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Photo via ​Wikimedia Commons​

A teen at Broadneck High School in Annapolis, Maryland, was ​snacking on a pot brownie during his third period class yesterday ​when his teacher asked for a bite. The student, presumably high as hell on dank kush, reportedly "panicked" and broke off a piece of the brownie for his teacher without mentioning that it had weed in it. The teacher began to feel sick—enough so that she went to the school nurse, who sent her to the hospital, where she was given the grand diagnosis of being high.

When school administrators questioned the kid, he admitted that the brownie had contained marijuana, and that he'd failed to mention that to his teacher. He was charged with counts of administering a dangerous substance, assault, and reckless endangerment.

The school's principal, David Smith, sent out a letter to the school's parents explaining what had happened and urging parents to " talk with your child about this matter and encourage them to only consume food that they bring to school or that is purchased at our school." In other words: trust no one, because ​anything could be laced with weed.

This year has been a tumultuous one for marijuana edibles. ​Levy Thamba, a 19-year-old college student, leapt off a balcony after "becoming agitated" from a marijuana cookie. A ​two-year-old girl in Colorado was sent to the hospital after eating an edible, and the number of kids rushed to Colorado hospitals after ​accidentally ingesting marijuana doubled in the past year. And then there was the ​Maureen Dowd incident, for which there isn't really an excuse, but which still cast a dubious light on the safety of edibles.

Edibles shouldn't have that kind of rap. The rules of the game are pretty simple: check the dosing, keep your goodies in child-proof packaging, and don't give them to unsuspecting people. So kids, let this be a reminder to enjoy your edibles responsibly—and please, don't give drugs to your teachers.

Follow Arielle Pardes on ​Twitter.

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Rinelle Harper addresses the Assembly of First Nations. Photo via ​GlobeNow on Twitter.

In early November, 16-year-old Winnipeg student Rinelle Harper—described by her Garden Hill First Nation family as a "soft-hearted teen"—was viciously attacked and dumped into the frigid Assiniboine River by two male assailants. Harper survived that attack and managed to crawl out of the river upstream from where she was assaulted. Then she was attacked a second time by the same men, beaten with a weapon and, according to police, "left for dead." She was eventually found alive by a passerby the next morning and was rushed to hospital, where she recovered from her injuries.

A 20-year-old and 17-year-old have since been charged with attempted murder, aggravated sexual assault, and sexual assault with a weapon.

When the details of the brutal attack came to light, they bore an eerie resemblance to the tragic story of Tina Fontaine, the 15-year-old aboriginal girl whose slain body was found in the Red River wrapped in a bag. Fontaine's body was found days after she was reported missing from her foster home. ​Police had seen and released her less than 24 hours earlier, in spite of the filed missing persons report: a brutal reminder of the violence indigenous women face in our country today. Fontaine's killers have not yet been found.

Across the country there have been calls for the federal government to hold a proper inquiry into the more than 1,800 missing and murdered indigenous women who have been reported by the RCMP (it's important to note that some feel that the RCMP's report doesn't go far enough in tackling the issue). But even with the UN urging Canada to solve the disproportionate number of cases involving aboriginal women, and growing pressure from the Liberals to use the courts to shame the Conservatives into action, the public outcry has largely fallen on deaf ears. The current federal government has made no indication that it is budging on its no-inquiry policy, with Stephen Harper going so far as to say the issue isn't a systemic, sociological problem, but simply one of crime.

Today at the at the gathering of the chiefs of Canada's Assembly of First Nations in Winnipeg—where the Assiniboine and Red rivers meet—Rinelle Harper added her voice to those growing number of people calling for an official inquiry.

"I am here to talk about an end to violence against young women. I am happy to be here today to provide you a few words on behalf of my family," Harper said, visibly shaken. She went on to thank her supporters and added, "I understand that conversations have been happening all across the country about ending violence against indigenous women and girls... I ask that everyone here remember a few simple words: love, kindness, respect, and forgiveness." She ended her speech with a powerful request: "As a survivor, I respectfully challenge you all to call for a national inquiry into missing and murdered indigenous women."

The conference Harper spoke at began Tuesday, and at it, First Nations chiefs from across Canada will elect a new national leader to the Assembly of First Nations. The discussion will include tackling education and missing and murdered indigenous women in Winnipeg, a city in the province where half of female murder victims between 1980 and 2012 were First Nations. While it's still unclear whether Rinelle Harper's request will push the federal government into action, there's hope to be found in the recent news that Winnipeg police are making the investigation of missing and murdered indigenous women a priority.

But without a proper inquiry to identify and understand the roots of the problem, and an informed plan on how to adequately deal with the issue, the bleak statistics—that aboriginal women make up only 2.1 percent of Canada's population, but account for 16 percent of female homicides and 11.3 per cent of missing women in Canada —will not likely get any better. 

​@katigburgers

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Photo via ​Wikicommons

This post originally appeared on VICE UK

Until recently the UK's record on LGBT rights was hardly something to gloat about. ​Alan Turing's situation was once the norm, not the exception, with thousands imprisoned for "gross indecency" during the 1950s. Even with the decriminalization of homosexuality in 1967, it wasn't until 30 years later that any meaningful social change took place. Now though, the UK has transformed into one of the few safe (or at least safer) havens for LGBT people. It's far from perfect, but at least in terms of legislation it is undoubtedly a global pack leader.

Cameron's government has advocated the need to tackle the persecution of the LGBT community around the world, where homosexuality is still criminalized in 79 countries and an estimated 175 million people face jail sentences, eviction, sacking, violence, and death—often state sanctioned. In many of these countries however, this situation is a direct fallout from the UK's colonial past.

As well as slavery, torture and the meticulous plundering of natural resources, British colonialists ​brou​ght anti-homosexuality laws to Africa—laws which still prop up the systemic persecution of the continent's LGBT community. There's more truth in the notion that homophobia is a Western-imposed value than homosexuality itself, despite the rhetoric of Uganda's President Museveni.

His country's Anti-Homosexuality Act (AHO), the infamous "Kill the Gays" bill, took the colonial legacy and ran with it. Pressure from Ugandan campaigners, domestic uproar and a bout of post-colonial guilt no doubt, meant Cameron's government took an unusually high level of interest in Uganda's situation, actively encouraging the former British colony to reform. Or so it seemed.

"They raised it with Museveni. They're very good at raising the issue and they have a very good policy of constructive engagement, but is that enough?" says Jonathan Cooper, chief executive of the Human Dignity Trust. His organization works with local lawyers and activists seeking to bring legal challenges against the criminalization of homosexuality. For him, though Cameron's policy of active engagement is commendable, more could and should have been done.

"It didn't seem to make any difference, Uganda just seemed to carry on," he says. "The main LGBTI organization there, SMUG, called for a number of measures to be taken against the Ugandan government, but the British didn't really do any of them. One of the things they asked for was targeted travel bans on the half a dozen [government] individuals who were viciously fomenting hatred against the LGBTI community. SMUG basically said, 'Why would you want them in your country?' The British wouldn't go near it, nor the EU."

Wholesale sanctions against Uganda would likely just inflame LGBT persecution. Knowing this, SMUG instead asked for international measures to be aimed at those responsible for inciting discrimination and actively pushing the bill through. While the British government made a lot of general noise about Uganda's situation, the American government took an approach closer to the one SMUG recommended, warning officials of potential travel bans, funding withdrawal and the relocation of military exercises. Though not exclusively responsible for the bill's temporary demise, their pragmatic measures certainly contributed to it.

Uganda's ​recently leaked new anti-homosexuality bill is really as draconian as the first, but the Ugandan government has learnt from their Nigerian counterparts, who watered down the language of their own to make it harder for international opposition to grow. The new bill moves away from punishing "aggravated homosexuality" and instead focuses on banning the promotion of "unnatural sexual practices." This sounds almost non-terrible—or at least not unlike, say, Margaret Thatcher's ​Section​ 28 law—but really it's just a very thinly veiled attack on same-sex couples, one which carries a seven year prison sentence for even "promoting" anything LGBT.

"A few weeks ago I would have said the American approach had worked, because the [AHO] act disappeared," says Cooper. "I'm sure the courts would have dis-applied it anyway but is it a coincidence this happened two days before Museveni heads off to an African summit in the US?"

"If it had still been in force, inevitably he'd be the naughty boy in the room and would have had to sit at the lower table, whereas he could go as one of the great leaders of Africa with the AHO dis-applied. So I would've said the Americans know how to do this, but the new [Same-Sex Marriage Prohibition] bill that's emerged is as bad as the old. Let's see what they do now."

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Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan via Wiki Commons. Photo by Akintunde Akinleye)

For many leaders it's a case of "sticks and stones" and strong words will do little to stop the inevitable passing of Uganda's latest bill. Cameron's much publicized opposition to Nigeria's " ​Jail All The Gays" act was seen as irrelevant by President Jonathan Goodluck who implemented it anyway. Many called for foreign aid restrictions as a result. Instead the British government increased aid from £200 million ($313 million) to almost £270 million ($423 million); with much of this already channelled through NGOs like UNICEF, any withdrawal would likely impact the most vulnerable.

On its own, the ability of economic sanctions to deter politicians from populist, poll boosting policies is questionable—just ask Putin. Really, Western governments need to think outside of punitive measures and look at more creative and proactive actions, such as increasing investment levels in grass roots movements, promoting pro-LGBT events and backing the kinds of legal challenges that the Human Dignity Trust engages in.

"Economic sanctions should usually only be applied when activists inside the country request them," says human rights campaigner Peter Tatchell, "The strategy must be to help people in severely homophobic and transphobic countries to liberate themselves."

He continues, "I would like to see David Cameron work with African NGOs to promote events featuring pro-gay speakers such as Arch Bishop Desmond Tutu; when he speaks out for LGBTI rights as an African Christian it has a much greater impact than if that support is expressed by a UK government minister."

If the UK is serious about tackling human rights abuses abroad then it should use all channels and mechanisms at its disposal. Though it's probably now more famous for staging second-rate athletics tournaments, the Commonwealth has sought to address human rights violations perpetrated by its affiliates. But despite its 2013 Charter denouncing all forms of discrimination, there's been little appetite for specifically tackling the criminalization of homosexuality in 42 member states.

"So far the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting has never discussed LGBTI rights at any point in its entire history," says Tatchell. "For the last 30 years that I've been involved any such discussion has been vetoed. Successive British governments just haven't lobbied hard enough to get LGBTI rights on the Commonwealth agenda."

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Gay men in Nigeria. Image ​via.

With the Commonwealth turning a blind eye, the UK's work within the UN becomes even more critical. As well as monitoring compliance with the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, its Human Rights Council conducts periodic reviews on its members, where records are scrutinized and reputations tarnished (or restored). Even China takes it seriously. But as well as naming and shaming guilty parties it also provides considered, targeted recommendations for improving their situations.

Dr. Ro​sa Freedman is a senior lecturer at Birmingham Law School, University of Birmingham, whose research has focussed on the UN and human rights. Her most recent b​ook looks at how the UN has failed to protect people from grave human rights abuses. Despite this, she believes the UK government's role inside the Human Rights Council is commendable.

"The UN is a fundamental tool for the UK to export rights and they have a large delegation there which consists of a very specialist human rights team," says Freedman. "They are massively involved behind the scenes with work that is done by the [Human Rights] Council. They're at every session and involved in all the informal negotiations which is where all the real work gets done anyway."

The promotion of LGBT rights is undermined though by political blocs like the ​Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC). When a South African–led LGBT panel took place in the Human Rights Council all but two OIC member states walked out the room. And despite spearheading the movement, regional allies pressured South Africa into stepping back from it. It hasn't been involved in any further attempts to advance LGBT rights since.

LGBT discrimination is a particularly contentious issue within the UN, but unfortunately even the most universally accepted rights cannot be taken for granted. "There are certain absolute rights, like the right to not be tortured, and you might think that it doesn't require resources to not torture someone, but it does," says Freedman. "It requires resources to train police officers, publicity, education and awareness among the populations about what the rights are. It requires judiciary and justice systems that will deal with situations where torture occurs. Protecting all rights requires resources. No country from Sweden to Somalia has a perfect record, but it's going to take time for rights that we recognize in the UK to be realized in other states."

The hypocrisies surrounding the UK's human rights crusade, both perceived and real, present a formidable barrier to its work. Its political capital has been severely reduced abroad by wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and at home by its involvement with human-rights abusing corporations like G4S and Atos.

Promoting the most universally accepted rights is admirable, but it can be a bitter pill for the scolded nations to swallow, especially when rights they hold in high esteem are often disregarded by the UK. The right to solidarity is a hugely respected in Latin American countries; looking at the way trade unions are ostracized and restricted suggests the UK feels otherwise. And should Cameron win a second term he's vowed to scrap Europe's Human Rights Act (HRA) and bring in his own British version. It doesn't make the UK Uganda on gay rights, but it's a move that will only incite international leaders who bemoan UK hypocrisy.

Each day thousands of LGBT people are persecuted globally. Human rights activists want to see more ground-level intervention, more funding for local NGOs, more direct involvement—not to mention the long overdue concerted policy from the Foreign & Commonwealth Office to specifically address the issue. Public condemnation, constructive engagement and utilizing the UN are worthwhile exercises, but this alone won't protect the LGBT community or even begin to undo the damage caused by the Empire.

Follow Chris Godfrey on ​Twitter.

​ What could thousands of libertarians do if they moved, en masse, to one tiny state and tried their hardest to reduce taxes, regulation, and general government meddling in people's lives? That's the question that one group of die-hard liberty-lovers has been trying to answer for more than a decade. 

Founded in 2001, the movement, known as the  ​Free State Project, has persuaded nearly 17,000 people, from across the US and other countries, to sign a pledge promising to move to New Hampshire once the number of signers reaches 20,000. So far, 1,674 "early movers" have already relocated to the state.

As you might expect from libertarians, the Free State migrants don't have a single strategy when it comes to turning New Hampshire into an Ayn Randian paradise. Some Free Staters have been trying to change the state from within the system—between ​15 and 20 members​ of the 400-seat New Hampshire House of Representatives are now associated with the Free State Project. Others are trying to build their own utopian institutions, starting businesses and schools aimed at putting as much distance as possible between themselves and Big Government.​

Kevin Bloom is seriously involved in both. A real estate agent-turned craft brewer, Bloom moved to New Hampshire with the Free State Project in 2008, and founded a microbrewery in Concord, the state capital. After the venture failed—due in part, he claims, to regulatory hurdles—he helped lead a campaign to pass the nation's first nanobrewery law, differentiating tiny beer producers (2,000 barrels a year or less) from their larger counterparts. Essentially, the law legalizes a scaled-up version of home brewing in your toolshed, letting hobbyists and other experimental fermenters tap into the growing market for craft beer.

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Kevin Bloom

Bloom, who is also the political director of the New Hampshire Liberty Alliance, is now in the process of opening up his own nanobrewery, named Area 23.  Like a lot of libertarians, Bloom combines earnest beliefs that owe much to Ronald Reagan with a style more in line with Monty Python. The name Area 23, for example, ​comes from adding Area 51 to Building 19 ½—a much-loved, now-defunct regional chain of discount stores—dividing by pi and rounding to the nearest whole number. (It works, he says, if you're bad at math.) He's also a founder of the Church of the Sword, a religious denomination that, from the looks of its ​website, is mostly libertarianism, with some foam sword fighting.

With Area 23 set to open soon, VICE caught up with Bloom to find out more about the project, and talk about his various crusades against big government.

VICE: Why did you move to New Hampshire?
Kevin Bloom: I had been working on a brewery project in Michigan, and I sold out to my partners. So I wanted to start my own brewery. I had a friend who had moved from Michigan to New Hampshire with the Free State Project, and I ran into a couple of other people who had talked about it when I was a volunteer with the Ron Paul campaign in 2007.

VICE: What drew you to that end of the political spectrum to begin with?
The first time I was exposed to politics was in 1978-79. When I was living in Michigan, the state decided to raise the drinking age from 18 to 21 right after I turned 18, which was hardly fair. So I got involved with that. And then a company put a toxic waste dump right next to a river up near my grandparents' property, so I got involved, kind of, in environmental stuff. And then in 1980, [the] first actual political campaign I campaigned for [was for] Ronald Reagan. And I learned more about Thoreau.

VICE: Thoreau. That's interesting.
That was the first time I'd ever seen them put together, [Reagan quoting Thoreau's] line, "that government is best which governs least."

VICE: You said you got involved with fighting pollution—it seems like that could lead you to be pro-regulations, instead of against them.
The big problem isn't that you need new laws. They don't enforce the ones that we have. And also, I found out that government is absolutely the biggest polluter in the country. They just do all kinds of incredibly bad things. And when the government's got some money on the line, they're going to approve that toxic waste dump in your backyard no matter what. It's a property-rights failure. Once upon a time, you were able to sue if pollution entered the atmosphere over your yard, you had property rights straight up to the sky, and if somebody was polluting your water table, you'd go after them. But they decided you don't have any real right to sue because that's a government thing.

VICE: Can you talk about your first brewery in New Hampshire?
In 2008, we opened Manchester Brewing. We had, I think, about 39 outlets for our beer. We had an agreement [with a distributor] that they would buy a certain number of cases every week. And they never did. And about two months in they said, 'We've got enough beer. We don't need any more.' We had spent more money on bottling equipment and things like that, and we were really overextended, based on the idea that all this beer was going to be going out. But that didn't happen so we ended up shutting the company down and dissolving it.

And part of the reason [was] there were a lot of laws that I didn't know about when I started the company. You could only sell one case per person per day. And beer tourists drove up from North Carolina [and] Virginia to get beer, and came to Concord to get beer, and then you have to tell them that you can only buy a case. Really crazy. I hadn't really got into the law but I—sort of in self-defense—started reading. It turned out, at the time, if you were Budweiser you basically paid the same thing as some guy who makes five gallons at home—$1,200 for your license fee every year, which is a lot if you're just starting out. And so I decided I wanted to change it, and around 2009 started asking other brewers what they thought was important about getting things fixed, and I wrote the first draft of HB 262, which became the nanobrewery bill.

VICE: Was that your first foray into state politics?
That was my first one. That was a real education, and I went to all the committee hearings, and to all the subcommittee hearings. I learned how things worked. It started out as a huge bill that would have affected the entire industry and basically reduced barriers of entry for everybody. And what they ended up doing was New Hampshire became the first state in the nation to recognize nanobreweries as a separate category. However, Anheuser-Busch got a small change made to the bill before it got out of committee and before the executive session that I didn't know about until it was too late. That was, it limited sales over the counter to four ounces.

After it went into effect, more breweries opened in New Hampshire than in any period of New Hampshire's history, including right after Prohibition. We kept trying to fix [the law] and get it right. Finally [New Hampshire] Governor [Maggie] Hassan signed the bill that actually fixed things, and that went into effect in 2013. If you had a restaurant, then you could sell beer over your counter that you make yourself. That made a big difference for the industry, and now they're just coming out of the woodwork, and we're going to have a big renaissance in beer in New Hampshire for the foreseeable future.

VICE: Now you have a new nanobrewery, Area 23?
Yes. It's not a production brewery. We won't be bottling and distributing, only over the counter. When I put the legislation together [this] is what I was looking for, so I kind of got it where I want it.

VICE: Tell us about the name Area 23.
We kind of liked the name. There were a lot of reasons why we thought Area 23 would be cool. It's [also] related to the 23rd hexagram of the I Ching—it means imminent change.

VICE: You're the political director for the New Hampshire Liberty Alliance. What are some of the things you are working on now in that capacity?
My biggest thing that I'm working on now is civil asset forfeiture reform. And yes, we were working on that before John Oliver came out with his fantast​ic piece. In the 2010 session, there was a bill introduced to halt the practice in New Hampshire. It's a very bipartisan issue. It's not a Republican thing, not a Democratic thing. Beer, you'll notice, is bipartisan too. I like to work on things that you can get everybody involved in.

VICE: Tell me more about civil asset forfeiture ?
It probably started back in the time of the witchcraft trials, probably in the 1500s. Say you have a cart and it rolls down the hill and it kills somebody's pig. What they'll say is the cart was possessed by demons, so the cart itself is guilty of killing this guy's pig, so we're going to steal it. So it might become property of the church.

In the 80s, [police] noticed that if they could charge the money that was used in drug transactions they could just keep it. And they then noticed, Oh, there's other stuff we can charge too, like Corvettes. And boats and houses and buildings.

[With modern civil asset forfeiture] generally what happens, the police stop people and say are you carrying any cash in your car? If you say yes, they take it. The average amount seized is about $1,500. It costs more for you to hire an attorney to fight it, and you won't. In almost all cases, people are never charged with a crime, much less convicted. They just take the money and you find out you have to sue the police to get your money back.

VICE: So that's a really serious issue. I think a lot of people have the impression of the Free State Project being a little goofy. Stephen Colbert did a piece on Free State Project ​members in Keene​ whose "activism" involved bothering parking-ticket enforcers.
I think there's a big split in general between what happens in a college town [like Keene] and what happens when you're looking at business and life in general. I disagree with people being hassled. I disagree with it on rudeness grounds. We should keep a humorous attitude if we can. On the other hand we're in a fairly serious contest to protect people's rights.

VICE: How are your political involvement and private ventures connected?
The cost of entry into any business needs to make sense, and generally be as low as possible. Quite frankly, the days of going to the bank, or investors, and saying, "Hey, I'm going to open a brew pub, I need a million dollars," those days are pretty much gone. You can open a nanobrewrey with very little money, but you have to be able to sell what you make.

I have a friend, [Free State Project member] Amanda Bouldin, who makes gourmet ice cream, and it's really, really good. And so she wanted to sell it, and she found out what the laws were about street vendors. She wanted to get a cart and just take it downtown. The fee was like $1,500 and you have to be attached to a restaurant. Well, anyway, she doesn't do that anymore, but she was elected to the legislature, and this is her first term. I like that she's a member of the legislature, but then again, she made really good ice cream. I think society has lost in that deal.

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President Museveni with the Obamas. Photo courtesy of ​Wiki​Commons

​When asked on national talk radio last weekend whether he had any plans for retirement, Yow​eri Kaguta Museveni, the President of Uganda for the past 28 years, claimed he would gladly leave politics, but believes his people do not want him to step down. The question comes as Museveni, whose National ​Resistance Movement party vo​ted him their sole presidential candidate this February, prepares to campaign for the nation's 2016 elections and potentially begin his fifth elected five-year term in office. Soon after this tacit affirmation of his openness to being the nation's president-for-life, Museveni claimed he did not think any other country in the world was more democratic than Uganda.

"Well, I don't think Ugandans are as obsessed with my retirement as [Member of Parliam​ent Ibrahim Ssemujju Nganda, of the Forum for Democratic Change opposition party, who posed the question] seems to be," said Museveni, "because when I go to ask them at the elections, 5 million say don't go, you stay. You have heard them, singing tajakugenda tajakugenda [don't go]. So if the Ugandans really were like Ssemujju, I would be happy to retire because I am not lacking where to retire. I am a member of my party and I do what my party wants."

Museveni's assertions raised eyebrows around the world. Uganda's elections, upon which the President's claims of external demand are based, are mired in allegations of tampering, intimidation, or at the very least imbalance. And the NRM, despite its outward show of support, is struggling with internal power struggles. (The President sidestepped specific questions by FD​C opposition MP Abdul Katuntu about these fissions in the same interview.) Despite claims by NRM spok​esman MP Stephen Mukitale that the party's yo​uth did impose a presidential bid on Museveni, the President's track record suggests that he's had far more agency and desire in his latest electoral run than he's letting on.

Museveni came​ to power in Uganda in 1986, after spending the 1970s fighting the dictatorial regime of General Idi Am​in and the early 1980s rebelling against the administration of President Apollo Milton Obote, under whose first 1966 to 1971 administration he'd served as an intelligence agent. Upon seizing the Presidency at age 41, Museveni initiated a series of economic, electoral, and social reforms that gained him massive popularity. This gained him an easy victory, with 74 percent of the vote, in the nation's lauded free​ and fair 1996 elections. Now aged 70, the 37-million-man nation's leader retains a strong everyman appeal. A 2013 Gallup Poll ranked him the ninth most popu​lar president in sub-Saharan Africa with a 62 percent approval rating; his lowest ratings in recent memory, in 2012, were still 59 percent.

However high approval ratings do not equate to a desire for continued rule as Blaise Co​mpaoré, President of Burkin​a-Faso from 1987 to 2014 and tied for fourth most popular with a 70 percent approval rating in the same Gallup Poll, learned when he was ousted after a bid to extend his term limit this year.

Museveni, the sixth longest-serving world leader who's not also part of a royal family, already bucked h​is own two-term limit, amending the constitution in 2006 to allow himself another run. This was particularly ironic given that he built his early popularity by lambasting Af​rican heads of state who stayed in office too long. This, alongside his decision to involve Uganda in the Democratic Republic of Congo's civil war, increasing use of the military to contr​ol the population through the 2000s, and excoriation of the Constitutional Court for opposing his actions, has slowly built up local skepticism of his increasingly Big Man regime.

Support for Musev​eni dropped in presidential elections to 69 percent in 2001 and 59 percent in 2006, before mysteriously jumping back to 68 percent in 2011. This trajectory tracks with growing accusations ​of electoral tampering, opposition intimidat​ion, and inc​reasing voter apathy. As early as 2001, the Supre​me Court of Uganda found the state's elections mildly suspect. By 2011, international observers reported numerous irreg​ularities, including bribery in at least 9 percent of voting fields and NRM spending t​en times above opposition parties.

As if this weren't enough to cast doubt on Museveni's popular credentials, key opposition candidate of the 2001, 2006, and 2011 elections Kizza​ Besigye of the FDC has been the subject of intense state-backed military intimidation. In 2001 he was forced into exile after losing the elections, only to be accu​sed of treason after returning in 2005. Over the course of five years, he was a​rrested at least 34 times and barricaded in his home on many more occasions. Protests after his 2011 loss were met with letha​l force, killing at least nine. As of this year, Basigye has declared that he will no longer ​legitimize Museveni's elections by contesting them.

Fellow opposition candidate, Olara Otunnu of the Uganda People's Congress party, claims that these instances of rigging and violence have led to calls for a violent ouster.

"There's tremendous frustration in the country, tremendous bitterness, and young people in particular are saying, give the guns, don't waste time talking with Yoweri Museveni, he only understands the language of the gun," says Ot​unnu in a call for the removal of military personnel from electoral monitoring roles and their replacement with independent observers.

Within the NRM, critics say Museveni has actively squelched alternative leadership, and that their motion to select him as their sole candidate was a bid to discourage prominent members from challenging him in 2016. The same month, Museveni warned NRM members ​against forming cliques and contesting his position. This was most likely aimed at former Vice President Gilb​ert Bukenya and Par​liamentary Speaker Rebecca Kadaga, both said to be enterta​ining a presidential bid. Then in September he dismissed his Prime Minist​er and former ally Amama Mbabazi supposedly because he had begun a campaign for the NR​M's presidential election.

Instead of welcoming opposition candidates or rising stars in his own party, many believe Museveni may wish to hand over power to his son, Briga​dier Muhoozi Kainerugaba, appointed head of a special forces unit in 2008, which in 2010 took control of presidential security and the nation's economically vital oil fields.

Museveni still enjoys widespread support, thanks to the nation's consisten​t six-plus percent growth rate and steady infrastructural development. Success in the nation's intervention in South Sudan, where many Ugandan businessmen have substantial economic interests, and presidential support for the anti-gay Bahati Bill skyrocketed Museveni's approval rating to ​80 perc​ent in February. And with no strong candidate set to emerge in Besigye's the incumbent president will likely enjoy a strong no-better-option bonus.

But none of this constitutes a popular mandate and desperate cry for Museveni to serve indefinitely as Uganda's de facto president-for-life. Whether Museveni does not recognize growing dissent, or simply dismisses it remains unclear. Whether he would be able to win an open internal NRM or national election remains unclear as well. What is clear is that, so long as the President appears to push against emerging alternative internal and external leadership, his claim that he only stays because the people want him there is entirely facetious, as they haven't really had the chance to voice their true opinions on the matter.

Follow Mark Hay on Twitter.

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Jonah (left) with his brother Jesse at Mardi Gras. All photos courtesy of the Bascle/Ford family

These days, ​New Orleans is a minor comedy mecca where amateurs choose from tons of clubs and event nights at which to practice their jokes. Most recently, Louis CK, Hannibal Buress, and Zach Galifianakis have at various times done weeks-long impromptu residencies. But before all that, Jonah Bascle was wheeling around the stages of New Orleans making people howl with laughter.

Local comedy fans shed a tear this week upon hearing of Jonah's death at 28 from the muscular dystrophy that had begun attacking him when he was ten. In addition to being a comedian, he was also an artist, filmmaker, activist, and general rabble-rouser. 

In the years after Katrina, New Orleans hosted maybe one weekly open-mic standup comedy night—until a small band of local comics including Jonah began building a real comedy scene. Jonah helped establish and produced the "Comedy Catastrophe" night at the Lost Lo​ve Lounge in Marigny, which continues to this day. 

I visited and spoke with Jonah's family about the most depressing thing they've ever had to face. Jesse—his brother, who also has muscular dystophy—told me about how they played sports together, thanks to the level playing field. 

"Jonah taught himself everything he could," added his father, Frankie Ford. "Near the end he got really into the cosmos, and learned everything about black holes and Stephen Hawking."

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"You know, if you have sex with a person in a wheelchair, you get a tax break," was one of Jonah's best jokes. A more Andy Kaufman–esque conceptual piece involved Jonah rolling up to the stage and struggling to adjust the microphone, as if he just couldn't manage. Beforehand, a friend would set a small table on stage topped with a glass of water so that Jonah's wheelchair could bump the table over, and he'd bumble and stumble trying to fix it. Inevitably, sympathetic audience members would stand and approach Jonah to help. "No, no! I can do it!" Jonah would shout, and continue to simulate pitiful struggling. Sometimes people howled with laughter. Just as often, no one caught on that he was doing a bit. 

Jonah's comedy didn't fixate on his wheelchair, however. He peppered the handicap jokes in artfully—though he almost always closed his sets with the line, "I started taking Ambien because I heard it makes you walk in your sleep." Jonah's doctor didn't laugh at that joke during Jonah's last days in the hospital. In his weakened state, a still-smiling Jonah, air tube down his throat, scrawled on a piece of paper for the doctor, "It's a good joke, you just don't get it."

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Though Jonah would prefer to be known as a creative and artistic force, he got more press—tons of press, really—for advocating in extreme but thoughtful ways for wheelchair access, mostly in places where it was already mandated under the ​Americans with Disabilities Act. Jonah could have sued many establishments to make his point, but instead he and his family spent hours building and painting wheelchair ramps personalized to each of Jonah's favorite bars and comedy clubs. The "Ramp It Up" project, as it was officially known, served as a precursor to Jonah's mayoral run in 2010 on a wheelchair advocacy platform, under the slogan "I Will Stand Up For You!"

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Jonah's most widely covered advocacy stunt involved the brothers parking their wheelchairs across both lanes of tracks on St. Charles, ​stopping the streetcar for four hours. The RTA, which runs the streetcar, suggested the police not arrest Jesse and Jonah, but the police didn't have a wheelchair-accessible car anyway, nor was the jail equipped either; the boys would have been detained in a hospital room.

In the last days of Jonah's life, Mayor Mitch Landrieu awarded Jonah a proclamation for his artistic contribution and his wheelchair advocacy. Neither the mayor nor the city have done anything else to honor Jonah's wishes though. "We're gonna bring Jonah's ashes for a ride on the St. Charles streetcar," Jimmy joked to me in the days after Jonah's death, "since he never got to ride it his whole life." Because of Jonah, the city did mandate a single taxi with a wheelchair lift. "But I've never gotten it to actually come get me," Jesse Bascle said.

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Six weeks before Thanksgiving, Jonah's heart began to weaken. At the hospital, Jonah's health seemed to improve, but the doctors' predictions remained dire. This might have served as a grim scene for some families but the Ford/Bascle clan's wild charm took over Jonah's whole floor. 

"Especially over Thanksgiving, man, Jonah's room, it was like a rave was going on," brags Jimmy. "We had loud music, and they let us have a little bar and we were making cocktails for everyone. We should have charged admission to Jonah's room."

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Despite the fact that Jesse has lost his shadow, he and Frankie and I had a genuinely fun time talking about it all—because this is how they are. And this is how Jonah was. Jimmy gets super happy describing the elaborate nature of Jonah's upcoming jazz funeral, which will happen on December 28.

And so I left the Ford/Bascle house feeling mostly uplifted, almost happy—because despite the tragic loss of Jonah, his surviving family remains the opposite of torn apart. His spirit clearly lives on. 

Follow Michael Patrick Welch on ​Twitter.

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Dr. Faye Girsh. Photo by the author

"There are lots of ways to die," Dr. Faye Girsh began. We had just sat down in the cafeteria of her retirement home. "I had a young woman friend who jumped off the Coronado Bridge. Somebody here had early Alzheimer's, and went to the shopping center and shot himself in his car. ​Robin Williams used his belt, for heaven's sake. And, somebody else here recently died by refusing food and hydration in his room." The psychologist paused a moment to glance at the menu. "Do you know what you want to eat?"

The animated 81-year-old's charming informality around death is the product of over three decades as an advocate for the right-to-die movement. Girsh is currently president of the World Federat​ion of Right to Die Societies, an alliance of 37 organizations from 23 countries. "We believe that quality of life is more important than quantity," she said. "We believe that people should die in ways that are consistent with their own values and beliefs. If they don't want to suffer, they should have a peaceful way out. They should not have to die violently."

As expressed in its manifesto, the WFRtDS views euthanasia as an intrinsic human right: "We strongly believe that the manner and time of dying should be left to the decision of the individual." It is a right that countries like Switzerland, Holland, and Belgium have ratified. More recently, in the United States, Oregon, Washington, Montana, and Vermont have followed suit with their own physician-assisted dying laws. WFRtDS's objective is to expand the legality and availability of assisted-dying for "all competent adults... suffering unbearably from incurable illnesses" throughout the world.

I spoke with Dr. Girsh about her mission, as well as her experience as an "exit guide" with the Final Exit Networ​k—a nonprofit that supports individuals wishing to end their lives. It is support that, across much of the country, occupies a legal gray area between freedom of speech and murder.

VICE: You mentioned starvation as a method. Do you advocate that?
​Dr. Girsh: There are advantages to it—like it's legal. You don't have to do anything. You just lie there.

They won't force-feed you?
​Not anymore. That was actually the cas​e that brought me into the [right-to-die] movement. In 1983, a young woman wanted to die that way. She was a quadriplegic. When she stopped eating, they force-fed her, and she got the ACLU to take her case. I examined her as a forensic psychologist. She eventually won her case in the appellate court, and now everybody has the right to refuse food and hydration.

That can't be pleasant.
​The data show that about 25 percent of people don't have a good death that way. The other 75 percent sort of lapse in and out of a coma. If they have good caregiving, and enough medication to handle pain or anxiety, it can go okay. But if you're at a hospital or nursing home that doesn't approve of it, they can make your life pretty miserable.

Is starvation the only legal way?
​Well, it's perfectly legal to shoot yourself. Suicide has always been legal here.

They won't prosecute you for it if you fail?
​That would be a civil case. If you're a danger to yourself or others, they can have you involuntarily committed. I have a situation like that now. There's a local psychiatrist who deliberately overdosed on methadone, but he survived, and they want to put him away for observation.

Do you primarily advocate death by helium?
​We don't advocate it. It's the only thing left to us. We would certainly like to figure out some other way to do it. It's just so awkward. The person needs to get all this equipment and put a bag over his head. It's not wonderful, but it is very effective. Our criteria is, that [suicide] should be quick, certain, painless, and relatively dignified. Helium is all that. When people watch their friends or their loved ones die that way, it's not so terrible.

There are no chemoreceptors for helium so you wouldn't get a feeling of suffocation, right?
​The way that I explain it is: it just supplants the oxygen in the blood. Carbon dioxide can give you the feeling of suffocation. Carbon monoxide is good. [Dr. Jack] Kevorkian used carbon monoxide. We just don't have a good way to produce it.

How do you administer the helium?
​There are different ways. A 91-year-old woman here in San Diego named Charlotte used to make these "exit bags" that you would put over your head. They were really good bags, thick plastic, and you could see through them. They had really nice Velcro around the neck, and the tubing was all in place with these little clips. She was selling those until this 29-year-old guy in Oregon used one to kill himself. His mother put the FBI on the trail of Charlotte, who was not very hard to locate. Ten FBI agents came in with guns pointed. They busted her whole operation—not that there was anything illegal about it. They charged her with tax avoidance, because she hadn't paid last year's taxes. That was it. They also took her computer so they knew who she distributed to.

What happened to her customers?
​Well, [the authorities] did wellness checks all over the world. "Knock, knock. I understand you bought one of these bags. Are you OK? Are you suicidal?" People just laughed and said, "Are you kidding? I bought this bag just in case things get bad."

Just to feel empowered?
​Right. Just to take control.

How are people getting exit bags now that Charlotte is out of business?
​Well, there's plenty of information around. Derek Humphry has a new DVD about using the helium method. It's not hard to get a turkey bag and hem it up with scotch tape. You can use a headband or something elastic to keep it around the neck. And then you have to get the right diameter tubing, but that's really all there is to it. People are happy to know there's a way.

And I'm sure they're happy to know they're not alone.
​I think that's a big deal. Nobody should die alone. We're there to provide our expertise, and also in many cases to provide companionship and a compassionate presence. Many people don't want to tell their loved ones or friends about their plans. Although, often there are many people there when it happens.

What is that final day like?
​Surprisingly casual. One of the first cases I worked, the woman wanted us to recite a poem while she was dying. She made scrupulous arrangements. Her husband was to be out walking the dog while she died, because he should have an alibi. I was present at another euthanasia [performed by] one of Kevorkian's colleagues, a Belgian psychiatrist. [The patient] was a relatively young man with multiple myeloma. His wife got into bed with him. They hugged and kissed, and said goodbye, and she held him while he got the shot in his arm. He died very peacefully in her arms.

How does that compare with the helium method?
​Helium is not always a pretty sight, because there's some gasping, and these little animal noises people make when they're dying. We helped this one woman recently and she lapsed into unconsciousness after just ten or 15 seconds. A couple deep breaths, and you're not conscious anymore. You die after about 20 minutes. That woman was probably in her early 60s. She was in hospice, but they couldn't help her pain because she was allergic to opiates. She was very religious. When I visited her, she had crucifixes all over the house. I asked her about that. She said, "It's fine with my God." She died with a well-worn Bible in her lap.

What do you do after someone dies?
​We usually take the equipment away. The person has a choice if they want us to take the equipment away and make it look like a natural death or not. The good thing about helium is that it's practically undetectable. The coroner rarely tests for it. My friend just worked with a man here in San Diego, who did want it to look like a suicide. He wrote a note: I have this disease, and nobody helped me end my life, and I'm of sound mind. He had his do-not-resuscitate orders with him, and the police recorded it as a Final Exit suicide.

The police here usually go along with it?
​Yes, as long as there isn't some reason why the person couldn't have done it himself.

What do you do if you're contacted by someone who's physically incapable of killing themselves?
​We can't help them. But the window of opportunity comes and goes if it's Alzheimer's or ALS. Thomas Hyde, who was Kevorkian's last patient, was long past the point where we could help. He couldn't swallow, and even if he could have, he couldn't even lift a spoon up to his mouth. An injection was absolutely the right course for him.

It seems that one of the ironies of the law is that it induces people to exit earlier than they might want to, just because they have to be healthy enough to kill themselves.
​That's especially true with Alzheimer's. I've been lecturing on what you can do when you're past the point of being able to kill yourself. You can do things like make sure that your infections are not treated, or even something like a broken hip is not treated. Just make sure you have good comfort care.

Alzheimer's is an interesting case, too, because a lot of times, the dementia destroys so much of the person that they become happy.
​It happens. In Holland, they allow an advance directive: "If get to this point—if I can't recognize my loved ones, or if I need 24-hour care, and so forth—then I want to be euthanized."

I believe they use ​phenobarbital injections in Holland, right? Are you aware of people buying that on that black market?
​It's hard to get that, but you could look online presumably.

Or take a trip to Mexico?
​Presumably. [Phenobarbital] is the way animals are allowed to die. It used to be fairly easy to get it from a veterinary supply store. Philip Nitschke in Australia published a map of where the veterinary supply stores were, and what to say when you got there. I can't remember if Philip was arrested, or if he just had his medical license revoked. Even in Europe [where euthanasia is legal], they have to resort to these Chinese Internet connections.

Why do you think society allows suffering animals to be euthanized, but not suffering people?
​As one of our esteemed senators said, "Dogs don't have souls." So, there's the answer to your question.

It's a religious objection?
​Yes. And, that reflects the amazing statistics I've read. They asked Americans if they supported doctors helping people with a terminal illness to end their lives, and 70 percent of them agreed. But when the word "suicide" was used, support went down to 50-50. We [at WFRtDS] don't refer to it as "suicide" anymore. Most of us call it "assisted-dying" or "self-deliverance."

It sounds like semantics. Is there any difference?
​Well, as a psychologist, I could say that "suicide" is usually an impulsive act that's done alone. It's usually a permanent solution to a temporary problem that could be remediated. "Assisted dying" is for people who are suffering unbearably from a terminal or chronic disease. But there's a lot of middle ground in there.

Do you advocate only for people in pain, or do you believe that everyone should have the right to take their own life?
​At the Final Exit Network, we get a lot of calls from elderly people who don't have a chronic or terminal illness—they're just tired of life. They have a lot of aches and pains. We just had a 97-year-old man who fit that category. He wanted to be finished with life, and his children agreed. He wound up shooting himself in the garage, because the kids were afraid they might get in trouble, and that we might get in trouble. That's the way he chose to end it. There are many old people warehoused in nursing homes who have completed their lives and are ready to go, but there's no simple, dignified, and nonviolent way for them to go.

Is self-deliverance something you've ever personally considered?
​Well, I'm 81 and I feel great! But, if we're talking 30 years from now, you never know. I don't have a good plan, and that's a concern. I have one of Charlotte's original bags and I have some very old barbiturates, but they might be too old by now. My fear is that I won't be able to get my Final Exit Network people in here. You have to sign in at the front desk.

I've been collecting dreams ​from around the world recently for a project. Your work must be so emotionally intense. I wonder, do you ever dream about it?
​Well, I remember a dream from when I first got into this movement. It was more of a nightmare. There was this VA newspaper with a man's picture on the front of it. The headline was "Patient of the Year." It read, "Joe Jones is patient of the year, because he decided to end his life. We awarded his family $5,000." I thought, "Is that what it can come to?" You know, I'm just as big an ACLU supporter as I am a Death with Dignity member. If we were ever incentivized to end our lives, that would be just awful.

That's one of the arguments that critics bring up. What else do your critics say?
​They say, it's a slippery slope that will lead to all disabled people going into gas chambers. Oh, and I just about died recently when [a right-to-die opponent] said that doctors should never kill their patients, but then went on to say, that if a patient is really suffering terribly, it's OK for a doctor to use terminal sedation. Terminal sedation is, of course, legal under the principle of double effect. A doctor can administer something that will end the patient's life, but the intent is not to end the life, but to end suffering. Well, that's fine, but it's not up to the patient. The doctor decides. Well, I think that the patient should decide, and that's almost where the line is drawn.

So, in order to qualify as double effect, we're basically talking about an opiate or barbiturate overdose, right?
​It's often some combination of painkillers and sedatives which could be barbiturates. Do you have a background in medicine?

Well, I've wor​ked as an EMT.
​You must have seen a lot of suicides then.

One thing that stands out is how violent most suicides are. A lot of people jump off buildings in New York. A lot of people use guns.
​When I hear that someone shot themselves, the first thing I ask is, "Did it work?" I don't know the percentages, but I wouldn't be surprised if the failure rate was high.

It depends on where they shoot themselves. I don't know why people shoot themselves in the temple. If they aim wrong, they just blow off their face. The brainstem is still intact, and the airway's still viable.
​I want to know how you can shoot your heart, because I think women would prefer not to be disfigured. But it's not for us to distribute that information, because we don't believe in violent, lonely means. You wouldn't gather your family around to shoot yourself in the head. On the other hand, it's better than jumping in front of a train, or jumping off a hotel balcony.

Well, guns are so accessible in America. People are going to use whatever they can get their hands on.
​We would love to find a better, more gentle method. At our upcoming conference, someone is presenting [a device] that we started out calling "the killer potato." It's a contraption with two potatoes that you place on your carotid arteries. Then you have this thing that tightens them automatically. I've had people suggest that [the device] could be marketed for autoerotic asphyxiation. There is some question about whether it would really work. The problem is, how do you try these things out?

Follow Roc's latest project collecting dreams from around the globe at World Dream Atla​s.

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Image via  ​Dean812

This article originally appeared on VICE UK

The first time I took Valium I was 19 and traveling through Southeast Asia with friends. I was going through my first major breakup and found myself waking up each night screaming. It was pretty dramatic. Someone handed me a Valium and I slept soundly for the first time in weeks.

Weirdly, my Valium addiction didn't start on that holiday. It began when I started to suffer with fatigue in my first job after university. I wasn't paid enough and was too broke to move out of my parents' house. With the stress of living at home, bosses constantly breathing down my neck, and constant whispers of redundancies, I'd often get migraines. My hands would go numb as I typed. I was becoming incredibly anxious, my stressors manifesting in physical ways, but I didn't really have the vocabulary or understanding of mental health conditions then. I just plowed through.

My partying got out of hand at this point—you can wind up craving powerful, out-of-mind experiences when you're young and your day-to-day life has become so defined by work-related anxiety—and with it came Valium. My friends and I all bought it from friends-of-friends, and took it to soften the sharp edges of our comedowns. It was—is—like the world's most luxurious blanket.

Even though I got to a point where I wouldn't embark on a big night out without having the small blue pills on hand, I had absolutely no idea that I was becoming addicted to them.  One day, though, I took a Valium at work, which in hindsight was a pivotal moment. In such a short while, the fear and dread had totally evaporated. My headache was gone. I could cope with my overbearing boss and the hundreds of unread emails in my inbox. The constant, creeping feeling that I was going to have a panic attack went away and this is where the cycle truly began. 

Of course, Valium and other anti-anxiety benzodiazepine drugs like Xanax aren't just incredibly addictive—you build tolerance to them very quickly. I began taking half a Valium if I was on deadline, but my body soon craved more. It barely touched the sides. Soon, I was taking a 10 mg pill (the strongest dose manufactured) every morning. Within months I was taking 20 to 30 mg every day.

The trouble is, of course, that with increased tolerance to benzos comes decreased normality when you're not taking them. I reached a point where, if I didn't take Valium, I'd feel more panicky than when I first started using them as a crutch.  "Benzodiazepines like Valium that are used for managing anxiety actually make anxiety symptoms worse," says Tim Leighton, the director of professional education and research at ​Action on Addiction. "It's why they're not recommended for long-term use. 

"Doctors in this country do not prescribe benzodiazepine drugs for more than a few days at most," he continues. "The drugs are just too addictive. Most people who get into trouble with these medications are older people who have had these drugs prescribed unwisely many years ago and been unable to get off them—or young people getting them online." Young people like me. And he's right—before long I was ordering my Valium online, with absolutely no idea of its provenance or purity. It could have been citric acid dyed blue for all I knew. But I—and anyone—could order 50 10 mg Valium tablets for $40 and they'd be with me just a few days later. I didn't even have to meet a dealer face-to-face.

Having a constant stream of Valium in your blood begins to numbs you. I found myself doing questionable things with men I barely knew—I once abandoned my mate on holiday for a guy—without worrying about the consequences. And if I did start to question myself, I'd just take another pill. 

The trouble with increased tolerance to benzos is decreased normality when you're not taking them.

It all had to come to a head at some point and, oh fuck, did it. L ast Christmas, aged 26, I ordered a bunch of dud pills when I was on holiday from work and that's where it all came crashing down. Within days I was convinced that I was totally and utterly losing my mind. I was free-falling through a range of physical and mental symptoms that, despite popping (fake) pill after fake pill, wouldn't abate. From feeling constantly like I was about to have a panic attack, suffocating paranoia that everyone hated me, agoraphobia, migraines, constant dry retching, uncontrollable sobbing, hot and cold flushes, to heart palpitations—I felt like I was dying. 

I obsessively googled my symptoms and, finally, stumbled on a thread that explained exactly what was happening to me. Some old guy in America had been prescribed Valium 20 years ago and was feeling completely insane since his GP cut his prescription. He had the exact same symptoms as me, and it all began to make sense. I was coming off an incredibly powerful drug that I'd become addicted to, cold turkey. My body was going through withdrawal. 

"Valium can be even harder to come off than the more 'spectacular' drugs like heroin and cocaine," says Leighton. "Withdrawal is entirely dependent on how much you've been taking and for how long, but it is potentially life-threatening. Withdrawal  from heroin is not actually life-threatening in itself, but the seizures that can occur with stopping Valium can kill." As I look back, the thought that I could have had a seizure due to my own naivety makes my blood run cold. ​

The coming months were spent tapering off Valium slowly, thanks to the help of a wonderful, completely nonjudgmental doctor. But getting to the clinic was still the hardest thing I have ever done.  The symptoms I'd felt at Christmas came back, albeit less severely. I kept my job—just about—but once I'd finished work each day I could do nothing other than go home, lie on the couch, and let my brain do its thing. I was a paranoid, sweating, sniffling mess, and I felt like I always had the flu. It was a constant struggle to listen to anyone or walk anywhere. My sleep cycle was fucked and I conducted my life in a mist of excuses—friends constantly heard that I was "exhausted" or that a family member had become ill. One snapped, finally, saying, "You always flake on us," which sent me into a bitter spiral of paranoia all over again. But who could blame her? 

"Benzodiazepines like Valium that are used for managing anxiety actually make anxiety symptoms worse," says Tim Leighton, director of professional education and research at Action on A​ddiction.

And yet, I told no one. Absolutely no one knew what I was going through. I was desperately ashamed of myself. "Secret addictions are not as uncommon as you'd think," says Leighton. "You simply don't realize that someone has an addiction because they're managing to hide it." Having the "gumption" to deal with addiction alone is, he says, "admirable," but that it's "highly preferable to have someone to confide in."

And so I sat, secretly, in an NHS outpatients' drug unit one morning per week. My specialist doctor assessed whether I could be trusted enough (I could, after all, hoof them all in one go and just buy more online if I wanted to) to be dispensed my one-week Valium prescription, tailored to taper me off slowly over a period of months. I stuck with the plan because I was determined not to go back—mostly because I didn't feel I could do it, physically. My body was ravaged. 

Getting to the clinic once a week wasn't easy, though—I was terrified every time I walked through the doors. Everyone else there was coming off heroin and I was the stupid, middle-class girl of whom the other patients must have thought, Why the fuck is she in here? Fights often broke out in the meeting room and I was often shouted at in the street by men being treated there. But this is the bleak reality of addiction treatment—who can actually afford to go somewhere like The Priory?—and the NHS provided a kind, unfalteringly dependable service that I owe my life and sanity to. 

It's been a year now since I realized I was addicted to Valium and I can, for the first time, say that I am largely OK. Slowly, under medical supervision, I became a "normal" person again. I still get weird panic over silly things, as well as the odd tension head and backaches. But I feel largely myself again. 

I had a propensity for anxiety before I started taking Valium, but I'd never experienced panic attacks or their suffocating spiral of negative thinking until I was in the full swing of my addiction. I'd take back the last 12 months in a heartbeat if I could because I feel like, now I've experienced the dark, bleak capacity for despair my mind is capable of, I might never be completely the same. I've felt, and thought, too much. 

My only hope is that even if one person reading this who takes Valium recreationally thinks, Yeah, maybe I should lay off it a bit, at least something good can come of my experience. Valium—or any other benzo—is not a joke. It's not a toy. It's not a quick fix for any kind of life stress. It might soften the blow of the odd comedown, but trust me: The more you rely on it, the more powerful it becomes. It's a drug no one can become bigger than. 

The author's name has been changed .

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Illustration by Cei Willis

This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

​It's December, which for a lot of people means basically giving up any prospect of doing work for the next few weeks, eating chocolate for breakfast, and getting drunk at every opportunity that avails itself. If you work in retail, though, this time of year is memorable for other reasons. The run up to Christmas passes by in a nightmarish blur of a discounting, lines, unappeasable customers, and an incessant soundtrack of terrible music. From Black Friday and Cyber Monday to the pre-Christmas rush and the Boxing Day Sales, 'tis the season to be tired and miserable, with little festive reward in your $10.50-an-hour wage and extended operating hours.

I've never worked on a shop floor, but having spent my last two Christmases in a call center for a major department store's website, I know all this only too well. With more and more of us opting to shop online, a frantic ritual of browsing, spending, and praying that a UPS guy then shows up with a parcel in tow has become as much of Christmas as groaning about decorations and getting up too early. Black Friday saw British shoppers spend an estimated $1.27 billion online, meaning millions of unique purchases have since wound their way to people's homes. This is the glorious age of consumer convenience: of seven-day deliveries, 24-hour customer service, and getting whatever you want with just a few clicks—and at a fraction of its in-store cost.

This is all surely a pinnacle of human technological achievement—except for when it all goes to shit. Going by the significant part of my life I spent listening to and pretending to care about tedious online delivery issues, I can verify that things do go to shit a lot of the time. Hey, guess what—it's Christmas Eve, it's 8:30 PM, and no, there isn't anything I can do about the fact that all your presents are sitting in a package holding center because your neighbor didn't sign for them. Would you like a $15 voucher to make up for the look on your child's face as you explain why Santa is late this year?

Listening to strangers getting hysterical about their Christmas party that I've personally ruined while screaming that they'll never order anything again with whatever fucking company I'm meant to be representing is a firm festive tradition as far as I'm concerned. Inevitably, they'll insist that they always get much better service with whoever our main rival is, despite the fact that every retailer uses the same five crappy courier companies, much the same call center contractors, and operate identikit warehouses packed full of agency staff on some sprawling industrial estate.

Near enough everyone who shops online has a horror story about missing items, late deliveries, "while you were out" cards, or damaged parcels. Sometimes for nostalgic kicks I enter search terms like "Yodel [the name of a delivery company] + bin" into Twitter, such is my morbid interest in people moaning about couriers leaving their delivery in the trash. Complaints like this were pretty much a daily occurrence in the world of e-commerce customer service, and seemingly a lot of people like posting photos of their trash cans on the internet so that everyone can share in their outrage.

In fact, it's reached such a terrible state that consumer group Which recently launched a campaign to "stamp out dodgy deliveries," warning that increasing numbers of customers are being put off from ordering things online. It's no doubt a well-intentioned move, but calling on retailers to simply provide a "first class" service seems aimlessly vague. I'm pretty sure they already have rules about parcels being left in the trash, but that doesn't stop it occurring often. The problem is that no one likes actually paying anything extra for delivery, meaning that companies operating in tight competition with one another opt for the cheapest courier firms going.

Enter Hermes and Yodel, essentially the Ub​er of online deliveries, who somehow manage to spin taking on thousands of seasonal temps as "creating jobs" in the run up to Christmas. In many cases, couriers for these companies are technically self-employed, meaning they're expected to supply their own vehicle and aren't entitled to holidays or sick pay. In the past, ​investigations ​into Hermes showed that people working for them ended up earning less than minimum wage. ​Complaints  ​about working conditions persist. The self-employed model is justified with the same kind of language Tory MPs use when they're talking about zero-hours contracts: it's all about "fre​edom" and flexibility, in case you were wondering.

I hate to think of how many hours I've spent on hold to these two companies, waiting for one of their call center staff to investigate what's happened to the parcel of a customer I'm dealing with. Sometimes, they'd simply get back to say that a driver isn't contracted with them anymore so they can't speak for any of their parcels, encapsulating exactly how messed up this entire model is. This isn't to say that most Yodel and Hermes drivers aren't hardworking and honest—I hated customers implying that couriers were stealing their parcels more than anything else—but they're still ruthlessly exploited. When in some cases delivery drivers are getting a total incentive of about a quid for each successful delivery (and nothing for a failed attempt), why things can go so badly begins to make more sense.

It's not just deliveries though: the entire logistics chain is predicated on a low paid, casualized workforce. Amazon's "fulfillment centers" have become notorious for their working practices, with stock pickers sometimes walking up to 15 miles a day over ten and a half hour shifts, their every move tracked by a computer. But that's just the industry standard in a sector which is employing more and more people each year—at least until replacing everyone with robots and delivery drones becomes cheaper.

With all this in mind, it must be reassuring for customers to know that there's a call center in a distant part of the country, stacked full of temps who started two weeks earlier, always on hand to answer their calls, reply to tweets, and churn out template email responses when things go wrong. So whether you're after the chance to let off some steam by shouting at a supervisor of an outsourced call center company or just want a straight-up refund for a parcel you are probably telling the truth about not having received, it's all taken care of. But no amount of reading about your "consumer rights" on the Which website is going to change the fundamentals of the online retail model. For big retailers, a certain level of delivery fuck-ups is a price worth paying when it means keeping other costs—like labor—as low as possible. Welcome to the future. 

Follow​ Liam and ​Cei on Twitter. ​

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Check out more of Alex's work ​here.

​Melbourne-based photographer ​Paul Hermes has spent a considerable amount of time driving around looking for people mowing their lawns. What started as a half-baked idea for a photo essay soon developed into a surprisingly interesting look at suburban Australia. Through his lens, Paul transforms a mundane piece of Australiana into a statement on conformity. Or at least that's what I assumed his project Mowing the Dre​am ​was all about. I called Paul to learn more.

VICE: So why did you take photos of guys mowing their lawns?
​Paul Hermes: I grew up in the suburbs and never really paid attention to the daily humdrum until I lived in the city for a while. Then, over ten years later, the quintessential weekend chore of mowing the lawn seemed so foreign and interesting to me. I wanted to explore and understand the motivations behind it. The idea first came to me a few years back when I was out in the 'burbs and saw this guy in a plume of two-stroke fumes mowing his nature strip. He just looked vacant and beaten. Like he'd submitted to something.

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Isn't that kind of a bleak view?
​Well, in some of the images the people almost look like slaves to their houses. Like the mower is a ball and chain. For me there's a dark comedic value to it. It's funny that so much effort can go into grooming the idyllic life. People work 60-hour weeks then mow. The Australian Dream isn't real, yet people yearn for home ownership and chase the ideal. Sometimes, though, I think they find a nightmare.

What do you think that says about us?
​It shows we're mostly a proud bunch. Even if we loathe chores, we get them done. One guy I spoke to treated it like a hobby. His mower was a prized possession he'd had for 14 years. He talked about maintaining it with a real fondness. But ask the next bloke and he'll roll his eyes and say, Gotta keep the missus happy.

Did you discover anything unexpected while shooting the series?
​Yeah, the smell of fresh-cut grass is really strong. When I found someone mowing their lawns I would sometimes find another a few streets away, as if the smell inspired or guilted them into mowing their own. It actually helped me find my subjects because I'd drive the streets with my windows down sniffing for my next shot.

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How did you start taking pictures?
​I started with a typological approach with very narrow subjects, like ​retired taxis still on the roads, ​small kiosk businesses, ​car covers, and ​discarded Christmas trees. I find it really interesting that once you notice something and focus on it you begin to see it everywhere. Now photography is a way of getting my head around things and trying to understand what's going on around me a little more.

Is that how Mowing the Dream started?
​Yeah, once something captures my attention it sticks in my brain, kind of like a decent movie. If I find it lingering I'll give it some space, work out the concept and a loose narrative, then try to put some structure around it. While it's all marinating I'll go and do some test shots to decide if I want to commit or not. Once the series is underway the concept can sometimes shift but mostly it'll crystallize and I'll continue shooting until I'm happy with the results. And I'm happy with these.

Follow Leo Van Der Pluym on ​Twitter.

On May 8, New Zealand ​ended its 294-day experiment with the legalized sale of ​synthetic drugs. Nearly a year earlier, the country decided it wanted a ​measured, modern response to ballooning sales of substances like K2, bath salts, and Kronic. What they came up with was called the ​Psychoactive Substances Act of 2013. The idea was the Ministry of Health would test and approve new drugs to be sold, without adversing, to adults in designated licensed stores. But the media declared war, politicians got nervous, and the drugs were again made illegal.

But that's a simple, bird's-eye chronology of events. I wanted to find out how synthetic drugs, and the laws governing them, had affecting ordinary New Zealanders caught up in them So I spoke to a guy named Mike Reeves. Mike sold synthetic drugs before becoming hooked; when I spoke with him he was packing a bag for an 18-week stint in intensive rehab. This is his story.

My path to addiction has been typical, although living in New Zealand made it easier. I was born to a couple of very intense people. My mom was from a large Catholic family with a lot of money. She committed suicide ten years ago. My dad had Asperger's, but he was a genius electrical engineer. I went to the best schools but things started to go wrong. I started smoking, drinking, and doing speed at age 12. I was a nightmare from then on.

Over time I learned about hippie culture, and that led me down the path of ​entheogens. This lead me to the biochemistry behind the feelings—dopamine, serotonin, norephedrine, ephedrine, and adrenaline. I got involved with the internet early, in 1990, and used early search engines to look up drugs. That way, when I saw them I knew what they were.

I remember exactly when I noticed New Zealand's fake drugs scene. I woke up on friend's couch and the World Trade Centre was on fire. We were watching and having a beer in our boxer shorts. This guy came along; call him Richard. He had a briefcase and pulled out some BCP and 5-Hydroxytryptophan. That's where legal highs were up to at that point. The chemistry was in the country, but if you put any of it into a police testing kit, none of it would come up. It just wasn't stuff they were looking for. Very few people knew about it.

Later, it was probably 2008, I met another guy who was importing stuff. He'd got two compounds on his first run—MDPV and Methylone. I tasted it together once and loved it. It was a superlative experience. So I sidled up to him and then, over the next year, me and eight of my friends got completely fucking lost in the stuff. 

From inside the bubble it was the best thing that ever happened. Like a lot of heroin junkies who think their lives are complete when they're first involved, I became a lot closer with my friends. We'd bang this stuff up and have orgies. We had all the money and food that we needed, but we were taking massive risks with our lives using IV drugs in incredibly inebriated states.

We had a house in the student quarter of Wellington and it just became a place and a time. We had sheets of acid, crack rocks, guys would come to our house to sell meth, coke, weed. It was a lot of fun for a while but to put it in context, this is a drug that doses like meth. By the end of that year we were getting up to a gram a day.

The group eventually blew apart. The guy who was importing saw how this stuff was affecting me and cut me off. So I hitchhiked north, shooting up water because I knew I couldn't quit both the behavior and the drug at the same time. I was fucked but I had a bit of money left so I bought a boat. I circumnavigated New Zealand twice and isolated myself for a few years. I considered myself drug-free because I hadn't put a needle in my arm for years.

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Mike took this photo as he left home for rehab

When I got off the boat, New Zealand was in the peak of its legal highs trade. This carried through 2009, 2010, and 2012, and it was getting less clean. The compounds being used were high-risk, untested, and novel. 

This May, after realising it couldn't play catch-up, the government rewrote the Psychoactive Substances Act. Suddenly they created a list of tests that a drug has to pass to be considered safe. Some these tests require animal testing to get a large enough sample size. For that you need a huge, highly expensive lab which most companies just can't afford. That's how they killed the industry, but I had a plan.

What a lot of people haven't realized is that a lot of the chemicals have been tested by universities overseas. The idea was that I'd pick an organic compound where the testing had already been done and then package it. My business was called Clone 42—a reference to The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. I bought some big bricks of these drugs, a pill press, and we were getting ready to hit the market. Then, a few months ago, I had to drive ten grams of the supply up to another guy in Auckland. That's when I came undone.

I don't know why but I stopped at the needle exchange on the way up. That's the addict in me. By the time I left Wellington I was off my chops. I was fucked. By the time I got halfway up the island it was snowing really heavily so I pulled over. Then in a car park I kept taking more, just getting higher and higher. When I finally got to Auckland I thought fuck it, and I banged up everything I had left, which was about 1,000 milligrams. For want of a better word, I had a heart attack. You take this stuff and it atrophies the actual heart muscle, which turned my heart into a block of leather. So I crawled to the hospital and they thought I was on meth. They pumped me full of benzos and I tried to explain that I wasn't on meth. When I survived that, I realized I needed help.

Do you know ​Saul Williams? He's an amazing poet and his friends recommended him DMT to expand his mind. So he tried it and said "So what? I already knew that." And that's kind of how I feel now. Fuck drugs man. It really disappoints me that my country is trying to be a spearhead on the whole altered states thing, because we keep fucking it up. 

There are merits to entheogens but the way it's being managed is really damaging. The way that people are learning to take drugs is to go to a shop and get fucked up. There's nothing wrong with, at the right time, looking for mushrooms and preparing them safely. The pioneers of drug use were looking for a particular experience, and they found it after a journey. Now you just get the destination and miss the journey. I think that's a huge mistake. So no, I don't think this stuff should be sold in the shops. Etiology doesn't combine well with economics. 

Follow Julian Morgans on ​Twitter.

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At most house parties, someone will get drunk and nostalgic enough to press play on "Brown Sugar." Exactly 1:40 through the song, just as the sax-solo kicks in, at least two people at that party will decide to have sex with each other. Bobby Keys played that solo. If you were one of those sexy people, you have him to thank.

Keys, who died of cirrhosis on Tuesday, was famous in music circles for playing with the Stones, John Lennon, The Who, Lynyrd Skynyrd, and just about every other overblown rock act of the latter half of the 20th century.

He also enjoyed a reputation as a total hell-raiser. Being too wild for the Rolling Stones in the mid-70s takes some doing, but the famous story goes that Keys missed a call-time, and when Mick Jagger found him in a bathtub full of Dom Perignon with a French call girl, Keys told him to fuck off.

There are a million Bobby Keys legends just like that one that have been repeated (and inflated) in bars and tour buses over the last 40 years. But what a lot of people don't know is just how much Keys' hard-playing and hard-living were the product of the West Texas wilderness, where he cut his teeth playing in honky-tonks and bordellos from the age of 14—and which has produced a roster of musical talent totally disproportionate to its tiny population, from Roy Orbison and Buddy Holly on down.

When the Stones went on a heroin/accountancy/ego-inspired hiatus in the mid-80s, Keys returned to Texas and joined a band led by local hero Joe Ely. The two would play together for the next 25 years. I caught up with Ely to talk about his friend Bobby Keys, West Texas, and the little white pills that fueled them both.

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Bobby (right) onstage with the Rolling Stones. Photo by Andrea Sartorati ​via.

VICE: Hi, Joe. Thanks for talking to me—it must be a really hard time for you right now.​
​Joe Ely: Yeah, with Bobby going—and Ian Mclagan [keyboard player in Faces and many other bands]. They both went within a day of each other.

With Ian it was a complete surprise, but Bobby had been ill for a short while. He missed rehearsal with the Stones in Australia, then he called and told me that the doctor had just given him six months to live. And that was two weeks ago. He said he wanted to take a van from Tennessee across West Texas and over to New Mexico, where his family came from. And he wanted me to help him find a home for his horn. This was heavy on me—just to help Bobby make his last wishes. But immediately after that call he took a turn for the worse, so we never got to make that trip.

But I got why he wanted to do it... you know, growing up in that dusty, windy part of the country—he just liked West Texas. The wind and the dust shaped his personality—his whole being was like a West Texas dust storm; he lived hard, traveled hard, played hard, y'know, with all that that takes. That was his being—and how he played, and that's what got him noticed by the Stones in the first place... he was untamed. [laughs]

Keys playing "Brown Sugar" with The Rolling Stones in Texas (1972)

All these amazing musicians came out of, like, two or three towns, right?
​ Yeah, Lubbock had Buddy Holly; Bob Wills came from Turkey; and Roy Orbison was from a little town south of Lubbock called Wink. But there's a lot more. There's a lot of music there for some reason—no one can figure it out. I guess there's not a whole lot else to do there. And there's a whole lot of sky, so the only thing you can fill that sky up with is music.

Bobby kind of grew up playing in different bands around there, from when he was just a kid... one called the Teen Kings that later backed Roy Orbison. It was just a lot of Lubbock musicians who played together. But it was really when he joined up with a guy named Buddy Knox that he took off on the road.

Then the Rolling Stones were on their first US tour and did a show opening for Buddy Knox—that's where Bobby met Keith. They kept it up, and then a few years later they asked him to come and play with the Stones. It all came from West Texas dance bands playing in honky-tonks.

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Keys (left) and Ely (right) onstage in Lubbock, Texas. Photo by Marie Elena Ely

What is it about that scene that produces these musicians and wild guys?
​ Well, back in Bobby's day it was all fueled by rock 'n' roll, whiskey, and little white pills. People out there were like farmers and ranchers—y'know, hard working people. When Saturday night came along they'd take their little money and head to the dance hall—that was the only thing to do. There was no other scene apart from the honky-tonks on one side, and church on the other

One for Saturday night, one for Sunday morning?
​ Yeah, and sometimes Saturday night would roll into Sunday. But those bands in the 50s and early-60s, playing these old spots... they were rough, dangerous places. They were lawless. The West Texas and Oklahoma honky-tonk scene was totally lawless.

We used to play these shows and there'd be a thousand people in there and not a security guard in sight. Everyone would bring their own booze because a lot these places were dry, so you'd have to buy stuff from bootleggers. The bootleggers sold half-pints of gin out of their cars and wore big, old pistols.

There was just no law out there—the law left those places alone because it was too dangerous for them. It's just the way things are when you get out into the wide-open spaces. Like, England has been settled for 2,000 years—my city just celebrated its 100th birthday. It's kind of a brand new land.

Keys playing "Sweet Virginia" with The Rolling Stones in Texas (1972)

It's funny, a guy like that from Lubbock, Texas ending up playing with a bunch of skinny Brits in velvet suits.
​ Well, it's kind of ironic, because when my band first went to England in '77, or '78, the first guys we ran into there were The Clash. That was like Bobby with the Stones... there was something about the music, something between London and Lubbock. Even going back to Buddy Holly, he was bigger in England than he was over here.

There are all these huge cultural differences, but Lubbock had this real influence on London rock 'n' roll. The Stones did "Not Fade Away" as, like, their second release, and the Beatles did Buddy Holly songs, too, and took his melodies for their own stuff.

And you ended up singing on a Clash record?
​ Yeah, I sang all the Spanish parts on "Should I Stay or Should I Go." Joe Strummer figured that, since I was from Texas, I should know Spanish... and I guess I did, kind of. Then I translated all that stuff later, and it was all completely wrong. Nobody seemed to care, though, because it was such a great song.

I brought the Clash to Lubbock, too. They really wanted to play there—and places like Laredo and El Paso; all the places in Marty Robbins songs.

I guess that West Texas scene is where Bobby Keys got his reputation for partying, too?
​ Oh yeah, Bobby could stay up all night with the best of 'em. I remember one tour in Canada—every show could have landed us in jail.

Another show was on his birthday, and someone brought up some tequila. There was a tray of 30 shots, and I was like, damn, there's only like five of us in the band—we're all gonna be smashed. But they were all just for Bobby. By the end of the show he'd done them all and was still playing hard. Though, that night did cost us a repair on the motel room the next morning.

His personality was kind of larger than life... kind of like those old movies, like Giant and Hud, or Big Sky. He wasn't a fighter, but the way Bobby came on you just didn't want to mess with him. He was a great human being—a great personality.

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Photo by Marie Elena Ely

Is the scene out there still producing those same kind of characters?
​ Well, it still does, of course, because it's isolated. The next real city is Dallas, and that's, like, 300 miles away. Although, sadly, a lot of those big ranches have been taken over by corporations, and a lot of those personalities are gone. It's tamed down a lot now... most people's idea of a big time is going to a football game.

But still, it's isolated; there's not much out there. You make your own way, build your own life. It's not a city where people live off of each other. So it was kind of amazing for Bobby to have come from that with his horn and to find his own way into the world. The chances of that were not good, even if you were a really good player.

Bobby had a lot of his own inner strength, which got him out there and joined him with all the great bands. That's where it came from—the lawless, wide-open spaces... wide roads with few cars and buildings with only one or two storeys because of the wind. There's so much space and nothing to hide behind, so everything you do is right there in the full-blown sun with the dust blowing around.

That place had a lot to say about how Bobby played the horn. He played it like he was chasing a tornado.

Thanks so much for taking the time. 

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Photo via Justin Ling.

​We're expanding our editorial team in Canada, and we're excited to announce our first big get: a dedicated, Parliamentary Correspondent in Ottawa who will be screaming at politicians in scrums for all of you lovely Canadians.

So without further ado, we're stoked to bring Mr. Justin Ling into the VICE News family. You might know him from his A1 bangers with the National Post, his irreverent Twitter account, or blowing the lid off a Cadet sex scandal for us. Now he's primed and ready to bring you reliable news on behalf of VICE—from the center of Canadian power. Expect to see more stories about our latest military foray into Iraq, incisive political reporting, and First Nations issues—all with Justin Ling's byline.

Update: As part of our initial announcement VICE Canada used an image of Justin Ling that had been a longtime author photo on Vice.com. This choice of image appeared in poor taste to some, for reasons that are obvious to us in retrospect. VICE Canada would like to state categorically that this was an oversight, and apologize for any offense that this mistake has caused.

Follow Justin on Twitter @Justin_Ling and read the stories he's already done for us here.

The netherworld of corruption and violence that is the United States ​prison system is a vicious subculture that has its own by-laws, codes, and regulations. It's an environment that forces prisoners to toe the line and maintain the status quo, or else suffer the consequences. And one of the golden rules is that when you are ​beholden to a prison gang and the big homie calls your number, you have to stop whatever it is that you're doing and come back inside, no questions asked.

With career prison gangsters calling the shots, drug smuggling is su​rging at many California county jails. As the state system works to deal with facilities that are ​overcapacity and ​court orders to decrease its inmate population, it's come up with a prison realignment plan that incorporates "​flash incarceration" tactics, utilizing county jails to hold prison parolees who get sent back for minor technicalities. But the shot callers and prison-gang leaders, doing life in Pelican Bay and the feds, have figured out a way to exploit these changes.

"What they do is get their guys, recently released gang members, to violate the terms of their parole on some minor account," says Trouble, a twice-convicted felon and Crip street gang member who is currently housed in the California Department of Corrections (CDC) and serving out a sentence of 20 years. "These guys don't come back to prison because they want to; they do it because they have to. It's a direct order. To disobey would be detrimental to their health. It could mean getting their head cracked or worse."

Once inside, it's open season given the inadequate security measures and resources at small facilities.

"These local county lockups are lax—you can get away with a lot of stuff," Trouble says. "[The authorities] are not hip to all the moves and methods that are used to bring drugs in. They don't have the training or experience in dealing with the hardcore prison mentality, and the shot callers recognized this and started using it to their advantage."

The sheriff's departments that run the county jails have struggled to keep pace with the flow of drugs in the three years since the overhaul of the state corrections system started sending lower-level felons to county lockups to reduce  ​overcrowding. "What they are doing now," Trouble tells VICE, "is sending dudes to the county jail for five or ten years. Unless you commit a certain type of crime, you don't even go into the prison system—you stay in the local lockup. It's right at home, so it's sweet for the homeboys who have access to all their people because they are so close. Instead of having to drive several hours to a CDC prison, their visitors can come see them regularly and make overtures to the deputies there."

These tactics were intended to give authorities a way to avoid sending parolees back to state prisons, but instead is being used by some offenders to move drugs into county jails, which are poorly equipped to deal with penitentiary smuggling techniques. "These folks have brought with them prison politics, prison contraband, prison culture. It's very different than what the deputy sheriffs were previously used to dealing with," Stanislaus County Sheriff Adam Christianson recently told the Associated Press. "Nobody was ready for this freight train."

"The California system is flooded with drugs." Trouble tells me. "A gram of heroin goes for like $400 to $600. They break a gram into quarters and sell them for like $100 to $150. Everybody locked up is trying to make money. The guards are on the take, especially at these county jails. They get paid to look the other way. A lot of these guards don't even have their GEDs. They are from the same areas as the gang members getting locked up. Plus, they don't got access to the same intel prison investigators in the state have access to."

But the county jails are catching up. Recently, they started sharing information with the CDC, which has led to many high-profile gang members being placed in segregation when they are housed in the county jails. "I went back on a writ and they put me in high power—max security—and when I asked them why, they said because the CDC called down and told them I was a threat to the orderly running of their jail," Trouble tells me. "But it was all good. I still got visits. And the homies that weren't behind the glass looked out, so I was straight."

Illicit drugs in jails and prisons aren't anything new—it's a battle prison administrators have been fighting pretty much forever. The amount of drugs flowing into local jails is just another example of the problems the CDC is facing as a result of the decades-long expansion of the state prison system. By swallowing balloons of heroin, meth, and cocaine, or using a method called keistering—which involves stuffing packaged drugs into the  ​anal cavity—prison inmates can sneak contraband through strip searches. Once inside the jail, they can retrieve the drugs and sell them quickly. Then the money from the sale of the drugs is funneled back out to the real world and diverted to the accounts of the gang leaders, most of whom are doing life at Pelican Bay.

"The Eme, AB, BGF, NF—these are the big four Cali organizations," Trouble says. "But my gang and the Bloods are doing things like this also. The Nazi Low Riders, everybody is getting in on the action. It's a free-for-all. Once the drugs are in they use a deputy to smuggle the money out. You would be surprised how much cash people have in these county jails. But if it's not a cash transaction, they do it just like they do in prison. They get their people on the street to send money for the drugs."

If you buy drugs in prison, the dealer will give you an address and tell you to send the money there. You call your people or see them in a visit and make sure the money arrives, because if it doesn't, consequences will arise. "Don't fuck around with the gang's money," Trouble says. "That can get you fucked up, seriously. When it comes to money, muthafuckas ain't playing. Not in these streets and not in these jails. Muthafuckas can get green lighted [marked for murder] for that."

With gang leaders sending out the call for their members to violate the terms of their parole and get re-incarcerated in the local county lockups, drug use will continue to rise in California jails. After all, in prison, drugs mean money and power—and that's what the gang leaders crave more than anything else.

Follow Seth Ferranti on ​Twitter.

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Aaron Ratoff, Ian Becker, and Jonah Furman. Photos by Julian Master

I'm sitting down with Boston-based indie band K​rill at a Polish restaurant in Brooklyn, but they aren't ordering anything. I get a meat boat and a beer inside of a glass boot, but Krill are fine with water. I figure they must have eaten on their way to meet me, which seems weird since we'd planned on lunch. Then I get it.

I tell them that I'm picking up the tab, and the band leaps to grab their menus. Soon the table is full of every conceivable combination of meats and potatoes and cabbage. Krill's bassist and singer, Jonah Furman, who looks a little bit like ​​the ​mouse from The Rescuers Down Under, drinks two glasses of pineapple juice before we finish our first course. When you're living out of a minivan for weeks on end, trying to keep expenses low, you take advantage of any free meal that comes your way.​

Krill has built up a fiercely loyal fan base over the past year or two, but you may have missed them unless you live in New York or Boston and keep careful tabs  on the musical renaissance sprouting up around the label Exploding i​n Sound, which has been churning out stellar albums by bands like P​ile, Sp​eedy Ortiz, and ​Porches.​ since 2008.

Exploding in Sound re-released Krill's second album, Lucky Leaves, earlier this year, and the songs garnered enough attention to get them touring more and working on a follow-up, which is slated for release in February. Fans have told the band that Lucky Leaves sounds like "Modest Mouse on pot," but Modest Mouse never wrote songs as proggy and knotted as Krill, or cataloged their neuroses in lyrics so well.

The guys in Krill know that their brand of vulnerable guitar rock isn't going to skyrocket them to fame and fortune. They're not chasing the old dreams of Led Zeppelin levels of  excess with drugs and groupies and mudsharks. Being in a rock band in 2014 means that you'll probably be broke and stuck navigating the convoluted ObamaCare website forever, but that's fine with Krill. They just like playing music, and they'll suffer through rainy tours and gigs in empty venues if it means making enough to scrape by.

Jonah slams another three pineapple juices as the band tells me about being broke, how touring is shitty, and why they do it anyway.

VICE: So, does anyone care about guitar rock anymore?
Aaron Ratoff: You should have seen our show at Sarah Lawrence. Nobody cares about guitar rock.

How are you feeling about the new record?
I think it's got a lot more going on than any of the other stuff we've done, but there's no single. Thank God that's not how it works anymore.

What do you mean?
Jonah Furman: We're just boring people doing hard work. If you approached music any other way, then it just wouldn't happen. Bands are trying to follow old models that are just fantasies now.

Ian Becker: Some bands get anointed. My roommate in college got signed to a major label and now he tours the world. It happened to him, whatever "it" is... But we're not going to be a buzz band. It's not about the press cycle, and it never was.

Those bands either implode or settle into the tour grind, anyway.
Right. Clap Your Hands Say Yeah is still chugging along. They were just in Boston again, playing for the third time this year. They had a big explosion and now they're back to where we are—just driving around.

Jonah: It's kind of liberating to know there's not some huge end goal. We're never going to get consistent checks.

It's not about money.
Remember that ​article about how the dude from Grizzly Bear doesn't make enough money to have children? If I wanted money, I would have done literally anything else. But that's helpful for me to understand why I'm doing this. I don't have to be disappointed when we go out on tour for two months and make no money, or just break even, or lose money. It was never about that.

Are you guys making enough to support yourselves?
We definitely make more money than we did on our first tour. But it's not because we signed to a bunch of labels or whatever. It's because we kept doing it. Things have progressed, but not astronomically.

You played with Deerhoof a while back. That's pretty huge.
Aaron: It was a crazy thing for us, but then you look at their tour itinerary and every single show they've played has been with a different band I've never heard of. Krill's just one of those bands for someone else. It was a dream to play with them, but it was funny, because they're touring in a minivan, too.

Jonah: Even a band that you idolize is just going through the same mundane thing.

What's tour like?
​ People always ask that for some reason. ​Touring is the most boring time of my life. When we go away on tour, we just drive and wait and then play for 30 minutes and then we're done. 

That's the entire thing, and then you do that 25 times in a row. You have no friends except the two other people in the car, and you've already had every conversation with them. You never get to shower. Every night is uncomfortable. You eat diarrhea food. It's terrible, but it's not even just terrible—it's boring.

What about the Krill groupies?
Any ladies willing to stay at the show until 3 AM are weird.

Ian: Touring is much better as a story than a lived experience. It's cool to say that you've been to all those cities. But it was the same story as every other city—it was fine.

Jonah: The shows we play with a huge crowd, like Deerhoof, they're still the same shit. What could be different? When your dream situation happens, you're still going to be doing your same thing.
​

It's not about the crowd.
Crowds don't make it a great show. We played in Vermont the other night and it was one of the best shows of the tour. Maybe 15 or 20 people.

Ian: We played a very well-attended show in Baltimore that made us never want to go back.

Jonah: Sometimes we play to nobody and it is the best moment of my life. Sometimes we play to a packed room and everything should be perfect but the vibes are off.

So much of it connects to the overall reasons for being in a band. The old justification was, "I want to make money and be famous" and you can get trapped in those old narratives. You tell yourself that you need to get on a support tour, or a bigger label, but that's not why you're playing music. You're getting trapped in someone else's vision.

We like to make records. We like to tour, at least we tell ourselves that. We like figuring out how to make songs good. Does it seem stupid to say that we like to practice a lot just so the songs will be good?

No, that's true craft.
It's fun to put in all that work and then listen to your record and think, "That sounds sick." That's when you say, "Right. This is why I'm doing this with my life." I can't imagine how a party band can deal with it mentally. It would hit me hard because it hits me already, and I think what we're doing is totally worthwhile and interesting.

I get that, for a big party band, every night's a blowout. You make money and you get to do whatever you want all the time. That makes sense to me, because of the external rewards. But a party band where nobody shows up? A party band with the crowds that we have? Nothing could be worse than a lonely party band. We played fucking Sarah Lawrence last night to nobody. How can you do that and not care about the songs at all?

It's like facing the void. You stand up on an empty stage and have to really get straight with yourself.
The whole process of recording our new album was stressful. We were all working full-time, practicing every night, and then we went on tour. There were two weeks straight where every fucking show sucked and it rained. But then there was a moment when we listened to the unmixed album in the van on our way back to Boston from Worcester, Massachusetts, and it was worth it.

I get it.
You tour, you record, you tour more. That's it. It's just a path and you walk down it, because otherwise you feel aimless.

Ian: I think it's OK to face the mundanity of that. Because once you confront that, it's freeing.

Krill's new album, A Distant Fist Unclenching, is out February 17 on Exploding in Sound. Pre-order it he​re.

Follow River Donaghey on Twitt​er.

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Bristol University. Image via ​OldakQuill

This post was originally published on VICE UK

The large oven cakes, high-vis vests and hot spam sandwiches of Leeds Market have outlived my student life. They outlived my whole generation of students and they may well outlive higher education as we know it today.

It is a strange thing to go back to your university town a decade after first stepping, shaky-boweled and clutching an Argos starter pack, into the sticky halls of residence many of us called home. Whether you swapped the medieval alleyways of the south for grit-gray Northern industrialism, England for Scotland or simply crossed the Pennines, moving to a university town marked the dawn of a new era.

And yet, go back now—after a decade—and if your university city is anything like mine, they'll be ripping it up from the very foundations. Leeds Met became Leeds Beckett, the town hall got swamped by a fishbowl of university plate glass, the University of Leeds admissions center grew a sandwich bar, the flat I overlooked from my first bedroom window became a mormon church and the old BBC building has been replaced by a huge, cuboid, two-pence coin of rusty student flats and a faculty of the arts.

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Leeds market. Photo by the author

How will the rest of our student towns look in another ten years? All those cities that tried to replace the clanking, oil-grimed industries destroyed by Thatcherism with the New Labour cash cow of higher education—what does the next decade hold in store for them? How will student loans, tuition fees, immigration, the reduction of public funding and increasing reliance on digital technology shift their very landscape?

While in 2004 it took me four and a half hours to travel from Oxford to Leeds, with one of those soul-stripping stopovers on the windy platforms of Birmingham New Street station, high-speed rail links like HS2 may well make visiting the North no greater a commute from London than Surrey is today. But will it save those  formative relationships that floundered on the rocks of entire terms spent apart? Will students be able to pop home every weekend to visit their 28-year-old boyfriend who works in a skate shop and smokes B&H Silver? Will more hearts go unbroken? Perhaps. But perhaps the 2.2 percent average increase in rail fares we're seeing this year will steadily creep up to render such travel unimaginable to most students.

Come out of the station and the student of ten years time will, no doubt, be met with a forest of new build flats. "More buildings will get knocked down and more flats will be built around the center," Yash, an agent at Samara Properties in Leeds, tells me. Of course, it is building projects like this, along with the accompanying leisure facilities, shopping centers and luxury goods that have turned British universities from seats of learning to economic pessaries—thrust into dwindling university towns to try and halt the yeasty creep of post-industrial decline.

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The Roger Stevens building, University of Leeds. Image via ​Ubcule

According to ​a report by Universities UK, for every 100 jobs at universities an additional 117 are created in the wider economy. Forget steel, wool, shipbuilding, coal, dockyards and football—our cities are now feeding off the pockets of students. Sheffield, Liverpool, Manchester, Glasgow, Falmouth and all the rest are topped up with student drinks deals and short term rents. Yash tells me there are 14 estate agents just on the one tiny road that I used to cross to buy my breakfast.

"There seems to be a lot more rich students nowadays," he says. "We've got four bed properties—really expensive ones—and all four tenants have cars. It seems ridiculous. We have a lot of Chinese, Spanish and Greek students. The Chinese students don't mind spending more money. They pay up front, because they don't have people over here to be guarantors."

Which, inevitably, leads us to the question of cash. Will the university towns of the 2020s be the preserve of the super-wealthy, students traveling to lectures in taxis? Maybe not. "There's no evidence to show that," says Nolan Smith, Head of Finance and Investment for the Higher Education Funding Council for England ( ​HEFCE). "The entrance even under the £9,000 ($14,000) fee regime showed that students from lower socio-economic backgrounds continue to want to go into higher education; higher fees have not put them off. That's partly because there are support packages in place—universities themselves provide quite a lot of bursaries and scholarships."

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Inside Leeds University's "corridor in the sky." Photo by the author 

Walking past the international supermarkets and Pan-Asian restaurants that skirt Leeds city center, it occurs to me that student internationalism might change significantly. According to ​Universities UK, 13 percent of current undergraduate students and 37 percent of postgraduate students are non-UK domiciled. And in 2012–13, around 44 percent of all non-UK students studying in the UK came from Asia. Project those figures forward and our British university cities could, if we're lucky, become multicultural hubs of language exchange, better food, more money, transferable skills, foreign investment and more interesting supermarkets. 

"I do expect more international students," says Nick Hillman, Director of the Higher Education Policy Institute (​HEPI). "Though the Home Office need to offer a more welcoming approach if we are to meet our full potential on that." If we're lucky, then, the large number of international students will mean more metropolitan university towns. If we're not, the influx of wealthy foreign students to city center flats, jumping the queue with cash deposits and failing to integrate with the local population even more than the current contingent may push local residents further into the suburbs and increase racial tension. 

The National Audit Office ​recently warned that more than half of councils are at risk of financial failure by the end of the decade. While this might not necessarily mean that the golden owls that sit on top of the railings circling Leeds City Centre Library will be sold off to pay the heating bill, it does mean that many of the public services I enjoyed as a student will be increasingly migrated online. 

Doctor's surgeries, housing services, town halls, citizens advice bureaus and tax offices may well become accessed almost entirely digitally. Public swimming pools, libraries, parks, and arts centers, similarly, will be sold off to private investors or simply closed. Which could lead to an even greater divide between students—who look to their institution for many of these services—and local residents, who have nowhere else to turn. It's the old ​town and gown conundrum I became aware of growing up in Oxford. 

Our student towns are an unmarked map of social, economic, educational and environmental change, only really understood when looked at in retrospect, from over our shoulder. 

As well as facilities, what sort of courses may the student of the next decade expect to find? According to their report, Trends in Undergraduate Recruitment, Universities UK observe that there has been "an increase in students applying to subjects in the science, technology, engineering and mathematics group (STEM) over recent years, reflecting an ongoing trend of increased participation in science-related subjects at level three." 

Does this mean no more design students sitting on the steps of H Block, chipping paint off nicotine-stained fingers and talking about the new releases? Not necessarily. "There are signs of a recovery in demand for subjects that showed declines in applications in 2012, such as arts and design, history and mass communications," the report goes on. 

Oh good, you're thinking, more mass communication. That's exactly what journalism, broadcasting and the internet needs. "I think traditional courses will remain popular," says Hillman. "We will need more scientists and engineers, but we will also need more people to help us understand the world, which means more social scientists, linguists and people skilled in the arts. The best vocationally-oriented courses are often those that are co-designed with employers, so I hope we'll see more of those too."

Will the student towns of the next decade be preparing a workforce for a life of gainful employment, or allowing students of all backgrounds the time and space to become good at, simply, thinking? Is the rush towards vocational subjects evidence of an arts sector in crisis, or simply a sign that Michael Gove got his way after all? 

We can't know yet. Too much depends on the result of next year's general election; on how, if ever, we climb out of recession; on the future of local industry. Whether we will follow the German model and abolish tuition fees or take an American approach—where fees often hit five digits—depends not just on our politicians but the businesses, policy groups and researchers who maneuver them. 

"Student loans were introduced 24 years ago, but the original rationale for them remains," explains Hillman. "If we are to have large numbers of young people living and studying away from home, and if there is to be enough money to educate them properly, then a loan system is close to inevitable. Other countries avoid loans but they typically send fewer people to university, don't cover students' maintenance costs or expect students to pay upfront, which limits access. Our loan system, which the OECD argue is ahead of other countries' support systems, allows the sector to continue expanding."

Our student towns are an unmarked map of social, economic, educational and environmental change, only really understood when looked at in retrospect, from over our shoulder. In my uneasy moments, I imagine the Leeds of 2024 as a binary split between students in wide-neck pastel shirts, driving their own cars and preparing for a career at KPMH, and a local community shuffled between Poundland Workfare and their distant suburban homes. It is the social divisions of a post-recession, post-austerity country laid across the granite and stone of a once-thriving industrial center. It is grim.

But maybe it will all work out. Maybe better transport links, investment in the public sector and an appreciation of higher education as more than just an economic leg-up and better digital access will bring the British university town to the forefront of international admiration. It will bring the country back into the same boat. It will create a generation of dancing, drinking, thinking citizens.

Or maybe, as Larkin said, what will survive of us is love. And hot spam sandwiches. 

Follow Nell Frizzell on ​Twitter