Cocaine, Marijuana, Ecstasy, Viagra Bust in Bloomfield

For those readers who need help deciphering legal acronyms:

CDS = Crazy Drugs 'n Stuff

Wow..nice bust! And no I wasn't talking to you MM (although yours might be nice too)..

If you were referring to me, didn't you mother ever teach you that it's not nice to make fun of others' deformities?

My mom apparently dropped me on my head once too many times.

My mom apparently dropped me on my head one too many times.

more than once, apparently ;)

I know about drug free school zones, but when did " intent to distribute within 500 ft. of a park" become a thing.

Between the two - isn't everyplace in the urban parts Jersey with 500 ft of a park or 1000 ft of a school?

Come on people. The drug war has been lost. Lets decriminalize pot and spend the money on things that matter.

Prediction:
If you decriminalize pot, the money will be spent on Fritos.

Adding further pressure to the price of corn.

Causing a collapse in the burgeoning argo-fuel industry.

agro-fuel.

Seriously, though, the militarization of our police in order to fight the "war" on drugs leads to bureaucratic reporting in order to continue the fight:

$5,800 in cash
285 grams of cocaine
100 grams of marijuana
38 ecstasy pills

$25,000 in cash
2.5 kilos of cocaine
94 grams of marijuana
300 ecstasy pills
12 Viagra tablets
1 bottle of steroids
1 9mm handgun
16 bullets

These inventories are touted day-in, day-out as if they represent success. But they don't, do they? They represent the continuation of a 40-year war over methods of intoxication. Prohibition is not the answer for this stuff any more than it was or is for alcohol.

Seriously. And now it's gone so far that you can't get decent cold medicine anymore.

The infrastructure around drug interdiction is a self-sustaining entity that provides jobs, career paths, and money to those professionals who make it their business to fight this 'war'.

None of these people are under any illusion that this war will ever be won.

It's politically necesary to decry the evils of drug addiction - and believe me, the shit is evil. However, the human appetite for sensory modification is bottomless and will never be sated.

Keeping drugs 'illegal' is not about helping mankind. If you belive that, then I've got a bridge for sale that you might be interested in.

What I want to know is why is there a google maps link to the perps house?

Is Liz trying to get the guy some more business after he gets out? :-P

This was a high-low or low-midlevel scuzzball of a dealer. Who, unlike the posters above, surely never intended to pay taxes on his "earnings.". Nor did he likely care who got screwed up by his merchandise. He was also apparently carrying an unregistered (to him, anyway) handgun. Which probably would be used for something more nefarious than plinking at soup cans.

One would think then, whatever one's views of the war on drugs, that his bust would be applauded as a general service to the community.

Yet all it seems to really occasion is disparaging commentary on our drug laws and attempts at wit. Could something maybe be just a tad wrong with this "picture" in terms of, dare I say, moral values?

Glad to hear that almost 3,000 grams of cocaine are not going to get distributed this week. Given the size of the stash and the currency that he was carrying in his car, he was making a few local deliveries.

Cathar,

Believe me when I tell you I'm glad this piece of human smegma is behind bars.

This is a war that, I believe, will never be over - at least not in our lifetimes. There is too much $$ at stake and too many unquenched human appetites.

So when some phoney baloney politican gets in front of the camera and starts talking about the 'war on drugs', I know they are just talking shit and trying to blow smoke up our arses.

The irony is that the best shit available is totally legal and only requires a wince and a 'wink' to get written 'permission' to use it.

Hominids love to party.

Yet all it seems to really occasion is disparaging commentary on our drug laws and attempts at wit. Could something maybe be just a tad wrong with this "picture" in terms of, dare I say, moral values?

Our drug laws are overwhelmingly deserving of disparaging commentary. Nefarious characters are drawn to the trade, with their unregistered guns and all, because prohibition makes it a lucrative criminal activity.

It is not a diminishment of moral values to point out that a government-sanctioned "war" on its citizenry is worthy of question. Nor is it wrong to attempt to use wit in the process -- was it somehow improper to make jokes about drunks during alcohol prohibition?

Consensual "crimes" need a new approach. The violations of civil liberties that occur on a daily basis in the name of prohibition are in themselves a cause of significant civic and moral decay.

"The irony is that the best shit available is totally legal and only requires a wince and a 'wink' to get written 'permission' to use it."

It's really sad that this is true. Between pills and alcohol I've seen more people die and families torn apart then anything else. I'm one of the lucky kids - my alcoholic parent got treatment and has been sober for 20+ years. I have friends who weren't lucky yet everything their parent did was perfectly legal.

"Prediction:
If you decriminalize pot, the money will be spent on Fritos."

Wap-Waps! That's when you place a sheet of wax paper on the table, open a bag of corn chips and put them on the paper, take a very heaping tablespoon of crunchy peanut butter and go WAP! WAP! WAP! on the chips. Stoner bliss.

Conan,

"Wap Waps" sound absolutely delicious. I think I'll have them for dinner tomorrow night!

I think I'll toss in a few apple slices, some grated cheddar cheese, rasberry preserves and chocolate chips.

The irony is that one newspaper paints a picture of a thug with a shoddy apartment in a seedy section of newark full of drugs and guns and cash. What you didnt read is that he lives in a more than modest home in livingston. has a beautiful wife and 2 kids. Taking 2.5 kilos off the street only opens the door to the other drug dealer who had a smaller territory to move in. If 90% of all drugs were seized at the border, the other 10% would provide a comfortable earning for everyone involved. I'm sure if the kids of newark or even baristaville wanted drugs, someone will be available, perhaps your medicine cabinet!

I liked the phrase "human smegma" a lot, MellonBrush. I'm not fond of drug dealers, recall the myth-haunted 60's when too many people actually believed drug dealers were simply good-hearted folk, like Johnny Appleseed in their own way, just trying to turn the world on.

With perhaps one half-exception, I think the drug dealers I knew were always much more selfish and rotten than that. And in any subsequent discussion of the wisdom of the "drug wars," I always feel much better if the proponents of laxity at least start off by acknowledging the scumminess of such merchants.

As to tbe "best shit" being legal, however, well, maybe you're right there. But in my case, it took more than a wink; I had in fact to be shot to get at them. Yes, the drugs given turned out to be enjoyable, but I'd have happily passed on the whole violent process.

Yes, they're often scummy people. That has little or nothing to do with the intoxicants themselves, but tons to do with the illegality of the substances. Who else would be drawn to flout the law for an easy buck? Are you implying that being in favor of "laxity" means being somehow in favor of scumbags? I think the opposite -- withdraw the easy money and remove the criminal element from a business that attracts often otherwise non-scummy customers. Are you thinking that a benefit of the drug wars is that it makes it somehow easier to find and arrest criminals or that the fact that scumbags are on the other side of the drug war means that the drug war makes continuing sense?

Wap-Waps! That's when you place a sheet of wax paper on the table, open a bag of corn chips and put them on the paper, take a very heaping tablespoon of crunchy peanut butter and go WAP! WAP! WAP! on the chips. Stoner bliss.

It's posts like these that make me really wonder how Conan knows the things he knows.

I think Joey D should create a task force to cull the drug dealers. They are just taking over and ruining the landscape.. not to mention overpopulation... addictive diseases ...
they are just like rats I tell you.

Have to love that you post this as a Bloomfield problem when the man in question was not a resident of Bloomfield and was essentially arrested on the Montclair border. But go ahead and continue to vilify Bloomfield as the bosom of all evil...

I think Bloomfield is more like an armpit than a bosom, but that's just me.

Broughton Avenue does not border Montclair.

Pork Roll, it's because along with the miscreants, a lot of intelligent people like to get high. I've known vice presidents of banks, entrepreneurs successful enough to buy buildings in NYC and run great businesses, if not renovate and preserve some of the history at the same time, that get high, even into their retirement years. The point Appletony is making is very valid. You get rid of the prohibition type gangsters, you gain tax revenue and you can control the public abuse, like drunk driving after prohibition as an example.
Getting high is a human condition, it dates back as far as recorded history in one way or another. The fact that the freest nation in the world has more people incarcerated in the world in actual numbers, not as a percentage, because more than one third of them are in for drug convictions of a non-violent nature is shameful. The people who need help with addictions are not only in denial, they are, for good reason, afraid of criminal prosecution. This condition eventually harms someone else. You can put the "pushers" and the big money crime right out of business almost immediately by changing the drug laws. It won't make a perfect world, but at least a lot fairer and with a lot less shootouts in the neighborhood (not to mention putting us at least under China in actual #'s on the jailed list, though barely).

Appletony, while I agree that scumbags are presently drawn to the sale of drugs, I doubt very much it'd change too much were drugs legalized (an issue I realize you generally support), although said skels might then be better dressed and more presentable in public. Albeit still drug-purveying skels.

My main concern is not that legalizing drugs withdraws "easy" money from the trade. I don't even think that legalization would do any such thing. There is a reason chemists keep at it in their labs, after all. And there is always somone out there ready to offer better stuff than one can procure officially. (As methadone users, to cite one group, usually freely acknowledge.)

Instead, I worry what it says about a society that would suddenly decide to say, in essence, "We forgive you" to drug-dealing sludge. Or anyway, "We'll now try and forget you were ever here." Are we so prone to surrender? So desperate to ignore the ravages of drug addiction, its social costs? There is also a twisted utopianism to the rosy view that society would somehow "improve" noticeably were drugs legalized, that crime overall would go down. This may be the libertarian version of things but it may also be dead wrong in reality. Nothing about the criminal underclass I've ever seen by way of research convincingly suggests that its members would turn to honest pursuits were drugs legalized, they're not wired that way.

Perhaps, too, a really stoned nation is not a terribly good one in which to live. The Dutch once convinced themselves that tolerance of "soft" drugs would ensure that their nation wouldn't endure the plague of "hard" drugs. Yet today Holland is both the heroin and organized crime capital of continental Europe, and seriously debates the actual banning of motorcycle clubs (gangs to most), a civil liberties-trampling notion that remains unthinkable in the United States. Have you ever walked through certain parts of Rotterdam and Amsterdam? They remind me of the 42nd Street area at its very pre-Giuliani worst, but worse. And the Dutch police are quite simply overwhelmed. (Holland is also the charming country where not only are doctors allowed to send critically ill patients off permanently to dreamland should they request it, but where a chilling majority of doctors have admitted in more than one such poll that they've also done so without any such request from a patient; there may be an linkage through the abdication of moral authority there.) Nor is it any better in cities like Stockholm or Berlin from reports. It definitely isn't in certain parts of Edinburgh and Glasgow and Manchester and even Prague. It all comes back.

And that getting high is a common human aspiration, Duckie, does not necessarily validate the concept via its more extreme varieties of practice. Nor do gangsters, real OC and LCN types, ever go gently into the good night. That you imagine they would speaks volumes re your core ignorance.

That's Ducky thank you.
As for my core ignorance, well, I forgot about those shootouts over Dewar's and Jameson whiskies that happened down the block last night, wait maybe that's what I hear now. Oh, and the last time I went to the Office, I almost forgot the password to get in.
Not to worry though, you'll get your reward in heaven, maybe even two bails of hay for being so...so.

Just in case you?re too full of yourself, "does not necessarily validate the concept via its more extreme varieties of practice" also does not translate into the drugs or practices being discussed. Nobody is saying angel dust is OK and don't worry if you murder your family. But leave it the posters to take a concept to an extreme, losing the point, wonder what they're on?

The problem with the low countries is not laxity re drugs, it is laxity re violent thuggery and jihad. If they were willing to apprehend and maningfully incarcerate those who physically harm others, intimidate or steal, much of the Dinkins-era feeling you perceive would go away. It wasn't a doper who left a manifesto tacked into Van Gogh, it was a readily-identifiable thug.

Nothing about the criminal underclass I've ever seen by way of research convincingly suggests that its members would turn to honest pursuits were drugs legalized, they're not wired that way.

I never said they would give up crime. But the crime they would pursue would be easier to target -- "civilians" would generally be mixed up in it as victims, not participants. Right now you have a situation where otherwise perfectly decent people interact with the criminal world in order to get their intoxicants. There is NO empirical difference between drug prohibition and alcohol prohibition -- unfamiliarity and fear keep people from realizing that (and the drug war machine is happy to enumerate the "success" statistics, ever the same, of x amount of coke, y number of bullets and z dollars seized to fund the Sheriff's interceptors).

"I think I'll toss in a few apple slices, some grated cheddar cheese, rasberry preserves and chocolate chips."

Is that from the MeMe Stoner cookbook?

That list of dope reminds me of that drug video game, (Drug Wars?)where you had to buy a bigger coat to fit more drugs and weapons. Sounds like that guy could have used a bigger coat, or he was dealing the wrong kind of drugs in the neighborhoood he was in. Should have sold the cocaine and moved over to a different neighborood, but pay off the loan shark before he comes for ya.

From the "Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers": 'Dope in times of no money is better than money in times of no dope'

And remember folks, never carry more than you can eat.

Would that have contributed to your self admitted weight problem in the past? :)

Appletony, I'll respectfully suggest that the comparison between alcohol and drug prohibition, which is always made, is wrongheaded and off the mark. There are empirical and even social differences.

The war against demon rum sprang out of genuine religious fervor, however wrongheaded. Its roots are in 19th century revivalism. For a brief episode, enough such proponents were able to get the Volstead Act passed, but the moment was short, and Prohibition was thus never accompanied by the kind of social reforms its most vociferous adherents yearned for. A movement that begins in the hard-drinking cowtowns of the West will, at best, only "flower" for a brief period of time, thank God. The exaggerations of the temperance movement were well known. (Think of the maudlin old vaudeville song, "Father, dear Father, come out of that saloon...")

The war against drugs is a very different story. As drug legalizers love pointing out for some reason I never quite get, things were often available over the counter which would now be prohibited.

But at the time, even as their abuses were well known, their social costs were low because the popularity of such concoctions was quondam at best.

Unfortunately, advances in chemistry and in processing made both cocaine and heroin both cheap and, relatively available by the late 50's. Two decades or so later came the fantastic marketing success (I really think it deserved to be "Product of the year" if not the decade) of crack cocaine. Now, at least according to the New York Times, it's something called "paco," cheap and rapidly addictive, probably destined soon for these shores. Plus there are assorted painkillers, meth, Ecstasy, etc. All are a far cry from spirits and beer. Drug dealers thus are marketers to the nth degree, unlike the 19th century publicans of places like Dodge City and Wichita.

Unfortunately, too, while Carrie Nation and her sisters propagated the lie that drink was making slaves of us all in one way or the other, heroin and assorted other controlled substances really do that. Would you really wish to work in an office full of cokeheads? (Possible reality notwithstanding depending on where you work, that is.) Alongside nodding junkies on a production line? With tweakers in a video rental store? I realize that the bright libertarian dream (which I am not suggesting you necessarily buy into) is of an America where everything is available but good sense basically prevails while good times are allowed. The success of new "products" as they come onto the market, however, suggests to me that this dream (analogous only in a very tiny way to the spirits industry's introduction of new products, or its pushing to youthful drinkers of trendy crap like Jagermeister) is nonsense, and that the costs of such non-prohibition would be appalling in the end. (And would again, as I tried to indicate above, send the most depressing message possible re the most scabrous elements of society to the rest of us.) Fortunes are already lost almost daily on Wall Street as a result of cocaine abuse, for example.

On a lighter note, take a ride someday up 23 to Butler, to its main street. There, fastened across the 2nd floor porch of what seems to now be a small apartment building, is an old W.C.T.U. sign. It's still in good shape, however, and is probably worth a pot of money. It reminds of a moment when the Temperance movement had its highest hopes. Mind the occasional junkies you may see on the streets of Butler on a warm sunny day, too, burn-outs who probably have no idea what "WCTU" even stands for.

So by the same standards the drug laws hold, moonshine with anti-freeze in it would be the same as a bud. So instead of letting the majority of people that frequent the bad guys whom are no real danger, purchase it legally, generating revenue instead of spending it, you think the corner pusher and all his suppliers would be business as usual after legalized regulation of some drugs. You think you can spot every drug user out there because they can't possibly do a good job.
People are entitled to their escape of choice as long as they are responsible (which the majority are, or we'd really have a prison problem) without others who don't approve putting them behind bars. I doubt that anybody would say heroin, as an example, should be legal any more than Dilaudid should be an over the counter pain killer.
It would free up the law enforcement to go after the really bad guys and stop wasting a lot of money. I don't think anyone wants to let a bunch of people go around wasted (drunk) hurting others. I don't think it would be rational to allow anyone of any age to what ever they wanted, but the current drug laws are out of whack. They need to be made reasonable to the human condition; otherwise you have "1984".
The laws should protect you from harm by other people, not let other people make you do what they think is right when there is no harm.

"what "WCTU" (Woman's Christian Temperance Union) even stands for"
Probably never giving them the vote ;) with their crazy ideas on drinking, or maybe it was their religion that's crazy. Maybe if they were Jewish instead

Your tortured post above, Duckie, is punishment enough. But the last graf simply makes no sense whatsoever.

And the really bad guys ARE drug dealers and their hirelings. None of whom give a remote crap for their customers.

My understanding of the case for legalizing drugs, by the way, at least of the libertarian case for it, is that it includes all such controlled substances. Meaning cocaine and heroin and meth and what have you. That's how it's usually promulgated on lewrockwell.com with more than a touch of over-rosiness re the social outlook post-legalization.

Nor should you attempt to use the phrase "generating revenue" with such seeming confidence. Revenue for whom? Off whose backs? The fact is, no one has any idea how much "revenue" could be generated via the controlled sale of now-banned substances, and an ancillary danger is that, whenever sales dip with ANY product, the usual response is to up the advertising and marketing budget.

I've had "shine" a few times in my life, by the bye. Never cut with ethylene glycol. Some expert "distillers" make a product that, at its onset is perhaps the equal of, say, Heaven Hill or Maker's Mark. It's come the aging process and the tinkering with the flavor (more sugar? less? should this batch be a blend or single-barrel?) that they all fall down.

"I don't think anyone wants to let a bunch of people go around wasted (drunk) hurting others."

You should see what I see. In my job I get to see all kinds on information about people - including prescriptions, doasges, frequency of use....I'd bet we interact with several people everyday who are legally high on something. You'd be amazed!

{{{{{{{{{{{{{{Psssst, HRH. Please don't tell anyone about my oxycontin meds. Thanks.}}}}}}}}}}}

Call me what you will cathar, it's like dealing with a 5 yr old. You probably didn't click on the links, if you did and don't get it, all well.

"And the really bad guys ARE drug dealers and their hirelings. None of whom give a remote crap for their customers."
Really? I should have made that point. All the comments on getting rid of the opportunists and the non gun totting friends that share the expense (not all people during prohibition were gangsters with their bath tub gin, nor were they pushers for sharing with their neighbors) from the criminal rolls. This freeing law enforcement to go after the people who are real criminals, who will still do illegal things for profit. My bad.

"My understanding of the case for legalizing drugs, by the way, at least of the libertarian case for it, is that it includes all such controlled substances. Meaning cocaine and heroin and meth and what have you."
That may be, I never said that, and inference to wackos does not a wacko make.

"Nor should you attempt to use the phrase "generating revenue" with such seeming confidence."
Multi-billion dollar sales at prevailing tax rates would mean didilly, even after factoring in the lessened jail population. I guess my math skills need improvement.

"and an ancillary danger is that, whenever sales dip with ANY product, the usual response is to up the advertising and marketing budget."
They would never regulate the marketing, so your right again, and that last cigarette ad on TV I saw made me wish I hadn't quit.

"I've had "shine" a few times in my life, by the bye. Never cut with ethylene glycol."
Don't be too sure.

You just don't write very clearly, Duckie. As per right above.

The problem with all proponents of legalization always seems to be how vaguely they couch their optimism. It is all based on...well, nothing very accurate, it seems. Just on cheery expectations re human behavior and even on corporate accomodations to human weakness.

Save for the tulips, the cheeses and the Rembrandts, I'd hate very much for America to come to resemble Holland. You, however, are much welcome to share my stash of home made aguardiente (from Portugese friends) anytime you wish, and to guess what gives the bottle I'll give you its yellowish color.

Cathar-- Could you be any more of a long winded fascist in love with the sound of your own voice?

Just shut the fuck up. You'd NEVER talk to people in a darkened alley the way you do on here, and if you'd like to prove that hypothesis i'd gladly give you the opportunity.

My guess is that Cathar wouldn't want to talk to anyone in a darkened alley. It's a kind of creepy place to hold a conversation.

The best thing to do, if one finds oneself in a dark alley and hears a hectoring voice is to walk briskly out of the alley and keep going.

cathar, thanks anyway, I'll stick with the advice of Frank Zappa about not eating the yellow snow, even melted in a bottle.
I suspect you get the sarcastic remarks above but choose to ignore them in hope of finding an easy mark for your limited repartee. Mikey was such a challenge to your superior incites (sorry, sarcasm, maybe you can take a night course); maybe you miss the easy pickings of another poster and are casting for a replacement; what is it about Mikey, he made you sound good(?)..., if you clued us in to your postings on other sites we could fully understand your wisdom from a more serious standpoint.
There is also something that reminds me of you...rubbed up and down, donkeys, I'll take the; it'll cum to me.