By Ross Paker ticklethewire.com Two months ago this column discussed the effect that America’s insatiable appetite for drugs was having on two contrasting Central American nations—violent and impoverished Honduras and peaceful and idyllic Costa Rica. Because of the success of DEA and the U.S. military at interdicting South American drug shipments by sea, the Colombian…
By Ross Parker ticklethewire.com The following are a few of the true stories from the cinema verite of America’s Prescription Addiction already playing in real life near you. Half of Americans received at least one prescription in the last month, and almost three billion prescriptions for 100 billion pills were dispensed last year. Both…
This is the second in a two-part series. To read the first part click here. By Ross Parker ticklethewire.com Part one of this report discussed the menace of a new generation of synthetic designer drugs from China causing a public health crisis in Europe. In America, in the last two years, enterprising rogue Chinese chemists…
By Ross Parker ticklethewire.com Cyber information is not the only thing the Chinese are stealing from the United States. A new generation of synthetic designer drugs is robbing the physical and mental health of thousands of American teenagers. In the last two years enterprising rogue Chinese chemists have introduced hundreds of these new chemical combinations…
By Ross Parker ticklethewire.com As he left for work on a January day this year, Police Officer Carlos Perez said goodbye to his wife and young children at their home in Limon, Costa Rica. As law enforcement officers and their families across the globe, they faced the unspoken reality that it could be the last…
By Ross Parker ticklethewire.com SAN PEDRO SULA, Honduras — I spent last week in Honduras with a couple dozen friends under the watchful and protective eye of a Honduran woman who has dedicated her life’s work to bettering the lives of the indigenous peasants of her country. Despite State Department warnings we felt safe and…
By Ross Parker ticklethewire.com Perhaps you, like me, have blithely assumed declining crime rates are due to some wonderfully fortunate combination of social factors. Not so, says Kevin Drum in a fascinating, recent article in Mother Jones. Citing dozens of crime causality studies, he makes a provocative and convincing case that a generation of children’s…
Second of a two part series. By Ross Parker ticklethewire.com Stan Garnett, the District Attorney in Boulder, recently told the people of Colorado that, although he was not morally or philosophically opposed to the death penalty, he had simply concluded that it was too expensive, time consuming, and subject to random application. As…
