Free Republic

It didn’t take long for Oregon to realize decriminalizing hard drugs was a bad idea. On Tuesday, Gov. Tina Kotek, a Democrat, signed legislation that recriminalizes drug possession, reversing Measure 110, which 58 percent of voters approved in 2020. By August, however, 56 percent of Oregonians disapproved after a major uptick in overdose deaths and addiction in the state. Lawmakers from both parties got to work drafting legislation to reverse the measure.

Cullan Mais used to shoplift almost every day. The 31-year-old would often travel from his home in Cardiff to towns such as Abergavenny where he would then steal up to £4,000 worth of goods in a day. “We’d park up on the one end of town and we’d hit the shops,” he told ITV Cymru Wales while visiting Abergavenny for the first time since kicking his habit. “We’d take the stuff back, we’d drive back around to this side of town and do the same here. “There’s certain opticians up here, pharmacies, clothing shops, that were hit frequently. I would...

<p>Chrissy Reifschneider had just left rehab to treat her heroin addiction in 2017 when she started taking tianeptine, popularly dubbed “gas station heroin." The 41-year-old from Alabama was struggling with low energy, so a family member who worked at a gas station recommended she try the pills.</p>

A self-proclaimed “vaping addict” is calling for the devices to be banned after her right lung collapsed twice and she suffered permanent scars. “You never think this type of thing will happen to you — but it happened to me. It felt like my lung was on fire,” Wisconsinite Karlee Ozkurt, 20, told SWNS. “I fell into the trap of thinking vaping was cool,” Ozkurt confessed. “But it’s stupid. I didn’t realize until it was too late.” Ozkurt’s plea follows a recent study that found that 11.3% of American high school students reported using e-cigarettes in the past 30 days...

Three years after Oregon voted to de-criminalize drug offences - residents are now begging to reverse their decision after seeing an astonishing number of deaths from opioid overdoses. In 2020 - Oregon voters approved a measure to decriminalize the possession of all drugs including heroin and cocaine. The proposal, known as Oregon Ballot Measure 110, passed with 58.8 percent support. Now residents of the liberal state are crying out to their politicians to do something about the open-air drug markets that their cities have turned into. Opioid deaths in Oregon have gone up from 280, before the de-criminalization was voted...

The spike in interest in all things related to Matthew Perry includes a nearly five-minute excerpt of an interview with Bill Maher where the deceased actor talks about a near-death experience, his belief in God and the "math" that was involved to feed his drug habit. "I believe there is a higher power. I believe I have a very close relationship with him that's helped me a lot," Perry said on Real Time with Bill Maher in November 2022 while promoting his book, Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing. "A lot of people did have you in the 'dead...

Hunter Biden blamed Republicans Thursday for weaponizing his cocaine and alcohol addictions through “fruitless congressional investigations” and waging a “disinformation” campaign against his father, President Biden. In an op-ed published in USA Today, Hunter Biden also complained that his status as the president’s son is the main reason the Justice Department is prosecuting him for illegal gun possession. He said his father is getting the blowback unfairly. “My struggles and my mistakes have been fodder for a vile and sustained disinformation campaign against him and an all-out annihilation of my reputation through high-pitched but fruitless congressional investigations and, more recently,...

Matthew Perry has died at the age of 54, TMZ has reported. The beloved “Friends” star was reportedly discovered dead in the jacuzzi of a home in Los Angeles’ ritzy Pacific Palisades neighborhood just after 4 p.m. Saturday afternoon. Law enforcement sources told TMZ that first-responders rushed to the address with the call first reported as a cardiac arrest. They added that no drugs found at the scene and no foul play is suspected. In a statement, the Los Angeles Police Department stated: “We responded to the 1800 block of Blue Sail Rd for a death investigation on a male...

Social media companies have allegedly contributed to a mental health crisis among Carroll County students and caused eating disorders, cyberbullying, depression and anxiety among other issues. The Carroll County Board of Education unanimously voted April 12 to join other Maryland school districts in a lawsuit against social media companies that claims the companies knowingly caused harm to students. Frederick County Public Schools on Tuesday announced it has joined Carroll County and other school districts across the state and U.S. by filing suit against Meta, Snap, ByteDance and Google — the parent companies of Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok and YouTube, respectively. In...

Italy's financial police Guardia do Finanza, said in a statement Wednesday that authorities seized a 15.4 ton shipment of amphetamines reportedly produced by ISIS in Syria. The police tracked three containers at the port of Salerno in southwest Italy and found around 84 million pills stored inside industrial paper cylinders, CNN reported. The estimated value of the drugs was around $1.12 billion, the largest amphetamine bust in the world by quantity and value, the statement said.

A nationwide social experiment launched by a wave of marijuana legalizations is finally bearing results in the form of higher depression rates and addiction. It started in 2012 in Colorado and Washington, setting off a domino effect that has seen restrictions lifted across nearly 40 states, including 23 where it's legal to use marijuana recreationally. The Biden administration now aims to demote the drug from its schedule I status, which lumped it in with heroin and LSD, to schedule III, the first step toward total decriminalization at a federal level. Marijuana has been lauded for its purported benefits for pain...

Deep in the hills of Appalachia is a land of beauty laced with heavy dr*g abuse. In some of these communities up to 50% of the 20-40 year olds are addicted to hard dr*gs creating a generation of children being raised by grandparents. Join me and the locals as we travel into the hills of Eastern Kentucky to show you the gravity of this situation, and also introduce you to the people who are creating positive ways out.

Police officers allegedly stood by and watched for 15 minutes as a man who relapsed on heroin drowned in the Tennessee River after fleeing from them, according to a newly filed lawsuit. Kimberly Williams-Clabo claims her son, Mika Wheeler Clabo, would still be alive if it weren’t for the alleged negligence of the Knoxville Police Department, which encountered him “acting erratically” on the morning of July 25, 2022. Police said that when they approached Clabo, 30, who struggled with a heroin addiction, he ran from them and jumped into the river, where he got caught on vines and drowned. In...

Hunter Biden's lawyer has blasted the account of an IRS whistleblower who testified about a WhatsApp message where he appeared to threaten a Chinese businessman and claiming to be seated with his powerful father. Lawyer Chris Clark, who negotiated a plea agreement on Hunter's behalf with the Justice Department, called the whistleblower 'biased' and claimed the account covered 'a time of turmoil and addiction' for the president's son. He also disputed the veracity of Hunter's claim about now-President Biden in the WhatsApp message, saying his words have 'no connection to anyone in his family.' 'An extensive, five-year-long investigation conducted by...

When James Hilton was a high school sophomore in Darien, Connecticut, his parents sent him to a psychiatrist because of the many problems he was having at school: He struggled to do his assignments, and then forgot to turn them in. He played the guitar in the school band, but it was agony to sit still for practice. “I rarely did my homework. I failed French freshman year,” he told me recently. “It was like a class clown kind of thing.” The psychiatrist diagnosed attention deficit hyperactivity disorder—ADHD—and prescribed a popular drug that, for almost three decades, has helped people...

A trove of photos from Hunter Biden’s infamous laptop that were published on a new website last week includes a litany of never-before-seen images depicting the first son’s former hard-partying ways — and family life. The nearly 10,000-image catalog includes a perverse mix of family photographs and naked snapshots of himself in hotel rooms surrounded by drug paraphernalia and scantily clad women. Several pictures capture the nude 53-year-old Hunter alongside a tattooed woman in bedazzled mesh lingerie. Another shows him apparently naked behind a hotel desk with two mystery women — one who’s undressed and another lying in bed —...

People taking Ozempic for weight loss say they have also stopped drinking, smoking, shopping, and even nail biting. All her life, Victoria Rutledge thought of herself as someone with an addictive personality. Her first addiction was alcohol. After she got sober in her early 30s, she replaced drinking with food and shopping, which she thought about constantly. She would spend $500 on organic groceries, only to have them go bad in her fridge. “I couldn’t stop from going to that extreme,” she told me. When she ran errands at Target, she would impulsively throw extra things—candles, makeup, skin-care products—into her...

We hear the horrifying statistics daily – over 106,000 drug overdose deaths in America in 2021, with nearly 30% deaths in people 15-34. These young people have their whole lives ahead of them, promising lives tragically cut short. And it's getting worse. In Colorado, overdose drug deaths rose 38% from 2019 to 2020. You or someone you know could soon be one of those desperately grieving parents of a dead child. At the heart of the problem is the tendency for parents to be their kids' "best friend" rather than the strong authority figure imposing necessary limits to guide their...

Researchers have identified a pill used to treat a common skin disease as an "incredibly promising" treatment for alcohol use disorder. On average, the people who received the medication, called apremilast, reduced their alcohol intake by more than half—from five drinks per day to two. "I've never seen anything like that before," said Angela Ozburn. Ozburn and collaborators searched a genetic database looking for compounds likely to counteract the expression of genes known to be linked to heavy alcohol use. Apremilast, an FDA-approved anti-inflammatory medication used to treat psoriasis and psoriatic arthritis, appeared to be a promising candidate. The researchers...

Prazosin, a medication FDA-approved for hypertension and used off-label for alcohol use disorder, may help prevent drinking relapse in people with cardiovascular or behavioral symptoms of alcohol withdrawal, according to a new study involving active-duty soldiers. Alcohol use disorder (AUD) is prevalent among soldiers. Prazosin reduces the noradrenergic signaling that is key to regulating the brain stress response. Overactivity of the noradrenergic system produces irritability, anxiety, "fight or flight" responses, and sleep disturbance. Noradrenergic activity can increase during abstinence from drinking; consequently, it contributes to mood disturbances, insomnia, and other distressing symptoms of alcohol withdrawal and to the "relief cravings"...