TUESDAY, MAY 2, 2006
Tuesday Edition: Street Cheese: A New Drug
The latest drug to hit the street is a mixture of
Tylenol PM and heroin.
The Dallas Morning News says the street name for this
deadly mixture is "cheese."
USA Today
says while the first reports of this new mixture are in Dallas, the
Drug Enforcement Administration
has sent warnings about this new "starter heroin" to agents nationwide.
The DMN said:
Lois Jordan runs a drug counseling center in Dallas that offers
rehabilitation programs for teens, and she aided several families that
were caught up in the Plano heroin use in the late 1990s.
She
said cheese sounds a lot like "a poor man's speedball," a mixture of
cocaine and heroin. The cheap, easily obtained Tylenol PM can contain
stimulants and could provide the "rush" associated with cocaine in a
speedball, she said.
"It's
a unique combination that could give a rush of an amphetamine combined
with a floaty high of an opiate." She said the cheap cost of cheese --
it's sold in small packages for between $2 and $10 -- could entice young
users.
"The
marketing that these drug dealers put together is just phenomenal," she
said. "They really know how to tantalize kids and [exploit] their risk
factors."
Drugs
that are cheap and accessible, she said, "will increase user
experimentation," adding that kids who start using drugs at a young age
are at greater risk of addiction.
While
the mixture of heroin and Tylenol PM appears to be new, the moniker
"cheese" is not. Drug dealers and users have long used the term for
heroin and other drugs. For example, "macaroni and cheese" is slang for
a $10 bag of cocaine and a $5 bag of marijuana.
[Dallas police narcotics Deputy Chief Julian] Bernal said the Dallas Police Department has known about the new drug since around August.
"We
didn't want to glamorize this," he said. "We initially wanted to keep
this quiet, thinking it would go away. That didn't happen."
Authorities
haven't said how potent the heroin is in the cheese they've found. The
purity of different forms of heroin varies. Black tar heroin is about
30 to 34 percent pure. A more pure form of heroin that is commonly
called "white China" is 80 percent pure or higher.
Police said cheese, even though it only has between 2 and 8 percent heroin, is still highly dangerous.
Watch video from CBS11-TV in Dallas.
Straight Edge: Punk Without Drugs
Here is a story that
is worth a look. It is about a hard-core punk cultural movement
called Straight Edge. It started in the 1980s and is now making a
resurgence.
What is most
interesting about this group is that, while it maintains the culture of punk rock, those who are part of Straight Edge abstain from sex, drugs,
alcohol and sometimes even caffeine. It is not something you "join" -- it is a lifestyle.
Straight Edge members sometimes wear the mark of an X on their hands; others get X tattoos. Other use the sXe logo. See the urban dictionary for an explanation.
In fact, here is a Web site with the name sXe.
Here is some background from straightedge.com. Also, XSisterhoodX is devoted to Straight Edge girls.
It might be helpful to take a look at these links. It would be easy for those who do not
understand what Straight Edge is about to make assumptions about the
lifestyles of kids with tattoos, piercings and punk garb.
More resources:
NCAA Database
The Indianapolis Star
has published an extensive NCAA database, which purports to be "the most detailed,
publicly available database of college athletic department financial
information ever assembled." You can look, school by school, at ticket
sales, concessions, advertisements and sponsorships and much more. You
can also sort the data. The Star introduces the database with this:
It
came from forms required by the NCAA for the 2004-05 school year. While
the NCAA reports such information only in aggregate, the data is
presented here by individual school -- with the ability for users to
sort by category and conference, and to compare two schools.
The Star
obtained the forms through freedom of information requests to the 215
public schools that compete in Division I. There were 164 responses, 76
percent.
(Requests
also were sent to Division I's 112 private schools, which had no
obligation to release the information. None did. In addition, state law
in Pennsylvania and Delaware does not require its public schools to comply.)
The
numbers are presented here as they were reported to the NCAA. No
attempt was made to change or research anomalies. The NCAA does that.
Despite
improvements in accounting procedures, schools still differ in how they
report certain information. For example, some placed all contributions
in the "non-program specific" category, while others broke them down by
football, men's basketball, etc.
The Latest Big Thing: High-Dollar Aquariums
Fortune says:
Aquariums, which were
popular in the 1970s, are back. But forget the fish tanks in your
dentist's office -- these "installations," as they're called, take six
months to complete and cost as much as $600,000.
The tanks feature
specialized glass for better viewing, custom-made furniture crafted to
accentuate the colors of the fish, live coral, and rare creatures like
angelfish from New Caledonia, which sell for $3,000 each.
What Would Happen if Jurors Asked Questions?
Last summer, the
American Bar Association published a list of 19 recommendations
intended to promote more jury participation -- including allowing
jurors to ask questions in civil trials.
The (Louisville, Ky.) Courier-Journal reported:
While five states ban
jury questions in criminal trials, the rest leave the decision up to
judges.
But most judges choose not to allow them, according to an
ongoing study by the National Center for State Courts.
Only 15 percent of
judges permitted jurors to write questions for witnesses in criminal
trials, based on 8,200 returned questionnaires.
The National Center for State Court offers two lists:
What are the advantages of juror questions?
Some advantages may include:
- The
nature of juror questions often alerts the trial judge and the
attorneys when the jurors have misunderstood an important point of the
evidence or testimony, thus giving them the opportunity to correct the
misunderstanding with new witness testimony, closing arguments, or jury
instructions on the issue;
- Permitting
jurors to ask question increases the likelihood that the jury will
understand the witness testimony and give it appropriate weight during
deliberations; and
- Permitting
jurors to ask questions helps keep them alert and engaged in the trial
proceedings, thus increasing satisfaction with jury service.
What are the disadvantages of juror questions?
Some disadvantages may include:
- Permitting jurors to ask questions may confuse their role as neutral fact finders, assuming instead the role of advocates;
- Jurors
may interpret the trial judge's failure to ask a question as an
indication that the witness's testimony should be discounted;
- Jurors may be offended or angry if all of their questions are not answered; and
- Permitting jurors to ask questions of witnesses adds to the length of trial proceedings.
Lists and More Lists
I usually don't get too torked up about random rankings, but when I
can pull together a whole list of lists, it seems worthwhile.
- PCMag.com's list of the worst products released in the first quarter of 2006.
- Best Jobs in America list from Money magazine
- Top 30 pet names list from the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals
- Most-recorded shows in TiVo
- Top 10 allergy cities in America, from the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America.
We are always looking for your great ideas. Send Al a few sentences and hot links.
Editor's Note: Al's Morning Meeting is a
compendium of ideas, edited story excerpts and other materials from a
variety of Web sites, as well as original concepts and analysis. When
the information comes directly from another source, it will be
attributed and a link will be provided whenever possible. The column is
fact--checked, but depends upon the accuracy and integrity of the
original sources cited. Errors and inaccuracies found will be corrected.
Posted at 3:42:36 PM
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