Summer House

LONDON, England (AP) — Scotland Yard started an investigation Wednesday into a video that allegedly shows troubled British singer Amy Winehouse smoking crack.

The British tabloid, The Sun, released grainy footage showing Grammy-nominated Winehouse, 24, inhaling fumes from a pipe. The video was reportedly shot hours before she attended a court hearing for her jailed husband.

Police will look at the video before deciding whether any charges should be brought against Winehouse, a Metropolitan Police spokesman said while speaking on condition of anonymity in line with force policy. The Sun gave the police the video, he said.

 Winehouse spokesman Shane O’Neill said he was unable to comment on the investigation. In the video, Winehouse lights a pipe in front of a photo that appears to have been taken on the day of her wedding to Blake Fielder-Civil. Winehouse’s father, Mitch Winehouse, said in an interview with The Sun that he was devastated by the images and hoped it would prompt his daughter to turn her life around.

"Your video of Amy taking drugs may well be the best thing that has ever happened to her," the newspaper quoted him as saying.

Universal Records, Winehouse’s record label, said it would do what it could to help her.
"We are deeply disappointed and upset by these latest revelations and are doing everything we can to offer Amy our full support in dealing with her problems," it said in a statement Tuesday.

The singer’s public demise amid allegations of drug use and lackluster musical performances have provided fodder for Britain’s notoriously scandal-hungry newspapers. Last month, the troubled singer, whose songs include "Rehab" and "You Know I’m No Good," was photographed walking outside her London home wearing a bra and jeans, with no shoes, looking upset.

Winehouse attracted yet more attention in court Friday when she blew Fielder-Civil kisses and shouted out, "I love you, handsome, gorgeous one," as he was led away after facing charges of assault and conspiracy. Fielder-Civil, 25, is accused of attacking a pub landlord and then later conspiring with him to withdraw as a witness at the trial. Fielder-Civil pleaded innocent to the charge of assault, and is expected to plead to a charge of perverting the course of justice next month.

Winehouse is nominated for six Grammys including best new artist and album of the year for "Back to Black," plus record and song of the year for the brassy hit "Rehab." The awards will be presented February 10 in Los Angeles.

WASHINGTON (CNN) — The U.S. Supreme Court ruled Monday that federal judges have the discretion to give "reasonably" shorter prison terms for crack cocaine crimes to reduce the disparity with crimes involving cocaine powder.

The 7-2 ruling represents a victory for lawyers who argued that crack cocaine offenders were unfairly targeted under U.S. sentencing guidelines.Current federal penalties for selling 5 grams of crack cocaine can warrant the same prison sentence as dealing 500 grams of the powdered variety.

The Supreme Court case centered around Derrick Kimbrough of Norfolk, Virginia, who according to court records, pleaded guilty to distributing more than 50 grams of crack cocaine. Federal sentencing guidelines called for 19 to 22.5 years behind bars. But Judge Raymond Jackson instead gave the defendant a 15-year sentence, calling the case "another example of how crack-cocaine guidelines are driving the offense level to a point higher than is necessary to do justice."

A federal appeals court overturned the case and sent it to a higher court, saying Jackson’s discretion was "unreasonable when it is based on a disagreement with the sentencing disparity for crack and powder cocaine offenses."

Said Kimbrough’s attorney, Michael Nachmanoff in October, "A sentence of 19 years for a man with no felony convictions who served his country honorably, who had never spent a night in jail … that was ridiculous."  Kimbrough is a veteran of the 1991 Persian Gulf War and is African-American.

African-Americans were nearly 82 percent of defendants sentenced in federal court for dealing crack, but only 27 percent of those sentenced for dealing powder cocaine, according to 2006 federal statistics. Each year, federal courts handle about 11,000 cocaine sentences, which are roughly evenly divided between crack and cocaine cases.

The issue long has been a source of contention between government prosecutors and civil rights advocates, who argue crack dealers are often targeted for longer prison terms because that drug is prevalent in urban and minority communities, while the powdered version is more commonly associated with higher-income users.

Writing for the majority, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg took a practical approach, saying it is important to preserve judicial discretion, while ensuring most sentences remain within federal guidelines established two decades ago to ensure a measure of uniformity.

Ginsburg said a federal judge was right to give a crack offender a lesser prison term than the guidelines called for, since federal law "mandates only maximum and minimum sentences," she wrote. "It says nothing about appropriate sentences within those statutory guidelines."

Ginsburg noted the trial judge "honed in on the particular circumstances of Kimbrough’s case and accorded weight to" reports by the U.S. Sentencing Commission that show "the crack/powder disparity yields unjustifiably harsh sentences for crack offenders."

Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito dissented in the Kimbrough case. Thomas said it will now be up to courts "to assume the legislative role of devising a new sentencing scheme," something Congress never intended.

The government had no immediate reaction to the high court’s ruling.

The U.S. Sentencing Commission — an independent federal agency that advises all three branches of government on sentences — recently cut the gap in recommended prison time for crack cocaine offenses. The guidelines took effect November 1 after Congress decided not to overturn the changes.

The commission is scheduled to vote Tuesday on whether to make those guidelines retroactive for prisoners convicted in the past of crack dealing.

Almost 20,000 inmates could be eligible for shorter sentences under the proposed changes.

Congress recently has introduced at least four bills that would reduce the current disparity in cocaine sentences. One widely circulated proposal led by Sens. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, and Edward Kennedy, D-Massachusetts, would revise the cocaine ratio downward to 20-to-1. That ratio is also supported by the Sentencing Commission.

Harsher sentences for crack offenses came after a social epidemic of crack cocaine began destroying many urban areas in the 1980s.

"The crack-cocaine guidelines were put in place because crack was fueling crime waves across the country, in particular with respect to street violence," said Kendall Coffey, a former U.S. attorney in Miami who comments on legal matters for CNN. "And it is clear that crack cocaine and white powder cocaine had a very different impact in terms of not only the lives of the users but the impact on the community."
 

The case is Kimbrough v. U.S. (06-6330).

WASHINGTON (CNN) — A bill in Congress seeks to eliminate military slot machines overseas that take in $130 million a year, mostly from soldiers.

The bill’s sponsor, Rep. Lincoln Davis, D-Tennessee, named the bill after Army Warrant Officer Aaron Walsh, a decorated Apache helicopter pilot who became addicted to gambling on military slot machines. Walsh eventually was discharged from the Army. He committed suicide after several failed attempts to break his addiction. The Defense Department uses slot machine revenues to pay a small portion of its morale, welfare and recreation programs. Davis said the money raised off the gambling of soldiers is not worth the risks.

"If American men and women are willing to serve our country overseas we should not be dependent on them to pay for recreational activities they deserve," Davis said in a written statement. "The risks are simply too high and too many to ask that of our soldiers."

The bill’s introduction comes after Walsh’s story was featured in a CNN investigative report. His widow, Carrie Walsh, described how her husband’s life spun out of control while the military refused to intervene.Video Watch interview with widow of gambling-addicted soldier »

"The military has this culture of taking care of their own," Carrie Walsh told CNN. "But it seems like when it comes to this, they just profited from his addiction and then threw him away."
 

Carrie Walsh said that in 2005 her husband lost more than $20,000 in military slot machines. He went AWOL, only to be found sitting in front of a video slot machine on a military post in Seoul. He was forced to resign from the Army and spent time homeless on the streets of Las Vegas, Nevada.

In 2006, Walsh returned to Maine and tried to reconnect with his wife and their two small children, but his gambling addiction continued. On September 26, 2006, Walsh, 34, went to Maine’s Baxter State Park and killed himself with a gunshot to the head.

The Army operates 3,000 slot machines on overseas posts, raising $130 million in revenue each year. Other branches of the military operate their own gaming programs. University of Illinois business professor John Kindt, who has studied gambling addictions and the military, agrees with Davis that the money raised is not worth the risk. He says the military should find other ways to entertain troops.

"It shouldn’t be about exploiting our service personnel and putting families and their children at risk," he told CNN.
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In a statement released by the Pentagon earlier this year, Undersecretary of Defense Leslye Arsht said gambling on bases and posts provides "a controlled alternative to unmonitored host-nation gambling venues and offers a higher payment percentage, making it more entertainment oriented than that found at typical casinos." The Warrant Officer Aaron Walsh Stop DOD-Sponsored Gambling Act would prohibit the military from operating slot machines on military bases. The legislation was introduced Wednesday afternoon.

VANCOUVER, British Columbia (CNN) — I didn’t know quite what to expect when I entered the injection room at Insite, the world’s busiest supervised drug clinic.

Inside the Vancouver facility, I found more than a dozen people taking illegal drugs, such as heroin and cocaine, under the watchful eye of trained nurses. These drug users were among the more than 700 people who visit the facility every day, bringing their drugs with them. Insite’s goal is to reduce the risk of overdose and limit the spread of diseases like HIV by giving addicts clean needles and a safe place to use them.

"People need to be kept alive long enough in order to get treatment," said Liz Evans, a nurse and founder of Insite.

The clinic, which is sanctioned by Vancouver’s health department, opens each day at 10 a.m. and stays open until 4 a.m. the following day. Many of the people in the clinic on the day we visited had tattered clothes, missing teeth and glassy eyes. They swayed as they struggled to keep their balance. Video Watch people shoot up in the Vancouver clinic »

Outside of the clinic, police patrolled the streets to keep people from buying and selling illegal drugs. Inside, patrons were given access to Insite’s clean needles, injection booths and nurses. Similar facilities can be found at 65 locations in eight different countries. San Francisco health officials recently held a day-long conference on the Vancouver drug clinic, with an eye toward possibly opening a similar one. But San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom said the city is unlikely to do so.

"You had a lot of health officials there that did participate in the pros and cons. But my director of the department of public health doesn’t feel the city should move forward," Newsom said.

Defenders of the Vancouver clinic say more than two dozen peer-reviewed studies have shown its benefits. One study found a 45 percent reduction in public drug use as a result of the clinic; another showed 33 percent of addicts are more likely to go to drug detox after using Insite. Dr. Thomas Kerr, a University of British Columbia research scientist who has studied the program, believes Insite benefits the wider community.

"In the absence of such a facility, not only would [drug users] be high out on the street, but they would be leaving their syringes in school yards, in parks and on city streets," Kerr said.

Dr. David Murray, chief scientist for the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, opposes opening drug injection clinics in the United States. He believes they do little to help addicts overcome their additions.
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"It is a cruel illusion because they are still addicted, trapped, trying to get out and dying by the virtue of the drug itself," he said.

Nurses at the Vancouver clinic say they get all kinds of people using their facility, from an old grandma who comes to inject her pain medication to men in business suits hiding their addictions from their families.

At the clinic, we met Lorraine Trepanier, 50, a longtime drug user. Trepanier said she used to sell her body for drugs, but now relies on a friend to give her the $20 she uses every day to buy cocaine and heroin.

"I get up in the morning and I make sure I have one down or half a down," she said, referring to her heroin fix. Trepanier believes Insite has helped keep her alive by giving her a supervised setting in which she can take drugs.

Evans and other operators of Insite say that rather than chase addicts from corner to corner and alley to alley, it is more effective to encourage them to use their drugs in a supervised setting.  In the more than four years Insite has been open, there have been roughly 800 overdoses at the facility, but there have not been any deaths. When someone does overdose, nurses try to revive them. If the drug user is in critical condition, they are sent to a hospital.
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Trepanier doesn’t care what critics have to say about Insite. All she wants is a chance to get her next fix in a clean facility, until the day she finally works up the willpower to kick her drug addiction.

"I don’t want to be down here all my life," she said. "I don’t want to be chasing this all my life."

NEW YORK (CNN) — Tests on a $20 bill found at the Lower Manhattan apartment where "Brokeback Mountain" actor Heath Ledger died yielded no drug residue, New York Deputy Police Commissioner Paul Browne said.

The bill was collected to see whether it had been used to snort illegal drugs because of the way it was folded, New York Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said earlier. The Academy Award-nominated actor was found dead Tuesday. He was 28.

An autopsy Wednesday morning was inconclusive, and a cause-of-death determination will take 10 to 14 days, a medical examiner’s spokeswoman said.

"There were no illegal drugs found" in the apartment, Kelly said on Wednesday. He said there were prescription drugs, in their bottles, not strewn around as previously reported.

Two law enforcement officials who asked not to be named said six types of prescription drugs, including an antihistamine and pills to treat anxiety and insomnia, were found in the apartment, according to The Associated Press. A publicist for Ledger told CNN Thursday that the actor was suffering from the flu and had been prescribed antibiotics during recent filming for "The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus" in London. New details are emerging about the moments before and after Ledger’s death.

WASHINGTON (CNN) — Methadone-related deaths have skyrocketed, fueled by a jump in theft and misuse of the addiction treatment drug, according to a Justice Department report released Wednesday

The report said methadone-related deaths jumped from 786 in 1999 to 3,849 in 2004. By contrast, during the same period, deaths related to cocaine increased 43 percent from 3,822 to 5,461.

The National Drug Intelligence Center, an arm of the Department of Justice, says it published the assessment because of its concern over the sharp increases stemming from the diversion and methadone abuse.  The center, which analyzes and dispenses strategic drug intelligence, noted methadone is safe and effective when prescribed and used correctly to treat opiate addiction, but is deadly when misused –"particularly in combination with other prescription drugs, alcohol, or illicit drugs."

The report said physicians dispensed the drug more frequently in the management of pain during the years studied.

"Methadone thefts from manufacturers, distributors and retailers have increased the amount of methadone available for abuse," the report said.

"Diversion from pain management facilities, hospitals, pharmacies, general practitioners, family and friends, and to a lesser extent narcotics treatment programs, increased availability, primarily at the retail level," the study said.

The study said Florida had by far the most methadone deaths during the past three years of the study — 2002 to 2004. Four hundred deaths occurred in Florida during 2004. North Carolina was second with 245 deaths, followed by California, New York, Washington, Texas, Virginia and Kentucky. Officials say the problem continues to get worse, with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement reporting as many as 716 methadone deaths in 2006.