-------------------------------------------------------------------
Cops Hurt Coke Trade (A Two-Year Vancouver RCMP Undercover Investigation
Leads To The Arrest Of Three Men, But 'North Shore News' Offers No Evidence
Of Any Impact On Cocaine Market)
From: creator@islandnet.com (Matt Elrod)
To: mattalk@listserv.islandnet.com
Subject: Cops hurt coke trade
Date: Tue, 13 Jan 1998 12:05:06 -0800
Lines: 81
Source: North Shore News (Vancouver)
Contact: editor@nsnews.com
Pubdate: Jan. 12, 1998
Cops hurt coke trade
- THREE NORTH VAN MEN CHARGED IN BUST
Anna Marie D'Angelo
News Reporter
dangelo@nsnews.com
A two-year Vancouver RCMP undercover investigation has resulted in
charges against a North Vancouver man for allegedly attempting to import
cocaine through Colombia and Mexico.
Noel Sale, 50, who lived in the 700-block of Edgewood Road in Upper
Capilano, is charged with conspiracy to traffic and import cocaine,
according to the Vancouver RCMP Drug Section.
Two other North Vancouver residents, Robert Windatt, 44, who lived in
the 1800-block of Belle Isle and Paul Searle, 40, of the 1200-block of
Premier Street, are also charged with conspiracy to traffic and import
cocaine.
According to the Vancouver RCMP Drug Section, Sale was the
"facilitator" who allegedly tried to establish, through his Colombian
and Mexican contacts, ways to bring cocaine into the Lower Mainland by
land, sea and air.
Vancouver RCMP's Drug Section seized 24 kilograms of cocaine in the
province in connection with the investigation.
The cocaine is estimated by police to be worth $480,000.
"We try to de-emphasize looking at the value and look at the degree to
which these type of enforcement efforts destabilizes drug operations,"
said Sgt. Russ Grabb, spokesman for the Vancouver RCMP, which is
the headquarters for the national police force in B.C.
Grabb said a Whistler resident, Milo Rusimovic, was arrested in
California and charged in connection with the cocaine importation
investigation.
The undercover investigation was called "Project Esquire" and involved
police in the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration , the Los Angles
Impact Team, the Mexican Federal Police, the Colombian Federal Police,
Milton Ontario Drug Section and the Integrated Proceeds of Crime
Section of Vancouver RCMP. United States Immigration and
Naturalization Services and Canada Customs staff were also involved.
The three charged North Vancouver men were slated for appearances in
North Vancouver provincial court on Friday, according to Vancouver
RCMP drug section. Police say more charges may be laid.
Another two-year Vancouver RCMP drug undercover investigation also
wrapped up last week.
The investigation called "Project Exigent" resulted in cocaine
conspiracy, trafficking and importation charges against eight people.
Vancouver RCMP say 462 kilograms of high-grade cocaine valued at $36
million on the street was seized in Fresno California, Los Angeles and
Richmond.
Police also seized 159,000 units of the depressant drug, diazepan,
valued at $1.2 million, $300,000 of American money and vehicles
allegedly used in the drug trade.
Charged with various counts of conspiracy, trafficking and importation
of cocaine are: Todd Kernan Robinson, 39, of Vancouver; Lindsay
William "Lee" Moffat, 39, of Vancouver, Charles Edward Nance, 43, of
Richmond, Richard Grant, 38, of Renton Washington, Patrick Alexander
LeBlanc, 55, of Vancouver, Jimmy Rodriguez, 28, of Los Angeles,
California and Cali, Columbia, Dennis Leong, 47, of Vancouver and
Brent Robinson, 42, of Ladner.
Project Esquire and Project Exigent were offshoots of Project EYESPY,
a 42-month money laundering investigation set up by Vancouver RCMP at
a Burrard Street currency exchange office.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Neither Side In Pot Debate Has Proven Case (First Of Several Letters
To Editor Of 'Toronto Star' Notes Logical Flaws In Previous Columns)
Date: Mon, 12 Jan 1998 23:33:54 -0800
To: mapnews@mapinc.org
From: jwjohnson@netmagic.net (Joel W. Johnson)
Subject: MN: Canada: LTE: Neither Side in Pot Debate Has Proven Case
Sender: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Newshawk: "Kelly T. Conlon"
Source: Toronto Star
Contact: lettertoed@thestar.com
Pubdate: 12 Jan. 1998
Editors note: There were no LTEs on the NO side of the question. Over half
of these letters are by participants in MATTALK, the discussion list of the
Canadian Media Awareness Project:
http://www.islandnet.com/~creator/cmap/
NEITHER SIDE IN POT DEBATE HAS PROVEN CASE
Dana Larsen and Neil and Phillip Seeman are talking at crossed purposes.
Larsen believes marijuana laws cause more damage than benefits to society,
which is a basis for decriminalization rather than legalization. He also
believes that smoking marijuana has been shown to be effective and safe for
treating many medical conditions.
The Seemans do not address the societal harm that arises as a result of the
criminalization of marijuana and point out that marijuana is of unproved
safety but this alone does not prove that possession should be a criminal
offence. There is no shortage of evidence suggesting that cigarettes are
associated with many diseases but they are legal. Nor is it convincing that
there is no role for marijuana in medical practice. In palliative care,
where long term adverse effects are less important, their argument is
difficult to support.
Larsen has argued that marijuana should be decriminalized but he failed to
show that it should be legalized, while the Seemens have argued that
smoking marijuana has not been proven to be safe but have failed to show
that possession should be a criminal offence.
Stephen Workman, M.D.
Mississauga, ON.
***
I have to chuckle whenever learned men like Neil Seeman and Philip Seeman
(who oppose legalizing marijuana) prattle on about the need to prove the
medical efficacy and safety of cannabis.
Cannabis has been safely used by humans for over 5,000 years without one
directly attributable fatality. The same can't be said for common pain
relievers such as ASA and acetaminophen. Whose interests are Seeman and
Seeman trying to defend?
Carey Ker Toronto
***
Do the misinformed authors, Seeman and Seeman, believe that we should
criminalize people for engaging in less than healthy activities such as
watching TV and eating snack foods? Is it their opinion that cannabis
should be distributed by biker gangs? I agree with Dana Larsen who wrote
the Yes column. Cannabis should be legalized.
Matthew M. Elrod
***
Common sense seems to elude the Seeman brothers. The use of marijuana as a
drug delivery system to combat nausea and the AIDS has two distinct
advantages over synthetic, oral medications. First, it is cheap to grow.
Second, people experiencing severe nausea cannot easily swallow pills.
Common Sense suggests that all available forms of cannabis should be
available to the sick.
The fact that THC has accepted theraputic benefits is evidence enough to
end the criminal prohibition on cannabis, and the sooner the better.
Kelly T. Conlon
***
I certainly must agree with the Yes side on this issue. The fact that
marijuana is not perfectly safe for human consumption does not hold water.
If the health issue is the primary consideration against the
decriminalization of pot, then why in the name of all things sensible are
cigarettes not criminal?
John Monaghan South Porcupine, Ont.
***
The Seemans' argument against legalizing marijuana fails on
many points, but space allows me only to address the
following two. Their focus on the alleged dangers of
smokable marijuana completely ignores modern, safer, methods
of cannabis consumption, such as vaporization, which
produces no cancerous smoke. Advocating synthetic
replacements for cannabis fails to take into account that
the benefits of marijuana therapy occur due to the
combination of substance in the plant, not just the active
ingredient delta-9 THC. The bulk of scientific evidence does
not support their assertion that marijuana is unsafe.
Timothy Meeghan
Toronto, Ont.
***
When will enough Canadians realize that pot/marijuana/
cannabis is a greatly beneficial herbal medicine, just like
garlic, St.Johns Wort, and Evening Primrose Oil? Do they
know that it can be taken orally, in tea, tincture, or
rubbed on? It should be available to responsible adults at
health-food stores and pharmacies, or in their own back
yards, without fear of being labelled criminals. Please
help to spread the truth so this terrible war against people
can end.
Kathy Galbraith
Raymond, Alberta
***
I find it hard to believe that people are still propagating
the same old myths about marijuana. A real look at the facts
shows the source of the "public health hazards" mentioned in
the Jan. 5 No column to be either dated studies or reefer
madness-like propaganda. I challenge the authors of the No
column to provide valid sources for the "hazards" they cite.
Adam Schiffman
North York
***
Alcohol prohibition does not work. Drug prohibition does not
work. Illegal drugs are a trillion dollar-plus industry,
most of which flows into the coffers of organized crime, the
only beneficiary of the drug laws. Who is the government
trying to benefit by refusing to end this travesty?
Ian MacMillan
Toronto, Ont.
***
I certainly must agree with the Yes side on this issue. The
fact that marijuana is not perfectly safe for human
consumption does not hold water. If the health issue is the
primary consideration against the decriminalization of pot,
then why in the name of all things sensible are cigarettes
not criminal?
John Monaghan
South Porcupine, Ont.
***
To our shame, "caring and compassionate" Canada imprisons
thousands of innocent citizens who happen to prefer drugs
not approved by the sanctimonious and uncaring majority.
Incredibly, even sick Canadians, who find relief from these
substances, are made to feel the sting of the majority's
disapproval.
Alan and Eleanor Randell
Victoria, B.C.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Feds Begin Civil War In California (News Release From American Medical
Marijuana Organization Includes Details For Activists On Who To Write To
About The Federal Attack On CBCs)
Date: Mon, 12 Jan 1998 18:30:13 EST
Errors-To: manager@drcnet.org
Originator: drctalk@drcnet.org
Sender: drctalk@drcnet.org
From: AMMO
To: Multiple recipients of list
Subject: ACTION ALERT: Feds Begin Civil War in California
ACTION ALERT: Feds Begin Civil War in California
Feds try to cut-off supply of cannabis to thousands of patients.
American Medical Marijuana Organization (AMM0)
January 12, 1998
Please re-distribute this announcement.
On January 9, 1998, six federal civil lawsuits were filed against cannabis
buyers' clubs in the Northern District of California.
In November 1996, voters passed the California Compassionate Use Act (Prop.
215) which ended the state prohibition on medical uses of marijuana in
California. Prop. 215 allows patients and their primary care-givers to
possess and cultivate medicinal cannabis upon recommendation from a
physician. Cannabis "buyers' clubs" have since supplied the needs of
thousands of medical patients. Since there are no statewide guidelines for
cannabis distribution, these herbal dispensaries operate under the auspices
of their local governments. The cannabis is either cultivated on site or
supplied by local horticulturalists.
The federal lawsuits filed on Friday are aimed at shutting down the
cannabis buyers' clubs in California by enforcing the federal Controlled
Substances Act, which lists marijuana as a Schedule I controlled substance,
along with heroin and LSD.
The Feds are thwarting the will of the voters in California by attacking
the supplies of medicine for thousands of seriously-ill people who rely on
cannabis to alleviate suffering caused by cancer and AIDS treatment and to
alleviate symptoms of other illnesses like glaucoma and chronic pain.
The Feds have started a CIVIL WAR against the sick people and voters of
California.
The People must win this war or be governed by federal tyranny. Is the
U.S. a republic or a totalitarian dictatorship? It's up to the People to
decide.
***
WHAT YOU CAN DO:
Donations to fight these federal lawsuits are urgently needed. At this
point, no central defense fund has been set up to fight this federal
harassment. Make checks payable to the name of the individual buyers'
clubs. Note: Pending potential asset forfeiture against the clubs, your
check may not be cashed immediately or it may be signed over directly to
the attorneys who are representing the clubs.
Please send any amount you can, even if it's just a few postage stamps.
The six clubs and ten individuals are named in the federal lawsuits are:
1) Cannabis Cultivators Cooperative
Dennis Peron (named defendant)
1444 Market Street
San Francisco, CA 94102
Phone: (415) 621-3986
Fax: (415) 621-0604
Email: cbc@marijuana.org
Web: http://www.marijuana.org
2) Flower Therapy
John Hudson, Mary Palmer, Barbara Sweeney, Gerard M. Buhrz (named
defendants)
3180 17th Street
San Francisco, CA 94110
Phone: (415) 255-6305
Email: flowert@pacbell.com
3) Oakland Cannabis Buyers' Cooperative
Jeff Jones (named defendant)
P.O. Box 70401
Oakland, CA 94612-0401
Phone: (510) 832-5346
Fax: (510) 986-0534
Email: ocbc@rxcbc.org
Web: http://www.rxcbc.org
4) Santa Cruz Cannabis Buyers' Club
201 Maple Street
Santa Cruz, CA 95060
Phone: (408) 429-8819
5) Ukiah Cannabis Buyer's Club
Cherrie Lovett, Marvin & Mildred Lehrman (named defendants)
40A Pallini Lane
Ukiah, CA 95482
Phone: (707) 462-0691
Fax: (707) 468-4336
Email: dirtroad@lightspeed.net
6) Marin Alliance for Medical Marijuana
Lynette Shaw (named defendant)
School Street Plaza
Building 6 - Suite 210
Fairfax, CA 94930
Phone: (415) 256-9328
***
WHAT ELSE CAN I DO???
1) Write LETTERS TO THE EDITOR of these California newspapers. Express
outrage at the persecution patients in California. Tell them to STOP THE
WAR ON SICK PEOPLE!! For help on letter-writing, see the Media Awareness
Project at http://www.mapinc.org.
California Newspapers (compiled by Jim Rosenfield: jnr@insightweb.com)
cctletrs@netcom.com(Contra Costa County Times Calif.)
chronletters@sfgate.com(San Francisco Chronicle)
feedback@smctimes.com(San Mateo Times)
letters@blk.com(BLK, LTE's)
letters@examiner.com(San Francisco Examiner)
letters@latimes.com(Los Angeles Times)
letters@link.freedom.com(The Orange County Register)
letters@modbee.com(Modesto Bee)
letters@news.latimes.com
letters@sfbayguardian.com(San Francisco Bay Guardian)
letters@sjmercury.com(San Jose Mercury News)
letters@TheReporter.com(Vacaville Reporter)
letters@uniontrib.com(San Diego Union Tribune)
mail@newtimes-slo.com
opinion@bakersfield.com
opinion@sacbee.com
pdletters@aol.com(Santa Rosa Press Democrat)
triblet@angnewspapers.com
tribletter@aol.com
viewpoint@asucla.ucla.edu(Daily Bruin UCLA Viewpoint)
voice@villagevoice.com
***
2) SEND POSTCARDS to and CALL federal and state elected officials.
SEND EMAIL to the few who have email.
Tell them to END THE WAR ON SICK PEOPLE!!!!
Use this short email list to cut and paste into the Bcc: field of your
email program. Save the list and periodically remind these officials that
you won't remain silent in this civil war on your family and friends.
STATE GOVERNMENT
Governor Pete Wilson
State Capitol, 1st Floor
Sacramento, CA 95814
Phone: (916) 445-2841
Fax: (916) 445-4633
Email: petewilson@ca.gov
Lieutenant Governor Gray Davis
State Capitol, Room 1114
Sacramento, CA 95814
Phone: (916) 445-8994
Fax: (916) 323-4998
Email: gray.davis@ltg.ca.gov
Attorney General Daniel E. Lungren
1300 I Street
Sacramento, CA 95814
Phone: (916) 445-9555
Fax: (916) 324-5205
Attorney General's Office Public Inquiry Unit
Web: http://caag.state.ca.us/piu/mailform.htm
Email: piu@hdcdojnet.state.ca.us
***
CALIFORNIA STATE ASSEMBLY AND SENATE:
Email list:
http://www.sonnet.com/CriminalJusticeReform/legislators.html
Other lists:
http://www.state.ca.us/s/govt/legisca.html
http://clerkweb.house.gov/mbrcmtee/members/mbrsstate/uolmfram.htm
***
U.S. CONGRESS
U.S. Senators of California:
Boxer, Barbara (D) senator@boxer.senate.gov
Feinstein, Dianne (D) senator@feinstein.senate.gov
For U.S. Senators in other states, see:
http://www.senate.gov/senator/membmail.html
http://www.earthlaw.org/Activist/senatadd.htm
U.S. Representatives:
http://www.visi.com/juan/congress/
***
EMAIL THE WHITE HOUSE:
president@whitehouse.gov
vice.president@whitehouse.gov
first.lady@whitehouse.gov
***
U.S. ATTORNEY'S OFFICENorthern District of California
Michael Yamaguchi, U.S. Attorney
11th Floor - Federal Building
450 Golden Gate Avenue - Box 36055
San Francisco, CA 94102
Central District of California
Criminal Division
312 North Spring Street
Los Angeles, CA 90012
Email: tmrozek@usdoj.gov
Executive Office for United States Attorneys
United States Department of Justice
950 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W., Room 1619
Washington, D.C. 20530-0001
Phone: (202) 514-1020
Fax: (202) 514-0323
U.S. Attorneys Home Page
http://www.usdoj.gov/usao/eousa/usaos.html
***
DRUG ENFORCEMENT ADMINISTRATION
a) San Francisco Division
450 Golden Gate Avenue
P.O. Box 36035
San Francisco, CA 94102
(415) 436-7900
Subdivisions: (Fresno, Monterey, Sacramento, San Francisco Airport TF, San
Jose)
b) Los Angeles Division
255 East Temple Street - 20th Floor
Los Angeles, CA 90012
(213) 894-2650
Subdivisions: (Riverside, CA; Santa Ana, CA; Ventura, CA; Honolulu, HI;
Guam; Las Vegas, NV; Reno, NV; N. Lake Tahoe TF; S. Lake Tahoe TF)
***
For information on medical uses of cannabis, see:
Medical Marijuana Master Reference - Cliff Schaffer's Online Drug Library
http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/medical_mj.htm
The Medical Marijuana Magazine
http://www.marijuanamagazine.com
American Medical Marijuana Organization
http://www.alpworld.com/AMMO
(Read the Department of Justice Press Release on the filing of the lawsuits
at: http://www.alpworld.com/AMMO/Clubs.html)
Oakland Cannabis Buyers' Cooperative
http://www.rxcbc.org
Cannabis Cultivators Cooperative (San Francisco)
http://www.marijuana.org
Multidisciplinary Association For Psychedelic Studies
http://www.maps.org/mmj
Media Awareness Project
http://www.mapinc.org
Drug Text
http://www.drugtext.nl
The Lindesmith Center
http://www.lindesmith.org/library/subject.html
***
AMERICAN MEDICAL MARIJUANA ORGANIZATION (AMMO)
Defending The Rights Of Medical Marijuana Patients
Board of Directors:
--Steve Kubby ,
--Ed Rosenthal
--Laura Kriho
For subscription changes, please mail to with the
word "subscribe" or "unsubscribe" in the subject line.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
New Attack On California Pot Clubs ('Philadelphia Inquirer' Contrasts
Dennis Peron's Club In San Francisco With Scott Imler's In Los Angeles)
Date: Wed, 14 Jan 1998 22:39:47 -0500
Subject: MN: US CA: Inquirer: New Attack On Calif. Pot Clubs
Sender: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Newshawk: Richard Lake
Source: Philadelphia Inquirer
Author: Nita Lelyveld, Inquirer Staff Writer
Contact: inquirer.opinion@phillynews.com
Pubdate: 12 January 1998
Website: http://www.phillynews.com/
NEW ATTACK ON CALIF. POT CLUBS
State Voters Approved Medicinal Use Of Marijuana. They Didn't Approve
Buyers Clubs, Say Law Enforcers.
WEST HOLLYWOOD, Calif. -- Three days a week, behind an unmarked office door
above an auto-parts store, the Los Angeles Cannabis Buyers' Club discreetly
goes about distributing medical marijuana to people with serious illnesses
and pain.
The nonprofit collective has 764 members, most of whom have HIV or AIDS.
All have major health problems -- as recorded in writing by their doctors.
Staff members carefully vet each application, verifying doctors' letters,
checking doctors' licenses with the state medical board. To get through the
front door, each person must pass through three security checkpoints.
Members arrive, get their marijuana, and take it home to use. Up the coast
in San Francisco, a giant green pot leaf is painted on the street-level
front door of the San Francisco Cannabis Buyers' Club on busy Market Street.
Inside the 8,000-member club, people pass joints in crowded smoking
lounges, visit the head shop and greet staff members, some of whom wear
green cloth pot-leaf wreaths on their heads. They travel from floor to
floor on the Jerry Garcia Memorial Elevator, and hundreds of origami cranes
in all the colors of the rainbow hang from every ceiling. Since
Californians voted in 1996 to legalize the medicinal use of marijuana,
cannabis clubs have popped up across the state, to get the drug to those
who qualify. But the future of the clubs is in jeopardy.
In recent weeks, state and federal authorities have cracked down on the
clubs -- saying their existence is illegal and unprotected by the
medical-marijuana initiative. On Friday, the U.S. Attorney's Office in San
Francisco began legal action against six Northern California clubs and
their operators, saying they flagrantly violated the Controlled Substances
Act.
California Attorney General Dan Lungren, whose agents raided the San
Francisco club and temporarily got it shut down in August 1996, last month
successfully pushed a state appellate court to declare the club illegal and
reinstate the injunction that closed it. That decision goes into effect
today, although a Superior Court still has to reinstate the injunction.
Lungren says he plans to use the decision to close every club in the state.
The looming threat of closure is fracturing the medical-marijuana movement,
whose diverse elements have always barely coexisted.
On the one side are people like Dennis Peron, an author of the initiative
and director of the San Francisco club, who openly tells anyone who asks
that he believes all use of marijuana is medicinal.
On the other are those like Los Angeles club director Scott Imler, who
argues that the only way to continue to supply marijuana to those it can
help is to run very strict and businesslike operations.
"We have more rules than all the other clubs put together," Imler said.
"The people who come here have cancer, seizures and epilepsy, multiple
sclerosis, Lou Gehrig's disease, chronic pain from botched surgeries. Their
problems are not what I would call trivial or marginal or temporary. This
isn't about fun, and this is not the kind of club you want to be a member of."
Proposition 215, the medical-marijuana initiative passed with 56 percent of
the vote in November 1996 -- does not legalize cannabis clubs. In fact, it
does not provide for a method for patients to get the drug. It states
simply that marijuana can be used medically in the treatments of AIDS,
cancer, anorexia, chronic pain, spasticity, glaucoma, arthritis, migraine
"or any other illness for which marijuana provides relief." Patients, with
recommendations from their doctors, are granted the right to possess and
cultivate marijuana for medical use, with a doctor's recommendation. The
patients also can pass that right on to designated primary caregivers.
A section of the initiative encourages federal and state authorities to
come up with plans for "safe and affordable distribution of marijuana," but
such plans have not been forthcoming.
That angers many club directors, who say that sick people would be forced
to approach dealers on the street if the clubs were forced to close. They
are quick to admit that making marijuana available in pharmacies would be a
much better way to distribute the drug than their clubs, which are forced
to buy much of what they give out from dealers, often at exorbitant prices.
"What has the attorney general done besides raid clubs and try to prosecute
patients?" said Jeff Jones, director of the 1,000-member Oakland Cannabis
Buyers' Cooperative, which was one of the clubs targeted Friday. "He hasn't
offered a single alternative to what we do."
Not all anger is reserved for the government. Some within the
medical-marijuana movement are increasingly angry at Peron for pushing the
limits of what the authorities might tolerate. State officials say
undercover police have bought marijuana at that club without prescriptions,
have found evidence of club marijuana being resold on the streets, and
witnessed minors on the club premises.
Some club directors believe such lax standards in San Francisco put the
other clubs in jeopardy.
"Dennis is widely credited with being the father of the whole movement,
and, unfortunately for the rest of us, whatever sticks to Peron sticks to
the medical-marijuana issue," Imler said.
"We call his club Peron's-town, like Jonestown, which was another San
Francisco-based nightmare. It's a three-ring circus." (He was referring to
the 1978 mass suicide in Guyana of more than 900 members of the People's
Temple cult, including leader Jim Jones.)
Hoping to make his club less vulnerable to attack, Imler works closely with
West Hollywood officials, who support him. He carefully tracks every bit of
marijuana he distributes and advocates total disclosure.
In October, he organized a conference of organizations involved in the
distribution of medical marijuana. Meeting in Santa Cruz, they drafted an
affirmation of 25 principles, resolving to, among other things, "diligently
verify all applicants," "observe responsible and accountable business
practices" and "refrain from behavior and statements blurring lines between
medical and nonmedical use of marijuana."
Peron's club did not sign on, but 28 other organizations did. Among them
was the Santa Clara County Medical Cannabis Center in San Jose, started by
Peter Baez and Jesse Garcia, who was diagnosed with AIDS six years ago.
Garcia began taking marijuana when his illness led to severe malnutrition.
He was losing weight rapidly. He couldn't eat or digest the drugs he was
prescribed. He had chronic diarrhea, which lasted for more than three years.
"I couldn't get my body to help repair itself," he said.
Marijuana changed that, stimulating his appetite.
"My whole health condition made a 180-degree turn. Marijuana changed my
life," he said. "Even my mother quickly noticed the difference. She's a
68-year-old Latino woman. Marijuana isn't something she'd approve of. But
when she saw how I was improving, she said, 'Don't stop taking your
medicine.' "
Garcia persuaded Baez to open the center after he found he could no longer
make the trip easily to Peron's club in San Francisco, 85 miles away.
The San Jose club, which does not permit marijuana smoking on its premises,
is housed in a nondescript four-room office, wedged between doctors'
offices in a single-story office block. As in Los Angeles, the club has
worked hard to ease the discomfort of local officials, even going so far as
agreeing to allow law-enforcement authorities to come in without warrants.
On two different occasions, when people came to the center with forged
letters, Baez and Garcia turned them in to police. Both forgers were
prosecuted.
"We don't play games with the rules or the issues. We run a very tight
ship," Baez said. "We had hoped that the authorities would recognize that
when they started talking about shutting clubs down. But it doesn't look
like they're going to make any distinctions."
Peron is unapologetic about the way he runs his club and unwilling to take
the blame for the crackdown.
"The biggest criticism of what I do is that I allow people to hang out and
enjoy the atmosphere," he said. "I don't see anything wrong with that.
They're sick and they're suffering. Why not let them experience a little joy?"
"If I could go to jail and allow the rest of these clubs to continue to
serve sick and dying people, I surely would. But in the end it's not just
me they're after, it's all of us."
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Is The Government's War Against Marijuana Justified As Public Policy?
(Debate In 'Washington Post' Between Mark Souder, Vice Chairman Of US House
Government Reform And Oversight Subcommittee On National Security,
And Lynn Zimmer, Associate Professor Of Sociology At Queens College
In New York, Coauthor Of 'Marijuana Myths, Marijuana Facts - A Review
Of The Scientific Evidence')
Date: Mon, 2 Feb 1998 17:46:23 -0800 (PST)
From: bc616@scn.org (Darral Good)
To: hemp-talk@hemp.net
Subject: HT: ART: lynn zimmer
Reply-To: bc616@scn.org
Sender: owner-hemp-talk@hemp.net
>From Mailer-Daemon@epub.med.iacnet.com Mon Feb 2 17:09:45 1998
Full content for this article includes photograph and illustration.
Source: Insight on the News, Jan 12, 1998 v13 n2 p24(4).
Title: Q: Is the government's war against marijuana justified as public
policy?(Symposium)(Panel Discussion)
Author: Mark Souder and Lynn Zimmer
Abstract: Critics of the war on drugs say it is ineffective, despite
penalties for marijuana possession that are far too harsh. Supporters of the
drug war say comparing it to Prohibition is unfair, and that tough law
enforcement is a key to neighborhood revitalization.
Subjects: Legalization of narcotics - Political aspects
Narcotics, Control of - Political aspects
Crime prevention - Political aspects
Marijuana - Laws, regulations, etc.
Electronic Collection: A20121867
RN: A20121867
Full Text COPYRIGHT 1998 Washington Times Corporation
Yes: Protect the public from the practitioners of `Cheech-and-Chona'medicine.
Rolling Stone magazine noted in its May 5, 1994. issue that currency
speculator and billionaire philanthropist George Soros gave the Drug Policy
Foundation, one of many recipients of his "charitable" largesse, suggestions
to follow if they wanted his assistance: "[H]ire someone with the political
savvy to sit down and negotiate with government officials and target a few
winnable issues, like medical marijuana and the repeal of mandatory minimums."
Keith Stroup, founder of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana
Laws, or NORML, told an Emory University audience in 1979 that medicinal
marijuana would be used as a red herring to give marijuana a good name.
Richard Cowan, writing for the pro-drug High Times magazine, described the
"medical model as spearheading a strategy for the legalization of marijuana by
1997."
According to public-opinion polls, legalization of marijuana is not supported
by the American people. This explains why the drug lobby carefully steers away
from using the term "legalization," preferring cryptic terms such as harm
reduction, decriminalization and medicalization. The goal of the drug lobby
has not changed; it only is camouflaged. The public sensibly and resolutely
remains opposed to recreational marijuana use, but drug legalizers shamefully
are trying to con voters through deceptive ballot referenda exploiting the ill
and dying.
Marijuana legalizers commonly claim America's prisons teem with young people
whose only come was simple possession of marijuana, and that drug arrests
disproportionately affect minorities. The recent debate about crack-cocaine
sentencing disparities sparked similar claims of racism by the criminal
justice system. The drug lobby ignores the obvious fact that a war on drugs
hits inner-city traffickers foremost and helps law-abiding residents of
neighborhoods who have the least resources with which to fight back. Despite
the inescapable conclusion that placing drug dealers behind bars protects
neighborhoods against criminals, violent crime and social ills attendant with
drug use, drug legalizers such as University of California at Los Angeles'
Mark Kleiman absurdly claim: "Locking up a burglar does not materially change
the opportunities for other burglars, while locking up a drug dealer leaves
potential customers for new dealers."
The drug lobby frequently compares the drug war to Prohibition. But as a
publication at the turn of the century (when the United States had a raging
drug problem) observed, "a drunkard may retain his moral equilibrium between
debauches . . . but the `dope fiend,' once thoroughly addicted, inevitably
drops into utter debasement." Unlike illegal drugs, alcohol and drinking were
embedded in Anglo-Saxon and European social customs. While the temperance
movement prevailed after heated debate, drug restrictions passed during the
same period widely were regarded as uncontroversial and needed. Western states
passed marijuana-prohibition laws in response to a rash of crimes and violence
linked to cannabis use among Mexican immigrants. A medical exemption existed
then to the import of marijuana, but soon states and politicians appealed to
the federal government for help in confronting -- the "loco weed." Legendary
New York journalist Meyer Berger in 1938 summed up expert medical opinion at
the time: "Marijuana, while no more habit-forming than ordinary cigarette
smoking, offers a shorter cut to complete madness than any other drug."
Drug legalizers recently lost a ballot initiative in Washington state on Nov.
4, a setback from victories to legalize illegal drugs last year in California
and Arizona. The Washington-state referendum -- I-685, which failed by a
margin of 60 percent to 40 percent --combined the worst aspects of the
legalization initiatives in California and Arizona by not only seeking to
legalize marijuana but also cocaine, heroin, LSD and other narcotics on
Schedule T of the federal Controlled Substances Act, drugs judged to have no
medicinal benefit and high potential for abuse. I-685 also would have released
drug offenders from prison. I-685 was bolstered by millions of dollars in
contributions from a handful of out-of-state millionaires, including Soros --
dubbed the "Daddy Warbucks" of drug legalization by former health, education
and welfare secretary Joe Califano -- and Arizona millionaire John Sperling.
The measure failed even though drug legalizers outspent antidrug advocates by
a ratio of nearly 15-to-1.
Washington state antidrug activists warned against complacency in fighting the
legalizers. They acknowledged the battle against I-685 was significantly
buoyed by the zealotry of the legalizers to delist Schedule I substances and
by the National Rifle Association's successful multimillion-dollar campaign
against a gun-control referendum also on the ballot.
The District of Columbia is threatened with a marijuana "medicalization"
initiative next November, sponsored by a homosexual advocacy organization, the
AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power. AIDS activists should take note of pioneering
research by Dr. Thomas Klein at the University of South Florida who showed
marijuana alters the immune system and may accelerate HIV-infection into
full-blown AIDS cases. D.C.'s Measure 57 would permit up to 20 people to
cultivate and sell unlimited quantities of marijuana for an individual
suffering from an amorphous range of conditions-essentially shielding drug
dealers from prosecution.
As drug czar Barry McCaffrey argues, the ballot box is the wrong place for
decisions about efficacy and safety of medicines. The Food and Drug
Administration, or FDA, was created to protect the public against snake-oil
salesmen, and consumer-safety laws require proper labeling of ingredients and
dosages. The sale of crude marijuana circumvents those protections.
The pro-drug lobby successfully described Proposition 215 in California as
"medical" marijuana for the sick and dying, preying on the compassionate
nature of the American people, but Prop. 215 legalized marijuana with no age
limitation for "any illness for which marijuana provides relief," including
ailments of dubious nature and severity such as memory recall, writers cramp
and corn callouses. The FDA has approved the only psychoactive ingredient of
marijuana, THC, found useful for pain relief as Marinol, in pill form through
prescription. Marinol, a Schedule IT drug with limited medical use and high
potential for abuse, is an antinausea drug for cancer patients who fail to
respond to other drugs, and an appetite stimulant for people suffering from
AIDS wasting syndrome. THC has not, however, been shown to be safe and
effective for any other condition ether than nausea and wasting due to AIDS.
In a double-blind study, patients preferred Marinol over smoking marijuana
2-to-1. A marijuana study by the Institute of Medicine concluded risks of
marijuana on the immune system were such that it favored development of a
smoke-free inhaled delivery system to provide purer forms of THC, or its
related compound, cannabinoids.
The drug lobby, however, rejects legal use of THC in Marinol and continues to
promote use of crude marijuana cigarettes as medicine. One doctor, explaining
why marijuana is not medicine, gave the analog of eating moldy bread in an
attempt to get penicillin. A prominent oncologist professed he could manage
pain with legal drugs in 99 percent of his patients, and that there are newer
and better medications for chemotherapy patients than Marinol, describing one,
Zofran, as a "miracle" drug.
Crude marijuana consists of more than 400 chemicals which, when smoked, become
thousands of chemicals. Drugs from a pharmacy are of a single ingredient and
of a known dosage. Pot advocates often cite the fact that morphine, available
under a doctor's care, is a heroin derivative. What they neglect to mention is
that morphine received FDA approval and underwent rigorous clinical testing, a
public-safety standard approved drugs must meet.
Drug legalizers often cite Americans participating in an ongoing federal
experiment at the University of Mississippi to evaluate any benefit from
medicinal marijuana, implying that the federal government believes marijuana
could be medicinal. But to date, despite 12,000 studies of the medical utility
of marijuana, an overwhelming consensus exists in the scientific community
that smoked marijuana never can be a medicine. The federal experimental
program, consisting of eight people, has declined new admissions since 1992.
Congress, in its reauthorization of the drug-czar's office, banned further
studies of marijuana as medicine, a provision which I sponsored.
While the Clinton administration campaigns vigorously against cigarettes and
chides the tobacco industry for its marketing techniques, marijuana cigarettes
rarely are targets of condemnation. Ironically, the tobacco industry, like the
drug lobby today, once promoted cigarettes as medicine until the Federal Trade
Commission halted this practice in 1955.
Marijuana is addictive, leading to the use of other drugs such as cocaine and
heroin, and is a major cause of accidents and injuries. It can cause
respiratory disease and mental disorders including depression, paranoia,
decreased cognitive performance and impaired memory. Babies born to women who
smoked marijuana during pregnancy have an increased incidence of leukemia, low
birth weight and other newborn abnormalities. The National Institute of Drug
Abuse's director frequently mentions brain scans showing that lower cerebral
activity seems to account for some of the reported learning disturbances found
in chronic marijuana users.
As a New York Times editorial recently put it, parents need to realize today's
marijuana is more potent than the version they may have smoked in their youth,
and "research has shown the drug to be far more dangerous to young people than
was known in the 1960s and 1970s, with a higher THC content. It can be
particularly harmful to the growth and development of teenagers."
There is a solid reason for scientific studies and FDA approval -- to avoid
medical catastrophes such as thalidomide. Good medicine is not conceived at
the polls, but through routine clinical trials. Since marijuana is far more
carcinogenic than tobacco cigarettes, it's not compassionate to recommend it
to sick people -- it's cruel.
Souder is vice chairman of the House Government Reform and Oversight
subcommittee on National Security, which has focused on the U.S. narcotics
problem.
***
No: This costly battle is a waste of government money and human capital.
A friend of mine allows his teenage son to smoke marijuana. The boy gets
intense nausea from the chemotherapy for his cancer, and marijuana works
better than the medications prescribed by his physician. My accountant, a
35-year-old man with AIDS, smokes marijuana before dinner to stimulate his
appetite and help him gain weight. A 77-year-old woman who lives near my
mother smokes marijuana to treat her glaucoma. A multiple-sclerosis patient,
whom I met last week at a conference, told me he uses marijuana to reduce
muscle spasticity.
Under federal law and the laws of most states, these people are committing
criminal offenses. In 1996, voters in California and Arizona passed
referendums to prevent state law-enforcement officials from arresting people
who use marijuana as a medicine. Washington-state voters recently defeated a
drug-policy referendum which, among its provisions, allowed patients access to
medical marijuana. In exit polls, however, more than half of those voting "no"
said they would have voted "yes" if the initiative had been for medical
marijuana alone. Next year, voters in several other states will get to approve
or reject proposals to decriminalize marijuana's use as a medicine.
Public-opinion poll data available today suggests they overwhelmingly will
approve. Still, unless federal law is changed, medical marijuana will remain
illegal throughout the United States.
Federal officials, including drug czar Barry McCaffrey, oppose leniency on the
question of medical marijuana claiming it "sends the wrong message" and
undermines government efforts to suppress marijuana's recreational use. By all
objective measures, these efforts already are a dismal failure. In 1995,
federal agents seized I million pounds of marijuana along the U.S. border and
spent millions of dollars to find and destroy marijuana grown domestically.
Nonetheless, the following year McCaffrey's Office of National Drug Control
Policy reported that "high-quality marijuana is widely available in all parts
of the United States." On government surveys, about 85 percent of high-school
seniors say it is "very easy" or "fairly easy" to obtain marijuana -- the same
as it has been every year since the early seventies.
During the last 20 years, state and local police have arrested nearly 10
million people for marijuana offenses, about 85 percent for possession.
Supporters of this approach claim that criminal sanctions keep some people
from using marijuana. However, the data show no relationship between the
number of arrests for marijuana possession or the severity of sanctions
imposed and the number of people who use marijuana.
Following legal changes since the seventies, researchers have compared the
rates of marijuana use in states which have decriminalized marijuana with the
rates in states which still had criminal sanctions for simple possession. They
found no difference. Marijuana use increased throughout the United States
during the seventies, irrespective of the policy in individual states. After
1979, marijuana use started declining. This downward trend, like the upward
trend that preceded it, occurred in states both with and without criminal
penalties for possessing marijuana.
In the mid-eighties, while marijuana use continued to decline, President
Reagan launched a new war on marijuana. Congress recriminalized marijuana
possession, setting a penalty of one year in federal prison for possessing a
single joint (or less) of marijuana the same penalty as for possessing small
amounts of cocaine or heroin. Two of the states that decriminalized marijuana
in the seventies-Oregon and Alaska reinstated criminal penalties for marijuana
possession. In addition, Congress and state legislatures created a variety of
new civil sanctions which could be applied to persons arrested for marijuana
offenses.
Today marijuana offenders, including those charged with simple possession, can
be denied college and or small business loans, farm subsidies, occupational
licenses and government grants, contracts and fellowships. More than half the
states have enacted "possess a joint loose your license" laws, which
automatically revoke the driver's license of anyone convicted of any marijuana
offense, even if it was not driving-related. People on probation or parole for
any criminal offense can be returned to prison on the basis of a urine test
showing them to be marijuana users. Following a marijuana arrest, government
officials can seize people's property, including cash, cars, boats, land and
houses. And, they can keep the property even if there never is a criminal
conviction.
After remaining fairly stable throughout the eighties, arrests for marijuana
offenses increased dramatically during the nineties. In 1992, state and local
police arrested about 269,000 people for marijuana possession. In 1996,
marijuana-possession arrests exceeded 545,000 nearly a doubling in a five-year
period. Arrests for marijuana distribution and sale also increased during
these years. But about 85 percent of marijuana arrests, the same as always,
were for marijuana possession. In New York City, marijuana arrests doubled
between 1990 and 1996, reaching 18,000. Most New York City arrests, such as
those across the country, are misdemeanor arrests, for either possessing
marijuana or smoking marijuana in public.
This war on marijuana has had no apparent impact on marijuana's popularity.
>From 1992 to 1996, while arrests were doubling, the number of adult marijuana
users remained stable. During the same five-year period, adolescent marijuana
use increased, after declining for more than a decade. In 1992, 8 percent of
12- to 17-year-olds said they had used marijuana during the last year. By
1996, the rate of past-year marijuana use among adolescents had risen to 13
percent.
Rather than admitting defeat, drug warriors argue that more enforcement and
tougher penalties for marijuana offenses are needed. Most marijuana users,
they say, never get arrested. And those arrested seldom get sent to prison.
Instead, judges give marijuana users suspended sentences, put them on
probation or sentence them to community service. A real war on marijuana, drug
warriors claim, will produce the deterrence that currently is lacking.
The National Commission on Marihuana and Drug Abuse in 1972 decided that
whatever marijuana's harms to users, they paled in comparison to-the harm of
being arrested. In addition, commission members understood that
"marginalizing" even a small minority of marijuana users did not serve the
best interests of society. Consider, for example, how many of today's
political leaders smoked marijuana in their youth. President Clinton, Vice
President Gore and House Speaker Newt Gingrich are among them. If, rather than
escaping detection, they had been arrested for marijuana possession, what they
now refer to as a "youthful mistake" might have ruined their career
opportunities.
Even if marijuana were a highly dangerous drug, criminalizing its use would do
more harm than good. Fortunately, marijuana is far less dangerous than
prohibitionists insist. In Marijuana Myths, Marijuana Facts. A Review of the
Scientific Evidence, coauthor John P. Morgan and I conclude, based on the
evidence, that although marijuana it not completely harmless it has an
extremely wide margin of safety.
Marijuana's only clear health risk is respiratory damage from smoking, and
this risk is confined to long-term, heavy marijuana smokers. Claims of other
biological harms -- for example, brain damage, infertility and immune-system
impairment -- are based on animal and cellular studies using doses of
marijuana up to 1,000 times the psychoactive dose in humans. None of these
harmful effects have ever been found in studies of people who use marijuana.
Unlike most other drugs that humans consume, no dose of marijuana is fatal.
All psychoactive drugs are used in an addictive fashion by some people.
Marijuana is no exception. However, compared to other drugs, marijuana has a
low addictive potential. Using a synthetic cannabinoid drug which resembles
marijuana, researchers recently have reported physical withdrawal in animals.
However, to achieve this effect, researchers also administered a blocker drug
which immediately strips cannabinoids from receptors. When people stop using
marijuana, the drug leaves receptors gradually and they do not experience
physical withdrawal.
Even without being addicted, some marijuana users use too much --meaning their
use interferes with other life events and activities. Such people,
overwhelmingly, had troubled lives before they began using marijuana. There is
nothing about marijuana, per se, that causes people to become bad students,
poor workers or dysfunctional members of society. Nor is there a
pharmacological basis for marijuana's long-alleged "gateway effect." People
who have used the least-popular drugs, such as heroin and cocaine, tend also
to have used more popular drugs, such alcohol, tobacco, caffeine and
marijuana. However, most marijuana users never use another illegal drug.
According to government surveys, for every 100 people who have tried
marijuana, only one currently is a regular user of cocaine.
The only clear social risk of marijuana is that people will have accidents
during the period of intoxication. Marijuana is not as debilitating as alcohol
or many prescription medications. Still, during the few hours after using
marijuana, most people show some psychomotor impairment. The data indicate
that marijuana is not a major contributor to highway accidents. Nonetheless,
criminalizing marijuana-impaired driving makes good social sense. A
public-service campaign of the sort now used to deter alcohol-impaired driving
might also prove useful. A disadvantage of strict prohibition, which defines
all marijuana use as equally wrong and equally illegal, is that it makes such
a campaign practically impossible. An advantage of decriminalizing marijuana
is that it would allow the dissemination of rules for safer marijuana use.
In the current political climate, government officials won't even discuss
marijuana decriminalization as an option. But outside government circles, the
country is buzzing with decriminalization conversations. Recent public-opinion
polls show that half of adults favor eliminating criminal penalties for
marijuana possession and use. Nearly three-quarters support immediate removal
of the federal ban on marijuana's medical use. They understand, even if
government officials don't, that the war on marijuana is unjust, ineffective,
unnecessary and far too costly.
Zimmer is an associate professor of sociology at Queens College in New York,
and coauthor of Marijuana Myths, Marijuana Facts: A Review of the Scientific
Evidence.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Clinton To Order States To Fight Prison Drug Use ('Los Angeles Times'
Reports The White House Credits UCLA Professor Mark Kleiman
For Inspiring The President's Anti-Drug Efforts In Prisons)
Date: Tue, 13 Jan 1998 00:16:15 -0800
Subject: MN: US: LAT: Clinton to Order States to Fight Prison Drug Use
Sender: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Newshawk: Jim Rosenfield
Source: Los Angeles Times
Contact: letters@latimes.com
Fax: 213-237-4712
Pubdate: January 12, 1998
Author: Elizabeth Shogren, Times Staff Writer
CLINTON TO ORDER STATES TO FIGHT PRISON DRUG USE
Directive will reportedly require studies of problem, plans to correct it.
Cutting rate of abuse will reduce recidivism, expert says.
WASHINGTON--In an effort to break the link between drugs and crime,
President Clinton plans today to order the states to assess the prevalence
of drug use in their prisons and chart their success at reducing it,
according to a senior White House official and a draft of the presidential
directive.
Last year, as a condition of federal prison grants, Clinton and Congress
gave the states until March to spell out their plans for combating drug use
behind bars. Taking that a step further, the directive the president is
expected to sign today would require studies of the level of drug use in
prisons and annual progress reports so that the public and the federal
government can judge how well the states are doing.
The evidence is conclusive that criminals continue abusing drugs and
alcohol while in prison and, once released, "go back out and commit crimes
to feed their habits,' said Rahm Emanuel, a top Clinton domestic policy
advisor. The president's goal, Emanuel added, is to "rip the habit out of
them" while they are in prison through a combination of mandatory drug
testing and treatment.
"Convicted offenders who undergo drug testing and treatment while
incarcerated and after release are approximately twice as likely to stay
drug- and crime-free as those offenders who do not receive drug treatment,"
Clinton said in a draft memorandum to Atty. Gen. Janet Reno dated Jan. 12.
The presidential action follows by a few days the release of a national
report driving home the connection between heavy drug and alcohol use and
crime. The study by Columbia University's National Center on Addiction and
Substance Abuse shows that alcohol abuse and addiction played a part in the
crimes committed by 80% of the 1.7 million men and women now behind bars in
the United States.
The White House had been working on the directive, but the president
decided to announce it now because of the Columbia report, which is
expected to increase pressure for mandatory substance abuse treatment for
inmates while they are behind bars and on parole, Emanuel said.
In his state budget released Friday, California Gov. Pete Wilson proposed
several new programs for combating drug use in the prison system, including
new random drug testing for inmates and the use of dogs to intercept drugs.
State prison officials said the annual reports would not tax them.
"We have no problem reporting whatever we determine on prevalence," said
Thomas Maddock, acting secretary of the California youth and adult
correctional agency.
The White House also plans to renew its effort to press Congress to let
states use their prison funds for drug testing and treatment. In his draft
memo to Reno, Clinton asked for legislation to be submitted to Congress
that would enable states to use their "federal prison construction and
substance abuse treatment funds to provide a full range of drug testing,
drug treatment and sanctions for offenders under criminal justice
supervision."
Although Congress and the president agreed to require the states to come up
with plans, the GOP-controlled Congress balked at allowing states to use
prison funds for this purpose. California officials, too, opposed this
idea. "That's mixing apples and oranges," Maddock said. "There's a dramatic
need for prison construction money too. [Clinton] should step up to the
plate and fund both separately."
The president's memo also directed the attorney general to work with
states on legislation to create "stiffer penalties for drug trafficking
into and within correctional facilities." Clinton is also expected to
announce that he will ask Congress for $192 million in his fiscal 1999
budget for a series of initiatives to promote what the White House calls
its "coerced abstinence" programs and treatment in the criminal justice
system.
The White House credits UCLA professor Mark Kleiman for inspiring the
president's anti-drug efforts in prisons. Kleiman argues that rooting out
drug use among inmates and parolees is the most effective way to decrease
demand for drugs in the United States. Eighty percent of the cocaine and
heroin is consumed by a relatively small number of chronic users, about 3
million, who spend an average of $15,000 per year on their addictions,
Kleiman said.
"Since few of them can generate that much after-tax disposable income
legitimately, about three-quarters of the hard-core users get arrested in
the course of a year," Kleiman, professor of policy studies at UCLA's
School of Public Policy and Social Research, wrote in a commentary in the
Los Angeles Times.
"When not in prison or jail, they are usually on bail, probation or parole.
Therefore, about 60% of the cocaine and heroin sold in this country is sold
to people who are nominally under the supervision of the criminal justice
system." This makes the prison system an ideal place to try to root out the
kind of drug abuse that leads to crime.
However, Kleiman argued, "many hard-core users don't want treatment if they
can get cocaine or heroin instead. "They have to be pushed into abstinence;
talking and offering treatment aren't enough."
Kleiman said probation and parole departments should make abstinence a
condition of continued liberty. He noted that few had set up consistent
systems of screening and punishment.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Philadelphia Marching To The Beat Of Hope ('New York Times' Feature
On The North Philadelphia Foot Stompers, A Neighborhood Drill Team Hoping
To Promote Urban Revitalization)
Date: Mon, 12 Jan 1998 23:44:14 -0800
To: mapnews@mapinc.org
From: jwjohnson@netmagic.net (Joel W. Johnson)
Subject: MN: US PA: Philadelphia: Marching to the Beat of Hope
Sender: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Newshawk: rlake@mapinc.org
Source: New York Times
Contact: letters@nytimes.com
Pubdate: Monday, January 12, 1998
Author: Sara Rimer
PHILADELPHIA: MARCHING TO THE BEAT OF HOPE
PHILADELPHIA -- The sound of drums echoed through the streets, signifying
the hope and renewal of one north-central Philadelphia neighborhood
devastated by lost work, poverty and drugs.
Inside the rowhouse on 23rd Street where she has lived for 63 years, Alice
Barry, 81, put down her sewing and pulled back her curtains. "There goes my
children," said Mrs. Barry, who had stitched their first uniforms four
years ago.
Vicki Thompson, 40, heard the familiar drumbeat in her office in the
community center that used to be a Roman Catholic rectory, just up the
block from Mrs. Barry. "It's a different noise," Ms. Thompson said. "Years
ago it was gunshots."
She hollered out the window: "Go, Foot Stompers! Go, Foot Stompers!"
On the street, Audra Holbrook, 11 and all legs, was leading the girls, high
stepping in her red and white pleated skirt and white boots with red
plumes. LaMark Shorts, 17, the captain of the boys, brought up the rear,
the drummers marching tall, pounding out their message: The North
Philadelphia Foot Stompers have arrived.
Up and down the block one recent morning, people went to their windows and
doorways to soak up the energy of their own drill team, 16 girls and seven
boys, more welcome than any fancy parade. They were practicing, marching
through the neighborhood's past and its unfolding future, past abandoned
buildings and newly renovated brick rowhouses, past vegetable and flower
gardens that will bloom come spring in what used to be vacant lots prowled
by drug dealers and prostitutes.
"The neighborhood is rising," said Helen Brown, 56, who kept house for a
rich family on Society Hill for years, and went home at night to fight to
hold her battered block of 23rd Street together so it could rise again.
Nothing symbolizes the rebirth more vividly than the Foot Stompers, not
just a drill team, but the heartbeat of the emerging 33-block north-central
Philadelphia neighborhood known as St. Elizabeth's-Diamond Street. The
story of the Foot Stompers reflects the rebuilding that has required, in
addition to money and political muscle, all the organization, creativity,
drive and discipline that makes a drill team.
It is a rebuilding amid an urban battlefield. A man was fatally shot the
day after Christmas only a block from where the Foot Stompers were
marching. The unemployment rate is 29 percent. The median family income is
less than $9,000 a year. In this setting, a drill team, with its military
roots and rigor, is more fitting than any string band.
"Get those legs up! Get in line!" Mrs. Brown, who lost her only son, Earl,
to AIDS and poured her grief and love into the drill team, was commanding
the troops from a wheelchair. The cast on her left leg, which she injured
while marching, has not held her back, any more than all the other
obstacles.
When Mrs. Brown and a neighbor, George Maginault, started the drill team
four years ago, the young people had nowhere but the streets to play. "The
girls used to jump rope," Mrs. Brown said. "They were arguing among
themselves -- 'Who's next?' They were hollering and hooting. All that
energy. I said, 'Why don't you get a drill team?"'
Mrs. Brown being Mrs. Brown, the girls knew it was not a question. "We
said, 'All right,"' recalled Sharnae Johnson, 12.
"After the jobs left, the drugs moved in," said Mrs. Brown, who went to
work as a housekeeper after the electronics factory where she had worked
for 26 years shut down, one more statistic in the neighborhood's downward
economic spiral.
Thousands of residents had fled. In 1994, over bitter protests, the Diocese
of Philadelphia closed St. Elizabeth's Roman Catholic Church and school,
long an anchor on 23rd Street.
"People had gotten so discouraged," said Sharnae Johnson's grandmother,
Evelyn Johnson, 69, whose 24-year-old grandson was shot to death in 1989.
"They had lost hope. When a person is without hope, they don't do
anything."
There were no after-school programs for the children. There was certainly
no money for a drill team. Without drums, the boys practiced by beating
sticks against the Philadelphia phone book.
"The phone book is a very good drum," Maginault said.
The drill team was only one idea Maginault, Mrs. Brown and others had for
the neighborhood. "We had all this vision," Mrs. Brown said, "but we didn't
have resources."
Sister Mary Scullion had both.
A Catholic nun and community organizer, she moved into what had been the
convent of St. Elizabeth's around the time the drill team got started.
Project Home, the community development corporation she founded with an
accountant, Joan Dawson-McConnon, to help homeless men and women, was
transforming the abandoned convent into a residence for 24 recovering drug
addicts.
At 44, Sister Scullion has crawled down manholes and into the darkest
alleys to invite the homeless to Project Home's shelters.
"Sister Mary, she doesn't come in and say, 'We're going to do this,"' Mrs.
Brown said. "She comes in block by block and asks you, 'What can Project
Home do to help you?"'
Three years ago, Sister Scullion had her first meeting with the residents
of Mrs. Brown's block at Mrs. Brown's home. "Mrs. Barry, she said she
wanted ceramics classes," Mrs. Brown recalled. "We said we didn't want any
more houses to be torn down on our block. We said we would like to see our
houses rehabbed."
Everyone wanted a place for the youth. As meetings were repeated on every
block, neighbors who had grown wary and withdrawn through the bad times
began to reconnect.
"The energy just multiplied," Sister Scullion said.
She knew that the Philadelphia Plan, established by Mayor Ed Rendell and
Gov. William Casey in 1994, represented a huge opportunity for St.
Elizabeth's-Diamond Street. The plan has linked corporations -- the city
gives them tax breaks -- with nine community development corporations
working to redevelop devastated neighborhoods.
The Crown Cork and Seal Co., an international can company in northeast
Philadelphia, made a 10-year, $2.5 million commitment to the St.
Elizabeth's-Diamond Street neighborhood through Project Home.
The money has helped pay for the opening of the community center in the
former rectory on 23rd Street, along with another community center on
Diamond Street. Alice Barry got her ceramics classes. There are also
aerobics and adult learning classes, computers and health care provided by
a part-time nurse.
A youth center has opened in the former Catholic school. A $1 million
donation from the Sisters of St. Francis has helped finance the renovation
of four houses in the last year, with plans to renovate 10 a year for the
next 10 years.
Sister Scullion made Mrs. Brown a professional community organizer. "She
said I was doing it anyway, why not get paid," Mrs. Brown said.
Mrs. Brown hired Ms. Thompson, who went to school to learn mortgage
counseling so she could help working poor families buy the renovated
three-story houses that sell for $25,000. The first family, a formerly
homeless woman and her son, who works two jobs, at an auto-parts store and
driving a food service truck, will move in soon.
"I've been here through the bad," Ms. Thompson said. "I want to be here
through the good."
The drill team has new uniforms, and money to travel to competitions. The
Foot Stompers have become ambassadors for the neighborhood -- a drill team
with a roomful of trophies, instead of the drug dealers many outsiders have
come to associate with north Philadelphia.
"They call us the City of Brotherly Blood, North Filthy," said one of the
drummers, Ron Young, 15, known as D.J. "The first thing they see is the
graffiti, and it's dirty, and they think people don't care about
themselves."
The Foot Stompers came marching down Ron's block two summers ago. "The
noise, the marching, the drums," he said. "It was like something I'd never
seen before. It was a good noise. I just looked and said, 'Dag, I wish it
was me."'
LaMark Shorts taught him how to play the drums, and soon Ron Young was a
drummer, too.
The Foot Stompers say people look at them differently when they march.
"They see you as a smart and active kid," Sharnae said.
"When I'm marching, people are like, 'Ooh, you play the drums,"' Ron said.
It is not how everyone sees him when he is in his usual baggy jeans and
parka. "They think I'm going to rob them," said Ron, who talks of becoming
a lawyer or a doctor.
Nate Robinson, 40, a recovering drug addict in Sister Scullion's residence,
was answering the phones at the community center when he heard the drums.
"It wakes me up," said Robinson, a forklift operator and gospel singer who
is marking seven months without drugs.
The neighborhood is awakening too, but the struggle is only beginning.
Drugs are still sold openly. The sound of gunshots has faded, but not
disappeared. There are still no supermarkets, dry cleaners or banks, though
Mrs. Brown and her neighbors hope businesses will begin to return as the
improvements continue.
Mrs. Brown, whose son was 32 when he died, knows that the young members of
her drill team will have to fight to survive. "We might can't save them
all," she said. "But we might can save half of them."
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Farmers To Debate Hemp (The American Farm Bureau Federation,
Which Has 4.6 Million Members, Is Reconsidering Its Endorsement Of Research
Into Hemp At Its Annual Convention In Charlotte, North Carolina)
Date: Mon, 12 Jan 1998 23:48:55 -0800
Subject: MN: US NC: Farmers to Debate Hemp
Sender: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Newshawk: "Frank S. World"
Source: The News and Observer Raleigh, North Carolina
Contact: forum@nando.com
Pubdate: January 12, 1998
Website: http://www.news-observer.com/daily/
Author: Emery P. Dalesio, The Associated Press
FARMERS TO DEBATE HEMP
The Farm Bureau will reconsider its endorsement of research into the
outlawed plant's potential as a crop.
CHARLOTTE -- The nation's largest farmers' group is buzzing about hemp
production as it meets to hash out stands on pocketbook issues such as
property rights, taxes and foreign imports.
Delegates to the American Farm Bureau Federation's annual convention, which
began Sunday in Charlotte, will revisit a policy statement supporting
research into the economic potential of industrial hemp production in the
United States. The group has 4.6 million members.
Farmers supporting the current policy say they just want to explore a hardy
crop that shows promise for use in fibers, fuel and foods. Opponents of
hemp production and research are citing the concern of law-enforcement
agencies, which say it would be difficult for agents to distinguish between
hemp and its cousin, marijuana.
"I would believe there would be a lively discussion on this issue," said
Dennis Stolte, the federation's senior director of governmental relations.
"This has been pretty much a state issue up until now." Hemp is a term
applied to a number of different fiber-bearing plants. The species at
issue, cannabis sativa, contains an ingredient called tetrahydrocannabinol,
or THC, which produces the high when the plant is used as a drug. Breeding
for marijuana boosts the THC content to as high as 15 percent, while in
commercial hemp it can be less than 1 percent.
Farm groups in Colorado, Missouri, Iowa, Kentucky, Wisconsin and Virginia
in recent years have proposed exploring whether a crop grown for hundreds
of years and still harvested from France to China could be a domestic
moneymaker. Vermont has given researchers a blessing to study the plant's
profit potential.
In California, a petition drive aims to let voters decide in November
whether to legalize hemp production for industrial purposes. Federal
law makes no distinction between hemp and marijuana; neither can be grown
legally. Even research requires approval by the federal Drug Enforcement
Administration, which demands intense security.
President Clinton's chief drug policy adviser, Barry McCaffrey, told
Congress in July that advocates of industrial hemp were aiding efforts to
relax marijuana laws.
"Drug-legalizers seek to revoke this prohibition against the cultivation of
hemp in order to camouflage drug crops," McCaffrey said. "Lifting the ban
on hemp cultivation in the United States would promote increased
availability of marijuana, not legitimate commerce."
Valerie Vantreese, an agricultural economist at the University of Kentucky,
said that even if it were legal, industrial hemp would not be a guaranteed
moneymaker for American farmers. Growers would face uncertain prices,
global competition, a limited market and the lack of a domestic industry to
process the product, she said last year.
Hemp's boosters respond that it is not a viable crop now because of the
prohibitions and the lack of investment since it was outlawed in 1937. It
is a hardy, low-maintenance plant that grows rapidly, has high resistance
to diseases and pests, and can return nutrients to the soil if crops are
rotated appropriately, they say.
Because hemp may be legally imported into the United States, its fibers,
oils and other byproducts are already being used to make carpets, beer and
auto parts. Supporters also point to potential markets including
construction materials, cosmetics and paper. Imports totaled about $1.2
million in 1996, McCaffrey said.
A vote on the Farm Bureau's hemp policy is expected Wednesday or Thursday.
It will be decided by a majority vote of 376 farmer delegates.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Nine Letters To The Editor Of Britain's 'Daily Mail' (Special Section
Responds To The Arrest Of Jack Straw's Son For Selling Cannabis)
Date: Mon, 12 Jan 1998 22:11:20 -0500
To: DrugSense News Service
From: Richard Lake
Subject: MN: UK: 9 PUB LTEs in Daily Mail special section
Sender: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Newshawk: webbooks@paston.co.uk (CLCIA)
Pubdate: Mon, 12 Jan 1998
Souce : Daily Mail (UK)
Section : Letters special
Contact : letters@dailymail.co.uk
TIME AND MONEY
I am once again appalled at the amount of time and public money being spent
deciding whether or not to prosecute a person for an offence involving a
harmless plant - cannabis.
By now it should be quite clear that cannabis is remarkably safe. This has
been confirmed by every major Government and scientific investigation
including our own 1968 Royal Commission Report.
Our laws are meant to protect people and society, not simply impose the
will of the Government on its citizens. Recently they have banned beef on
the bone - that, like cannabis, has been declared dangerous. Yet known
poisons and dangers, not only the likes of alcohol and tobacco but also
mercury fillings, clingfilm, pesticides, pollutants and food additives, are
allowed.
Let's get the matter straight. The act of the Minister's son in supplying
cannabis, had no victim, nobody was hurt (except possibly the pride of his
farther).
The only victims will be the lad himself - a victim of a nonsense law - and
the public who will foot the bill.
Ann Clarke, Norwich
***
CANNABIS IS NOT LEADING ME TO TRY OTHER DRUGS
William Straw's case has reopened the tedious debate on the legalisation of
cannabis. I have smoked almost every evening since I was introduced to it
at the age of 17.
It has not led me to use other drugs, nor smoke cigarettes, nor break the
law, nor to be unable to hold a job (I run my own successful video company
and have never claimed the dole), nor fail my family duties.
I do not, however, wishe to see it legalised and after several broken New
Year's resolutions, this year I am again trying to stop? Why? Because I am
worried about the effect of the tobacco and cannabis smoke on my lungs.
I carve the relaxant effect and the tobacco rush, but I am helped by the
fcat that I cannot smoke in public, cannot buy it in shops and I am not
bombarded with advertising.
A packet of cigarettes carries tax, yet we still have no cure for lung
cancer. I urge the Government not to legalise a drug which is as dangerous
to the nation's health as tobacco but to invest its resources in reducing
the use and effects of one damaging drug already on the market. Inhaling
smoke causes cancer.
Name and address supplied
***
LAW IS THE HEIGHT OF HYPOCRISY
The arrest of William Straw, Daily Mirror journalist and another man, for
alleged small cannabis offences, illustrates the injustice of the law which
bans the plant.
In a public house where alcohol - a dangerous, addictive, legal drug - is
sold, a small amount of a plant product recently described as "remarkably
safe" by Professor Lester Grinspoon of Harvard Medical School, yet illegal,
was sold.
Prosecution of this is surely the height of hypocrisy and nonsense.
The fact that the journalist asked the youth to get some cannabis as a
basis for a story makes the reporter the only one of the three so far
arrested upon whom any allegation of harm could possibly be laid.
The annoying thing is the cost - both economic and to police time - will
come out of the public pocket. To what end? Punishing someone for a crime
without a victim. A fine example of continuing British justice!
Now that the cannabis laws can be seen clearly for what they are, let's get
rid of them and the concept that the Nanny State is more capable to decide
what we can smoke and bring in the right tofreedom of choice,
Tina Smith, Norwich
***
TEENAGE USE
I disagree with the two points Ann Leslie made in favour of
decriminalisation of cannabis. The law criminalising it may have been
passed in some hysteria at the time, but it is much more relevant now.
Until the contraceptive Pill came onto the market, families were larger and
everyone, including teenagers, had very little money to spend. Since then,
one or sometimes two children is the norm and parents indulge their
children very much more.
Market research groups have proved that a substantial part of the money in
circulation today is in the hands of teenagers, with cannabis being such an
ideal drug for seduction.
Hard drug dealers would be delighted if cannabis were decriminalised: they
could then expect an expanding market for hard drugs.
Ann equates Prohibition in America - where more than 50 pc of the adult
population broke the drink laws - with slightly over 4 pc who break the
cannabis law in this country, most of them vulnerable teenagers or in their
20s.
I don't see that it proves her point that the cannabis law is in disrepute
in this country.
L.P Woods, Loanhead, Midlothian
***
THE REAL ISSUE
Ann Leslie's view on cannabis (Mail) is flawed as she is an ex-cannabis
users (by her own admission). I can visualise the spot in her brain.
Burned out by weed, it is a gap, a void, a broken pathway that causes the
hiccup.
The main issue as regards state legalisation of any 'soft' drugs is one of
control. Live on the top floor of a tower block? No job? Feeling bad about
things? Worked hard all your life for what little you have and find that
society outside your front door is so uncaring, you must close the door on it?
No problem. The state will provide you with an arsenal of mind-altering
drugs to make you feel better. Just go away in a corner and use them.
That's the issue.
Tony Schubmehl, Dinbych
***
SERIOUS DANGER
What the pro-cannabis lobby seem to forget is while alcohol and tobacco in
reasonable amounts do no harm to the user and absolutely none to anyone
else, one smoke of cannabis, because it is mind-altering, makes the user
incapable of rational thought or action.
This presents a serious danger to both the user and those with whom he or
she associates and, unlike alcohol, is virtually undetectable. Legalising
it would be madness.
Furthermore, as a lawyer, I fail to understand the oft-made distinction
between decriminalisation and legalisation. Can someone please elucidate?
William C. Hogg Killin, Perthshire
***
DOPEY AND DOCILE
When I was an RAF cook on Maserah Island from 1959 to 1960, I had Arab
kitchen hands working with me. They regularly smoked cannabis, which put
them constantly in a dopey and docile frame of mind.
To get them to move themselves and do their jobs was a job in itself. They
were useless when they were using the stuff.
I was 21, which was the average age of the camp. We did 12 months there,
with no resident doctor or dentist and nowhere to go, but we never resorted
to drugs.
Joe Watson Staunton, Glos.
***
UNFAIR CHARGES
The arrest and treatment William Straw, for supplying cannabis demonstrate
the unfairness of the present law. It seems that there may well be one law
for the rich Londoners and another for the rest of the country.
I know a man who was arrested for having less than half a gram (worth about
£1.50). He had his house thoroughly searched by police with dogs and was
locked up and interviewed.
He had to wait many months before getting to court. To what aim? The cost
of taking a man to Magistrates Court is £200 to £300, and then to Crown
Court was £2000 - £3000.
Was Mr Straw's house searched to confirm that there were no other drugs there?
Is the pub landlord to be prosecuted for allowing his premises to be used
for illegal drugs. Was the pub searched?
What is behind these senseless prosecutions? Could it simply be that many
in the criminal justice system profit from the fees they charge? There
seems to be no other justification for keeping a remarkably harmless and
beneficial plant illegal.
Levi McCarthy, Norwich
***
NO HARM DONE
Jack Straw is on record as saying that cannabis is a 'dangerous drug' and
that drugs 'lead to the break-up of family life'. Perhaps he could tell us
what damage cannabis has done to William and the people whom his son
supplied? The answer, as he well knows, is no damage.
The Lancet has stated that 'the smoking of cannabis, even long term, is not
harmful to health'. And the 1968 Royal Commission into cannabis stated:
'The long-asserted dangers of cannabis are exaggerated and the realted law
is socially damaging, if not unworkable.'
The only way in which cannabis can lead to the break-up of family life is
if you are an MP who is trying to justify the drug laws, and whose son is
smoking a harmless substance enjoyed by thousands.
Gary Stimson, Sheffield
to 1998 Daily News index for January 8-14