootout in northern Mexico
The victims appear to members of the Sinaloa and Jalisco gangs fighting for control of the narcotics trade in Zacatecas state
The bullet-ridden bodies of 18 people were discovered after what appeared to have been a shootout between members of rival drug cartels in northern Mexico.
The bodies were found in a remote, rural area of the north-central state of Zacatecas, state security department spokeswoman Rocío Aguilar said on Friday.
Continue reading...‘I don’t want to remember these things’: dark pop poet John Murry on surviving rape, heroin and family strife
The singer-songwriter talks about his relative William Faulkner, his violent childhood and drugs – and saves a surprise until the end
If you’re after cheery crowdpleasers, John Murry is not your man. Murry is 41, barely known, and has never come close to denting the charts. Yet he has been compared to the great existential pop poets Nick Cave, Leonard Cohen and Scott Walker. And with good reason – he has a rich baritone, writes gorgeous ballads and is half in love with death. The titles of his first two albums, The Graceless Age and A Short History of Decay, reflect the melancholy at the heart of his work. The title of his third, The Stars Are God’s Bullet Holes, is equally bleak. Yet, it turns out that Murry has a surprise in store.
The singer-songwriter is related to the Nobel-prize winning American novelist William Faulkner. Like Faulkner, he paddles along his stream of consciousness – sometimes ferociously. You get a sense of what his songs are about, but seldom know for sure. Take the new album’s opener, Oscar Wilde (Came Here to Make Fun of You). We get the references to terrorist attacks and the images of foreboding, but the meaning is left to us.
Continue reading...Mysterious packages washed ashore at Cape Canaveral turn out to be cocaine
Wildlife manager discovers nearly 20 packages at Florida space force station
The mystery of more than 20 unidentified floating objects that washed up on the beach at Florida’s Cape Canaveral space force station was solved when the contents turned out to be more than 60lb of cocaine, apparently lost from a passing trafficker’s boat.
The discovery was made by a wildlife manager who was surveying turtle nests and spotted one of the square packages, bound tightly in plastic wrapping, lying on the sand.
Continue reading...Marc Thompson: how an HIV diagnosis at 17 helped him change Britain
In 30 years as an activist, he has fought to stop black gay men being forgotten, broken taboos about homosexuality and campaigned to make life-changing PrEP medication available on the NHS
Marc Thompson was 17 when he found out he had HIV. He had been out as gay for only a year when a friend suggested he get himself tested. “I thought: ‘Yeah, why not? I’m not going to be positive.’ You had to wait two weeks for the results back then – I’d actually arranged to have lunch with a friend on the day they were due, because it never occurred to me that I would be positive.”
Thompson says he will never forget how he felt that day – partly because he is still asked about it all the time. As one of the UK’s leading HIV, Aids and queer black men’s health campaigners, sharing his own experience comes with the job. “I felt complete and utter numbness,” he says. “All I could hear was white noise. I was walking around in a daze.”
Continue reading...Hundreds arrested in global crime sting after underworld app is hacked
European and Australian police join forces with FBI to seize weapons, drugs and $148m in cash
A global sting in which organised crime gangs were sold encrypted phones that law enforcement officials could monitor has led to more than 800 arrests in 18 countries.
The operation by the FBI and Australian and European police, ensnared suspects in Australia, Asia, Europe, South America and the Middle East involved in the narcotics trade.
Continue reading...FDA approves first new Alzheimer’s drug in almost 20 years
Usefulness of aducanumab is disputed but US approval will trigger push to make it available globally
A controversial new drug for Alzheimer’s disease, the first in nearly 20 years, was approved in the US on Monday, which will trigger pressure to make it available worldwide in spite of mixed evidence over its efficacy.
While doctors, patients and the organisations that support them are desperate for treatments that can slow mental deterioration, the usefulness of the new drug, aducanumab, is disputed by scientists. Two trials were stopped in March 2019 because the drugs appeared not to work. The manufacturer, Biogen, said the drugs were unlikely to improve people’s memory and thinking.
Continue reading...‘A united nations of crime’: how Marbella became a magnet for gangsters
The new international crime organisations have made Marbella their centre of operations. And as violence rises, the police lag far behind
One morning last autumn, a dozen or so locals were eating breakfast at a cafe under a clear Marbella sky, in front of the offices of the Special Organised Crime Response Unit (Greco), on the Costa del Sol. The property is nondescript – an unobtrusive building in a working-class neighbourhood – and only someone with a sharp eye for detail might notice the two security cameras monitoring the front entrance. The cafe’s regulars drank coffee and ate toast, unaware that only 24 hours earlier, in another part of the city, Greco agents had rescued a man from a garage, alive, but with holes drilled through his toes. It was the latest local case of amarre, or kidnapping, to settle a score between criminal gangs.
That afternoon, in Puerto Banús, the wealthiest and most extravagant area of the city, a young British man with ties to organised crime walked out of a Louis Vuitton store and found himself surrounded by a crew of young Maghrebis, “soldiers” from one of the Marseille clans. “They didn’t want anything specific,” he said. “They just stared me down and said: ‘What’s up?’ They were looking for trouble. Things like this have been happening for a while now. It’s getting really dangerous here,” he said, with no apparent sense of the irony of a criminal complaining about criminality.
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