Black Entertainers and Drug Abuse: What Could Be Responsible?

King And Queen Of Pop: Gone Too Soon

"Are blacks (African Americans) genetically predisposed to addiction to narcotics? How is that once they start taking drugs, it spirals out of control- while many White celebs are still able to do drugs and "function."?"

Well, before  Whitney Houston, the last major celebrity to die from crack addiction was  Amy Winehouse.

 Unless my memory fails me, I do not believe that she was black.

And then there are others -such as Anna Nicole Smith, Marilyn Monroe, John Belushi, Elvis Presley, and many other white celebrities who died from some form of drug addiction or the other. So if there is a racial basis for drug addition, the evidence has so far been carefully hidden.

Moving on ..

If you travel to economically depressed cities with mostly white populations, you will find a major addiction to CRACK. Sure, crack addiction has also devastated black neighborhoods, but there are HUNDREDS of mostly-white communities in North America where crack addiction is also epidemic.

So the big factor underlying crack addiction is  NOT racial. It is Economic.  Simply put, crack is the poor man's cocaine.  If a cocaid drug user is rich, she will likely do cocaine. If she is poor, she will have no choice but crack. People like Whitney  Houston and Amy Winehouse who are rich (?) and also on crack are exceptions to the rule, and rich folks like that probably got into the crack habit from hanging out with ghetto company.

Moving on …

Unfortunately for all of us, between crack and cocaine, crack is by far the more addictive variant. The cheaper substance is also the more addictive and dangerous. People in Wall Street and Aso Rock can do cocaine and still function, because cocaine addiction does not, for the most part, alter the human personality. It merely depletes your bank account, perhaps until you can no longer afford cocaine, at which point you may descend down to crack, at which point your life will spiral completely out of control.

So if you have a good stream of income, you can keep it together, even with cocaine addiction. And since white people are on the whole richer than black folks, more white drug users will do cocaine, while more black drug users will do crack. That's why it sometimes seems as if they handle drug addiction better than the rest of us. They don't. They just have more money.

Crack, on the other hand, is devastating. It is like sex:  anybody who tries crack once will almost  invariably go back to it again.

Here is the pain: crack isn't just addictive. It alters the mind in a way that makes it impossible to function normally.  So a crack habit isn't just an addiction, it is a descent into insanity. If you are a Nigerian residing in North America, denying your children the opportunity to mess with that stuff should be considered a prime parental responsibility.

Finally, so far, crack-addiction treatment programs are really a scam. The Government injects an unholy amount of money into it, but the success rate is less than 1%! It would appear that, once you go crack, you never go back. I am a big believer in personal responsibility, but people addicted to crack lost control long ago.  What they really need is sympathy.

Final finally: while I generally don't support Capital Punishment, I emphatically support death penalty for drug pushers.  They waste too many lives. Nothing can destroy a community, or steal an entire community, so thoroughly.

Dominic Ogbonna

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Like Father Like Daughter: Paris Jackson Following Michael Jackson's Dance Steps!

Paris Jackson really is a chip off the old King of Pop. In the middle of playing high school softball the 13-year-old out-fielder broke out one of her late dad Michael Jackson's famous dance steps. She's got the moves like Jackson

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Dr. Conrad Murray Back In Court To Prove Michael Jackson Partly Caused His Own Death

Obviously the last hasn't been heard about the late Pop Icon, Michael Jackson and his doctor, Dr. Conrad Murray because the doctor is asking the judge in his criminal case to deny Michael Jackson's family full restitution, on grounds that MJ caused his own death.

Dr Murray filed legal documents yesterday pleading for evidence which the defense never received during the trial ... evidence they claimed could show Michael Jackson self-administered the fatal dose of Propofol.

Dr Murray's lawyer, Michael Flanagan, argues that in deciding how much restitution the family gets, it's appropriate to consider the victim's responsibility for his own demise. So Murray will concede he's partly to blame -- he can't argue otherwise because of the conviction -- but he still wants to prove that MJ ultimately caused his own death. The prosecution is asking for around $100 million in restitution, but the judge hasn't decided on a figure.  But once the figure is set, if Flanagan gets his way and the judge were to decide MJ was 50% responsible for his death, the judge would reduce the restitution award by 50%.So the fat lady hasn't sung ... yet.

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Michael Jackson's Doctor, Conrad Murray Finally Stripped Of Medical Certificate

No longer a doctor...

Conrad Murray has been officially stripped of his medical certificate following his conviction for Michael Jackson's death.
The 55-year-old was found guilty of the involuntary manslaughter of the popstar in November and has been sentenced to four-years in jail. Documents from the Medical Board of California obtained by TMZ, show that Murray's licence has been automatically suspended following his conviction.

Murray now has 15 days to return the license which reportedly hangs on his office wall, or he will face criminal charges. He is currently preparing to appeal his manslaughter conviction and will hire an attorney to fight his case.
Michael died in 2009 from an overdose of anaesthetic Propofol, which Murray was responsible for administering.

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Conrad Murray DENIED Probation! Sentenced To Four Years In Prison!

It's over!
Despite pleas from his mother and loved once earlier today, Dr. Conrad Murray has been denied probation in the Michael Jackson involuntary manslaughter trial.
He has been sentenced to
 serve four years in prison!

Judge Michael Pastor threw the book at Dr. Conrad Murray, sentencing him to 4 YEARS IN PRISON.  But Murray will not spend a single day in prison because of a new California law.  He'll serve his time in L.A. County Jail.  And in jail, at most Murray will only serve half the sentence.

The judge was angry, talking repeatedly about Dr. Murray's documentary in which he laid the blame at Michael Jackson's doorstep.  The documentary clearly weighed in the judge's decision to give Murray the max.

As for restitution, Judge Pastor ordered Dr. Murray to pay "appropriate restitution" to the Estate and to MJ's kids at a later date ... but the judge seemed dubious about the $100 million request by the prosecution.  

Judge Pastor ruled Murray must pay an $800 fine, a $30 court security fee, and a $40 criminal conviction assessment. 

Judge Pastor said, "There are those who feel Dr. Murray is a saint.  There are those who feel he's the devil.  He is neither.  He's a human being." 

Judge Pastor says it's irrelevant to him that Michael might have met this fate with some other doctor.  The fact is, Pastor said, Michael Jackson died because of the actions of ... Dr. Murray."

The judge said he looked at Murray's whole life, and he was impressed.  But he added Dr. Murray's recklessness with Jackson overshadowed the doc's good deeds, calling the treatment, "a cycle of horrible medicine."

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Michael Jackson's Children Considers Offer To Appear In TV Reality Show + In-Depth Story Of Their Lives After MJ

Until now, only sketchy details have been available about the Jackson children, but today, after interviewing several sources close to the Jackson family,The Mail on Sunday has reveal the first detailed picture of their lives.

Within the family, Prince and Paris are now seen as the great hope of carrying on the Jackson entertainment dynasty. There is even talk in Hollywood that they are considering an offer to appear in their own TV reality show.

Given the bizarre nature of their upbringing – they often stumbled upon their father passed out on the bathroom floor or in his bedroom due to his intake of drugs –

Prince and Paris appear to be surprisingly normal. But Blanket is a seriously withdrawn child.

'He is shy, speaks very little and seems to be more shell-shocked than his siblings,' said a family acquaintance.

When Michael was alive, the children were educated at home. But now the two older ones attend Buckley School – one of the oldest co-educational day schools in Los Angeles, with fees of $33,500 (£21,000) a year. The Jackson children travel to and from the private school in a phalanx of four-wheel-drive vehicles with their bodyguards. Paris plays on the Buckley flag football team – its only female member – and Prince sings in school performances.

'They're down-to-earth kids, not full of themselves, not pretentious,' says Diane Dimond, author of Be Careful Who You Love: Inside The Michael Jackson Case.

'They don't wear $500 sneakers and, except for their father's trial, they don't watch TV.

'Of course, a staff of three maids, a full-time chef and a round-the-clock security detail looks after them.'

The children live with their grandmother Katherine in a sprawling, six-bedroom mansion set in 14 acres. It was once owned by Jose and Kitty Menendez, who were famously shot dead in 1989 by their sons at their other residence in Beverly Hills.

More...

Katherine, 81, managed to wrest guardianship of the children when Michael died in June 2009 after a bitter battle that pitted one branch of the Jackson family against the other. At stake was the children's $300 million (£190 million) trust fund, plus their enormous potential future earnings  on the stage as the rightful heirs to the Jackson dynasty.


One faction, made up of siblings Randy, Tito and Janet, argued that the children should be kept away from Katherine and her physically abusive husband Joe and, instead, be placed in the more stable care of Michael's eldest sister Rebbie.

But a second faction, including siblings Jackie, Jermaine and LaToya, was set against giving the children to Rebbie, in part because her husband, Nathaniel, had publicly accused Michael of being a child molester.

When Michael was alive, the children were kept secluded from the world.

When they went out in public, they wore face masks.

'The only mother these children ever knew was Grace Rwaramba, the Rwandan nanny introduced to Michael by his friend Deepak Chopra,' Stacy Brown, a close Jackson family friend, told me.

'Michael fired Grace for unknown reasons in 2008, but after he died she turned up again at the Calabasas mansion and resumed child-caring.

'However, the children had taken a strong dislike to Grace.

'The older boy, Prince, went to his grandmother and told her that he and Paris didn't want Grace around any more. In their view, Grace belonged to the inner circle who weren't able to halt Michael's drug habit which led to his demise.'

Three months after Michael's death, Katherine fired Grace and became the sole adult authority over the children. However, she is sometimes forced to share her parental role with her husband, Joe, who spends part of the year in Las Vegas but has the run of the Calabasas mansion when he is in California.

'Now Katherine gets $60,000 [£38,000] a month from the executors of Michael's estate and gives some of that money to Joe. Joe's relationship with the kids is better than you might expect. Prince and Paris are aware that their grandfather often beat their father before sending him on stage. But they don't seem to mind having him around.'

Paris recently found herself the victim of a cyber-bully when a Twitter follower began taunting her that Michael was not her biological father. She went to the police, but did not stop tweeting. In one tweet, she boasted about her '100% Jackson blood', in another she referred to herself as a 'natural Jackson' who has the love and support of her 'beloved gramma and cousins'.

Yet despite the damage they suffered from their father's behaviour in their formative years, it seems the children have never undergone psychotherapy.

'Over the almost 40 years I knew Michael he grew stranger and scarier,' said Theresa Gonsalves, 53, who met Jackson when they were  teenagers and watched the way he raised his children.

'I was probably the only person in the world who wasn't shocked when I saw photos of Michael dangling his son Blanket from the balcony of that Berlin hotel [in 2002]. I had seen Michael flirting with his own death, including the time he showed me how he could hang by one arm from the narrow railing of the balcony of his penthouse apartment in New York.

'When I last saw him backstage at the American Music Awards show in 2003, I was shocked by his appearance. He looked like death. His eyes were sunken in his head like a corpse and it was obvious he had been crying.

'Prince and Paris were with him and they seemed to be perfectly normal children, running around and playing, laughing and squealing. They didn't have veils over their faces and they seemed to have a normal relationship with their father.

'But to me it was obvious that all the weirdness they grew up with must have had a negative influence on them. Michael had no childhood. He was regimented and made to work incredibly hard to make money. His father Joe was a very scary man and was absolutely abusive. Nobody taught Michael right from wrong – he was just beaten when he didn't do exactly what Joe wanted.

'When he had children of his own, he wanted just the opposite of his childhood. So he let them run wild and made their lives like a long visit to Disneyland.

'He wanted more than anything for them to have the joy and freedom he was denied – they could do more or less anything. But now that they are living with their grandmother, their lives are far more structured and their freedom curtailed.

'Michael's death has brought a new-found popularity to the Jacksons and the family is capitalising on every bit of it.

'But if the media starts to lose interest, the family will come down hard on the children to help the Jacksons recapture the old magic.'

DailyMail

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