Drug

I ASKED Donta Ellerbe, a 28-year-old Baltimorean who spent too much of his young life selling heroin in his hometown, what he would like to do for a living, now that he's sworn off the hustle, and this is what he said: "I'm a good people person. I think I would be good at customer service. " I'm guessing he'd be good at sales and marketing, too. Now, you have to appreciate the irony in that -- a drug dealer looking for a second career in customer relations. But it's not an outrageous idea.

The Essex man killed Sunday in Northwest Baltimore's Forest Park neighborhood may have been involved in an illicit drug deal, police said. Richard Erdek, 33, of Valley Orb Court, was found at 3:38 p.m. in an alley behind the 3900 of block Woodhaven Ave., near Garrison Boulevard. He was unresponsive from a gunshot wound to the chest when police located him in the driver's seat of his vehicle. The victim was taken to Sinai Hospital, where he was pronounced dead at 4:16 p.m., police said.

The drug ring was taking in $14,000 a week selling cocaine and heroin in East Baltimore Street's strip club district, but court documents say Monica McCants, who ran the gang with her son, had grown concerned about one of the dancers in her network of dealers on The Block. Cherrie Gammon, who worked at Club Pussycat, owed money to gang members, and they suspected she was feeding information about the operation to police, according to prosecutors. Police found Gammon near Leakin Park on Dec. 12, 2010, suffering from five gunshot wounds.

A 16-year-old Havre de Grace teen is facing drug charges after police saw her walking through a neighborhood early Friday morning. A Havre de Grace police officer on patrol around 3:30 a.m. in Grace Harbour, where several thefts from vehicles have been reported in recent weeks, and saw a female, carrying a large purse, duck behind two cars, Ofc. Jeff Gilpin, of the Havre de Grace Police, said. The officer drove up the street, turned off his lights and drove back down Canvasback Drive, where he saw the girl sitting on a porch.

SARASOTA. Fla. - Jason Pridie will be the first to admit his mistake. The 29-year-old outfielder has spent most of the past six years on the cusp of finding a home in the big leagues - his life-long dream just within reach. But around this time last season, Pridie's very public miscue had him worried that he might have handed himself a career-crippling sentence into baseball purgatory. Last March, Pridie was fighting for a roster spot in Oakland Athletics' spring training camp when he received a 50-game suspension for a second failed test for a recreational drug - a "drug of habit" as Major League Baseball calls it. First failed tests are kept confidential.

Major League Baseball and the players association have agreed to take the next step toward eradicating performance-enhancing drugs from the game by expanding random blood testing for human growth hormone to during the season and conducting additional testing for testosterone. Last year, players were tested for HGH during spring training, the offseason and for reasonable cause. Minor league players have been tested randomly during the season since 2010. "I think with all of us and the players, all we are looking for is a level playing field," Orioles manager Buck Showalter said Thursday after the increased testing measures, effective this season, were announced . "We are trying to keep the fans' trust that what they are seeing is real.

A glimpse over the television director's shoulder shows the next transformation involving the corner of West Fayette and Monroe. Two video screens, each the size of a compact disc box, display views from two cameras capturing a scene distilled from a book detailing a year in a West Baltimore neighborhood overrun by illegal drugs.Actors are portraying the sadness of a real father and the alienation of a real teen-age son. In take after take the boy turns away from his father's soft-spoken plea to stay in school, stepping off the curb outside the corner bar, turning his back on his old man, dropping his dreadlocked head and walking out of the picture.

The two houses are across the street from each other on Camrose Avenue in Brooklyn Park — a two story bungalow and a one-story ranch. The lawns are mowed, flowers fill the planters and one has a plastic toy basketball hoop. The narrow street starts at a cemetery on busy Ritchie Highway, sandwiched between two used motorcycle shops. But it quickly becomes typically suburban, lined with small but comfortable and well-kept homes with neatly trimmed hedges. Anne Arundel County police announced Wednesday that two weeks ago they raided the bungalow and the ranch, along with six other homes, as part of a six-month investigation into the sale of cocaine and prescription medicines.

JUST A MONTH ago, Merck & Co. withdrew its popular painkiller Vioxx from the market, citing a long-term study that showed increased risks of heart attacks among its users. At the time, Merck CEO Raymond V. Gilmartin said that the findings were unexpected. But recent news reports raise questions about what and when Merck knew about the drug's potential dangers, and whether the company was more focused on corporate profits than on consumer safety. Vioxx, which helped ease arthritis and other pain for about 20 million Americans, was a blockbuster drug for Merck, generating about $2.5 billion annually.

Drug company Amgen Inc. will pay the Maryland Medicaid system $856,474 to settle allegations that it illegally marketed and priced drugs used to treat anemia, rheumatoid arthritis and other diseases. The settlement, announced Friday by Maryland Attorney General Douglas F. Gansler, is part of a $612 million deal Illinois-based Amgen made with the federal government and several other states. As part of the settlement, Amgen's future marketing practices will also be monitored by the federal government.