MIAMI, FLORIDA -- A gang of Miami airport workers used their security passes to smuggle cocaine and heroin aboard passenger jets from Colombia, the latest in a string of security breaches at one of the busiest aviation crossroads in the Americas, U.S. officials said Friday. U.S. prosecutors unsealed indictments charging 10 current or former employees of airport services and security companies at Miami International Airport with federal offenses including conspiracy to possess and distribute narcotics. The U.S. Customs Service said the ring secreted cocaine in the interior panels of the cargo holds on Avianca passenger jets from Colombia. Miami International, a critical hub for connections between the United States and South America, has been plagued by security lapses since a federal investigation dubbed "Operation Ramp Rats" resulted in charges against airline and food service workers for smuggling drugs and weapons in August 1999. [end]
Parents, listen up: One out of five kids today huffs, sniffs or bags inhalants before graduation from high school. Parents, listen up: One out of five kids today huffs, sniffs or bags inhalants before graduation from high school. Called Hippie Crack and Poor Man's Pot, inhalants are vapors from common household products intentionally inhaled to produce mind- altering effects. The vapors go directly to the brain and the blood stream. "I feel lucky to be alive," said Dave, a recovering teen inhalant user, who spent his summer days inhaling full tanks of nitrous oxide. He mixed it with the drugs Xanax and Ecstasy and stole air duster and computer cleaner to get high. [continues 1041 words]
Dear Editor: As noted in your March 16 editorial, anti-loitering laws are no solution to drug dealing. The tough-on-drugs approach is problematic, especially when focused exclusively in poor neighborhoods. Forcibly limiting the supply of illegal drugs while demand remains constant only increases the profitability of drug trafficking. In terms of addictive drugs like heroin, a spike in street prices leads desperate addicts to increase criminal activity to feed desperate habits. The drug war doesn't fight crime, it fuels crime. [continues 271 words]
I recently proposed "Michigan Exile," an innovative approach to combat gun violence. The plan, modeled after similar federal programs in Richmond, Va., and Texas, calls for a mandatory one-year state prison term along with a presumption of no bond for any convicted felon found in possession of a gun or ammunition. Your March 18 editorial "Sentencing Sense: For guns, new rule for felons isn't needed" suggested that the plan may be appropriate for violent felons but not appropriate for "nonviolent" felons. News flash: An armed "nonviolent" felon, whether previously convicted for dealing drugs, retail fraud or felony stalking, is a violent felony waiting to happen. [continues 220 words]
The Buzzard Point neighborhood where U.S. Park Police said they encountered former D.C. mayor Marion Barry sitting in a parked car is a desolate swath of Southwest Washington dotted with warehouses, industrial plants and parking lots. Asked yesterday what the 66-year-old four-term mayor was doing there Thursday night, Barry's attorney, Frederick D. Cooke Jr., said: "I didn't ask him why he was at Buzzard Point. I don't know what he was doing sitting there." [continues 958 words]
A School Policy On Naming Informants Is Necessary; It Just Doesn't Work The tangled web cast by our nation's ineffective battle against drugs has increased the casualty count in Athens. It's hard to find a winner in what has occurred there. A student at Athens Middle School told authorities that some fellow students had marijuana on school grounds. Two students were questioned. A substance was seized. One student was expelled and sent to an alternative school for kids with behavior problems. The superintendent recommended the second student be expelled, but the board rejected that. [continues 355 words]
Area residents told state officials Wednesday the Legislature has failed to provide adequate funding for addiction prevention and treatment. They spoke at a forum sponsored by the state Office for Addictive Disorders. "Once again healthcare is losing when it comes to state funding," said Cliff Thomas of the non-profit organization Empowering Communities of America. He cited the tobacco settlement as an example of the state's apparent disinterest in healthcare. The money came at the expense of the health of smokers, he said, but little has gone to tobacco prevention and smoking cessation programs. [continues 249 words]
LAFAYETTE - Acadiana law enforcement officials said Tuesday that the closure of University Medical Center's First Step Detoxification Unit this week will have little effect on their individual agencies. But a spokeswoman said one Acadiana recovery program will miss the unit's services. Lt. Craig Stansbury, Lafayette Parish Sheriff's Office spokesman, said the Lafayette Parish Correctional Center has its own detoxification unit staffed by full-time nurses and on-call physicians. "If a person in custody needed medical attention more than they could handle, we would bring the individual to the UMC detoxification unit," Stansbury said. "They were very seldom referred." [continues 271 words]
Darkness falls on thousands of adobe houses in Shir-Abad, beyond the runways of Zahedan airport. A group of Afghan refugees, aged 15 to 50, has gathered round a brazier, amid mounds of trash. Some left home 20 years ago, others only last December. A pan is boiling up the ashes of a heroin joint that they have just smoked. The recycled fluid can then be injected. Disregarding the risk of Aids contamination, the same syringes go the rounds between pock-marked arms. [continues 752 words]
The Heroin Route From Afghanistan To Europe Most heroin sold in Europe comes from Afghanistan's poppies. Drugs cross the permeable border with Iran on their way to Turkey and Europe despite Iran's desperate efforts, costing many lives, to combat trafficking at the border. Europe doesn't help Iran with the cost of policing, and does even less to finance Afghan farmers to plant alternative crops. Zahedan is the capital of Seistan-Baluchistan province, at the eastern edge of Iran, bordering Pakistan and Afghanistan. At first sight it seems an ordinary oriental town, with a lively bazaar, broad avenues jammed with traffic and poor neighbourhoods on its outskirts. But this is misleading. Zahedan is a vital staging post for international drug smuggling. In streets placarded with posters of Ayatollah Khomeini, army trucks and smugglers' four-by-fours squeeze past each other. As evening falls men in all-terrain vehicles sell opium and heroin to local buyers. But the real action goes on in the desolate valleys and hills outside the town. [continues 1956 words]
