Drug

The 20 horses that ran in the Kentucky Derby on May 5 were tested before the race for the performance-enhancing drug erythropoietin, or EPO. The tests, which came back negative, were intended as a deterrent. But as the Preakness approached, Maryland Racing Commission officials were taking a different tack. "I don't know that there would be any value" in the tests, executive director J. Michael Hopkins said. The commission ultimately decided to take pre-race blood samples and screen for a battery of 65 drugs that included EPO. None came back positive.

Three Millersville residents have been charged with multiple drug offenses and a fourth is being sought after police searched their house Wednesday, Anne Arundel County police said. After a monthlong investigation into drug activity in the 100 block of Obrecht Road, police raided a house and seized a small amount of marijuana, a trace amount of crack cocaine, and numerous pieces of paraphernalia including a digital scale, drug-smoking pipes and numerous sandwich bags used to package drugs.

Federal prosecutors in Baltimore announced yesterday that 10 members of a drug organization that sold cocaine in Fells Point bars and other neighborhood locations have pleaded guilty. Four women and six men pleaded guilty to drug-related charges, authorities said. Prosecutors said most of the defendants are from Baltimore, and one man is from Elkridge. Prosecutors also charged a Colorado woman believed to be a supplier. Yesterday and Thursday, five defendants from Baltimore - Angel Francisco Velasquez, 25; Daniel Najera Gasca, 26; Rafael Gasca, 33; Patricia Fonseca, 33; and Enrique Najera Gasca, 21 - pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in Baltimore.

A reputed hit man for a Northwest Baltimore drug organization linked to four killings pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court yesterday to racketeering and murder charges and was sentenced to 30 years in prison, federal prosecutors said. The Maryland U.S. attorney's office had targeted Eric Hall, 36, for the death penalty. But as a result of a plea agreement, he will serve prison time and then be on 15 years of supervised probation. Prosecutors say Hall worked as an enforcer for a drug ring led by Howard and Raeshio Rice, brothers who, respectively, are serving 30-year and 27-year prison sentences.

WASHINGTON -- American combat troops will be thrown into the fight against narcotics traffickers in Afghanistan, where despite a $1 billion U.S. effort, another record opium crop is expected this fall, U.S. anti-drug officials said yesterday. In a briefing for reporters, the officials outlined the new approach as part of a "basic strategy shift" in the U.S. campaign in Afghanistan. Production of Afghan opium in the coming year will provide the entire world's supply of heroin, U.S. officials reported, surpassing last year's record-high production that has defied a concerted international effort at controlling narcotics.

When police officers burst into a West Baltimore Street rowhouse on a hot August afternoon, their target was a suspected drug dealer, and the raid yielded a stash of cocaine, heroin gel caps and marijuana. But they found much more: a loaded revolver as well as two pit bull terriers and the weights, chains, homemade harness and other equipment that are telltale signs of dogfighting. That volatile mix - drugs, guns and dogfighting - has fueled a deadly subculture that is tearing at some city neighborhoods, police, animal enforcement and health officials say. Pit bulls, or "pits" as they are commonly called, are prized by drug dealers and other criminals for their loyalty, muscular beauty and aggressive nature, a characteristic that can be manipulated to sadistic extremes.

Coast Guard cases protect the public The Sun's article "Justice capsized?" (June 24) and the editorial "A listing court" (June 26) emphasize statistics that may leave readers with an erroneous impression. In an industry with more than 200,000 mariners, few violations are serious enough to reach administrative law judges. The Coast Guard initiates action only when failing to do so might endanger the public or the environment. More than half of the more than 6,300 charges against mariners cited in The Sun's article resulted from a positive drug test or from drug- or alcohol-related convictions.

A federal judge sentenced a 41-year-old Baltimore County man yesterday to serve 10 years in prison for his role in a large-scale drug operation that sold heroin and cocaine throughout the Baltimore region. Michael Felder, 41, of Cockeysville, pleaded guilty to conspiring to distribute five or more kilograms of cocaine over a 10-year period in a large narcotics-trafficking enterprise operated in Baltimore by brothers Howard and Raeshio Rice, who also pleaded guilty and received sentences of decades in prison.

He cast himself as an up-from-the-hood gangster gone legit in real estate. He had style, a sense of elegance, a quick wit and ready smile that won the instant attention of some very pretty women. He drove a royal blue Rolls.At nightclubs from Columbia to Manhattan, George A. Dangerfield Jr. was a walking blizzard of cash, bestowing trays of drinks and sizzling skillets of filet mignon on his adoring entourage.Not yet 30, he already had it all."I'm the K.O.B., can't nobody mess with me," he decreed to friends.

It didn't take William E. Franklin long to get back in business.One of Baltimore's biggest heroin dealers in the 1970s and 1980s, the man known as "Little Will" was released from a federal prison in January 1997 after serving nearly nine years for running a drug ring.By November, according to federal authorities, he was involved in a similar enterprise: transporting cocaine and heroin from New York to Maryland.Monday, just before jury selection in his federal criminal trial was to begin, Franklin, 56, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to distribute drugs.

Man charged in attempted sexual assault in Odenton Anne Arundel County police arrested a 19-year-old man and charged him in an attempted sexual assault in Odenton that occurred early Thursday morning. A 19-year-old woman said she was walking to her bus stop about 6:45 a.m. when she was approached from behind in the 300 block of Mount Vernon Ave. by a man who dragged her into a yard, where he attempted to rip off her shirt, police said. The woman struck him in the head with a blunt object and was able to flee on foot, police said.

As the officer in charge of a Howard County police detail at Merriweather Post Pavilion concerts, Capt. John McKissick says that "different bands draw different kinds of crowds." In the case of Phish, often compared to the Grateful Dead, some in the crowd of 20,000 were doing drugs Saturday night, when police made 31 drug-related arrests - the most of any concert in recent memory, McKissick said Tuesday. Four out-of-state men were arrested and charged with drug possession, intent to distribute and possession of paraphernalia, police said.

A 41-year-old West Baltimore man was listed in critical condition at the University of Maryland Medical Center after he attempted to swallow a plastic bag containing at least 17 gel caps of heroin while being pursued Monday evening by police, according to a Police Department spokesman. Anthony Guglielmi, the spokesman, said Dion Snipe of the 1100 block of W. Lombard St. was observed in possession of narcotics in the first block of N. Carrollton Ave. about 6:30 p.m. Monday by plainclothes officers assigned to a drug enforcement unit.

It was a classic Sister Katherine moment. She was standing on a forlorn stretch of West Pratt Street when three people shuffling past stopped to inquire about the nearly finished building behind her. Eagerly, almost thankfully, she engaged them. Soon, she said, it will be a place where drug addicts can talk about their demons or just duck out of the chaotic streets for a while. Soon it will be evident why the glass-fronted building is called an Island of Hope. "It'll be a beautiful spot for beautiful people," said Katherine Nueslein, a gray-haired veteran of the Sisters of Mercy religious order.

When a Food and Drug Administration panel took steps last month to reduce consumption of the popular painkiller acetaminophen, warning that too many people are inadvertently taking more than is safe and suffering liver damage and even death, Dr. David Maine's phones started ringing. And ringing. Patients wanted to know if taking Tylenol once a day is too much (it is not). They wanted to know if their prescriptions contain the drug (some do). "We've gotten a ton of calls," said Maine, a pain management specialist at Mercy Medical Center in Baltimore.

Here's some new news about drugs in Baltimore: * A kilo of cocaine now costs $32,000, up a full $10,000 from 2006. Bulk quantities of the drug are more expensive here than in Washington, where a kilo costs $30,000, and in Richmond, Va., where it goes for $26,000. * Local drug dealers outsource even the final stages of turning powder cocaine into crack. * Dealers are increasingly steering away from highways to smuggle drugs, preferring package delivery services so they can track their shipments on the Internet.

President Barack Obama and congressional Democrats have promised to pass sweeping health reform legislation by year's end. But before they overhaul the entire U.S. health care system - and pledge trillions in spending - they ought to consider policies that transcend traditional political divides and have already proven successful. Here's one such policy: improve patient "adherence" to doctor-ordered courses of prescription drugs. In recent years, pharmaceuticals have been integral to improving Americans' health.

Calling it an "egregious crime," a city judge sentenced a Black Guerrilla Family member to life in prison for executing a learning-disabled recruit who didn't meet standards as a drug dealer. The victim, 18-year-old Derius Harmon, was shot in the eye two days after he joined the gang because he had made mistakes handling drug money. His body was dumped in a vacant house in the 2200 block of Barclay St., where it was found May 2, 2007. On Thursday, Judge John C. Themelis sentenced Bryant Williams, 25, of the 5400 block of Todd St., to the life term, plus 20 years for using a handgun in a violent crime, after describing the killing as "one of the most egregious crimes ... that I've heard in a very long time."

A verdict could come as soon as today in a federal death penalty trial alleging vast drug conspiracy and killings by three Baltimore men known on the streets as Melvin, Miami and Moo Man. Jurors began deliberations about 4 p.m. Tuesday. If they convict Melvin Gilbert, 34, and James "Miami" Dinkins, 37, on certain charges, a sentencing phase of the trial would begin next week to determine whether the men should be put to death. A third defendant, 24-year-old Darron Goods, could receive life in prison if found guilty.

Jurors are expected to begin deliberations Tuesday in a federal death penalty case set deep within the "violent world of drug dealing, intimidation and murder" of a tiny section of Northeast Baltimore, prosecutors say, and the alleged drug ring that ran it, selling heroin and crack under one name: Special. The three defendants - Marvin Gilbert, 34; James "Miami" Dinkins, 37; and Darron "Moo Man" Goods, 24 - are accused, in various combinations, of drug conspiracy and multiple killings, including the shooting deaths of two witnesses, one of them on Thanksgiving Day in 2006.