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I know a guy died, which is always sad... but that's a hilarious fucking postNot all heroes wear capes
Spirit Airlines Pilot Fatally Overdoses On Cocaine Spiked With An Elephant Tranquilizer
Provisional data released last month by the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) showed that there were 64,070 drug overdose deaths in the United States in 2016, up 21 percent from 52,898 the year before. The NCHS is an arm of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The 2016 estimate "would be the highest drug death toll and the fastest increase in that death toll in American history," Sessions said. "And every day this crisis continues to grow, as more than 5,000 Americans abuse painkillers for the first time."
Opioids such as heroin and the synthetic drug fentanyl were responsible for most of the fatal overdoses, killing more than 33,000 Americans — quadruple the number from 20 years ago. "More Americans died of drug overdoses than died from car crashes or died from AIDS at the height of the AIDS epidemic," Sessions said. "For Americans under the age of 50, drug overdoses are now the leading cause of death." Sessions spoke at an event in Charleston, West Virginia, a state with the highest drug overdose rate in the country. In 2015, West Virginia reported more than 41 overdose deaths per 100,000 people, compared with a national average of 16 per 100,000, according to NCHS data.
A bag of 4-fluoro isobutyryl fentanyl, which was seized in a drug raid, is displayed at the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) Special Testing and Research Laboratory in Sterling, Virginia
Sessions said President Donald Trump's campaign pledge to end the opioid crisis remains a priority for his administration. "I believe that the department's new resources and new efforts will bring more criminals to justice, and ultimately save lives," Sessions said. "And I'm convinced this is a winnable war." In March, Trump named New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, a former presidential candidate, to head the newly formed President's Commission on Combating Drug Addiction and the Opioid Crisis.
Last month, the commission urged the administration to declare the opioid crisis a national emergency. "With approximately 142 Americans dying every day, America is enduring a death toll equal to September 11th every three weeks," the commission said in an interim report. Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price said that no declaration was necessary to combat the crisis, but White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders later said Trump was taking the idea "absolutely seriously."
US Deaths from Drug Overdoses Set Record in 2016
Sessions told law enforcement officials in Boston that they cannot allow violent street gangs such as MS-13 to turn cities into war zones. "We are coming for you,'' Sessions said during a speech at the federal courthouse. "We will hunt you down, we will find you and we will bring you to justice.'' MS-13, or La Mara Salvatrucha, is believed to have been founded in Los Angeles in the 1980s by immigrants fleeing El Salvador's bloody civil war and has grown into one of the largest street gangs in the country, with more than 10,000 members, federal officials say.
The gang, whose motto is "kill, rape, control,'' is known for its use of gruesome tactics, including hacking and stabbing its victims with machetes. It has been tied to a wave of recent violence on Long Island, just east of New York City, and has been linked to brutal killings in other states. Sessions applauded Massachusetts federal prosecutors' dedication to dismantling the gang, pointing to a massive roundup of its members in the state last year. More than 50 members of the gang in and around Boston were indicted in January 2016 on federal racketeering charges, including murder, conspiracy to commit murder and attempted murder.
Protesters gather outside the federal courthouse in Boston where U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions was speaking to law enforcement officials about transnational organized crime
Sessions, a Republican, said gangs are exploiting a program for unaccompanied minors found crossing the southern border by sending members over as "wolves in sheep clothing'' and recruiting in communities. Gregory Chen, director of government relations for the American Immigration Lawyers Association, called that assertion "truly baseless.'' The program aids children fleeing violence in their home countries, he said. "He's trying to inflame public opinion against this highly vulnerable population,'' Chen said.
A few dozen protesters carrying signs with phrases such as #NotWelcome gathered outside the courthouse before Sessions' speech to condemn his views on immigration and law enforcement.Sessions' visit to Boston included a briefing from local officials on MS-13 and a discussion with local police chiefs.
US Attorney General Warns Gang Members: 'We Will Hunt You Down'
During a speech at the National Narcotics Officers’ Association’s Coalition Drug Enforcement Forum, Sessions said the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated the death toll from drug overdoses last year at approximately 72,000, which he said is the “highest drug death toll in American history by far.” “It is widely estimated that life expectancy has declined in the United States in recent years—largely because of drug abuse,” he said. Sessions said opioids like prescription painkillers, heroin, and synthetic drugs like fentanyl are to blame for the dramatic increase in overdose deaths, and in 2016 alone, 42,000 Americans died from opioid overdoses. “We also have a serious and growing cocaine problem in this country. It’s purer, cheaper, and more available. Cocaine-related deaths have nearly tripled the United States since 2010, and our DEA agents in the West tell us that methamphetamine is their number one problem. The situation is daunting and the challenge is great, but we have a unique opportunity to reverse these trends,” he said.
Sessions noted that in the past drug enforcement agents did not get the support they needed from politicians who tried to “tie” their hands. “I know that sometimes in the past, you haven’t had the support that you deserve. You’ve had politicians that tie your hands, who fail to understand the challenges you face, and who are in denial about the nature and extent of the problem, but not this administration,” he said. “In the face of an unprecedented crisis we have to take unprecedented action, and with President Donald Trump, that is exactly what we are doing. President Trump has a comprehensive plan to end what he has declared to be ‘a national public health emergency.’ The three legs of our plan include prevention, enforcement and treatment,” the attorney general said. Trump has improved prevention efforts, Sessions said, “by launching a national awareness campaign about the dangers of opioid abuse” and has set the goal of reducing opioid prescriptions by one-third in three years. Furthermore, the president ordered Sessions to seek the death penalty for certain drug dealers – “something no president had done before him.” “When we enforce our drug laws, we prevent addiction from spreading. The work that you do helps keep drugs out of our country, reduces their availability, drives up their price, and reduces their purity and addictiveness. That saves lives. Experts tell us supply creates its own demand,” Sessions said.
The attorney general said the Obama administration directed federal prosecutors to omit the full amount of drugs someone is charged with in order to avoid triggering mandatory minimum sentencing for drug cases. “Under the previous administration, in drug cases, the Department of Justice directed federal prosecutors not to include in charging documents the full amount of drugs being dealt if it would trigger certain mandatory minimum sentences. Prosecutors were required to leave out facts in order to achieve sentences lighter than required by law. That is an improper and dangerous policy. It weakens enforcement and reduces cooperation,” Sessions said. As a result, drug prosecutions and the average length of sentences for drug traffickers decreased. “After they put this directive into place, drug prosecutions went down by 17 percent, and the average sentence length for a convicted federal drug trafficking offender decreased 15 percent. Even if everything were going well, that still wouldn’t make sense, but we were suffering from the worst drug crisis in our history,” the attorney general said. “And so, when I became Attorney General, I restored the charging policy of this department to the traditional one that was in place when I was in trying cases and through much of the Obama Administration, and in the districts where drug deaths are the highest, we are now vigorously prosecuting synthetic opioid trafficking cases, even when the amount is small. It’s called Operation Synthetic Opioid Surge—or S.O.S.,” he said.
Sessions said it only takes a tiny amount of fentanyl – “a pinch of salt” - to kill someone. “We are in a desperate fight to curtail the availability and spread of this killer drug. Synthetic opioids are so strong that there is no such thing as a small case. Three milligrams of fentanyl can be fatal. That’s equivalent to a pinch of salt. Depending on the purity, you could fit more than 1,000 fatal doses of fentanyl in a teaspoon,” he said. The attorney general said his department targeted synthetic opioid suppliers in one Florida county and reduced the number of overdose calls from an average of 11 calls a day to one a day. “I want to be clear about this: we are not focusing on users, but on those supplying them with deadly drugs. In Manatee County, Florida, in partnership with the sheriff, we tried this strategy, and it worked. This past January, they had half the number of overdose deaths as the previous January. The Manatee County Sheriff’s Office went from responding to 11 overdose calls a day to an average of one a day. Those are promising results,” he said. “We want to replicate those results in the places that have been hardest hit. And so I have also sent 10 more prosecutors to help implement this strategy in ten districts where drug deaths are especially high. And that is in addition to the 12 prosecutors I sent to prosecute opioid fraud in drug ‘hot spot districts.’ To help them do that, I have begun a new data analytics program at the Department called the Opioid Fraud and Abuse Detection Unit to use data to find opioid-related health care fraud,” Sessions said. “This team follows the numbers—like which doctors are writing opioid prescriptions at a rate that far exceeds their peers; how many of a doctor's patients have died within 60 days of an opioid prescription; pharmacies that are dispensing disproportionately large amounts of opioids; and regional hot spots for opioid issues,” he said.
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