Cheese-like heroin killing Texan teens

Source: Observer

A teenage student has become the latest victim in Dallas to die from a powerful and highly addictive new street drug known as 'cheese'. The rise of the drug, a mixture of black tar heroin and powdered headache tablets, has been described as an epidemic. Dealers often sell it at $2 a time to get youngsters hooked. Because it is snorted, teenagers do not realise they are taking such a lethal heroin-based drug.

Since 2005 at least 23 teenagers in the Texan city have died after taking cheese, so called because it resembles crumbled Parmesan. The latest victim was 18-year-old Scott Clark, a volunteer for a local animal charity and a fitness fanatic.

The drug is mass produced in Mexico and smuggled across the border in increasing quantities. The authorities are so concerned that a special regional 'cheese task force' has been set up to tackle the problem.

Sergeant Jeremy Liebbe said: 'To market heroin to kids, you've got to get rid of the needle because even the hardcore cheese users that we've identified and brought into custody have said "I wouldn't stick a needle in me to get high, but I'll snort it up my nose".

Read more: http://observer.guardian.co.uk/world/story/0,,2165332,00.html

my momma's advice was never truer than now.

Did your mother really say that?

I don't think we will ever stop illegal drug use until we understand WHY people take them. From what are they trying to escape?

"From what are they trying to escape"?

Take a look around you. Everywhere there is war, poverty, disease, unemployment, parental indifference and a definite lack of social services to help these kids avoid drugs.

There's plenty to escape from. Drugs may be the absolute worst way to escape from their problems but they're certainly the easiest way. Always have been, always will be.

I have done just about every drug known to Man (including years of daily heroin use).

At no time did I ever do anything in an attempt to "escape" from anything, whatsoever.

I got high to get high.

Pure and simple.

Texas, of course.

Seriously, though. Having struggled with addiction problems myself, I was born trying to escape. Mostly whatever it was that I was feeling at that moment. Even as a child I used sugar, caffiene, baby asprin, skiing or biking really fast, you name it - to product a high or feeling of escape.

Some of us are just wired that way from birth.

this is a very crappy world indeed

one of the worst addicts i knew had chronic pain from arthritis even as a teen, that's a pretty tough row to hoe

there is also mental pain issues, many many MANY drug addicts i know have mental illnesses, and they don't seem to ever recover, or if they do for a few years, eventually they start again

i don't think there is much illegal drug use in singapore, i just think we are not willing to go to the measures required to end the market in illegal drugs

in Texas about this? I googled and came up with nothing but this article.

found some:

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/city/collin/mckinney/stories/DN-cheese_03met.ART.State.Edition1.42056d2.html

I'm wondering if this heroin is coming from Afghanistan through Mexico.

There's also poppies in Colombia.

But there are indications Afghan heroin is starting to show up on the West Coast.

glad as hell to get rid of him any way they could though.

Last time I was in Texas - in Austin a year and a half ago - I was shocked at the number of homeless people on the streets.

I was also stopped and questioned twice while taking pictures!

Me-thinks that Texas has no idea how far they have fallen.

the entire country.

....as an opportunity to shit-can the entire state of Texas (millions of Democrats included), as is so often the case here at DU.

If the kids in your vicinity are not burdened with drug abuse problems, my compliments. I seriously doubt that's the case, though. Your cheap shot at my native state is uncalled for, in any event.....

Very prominent here at DU.

If it is not occurring in other states, then it's bound to happen eventually. This is not a problem that will be confined only to Texas.

not mean I am mocking you.

edit: language.

I'm not from Texas; I'm from NJ. And considering that the people of Massachusetts elected Mitt Romney as their governor, you're not in much of a position to ridicule Texas because of George W. Bush.

On edit: I am not going to defend Mitt Romney in any way, manner or form. He is a lying sack of excrement. In the same vein as the pResident.

...after I encountered the first 200 or so DU threads where open season on Texas was declared. There have probably been at least another 200 similar threads since then.

Just to refresh everybody's memory, 2,832,704 Texans voted for John Kerry in 2004, almost 40% of the state's voters. No sense in trashing the entire state, just because the Bush clan decided to carpetbag their way in, years ago, with such dismal results.....

It's pretty rude and myopic to trash someone else's state, I must say.

Edit to add: I'm sure you'll get a chance to call me out for being rude or myopic on some other thread.:)

There was a major drug bust in Massachusetts just the other day, in fact:

http://www.southcoasttoday.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070907/NEWS/709070340/1011/TOWN10

By Brian Fraga
Standard-Times staff writer
September 07, 2007 6:00 AM

NEW BEDFORD — The first wiretapping investigation in Bristol County since 1990 uncovered a significant suburban drug distribution ring that led authorities this week to arrest 25 individuals in Dartmouth, Fairhaven and New Bedford.

Bristol County District Attorney C. Samuel Sutter, accompanied by local, state and federal law enforcement officials during a press conference Thursday, unveiled the 711 grams of cocaine, 15 pounds of marijuana, numerous narcotic prescription pills, a gun, brass knuckles, laptop computers and several cell phones that authorities seized from five homes during an early-morning sweep Wednesday.

a moderate to liberal "blue" city, atypical of the state of Texas, despite being its capital. The fact that these things that bothered you occurred in Austin may prove that they are simply fairly common occurrences around the U.S. and not indicative of the wingnut mentality that admittedly has overtaken much of this state, as Austin is one of the least "typical" Texas cities there is- at least in the downtown area.

(Also, it may be worth considering that the possibly homeless people who you noticed may have not been homeless, but "drag rats"- a name I heard in Austin that was given to young adults who choose to live on the streets in various cities for the experiences, but who aren't truly homeless based on poverty. I'm not trying to knock anyone who does that, but just noting this because Austin is a town that attracts a good number of them due to the fairly tolerant atmosphere, the large college, etc.)

is true and I can't change that. I am sure that the good folks in Austin are very tolerant when they wish to be.

FYI - the homeless folks I saw, were on the side of the road, holding signs, their belongings in shopping carts next to them. On every trip out of our hotel we saw them. To me, that is unusual. Perhaps that "lifestyle" is made possible by the tolerant climate in Texas. Up here, they would be would be found frozen solid in the morning. No steam vents where I live.

Oddly, I have never in my life been stopped for taking pictures anywhere else. Maybe having that happen twice in one week was just bad luck.


edit: punctuation

I actually lived there for several months recently, and I honestly like my small Southeast TX hometown just as much. The point of my post was simply to point out the flaw I saw in assessing the entire state of Texas based on the experiences you had in Austin, because it is pretty unrepresentative of the state as a whole (although most liberals and "blue staters" would probably find it more to their liking than the rest of the state). Kind of like visiting Cambridge and then giving an assessment about the state of Massachusetts as a whole...

Yes, the people you saw do indeed sound like genuine homeless people. Maybe I just don't find that particularly shocking because I've seen homeless people in every large city that I've spent much time in when I was in the downtown area. I'm not saying it's a good thing at all; just that I wouldn't be shocked by it. And as for the picture thing, yeah that is weird, but I really don't know what the implications of it would be- just people being paranoid?

I live in the DFW area, and my local news station has been covering this problem for at least the last year. The week before school started, there was a big anti-cheese rally in Dallas to educate the middle schoolers on this.

or so. That's where they have the biggest problem.

Because every drug is illegal, there is absolutely no way to know what is in street drugs. Like alcohol prohibition, that brought all kinds of dangerous alcohol mixtures to the underground marketplace, we are repeating our mistakes. Generally, a large number of people want to get high. That can be accomplished with the drug called alcohol, or any number of other drugs. Is everyone drinking alcohol trying to escape from some big issue in their lives? I don't think so. Maybe they just want to get high for the fun of it.

We don't seem to have much problem with street pushers selling deadly mixtures of alcohol, because it is a legal drug, even though we do have incidents of overdose (probably higher than with illegal drugs) whether intentionally or accidentally. When there is a legal channel for obtaining the drug, there is no need to do the deal in back alleys where the content is unknown. And at least we're not also creating a whole criminal supply underworld.

It is prohibition that is causing much greater harm. We are keeping the drug cartels in business, just as we did in alcohol prohibition. Only now, we have most of the world pursuing prohibition, so we have worldwide criminal enterprises to provide prohibited intoxicants and stimulants. In the US, we have half a million non-violent drug offenders locked up. We've created a law enforcement segment addicted to the drug war for its funding, and livelihood, and a reasonable discussion about alternative approaches seems to be completely off the table.

Also, keep in mind there were 94 teen suicides in Dallas in 2004. How many teens died in Dallas in auto accidents? While these deaths are terrible, we must keep things in perspective. If we want to reduce teen deaths from drugs, we need to ask ourselves what other approaches are possible.

Since the black market acts as an unregulated industry, there's no reason not to cut the drugs with cheap mexican medication, household cleaners, cheaper drugs, inert ingredients, etc. It's the resulting unpredictability of dosage and ingredients that contributes to many deaths and overdoses.

With legalization would come regulation, and people would know what they were putting in their bodies.

used drugs over the course of human existence. The anti-drug crowd continues to try and legislate that drug use be eliminated. This is simply a waste of tax dollars and law enforcement efforts. It also crowds the jails and ruins lives. It is really a lose lose.

Legalizing and controlling drugs in no way guarantees that illegal/impure drugs will be eliminated. However one does have to consider that once alcohol became legal, available and affordable, the incidence of illegal production dropped drastically.

on edit: sp.

associated with smuggling and selling bootleg liquor.

to DU askeptic :hi:

It's not just ghetto kids in South Dallas,
but also the kids of the rich folks in Highland
Park who would rather burn in hell for all eternity
than vote for a Democrat. These same folks are out
there at social affairs wearing their expensive duds,
pretending that poverty is the affliction of the
undeserving, and that America (=Bush) can do no wrong.

All the time their neglected kids are showered with money
so they won't get in the way, and they buy whatever the hell
they can and want. My daughter went to Highland Park High
for a semester, and was, thankfully, one of a tiny group
of misfits who wanted no part of that scene. But she was
there long enough to get an idea of the local flavor. Not
that all of North Dallas or even all of Highland Park is
like that, but it's definitely more of a rule than an exception.

Where a disgusted Michael Douglass asks Topher Grace, why the hell he brought his daughter to the worst slum in Cincinnati. The response was one of the best descriptions of the Drug War.

Here it is:
Robert Wakefield: I can't believe you brought my daughter to this place.

Seth Abrahams: Woah. Why don't you just back the fuck up, man. "To this place"? What is that shit? Ok, right now, all over this great nation of ours, 'hundred thousand white people from the suburbs are cruisin' around downtown asking every black person they see "You got any drugs? You know where I can score some drugs?" *Think* about the effect that that has on the psyche of a black person, on their possibilities. I... God I guarantee you bring a hundred thousand black people into your neighborhood, into fuckin' Indian Hills, and they're asking every white person they see "You got any drugs? You know where I can score some drugs?", within a *day* everyone would be selling. Your friends. Their kids. Here's why: it's an unbeatable market force man. It's a three-hundred percent markup value. You can go out on the street and make five-hundred dollars in two hours, come back and do whatever you want to do with the rest of your day and, I'm sorry, you're telling me that... you're telling me that white people would still be going to law school?

So very very true, too.

Means they need a wider market for their product.

Cheese is a handy way to market heroin to new crowd.

Now why exactly is Afghanistan producing such an abundance of opium again?

:rofl:
Sorry, but it must be really hard to get any respect around the office when you're attached to the CTF...

CTF employee of the month:

"Cheese, Grommit, cheese!"

...the dealers are CUTTING THE CHEESE?...

(sorry, somebody had to ask...)

I think that it is cheaper to produce black tar heroin than it is to produce the yellow/whitish powder heroin called "china white". The problem is that normally you have to boil up and shoot tar. Someone discovered that you can crush headache pills up and mix it with tar an that this mixture can be sniffed like china white but with a lower production cost. In my opinoin only legalization will make the uncut china white more available again. With legalization overdoses would be cut to near ZERO because the pruity level would be on every bag sold.

Every time a rich person's kid gets arrested or killed doing something either illegal, stupid or both (and snorting cheese falls into both categories), they always hit you over the head about what a wonderful kid he was?

It's always

"Joe Jones, an 18-year-old member of the National Honor Society who worked three jobs to buy toys for the kids in the hospital, loved kittens and read the newspaper to senior citizens in the hospital"

and never

"Joe Jones, a 17-year-old father of six who sold crack at the corner of Main and Fourth to finance his marijuana plantation."

"He was such a good kid, so undeserving of this tragic ACCIDENT." 1. Reiterate he was "good" which generally means white and middle class or better. 2. If any kid should be dead it shouldn't be HIM he was born into a class of people that should not have to deal with this. 3. They will never admit the drug issue was the fucking ISSUE they conveniently call it an accident.

I always read these types of stories with a critical eye because I live in an area where there is a large number of Hispanic kids and the stories about drug use, death, etc etc are almost always written differently when they are writing about kids from the brown area of Roseland, or the white area of Petaluma!

:evilgrin:

from Afghanistan, and we gotta unload it somewhere.

It sounds like their angle is border control.