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The VICE Guide to Right Now: Obama Has Officially Axed the Keystone XL Pipeline Plan

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Photo of a Pipeline protester via Flickr user Elvert Barnes

Read: Why Obama Killed Keystone

President Barack Obama announced Friday that after seven years of deliberation, there will be no Keystone XL—a controversial pipeline that would have transported oil 1,179 miles from tar sands in Canada all the way to the Texas Gulf Coast.

The project was estimated to cost around $8 billion, and the president already vetoed a bill for the pipeline in February, unconvinced that the pipeline served "the national interest." On Friday, Obama said that "shipping dirtier crude oil into our country would not increase America's energy security."

Obama cited climate change as playing a part in his decision to reject the pipeline, and emphasized the need for clean energy alternatives. His Clean Power Plan, announced in early August, is supposed to "reduce pollution from power plants by 32 percent from 2005 levels by 2030," according to the White House's Twitter account. By that year, the administration says, it will prevent "up to 3,600 premature deaths, 1,700 non-fatal heart attacks, 90,000 asthma attacks in kids, and 300,000 missed work and school days."

Once Obama's fixed that, maybe he can set his sights on the hangovers that are ravaging our great nation.


Ontario to Expand Access to Surgery Referrals for Trans People

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Still via On Hold

The Ontario government is expanding the number of gender reassignment surgery referral sites in the province in an attempt to reduce long wait times faced by transgender people.

Health Minister Eric Hoskins announced the changes in Toronto Friday morning, indicating that the government wants to allow more health care practitioners to approve the surgical procedures.

VICE Canada Reports: On Hold

Currently, the Gender Identity Clinic at Toronto's CAMH is the only place in the province that can approve publicly funded surgeries. There are currently about 1,000 people seeking a referral in Ontario; the ministry has said the wait time is approximately two years. Such delays have been linked to increased suicides amongst people who are transitioning, an issue that VICE explored in its recent documentary On Hold. The doc also highlighted the inconsistency of access to health care across the country; a hospital in Montreal is the only facility to provide a full spectrum of care while New Brunswick offers no publicly funded procedures.

Hoskins said the goal is to "dramatically enhance access" to surgical support, with potentially hundreds of sites for referrals. The changes will likely begin rolling out early next year.

"One of the most vulnerable times for trans people is when they are ready for surgery, but face a prolonged wait," said Hoskins. "This change would reduce wait times by allowing many trans clients to get surgical approvals from their own local primary care teams."

Susan Gapka, a training and education facilitator at Toronto-based LGBTQ charity The 519 called the announcement "historic."

"It shows you how far we've come," Gapka, who is trans, told VICE. "When I came out in 2000, there were no human rights, there was no access to healthcare. It was quite a grim situation."

But she said many barriers to trans health care remain, including the lack of sites where people can undergo surgery in Ontario. Doctors, she added, need more training and education in trans-specific health care issues.

Gapka said she hopes trans advocacy groups will be consulted by the province in the next steps. "This is a really strong and significant opportunity for moving forward."

Follow Manisha Krishnan on Twitter.

The DEA Says the 'Zombie' Drug Flakka Has Come to New York City

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The chemical composition of alpha-pyrrolidinopentiophenone, a.k.a. flakka. Image via Wikipedia

Since early this summer the synthetic drug nicknamed "flakka" has been making for dramatic headlines and the types of stories that media outlets crave: Reportedly, it's caused naked, deranged men to take to the streets or attempt to break down the doors of a police station in order to escape a gang of hallucinatory murderers in imaginary hot pursuit. As VICE has reported previously, the DEA has intensified efforts to stamp out the drug, and started going after dealers and smugglers in Florida, ground zero for the cathinone, which is a chemical cousin to the better known Bath Salts.

On VICE News: A Malaysian Cartoonist Told Us Why He's Risking 43 Years in Prison for Tweeting

Despite the efforts of law enforcement, the DEA has reported that the drug has trickled into upstate New York and then New York City, which is experiencing an outbreak of the drug and the misery that accompanies it. Flakka-related emergency room visits have increased tenfold since this time last year, and there are now 150 hospital visits a week caused by the drug, according to New York's Pix 11. Particularly hard hit are East Harlem and the Bronx.

"This is poison," Special Agent in Charge of the New York DEA field office James Hunt told Pix 11. "No different than taking rat poison."

Watch our documentary on the hard lives on synthetic marijuana addicts:

A hit of flakka reportedly costs just a few bucks and gives users a high similar to cocaine, but with hallucinations. Produced in China and India, its main ingredient is alpha-pyrrolidinopentiophenone (a.k.a. alpha-PVP), which is related to the psychoactive stimulant methylenedioxypyrovalerone (MDPV). Users of the drug have reported feelings of extreme euphoria, but the downsides are pretty intense and can include heart attacks and the sort of paranoia that convinces you invisible people want you dead.

It can be purchased on the dark web, and before it became cause for alarm in New York was mostly an issue in Broward County, Florida, the epicenter for the growing flakka epidemic which saw 477 reported cases of flakka use in 2014.

Police who have dealt with the drug paint a bleak picture of its effects, telling tales of dangerous "zombies" in the middle of severe psychotic breaks. YouTube videos of alleged users completely losing their shit leave the rest of us perplexed as to what the appeal could possibly be. But the drug continues to spread, and has turned up in states like Georgia, West Virginia, Illinois, and Ohio.

Most states ban synthetic cathinones, the class of drugs that flakka belongs to, but often drug manufacturers tweak their formula in an attempt to stay on the right side of the letter of the law. Legislators in New Jersey have drafted new "open ended" laws that resemble New York's in hopes that they'll be able to combat new drugs like flakka when they appear on the scene. "As quick as we make the laws, the chemists can make new versions of the drug," Bergen County Assemblyman Tim Eustace told Pix 11.

Calls to the New York division of the DEA were not immediately returned.

Follow Brian on Twitter.

Remembering John Barron, Donald Trump’s ‘Spokesman’ Alter Ego

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Photo by Ron Galella/WireImage via Getty

The year was 1984, and Donald J. Trump had already made a name for himself.

Just a few years earlier, the son of a wealthy outer-borough real estate developer stunned New York with the Grand Hyatt Hotel deal, in which he'd snatched up an unprecedented 40-year tax break from a city on the brink of bankruptcy. Then, he built Trump Tower. Ignoring his father's advice, he had ventured deep into the world of Manhattan real estate—a world he would dominate for years to come. And now, his eyes were set on a new property: Trump Castle.

As New York Magazine described it, Trump's vision came "complete with spires, drawbridge, and moat"—a legit fortress on Madison Avenue and 59th Street; something only The Donald could conjure up. His competitors labeled the idea "lunacy," and eventually, it turned out they were right: the cost of the development spiraled out of control, climbing upwards of $135 million, and Prudential Insurance, Trump's partner on the project, decided to walk.

Before breaking ground, Trump's castle had crumbled. (He would christen an Atlantic City casino with the name the following year.) In the cutthroat world of Manhattan real estate, it was considered a big loss for the mogul. Trump had tried, and failed, to build a larger-than-life property, and, according to New York, his partner was out $15 million as a result.

But to John Barron, a "Trump spokesperson," that wasn't the case: Selling the property was Trump's idea the whole time, Barron told reporters, making it seem like the real estate mogul had never even wanted the damn castle in the first place, and was happy to see it go: "It sure is easier to get a large commission on a $105-million sale than to put up a building," Barron told New York at the time. Contrary to the public's perception, Trump actually left the bruising battle victorious—at least according to Trump himself.

Because throughout the 1980s, Donald J. Trump was John Barron—a literal alter ego that allowed Trump to say what he wanted, when he wanted, to the New York City press corps, and the world. Barron was a Trump spokesperson, a Trump representative, and was even quoted once or twice as a Trump executive. Sometimes, it was spelled "Barron," other times, just "Baron." But it was always the same person talking: Trump.


People magazine cover, 1990

It was the billionaire businessman's first foray into media manipulation, a strategy the Republican presidential frontrunner has mastered, with his Twitter rants, his widely-publicized feuds—with networks, candidates, famous women, the people of Mexico—and his frequent threats against anyone who tries to discredit his personal narrative. By pushing the right buttons, Trump was able to get his story told the way he wanted to tell it. He was—and is—his own spin doctor, beholden to no one but himself.

"John Barron was a way for Trump to talk himself up," said Michael D'Antonio, the author of Never Enough: Donald Trump and the Pursuit of Success, a Trump biography that was rushed to publication this September. "He'd be able to express things that he wanted expressed about himself by someone that wasn't him." In other words, Trump was his own personal cheerleader, like the extras he allegedly hired for his presidential candidacy launch.

According to D'Antonio, the fake spokesperson began to appear in the early 1980s, with the construction of Trump Tower, the mogul's magnum opus on Fifth Avenue. Before demolishing the storied flagship of the now-defunct department store chain Bonwit Teller, Trump promised that he'd donate the cache of valuable artworks inside to the nearby Metropolitan Museum of Art. Then, his company's workers smashed them to pieces.

After an outcry from the art community, a man named John Barron—who, in phone interviews with reporters, vaguely gave his title as a "Trump Organization vice president"—said he spoke on behalf of his boss when he cited costs to construction that outweighed the pieces' value. And besides, Barron argued, they were "without artistic merit" anyway. Though reporters at the time may not have realized it, Americans now will recognize this as quite possibly the most Trumpian response ever.

Photo by Gamblin Yann/Paris Match via Getty

Over the course of nearly a decade, Trump was quick to dispatch John Barron to share his position on deals with media outlets: "We have no interest whatsoever in Lincoln West," Barron told the New York Times, in response to questions about a Manhattan property in 1984.

In other, more deranged instances, Trump's alter ego emerged as a second spokesperson named "John Miller," who was used to boost his playboy reputation in between the mogul's marriages. "Important beautiful women call him all the time," "Miller" told People.

"It was a chance for him to say that Carla Bruni and Madonna were interested in him," D'Antonio explained. "And if you want everyone to think you're a charming, dashing, and beautiful guy, maybe it's handy to have someone on hand who says that." (After listening to a tape of the People interview, Trump's ex-girlfriend at the time, Marla Maples, confirmed that John Miller was, indeed, Trump. Trump and Maples would later get back together, marry, and then divorce.)

Playboy magazine cover, 1990

To this day, the roots of the name "John Barron" are hazy, at best. Strangely enough, Trump named his third son Barron in 2006, long after he retired the fictional Barron. D'Antonio suggested the name may be a reference to Barron Hilton, the famous hotelier who Trump bought out in Atlantic City ("John Baron," of course, announced that deal). Another Trump biographer, Wayne Barrett, hypothesized that the name could hint at ancestral royalty for Trump, the grandson of German immigrants. "Maybe he thought he actually was a baron," Barrett joked to me.

Having a fake identity, however, does run in the Trump family. As it turns out, years before the advent of John Barron, Donald's father, Fred Trump, would call competing real estate companies in the middle of night, introducing himself as "Mr. Green," to score inside information that might benefit his business. The lie became a well-known "family practice"—a tradition, of sorts—according to Maryanne Trump Barry, Donald's sister.

"It was like 'John Barron' is for Donald," she told the Trump biographer, Gwenda Blair. "A name for an imaginary biographer who is really Donald. My husband says when he's joking that he's going to call and say John Barron's been given a subpoena, and then we'll see how quickly John Barron falls ill and dies."

We spoke to an expert to find out what would happen if Trump won the presidency.

Ironically, that's kind of what happened.

In 1990, Donald J. Trump took the stand to testify against charges that his company had knowingly employed—and withheld payments from—undocumented Polish workers during construction of the aforementioned Trump Tower. In court, the lawyer for the workers, John Szabo, said that he had received a call from someone who identified himself as "Mr. Baron," who threatened to sue him for $100 million if he didn't drop the lawsuit.

So, after years of secretly hiding behind the pseudonym, Trump finally had to explain himself. He admitted to the court that yes, he and one of his assistants had used the name "John Barron" in business matters. "Lots of people use pen names," he later told a reporter outside of courtroom. "Ernest Hemingway used one."

John Barron died that day. And once Trump settled down with Maples, his second wife, John Miller followed. As quickly as Trump's alter egos had appeared to the press, they disappeared into nothingness. But the groundwork—and the headlines—had been laid, powering Trump's celebrity, and his reality show of a presidential campaign, today. Looking back, John Barron was really just an early exercise for The Donald that America would come to know—a natural extension of Trump's uncanny ability to constantly be seen, including, but not at all limited to, his upcoming role as 'SNL' host. This is a man that has to live in the spotlight, even if he's the one tethering the cords.

"Donald seems, in retrospect, to have engaged in a kind of long con. He uses whatever he thinks he can get away with to manipulate other individuals, the press and country as a whole," D'Antonio writes in his biography. "He understands that the news cycle makes yesterday's statements irrelevant and that reporters prefer a snappy, exciting story to a narrative that is complex and impossible to distill into four words that would be plastered on a tabloid's front page."

"These are the conditions that allow hucksters to thrive," he continues, "which is all fun and amusing until we consider him in the Oval Office."

Follow John Surico on Twitter.

Cry-Baby of the Week: A Cop Got Upset Because a Store Was Selling Liquor Flavored Chips

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It's time, once again, to marvel at some idiots who don't know how to handle the world:

Cry-Baby #1: Claire McNaney

Ben Carson's Fake Life Story Ruined My Real Childhood

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Photo by Gage Skidmore via Flickr

For a generation of young black men born into chaotic poverty, Ben Carson has been an inspirationally boring father figure. My mother loves the guy, which means I've had to memorize more of his accomplishments than my own: A poor black boy from Detroit who became a Presidential Medal of Freedom winner, the youngest-ever division director at John Hopkins Hospital and the first surgeon to take twins conjoined at the head and separate their goddamn brains. He's even a cancer survivor. It sounds so exciting for a guy who talks like he freebases elevator music.

As Carson continues to rise in the Republican presidential polls, rational thinkers become more and more alarmed by his popularity. With every comment about pyramids and space aliens, every question about that "full scholarship" to West Point, every piece of evidence suggesting he may not have been the violent, misbegotten youth he claims to have been, those rational thinkers assume Carson will see himself out of the race, that wounds will close, no harm done. But my mom still admires him, and maybe the rest of America will too. And really, that's the thing about myths: they don't have to be true for people to believe them.

Carson nods agreeably as his followers call him kind, modest, soft-spoken—those adjectives are his manna. These are the adjectives you unlock when Johnson & Johnson turns your memoir into "a heartwarming true story" told in a TV movie starring Academy Award winner Cuba Gooding, Jr.

Heartwarming True Stories are modern myths, and Carson's is specifically targeted to single mothers. My own single mother was one of Carson's early disciples after buying Gifted Hands, his 1992 memoir (the one Johnson & Johnson adapted for the small screen). With its emphasis on the passionate discipline of Carson's mother, the book was basically The Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mom for black families.

Carson describes himself an unmotivated, angry young man who attacked people with "rocks, and bricks, and baseball bats, and hammers." Carson's single mother took away the family television and took a regimented interest in Carson's education. He became a surgical genius. My mother used this Heartwarming True Story as an excuse to stop paying the cable bill for seven years. I didn't end up becoming a surgical genius, but I did recently write a VICE article about my masturbation habits.

In the first chapters of Gifted Hands, Ben Carson was but a mortal black boy. In ninth grade, he claims, he stabbed his friend Bob for tuning the radio from his beloved classical music. "If he had not had that belt buckle on, he could've been killed or seriously injured and instead of realizing my dream of becoming a physician, I could've been on my way to jail." After that, Carson locked himself in a bathroom for hours like Muhammad in the Hira Cave. God spoke to him through the Book of Proverbs, and Carson emerged "a model to all the youth today" as Jesse Jackson blurbs on the back cover of Gifted Hands.

Jackson's sentiment is echoed in the fourth season of The Wire, when a black kid tells the class that, "I wanna be a pediatric neurosurgeon like that one nigga." While many black kids had hoop dreams by the time they could spell H-O-R-S-E, Carson's odyssey from poverty suggested education could similarly equal the playing field.

My substitute teachers were always supplied a VHS of the Gifted Hands documentary. Footage from Carson's famous surgeries glowed in our dark Orlando classrooms, classical muzak played from a boombox beside him. A patient's mother marvels at the successful operation: "He really took his whole skull apart, put it back together." In a later scene, a frail boy in a hospital bed has a jungle gym drilled into his head and copy of the Gifted Hands book lying in his lap. He can lift a Sharpie about two inches; Carson signs his book "Think BIG!"

Think Big: Unleashing Your Potential For Success, was published a few years later. The back cover summary is rousing: "This book is for you if you have no dreams at all." Prescribing self-help for the free world has become The Ben Carson Cottage Industry. His campaign raised $10 million in October alone. Compared to Donald Trump is a 1-800-number-yelling, get-rich-quick-schemer offering the American Dream from a yacht with his face on it, Carson's calm, collected crazy comes off like Marshall Applewhite of Heaven's Gate.

If Jesus died for sins of mankind, Ben Carson is a martyr for white guilt. When he accepted the NAACP's highest honor for achievement, Carson chastised its leaders, saying, "You're not doing enough. We need to help ourselves."

My mother is a good person—her wicked flurries of rage towards general groups of people don't come close to blemishing that truth. She is so filled with sincerity, love and compassion towards the world. So much of my childhood was spent picking up foster kids after school, driving them to every corner of Florida. She still picks up homeless people and helps them get wherever it is they're going. She still calls me just to read inspirational Chipotle cups over the phone. But she also left "Do I have HIV?" pamphlets in our bathroom for my gay brother to find, and would call the cops to step in as emergency father figures when she caught me watching violent or sexual TV programs.

This gets at the heart of Carson's appeal—when I look into his tiny, sleepy, drooling eyes, I still see compassion towards individuals, marred by fearful spite towards whole swaths of society he fails to understand.

"Alex my dear son," my mother tells me, "YOU are such a kind and modest person. YOU speak so eloquently. I'm proud of you." I nod along. I love these adjectives. At some point, while I wasn't looking, I became Carson's prodigal son. If I succeed in life it will just validate all the motivational Post-It notes and index cards my mother attached to every blank surface in the house. In her eyes, if I win, Carson wins too. It fucking sucks.

Recently, I revisited a Carson VHS video, in which he speaks to a class of black students—wearing a lab coat for whatever reason. He was preaching his mother's path, "She said we would be able to watch two or three pre-selected TV programs a week."

I showed the clip to my mom, saying, "His mom didn't take away the TV."

"Huh." My mom sat on this info for a second. "Well how about that. Maybe I didn't read the whole book or something."

Palms over my eyes, I was in disbelief. I had to laugh. Even if his book is full of half-truths, well, my mom only half-read it anyways.

Read more by Alex O'Keefe on his website.

Meet the Spider Species Whose Males Irreversibly Mutilate the Genitals of Their Mates

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Larinia argiopiformis, similar in appearance to Larinia jeskovi. Photo via Wikimedia Commons

If you didn't receive your November issue of Current Biology yet, you're missing out on a big, horrible story about sexual violence in spiders. Researchers at the University of Greifswald in Germany have discovered that the males of a particular species of orb weaver have a devious strategy for keeping females from mating again after they finish with them: They destroy a crucial part of their genitalia.

Read: Have Scientists Learned Anything from Giving Drugs to Spiders?

According to the paper "Securing Paternity by Mutilating Female Genitalia in Spiders" by various members of the University of Greifswald's zoology department, the species in question is Larinia jeskovi, a type of orb weaver.

Larina jeskovi spider sperm have a tough time accessing females and their eggs, so after mating, males have tricks up their sleeves for keeping other sperm from getting into the female. According to the paper, they insert a genital plug, they stand around scaring off other males, and they make females less attractive by transferring "manipulative substances" onto them. In contrast, the authors call directly damaging the female's genitals a "drastic" measure.

Outside the female's genital opening there is a protruding shaft called a scapus, and it's required in order for the male to latch on during copulation. Researchers found that something occurred during mating in which the male's genitals broke off the scapus, making it impossible for the female to mate again.

You're probably feeling like Werner Herzog right now, vis a vis nature:

But it's not just a handful of asshole spiders who do this; it appears to be standard. The report found that among spiders studied in the field, all of the females were without a scapus at the conclusion of the mating season.

However, before anyone goes on a spider-stomping spree, and targets the males of this particular species for being abusive and possessive toward their mates, it's important to note that this is just the one species where the behavior has been documented.

They suspect that this act of aggression might be common among other species of spiders with similar interlocking genital structures, but many of the genital-mutilating species just haven't been discovered yet.

Follow Mike Pearl on Twitter.

Comics: Some Friends Experiment with a Tricky Substance in Today's Comic from Armani Love


What It's Like to Be a Volunteer in Berlin During the Migrant Crisis

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All photos by the author

Last Sunday, we published a series of interviews with refugees who finally made it to Berlin after spending weeks escaping war-torn countries. While many had been through hell just to make it to Europe, some have found that their situations aren't much better in Germany: government bureaucracy combined with a lack of resources have coalesced into a nightmarish situation.

Thousands of refugees spend days on end waiting in line outside the State Office for Health and Social Affairs (LaGeSo) in hopes of getting assigned to a refugee camp or finding out when they can officially apply for asylum and German residency. Many of the refugees don't have places to sleep at night, and there is a serious lack of food, water, and medical resources for those who've found shelter at government-sponsored camps.

Many Berliners, however, are lending a hand and helping the refugees start their new lives. From volunteers distributing food outside LaGeSo to people opening up their homes for refugees to sleep in, every little act helps—but a lot more is needed. Photographer Alexander Coggin spoke with a variety of volunteers to learn what it's like to be involved in such a chaotic situation, what type of aid actually works, and what resources are still in short supply.

Kurt and Sabine, from Berlin

Kurt: It's getting worse every week. The numbers of refugees are increasing and the donations have been going down because after a few months, most people say they've given enough already. So things like blankets and sleeping bags have already arrived here and now people think that the government should take over and provide financial care for the refugees, but the support is not there. There is not enough accommodation, and there are at least 500 more arriving in Berlin every day, though the number is likely higher. There are between 30 and 100 volunteers every day. At the other camps, I have no idea, but there must be at least a couple thousand. Right now, we're in need of razors most. We get donations for women all the time—hygiene and cosmetic stuff—but roughly 70 to 80 percent of the refugees are male, so this doesn't help them.

Sabine: We also have a lot of private donations, but we need a real solution for this problem. A government solution. The donations are not enough and people aren't giving any more. We also have women who are pregnant and the accommodations here aren't enough. We need a lot more doctors, but they're not coming fast enough.

Carolina Waldner, 24, from Berlin

I'm working with refugees at LaGeSo. Sometimes I host refugees just for one night if it's an emergency. If they arrive too late at LaGeSo and the buses are already gone to the emergency accommodations, I will get a call from a volunteer coordinator. They may ask, for example, if five Kurdish guys can sleep at your place tonight, and then I say yes or no. There are other volunteers working as drivers, there are some who host refugees, there are some who organize the hostings.

Dirk asked on a Facebook group if anyone had space in their apartments, and I have an extra room. I was looking for a roommate anyway, but I wanted to host a refugee because I know how difficult it is for them to find an apartment. Even when they have all the papers and even when the job-center pays for rent, it's still really hard for them to find an apartment. I know refugees that have already gone to about 50 apartment showings and they only heard back from two. Some people told me that they even have to pay more monthly rent than Germans. Apparently there are some people that take advantage of other people's misery.

I've hosted people just for one night maybe four or five times. I started doing it in September. Once, while my sister was staying with me, 300 refugees showed up at LaGeSo with nowhere to sleep after the office was closed. My sister said she'd sleep in my bed and we should host people. I was hesitant because we didn't know these people. But we did it anyway and I haven't had a bad experience hosting anyone yet. For two girls to have five guys stay with them... you're on your own and it can be nerve-wracking to think about. The first night a Syrian man came to stay with me and he cleaned everything in the apartment. I was writing my bachelor thesis so he said, 'OK, you write and I'll clean the house.' We became friends and really supported each other while he stayed with me.

For more on the migrant crisis, watch the VICE News doc 'My Escape From Syria: Europe or Die'

Anna Alboth, 30, from Poland, lives in Berlin


I was here so I saw how people were sleeping on the ground. I talked with one of the refugees who I hosted at my flat and asked him what could be useful. I wanted to focus on one thing because I think it's difficult to ask people for everything. So I decided to ask people from Poland, where I'm originally from, to donate sleeping bags. When I started, I posted information about it on my travel blog and I was sure that some friends of mine from Warsaw or Kraków would help. But then people started to spontaneously help from different cities, which was super cool but very difficult to coordinate because all of a sudden I was getting 500 emails or more every day. People were trying to find out where in their cities they could help to drop off sleeping bags. I'm very old school so I don't use all the online tools. I had a big map on my wall with pins in it to highlight the cities we've been coordinating with. Maybe if I had time to plan it in advance then I could think of having a coordinator for south Poland or north Poland or something, but there's no time!

I had people put notes inside the sleeping bags for the refugees. Sometimes they were in Polish or English, sometimes people even wrote in Arabic. It was very important to me that the sleeping bags were a gesture of giving something that was very useful, but I also wanted it to be symbolic and have Polish people consider what they were doing. I was absolutely scared of the Polish reaction to the topic and I wanted to have people talk about it a bit.

So, after one week, I brought almost 400 sleeping bags to LaGeSo—which I thought was a ton—but there were over 3000 refugees waiting! I opened the doors and it was so emotional for me because that whole week I was feeling crazy about what was happening. I was crying when I was giving the sleeping bags out. It was just so emotional.

We've brought maybe 2000 sleeping bags so far. There was a small boy who got a sleeping bag and after he got it he brought it back because he found a letter in there and thought it was someone else's sleeping bag. Those moments are almost beautiful.


Aviv, 33, from Berlin

"I have many different roles here. I work in the children's clothing donation center. I work with the LGBT community. I find flats and housing for refugees, but also teach German and English at classes I organize. The most challenging thing I've come across while volunteering is that it's difficult to respond to people who come to the donation centers who are not really refugees, but rather very poor people who also want things. We have to send them away and try to explain to them how they have other options in Berlin and that we don't have the resources to help them. It's a complicated situation to deal with because they likely need support, too."


Adina Bier, 30, from Chicago

I'm the granddaughter of Holocaust survivors so it's absolutely unacceptable for me to just sit here and watch awful things happen to the refugees and sort of be on the sidelines. My perspective has always been that I'm an ex-pat, my German is not up to standards, so what can I do to actually help here? How can I teach or educate or bring people to all the different offices that they have to go to? I can't. I can't be their translator. So I was struggling with ways in which I could contribute and engage with the volunteer work for this crisis.

After I came back from this trip, I started looking at my options and trying to figure out where I wanted to volunteer and how. Within that time frame, a friend of mine posted that her company, Kayak.com, was organizing a collection. They were specifically requesting to collect for LaGeSo and they had a long list of things they needed. Without thinking twice, I thought, OK, I can do this. It's simple. I know exactly where the items are going; I know exactly what they need; I have my deadline. I just sent out a very small, friendly message to my community on Facebook and an email to maybe 20 people. I also sent it to my colleagues at work so that was another 30. Within a couple hours, I had about 400 responses, internationally and within Berlin.

Everyone was contacting me about what they can bring, when they can drop off, all of these things. So then my house instantly became a drop-off zone. People were just ringing my doorbell every hour, every half hour even, for four days straight. I had a team of friends that would come over every night and help me sort the donations. My entire living room and floor was covered, my couch was topped with bags and boxes. It was really impressive, actually. We ended up needing a much bigger truck than expected to pick everything up.

What I noticed, though, was that this is just the tip of the iceberg. This is the smallest nugget of things that one can do to volunteer and people were thanking me and supporting me. But for me it was like... this was just the start of something much, much bigger that needs to happen. I don't necessarily feel engaged yet.



Alicia Reuter, 38, from Pittsburgh

"I went hiking and backpacking alone for two weeks in Greece and was super disconnected from everything, including current events. I came back to Berlin in the middle of August and it was like this crisis had exploded. Within two days of being back I realized that things needed to be done. I still had time free in August before I had to get back to work, but I wasn't sure what I could do.

I did a ton of research but, still, I couldn't figure out what I could do or who I could help. Who was collecting clothing and who was taking food? One morning I just said forget it! and went to LaGeSo. Within five minutes I met a refugee woman there and her baby was not moving in her arms and looked unconscious. The woman had been carrying the baby for days so I helped get her milk and a baby carriage. Basically, from there, I just got thrown right into doing food-related volunteer work, including sorting food donations and distribution.

I would go LaGeSo at 8:30 or 9 in the morning and every day I would think I could go home and do a little bit of my own work by 2 PM. But at 5 PM I would still be there. I would think, There's just one more thing I can do. And then another thing I can do... Then another... But there are people volunteering who are way more hardcore than me in terms of commitment.

Volunteering is long-term. It's not just going to be this year or next year. This is going to go on for many, many years and people shouldn't burn themselves out or get to a point where you start to have hatred for the situation, you know? Which I've seen happen. We've all seen opinions change.


Below are links to organizations and initiatives trying to help the refugees in Berlin if you'd like to get involved.

For donations:
Clothes or monetary donations
German Red Cross
Refugee Phrasebook (for printing and organizing language bibles)
LGBT Refugees


To volunteer:
Volunteer Planner
Online translation volunteering
Information Guide
Flat Sharing with Refugees

For more of Alexander Coggin's work, visit his website here.

Everything We Know About the Thursday Attack on a Rikers Island Prison Guard

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On Thursday around 4:30 PM, Rikers Island guard Raymond Calderon was opening a cell in the New York City jail complex when he was attacked from behind, placed in a chokehold and knocked to the ground, the New York Times reports. Two other inmates then allegedly began what is being called an "unprovoked" attack on the officer, slashing him with a sharp object to "within an inch of his life," as Norman Seabrook, President of the Correction Officers' Benevolent Association (COBA), put it.

Calderon, who has been an employee of Rikers for three years, was taken to New York Hospital Queens in serious but stable condition where he received over 20 stitches according to the Daily News. He was released from the hospital the same night, the Department of Correction tells VICE.

Inmates Green and Whitfield are both teenagers—19 and 18 respectively. They are rumored to have gang ties, and are said to be members of the Bloods. Green is being held on homicide and robbery charges and has also allegedly been involved in two previous incidents with guards. Whitfield, meanwhile, is behind bars over attempted homicide and weapons charges in Brooklyn. The two were arraigned after the beating in the Bronx Friday morning and did not enter pleas during their appearance. They were ordered held on $500,000 bail on assault and other charges stemming from the attack.

Two other inmates, 19-year-old Joseph Ordonez and 18-year-old Dave Johnson, were awaiting arraignment Friday their own roles in the attack. As a result of the incident, the DOC is in lockdown as officials conduct a tactical search to root out all contraband.

"I am outraged by this horrific assault," New York City Correction Commissioner Joseph Ponte said in a statement to VICE. "Attacks against the hardworking men and women who serve in our department are unacceptable and will not be tolerated. I visited the officer in the hospital last night, and told him that we will do everything possible to support him and his family during this ordeal."

The attack comes just before sweeping reforms are set to take place at Rikers. Come January, teenage inmates will no longer be thrown in solitary confinement, officers will be limited in the types of physical force they'll be able to use, and thousands of additional cameras will be installed in the facility.

Advocates praise the measures being taken to help stop what the New York Times has called "the pervasive brutality" of the prison, but the men and women who work at Rikers fear they will leave jail personnel vulnerable to the type of attack CO Calderon suffered last night. They argue that the ban on solitary will be particularly ruinous, with one Rikers rep telling the New York Daily News it represents "a recipe for disaster."

"There will be a correction officer killed at the hands of an inmate because there is no penalty for what they do," Seabrook told CBS New York.

"On the eve of the release of new 'use of force' guidelines from the Department of Correction, which we were not consulted on, one of our members is laying in a hospital bleeding from multiple slash wounds to his head and face," Seabrook wrote on COBA's Facebook page, which keeps a running count of how many COs have been splashed with urine and/or feces in the last 24, 48, and 72 hours. "Our members face life and death danger every single day when they walk into work, and incidents like this are exactly why we need to be a part of these policy discussions. It is an outrage that the lives and safety of brave Correction Officers like this young man do not seem to be a priority."

The reforms approved two weeks ago by federal judge Laura Taylor Swain are a result of Rikers's record of systemic abuse and brutality against inmates, particularly teenagers. The rampant abuse savagery against detainees was documented last year in exhaustive investigations by the TImes and the Department of Justice.

While this year hasn't exactly been pretty at the facility, with 83 more staffers getting attacked than in 2014, major incidents resulting in serious harm to guards and other officials are down 15 percent, according to the Daily News.

"Safety is our top priority and we will continue to take every step to ensure the safety and security of our staff and inmates," Ponte told VICE in the statement.

Follow Brian McManus on Twitter.

Why Is America So Fascinated with the Booze Famous Mobsters Drank?

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Image via Wikipedia Creative Commons

Prohibition is a natural lode for pop culture to mine—you've got booze, gangsters, police officers, and violence, and any number of easily romanticized figures. Decades later, people still get intoxicated on the very notion of mobsters and martinis; last year, Al Capone's cocktail shaker sold for $75,000 at auction.

In a new book by Scott Deitche called Cocktail Noir, the true crime writer explores the bonds between booze, organized crime, and fiction. Over the course of 256 brisk pages, Deitche delves into the drinking habits of both real and imagined characters, plus the writers who celebrated them, including Chandler, Dennis Lehane, Patrick Downey, and T.J. English.

The author grew up watching old gangster movies and reading mafia books as a kid. After seeing Goodfellas, Deitche decided that he wanted to start researching and writing about gangsters. After a stint freelancing for AmericanMafia.com and some local weeklies in Florida, Deitche put out his first book, Cigar City Mafia, in 2005 and has published six others since, focusing on mobsters like Santo Trafficante Jr., Eddie Trascher, and Mark Silverman. We called him up to talk about the drinking habits of mobsters and iconic noir characters.

Image courtesy of Scott M. Deitche and Perfect Paperboy

VICE: What inspired you to write this book?
Scott M. Deitche: I wrote a spirits column for Cigar City Magazine for a couple years and my agent suggested I put together a project on the favorite drinks of writers. The original idea was a book called Literary Libations. My agent shopped it around and it didn't get a lot of traction, so I wanted to retool it.

I tweaked the idea to focus on the favorite drinks and bars of crime writers and gangsters, partly because most of the authors I know write about crime. From there, I thought adding in real life gangsters was a natural progression, as well as drinks featured in gangster movies and classic film noir. I also reached out to some of the big names in the cocktail world to talk about the renewed interest in the scene.

What was the most unique or quirky drinking habit from one of the real-life mobsters you cover in the book?
It's funny because many gangsters' favorite spirits are hardly top-shelf. A lot of them like Cutty Sark. But others, like John Gotti, had favorites that were over the top. Many of the gangsters drank wine, while the Manhattan was always a favorite. Undercover FBI agent Jack Garcia had some interesting observations from his time with the Gambino family, like how mobsters always order drinks by brand. They never order just a scotch and water. It would be a Cutty on the rocks or Johnny Walker and water. It's not a vodka and tonic; it's Gray Goose.

And no one ever drank out of a straw. That was a big no-no. Gus Alex, a political "fixer" for the Chicago Outfit, had a liquor collection in the early 1960s that he estimated was worth over $2 million. Charles Carneglia, a Gambino hitman, was described in court as a "crazed uncle who guzzled bottles of Cutty Sark while waiting for calls to commit murder or dissolve corpses in acid in his junkyard."

How did you research for this book?
Research-wise, this was fairly similar to how I approached my mob books. I interviewed experts in the field, this time the field being cocktails. I also interviewed some ex-gangsters and a lot of crime writers, both mystery and mob authors. I visited some of the hangouts and dug through a lot of old FBI reports and surveillance logs looking for info on what a lot of these wiseguys drank and where they drank.

I also poured through FBI files looking for mentions of cocktails and drinks of gangsters, so in addition to some of the usual suspects—Al Capone, Meyer Lansky, Lucky Luciano—I have some interesting tidbits on lesser-known gangsters like Vito Giacalone and Russel Bufalino. I also talked to some ex-wiseguys like Frank Calabrese and John Alite to get their input on the libations favored by wiseguys.

Since the book has loads of cocktails recipes, I also mixed lots of drinks... for research, of course.

A lot of the noir writers were heavy drinkers themselves. Did their characters mirror their real-life drinking preferences?
Some of the great crime/noir authors imbibed as much as their literary creations. Raymond Chandler's legendary private investigator Phillip Marlowe solved cases while downing Old Forrester whisky and giblets. Chandler himself would occasionally find creative juices in the bottle, writing the screenplay to the noir classic The Blue Dahlia over eight days, surviving on little more than whiskey and glucose injections from his doctor. Dashiell Hammett was another drinker whose literary characters reflected his propensity for the bottle, most notably Nick and Nora Charles, who were rarely without a martini in hand.

I heard a lot of interesting stories including how moonshine is made in prison. I learned a lot about spirits I was unfamiliar with. For example, Benedictine, a French herbal liqueur is now one off my favorites. I also spoke with some of the giants in the cocktail industry like Dale DeGroff and Derek Brown. They opened up some of the history of cocktails in the US to me. It's interesting how intertwined cocktails, pop culture, and US history are.

What was the vibe at the speakeasies where the mobsters hung out?
There are still some historic gangster bars around. Places like the Cruise Room in Denver, the Anchor Bar in Detroit, Dino's on the Vegas Strip (which used to be Ringside Liquors), the Green Mill in Chicago, and, as expected, a lot in New York City, including Neir's. There are definitely some well-known mob bars across the country that were once big hangouts.

Why do you think America is so obsessed with criminals and what they drink?
It's no secret that America has long been fascinated with gangsters, especially in pop culture. I think that the 1920s to 1940s era evokes a lot of specific nostalgia—gangsters, nightclubs, jazz—that all center on good cocktails. That's coupled with the renewed interest over the past ten to 15 years in not only old-school cocktails, but liqueurs and spirits that haven't been available in America for years. Plus, a huge surge in inventive new cocktails. As spirits author Kara Newman says in the book, we've rediscovered the recipes and ingredients of so many, like crème de violette, so we can experience those drinks firsthand and not just read about them. At the same time, bartenders have invented a canon of new classics. It's hard to characterize a decades-long evolution as just a fad.

Cocktail Noir is out now via Perfect Paperback. Get a copy here.

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The Long Love Affair Between 'Saturday Night Live' and Politics

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From Giuliani's post-9/11 appearance to McCain's non-use of sex puns, 'SNL' and politics go hand in hand. Screencap from 'SNL' promo. Courtesy of NBC

Tonight, when Donald Trump hosts Saturday Night Live, we can expect jokes about how his xenophobia has endured despite his marriages to Eastern Europeans, his ill-fated attempt to trademark the phrase "You're fired," his brand new feud with John Oliver, his Scrooge McDuck–like lust for gold, and his inability to pronounce the first letter in the word huge. And hey, get a look at his hair!

According to the GOP presidential candidate and reality-show star, he vetoed a couple of "risqué" sketches, so the chances that the show will have much edge are pretty much nil. But his mere presence on the long-running sketch show has already generated a lot of controversy: Activists have called for SNL to "dump Trump" because of his anti-immigration views, and a Latino group has offered a $5,000 bounty to any audience member who will yell accusations of racism at the host.

Since SNL debuted in 1976, politicians have descended onto the late-night institution in one of three capacities. An elected official might be impersonated by a celebrity (Larry David's Bernie Sanders) or, more typically, a cast member (Norm Macdonald's Bob Dole, Will Ferrell's George W. Bush), unless he or she is available for a brief cameo (Ralph Nader, Mike Huckabee) or, even rarer, a hosting gig (Ed Koch, Jesse Jackson). 2016 Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton stopped by the show a month ago, where she played a bartender named Val opposite her ferociously ambitious doppelgänger, Kate McKinnon.

Trump himself previously hosted SNL in 2004, back when he was merely the overlord of The Apprentice—but that was just a bit of corporate synergy, considering both shows are on NBC. (After Trump's inflammatory comments about Mexico, the network pulled him off the show and later replaced him with Arnold Schwarzenegger.)

Trump is a controversial guest, but American politics has always been a part of SNL's DNA—whatever the political landscape turns out, the show rolls with. The first impression of a government official occurred in episode four, when Chevy Chase was cast as then-president Gerald Ford, "committing all manner of trips, flails, and lurches," as the New York Times recounted. The Ford Administration responded to the parodying by sending press secretary Ron Nessen to host an episode that included a taped clip from President Ford. Chase's impersonation is still one of the show's most enduring, along with Tina Fey's take on Sarah Palin during the 2008 campaign. The all-time MVP of SNL political impersonations is Darrell Hammond, the show's longest-running cast member (1995–2011) and current announcer. Hammond, who Michaels dissuaded from pitching original characters so he could focus exclusively on learning to imitate public figures, played Bill Clinton as a sly dog, Al Gore as a stiff bore, John McCain as a seen-it-all war hawk, and Dick Cheney as a robotic crank. At times, the line between parody and reality blurs—politicians are campaigning when they appear on the show in attempts to make themselves seem likable, relatable, or funny, and former SNL writer/performer Al Franken is now a senator from Minnesota. The show is such an important platform that John McCain and Sarah Palin appeared on the show less than 55 hours before polls opened on election day in 2008—not that that last-minute schtick helped them win over voters.

Far and away the best appearance by a politician on SNL came in the first post-9/11 episode, when then New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani opened the episode alongside the firefighters and police officers who had responded when planes hit the World Trade Center. "Even as we grieve for our loved ones, it is up to us to face the future with renewed determination," Giuliani said. "Our hearts are broken but they are beating, and they are beating stronger than ever." Then showrunner Lorne Michaels asked Giuliani, "Can we be funny?" to which he replied, "Why start now?" relieving all the tension in the room. It was a human moment that was bigger than either comedy or campaigning.

I was in the room with McCain as preparations were underway for his previous guest spot that May. It was the final day of my internship at SNL, where I'd spent 36 hours a week for the previous four semesters. On that spring Saturday afternoon, SNL's writers were still deciding how to best utilize the presidential candidate. Every episode of SNL begins with a "cold open," a sketch that ends when someone breaks the fourth wall and shouts, "Live from New York, it's Saturday night!" It is considered an honor to be the person who looks into the camera and formally introduces the show. Since McCain was running for president (and many writers had fond memories of collaborating with him when he hosted six year previously), initially he was going to deliver the famous tagline.

SNL's scripts often align with the calendar, and a graduation sketch seemed apropos for the last episode preceding a summer hiatus. Thus the cold open took place on commencement day at the Pounder School for Students with Special Needs, an academy where no one dares "tease you because you have a funny name." This meant the show about three dozen extras to play graduating students, and the group group included everyone from then-SNL writer and future Weekend Update co-anchor Colin Jost (as Harry Charles Wombus) to myself (as Eileen Dover). During that afternoon's run-through, Senator McCain portrayed the Pounder School's principal, tasked with enunciating a litany of shoehorned sex puns. Perhaps McCain felt uncomfortable uttering euphemisms about masturbation and cunnilingus, for he instead appeared seated at a desk in front of an American flag later in the episode, leaving commencement duties to host Steve Carell, and the show went on.

On Broadly: 'Shooting Guns with Ann Coulter':

It might seem odd that Trump would have similar worries about appearing presidential—after all, here is a man given to say things like, "I have a good relationship with the blacks," and "If Ivanka weren't my daughter, I'd perhaps be dating her." But as the campaign goes on and he remains near the top of the polls, the Donald has become more of a traditional candidate, commissioning ads and hiring staff. People may be upset by what they see as SN's legitimizing of a candidate with some odious views, but the show didn't make Trump popular—America did that. And whatever the political climate of the country is, it's SNL's job to point at it, and laugh.

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Saturday Night Live airs tonight at 11:35 PM EST.

Comics: Ghost Girl Spends a Day at the Beach in Today's Comic from Ines Estrada

What It Looks Like to Pray at JFK

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It seems strange that you'd find religion in the middle of an airport—but hold on. Aren't airports spiritual voids, immense storage facilities of ennui and confusion and lost souls? Don't they feel everyone's throat with a sense of rising panic? Doesn't the near-future mild dystopia aesthetic make you feel like something undefinable has gone wrong in your life? Doesn't that make an airport the perfect place to find God?

According to PEW, more than half of the nation's "large hub airports" (airports that handle 1 percent or more of the nation's annual passenger boardings) have some sort of designated worship area—mostly Protestant and Catholic chapels, but a few scattered mosques and Jewish temples. New York's JFK Airport is one of the few that has a full complement of Abrahamic houses of worship, all tucked away behind the check-in at Terminal 4. There's Our Lady of the Skies Chapel (Catholic), Christ for the World Chapel (Protestant), and International Synagogue (Jewish), and JFK International Islamic Center (Muslim).

Apart from regularly scheduled masses and prayer gatherings, people come here as time allows—baggage handlers and TSA staffers trickle in during breaks, passengers stop by during layovers, nervous flyers make pit stops for a last-minute Hail Marys.

Imam Ahmet Yuceturk of JFK International Islamic Center told me the mosque is a necessity for Muslims. "Within the airport, or any facility, if the management doesn't provide a chapel, Muslims will still pray. It's that important to us. Our daily prayers are kind of like connecting your cell phone to the WiFi. It's getting that connection—connecting with God so you can remember your faith. It's not part-time.

"Just like there's bathrooms and food in every terminal, prayer is just as important," the imam added.

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The War on Drugs Could Be Making Our Communities More Dangerous

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12205 Imperial Avenue in 2009. Photo courtesy of Melvin Smith.

When 11 corpses were discovered in and around the Cleveland home of Anthony Sowell in the fall of 2009, there were some 4,000 untested rape kits being neglected by local cops. The deranged rapist and murderer was stopped, but his case exposed the stunning mishandling of missing persons and sexual assault cases in the city, a problem advocates argue has festered nationwide as the war on drugs has sucked up public safety dollars that might otherwise have gone toward putting rapists and killers behind bars.

"Sexual assault just isn't at the top of the agenda," says Ilse Knecht of the Joyful Heart Foundation, a sexual assault victim advocacy group.

She's not the only one calling for a redirection of resources.

"We've been advocating that money be made available for robbery units, homicide units, sexual crime units," said Neill Franklin, director of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, a national coalition of former police officers and criminal justice reform advocates. "How about using some of that money to analyze the rape kits that are sitting on shelves waiting to be looked at?"

Reporters for the Cleveland Plain Dealer discovered the untested rape kits not long after Sowell was arrested, and their reporting has resulted in the conviction and incarceration of over 100 rapists. But the sex crimes unit in Cleveland continues to be sub-par, at least by the standard of a 2013 audit from the Police Executive Research Forum (PERF), a non-profit law enforcement research group.

As of 2013, there were 13 Cleveland Police detectives handling nearly 1,400 sexual assault cases—which included child abuse, rape, and attempted rape—according to the audit. That means each detective was responsible for well over 100 cases annually. Three other detectives were looking at cold cases and a 17th was assigned to the crime lab. The PERF audit suggested the city add four new detectives to the beat, but a police spokesman told the Plain Dealer's Rachel Dissell in May that there were now 16 total detectives, with just two on cold cases.

In other words, Cleveland Police decreased the number of detectives investigating sex crime over the past three years, rather than adding several more as auditors insisted.

In addition to calling for more detectives, the PERF audit also suggested the sex crimes unit to be staffed from 10 PM to 8 AM, because, auditors said, one third of sexual assault reports are filed during that time period. Yet the city quashed the third-shift staffing recommendation, and as of the May editorial, hadn't released specific staffing numbers to the local newspaper of record.

Cleveland doesn't face this problem in isolation. Major police departments across the country are confronting similar deficiencies in their sex crimes units. Charlotte, Jacksonville, Kansas City, Portland, and San Diego had a combined backlog of 9,090 untested rape kits as of mid-May, according to the Joyful Heart Foundation. As the group noted in its May report, "Few states and no federal agencies require that law enforcement track or count the untested rape kits in their storage facilities." Nationally, there are likely hundreds of thousands of rape kits waiting to be tested, and the Joyful Heart Foundation has found more than 21,000 untested kits in nine of the 27 cities it has collected data on so far.

"There really is an issue in terms of figuring out what the real number (of untested rape kits) is," Knecht said. "Police just aren't tracking them. The evidence log in some cases could be a spiral-bound notebook."

Worse, according to Franklin, is that many violent criminals are repeat offenders.

"Most of the people who commit those crimes—the robberies, the murders, and the rapes—they do it over and over again," Franklin told me. "But those units don't have the money and they don't have the man hours to effectively investigate those crimes."

Statistics on internal spending among law enforcement agencies are glaringly hard to come by, making it difficult for lawmakers, police departments, and reformers like Franklin to determine what's working and what isn't. "It begins with keeping the proper amount of data," Franklin said. "Let's stop the business of fear mongering, and let's start using data."

The most recent data for internal spending at the Cleveland Division of Police was not immediately available, and a public records request filed by VICE had not been fulfilled by the time of publication.

Watch 'The Cleveland Strangler'

When crack developed a foothold on the streets of Cleveland and other American cities in the 1980s, it had a "devastating effect," according to Wilbert L. Cooper, Sr., a retired Cleveland cop who is also the father of one of VICE's Senior Editors. The spike in homicides related to the drug—murder rates for young black males more than doubled between 1984 and 1994—flooded televisions and newspapers, triggering an immense public outcry

"I think a hysteria grew up around it that led to a lot of mistakes," Cooper, who reached the rank of sergeant after 30 years on the force and retired in 2011, told me.

The early years of Franklin's career, meanwhile, were spent running narcotics task forces for the Maryland State Police. He busted major drug dealers, scooped up low-level users, and believed strongly that he was helping the communities he served. But eventually, his perception of the drug war began to change. The final straw for Franklin came when a close friend was killed during an undercover drug deal.

"That is when I really made the turn," Franklin wrote. "That's when I decided to make my views public."


Photo by Wikimedia Commons user Petty Officer 2nd Class Connie Terrell

Since his time as a narcotics unit leader, the look of those units responsible for enforcing America's drug war has changed dramatically, according to Franklin. Gone are the backwards hats and dangling badges of cops busting up drug houses; now, SWAT teams are often used to execute search warrants and conduct raids. One case in particular that sticks out in Franklin's mind is the that of a man whose home was invaded by a SWAT team on a tip that a single marijuana plant was growing in the backyard. The officers were dressed in war garb, toting automatic weapons, and barking orders before the man inside the home even knew what was going on.

"That's one of the most dangerous environments you can create, not only for the people in the home, but for the officers involved in the raid," Franklin told me.

In previous decades, a squad car would be parked out in front of the target-home, letting those inside know that something was coming. Cops identified themselves verbally and with their badges, and only used force to enter the home if the residents refused to comply with commands. Now, police regularly use battering rams, smoke and stun grenades, heavily armed SWAT teams, and "no-knock" search warrants, to conduct raids, Franklin said.

The use of SWAT teams for no-knock warrants is more expensive than the more low-key alternative, but the exact dollar amount has proved tantalizingly hard to decipher.

"We know how much it costs to fly a helicopter," Franklin said, "but we don't know how much it costs to deploy a SWAT team."


Photo by Wikimedia Commons user Dennis Mojado

Sowell, the serial killer who raped and killed without detection for years in Cleveland, was eventually convicted for the murder of the women whose remains were found in and around his home. But it's entirely possible that somewhere in the trove of Cleveland rape kits, police will find more of Sowell's victims. That's because of the more than 4,000 untested kits the Cleveland police finally submitted for testing by mid-2014, 275 rape suspects have been identified.

"Rape kit testing costs anywhere from $500 to more than $1,000," said Knecht, of the Joyful Heart Foundation. But because Cleveland hasn't disclosed what its police spend on enforcing drug laws in recent years—and because VICE's open records request wasn't fulfilled at press time—it's difficult to tell how much more is spent in that city on fighting the drug war and seeking justice for rape victims.

The FBI notes that Cleveland police reported 482 rapes in 2014—far lower than the number cited in the PERF audit. (This is because reporting requirements aren't mandatory, according to Knecht.) And while the FBI's Uniform Crime Report doesn't break down drug arrest for the city, it does note that there were more than 36,000 of them throughout the state of Ohio.

In addition to processing those more than 400 rape kits from 2014 and however many have been reported this year, the Cleveland Division of Police is also charged with investigating the 106 homicides that have occurred in the city in 2015, which is already an increase from last year's total.

"Violence has clearly gone up," said Khalid Samad, a community activist who has worked to mediate gang conflicts on the streets of Cleveland since 1987, most recently under his organization, Peace in the Hood. "These young people are emphasizing robberies and home invasions and car thefts."

And they may be more reckless than their predecessors. Gangs like the Heartless Felons are marauding around Cleveland and settling scores, according to Samad, and they're doing so without the leadership of the hierarchical gang structures from the crack era.

In the 1960s and 1970s, we were solving nine out of 10 murders. Now, in some places like Baltimore, it's more like three out of ten. – Neill Franklin

Other cities are experiencing a rise in violent crime, too. As of October 18, Chicago police had counted 385 homicides, approaching the total of 411 from 2014 that the department cited in response to an open records request I filed in May. The same goes for Charm City, which has surpassed its 2014 total of 211 by tallying well over 250 murders this year, according to the Baltimore Sun.

Franklin and other reformers are disturbed by the recent uptick in homicides, and are pushing for more resources to go toward preventing the killings and achieving justice for the victims and their families.

"In the 1960s and 1970s, we were solving nine out of 10 murders," Franklin said. "Now, in some places like Baltimore, it's more like three out of ten. Federal dollars that are going to law enforcement agencies need to be reevaluated, pulled back from drug enforcement, and redirected toward preventing and solving violent crime."

The families of the 11 women killed by Anthony Sowell would almost certainly agree.


Can New York Save Itself from Out-of-Control Rents?

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Photo via Flickr user Jeffrey Zeldman

New York City has a problem that isn't unprecedented or unique, but it's undeniably a problem: Too many people want to live here. As a result, the vacancy rent has dropped to 1 percent in Manhattan, and the average price of a rental in that borough is higher than it's ever been. Brooklyn is now the least affordable housing market (relative to income) in the entire country, and rents have risen in Staten Island, the Bronx, and Queens as well. Luxury condos have transformed neighborhoods like Williamsburg into glassy wastelands, and chain stores are taking over as independent bodegas are driven out.

Mayor Bill de Blasio was elected partially on the promise that he'd reverse the Bloomberg-era trend of of anything-goes development. A proposal from the mayor calls for the construction of 80,000 units of affordable housing and the preservation of another 120,000 units. Most of those units would come as a result a policy called "mandatory inclusionary zoning," which forces developers of large apartment complexes to set aside up to 30 percent of their units for lower-income residents.

Questions remain about whether this plan will work, or if it'll work well enough to counteract the waves of gentrification washing over New York neighborhoods. Activists say allowing developers to build in previously poor areas like East New York and the South Bronx, even if many of the units are affordable, will encourage even more gentrification. And some experts wonder whether de Blasio's inclusionary zoning mandate will be sufficient to address the housing needs of all New Yorkers.

Related: Why New Yorkers Love New York

Nearly every city in the country that's grappling with gentrification and rising prices will have to face these same issues; if New York can successfully navigate them, other municipalities will surely follow the de Blasio model.

To learn more about the city's housing crisis and the proposed solutions, I spoke to three experts with different perspectives on the issue: Alicia Glen, New York Deputy Mayor for Housing and Economic Development; Matthew Lasner, associate professor in the Department of Urban Policy and Planning at Hunter College; and Shatia Strother, the lead organizer at FUREE (Families United for Racial and Economic Equality), a Brooklyn-based activist group fighting gentrification.


Public housing in Brooklyn. Image via Flickr user Mike Steele

Alicia Glen, New York Deputy Mayor for Housing and Economic Development

VICE: Is the city in a housing crisis?
Alicia Glen: Yeah. I'm not usually prone to one-word answers, but yeah. We're in a full-blown housing crisis. It's not like this city hasn't had housing crises before, but I think it's different . I often talk about the housing crisis when I was growing up in the 70s and 80s, which was a crisis of disinvestment and shrinking neighborhoods, and the discussion around whether or not we should do massive urban renewal and clearing out. The issue there was less about affordability and more about the housing stock and neighborhoods.

We sort of have the opposite problem now, which is that NYC simply does not have enough housing and there's a growing disconnect between rents and incomes. So that's like a double whammy, right?

You have all of these people like you and my kids who can't live in the neighborhoods they grew up in. Is that so terrible? I'm not so sure that it is. My grandparents didn't live in the neighborhood they grew up in either. Change isn't per se bad. The biggest issue is not that you guys can't live in the Village anymore, it's that you may not be able to live anywhere. So that, to me, is a big differentiating factor.

But isn't there a kind of domino effect? If I can't afford to live where I grew up and move somewhere else, won't I make that area unaffordable for someone else?
Is that a bad thing, though? It used to be quite the opposite, right? It used to be people didn't want to live in the city center. If you build amazing neighborhoods with transit and good schools and connectivity why would you want to live in the cacophony of downtown Manhattan? My answer is it's very complicated and that neighborhoods change. And I think it's already a value statement to assume that it's bad if people move into other neighborhoods that are further away because that just runs afoul of the history of the world.

Sure, but have you heard anyone say, "Thank God, all these people are coming in and kicking us out of our apartments?"
Well, I've never heard of anybody that's been kicked out of their apartments saying, "Thank God," but I've certainly heard people saying, "Thank God my neighborhood isn't the shitty crap-hole it was 25 years ago, when I couldn't walk down the street and I couldn't buy a quart of milk." I think we need to differentiate between people who are being displaced because of bad behavior versus the fact that neighborhoods change. It's complicated, but a lot of neighborhoods have changed for the better.

People being illegally evicted from their buildings is against the law and we will not tolerate it, but that is different than neighborhoods that were historically filled with just New York City Housing Authority housing and other very, very low-income housing. We're saying as a policy matter we'd like to see a healthier mix of uses and incomes in these neighborhoods.

Watch our documentary on London's own housing crisis, 'Regeneration Game':

But I think people get mad when all this change happens and they don't seem to have control over it. Things are rezoned, their neighborhoods change, some of them can't afford to stay.
The reason why so many people are pissed is that they have been conditioned to the fear of change. I don't like it when my dry cleaner changes ownership. It pisses me off because I've known those people for years. It stresses me out. I don't like change. But change is inevitable and so how you shape the future is incredibly important as opposed to letting it wash over you. Because it's coming.

One of the things that fundamentally differentiates that is you have to build affordable housing or else you can't build a building. No other city in the country has ever done what we are doing. So when some developer comes in to, say, Prospect Lefferts Gardens or wherever and says, "I want to build a 25-foot tower and I might need a zoning change in order to get it," they can't build that building then unless they build affordable housing. It's a fundamentally different contract with the community. The other option is to let the market go roll right over you.

Growth is happening anyway. We've spent two years of our blood, sweat, and tears trying to figure out how we marry a really smart mandatory inclusionary housing policy with our capital budget so that we're doing the kind of infrastructure improvements that we need in the neighborhoods that are experiencing growth. Why are we fighting tooth and nail for transit improvements in New York City that connect neighborhoods? Why are we insisting that Citi Bike is put in neighborhoods where there's no demonstrable market demand for it? Because we want the city to be inclusive and grow at the same time. We have to bring those equity principles and overlay them.

"Do I wish we had more money to invest in housing? Of course. But we also need money to invest in our schools and our roads and our parks."

OK, but even with all this stuff, gentrification is still happening, people are still being pushed out.
We have certain tools in our municipal tool box. We can't change the entire history of capitalism and we're not Trotsky. You try to redistribute some of that growth to the people that need it. We could have also just said, You know what? Let's just let the housing market run rampant like it has been for the past ten years and sort of throw up our hands. We did quite the opposite. We could have said, "Let's not take another stab at fixing the New York City Housing Authority." That's not like a sexy, fun thing to do with your day, trust me. And instead we threw ourselves into it. I mean, no one in their right mind would do that.

We can't control everything, but the differences we make actually really matter. It's not just in the margins. Tens of thousands of families who actually will be in better shape because of the battles the mayor's chosen to wage.

Do you think what you have in your toolkit is enough?
There's never enough. Do I wish we had more money to invest in housing? Of course. But we also need money to invest in our schools and our roads and our parks. Do I wish that the federal government would issue an incremental Section 8 voucher so that people coming out of the shelters can afford housing? Of course I do. Do I wish that the federal government had a more thoughtful approach to the mortgage interest tax deduction so that we could reallocate money into housing for renters and not just subsidize owners? Of course I do. We don't have all the tools.

Matthew Lasner, Associate Professor in the Department of Urban Policy and Planning at Hunter College

What do you think of de Blasio's housing plan?
Matthew Lasner: Certainly it's more ambitious than earlier plans. It's certainly not the most ambitious ten-year proposal for housing in the region ever. It doesn't envision more housing, say, than was built in the 1950s under Mayor Wagner, when we saw hundreds of thousands of units between the federal public housing program and the New York City Housing Authority. We saw a tremendous outpouring of subsidized housing production in that area. The historian in me cocks an eyebrow about these things, about de Blasio saying how large his plan is.

The other piece that disappointed me a little—and I understand why the administration didn't tackle this in the plan—is that affordable housing requires more subsidies. The subsidies can come from the city, to a degree, but the city has never been able to pay for these kinds of programs on its own, and there's no reason why the city should pay. New York City gives millions—billions—of dollars to Albany and Washington to support highway construction in Georgia and Kansas, and some of that money should be coming back in the form of cash grants or zero-interest, long-life mortgages for below-market housing. And it's not.

In that sense, the plan that de Blasio produced was really coloring within lines. It didn't really set up a political agenda for trying to do what previous generations of leadership work successfully did, which was go to Albany and go to Washington and say that conditions in a big, dense city like New York requires subsidies, ones the city itself can't provide.

Well that gets to a larger issue though: We fight gentrification as if it's a local issue, but really a lot of this is out of our control. There's no money from the feds, there's no regulation from Albany.
I don't want to say that a mayor, that even the mayor of New York City, doesn't have any control over the situation, but I would agree that this is a much larger issue. If the mayor of New York City cannot solve a housing crisis—which is really just a product of laissez faire capitalism—then it doesn't bode well.

That said, again, you go back to the 1910s, the 1920s, the 1930s, 40s, 50s, and it was housing activists and politicians by and large from New York City who made the argument for a federal housing program, for a state housing program. From that perspective, I would say that the potential for change does rest on the shoulders of local actors. It's a much larger issue the mayor can't solve on his own, but the problem can't be solved without the mayor taking a very strong role in making a case for a national and state support for affordable housing in New York City.

"The market-based solution has done a good job to a degree, but it's never going to solve the problem."

What do you think about this kind of market-based solution to housing—allowing lots of private development as long as it includes some affordable housing?
That's kind of the solution that we've come up with since the 1970s, since the start of the demise of public housing. The market-based solution has done a good job to a degree, but it's never going to solve the problem. There's only one way to solve the problem, just as there's only one way to solve the problem of income inequality. It's through redistribution of wealth at the federal level. And the mayor can't redistribute wealth in that way. So, again, the mayor can sort of set the dialogue and serve as an advocate. To me, that's perhaps the single most important thing that a New York City mayor can do.

Image via Flickr user Dan DeLuca

Shatia Strother, Lead Organizer at Families United for Racial and Economic Equality

Why do you feel like it's your responsibility to fight gentrification?
Shatia Strother: On a personal level, I've been able to visually see my neighborhood change and also emotionally see my neighborhood change. Bed Stuy has always been a very tight-knit community, has always been predominantly populated by people of color from various backgrounds. We have a rich culture, a rich history here of arts, activism, community engagement. More recently I've noticed that it's under attack.

A lot of the new residents who move here don't have roots here, don't have a true connection to the neighborhood, and are not interested in integrating themselves in the culture. I've seen instances where folks come here and create their own atmosphere without any regard to what already exists, and it's a complete disrespect to the neighborhood that I know and love. So that's a personal thing. Also, I've watched the rents increase here to such a degree that many people who've been here for so many years and so many generations like myself are finding it harder and harder to afford to stay. My family has been fortunate enough to be able to continue to live here, but I don't know what the future holds, so we're living in this constant state of uncertainty.

What did you think when de Blasio was first elected? Did he represent hope after the Bloomberg era?
Like a lot of other people, my optimistic side tried to think, "OK, let's see how this goes." He ran on a platform of eliminating the whole "Tale of Two Cities" idea; he touted himself as someone who was interested in truly bridging the gap and truly changing the city so that it not only accommodated wealthy and affluent residents, but was inclusive and supportive of low-income and moderate-income communities. They always say hindsight is 20/20. Since then, it has been my observation that de Blasio's plans and strategies are less about meaningful change and are starting to, in a lot of ways, mimic Bloomberg's plan.

He has changed the ratio in a lot of development with inclusionary zoning to be instead of 80/20 to be 70/30, so that's a diversion from Bloomberg's plan. But otherwise, I think it's just another version of this general American idea of the trickle-down effect. I think in order for any kind of real meaningful change and shift, we need to get out of the idea that supporting and encouraging the rich will somehow trickle down to the rest of us.

"I think that in order to change the political and economic and social climate of not only our city but our nation, we really have to change the entire the capitalist system, but we're not there yet."

Alicia Glen talked a lot about how the growth of the city is kind of inevitable, so we need to figure out how to deal with the consequences, such as higher housing prices. How do you feel about that?
Economic growth is a wonderful idea if that economic growth is targeted to low-income and moderate-income communities because, of course, no one wants to stay poor. But gentrification doesn't have to be inevitable. As it currently stands, it is because of the policies that are in place, in terms of the way real estate developers control politicians and that government and have a big say in how policies go down. But that doesn't have to be the case.

I think we oftentimes become very complacent and comfortable with the status quo, which makes it very hard for us to think outside of the box and to think of solutions that don't just perpetuate existing realities. Poverty is a socially constructed creation, and we need to address the underlying causes of poverty in these communities. Affordable housing is great, and it's absolutely necessary, but it's not enough. I don't think that addressing poverty should include opening the doors for white affluent residents to move into communities of black and brown folks, and then praying and crossing our fingers for some trickle-down effect that'll never come.

We should be investing in quality schools for communities because as we know education is a major component in the economic makeup of neighborhoods. We should support small businesses and encourage ones that are owned by community members and employ other community members. We should be offering and making sure that there are measures for homeowner stability and support in low-income communities. And community boards, while they have some control over things, definitely don't have as much control and power as they could in things like land-use review or rezoning processes. That could be something that definitely addresses concentrated poverty.

Right, but those are all issues that can't necessarily be addressed by just a mayor. It would basically mean living in a socialist country.
I definitely don't think that all of that burden and all of that responsibility or power should lie with just the mayor. I think that's a systemic issue. One mayor cannot enact all of that change. I think that oftentimes socialism has a negative connotation. Somehow socialism has been translated mostly into this idea that society should just support lazy people who sit on their butts and collect benefits, but that's not true at all. When we talk about a socialist society, what we're saying is that we should uphold, uplift, and prioritize people over greed, over money, over this idea that we need to step on each other in order to achieve success.

In terms of from an organizing perspective, I think that our role is helping to facilitate a change in that dynamic of powerlessness and figuring out strategies and ways that communities can reclaim power, agency, and determination for their own communities because oftentimes we negate the existing knowledge in communities. Community members are the experts in how their communities should be run, but they're not giving that room and that opportunity.

East New York is a perfect example of how this is playing out. The government is not paying attention to what the community is saying, and there are loopholes in the inclusionary zoning law. We're really at a critical point where we either have to make a very radical shift in the way things go, because if not, if the city is allowed to bulldoze through East New York and it's going to set the stage for the rest of the city and other neighborhoods who are in similar circumstances.

Do you think New York can be saved from gentrification?
I think that New York could be saved, but there's a caveat. I think in order for that saving to happen, there needs to be some significant and deep searching and deep introspection into how we go about doing things. I think that in order to change the political and economic and social climate of not only our city but our nation, we really have to change the entire the capitalist system, but we're not there yet.

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Getting Behind America's Anal Sex Fetish

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On 18 May 2011 , the prolific dominatrix-turned-pornstar Asa Akira sent her Twitter followers one brief, but provocative message: "Ass is the new pussy."

Although Akira was not the first to utter this smutty axiom, the tagline has been pegged to her name. That may have made it easy for many to dismiss the concept as nothing more than a shocking, perhaps self-promotional assertion by a savvy performer sometimes known as porn's " Ass Queen ." But the starlet wasn't just blowing smoke out of her buttocks. She was channeling a growing and convincing body of data on the inexorable rise of heterosexual anal play in America.

We can actually track the rise of heterosexual anal sex over the past quarter century thanks to your tax dollars. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has released a series of studies in which they asked huge groups of people the same nosey questions about their sex lives— including whether men had ever put their penises "in a female's rectum or butt" and if women had experienced a man putting his penis in their rectums (or butts) . In 1992, 20 percent of women and 26 percent of men aged 18 to 59 had reached fifth base with an opposite sex partner at least once. In 2005, the figure was 35 percent of women and 40 percent of men aged 25 to 44. In 2011, it was 39 percent of women and 44 percent of men aged 15 to 44. In some smaller age subgroups, the prevalence of anal experimentation was even more common.

The CDC didn't ask whether people had heterosexual anal sex on the reg (probably because it's hard to measure what "the reg" means), experimented with other forms of anal play, or tried male-recipient butt stuff. The best numbers we get regarding frequency are studies that look at what proportion of people had heterosexual anal sex in the last year, or the last time they had sex, which is a weak proxy at best. But it give us a sense that recurrent hetero butt sex is on the rise as well as one-off experiments.

A 2010 study also suggests that experimentation with wider forms of anal play may be even more common than experimentation with anal sex amongst heterosexual couplings. Among its subjects, 43 percent of women and 51 percent of men surveyed in heterosexual couples copped to testing out anilingus, anal fingering, or anal toy play at least once. A 2008 study suggests that at least some self-identified heterosexual men are receiving anal pleasure as well (mostly fingering, some anilingus). We have no good data to compare that to in terms of trends. But given the taboos against men receiving anal play, any male-receiver experimentation seems, anecdotally at least, like a pretty big sign of the times.

Pop culture's gotten wise to this trend over the past few years, showcasing anal play in mainstream shows like Broad City , Girls, and How to Get Away with Murder and how-to guides in mainstream publications like Cosmo, Ebony , and GQ. An inevitable deluge of think pieces have followed, pinning this sexual trend on everything from anal sex's overrepresentation in porn to widespread social liberalization . Some spill cartridges of ink, decrying heterosexual anal sex as a painful fetish foist upon women (especially those looking to keep their vaginal virginity intact, but still eager to be sexual or please a man), while others write tomes on how to have good heterosexual anal sex and play.

Yet for all that we've collectively bickered, raved, and railed about this widely acknowledged trend, almost no one's investigated what America's changing anal inclinations have meant for the sex market— namely brothel owners, pornographers, and toy manufacturers . To find out, I reached out to a few makers and shakers in the sex industry to get a quick look at how America's smut mongers have responded to the rise of hetero anal sex.


Art by Peter Johann Nepomuk Geiger via Wikicommons.

PORN IN THE HETERO ANAL-ERA

According to Pornhub, the king of dirty search data, the heterosexual anal revolution correlates with exactly the trends you'd imagine. Anal-related porn searches still represent less than 10 percent of all queries on their site. However, anal is a more common term among straight content searches than gay ones and its pervasiveness in hetero searches is rising rapidly. Pornhub crunched the numbers for VICE and found that between 2009 and 2015 , anal-related searches increased by 120 percent in America. That's significantly higher than the 78 percent increase in anal-related searches globally. The increase was steeper among male than female users, but anal-related tags were still the 18th most searched most searched terms among the site's female clientele.

(As a side note, Pornhub's investigation found that users aged 18 to 24 are actually 33 percent less likely to look for anal content than users aged 35 to 44, which is unexpected given how often we talk about hetero-anal as a young person's game. But that 18 to 24-year-old demographic is 290 percent more likely to search for My Little Pony porn than any other age bracket, which is certainly its own can of worms.)


Image by Paul Avril via Wikimedia Commons

Yet, despite this clear demand spike, and the excitement a first-time anal scene can generate for a female performer, anal-focused heterosexual videos make up a small portion of the market. A Pornhub investigation last year revealed that just 7 percent of their straight content has an "anal" tag on it. And it doesn't seem like porn studios are making any notable move to increase the volume of anal-focused content they create.

"I don't think the overall production has gone up," says Holly Kingstown, the editor of Fleshbot and a fixture of the adult industry since 1999 who's held every job possible save actress. "In your talent pool, there are still a certain number of girls who will do . And how many of that scene can you do with that girl?"

"There are performers who are willing to do it," possibly due to industry pressures and consumer demand. "But in terms of the quality, when you're talking about DVD sales..." she adds, before pausing briefly. "You can get a crappy internet scene or two out of a girl, but if she's not really good at it, you're not going to get that too many times. And when you're talking about a girl who does it just to get a scene, it's usually not going to be a girl who loves it or does it very well. So she's not going to get that much work."

Kingstown does believe that there's more consumption of the anal-focused content that already exists. But the absolute number of anal-focused titles available for consumers is fairly static.

Watch ' The Biggest Ass in Brazil'

What has changed, says Kingstown, is the tone and packaging of the anal porn that gets made. Towards the early 2000s, when Kingstown was still working at Buttman Magazine, she and a her colleagues realized that more couples, versus angry men looking for painal (grimacing girls , visibly suffering an un-lubed ass-ramming), were exploring their content. Adjusting to this mass market, pornographers shifted to portraying anal as pleasurable and normal versus painful and sick, which had apparently been the norm for the bulk of anal porn content up to that point.

"You still see the stuff where you'll see a woman called an 'anal whore.' But you also see the tone overall to be a bit more... I want to say woman-positive," says Kingstown. "For example, I'm looking at my desk and I've got James Deen Loves Butt here. This isn't James Deen Loves Sodomizing Little Girls and Making Them Cry . That title would sell too, but to a whole different audience. There's Anal Warriors, where women are shown as strong and powerful and in control of the sex that they're having. There's a whole ton of these kinds of movies where the women who enjoy anal are shown as strong and powerful."

But even if movies today portray anal sex as pleasurable, they still don't paint it realistically. They don't focus on the time and preparation most (s)experts agree good anal requires . They often show a ramrod, angled experience that wouldn't be pleasant for more than a few women in the world. Of course, a lack of realistic sexuality is a chronic problem in all niches of fantasy-driven porn.

We're seeing a lot more prolapses. We're seeing double anal. It used to be five anal scenes, done, not four anal scenes and a double penetration. They can go further, so they do. –Holly Kingstown

This pleasurable-looking anal, says Kingston, is now treated like a run-of-the-mill aspect of porn rather than a specialty act. Whereas in the past, you might stuff all your anal content into one niche film, nowadays directors think nothing of nonchalantly inserting an anal scene into a larger project. The overall amount of anal content remains the same—it's just not as clustered into niche markets and individual movies. Yet, as anal becomes a normal part of heterosexual porn for a wider audience, a small audience craving painful or extreme porn, for whom anal is now too passé and mainstream, has started demanding more physically taxing and (Kingston believes) potentially dangerous ass play acrobatics from the limited actress pool.

"You see a lot more circus stuff than you used to," says Kingstown. "We're seeing a lot more prolapses. We're seeing double anal. It used to be five anal scenes, done, not four anal scenes and a double penetration. They can go further, so they do. And physically, there's only so far that you can go with your body ."


Photo by Jamie Tate

SEX TOYS IN THE HETERO-ANAL ERA

"Anal sex has always been a frequent topic of conversation with our customers," Claire Cavanah, co-founder of Babeland, told VICE when we asked for data on anal-related sex toy sales. The Seattle-based outfit with three outlets in New York is often hailed as one of the most accessible and acclaimed sex toy shops in America—a profile that lends it a large consumer base. "The 'How to Have Butt Sex' content on Babeland.com is the number one viewed piece of our content. It has almost double the number of eyes on it as the 'How to Give a Blow Job' article, which is the second most viewed . We don't have data before 2009, but it's always been number one."

A Babeland survey of 18,412 customer respondents in 2009 (not a reliable sample, due to self-reporting issues, but still one of the better pieces of data you can find on this subject matter) also found that, 60.5 percent of men and 40.1 percent of women had tried using a butt plug, 56.8 percent of men and 31.7 percent of women had tried using an anal dildo, 51.8 percent of men and 29.2 percent of women had tried using an anal vibrator, and 37.4 percent of men and 27.8 percent of women had tried using anal beads.


Screen shot of Babeland.com

Yet even with a high baseline of anal interest, Babeland has seen an increase in anal-related sales. Between 2012 and 2015, the genre averaged about 5 percent growth per year. As of 2015, Cavenah estimates that such toys, specifically made with anal in mind, make up about 16 percent of Babeland's sales.

What's more significant to Cavenah and company, they say, is how they've witnessed the tone and level of openness their customers use when talking to them about purchases and proclivities evolve. The hushed voices and seedy aura customers once took into transactions has faded away. And as people get more open, comfortable, and explicit with their anal sex toy needs, toy makers have responded to their feedback with a deluge of new, specifically anal-targeted sex toys , including smaller models marketed towards anal beginners. Babeland's also noticed more luxury anal sex toys coming onto the market—products made of metal or glass, substances with higher price points—which suggests the emergence of a fair number of swankier, less bashful customers.

"We've definitely seen a shift in more interesting, innovative, and high-quality butt toys from some of the leading sex toy companies," says Cavenah. "Je Joue debuted a remote-controlled vibrating prostate stimulator this spring. Anal toys come with vibrators, apps, and magnetic resistance that creates a pulsating sensation. There are also lubricants, such as Sliquid Sassy , that are marketed specifically for anal use."

Watch 'Buttloads of Pain'

Although researchers have not done much study on the growth of male interest in receiving anal play, Babeland apparently sees newfound curiosity reflected in the growth of male-targeted anal toys, some designed with heterosexual couples in mind. They're actually among the fastest evolving and growing varieties of sex toys on the market today, according to Cavenah.

"Pegging has become more popular for sure," adds Cavenah. "Strap-ons for straight couples have been on the rise for years now. The notable statistics lie in the increase in prostate toys . Whereas seven years ago, only four of the toys we could offer were specifically designed for prostate stimulation, now 45 percent of the anal toys have prostate stimulating capabilities. Good news for anyone with a prostate!"

BROTHELS AND SEX WORK IN THE HETERO-NAL ERA

As in the sex toy industry, heterosexual anal play has long been a feature of the sex work world. Dennis Hof , the notorious client-turned-owner of Nevada's 60-year-old legal Moonlite Bunny Ranch bordello, believes that the traffic in anal at his establishment is often an extension of men wanting to try something new or do something the women in their lives wouldn't embrace. Although anal has always been on the menu, Hof and the women at the Bunny Ranch say they too have seen a marked spike in the demand for butt sex over the past couple of years. The rise has come in the form of men who want to fuck girls in the ass, men who want the ladies there to lightly stimulate or rail them in their own asses, and men who want both.

"Anal business in the last couple of years has tripled," says Hof. "We stock all kinds of butt plugs now. We have all these anal toys—lots of silicon lubes. We buy strap-ons by the gross because the girls are always using strap-ons on the guys."


Photo via BunnyRanch.com

"It's just as popular as a BJ now," adds Caressa Kisses, whom Hof calls one of his most popular girls (who will do anal fingering or fuck a guy with a strap-on, but doesn't do anal sex herself). "A lot of guys, they want anal. Both . Just anal play in general. It's up."

Perhaps surprisingly, Kisses says that the rise in men asking for ladies to anally stimulate them has been much more stark than the rise in men seeking women amenable to anal themselves.

"I'd say every sixth email I get is for me to do anal on them," she says. "And every 15th to 20th is for me. be an anomaly. There'd be that one guy who just wanted to get freaky. But now it's really common... They want it performed on them more so than on me."

Kisses has been getting a ton of requests for pony plugs, small butt plugs with horse tails coming out the back, both for her and for men to wear during sex.

These clients ask for anything from a woman putting a finger up their asses to stimulate their prostates during sex to the use of vibrators (and especially vibrating eggs) in play and sex to strap-on adventures. Kisses actually notes that she's been getting a ton of requests for pony plugs, small butt plugs with horse tails coming out the back, both for her and for men to wear during sex. These demands came out of the blue, but she now gets four or five a month, which you can't help but think might tie back to Pornhub's rise in brony porn searches.

Men don't tend to tell Kisses or her fellow sex workers why it is they've suddenly decided to explore anal stimulation themselves. Kisses notes that men who ask for anal these days tend to be a bit older—40 to 60 years old—so she thinks they may just want to try something different that they've started to hear about more and that they might not know how to talk to their partners about, or may not want to do with their spouses or girlfriends. Whatever the reason, this rise in interest tracks fairly well with the rise in male-focused anal toys Babeland's seen in recent years. And Kisses, for one, seems happy to meet this demand with an a stiff, strap-on dick.

THE FEEDBACK LOOP OF ANAL SEX


Photo by Charlotte Rutherford

The rise of heterosexual anal sex in American life is the product of a host of factors, from evolving social norms to the media we consume and the products sold to us. It's hard to say exactly how much of an impact the sex market, as just one zesty ingredient in that cultural stew, has on our collective and idiosyncratic bumpings and grindings. But it's somewhere in the interplay between what's offered in this market and what people actually do in their bedrooms that makes up our culture of sex. As we've begun to open our asses to new toys and different types of play, businesses have responded with even more offerings, which in turn are making it even easier for more people to start talking about and exploring anal sex. If you're one of those folks preparing to take their first ride down the poop chute, just remember not to take all your cues from porn; lube up nice and good.

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Riots Erupt at an Australian Detention Center Over a Refugee's Death

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Image via

Guards at the Christmas Island detention center have reportedly abandoned their posts following the outbreak of riots today. The disturbance was triggered by the death of Kurdish-Iranian detainee Fazel Chegeni on Sunday. Mr Chegeni had recently escaped the center before his body was found at the bottom of cliffs by Australian Federal Police officers. The cause of his death is currently unknown.

The Immigration Department hasn't released any details about how the riots started, but reports from individuals inside the center have begun to form a picture of the escalating events. Detainees were allegedly called into a meeting and told that Mr Chegeni's body had been found "in the jungle" and he had been dead for "some time." According to Christmas Island shire president Gordon Thomson, the news triggered panic. When a detainee attempted to ask a guard for more information, he was punched in the face.

New Zealand detainee Lester Hohua detailed the situation to the ABC, saying it went "haywire" and people were ripping panels off the walls because "nobody wants to be locked down anymore." He added that the officers were allegedly forced to leave the center.

The report of guards fleeing was corroborated by Ricky Downs, another New Zealand detainee. He told ONE News that guards had "freaked out and left" as fires broke out across the property. Explaining the scene now he said, "There's not security, there's no response team, there's not border control, no guards."

About 40 New Zealand citizens are housed in the center facing deportation from Australia.

At this stage, it's believed that the canteen has been burned down and fences and walls have been demolished in some parts of the center. Despite this, an anonymous male detainee told the ABC detainees weren't fleeing because "we've got nowhere to go."

Since news of the riots broke out, the Refugee Action Coalition have released additional information about the man whose death triggered the response. Fazel Chegeni had been detained for five years, and was found to be a refugee two and a half years ago. While housed in the Curtin detention center, he was involved in a fight between detainees and charged with assault. He was briefly released in Melbourne, but re-detained after a few months because of his previous assault charge. He had been at the Christmas Island detention center for 10 weeks and had reportedly told others he could no longer stand being in detention.

Refugee advocate Pamela Curr was in touch with Mr Chegeni when he was in detention and during his time in Melbourne. She described him as a "gentle man" and told The West Australian that before coming to Australia he had been jailed and tortured in Iran. She also said his previous assault charge was unfair, as he'd only been defending himself during an attack.

This morning, spokespersons for the Department of Immigration and Border Protection's said they're working to resolve the situation and are "committed to providing a safe and secure environment for detainees, and maintaining the good order of detention facilities." They've confirmed they will refer any criminal offenses onto police. They have also maintained there have been no injuries and the perimeter was secure, but would provide no further comment. They wouldn't confirm whether or not guards had abandoned the center.

Fazel Chegeni's death will be investigated by a coroner.


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This Is Your Sex on Drugs

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"A lot of people use a lot of different drugs," Matthew Johnson, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Johns Hopkins University, recently told VICE. "And a lot of people have sex. You name the drug, and someone says they love having sex on ."

If you've ever spent any time in a club, on the internet, or at college, you know Johnson's onto something. Most of humanity likes to get freaky. And from the moment we figured out how to burn, ferment, or otherwise synthesize mind-altering substances, from alcohol to cocaine to LSD, we've found ways to incorporate them into our sex lives, expanding and refining the raw pleasures that come with having sex.

Given how long—and often—humans have mixed drugs and sex, you'd think we might understand the two pretty well by now. But as Johnson—who runs clinical trials testing narcotics' effects on human behavior—can attest, drugs affect us all a little differently. Some have a direct pharmacological impact on the way we experience the world, while others affect our brains so dramatically that their impact on sex is a total crapshoot. They can open us to complete ecstasy or lead us to make risky, dangerous decisions that can negatively impact our health and the well-being of our partners. They can even play a disturbingly crucial role in the sexual assaults that happen all too often across America.

It's important that you have some information on what you're getting into before you jump into the sack or a bathroom stall with a baggie full of something. To help you out, we've trawled through drug enthusiast forums, combed over what limited studies exist, and consulted as many people—from casual tokers to psychonauts, from amateur enthusiasts to doctors and psychiatrists—as we could to put together this rundown of all the info that's out there about humping high on drugs.

All illustrations by Carly Jean Andrews

Alcohol

Booze is probably the most commonly used drug for initiating or enhancing sex. Going by some studies , alcohol may be involved in over half of all sexual interactions in America, at least among young people—although we don't know if it's always used for inebriation or just social lubrication. Predictably, stories of sex and alcohol are a dime a dozen. Some anecdotes suggest that casual drinkers get a boost in sexual interest, arousal, or orgasm, while others detail problems with all of those.

"It doesn't appear that people actually enjoy sex more ," Johnson tells me. "It's probably just the disinhibiting effect. Their social anxiety that usually comes along approaching a partner is taken down. Or suggesting a sexual practice that you wouldn't usually suggest, particularly with a novel partner, made easier as well."

Much of what we experience while drunk is a manifestation of expectations. If we expect to get turned on and fuck, we will likely fulfill that prophecy for ourselves.

A buzz can make it easier to talk about desires freely and openly, or help someone feeling pain due to stress and tension to loosen up and find pleasure. For most people, that's the effect of a few drinks over the course of an evening. Consume more than that, and you can start running into trouble.

Alcohol, especially when consumed in large quantifies, dampens not just your inhibitions, but also your long-term decision-making processes, drastically increasing your chance of having unprotected sex. Its impacts on your brain, nervous system, and body can cause erectile dysfunction in men and dulled sensations and delayed, difficult orgasms for men and women. (Some couples actually like this, since it helps them deal with premature busting or similar issues.) The dehydration caused by booze can also make it difficult for a woman to get wet, which can turn the other way and make sex more painful.

At the most benign level, beer goggles are a very real phenomenon. At the most malignant, alcohol plays a huge part in sexual assaults, coercions, and rapes, by inhibiting self-awareness and consent.

Cocaine and Amphetamines

You've probably heard a ton of stories about coke or meth-fueled sex parties over the years, perhaps involving disgraced politicians. That's because amphetamines and cocaine are among the few hard narcotics with truly aphrodisiac qualities. And according to Steven Shoptaw, a UCLA professor and psychologist of substance abuse, some amphetamines are used across demographic lines as well, which is unusual for most drugs. He tells of bikers, sure, but also housewives, eager to keep up their sexual appetites despite their chores and childcare duties, who turn to crystal and hard white.

Many accounts of cocaine sex throw around words like animalistic or invincible. This can be seen in The Casual Sex Project (CSP), a series of testimonials NYU researcher Zhana Vrangalova is collecting to study experiences of sex outside of mainstream, monogamous relationships. One subject, "Aslan," a 34-year-old married woman in Panama writing about a recent one-night stand, described having sex on cocaine as follows:

" raw gritty sex w/ a beautiful stranger. It felt surreal almost. Then the reality of the effects on my reputation, possibility of pregnancy and stds started to hit me a bit."

Yet some people talk about these drugs as mere tools that help them stay awake and focused. While others see them as turn offs or attribute their erectile dysfunction to them. It's a dizzying diversity of opinions, but the raw science of stimulants suggests that the vast majority of people popping, snorting, or injecting them will experience sex-heightening highs.

According to Soptaw and Larissa Mooney, also a professor of substance abuse issues at UCLA, amphetamines blast our brains with dopamine, the pleasure chemical, and norepinephrine, a stamina booster, making us feel incredibly positive, energized, and focused. But they also alter the way we make decisions and can lead to an over-emphasis on personal desires and short-term outcomes. The drugs increase our heart rates and blood pleasure, which can enhance physical sensation, yet they also often delay orgasm.

There are slight differences in the effects of these drugs. Coke generally fades within an hour, while meth can last as long as 11 or 12 hours. But they generally make you feel like a sex god—everything seems amazing and you can have sex longer than usual.

"People will have these experiences where they'll just fuck and fuck and fuck, but they won't come," Shoptaw told VICE of amphetamine sex marathons.

These drugs come with common sexual and non-sexual risks as well. By encouraging rough or marathon sex, they can lead people to push their bodies unto bleeding and chafing. Coupled with a lack of sleep and a decreased assessment of risk, the drive to get any sex as quick as possible makes coke-, meth- or pill-sex a great way to contract a disease.

In the long-term, usage of these drugs can lead to "coke" or "crystal dick," which is to say a limp cock. But more troublesome is the potential of powerful amphetamines to ravage your pleasure receptors, killing your sober sex life—not to mention your overall capacity to experience joy without a hit, a problem sadly not unusual among habitual meth smokers.

Watch 'Stoned Kids'

Weed

After alcohol, pot is probably the second-most common drug used in the bedroom. And just like with booze, stories of blitzed banging are both common and diverse. Some people describe weed as an aphrodisiac, making them harder, wetter, and more sensitive, or a relaxant, loosening things up . Others call it a downer that depresses their interest in sex. Despite varied tales, studies on cannabis and copulation suggest that the majority of users experience positive effects when pounding on pot.

"Generally, two-thirds of most experienced users report some sort of sexual enhancement," Mitch Earleywine, a psychologist studying cannabis at SUNY Albany, wrote to VICE. " that men thought they were more attentive lovers after using the plant, and most folks thought that it enhanced orgasm and increased general arousal and responsiveness."

There're a lot of theories thrown around about the neurochemical adjustments weed makes in our brain to achieve that. But at its core, weed increases sensations, which can augment or dampen sex drives, depending on our mental states and environments when blazing.

As Earleywine explains,"Cannabinoids modulate amygdala reactivity to stimuli in general, and the amygdala has a lot to do with any strong feelings, especially sexual ones. In a sense, cannabis can make the amygdala interpret average stimuli as more fun and sexual than they might seem otherwise."

As anyone who's had a bad high can attest, weed can also magnify fear and depression, and cause paranoia. This might wind up putting you off of sex, or distracting you from a sexual impulse. It's also worth noting that some studies correlate chronic usage with decreased fertility and erectile dysfunction, which can make for a shitty time for everyone.

Desperate anti-pot activists have recently tried to label marijuana as a new date rape drug. Although weed does alter the mind, it doesn't seem to increase risky sexual behaviors like alcohol or amphetamines. And considering pot across the country is getting more formal regulation, for many lovers out there, it probably offers the best balance of safety and reliability on this list.

However, due to a lack of research and their idiosyncrasies, the jury is still out on the effect of synthetic cannabinoids, which we do not recommend under any circumstances.

Molly

Going off of the dozen or so stories of MDMA-fueled casual sex in the in the CSP database, you might think molly, a unique drug that shares qualities with amphetamines and hallucinogens, was just another raw, gritty, sense-enhancing stimulant aphrodisiac. Consider the tale of "DJ," a 30-year-old man in Connecticut who used three points of the stuff to enhance sex with a booty-call he met on an adult friend finder-type website:

"There was one point in the night when I felt like we were in another place and time and nothing mattered except the pleasure of the moment. It truly felt amazing. The night started around 7 PM and we didn't stop making love until about 7 AM."

That sounds like an amphetamine marathon. More tender than meth sex, maybe, but still a marathon. And in some studies, half of the users researchers talked to said they'd experienced an increased sex drive, reinforcing the drug's stimulant connections. But that doesn't actually make much sense given the pharmacological properties of MDMA.

"Pure MDMA produces euphoria and feelings of empathy in most people," Karen McElrath, a professor at Fayetteville State University and an MDMA researcher, told VICE. "A number of individuals who use pure MDMA will experience feelings of emotional closeness (even with strangers), which can include sensuality, although without the desire for penetrative sex."

Both McElrath and Zvi Zemishlany, a professor at Tel Aviv University and the author of one of the studies linking MDMA to stimulant-esque experiences, suggest that people's hot-and-heavy E escapades are often the result of impure pills or powders—or mixing it with other drugs.

Some people still try to use pure MDMA's empathetic qualities to enhance sex. But more often than not, the drug's sexual impairments, from drive decrease to erectile dysfunction, win out. As long as it doesn't cause anxiety (which it can), MDMA is better suited to spooning than plowing.

It's worth nothing that it's not clear if this emotive-sensitive property extends to MDMA variants—e.g. synthetic cathinones like MDPV (a.k.a. bath salts), which are often sold as MDMA on the street.

As McElrath explains,"Synthetic cathinones have been linked to sexual arousal, although this relationship is seriously under-researched. Clearly, the synthetic cathinones contain amphetamine-like properties and much like other stimulants, they might enhance sexual desire and extend sexual activity" and carry similar risks, too.

Watch 'Getting High on HIV Medication'

Hallucinogens

Psychedelics and dissociatives (a wide class covering everything from DMT to LSD to ketamine to PCP) are among the most subjective and unreliable drugs on the market. Just look at accounts of LSD sex: "Matthew," a 33-year-old guy from Austin, Texas, recounts the tale of a particularly horny trip at age 16 in the CSP database that makes it sound like a straight aphrodisiac:

"I hit on every female b/c I could smell the lust if I was only able to catch their eye... hips and pulled her closer to my lips then stop then I would start again as a teasing flirtationship was playing out in front of both of our groups . Im sure they were saying something but we were in our own world ."

But to other users, LSD is too distracting, the trips too weird, to get into a sexual vibe.

The same is true of psilocybin, a.k.a. shrooms. Some describe them as creating a primal, almost amphetamine-like lust. Others describe them as being more like pure, cuddle-inducing molly. That was the case for " Anna," a 35-year-old woman in the South recounting a trip when she was 18 in the CSP database. Mushrooms made her feel closer than ever to a boy she'd never had feelings for before, but they didn't impact her physical drive or ability.

You could show the same variability for every dissociative or psychedelic out there, whether it's DMT or ketamine or peyote or PCP. These drugs are united by one thing: unpredictability.

According to Johnson and Michael Kometer, a neuropsychologist of altered states studying psychedelics and consciousness at the University of Zurich, much of this has to do with the massive effect these drugs have on the human brain. Each one hits slightly different receptors. LSD hits wide, making it especially unpredictable. DMT hits hard, so you'll most likely be too immobilized and far out to have sex. And PCP and ketamine hit our deep brain, making them uniquely destructive and risky—they can stop your breathing, for instance. But for all their little variations, they all touch a few of the same spots to loosen up our thought patterns.

"We have more to learn and verify about this, but it seems that they kind of pull the self-identity out," Johnson says. "You could think to it as a more unconstrained form of consciousness... That can result in panic and anxiety at the loss of ego boundaries and confusion. it can lead to ecstatic states of intense feelings of unity with the universe and everything."

Depending on who you are, where you are, and what state of mind you're in, you're going to have utterly different hallucinogenic sex experiences. It's all entirely idiosyncratic and impossibly under-studied. But based on what he's seen in psilocybin studies, Johnson suspects that ego-loss can lead to a type of empathy that's especially useful for rekindling romance and finding new sparks and connections in long-term couples. That suggests you're probably more likely to have good psychedelic sex with someone you're comfortable with, not someone you just go into a trip desperately trying to bone.

You're more likely to have a positive hallucinogenic hump if you become a psychonaut first, learning what substances, dosages, and settings work for you over time. For those who want to mix shrooms or ketamine with sex right off the bat, remember that small doses are key , you're more likely to be sexual towards the tail end of a trip (based on anecdotal evidence collected by Kometer), and you're more likely to enjoy yourself in a setting of comfort and safety.

Nitrites

Commonly known as poppers, nitrites are probably the drug with the most direct link to sex on this list. Despite some back-and-forth with regulators, it's usually legal to buy poppers so long as sellers give them a euphemistic name, so it's no wonder there are so many vivid stories of sex on nitrites floating in the filthy ether.

Poppers can relax your body, and are said to often give you a brief but intense rush , making you feel extremely horny. An unnamed, 19-year-old non-binary individual in New York speaks to this relaxing property on the CSP in a tale of sex with a 41-year-old man the teen met on Grindr:

" offered me poppers... which I could feel relax my body, making more tolerable."

Meanwhile "Peter," a 33-year-old white man in the United Kingdom, mostly straight but engaging in a sexual experience with another man and using poppers for the first time, focused on the intense flush and rush to the head he experienced in his tale in the CSP database:

"The feeling was so intense, I thought my head would explode and it was as if we were both possessed by something. We went at each other and I felt like I wanted him so badly I would die if I didn't . It was really intense and overpowering... I can't really remember much more after this for the next few minutes as I just came over so hot and felt enormously horny."

Although that sounds extreme, poppers are physiologically very simple. Most often amyl nitrites, but sometimes solutions of isobutyl, cyclohexyl, isopentyl, or isoamyl nitrites, poppers are vasodilators—substances that relax your blood vessels. More important for sex, they relax not just blood vessels, but all soft tissues, including the anus and sphincter—a combo that has historically made them great for anyone interested in butt sex.

Poppers can be especially unsafe if they're not properly stored. They can also burn if they splash on your skin, and they're flammable as hell. They pose risks for people with certain medical conditions, and although their stackable, strategic pleasure effect mixes well with many drugs, it's very risky to mix them with erectile dysfunction treatments because the added blood pressure drop can cause anything from a temporary fainting spell to death depending on your health. Not to mention that more relaxed anal can also mean rougher anal, leading to tears and bleeding, making it easier to catch a disease.

Shoptaw also cautions users that not all poppers on the market today are even nitrites—which is to say, be careful about what you put in your body, people.

Opiates

Opiates, a class containing heroin and a number of painkillers and sedatives, are perhaps the least sexy category in this primer. That makes some sense, considering opioids are fueling the nationwide increase in overdose deaths. The only account in the CSP database to seemingly include any type of opiate came from a 32-year-old woman from Seattle who hooked up with a surfer on a vacation to Oahu after suffering a mild injury—then promptly fell asleep on him after accidentally mixing painkillers and alcohol. Anonymous accounts from wider drug websites likewise talk about opiates as things that take away your sex drive, make it impossible to achieve orgasm if you do have sex, and more often than not just lay you out in a total stupor.

Opiates are among the least-studied narcotics when it comes to sex because, according to Johnson, their use in intercourse is so rare as to be a negligible population-wide phenomenon.

"They're in a different class than the classic sedatives like barbiturates," he says. "But at the gross level, they're sedating. Someone's more likely to get drowsy and nod off , and you've got to be awake to have sex."

Adds McElrath, "A large proportion of people who are dependent on heroin tend to experience low sex drive even among short- and long-term sexual partners."

This seems to be linked to the pharmacology of opiates, which apparently bind to bits of your brain in such a way as to inhibit the production of neurochemicals associated with sexy feelings. That goes for anything from codeine to heroin—some opiates are perhaps more addictive than others, and some are better controlled in medicinal doses, but none of them differ enough from the rest pharmacologically to have massively divergent sexual effects.

That said, you can find a tiny minority of people who claim to enjoy sex on opiates, either because a mild dose can give them an altered sense of time, elongating sexual experiences (especially for people dealing with premature ejaculation), or because they can increase relaxation and comfort, or just because they can make you feel a little bit loopy, but still awake.

For most people, though, opiates just aren't very good sex drugs.

NOW WHAT?

Taking drugs can be pretty dangerous and is often a crapshoot when it comes to having enjoyable sex, especially when you're getting your drugs off the black market. Even if you've tried a particular drug before, adding sex into the equation is a new layer of experiential factors to account for, so be careful. Or you could just have sober sex, which is risky enough in its own right in this day and age, considering all the STDs and clingy partners out there.

There's a real lack of scientific research being done on the way drugs impact sex, which is what makes getting high and having sex even more risky. One thing we can say for sure is that everyone's sex-drug experience is unique. So don't take anyone else's word or anecdote as gospel when it comes to what you put in your own body, and never forget that your partner(s) might not feel the same way you do on a particular drug. If you have serious questions about drugs, sex, and your body, you should go talk to a medical professional.

Follow Mark Hay on Twitter.

The VICE Morning Bulletin

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Obama and Netanyahu (Photo by Pete Souza via)

Here is everything you need to know about the world this morning, curated by VICE.

US News

  • Obama to Meet Netanyahu
    The Israeli Prime Minister arrives at the White House today for talks with President Obama. The leaders will discuss security agreements and Iran as they attempt to put past tensions and suspicion behind them. —The New York Times
  • Football Players Threaten Boycott
    Dozens of members of the University of Missouri's football team are demanding the school president's resignation before playing again. Student activists are angry at the president's unwillingness to engage with racism on campus. —The Washington Post
  • States Ranked for Corruption
    An investigation by the Center for Public Integrity and Global Integrity ranked 50 states for government corruption. Alaska, the highest ranked state, only received a C grade, while 11 states received "failing" grades for transparency and accountability. —USA Today
  • Bachmann: Covert the Jews
    Michele Bachmann called on Christians to convert "as many Jews as we can" ahead of the forthcoming arrival of Jesus Christ. Speaking during a tour of Israel, the Republican politician said Jesus was "coming soon". —Hareetz

International News

  • Suu Kyi Set for Landslide Victory
    Official results of Myanmar's first open election in 25 years are expected tonight. But the ruling party has already conceded defeat, and votes counted so far show Aung San Suu Kyi's democratic opposition on course for a huge victory. —AP
  • Riot on Christmas Island
    Inmates at Australia's Christmas Island detention centre have set fire to parts of the facility during a stand-off with guards. The unrest follows the death of Iranian Kurd Fazel Chegeni, who had escaped from the facility on Saturday. —ABC News
  • Bomb Theory Backed
    Official Egyptian investigators are "90 percent sure" a bomb downed the Russian plane Airbus A321. One investigator has revealed the noises heard in a cockpit recording indicate a bomb explosion. —Reuters
  • Climate Change Could Cause More Poverty
    According to a grim World Bank warning, global warming could drive an additional 100 million people into poverty by 2030. Poor people are more likely to be impacted by flooding, drought and crop failure. —CNN

(Photo by Angela George via)

Everything Else

  • Larry David Just Got $5,000 Richer
    An anti-racism group says it will honor its pledge to give $5,000 to anyone shouting "Trump is a racist" during SNL's Trump-hosted broadcast. Even though Larry David's outburst was scripted, DeportRacism.com said the comedian still gets the money. —VICE News
  • Porn-Free WiFi in Moscow
    The Russian Orthodox Church will roll out free WiFi "cleansed of immoral content" in Moscow's public places. One priest said the orthodox internet would "delete everything that brings evil". —The Guardian
  • Veteran: Weed Saved My Life
    Retired Marine Staff Sergeant Mike Whiter says smoking cannabis saved him from a life stuck on 14 different kinds of medication. His Weed for Warriors campaign group is currently touring US cities. —The Daily Beast
  • UFO Panic Inspires Punks
    A late night naval missile test created a short but all-consuming UFO panic on the West Coast this weekend. Cali punks No Parents recorded a 30-second song about it. —Noisey

Done with reading? How about watching something instead? Like this short film we made, 'The Wolfpack Goes to Hollywood', about the six brothers who grew up recreating Hollywood movies in their Manhattan apartment finally visiting Los Angeles and seeing the sights and meeting the people who inspired them.

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