Now here's one way to get drugs across the border and it's not the first time in recent years that this has happened. A homemade cocaine smuggling submarine was found by the Mexican Navy off the Pacific Coast this week. "The crew members said they were fishermen forced to make the journey by drug traffickers who threatened to harm their families," reports KNX1070, per the AP. Nine vessels like this have been found in the......

26-year-old skateboarder and photographer Lee Grivas was found dead in his apartment by a neighbor in Hollywood on July 1. There were no signs of physical trauma and it appears to be from a heroin overdose. Applegate and Grivas dated on and off but his drug problem was a factor that often split them up. Right now, there is no official cause of death and is currently being ruled as an accident or suicide pending......

Spencer Rollins of the Young Animals | Photo via the band's MySpace profile After leaving the Autonomous Music Festival in Victorville this past weekend (cops broke it up for lack of permits), the lead singer of the locally based band, the Young Animals, was arrested and charged for possession of a Controlled Substance. Spencer Rollins was pulled over for having is license plate light out when police asked if they could search his vehicle.......

Photo by digitalshay via Flickr In January, the Los Angeles Police Commission agreed with an LAPD federal consent decree that said officers in specialized units dealing with narcotics and gangs must "disclose all of their sole and jointly owned assets, liabilities and income every two years. Refusal to disclose such information would bar officers from working in those units." And even though officers said they would quit, leave the department or request a transfer......

digg_url = 'http://digg.com/world_news/BBC_Buys_Marijuana_in_LA_This_place_is_like_Amsterdam'; BBC News Correspondent David Willis wanted to see how hard or easy it was to get a medical marijuana prescription in California. He went to a clinic in the San Fernando Valley of the city and the only medical condition he could think of was how he gets anxious. Soon, the doctor appeared - a softly-spoken Vietnamese man who introduced himself as Dr Do. He wore a white lab coat and......

A protester who identified himself as 'Farmer Dave' holds a sign protesting Drug Enforcement Agency raids on medical marijuana clinics in Los Angeles Tuesday, May 27, 2008. (AP Photo/Nick Ut) Yesterday, Drug Enforcement Agents arrested Virgil Grant, 41, who owns six medical marijuana dispensaries around Los Angeles, after an incident that allegedly involved product from one of his stores, reports the LA Times. The accident that prompted authorities to begin investigating Grant occurred after......

Deputy district attorney Damon Mosler, chief of the narcotics division points out guns and drugs seized during at a news conference held in San Diego today.(AP Photo/Denis Poroy) SDSU may as well stand for Sold Drugs to Some Undercover after 18 students were arrested today on drug charges. Nearly 100 people -- including 75 students -- have been stung in Operation Sudden Fall, a five-month DEA investigation on the San Diego campus.Agents were involved......

Albert Hofmann, the Swiss chemist who discovered LSD, died at his home near Basel, Switzerland on Tuesday. Hofmann synthesized lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD-25) in 1938 and five years later became the first person to experience a full-blown acid trip. On April 16, 1943, Hofmann inadvertently absorbed a little LSD-25 compound in his fingertips at the Sandoz laboratory (now Novartis) where he worked. In a note to the lab director he described what happened next:“I was......

“Last night was the first night I could open my windows and enjoy my home undisturbed by the roosters,” a neighbor said to the Los Angeles City Animal Cruelty Task Force (ACTF). He lived near or on the 10400 block of Variel Avenue in Chatsworth where someone tipped the ACTF off to an alleged cockfighter. But when the special task force, made up of Los Angeles police officers and detectives, animal services’ officers and city......

At 12:01 p.m. today, the USC Department of Public Safety received a call from a Resident's Assistant in New/North (dorms) that a student was not breathing. Captain David Carlisle of USC's DPS said that campus police arrived shortly after the call as well as Los Angeles Fire Department paramedics, who pronounced the man dead upon arrival. Homicide detectives from the LAPD were then called out. After their initial investigation, preliminary reports stated that it appeared......

After a 5-month investigation, the Associated Press found that Los Angeles drinking water has traces of Anti-epileptic and anti-anxiety medications. "To be sure," the AP noted "the concentrations of these pharmaceuticals are tiny, measured in quantities of parts per billion or trillion, far below the levels of a medical dose." Across the nation, the report found tainted water supplies in 24 major metropolitan areas, five of those in California: Los Angeles: 2 (meprobamate and phenytoin)......

Nick's, home of delicious breakfast burritos, by Rebecca~James via LAist Featured Photos Pool on Flickr Remember when we told you that Los Angeles tap water was the best tasting in the world? Turns out that our delicious H20 might have been sprinkled with delicious drugs. The AP found that a multitude of pharmaceuticals, like antibiotics, anti-convulsants, mood stabilizers and sex hormones, have been found in the drinking water supplies of at least 41 million......

So The Torrance Police Department busted these four people living in the South Bay area of Los Angeles. It turns out that they weren't tipped off by his Afghan rocket launcher, or the imitation police badges, or even the "Anarchist Cookbook" and other illegal books. They were busted because the police where there looking for drugs, and apparently ended up hitting the jackpot. The house was located near the intersection of 190th and Rindge,......

One year ago, Los Angeles County received the distinction of being number one in the nation for the amount of medical marijuana dispensaries in the country, with close to 50 in operation. Recently, picking up your prescribed pot got theoretically easier with the launching of the world's first marijuana vending machines here in the City of Angels, which is causing international waves from objectors who cast doubt on the therapeutic validity of the Schedule 1......

Slide your money in the slot, press the right alphanumeric combo, and down drops a treat for you to reach in and grab. That's vending machine magic in a nutshell. But LA's got some new vending machines that are raising some eyebrows, and possibly violating some international treaties. They are the newly installed marijuana vending machines that are operating out of at least three of the city's medical marijuana dispensaries, and the International Narcotics Control......

Outside the scene of Heath Ledger's death in NYC | Photo by Tien Mao, Gothamist.com Gothamist, parent site to LAist, is reporting the death of Heath Ledger. "Actor Heath Ledger was found dead in downtown Manhattan apartment by the police. Some reports say he died from an overdose." Ledger lived on Broome street. Ledger was a rising star and actor from Australia, known for his work in Brokeback Mountain, which earned him a best......

Read the "sassy" version of this story here. Ike Turner, ex-hubby to Tina Turner and a "rock and roll pioneer", died last month on December 12 in his northern San Diego county home. The cause of death was not immediately known then, but today, the results from the coroner came to light."We are listing that he abused cocaine, and that's what resulted in the cocaine toxicity,'' said Paul Parker, chief investigator at the medical examiner's......

Actor Brad Renfro was found dead yesterday in his Los Angeles apartment, of causes unknown, but for reasons that are no doubt both tragic and infuriating. He was the cute little kid who acted alongside huge names like Susan Sarandon, Ian McKellan, and Mary Louise-Parker, the cute little kid who grew up to be a troubled but still talented young man, the young man who spiraled downward into a diseased web of drugs and......

Just like yesterday, when we announced that while the federal government can rob medical marijuana dispensaries, citizens can't, we find that LAPD officers are not allowed to rob drug dealers. In a separate case from the widely known Rampart Division Scandal, a group of rogue officers held up at least 30 drug dealers in a two year period ending in 2001 according to CBS2 News. After the robberies, which included taking the drugs, money......

California Highway Patrol Officer Joshua Blackburn, charged with stealing $1 million worth of cocaine being held as evidence, has had his arraignment postponed at his lawyer's request until early next month, KTLA is reporting. The 32-year-old Murietta man (pictured) has been with the CHP for six years, and remains in the Orange County Jail on $4 million bail. His arraignment had been scheduled for yesterday, but the alleged drug nabber's attorney has stated that he......

Father Dollar Bill (a.k.a. Reverend Maurice Chase) was at it again yesterday, handing out money on Skid Row. While he often hands out money to downtown residents in need, Christmas is his no-holds-barred attempt to spread a little more love in the form of Christmas cash. Skid row residents have lined up every year for 24 years to see what luck might come their way from Father Dollar Bill on Christmas Day. Reverend Chase gives......

This morning the Daily News is reporting that the FBI is looking for "Arcesio Escobar, a 49-year-old laundry cleaner worker" who is the alleged supplier of the drugs that caused a 15 year old girl's lethal overdose this summer. Jennifer Elias, from New York, was found dead in a converted garage in North Hollywood "with only a jacket on, about 2 p.m. on June 27." Although her official cause of death remains uncertain, it is......

Well, if that’s not the reason for us encountering a shortage of a particular cough syrup this week at area drug and grocery stores, then it must be the cold and/or flu season hitting the LA area. (Extra Extra told us on Friday night that the first case of the flu was recently reported in the Valley – so maybe that’s causing the Robitussin run.) First, we drove to our neighborhood Longs Drugs in......

LATimes.com is well aware of the conflicts that come with contextual advertising -- no ad box appears alongside search results for terms such as "porn" or "sex," for example. But, for now at least, "freaky big, cartoon like muscles" are only a click away....

For baseball fans under the age of 35, reading the Mitchell report should be like taking repeated shots to the groin without the Nutty Buddy. With 75 names and guys who get shipped all over the country, you know your idols didn't escape. Me? I grew up in NorCal. Matt Williams? He was our hero on the hot-corner. Glenallen Hill? The only pro player from the small town I was growing up in. That's a......

Former Senate Majority Leader (and current Boston Red Sox director) George Mitchell just announced the results of his 20-month, $20 million investigation into allegations of widespread steroid usage in baseball. The long-awaited, 409-page Mitchell Report (document here) identifies more than 80 current and former players as being linked to using performance-enhancing drugs. While the report casts blame on the lack of institutional control within baseball as much as the players themselves that cheated, what......

About the above picture: The Rawking Refuses To Stop!, a blog of all things Los Angeles pop culture and MP3, shares with us their best concert photos of 2007. Above, they sneak out of LA to New York to see Les Savy Fav at the Bowery Ballroom (we'll just say they did the same thing when they came here). Don't forget -- you still have today and tomorrow to enter our Rufus Wainwright/Belinda Carlisle......

Ike Turner, ex-hubby to Tina Turner and a "rock and roll pioneer", died this morning in his northern San Diego county home. The cause of death is not immediately known. Despite winning a Grammy this year in the traditional blues category ("Risin' With the Blues") , being in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and known for having the first rock 'n' roll record ("Rocket 88," 1951), Turner's image is marked in the media......

Barry Bonds was in federal court today to face the music ... sort of. Southern California's least favorite son pleaded not guilty to four counts of perjury and one count of obstruction of justice. After showing off his latest threads (the wire reports had little else to say so they raved about his "impeccably tailored" look), Bonds walked back out a free man. He was essentially released on his own recognizances, but would owe Uncle......

......