Tag: kentucky

Kentucky’s Risky Million-Dollar Bet to Fight the Opioid Crisis With Psychedelics

On the steps of the state capitol building in Frankfort on May 31, the Kentucky Opioid Abatement Advisory Commission (KYOAAC) announced the launch of a new state-funded program that would aim to help stem the damage and destruction wrought by the ongoing opioid crisis that has devastated the lives of millions and led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands. But the new initiative wasn’t simply to throw more money and resources into tried-and-true public health programs.

Instead, the commission announced it was going to explore allocating tens of millions of dollars toward studying and promoting the use of the controversial, plant-based hallucinogen ibogaine in psychedelic-assisted therapy to combat the opioid crisis, as well as treat a host of other mental health issues. The goal is to make Kentucky the first state in the nation to pursue a clinical program around ibogaine—currently legal only in Mexico and New Zealand.

“This administration recognizes that the opioid epidemic is one of the most tragic and visible symptoms of spiritual affliction which pervades our society,” Bryan Hubbard, chairman and executive director of KYOCC, told The Daily Beast. “We must do better. We must explore every possible avenue which holds the potential for improvement.”

The news was lauded by advocates of psychedelic-assisted therapy, an increasingly popular form of mental health treatment.

“With yesterday’s announcement, Kentucky is taking a bold leadership role to addressing the opioid epidemic,” Jesse MacLachalan, state policy and advocacy coordinator for Reason For Hope, a psychedelic therapy advocacy nonprofit, told The Daily Beast. “This is a prudent and measured approach to explore innovative solutions to the greatest addiction crisis our country has experienced in its history. We applaud the Bluegrass State for the example they are setting for states across the country.”

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Director’s Cut: ‘The Kentucky Derby Is Decadent and Depraved,’ by Hunter S. Thompson

The telephone rang at Warren Hinckle’s San Francisco home at about 3:30 in the morning on Wednesday, April 29, 1970. When Hinckle picked up the receiver, he heard the unmistakable voice of Hunter S. Thompson, calling from Aspen, proclaiming, “Goddammit, Scanlan’s has to cover the Derby. It’s important.”

The pitch, even at the late hour and the late date (barely 72 hours before the race itself), was fairly irresistible.1 Send Thompson, still finding his distinctive voice in countercultural journalism, to his hometown of Louisville to cover the drunken, debauched scene at Churchill Downs for Scanlan‘s, the anti-establishment (some would say subversive) monthly magazine for which Hinckle was co-editor.

Hinckle agreed on the spot, booked Thompson a ticket, wired him expense money, and then set about finding an artist to provide illustrations for the story. Originally, he had hoped to send a photographer to shoot the event, but after haggling with Thompson, he instead hired the English illustrator Ralph Steadman.2

It would prove to be a memorable, historic weekend. And it began, as so many of Thompson’s adventures would, with drinks at a bar.

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Louisville Bank Shooter Left Behind Manifesto Detailing 3 Reasons for Rampage: Report

It is now reported that Louisville bank shooter Connor Sturgeon left a disturbing manifesto outlining three key reasons for his killing spree that left five coworkers dead.

The 25-year-old wrote a 13-page screed describing his motives for gunning down his colleagues during their morning conference at the Old National Bank, “a massacre he captured on a deranged Instagram live stream,” the New York Post reported.

The murderer’s treatise reportedly lists three principle goals that served as motivation for the murder spree, addressed here in no particular order.

One was suicide. Sturgeon could easily have achieved this goal without killing anyone else, but he did reportedly list suicide as one of his three motives.

A second goal was to raise awareness regarding mental health issues in America. Sturgeon dealt with depression and anxiety and was taking medication.

A third goal communicated by Sturgeon was to demonstrate how easy it is to purchase a gun in Kentucky.

Observers have noted that Sturgeon was aware that he was about to be fired from the bank, but the veracity of that report is now disputed.

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Kentucky governor who forced churches to close and used taxpayer dollars to defend his shutdowns ordered to pay more than a quarter million in legal fees

Andy Beshear, one of the absolute worst governors in America, just got handed a major and embarrassing defeat stemming back to his illegal and immoral shutdown of churches during Covid.

Beshear abused his power by shuttering houses of worship during Covid and was sued for his trouble.

Now an appeals court has ruled that the governor is on the hook for $270,000 in attorney’s fees to be paid to the plaintiffs who rightfully sued the tyrant wannabe.

Three individuals sued Beshear for violating their civil rights and preventing them from gathering for worship during the Covid shutdowns, and now they have been vindicated and the governor has been punished, at least somewhat, for his actions.

The appeals court upheld a lower circuit court ruling against the governor.

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Questions remain 75 years after mysterious Fort Knox UFO incident, downed pilot

His 2,867 flight hours, much of it in combat, and Distinguished Flying Cross and four Air Medals weren’t enough to avoid a fatal crash near a Franklin, Kentucky farm.

Exactly 75 years later, Capt. Thomas Mantell’s flight that afternoon still remains shrouded in mystery. He died while pursuing a UFO that was seen in the skies over Godman Army Airfield by countless people throughout the region surrounding Fort Knox.

On Jan. 7, 1948, Mantell sat in the cockpit of his F-51D Mustang as flight leader headed north from Marietta Air Force Base in Georgia back to Louisville’s Standiford Field. He and three other pilots from the Kentucky Air National Guard’s Flight C, 165th Fighter Squadron had been participating in a low-altitude navigational training exercise when the request came from Godman Commander Col. Guy Hix to investigate the sightings.

The 25-year-old World War II hero acknowledged the request, and he and two other pilots climbed to 15,000 feet to intercept it. The fourth, a “Lt. Hendricks”, continued on to Standiford Field.

According to a Jan. 6, 2005 article by Turret editor Larry Barnes, several hundred people in Central Kentucky had already witnessed the UFO by 1:15 p.m. on that Wednesday, a day described by some observers as partly cloudy with high-altitude feathery cirrus clouds. That day is recorded by Wunderground.com as also having relatively calm winds, mild temperatures — a high of 49 degrees — zero precipitation, and visibility for at least 10 miles.

“It would have been probably a typical winter day. If they had cirrus clouds in the sky, the visibility would have been great,” said an area weather forecaster. “There was just nothing much else going on weatherwise, so it probably made for a pretty good day.”

News agencies wasted no time turning the crash into front-page news. The big questions on everyone’s minds: What did Mantell encounter, and why did he crash?

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Police Snipers Respond to Call for Help, Kill Man from Outside His Home as He Sat Alone in His Bedroom

As frequent readers of the Free Thought Project understand, calling police for help with a family member suffering from a mental illness, can be a dangerous decision. All too often, officers, who are trained to kill, show up to calls in which people need help, not bullets. Unfortunately, as was the case with Desman LaDuke, 22, he received the latter.

LaDuke’s family is now demanding justice and answers after police showed up last month during a call for help and executed LaDuke from outside the home as he sat alone in his bedroom.

According to Kentucky State Police, Nicholasville police received a call from LaDuke’s family notifying them that LaDuke was suicidal and needed help. A SWAT team and a crisis negotiation team responded to the scene but it appears SWAT was in control.

Police claim that after a two-hour-long standoff, they “confronted an armed individual” which resulted in the loss of life. According to the family, however, no such confrontation ever happened and a police sniper shot LaDuke in the chest from outside his home as he sat alone in his room, posing a threat to no one.

The family is now speaking out and telling the media that the original police claims are false.

“There has been very limited information released regarding the circumstances of Saturday. Much of what has been said is false. And the police have done nothing to correct it. Desman was alone in his home and inside his bedroom when he was shot, through the bedroom window, by a police officer positioned outside the home. Any suggestion that officers made entry into Desman’s home, were threatened [sic] inside the home by Desman, and shot Desman from inside the home, are false,” a letter from the family states.

According to the letter, LaDuke was struggling “with the desire to live” on October 22, and the family called the police to help him but police instead responded by ”sending the SWAT/ERT unit.”

When the family asked to go inside to talk to LaDuke during the standoff, police refused to allow them in, escalating to deadly force instead.

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Kentucky court suspends prosecutor who allegedly had sexual relationship with, received nude photos from defendant in exchange for legal favors

The supreme court of the commonwealth of Kentucky has temporarily suspended a prosecutor after it was discovered that he had repeatedly requested nude photos from a defendant in exchange for prosecutorial favors.

On Friday, the commonwealth supreme court issued its suspension of Ronnie Goldy, who has been the commonwealth’s attorney for Rowan, Bath, Menifee, and Montgomery Counties since 2013. According to investigations, Goldy has been caught requesting — and receiving — nude photos of incarcerated defendant Misty Helton of Salt Lick. The Courier Journal reported that since their meeting in 2015 or 2016, Goldy and Helton have exchanged 230 pages of messages on Facebook Messenger. During their conversations, Goldy repeatedly promised to do legal favors for Helton in return for the photos.

For example, after Helton sent him a series of nude photos of herself in May 2018, Goldy replied, “Wow Nice I do have most of those I think But they are very nice I’m sure you have some even better.” Then later that summer, Goldy told Helton that she “owed” him a video and that “It better be worth the wait.”

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Biden Admin Is Placing Vending Machines Filled With Drug Supplies in Rural Kentucky

The Biden administration is set to spend $3.6 million to deploy vending machines filled with drug supplies in rural Kentucky—an effort the Biden administration claims will reduce stigma for drug users.

The project from the National Institutes of Health was launched in August and will study the effectiveness of “harm reduction kiosks” in rural Appalachia that contain “injection equipment, naloxone, fentanyl test strips, hygiene kits, condoms, and other supplies.” The vending machines allow drug users to obtain items such as syringes without interacting with a health professional, in hopes of eliminating the “stigma” that comes with visiting an in-person harm reduction facility, according to the health agency.

The White House referenced the project in an August 31 press release on its actions taken “to address addiction and the overdose epidemic.” The administration has adopted a wide range of harm reduction policies, which aim to make illicit drug use safer rather than eliminate it.

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Prosecutor Who Impregnated A Defendant And Slept With Juror Now Running For Judge

A Republican-elected Kentucky state’s attorney who admitted to impregnating a defendant and having an affair with a dismissed alternate juror now wants to become a judge.

Matthew Leveridge, the commonwealth’s attorney for Russell and Wayne counties in Kentucky, was prosecuting Latisha Sartain back in 2011 for trafficking in a controlled substance, The Daily Beast reported. Leveridge placed Sartain on pretrial diversion for five years, but began an affair with her in 2015, three years into her five-year diversion. Sartain became pregnant and told Leveridge’s wife about the affair, after which Leveridge moved to void Sartain’s pretrial diversion.

“If you’re a prosecutor, you’re not even supposed to talk to a defendant without her attorney being present, much less — well, this,” Sartain’s attorney Larry Rogers told the Lexington Herald-Leader at the time. “Universally, I think everyone would agree this is a big, big, big no-no.”

Sartain’s pretrial diversion was later reinstated by a special prosecutor. Leveridge was investigated for the affair with Sartain, but was never indicted, The Beast reported.

Leveridge also admitted to sleeping with a woman in 2013 who had been dismissed as an alternate juror for a murder trial. He said at the time that he thought she was done with jury duty, though, as The Beast reported, the juror said she had been called to serve on a different panel but was dismissed when that case settled. This woman also told investigators from the attorney general’s public corruption/special investigations unit that Leveridge “was just using her for sex” and she didn’t understand how “someone with a wife, a child and such an important job would take such risks.”

Leveridge’s actions did raise concerns that he may have breached the Rules of Professional Conduct for lawyers, but he was never charged with a crime and the Kentucky Supreme Court never sanctioned him, even though he admitted to the affairs.

“A few years ago I made a mistake in my life,” Leveridge told the Louisville Courier Journal. “I acknowledged the mistake, sought forgiveness, took responsibility and accepted the consequences. I learned from the mistake and have since moved on to a better life, both personally and professionally.”

Now Leveridge is running to be a circuit judge, The Beast reported.

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KY Mayor Who Got Lap Dance from Male Students Was Sued over School Trip that Ended in Alleged Rape

The mayor of Hazard, Kentucky, and principal of Hazard High School, Donald “Happy” Mobelini — who was seen in photos receiving a lap dance from a scantily clad male high school student during a “man pageant” at a recent school assembly — was accused in a 2019 lawsuit of not properly chaperoning a school trip during which one student allegedly raped another.

Mobelini and two Hazard High School teachers are being sued over a school trip to New York City and Washington, D.C. in 2017, according to a report by the Lexington Herald-Leader.

Court records show a jury trial is scheduled for August 2022, the report adds.

A female former student alleges in the lawsuit that when she was a junior at Hazard High School in 2017, Mobelini and two teacher chaperones did not check on students at various points during a school trip.

The suit claims that students drank and that the female victim was physically and sexually assaulted by a fellow male student. The lawsuit asks that the former female student be compensated for her distress.

The lawsuit also alleges that Mobelini and the other adults in charge did not hold the students “to a strict account for their conduct,” and did not appropriately handle the investigation into the female student’s allegations.

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