• on duty
• in a government office
• wearing an official uniform
• using a government vehicle
• wear political buttons on duty

Federal Hatch Act Do's

Federal employees covered by the 1993 amendments may-

Arizona Voters To Have The Last Say On Proposition 200

The Arizona Daily Star, April 25, 1997
By Shaun McKinnon

PHOENIX - The debate over what Arizona voters meant when they approved Proposition 200 may be settled by the only people who know for sure - Arizona voters.

Proponents of the so-called medical-marijuana initiative filed papers with the secretary of state yesterday seeking to place on the 1998 ballot two recently passed bills that dismantled key pieces of the proposition.

Sam Vagenas, one of the original backers of Proposition 200, said the new drive is really a referendum on the arrogance of legislators who refuse to accept a decision made by 800,000 Arizonans.

"We can't leave it up to politicians to decide which votes count and which votes don't," Vagenas said. "We can't leave it up to the politicians to decide which voters are stupid and which voters aren't. We are going to prove people are a lot smarter than the politicians think."

The group, calling itself The People Have Spoken, has a more far-reaching agenda built on a planned constitutional amendment that would prevent the Legislature from changing a voter initiative for at least two years.

Vagenas said the paperwork for that measure will be filed later.

The new petition drive adds long-term fuel to a debate that has scorched a wide swath through the Arizona political landscape since Proposition 200 passed last November by a 2-to-1 ratio.

Gov. Fife Symington briefly considered vetoing the measure and members of the state's congressional delegation have condemned it, enlisting national figures such as former education secretary and drug czar William Bennett.

In addition to allowing doctors to prescribe marijuana and other drugs for seriously or terminally ill patients, Proposition 200 allowed the release of first-time, non-violent drug offenders and diverted future first-time offenders to treatment programs.

The Legislature approved three bills changing the measure's provisions. The first, passed and signed by the governor early in the session, limited which non-violent drug offenders could be released from prison. Because the bill was passed with an emergency clause, it can't be referred to the ballot.

Two others can: House Bill 2518 prohibited physicians from prescribing marijuana or other Schedule I drugs - which include heroin, LSD and PCP - until they received approval from the federal Food and Drug Administration.

Senate Bill 1373 narrowed the number of first-time drug offenders eligible for treatment or probation.

If supporters of the referendum gather the needed 56,481 signatures by July 20, the state would be unable to enforce the new laws until voters have their say in 1998.

Sen. John Kaites, a critic of Proposition 200 from the start and one of the architects of the three bills that passed this session, said yesterday that the ballot drive to repeal the laws should cast suspicion on its backers.

"Clearly the more radical elements of the organization do not approve of what we tried to do," he said, "which would seem to suggest they are moving toward legalization of drugs and not medicalization."

Kaites, R-Glendale, said legislators were trying not to undo the voters' wishes but instead smooth over some of the rough - an potentially illegal - edges.

"When we were put in the position of implementing a proposition as poorly crafted as Proposition 200, we had to do it in a reasonable and rational manner," he said.

The petition drive filed yesterday is the second attempt to undo what the 1997 Legislature did. The Arizona Hospital and Health Care Association has filed to block the state from spending $14.8 million from the tobacco tax medically-needy account on a new health department laboratory.

'Hemp Rooted In Missouri History'

Industrial hemp, one of mankind's oldest cultivated plants, was once the key cash crop in the Missouri River basin.

In fact, Weston billed itself as the "hemp center of the world" in the late 1850s.

A hemp-growing belt developed in Kansas and Missouri counties bordering the Missouri River because the river provided affordable shipping for the bulky crop.

Hemp came west with early settlers, decades after George Washington raised the plant and Thomas Jefferson wrote drafts of the Declaration of Independence on hemp paper.

"We became wealthy from its culture," pioneer W.M. Paxton wrote in his Annals of Platte County, Missouri, published in 1897. "After a few years the South looked more to Missouri than to Kentucky for a supply of hemp for bagging and rope."

In 1861, Confederate troops used hemp as rolling bulwarks in a charge on Union troops at Lexington, Mo. During a recent re-enactment, historians re-created the "battle of the hemp bales" by buying imported fiber.

But hemp fell from favor in the Kansas City region after the Civil War because its harvest and processing was labor intensive.

Machinery that made hemp production easier was invented in the early 1900s.

Henry Ford rolled out a car that had body panels made from hemp fibers and resins and hemp oil in the gas tank.

Then federal anti-drug efforts in the 1930s regulated all varieties of marijuana, including industrial hemp. That made hemp less competitive with cheap oil, cotton and wood products.

A "Hemp for Victory" campaign by the U.S. government during World War II temporarily revived the crop.

"When I was a boy, I remember when they raised it," said John Bollin, 66, who farms land in Kansas but lives in Weston.

Tight regulations including a special tax on fiber or finished products were reinstated after the war. That helped stymie domestic industrial hemp production, which ended in the 1950s.

Hemp became illegal under 1970s federal drug laws pertaining to marijuana.

77 Percent Of Kentuckians Support Industrial Hemp

The Philadelphia Inquirer, Sunday, April 27, 1997
By Jeff Gammage, Inquirer staff writer

CLAY CITY, Ky. - Some people who walk into John Centers' one-room store see only the sparsely stocked shelves of rough-hewn canvas shirts, caps, socks and bags.

But Centers sees the beginning of an economic revolution, one he believes can save struggling farmers, revive rural communities, fill his store with customers - and just maybe make a few people rich in the process.

How? Hemp. Not the notorious, pointy-leafed weed that sends its tie-dyed smokers to nirvana, but its industrial cousin, a slender plant whose fibers and juices can be turned into everything from carpets to cosmetics, stucco to salad oil and diapers to denim jackets.

"It's only a matter of time before it all comes about," said Centers, who runs The Hemp Connection here. "It's something that's new, and everyone's getting into it."

A widening alliance of farmers and businesspeople describe hemp as a near-miracle crop, one that can be grown cheaply with few pesticides, and harvested by existing machinery. Mostly, advocates say, it may be a way to wean tobacco farmers onto another crop and still make a living.

There's just one problem.

It's illegal to grow hemp in this country, and has been for nearly half a century. The plant contains a small amount of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the psychoactive chemical that gets pot-smokers high. Police will lock up anyone who so much as plants a seed.

But that may change. Centers is part of a growing movement, based in tobacco states such as Kentucky but stretching north to Maine and west to Hawaii, to legalize the production of industrial hemp.

Bluegrass State legislators are scheduled to hold hearings this summer. Lobbyists are pushing for a pilot program in Virginia, as they are in a dozen other states including Colorado, Minnesota, Iowa and Illinois. The American Farm Bureau, representing almost five million farmers, has endorsed research into hemp's possibilities.

With that activity has come controversy and confusion. The hemp movement faces little organized opposition, but plenty of informal resistance.

Questions about hemp's economic viability, and its relationship to marijuana, cloud its image in the minds of many citizens. The federal Drug Enforcement Administration makes no distinction between low-THC hemp and its high-octane relative, defining any plant that contains THC as marijuana.

Both plants are types of Cannabis sativa. Pharmacologists say, however, that hemp contains less than 1 percent THC, making it useless as a narcotic. Hemp supporters say comparing the two plants is like comparing a toy poodle and a pit bull.

But they know they have a public-relations problem.

The pro-drug National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws has pushed to legalize hemp, saying it could pave the way for legal pot. And the energetic support of off-beat Hollywood actor Woody Harrelson, who was arrested in Kentucky last summer for planting four hemp seeds, has made some wary.

"I think his involvement has scared people," said Julia Williams, who is active in the Community Farm Alliance, which endorsed hemp as an alternative to tobacco.

Even in this eastern Kentucky town of 1,173, where farming is as natural as breathing, the mention of hemp doesn't rouse cheers. The mayor declined to attend the ribbon-cutting for Centers' store, and some residents fretted the business would become a draw for potheads.

Centers says that's ridiculous - smoking hemp will make you sick, but not high. Meanwhile, demand for his goods is so strong that The Hemp Connection - he swears the initials are unintentional - will soon move to bigger quarters. It still will sell pants, chairs, cookbooks and soap, along with hats that say, "Do not smoke this cap," all made from imported hemp.

The new store will stand next to a "Hemp Motel" that's being built in renovated apartments, where visitors will sleep on hemp sheets and pillowcases, and dine at a cafe featuring hemp burgers.

"Every day I'm finding another way to expand it," Centers said. "The tobacco industry is just falling to pieces. This right here could bring our farmers back."

Hemp once was among the nation's leading cash crops, a plant with a secure future and proud past.

Drafts of the Declaration of Independence were written on hemp paper, and Betsy Ross' flag was sewn of hemp canvas. During World War II, the federal government mounted a "Hemp for Victory" campaign, urging farmers to grow the plant that provided parachutes for battle and cosmetics for the home.

But congressional action, drug hysteria and the arrival of new fabrics such as nylon soon strangled domestic production, a particularly hard blow in Kentucky, which once produced 90 percent of the nation's hemp.

Today, a poll funded by the state Hemp Growers Cooperative Association showed that 77 percent of Kentuckians support growth of industrial hemp. For most the reason is simple: The farms are dying.

Kentucky has lost more than 150,000 farms in the last 50 years, a lot of them small family farms. Often it's tobacco that keeps the survivors alive. And many farmers think they can't last much longer.

"We're in a crisis situation," said Dorothy Robertson, a tobacco farmer in Bethel. "People are looking for anything to be able to stay on the farm."

No crop will prove as lucrative as tobacco, which pays $2,000 to $3,000 an acre. But some farmers see hemp as an option because, theoretically, they could grow more of it.

The hemp cooperative estimates that farmers could earn $270 to $300 per acre; others put the figure as high as $475. That's more than crops like corn, which pays about $250.

Co-op president Andrew Graves said that if growing hemp is legalized, he expects the crop to be regulated and monitored, just like tobacco is now. Farmers would use government-certified, low-THC seed, raising only enough hemp to meet manufacturers' orders, to keep prices stable. Hemp is so bulky it must be processed close to where it's grown. Graves envisions spinning mills, paper factories and seed-crushing plants springing up around farms, creating scores of jobs in hard-pressed rural communities.

But others say that's a pipe dream.

Owensboro farmer Billy Joe Miles, chairman of a state committee that studied hemp, has called the crop a "complete fraud." Hemp would earn about a third as much money as soybeans, not nearly enough to offset tobacco, he said.

Nearly two dozen countries including France and England now grow hemp to make paper, fuel, detergents, paints, coffee filters and artists' canvas. Advocates see the same thing happening here.

"I know we're going to succeed. There's no doubt in my mind," said Joseph Hickey Sr., the hemp cooperative's executive director. "It's going to create rural economic development on a scale we've never seen before."

Canadian Mounts Constitutional Challenge To Pot Prohibition

The Toronto Star, April 28, 1997
By Catherine Dunphy
Toronto Star Staff Reporter

This is one marijuana charge neither the accused nor his lawyer wants to go up in smoke. In fact, London hemp shop owner Chris Clay intends to go all the way to the Supreme Court in order to beat the charges of trafficking and cultivation he'll be facing in a London, Ont., courtroom today.

And while he's at it, he'd like to strike down Sections 4 and 6 of the Narcotics Control Act - or, in other words, legalize marijuana.

"I think I've got a good shot," said Clay, 26. "These laws should have been changed before I was born."

Clay faces charges stemming from police raids in 1995 and 1996 on his store, Hemp Nation, after one of his staff sold an undercover officer a marijuana seedling or "clone."

He has already spent a total of five days in jail and he and his employee could face life imprisonment if convicted of trafficking.

But even Clay admits there's little chance of that. "Serving jail time (for convictions) is rare now," he said.

He considers himself more an activist than retailer.

His lawyer agrees.

"My client is a political activist," said Osgoode law professor Alan Young.

Young intends to argue this case in two parts. The second part is a constitutional challenge based on the argument that people have the right to make autonomous decisions with regard to their "bodily integrity."

`We are working on the principle it is beyond the authority of Parliament to criminalize harmless conduct."

But first Young will state no one can prove whether the seedlings sold by Clay were marijuana or hemp.

And that no one can prove they were a prohibitive substance containing more than 0.3 per cent of THC, the main psychoactive ingredient in marijuana. That amount is considered the threshold level for intoxication.

Young said hemp, or fibre cannabis, was once a cash crop in southwestern Ontario during World War II.

It was considered the source of the strongest rope and was so important to the war effort the government offered subsidies to farmers to grow it.

"I will argue that there is a strain of cannabis which is not intoxicating and that it is absurd and arbitrary to prohibit fibre cannabis," he said.

"I will have to persuade the court fibre cannabis or hemp is not covered by the Narcotics Control Act."

If Young loses the first round, he'll move on to his constitutional challenge.

"We'll prove marijuana is relatively harmless and may be the safest psychoactive substance," he said.

"There are more hospital admissions in the U.S. from ASA complications than from marijuana."

Chris Clay Of Hemp Nation Gives Constitutional Challenge Timeline

As our constitutional challenge proceeds, I'm adding daily summaries of our progress. Updates for the first three days are now online at http://www.hempnation.com/challnge/challnge.html

Next week the excitement really starts, don't miss out ;-)

Chris Clay

Hemp Nation * http://www.hempnation.com/
Chris Clay * E-mail chris.clay@hempnation.com
Constitutional challenge is underway!

Constitutional Challenge Features Hemp Expert's Testimony

The London Free Press [Ontario], May 1, 1997

The former agronomist with an agricultural college says hemp can be used in paper production, clothing, plastic materials, concrete materials and for many other uses.

By Eric Bender
Free Press Reporter

A second scientist has said at the trial of hemp store operator Chris Clay that he has "enthusiasm" for the cultivation of industrial cannabis.

Gordon Scheifele, a former agronomist with the Ridgetown Agricultural College who grew licensed plots of cannabis plants for two years, told Ontario court Justice John McCart Wednesday he sees great potential for commercial hemp as an alternative cash crop in Southwestern Ontario.

Scheifele has left employment with the provincial Ministry of Agriculture and Food at the college because of downsizing in the research area and is in the process of moving to Thunder Bay.

He'll be working for the University of Guelph, doing much of the same work including cannabis research for development in the northwestern region.

Although the bulk of his career work has been corn research, he said, the ministry has been interested in exploring alternative crops.

Scheifele said that among the alternatives, low toxicity cannabis or hemp plants have the greatest variety of uses.

He listed fibre for paper production, clothing, plastic materials, concrete materials, fibreboard, and oils and seeds for the food industry.

FIBREGLASS: He said the auto industry is extremely interested in hemp "fibreglass" because it is stronger, more flexible and lighter.

In Europe, he said, interiors of Mercedes and Volvo cars have hemp interiors and dashboards.

And in England, the Queen's own horses are bedded in hemp shavings.

He said cannabis is recognized as "a natural, annually renewable fibre for many uses." Scheifele said the government's interest in commercial hemp has arisen as an economic concern resulting in the first test plots being licensed in 1994 after a 56-year hiatus.

Cannabis was banned in Canada in 1923 because of concern over the intoxicating effects following human consumption.

Clay and employee Jordan Prentice were charged two years ago in a raid on his shop with several counts of possessing and trafficking marijuana in violation of the Narcotics Control Act.

NOT GUILTY PLEAS: Both have pleaded not guilty and are mounting a defence that the act should not include non-intoxicating materials.

They are prepared to argue constitutional matters surrounding the criminalization of marijuana and personal freedoms.

Clay is proprietor of the Hemp Nation retail store at 343 Richmond St.

Scheifele, testifying for the defence, added his supportive voice for hemp potential to that of federal Agriculture Canada scientist Ernest Small, who said he has "enthusiasm" for the crop.

Small said that as a civil servant he has had to be careful about expressing his beliefs because of "sensitivity" on the part of the department and government to the cannabis issue.

He said it may be even more sensitive during an election campaign. However, he told the judge, he was speaking his mind in court.

Scheifele said in his discussions with Health Canada and other departmental officials he has learned the government recognizes the "commercial development" that hemp production can achieve.

He said there is a belief hemp cultivation and processing can develop into regional industries in areas such as the Essex-Kent-Lambton region and the northwest area of the province.

It was Small who suggested a now-established guideline of 0.3-per-cent toxicity in cannabis as the defining level between toxic and non-toxic cannabis plants.

Lower toxicity plants tend to be the fibrous hemp variety, he said.

The 0.3-per-cent threshold has been adopted around the world, court was told.

The trial is to resume Monday.

Herbal Joints The Key To Bust Free Rallies

Like the Extravaganja, the Boston Freedom Rally always sells/distributes herbal cigarettes. They serve as decoys to prevent busts. We always make a point of letting the press and police know we are selling the herbal cigarettes. BTW, we make a ton of money selling the herbal cigarettes.

I also make a point of bringing a baggie of my bright green homegrown tobacco for consumption in public. (You gotta dry tobacco leaf in a micowave to get the green color).

-Neil-

The Arizona Daily Star, Tuesday, April 29, 1997

WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court, refusing to expand police powers in the war on drugs, ruled unanimously yesterday that officers armed with warrants sometimes may not barge unannounced into homes to search for narcotics.

Giving the police a blanket exception, wrote Judge John Paul Stevens, the court's most liberal member, violates the Fourth Amendment's protection against unreasonable searches and seizures.

In another decision, the justices made it tougher for citizens to collect damages from local governments when an employee, such as a police officer using excessive force, violates their constitutional rights. That decision was 5-4.

The drug search case came from Wisconsin, where the state's highest court had decreed that the narcotics trade was so dangerous that the police could always serve search warrants in felony drug cases without first knocking and identifying themselves.

The purpose of what is called the knock-and-announce rule is to protect privacy, reduce the risk of violence, prevent destruction of property and give an innocent person a chance to tell police officers they made a mistake. The rule has been adopted by most states and was endorsed last year by a unanimous Supreme Court.

Stevens, while acknowledging that the war on drugs is violent and dangerous to investigators, warned against creating blanket exceptions to constitutional rights based on "the social norms of a given historical moment."

Moreover, Stevens said, a blanket exemption for drug cases would open the door to exceptions for other categories of crimes - such as armed bank robbery - in which suspects are likely to carry weapons and can easily destroy evidence.

In practice, the police still could avoid the knock-and-announce rule by showing they have good reason to suspect that announcing themselves would be dangerous or inhibit the investigation of the crime.

In the case of excessive force, the justices overturned a lower court decision that required an Oklahoma county to pay $818,000 in damages to a woman who was severely injured by a sheriff's deputy in 1991. The deputy had been hired despite having a criminal misdemeanor record.

The decision made it difficult to hold cities, counties and school districts liable for damages under federal law for single, isolated decisions of public officials - as, for example, when a carelessly hired or trained police officer breaks into someone's home, or when a teacher accused of sexual harassment is transferred and becomes the target of a similar charge in another school.

Congress did not intend to hold local governments liable for isolated hiring decisions, ruled Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, writing for a majority composed of the court's five most conservative justices.

In another action, the justices refused to hear free-speech challenges to Baltimore child-protection ordinances that ban tobacco and alcohol advertising on most billboards within the city. The decision left intact a federal appeals court decision that courts owe "special solicitude" to governments seeking to shield children from harm.

The action had no nationwide impact, but it could help the Clinton administration's broader effort to regulate cigarette advertising aimed at children. Last week a federal judge in North Carolina ruled that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration could regulate sales and labeling of cigarettes, but had no authority over advertising. President Clinton ordered an appeal.

[A link above takes you to the Legal Information Institute site out at Cornell University, where the Supreme Court decision is online. A site called "Oyez Oyez Oyez" also features actual oral arguments in Real Audio of significant cases before the Supreme Court. - ed.]

CNN, April 24, 1997

WASHINGTON (AP) - All newborns would undergo drug testing and positive results would have to be reported to child welfare agencies under a newly introduced child-abuse prevention bill.

Such testing would be required for states to continue receiving federal substance abuse grants, said the bill's sponsor, Rep. Susan Molinari, R-New York, at a Wednesday news conference.

"We feel that if a pregnant mother is abusing drugs, this should at the very least be a red flag for those charged with the protection of children," Molinari said, adding that exposure to drugs in the womb increases the chances that a child would become a victim of further abuse.

How Drug Prohibition Kills The Unborn

I don't think it too far fetched that mothers who use drugs and fear law enforcement will begin to abort their babies, late term, in order to avoid prosecution. Can people doubt any longer, the real intent of government regarding total control of our lives?

Art Sobey

As the excerpt from "Smoke And Mirrors" below shows, many abortions have already been caused by this kind of misguided legislation. The unintended, but predictable, consequences of this law will be exactly opposite what Molinari has deluded herself into thinking. Once again we see the famous Vietnam strategy of "destroying the village to save it" at work. When will the madness end?

R Givens

Pregnant women would pay the highest price "for transgressing the rights of others" in Bennett's War on Drugs. No other group of drug users was treated as harshly by the media, the legislatures, or the courts. No other group took as much blame for the failure of the nation at large to act with reason and compassion. Having turned its wrath variously on Negro junkies, teenage potheads, yuppie coke dabblers, and black crack dealers, the Drug War now would elevate pregnant drug users - often poor, uneducated, and unable to get treatment - to Public Enemy Number One.

The proximate roots of the "crack baby crisis" were in 1981, when federal cuts in Medicaid stripped more than a million poor mothers and their kids of access to medical care. Within a few years, half of all African-American women had access to poor prenatal care or none at all, and the effects showed up at once. By 1984, their infant mortality rate had noticeably worsened for the first time in twenty years - and this was a full year before crack appeared. The number of uninsured child-bearing women in California exploded by almost half between 1982 and 1986. And even those who qualified for public assistance weren't guaranteed access to care. Twelve of the state's fifty-eight counties had no doctors at all willing to accept Medicaid patients. Flu, infections, and pneumonia killed impoverished American babies in ever-greater numbers.

And then crack arrived on the scene.

Crack is bad news for pregnant women and their babies. Like men, women on crack binges neglect everything else - sleep, nutrition, safety, and their health in general. They tend to smoke cigarettes, drink alcohol, and use other drugs to moderate the intense highs and lows of crack.

Their babies show the effects. They are frequently premature, and on average smaller and lighter, with smaller heads. When suddenly deprived of cocaine they alternately howl and drop into deep sleep. At one Washington, D.C., hospital where the average neonatal stay was three days in 1989, babies born to crack-using mothers stayed an average forty-two days.

By 1989 scientists had had four years to study the phenomenon of "crack babies" and some were backing off from their initially alarming reports. Ira Chasnoff, the Chicago doctor whose 1985 article in the New England Journal of Medicine started the crack-baby panic, now cautioned that crack was only a small part of the problem for small, undernourished, and sickly babies. Pregnant women are sixteen times more likely to use alcohol than crack, he wrote, and unlike cocaine, alcohol has proven fetus-damaging effects. Chasnoff and other researchers cautioned that the lives of poor, crack-using women were bad for babies in so many ways that there was no way to isolate crack as the primary cause of their infants' health problems. Poor women have always birthed smaller and sicker babies, and the sharp increase in the number of poor, uninsured women was certain to boost the number of ailing newborns. Prenatal care - and the insurance to pay for it - was and is a better predictor of a newborn's health than whether the mother smokes crack. "In the end," Florida health officials concluded in 1985, "it is safer for a baby to be born to a drug-abusing, anemic, or a diabetic mother who visits the doctor throughout her pregnancy than to be born to a normal woman who does not." The Yerkes Primate Research Center in Atlanta tried to isolate cocaine's effects, administering a pure cocaine intravenous drip to rhesus monkeys for the entire duration of their pregnancies. Their babies were unaffected. Researchers of human "crack babies" furthermore found that the effects of cocaine wore off within a few months and that such babies who were well fed, loved, and properly stimulated could recover completely.

These were not, however, messages even the medical community wanted to hear. Research papers trumpeting the fetal dangers of cocaine were eleven times more likely to be published in professional journals than those claiming few or no harms, according to the British medical journal The Lancet, which analyzed all the "crack baby" studies submitted to the Society of Pediatric Research during the eighties. Moreover, the "negative" studies were better, controlling more effectively for other fetus-damaging factors and taking more care to verify cocaine use, The Lancet found.

Yet the myth of the "crack baby" grew ever larger. Syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer dismissed "crack babies" in 1988 as a "biologic underclass whose biological inferiority is stamped at birth." Boston University president John Silber criticized "spending immense amounts on crack babies who won't ever achieve the intellectual development to have consciousness of God." The New York Times declared "crack babies" unable to "make friends, know right from wrong, control their impulses, gain insight, concentrate on tasks, and feel and return love. " Even Rolling Stone condemned "crack babies" as "like no others, brain damaged in ways yet unknown, oblivious to any affection."

Reporters sent out to write "crack baby" stories sometimes got their facts right without knowing it. After forty-odd inches of horror stories of low-income women giving birth to "crack babies," the Wall Street Journal, in a typical July 1989 front-page article, let drop that "their mothers aren't all low income. Linda, an impeccably dressed 34-year- old, now looks more like the accountant she once was than a recovering addict who once had a $2,000-a-week crack habit." Turns out, the Journal reported, "her son was born healthy." No explanation was offered as to why a woman smoking $2,000 worth of crack a week can give birth to a healthy baby. And no connection was made to the fact that, unlike every other mother in the article, Linda is an impeccably dressed accountant who likely had health insurance and proper care.

Getting poor women to stop using drugs during pregnancy wouldn't have guaranteed healthy babies, but it certainly would have helped. Even if the effects of drug exposure in utero are relatively short-lived, the home of a crack addict is no place for a baby to grow up. Infants of crack users frequently show up in the hospital again, dehydrated, underfed, filthy, and sometimes injured. If only for the sake of babies after they are born, getting pregnant women off drugs would have been not only humane, but a genuine bargain. The cost of caring for babies neglected and abandoned by crack-using parents was estimated in 1989 in the hundreds of millions of dollars a year.

Yet the federal government refused to pay for residential drug treatment for the poor because it classified drug abuse as a mental illness, and under Medicaid rules that was a state responsibility. The states were similarly unwilling or unable to provide care. Of the various drug- treatment programs in New York City in 1989, 54 percent refused pregnant women, 67 percent refused pregnant women on Medicaid, and 87 percent specifically denied treatment to Medicaid women dependent on crack. Only one hospital in the entire Chicago metropolitan area had a residential treatment program for pregnant addicts, and the program had only two beds. The state of Indiana had only sixteen beds for the treatment of pregnant addicts. Nearly a third of the women living in California had no prenatal care at all, let alone treatment for prenatal drug abuse. "We seem more willing to place the kid in a neonatal intensive care unit for $1,500 or $2,000 a day, rather than put $1,500 into better prenatal care," one psychiatrist complained to Time.

Jennifer Johnson, a black twenty-three-year-old mother of three living in Seminole County, Florida, tried several times during her fourth pregnancy to get treated for her cocaine addiction. "I thought that . . . if I tell them I use drugs they would send me to a drug place or something," she later testified. Alas, there was no "drug place" for her in Seminole County. What there was instead was jail, and the confiscation of her newborn.

When she delivered her baby on January 23, 1989, the attending doctor recorded that the baby "looked and acted as we would expect a baby to look and act." But Johnson told the doctor she had used cocaine during the pregnancy, and urine tests on mother and child bore that out. The hospital reported the birth of a "crack baby" to a state child protection agency, which in turn called the local sheriff, who ordered Johnson's arrest.

Assistant state's attorney Jeff Deen had been waiting for just such a case to test a new prosecution tactic. Deen was fed up with seeing pregnant women get away with abusing their unborn children by using drugs. When Deen heard about Jennifer Johnson, he decided to charge her with delivering cocaine to a minor. Courts throughout the country had held to the legal doctrine - which lies at the heart of abortion rights - that a fetus is not a person in the eyes of the law. But Deen had a new argument: In the sixty seconds between the baby's birth and the cutting of her umbilical cord, Johnson had "delivered" cocaine to her baby through the cord.

Judge 0. H. Eaton Jr. of the Seminole County Circuit Court declared himself "convinced" and convicted Johnson, sentencing her to a year of house arrest and fourteen years probation. Jennifer Johnson thus became the first woman to be convicted of the special crime of using drugs while pregnant. The Court of Appeals for the Fifth District affirmed her conviction.

Given Johnson's repeated attempts to find treatment for her drug abuse, Eaton's decision seems particularly cruel. "Pregnant addicts . . . have a responsibility to seek treatment," he ruled. The same judicial reasoning applied in the 1988 prosecution of a heroin addict in Butte County, California, who was convicted of birthing a drug-tainted baby after making Herculean efforts to get treatment. For months, she traveled 130 miles round-trip to a private methadone clinic that charged $200 a month. When her car broke down, she hitchhiked. When her money ran out, the clinic stopped treating her, even knowing she was seven months gone. Visibly pregnant, she asked several doctors and clinics in her area to help her, but none would do so. Twenty-four hours after giving birth, the district attorney confiscated her baby and charged her. "I don't see people making a choice unless you force them," he explained.

As has often been the case in the War on Drugs, the drug warriors wanted it both ways. Drugs are immoral, Bennett's drug office was saying at the time, because they "enslave" people and "take away their ability to function as free citizens." Yet when people fall into the "slavery" of drug use, they are prosecuted for making a bad "choice."

It is no accident that the first woman prosecuted for prenatal drug abuse was black. During a single month in 1989, Ira Chasnoff and his colleagues collected urine samples from every pregnant woman who visited a public health clinic or private obstetrician in Pinellas County, which contains St. Petersburg and is the fourth most populous county in Florida. They found that equal percentages of both black and white women - about 15 percent - used drugs during pregnancy. But the black women were ten times more likely than the whites to be reported to authorities for drug use. And the poorest women - with incomes of less than $12,000 - were seven times more likely to be reported than those earning more than $25,000. Private hospitals and obstetricians weren't about to intrude on their paying customers' privacy with a drug test, but public hospitals often were required to do so. Typical was South Carolina, where one characteristic used by public hospitals to identify "probable drug users" for testing was "no prenatal care or late prenatal care (24 weeks)." In South Carolina, Medicaid doesn't cover prenatal care before nineteen weeks.

"If these mothers were walking away from treatment, I might feel differently," said the director of Family and Children's Services in San Francisco. "But they are not walking away from treatment. They are walking away from waiting lists."

With drugs at the top of every pollster's list, the country walked away from treating pregnant users. In one national poll, almost half thought prenatal drug abuse should be a criminal offense. Which perhaps isn't surprising, given such headlines as (in the Washington Post) CRACK BABIES: THE WORST THREAT IS MOM HERSELF and SHE SMOKED CRACK, THEN KILLED HER CHILDREN. Senator Pete Wilson of California in Iggo asked Congress to give treatment funding only to states that make it a crime to give birth to a drug-tainted baby, a classic Catch22: few pregnant women would seek drug treatment in a state where doing so invited jail and loss of the baby. In Florida, where such a law was already on the books, doctors complained to the St. Petersburg Times that pregnant women withheld important information about their drug use "because word had gotten around that the police will have to be notified." San Francisco deputy city attorney Lori Giorgi began noticing an increase in "toilet-bowl babies" - born at home or in secret. "They're afraid their babies will be taken away," she concluded.

If they birth them at all. In one Washington, D.C., case, a woman "miscarried" days before appearing before a judge who'd threatened to jail her because he thought she was using drugs while pregnant. Researchers reported being told often about such abortions. This is particularly ironic, since the movement to prosecute drug- using mothers gets much of its steam from the anti-abortion movement. Such prosecutions create a legal division between mother and fetus that doesn't exist elsewhere in the law. If a woman can be prosecuted for drugging her unborn baby, why not for killing it?

'Doubt Cast On DARE Program'

The Star-Ledger, [Newark, NJ], April 28, 1997, p. 1

It ranks as the most popular youth-oriented drug education program in the country, has been embraced in 41 other countries and is a fixture in nearly 900 New Jersey schools.

But the Drug Abuse Resistance Education program - better known as DARE - doesn't help keep kids off drugs at all, according to a U.S. Department of Justice report soon to be released.

"There is not a scientifically sound study that shows DARE prevents kids from using drugs," said Joel Brown, director of Educational Research Consultants, which conducted a three-year study of the program that is to be part of the federal findings due out next month.

The view of DARE and other anti-drug programs as failing their mission - essentially a variant on the "Just Say No" theme first trumpeted during the Reagan administration - comes at a time when drug use among teenagers is on the rise.

Brown and other researchers who have studied a range of anti-drug efforts cite a University of Michigan survey that showed marijuana use among eighth- graders nationally tripled from 6 percent to 18 percent between 1991 and 1996. Others have noted that heroin is now pure enough to be just snorted or smoked, and is increasingly spreading from urban areas to more affluent suburbs.

[photo caption:] Piscataway policeman Jerry Mahoney reviews the Drug Abuse Resistance Education program for fifth- graders at the Arbor School in Piscataway.

Researchers say the philosophy behind DARE - police officers in classrooms warning fifth- and sixth-graders, for the most part, about the dangers of drug use - doesn't promote open, honest discussion among students, who often get conflicting messages about drugs in their communities.

"Kids want to have real discussions of drugs, not just hear 10 ways to 'Just Say No."' said Brown. "When kids get old enough, they reject those messages, and the ones bringing the message."

And some New Jersey students agree. Several students at Columbia High School in Maplewood dismissed the program as ineffective.

"They did it when you were too young," said Sarah Bryant, now 17. " I really don't remember anything. It wasn't nothing that special. If it was, it would have stuck in my mind."

At Union High School, students had similar reactions.

"I used to say I'm not going to do drugs, but when I turned 12, that's when pot kicked in," said Tony Abridelloa, a 14-year-old sophomore. "'The only way to get drugs out of Union is to knock out Newark and New York City."

But Daniel Skelton, principal of the Frelinghuysen Middle School in Morristown, said, "'We've had the program for six years and I have nothing but positive feelings about it."

To "graduate" a program, students must take 17 classes that are each 45 minutes long. They normally receive certificates showing they've completed the courses. But there is no follow-up to determine the long-term benefits, a situation that Denise Zimmer, executive director of DARE New Jersey, said needs to be changed.

Many school administrators say they retain faith in DARE, but concede it should only be part of a much larger campaign. DARE officials admit it may need some fine-tuning and can't be expected to work alone.

Ralph Lochridge, a spokesman for DARE America, said some studies, including one released two years ago by Ohio State University, support DARE. He said the failure results from parents and community groups failing to reinforce what DARE is teaching.

"DARE is not a magic bullet - it's just one little piece," Lochridge said. "The problem is that the parents of these kids are baby boomers who experimented with drugs themselves. They are reluctant to send a clear message about the dangers of drug use."

Nicholas De Mauro, founding president of DARE New Jersey and a New Milford police detective, said the program has never touted as a sure thing for drug abuse prevention. The program, he insisted, is still "in its infancy."

Launched in Los Angeles in 1983 as the brainchild of then-Police Chief Daryl Gates, it linked police officers promoting self-esteem and clean living with elementary schoolchildren who might be tempted to experiment with narcotics. The program was widely praised at the start. Even Chelsea Clinton is a graduate.

DARE New Jersey began in 1988 and has extended to Australia, Italy, Spain, England, Costa Rico and Mexico, among scores of other receptive nations.

DARE is turning to new approaches to increase its effectiveness, officials say. In New Jersey, a DARE advisory board of drug abuse prevention specialists which will "look at where we should focus and the direction we should take," De Mauro said.

Nationally, DARE after-school pilot programs offer chess, gardening clubs, tutorial help and recreational activities in inner-city schools. That program, known as DARE Plus, is available in New York, Los Angeles Washington, D.C., and Chicago.

Though classroom sessions headed by a police officer are at the core of the program, other DARE-sponsored events, like dances and other activities can be held in a community - and T-shirts and other DARE items sold - to help drive home the point about the dangers of abusing drugs.

Despite DARE's detractors, the number of participating New Jersey schools is increasing and currently there are 425 police departments and some 1,160 police officers in DARE programs in 857 public and parochial schools, organization officials say. De Mauro said he is not aware of any New Jersey districts that have dropped the program.

Elizabeth Superintendent of Schools Thomas G. Dunn Jr., who noted there are other anti-drug efforts at work in the district, said he is watching the DARE studies to determine whether the district's program should be modified or eliminated, but he said it is a good deal.

"The cost (to a school district) is negligible," Dunn said. " 'The police officers' salaries are paid by their departments."

De Mauro said DARE New Jersey holds its own fund-raising to provide workbooks to districts and most of the cost of a police officer's DARE training, and also receives state money.

The Governor's Council on Alcoholism and Drug Abuse indirectly contributes to DARE annually - for example, giving $682,021 in 1994 for 217 program activities. Last year, the council spent $731,644 on 239 DARE activities and this year budgeted $699,745 for 274 DARE events. De Mauro said DARE receives a small grant from the state Department of Health.

But even some law enforcement officers haven't bought into DARE.

"I still believe we have to educate our youth, but the statistics (on drug abuse) are staggering," said Hackettstown Police Chief Leonard Kunz. "How successful have we been?"

A number of cities nationally have the answer: Not very. In Seattle, the program was eliminated after Police Chief Norm Stamper labeled it "an enormous failure." School districts in Spokane, Wash., and Oakland, Calif. have also dropped the program.

Star-Ledger reporter Barry Carter and the Associated Press contributed to this article.

* Many physicians already prescribe the antidepressant for youngsters, but critics fear formal approval will lead to abuse

By Steve Farr
The Associated Press

INDIANAPOLIS - Dr. Paul Riley has prescribed Prozac to chronically depressed and obsessive-compulsive children almost since it appeared on the market in 1988.

After 35 years as a pediatrician and child psychiatrist, Riley says he knows from experience that Prozac and drugs like it are safe and effective.

"I lived in the old days when we didn't have antidepressants," said Riley, now at St. Vincent Stress Centers in Indianapolis. "Fifty percent of the people were dead (from suicide) within a year. People don't remember that, but I do."

Now the Food and Drug Administration is considering formally approving Prozac for children, a move that could open a huge market for Eli Lilly and Co., the Indianapolis-based maker of the drug.

Some worry, though, that there haven't been enough studies of the drug's effect on children.

And others are concerned that doctors will dispense Prozac for typical adolescent moodiness, in the same way the hyperactivity drug Ritalin is said to be overprescribed to children who are merely rambunctious or unmotivated.

"Once the drug is on the market, its use is totally up to individual physicians, and hopefully it's based upon sound scientific fact and not marketing," said Larry Sasich, a research analyst for the consumer group Public Citizen.

Doctors can prescribe it

Young people could represent a huge new market at a time when drug companies have seen sales of their best-selling antidepressants begin to slow. Millions of children and adolescents are thought to suffer from depression or obsessive-compulsive disorder. Advocates say many go untreated.

"The only way you could boost further growth is go after other markets, and one potential market is the adolescent market," industry analyst Hemant K. Shah said.

Last year, U.S. physicians prescribed Prozac and competitors Paxil and Zoloft to more than 580,000 children and adolescents, according to the research firm IMS America Ltd.

In 1996, about 28 million U.S. adults took the drugs, which are known as serotonin reuptake inhibitors for their ability to boost brain levels of the mood regulator serotonin.

Prozac, the most established of the class of drugs, produced $2.36 billion in sales last year.

Eli Lilly sent test data to the Food and Drug Administration in December. Pfizer Inc. has submitted data on Zoloft, SmithKline Beecham PLC is conducting tests of Paxil, and Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. and American Home Products Corp. are preparing to test their entries.

Last month, the agency cleared Luvox, a similar drug jointly marketed by Solvay Pharmaceuticals Inc. and Pharmacia & Upjohn Inc., for the treatment of obsessive-compulsive disorder in children and adolescents.

Lack of data on children

"I think pharmaceutical companies have to be exceptionally careful because any side effect or abuse issue could come back to haunt them," Shah said.

So far only one large-scale study, funded by the National Institutes of Health, has been completed on children and the new class of antidepressants.

The four-year study compared Prozac and a placebo in 96 people ages 8 to 18. About half of those on the drug showed improvement, while a third of those on the placebo did.

Rastafarian Lawyer Challenges Jamaican Ganja Laws

Legalize Ganja Campaign
Kingston, Jamaica
April 26, 1997

Dr. Dennis Forsythe, a respected Rastafarian, author, sociologist and attorney-at-law [and one of our directors], is facing charges in the Jamaican courts for possession of ganja. A major constitutional challenge is being mounted on the grounds that "Jamaica's anti-ganja laws violate the Human Right to Freedom of Religious thought, action and worship."

A joint parliamentary committee has recommended amendments to the Jamaican Constitution which would remove the legal block to such constitutional challenges.

Money is needed to finance this constitutional challenge. The costs are as follows:

Stage One

Full Court Trial
Jamaica - now
US $2,000.00

Stage Two

Court of Appeal/Constitutional Court
Jamaica - May/June 1997
US $3,000.00

Stage Three

Privy Council
United Kingdom
1997/1998
US $20,000.00

If you would like to assist this worthy cause, please send your donation to the "Legalize Ganja Campaign" and note that it is for the Dennis Forsythe Legal Fund. Cheques can be mailed to our PO Box as follows:

Legalize Ganja Campaign
P O Box 357
Kingston 10
Jamaica, West Indies

Below is a copy of a newspaper article from the Jamaican Daily Observer.

The Daily Observer [Kingston, Jamaica], March 26th, 1997.

by Sister Barbara Makeda Blake Hannah.

The overzealousness of the Constant Spring police in intervening in a family dispute, has created a most important test of the laws against possession of ganja. Dr. Dennis Forsythe, attorney-at-law, best-selling author [Rastafari - The Healing of the Nation], sociologist and member of the Legalize Ganja Campaign [Jamaica], was recently arrested for possession of ganja.

This, after police broke into his house with a crowbar and a search warrant, on the instructions of Dr. Forsythe's baby-mother, who wanted him to hand over their two-year-old child to her on 5:00 pm Saturday.

Dr. Forsythe wanted to keep the child overnight so as to give him medical care and nourishment which he felt the child needed. Using the search warrant, the obviously informed police searched the house of this man, whose book and life has endorsed the medical and sacramental uses of ganja, and found a small bag of ganja and the pipe in which Dr. Forsythe smokes it. Thereupon, through the vindictiveness of an angry baby-mother, Dr. Forsythe found himself arrested on both civil and capital charges.

Fortunately, further attendance at the Family Court asserted the legal possession of the custody of their child was a temporary and non-binding condition which has still not been ruled on, which in turn demonstrated that the police had no authority to break into Dr. Forsythe's house to take the child from its father, or to search.

However, the larger issue of his arrest on charges of possession of ganja has stirred the respected lawyer to base his defense on the issue of the constitutionality of the laws against ganja, specifically where it infringes the Declaration of Human Rights which allows freedom of religion. Forsythe, an acknowledged Rastafarian, demands unequivocally his right to use ganja as a part of his sacramental worship. He points out that the constitution has written in and entrenched, certain fundamental rights, including the Right to Freedom of Religion and Conscience, which states that:

"Except with his own consent no person shall be hindered in the enjoyment of his conscience and for the purposes of this section the said freedom includes freedom of thought and of religion...and in private to manifest and propagate his religion or belief in worship, teaching, practice and observance."

He has, therefore, taken his case to the Supreme Court, challenging the right of the resident magistrate to try his case, and demanding that it instead be brought to the highest court in the land. In an in-chambers hearing before Justice Wolfe, Dr. Forsythe was informed that he does not have to bring action but that he should proceed immediately to the full Constitutional Court for hearing. Dr. Forssythe ins now in the process of doing this.

"If I were to simply admit guilt, it would cost me only around $5,000 [appx. US $150] in fines and that would be the end of the matter," says Dr. Forsythe. "However, I take the opportunity to challenge this law because it is an unjust law. Where the law makes I&I out to be a 'criminal' simply for possession of herbs, the law is a bad law.

He sees his arrest as a test case for the newly formed "Legalize Ganja Campaign" [LGC], feeling that his very public association with the half-century-old struggle for legalisation of ganja caused him to be singled out for arrest. As a lawyer, there is the threat of being disbarred from practising, which will undoubtedly follow a conviction under the present law.

"Jamaica takes international credit as the birthplace of the Rastafarian movement and of its leading prophets - Marcus Garvey and Robert Nesta Marley," says Forsythe. "Yet ironically, the right to religion is starkly denied to Rastafarians here in Jamaica, some 67 years after its emergence as a religion. The religion which Bob Marley devoted his life and songs, is legally repressed openly and flagrantly every time a Rastafarian [or any other person] is harassed, arrested, charged and sentenced by officers of the law for the simple use of ganja or a chillum pipe."

Responding to Forsythe's constitutional challenge, fellow LGC committee member, attorney Lord Anthony Gifford, who is acting as an advocate in a similar case in Antigua, is doubtful Forsythe will be successful due to a clause entrenched in the Jamaica Constitution [chapter three, section 26, sub-section eight] which states that all laws which were in force in Jamaica before Independence in 1962 cannot be challenged. [No such provision exists in the Antigua law.]

This "bucky-massa" ["slavery/colonial" - my translation of Jamaican slang - pc] clause of the Jamaican constitution retains the chains of colonialism despite our so-called "independence." However, it is encouraging to note that in its final submission handed down in May 1995, the Joint Committee on Constitutional Reform recommended "...that the present provision of section 26[8], by which pre-Independence laws are preserved, despite inconsistency with fundamental rights and freedoms, be repealed."

Though no date is known for implementation of the recommended constitutional reforms, the fact that a new constitution will remove this legal obstacle gives Forsythe hope that his case will be successful, despite the enormous costs which will be incurred in taking this matter through the higher courts.

"By defining the herbal sacrament of Rastafarians as not only profane but dangerous and unlawful," he says, "the lawmakers have delivered a fundamental attack on the Rastafarian religion and a clear denial of their fundamental freedom of conscience." "Parliament," states Forsythe, "has the right to pass laws for 'the peace, order and good government of the country,' but such laws must be reasonably necessary and must not stifle the creative impulse of its people. It cannot be fairly maintained by the evidence of this day and age that the Act in relationship to ganja, is "reasonably required in the interest of either defense, public safety, public order, public morality or public health."

Whatever the outcome of the case, it is certain to create a great deal of public debate and may - if Dr. Forsythe is able to stay the course - be a benchmark case of its king in legal and Jamaican history.

Legalize Ganja Campaign [Jamaica]

MISSION: To campaign by all legitimate and democratic methods to bring about reforms in the laws of Jamaica relating to ganja, and in particular to secure that no person should be punished under law for simple possession, use or cultivation of ganja.

DIRECTORS: Sandra Alcott . Paul Chang . Sydney daSilva . Dr. Dennis Forsythe . Lord Anthony Gifford . Barbara Blake-Hanna . Antonnette Haughton-Cardenas . Dr. Ronnie Lampart . Junior Manning

TEL: [809] 924-1787
FAX: [809] 924-2500
E-MAIL: lgc@infochan.com
MAIL: POB 357
Kingston 10
Jamaica, West Indies

'Mexico Overhauls Drug Agency'

'Mexico Replaces Inept, Corrupt Anti-Drug Force'

MEXICO CITY - The Mexican government scrapped its corruption-ridden anti-drug force Wednesday, purging its 1,100 agents and replacing them with a specially trained, rigorously tested and better paid anti-narcotics unit directly under command of the attorney general.

Unveiling the new drug enforcement plan at a news conference here, Atty. Gen. Jorge Madrazo Cuellar said it was merely the first in a series of sweeping law enforcement reforms ordered by President Ernesto Zedillo to win back Mexicans' confidence in their criminal justice system.

The new agents, he said, are required to take psychological, drug-detection and lie-detector tests and open their personal finances to investigators - an effort to combat the corruption that he said had compromised the 4-year-old National Institute to Combat Drugs, or INCD.

Members of the new unit, he said, also will be given "substantial" pay raises, expanded life insurance and better medical and retirement benefits - additional hedges against the billions of dollars in bribes that Mexico's drug cartels have paid officials to allow the smuggling of South American cocaine across the U.S. border.

When asked how many agents the new unit has, Madrazo said only 60 of the 107 agents who applied for the jobs have passed the tests. U.S. and Mexican officials privately have said the new anti-drug squad will have at least 1,000 agents when it is complete.

In discarding the INCD - created under a similar restructuring in 1993 - Madrazo cited the agency's "advanced state of deterioration," "documented corruption" within its ranks and its "proven inability to dismantle the drug cartels."

Madrazo said the INCD's current director, Mariano Herran Salvatti - a career prosecutor who was the first to pass the stringent new tests in March - also will head the new drug unit, officially dubbed the Special Prosecutors Office for Crimes Against Health - Mexico's terminology for drug crimes.

Madrazo's reorganization came just five days before President Clinton is due to arrive for the first U.S. presidential visit here in nearly two decades. The attorney general denied that the two events are linked.

"This reform has absolutely nothing to do with bilateral relations with the United States," Madrazo said, detailing the months of study that went into it. But he added, "After this, we hope that these measures will make [the relationship] even better."

Establishing better cooperation between the two countries in combating a drug trade that supplies up to three-quarters of the cocaine sold in the United States and generates an estimated $30 billion a year in illicit profits will be high on the agenda when Clinton, Zedillo and their key cabinet members meet here next week.

U.S. officials, who privately hailed Madrazo's new program, have been pressing Mexico City for radical reforms in its drug enforcement operations since the Feb. 18 arrest of Mexico's anti-drug czar, Gen. Jose de Jesus Gutierrez Rebollo. Gutierrez headed the INCD when he was jailed along with two of his top lieutenants and charged with collaborating with Mexico's most powerful drug cartel.

Gutierrez, an army general, was arrested just days before Clinton certified Mexico as an ally in the drug war. The arrest raised fears of intelligence leaks in joint U.S.-Mexican drug-enforcement operations and triggered a failed attempt in the U.S. House of Representatives to overturn Clinton's certification of Mexico.

But officials in Washington also took steps Wednesday to clear the air on the drug front in advance of Clinton's May 5-7 visit.

A U.S. official said the Clinton administration had dropped formal protests it filed with Mexico in March on a major drug-money laundering case, which touched off a series of charges and countercharges between Mexico City and Washington.

A senior U.S. law enforcement official conceded that Washington was wrong in alleging that Mexico had seized only a tenth of an estimated $183 million in suspected drug proceeds that U.S. investigators said were in the Mexican bank accounts of Rigoberto Gaxiola Medina, who is under indictment for drug trafficking in Detroit.

The U.S. official, who asked not to be named, told reporters Wednesday that Mexico, in fact, had frozen all $16 million that was in the accounts at the time, as Mexico had asserted all along. The $183 million, he said, represented the total in suspected drug money that had passed through the accounts.

"The [U.S.] protests were based on a misunderstanding," the official said. Explaining the timing of the Clinton administration's apology - delivered formally to the Zedillo administration here last week - he added: "I'm not going to say this was unrelated to the president's trip. But these are areas [we] want to make progress on throughout."

Meanwhile in Washington, the House International Relations Committee voted Wednesday to abolish the drug certification program that has angered the United States' southern neighbors and rejected an effort to tie U.S. aid to how a country votes in the United Nations.

The votes came as members began work on a sweeping foreign affairs bill that seeks to make changes at the State Department and the United Nations. The panel voted 24-18 for an amendment to eliminate the certification program. This year's certification process, which approved Mexico and disapproved Colombia, brought calls for changes in the process.

Times staff writer Mary Beth Sheridan contributed to this report.

'Mexico Overturns Drug Lord Sentence'

Prohibitionists' Fantasies Alter Caribbean Islands

The Los Angeles Times, circa April 27, 1997
By Juanita Darling, Times Staff Writer

BASSETERRE, St. Kitts - With its palm trees, pastel gingerbread houses and friendly shopkeepers and hoteliers, this tropical port long has been a haven for British and U.S. tourists.

But in recent years, its Caribbean calm has been broken by a laundry list of violent events: A former U.N. ambassador disappeared and was presumed dead; police found the body of the scion of a politically powerful family stuffed in the trunk of a burned-out car; the inspector investigating the cases was killed in broad daylight.

Scotland Yard was brought in to try to solve those mysteries and ease the ensuing political crisis.

But police now believe the three men were all victims of a growing wave of violence and corruption sparked by the new presence here of Colombian drug lords.

Confronted with intensified interdiction efforts in the Bahamas and at the U.S.-Mexico border - and with the growing distrust of their Mexican allies - Colombian cartel members have pushed their drug trafficking deep into the eastern Caribbean, experts say.

About one-third of the cocaine available in the United States and one-half to two-thirds of that sold in Europe - hundreds of tons of the drug - is now shipped through the tiny islands of this region, according to U.S. and European law enforcement officials.

Traffickers in small planes and swift boats are following the necklace of islands from the Colombian coast eastward to the edge of the Caribbean and then on to the U.S. Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico, officials say. Once in U.S. territory, they can move drugs to the mainland with no fear of customs inspections.

Similarly, former and current Dutch, British and French colonies are providing the cartels with easy access to Europe.

The traffickers are inflicting on the region what Caribbean security expert Ivelaw Griffith calls the "package": They are blamed for increases in money laundering, addiction and corruption so profound that they threaten to put criminals in charge of the government and the economy.

"This is probably the best scenario a drug trafficker could invent," said Sandor Calvani, who heads the U.N. Drug Control Program's Caribbean office. "In the south, big producing countries. In the north, big consuming countries. And in between, 1,200 islands organized in 29 countries with four different [government] systems that do not communicate among themselves and [with] an infinite number of coves and small beaches."

Richard Thomas, the top British official in the region, compares the upsurge in narcotics trafficking today to the perceived threat of communism that provoked the U.S. invasion of Grenada in 1983. "In the intervening 14 years, that threat has dwindled to almost nothing, but the threat to stability is now drug trafficking," he said.

Colombian drug lords are paying those who ship their loot through the Caribbean with drugs rather than cash, creating a local supply that has increased consumption, experts say.

The Psychiatric Hospital in Barbados has been flooded with addicts from throughout the region. "We have no systematic study as to the extent of the drug problem here," said Dr. Victor Ford, "But it ain't getting no better."

The number of tourists complaining that they have been approached by drug dealers in Barbados has quadrupled over the past six months, Calvani said.

He compared the drug traffickers' strategy to the way Italian ice-cream makers got into the German and Austrian markets. "They put small shops along the route to consolidate transportation and build consumption," he said.

He added that "the other frightening observation is that instead of just wanting to influence government," the drug dealers "now . . . want to short-circuit the democratic process and actively and regularly influence electoral campaigns. It is becoming a direct challenge to the democratic process."

Indeed, Caribbean political parties now regularly accuse one another of accepting campaign contributions from traffickers. Law enforcement authorities say they believe most of the claims but cannot prove them because they lack tough election laws that would, for example, let voters see just who is bankrolling a campaign.

As for widespread political corruption, "If it can be done in Colombia, it can be done in St. Kitts," said Anthony Bryan, director of the Caribbean Studies Program at the University of Miami's North-South Center.

The U.S. State Department already has reported that there is extensive money laundering in Aruba, the island closest to Colombia. Officials also note an increase in both cocaine and heroin trafficking there. A U.N. internal document says that 75% of all arrests in Aruba are now drug-related.

Recently published Dutch intelligence reports cite "worrying indications" that Aruban democracy is being eroded by money laundering linked to the drug trade - an allegation denied by Aruba's government.

As more Caribbean countries try to develop offshore banking, the threat of drug-related money laundering will increase, law enforcement authorities warn.

European nations are so concerned about the burgeoning Caribbean drug trade that they are financing an 87-point anti-narcotics program.

The United States has offered Coast Guard and Navy vessels to help patrol the region and has negotiated agreements for U.S. planes to fly over the islands and for its law enforcement personnel to pursue suspects into their territorial waters.

Accustomed to dealing with nothing more threatening than drunken tourists or rowdy cricket fans, police in many of the small Caribbean isles are now facing drug-related crimes that could provide the fodder for Hollywood mysteries.

The day after Dole Chadee, an alleged drug lord in Trinidad and Tobago, was ordered to stand trial for murder last year, the key witness against him - who had been in a protection program for two years - was killed.

Law enforcement officials said the witness' death was just one of 30 slayings linked to the organization run by Chadee, who has been convicted of four killings.

But such convictions are a rarity, especially as drug-linked bribery and intimidation of witnesses, jurors and judges increase, experts say.

They also note that it can be difficult to bring suspects to justice because of the "island mentality" - the reality that in small Caribbean communities, the residents all know one another and distrust outsiders.

Here in St. Kitts and Nevis, shaken by the two high-profile killings and the disappearance in 1994, police frustration is especially high. Officers have formally charged half a dozen individuals in the killings but have watched as the cases collapsed in bizarre judicial circumstances.

"We have known who committed the murders for the past two years," asserted Brian Reynolds, the Scotland Yard inspector called in to clean up St. Kitts' corruption-riddled, 574-officer police force.

Police have not been able to persuade a local judge to hear a case against six suspects. The one man who was put on trial - accused of killing the police inspector - was freed after two juries deadlocked.

British police have acknowledged that in the killing of the man found in the car trunk - the deputy prime minister's son - they were not able to gather evidence as thoroughly as they would have back home.

The car containing Vincent Morris' body - and that of his girlfriend, Joan Walsh - was found hidden in a field of 7-foot-tall sugar cane. Police normally would have waited to move the bodies until a pathologist arrived from London the next day to examine the scene. But several hundred islanders were threatening to burn the cane field, forcing authorities to move the car immediately, possibly destroying valuable evidence.

Apparently, the crowd had moved upon the field because the suspects in the pair's killing had been arrested - and several of them are popular figures in Basseterre, the capital.

Authorities identified them as:

Miller was seen regularly with William Herbert, the former U.S. and U.N. ambassador who was an island power broker and who disappeared on a June 1994 boating trip.

Morris' brother, Dean, later testified in another case that Miller, Henry and Matthew were suspects in his brother's death because Morris had stolen cocaine from them.

But police never got a chance to lay out their theories and evidence in Morris' killing because the prosecutor in the case, who could not be reached for comment, didn't show up for the trial. Opposition newspapers claim he was corrupted, and other observers suspect he may have been intimidated.

In the end, the suspects were released.

But Heath, Miller and Matthew - their lawyer could not be reached for comment either - were rearrested last year at the request of U.S. authorities who wanted them extradited to face drug-trafficking charges in Miami.

After their arrests, flyers and graffiti appeared all over town denouncing U.S. imperialism.

Police here were frustrated when a magistrate refused to extradite the men. That frustration deepened in February when a U.S. jury, hearing the same evidence presented to the magistrate, sent Henry - who had fled to Miami and was arrested there - to prison for life.

"The morale of the officers," whose take-home pay starts at about $470 a month, has been "affected a lot" by the tumult caused by this case, Reynolds said.

As for the government, it cannot do anything about the homicide cases, because "as in your country, the judiciary here is independent," noted Prime Minister Denzil Douglas. He also insisted that St. Kitts and Nevis is doing all it can to combat drugs - fully cooperating with U.S. authorities and tightening money-laundering laws.

Still, its mixed counter-narcotics results show the uphill battle the small countries of the eastern Caribbean face, diplomats and law enforcement experts agree.

"This is not the Gulf War," expert Calvani said, referring to the U.S.-led alliance's quick defeat of Iraq in 1991. "It is not something that we are going to win next year or in the next five years. . . . Now is the time when significant decisions of strategy will affect what will be the result in the next five to 10 years."

[End]

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