Letteratura scientifica selezionata sul tema "Drug dealers – United States – Biography"

This article explores the variable, contextual nature of drug dealing as an economic activity. It juxtaposes Steven Levitt and Sudhir Venkatesh’s (2000) wellknown study of the finances of a drug-dealing gang in Chicago with an analogous investigation carried out in Managua. It highlights how differences in the labor market contribute to individuals associated with drug dealing in Managua earning much more than the median local wage, in stark contrast to the situation famously described in Chicago. These disparities can be linked on the one hand to the more decentralized organization of the drug trade in Nicaragua and the fact that drug dealing was more of a specialist activity, and on the other to the fundamentally different broader political economies of the United States and Nicaragua.

Cryptomarkets are online illicit marketplaces where drug dealers advertise the sale of illicit drugs. Anonymizing technologies such as the Tor network and virtual currencies are used to hide cryptomarket participants’ identity and to limit the ability of law enforcement agencies to make arrests. In this paper, our aim is to describe how herbal cannabis dealers and buyers in the United States have adapted to the online sale of herbal cannabis through cryptomarkets. To achieve this goal, we evaluate the size and scope of the American herbal cannabis market on cryptomarkets and compare it to other drug markets from other countries, evaluate the impact of cryptomarkets on offline sales of herbal cannabis, and evaluate the ties between the now licit herbal cannabis markets in some States and cryptomarkets. Our results suggest that only a small fraction of herbal cannabis dealers and drug users have transitioned to cryptomarkets. This can be explained by the need for technical skills to buy and sell herbal cannabis online and by the need to have access to computers that are not accessible to all. The slow rate of adoption may also be explained by the higher price of herbal cannabis relative to street prices. If cryptomarkets were to be adopted by a larger portion of the herbal cannabis market actors, our results suggest that wholesale and regional distributors who are not active on cryptomarkets would be the most affected market’s participants.

This agenda-building study employed a path analysis model to examine the three-way relationship among the public, the media, and the president on the issue of drug abuse during the Nixon administration. The path model also measured the extent to which these actors were influenced by real-world conditions about the number of drug-related arrests in the United States. Past studies have suggested a cyclical relationship should exist among the president, the press, and the public. This study, however, found a linear relationship with issues moving first, from real world to the media and the public, then from the media to the public, and finally from the public to the president.

Given the rapid rise of prescription (Rx) opioid overdoses in the United States, it is crucial to understand how people acquire Rx drugs. Prior research suggests individuals obtain Rx drugs through both legal and illegal channels, but there has been limited qualitative research focused upon the intersections between Rx drug markets and other drug markets. To understand the similarities and differences, we interviewed 40 incarcerated women about their experiences with both markets. Based upon these conversations, we find that few women received pills exclusively through doctors and 90% of them had used illicit markets or informal social networks to acquire Rx drugs. Although there is extensive overlap between the users, dealers, and operations between Rx and illicit drug markets, these women draw attention to how certain agents, processes, and social reactions differ in meaningful ways that are crucial to an effective public health response.

Sociologists and political scientists examining the social construction of public anxiety surrounding drug use in the United States have argued that racial minorities are the targets of the harshest drug laws while middle-class whites are shielded. In this article, I provide further evidence that middle-class, white drug users are shielded from harsh punishment by analyzing the process through which U.S. legislators and policy makers decide which drug users need punishment and which deserve protection and treatment. Analyzing transcripts from federal Congressional hearings, I examine the rhetoric of legislators and stakeholder witnesses concerning the use of 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA) by middle-class whites. Building on the social construction literature, I use social identity theory to demonstrate how legislators within Congressional hearings create in- and out-groups in order to categorize different drug users and dealers. My analysis of Congressional hearing language concerning white MDMA use demonstrates that Congressional speakers use rhetoric to convince committee members and the wider public that middle-class, white drug users are different from drug users of color and that the appropriate policy response is education and treatment rather than punishment. My findings highlight how middle-class, white drug users are characterized differently from drug users of color, providing further evidence that U.S. drug policy has historically favored middle-class, white drug users.

The purpose of this paper is brief presentation of learning and development of the cult of Saint Death, and to indicate to the interest in anthropology and religious studies on this phenomenon that contributes to a better understanding of this interesting topic. It is certainly not an exhaustive study on this issue, but only a starting point for further, more comprehensive and interdisciplinary researches. The cult of Saint Death is increasingly popular, not only in Mexico but also in neighboring countries, such as Guatemala, El Salvador and the United States. The cult of Saint Death is already a social phenomenon which has yet to be systematically explored, especially as this syncretic religious system is very popular among the Mexican underworld: drug dealers, street vendors, taxi drivers, vendors, piracy, street children, prostitutes, pickpockets, criminal gangs and murderers.

During a post-election TV interview that aired mid-November 2016, then President-Elect Donald Trump claimed that there are millions of so-called “criminal aliens” living in the United States: “What we are going to do is get the people that are criminal and have criminal records, gang members, drug dealers, we have a lot of these people, probably two million, it could be even three million, we are getting them out of our country or we are going to incarcerate.” This claim is a blatant misrepresentation of the facts. A recent report by the Migration Policy Institute suggests that just over 800,000 (or 7 percent) of the 11 million undocumented individuals in the United States have criminal records.1 Of this population, 300,000 individuals are felony offenders and 390,000 are serious misdemeanor offenders — tallies which exclude more than 93 percent of the resident undocumented population (Rosenblum 2015, 22–24). Moreover, the Congressional Research Service found that 140,000 undocumented migrants — or slightly more than 1 percent of the undocumented population — are currently serving time in prison in the United States (Kandel 2016). The facts, therefore, are closer to what Doris Meissner, former Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) Commissioner, argues: that the number of “criminal aliens” arrested as a percentage of all fugitive immigration cases is “modest” (Meissner et al. 2013, 102–03). The facts notwithstanding, President Trump's fictional tally is important to consider because it conveys an intent to produce at least this many people who — through discourse and policy — can be criminalized and incarcerated or deported as “criminal aliens.” In this article, we critically review the literature on immigrant criminalization and trace the specific laws that first linked and then solidified the association between undocumented immigrants and criminality. To move beyond a legal, abstract context, we also draw on our quantitative and qualitative research to underscore ways immigrants experience criminalization in their family, school, and work lives. The first half of our analysis is focused on immigrant criminalization from the late 1980s through the Obama administration, with an emphasis on immigration enforcement practices first engineered in the 1990s. Most significant, we argue, are the 1996 Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigration Responsibility Act (IIRIRA) and the 1996 Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA). The second section of our analysis explores the social impacts of immigrant criminalization, as people's experiences bring the consequences of immigrant criminalization most clearly into focus. We approach our analysis of the production of criminality of immigrants through the lens of legal violence (Menjívar and Abrego 2012), a concept designed to understand the immediate and long-term harmful effects that the immigration regime makes possible. Instead of narrowly focusing only on the physical injury of intentional acts to cause harm, this concept broadens the lens to include less visible sources of violence that reside in institutions and structures and without identifiable perpetrators or incidents to be tabulated. This violence comes from structures, laws, institutions, and practices that, similar to acts of physical violence, leave indelible marks on individuals and produce social suffering. In examining the effects of today's ramped up immigration enforcement, we turn to this concept to capture the violence that this regime produces in the lives of immigrants. Immigrant criminalization has underpinned US immigration policy over the last several decades. The year 1996, in particular, was a signal year in the process of criminalizing immigrants. Having 20 years to trace the connections, it becomes evident that the policies of 1996 used the term “criminal alien” as a strategic sleight of hand. These laws established the concept of “criminal alienhood” that has slowly but purposefully redefined what it means to be unauthorized in the United States such that criminality and unauthorized status are too often considered synonymous (Ewing, Martínez, and Rumbaut 2015). Policies that followed in the 2000s, moreover, cast an increasingly wider net which continually re-determined who could be classified as a “criminal alien,” such that the term is now a mostly incoherent grab bag. Simultaneously and in contrast, the practices that produce “criminal aliens” are coherent insofar as they condition immigrant life in the United States in now predictable ways. This solidity allows us to turn in our conclusion to some thoughts about the likely future of US immigration policy and practice under President Trump.

Throughout its existence, humanity has experienced both evolution and progress in health matters and borne the burden of complex diseases and shortened life duration. Tuberculosis is an example of a pathology that until recently was a sentence for the patient. Every successful step in the search for tuberculosis treatment (which means saving a life) is priceless. The aim was to study of the biography of Selman Waksman and the history of the streptomycin discovery according to the literature data. Selman Waksman was born in 1888 in a Ukrainian village near Vinnitsa, and immigrated to the United States in 1910. He received a bachelor’s degree in 1915, and in 1916 — a magister degree in the agricultural course of Rutgers College. In 1918, Selman received Ph.D. in Biochemistry in the University of California. Since 1918, he worked in the Department of Soil Microbiology at Rutgers University and studied actinomycetes. In 1923, Waksman discovered that certain actinomycetes produced substances toxic to bacteria, and in 1939 he began an extensive research program to determine the nature of the substances by which various soil microbes destroyed each other. Actinomycin, an effective but toxic antibiotic, was isolated in 1940. In 1942, the antibiotic streptothricin was discovered and studied, a highly active against the M. tuberculosis, but too toxic. In 1943, together with graduate student Albert Schatz, two strains of Actinomyces were isolated, which produced a substance with antibiotic activity — streptomycin. Streptomycin had shown antibiotic activity against several bacteria, including M. tuberculosis. The drug was not toxic to animals. The great practical prospects of streptomycin for the treatment of tuberculosis and other infections led to the award of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1952. Dr. Waksman introduced and popularized the term “antibiotic” in microbiology. He published more than 447 articles and wrote, independently or with co-authors, 28 books. When the Nobel Prize was awarded to the developer of streptomycin, a drug that saved thousands of human lives, the outstanding scientist was recognized as one of the greatest benefactors of mankind. Key words: Selman Abraham Waksman, streptomycin, tuberculosis, history of medicine.

Background: The non-medical use of and harms related to prescription opioid (PO) analgesics – key medications to treat severe and chronic pain - are an emerging public health concern globally. PO use is proportionally highest in North America, where, consequently, nonmedical PO use (NMPOU) and morbidity/mortality are high and well documented for the United States. Canada is the country with the second highest PO consumption rate in the world – with steeper recent increases in PO use than the US - mainly driven by substantial increases in the use of strong opioids (e.g., oxycodone). Indications and select data of NMPOU and PO-related morbidity and mortality have emerged in recent years, yet a systematic and comprehensive collection of relevant data to characterize the phenomenon in Canada does not exist. Objectives: This paper comprehensively reviews the available data in Canada regarding NMPOU, and PO-related harms, diversion, and interventions, and discusses implications for interventions and policy. Study Design: Narrative literature/data review. Setting: Canada. Methods: Publicly available data and information – either from journal publications, “grey literature” (e.g., government/technical reports) or Web sites reporting relevant data on Canada - were searched and narratively reviewed. Results: Indicators on NMPOU and PO-related harms in Canada are highly fragmented, and not nearly as systematic and comprehensive as they are in the US; virtually no national statistics/data are collected. Available –largely provincial/local - data indicate that PO misuse is increasingly common in key populations, including general adult and student populations, street-drug users, First Nations/Aboriginal Peoples, and correctional populations. Co-morbidities – e.g., pain, mental health problems, polysubstance use – among people reporting NMPOU appear to be high. Substance use treatment admissions for those with problematic PO use have risen substantially where reported. Opioid-related mortality (and oxycodone-related mortality, specifically) have increased considerably in Ontario where relevant data from the mid-1990s onward have been examined. In Canadian populations reporting NMPOU, sourcing of POs occurs through various diversion routes, including from family/friends, “double-doctoring,” or street drug markets. In addition, losses and theft/robberies from pharmacies and licensed medications dealers appear to be on the rise. Finally, interventions (i.e., provincial PO guidelines, prescription monitoring programs, substance use treatment services) are fragmented and inconsistently applied throughout the country, and currently fail to effectively address the growing problem of NMPOU and PO-related harms across Canada. Limitations: This review did not rely on systematic review methodologies. Conclusion: Corresponding to its increasing and high overall PO consumption levels, NMPOU and POrelated harms in Canada are high based on available data, and likely now constitute the third highest level of substance use burden of disease (after alcohol and tobacco). The data and monitoring situation in Canada regarding NMPOU and PO-related harms are fragmented, un-systematic, and insufficient. While major and concerted policy initiatives – primarily from the federal level - are absent to date, these urgently require vastly improved national data indicators and monitoring in order to allow for and evaluate evidence-based interventions on this urgent and extensive public health problem. Key words: Prescription opioids, pain, non-medical use, epidemiology, public health, morbidity, mortality, treatment, policy, Canada

Black, Native American, Latinx, Asian, and Pacific Islander women all have histories of sexual violence in the United States. Their historical victimizations have set a precedence for contemporary commercial sex victimization. The purpose of this study was to examine the role of “race” in sex trafficking. Data from 50 women with sex trafficking histories resulted in three candidate themes and five subthemes that include (a) sex trafficked women (White women, Black women vs. White women, and all women with unique subthemes related to drug use and locations); (b) Black male traffickers; and (c) Black and White male customers.

Megachurches are growing in size and number in the United States with no indication of slowing down. We argue that their success is due to motivating their congregations with emotional energy that stimulates intense loyalty and a desire to come back repeatedly to get recharged. Megachurches are like drug dealers offering members and nonmembers alike their next hit of emotional energy. Ritual life is critical for the generation of emotional energy, but so are the minimally counterintuitive ideas that capture attention, channel the emotional energy, and rally loyalty and motivation to keep coming back for more. However, these ideas are not sufficient on their own but need to be charged with emotional energy from rituals to inspire loyalty from participants.

Abstract Three effects of the War on Drugs stand out. First, it was a failure. The street price of cocaine, the war’s signature drug, should have risen if dealing were becoming riskier and drugs less available; prices fell. Massive arrests and street-sweep tactics in many cities, backed up by harsh mandatory prison sentences, should have cleared out the drug dealers and made drugs harder to find; they did not. Most analysts and many police officials believe that arrested street dealers are nearly always replaced by others willing to take the risks and that drug sales are merely moved to other locations. Finally, there is no evidence that crime control efforts lowered levels of drug use in the United States. Drug use was declining years before the war was declared, and the war can claim no credit for the continuation of preexisting trends. There are reasons to believe that mass media and public education initiatives reduced drug use, especially among school-age people, but that is a different matter.

Chapter 10 charts the events following April 15, 2013, when the brothers Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev exploded two bombs as throngs of runners approached the finish line of the Boston Marathon. Three people were killed and 264 injured. The chapter considers why they did it. as well as how. The brothers were Chechen Muslims from the Russian Federation. They had come to the United States with their parents as refugees. The family were not observant Muslims. The brothers were drug dealers and users. Tamerlan was later determined to have committed a triple murder. Dzhokhar, a student at a local state university supported by a merit fellowship was a drug dealer. But the brothers were in some ways typical of one type of violent Western jihadist: involved in crime and with drug habits, but attracted to radical Islamist ideas. They followed online Do-It-Yourself instructions pushed out online in Inspire Magazine, a publication produced by two American citizens, Anwar al-Awlaki and Samir Khan.