300 people have been arrested in a two-month crackdown on drug houses. Police carried out 301 search warrants as part of Operation Localise, a nationally coordinated operation focusing on "tinnie houses" - those where cannabis is sold. They made 311 arrests, seized 32.2kg of cannabis and 139g of methamphetamine. Cannabis was found growing at 44 locations, with 2657 plants and seedlings seized. Officers also seized $111,154 in cash, 19 firearms and ammunition. A wide range of charges have been laid, including conspiracy to supply class A, B and C drugs, manufacturing methamphetamine, participating in an organised criminal group, unlawful possession of a firearm and threat to kill. "This was a sustained programme of enforcement to combat drugs and disrupt organised crime groups" said Assistant Commissioner Malcolm Burgess. "Tinnie houses are hubs for criminal offending. The people who run them are often not only dealing cannabis, but also methamphetamine. They invariably receive stolen property, take payments for drugs and are involved in organised crime groups. "Such houses cause misery in communities and we are sending a clear message that they won't be tolerated. "We will continue to protect our communities from the harm caused by drug dealers and stamp out the anti-social behaviour they create." Police are trying to seize assets from 47 of those arrested. They will have to prove they are not the proceeds of criminal activity. Mr Burgess said he was confident the operation had caused "significant disruption" to drug dealing and warned dealers they would continue to be the subject of close police attention.

Police are calling a drug-making operation found during a Lakewood fire last week one of the most unusual they've seen in decades. Home video captured the huge fire that leveled a home as explosions rocked the neighborhood. UNCUT: Fire Explodes At Lakewood Home UNCUT: Chopper 7 Over Lakewood Fire At first, police thought they were dealing with a meth lab, when they went inside and found what appeared to be equipment for illegal drug manufacturing. Then, they found bag after bag of scored and burned marijuana and what they say were the makings of a hashish oil factory. "(It's) very unusual," Lakewood police Lieutenant Chris Lawler said. "Even some of the people in our narcotics unit haven't seen this in a long time. ... It's very rare. I haven't seen it in my 20 years in law enforcement." Investigators say the suspect had pounds of marijuana and boxes of butane, and somehow set them on fire while making the oil. Hashish oil is a concentrated form of the active ingredient in marijuana. It's extracted through a process using highly flammable butane. "It's suspected that that was probably the cause," Lawler said. The suspect's father spoke with KIRO 7 on Friday night after his son was taken to Harborview Medical Center with burns over nearly 30 percent of his body. "I don't know what in the world my son was doing," James Rogers said Friday. "I think he was fooling around with some explosives or something he shouldn't have been." The suspect remains in the hospital; it's not clear when he'll be released or what charges he may face.

      According to the Customs, the first attempts to bring internally concealed hashish into the country were observed in 2008. In the past several months, however, the phenomenon has become markedly more common.       Customs Inspector Tero Virtanen explains that since last December more than a dozen individuals have been stopped and caught on arrival at Helsinki-Vantaa International Airport for trying to smuggle in hashish inside the body.       ”Most of them have been men between the ages of 20 and 35. They are professional couriers, and some of them have told the officials that they have made several successful runs to Finland before getting caught. Some of them have also performed deliveries to other Nordic countries.”       According to Virtanen, the Customs have confiscated more than ten kilograms of cannabis from the mules. The street value of the lot would have been in the region of EUR 100,000.       In addition to this, the officials have learned in the preliminary investigations about the importation of additional roughly 10 kg of hashish.       “Thanks to the couriers, several different criminal organisations have now been tracked down in Finland. At the receiving end of the chain there are around a dozen suspects and the spectrum of their nationalities is broad”, Virtanen notes.       The Customs believe that hash has been distributed, or was supposed to be distributed, across Southern Finland.       The amounts of cannabis that the couriers have swallowed in small packages have varied from half a kilogramme to a kilo.       The smugglers doing the ingesting of the small packages have been natives of Spain, Portugal, Morocco, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia.       Customs officials suspect that the smuggled substance has generally originated from Morocco and Spain.       One of the couriers told the authorities that his fee for the gig was EUR 700.       The use of this technique to bring in hashish is a new development: traditionally the internally concealed drugs smuggled into the country have been substances appreciably stronger than hash, such as cocaine and heroin.       “Larger hashish consignments are still brought in through other means, but this is a quick way to import narcotics. There will always be a ready market for cannabis”, Virtanen says.

What starts out as a fun activity, can take over some lives. Some psychiatrists say video games are one of the big addictions of the decade and can cause problems for people who play them too much. Others argue it is not a recognized addiction.

Described in the Alcoholics Anonymous Big Book as "cunning, baffling, powerful," addiction often seems as inscrutable as the human mind itself. Its reach is widespread: Else Pedersen, executive director of Bridge House, estimates 10 to 15 percent of the population has an addiction. "We all either have this or have some strong primary connection to it," she says. "This is everywhere, and it needs to be dealt with like the medical issue it is. We need to give it the same attention we give other diseases that are progressive, pervasive and potentially lethal."

  Last month, The American Society of Addiction Medicine (ASAM) made a big step toward widespread recognition of addiction as a medical issue rather than a behavioral issue or moral failing. It released a new definition which states addiction is a chronic, underlying, largely genetic brain disease.

  "The disease is about brains, not drugs," former president of ASAM Dr. Michael Miller stated in a press release. "It's about underlying neurology, not outward actions." Miller oversaw a four-year effort by more than 80 addiction experts and neuroscience researchers which yielded the new definition.

  Dr. Ken Roy, medical director of Addiction Recovery Resources Incorporated in Metairie, calls it a game-changer.

  "This is a definition based on a consensus of expert opinion and scientific literature that changes the understanding of addiction from a choice or a self-treatment to a condition of brain structures that basically compels behavior outside the ability to choose," he says. "It's also pivotal in the sense that it equates a compulsion to use chemicals with compulsions to have other kinds of behaviors such as food or gambling or sex. (It is) the same disease state. Addiction is not a choice."

  The new definition reveals addiction to be a primary disease, much like diabetes or cardiovascular disease. It can be a root cause behind other behavioral, social and psychological problems like depression, cognitive distortions, social isolation and anxiety. According to ASAM's definition, "genetic factors account for about half the likelihood that an individual will develop addiction" — meaning if one of your parents is or was an addict, you are genetically predisposed to developing addiction.

  Since addiction has physical, neurobiological causes, one would expect the brains of addicts to function differently than the brains of non-addicts. This is exactly what happens, says Dr. Howard Wetsman, medical director at Townsend, a network of local outpatient addiction treatment centers. Many (not all) addicts have a morphology (or mutation) in the genes associated with the production, release, reuptake and metabolizing of dopamine, a neurotransmitter associated with pleasure and reward. Wetsman refers to the intricate factors governing normal dopamine levels as "dopamine tone."

   "Generally, people who have a low dopamine tone are not able to make great attachments and feel rewards from normally rewarding activities, and that is when the drug or behavior comes along," he says. " Our society likes to think that drugs cause addiction. It's actually the other way around for most people with addiction. The addiction causes the drug use," he writes in his book, QAA: Questions and Answers on Addiction.

  The genetic factor is so pervasive that Wetsman has instituted genetic testing as part of Townsend's intake procedure. "The test identifies two dozen genetic mutations in the brain that relate to symptoms of addiction," says John Antonucci, an intake coordinator at Townsend who also is recovering from addiction. "This information helps fine-tune medical interventions, and it is amazing when you take a patient and their family members, and they realize it really is a biological brain disease. I like to equate it to seeing the X-ray when you have a broken arm. And I have seen family members break down and cry when they realize all this time, their kids weren't doing this to spite them. They were doing it because they were sick."

  Though Antonucci says nine out of 10 of Townsend's patients report addiction in their family trees, there are some addicts without a family history or genetic indication of the disease (but because addiction can express itself through many different compulsions, from overeating to compulsive spending, it can sometimes be hard to trace, Wetsman says). New Orleans native, Xavier University alumnus, father of five and recovering addict Darryl Rouson, now a Florida state representative, had no known family history of addiction.

  "My mother was known to cut her beer with 7-Up, and my dad drank three or four times a year," says Rouson, who began drinking and using cocaine in the '80s. "I wasn't drinking for the social nature, I wanted the effect, and I wanted it quickly, and for a long time. For me, it started out filling what I thought were voids in my life, low self-esteem: I never thought I was cute enough, strong enough, athletic enough or smart enough, and I was always doing things to compensate for these lacks."

  Rouson says he has been through eight treatment programs and is well-versed in the genetic component of addiction, but he has never been tested for the morphologies. Though genetic testing can provide clarity to a diagnosis of addiction, and a basis for what medications will best normalize individuals' brain chemistry, neither testing nor medications are necessary for recovery. "There are millions of people who have gotten sober by going to 12-step meetings (like Alcoholics Anonymous or Narcotics Anonymous). For some people, that works," says Jo Cohen, clinical director of New Orleans Bridge House and Grace House. "We support the science, but like everything else in treatment, it's an individualized approach."

  Although people do not choose to become addicts, they do have choices over how they manage the disease. Addiction requires ongoing treatment, which varies from person to person — some may benefit from ongoing use of medications like Suboxone, some may require long-term inpatient treatment, others may stay sober simply by attending 12-step meetings. Antonucci stresses that a strong routine of recovery-related activities like meetings or volunteering helps people maintain sobriety, as does access to help from addiction doctors. "This is a chronic disease like diabetes or hypertension," he says. "If you are diabetic, you get exercise and take insulin, but there are times you need to check up with your endocrinologist."

    Rouson manages his addiction by attending 12-step meetings, sponsoring other recovering addicts, reading Alcoholics Anonymous literature, and giving back to the community by sharing his story at prisons and recovery centers. He will speak at Xavier Wednesday, Sept. 14, to celebrate National Recovery Month.   

  "One of the critical reasons why I got clean was I was given a choice," he says. "(My wife) Ruby was dead and I had taken her $80,000 life insurance policy and spent $60,000 on cocaine. I was in a courtroom with my wife's family and they were trying to convince the judge to take my four-year-old son. The judge said I could either choose Daniel or drugs, but after today, I would not have both. I chose my son."

  Antonucci and Rouson both say their community outreach work, which is a tenant of Alcoholics Anonymous (the 12th step states, "Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs"), is essential to their ongoing sobriety. And though there may seem to be a disconnect between the scientific, biologically based addiction definition and the spiritually based 12-step programs, ASAM's research scientically supports the activities recovering addicts undertake in 12-step recovery programs as ways to maintain sobriety.

  "Our medical approach to addiction dovetails very nicely into 12-step recovery, because there is a scientific basis behind how it works," Antonucci says. "Part of my recovery is, I serve food to homeless people every Saturday night, and afterwards, I feel great. Why do I feel great? My hedonic tone has gone up. Doing something really healthy for the community has changed my brain chemistry."

  Wetsman agrees that engaging in charitable activities can normalize dopamine levels. "You get dopamine lowering from being isolated and feeling less-than," he says. "You can't feel isolated and less than when you help somebody else — dopamine receptors actually physically gain in number. The receptors are much more plastic than we think."

  Pederson, Antonucci and medical professionals across the board hope the new definition of addiction will serve to remove much of the shame and stigma surrounding the disease, which in turn will facilitate recovery for the millions who suffer from addiction.

  "When people have a strong understanding about the disease, that's when the miracles happen, and treatment can be extremely successful," Antonucci says. "Don't be afraid to get better. This can work for you, too. Give yourself a chance."

Amy Winehouse's fortune was worth just over £2 million when she died. Although the late singer made The Sunday Times Rich List in 2008 with an estimated fortune of £10 million, the accounts for two companies she owned that were published yesterday suggested her financial value had decreased in the last several years. The figures showed that Winehouse’s Cherry Westfield company was worth £2,004,963 at the end of last November, which is £20,000 less than it was valued at in 2009. Her CW Touring company, meanwhile, dropped in value from £142,012 to £8,032 during the same period.  Amy Winehouse’s ‘Back To Black’ becomes UK’s biggest-selling album of the 21st centuryMark Ronson toasts Amy Winehouse at his weddingDrug overdose ruled out as cause of Amy Winehouse's death According to The Daily Star, a source close to Winehouse claimed that she had spent thousands of pounds on drink and drugs. They said: Even though Amy spent thousands on drink, drugs and hangers-on, she was still a rich young woman. Had she beaten her issues with drink, she would almost certainly have lived a worry-free and comfortable life. It is sad that having beaten drugs, she never got a chance to enjoy the money she worked so hard to produce.

Over an average British person's lifetime, 5,800 pints of beer are consumed, plus 8,700 glasses of wine, 2,900 bottles of cider, 5,808 shots of spirits, 1,452 cocktails, 1,452 glasses of liquor, and 1,452 glasses of champagne - the equivalent of 456 drinks annually. The typical Brit also experiences 726 hangovers over a lifetime. £962 are spent annually on alcohol, or £58,201 ($93,000) by the time they die.

These figures were reported today by Benenden Healthcare.

Below are some highlighted statistics from the survey:
The average Brit consumes alcohol at least three nights each week
The average Brit downs nine alcoholic drinks each week
57% of British people drink at home
17% of Brits regularly go to a pub for a drink
40% of Brits think they need a drink to unwind.
1 in 6 adults in the UK say they have a drink in the evening out of habit, and the same number see it as a form of escapism
1 in every 10 Brits says he/she would find it hard to spend more than a week without a drink, while 1 in 10 would find two days difficult
1 in 5 Brits say they cannot enjoy a night out if they don't have a drink
12% say their aim when drinking is to get drunk
Over one third of Brits have blacked out while drinking and cannot remember how they got home
Two thirds of UK adults say they consume more alcohol while on vacation, and have four or more drinks per day (while on vacation)
The average Brit enjoyed his/her first drink at the age of 14 years
Lawrence Christensen, Head of Communications & Strategy at Benenden Healthcare, said:

"Day by day, we may not notice our drinking habits and may not think about what it's costing us. But add it all up and the amounts become quite staggering.

Recommended guidelines for alcohol consumption are 3-4 units per day in men, equating to around a pint and a half of 4% strength beer, and 2-3 units in women - a single 175 ml glass of 13% strength wine for women. This means that by getting through 456 drinks a year on average, many Brits are sailing perilously close to the wind and, in many cases, most likely exceeding guidelines.

The yearly financial cost of this level of consumption also gives pause for thought, with £962 a year being no small sum for many families in the UK.

Benenden Healthcare wishes to draw attention to these levels of alcohol consumption, which not only pose a medical risk but a lifestyle risk in terms of financial cost. With 726 hangovers and being £58,201 out-of-pocket, 'enjoying a drink' regularly takes on a new dimension."

Andrew Meredith, Medical Director at Benenden Hospital, said:

"This survey highlights the dysfunctional relationship many of us have with alcohol. The results can be seen in our town centres every week-end, in A&E departments where alcohol related conditions and injuries are a large part of the workload and the increasing numbers of admissions with alcohol related liver disease."

DRUG sting led by Northern Constabulary has recovered up to £90,000 worth of Class A and B illegal substances.
The intelligence led operation which took place last night led to eight people in the Inverness area being arrested.
Police say five men and three women were detained in custody overnight in connection with allegedly being concerned in the supply of drugs.
Two men aged 30 and 43 and two women aged 34 and 36 from Inverness, two Elgin men aged 23 and 25, a 39-year-old woman from Liverpool and a 34-year-old man from Manchester were amongst those arrested.
A report will be made to the procurator fiscal.

The UK Border Agency (UKBA) confirmed Mahfooz Ahmed, 34, was jailed yesterday at Leeds Crown Court after he admitted importing drugs.

A judge was told how 24.8kg of drugs were seized five years ago after an accomplice dropped a suitcase in a residential street in Halifax, West Yorkshire, when he spotted approaching customs officers.

In the suitcase were 50 blocks of high-purity heroin with an estimated street value of £1.36 million.

Law graduate Ahmed had been seen driving a car with the drug-laden suitcase before picking up his accomplice and then dropping him off in Hopwood Lane.

He went on the run for five years but was arrested in October last year in Harrow, North London.

The UKBA said their investigations confirmed that while Ahmed was on the run for the UK drugs offences he had also committed further large-scale drugs offences in Belgium, for which he was sentenced to five years' imprisonment in his absence by a court in Brussels.

That case involved a multimillion-pound international drugs operation.

The court heard how he had previously been a community worker in Halifax who supported drug users and had also carried out research on the problems of drug use in minority groups.

He said he fell into drug-dealing after developing financial problems.

Malcolm Bragg, assistant director for the UK Border Agency, said: "Drug smuggling is a vile business that exploits the misery of others for an easy profit. Heroin destroys the lives not only of users, but also their families and the surrounding community.

"The UK Border Agency plays a vital role in the Government's aim to disrupt the international drugs trade and bring the organisers to justice.

"As today's case shows, our officers work tirelessly to catch those involved in drug smuggling. The message is clear - if you are involved in drug smuggling we will catch you and you will go to jail for a long time."

People, especially those aged from 18 to 40, have become emotionally dependent on technology.

Twenty-four hours without an internet connection or access to a smartphone, computer or tablet is described as "my biggest nightmare" or akin to "having my hand chopped off" by respondents in a recent study conducted by British consumer research specialist Intersperience.

Intersperience challenged more than 1,000 individuals in the UK to switch off from their digital lives and to go one full day without technology to measure the extent of their "digital dependency."

The results, released this week, could be likened to that of smokers who have been deprived of their cigarettes: more than half of respondents said they felt "upset," while a significant number of participants couldn't hold out and "cheated" by watching TV or putting their phones on silent.

"A total of 40% of people felt 'lonely’ when not engaging in activities such as social networking, emails, texting or watching their favourite television channels," said Intersperience.

Some admitted that the thought of being completely disconnected, even for just one day, was "inconceivable."

A second study conducted by the University of Maryland’s International Center for Media & the Public Agenda recorded similar results when it asked university students to abstain from media for 24 hours.

When deprived of media, students from around the world experienced cravings, anxiety and depression. When asked to write about their experience, the students repeatedly used the term "addiction" to describe their dependence on technology.

"Students around the world reported that being tethered to digital technology 24/7 is not just a habit, it is essential to the way they construct and manage their friendships and social lives," said the International Center for Media & the Public Agenda.

A recent study in neurology, conducted by Toronto's Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, has suggested that use of amphetamine or methamphetamine, popularly known as crystal meth or meth and similar drugs, can pose a risk of developing Parkinson's disease.

The relation has been long suspected but now it has been confirmed.

Parkinson’s disease causes tremors, slowness, and stiffness and impairs balance. This neurodegenerative disease is caused by brain’s inability to produce the dopamine, evidences of meth and similar drugs injuring the dopamine-producing areas of the brain have been traced before in animal tests.

The Center had examined three hundred thousand cases of California hospitals over the past 16 years. The studies laid a clear indication that the people on meth or similar drug as amphetamine had 76 % greater chances of developing Parkinson’s

As the illness has long-term effects to those usually in their middle or old age, it was difficult for researchers to establish a link because it required long-term cases of the users for studying. The study was not conducted under the supervision of any medical practitioner, as it is widely used as a recreational drug which is out of practitioner’s control anyway.

The research suggested that it is also important for people to understand that the results do not apply to people taking the drug, as the medicine is for limited period of time and under controlled supervision.

A new study in mice has found that activating a receptor affected by marijuana can dramatically reduce cocaine consumption. The research suggests that new anti-addiction drugs might be developed using synthetic versions of cannabidiol (CBD), the marijuana component that activates the receptor—or even by using the purified natural compound itself.

Researchers formerly believed that the receptor, known as CB2, was not found in the brain and that therefore CBD had no psychoactive effects. But a growing body of research suggests otherwise. After THC, CBD is the second most prevalent active compound in marijuana.

The study found that JWH133, a synthetic drug that activates the CB2 receptor, reduced intravenous cocaine administration in mice by 50-60%.

"It's a very significant reduction,” says Zheng-Xiong Xi, the lead author of the study and a researcher at the National Institute on Drug Abuse.

JWH133 comes with some other features that make it an attractive candidate as a potential anti-addiction treatment. It does not seem to produce either a high or a negative experience, which is critical if it is to become a useful and politically acceptable anti-addiction option. While mice given drugs like cocaine or heroin will spend more time in the place where they got high (apparently hoping for more), mice didn't develop such a “place preference” when given JWH133. Nor did they avoid the spot where they'd been given it, which happens when mice are given drugs they find unpleasant.

"It's extremely exciting,” says Antonello Bonci, scientific director for intramural research at the National Institute on Drug Abuse.

Ethnographic research by Ric Curtis, chair of anthropology at John Jay College in New York suggests that, as is often the case, addicts may have been ahead of the researchers in discovering this potential property of marijuana. National surveys found that as crack use declined in the early 1990's, marijuana use rose— and Curtis found that many crack users reported deliberately substituting marijuana for crack, seeking a cheaper and less disruptive high.

MORE: Study: Marijuana Not Linked With Long Term Cognitive Impairment

Could successful replacement of crack with marijuana be related to CBD and its activation of CB2 receptors? “That's a very tough question,” says Xi, adding that while we don't really know, he suspects that THC may be more involved. “That sounds more like substitution, using a less addictive drug to replace a more addictive drug,” he says.

The next step to is to figure out what are the side effects of this, to figure out what could limit [development],” says Bonci. Interestingly, other studies suggest that JWH133—and therefore, potentially, CBD—may prevent the development of the brain plaques associated with Alzheimer's disease. It also seems to have antipsychotic effects.

All of which merely adds to the increasingly absurd controversy over medical uses of marijuana.

Her very public battles with her demons spawned her signature tune "Rehab", but British soul singer Amy Winehouse's self-destructive lifestyle finally caught up with her.

The 27-year-old singer, who was found dead at her north London flat on Saturday, will be remembered as a wildly talented musical star whose addiction to drink and drugs proved too much.

She seemingly headlined newspapers more often than concerts, most recently in June when she was booed at an open-air concert in Serbia as she appeared to be too drunk to sing at the start of a comeback tour.

Winehouse had reportedly ended an alcohol rehabilitation program in London two weeks earlier and local media reported that alcohol had been banned for the tour.

Born on September 14, 1983 to a north London Jewish family, Winehouse grew up in a jazz-loving household — her taxi driver father Mitch is an aficionado, while uncles on her mother Janis's side were professional musicians.

Aged 12, she created a rap duo with a friend, and a year later, she received her first guitar and began singing soul music.

She cited black American female singers like Sarah Vaughan and Dinah Washington as influences, as well as Elvis Presley.

Winehouse attended the BRIT School in Croydon, south London, which excels in the performing arts and has produced music stars such as Katie Melua, Adele, Dane Bowers, Kate Nash, Leona Lewis and The Feeling.

In an interview for a tour DVD, Winehouse described herself as "insecure", giving a possible reason for her excessive behaviour.

She bared her soul in two albums — "Frank" in 2003 and "Back to Black" in 2006 — and impressed critics with her powerful, smoky voice and wide-ranging repetoire taking in everything from rap to Motown.

Her distinctive jet-black beehive hairstyle, thick make-up around her eyes, and the myriad tattoos on her skinny frame ensured that she stood out from the crowd for her appearance as well as her talent.

"Back to Black" was Britain's best-selling album of 2007, and was named best pop vocal album at the 2008 Grammys.

Unfortunately, her hit single "Rehab", which won three gongs by itself at the Grammys, became a symbol for her off-stage life.

She has fought alcohol, drugs, self-harm and eating disorders, all in the public eye.

Her relationship with her former husband, Blake Fielder-Civil, was further fuel for the tabloid newspapers.

They married in Miami in May 2007 but had a tempestuous relationship. He spent part of their marriage behind bars for a vicious attack on a pub landlord and a subsequent attempt to cover it up. They divorced in July 2009.

In December 2007, she was photographed wandering London's streets barefoot and in her bra in the early hours of the morning.

In early 2008 she spent another stint at a rehabilitation clinic to overcome drug addiction, having been caught on video apparently smoking crack cocaine a month earlier, which led to her bein

Meyers - who played Henry VIII in raunchy BBC series The Tudors - is believed to have taken pills at his £3million home in Maida Vale, west London on Tuesday evening.

The handsome actor - who has been battling a long-standing drink problem - was found slumped on the floor by paramedics. They were forced to call police after he initially refused treatment at the scene.

The Irish actor was then taken to hospital.


Rising star: Jonathan Rhys Meyers at the Irish Film and Television Awards in Dublin in February 2010

A source said: ‘It was the opinion of those present that he tried to take his life.’

Meyers, 33, was then discharged in the early hours of Wednesday morning.

A female neighbour of the star said: ‘I saw the ambulance arriving and was worried to death.

‘Jonathan is a lovely guy. You see him all the time in the street. He says hello and is very pleasant. I hope he is fine.’

Meyers is regarded as one of the rising stars of the acting world.

However, the actor - who owns homes in Los Angeles and Monaco as well as London and his native Dublin - has long battled a drink problem which worsened following the death of his beloved mother in 2007.


Critically-acclaimed: Rhys Meyers as King Henry VIII in The Tudors

Last month, Rhys Meyers checked into a five-star rehabilitation centre in South Africa. It was his fifth stint in rehab.

The actor has been dating heiress Reena Hammer - whose father owns the Urban Retreat spa in Harrods department store - for seven years.

However, there have been rumours their relationship has recently been under threat.

Meyers has starred in films including Alexander, Velvet Goldmine and Bend It Like Beckham. He won a Golden Globe for his role as Elvis in a US TV series.

He is also a pin-up, and has worked as a model for Hugo Boss and Versace.


Troubled: Rhys Meyers pictured drinking in a London street at 10am four years ago

In the past, he has spoken of his alcohol problem, admitting: ‘When I do drink I'm like Bambi. I'm all over the place like a 16-year-old kid.’

Scotland Yard today confirmed: ‘Officers were called by London Ambulance Service to a residential address following reports of man refusing treatment.

'Police and London Ambulance Service were in attendance and a 33-year old man was taken to a central London hospital for treatment.’

Rhys Meyers has also been arrested twice at airports in drink-related incidents in the past.

He was arrested at Dublin Airport and arrested for being drunk and in breach of the peace in November 2007. The charges were subsequently dropped.

He was also detained by police in June 2009 at the Charles De Gaulle airport in Paris after allegedly assaulting an bar staff employee while drunk.

Last night, a spokesman for Rhys Meyers was unavailable for comment.

Authorities say they've arrested nine people involved with a drug ring that smuggled marijuana from Canada and cocaine from South American into the United States via western and northern New York.

Local, county and federal law enforcement officials say raids carried out Thursday in the Niagara Falls area resulted in the arrests of six suspects while two others were taken into custody in Massena. Another was arrested in Buffalo.

Officials say the raids netted pot and cocaine, 17 firearms and more than $25,000 in cash.

Federal prosecutors say the busts resulted from the arrests in April of two Niagara Falls men accused of being the ringleaders of the drug-trafficking operation.

Officials say the two men and their associates were smuggling marijuana in from Canada and South American cocaine through Mexico.

Oleg glances furtively around him and, confident that nobody is watching, slips inside the entrance to a decaying Soviet-era block of flats, where Sasha is waiting for him. Ensconced in the dingy kitchen of one of the apartments, they empty the contents of a blue carrier bag that Oleg has brought with him – painkillers, iodine, lighter fluid, industrial cleaning oil, and an array of vials, syringes, and cooking implements.

Half an hour later, after much boiling, distilling, mixing and shaking, what remains is a caramel-coloured gunge held in the end of a syringe, and the acrid smell of burnt iodine in the air. Sasha fixes a dirty needle to the syringe and looks for a vein in his bruised forearm. After some time, he finds a suitable place, and hands the syringe to Oleg, telling him to inject the fluid. He closes his eyes, and takes the hit.

Russia has more heroin users than any other country in the world – up to two million, according to unofficial estimates. For most, their lot is a life of crime, stints in prison, probable contraction of HIV and hepatitis C, and an early death. As efforts to stem the flow of Afghan heroin into Russia bring some limited success, and the street price of the drug goes up, for those addicts who can't afford their next hit, an even more terrifying spectre has raised its head.


The home-made drug that Oleg and Sasha inject is known as krokodil, or "crocodile". It is desomorphine, a synthetic opiate many times more powerful than heroin that is created from a complex chain of mixing and chemical reactions, which the addicts perform from memory several times a day. While heroin costs from £20 to £60 per dose, desomorphine can be "cooked" from codeine-based headache pills that cost £2 per pack, and other household ingredients available cheaply from the markets.

It is a drug for the poor, and its effects are horrific. It was given its reptilian name because its poisonous ingredients quickly turn the skin scaly. Worse follows. Oleg and Sasha have not been using for long, but Oleg has rotting sores on the back of his neck.

"If you miss the vein, that's an abscess straight away," says Sasha. Essentially, they are injecting poison directly into their flesh. One of their friends, in a neighbouring apartment block, is further down the line.

"She won't go to hospital, she just keeps injecting. Her flesh is falling off and she can hardly move anymore," says Sasha. Photographs of late-stage krokodil addicts are disturbing in the extreme. Flesh goes grey and peels away to leave bones exposed. People literally rot to death.

Russian heroin addicts first discovered how to make krokodil around four years ago, and there has been a steady rise in consumption, with a sudden peak in recent months. "Over the past five years, sales of codeine-based tablets have grown by dozens of times," says Viktor Ivanov, the head of Russia's Drug Control Agency. "It's pretty obvious that it's not because everyone has suddenly developed headaches."

Heroin addiction kills 30,000 people per year in Russia – a third of global deaths from the drug – but now there is the added problem of krokodil. Mr Ivanov recalled a recent visit to a drug-treatment centre in Western Siberia. "They told me that two years ago almost all their drug users used heroin," said the drugs tsar. "Now, more than half of them are on desomorphine."

He estimates that overall, around 5 per cent of Russian drug users are on krokodil and other home-made drugs, which works out at about 100,000 people. It's a huge, hidden epidemic – worse in the really isolated parts of Russia where supplies of heroin are patchy – but palpable even in cities such as Tver.

It has a population of half a million, and is a couple of hours by train from Moscow, en route to St Petersburg. Its city centre, sat on the River Volga, is lined with pretty, Tsarist-era buildings, but the suburbs are miserable. People sit on cracked wooden benches in a weed-infested "park", gulping cans of Jaguar, an alcoholic energy drink. In the background, there are rows of crumbling apartment blocks. The shops and restaurants of Moscow are a world away; for a treat, people take the bus to the McDonald's by the train station.

In the city's main drug treatment centre, Artyom Yegorov talks of the devastation that krokodil is causing. "Desomorphine causes the strongest levels of addiction, and is the hardest to cure," says the young doctor, sitting in a treatment room in the scruffy clinic, below a picture of Hugh Laurie as Dr House.

"With heroin withdrawal, the main symptoms last for five to 10 days. After that there is still a big danger of relapse but the physical pain will be gone. With krokodil, the pain can last up to a month, and it's unbearable. They have to be injected with extremely strong tranquilisers just to keep them from passing out from the pain."

Dr Yegorov says krokodil users are instantly identifiable because of their smell. "It's that smell of iodine that infuses all their clothes," he says. "There's no way to wash it out, all you can do is burn the clothes. Any flat that has been used as a krokodil cooking house is best forgotten about as a place to live. You'll never get that smell out of the flat."

Addicts in Tver say they never have any problems buying the key ingredient for krokodil – codeine pills, which are sold without prescription. "Once I was trying to buy four packs, and the woman told me they could only sell two to any one person," recalls one, with a laugh. "So I bought two packs, then came back five minutes later and bought another two. Other than that, they never refuse to sell it to us, even though they know what we're going to do with it." The solution, to many, is obvious: ban the sale of codeine tablets, or at least make them prescription-only. But despite the authorities being aware of the problem for well over a year, nothing has been done.

President Dmitry Medvedev has called for websites which explain how to make krokodil to be closed down, but he has not ordered the banning of the pills. Last month, a spokesman for the ministry of health said that there were plans to make codeine-based tablets available only on prescription, but that it was impossible to introduce the measure quickly. Opponents claim lobbying by pharmaceutical companies has caused the inaction.

"A year ago we said that we need to introduce prescriptions," says Mr Ivanov. "These tablets don't cost much but the profit margins are high. Some pharmacies make up to 25 per cent of their profits from the sale of these tablets. It's not in the interests of pharmaceutical companies or pharmacies themselves to stop this, so the government needs to use its power to regulate their sale."

In addition to krokodil, there are reports of drug users injecting other artificial mixes, and the latest street drug is tropicamide. Used as eye drops by ophthalmologists to dilate the pupils during eye examinations, Dr Yegorov says patients have no trouble getting hold of capsules of it for about £2 per vial. Injected, the drug has severe psychiatric effects and brings on suicidal feelings.

"Addicts are being sold drugs by normal Russian women working in pharmacies, who know exactly what they'll be used for," said Yevgeny Roizman, an anti-drugs activist who was one of the first to talk publicly about the krokodil issue earlier this year. "Selling them to boys the same age as their own sons. Russians are killing Russians."

Zhenya, quietly spoken and wearing dark glasses, agrees to tell his story while I sit in the back of his car in a lay-by on the outskirts of Tver. He managed to kick the habit, after spending weeks at a detox clinic ,experiencing horrendous withdrawal symptoms that included seizures, a 40-degree temperature and vomiting. He lost 14 teeth after his gums rotted away, and contracted hepatitis C.

But his fate is essentially a miraculous escape – after all, he's still alive. Zhenya is from a small town outside Tver, and was a heroin addict for a decade before he moved onto krokodil a year ago. Of the ten friends he started injecting heroin with a decade ago, seven are dead.

Unlike heroin, where the hit can last for several hours, a krokodil high only lasts between 90 minutes and two hours, says Zhenya. Given that the "cooking" process takes at least half an hour, being a krokodil addict is basically a full-time job.

"I remember one day, we cooked for three days straight," says one of Zhenya's friends. "You don't sleep much when you're on krokodil, as you need to wake up every couple of hours for another hit. At the time we were cooking it at our place, and loads of people came round and pitched in. For three days we just kept on making it. By the end, we all staggered out yellow, exhausted and stinking of iodine."

In Tver, most krokodil users inject the drug only when they run out of money for heroin. As soon as they earn or steal enough, they go back to heroin. In other more isolated regions of Russia, where heroin is more expensive and people are poorer, the problem is worse. People become full-time krokodil addicts, giving them a life expectancy of less than a year.

Zhenya says every single addict he knows in his town has moved from heroin to krokodil, because it's cheaper and easier to get hold of. "You can feel how disgusting it is when you're doing it," he recalls. "You're dreaming of heroin, of something that feels clean and not like poison. But you can't afford it, so you keep doing the krokodil. Until you die."

Some of the names in this story have been changed

Boozy pensioners are Britain's "invisible addicts", according to a new study, which urges the slashing of drinking limits for over-65s to take into account the effects of ageing.
Separate guidance on safe drinking levels for the elderly should be issued by the government as current recommended limits are based on younger adults and are too high for more mature people, the Royal College of Psychiatrists says in a report.
Recent evidence has shown that the upper safe limit for older men is 1.5 units of alcohol a day, the college said, compared to a current recommendation for men of not regularly drinking more than three to four units daily.
For women over 65, the limits should be lowered from not regularly drinking more than two to three units a day to possibly to just one unit a day, according to Dr Tony Rao, a consultant in old age psychiatry and a member of the Older People?s Substance Misuse Working Group that drew up the report.
"As we age, there are other accompanying factors such as increasing memory problems and physical health problems and less of an ability to get rid of alcohol from the blood stream," he said.
"This means that the effects of what we would currently call the safe limits is actually more damaging for older people."
The call for new drink limits for the over-65s comes as part of a series of recommendations from the college on drug and alcohol misuse among older people.
The UK is witnessing a "burgeoning" public health problem in the form of a growing alcohol and drug misuse problem among the "baby boomer" generation, according to the college.
"Not enough is being done to tackle substance misuse in our aging population ? making them society?s invisible addicts,? the study found.
It said problems included misuse of prescribed and over-the-counter medicines as well as alcohol abuse. Illegal drug use was currently uncommon among over-65s but there has been a "significant" increase in the over-40s in recent years, the report said.
A third of older people with alcohol problems develop them in later life, often as a result of changes such as retirement or bereavement, or feelings of boredom, loneliness and depression, according to the report.
Recommendations include screening by GPs for substance misuse amongst the over-65s, as part of a routine health check and a public health campaign on alcohol and drug misuse targeted at older people.
Professor Ilana Crome, professor of addiction psychiatry and chairman of the working group, said: "The traditional view is that alcohol misuse is uncommon in older people, and that the misuse of drugs is very rare.
"However, this is simply not true. A lack of awareness means that GPs and other healthcare professionals often overlook or discount the signs when someone has a problem.
"We hope this report highlights the scale of the problem, and that the multiple medical and social needs of this group of people are not ignored any longer."
Don Shenker, chief executive of Alcohol Concern, said: "While younger excessive drinkers often make the headlines, we should remember that older people often turn to alcohol in later life as a coping mechanism and this can remain stubbornly hidden from view.
"This report calls for much greater recognition that excessive drinking in older age is both widespread and preventable, particularly if public health professionals are supported and trained to spot the signs and take appropriate action."

Nobody knows for sure just how many drug and alcohol recovery houses are operating in Surrey. Some estimates run as high as 200, but Surrey's mayor thinks the actual number is smaller. "From what I understand, there are about 130 here in our city," Mayor Dianne Watts told the Now. However many there are, the vast majority of the recovery houses in Surrey - about 90 per cent of them - are not subject to provincial regulation and inspection and that's a problem. It's a problem for the city, for police, but most of all, it's a problem for their residents, addicts trying to get clean and sober.

The situation dates from December 2001 when the government of former premier Gordon Campbell changed the rules governing recovery houses. The Liberals amended the Community Care Facility Act to create a new class of facility called supportive recovery residences that are not required to have a provincial licence to operate.

In order to qualify as a supportive recovery residence, operators are required to provide "a safe and drug-free environment" for recovering addicts, but cannot "provide most or all of the services" required of licenced houses. The changes essentially created a class of boarding house for those addicted to alcohol and drugs.

In many cases, what it created was a network of flophouses where people trying to overcome addiction are exploited by unscrupulous operators who take clients' welfare cheques, but deliver little in the way of support or supervision.

There's good money in recovery houses; 10 clients will gross the operator nearly $6,000 a month and those who exploit their clients by providing substandard accommodation and meals can realize a tidy profit.

Gary Robinson is a former Surrey city councillor, a recovery house operator and a recovering cocaine addict. He is the executive director of Realistic Success Recovery Society, which has three recovery houses in Surrey.

Robinson does it right. His houses provide clean, well-maintained residences where clients receive nutritious meals, counselling and caring support from staff and fellow residents.

Robinson has nothing but contempt and anger for operators who exploit people trying to regain control of their lives.

"I call them predators. They're preying on people at their lowest, at the lowest point in their lives."

'NO POINT' IN BEING THERE

Corey is a 22-year-old recovering crack addict who lives in one of Robinson's recovery houses. He's been wrestling with substance abuse of one kind or another since he was seven. He spent four weeks in a recovery house run by an organization that has at least five houses in Surrey.

"They got $560 a month from me and it was pretty much just a meal a day and a bed to sleep in. I wasn't put on any restrictions and I was allowed to keep my phone," Corey said.

He said within the first week of his residence there, he and the house monitor - the person in charge of the place - were on their way to a recovery meeting.

"While we were out, the monitor bought some crack. Both of us were using crack. After a while, I figured there wasn't much point being there."

Corey eventually found a place in one of Robinson's houses and 46 days in, he said the difference was like night and day.

"Here, they treat you with respect. All the guys and all the managers here show you respect, they don't look down on you."

PROVINCE BLAMED FOR PROFITEERING

Rogue recovery houses are bad news for neighbourhoods, too.

Steve Burke and Charlie Morton both live in Whalley and both have bad recovery houses in their area. They want the rules changed to outlaw the kind of exploitation they see every day. Both blame the provincial government for allowing unlicenced - and virtually uncontrolled - recovery houses to exist.

They say the province is responsible for the situation and they want Victoria to step up and put it right.

Burke and Morton said the majority of recovery houses have more residents than the rules allow, are poorly managed, and are nothing more than money-making enterprises that take advantage of people who have fallen on bad times.

The anger is evident in Morton's voice as he talks.

"We have more compassion for a dying seal on a beach than we have for human beings in our city. It's not right. I think the province is misappropriating our tax money, supposedly to help these people, and they're not doing anything."

Burke agreed. He said profit is the prime motive for most recovery house operators.

"You can't make a profit with just six people in that house. You've got to have more people there - a lot more."

CITY'S HANDS TIED: WATTS

Watts said city hall is working on a plan of action, but said the city's options are limited. City hall can only regulate zoning and land use; it has no direct control over the recovery process itself.

"This has been a problem ever since I've been on council. The province won't regulate them," the mayor said.

Watts said she's not eager to shut down recovery houses that violate city bylaws.

"But we've got to move in that direction. We're going to start shutting some of them down, but we have to have a plan to house these people. Otherwise we'll just have a lot more addicts on the street."

Calls to minister Rich Coleman were not returned.

The Hebrew University researchers, led by Dr. Rami Yaka of the university's Institute of Drug Research, were seemingly able to erase the drug-linked memories of rats that had been deliberately administered cocaine over two weeks' time.




The researchers injected a small protein - a peptide called ZIP - directly into an area of the addicted rats' basal forebrain called the nucleus accumbens, which controls pleasure and reward and which has been demonstrated to be connected to drug addiction.

Afterward, the rats were returned to their pens to check their reactions. Rather than seeking out the place where they had been getting their "fixes" of cocaine, the rats ignored it, indicating that memories linked to their addiction had been erased.

"One of the biggest problems with drug addicts is the high rate of those who return to drug use after being rehabilitated," explained Yaka. "Memories can trigger a desire for the drug, including memories of the drug itself, the needle or the environment in which the drug was consumed.

"This research indicates the possibility of erasing these memories, in a way that will allow addicts to cancel the associations they have in their minds regarding the drug."

The research is to be included in Hebrew University's presentation at next week's Facing Tomorrow 2011 conference in Jerusalem.

The protein used has been found by other researchers over the past five years to inhibit learning processes by affecting memory. To date, however, all the memories erased have been short-term ones. This research provides evidence that the peptide can also erase memories acquired through a long-term learning process.

Based on this research, Yaka said, it may be possible to erase memories in the course of treating other problems, such as post-traumatic stress disorder.

While the current research dealt only with memories linked to cocaine, "All drugs follow the same addictive path, just at different intensities," Yaka said. "Cocaine, heroin and even cannabis stimulate the secretion in the brain of the hormone dopamine, which is associated with pleasure, at least in the first stages of addiction. Therefore, the substance that affected the memories of addiction to cocaine should have a similar influence on addictions to other substances."

The research could provide a new treatment model for weaning people off drugs. Currently, the treatment of addicts relies primarily on administering alternative drugs, such as methadone, and psychological counseling.

Medical research has previously demonstrated the counterintuitive fact that the longer an addict remains "clean" of drugs, the more likely he is to resume taking them, because of certain chemical changes that take place in the brain.

"The treatment being examined in the current research tries to prevent the increased risk of returning to drugs by preventing some of these brain changes," Yaka said.

The scientists are still unsure if the memory erasure process is selective, affecting only memories associated with drugs, or if other memories are erased as well.

"Tests we've done show that the place [in the brain] where the substance was injected is connected solely to memories of pleasure and reward, and not to other memories," Yaka said. "We also found that after the injection of the substance, the rats' ability to accumulate new memories was not affected."