Students at one of the world's most prestigious educational institutions, Oxford University in England, have been warned against dealing in heroin.

It was Oxford University's independent student newspaper Cherwell which first reported that an anonymous letter had been sent to authorities at one of Oxford's largest colleges, Christ Church.The letter had warned the authorities at what is one of 38 colleges and six Permanent Private Halls at Oxford that a "considerable drugs culture" can be found among the students at Christ Church.According to the Telegraph those students number 426.And as a consequence of the anonymous letter, junior Censor Ian Watson, described by the Daily Mail as the person "in charge of discipline" at Christ Church, has sent an email to his college's students with the subject line "Urgent warning concerning drugs".Explaining to the students that "The law applies just as rigorously within college as elsewhere" and that he and his colleagues cannot and will not protect anyone who breaks the law Mr Watson said:

Last week the censors received an anonymous letter alleging the existence in Christ Church of a considerable drugs culture, including the supplying of class A drugs such as heroin. The letter named one individual.The police, whom the censors consulted in the person of the community liaison officer who deals with the university, have advised that this letter does not in itself constitute usable evidence with which to start an investigation.All junior members should, however, recall that the use, and especially the supplying, of prohibited drugs constitutes a serious criminal offence

While students interviewed by Cherwell acknowledged that drugs could be found at Christ Church, and one student is quoted by the Daily Mail as saying "On the surface Christ Church appears to be full of hardworking, bookish students. In reality, drug use and supply is widespread", the consensus seems to be that heroin is not being widely used by those attending the college.With Ian Watson dubbed by one female student "an over-enthusiastic Censor being over-dramatic", another unnamed student opined:

It looks like some nutter coming in, seeing a few people looking rough, and saying they're all smack-heads. It's palpably false - there is no Heroin in Christ Church

However Christ Church has been at the center of a controversy involving the use of heroin on a previous occasion.In 1986 Olivia Channon, the 22-year-old daughter of the late Paul Channon, Conservative Secretary of State for Transport and Secretary of State for Trade and Industry during the 1980s, died at a party on campus from the effects of the alcohol she had consumed and the heroin she had taken.The party attended by Ms Channon had taken place in the room of Count Gottfried von Bismarck, who was to eventually die in 2007 at the age of 44 after what the Daily Mail said at the time and the Telegraph said this weekend was "a two-day binge on cocaine and heroin".

typical heroin user is often depicted on television as an unclean person sitting next to some back-alley garbage dumpster with a needle in his or her arm

typical heroin user is often depicted on television as an unclean person sitting next to some back-alley garbage dumpster with a needle in his or her arm. It can be easy for a morally “clean” person to see this and think “that will never be me.”

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Labeling and compartmentalizing a drug addict as “other” than one’s self-identified category is typical, according to Phil Adkins of the Mental Health and Recovery Services Board of Allen, Auglaize and Hardin Counties.

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He said comparing one’s own self-image to that of a person whose life is “in the gutter” can put one at risk. He says everyone is capable of becoming an addict and thinking it’s impossible is unrealistic. In part, this is because the image of an addict is based exclusively on the end result. Adkins said heroin addicts often end up in a very different world than they started in. He describes their journey from happiness to hell:

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“The brain’s pleasure centers fire when you fall in love, win a big game or experience anything that gives you pleasure. Heroin binds to these opiate receptors and when a person’s body builds a tolerance for it, those pleasure centers don’t fire correctly. They’re sort of ‘numbed’ and you can no longer feel pleasure from the things that used to make you feel good. Heroin addicts are depressed all the time; they can’t derive pleasure from being with their girlfriend or boyfriend because they’ve squeezed their pleasure centers like a sponge and they can no longer produce endorphins. So, because of the opiate, they feel terrible all the time.

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“Your body regulates itself naturally. If you do anything pleasurable, your body produces endorphins but heroine has taken over. You go from autopilot to a manual over-ride. So, instead of your body managing those pleasure centers, heroin now controls them and when the heroin isn’t in your system, the withdrawal is severe. Heroin’s absence is telling the body to go back to autopilot but the way it does that has been severely compromised; it has been permanently altered by heroin. If you were functioning at a rating of 70 before injecting heroin, the drug took you to a 75 or 80 but when it’s gone, you don’t go back to 70 — you go to 30. Heroin compromises the body’s ability to function autonomically.”

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The withdrawal symptoms include an extremely severe craving for heroin that can land a formerly-functional person in a living nightmare. Adkins says craving a state of normal function is so severe that heroin becomes the driving force in a person’s life. It takes a very clean person and makes them do things they never dreamed of to get a “fix.”

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“Once people are addicted, instead of using for a ‘high,’ or altered mood-state, they’re just trying to get back to 70 but they can’t. They have to be high on heroin just to feel normal and find escape from the withdrawal symptoms. They are looking at having a life in which they will never feel good, like they did when they first tried heroin. Their entire life their physical, mental, emotional and spiritual well-being is now owned by heroin and is forever tied to the experience of becoming addicted to it,” he said.

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“People prostitute themselves and all kinds of things. People’s veins collapse from injecting heroin and I know of one case where a guy’s veins collapsed to the point that he started cutting himself open to administer heroin. That’s drastic but not outside of the realm of a heroin addict. If you were in Kenton and needed a ‘fix’ and I told you there was a syringe with heroin in it laying in front of St. Rita’s, you would crawl on glass to get there. People do very off-the-wall things when looking for their substance.”

Ten Filipino “drug mules” have been sentenced to “death without reprieve” in China.

Their cases are “awaiting final review before the People’s Supreme Court in Beijing, the court of last resort before the judgment becomes final and executory, according to Foreign Undersecretary Esteban Conejos Jr.
Sixty-three others, also facing drug-related charges, were also meted death penalties, but “with a chance of reprieve.”
“If they show good behavior while in jail and evidence of such good behavior is verified, there is a possibility of commutation of their sentence to a lower penalty—life imprisonment or a jail term of not less than 15 years,” Conejos told a news conference at the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) Friday.
Conejos, who is undersecretary for migrant workers’ affairs, said “there is still hope for our kababayans who are facing the death penalty in China.”
“We urge them to work on the possible reduction of their sentence from death penalty to life imprisonment by showing good behavior. If a detainee does not show good behavior while in jail, the execution of the death penalty is imposed after a two-year period upon the approval of the People’s Supreme Court in Beijing,” the said.
According to Conejos, China “strictly imposes tough penalties against persons caught in possession of prohibited drugs.”

Former heavyweight world champion Oliver McCall was arrested over the weekend in Ft. Lauderdale and charged with possession of cocaine,

Former heavyweight world champion Oliver McCall was arrested over the weekend in Ft. Lauderdale and charged with possession of cocaine, possession of drug paraphernalia and violation of probation. McCall, who was scheduled to headline a fight card Tuesday night at the Seminole Hard Rock Casino in Hollywood, Florida against Zuri Lawrence has been removed from the card. This is not the McCall’s first run in with the law either. In January, 2006 he was arrested by police in Nashville, Tennessee and tasered after attempting to flee. In his pocket was a small amount of cocaine. He was accused of spitting on a police officer and threatened to kill him. The former champion’s son Elijah McCall is still scheduled on the card, promoted by the newly formed Heavyweight Fight Factory. Scheduled to make their debuts on the card are former University of Miami football stars Quadtrine Hill and James Bryant.

Black-tar heroin, a potent, inexpensive, semi-processed form of the drug that has spread across the United States,

Black-tar heroin, a potent, inexpensive, semi-processed form of the drug that has spread across the United States, driven by the entrepreneurial energy and marketing savvy of immigrants from a tiny farming county in Mexico.Immigrants from Xalisco, in the Pacific coast state of Nayarit, Mexico, have brought the heroin north over the last decade, and with it a highly effective business model featuring deep discounts and convenient delivery by car. Their success is a major reason why Mexican black tar has seized a growing share of the U.S. heroin market, according to government estimates.
Xalisco networks are decentralized, with no all-powerful boss, and they largely avoid guns and violence. Staying clear of the nation's largest cities, where established organizations control the heroin trade, Xalisco dealers have cultivated markets in the mountain states and parts of the Midwest and Appalachia, often creating demand for heroin in cities and towns where there had been little or none. In many of those places, authorities report a sharp rise in heroin overdoses and deaths.Before the string of fatal overdoses in 2007, "we didn't even consider heroin an issue," said Huntington Police Chief Skip Holbrook.
Xalisco dealers have been particularly successful in areas where addiction to prescription painkillers like OxyContin was widespread. Many of those addicts, mainly young middle- and working-class whites, switched to black tar, which is cheaper and more powerful.In York County, S.C., pain-pill addicts became hooked on black tar purchased in Charlotte, N.C., half an hour away. "We used to get maybe one overdose death a year" caused by opiates, said Marvin Brown, commander of the county's drug unit. "We had six in the first six months" of 2009.In the suburbs south of Salt Lake City, heroin was unheard of until dealers from Xalisco arrived, said Lt. Phil Murphy of the Utah County Major Crimes Task Force. Now, he said, young people looking for an alternative to pain pills drive to Salt Lake to score black-tar heroin.
University towns have been especially fertile markets for Xalisco heroin. Authorities in Boulder and Fort Collins, Colo. -- home to the University of Colorado and Colorado State University, respectively -- report increased overdoses caused by black-tar heroin purchased from dealers in Denver.Ohio has also become a center of Xalisco networks, and it was through a junkie in Columbus that black tar made its way to Huntington.

Mohammed Umar, 36, was arrested for smuggling the white crystal powder, usually used as an anesthetic, inside a water heater he brought from India.

Mohammed Umar, 36, was arrested for smuggling the white crystal powder, usually used as an anesthetic, inside a water heater he brought from India. His attempt was foiled by the customs officers when he underwent a luggage check after disembarking from a Thai Airways flight at 3 p.m. local time from New Delhi.Customs service and monitoring head Bambang Wahyudi said Saturday that the suspect wrapped the drugs in plastic and hid it inside the water heater.
The water heater was packed in a large cardboard box that the suspect brought through a scanner.
“Why would he bring a used water heater to Bali? That’s what raised our officers’ suspicions. He also seemed very nervous,” Bambang said.The suspect said the water heater was to be donated to an Islamic boarding school in Indonesia. He even showed officers an invoice for the water heater priced at 6,000 rupees. “The suspect was confused when officers asked him which school he wanted to donate to,” Bambang said.As the officers examined the water heater using an ion scan and opened the machine, they found the drugs. The suspect admitted he was under orders by someone identified as Jakfar, who resided in India. He said he was paid 5,000 rupees for transporting the drugs. He said Jakfar told him to find accomodation close to Ngurah Rai Airport while awaiting instructions. “We tried since Thursday night to locate the recipients of the drug, but couldn’t find them. They may be aware of the arrest,” Bambang said.
Ketamine, which has similar effects to crystal methamphetamine, is usually sold for Rp 1.5 million per gram.
Bambang said that the suspect would be charged with violating the Health Law and could face a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison and fines of Rp 1 billion. “We can’t charge the suspect with violating the Narcotics Law, because ketamine is not classified as a narcotic,” he said. In several countries including Singapore, Hong Kong, India and Canada, ketamine is a class 1 narcotic, while in the US it is classified as a category 3 prescribed drug.

Bali is a magnet for foreign drug traffickers as the island has seen many cases of drug smuggling in the last couple of months.

Among the foreigners arrested in drugs cases were seven Iranians who attempted to smuggle 5 kilograms of crystal methamphetamine by swallowing the drugs.

Another Iranian, Shahbazi Saeid, was arrested for bringing in 200 grams of crystal methamphetamine in a similar way.

Also in December, 48-year-old Australian Robert Paul McJannett was detained for attempting to smuggle 2 grams of marijuana.

In January, the customs office arrested Malaysian woman Hoon Yue Chin for bringing in 0.62 grams of crystal meth. Several days later, French national Francois Virgile Arthur Sidoine was caught with 0.78 grams of heroine in his underwear. In the same month, two Malaysians, Chang Cheng Weng and Boo Guan Teik, were arrested for smuggling in 2 kilograms of crystal meth.

Lady Gaga about her cocaine addiction saying she “believed it would have killed her”.

“I thought I was gonna die,” she said in her explosive new biography written by Helia Phoenix.

outrageous dresser Lady Gaga has come out in her biography LADY GAGA: Just Dance about her cocaine addiction saying she “believed it would have killed her”.The outrageous pop diva – who stole the show at last week’s Grammys performing with Sir Elton John- told how she would lock herself in her room snorting “bags and bags” of the drug to get inspiration for her music. And now the 23-year-old whose real name Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta – claims she was eventually saved… “by a dead auntie whose ghost lives inside her.”“I wanted to be the artists I loved, like Mick Jagger and Andy Warhol – and I thought the only way to do it was to live the lifestyle. But then I realised my father’s sister Joanne, who’d died at 19, had instilled her spirit in me. She was a painter and a poet – and I had a spiritual vision I had to finish her business,” she said.In the book that will only be in stores from February 18, Gaga reveals how she stripped on stage during a song as an unknown to get a bored audience to notice her. And served meatballs to a lover in only Knickers and Stilettos to turn him on.
Costing about R164 per copy, the singer revealed in the book how she dropped out of her New York performing arts school at 20 and descended into a nightmare world.“My cocaine soundtrack was always the Cure. I would lock myself in my room and listen to Never Enough on repeat while I did bags and bags of cocaine. It was about being an artist. I wasn’t a lazy addict. I would make demo tapes and send them around. At the time I didn’t think there was anything wrong with me, until my friends said, ‘Are you doing this alone?’ Um, yes. Me and my mirror.”