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Cops Post Drug Flier as Facebook Joke, Public Responds With Actual Leads

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Image via the Woolwich Township Police Department

Image via the Woolwich Township Police Department

Earlier this week, the Woolwich Township Police Department in South Jersey posted this flier on its Facebook page, just having a bit of fun. But as it turns out, their little joke has actually yielded some good tips.

“The detective who did it was just joking around,” says Woolwich Township Police Chief Russ Marino. “But then it took off like crazy, and we got some very good leads. It was a total joke. But hey, I’ll take it.”

Woolwich is a town of 12,000 people in Gloucester County, New Jersey, just across the Delaware River from Marcus Hook. Marino describes it as a bedroom community and says that while drugs aren’t a huge problem in Woolwich, they do have their fair share.

“It’s no different than any other community, I guess,” he observes. “We have the normal small dealers and some stuff at the high school. We really try to keep a handle on the kids and let them know how serious this can be.”

Marino says that his investigators are currently running down the leads, and he calls some of them “very promising.” He adds that their phone has been ringing off the hook with calls from other police departments around the country that want to use the idea.

“Whatever it takes,” insists Marino. “Anything to combat this drug thing.”

Follow @VictorFiorillo on Twitter.

The post Cops Post Drug Flier as Facebook Joke, Public Responds With Actual Leads appeared first on Philadelphia Magazine.


“Heroin Antidote” Nasal Spray Gets FDA Approval

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Narcan Nasal Spray can be administered in an emergency to reverse the effects of opioid overdose until help arrives.

Narcan Nasal Spray can be administered in an emergency to reverse the effects of opioid overdose until help arrives.

Heroin usage has reached epidemic proportions in the United States — and families in Philadelphia have certainly been feeling its wrath. In fact, deaths nationally from the drug have quadrupled from 2002 to 2013, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Adapt Pharma Limited, which has its U.S. headquarters in Radnor, Pa., has a drug to help combat the heroin overdose problem — and overdoses from other opioids. On Thursday, it just won Food and Drug Administration approval.

Called Narcan Nasal Spray, the product delivers a 4 mg dose of naloxone which can be administered in an emergency by family members, caregivers or others to reverse the effects of an opioid overdose until help arrives. For years, naloxone has been used as the standard treatment for opioid overdoses, but was only FDA approved in injectable formulations. Now it can be administered as easy as allergy medication.

The FDA said that “when someone overdoses on an opioid, it can be difficult to awaken the person, and breathing may become shallow or stop – leading to death if there is no medical intervention.” But if naloxone is administered quickly, it can counter the overdose effects, usually within two minutes.

“We cannot stand by while Americans are dying,” said Dr. Stephen Ostroff, acting commissioner of the FDA. “While naloxone will not solve the underlying problems of the opioid epidemic, we are speeding to review new formulations that will ultimately save lives that might otherwise be lost to drug addiction and overdose.”

Adapt Pharma says it aims to keep pricing transparent. Group purchasers like law enforcement officials, schools and first responders are eligible for the discounted price of $37.50 per for one 4mg nasal spray device.

The post “Heroin Antidote” Nasal Spray Gets FDA Approval appeared first on Philadelphia Magazine.

Philly’s Drug Problems Are Probably Bigger Than You Think

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overdose-deaths-940x540

Drug-related overdose deaths in Pennsylvania counties in 2014 as reported to DEA Philadelphia Field Division.

The Washington, D.C.-based Drug Enforcement Administration has released its 2015 National Drug Threat Assessment Summary, and Philadelphia doesn’t exactly come out looking like the Next Great American City.

The DEA publishes the study each year, tracking drug trends throughout the country with a specific focus on international organized crime rings. The study points out that drug overdoses are now the leading cause of death by injury in the country, even exceeding deaths by guns and car accidents.

While most of the chatter about drugs in Philadelphia over the last year has been about how great and progressive it is that you can now smoke pot and not go to jail for it, the public health disaster surrounding “hard” drugs like heroin and PCP has all but disappeared from public discussion.

Oh, we always hear about the big drug busts, with law enforcement agencies proudly displaying their victorious piles of kilos, and there’s been a lot of talk of Naloxone, the drug that reverses the effects of heroin overdoses, but none of the people in charge seem to be taking the issue as seriously as it needs to be taken.

Neither Mayor Nutter nor Mayor-Elect Jim Kenney have had much of substance to say about the drug epidemic we face, and not one of the mayoral candidates this year appeared to make drug addiction a priority. And we’re pretty sure it hasn’t come up in the presidential debates.

“We haven’t committed to the idea of dealing with addiction as a public health issue,” says Thomas McLellan, the deputy director of President Obama‘s Office of National Drug Control Policy from 2009 through 2012 and founder of the Philadelphia-based Treatment Research Institute.

“But it’s not all the politicians’ fault,” he adds. “The public gets what it wants if it’s vocal enough. Affected individuals haven’t stepped up the way they have with HIV, depression and breast cancer, and neither have their families, because everyone is shy and embarrassed and stigmatized. But now that the Affordable Health Care Act and the Mental Health Parity Act have passed, this is no longer an issue of stigma. This is an issue of discrimination.”

According to McLellan, less than a quarter of the medical schools, fewer than a third of pharmacy schools, and not even 10 percent of the nursing schools in the United States offer a single course on substance abuse.

“We could have progress in drug abuse,” he insists. “We know exactly what to do. We just haven’t done it yet.”

We took a look at the DEA report (in full below) and pulled out some of the most interesting findings regarding Philadelphia and the region:

• Heroin availability is high and on the increase. Prominent University of Pennsylvania researcher Charles O’Brien — UPenn’s Center for Addiction Treatment is named after him — confirms to Philadelphia magazine that the center’s patients tell the doctors there about the “easy availability” of the drug. Almost all of the heroin moving through Philadelphia is of South American origin.

Source: DEA's 2015 National Drug Threat Assessment Summary

Source: DEA’s 2015 National Drug Threat Assessment Summary

• As with most cities in America, the availability of prescription drugs for illegal use in Philadelphia is high, but unlike most cities in America, it’s getting worse here. The DEA says that availability has stabilized or gone down in most places, with Philadelphia, San Diego and Detroit being the exceptions.

• Methamphetamine sales have stabilized, but coke dealers have begun pushing meth when the coke supply gets low.

• Speaking of cocaine, the drug’s availability is at historically low levels throughout the country, but not in Philadelphia. Only Philly and Boston report high levels of cocaine, most of which comes to us in large shipments from Arizona, California, and Texas. As you might have guessed, the majority of cocaine still originates in Colombia.

• The availability of synthetic cannabinoids (better known by names like Spice and K2) and cathinone (the dreaded bath salts) has actually gone down, whereas in New Jersey it has gone up.

• For some ungodly reason, people in Philadelphia are using PCP more and more. The DEA says that the dealers have been traced to Philadelphia’s public housing projects as well as to North and Northeast Philadelphia.

• The study cites a New Jersey State Police report that showed that 60 percent of the people who overdosed on heroin in Camden, New Jersey during a set time period weren’t actually Camden residents. They just went there to score.

How are the drugs getting here?

• According to the DEA, thanks to increased law enforcement activity in the southeastern United States, which has chased their operations elsewhere, Mexican Transnational Criminal Organizations are increasingly using Philadelphia as a business hub. The Sinaloa Cartel, operating out of the Mexican states of Chihuahua, Baja California, Durango and Sonora, is the primary Mexican cartel operating in Philadelphia. Same for Camden, Atlantic City and most northeastern cities.

• While the Mexican cartels control much of the drug supply coming into Philadelphia, the report says, it is the local Dominican criminal organizations who handle most of the mid-level distribution.

• As of 2013, there were nearly 169 gangs involved in the local drug trade. These include street gangs, outlaw motorcycle gangs and prison gangs. Compare that with the 500 or so gangs in Los Angeles County.

The DEA subsequently released a study of drug overdose death data in Pennsylvania specifically. The study found that heroin was detected in the systems of the majority of Pennsylvania overdose victims in 2014. About half of the overdoses also involved a benzodiazepine — usually Xanax. The average overdose victim is a white male between 31 and 45, although the 46-60 age group was close behind.

Follow @VictorFiorillo on Twitter.

The post Philly’s Drug Problems Are Probably Bigger Than You Think appeared first on Philadelphia Magazine.

Eight Charged With Selling Heroin Near Kensington School, Playground

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Children line up at the Lewis Elkin Elementary School in Kensington (Photo via Google Maps)

Children line up at the Lewis Elkin Elementary School in Kensington (Photo via Google Maps)

Just weeks after the Drug Enforcement Administration released a report claiming that heroin availability is up in Philadelphia when it’s down in most other parts of the country, another branch of the Department of Justice has announced charges against eight people for allegedly dealing drugs in Kensington, including at locations within 1,000 feet of a neighborhood school and playground.

According to United States Attorney Zane David Memeger, the following Philadelphia residents were part of the Kensington drug ring: Jorge “Hansel” Balbuena, 29; Yan Mota Soto, 25; Luis Garcia, 35; Jose Garcia, 35; Ysidro “Pisa Pie” Garcia, 67; Elvin De Jesus, 26; Pedro Angel Montes-Perez, 24; and Gary Cuevas-Reyes, 27.

The feds say that Balbuena was the leader of the ring, which is accused of unleashing crack, cocaine and heroin onto the streets of Philadelphia, including within 1,000 feet of the Lewis Elkin Elementary School on D Street and the Hissey Center Park Playground on Indiana Avenue. Under federal law, penalties can triple if a suspect is convicted of selling drugs that close to a school or playground.

In addition to allegedly selling heroin, Soto is said to have served as a driver and interpreter for Balbuena. He’s also accused of obtaining the cell phones used by dealers. Ysidro Garcia is the father of twin brothers Luis and Jose Garcia, and the trio allegedly operated out of the area of D Street and Indiana Avenue.

The only defendant that is a United States citizen is Montes-Perez, say prosecutors. The rest are citizens of the Dominican Republic. That same DEA report released in November stated that Dominican criminal organizations control most of the mid-level distribution of drugs in Philadelphia.

The offenses are alleged to have occurred between March 2014 and October 2015. Balbuena, Jose Garcia, De Jesus, Cuevas-Reyes, and Montes-Perez were all arrested on Thursday morning.

The post Eight Charged With Selling Heroin Near Kensington School, Playground appeared first on Philadelphia Magazine.

Cop Uses Well-Known Beatles Rumor to Capture Montco LSD Suspect

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"Pink Elephants on Parade Blotter LSD Dumbo" by Psychonaught - Own work. Licensed under Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.

Pink Elephants on Parade Blotter LSD Dumbo” by PsychonaughtOwn work. Licensed under Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons. Not the actual LSD in the bust.

It’s Christmastime, which means one thing: The Beatles are in the news.

Usually this is because there is some new Beatles-related product you can buy for people at Christmas. We already have an enhanced 1+ album and DVD of No. 1 singles this year. And this morning music fans awakened to some news: The Beatles would be available on streaming services starting tomorrow, Christmas Eve.

But The Beatles are also in the news because of a Montgomery County police detective. On December 1st, a Lansdale cop arrested a Colmar man for selling him what the alleged dealer called LSD.

The Reporter’s Michael Goldberg describes how that alleged transaction went down:

A detective who is a member of both the Lansdale police Street Crimes Unit and the Montgomery County District Attorney’s Office Drug Task Force alleged in court documents that on Dec. 1, he received information that someone had created a Craigslist post that read, “Lucy anyone? (Lansdale) lucy in the sky with diamonds … e-mail me and we’ll go from there.”

The detective said that based on his experience as a drug investigator, he knew that the term “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds” is commonly used as a reference to LSD and he replied to the advertisement, according to an affidavit of probable cause.

Crime, including drug crime, is not a new Craigslist phenomenon, though it’s amazing how obvious this dealer allegedly was. The detective did not really need his experience as a drug investigator to know that this guy was selling drugs. He could have googled it, or looked up the song’s Wikipedia page, which has a section titled “LSD Rumors.” (Lennon, for one, denied it’s about drugs.)

In the meantime, don’t go selling any drugs on Craigslist while using popular, obvious song titles as code words. So no selling “Puff, the Magic Dragon” or “White Lines.” Certainly don’t label yourself Dr. Feelgood.

Follow @dhm on Twitter.

The post Cop Uses Well-Known Beatles Rumor to Capture Montco LSD Suspect appeared first on Philadelphia Magazine.

Prosecutor: Baby Dies After High Mom Rolls on Top of Her

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Lisa Scalia with her daughter (Facebook) / Lisa Scalia mugshot (Atlantic County)

Lisa Scalia with her daughter (Facebook) / Lisa Scalia mugshot (Atlantic County)

The Atlantic County Prosecutor’s Office has announced the death of seven-month-old Ventnor girl Olaia Marie Mejia after her mother allegedly rolled on top of her while she was high.

Lisa Scalia, 30, was charged with endangering the welfare of a child and four counts of drug possession after paramedics responded to her home on January 3rd, finding the child unresponsive. The infant was originally treated at the AtlantiCare Regional Medical Center before being transferred to St. Christopher’s Hospital for Children here in Philadelphia, where she died on Friday.

In light of the child’s death, Scalia could face additional and much more serious charges depending on the results of an autopsy being conducted by the Philadelphia Medical Examiner’s Office. According to prosecutors, Scalia was high on drugs when she rolled on top of the baby. She was allegedly found in possession of synthetic opioid Suboxone, oxycodone, heroin and Lyrica.

The baby’s father, Marco Mejia, has taken to Facebook both to mourn the loss of his infant daughter but also to ask for compassion for Scalia.

“With a heavy heart I would like to inform everyone that my baby girl, my heart and soul, my lil miracle baby, has left to be with God,” he wrote on Friday. “She was pronounced dead at 8:30 this morning…. we thank u for all the prayers, love and support I am sure Olaia heard them…. I have decided to allow my babies organs to be donated with the hope that she will bring a miracle to another family.”

And on Sunday, as news of the baby’s death spread, he had this to say:

Please everyone remember that Lisa Marie loved Olaia Marie … she definitely made the biggest mistake anyone can make but I refuse to believe she did this horrible act on purpose… no one is in more pain than me except probably her… if I can forgive her I know everyone can forgive her… Please pray for her as well.. Thank you everyone for all the love

Scalia is being held in Atlantic County Jail in lieu of $100,000 bail.

Follow @VictorFiorillo on Twitter.

The post Prosecutor: Baby Dies After High Mom Rolls on Top of Her appeared first on Philadelphia Magazine.

Ted Cruz Shares Emotional Story of His Half-Sister’s Overdose Death in Delco

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Republican presidential candidate, Sen. Ted Cruz. | Photo by Elise Amendola/AP

Republican presidential candidate, Sen. Ted Cruz. | Photo by Elise Amendola/AP

U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz is usually a rabble-rouser when he delivers a stump speech on the campaign trail. Thursday night at a church in Hooksett, N.H., he was anything but as he shared the story of his half-sister Miriam’s drug addiction and an attempt he and his father made to rescue her.

Miriam’s journey from untroubled childhood to addicted adulthood began when Cruz’s father, Rafael, divorced Miriam’s mother — and it ended in a crack house near Philadelphia. 

Miriam, it appears, resented her father for divorcing her mother. Cruz said in New Hampshire Thursday that she abused drugs and alcohol and would steal his allowance money. According to an article in Britain’s Daily Mail that explores Miriam’s life in detail, she developed a full-blown drug addiction after she was put on painkillers.

At the time, Miriam was married to Larry Maykopet, with whom she had a son, Joe. Cruz told the audience in New Hampshire how he took a $20,000 cash advance on his credit card to put his nephew through school at Valley Forge Military Academy.

As the New York Times related the story, Cruz also told the crowd he and his father tried to find Miriam at crack house in Philadelphia, though he appears to have meant Darby, Pa. “We were driving to a crack house,” he said. “We didn’t know what was going to happen there.”

The two found Miriam and took her to a diner to try to talk her out of her habit. “She wouldn’t listen. She kept going on and on,” Cruz said. “She was angry. She said, ‘Daddy missed my swim meet in high school.'”

They reminded Miriam about her son, Joe, but “she wouldn’t hear of it,” Cruz said.

Cruz went on to say that Miriam improved for a while, but in 2011, she died of an overdose. According to the Daily Mail, she overdosed on several prescription drugs in Darby.

“Her son found her in her bed,” Cruz told the New Hampshire audience. “The coroner ruled it accidental. We’ll never know. We just got the call one day that Miriam was gone.”

Cruz’s new memoir, A Time for Truth, contains more about his relationship with his half-sister and her husband, whom Miriam divorced in 1993 after six years of marriage and three of separation. According to the Mail story, Cruz accused Maykopet of being physically abusive towards her.

It was after the divorce was finalized that Miriam landed in this area. She soon acquired an criminal record, starting with pleading guilty to retail theft in Darby. It was after that 1996 incident that Ted and Rafael Cruz tried to step into her life. After the intervention failed, Miriam went on to be convicted of committing a series of petty crimes and traffic violations across Delaware County. She was sentenced to two to 23 months in jail after being found guilty of a 2004 robbery of a Pathmark store in Darby; after two months, she was released on parole only to become involved with a man with a drug problem.

In 2010, after police she said she relieved a Wawa in Collingdale of candy and paper cups, they searched her purse and allegedly found several pills and prescription painkillers, making her arrest here her first on drug possession charges. When she died in 2011 in Darby, she was awaiting trial for a later alleged theft from a CVS store in Collingdale.

In recent years, there has been a rising tide of drug overdoses in Philadelphia’s suburbs, where death rates have in some communities have surpassed the city’s.

Cruz ultimately used the story of Miriam to make a point about drug policy in New Hampshire, where heroin addiction is a serious problem. In a roundtable discussion following his speech, he said that while he supported a Senate program to fund anti-drug efforts, “it’s not going to be the government that solves this.” Instead, he said, churches and charities that worked on the front lines will take the lead.

Follow Sandy Smith on Twitter.

The post Ted Cruz Shares Emotional Story of His Half-Sister’s Overdose Death in Delco appeared first on Philadelphia Magazine.

State Could Ban Cold Medicine Sales to Minors

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Wikimedia Commons | MarkBuckawicki

Wikimedia Commons | MarkBuckawicki

The war on cold medicine continues.

State Sen. Stewart Greenleaf, a Republican who serves parts of Bucks and Montgomery counties, told colleagues this week he will sponsor a bill that bans over-the-counter sales of certain cold medicines to children under the age of 18.

The medicines — Robitussin, Tylenol Cough & Cold, and NyQuil — contain an ingredient, dextromethorphan, that helps suppress coughs. It can also help you get high.

“Unfortunately, some teens are abusing DXM by consuming these medicines in large amounts,” Greenleaf said in a Tuesday memo to colleagues, using a shorthand, DXM, to identify the drug. He said a recent study shows a third of teens use the medicine to get high.

His proposed bill would require sellers to request identification of any purchaser who appears to be 25 or younger. Stores would pay a minimum fine of $250 for the first violation, escalating to $500-a-ticket for subsequent violations. Nine states, including New Jersey, already have such legislation in place, Greenleaf said.

Restrictions on cold and allergy medicines have increased in recent years, starting with efforts to curb sales of brands that contained ephedrine and pseudoephedrine, ingredients that were also useful in the making of methamphetamines. That process, though, involved toxic chemicals and hidden-away labs. Consuming DXM, it seems, is easier: Just abuse the stuff that’s already in your medicine cabinet.

Greenleaf proposes to curb teen access to the drugs.

“Restricting access to products with DXM to minors,” he wrote, “can help in the effort to prevent teen cough medicine abuse.”

The post State Could Ban Cold Medicine Sales to Minors appeared first on Philadelphia Magazine.


12 Things You Might Not Know About Philly and LSD

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Photo | DEA.gov

Photo | DEA.gov

When news broke last weekend that a trio of kids at Villanova University went on bad LSD trips — two got arrested for dealing — you probably thought: Huh. Kids are still doing LSD? Turns out drugs are like fashion; everything old is eventually new again. Here, a look back at the history of LSD in Philly and elsewhere.

1. Ergot, a fungus found in spoiled rye, was used as a folk medicine for centuries; it helped ease childbirth and stemmed bleeding afterward. But too much ergot caused the illness known as “St. Anthony’s fire.” The fungus ran rampant in Germany in the Middle Ages, poisoning hundreds of victims and causing convulsions and hallucinations; it’s also been blamed for the Salem witch trials and an outbreak in Russia in the 1920s that killed 10,000 people. In 1938, a Swiss chemist, Albert Hoffman, ingested a dose of a synthetic facsimile of the fungus that he’d created — lysergic acid diethylamide — and went into “a not unpleasant intoxicated-like condition” in which he saw bizarre lights, shapes and colors, as he reported to his boss. His later experiments showed LSD caused behavior changes in cats (they became scared of mice, for example), made aquarium fish swim in strange patterns, and altered the way spiders built their webs.

2. Doctors and psychologists investigated the drug’s effects on people for many years, studying whether it could ease depression, chronic migraines and PTSD, among other illnesses. Bill Wilson, the depressive Californian who founded Alcoholics Anonymous, took LSD in therapy in 1956 and experienced the opening of the “doors of perception” and “essential All-Rightness” of the universe; he credited the experience with saving his life. Steve Jobs called taking LSD in the ’70s “one of the two or three most important things I have done in my life” and suggested adding it to the nation’s water supply.

3. In his 2008 book Philadelphia Freedom: Memoir of a Civil Rights Lawyer, Temple Law professor David Kairys discusses his legal work for the family of Frank Olson, a scientist who threw himself from a 13th-story window in 1953 after being given LSD by CIA officials. Olson’s death led to a cover-up that wasn’t made public until decades later.

4. John C. Lilly, a Penn-trained neuroscientist whose work in West Philly centered on trying to locate “the conscious self” in the brain, took LSD in the 1960s after being introduced to the drug by colleagues at the National Institutes of Mental Health. His work inspired the 1973 movie Day of the Dolphin; according to his New York Times obituary, he dreamed of creating “a floating living room where humans and dolphins could chat.”

5. Speaking of Penn, in 1961, Ira Einhorn, who’d won a football scholarship there, dropped out to travel to California, where he dropped acid with Ken Kesey. When Einhorn returned to Philadelphia in 1964, he made a name for himself as the city’s leading hippie, taught at Penn’s Free University, made friends with the likes of Abbie Hoffman and Allen Ginsberg, and in 1972 met blond, beautiful former high-school cheerleader Holly Maddux. Maddux moved in with him within days and lived with him until she vanished in 1977. Her body was found nearly two years later, mummified inside a trunk in Einhorn’s closet. Einhorn fled the country on the eve of his 1981 murder trial, was convicted in absentia in 1991, and in 2001 was finally extradited from France and tried again. Though he claimed to have been framed by the CIA, he was convicted and sentenced to life in prison without parole.

6. Over the years, there have been regular bursts of LSD use locally. In 1991, 15 students at two Medford high schools were arrested for it; in 1993, 10 students at Pennsbury middle and senior high schools were arrested for LSD and pot. An Upper Merion freshman and three Quakertown teens were arrested for LSD use in 1995, as was a Council Rock High senior in 1996. In 1999, three Central Bucks middle-schoolers were arrested for the drug. In 2012, two schoolboys from Easton, ages seven and 10, ingested LSD from a bottle of breath mints they found on the street. And just last year, a Colmar man was busted after advertising “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds” on Craigslist. Annual surveys taken nationwide between 1975 and 1997 showed the least LSD use reported by the class of 1986.

7. The Drug Enforcement Administration says current LSD samples contain from 20 to 80 micrograms of the drug per dose, far less than in the 1960s and ’70s, when the range was from 100 to 200 micrograms per dose, and sometimes even more.

8. In January 2012, in what Philly police called the biggest bust of its kind in 15 years, five people were arrested in connection with a $15,000-a-week LSD ring operating out of Drexel University. A raid on the suspects’ West Philadelphia apartment yielded 9,500 tabs of LSD on paper printed with images of Homer Simpson and Spongebob. Those arrested included anti-war activist Raphael Zappala and one of the founders of the FDR skate park.

9. In May of that same year, a “psychedemia” conference at Penn examined “visionary art and psychedelic culture.” Penn medical ethics professor Jonathan Moreno told the Inquirer that the government’s crackdown on medical research into psychedelic drugs in the 1960s was “extremely destructive. It created a major stigma.”

10. In “The Gang Gets Invincible,” the second episode of the third season of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Frank drops acid during an Eagles tailgate, gets locked in a bathroom, and winds up in a trash can.

11. In 2014, Radnor Township police arrested a man on LSD after he walked down the street swinging two “aggressive-looking” machetes. What is it with the suburbs and acid?

12. A 2012 Daily News report on that guy in Florida who ate the face of another guy led to one of our all-time-favorite corrections, as headlined on the website of journalism’s Poynter Institute: “Philadelphia Daily News Clarifies That Bath Salts Are Not LSD.” Glad they set that straight.

Follow @SandyHingston on Twitter.

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WATCH: Man ODs on Bus, Revived by Upper Darby Police

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A screenshot from the video depicting an overdose and revival aboard a bus in Upper Darby.

A screenshot from the video depicting an overdose and revival aboard a bus in Upper Darby.

Upper Darby police on Tuesday released this dramatic video of a man overdosing aboard a SEPTA bus — then being revived by officers using Narcan, an anti-overdose drug.

NBC10 reports the incident happened last Thursday. Michael Meeney, 25, overdosed a collapsed; Upper Darby Officer Matt Rugh gave Meeney a dose of Narcan. Meeney soon was awake and talking. He was taken to a nearby hospital — and ultimately charged with heroin possession.

Upper Darby Chief Michael Chitwood said we was troubled about how to handle addiction issues; this was the department’s 54th overdose save in the last year.

“OK, we saved a life, for what? So they can continue to feed the path of addiction?” Chitwood said. “They need help. We as a society need to help them.”

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Casey on Pa. Overdose Epidemic: “We’re Leading in a Category We Don’t Want to Be Leading”

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bob-casey-overdose-deaths-940x540

Drug overdose deaths have rapidly increased in recent years and experts say this is due in large part to abuse of prescription painkillers and heroin addiction. The number of Americans who die annually from heroin addiction has increased by 244 percent since 2007. In 2013 alone overdoses from prescription pain medications killed more than 16,000 people. Drug overdose now exceeds car crashes as the No. 1 cause of injury-related death in the United States.

Pennsylvania has been hit hard by the rising epidemic. According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, 2,732 people in Pa. died of drug overdoses in 2014 and overdose deaths have increased by 12.9% in one year from 2013-2014. As Pennsylvania Senator Bob Casey said in a conference call this morning, “We’re leading in a category we don’t want to be leading. Pennsylvania is third in the nation for heroin deaths.”

It is also striking that the rise in overdose deaths has a strong connection to opioid painkillers. In 2013, opioid painkillers caused 71.3% of prescription drug overdoses. A person who is addicted to painkillers is also 40 times more likely to be addicted to heroin according to the National Institute of Health. The largest demographic of people who overdose on heroin has shifted from blacks to non-Hispanic whites.

There appears to be strong bipartisan support for The Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act (CARA) in Congress, which aims to provide states with more resources for prevention and recovery treatment. The bill would: expand evidence-based treatment services and medications; give local law enforcement and other first responders access to medicine that counters the effects of an overdose; improve prescription drug monitoring programs; increase access to medical treatment for incarcerated drug users; and expand preventative education.

The bill currently proposes up to $312 million over the 2016-2021 period but Senator Casey is helping to push an amendment that would increase the funding by $600 million. “We need to make sure that states have more resources, which they will not have if we pass CARA without this amendment. They don’t need the hot air of someone giving more speeches in Washington. They need dollars.” Casey emphasized that the local healthcare providers that deal with drug addiction and drug overdose know what treatments are effective, but they need financial support to providing that treatment.

When asked where the money will come from, Casey responded that they could find the money within existing appropriations adding, “Washington figures out a way to pay for a lot of things that are less important and more expensive.”

The post Casey on Pa. Overdose Epidemic: “We’re Leading in a Category We Don’t Want to Be Leading” appeared first on Philadelphia Magazine.

Cops: Main Line Dad Left 3-Year-Old Home Alone So He Could Go Smoke Weed

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Stanley Lee Hampton in a photo provided by the Tredyffrin Police Department.

Stanley Lee Hampton in a photo provided by the Tredyffrin Police Department.

A Main Line dad is in  trouble with police after he allegedly left his 3-year-old child home alone so that he could go out and get high.

The Tredyffrin Township Police Department says that officers conducted a routine traffic stop on West Valley Road on Tuesday morning just before 9 a.m., pulling over a vehicle being driven by 29-year-old Stanley Lee Hampton of Wayne. Police say it had a busted rear light.

As the cops were talking to Hampton, they say they smelled that oh-so-familiar odor of marijuana, and they arrested Hampton, charging him with possession of marijuana, possession of drug paraphernalia and driving without a license.

Well, while Hampton was in the squad car en route to the police station, he allegedly made a startling admission to the cops: Police say that Hampton told them that he had left his 3-year-old child home alone.

The cops in Tredyffrin got in touch with the Radnor Police Department, which launched its own investigation. Hampton was subsequently charged with endangering the welfare of a child and reckless endangerment. He remains in jail in lieu of $50,000 bail, and a preliminary hearing is scheduled for March 17th.

Follow @VictorFiorillo on Twitter.

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Another Nice Spring Day, Another Villanova LSD Bust

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Was it just last month that a bunch of Villanova University kids went on bad LSD trips, resulting in two arrests and four hospitalizations? It sure was. Radnor Township cops confiscated $9,000 and 37 tabs of acid in February, and we pretty much assumed that was that, even though only a few years back, cops broke up what they said was a $1 million LSD ring operating out of Drexel University.

Well, Radnor cops were back on Villanova’s campus on Saturday to make another LSD bust. John Patrick Visser, a 19-year-old freshman from Aurora, Colorado, was arrested after campus police found paper dose tags and bottles of a liquid they believe to be LSD in a dorm room at Good Counsel Hall on the college’s South Campus. That’s the same dorm where the students involved in last month’s incident lived.

Though there’s no mention of this in the account in Villanova’s student newspaper, the Delco Times reports that a group of students visited Valley Forge National Historical Park on Saturday, when, you may recall, the weather was quite nice. When one of the group, a 19-year-old male, didn’t return to campus after the outing, fellow students reported him missing. He was eventually found by park rangers and taken to Phoenixville Hospital, suffering from a “bad reaction” to LSD.

That launched the investigation by campus security personnel that uncovered the blotter paper — enough for 3,800 LSD tabs — and bottles of liquid, according to Villanova’s director of public safety, David Tedjeske. Visser was charged with multiple crimes, including receiving stolen property, possession of drug paraphernalia, and possession with intent to deliver a controlled substance. He spent a night in Delaware County jail before posting $5,000 bond.

After last month’s arrests, Father John Stack, vice president of student life, sent out an email to students and parents warning about the recent drug-related incident on campus, warning that students found to be involved in drug use could be suspended or expelled, and asking that students report any information they had about LSD use to public safety. At that time, Tedjeske told the student paper he couldn’t remember another incident involving LSD at the school. This time around, he told the student paper he believes the two incidents are related and that Visser was a “major source” of the drug for both. He told the Delco Times, “I’m optimistic it is the last of it,” and added that students “cooperated and were helpful” in the investigation.

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The post Another Nice Spring Day, Another Villanova LSD Bust appeared first on Philadelphia Magazine.

Medical Marijuana Could Be Law in Pennsylvania Very Soon

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iStockphoto.com | OpenRangeStock

iStockphoto.com | OpenRangeStock

After a long battle, medical marijuana is poised to be made into law in Pennsylvania.

The House of Representatives passed the bill earlier this week; the Senate will be able to vote on the bill as early as Monday.

“I applaud the Pennsylvania House for passing legislation to legalize medical marijuana, and I look forward to the Senate sending the bill to my desk,” Gov. Tom Wolf said in a statement. “We will finally provide the essential help needed by patients suffering from seizures, cancer, and other illnesses.”

Pennsylvania’s medical marijuana bill legalizes marijuana for the following conditions: Cancer, HIV/AIDS, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, Parkinson’s disease, multiple sclerosis, epilepsy, inflammatory bowel disease, neuropathies, Huntington’s disease, Crohn’s disease, post-traumatic stress disorder, intractable seizures, glaucoma, autism, sickle cell anemia, damage to the nervous tissue of the spinal cord with objective neurological indication of intractable spasticity, and severe chronic or intractable pain of neuropathic origin, or if conventional therapeutic intervention and opiate therapy is contraindicated or ineffective. Those with terminal illnesses can also qualify for medical pot.

In order to be approved for medical marijuana, a physician involved in the ongoing care of a patient must give a certification during an in-person visit. Doctors must take a four-hour course in order to issue certifications. The state will also issue 25 grower licenses. The Pennsylvania Department of Health will be in charge of issuing medical marijuana patient ID cards and licenses.

The state can license up to 50 dispensaries, which can have three locations each; there could be up to 150 medical marijuana dispensaries in the state. These stores will be licensed to sell pills, oils, gels, creams, ointments, tinctures, liquid, and non-whole plant forms for administration through vaporization. Edibles were not legalized. Smoking marijuana will remain illegal.

Daylin Leach, a state senator who represents parts of Delaware and Montgomery counties, was one of the bill’s co-sponsors in the Senate. Leach’s bill passed last year, but the Senate must vote on it again because the house added some amendments.

“Twenty three states have legalized medical cannabis in the United States,” Leach said in a statement. “When the Senate passed Senate Bill 3 last year, national experts agreed that it would be the best medical cannabis protocol in the country. I intend to sit down with Senator Folmer and the advocates to review the House’s changes to our bill while keeping in mind our goal from the beginning of this process: to provide medicine to as many patients as possible, as soon as possible.”

Parents of children with epilepsy were particularly vocal about the legalization of the drug. Dana Ulrich, of Berks County, has been fighting for years to legalize marijuana as a treatment for her daughter’s epilepsy. “We’re at the top and we’re ready to slide down and throw our hands up in the air,” Angela Sharrer, another parent with a daughter with epilepsy, told York’s Fox 43.

Voter approval of medical marijuana in Pennsylvania is somewhere near 90 percent. At this week’s hearing, Rep. Mike Vereb of Montgomery County, said he was once a marijuana opponent but changed his opinion after hearing testimony. Some weren’t swayed. The Morning Call reports:

Anecdotal evidence shows marijuana can help the sick, but there’s no hard research to back up those claims, said Rep. Becky Corbin, R-Chester, a chemist. There are no studies that show how the chemical compounds will interact with other medicines and with heat and humidity in the environment. Without those studies, Corbin said she cannot support the bill.

If the senate approves the amended House bill, it will go to Gov. Wolf’s desk. He says he will sign it.

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The post Medical Marijuana Could Be Law in Pennsylvania Very Soon appeared first on Philadelphia Magazine.

Penn Study: Painkiller Prescriptions on the Rise

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iStockphoto.com | DanielAzocar

iStockphoto.com | DanielAzocar

Are prescription painkillers playing a role in increasing rates of addiction and overdose from prescription opioid painkillers? A study published this month in the Journal of the American Medical Association by researchers at Penn Medicine doesn’t go as far to say doctors’ pain treatment methods are the cause, but shows they have become much more lenient in recent years with prescribing opioid medications — both in larger doses and more frequently — after low-risk surgeries.

“I think much of this pattern probably derives from good intentions, says Mark Neuman, senior author of the Penn Medicine study. “It also reflects the fact that there are only so many options for patients who have pain.” The researchers say more work is needed to see how pain prescriptions plays into the addiction and overdose epidemic.

Addiction and overdose from prescription opioid medications has been on the rise over the past decade and the increase has been especially rapid in recent years. While the drug overdose death rate has more than doubled since 2000, overdoses from opioid drugs hit a record high in 2014 with a 14% increase in just one year. And Pennsylvania in particular has been hit hard by this phenomenon. Today 2.1 million people are addicted to opioid painkillers and we’ve also seen a rise in heroin addiction, which is related to opioid use.

On March 18th, the CDC issued new guidelines for physicians treating chronic pain with opioid medication and health policy experts have been trying to curtail the epidemic at the local level. Meanwhile, Congress is working on bi-partisan legislation to help prevent the increase in heroin related overdose deaths.

But how did opioid prescriptions become so lenient in the first place? Director of pain medicine and palliative care at Penn Medicine, Dr. Michael Ashburn, says that “In the ’90s, thought leaders were concerned about the under-treatment of pain.”

Doctors were concerned that their patients were suffering more than they should given the availability of treatment methods. In response to this perception, the Joint Commission, a non-profit that accredits health care organizations and programs, passed new requirements that all patients must have their pain assessed and treated. Health care organizations like hospitals or private practices started to create policies saying a patient should get treatment if they self-report a certain level of pain on a 0-10 scale. The treatment is often opioid painkillers. If the patient continues to report high levels of pain, the physician is supposed to continue providing treatment.

“The problem is that pain is not like blood pressure,” Ashburn says, “it’s an emotional experience. It’s hard for me to equate a 7 out of 10 for me to what it could be for you. Its virtually impossible for a provider to treat a number.”

Some doctors prescribe pain medications to a patient following a surgery or a painful incident, but there are also doctors, like Dr. Ashburn of Penn Medicine, who specialize in treating chronic pain when there are no surgical alternatives. Even among pain specialists, who are well aware of potential addiction, there can be an over reliance on these medications in part because of limitations on health services. Insurance companies can sometimes make it harder for people to get the holistic pain management care that they need.

“Proper care for chronic pain could involve behavioral therapy like helping people quit smoking, diet, or weight loss,” Ashburn says. “A really significant barrier is access to psychological care. No Medicaid program in Pennsylvania pays for psychological services even though Medicaid patients could benefit most from these services.”

In this way, insurance companies can make patients vulnerable to the dangers of opioid medications when they don’t cover services that could improve the root cause of a patient’s chronic pain.

Even if insurance companies do cover a certain treatment like substance abuse or psychological therapy, they often only allow patients to get treatment from a limited number of professionals who might not work in the same office as the pain management specialist. Research shows that fragmented care is typically less effective than integrated care. Penn Medicine’s pain management office is seeing an increasing number of patients with substance abuse addictions, making this aspect of treatment increasingly necessary to secure in-house.

Where do we go from here? Creating more guidelines to scale back opioid prescriptions and doses is an important step, but not the whole picture. Penn Medicine’s Neuman says that one direction research should go from here would be looking into why doctors often avoid using alternative methods like non-opioid prescriptions and regional nerve blocks. Ashburn emphasizes that part of moving forward has to involve teaching people how to store and properly dispose of their medications to prevent kids or other family members from using them. Breaking down the barriers posed by insurance coverage looks like it will be a more drawn-out battle, but its importance seems clear.

“While perhaps we’re treating pain better,” Ashburn says, “more people are dying. We have to strike a balance between compassionate effective pain care and efforts to make sure we don’t hurt our patients, our patients’ children, or their families.”

The post Penn Study: Painkiller Prescriptions on the Rise appeared first on Philadelphia Magazine.


ACME Now Selling Overdose-Reversal Drug NARCAN at Pennsylvania Pharmacies

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ACME - Lawrence Park Shopping Center - Delaware County

The ACME Sav-On Pharmacy in the Lawrence Park Shopping Center in Broomall. (Photo courtesy ACME)

The country is the midst of an opioid overdose epidemic. The CDC estimates 89 people die every day from an opioid-related overdose in the United States. Pennsylvania officials say that, in 2014, 2,400 people were killed by drug overdoses. Heroin and opioid overdose is the leading cause of accidental death in the state.

Amazingly, there is a drug — Naloxone, commonly known by the brand name NARCAN — that can immediately reverse an overdose by reversing the depression opioids cause in the central nervous and respiratory systems. Research has shown that availability of naloxone does not encourage people to use opiates more. 

In Pennsylvania, Gov. Tom Wolf issued a standing order in October for naloxone for all residents of the state. The order allows naloxone to be purchased without a prescription at a pharmacy. “Making it possible for all Pennsylvania residents to access the life-saving drug naloxone is a huge victory in our battle against drug overdose deaths in the commonwealth,” Physician General Dr. Rachel Levine said.

It was previously available in injectable form only. But last November the Food and Drug Administration approved a nasal spray version of NARCAN. “While naloxone will not solve the underlying problems of the opioid epidemic,” FDA acting commissioner Stephen Ostroff said, “we are speeding to review new formulations that will ultimately save lives that might otherwise be lost to drug addiction and overdose.”

CVS has been stocking naloxone in all its pharmacies since last year. Now the state’s massive supermarket chain, one with roots in South Philadelphia, is joining them. At a press event in Delaware County today, ACME announced NARCAN Nasal Spray is now available at all 40 of its pharmacies in Pennsylvania. There are 178 total ACME supermarkets in the state.

“The opioid and heroin epidemic cannot be ignored,” said Danielle D’Elia, communications manager for ACME. “By stocking NARCAN Nasal Spray in our pharmacies, we hope to give our communities – the family, friends, loved ones and caregivers of those struggling with addiction – a tool that might help prevent the avoidable loss of a loved one.”

D’Elia told Philadelphia magazine the nasal spray was now available at all 40 ACME pharmacy locations in the state. ACME held an event with Delaware County District Attorney Jack Whelan and Delaware County Councilman Dave White today at the pharmacy in Broomall to announce the initiative. Since making naloxone available to first responders in November 2014, Delaware County says 244 overdoses have been reversed.

“In Delaware County, heroin and opioid abuse is a serious health and public safety threat that is endangering lives and tearing families apart,” Whelan said. “We believe making NARCAN Nasal Spray available to first responders and police as well as families will continue to save lives and provide a chance for those suffering from addiction to get help.”

NARCAN, made by Adapt Pharma, is the only naloxone nasal spray on the market. It costs $155.69 out of pocket, though it is covered by many insurance providers. The person who is on the insurance, however, must be the one to pick it up. (D’Elia gave an example: If parents want naloxone because they are worried their child is using opiates, the child must be there in order to pick up the prescription.)

There are 10 ACME stores with pharmacies in Philadelphia, and more in the suburbs.

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The post ACME Now Selling Overdose-Reversal Drug NARCAN at Pennsylvania Pharmacies appeared first on Philadelphia Magazine.

Drug-Resistant Superbug Found in Pennsylvania Woman

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e-coli

A terrifying strain of drug-resistant bacteria has made its first appearance in the United States — in a Pennsylvania woman.

The report, posted online Thursday as an accepted paper in Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy, says the E. coli found in a woman in the Keystone State “heralds the emergence of truly pan-drug resistant bacteria.”

A woman, 49, came to a Pennsylvania clinic and was found to have a rare strain of E. coli that is resistant to colistin.

Colistin is an important drug in fighting antibiotic resistance. Though it has been used on humans since 1959, it was also found to be toxic to the kidneys and nerves. It is primarily used as a “drug of last resort” for bacteria resistant to other antibiotics.

The mcr-1 gene was first discovered in China in November of 2015. Since then, E. coli with the mcr-1 gene has been discovered in samples in the Netherlands, Malaysia, Portugal, Denmark, and England. This sample from a Pennsylvania woman, who had not traveled outside the country in the past five months, is the first in the United States.

E. coli with the mcr-1 gene that are resistant to antibiotics “signals another step toward untreatable” E. coli infections, according to a report by the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy.

The Washington Post quoted Center for Disease Control Director Tom Frieden in its report on the discovery: “It basically shows us that the end of the road isn’t very far away for antibiotics — that we may be in a situation where we have patients in our intensive-care units, or patients getting urinary tract infections for which we do not have antibiotics.”

In Nature last December, an infectious-disease doctor called the discovery of a colistin-resistant superbug “bad, [but] it isn’t apocalyptic.” But the magazine also writes: “It is only a matter of time, however, before some kinds of infections may not be treatable with any of our current antibiotics.”

“My administration, through the Department of Health, immediately began working closely with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), as well as the United States Department of Defense (DOD), to coordinate an appropriate and collaborative response between federal, state, and local entities,” said Gov. Tom Wolf. “We are taking the emergence of this resistance gene very seriously and we will take necessary actions to prevent mcr-1 from becoming a widespread problem with potentially serious consequences. The safety of Pennsylvanians is our utmost priority.”

“Antibiotic resistant bacteria is an urgent public health problem that we must focus on intensively,” Sen. Bob Casey tweeted in response to the news.

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MLB Clears Ryan Howard in Drug Probe

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Philadelphia Phillies first baseman Ryan Howard | Bill Streicher-USA TODAY Sports

Philadelphia Phillies first baseman Ryan Howard | Bill Streicher-USA TODAY Sports

Major League Baseball announced today it had cleared Phillies slugger Ryan Howard in its investigation into the Al Jazeera performance-enhancing drug report released late last year.

The international media giant’s report into the world of sports doping used an undercover athlete to secretly record people peddling PEDs. It linked Howard, two-time Super Bowl champ Peyton Manning, Nationals third baseman Ryan Zimmerman and others to edge-enhancing drugs. MLB cleared Zimmerman today also; the NFL is investigating other football players named in the report.

“This thorough investigation did not find any violations of the Joint Drug Prevention and Treatment Program by either Howard of Zimmerman,” MLB said in its statement. “Both Howard and Zimmerman fully cooperated with the Office of the Commissioner’s investigation.” Charlie Sly, the pharmacist secretly recorded in the report who accused the two baseball players, did not cooperate with MLB.

Howard and Zimmerman were accused of using Delta-2, a PED with a mixed record of effectiveness. (Combining it with peptide, the substance Lane Johnson said he tested positive for, is supposed to help quickly build muscle mass and give the user a “feel-good effect.”) Sly said Howard told him the substance helped with his “explosiveness,” but later said he was lying.

Howard released a statement:

The accusations from Al Jazeera came out of nowhere, and I was shocked and outraged by their false claims. I welcomed the investigation by Major League Baseball as an opportunity to clear my name. I was fully cooperative and transparent in the process, and MLB’s findings validate what I have said publicly. I am glad this part of the process has concluded, and I look forward to holding the responsible people accountable for these false and defamatory claims in my ongoing litigation against Al Jazeera and its reporters.

Howard sued Al Jazeera in January.

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The post MLB Clears Ryan Howard in Drug Probe appeared first on Philadelphia Magazine.

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