Tag: the war on (some) drugs

Toronto Judge Acquits Man Who Attacked and Choked 7-Year-Old Girl While Shouting About Allah, Naked, Because He Was in a ‘Cannabis Psychosis’

An Ontario judge has acquitted a Toronto man who threw a seven-year-old girl to the ground, punched her, and choked her in her family’s driveway after he argued the attack was involuntary because he was in a cannabis-induced psychosis.

The man, Ahmed Baig, did not dispute that he attacked her.

Justice Mara Greene found him not guilty of assault causing bodily harm and assault by choking because he was so high at the time.

The attack happened August 2, 2023, in North York.

Greene wrote that Baig left his house wearing only a towel after vaping cannabis at home for anxiety. The towel fell off as he chased the child in the driveway.

“On August 2, 2023, Mr. Baig exited his residence wearing only a towel. He ran into the street, and as he did so, his towel fell off. Now fully naked, Mr. Baig chased a family who lived across the street. He ran into the driveway and picked up a seven-year-old girl. He threw her to the ground, punched her and strangled her. He then abruptly left the driveway, and a short time later was arrested by police. At the time of arrest, he wore only a t-shirt.”

The attack was captured on video.

The girl’s mother told the court he said both “I will kill you” and “I won’t kill you,” according to a report from the Toronto Star.

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HHS Awards $42.3 Million To Push ‘Treatment First’ Model For Homelessness & Addiction

A federal agency within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) awarded $42.3 million in new supplemental cash Friday to states and territories with the goal of speeding up the implementation of the Treatment First model for homelessness tied to addiction.

The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) funding supports the initiative falling under President Donald Trump’s executive order titled “Ending Crime and Disorder on America’s Streets” and the relevant Best Practices Toolkit that followed. That order from July 2025 directed agencies to put treatment and recovery ahead of the old approaches.

“President Trump has directed us to break the cycle of homelessness and addiction by putting treatment, recovery, and self-sufficiency first,” HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said in a statement. “These investments will help states move people from crisis into treatment and from treatment into lasting recovery, stable housing, and work. We are funding results that help people reclaim their health and independence.”

About $17.3 million of the funds went to Community Mental Health Services Block Grant recipients. Officials say it builds systems, partnerships, workforce capacity, policies, and the technical pieces needed to make Treatment First a success. The funds will go toward technical assistance, training, policy work, and coordination across systems.

Roughly $25 million went to Substance Use Prevention, Treatment, and Recovery Services Block Grant recipients to expand options for safe, licensed, certified, or chartered sober and recovery housing, as well as the requisite technical assistance to ensure that more recovery residences open and quality standards tighten.

“Treatment First means building a system that does not leave people cycling between homelessness, emergency rooms, and the criminal justice system,” SAMHSA Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary Christopher D. Carroll said. “These investments will help states strengthen the infrastructure – partnerships, data, workforce, and recovery supports – needed to connect people with serious mental illness and addiction to effective treatment and support them on a path toward lasting recovery, stable housing, employment, and self-sufficiency.”

In June, the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) published a $4.04 billion Continuum of Care notice. It walked away from the Housing First model, which provided permanent housing with no strings attached. Chronic homelessness climbed 81 percent from 2013 to 2025, despite the number of taxpayer-funded beds increasing 151 percent, HUD figures show.

HUD Secretary Scott Turner called Housing First a failure that “warehoused the vulnerable without results.” Housing alone will not fix a crisis driven by addiction and mental illness, he said.

Kennedy earlier this year announced more than $700 million for related work, of which nearly $100 million went to the STREETS program for homeless people dealing with addiction or serious mental illness. In February, he introduced the $100 million STREETS effort itself, built around continuous contact from the street through recovery, jobs and self-sufficiency.

A federal appeals court this week allowed HUD to forge ahead with funding shifts after lower-court challenges. The department has earmarked $1.3 billion for transitional housing and supportive services.

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Homeless Advocate Charged With Recruiting Teens To Make and Sell Drugs

Lisa Kinkade, the Brattleboro homeless advocate who was praised last year for helping create a downtown drop-in center for homeless people, has been arrested following a drug raid in which police say a large amount of crack cocaine and cash was seized.

Kincade, 46, was one of three people arrested Sept. 4 when Brattleboro police assisted the Vermont Drug Task Force in executing a search warrant at an apartment at 69 Elliott Street at about 9:15 AM, according to a Brattleboro Police Dept. statement. She pleaded innocent Tuesday to trafficking, manufacturing and sale of crack cocaine and fentanyl, and conspiracy to sell drugs.

In her arraignment Tuesday, Judge John Treadwell set bail at $ 50,000 for Kinkade, saying she allegedly recruited “young people from Connecticut to come to Vermont to manufacture and distribute regulated drugs in this community,” according to a Brattleboro Reformer report.

The other two people arrested were 18-year-olds from Connecticut: Darrius Tatum of Darien, and Xavier Burgos of Meriden. 

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Zelensky Sanctions His Ex-Spokeswoman Yulia Mendel, Who Revealed to the World the ‘Open Secret’ of His Drug Abuse

Sanctioned and included in the Ukrainian ‘kill list’, Mendel is in the crosshairs of Kiev.

Yesterday (13), it arose that Kiev regime leader Volodymyr Zelensky sanctioned his former spokeswoman, Yulia Mendel.

Mendel has left Ukraine, and gone public with a torrent of detrimental information about her former boss, including the fact that Zelensky profits from the continuation of the war, and – what’s even worse – she dared talk about the ‘open secret’ of his drug abuse.

Reuters reported:

“Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky imposed sanctions on a former press secretary on Sunday, accusing her and nine others of spreading Russian propaganda and of supporting Russia’s aggressive policy toward Ukraine.

Yulia Mendel — who worked with Zelenskiy from 2019 to 2021, before Russia’s invasion — responded with a message on Facebook saying it was unconstitutional to impose sanctions on Ukrainian citizens. She did not comment on the specific accusations.

[…] The sanctions — announced by Zelensky in a decree — would last for 10 years and included asset freezes and restrictions on trade, the document read.”

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Trump says he’s lifting a 10% tariff on Irish whiskey because ‘everybody’s been bugging me’ about it

President Donald Trump says he plans to remove a 10% tariff on Irish whiskey.

DOONBEG, Ireland (AP) — U.S. President Donald Trump announced on Sunday at the close of a golf tournament in Ireland that he plans to remove a 10% tariff on Irish whiskey.

Trump said during the trophy ceremony for the Irish Open that he had been asked about the issue by everyone, including Irish Prime Minister Micheál Martin and even some of the golfers. Irish Open winner Shane Lowry was among them, Trump said.

“Everybody’s been bugging me” to do it, the Republican president said. “And I said, ‘On behalf of the United States of America, I am going to take the tariffs off’” of Irish whiskey.

Irish whiskey currently faces the standard tariff imposed by Trump on most imports from the European Union, which was reduced from 15% to 10% in July.

Trump announced in April that he was lifting certain tariffs on U.K. whiskey, which includes Scotch and spirits made in Northern Ireland, creating an imbalance with Ireland.

Trump’s surprise announcement was met with loud whistling and cheers from the crowd of spectators. Details on how soon the tariff would be lifted were not immediately available.

Chris Swonger, president & CEO of the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States, called Trump’s announcement “another positive step toward reducing barriers to spirits trade” and said everyone would benefit from it during the coming holidays.

“As U.S. hospitality businesses enter the critical holiday season, this action will provide a welcome boost for retailers, restaurants, consumers and the American economy,” Swonger said.

In May, the Irish Whiskey Association called for the tariffs to be removed, arguing that such a step would help many U.S. companies with Irish products in their portfolios and avoid uncertainty for consumers.

Trump said on April 30 that he gave the United Kingdom a tariff break on whiskey after King Charles III and Queen Camilla visited the White House. “The King and Queen got me to do something that nobody else was able to do, without hardly even asking!” Trump posted on social media.

The Scotch Whisky Association said July 24 that the zero-tariff policy had come into effect.

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Popular GLP-1 weight-loss drugs linked to potentially deadly brain disorder

Researchers are warning about a rare but potentially life-threatening brain condition that may be linked to popular GLP-1 weight-loss medications.

A new study, published in Clinical Nutrition, identified 15 reported cases of Wernicke encephalopathy, a neurological disorder caused by severe vitamin B1 deficiency, in people taking GLP-1 receptor agonists.

Most of the reported cases involved semaglutide, sold under the brand names Ozempic and Wegovy, or tirzepatide, sold as Mounjaro and Zepbound.

Researchers found 15 cases through the FDA’s Adverse Event Reporting System (FAERS), published medical literature and their own medical center.

Most patients reported gastrointestinal symptoms or nutritional issues, including weight loss, vomiting, loss of appetite or malnutrition, the study noted.

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Billionaires Are Buying Into Psychedelic Companies

Putting aside my skepticism of SpaceX for a moment, there is something worth paying attention to in the latest report about the people who made fortunes backing the company: they are now putting serious money into psychedelics.

And while I can’t necessarily get behind backing Elon Musk’s idea of elephants performing Les Miserables on the moon, or whatever other “lofty” goals are in the SpaceX S-1, I can get behind these follow up investment ideas.

Back in January when absolutely no one was talking about the sector, I officially hung my balls out there and name it my “Best Idea” sector for 2026. I was writing about these stocks years ago ago, first in January 2025, calling the psychedelic names “stocks to watch” for the year. Then, in July 2025, urging patience in these positions.

In April, after the administration’s executive order supporting psychedelic research, I reiterated my bullish stance and argued that we were moving from the phase where these therapies were ignored into the phase where institutions would be forced to engage with them seriously. That transition appears to be underway.

So far, the group has wildly outperformed the market, with the AdvisorShares Psychedelic ETF (PSIL) beating the S&P 500 by about +32% this year. Other individual companies I pointed out at the beginning of this year are beating the market by about +79% and +171%.

That doesn’t mean every name is going to work, or that the easy money hasn’t already been made in some of them. But the broader thesis continues to get validation, and the latest evidence suggests that capital is still finding its way into the space.

The biggest validation came in July, when Eli Lilly agreed to acquire AtaiBeckley for approximately $2.8 billion upfront, with another $1 billion contingent on development and regulatory milestones.

That is not a small biotech taking a flyer on an experimental treatment. That is one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world committing billions of dollars to a psychedelic-derived drug pipeline. Lilly’s interest is centered on BPL-003, a treatment being developed for treatment-resistant depression.

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Popular Egyptian Show Host Sentenced to Death by Hanging Over Drug Trafficking Gang Involvement

A Cairo criminal court sentenced television host Sarah Khalifa, 39, and 11 other defendants to death by hanging on Saturday after convicting them of forming an organized gang that imported materials used to manufacture synthetic drugs for trafficking.

Khalifa has more than two million followers on social media.

Nine co-defendants received life sentences. Seven of the 28 people charged were acquitted.

State newspaper Al-Ahram said the death sentences were unanimous and issued after Egypt’s Grand Mufti gave the opinion required by law.

Prosecutors said more than 750 kilograms of narcotics and materials were seized.

They cited statements from 20 witnesses and electronic evidence including messages, photos, and video.

Khalifa was arrested in Cairo in April 2025. She has denied the drug charges and shouted that she was innocent when the verdict was read.

Al Jazeera reports:

Khalifa denied the charges and told investigators she had “never smoked a cigarette in my life” and declared her innocence.

Egyptian media reported that she was weeping and crying during the session, asking the court for mercy: “Please listen to me, sir. My parents raised me well; they are people who pray, and I don’t need drug money”

Prosecutors said the gang imported raw materials from abroad to manufacture synthetic drugs, storing them in residential properties. Members divided roles between procurement, manufacturing and distribution, authorities said. Investigators seized unlicensed firearms and ammunition alongside the narcotics.

The prosecution said the group used a residential property to store the materials and manufacture the drugs.

Khalifa hosted the Al-Mehwar crime and security program Mission Impossible. She also operated a cosmetic clinic and an events company.

Her lawyers said they will appeal.

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