Drug Addicts

Many people pick quitting smoking as their New Year's resolution. But if quitting smoking was easy, most smokers would have already done it. Tobacco is highly addictive and the process isn't easy, but quitting is possible for those who really are ready and are linked to methods that work for them, says Christine Schutzman, a certified tobacco treatment specialist who leads a free Freshstart smoking cessation program at the Cancer Institute at St. Joseph...

Linda Fletcher lives in fear of reliving a nightmare: a son dying from a heroin overdose. Her son Kris Klipner succumbed to the drug in 2007. He was 28. Klipner's half-brother battles the same kind of depression as Kris. He suffers the same heroin addiction Kris did. Kirk Fletcher, 29, is in a methadone program to help him avoid the drug. He says he has his addiction under control. But he understands his mother's fear that it will return - just as his brother's did. Linda Fletcher is hopeful that some relief is on the way. New legislation, pushed by Fletcher and other parents, backed by the state health department and passed unanimously this year by both chambers of the Maryland General Assembly, creates a statewide program allowing family members of addicts to be prescribed and trained in administering Naloxone.

With Congress about to consider even tougher action against them, 172,000 drug addicts and alcoholics are being notified this week that they face the loss of federal disability checks beginning in three years.In a letter to each recipient, the Social Security Administration is outlining the terms of a nationwide crackdown that lawmakers ordered after congressional investigators said many addicts and alcoholics use monthly checks to support their habits. The investigators also faulted Social Security for doing a poor job of monitoring addicts and getting them into treatment.

Has it been mentioned anywhere that the couple who ran the Dogwood Restaurant in Hampden tried to change the lives of desperate people while serving good food and drink? There aren't a lot of businesses willing to hire ex-offenders and recovering drug addicts. It's a bother. It comes with risks, and there are plenty of attorneys to warn clients about "negligence in hiring," and the liability that brings. But the Dogwood believed in giving second chances, so attention must be paid, however late the notice.

Most of the drug dealers I've met are drug addicts. They would not fit the TV version of a drug dealer: Bling-bling king, all smooth from drinking Remy and smoking weed, cruising the `hood in a shiny black Navigator, scooping up cash as he goes. The ones I've met do not own or lease motor vehicles; many of them live with their mothers. They sell drugs of the same variety they use. They do not make much money, and some of them wind up dead because they may have snorted dope they were supposed to sell or failed to pay their debts.

For the first time in 10 years, a community-based drug treatment center is on its way to opening in the heart of Baltimore, where the pulse of drug traffic beats fast. The basement of New Life Evangelical Baptist Church, at the corner of East North Avenue and Port Street, will soon be converted into a clinic, filling a need in the East Baltimore neighborhood, said the Rev. Milton E. Williams, the church's pastor and founder. The city's health commissioner, Dr. Peter L. Beilenson, who attended a groundbreaking ceremony Friday for the Turning Point substance abuse clinic, noted a lack of treatment and resources for drug treatment where it is needed most.

Funds for hundreds of additional drug treatment and day care slots were approved yesterday by the board overseeing Baltimore's multimillion dollar federal revitalization effort.But the approval of $6.4 million to treat 5,400 drug addicts and provide day care subsidies for 360 children rekindled a debate about whether too much money was being spent to expand existing social service programs and not enough was being directed to create jobs.The money is in addition to $34 million for business development, housing and job training programs approved last month.

HOLYOKE, Mass. (AP) -- Drug addicts trying to scrape up quick cash in this struggling mill city are turning to the unusual plunder of disposable diapers, baby formula and Tylenol, police say.Across the country, addicts in Los Angeles are likely to grab car stereos; in Miami, aluminum awnings and copper wire are snagged by those looking for ready money, police there said."

For all its wealth, Howard County invests little of its money in treatment- programs for the increasing number of heroin addicts who have few places to turn for help. In a county where the median family income is the highest in the state and it is common for homeowners to pay more than $200,000 for a house on a quarter-acre lot, there are no county-sponsored inpatient treatment centers or methadone clinics. In Howard, 342 heroin addicts sought help last year at state-certified treatment centers.

In a city where an estimated 30,000 people shoot drugs, there is no shortage of fodder for a daylong conference on addiction. But to Dr. Joshua Mitchell, chairman of Saturday's forum, "The African American Perspective on Substance Abuse," one issue surpasses all others."

Under heavy rain on a beat-up street in East Baltimore Tuesday, the heads of city government kicked off an intensive, weeklong program designed to address violence, drug trafficking and other stubborn problems that have plagued the Oliver neighborhood. The program will feature increased police patrols and a door-to-door campaign to connect drug addicts with substance abuse treatment and struggling homeowners with much-needed services to keep them in their homes. The gathering just north of Johns Hopkins Hospital launched a blitz of resources in Oliver — which the city has targeted as much for its potential as its problems.

OK news media, every story has two sides. We have seen what convicted felons, mentally disturbed and drug addicts can do with their guns, which are stolen and unregistered to say the least. Two laws broken right there! Now, let's hear from those hundreds of legal gun owners who are alive and well today because they were armed and ready when violence entered their lives.   Over 60 million people in this country own firearms legally. Positive thinking, intelligent, hard working citizens living within their rights.

A tweet linking to an offensive joke came from the Anne Arundel County Sheriff's Office early Monday morning, and was taken down with a few hours. "We are investigating it. I don't know if it was a hack, I don't know what it is," said Lt. Col. Rick Tabor, the second in command to Sheriff Ron Bateman. Reb Orrell, who said he works part-time for the sheriff's office, told The Baltimore Sun he accidentally shared the American White History Month photo that contained the statement.

Health officials still aren't certain what is causing the alarming uptick in heroin overdoses that has occurred across Maryland recently. But it would be especially disturbing if the trend turns out to be an unintended consequence of state efforts to crack down on prescription drug abuse and fraud. The concern is that people addicted to prescription drugs are now finding them harder to get, and as a result may be turning to illegal narcotics like heroin, which are cheap and relatively easy to obtain on the street but which pose even greater public health and safety risks.

Every year, some 31,000 Americans are killed with guns; nearly 340,000 more are victimized in gun-related crimes, with more than 73,000 of those treated in hospital emergency rooms for nonfatal gunshot wounds. The rate of firearms-related homicide in the U.S. is 20 times that of the next 22 richest nations combined, yet measures to reduce the loss of life and the enormous economic and social costs of gun violence have become a virtual non-issue in this year's political campaign season.

The governor of Maryland, a Democrat who fostered a reputation for being tough on crime to neutralize claims that he's some sort of liberal, says it's full speed ahead for a new juvenile jail in Baltimore — most recent price tag, $70 million. This is the sort of predictable, inside-the-box thinking we get from Martin O'Malley and from politicians of both major parties. If O'Malley had a truly progressive thought — such as proposing a complete change in how the state handles kids who commit serious crimes — that would be news.

A federal judge yesterday ordered the port of Baltimore to lease a long-term berth to a former Navy ship on which a nonprofit organization has long sought to open a drug recovery program. "It was a great day," said Reid Weingarten, a lawyer for the organization, Project Life, after U.S. District Judge William M. Nickerson's ruling. "We got a home." Project Life has sought for seven years to start a program for drug-addicted women aboard the Sanctuary, a 14,000-ton former Navy hospital ship.

Baltimore County — and specifically, Councilman Kevin Kamenetz — declared victory in a long-fought legal battle this week over whether a methadone clinic could operate in a residential area just north of the city line in Pikesville. It is a victory in that methadone clinics, just like any other business, are a good fit in some areas and not in others, and it would have been unreasonable if the Americans with Disabilities Act prevented the county or other local governments from exercising any control over where one is located.

In "The Wire,"Lester Freamon famously said, "You follow drugs, you get drug addicts and drug dealers. But you start to follow the money, and you don't know where the [bleep] it's gonna take you. " Well, it's apparently taking folks to Martha's Vineyard for a chichi Obama campaign fundraiser. To raise some cheddar for Obama, National Journal reports via the Sunlight Foundation's Party Time blog that his campaign is throwing a little street party, Baltimore-style. Except that it's on the beach, in one of the country's most elite zip codes and at the private home of not junkies or cops or even dock workers -- but socialites.

Isn't it a bit disingenuous for the University of Maryland School of Medicine to use its own research to justify locating a methadone treatment center in the 1100 block of West Pratt Street ("Study: Methadone clinics don't draw crime," May 1)? It's interesting that the school found that convenience stores bring crime to a neighborhood because of the foot traffic they generate. How else would the university describe bringing 600 or so drug addicts a day to a methadone treatment center except as generating foot traffic through the neighborhood?