10Thursday, December 11, 1997 Pahrump Valley Gazette
Nye County Sheriff's Ninja Team
/
watch out/
Reading the letters to the Editor column is, to me,
one of the best features of any newspaper. It's always
enjoyable to read other peoples' opinion.
Sometimes I ROTFL. If you get on the internet and
talk with people, that's a term you'll eventually come
across. It stands for "roll on the floor in laughter."
Last week's letter from Ray Mallow, Pahrump,
regarding the Nye County Sheriffs Department had
me ROTFL.
Ray wrote about a recent photo spread that appeared
in the Pahrump Valley Times. It. was a nice feature
spread involving the Nye County Sheriffs Department
and their emergency response team. Ray wrote:
"Sheriff Lieseke: your ninja team to stop terrorism
is exactly what Nye County needs."
He wrote that line facetiously, of course.
Ray also writes, "Wade, this is not Vietnam. This is
not the south side of Chicago. This is Pahrump, Ne-
vada. Disband your troops, let America breathe."
Ray, I really, truly, respect your opinion. I also
disagree with it.
I've been to Leroy Brown [The South Side of Chi-
cago] territory. The folks there will tell you that things
didn't seem all that bad at one time. They tended to
object to an ever increasing police presence. The
police backed-off after many heated complaints and
Mayor Richard Daley's concern over the political fall-
out of neighborhood complaints. That, plus the fact, he
really didn't give a damn about "that" neighborhood.
NORTHERN EXPOSURE
th/city let that area g° t° hell, in a hand-/
walk those streets at high noon II
Now, it's certainly true that we're
using an extreme example so let's back off Chicago.
There's no comparison between it and Nye County any
more than there is any comparison between the Nye
County Sheriffs Office and the Chicago Police De-
partment.
However, we have an exploding population in the
south county. With exploding populations comes an
exploding crime rate. The only reason we haven't seen
tremendous increases in crime, so far, in the Pahrump
area is because of the foresight of Sheriff Lieseke and
his department. He has made his department "visible"
through such fine features as appeared in the PVTand,
of course, this newspaper also.
He is letting those that would take advantage of the
law-abiding citizen be put on notice. You don't want to
come into this town/is the message. Trust me, Ray,
I've seen it happen. Given a weak police presence,
crime will move in and take over the streets. Gangs
will rule.
I do not believe in the slightest that Sheriff Lieseke
would ever jeopardize a citizen's rights. I believe the
sheriff respects those rights more than most. A proven
violation in the courts, our last bastion for justice,
would throw him out of office.
It is certainly true that there could be a rotten apple
in the ba.rrel and some deputy might get a little
"power" influenced. The sheriff threw out a lot of
rotten apples when he took office. A proven case of
abuse by a deputy would not settle well with this
sheriff.
However, I'll give you this much Ray. If ever I'm
doing a couple miles over the speed limit and four
helicopters land in front of me, a squad of ninja goons
descend on my vehicle and one of them hollers out,
"Grrrrn-," and his foot flies through my windshield --
then, we've definitely gone too far.
A cure for heroin addiction?
For hundreds of years, the people of Vietnam have
used opium as a sedative and cure-all. Addiction,
especially in the rural areas, is common. But only in
the last twenty years has the use of heroin, refined
from opium, become a problem...especially in the
cities.
Heroin addictions are notoriously hard to break.
This is why the Swiss provide subsistance doses to
hard core addicts. Cold turkey withdrawal can be
agonizing and even life threatening.
Doctor Tran Khuong Dan is one of Vietnam's
foremost herbalists. Ten years ago his father be-
came addicted to opium and has since died. Dr Tran
set out to find a cure for addiction using natural
herbal ingredients...leaves, roots andtree bark. He
traveled all over his country, collecting and analyz-
ing recipes from other herbalists. (In Vietnam, many
people swear by herbal cures over more modern
medicines.) Then he set about finding the right mix.
Dr. Tran made himself dependent, first on opium and
then on heroin. When he broke his addictions, he
knew he had succeeded in his quest.
Dr. Tran took his recipe to the National Center for
Natural Sciencesin Hanoi where the mix of thirteen
herbs and root extracts were refined into a sticky,
black liquid and given the name Heantos...a play on
the words "heat of the sun."
Changing Patterns
by Richard Reul
00IIIIIII ..............
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Heantos is being utilized in the Drug Rehabilita-
tion Center at Hoa Binh, a two-hour drive north of
Hanoi. Its ten foot high walls are covered with lurid
paintings and slogans in Vietnamese. One message,
with accompanying pictures, reads: "Drugs are the
highway to Hell." There a five-day course in Heantos
is given. The herbal mixture is administered orally,
three times a day. It apparently works.
The United Nations Development Program is so
impressed that it is backing a three-year research
project by the Johns Hopkins Medical Research Cen-
ter and the Medical College of Virginia Drug Depen-
dency Center. Lutz Baehr, a U.N. International
Project Coordinator, who now divides his time be-
tween the United States and Vietnam, says he has
witnessed the effectiveness of Heantos many times.
He doesn't understand how it works, but he is con-
vinced that it is far superior to the ineffective cures
offered in Western countries. The project has the
backing of U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annon, be-
cause he believes it is important for Third World
"recipient nations" to be able to offer something back
to the "'donor nations" of the industrial world.
It will be a long time before that happens. Tests
must be conducted on animals to discover any pos-
sible long-term effects. If Heantos does live up to the
hopes and expectations pinned on it, the medicine
must still be accepted by the Western medical profes-
sion. But to the graduates of the Hoa Binh center,
there is nothing to prove.
Short vignettes
It took me longer than usual to write this weekly
offering of nonsense on account of me having to do
some repairs on the keyboard of our old word proces-
sor. The thing is getting on in age and, consequently,
the letters which are supposed to be easy to read are
getting worn off. And being that I never learned touch
typing this causes some difficulty in how the finished
stories turn out. Just one letter different makes a big
difference. Say for instance a guy was writing about a
baseball game describing about how the pitcher pitched
a no hit gamd. The lead to the story would be so and so
pitched a shut out. What would this have looked like if
instead of the U in shut out the I, the next letter on' the
keyboard got used?
I had better stop carrying on in this vein as I can see
where this misplaced letter business could get me into
trouble ifI went any further with it. Alhough you could
do your own research into this subject maybe turning
it into some sort of word game.
So before I started this I had to attach some stick on
labels on the keys that the letters had gotten worn off.
I think I got 'em right.
Did you ever notice how many word games and
games in general show up around Christmas time and
are never heard of afterwards.
What I do is wait till the after Thanksgiving day
Christmas sales are over and buy up a bunch of these
Slim Sez
by Slim Sirnes
marked down items saving them
to be used as gifts when the next
X-mas season rolls around. At first
I used to leave them intact. But then discovered that.
most of the packages opened easily making slipping
out the instructions a piece of cake leaving the receiver
wondering how the game was to be played or what the
rules if any were. And what was even better, replacing
them with instruction sheets printed for another game
and with all this free trade jazz printed in another
language. Well enough of this and I got a couple of
more short vignettes to pass along that I heard.
Student in a biology class making an observation
that it wouldn't have made any difference to me if my
grandfather had been a monkey. To which another
student replied, "It sure would have made a difference
to your grandmother."
The bathroom was invented in 1850s, and the tele-
phone in 1875. Had you lived in 1850 you could have
sat in the bathtub for the next 25 years without having
the.phone ring once.
Maybe this applies to you or someone you know or
maybe even to me. Some people get lost in thought
because it's unfamiliar territory to them. Have a good one.
