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.
Of course, that ignorance ended with the first autopsy – 2 years ago.
Since 2005 at least 23 teenagers in the Texan city have died after taking cheese, so called because it resembles crumbled Parmesan.
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.
Junkies – and people as stupid as junkies – have no excuses. And I haven’t yet seen a successful drug-smuggling operation that wasn’t paying off some portion of law and order. Both sides of the border.
My wife just quit teaching at a school here in Dallas. One of the many problems there was the extensive use of “cheese” by students. I mean drinking and smoking pot are one thing, heroin mixed with a sedative???
and all they have to do is legalize it and it can be taxed, tracked, regulated..
This stuff is nasty, super-addictive and has been all over the news in major Texas cities, especially in Dallas and Houston.
From CBS:
Tex-Mex Soccer Children’s League, which involves more than 1,800 children and parents, most of them Hispanic, represents how a sports program can be used as an effective tool to fight against the drug.
http://cbs11tv.com/topstories/local_story_239083908.html
At $2 a pop, it’s inviting to a peer-pressured teen.
I have always said that wide spread drug use is a symptom and not the disease. Treating the symptoms does not cure the disease.
So what is the disease?
Cheers
Not that the people distributing this shit arn’t in the wrong, but people that sniff anything which they obviously are oblivious to the true content deserve to get f*cked up from it. Maybe this is natural selection killing off stupidity!
It’s not easy being cheesy – Chester Cheetah
Some one had to say it ….
Here is a link to Chester do’n some “cheese”.
“So what is the disease?”
Greed!!! Same as everywhere else.
Just another case of Darwinism if you ask me. Most of these kids would probably grow to be shit heads anyway, so they saved us all a little trouble.
with all the teen drug “epidemics” that have triggered hysteria through my lifetime – airplane glue sniffing, aerosol huffing, dope smoking, crack smoking, meth smoking, now ‘cheese’ snorting – can anyone explain why we are not ALL dead by now?
me, I think that the cops and the media massively overhype these things for increased ratings and increased budgets.
Doug (#10),
The idiots that were smoking crack, meth, etc. are the ones who gave birth to theses morons that are now doing cheese.
#6 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWpLvDH-jbg
😆
Cheers
#8 Well, how about no direction?
Cheers
#4 – TIHZ_HO – So what is the disease?
Society?
#5 – Eaze – Maybe this is natural selection killing off stupidity!
#9 – gquaglia – Just another case of Darwinism if you ask me.
I was thinking along the same line.
#10 – doug – can anyone explain why we are not ALL dead by now?
Because the majority of us don’t abuse illegal drugs.
#12 – TIHZ_HO
Very suitable clip!! 😀
Cheese? Kid’s stuff. You ain’t seen nothing yet. But legalization should allow children to enjoy these things in a safe cost-effective way, right? And pushers will finally be forced into the insurance business or such.
RBG
Eideard,
So exactly how many successful drug-smuggling operations have you seen, other than in the movies of course?
“And I haven’t yet seen a successful drug-smuggling operation that wasn’t paying off some portion of law and order. Both sides of the border.”
#14. and many do, yet live.
and if the VAST majority are not abusing meth, crack or ‘cheese’, can it really be called an ‘epidemic’?
All this talk about darwinism and drug use stupidity is shallow and short-sighted.
I am a real person and I know good, real, people with drug problems. These individuals aren’t stupid in any respect other than their habit patterns.
The more things change the more they stay the same. If we had to eliminate the drug users of the past we would lose out on countless contributions to science, psychology, medicine, and the arts.
Drug addicts are people too and ought to be judged by the harm or good they make.
If you think addiction is isolated to the lowest in society than you don’t get out much.
I’m sure the people abusing legal drugs like alcohol and tobacco aren’t subject to the laws of Darwin. After all it’s the illegality that makes it dangerous right?
Well maybe legalization might help then. I mean when you go to the store to buy a bottle of liquor you’re unlikely to go home with a bottle of methyl chloride since we have a regulated alcohol production and distribution system.
When someone is forced to buy their drug of choice from parties unknown in an illegal transaction the odds of poisoning go way up.
Education and regulation are the answer. Prohibition doesn’t work.
#14 So what is the disease?
My take is were is the focus in kids lives? I hate to say “in my day” but aside from the fear of the bow-tied civil defence workers shooting hoops in bathrooms kids grew up thinking of a better America for tomorrow. We were part of something good that was going to triumph over the commies who wanted to destroy our way of life. By doing well in school and getting a good job we could make America proud
So today there are no commies, they have been replaced by the terrorists but we can’t fight them. No matter what we do what’s’ the use – they can still get us and they have already destroyed our whay of life. Not like the commies – us and them. Even the Duck and Cover movies while putting us into fear we had faith in the government that the US will keep those bombs from falling on us. We can keep our enemy at bay.
Add to this money.
Mom and Dad owned their house and as a kid I knew I would own my own home one day and of course I would have a good job and kids of my own.
Where has that been going? Kids are growing up with the idea (justified?) that they just won’t be able to own a home, a good job is hard to find, having a car pollutes the Earth – hell all the good things in life happened already in the 1950’s so what can I get?
It’s like Tony Soprano said to his shrink that he felt he is coming in (to the Mafia) at the end of the wave – all the best was already gone.
Kids didn’t have all the electronic distractions to lose themselves in. Second Life? Get a first one.
TV – like the opening of Family Guy – Where are those good old family values?
Children learn from what they see – not by just what we tell them.
Anyway that is my take.
Cheers
No matter what’s done, there will always be dopes who’ll take chances with their lives. So don’t expect zero drug use anytime in the future.
However. I’d like the point out that most authorities favor a program of education about the serious consequences of drug abuse. The problem is that it’s not wide spread enough. You see and hear more about the space program and how great a career is in the Army, than a single second a day about drug abuse. And even if you do, it’s not very convincing. The “Just say No” ads were a joke. As well as the “Here’s your brain on…” ads. There are very very few showing abusers lying dead out on sidewalks or in alleys. And I believe there is a reason.
The commercial industries that stand to suffer from an all out anti-drug abuse campaign would be the alcohol and tobacco makers. If you point out the addiction to one group of substances, you can’t help put effect the addiction cycle of the others. And these industies don’t want that to happen. So they’re against any serious national education program that reaches the school students. Because they’re being counted on to be the next alcohol and tobacco addictied generation. It’s reasoned that it better for a few million kids to be victims of serious drug abuse, than too risk losing 100s of millions of potentally new product users.
And it may be the same for other educational programs that don’t exist. Instruct people how to not be ripped off by con artists, and such. And the banking and credit industries stand to loose business. Instruct how not to be fooled by Used Car salesmen. And army recruiters will find it more difficult to fill their quotas. So it just doesn’t happen. And it’s stupid to believe that education can’t work. If we can put men on the moon, we can certainly pull this off. We just need to break the cycle for a generation of two, and the drug cartels collapse.
It’s just an unfortunate consequence that some other grandfathered abusive enterprises will too. Too bad, boo hoo.
#23 RBG
While the studies you refer to are interesting they don’t support your conclusion. You’ve taken it out of context.
These studies all happen to target small Inuit villages in Alaska. I don’t think small Inuit villages are even remotely similar to the large Urban centres where most Americans and Canadians live.
All of the studies noted a police presence in addition to alcohol prohibition. I don’t think you can attribute cause even in the cases cited.
Perhaps you’ve read about the period of American alcohol prohibition (1920-1933). Prohibition was a boon to American organized crime families, Al Capone comes to mind. The Canadian whiskey distilleries made fortunes manufacturing alcohol destined for illegal importation to the USA(sort of like the BC marijuana industry now).
All prohibition serves to do is make criminals out of otherwise law abiding citizens.
“Nothing is more destructive of respect for the government and the law of the land than passing laws which cannot be enforced. It is an open secret that the dangerous increase of crime in this county is closely related with this.”
Albert Einstein
24. nightstar. Then let’s do away with speeding laws and any other law that enforcement seems not to fix.
RBG
#25 another non sequitur, at least you’re consistent.
26. Thank you. My point is made by this non-sequitur if you missed it. Just because a law is unforceable, it does NOT follow that you do away with it or any other unenforceable law.
Speeding laws can not be enforced. People continue to speed regardless. Never-the-less we continue to try to enforce those laws. Now replace speeding with drugs.
My first example proved prohibition exists and working in the US and Canada. That’s it. You might want to think about how you’d deal with that before advocating a drug free-for-all experiment with people’s kids and Northerners alike.
RBG
#27
>>”My first example proved prohibition exists and working
in the US and Canada.”
I disagree, you haven’t proven your conclusion. The studies you cite don’t account (in the material available) for the other variables such as culture, ratio of law enforcement officers to citizens, remote location precluding smuggling etc.
To suggest that because prohibition works in a small Inuit village it would work in L.A. is preposterous. Even if the studies conclusions are accurate they don’t support your conclusion.
BTW I agree that drivers persistence in flouting speeding laws indicates that the speed limits imposed are unrealistic and unenforceable. This doesn’t mean however that some other speed limit would not be obeyed. So abolition isn’t necessarily the answer.
For the hard-of-reading, I’ll repeat: “My first example proved prohibition exists and working in the US and Canada. That’s it.” If you want further details on these laws and policies, go do your own research.
RBG
#29
If you have no response but to restate your position why bother? Let your words stand if they are so persuasive.
You’ve admitted that your arguments aren’t logically supported and yet you claim they are still valid.
I’ve examined your so called evidence. Not only is it questionable it’s just not applicable. The studies aren’t available in their entirety and the conclusions are speculative.
Even if I accept your studies as factual how is a small Inuit village like say, NYC or LA. Why would you expect the residents of either city to behave like residents of “isolated Alaska Native villages”?
Your logic is unsound, your argument flawed.
AMERICA NEEDS ITS DRUGS. There wouldn’t be a supplier if there weren’t consumers. How about for once we take the blame for our problems rather than push it on others.
#31, RBG,
Your points are valid. Nightstar has made the error that a criminal enterprise will always be the excuse NOT to enforce a public safety law.
*
We encourage people to try living on the edge. Geeze, people pay $3 or 4 to go on a carnival thrill ride to have the crap scared out of them. Books, movies, television, magazines all in their way suggest smoking and alcohol are sexy. Scenes from the Fast and the Furious show how reckless driving will get you off.
So whether its booze, tobacco, pot, or heroin, people are encouraged to partake. And the younger the person, the more invincible he is.