A little levity from the crisis in the Eurozone. An ad campaign from the Portuguese liqueur Beirao. Caption reads: “Dear Angela (Nicolas), Portugal is giving you its best. Happy Holidays!” Portugal followed Ireland and Greece in securing bailouts from the European Union and the IMF. German chancellor Angela Merkel and French president Nicolas Sarkozy, who represent Europe’s largest and more solvent economies, have been leading the EU through the crisis.
Also, check out this story from The Guardian correspondent Tom Phillips on the trend of Portuguese heading to their former colony Brazil to escape the economic crisis. Tom was the field producer on “City of God, Guns & Gangs.”
Encouraging news out of Florida. After a three-year investigation, federal authorities announced a sweeping indictment charging 32 people under racketeering statutes for their involvement in South Florida-based pill mills that doled out 20 million oxycodone pills and profited more than $40 million dollars from illegal sales of controlled substances. In a companion indictment, local authorities charged a doctor with first-degree murder in the death of a West Palm Beach man who died within hours of filling a prescription for a painkiller.
This is the strongest move yet to combat the growing black market trade in painkillers coming out of Florida, the “Colombia of prescription drugs”. And among those charged, were the owners of the pain clinic who chased us while filming “The OxyContin Express”. The government reportedly seized approximately $4.7 million in cash, most found in the attic of the owners’ mother’s home. To quote a line from a good a doctor in our report, “This is medicine?”
On Sunday, one of the young organizers I met while covering the Obama campaign in 2008 posted a link on Facebook to Drew Westen’s provocative essay in the New York Times, “What Happened to Obama?”. It got me thinking about the electric mood we were trying to capture in this short piece on youth participation in the Obama campaign, and wondering what are all those people are thinking after what’s obviously been a really tough week for the President. The electricity of 2008 was more than just mood, it forced many young people to action, many quit their jobs, taking an early detour from their careers to organize a formidable — and ultimately successful — grassroots campaign. Can the administration rely on that energy in 2012?
Just in time for tonight’s premiere of “Recovery High,” on Vanguard, comes this story from the @nytimes about how prescription drugs are fueling crime on Cape Cod.
We reported in Gateway to Heroin on the rising rates of pharmacy robberies across the nation, but law enforcement will also tell you that property crime and rising rates of opiate addiction go hand in hand.
From the Times:
The majority of drug users here are looking for 30-milligram tablets of oxycodone and acetaminophen, known on the street as Perc 30s, said Lt. Jack Mawn of the Massachusetts State Police, who is a member of the Cape Cod Drug Task Force.
The pills sell for about $1 a milligram, but sometimes more, and the authorities believe that most are coming from Florida. Lieutenant Mawn said there had been a rise in prostitution — a problem virtually unheard of on Cape Cod years ago — because of the drug trade.
Perc 30s are the preferred drug among users these days and were the pills that the dealers we met in Boston while shooting Gateway were bringing up from pill mills in Florida, “the Colombia of prescription drugs”.
Very excited for this final Vanguard episode. It’s a great capper to a season that began with Gateway to Heroin, a pretty dark story about how in Massachusetts prescription painkillers like OxyContin are fueling a heroin epidemic. “Recovery High” shows one of the steps the state is taking to deal with rising rates of addiction among youth and features some pretty inspiring characters. The story grew out of our reporting The OxyContin Express and Gateway, and I’m proud to have been involved in the early stages of it. So check it out Monday at 9 on Current TV.
There are 12 million people living unlawfully in the United States. In this episode of “Vanguard,” correspondent Mariana van Zeller explores the lives of two of them: a senior at UCLA named Ilse who crossed the border from Mexico in the trunk of a car at age 3 and a strawberry picker named Filemon who lives in an Oxnard flophouse with 19 other people so that he can send money back to his family in Oaxaca. In their stories, Mariana finds testament to both the power of the American Dream and the absolute failure of American border policies.
In “City of God, Guns & Gangs,” Vanguard correspondent Mariana van Zeller investigates Brazil’s bold new initiative to transform Rio de Janeiro’s dangerous slums before the country hosts the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Olympics.
