-------------------------------------------------------------------

Joe Hart Defense Fund Announced (AIDS Patient
And Director Of Medical Cannabis Providers Club Of Key West, Florida,
Recently Arrested After No-Knock Raid By 25 State And Federal Agents
For Possession Of Cannabis With Intent To Sell)

Medical Cannabis Providers Club of Key West, Florida
Joe Hart Director
Call Joe Hart @ (305)293-1865

Please send check, money order or cash to: JOE HART DEFENSE FUND
Scheduled for APRIL 06 1998 in KEY WEST, Florida

c/o
THE LAW OFFICE OF LAWRENCE ELLIOTT HIRSCH
1700 Sansom Street, Suite 501
Philadelphia, PA 19103
telephone (215)496-9530
fax (215)496-9532; e-mail
LEH36@aol.com.

"A government, whose character is thus marked by every act
which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free People!"
WE NEED AS MANY FREEDOM LOVING PEOPLE TO SUPPORT JOE AS IS HUMANLY
POSSIBLE!

This is dedicated to Joe Hart who was recently arrested by state and
federal agents in Key West, Florida for possession of cannabis with intent
to sell. Please help Joe live his last few years as a free man! Joe has AIDS
thus his time on this earth is quickly passing. Despite being
afflicted with this terrible disease he has remained at the forefront of the
medical cannabis debate, nationally and in the state of Florida.
It doesn't have to be like this! The sick and suffering or their caregivers
are being arrested and thrown in jail all because of a medicine they
choose to heal their own bodies. Nevertheless it happens every day. From
Montgomery, Alabama to Key West, Florida and from San
Francisco, Ca. to Boston, Mass from our smallest towns to our largest cities
sick and suffering people are being denied their constitutional
rights in a war that has ravaged and divided our country.

A few facts about Joe Hart

Joe is one of the founders of the Key West Florida Buyers Club and is now
the Director of the Medical Cannabis Providers Club of Key
West. Joe was arrested in a "no-knock raid" of his apartment in March.
Approximately 25 state and federal agents smashed their way in after Joe
received a package delivered by a federal postal inspector dressed
in a mail carrier's uniform. A package he knew nothing about! In the package
it was alleged there were approximately:

2.8 pounds marijuana in two sealed bags.
46.5 grams of marijuana in six packages.

Also an assortment of marijuana paraphernalia was allegedly found after
police ransacked Joe's home.

The police held Joe at gunpoint, "bodyslammed" him to the floor and were
verbally abusive. Police and detectives ransacked the place and
allegedly found an additional kilo in the freezer already packaged for
patients.

Joe Hart was also deprived of several personal items including a notebook
containing addresses and names and a 35mm camera with film
intact.

After interrogating Joe for nearly three hours he was transported to the
Dade county jail where he was incarcerated in a cell with a TB
patient. TB is very contagious! With Joe's already diminished immune system
from having AIDS we are hopeful Joe doesn't show any signs
of tuberculosis in the coming months. He was also given a tuberculin
vaccination which carries the live TB germ. Joe was released after
posting a $25,000.00 bond a couple of days later. Joe may also be facing
federal charges as well as state charges.

Please help a brave and courageous "former highly decorated Viet-Nam
veteran" remain free these last few years of his life by sending
whatever you can to the address listed at the top of the page. Since Joe's
recent arrest his organization has had to move underground.
Lawrence Elliott Hirsch is counsel for the defense. He has stated that a
suit against the denial of Mr. Hart's civil rights will be filed.

-------------------------------------------------------------------

Outrage At Cops Boils Over ('San Francisco Examiner' Says An Overflow Crowd
Testified All Day Friday In Santa Rosa, California, Where US Commission
On Civil Rights Heard Allegations Of Brutality And Neglect Against County's
11 Law Enforcement Agencies)

Date: Sat, 21 Feb 1998 19:46:19 -0800
To: mapnews@mapinc.org
From: jwjohnson@netmagic.net (Joel W. Johnson)
Subject: MN: US CA: Outrage At Cops Boils Over
Sender: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Newshawk: "Frank S. World" 
Source: San Francisco Examiner (CA)
Contact: letters@examiner.com
Website: http://www.examiner.com
Pubdate: Sat, 21 Feb 1998
Author: Carol Ness of the Examiner Staff

OUTRAGE AT COPS BOILS OVER

Civil rights panel gets an earful as Sonoma residents list gripes of police
abuse, neglect

SANTA ROSA - U.S civil rights commissioners tapped into a well of
antagonism between the people of Sonoma County and their cops - and hit a
gusher.

Tension crackled all day Friday through the Justice Joseph A. Rattigan
State Building, where the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights examined
brutality and neglect charges against the county's 11 law enforcement
agencies, grilled police on their procedures and looked for answers.

Hundreds of people on both sides showed up, swamping the 80-seat hearing
room and forcing those waiting to speak and to hear to spend most of the
day in the lobby, split into camps that had nothing to say to one another.

The outraged citizens were a diverse bunch of men and women, most wearing
black and white ribbons in solidarity with those they see as victims of
police abuse.

Police officers, sheriff's deputies and their supporters wore yellow
ribbons or buttons saying, "I support our law enforcement community."

"I have been to a lot of hearings around the country - in Miami, New York,
many in Washington, D.C., - on the issue of police-community relations, and
in none of them have I seen the intensity of interest that I have seen
here," said Cruz Reynoso, former California Supreme Court justice and now
U.S. Civil Rights Commission co-chair.

"Nor have I seen this "us' and "them' perspective," he said. "What do you
think is happening in Sonoma County? What's gone awry? It's a matter of
some concern."

What led to Friday's hearing was anger over a spate of police-related
deaths, and complaints that at least some officers in the Sheriff's
Department and the county's 10 police departments still refuse to treat
domestic violence as criminal.

Two killings in particular - and law enforcement's solid defense of them -
fueled sentiment that police are out of step with the changing community.

The fatal shooting of Kuan-chung Kao by a Rohnert Park police officer last
April, because he was drunk and loud and waved around a broomstick,
galvanized Asian Americans outraged by the stereotype implicit in the
officer's defense - that he thought Kao, a Chinese American, was
brandishing the stick in a "martial arts fashion."

Seven other Sonoma County residents have been killed by police, most of
them Santa Rosa officers, since April 1995, and three others died in or
just out of jail, according to the October 22nd Coalition, which grew out
of opposition to the killings.

The other rallying cry has been the 1996 murder of Teresa Macias by her
husband, who also shot her mother in the legs and then killed himself.

Though Macias had repeatedly reported his abuse, threats and violations of
a court stay-way order to sheriff's deputies, neither they nor the district
attorney's office ever arrested the husband or took any other action to
keep him away from her.

Tanya Brennan, a member of the Purple Berets, a domestic violence victims'
advocacy group, said Macias' story was all too common.

"I'm now working with a 15-year-old woman whose partner violated (a court
order) 15 times," she told the hearing panel. "The district attorney is
indignant that she wants him jailed. He thinks (the man) is just young and
immature. And this is after Macias."

Macias' death has become a symbol of what Judith Volkart of the Sonoma
County American Civil Liberties Union Friday called a "general pattern of
discrimination" by the law enforcement agencies.

A key part of the problem is what Volkart called the "absence of (police)
accountability to the community and the resistance of law enforcement to be
accountable to any organization it cannot control."

Complaints against law enforcement are handled by the agencies themselves
and the district attorney's office, with oversight by the county grand
jury.

District Attorney J. Michael Mullins told the panel that in his three years
in the job, his office had not once sustained a charge of wrongdoing
against an officer.

And the grand jury's recommendations for improvements have generally been
ignored, several victims' advocates contended.

"All our efforts to reach out to law enforcement and local officials have
met with closed doors," said Elizabeth Anderson, executive director of the
Sonoma County Center for Peace and Justice.

In their own defense, the chiefs of the three biggest law enforcement
agencies in the county took the hot seat to explain and defend their hiring
and recruitment practices, training, policies and procedures, and handling
of complaints.

"I feel overall (people) are comfortable with what we are doing," said
Sonoma County Sheriff Jim Piccinini. He said that the panel was being
misled by "certain interest groups."

He said he'd taken steps to recruit and retain more women and minorities,
and formed a new domestic violence unit.

Michael A. Dunbaugh, police chief in Santa Rosa, said a 1995 survey of city
residents showed that 82 percent rated his department as good or excellent.

Reeling off a list of community groups like the Boy Scouts that his
officers take part in, he said, "We are very involved in our community. We
treasure it."

Santa Rosa police Sgt. James Carlson, who was involved in one of the
killings, told the panel, "It's obvious everyone missed the point about who
is in the wrong in these incidents. . . . If there have been eight dead
officers because of these incidents, there would be no hearing today."

Larry Shinegawa, an associate professor at Sonoma State, said part of the
problem might stem from changing times and demographics in the rural county
- the same changes sweeping the state and country.

The county's population has doubled in 20 years, to 424,495 in 1996, with
huge increases in the Asian and Hispanic communities pushing the minority
total to 18 percent, Shinegawa said. At the same time, police agencies are
only 8.7 percent minority, and only 6.9 percent female.

"Diversity in Sonoma County is at a cusp," he said.

One recommendation likely to come out of Friday's hearing - and urged by
most police critics - was creation of an independent civilian review system
to decide charges against police. Also explored were ways to improve
training, recruitment and hiring, and to reach out to the community.

The California committee will make its report to the full commission,
probably within 6 months. If the commission adopts it, its recommendations
won't have the force of law but will build pressure for change.

"Demographics and population changes always create problems for a system
that isn't prepared for them," said Philip Montez, the commission's Western
regional director.

"It's important that law enforcement and all other governmental systems be
prepared to meet the change - because it's coming, faster than anyone can
say."

-------------------------------------------------------------------

Pot Is On A Roll (Staff Editorial
In California's 'San Luis Obispo Telegram-Tribune'
Says New But Unnamed Report From National Institute On Drug Abuse
Has Cannabis Smoking Increasing Among College Freshmen,
From 16.7 Percent To 35.2 Since 1989 - Among High School Seniors,
Use Rose From 33 Percent To 50 Percent)

Date: Tue, 24 Feb 1998 11:49:53 -0800
To: mapnews@mapinc.org
From: jwjohnson@netmagic.net (Joel W. Johnson)
Subject: MN: US CA: Editorial: Pot Is On A Roll
Sender: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Newshawk: Jo-D Harrison
Source: San Luis Obispo Telegram-Tribune (CA)
Contact: slott@slnt01.sanluisobispo.com
Website: http://www.sanluisobispo.com
Pubdate: Sat, 21 Feb 1998
Page: B-10, Opinion section

POT IS ON A ROLL

It's not surprising, but nonetheless disappointing, that more young
Americans than ever are smoking marijuana and finding nothing wrong with
it.

A new report by the National Institute on Drug Abuse finds that pot smoking
among college freshmen has risen from 16.7 percent to 35.2 since 1989. The
trend is equally alarming among high school seniors - from 33 percent to
50.

Users argue that pot is less harmful than tobacco and alcohol. What's more,
young people say, their parents smoked the weed, with no long-lasting
damage to body or mind.

It's hard to brush off such rationalizing.

Still, we can't see marijuana legalized until the medical community comes
up with research that minimizes the negative effects and opponents are
ready to give up the fight against it.

California has a pretty sensible law on marijuana. Its use is OK if
approved by a doctor for a specific ailment.

Unfortunately, pot zealots manage to find loopholes in the law or defy it
outright.

Not a pretty picture.

-------------------------------------------------------------------

'Crime City' - A New Look ('Sacramento Bee' Notes Gentrification
Of Three-Story Midtown Sacramento Apartment Complex
That Was Previously Scene Of Daylight Drug Deals, Shootings,
Murders, Other Crimes)

Date: Sat, 21 Feb 1998 19:46:41 -0800
To: mapnews@mapinc.org
From: jwjohnson@netmagic.net (Joel W. Johnson)
Subject: MN: US CA: 'Crime City': A New Look
Sender: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Newshawk: Joel W. Johnson (jwjohnson@netmagic.net)
Source: Sacramento Bee
Contact: opinion@sacbee.com
Website: http://www.sacbee.com/
Pubdate: Sat, 21 Feb 1998

'CRIME CITY': A NEW LOOK

Then: It was known as "Crime City," a three-story midtown apartment complex
that was the scene of daylight drug deals, shootings, murders and other
crimes. In the first three months of 1996, police were called 73 times to
Midtown Terrace, at 24th and Q streets.

Neighbors kept their children inside out of fear. Others got fed up and
moved out. Owner Robert Shee-Hong Yee was the first property owner to be
fined under the city's social nuisance law. In May 1996, he agreed to pay a
$5,000 fine, plus a $6,000 reimbursement to the city for its enforcement
costs.

Now: While the address remains the same, little else is recognizable at the
apartment building. It has new owners, a new name, a new decor and a new
type of tenant.

Jim Cress, his wife, Ann Schafer, and his brother, Jerome Cress, bought the
complex in October. Cress said he offered residents $300, plus their
deposit, to move out. Almost all took his offer.

Then the partners closed the place down and spent months -- and a
"considerable amount of money" -- ripping out carpets, laying ceramic tile,
installing new appliances and more. It was much like a modern-day
barn-raising, with numerous Cress family relatives investing or adding
elbow-grease to the effort.

When Cress tore down the Midtown Terrace sign, neighbors cheered, he said.

The building now has a new coat of teal and cream paint and a rich red
awning pronouncing its new name -- The Oxford -- chosen to evoke its
"English-garden theme," Cress said. A lion's head fountain spouts water in
the brick-floored entry way. The new owners -- who also own Sutter House
around the corner -- envision flowers blooming around the pool.Cress raised
the rents to $415 to $625 a month and began renting last month to "young
professionals and students." The renovation is due to be finished in three
weeks.

"It's kind of like buying an old Mercedes that's dirty and dented up but
it's really a beautiful car," said Cress.

-------------------------------------------------------------------

Needle Exchange Headed To House With Senate's OK ('Rocky Mountain News'
Says 20-15 Vote Sends Bill To Colorado House Of Representatives)

Date: Sat, 21 Feb 1998 15:00:57 -0800
To: mapnews@mapinc.org
From: Olafur Brentmar 
Subject: MN: US CO: Needle Exchange Headed To House With Senate's OK
Sender: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Newshawk: GDaurer@aol.com
Pubdate: Sat, 21 Feb 1998
Source: Rocky Mountain News (CO)
Author: John Sanko Rocky Mountain News Capitol Bureau
Contact: letters@denver-rmn.com
Website: http://insidedenver.com/news/

NEEDLE EXCHANGE HEADED TO HOUSE WITH SENATE'S OK

Denver and other cities should be able to launch needle exchange programs
for drug addicts to slow the spread of AIDS, the state Senate said Friday.

But the decision didn't come easily. There was bitter debate before
lawmakers approved the legislation by a 20-15 vote.

Opponents argued it would encourage drug use and send the wrong message to
young people. They noted that most police chiefs oppose the idea. The bill
will come up for a final vote Monday before it faces a tougher reception in
the House.

"It is a public health issue," said Sen. Dottie Wham, R-Denver. "This is
one of the most difficult issues I've ever been involved in. But the
reality we live in is that people use drugs."

Denver wants to launch a needle exchange program. In Boulder, one is
already under way--illegally.

Local authorities have declined to intervene because of their belief that
the program is useful

The bill requires prior approval from the state health department before
cities or counties could enact a program. No tax dollars could be used, and
the programs would have to provide counseling and anti-drug treatment.

"This bill does not legalize drugs in any way," Wham said. "If you are
carrying drugs when you go to a needle exchange, you will be arrested."

But the argument didn't convince Sens. Ken Arnold R-Westminster, a former
Colorado State Patrol officer, and Jim Congrove, R-Wheat Ridge, a former
undercover drug officer.

"This is sending the wrong message to our youngsters and everybody else in
our society, saying, 'We don't want you to do it and, yet, here's a clean
needle. Go out, and shoot up,'" Arnold said.

"Why not just give the needles to drug dealers? That way we don't have to
have the center to distribute them. We can give the needle to the drug
dealer, and he can give it along with each fix that he sells. The problem
is not the dirty needles. The problem is heroin, and it's a moral problem
within our society."

Congrove, a former Jefferson County law enforcement officer, called it a
really bad idea.

For more information, call/write:
People Engaged in Education and Reduction Strategies (PEERS) 2701 Alcott
St. #263 Denver, CO 80203 phone: (303) 455-2472 fax: (303) 455-2548 email:
PERSDEN@aol.com

-------------------------------------------------------------------

Marijuana Special Report: Aerosols: The Future Of The Spliff? (Britain's New
Scientist notes fear of cannabis smoke leads many doctors to wish for a
better delivery system.)

Date: Thu, 19 Feb 1998 23:28:33 EST
Originator: medmj@drcnet.org
Sender: medmj@drcnet.org
From: Michael (miguet@november.org)
To: Multiple recipients of list (medmj@drcnet.org)
Subject: Aerosols: the future of the spliff?

New Scientist
21 February 1998

Marijuana Special Report: Aerosols: the future of the spliff?

From pain relief to stimulating the appetites of patients on chemotherapy,
marijuana seems to have plenty going for it as a medicine. But many doctors
worry about the weed's effects on lungs, and some would rather it didn't get
people quite so stoned. For them, the dream solution would be some kind of
aerosol or smokeless cigarette filled with a redesigned version of the drug
that doesn't bend minds.

The first part of the dream is already being worked on - the second will be
harder to achieve.

For years, doctors have been allowed to prescribe a swallowable capsule
containing the main active ingredient of cannabis,
delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinnol (THC). The problem is that patients complain of
side-effects such as anxiety and say they prefer to smoke grass because that
way they can control the dose through careful inhaling. Some researchers
think they can improve matters by developing an aerosol form of THC.

Even if it works, though, the spray would still make people high, and
changing that won't be easy. The problem is cannabis's peculiar pharmacology.
In the past decade, researchers have discovered that all cannabis's main
effects - from changes in pain perception to euphoria and the munchies - are
the work of a single type of receptor, copies of which protrude from neurons
scattered far and wide in the brain. This is a problem because normally
researchers fine-tune the effects of drugs by tailoring them to home in like
a smart bomb on a small subset of the receptors they usually stimulate. For
cannabis and THC, there is no subset. The targets are all identical.

One solution might be to develop drugs that bypass these identical surface
receptors and mimic chemical changes triggered by cannabis deeper in cells.
But this is a long way off. In the meantime, there is a more basic puzzle to
solve: why the brain has cannabis receptors in the first place.

A few years ago, researchers discovered a cannabis-like substance in the
brain called anandamide (after the Sanskrit for "bliss"). Like THC,
anandamide stimulates cannabis receptors to dampen the electrical activity of
neurons and reduce the flow of neurotransmitters across synapses. But nobody
has a clear idea why. The best guess is that the brain uses anandamide as a
central fine-tuner of electrical activity.

(c) Copyright New Scientist, RBI Limited 1998

-------------------------------------------------------------------

Marijuana Special Report: High Anxieties: What The WHO Doesn't Want You To
Know About Cannabis (New Scientist says a document leaked to the magazine
shows that World Health Organization officials in Geneva have suppressed the
publication of a politically sensitive analysis that confirms what aging
hippies have known for decades: cannabis is safer than alcohol or tobacco.)

Date: Thu, 19 Feb 1998 08:46:05 -0500
To: mattalk@islandnet.com
From: Dave Haans (haans@chass.utoronto.ca)
Subject: New Scientist: WHO suppresses comparison of mj, alcohol and
tobacco

Hi Mattalkers,

I include this because at least two of the report's authors are Canadian.

Cheers,
Dave.

From: http://marijuana.newscientist.com/nsplus/insight/drugs/
marijuana/news.html

***

Marijuana Special Report: High anxieties
What the WHO doesn't want you to know about cannabis

Health officials in Geneva have suppressed the publication of a politically
sensitive analysis that confirms what aging hippies have known for
decades: cannabis is safer than alcohol or tobacco.

According to a document leaked to New Scientist, the analysis concludes not
only that the amount of dope smoked worldwide does less harm to public
health than drink and cigarettes, but that the same is likely to hold true
even if people consumed dope on the same scale as these legal substances.

The comparison was due to appear in a report on the harmful effects of
cannabis published last December by the WHO. But it was ditched at the last
minute following a long and intense dispute between WHO officials, the
cannabis experts who drafted the report and a group of external advisers.

As the WHO's first report on cannabis for 15 years, the document had been
eagerly awaited by doctors and specialists in drug abuse. The official
explanation for excluding the comparison of dope with legal substances is
that "the reliability and public health significance of such comparisons
are doubtful". However, insiders say the comparison was scientifically
sound and that the WHO caved in to political pressure. It is understood
that advisers from the US National Institute on Drug Abuse and the UN
International Drug Control Programme warned the WHO that it would play into
the hands of groups campaigning to legalise marijuana.

One member of the expert panel which drafted the report, says: "In the eyes
of some, any such comparison is tantamount to an argument for marijuana
legalisation." Another member, Billy Martin of the Medical College of
Virginia in Richmond, says that some WHO officials "went nuts" when they
saw the draft report.

The leaked version of the excluded section states that the reason for
making the comparisons was "not to promote one drug over another but rather
to minimise the double standards that have operated in appraising the
health effects of cannabis". Nevertheless, in most of the comparisons it
makes between cannabis and alcohol, the illegal drug comes out better--or
at least on a par--with the legal one.

The report concludes, for example, that "in developed societies cannabis
appears to play little role in injuries caused by violence, as does
alcohol". It also says that while the evidence for fetal alcohol syndrome
is "good", the evidence that cannabis can harm fetal development is "far
from conclusive".

Cannabis also fared better in five out of seven comparisons of long-term
damage to health. For example, the report says that while heavy consumption
of either drug can lead to dependence, only alcohol produces a "well
defined withdrawal syndrome". And while heavy drinking leads to cirrhosis,
severe brain injury and a much increased risk of accidents and suicide, the
report concludes that there is only "suggestive evidence that chronic
cannabis use may produce subtle defects in cognitive functioning".

Two comparisons were more equivocal. The report says that both heavy
drinking and marijuana smoking can produce symptoms of psychosis in
susceptible people. And, it says, there is evidence that chronic cannabis
smoking "may be a contributory cause of cancers of the aerodigestive tract".

-------------------------------------------------------------------

Marijuana Special Report: What happens to Dutch dope smokers at the age of
26? (New Scientist, in Britain, examines the comparative success of the
Netherlands' policies, implemented in 1976, separating cannabis from more
dangerous illegal drugs, effectively decriminalizing possession and low-level
sales. The vast majority of people who use cannabis do so almost exclusively
in their 20s. The data suggest that more people did experiment with cannabis
after decriminalisation, but the increase mirrored that in other countries,
and new users generally didn't continue using it for long, leaving Holland
with perhaps the lowest rate of cannabis use - and hard-drug addiction - in
industrialized Europe. Cannabis dependency and other problems are uncommon.
"The number of cannabis users treated in drugs outpatient facilities is low,"
says Frits Knaak of the Trimbos Institute in Utrecht, the Dutch national
institute for mental health and addiction. "In 1996, there were only 2000 in
the whole country - just 0.3 per cent of all Dutch cannabis users." Of those,
42 per cent "are also having trouble with alcohol or other drugs - the rest
usually just need counselling to help change their lifestyle." Dutch
teenagers get among the highest scores in the world on international
science and mathematics tests.)

Date: Sun, 28 Feb 1999 09:50:21 -0800
To: restore@crrh.org
From: "D. Paul Stanford" (stanford@crrh.org)
From: "CRRH mailing list" (restore@crrh.org)
Subject: What happens to Dutch dope smokers at the age of 26?

New Scientist
21 February 1998

What happens to Dutch dope smokers at the age of 26?

Marijuana Special Report: Vraag een politieagent . . .
Go ahead, ask a cop for dope. The Dutch don't mind

It is a weird experience. You walk up to a Dutch policeman, and ask where
to get some marijuana. You are smilingly directed to the nearest "coffee
shop", where the menu offers everything cannabinoid from something called
Space Cake to Northern Lights, a local weed.

In much of the world, this could never happen: the penalties for using
cannabis are severe. But in 1976, the Dutch legalised the possession of
small amounts. What has happened since? Some say that crime has soared,
schoolchildren drop out, and heroin addiction is rife. Others insist the
Netherlands is a stoned paradise of peace and love.

"I've visited their parks. Their children walk around like zombies," says
Lee Brown, [former] head of the US Office for National Drug Control Policy.
"Hard drug use - heroin and cocaine - has declined substantially," says Paul
Hager of the Indiana Civil Liberties Union.

Most comments seems to seem to depend on the speaker's politics. So what is
the truth about the great Dutch cannabis experiment?

Hard addicts

"There was no immediate increase in cannabis use after 1976," says Arjan
Sas of the Centre for Drug Research at the University of Amsterdam.

"Trends in use have generally been the same as in other countries." The
percentage who regularly use either cannabis or hard drugs is lower in the
Netherlands than in many European countries, including Britain. And the
number of hard drug addicts in the Netherlands has not increased for a
decade, while their average age is rising.

Dutch statistics, however, are far from conclusive. The first national
survey of drug use in the Netherlands is only just being done. There have
been smaller-scale studies of particular towns or age groups but comparing
them is fraught with statistical problems.

Nonetheless, Dirk Korf of the Institute of Criminology at the University of
Amsterdam has used the smaller studies to estimate that 3 per cent of Dutch
people had used cannabis at least once in 1970, rising to 12 per cent in
1991. The best guess for 1998 is 14 per cent.

Most of that increase, says Korf, is because "lifetime use" figures are
cumulative: people who had used it in 1970 are still around, and are joined
by younger users over time. More to the point, he says, is to compare the
number of teenagers who start using cannabis. In 1970, he estimates that 20
per cent of all Dutch 18-year-olds surveyed had used it at least once; in
1980, that had fallen to 15 per cent. By 1987, it was 18 per cent, an
increase, Korf says, that mirrors the increase in the number of coffee
shops in the mid-1980s. Now, about 30 per cent of Dutch 18-year-olds are
said to have tried cannabis, though some researchers think that is an
overestimate based on studies of Amsterdam where coffee shops abound.

But did more people try cannabis after it was legalised? It seems so. At
the Centre for Drug Research, Sas and Peter Cohen divided Amsterdamers
surveyed in 1987, 1990 and 1994 into two groups -- those that were born
before 1958, who were 18 or older in 1976, and those that were born after
1976, for whom cannabis has always been legal. Only 19 per cent of the
oldies had tried cannabis, compared with 38 per cent of the younger group.
That difference could be partly misleading. Dutch surveys show that the
vast majority of people who use cannabis do so almost exclusively in their
20s. The drug became common in the Netherlands in the mid-1960s, so for the
older group members who were already more than 30, it was too late.
Nonetheless, the data suggest that more people did try cannabis after
decriminalisation.

But what counts, though, says Sas, is how many continue to use it. (see
diagram:"Cannabis users"). In Amsterdam, 55 per cent of people who say they
have tried cannabis only end up using it a couple of dozen times or less.
The rest may have used it more often, but more than half have not used it
in the past month. The data show, says Sas, that legalising cannabis may
make you more likely to try it, but it does not make it more likely that
you will continue to use it.

But it is by no means certain that the first half of that conclusion is
correct. Korf finds that surveys of the number of Germans who use cannabis
"virtually parallels" the peaks and troughs in Dutch surveys between 1970
and 1990, even though Germany has prohibited cannabis throughout the
period. Surveys of young Americans in the 1970s and 1980s found
"substantially higher prevalence rates" than in Holland, peaking at 50 per
cent of high-school seniors in 1980, although the US was strongly
prohibitionist.

Legal immunity

Since then, says Korf, there have been no discernible differences in use
between US states that have decriminalised, and those that have not, while
cannabis use has increased in the US and Western Europe since 1990,
regardless of the legal framework. "There is no appreciable causal
connection between the Dutch decriminalisation of cannabis and the rate at
which cannabis use has evolved," Korf concludes.

Last year, Robert MacCoun of the University of California at Berkeley and
Peter Reuter of the University of Maryland, compared trends in cannabis use
in the US, Norway (which bans it) and the Netherlands. They also concluded
that "reductions in criminal penalties have little effect on drug use, at
least for marijuana".

While the 1976 legislation may have had little effect on cannabis use, how
effective has it been in its main goal of keeping people off harder drugs?
The Netherlands has fewer addicts per capita than Italy, Spain,
Switzerland, France or Britain, and far fewer than the US. Frits Knaak of
the Trimbos Institute in Utrecht, the Dutch national institute for mental
health and addiction, says the number of hard drug addicts in the country
has been the same for a decade because fewer young people are joining their
ranks. The average Dutch junkie is now 44 years old and only 0.3 per cent
of Dutch teenagers had tried cocaine in 1994, compared with 1.7 per cent in
the US. In the Netherlands, virtually everyone who uses drugs tries
cannabis first, and many seem content to go no further.

Cannabis addiction and other problems are uncommon. "The number of cannabis
users treated in drugs outpatient facilities is low," says Knaak. "In 1996,
there were only 2000 [patients] in the whole country -- just 0.3 per cent
of all Dutch cannabis users."

Of those, 42 per cent "are also having trouble with alcohol or other drugs
-- the rest usually just need counselling to help change their lifestyle",
says Sas. Most people who find cannabis causing trouble with concentration
or memory at work or school, he says, apply rules, like no smoking on week
nights, or they limit their intake.

This self-policing seems to work. Dutch teenagers get among the highest
scores in the world on international science and mathematics tests. If
there are serious problems caused by legalising marijuana, then twenty-plus
years of the Dutch experiment has not revealed what they are.

Debora Mackenzie

(c) Copyright New Scientist, RBI Limited 1999

-------------------------------------------------------------------

Drugs Shock At Primary Schools ('The Telegraph' In Belfast, Northern Ireland,
Says Survey Commissioned By Southern Health Board Found One In 10
Primary Schoolchildren Had Been Offered 'Drugs,' Four Out Of 100
Had Tried Them)

Date: Sun, 22 Feb 1998 20:53:12 -0800
To: mapnews@mapinc.org
From: Olafur Brentmar 
Subject: MN: Ireland: Drugs Shock At Primary Schools
Sender: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Newshawk: Zosimos 
Source: Belfast Telegraph
Contact: editor@belfasttelegraph.co.uk
Pubdate: Sat, 21 Feb 1998

DRUGS SHOCK AT PRIMARY SCHOOLS

ONE in ten primary schoolchildren have been offered drugs, a shock survey
by the Southern Health Board has revealed.

And four out of 100 have tried them.

The Southern Board also found just under 70% cent of 17-year- olds have
been offered drugs and almost half of them had taken them.

The report, based on surveys carried out among young people in the Southern
Board's area, found the most widely-used drugs were cannabis, solvents,
magic mushrooms and LSD.

And while more boys than girls had tried cannabis, LSD and Ecstasy, a
greater number of girls had experimented with alcohol.

Just one percent of those surveyed, who were all boys, had tried heroin.

The figures were published in Armagh to coincide with the launch of an
action plan to tackle drug addiction in the area.

The project is the brainchild of the Southern Drugs Co-ordinating Team - a
steering committee made up of local health representatives - and aims to
educate parents.

George McCague, team co-ordinator, said while the area did not have a hard
drugs problem, there was a worrying rise in the amount of drug use.

"The drugs are right here. It's not just in Belfast, Dublin and
Londonderry. We have a drugs problem here in the district."

-------------------------------------------------------------------

Drugs Courier Gets Eight Years ('Irish Times' Notes Dublin Man Sentenced
For Ecstasy Tablets, Cocaine, Was Very Small Cog Trying To Pay Off Debt
For Drugs - Judge Replies Couriers Have To Be Treated Very Harshly
With Long Prison Sentences Because Without Couriers,
Dealers Would Have To Put Themselves At Risk)

Date: Sun, 22 Feb 1998 20:53:12 -0800
To: mapnews@mapinc.org
From: Olafur Brentmar 
Subject: MN: Ireland: Drugs Courier Gets Eight Years
Sender: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Newshawk: Zosimos 
Pubdate: Sat, 21 Feb 1998
Source: Irish Times
Contact: lettersed@irish-times.ie (backlog)
Mail: LTE, The Irish Times, 11-15 D'Olier St, Dublin 2, Ireland
Fax: ++ 353 1 671 9407

DRUGS COURIER GETS EIGHT YEARS

A Dublin man who was found in Cork city centre with 2,000 ecstasy tablets
and a large quantity of cocaine was acting as a courier in payment of a
drugs debt, a court was told yesterday.

Christopher Doherty (31) from Ballincurris Road, Dundrum, Co Dublin,
pleaded guilty to possession of the drugs with intent to supply to others
before Judge A. G. Murphy in Cork Circuit Criminal Court.

He asked the judge for a chance, stating that he had an awful drugs problem
but that since being imprisoned in Mountjoy he had been drugs free for 11
months and was doing a number of courses.

Defence counsel Mr Kieran Hughes said that Doherty was "sucked into this
web of vice" by dealers who wanted him to deliver the drugs to Dublin, and
he was a very small cog paying off a debt.

Judge Murphy said that without couriers the dealers would have to put
themselves at risk and for that reason couriers had to be treated very
harshly with long prison sentences.

The case was pathetic as Doherty was weak and was used by evil men. He
sentenced him to eight years in prison and said he would review the case in
a year's time when he would be sympathetic if the defendant continued to
behave himself.

-------------------------------------------------------------------

[End]