Heroin

Rock singer Kurt Cobain was high on heroin and Valium when he killed himself April 5, three days before his body was discovered at his posh Seattle home.In a strange twist to the drama surrounding the Nirvana singer's death, police in Beverly Hills, Calif., reported Wednesday that his wife, Courtney Love, was arrested on drug charges April 7 -- the day before his body was found.Police and fire officials were called to the luxurious Peninsula Hotel early that morning and treated Ms. Love for a suspected heroin overdose.

A group of alleged Black Guerrilla Family members met last December to discuss a robbery with a confidential source, who, unbeknownst to them, was working with the Drug Enforcement Administration. The price of cocaine in Baltimore City at that moment was "high" at $40,000 per kilogram, agents wrote in court documents, making the proposed robbery "especially lucrative. " "Coke price [is] high and everything, but a better price is free," the source told the group. In a more recent court document, however, that estimate had tumbled by 30 percent.

Ella Thompson, whose tireless efforts to bring hope to a drug-infested West Baltimore neighborhood made her a heroine of the book "The Corner," died of a heart attack yesterday while picking up computers donated for a city recreation center. She was 47."She saw the possibilities in everybody," said David Simon, co-author of the 1997 book that portrayed the battered realities of her neighborhood. "She understood innately that a 15-year-old drug dealer is still a 15-year-old. And she understood that a 38-year-old neighbor lost to heroin addiction is still a neighbor."

With epidemic rates of prescription opioid and heroin deaths in Maryland, families are demanding easier access to the antidote that could save the lives of their loved ones. Naloxone is used safely to reverse the effects of heroin and prescription opioid medications. Emergency medical technicians administer naloxone when they respond to an overdose emergency. All too often, however, these emergency responders do not arrive in time. State law bars family members and friends who may be in the best position to save the life of a person experiencing an overdose from obtaining a prescription for naloxone in their own name and administering this medication in an emergency.

Drug money made Mumin Sahib Abdullah rich.The loft of his Owings Mills townhouse was filled with silk suits, fur coats and $600 shoes. He had four foreign cars, including a $50,000 Range Rover. His wife ran up monthly bills as high as $16,000 at Saks Fifth Avenue and spent thousands more at other chic stores. Abdullah threw champagne parties at a private club.The couple's high-flying lifestyle was financed on the streets of Baltimore. Abdullah's heroin operation, begun in 1990, was an entrepreneur's dream.

A 41-year-old Baltimore man was sentenced to 12 years in prison Friday for his role in a heroin conspiracy that spread through three Maryland counties, federal prosecutors announced. Alvin Williams Jr., who used his home to process the drug which was distributed throughout the city as well as Anne Arundel and Baltimore counties, pleaded guilty in April, after two days of trial. To date, more than two dozen of the roughly 30 people indicted in the case have pleaded guilty. The drug ring was run by Christian Gettis, who described himself during a February sentencing hearing as a family man living a double life: secretly dealing drugs while holding down a job in retail.

Two 44-year-old city men were sentenced to federal prison Friday for taking part in a heroin conspiracy that spread into Baltimore and Anne Arundel counties, the Maryland U.S. attorney's office announced. William Larry Diggs Jr. was sentenced 14 years, and his co-defendant Darrin William Scott, received a five-year term. The men were part of a vast drug ring run by Christian Gettis, who previously described himself in court as a family man living a double life: secretly dealing drugs while holding down a job in retail.

At the first GOP debate tonight in Greenville, S.C., Republican presidential candidate and U.S. Congressman Ron Paul made the case for legalizing drugs, even heroin.  In an exchange with Fox News' Chris Wallace, Paul made the point that people should have the freedom to do things to themselves that might seem crazy to others.   "You have a right to do things that are very controversial," Paul said.   "Are you sugggesting that heroin and prostitution are an exercise of liberty?"

A detention hearing will continue today in the federal case against Mark Alan Bryan, a Washington County man who is accused of selling a fatal dose of heroin to a Hagerstown college student in 2008. Bryan, 22, of Maugansville was arrested this month on federal charges of conspiracy to distribute heroin and cocaine, as well as drug distribution resulting in death. A detention hearing began Monday afternoon, but was held over after the judge determined that too many facts were in dispute to continue in the allotted time.

A Baltimore man returning from Ghana was arrested at Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport Tuesday after nearly seven pounds of heroin was found hidden in his suitcase, according to the U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Suleiman Zakaria, 26, was randomly selected by a customs officer for a secondary examination while he was in the passenger arrivals area about 6 p.m. Officers found the heroin, worth about $430,000 wholesale, in a false bottom of his suitcase, authorities said.

A federal grand jury indicted a Baltimore police officer Friday on charges that he was involved in a conspiracy to distribute heroin, cocaine, crack cocaine and marijuana. In an indictment unsealed Friday, federal prosecutors allege that Kendell L. Richburg, 36, took part in a drug scheme between January 2011 and October 2012. He is further accused of having and using two handguns to further the conspiracy. "Corrupt police officers insult the many honorable officers who serve with integrity," U.S. Attorney Rod J. Rosenstein said in a statement.

A 34-year-old Baltimore man was sentenced to 10 years in prison Monday for his role in a heroin and gun distribution ring that netted police more than a dozen weapons, $8,000 in cash and two ounces of heroin when they busted it earlier this year, according to police and the Maryland U.S. attorney's office. Keith James, 34, of the 5000 block of Harford Road, will also have to serve three years of supervised release, after pleading guilty Monday to possession of heroin with the intent to distribute it and possession of a firearm that he was prohibited from having because of a previous conviction, prosecutors said.

As efforts to crack down on the abuse of prescription drugs have worked, a new problem has emerged, with addicts who can no longer get their fix by popping pills turning to the old-fashioned street drug heroin, health and law enforcement officials say. The trend shows up in local arrests, drug seizures and overdose deaths. Drug dealers are finding new markets in the suburbs, where teenagers once got their stash from local drugstores or their parents' medicine cabinets, some experts say. "The kids who got addicted to prescription pills are flipping to heroin, and, as a result, these kids are dropping like flies," said Mike Gimbel, a longtime drug counselor in Baltimore County who now works at University of Maryland St. Joseph Medical Center.

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.

In an effort to reverse an "overwhelming increase" in heroin abuse in Ocean City this year, police in Maryland's largest beach resort launched a broad, weeks-long investigation into the local drug trade — resulting last week in the indictments of more than 20 people on felony drug charges. The large bust — which has netted more than 100 bags of heroin — comes at a time when law enforcement agencies across the state have focused on prescription drug fraud and abuse, resulting in prescription addicts unable to obtain the drugs they are dependent on turning to the streets for their fix, said Officer Michael Levy, an Ocean City police spokesman.

The national debate over legalizing marijuana should be guided as much as possible by facts ("Stirring the pot," Nov. 12). Although marijuana is listed by the DEA as a "Schedule 1" drug - the same category as heroin - the notion that cannabis is as dangerous as heroin is false. There is no scientific or medical evidence that supports lumping together marijuana and heroin. The 1972 decision to label marijuana as a Schedule 1 drug was heavily influenced by political considerations and was opposed by the American Medical Association.

A Gwynn Oak man was sentenced Wednesday to 10 years in prison for his role in a conspiracy to sell between 1 and 3 kilograms of heroin, prosecutors said. Recco F. Beaufort, 52, was the principal transporter of heroin for a drug trafficking group that processed and distributed heroin less than 1,000 feet from a charter school, according to a statement from Maryland's U.S. Attorney's Office. Beaufort delivered heroin for a New Jersey man named Charles C. "Billy" Guy, 43, to a Baltimore man named Christian Gettis, 39, the statement said.

Lecture Neurobiologist Therissa Libby, co-author of "Heroin: Its History, Pharmacology, & Treatment," gives a talk on recovery at 7 p.m. Nov. 15 at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Annapolis, 333 Dubois Road. A Q&A session follows her presentation. Information: 410-268-9639 or mpg@uuca-md.org .

A week after Malala Yousafzai was shot and gravely wounded by Taliban militants for insisting on the right of girls to get an education, the 14-year-old blogger and Internet activist has become a worldwide symbol of resistance to the extremist views of her attackers. Over the weekend, mass demonstrations in Karachi and elsewhere in Pakistan were called to demand the government crack down on Taliban operating in the Swat Valley near the border with Afghanistan, where Ms. Yousafzai lived.