Dec 17 Drug Headlines

GENERAL - SCOTLAND
Cold turkey plan for Scots addicts - The Scotman
The biggest shake-up of drugs policy for 20 years is to be pushed through by Labour in a bid to get Scotland's 50,000 addicts off heroin and other deadly substances.

GENERAL - US
Drugs might be the reason the season has been so violent - Our Midland
A carjacking and attempted kidnapping in broad daylight at a grocery store in Midland has a number of people wondering what is going on in our community. Even the police have taken notice, with one official saying that criminal behavior in Midland is changing and becoming more serious.

HEROIN - US
Three die amid 'bad heroin' fears - BBC
Three drug users have died in a week after injecting themselves with "contaminated" heroin, police fear. Two men and a woman, aged in their 20s, died in separate incidents while a fourth man remains seriously ill.

HEROIN - UK
Take the war on drugs to the poppy fields - The Observer
Heroin isn't a snob. Nor, to be strictly accurate, is it an inverted snob. Here at least it cannot be faulted. Class As are impressively classless; heroin is happy to enter your bloodstream whatever your bloodline.

GENERAL - AUSTRALIA
Bongs set for national ban
The Howard Government is pushing for a ban on the sale of marijuana bongs throughout Australia. The Federal Parliamentary Secretary for Health, Christopher Pyne, said the Government believed the legal sale of bongs sent a tacit signal that the Government approved the use of such drugs.

METH - AUSTRALIA
Ice smuggled in through 'porous borders'
Cracks in Australia's border protection are being blamed for the smuggling of the potentially lethal drug ice. NSW Police Minister John Watkins accused the federal government on Sunday of not doing enough to catch drug smugglers, saying more shipping containers should be checked for ice, also known as crystal methamphetamine.

GENERAL - US
Sobering Vacation
A new wave of addiction treatment centers is turning Malibu into the capital of luxury rehab -- and raising questions about whether five-star service and recovery mix.

GENERAL - SCOTLAND
Scotland shakes up drug laws
Scotland is undergoing a shake-up in its drug policy, with proposals to help get the country's 50,000 addicts off heroin and other drugs.

HEROIN - AFGHAN
Drug war, Taliban, poppies are all in full flower Opium, thugs bloom under U.S. policies in Afghanistan war
A little more than five years since the start of the Bush administration's Afghan war, the "ousted" Taliban is back in full flower, and so is the notorious Afghan poppy. There's no doubt the two are intimately connected.

HEROIN - UK
Three die amid 'bad heroin' fears
Three drug users have died in a week after injecting themselves with "contaminated" heroin, police fear.

GENERAL - US
Meth down, heroin on rise
Lately, when grand juries hand up indictments for drug charges, meth-lab cooks are conspicuously absent, and the drugs of choice now seem to be heroin, cocaine and pills.

MARIJUANA - UK
Drug dealers offer cash to home growers
After a police crackdown in Britain, drug dealers reportedly are paying customers to grow marijuana in their homes.