Believing that he had been ripped off in a commercial transaction, Antonio Recinos decided to contact Connecticut cops to register a complaint.
Perhaps the Better Business Bureau would have been a better choice considering that Recinos, 35, thought he had been cheated by a cocaine dealer who had sold him $40 of the drug Sunday evening.
According to the East Hartford Police Department, Recinos initially dialed 911 to lodge his complaint, but when he spotted a patrolman he approached the cop to deliver his beef face-to-face.
This was a mistake on the part of Recinos, who is pictured in the above mug shot.
Recinos, who displayed a small bag of cocaine, told the officer that he had been shorted by his dealer. While it is unclear what Recinos, who apparently had been drinking, expected the cop to do on his behalf, he likely did not expect to end up in handcuffs over his consumer complaint.
Recinos, an El Salvador native, was arrested early Sunday on a narcotics possession charge. He was later freed on $5000 bail and has a March 30 court appearance, according to police.
Charlie Sheen got a standing ovation Thursday after delivering a stirring, anti-drug speech to the UCLA baseball team -- "Stay off the crack. Drink a chocolate milk."
AP – FILE - In this Oct. 13, 2003 file photo, Jamaican reggae star Buju Banton poses at the Source Hip-Hop …
By JENNIFER KAY, Associated Press Jennifer Kay, Associated Press – Sun Feb 13, 7:38 pm ET
MIAMI – Grammy-winning singer Buju Banton checked out some cocaine, put some on his finger and tasted it — all of it caught on law enforcement video inside a Florida warehouse. Now he has another chance to explain why.
His second trial is scheduled to begin Monday, just a day after his 2010 album "Before the Dawn" won the Grammy award for best reggae album. The trial comes five months after a previous jury hung on federal drug trafficking charges that could put him in prison for life.
Banton, whose real name is Mark Myrie, claims he was entrapped by a confidential informant and got in over his head while trying to impress the man, who implied he could help Banton's music career. The U.S. government says Banton conspired with two associates to buy a shipment of cocaine from an undercover officer.
The two other men pleaded guilty and agreed to cooperate with investigators. Their sentencing hearings are scheduled next month.
Banton, 37, was arrested in December 2009 at his Miami-area home.
He remained in custody until November, when another Jamaican singer, Stephen Marley, reggae legend Bob Marley's son, posted his South Florida home as bond. Banton has been on house arrest except for a Miami concert last month to raise money for legal expenses.
Federal prosecutors initially charged Banton with drug conspiracy and gun charges, and in November added two more drug-related charges.
"Buju is not guilty. The number of charges doesn't change that," Banton's attorney, David Markus, said in an e-mail. "The prosecution wasn't happy with the first trial, so now it is trying to throw as many charges against the wall in the hopes something sticks."
Markus has argued the singer, who rose from the slums of Kingston to massive success in the 1990s, was a victim of entrapment by an informant who's been paid $3.3 million for working with law enforcement over several years.
During his first trial, the Rastafarian singer, his long dreadlocks tied in a braid, testifed that he talked a lot about cocaine with the informant, Alexander Johnson. But he said he was only trying to impress the man, who claimed to have music industry connections. He said he had no interest in buying or selling drugs.
"I talk too much, but I am not a drug dealer," Banton said on the stand.
In excerpts from their recorded conversations from July 2009 through December 2009 that were played for the jury, the husky-voiced singer told Johnson that he financed drug deals and that he wanted to sell drugs in Europe, buy drugs from the Caribbean and South America, and use Johnson's boat to transport drugs. The men met on a trans-Atlantic flight at the end of Banton's European tour for his album "Rasta Got Soul."
Assistant U.S. Attorney James Preston argued Banton's conversations with the informant put the conspiracy into motion. Banton testified that he never wanted nor expected Johnson to set up a cocaine deal, despite what he said in the recordings.
Johnson testified that he surprised Banton with cocaine at an undercover police warehouse in Sarasota on Dec. 8, 2009. Surveillance video shows Banton tasting the drugs.
The singer was not present two days later when his two associates, Ian Thomas and James Mack, were caught on video trying to buy the drugs at the warehouse.
His Grammy-winning album's 10 songs were recorded in Kingston, Jamaica, before his arrest. The singer worked with producers and engineers over the phone from jail to finish the album before its September release.
In an e-mail from his manager last week, Banton thanked his fans for their support and celebrated his fifth Grammy nomination.
"'Before The Dawn' is a prophetic album and if it happens to win I am grateful," Banton said. "If it doesn't, I still say thanks for the appreciation and the recognition because music is an art form that cannot be denied by any living soul. Music is my life."
In Jamaica, some fans have theorized Banton was framed by the U.S. government or gay activists who have protested violent, homophobic lyrics from early in Banton's career as a brash dancehall singer. Shows in several U.S. cities were canceled on his 2009 tour because of the protests.
Banton jabbed at his detractors during his Jan. 16 performance in Miami, referencing one of his controversial songs and the messiah of his Rastafarian faith.
He said: "Why they want to see Buju Banton cry? Is it because I said 'Boom Bye Bye'? Is it because I say Selassie I? Is it because I'm black and not shy?"
It was a typical day in the life of 18-year-old Art Taylor of Massachusetts until reds and blues lit up behind him while attempting to change lanes without signaling.
The teen pulled his vehicle over without a problem, but when officer Brandolini approached and asked for his License and Registration, Taylor refused.
“He made a quick movement to the center console, and there was small baggie with a white powder in it,” Brandolini said. “He immediately made a movement to put it in his mouth,” at which point another officer stepped in and attempted to stop him from consuming what they expected was cocaine.
The struggle quickly turned aggressive, at which point the officers pulled Taylor from the vehicle and cuffed him… but not before the teen had consumed the entire bag of “white powder”.
Art Taylor was arrested and charged with assault and battery on a police officer, resisting arrest, disorderly conduct, refusing to give police his license and registration and was also cited for not using a turn signal — a drug possession charge however was never filed.
Moral of the story? Always eat your drugs, because if nothing else, at least you’ll have an awesome time in jail. Source: Metro West
And in a similar story, what evidence?
During filming of The Empire Strikes Back, the second movie in the epic "Star Wars" saga, it turns out the subzero planet Hoth didn't have the only snow on the set.
Actress Carrie Fisher, who played Princess Leia in the first trilogy admitted to the Australian Associated Press that she used cocaine while the movie was being shot. "We did cocaine on the set of 'Empire', in the ice planet," she told the Aussie newswire on a visit to Sydney for her stand-up comedy show Wishful Drinking. "I didn't even like coke that much, it was just a case of getting on whatever train I needed to take to get high." (See a video on doing yoga, Star Wars style.)
Fisher, 53, now known in the movie biz primarily as a writer and comedienne, said her life had spiraled into a tempest of addiction and rehab, and even sent her to the emergency room from an overdose. John Belushi, her co-star in The Blues Brothers, which was released in 1980, the same year as Empire, warned her of her problem. Ironically, Belushi himself succumbed to a drug overdose in 1982.
"Slowly I realised I was doing a bit more drugs than other people and losing my choice in the matter," she said. "If I'd been addicted to booze I'd be dead now, because you just go out and get it." (See the Top 10 "Star Wars" fan films.)
Mike Tyson sat down with Pablo S. Torre for a feature in Sports Illustrated's 'Where Are They Now' issue, on newsstands this week.
Howard Schatz/SI
This spring, over the course of two days and two different cities (New York and Las Vegas), I spent approximately eight hours hanging out with Mike Tyson. The final product is a feature in Sports Illustrated's annual "Where Are They Now?" issue, on newsstands this week. Here, below, is a portion of our conversation.
SI: I imagine you have a few stories from your days as a junkie.
Mike Tyson: Listen: I was in St. Tropez, in the South of France. In Ibiza, Spain. I was in Monte Carlo. I was in the Ukraine, Russia, all those places, for three months. From Russia I went to Lisbon, Portgual, from Portugal I went to Amsterdam. In Amsterdam I met this drug dealer, right? And he sees that I like getting high, and he wants to be my buddy, right? This guy goes and gets me a big rock of cocaine. So pretty soon I got a party going on. I got everything: I got these rugby players. I got these naked girls, I got all these ... everything's going on in the room. Plus I also had this girl with me that I picked up in Romania. But then [the dealer he met in Amsterdam] saw how much of a mess I was. He came in and kicked everybody out of my room! All the nude people, all the people having sex. He said, "I feel so bad I ever gave him that stuff."
SI: How about in Las Vegas? What would your typical day in Vegas be like?
Tyson: This is how the day would start: I would go to a club, at say, 2 o'clock [a.m.]. Hang out there for what, two hours, and then I'd go to the after-hours [clubs], that start at 6 o'clock [a.m.]. So I'd stay there from 6 in the morning to 7:30 at night. I'd be sitting down and drinking and doing cocaine, talking to girls ... doing anything. Everything. Then I make it home and I'm tripping out at home. I'm calling people, I'm tired, but I've got people coming in and we're making plans to go out a few hours later. We're getting high, staying up, [doing] cocaine. Somebody would be calling me: "Come hang out with me." So we would go out and get high, till 11 o'clock [p.m.] or something, then go somewhere, to a bar or somewhere. We might go to a club, then get high all day long.
SI: You got involved with prostitutes.
Tyson: Listen, I was living a crazy life. A [prostitute] would go, "There's that guy who hit me the other day, who took money from me the other day, who intimidated me." And [that guy] had to give some money up. [I'd say,] "This is my girl, man. She works for me now. This is my girl now." That's how it was. I wanted to show loyalty to these people. I was so stupid. I'd say, "If you have a problem, just let me know." And all these guys would say, "What's Mike Tyson going to do [to me]?" It was always like that until I got in their f-----' ass. I'm a nice man, but back then, I wasn't. I'm not proud of it.
SI: So your home looks pretty different now, it's safe to say...
Tyson: I'm very fortunate that I have my wife and my children. I don't know how it happened, but, man, I'm living such a different life. Listen: If I allowed my will to run riot, this house would be full, you'd hear people screaming from sex upstairs. If I allowed my mind to run riot, that's what this place would be like.
SI: How many times did you end up going to rehab?
Tyson: I was addicted to rehab. I was like the poster boy, because I would go to like five meetings a day. You were only required to go to one. I would go to five, because I'm an addictive freak. I love hanging out, the camaraderie. It's just awesome! But you know what people want, too? [Tyson leans in closer, his voice suddenly quieter.] This is what I realized, bro: It gives people family. A way of starting over. [In rehab] we start a new life with new family members. And all they gotta do to stay in this family is not get high, and you gotta try really hard. And then if you do get high? "We got your back." That's what I like.
SI: What do you see when you look back at your infamous press conferences?
Tyson: I always wanted to be that guy who said, "F--- you." When I see people doing that, trying to imitate me, these tough guys trying to emulate me, I'm sitting there thinking, like, This guy's an idiot, so I know I'm an idiot. Floyd Mayweather doesn't stand a chance as far as that idiocy. He's not even in my league as an a--hole. He's a good kid. Everyone's hard on him, but this is a great kid. He's just a kid having fun, living in a fantasy world.
Behind the Tyson photo shoot
Source:SI
SI.com takes you behind the lens during the Mike Tyson photo shoot while reporter Pablo Torre discusses what it's like to spend a day with Iron Mike.
SI: When did your wife, Kiki, really get to know you?
Tyson: She really got to know who I am, the real core, maybe two years ago, three years ago. She got to know the barometer of an individual. She never gave up on me; I gave up on me. But she would never give up. I have a great deal of respect for her as a human being for that. Me and her, we're too far gone as just human beings to try and butter each other up.
SI: What was it like to lose over 100 pounds of weight?
Tyson: I don't want to be grotesque, but when you're 330 pounds, it's hard to wipe your a--. You know? I didn't like living like that. I felt like an animal. I'm more active than I have been in years.
SI: You're a big fan of ancient history, I've heard.
Tyson: I like classical biographies. Hannibal was an awesome person. Clovis was pretty awesome, the Franks and stuff. The Khans: Genghis and his grandsons. Listen, this is pretty interesting, with this Clovis guy. Clovis was king at 15. He gets to be king at 15 with some of his father's ragtag army. Still, he would conquer people and take all their lands. He was still an evil guy. His bloodline became kings of different countries.
SI: How did you learn about all of that stuff? Do you go online now?
Tyson: Before I got involved with the Internet, I used audio books. I used to listen to them while working out, or lying down and falling asleep. [Kiki, his wife, then interjects: "He'll randomly, out of the blue, say, 'Google for me, Who is Clovis' father's first monkey's pet?' It's the craziest things."]
SI: What did you make of your time in jail?
Tyson: In a weird way, prison was the best thing that happened to me. Imagine if I was out here from '92 to '95 -- I probably would have caught AIDS, I would've got shot, I would've got into all kinds of s---. You have no idea what kind of person I was on the street, when I was in Mike Tyson megalomaniac mode.
SI: You famously converted to Islam. Are you still very religious?
Tyson: You know, people say, "My god is better than your god." But how do we prove whose god is better? And this is when it gets really interesting. This is how we prove whose god is better than whose: [by saying,] "I'm going to kill you, or you're going to kill me first." And that's real godly. That's real godly. Yeah. I bet you people think, I wonder who would win a fight with the Prophet Mohammad and Jesus? These are sick people. This is crazy, you know what I mean?
Back in the late 19th century, Coca-Cola hooked customers with a narcotic hit drawn from its namesake coca leaf. These days, Coke is cocaine-free, and may or may not still have coca-leaf flavoring, depending on who you speak to. But a new drink from Bolivia, Coca Colla, isn't shy about its ingredients, even sporting a bright green coca leaf on its label.
The energy drink, produced by a small Bolivian company that develops legitimate uses for coca leaves, uses coca-leaf flour as a key ingredient. It apparently lacks the cocaine that made early Coca-Cola popular, but is gaining cult status since being served at President Evo Morales' inauguration. Morales is no fan of the leading American cola, and the Bolivian government may help its own drink build some buzz:
“
The beverage is named after both the coca leaf, a plant that is virtually the national symbol of Bolivia, and the local population. The word "colla" is a local term referring to the descendants of the indigenous Aymara people, a heritage Mr. Morales shares. Mr. Morales has also headed a union of coca farmers.
Although the Bolivian government is still studying Coca Colla and hasn't provided any financing, Mr. Morales is no fan of the other Coca-Cola. He has criticized the soft drink, and referred to Coke in a recent speech as "the liquid that plumbers use to unblock the toilets."
”
The American company isn't currently planning any legal action against the Bolivian startup -- though we hear Coke may be investigating the local plumbing industry.
Look, I’m going to put as little distance between that headline and the actual anecdote as possible. In Pam Grier’s new memoir Foxy: My Life in Three Acts (which is now a must-buy), she recounts how a conversation with her doctor led to her breakup with Richard Pryor. Stars, they are not just like us:
He said, “Pam, I want to tell you about an epidemic that’s prevalent in Beverly Hills right now. It’s a buildup of cocaine residue around the cervix and in the vagina. You have it. Are you doing drugs?”
“No,” I said, astonished.
“Well, it’s really dangerous,” he went on. “Is your partner putting cocaine on his penis to sustain his erection?”
“No,” I said, “not that I know of. It’s not like he has a pile of cocaine next to the bed and he dips his penis in it before we have sex.” I had a nauseating flash of one of Richard’s famous lines: Even my dick has a cocaine jones.
“Are you sure he isn’t doing it in the bathroom before he comes to bed?” the doctor asked.
“That’s a possibility,” I said. “You know, I am dating Richard Pryor.”
“Oh, my God,” he said. “We have a serious problem here. If he’s not putting it on his skin directly, then it’s worse because the coke is in his seminal fluid.”
Also recounted in the anecdote, says Jezebel, is that “the doctor then asks her if her mouth went numb while performing oral sex on Pryor, which she says it did, and which he links to the Novocaine-like effects of cocaine.”
The writers of Nurse Jackie, Grey’s Anatomy, and Private Practice all just bolted upright, screaming, “How have we missed this?” The Truth About Cocaine Vaginas [Jezebel]
Different strains of medical marijuana at Coffeeshop Blue Sky in Oakland, California. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
By Jacob Goldstein
A Harvard economist has estimated how much money states would raise by legalizing and taxing marijuana and cocaine.
In a podcast a while back, Harvard's Jeffrey Miron told us that his estimates for what California would bring in from taxing marijuana are much smaller than some of the numbers that are floating around out there (including a $1.4 billion estimate from state officials).
Since that interview, Miron has come out with a paper estimating, among other things, potential tax revenues from cocaine and marijuana.
It turns out the big tax money is in cocaine.
Sure, legalizing marijuana is highly unlikely and legalizing cocaine isn't even on the table in mainstream politics. Still, it's interesting to know what the numbers would be -- particularly when they're coming from a Harvard economist.
Here's a table that shows Miron's estimates for the annual tax revenues each state would get from marijuana and cocaine. (The figures are in millions; for more details, see the explanation and links after the table.)
State
Marijuana
Cocaine
Alabama
25.59
80.54
Alaska
6.53
16.28
Arizona
41.91
177.67
Arkansas
19.87
54.49
California
201.74
767.73
Colorado
46.97
133.74
Connecticut
22.57
72.53
Delaware
6.07
18.76
Florida
142.05
362.34
Georgia
86.75
213.96
Hawaii
10.09
21.59
Idaho
11.73
22.66
Illinois
83.98
263.93
Indiana
43.44
120.04
Iowa
18.72
45.94
Kansas
16.69
53.95
Kentucky
28.05
77.79
Louisiana
30.02
97.43
Maine
6.64
25.46
Maryland
37.68
113.79
Massachusetts
44.94
167
Michigan
69.04
174.55
Minnesota
45.43
102.31
Mississippi
19.67
41.17
Missouri
54.99
111.28
Montana
7.94
19.29
Nebraska
13.87
29.13
Nevada
13.97
53.19
New Hampshire
9.03
29.18
New Jersey
74.6
140.31
New Mexico
11.92
47.42
New York
136.81
464.05
North Carolina
87.88
191.04
North Dakota
4.02
9.54
Ohio
88.7
248.79
Oklahoma
29.23
58.23
Oregon
24.09
76.88
Pennsylvania
73.73
211.85
Rhode Island
7.75
37.12
South Carolina
26.29
79.71
South Dakota
7.28
11.96
Tennessee
39.94
146.9
Texas
270.39
483.02
Utah
16.34
53.16
Vermont
3.67
15.86
Virginia
53.35
175.63
Washington
35.76
143.55
West Virginia
8.97
36.65
Wisconsin
61.12
114.16
Wyoming
3.72
11.26
DC
4.82
25.94
Total
2,138.47
6,234.11
On top of state revenues, Miron estimates that a federal taxes would amount to $4.28 billion for marijuana and $12.47 billion for cocaine.
Miron figures taxes on the drugs would be comparable to taxes on alcohol and tobacco. His estimates for how many people in each state use marijuana and cocaine are based on a government survey. (He notes that the number of users would likely rise if the drugs were legalized, but his estimates don't account for this.) He estimates that if marijuana and cocaine were legalized, their prices would fall by 50% and 80%, respectively. The research was funded by the Criminal Justice Policy Foundation; here's the foundation's take on drug policy.
MADRID, Spain (CNN) -- A 92-year-old woman with cocaine strapped to her body flew all the way from Brazil to Spain before police arrested her, in a wheelchair, at Madrid's airport.
A Civil Guard spokeswoman says the 92-year old was apprehended at Madrid's Barajas Airport.
They found 4.3 kilos, or nearly 9.5 pounds, of cocaine packets strapped to her legs and torso, and also arrested a 44-year-old female companion, who tried to escape on another plane, a Civil Guard spokeswoman told CNN Tuesday.
The two women, both from Uruguay, were arrested Friday after arriving in Madrid on a flight from Sao Paolo, Brazil. But officials did not release details about the case until this week, after a judge had arraigned the two on drug trafficking charges. The judge ordered the younger woman to prison but sent the 92-year-old to a senior citizens' home in Madrid.
Due to her advanced age, "it's practically impossible" that she would be tried or face jail time, said the Civil Guard spokeswoman, who by custom is not identified. Police did not identify the two women.
Civil Guards became suspicious when the younger woman repeatedly told the older woman -- who had asked for an airport wheelchair in Madrid to traverse the terminal -- that if they rushed, they would make their connecting flight to Spain's Canary Islands.
The Civil Guards, who run customs controls at the airport, stopped the woman in the wheelchair.
The younger woman immediately fled, first trying to make the connecting flight, which by then had closed its doors, and then attempting to leave the airport terminal for the street.
But she was stuck in the "satellite," or second building, of Terminal 4, which is connected to the main building and the street by an underground train. Police caught up with her before she left the satellite terminal.
The two would-be smugglers probably expected a cash payment and return flight tickets to Brazil from their drug trafficking contacts, the Civil Guard spokeswoman said.
A 46-year-old Burlington mom is in some serious trouble after she allegedly taught her 16-year-old son how to shoot heroin. The teen ended up overdosing and now prosecutors connecting her to the death. Parent of the year award! Thank you Wisconsin for showing us everything we don't want to be in life
Patricia L. Strosina is charged with intentionally contributing to the delinquency of a child resulting in death. She could face 25 years in prison if convicted in connection to her son's Sep. 14 death.
When police found the teen, he was slumped over a desk at his dad's house with a syringe, a burned spoon and other drug paraphernalia. He died of an overdose of heroin and cocaine.
The story of this teen's fall into hard drugs is extremely depressing, especially for any parent who actually cares about their kids.
Several witnesses, including a case worker, told investigators that the teen had been shooting heroin with his mother and that she originally taught him how to do it. She would even bring him along on drug runs and shoot up with him. Witnesses even saw her shoot him up. Strosina admitted to doing drugs with her son and said she used heroin with him a week before his death.
The sheriff's department investigator was told that Patricia Strosina would take her son along with her to buy heroin and that she would "not cut Ray off because he would get sick" from withdrawal.
The woman also was seen smoking marijuana and crack cocaine with the boy, according to the complaint.
One witness described how Strosina, her son and others would shoot up in Strosina's car after a drug run and how the only conversation that took place in the vehicle would be about "who would get the first needle and who would get the last bit of heroin."
She said on one occasion, after a drug buy, that she shot heroine while driving before passing it to her son in the back seat so he could use the drug.
Researchers have shown for the first time today that a vaccine can help reduce drug abuse. There's currently no FDA-approved treatment to get people off of cocaine (or crack), so this could really help out the 2.5 million Americans dependent on cocaine.
Thirty-eight percent of drug abusers who were given the vaccine produced anti-cocaine antibodies. Over the course of seven weeks, these subjects were 45 percent likely to have a cocaine-free pee test, as opposed to 35 percent for those who got placebo vaccine instead.
The vaccine works similar to vaccines for microorganisms, training your body to view cocaine as a bad invader. The shots, which include a cocainelike substance (succinylnorcocaine), encourage the body to pump out antibodies against cocaine. The antibodies bind to the coke, which prevents it from getting into the brain, and theoretically prevents people from getting high. Right now, only about 38 percent of the subjects who got the vaccine produced high levels of antibodies, so there's room for improvement.
Study leader Dr. Thomas Kosten, a psychiatrist at Baylor College of Medicine, told Popsci.com that they're planning to confirm the results in a larger study in six cities in January and that the vaccine could become widely available in two to three years.
The study was published in the October issue of the journal Archives of General Psychiatry.
Why were rats a cause for writing off 10% of his annual revenue?
By Ross Bonander, Entertainment Correspondent
Pablo Escobar: 5 Things You Didn't Know
In most businesses, seeing a return on investment (ROI) of 100% would be more than enough for a company to thrive. By some estimates, notorious Colombian cocaine kingpin Pablo Escobar enjoyed an ROI of as much as 20,000%. Put another way, for every $1 he put into his business, he got about $200 in return.
That is one seductive ROI, for certain. It doesn't account for risk, but for most of Escobar's professional life at the head of the Medellin cartel, the risk wasn't his, nor was it financial: The risk fell to the lives of Pablo's rivals and to the lives of the (mostly) American dealers who pushed his product to the users who snorted it. Only after his wealth, notoriety and brutality made him the target of both big governments and small (but determined) vigilante groups did Escobar finally endure some risk. Not surprisingly, on December 2, 1993, a day after his 44th birthday, it caught up with him in the most permanent way after a rooftop chase-down in a middle-class part of Medellin.
As Hollywood eyes 2011 as a possible release date for a biopic based on Mark Bowden's Killing Pablo, we present five things you didn't know about Pablo Escobar.
1- Rats ate $1 billion of Pablo Escobar's profits each year
The first thing you didn't know about Pablo Escobar testifies to an uncommon, staggering degree of wealth. According to Roberto Escobar, one of Pablo's closest brothers, at a time when their estimated profits were circling $20 billion annually "Pablo was earning so much that each year we would write off 10% of the money because the rats would eat it in storage or it would be damaged by water or lost."
If that weren't enough to drop your jaw, Roberto adds that the cartel spent as much as $2,500 every month on rubber bands to "hold the money together."
2- Pablo Escobar's paradise now houses refugees and hippos
Near the small northwestern Colombian town of Puerto Triunfo, Pablo Escobar once built himself a vacation getaway befitting a man of his stature. Hacienda Napoles was just shy of paradise, spread across almost 5,000 acres (7.7 sq-mi.) and featuring everything from pools to a bullring to an exotic zoo with hippos, giraffes, elephants, and more. Stories of enormous drug-fueled parties at Hacienda Napoles with some of Colombia's most powerful and most beautiful in attendance continue to circulate, contributing to the legend of Escobar.
Today, though, that paradise is in ruins. Everything that could be gutted has been gutted by people looking for rumored stashes of coke or cash. Its only residents are families of refugees from the country's war against guerrilla fighters and about 20 hippos which roam the area with the same kind of impunity that Pablo enjoyed decades ago.
How did Escobar manage to get his millions back to Columbia from the U.S.? That's next...
3- Pablo Escobar was suspected of bombing the World Trade Center
Another thing you didn't know about Pablo Escobar is that he was named as an early suspect in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center. Shortly after the bombing, which killed six and injured over 1,000, a New York City prosecutor publicly suggested that the bombing could have been carried out by any "enemy of the U.S.," including Escobar's Medellin cartel.
Well, Pablo may have assassinated a presidential candidate (Luis Carlos Galán), threatened to kill the offspring of a sitting U.S. president (allegedly one of Bush Sr.'s sons), blown a commercial jet out of the sky (Avianca Flight 203), and orchestrated the attempted slaughter of the Colombian Supreme Court (Palace of Justice siege), but bomb the World Trade Center? Escobar was sufficiently offended, enough so that he sent a handwritten note to the U.S. Ambassador to Colombia declaring his innocence. "You can take me off the list," he assured Ambassador Morris Busby, "because if I had done it I would be saying why I did it and what I want."
4- Pablo Escobar built his own barrio
Medellin is Colombia's second largest city (with almost 2.5 million residents), but it is, and always will be, linked by name to the legacy of Pablo Escobar's cocaine cartel. To many of the city's poorest people, Escobar -- whom they called Don Pablo -- was nothing short of Robin Hood in the flesh, a reputation he enjoys among some to this day.
In his prime, he was undeniably a public works tour de force, establishing food programs, building parks and soccer fields, but his masterstroke may have been Barrio Pablo Escobar, a neighborhood of 450 red brick homes housing a couple thousand of Medellin's most indigent. Did they pay rent? Nope. Property taxes? No way.
The only problem? Writing for the Washington Post in 1989, Michael Isikoff noted a growing frustration among the barrio's residents with kids from other areas coming to Barrio Pablo Escobar to peddle drugs.
5- Pablo Escobar bought a Learjet to fly his cash
The last thing you didn't know about Pablo Escobar is that he had an interesting solution to a very rare kind of cash flow problem. Escobar and his cartel began to see soaring profits rather quickly. His being a cash business, Escobar needed to get that U.S. cash back to Colombia. For a while, the small plane he used to transport that cash was sufficient, as it could hold about $10 million. Keeping in mind Escobar's estimated ROI of 20,000%, and that he was getting cocaine to the U.S. by a wide variety of methods (including a pair of submarines which would each carry about 1,000 kilos), it's no surprise that he needed an upgrade. Escobar thus bought a Learjet, a substantially faster plane and one that could carry as much as 10 times the amount of cash. Problem solved.
Johnny Cappas stands outside his Markham hot dog stand, Johnny's Wee Nee Wagon. (Terrence Antonio James, Chicago Tribune / August 28, 2009)
By Kim JanssenTRIBUNE REPORTER
First there was Felony Franks, the controversial West Side hot dog stand staffed by ex-cons.
Now notoriously loudmouthed 1980s cocaine kingpin John Cappas has taken the encased-meat-served-by-a-criminal concept one step further.
Cappas doesn't just work at Johnny's Wee Nee Wagon in south suburban Markham: He owns it.
"I've got the best weenies in Chicago," said Cappas, who as a teenager controlled the cocaine trade on the Southwest Side, before his arrest and trial became national news.
The Marist High School graduate was making $25,000 a week selling cocaine before he hit age 20, attracting attention with his flashy cars, fast women and crew of flunkies, who he'd take to nightclubs in stretch-limos, wearing jackets emblazoned with his name.
When federal warrants were issued for his arrest, he famously flaunted his contempt for the law by partying on a friend's speedboat on Lake Michigan with TV reporter Giselle Fernandez before turning himself in.
But after two Chicago cops' kids who owed him money killed themselves, Cappas was sentenced to 45 years in federal prison in 1989.
Now 43, he served 15 years, an experience he said changed him for the better.
"This is my chance to give back," he said, explaining that he plans to sponsor Little League teams and turn his hot dog stand into a playground for kids, complete with a miniature railway ride and a stagecoach.
The business, previously called Willie's Wee Nee Stand, has been on the 15900 block of Pulaski Road since 1955, and Cappas said he hopes to re-create with it the western-theme amusement arcades of his Oak Lawn youth.
Though the scrappy two-lot stand is decidedly smaller than the illegal empire he once controlled, and he expects to make less money than he did selling cars since his release from prison in 2003, Cappas said "feeding families is an honest business that I can take pride in."
Even so, he's happy to trade on his bad guy reputation.
At a grand opening party for the business Sunday, he said, will be Julie Craig, his former girlfriend and a one-time Playboy model best-remembered for spending his drug money on a diamond necklace that spelled out the letters "SPOILED BRAT."
Also at the party, he said, will be Dick and Clement Messino, brothers and former Chicago police officers convicted of selling hundreds of pounds of cocaine. Prosecutors alleged they supplied Cappas, but he refused to testify against them.
A smaller courtesy will be extended to police visiting Cappas' new business.
"I've told the local cops they can have all the free soda they want," he said.
Traces of cocaine taint up to 90 percent of paper money in the United States, a new study finds.
A group of scientists tested banknotes from more than 30 cities in five countries, including the United States, Canada, Brazil, China, and Japan, and found "alarming" evidence of cocaine use in many areas.
U.S. and Canadian currency had the highest levels, with an average contamination rate of between 85 and 90 percent, while Chinese and Japanese currency had the lowest, between 12 and 20 percent contamination.
The findings were presented yesterday at the 238th National Meeting of the American Chemical Society in Washington, D.C.
Study leader Yuegang Zuo of the University of Massachusetts in Dartmouth said that the high percentage of contaminated U.S. currency observed in the current study represents nearly a 20 percent jump in comparison to a similar study he conducted two years ago.
"To my surprise, we're finding more and more cocaine in banknotes," Zuo said.
Scientists have known for years that paper money can become contaminated with cocaine during drug deals and directly through drug use, such as snorting cocaine through rolled bills. Contamination can also spread to banknotes not involved in the illicit drug culture, because bills are processed in banks' currency-counting machines.
"I'm not sure why we've seen this apparent increase, but it could be related to the economic downturn, with stressed people turning to cocaine," Zuo said.
Such studies are useful, he noted, because the data can help law enforcement agencies and forensic specialists identify patterns of drug use in a community.
Previous studies that have reported on cocaine traces on money have had several drawbacks, Zuo said. Some only sampled a small number of bills, while others destroyed the money in the process of testing.
Zuo and his colleagues used a modified instrument that allowed for faster, simpler and more accurate measurement of cocaine contamination than other methods, without destroying the currency.
The amounts of cocaine found on U.S. bills ranged from .006 micrograms (several thousands of times smaller than a single grain of sand) to more than 1,240 micrograms of cocaine per banknote (about 50 grains of sand).
The scientists found that larger cities like Baltimore, Boston, and Detroit had among the highest average cocaine levels. Washington, D.C., ranked above the average, with 95 percent of the banknotes sampled contaminated with the drug. The lowest average cocaine levels in U.S. currency appeared on bills collected from Salt Lake City.
Despite the high percentage of cocaine-contaminated banknotes, Zuo points out that the amount of cocaine found on most notes was so small that consumers should not have any health or legal concerns about handling paper money.
"For the most part, you can't get high by sniffing a regular banknote, unless it was used directly in drug uptake or during a drug exchange," Zuo said. "It also won't affect your health and is unlikely to interfere with blood and urine tests used for drug detection.
Richard Gasquet was up for a two-and-a-half year suspension after testing positive for cocaine in his system during the ATP stop in Miami.
He and his attorneys went with the Jimmy Buffett defense — some people say that there’s a woman to blame. Gasquet said he would never roll up a $100 bill and snort Peruvian powder, but there was this girl in a nightclub in Miami and they were making out and she had done cocaine so some of what she had done must have transferred to his system. The old cocaine contact high theory.
And it worked. An international tribunal of lawyers who decides such things noted that the amount of cocaine found in Gasquet’s bloodstream was so small it could not have come from recreational use (that or he’s just really, really bad at it) so this story seemed plausible. And they apparently just plain liked the guy. The tribunal reduced his suspension to essentially time served (a couple of months).
Now he can return to the court where he is regarded as a talented underachiever who can’t seem to focus and concentrate — oddly, kind of things you’d expect of a guy with this kind of lifestyle.
This ruling could lead to a rash of athlete blaming women in clubs for their problems. Manny Ramirez got female fertility drugs in his system because he was at this club in Los Angeles and there was this woman. Plaxico Burress didn’t shoot himself in the leg, there was this girl in a Manhattan nightclub. You get the idea.
But be warned, what a French tennis star and his team of lawyers can get away with and what you can get away with when trying to explain something away to your boss are two different things. Don’t try this excuse with your girlfriend.
Marijuana and cocaine for personal use should be decriminalised because the "war on drugs" has been a disaster, according to some of Latin America's most powerful politicians and writers.
The current international policy on drugs encourages corruption and violence that is threatening democracy throughout the continent, according to the former president of Brazil, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, who is a co-president of the Latin American commission on drugs and democracy. As well as politicians, the commission includes the writers Mario Vargas Llosa of Peru, and Paulo Coelho of Brazil.
The election of Barack Obama has opened up the best opportunity for decades to address the failure of the "so-called drugs war", Cardoso told the Guardian today on a visit to London. He said he was hopeful that the international community would acknowledge that the time had come for a "paradigm shift" in the debate on drugs. "The war on drugs has failed in spite of enormous efforts in places like Colombia – the area of coca crops is not reducing," he said.
The current system of prohibition encouraged corruption among police officers, politicians and even judges. "It poisons the whole system, it undermines democracy," Cardoso said. "The war on drugs is based on repression … How can people believe in democracy if the rule of law doesn't work?" Users should be offered treatment rather than jail, he said.
"The starting point has to be the United States," he said. "Now we have a new American administration, which is much more open-minded than before." He said he had held talks with the US state department in the later years of the Bush administration and found that, privately, many of the officials there shared his views.
Cardoso said that the changes would have to be co-ordinated. "We need an international convention, otherwise you will have different countries doing different things," he said. "But the climate is changing for the first time for many years. Even in the US, they recognise we are in deadlock now." Obama had already made it clear that the idea of a "war on drugs" was not workable. The need for change is urgent, said Cardoso, because of what is happening in Latin America. "There is a very grave situation in Mexico," he said. "More people are being killed there (through the drugs war) than in Iraq." He said that it was easier for former presidents who were no longer in office or running for election to speak out on such a controversial issue. He added that ending the war on drugs would be not be a signal that drugs were acceptable but a recognition that current policies had failed.
"You have to show that drugs are harmful, even light drugs, like marijuana - it is better not to use drugs - but tobacco is harmful also yet its use is being reduced by education," said Cardoso. He added that the vast quantities of money being used to enforce "repressive" policies on drugs could be put into treatment and education. Hundreds of thousands of people were being unnecessarily criminalised and sent to prison, "which are schools of crime."
The previous UN drugs policy that aimed to eliminate all drug use by this year was ill-conceived, he said. "You can never stop drugs use," he said, likening it to some of the failed policies in the past over HIV/Aids. "You can't have zero drugs any more than you can have a zero sex policy but you can have a safe sex policy." He said that Brazil's success in halting the HIV/Aids epidemic, which meant promoting the use of condoms in a Catholic country, was an example of how people's behaviour could be changed by education rather than repression.
MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexico's navy has seized more than a tonne of cocaine stuffed inside frozen sharks, as drug gangs under military pressure go to greater lengths to conceal narcotics bound for the United States.
Armed and masked navy officers cut open more than 20 shark carcasses filled with slabs of cocaine after checking a container ship in a container port in the southern Mexico state of Yucatan, the navy and Mexican media said on Tuesday.
"We are talking about more than a tonne of cocaine that was inside the ship," Navy Commander Eduardo Villa told reporters after X-ray machines and sniffer dogs helped uncover the drugs. "Those in charge of the shipment said it was a conserving agent but after checks we confirmed it was cocaine," he said.
Drug gangs are coming up with increasingly creative ways of getting drugs into the United States -- in sealed beer cans, religious statues and furniture -- as Mexico's military cracks down on the cartels moving South American narcotics north.
President Felipe Calderon has sent 45,000 troops and federal police across Mexico to try to crush powerful smuggling cartels. But traffickers armed with a huge arsenal of grenades and automatic weapons are far from defeated, worrying Washington as violence spills over into U.S. states like Arizona.
Some 2,750 people have died in drug violence in Mexico this year, a pace similar to that of 2008, when 6,300 were killed.
Led by Mexico's most wanted man, Joaquin "Shorty" Guzman, smugglers from the Pacific state of Sinaloa are fighting a turf war with rivals. Guzman seeks to control Mexican and Central American smuggling routes into the United States.
(Reporting by Robin Emmott; editing by Patricia Zengerle)
Bolivians celebrate the 'acullicu' day or 'coca chewing day.'
Martin Alipaz / EPA
Colombia, Ecuador and Venezuela have avoided war, but now two other Andean nations are gearing up for battle. This time the foe is the United Nations, and the cause is the right to chew coca, the raw material of cocaine. It may not sound as important as the diplomatic row that shook the region earlier this month. But the dispute is momentous for millions of people in Bolivia and Peru — where the coca leaf is sacred to indigenous culture and a tonic of modern life — and for anti-drug officials in the U.S. and other countries who are desperate to stem the relentless flow of cocaine. Says Silvia Rivera, a sociology professor at San Andres University in Bolivia's capital, La Paz, "This is the most aggressive attack [Bolivians] have faced" since the U.N. designated coca a drug in 1961.
The latest affront, they say, is a recommendation this month from the UN's drug enforcement watchdog, the International Narcotics Control Board (INCB), that Bolivia and Peru criminalize the practice of chewing coca and drinking its tea. The move has provoked widespread anger and street protests in the two countries, especially among the majority indigenous populations. For them, coca has been a cultural cornerstone for 3,000 years, as much a part of daily life as coffee in the U.S. (La Paz is home to perhaps the world's only coca museum.) From the countryside to swanky urban hotels, it is chewed or brewed to stave off hunger or exhaustion or to ease the often debilitating effects of high-altitude life in the Andes. It is also "used by healers and in ceremonial offerings to the gods," says Ana Maria Chavez, a coca seller in La Paz, who refers to her product as "the sacred leaf." Pope John Paul II even drank coca tea on a 1988 visit to Bolivia. It is, says Chavez, "part of who we are."
The problem is, it's also considered the building block of broken lives in the rest of the world, where cocaine consumption and addiction remain rampant in developed regions like North America and Europe. The U.S. has spent more than $5 billion this decade aiding Colombia's largely failed efforts to eradicate coca cultivation. Meanwhile, Washington and the U.N. have tried to get Bolivia and Peru to reduce their coca crops to the bare minimum for traditional consumption. Peru and Bolivia are the region's second and third largest coca producers, behind Colombia, with about more than 75,000 hectares (185,000 acres) under cultivation, or almost half of global supply.
The 1961 U.N. convention called for coca's elimination by the late 1980s. A new accord struck in 1988 recognized the plant's traditional attributes and allowed for limited local use, while anti-narcotics forces continued to work to wipe out coca's drug-related cultivation, destroy the labs that process it into cocaine and intercept traffickers. But this month's INCB report seeks to end that uneasy arrangement. A big reason is that despite the decades-long, multi-billion-dollar drug war in Latin America, cocaine production has remained stable at best. Criminalizing even traditional coca use may be the only means agencies like the INCB feel they have left to salvage the anti-drug mission. Consuming the raw, unprocessed leaf, says the INCB report, abets "the progression of drug dependence."
Critics of the report call that conclusion an absurd stretch, especially since there is no published evidence that the coca leaf itself is toxic or addictive. Foremost among the detractors is left-wing Bolivian President Evo Morales, who remains head of one of the country's largest coca-growing unions and was elected as Bolivia's first indigenous head of state in 2005 in part because of his defense of the leaf. "This leaf," Morales said at last year's U.N. General Assembly, holding one up at the podium, "represents... the hope of our people." Bolivia accounts for about 17% of worldwide coca supply and Morales gets much of the international blame for coca's persistence. But while critics like the U.S may call him disingenuous for arguing that coca and cocaine are apples and oranges — analysts say that despite government efforts, much of the coca grown in Bolivia ends up in drug cartels' hands — he has also helped lead what experts like Rivera call "a revaluation of the coca leaf." "Many people," says the sociologist, "have begun to rediscover its nutritional and medicinal benefits."
Indeed, several international studies, including one published by Harvard University, say that raw coca is loaded with protein, calcium, iron and a range of vitamins. As a result, Morales has encouraged a local industry, with an eye to exporting, that is turning coca into everything from flour to toothpaste, shampoo and curative lotions. (Morales sent Fidel Castro a coca cake for his 80th birthday last year.) Even as the INCB was issuing its report, the Bolivian government was reaffirming its desire to increase Bolivia's legal coca crop limit from 12,000 hectares (30,000 acres) to 20,000 hectares (49,000 acres). The Bush Administration has warned that the latter move would put Bolivia in violation of its international agreements — it is "not consistent with Bolivia's obligations," said the State Department — and risk tens of millions of dollars in U.S. aid.
Seemingly undeterred, Bolivia said this month it was also set to invest another $300,000 for developing new, legal coca markets. Not surprisingly, the Bolivian delegation was the first to issue what it called an "energetic protest" against the INCB's recommendations during the agency's annual meeting this week in Vienna. It also put forward a proposal to remove coca from the U.N.'s narcotics list. That's not likely to happen. The big question is whether the U.N. will adopt the INCB proposal — which would essentially leave Bolivia and Peru in breach of international law if they continue to allow coca's non-narcotic use and commercialization. That in turn could result in the U.N. calling for commercial or other embargoes against them.
Many Bolivians say they don't care. "My grandfather and my grandmother sold coca and I've been doing it for 48 years," says Josefina Rojas, another La Paz coca seller. "We aren't going to let them take coca away from us no matter what." Such is the latest Andean conundrum. One that might be harder to solve than a potential war.
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All you art collectors out there. Here is a chance to get a Giclee copy of some of Ian M Sherwin work. Ian is planning on doing a whole series of Marblehead, Massachusetts paintings. His work is amazing.
Believing that he had been ripped off in a commercial transaction, Antonio Recinos decided to contact Connecticut cops to register a complaint. 
Look, I’m going to put as little distance between that headline and the actual anecdote as possible. In Pam Grier’s new memoir Foxy: My Life in Three Acts (which is now a must-buy), she 
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