Saturday, 6 January 2007 - 1:29 AM GMT

This is actually a comment I want to send to Ruth but the system went down when I attempted to send it. Luckily I've learnt to highlight+ctrlC my comments before I click anything else. Thattaway no lengthy essays get lost!! 

Yes that is really beautiful. Strange coincidence but I found a fresh lime on the pavement last night (never one to pass a free fruit by, me. And I love to add about 5 teaspoons sugar + 1 glass water; makes far better lime cordial than you can buy).

And yeah! Dear Deidre replied to me! How cool is that!!!

(She must pay an army of pseudonymous Deidres to answer her mail, SURELY...!)

I still can't get over that reply though!! I was like you. I thought she was just a photo in the paper!

Re below, I love the photos of the moving bedspreads you put before. And that mound of leaves the local frogs and harvest mice set up home in... (well what else happened to it...???!!?)

Okay then, — Gleds xx

PS I hope Mick is well. Please give him my best regards...

Saturday, 6 January 2007 - 2:11 AM GMT

Hi, Gledwood -- yes, it certainly is amazing that Dear Deidre wrote to you!  I wasn't actually so familiar with her in particular, but I do occasionally read some articles from The Sun online.  I discovered the colorful print version too, some time ago, when waiting for a colleague to pick me up at Stansted and drive me to Derby.

Thanks for all your comments.  I agree with you completely re: the senseless banning of diamorpine for pain relief in the US, while it's available pretty much elsewhere, as in the UK.  Here we have a big problem with fentanyl showing up in street heroin.  It has killed people I know, or rather, friends of friends.  Several.

I think you would be an interesting person to sit next to on the bus ...

Saturday, 6 January 2007 - 5:00 PM GMT

Oh by the way, re fentanyl and heroin "cut" with "benzos", "barbs" or "methaqualone" (Mandrax/Quaaludes)...

How does fentanyl get into heroin? Where does the fentanyl come from? Is it illicitly manufactured? If so, surely the American police/fbi/customs/whoever deals with these things has busted at least one lab... IF NOT, doesn't that suggest that the pharmecutical companies are somehow complicit in this? Or else the government? Or at the very least some people in pretty high places. Because unless you're making it yourself, getting hold of huge enough doses to cut a swathe of a nation's heroin supply takes quite some influence.

Ditto with "gear cut with barbs". E.g. a red Seconal in the 1960s contained 50mg or 100mg of Seconal (quinalbarbitone/secobarbital) in a red capsule weighing in total at least 500mg (half a gram) Which is the size of (here in the UK) a £20 bag of street gear. To cut heroin with this drug and have it take any effect, you'd need to add NEAT barbs, not just powder from capsules, which again begs the same questions...

Same with methaqualone, which has also turned up in heroin. (Though I know someone who grew up in Malta where "Quaaludes" were on the drugs market. He said these weren't pharmaceutical pills, they were more like Es, branded with various stars, birds, crowns/ etc. I.e. illicitly manufactured ...

But again, the police in this country have examined the quality of ecstasy pills and stated (though this has not been widely publicized) that some are so well made they almost definitely come from professional pill-making equipment... which again begs some fascinating questions - how do criminal gangs get their hands on such equipment?

All I'm saying is, I reckon there's a lot more going on with this drugs thing than meets the eye...

Saturday, 6 January 2007 - 8:31 PM GMT

I've read theories about where the fentanyl found in some heroin supplies gets there.  One article I read (sorry, can't remember where!) said that fentanyl is one of the most-often stolen drug from pharmacies which have been burglarized.  It is also intercepted in shipments, they said.  I suspect two aditional things: manufacturer complicity, as you state -- as well as pharmacists and/or physicians and/or hospitals which siphon off fentanyl and sell it to heroin wholesalers.  Here in Detorit it has killed nearly two hundred people.  And it certainly hasn't killed every user who has received it -- most of the time, I would imagine that it's properly diluted.  So it's certain that, just here in Detroit, an ENORMOUS amount of fentanyl is being diverted to the streets.  And that's just one city!  So there must, MUST be a conspiracy going on, cooperation between heroin suppliers and "legitimate" drug manufacturers and distributers!