NEWS
By Julie Bykowicz | June 11, 2009
About 100 recovering drug addicts marched on City Hall yesterday to protest public funding cuts that will cripple a well-known recovery program. Chanting the name of the organization, I Can't We Can, they drew the attention of City Councilman Bernard "Jack" Young, who said he is powerless to help but "stands in solidarity." Other city employees stopped to watch the group pray and tell stories about addiction and survival. Al Moy?, who credits the program with his recovery from addiction, said lives and public safety are at risk if I Can't We Can closes its doors.
NEWS
By PETER HERMANN | February 4, 2009
Christopher Nieto believes in Baltimore. His car has been broken into four times. They took his iPod, his Discman and the empty plastic suction cup that held his navigational device. They even stripped the rubber off his wiper blades. His former house in Pigtown was burglarized three times. They took two television sets, his suits, watches and two laptop computers. "I have absolutely nothing left of value anymore," he says. "I'm down to a pretty skeletal home life." Christopher Nieto also believes in his job. He is a public defender.
NEWS
By Melissa Harris | June 5, 2008
A Southwest Baltimore man who wrote notes, made threats and tried to arrange the poisoning of witnesses who were to testify at his murder trial pleaded guilty yesterday to murder and witness-intimidation charges and was sentenced to nine years in prison. Baltimore Circuit Judge Charles G. Bernstein acknowledged that Ray "Lucky" Williams' 30-year sentence, with all but nine years suspended, is "very, very lenient." Williams' previous trial ended with a hung jury, and the case against him was rife with difficulties common in Baltimore murder cases.
NEWS
By Jacques Kelly | March 28, 2008
When friends recalled Marshall Shure yesterday, they compared him to Matlock, a folksy, down-home attorney who could lull people into thinking he was their friend while he was tearing their testimony apart. He could equally play the part of father confessor and social worker. Mr. Shure, an assistant state's attorney who prosecuted vagrancy, car theft, spouse beating and drug possession cases in Baltimore's neighborhood courts - mostly in the Southern District - died of lung cancer Wednesday at the Levindale Hebrew Center and Hospital.
NEWS
By DAN RODRICKS | March 29, 2007
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.
NEWS
By Dennis O'Brien | March 16, 2007
You might think reaching for that cup of coffee or cigarette is a simple decision. But scientists believe the way we act to satisfy cravings involves a little-understood automated response - one we have no control over - and researchers in Baltimore are using brain scans to unlock its secrets. "If there's an automated component to craving, we really want to understand how it works," says Elliot Stein, director of the neuroimaging lab at the Bayview campus of the National Institute on Drug Abuse in East Baltimore.
NEWS
By Lynn Anderson | March 15, 2007
Mayor Sheila Dixon is using academic research to support the city's request for expanded drug treatment, including $5 million in Gov. Martin O'Malley's proposed budget to improve access to buprenorphine, a prescription drug that requires less monitoring than methadone and also weans addicts off heroin. Quoting research by the University of Maryland, Baltimore County that Medicaid patients receiving drug treatment were "four times less likely" to be hospitalized than those without treatment, Dixon is urging legislators to back the governor's budget and legislation that would increase the state's cigarette tax by $1 a pack, revenue that could provide treatment for an additional 7,000 city residents annually.
NEWS
By John Fritze | October 4, 2006
Hoping to make a revolutionary treatment more available for heroin users, Baltimore officials are taking the unusual step of subsidizing a training program that could more than double the number of physicians permitted to prescribe a new medication to cure opiate addiction. Buprenorphine, commonly referred to as "bupe," is being used in place of methadone to wean addicts off heroin because it can be taken at home, is less prone to abuse and is easier to discontinue when the patient is ready.
NEWS
By DAN RODRICKS | September 28, 2006
Icalled the other day for an expanded attack on the drug addiction that fuels the drug trade that fuels the violence that fuels the decline - or at least delays the progress - of the quality of life in Baltimore. It's a burden on the entire metropolitan area, on the whole state. Drug addiction has been placed at the root of 80 percent of crime. It's the reason our prisons are filled. It's why we have neighborhood crime patrols, why our courts are crazy-busy. In many cases, drug addiction is at the root of family dysfunction, and family dysfunction - compounded by poverty, ignorance, unemployment - is at the root of the cycle of failure of children and schools.
NEWS
By DAN RODRICKS | April 10, 2006
Alittle more attention must be paid: Keith Harrison, The Sun's Police Officer of the Year for excellence in community service, has been deeply engaged in the effort to get drug dealers and drug addicts out of that miserable game. We kind of missed the story the other day when we reported on Harrison's selection from among dozens of nominees across Maryland. He's done more than "set up an office where citizens can talk privately to officers about their lives." Like street-corner missionaries, Harrison and his colleagues from the Baltimore Police Department's Get Out of the Game unit have been encouraging hard-core drug offenders to change their lives.