Fu Lixin, emotionally exhausted from caring for her sick mother, needed a little pick-me-up. A friend offered her a "special cigarette" -- one laced with methamphetamine -- and she happily inhaled. The next day, three policemen showed up at her door. "They asked me to urinate in a cup," Fu said. "My friend had been arrested and turned me in. It was a drug test. I failed on the spot." Although she said it was her first time smoking the drug, [continues 796 words]
BEIJING -- Fu Lixin, emotionally exhausted from caring for her sick mother, needed a little pick-me-up. A friend offered her a "special cigarette" -- one laced with methamphetamine -- and Ms. Fu happily inhaled. The next day, three policemen showed up at her door. "They asked me to urinate in a cup," she said. "My friend had been arrested and turned me in. It was a drug test. I failed on the spot." Although she said it was her first time smoking meth, Ms. Fu, 41, was promptly sent to one of China's compulsory drug rehabilitation centers. The minimum stay is two years, and life is an unremitting gantlet of physical abuse and forced labor without any drug treatment, according to former inmates and substance abuse professionals. [continues 869 words]
NEWARK, Dec. 15 -- The flickering votives, the tearful relatives and the angry activists scolding City Hall for the death of a young mother. It was a familiar tableau as a small crowd huddled to mark the killing of Taheerah Sweat, who the police say was shot twice by a man who had taken her out on the town but then left her to die on the chilly pavement after they had a fight. Ms. Sweat's killing early on Dec. 10 was the 101st homicide in Newark this year, the authorities said, one body short of a 1995 record, when Newark was buckling under a wave of crack-fueled mayhem. [continues 980 words]
A trip to the Statue of Liberty, a spin through the Metropolitan Museum of Art, a Broadway show and a nightcap or three at one of New York's drinking establishments. For locals and out-of-towners alike, the city's bounty of 1,200 bars, lounges and dance clubs is an essential lure of city life. It is also a vital cog in the New York economy, generating an annual $9.7 billion in revenue and employing 19,000 people, according to the New York Nightlife Association. [continues 1177 words]
FAIR LAWN, N.J., April 23 - The crowds of teary-eyed strangers, the riderless stallion clip-clopping down St. Anne's Street, the carloads of flowers, the eulogies, the appearance by the governor - friends say it all would probably have made Mary Ann Collura blush. "She would have been dumbfounded by all the attention," said David Boone, a colleague and friend of Officer Collura, a Fair Lawn fixture who lost her life last week as she tried to arrest a small-time drug dealer. [continues 721 words]
Some know it as crystal. Others refer to it as Tina, a campy abbreviation of its other name, Christina. But among the habitues of New York's frenetic gay club scene, the extraordinarily powerful stimulant commonly known as crystal meth is earning a new nickname: the Evil One. Once largely confined to California, the Midwest and the Southwest, where it has upended the lives of gay men and a blue-collar constituency of truckers, bikers and housewives, methamphetamine is increasingly becoming a conspicuous part of New York's clubbing landscape and a major worry for health care workers. [continues 1341 words]
After years of continual growth, New Jersey's prison population has begun to shrink for the first time in more than two decades. There were 27,676 people incarcerated in the state as of last month, down from a peak of 31,290 in 1999. The 11 percent drop, prison officials said, was partly because of a reduced backlog in parole board hearings. State officials expect to save $83 million as a result. The number of inmates increased fourfold between 1980 and 1999, largely because of mandatory minimum sentences and stricter drug laws. [end]
PRINCETON, N.J., Oct. 31 - When Green Party die-hards want to feel the warm embrace of like-minded progressives, they come to this mannered and manicured college town, even though it is not exactly famous for political radicalism. "Princeton is very welcoming to us," said Noni Bookbinder Bell, the coordinator for Nader 2000 in Burlington County. "The energy here is amazing." Since the university is Ralph Nader's alma mater (class of '55) and the town is the home of two Green Party Congressional candidates, Princeton has become an unlikely center for Green Party activism in this middle-of-the road, two-cars-in-every-driveway state. [continues 960 words]
BRICK, N.J., Aug. 4 -- The sign, in front of the high school here, is an unavoidable warning to anyone driving through this sprawling township on the Jersey Shore. "Deal Drugs in Our Communities and Go to Jail!" it shouts in 6-foot-tall letters. A graduate of Brick Memorial High School, Kenneth S. Gregorio probably often saw the sign, erected by the local prosecutor, as he drove to his mother's home or to the gym where he regularly worked out. Mr. Gregorio, 23, a Monmouth University junior on probation for two drug arrests, knew the warning was not an idle threat. [continues 1394 words]
NEPTUNE, N.J., July 31 -- Kenneth Gregorio and Brian Juliano did not fit the profile of the street-hardened drug dealer. As a criminal justice major at nearby Monmouth University, Mr. Juliano knew he and his classmate were in deep trouble on Saturday night when law enforcement officials charged them with the possession and intended sale of 49,000 tablets of Ecstasy, the dance-club drug that has become increasingly popular with young suburbanites. Just a few hours after the students were taken to the Neptune Police Station in handcuffs, Mr. Gregorio, 23, a communications major, was found dead in his cell. He had hanged himself with the drawstring from his sweat pants, the police said. [continues 683 words]
NJ Case Highlights Youths' Growing Use Of Narcotic DXM, Surge In Internet Sales HIGHTSTOWN, N.J. - With its lushly manicured campus, private lake and neo-colonial buildings, the Peddie School provides its 500 students with a sheltered oasis seemingly far from the lures and perils of the outside world. Supervision is intense, and the use of drugs and alcohol is strictly forbidden. But the four 17-year-olds who were rushed to a hospital emergency room Tuesday night after authorities found them nearly unconscious did not have to leave their dormitory rooms to purchase their highs. [continues 755 words]
Hightstown, N. J. May 25 -- With its lushly manicured campus, private lake and neo-colonial buildings, the Peddie School provides its 500 students with a sheltered oasis seemingly far from the lures and perils of the outside world. Supervision is intense, and the use of drugs and alcohol is strictly forbidden. But the four 17-year-olds who were rushed to a hospital emergency room on Tuesday night after the authorities found them nearly unconscious did not have to leave their dorm rooms to purchase their highs. [continues 699 words]
NEW YORK -- It was 3 a.m. on a Saturday night and Samantha Gregorio was all dressed up with no place to go. Wearing glitter eyeshadow and absurdly tall platform shoes, she huddled in a doorway outside the Sound Factory on West 46th Street, a relentless downpour making a mockery of her painstakingly crafted face. Most of her friends, along with 1,000 or so other young people, were inside the cavernous club on Manhattan's far West Side, but the 17-year-old high school senior from Whitestone, N.Y., in the borough of Queens, had failed the identification check at the door. "I tried to use my older sister's license and I got snagged," she said. [continues 807 words]
It was 3 A.M. on a Saturday night and Samantha Gregorio was all dressed up with no place to go. Wearing glitter eyeshadow and absurdly tall platform shoes, she huddled in a doorway outside the Sound Factory on West 46th Street, a relentless downpour making a mockery of her painstakingly crafted face. Most of her friends, along with 1,000 or so other young people, were inside the cavernous club on Manhattan's far West Side, but the 17-year-old high school senior from Whitestone, Queens, had failed the identification check at the door. ''I tried to use my older sister's license and I got snagged,'' she said, her voice heavy with disappointment. [continues 1932 words]
