Tag: News

Wynonna Judd's Daughter Sentenced For Meth Charges

Grace Pauline Kelley has been sentenced to eight years in prison.

Grace Pauline Kelley, daughter of singer Wynonna Judd, was sentenced to eight years in prison for violating probation for a 2017 drug charge.

Kelley, 22, left a 180-day in-house rehab program on November 19, 2017 before she was scheduled to be released, which violated the terms of probation she received for charges of manufacturing, delivery and possession of methamphetamine with intent to distribute in May 2017.

Robert Reburn, the Public Information Officer East Tennessee for the Tennessee Department of Correction, confirmed an inquiry by Us Weekly that Kelley had received the eight-year sentence, which does not expire until August 2025.

Kelley is the younger of two children by Wynonna Judd, who was one-half of the popular ’80s country duo the Judds with her mother, Naomi; her father is Judd’s first husband, Arch Kelley, whom Judd divorced in 1998, two years after Grace Kelley’s birth.

She made headlines for the first time in 2014, when Judd’s half-sister, actress Ashley Judd, sought temporary custody of the 17-year-old after she alleged that her mother abused drugs and alcohol and was verbally abusive. Wynonna Judd denied those charges.

A year later, Kelley was arrested at a Walgreens in Nashville and charged with promotion of methamphetamine manufacture after police found a bag of items used for making meth in a plastic bag that Kelley reportedly threw from her car.

She pled guilty to possession and received probation, which was revoked in 2016 after Kelley was arrested in Alabama on charges of being a fugitive from justice.

In 2017, Kelley pled guilty to the aforementioned methamphetamine charges in Williamson County Court in Tennessee, and received a suspended sentence of 11 months and 29 days in jail, as well as a fine of $3,092.50, and a second suspended sentence of four years after pleading guilty to evading arrest in nearby Maury County.

She was required to complete the 180-day rehab program and then 30 days in jail in March 2017, which would have then allowed her to complete the balance of her sentence on probation.

According to Taste of Country, Kelley served her 30 days in June 2017 and moved on to rehab, but left the program on November 19, 2017. “[Kelley] was terminated from the recovery court program on November 21, 2017,” said a spokeperson for Williamson County. “A warrant for probation violation was issued on November 22, 2017 and served on December 16, 2017.”

Probation was officially revoked on February 8, 2018, and Kelley was given the eight-year sentence, as well as the four-year sentence for evading arrest.

Kelley will be eligible for parole on February 4, 2019. The Judd family and her father, Arch Kelley, have not issued any statement on her sentence.

View the original article at thefix.com

3 July 2018
Rapper Vic Mensa Deals With Addiction, Mental Health In New Song

The 25-year-old rapper gets candid about relapsing, recovery and mental health in his new song “10K Problems.”

Chicago rapper Vic Mensa just dropped his second single in a month called “10K Problems.” The song tackles addiction, his struggles with his mental health and dealing with family tragedy.

“10K Problems” immediately received strong reviews upon its release, and while the song is a little over two minutes, its impact hits hard from the beginning: “Niggas asking where I been at, I gotta recap it/Relapsing d-r-u-g habits/Tryin’ to move forward, depression been holding me backwards/Recovery ain’t a straight line.”

Then as Mensa raps on, he deals with his father becoming paralyzed after surgery. “It’s a painful process watching your parents die/And niggas look at my life and think I’m in paradise.”

Like the Fugees classic “Ready or Not,” Vic Mensa rapped “10K Problems” over the same Enya song, “Boadicea.” In the brief time the single has been out on SoundCloud, Rolling Stone has called it “cathartic,” and HotNewHipHop writes that “when Vic Mensa is his vulnerable self, he is able to weave a story with the best of ‘em.”

Continuing in the same self-confessional vein, Mensa also promised Business Insider that his next album will be “powerful, aggressive, beautiful, sad, all those things… Whenever I get into making an album, it’s always like a really self-reflective, self-expressive journey. And I’m learning about myself in real time.”

Mensa had previously tackled addiction in the single “Rollin’ Like a Stoner.” In the song, Mensa rapped, “I am a disaster, I don’t need a recipe/Tried to be sober, that didn’t work for me.”

Mensa told High Times, “I really was writing that song about a point in time in my life, for the most part. I was fucking with a lot of drugs. I went sober and then I’d do hard drugs some time ago.

But I still bounce back sometimes,” hence the lyrics in “10K Problems” where he raps, “Recovery ain’t a straight line.” (As a Mensa profile in Billboard reports, Mensa’s favorite drugs included mushrooms, acid, Molly, and Adderall.)

Mensa added that artists should be open about drugs and alcohol, as well as their mental health struggles. “I do think that shedding some honest light on drug use is important… A lot of youngins growing up in the hood, they witness death and despair firsthand… and we’re trying to deal with trauma often through external substances.”

Mensa admitted he sees a therapist, and practices meditation as well, and he “100%” feels that “the stigma is lessening” around mental health, “but it still needs to be introduced in a major way.”

View the original article at thefix.com

3 July 2018
Searching For The Next Naloxone

Experts are concerned that naloxone may not be strong enough for synthetic opioids such as fentanyl and carfentanil.

Naloxone is—at times—a seemingly miraculous drug. Within minutes of naloxone being administered, someone who was unresponsive because of an opioid overdose can start breathing on their own and regain consciousness.

However, despite its strengths, there are issues with the drug that have left healthcare professionals and policy makers pushing for alternatives.

One of the biggest issues with naloxone today is that it is reportedly not as effective at reversing overdoses from powerful synthetic opioids like fentanyl and carfentanil.

In these cases, a person might need multiple doses of the opioid reversal drug in order to see a benefit. This isn’t just expensive, but can also cost someone their life if there aren’t enough doses immediately available.

Another issue is that opioids remain active in the body for longer than naloxone does. Because of this, someone can be revived using the opioid reversal drug, but later slip back into an overdose when the effects of naloxone have worn off.

Both of these concerns have led to the search for alternatives to naloxone.

“The strategies we’ve done in the past for reversing overdoses may not be sufficient,” Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), recently said in a speech at the 2018 National Rx Drug Abuse and Heroin Summit, according to STAT News. “We need to develop alternative solutions to reversing overdoses.”

Dr. Jay Kuchera, a Florida-based addiction medicine specialist for Resolute Pain Solutions, said that “naloxone is being outgunned” by synthetic opioids that have largely replaced heroin in many areas of the country.

“Naloxone seemed to be great for the older opioids,” Kuchera said. “But now that we’re encountering these nonmedical, ungodly [opioids] like carfentanil… we need to get with the times.”

In 2016, one report found that the market for opioid reversal drugs was valued at nearly $1 billion, so there are good economic incentives for companies to find alternatives to naloxone.

Opiant Pharmaceuticals, which developed Narcan (the nasal spray version of naloxone), has had early success with a drug that works the same way as naloxone but lasts longer, so that the victim would be less likely to slip into another overdose after administration.

“Compounds like fentanyl, carfentanil, and other synthetic opioids act for longer periods of time,” said Dr. Roger Crystal, CEO of Opiant. “The concern is that naloxone’s half-life doesn’t provide sufficient cover to prevailing amounts of fentanyl in the blood.”

Because many overdose deaths occur when a person stops breathing, scientists are also examining whether they can use drugs to keep a person breathing even while not reversing the overdose itself. For this, researchers are looking at ampakines, a class of drugs that can counteract respiratory depression.

Some people argue that funds would be better used to address the causes of addiction or to further study naloxone to see if it is indeed less effective against synthetic opioids, but Volkow said that having new and potentially better options for saving people from overdose is critical.

“There are so many people dying that we have to recognize the urgency,” Volkow said. “We obviously value basic science, but at the same time we have to recognize because of the current situation, the development of medication the can help address the crisis has become our top priority.”

View the original article at thefix.com

3 July 2018
"American Greed" Tackles Crackdown On Recovery Industry Fraud

The latest episode of the CNBC series examines the case of notorious sober home operator Kenny Chatman who was convicted of health care fraud and human trafficking.

By now you’ve likely heard of the Kenny Chatman story. He is perhaps the most nefarious of all sober living home operators, who used his business to sabotage clients’ recovery so he could continue collecting insurance payments, even using it as a front for prostitution.

His high-profile case shed a harsh light on fraud and the lack of regulation in the recovery industry, and spurred several reforms since.

“Kenny Chatman saw an opportunity, saw a chance to make a lot of money, and didn’t care who he hurt to make that happen,” assistant U.S. attorney Maria Villafana said on American Greed, the CNBC series which featured Chatman’s story on Monday, July 2.

Chatman’s South Florida facilities encouraged, rather than prohibited, drug use to perpetuate the cycle of “treatment” and keep millions of dollars’ worth of insurance payments coming in.

Last May, Chatman was sentenced to 27 years in prison after pleading guilty to health care fraud, money laundering, and human trafficking. His case led to 50 arrests and the shutdown of about 200 facilities.

The recovery industry is “really not a comprehensive system” that lacks a standard for treating substance use disorders, said Mark Mishek, president and CEO of the Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation. Insurers and regulators tend to focus on the short term, which is a big problem for people seeking recovery.

“It’s a disease that needs to be managed over a person’s lifetime. So, the system we have today, for example, may provide insurance coverage for a short residential stay or for an outpatient program,” said Mishek. “That’s not enough. Patients and their families need to be involved in recovery for many, many weeks if not months and years in order to get well.”

Last July, Florida enacted a law that established tighter rules and penalties on sober living homes that scam clients and falsely advertise their services. It also mandates background checks for any owners, directors, and clinical supervisors at treatment centers.

And last month, the U.S. House of Representatives passed legislation that would increase coverage for the treatment of substance use disorder under Medicaid, and would expand the use of medication like methadone for treating substance use disorder.

View the original article at thefix.com

3 July 2018
Colleges Create Opioid Response Plans Amid National Crisis

Even though overdose deaths on college campuses are relatively rare, many schools are still choosing to put a plan in place.

Colleges across the country are focused on responding to the opioid epidemic, even as opioid abuse and overdose deaths remain very rare on campus.

According to the American College Health Association, about 7 to 12% of the college-aged population use opioids for non-medical purposes, and about 2 to 3% use heroin. Comparatively, about 5% of U.S. adults report misusing opioids.

“Colleges definitely have an obligation to address the opioid epidemic as it manifests on their campuses,” Beth DeRicco, director of higher education outreach at Caron Treatment Centers, told Inside Higher Ed. “While a small percentage of students misuse pain relievers, the danger of opioids and the way in which use has risen makes it an incredible concern.”

In 2016, the American College Health Association released guidelines for how colleges can address opioids and opioid misuse.

Since then, campuses around the country have crafted their own responses to the opioid epidemic. At Bridgewater State University in Massachusetts, naloxone is now available in 50 defibrillator boxes around campus, including in all 11 dormitories. Asheville-Buncombe Technical Community College in North Carolina trained staff on how to recognize signs of opioid addiction, changed the locks on single-stall bathrooms and had school security officers begin to carry naloxone.

The University of Wisconsin Madison hired two substance abuse counselors and made an agreement with Walgreens to allow students to purchase naloxone.

At the same time, a 2016 survey of students at the University of Wisconsin Madison found that just 0.8% of the campus population, or 55 students, reported having any issues with substance use disorder. Of those, only 5.4%—less than 3 students—reported opioid misuse.

One reason opioid abuse may be lower on campus is that opioid addiction is most common among people who have less education, fewer job prospects and live in poverty. However, reaching out to students might help those in their personal lives who are not enrolled in college.

For example, Anne Arundel Community College in Maryland has not seen any opioid overdoses, according to Tiffany Boykin, dean of student engagement. However, in the surrounding county 37 people overdosed in the first quarter of this year, she noted.

“It may not be a student who is actively engaged in practicing. They may have a parent or spouse or a friend who is affected,” Boykin said. “The majority of our students are working professionals. When they’re trying to cope with a family member or a loved one who is affected, it’s very difficult for them to be successful.”

View the original article at thefix.com

3 July 2018
Marijuana Decriminalization Bill Introduced By Sen. Chuck Schumer

The bill tackles marijuana rescheduling, advertising regulations, expungement and research.

New York Senator Chuck Schumer introduced a new bill to regulate marijuana at the federal level, High Times reported. The bill isn’t aimed at legalizing the drug but the proposal would decriminalize it.

Schumer previously announced plans to introduced the bill in April. The legislation would eliminate pot from the Controlled Substances Act, where it currently sits alongside drugs like LSD and heroin. By removing marijuana’s Schedule I classification, Schumer’s bill would “dramatically change the way federal prohibition laws would be enforced.”

The proposed measure would still allow states to establish their own marijuana laws, including Alaska, California and Colorado.

“The time to decriminalize marijuana is now,” Sen. Schumer said in a press statement. “The new Marijuana Freedom and Opportunity Act is about giving states the freedom to be the laboratories that they should be and giving Americans—especially women and minority business owners as well as those convicted of simple possession of marijuana intended for personal use—the opportunity to succeed in today’s economy.”

He added that the law “is simply the right thing to do.”

Co-sponsored by fellow Senators Bernie Sanders, Tim Kaine and Tammy Duckworth, the bill would introduce several other changes if it’s passed into law. For one, it would route tax dollars to a Treasury trust fund for weed businesses owned by women as well as “socially and economically disadvantaged” people.

The legislation would also allow the Treasury Department to control various aspects of advertising and marketing around marijuana. The proposed bill would also set nearly $750 million aside for highway safety programs and research into the “pitfalls of driving under the influence of THC,” not to mention developing technology to “reliably measure impairment.”

Perhaps the most significant aspect of Schumer’s bill is that it aims to grant $100 million to “help expunge criminal records of folks who have been convicted in the past for marijuana-related crimes.”

For many of the people helping to get the bill off the ground, High Times observed, it’s about ironing out the problems with how marijuana laws are enforced across the country—especially across racial divides.

“Far too many Americans are currently incarcerated for marijuana-related offenses,” said Sen. Duckworth. “And they are disproportionally people of color, despite the fact that African Americans and Caucasians use marijuana at the same rates.”

Sen. Sanders is particularly hopeful that the bill goes into effect, given that his home state (Vermont) legalized recreational weed earlier this year. Vermont is also exploring the possibility of clearing nearly 3,000 people of misdemeanor marijuana convictions. That said, much of the nation remains hugely inconsistent in its weed laws.

View the original article at thefix.com

2 July 2018
Feds Charge Dozens Of Dark Web Dealers In Massive Sweep

The dark net is no longer a safe haven for online drug dealers, says the Justice Department.

Last Tuesday, more than 35 people were charged with dealing illicit drugs on the dark web, the online marketplace previously thought untouchable by authorities.

The charges mark the first time that authorities went after the dealers on these secretive online platforms rather than the managers of the online spaces, the New York Times noted.

The bust resulted in the seizure of opioids, cocaine, over 100 guns and assault rifles, a grenade launcher, five cars, and almost $24 million worth of gold, cash, Bitcoin as well as other cryptocurrencies.

“Criminals who think that they are safe on the dark net are wrong,” said deputy attorney general Rod J. Rosenstein. “We can expose their networks.”

Homeland Security agents went undercover online as money launderers working with virtual currencies.

“Special agents were able to walk amongst those in the cyberunderworld to find those vendors who sell highly addictive drugs for a profit,” said Homeland Security Investigation’s Derek Benner. “[Homeland Security Investigations] has infiltrated the dark net.”

The captured suspects came from all across the United States, aged mostly in their 20s and 30s, and sold opioids, cocaine, meth, and marijuana on the web.

One thing many of them shared was the acceptance of Bitcoin as payment for their products. Bitcoin may seem like an obvious choice of currency for nefarious dealings, being independent of government controls as well as being hard to track as it is transferred from one anonymous user to another.

However, to hold all bitcoin users accountable, every transfer is recorded in a ledger that, while hard to understand to the average person, is pretty much an open record of everyone who has ever laid hands on that bitcoin. With time, law enforcement will be able to reliably track bitcoin transfers, some cyber security experts say.

This marks a departure from the old strategy used by authorities to crack down on online crime: going after the managers of the trade platforms. In 2015, authorities shut down the online bazaar Silk Road and prosecuted the owner and founder, Ross Ulbricht, also known by his online nickname “Dread Pirate Roberts.” He is now serving a life sentence.

But the lure of an anonymous online drug market remains, evidenced by the myriad cryptocurrencies arising that are made expressly for difficulty in detection.

“Some newer cryptocurrencies have features that make the tracing of them quite complicated,” said Greg Nevano, an ICE official who investigates cryptocurrencies. “These new anonymity-enhanced cryptocurrencies are clearly ripe for illicit use in an effort to subvert legitimate law enforcement inquiries.”

View the original article at thefix.com

2 July 2018
Link Between Heroin Addiction And Narcolepsy Examined

Could opiates be the key to treating the chronic sleep disorder?

Heroin could be the next big breakthrough in treating narcolepsy.

That’s one possibility raised in a paper published recently in the journal Science Translational Medicine, detailing new work probing the connection between addiction and the chronic sleep disorder.a

When narcoleptics nod off or lose muscle control, it’s caused by a lack of hypocretin in the brain. But to probe the connection further between the wakefulness-controlling chemical and the sleep disorder linked to it, researchers started studying the brains of dead narcoleptics. In the process, they stumbled across one brain that stood out.

It had a lot more hypocretin-producing cells than the other brains – and then the researchers learned that person had been addicted to heroin. So the scientists decided to start looking at the brains of people who had struggled with opioid use disorder before their deaths.

In the first four samples they studied, researchers found the opioid-addicted brains had an average of 54% more hypocretin-producing cells than regular brains.

“So it was natural to ask if opiates would reverse narcolepsy,” study co-author Jerry Siegel, a neuroscientist at the University of California Los Angeles, told Gizmodo.

The next step, Siegel explained, was trying a study with mice.

Over a two-week period, researchers drugged up narcoleptic mice with regular doses of morphine. The experiment upped their hypocretin-making cells, and the effect lasted for a few weeks after scientists cut off the dosage.

Basically, the researchers said, the opiates wake up dormant cells that make the necessary chemical.

“Understanding why opiates ‘awaken’ these cells is a task for the future,” Siegel said.

But other scientists voiced reservations about the work. Even if opioids turn out to be an effective treatment in humans, there are practical limitations.

“No mother of a 15-year-old with narcolepsy would sign onto us giving them several doses of morphine a day,” sleep expert Thomas Scammell of Harvard Medical School told Gizmodo.

Yet, the findings could herald new hope for addiction treatment. If opiates users have more neurons that make hypocretin, the researchers suggested, then maybe they need less.

“If chronic use of opioids is increasing hypocretin production—and the authors show that nicely—then that could amplify the rewarding aspects of these drugs, making addiction all that much worse,” Scammell said. “I think that’s actually the most interesting part of their research.”

View the original article at thefix.com

2 July 2018
Hemp Could Soon Be Legal

A bill to legalize hemp has passed the Senate and is moving to the House.

The U.S. Senate last week green-lit a bill that would legalize growing hemp.

Included as part of a massive farm bill, the proposed legislation sailed through the upper chamber 86-11, paving the way to allow industrial growth of the non-psychoactive plant. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) touted the legislation as a farmer-friendly measure.

“I have heard from many Kentucky farmers who agree it’s time to remove the federal hurdles and give our state the opportunity to seize its full potential and once again become the national leader for hemp production,” McConnell said. “That is why I strongly advocated for this measure to be included in the Farm Bill.”

This isn’t the first time McConnell floated hemp legislation; in April he introduced the Hemp Farming Act, which could have legalized the plant, according to Forbes.

Then in June, he inserted the measure’s key provisions into the 2018 Farm Bill. The move would later spark some squabbling in the committee on whether to remove cannabis derivatives like cannabidiol (CBD), but ultimately pot opponents opted not to demand the change, according to Forbes.

The consistently anti-cannabis Attorney General Jeff Sessions has signaled that he will not fight the hemp provisions, McConnell told the Associated Press.

Currently, hemp—a crop derived from the cannabis sativa species—is a Schedule I controlled substance. The new provisions would remove it from that list and allow farmers to get federal crop insurance when they grow it.

But despite its recent win, the bill still has other hurdles to clear before it passes. The House has a separate farm bill, one that tightens controversial work requirements for food stamps. That is expected to generate some contentious debate as the two chambers reconcile their competing pieces of legislation.

As of now, farmers in McConnell’s home state are already enjoying the benefits of hemp cultivation, thanks to a pilot program launched in 2014. That year, the state saw 32 acres of hemp planted; this year, officials have approved more than 14,000.

“It’s tremendous for us,” eighth-generation tobacco farmer Brian Furnish told the Associated Press. “We can start going after crop insurance and research dollars.”

View the original article at thefix.com

2 July 2018
Tom Hanks’ Son Chet: Parents Helped "Every Step Of The Way" To Sobriety

The actor and rapper says parental support and the birth of his daughter gave him the motivation to get sober.

Chet Hanks has struggled with substance use under the public eye but is now sober thanks to his parents.

Chet Hanks, the son of Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson, has had a long, public struggle with substance use disorder, but the musician says those days are behind him. His biggest motivator for getting his life together was becoming a parent.

“It was the prospect of having a kid, and I knew that in nine months there’s gonna be a baby here,” Hanks said in an ET interview with Katie Krause on Tuesday. “That gave me the motivation to be like, ‘OK, I’ve had my time now, and I need to move on.’”

Hanks said he had long known he had a problem and needed to get clean, but was unable to find the energy or motivation to do so.

“There’s a part of you that knows that you need to make a change but you can’t really shut that door on your life and just move on to a new chapter,” he explained. “For me, it took something drastic happening, like becoming a father, for me to make the change.”

His daughter, Michaiah, was born in April of 2016. While fatherhood served as an impetus to kick his habits, it was his own parents who gave him the support he needed to follow through. “They couldn’t be more supportive,” he explained. “Every step of the way… They’ve always been there for me and I’m really lucky.”

His famous parents love being grandparents, and Hanks says they offer to babysit very often. “It’s awesome seeing them being grandparents as well, because I was really close with my grandparents and now my daughter gets to have the same experience,” Hanks said.

Hanks’ sobriety has also provided inspiration in his rap career as his duo act, FTRZ, tackles the issues the pair has faced in their debut album, Ocean Park EP.

“I feel a responsibility like to tell the truth… and be as open as possible, because there is such a bad drug epidemic going on,” Hanks explained. “It’s a bad problem and I feel like there should be no stigma around people who get sober, because you need to be open to help other people.”

In sharing his experiences, he hopes to help others.

“If you just get sober and try to keep it a secret, you’re not really helping anybody because there could be somebody that’s struggling really hard and if you can be an inspiration to that person to make the change for them to change their life, you can’t put a price on that,” he said.

Hanks is also working with his father for the first time on an upcoming World War II movie called Greyhound.

View the original article at thefix.com

2 July 2018