Buy Drugs

It's no secret that residents of Baltimore's neighboring counties are lured to the city by more than employment opportunities, ethnic restaurants and the occasional ballgame. City police say about 15 percent of the 20,000 drug arrests last year involved suspects from the five suburban counties; City Councilman William H. Cole IV believes the actual number who visit the city for this nefarious purpose is even higher. He introduced an ordinance yesterday to slap the out-of-town miscreants with a civil penalty of $1,000, which would be in addition to normal criminal penalties of jail time and a fine of up to $25,000.

Stevenson University has bought the Shire Pharmaceuticals plant next door to its Owings Mills campus, a $10.5 million deal that a school official said will expand the grounds by a third and help meet the goal of increasing full-time student enrollment to 4,000 in the next two years. "It was just a great opportunity we couldn't pass up," Tim Campbell, Stevenson's executive vice president for financial affairs and chief financial officer, said of the sale that closed Tuesday, expanding the campus in northwestern Baltimore County from 74 to 102 acres.

This article was reprinted with permission from Reader's Digest, where it first appeared. The author changed the names of some of the addicts to protect their privacy. PARKED NEXT to an abandoned lot on Baltimore's south side, the big cream-colored recreational vehicle seems out of place. So, too, do the dozen-odd men and women who gather by the RV's side door, most of them carrying brown-paper lunch sacks filled with used syringes. One or two at a time, they step inside and dump the needles onto a table.

It's no secret that residents of Baltimore's neighboring counties are lured to the city by more than employment opportunities, ethnic restaurants and the occasional ballgame. City police say about 15 percent of the 20,000 drug arrests last year involved suspects from the five suburban counties; City Councilman William H. Cole IV believes the actual number who visit the city for this nefarious purpose is even higher. He introduced an ordinance yesterday to slap the out-of-town miscreants with a civil penalty of $1,000, which would be in addition to normal criminal penalties of jail time and a fine of up to $25,000.

A Carroll County man fatally shot Wednesday night in East Baltimore was identified yesterday as a 26-year-old Manchester resident, who police said was killed while searching for drugs.James Lance Brady of the 2500 block of Bachmans Valley Road was pronounced dead in a car in the 1600 block of Carswell St. about 11: 20 p.m. Police said he had been shot once in the right arm. The bullet lodged in his armpit.Agent Ragina L. Cooper, a city police spokeswoman, said Brady and an unidentified friend were driving around East North Avenue and Harford Road looking to buy drugs.

ANNAPOLIS -- Anyone who tries to buy drugs, fake or real, breaks the law, Assistant Attorney General Gary E. Bair argued yesterday before the Maryland Court of Appeals.Margaret L. Lanier, assistant public defender, argued the other view."What is impossible," she said, "is to buy drugs when your seller gives you fake drugs."At issue in the state's highest court was whether a person can be punished for buying illegal drugs when what was purchased was merely a look-alike substance.Peggy Sue Grill was convicted in 1992 of trying to buy heroin in Westminster from an undercover agent that year.

Tired of motorists coming to their neighborhood to buy drugs, Greenmount East residents have adopted a battle plan: videotaping cars that cruise drug-infested areas and sending the owners a letter that states, "Drugwatchers are watching you."The East Baltimoreans' campaign, which begins tonight, also includes twice-weekly marches through drug-infested pockets of the neighborhood and increased vigilance to report drug activity."This lets [drug buyers] know that we know just who they are," said Candace Campbell, who lives in the 1400 block of N. Bond St. and is an organizer of Drugwatchers, the community's drug-fighting group.

Chase Brexton plans open house June 20 As part of Columbia's 40th birthday celebration, Chase Brexton Health Services will hold a community open house at its Columbia center from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. June 20. Housed in offices in Twin Knolls North, the center provides primary adult medical care, pediatric care, women's health services, mental health services, case management, counseling, testing and referral services for diverse communities. For those who are uninsured, underinsured or in need, Chase Brexton offers a sliding scale of fees and help in accessing state and federal assistance programs.

Posing as drug dealers, Southwestern District undercover police officers arrested 16 people attempting to buy cocaine and heroin yesterday evening, and seized nine vehicles and more than $800.Sgt. Timothy Devine, head of the district's drug enforcement unit, said the arrests occurred between 3 p.m. and 6 p.m. in the 500 block of N. Denison St., a dead-end street that prevented suspects arriving by car from driving off if they became suspicious.Before the operation began, officers ran off several regular drug dealers, Devine said.

Barbara Quamina is looking forward to a summer of hanging wash without having to fear drug dealers' gunshots. And Olivia Reid plans to find more useful hobbies than peering through her binoculars as drug buyers cruise by.For the first time in a year, their West Baltimore neighborhood, Forest Heights, is quiet, thanks to an intense anti-drug campaign by residents and a private security company. These days, drug activity is being held at bay.Now, the neighborhood is using another weapon -- the trespassing law -- in the battle against drugs.

An Annapolis man who was assaulted during an attempt to buy drugs was accosted again when he went to another city neighborhood with the same mission, city police said. The Cherry Point Road man, 44, told police at Anne Arundel Medical Center early Tuesday that he had gone to Captain's Circle in search of drugs that night and an unknown man approached, knocked him down, and shot at him as he fled. Then the victim headed to the Clay Street area, where he said a man came at him with a knife, and he fled again.

The 15-year-old's punishment after being convicted as a juvenile in January was to go home with his mother - a woman convicted three months earlier of buying drugs. Six weeks later, Farron Tates became the first teenager to be arrested on a murder charge in Baltimore this year. He was arrested last Thursday and has been charged as an adult. Farron's life followed the criminal trajectory of Baltimore's most troubled children: He lived with a parent who used drugs, stopped attending school in the fourth grade, said he smoked marijuana every day, carried a loaded handgun at age 13 and told authorities he turned to drug dealing as a way to make money.

Chase Brexton plans open house June 20 As part of Columbia's 40th birthday celebration, Chase Brexton Health Services will hold a community open house at its Columbia center from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. June 20. Housed in offices in Twin Knolls North, the center provides primary adult medical care, pediatric care, women's health services, mental health services, case management, counseling, testing and referral services for diverse communities. For those who are uninsured, underinsured or in need, Chase Brexton offers a sliding scale of fees and help in accessing state and federal assistance programs.

Baltimore consumers who lack health coverage pay almost 62 percent more for prescription drugs than the federal government does when buying medicine in bulk for its employees, retirees and military veterans, a new survey says. The Maryland Public Interest Research Group survey said uninsured Baltimore consumers also pay more than twice as much for a sampling of 10 common prescription drugs than they would pay at a Canadian pharmacy. The city had the 14th-highest costs of 35 cities included in the unscientific survey conducted by PIRG volunteers nationwide.

On the heels of Montgomery County's efforts to sidestep a federal ban on importing cheaper medicines from Canada, a statewide coalition of health care advocates announced plans yesterday to push two bills through the General Assembly next year to give Marylanders access to discounted prescription drugs. The Maryland Citizens' Health Initiative will support legislation to allow Marylanders without drug coverage who earn less than 300 percent of the federal poverty level to purchase medicine through the state's Medicaid program, which backers said could save participants up to 40 percent on name-brand drugs.

America's best discount drugstore is run by the federal government. The Department of Veterans Affairs throws the weight of federal buying power and a law mandating discounts on medicine into price negotiations with drug manufacturers. "We're the big gorilla," said George T. Patterson, executive director and chief operating officer of the VA Office of Acquisition and Materiel Management. "We get the drop-dead best prices in the world." The VA drug benefit is a life preserver for vets like Vernon Chapin, 76, a retired plumber and Army veteran from Lutherville.

Corrie Simpson wakes up every morning in a stone rancher outside Westminster and heads to Shipley Street and Fairmount Avenue, a drab pocket of sagging brick rowhouses and concrete front yards in Southwest Baltimore.There, her boyfriend, Patrick Cook, 35, leans out of the 1984 Chevrolet and shouts to a stocky man wearing a red bandanna. "Any Ready?" he asks, using street-corner slang for crack cocaine. The seller nods. "Give me six."The drugs are for Simpson, a 19-year-old former Glenelg High School student from western Howard County.

On the heels of Montgomery County's efforts to sidestep a federal ban on importing cheaper medicines from Canada, a statewide coalition of health care advocates announced plans yesterday to push two bills through the General Assembly next year to give Marylanders access to discounted prescription drugs. The Maryland Citizens' Health Initiative will support legislation to allow Marylanders without drug coverage who earn less than 300 percent of the federal poverty level to purchase medicine through the state's Medicaid program, which backers said could save participants up to 40 percent on name-brand drugs.

The Bush administration and Maryland pharmacists are staging a public relations campaign aimed at scuttling a state Senate proposal that would help state employees, retirees and Medicaid recipients buy lower-price prescription drugs from Canadian mail-order pharmacies. Sen. Paul G. Pinsky, a Prince George's County Democrat, is chief sponsor of the legislation, which he says would prevent Maryland residents from "being gouged unmercifully by the pharmaceutical companies." The bill, which has 21 co-sponsors, two short of a majority in the 47-member Senate, is scheduled for a public hearing in the Senate Finance Committee this afternoon.

Two University of Maryland pharmacy professors say they have found a way to use beams of light and chemical "fingerprints" to help stop the flow of counterfeit drugs. James Polli and Stephen Hoag say their technology could confirm the authenticity of every medication sold in the United States by measuring the light reflected by chemicals in the drugs. "There is no one single solution to the problem of dealing with counterfeit drugs, but what we have may be part of the solution," Polli said.