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

Man Charged With Growing, Selling Pot ('Associated Press'
Article In 'Statesman Journal' Says Multiple Sclerosis Patient
Samuel Dean Diana Was Busted Near Cheney, Washington,
With More Than 100 Marijuana Plants And $53,000 In Cash -
In 1981, A Spokane, Washington, County Judge Gave Diana
Permission To Use Small Amounts Of Medical Marijuana)

Date: Mon, 30 Mar 1998 18:29:28 EST
Originator: drctalk@drcnet.org
Sender: drctalk@drcnet.org
From: "Geoffery S. Thomas" 
To: Multiple recipients of list 
Subject: MS PATIENT CHARGED WITH GROWING POT

MAN CHARGED WITH GROWING, SELLING POT
The Statesman Journal
(Salem, Oregon)
3 - 29- 98

The suspect is legally allowed to use the drug
ease symptoms of multiple sclerosis.

The Associated Press

SPOKANE---- A man allowed by a judge to smoke marijuana to
help alleviate symptoms of multiple sclerosis has been charged with
growing large amounts of the drug and selling it.

Samuel Dean Diana is one of five men named in a grand jury
indictment returned in U.S. District Court last week.

Agents who raided Diana's rural home outside Cheney found
more than 100 marijuana plants and $53,000 in cash, authorities
say.

In 1981, a Spokane County judge gave Diana permission to
use small amounts of marijuana to alleviate the symptoms of MS,
a chronic disorder that can result in speech problems, loss of
muscle coordination and other difficulties.

Diana, who has been summoned to appear Thursday before
U.S. Magistrate Judge Cynthia Imbrogno, said he has smoked
marijuana daily for 20 years for medical reasons.

"It's the best drug on the market for MS," Diana said Friday.
"It's just that you can't legally buy it anywhere. There aren't any
government stores."

Federal, state and county drug agents who raided Diana's home
found pot plants ranging from seedlings to mature plants, and others
that were being dried.

"The indictment speaks for itself, and it charges, among other things,
a conspiracy to manufacture marijuana and distribution of marijuana,"
Assistant U.S. Attorney Joseph Harrington said.

Daina, who was not arrested in the raid, said his plants were at
various stages so he could have a steady supply.

Diana is accused in the five-count indictment of manufacturing,
storing, distributing and using a controlled substance.

He is also charged with conspiracy to manufacture marijuana,
manufacturing more than 100 plants, possessing with intent to
distribute more than 100 pot plants and distribution.

Others named in the indictment are Benjamin Luke Francis,
Henry Joseph Chiappetta, Guy Gorden Gardener and Larry
Fay Spink.

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

Don't Listen To Lungren (Letter To Editor Of 'San Francisco Examiner'
Slams California's Attorney General And Republican Gubernatorial Candidate
For His Opposition To Medical Marijuana )

Date: Mon, 30 Mar 1998 12:40:15 -0800
To: mapnews@mapinc.org
From: jwjohnson@netmagic.net (Joel W. Johnson)
Subject: MN: US CA: PUB LTE: Don't Listen to Lungren
Sender: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Newshawk: "Frank S. World" 
Source: San Francisco Examiner (CA)
Contact: letters@examiner.com
Website: http://www.examiner.com/
Pubdate: Sun, 29 Mar 1998

DON'T LISTEN TO LUNGREN

Regarding the story, "Lungren flip-flops on legality of assault weapon"
(March 22): I am disgusted that we as Americans and human beings would
consider listening to anything Attorney General Dan Lungren says.

His attacks are against the sick and dying, those with cancer, AIDS and a
host of deadly and sad diseases.

If James Allen Dingman was exercising his right to bear arms, what of my
right to medicine even if it happens to be marijuana? We as Americans must
give comfort and aid to the sick and dying.

Al Stuart, San Francisco

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

Deputy Charged With Pocketing Drugs ('San Francisco Examiner'
Notes A Yuba County Sheriff's Deputy In Marysville, California,
Was Videotaped Stealing Methamphetamine From An Evidence Room,
Compromising Several Drug Cases)

Date: Mon, 30 Mar 1998 12:42:26 -0800
To: mapnews@mapinc.org
From: jwjohnson@netmagic.net (Joel W. Johnson)
Subject: MN: US CA: Deputy Charged With Pocketing Drugs
Sender: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Newshawk: "Frank S. World" 
Source: San Francisco Examiner (CA)
Contact: letters@examiner.com
Website: http://www.examiner.com/
Pubdate: Sun, 29 Mar 1998

DEPUTY CHARGED WITH POCKETING DRUGS

Marysville - A Yuba County sheriff's deputy has been charged with taking
methamphetamine from an evidence room.

Deputy Brian Gilbert, whose job was testing drugs being prepared for court
cases, was caught on videotape Friday putting some speed into a container
and into his pocket, said Undersheriff Gary Finch.

Gilbert had been under investigation for four weeks and had taken drugs
several times previously, Finch said.

He added that several drug cases have been compromised.

Gilbert, who has been with the department since 1992, was placed on suspension.

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

Orange County Jail Crowding Leads US ('Orange County Register'
Says The Orange County Sheriff's Department Has Produced A Study
Showing Its Jails Are At 140 Percent Of Capacity)

Date: Tue, 31 Mar 1998 13:03:17 -0800
To: mapnews@mapinc.org
From: jwjohnson@netmagic.net (Joel W. Johnson)
Subject: MN: US CA: O.C. Jail Crowding Leads U.S.
Sender: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Newshawk: John W.Black
Source: Orange County Register (CA)
Contact: letters@link.freedom.com
Website: http://www.ocregister.com/
Pubdate: Sat, 28 Mar 1998
Author: David Parrish-OCR

O.C. JAIL CROWDING LEADS U.S.

Jammed local lockups are forced to release thousands of inmates early.
Hundreds are soon charged in new crimes.

Orange County has the most overcrowded jails among the 25 largest county
systems in the nation, resulting in the early release of criminals, who
sometimes are quickly arrested again for new offenses.

A Sheriff's Department study shows that among 19,017 inmates given early
release last year - ranging in length from a few days to more than a month
- 658 were rearrested on new charges during the time they would have been
behind bars if they had served their full terms. Forty-three percent of the
repeaters were charged with felonies.

"We don't know how many crimes these people committed before they were
rearrested," Assistant Sheriff Rocky Hewitt said.

The five-jail system run by the Sheriff's Department is at 140 percent of
its capacity, cramming a daily average of 5,368 inmates into what was
designed to hold 3,821.

That exceeds the packed conditions in jails in New York City and Los
Angeles County, and significantly outstrips the next most overcrowded jail
system, in Atlanta's Fulton County, which is at 133 percent of its
capacity, figures from the U.S. Justice Department show.

Orange County has had the most overcrowded county jail system for the past
two years.

Attempts to ease the overcrowding by building new jails have been thwarted
by a lack of money exacerbated by the county's bankruptcy, and squabbles
over where to build new lockups.

A proposal to build a 7,500-bed jail at the site of the James A. Musick
honor ranch near Irvine and Lake Forest has met with stiff community
opposition.

A lawsuit has ground the Musick planning process to a near halt.

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

Using Children As Bait In Drug War (Letter To Editor
Of 'Orange County Register' Says 17-Year-Old Used As An Informant
By Police In Brea, California, Only To Be Shot And Killed
Was Needlessly Sacrificed On The Altar Of The War On Drugs)

Date: Tue, 31 Mar 1998 12:58:47 -0800
To: mapnews@mapinc.org
From: jwjohnson@netmagic.net (Joel W. Johnson)
Subject: MN: US CA: PUB LTE: Using children as bait in drug war
Sender: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Newshawk: John W.Black
Source: Orange County Register (CA)
Contact: letters@link.freedom.com
Website: http://www.ocregister.com/
Pubdate: Sun, 29 Mar 1998

USING CHILDREN AS BAIT IN DRUG WAR

Chad MacDonald is dead because he was needlessly sacrificed on the altar of
the War on Drugs. He certainly was responsible for getting involved with
drugs, but for the police to have uses him as a sacrificial pawn so that
they could find other drug users just shows how insidious the drug was has
become.

Don Wellington - Aliso Viejo

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

Drug Turf Dispute A Motive In Killing? ('Orange County Register'
Notes Police In Brea, California, Have Said Their 17-Year-Old Informant
Was Not Working As An Informant When He Went To The Drug House
Where He Was Strangled And His 16-Year-Old Girlfriend Was Raped And Shot)

Date: Tue, 31 Mar 1998 13:14:43 -0800
To: mapnews@mapinc.org
From: jwjohnson@netmagic.net (Joel W. Johnson)
Subject: MN: US CA: Drug Turf Dispute a Motive in Killing?
Sender: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Newshawk: John W.Black
Source: Orange County Register (CA)
Contact: letters@link.freedom.com
Website: http://www.ocregister.com/
Pubdate: Sun, 29 Mar 1998
Author: Tony Saavedra-OCR

DRUG TURF DISPUTE A MOTIVE IN KILLING?

The lawyer for Chad MacDonald's mother calls it a possible scenario, but a
'red herring.'

Slain teen-ager Chad MacDonald might have angered Norwalk drug dealers by
selling methamphetamine on their turf, said a family lawyer Saturday after
concluding his review of police files.

Attorney Lloyd Charton, however, called the scenario a "red herring" and
insisted that MacDonald, 17, was tortured and strangled for working in the
past as a Brea police informant. On Friday, Charton said a 97-page Brea
police file showed that MacDonald's Hispanic killers called him "a
(expletive) narc" and made ethnic slurs as they beat the Yorba Linda teen.

"It is possible that Chad was (ticking) them off by being on their turf or
selling on their turf," Charton said Saturday. "Supposing it's a
combination of motives, who (cares)?"

Brea police officials have said the MacDonald boy, arrested in January for
possessing meth, was not working as an informant when he went to the
Norwalk drug house where he was strangled and his girlfriend raped and
shot. MacDonald's body was discovered March 3 in a Los Angeles alley. His
16-year-old girlfriend survived the attack.

Police dispute that MacDonald's one supervised drug buy at another location
had anything to do with his slaying.

Charton said that the day after MacDonald's body was found, Brea police
received a tip that he had met the same fate as another informant dumped in
the desert. Police Chief William Lentini said confidentiality laws prevent
him from discussing the "other informant" tip, but added: "We are not
investigating any homicide."

The probe into MacDonald's death is being conducted by Los Angeles County
sheriff's detectives.

Charton on Saturday said he learned from talking to MacDonald's mother and
friends that the teen-ager was trying during his final days to set up "one
last deal" for police.

In the week before his death, MacDonald stopped going home, even after his
mother, Cindy, paged him with a plea to come back and work out his
problems, Charton said.

The lawyer said the mother asked a Brea narcotics detective to contact
MacDonald, but the officer did not help.

"Chad was doing drugs, smoking speed," Charton said. "He told his friend,
'I have to do this one last deal so I can put all this behind me.'"

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

Cops Not Alone In Blame for Chad's Death ('Orange County Register'
Columnist Gordon Dillow Says Police In Brea, California,
Shouldn't Be Held Responsible For The Death Of A 17-Year-Old
They Coerced Into Being An Informant - 'He Shouldn't Have Gotten Involved
With Drugs - And After Being Busted . . . He Shouldn't Have Tried To Wriggle
Out Of His Punishment By Taking On The Devious And Often Dangerous Job
Of Being A Snitch')

Date: Tue, 31 Mar 1998 12:46:06 -0800
To: mapnews@mapinc.org
From: jwjohnson@netmagic.net (Joel W. Johnson)
Subject: MN: US CA: Column: Cops Not Alone in Blame for Chad's Death
Sender: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Newshawk: John W. Black and Mike Gogulski 
Source: Orange County Register (CA)
Contact: letters@link.freedom.com
Website: http://www.ocregister.com/
Pubdate: Sun, 29 Mar 1998
Author: Gordon Dillow, Columnist

COPS NOT ALONE IN BLAME FOR CHAD'S DEATH

Lloyd Charton is a lawyer. And lawyers make a business out of twisting
words around until they're barely recognizable.

But when he says the Brea cops -- and perhaps ultimately the taxpayers --
are responsible for the death of 17-year-old Chad MacDonald, Lloyd is
laying a whole lot of lawyering on the word "responsibility."

Chad MacDonald was the Yorba Linda teen-ager who was killed earlier this
month in a Norwalk drug house; his girlfriend was raped and shot, but
survived. This week the Register reported that Chad, with his mother's
signed permission, had become a drug informer for the Brea police to avoid
prosecution on methamphetamine possession charges.

Although police say Chad wasn't working for them when he went to the house
in Norwalk, the case has sparked a furious public debate over the wisdom of
using juveniles as drug informers.

Meanwhile, attorney Charton, who represents Chad's mother, Cindy, says the
Brea cops bear heavy responsibility for Chad's death  because, he claims,
they pressured Chad to become an informant, a role that Charton says
ultimately led the teen-ager to the Norwalk house.

"The police failed to insist that Chad get help when they knew he had a
drug habit," Charton told me Friday. "They failed in their responsibility
to Chad and to the public."

So far at least, Charton and Chad's mother haven't filed a lawsuit. But
lawsuits follow lawyers as surely as a slime trail follows a garden snail.
I'm betting that eventually a process server with a multimillion-dollar
lawsuit in his hand is going to knock on someone's door.

The problem is that the door probably will belong to the Brea Police
Department -- which means the taxpayers would have to foot the litigation
bill. But not everyone who was wittingly or unwittingly involved in the
chain of circumstances that led up to Chad MacDonald's death was wearing a
badge.

Of course, the teen-ager's killers bear the most direct responsibility. But
Chad bears responsibility for his death, too.

First, he shouldn't have gotten involved with drugs. And after being busted
when he was just three months shy of his 18th birthday, he shouldn't have
tried to wriggle out of his punishment by taking on the devious and often
dangerous job of being a snitch.

And although it's hard to say this about the grief-stricken mother of a
slain son, Cindy MacDonald may be partly responsible as well. Without her
signature on the consent form, Chad couldn't have become an informant.

Attorney Charton insists that his client's main goal is to force the cops
to admit their error and stop using minors as drug informants. That would,
he says, "go a long way toward defusing Cindy's outrage."

But when I asked him if an apology and a promise not to do it again would
stave off a lawsuit, Charton wouldn't answer.

Personally, I think the entire so-called "war" against drug use -- by
adults, at least -- is a waste of time and law-enforcement resources and,
too often, lives. And using minors as drug informers is a pretty bad idea.

But the cops, and the taxpayers, shouldn't have to bear the sole financial
responsibility for Chad MacDonald's death.

Because there were a lot of wrong turns on that tragic road to the house in
Norwalk.

And while young Chad MacDonald didn't deserve what happened to him, he took
the first wrong turn on his own.

Gordon Dillow may be reached at (714) 953-7953.

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

Police Out Of Control (Two Letters To Editor Of 'Dallas Morning News'
Fault Cops In Plano, Texas, For Helping A 16-Year-Old Boy
Relapse Into Heroin Use In Order To Further Their Investigation)

Date: Mon, 30 Mar 1998 11:37:12 -0800
To: mapnews@mapinc.org
From: jwjohnson@netmagic.net (Joel W. Johnson)
Subject: MN: US TX: PUB LTEs: Plano Police Defend Stings at High Schools
Sender: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Newshawk: adbryan@onramp.net
Source: Dallas Morning News
Contact: letterstoeditor@dallasnews.com
Website: http://www.dallasnews.com
Pubdate: Sun, 29 Mar 1998

POLICE OUT OF CONTROL

Re: "Plano police defend stings at high schools - Drug suspect says he was
entrapped," March 24.

So I read in the paper that it's OK for a Plano undercover policewoman to
entice a 16-year-old boy to come out with her in her red sports car. It's
"acting in a professional manner" for her to give him money to buy drugs,
and then allow him to take them, without even informing the boy's parents.
Well, I'm over 40 but an attractive woman in a cute sports car can still
make me do things that I wouldn't normally do.

I expect the Plano Police Department to settle any lawsuit pretty quickly.
The policewoman should be prosecuted for corrupting the morals of a child.
Surely this is something that can only happen in Plano. But wait. In the
New York Times the same day I read about a case in California where the
police pressure a teen-age couple, under threat of prosecution, to make a
drug buy at a local drug house. The result: The boy (16) is murdered, and
the girl (15) is raped and shot.

What is going on here? The police are out of control. What possible purpose
could these practices serve? Is there any evidence at all that this sort of
stupid cruelty reduces the supply of drugs? No. People need to wake up and
realize that this "cure" is worse than the disease.

I'm very afraid for the morals of this country, and for our freedom if the
police are allowed to carry on this sort of entrapment.

SHANNON STEEL, Dallas

***

Tactics legal - but wrong

Re: The manner in which Plano Police Chief Bruce Glasscock used an
undercover police officer in the recent drug bust.

It seems wrong to provide money, transportation and locate a source for
drugs and then pester a known recovering drug addict into buying drugs.
This kind of behavior may not be illegal, but it is destructive of the
respect of police officers. It should not be tolerated anywhere.

I call for the admission of Chief Glasscock that this is wrong and that he
will ensure that this behavior of police is not repeated.

TOM SULLIVAN, Plano

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

Ninety-Three Years For Pot ('Waco Tribune-Herald' Columnist John Young
Recounts The Case Of Oklahoma Medical Marijuana Prisoner Will Foster)

Date: Mon, 30 Mar 1998 11:27:54 -0800
To: mapnews@mapinc.org
From: jwjohnson@netmagic.net (Joel W. Johnson)
Subject: MN: US TX: Column: Ninety-Three Years for Pot
Sender: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Newshawk: John F. Wilson 
Source: Waco Tribune-Herald
Contact: letters@mail.iamerica.net
Fax: 254-757-0302
Pubdate: Sun, 29 Mar 1998

NINETY-THREE YEARS FOR POT

Is this man a threat to society? Judge for yourself

MANSFIELD, Texas -- The hands may tell the story in the case against Will
Foster, who just completed the first of an assigned 93 years in prison.

Or maybe the tale is told by a bloated left pinky. You couldn't call it a
little finger. It's huge. It has the swerve of a highway off-ramp.

The detour that has become of this man's life centers around a crime he
admits to committing.

He says he smoked marijuana because of arthritis pain in a bum ankle and
his left hand. For this offense, the 39-year-old is paying an
incomprehensible price.

He's at the Mansfield Law Enforcement Center, which contracts to house
Oklahoma prisoners.

In 1996 Foster was convicted of five drug counts in Tulsa, all revolving
around the plants he was growing in an underground backyard shelter.

Foster says he had 38 marijuana plants. He said he was growing them to be
harvested in rotation -- each harvest to yield about 12 ounces.

Prosecuters asserted that he had between 50 and 70 plants and that he meant
to distribute. A Tulsa jury sentenced him to a little over a year per
plant, 70 years for cultivation. It tacked on 20 years for possession in
the presence of minors, his children. Foster asserts they never knew.

The sentence "certainly falls within the realm of punishment within
Oklahoma law and I think it's a fair verdict," said Tulsa County assistant
District Attorney Brian Crain.

For a first-time offender, owner of a successful computer consulting
business, honorably discharged from the Army, it would have seemed a
plea-bargain was in order for Foster. The only problem was that police had
arrested Foster's wife, too, charging her with complicity.

She was offered probation if she consented to testify against her husband.
Foster assumed the jury would be lenient on him, and was determined
nontheless to challenge his arrest in court, alleging illegal search. He
told his wife to play the hand the DA had dealt.

"Someone had to be home to take care of the children," he said.

The Fosters tried to enter his medical condition into the trial but the
judge blocked it as irrelevant.

The case recently was remanded back to the trial court based on questions
about an unsigned affidavit filed by police. Also, the status of an
anonymous informant -- police say he's now dead -- has been questioned.

Legal, illegal

Meanwhile as Will Foster's nightmare was being projected on cellblock
walls, voters in California and Arizona legalized medicinal marijuana use.

Here's the kicker about the crime to which Foster admits: He says he used
the marijuana -- smoked or boiled it and used it as a compress on his ankle
-- because it caused less impairment, made him less groggy, less iritable,
than the codeine-based medicine he'd been prescribed for pain.

He said relief from smoking marijuana was more measured and less impairing.

"I didn't get physical addiction to marijuana the way I did with
Codeine-based drugs," he said. Imagine, using this "gateway drug" to avoid
addiction.

Now imagine a man in prison for the rest of his life because of it.

What are Foster's parole chances? Not good. His attorney, Stuart
Southerland, said the most hopeful scenario, though very remote, would be
to get out in 10 years. By then he'll have served time that exceeds what
some rapists and armed assailants do.

Meanwhile, some of Foster's joints get bulbous when the humidity changes,
pressing white against his skin. The prison has Advil for it. His wife
worries that one day he may lose a leg or foot.

That's tough.

John Young's column appears Tuesday, Thursday, and Sunday.

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

Burton 'Sad' His Son Is Caught With Seven Pounds Of Pot
In Car ('Indianapolis Star' Article From January 15, 1994)

Date: Sun, 3 May 1998 14:31:03 -0700 (PDT)
From: pcehthns@scn.org (SCN User)
To: hemp-talk@hemp.net
Subject: HT: selena@ncci.net: The Scoop On Dan Burton
Sender: owner-hemp-talk@hemp.net

-- Begin forwarded message --

From: selena@ncci.net (Selena)
To: november-l@november.org (Multiple recipients of list)
Subject: The Scoop On Dan Burton
Date: Sat, 02 May

Hey All...

Ok, this is what I found out. I have three other
articles, they are from the Indianapolis News. I didn't
include them. They say essentially the same thing. For
some reason, my scanner couldn't pick up the type, so I
re-typed them, and I was tired of typing. If anyone
really wanted to see the other articles, I'd be glad to
type them in the next day or two.

Question...ok, now we know it is true....where do we go
from here?

***

Date 01/15/94
Newspaper The Indianapolis Star
Day Saturday
Headline Burton 'Sad' His Son Is Caught With 7 Pounds
of Pot in Car

US Rep. Dan Burton said Friday he is very disappointed
in his son's arrest on marijuana charges.

Danny Burton II was arrested Thursday in Louisiana.
Later the same day, he was released on his own
recognizance without being required to post bond.

Friday, through his press secretary, Sean Moran, the
Republican congressman from Indiana issued the
following statement: "Anytime one of your children
gets into this kind of trouble, it is a horrible
feeling for the parents and for the whole family. His
mother and I are very sad and disappointed."

After the car in which Danny Burton was riding was
pulled over for speeding, a state trooper found 7 pounds
of marijuana in the vehicle.

The younger Burton, 18, and the driver of the car,
Joseph D. Farr, 21, both of Indianapolis, were charged
with possession of marijuana with the intent to
distribute. Like Burton, Farr was also released on his
own recognizance Thursday afternoon.

Earlier, officials had said the two were jailed in lieu
of $10,000 bonds.

Lt. Roy Frusha, regional head of the Louisiana police
narcotics unit, said the young men told investigators
they were driving back from Houston where they paid
$6,000 for the marijuana.

"They said they heard it's cheap down here, and it's
real expensive up there," Frusha said.

He said they intended to sell the marijuana in Indianapolis,
but that troopers do not consider them full-time drug dealers.
"They have jobs, but apparently they're not making as much as they would
like to make, and they thought this might be an opportunity to make three
or four thousand dollars real fast," Frusha said.

A trooper stopped the car for speeding and improper lane usage about noon,
police said. The trooper smelled marijuana, asked permission to search the
car, got written consent and found the marijuana in the trunk.

There was no indication that either man was using marijuana, but Farr and
Burton were booked with possessing the drug with intent to distribute it,
police said.

The congressman is back in Indiana, "but he is not taking any calls," Moran
said. Asked if the son had returned to Indiana, Moran said, "I have
absolutely no idea."

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

Politics Didn't Lead To Dropped Drug Charges, Prosecutor Says
(Second Of Three Past Articles About The Son Of US Representative Dan Burton
Receiving Favorable Treatment After His Drug Bust,
From 'The Indianapolis Star' Of January 6, 1995)

Date: Sun, 3 May 1998 14:31:03 -0700 (PDT)
From: pcehthns@scn.org (SCN User)
To: hemp-talk@hemp.net
Subject: HT: [selena@ncci.net: The Scoop On Dan Burton]
Sender: owner-hemp-talk@hemp.net

-- Begin forwarded message --

From: selena@ncci.net (Selena)
To: november-l@november.org (Multiple recipients of list)
Subject: The Scoop On Dan Burton
Date: Sat, 02 May

Date 01/06/95
THE INDIANPOLIS STAR
Day Friday
Headline Politics Didn't Lead To Dropped Drug Charges, Prosecutor Says

A Marion county deputy prosecutor said politics had no bearing on the
decision to dismiss a marijuana charge against the son of US Rep. Dan=
Burton.

Danny L Burton II, 19, was arrested and charged last June with misdemeanor
possession of marijuana under 30 grams. On Dec. 21, Special Judge Clarence
Bolden of Municipal Court agreed to a prosecution motion to dismiss the
charge.

The dismissal was part of Burton's agreement to plead guilty to a more
serious felony charge in Louisiana in November, said Deputy Prosecutor
Michael Jensen.

"What we did was kind of a package deal," Jensen said Wednesday.

Burton pleaded guilty in St. Martin Parish, La., to possession of marijuana
with intent to distribute and was sentenced to five years probation,
including 2,000 hours of community service and three years of house arrest.
He must also submit to random drug screenings.

Jensen said Burton's Louisiana sentence was harsher than what his
accomplice received. Burton also underwent drug therapy, and drugs have
not shown up in his systems in screenings since then, the prosecutor said.

"I didn't see any sense putting him on probation a second time," Jensen
said. Burton is serving his probation in Marion county, and is living with
his parents.

Rep. Burton said his son had learned a valuable lesson. "His mother and I
hope that he stays on the beam so he turns out the way we want him to," the
congressman said.

Danny Burton was arrested in January 1994 in Louisiana after his car was
stopped on a interstate carrying 7 pounds of marijuana. While awaiting
trial, he was arrested again in June, when the Indianapolis police raided
his northeast side apartment.

The Indiana charge is punishable by up to six months in jail, and a fine of
up to $1,000.

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

Burton Was Braced For A Hot Kitchen, Not For Accusation And Partisan Response
(Third Of Three Past Articles About The Son Of US Representative Dan Burton
Receiving Favorable Treatment After His Drug Bust,
From 'The Indianapolis Star' Of March 30, 1997)

Date: Sun, 3 May 1998 14:31:03 -0700 (PDT)
From: pcehthns@scn.org (SCN User)
To: hemp-talk@hemp.net
Subject: HT: [selena@ncci.net: The Scoop On Dan Burton]
Sender: owner-hemp-talk@hemp.net

-- Begin forwarded message --

From: selena@ncci.net (Selena)
To: november-l@november.org (Multiple recipients of list)
Subject: The Scoop On Dan Burton
Date: Sat, 02 May

Date 03/30/97
Newspaper THE INDIANAPOLIS STAR
Day Sunday
Headline Burton Was Braced For A Hot Kitchen, Not For Accusation And
Partisan Response

When you're a Midwestern congressman given the job of investigating some of
the most powerful people in the world-including Bill Clinton- you'd better
be ready to take some flak.

Dan Burton thought he was. "I fully expected them to check my campaign
contributions, possibly even my personal life, maybe my business activities
in the past," the Indianapolis Republican says."I was prepared for that. I
told the leadership of the House, and they said, 'Yeah, just get prepared
for it. They're going to try and protect themselves any way they can.' "

But Burton wasn't ready to be accused of committing a crime, and he's
frustrated and angry at how it happened. "No matter how much you think
you're prepared, it's always a shock when it starts. You really don't
expect it to happen, and then it happens."

Diversionary Issue

Burton's frustrated because the allegation diverted him from his job of
chairing the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee as it
investigates allegations of improper fund raising from the Democratic
National committee to the White House.

"I thought I was working hard before as chairman of the Western Hemisphere
Subcommittee and as a member of Congress. It was nothing compared to now.
We're literally working seven days a week. We've got 200,000 to 300,000
documents to examine and 70 people to dispose."

He's frustrated because he knows there are people in his home district,
Indiana's 6th , who'll think there could be something to a charge just
because it was made.

"I'm a human being, who, if not perfect, I do value my integrity. It
really bothers me when I read in the paper when someone said I tried to
shake them down. Obviously, some people are going to read that and think
there's more to it than there is. Even though I've got faults, I'm not
someone who would violate my oath of office." (Selena's note - ROLLING ON
THE FLOOR LAUGHING MY ASS OFF)

What angers Burton is how the allegation has been handled by the
Democrat-controlled Executive branch.

Lobbyist Mark A. Siegel, the former executive director of the Democratic
National Committee who alleges Burton asked him for an improper campaign
contribution, has been called before a federal grand jury.

It bothers Burton that congressional attempts to get a special counsel to
look into White House campaign fund-raising allegations were ignored while
the Department of Justice leaped on the Siegel allegation.

"We have a Democrat activist, and he makes allegations which are unfounded.
I, and a lot of my colleagues have been trying for three or four months to
get (attorney general) Janet Reno to appoint a special counsel. Both
judiciary committees have sent letters to her."

"Here you have Democrats and Republicans urging her, and she won't do it,
yet within 24 hours of Siegel's allegation, she's got the FBI looking
into it. I don't understand it. It's so blatantly obvious there's a bias.
It's just unbelievable."

Drug case brought up

On top of this, the April issue of Playboy magazine is recycling the story
of how Burton's son was arrested on drug charges in 1994. Playboy uses the
Dan Burton II case, highly publicized when it happened, as one of a number
of examples of how children of influential people supposedly receive more
favorable treatment in drug cases.

Young Burton (18 at the time) and a friend were arrested in Louisiana while
transporting seven pounds of marijuana. The congressman's son was also
arrested in Indiana for possession of marijuana plants. He was fined,
placed on probation, and ordered to do community service.

"I don't think he got preferential treatment," his father says. "As a
parent, I did not like what he did, but I wanted to do what any parent
would do-try to help him. I hired an attorney. That was it. I have
always felt that the law should be applied equally and fairly to everybody.
It was up to the court."

Burton says the episodes didn't change his attitude about what should
happen to major drug dealers. "I believe those who are dealing in huge
amounts of cocaine and crack that's destroying the fiber of our country. I
think they should be subject to the death penalty."

"I do not believe we should show a deference to drug dealers just because
my family was personally involved."

Burton thinks his son learned his lesson and the experience brought them
closer together. "He's 22 now and doing real well. We talked the other
night until 3 o'clock in the morning. We talk more as friends now, more
man to man, than father and son."

Burton remembers from his own troubled youth how difficult the transition
from adolescent to manhood can be. He came from a broken home, and spent
several months in the Children's Guardian Home.

That's why Burton is serving as honorary chairman of a capital fund-raising
drive for the home, something the Washington investigation will keep him=
from.

"A Lot of Strain"

Burton is reluctant to discuss the personal impact of being in the national
spotlight in what is certain to be a controversial, wide-ranging
investigation.

"There's a lot of strain. I'm very aware of everything I do. In the past,
I might be walking to have lunch and somebody might ask about a
fund-raiser. I don't even talk about it. When I make phone calls, I
assume somebody's listening. I assume every activity I undertake is being
checked. If they go as far as they've gone to attack me, anything can
happen."

So far, Burton says, he's pleased that Democrats on the committee have told
him they believe he's been fair. "I feel my position is a quasi-judicial
position, to act as a referee. Let both sides say what they think, to ask
questions, and once they get to the bottom, let the chips fall where they
may."

"Quite frankly, because of what happened with Watergate, I think it would
be good for the country if we found the president had no involvement. Even
though I'm a Republican, I hope our investigation ends up showing he didn't
do anything wrong."

"But, if we were selling the White House, it illegal contributions were
buying favors, if all that was happening, then whoever did it should be
brought to justice."

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

Tearful Ex-Austin Officer Admits His Role In Drug Ring ('Chicago Tribune'
Says A Former Austin, Illinois, Cop Who Pleaded Guilty Thursday
To Federal Racketeering And Weapons Charges Was One Of Seven
Austin District Police Officers Indicted In 1996 For Allegedly Shaking Down
Illegal Drug Sellers And Undercover Federal Agents
Who Posed As Illegal Drug Sellers - One Other Cop Has Admitted Guilt,
Another Has Agreed To Testify For Prosecution - Other Remaining Defendants
Go On Trial Wednesday)

Date: Mon, 30 Mar 1998 01:51:28 -0800
To: mapnews@mapinc.org
From: Olafur Brentmar 
Subject: MN: US IL: Tearful Ex-Austin Officer Admits His Role In Drug Ring
Sender: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Newshawk: Steve Young
Pubdate: Sun, 29 Mar 1998
Source: Chicago Tribune (IL)
Section: MetroDupage, page 9
Contact: tribletter@aol.com
Website: http://www.chicago.tribune.com/
Author: Melita Marie Garza

TEARFUL EX-AUSTIN OFFICER ADMITS HIS ROLE IN DRUG RING

A former Austin tactical officer pressed a tissue against his face to dry
the tears as he admitted in federal court Thursday to stealing rock cocaine
and cash from numerous drug suspects and drug houses.

Gregory Crittleton, 31, who pleaded guilty to racketeering and weapons
charges, was one of seven Austin District police officers indicted in 1996
for allegedly shaking down drug dealers and undercover federal agents who
posed as drug dealers.

Under a plea agreement with the government, Crittleton agreed to cooperate
with the government in the prosecution of his co-defendants, in exchange
for a sentence of 11 years and 6 months in prison. The government also is
requesting $29,000 in restitution.

He is the second of the officers indicted in the Operation Broken Star
investigation to admit his guilt in the scheme. Officer Lennon Shields
pleaded guilty Jan. 29, 1997, to robbing an undercover agent.

And in what appeared to be an unusual move, a third defendant, Alex Ramos,
has agreed to waive his 5th Amendment rights and testify for the
prosecution when he and the other remaining defendants go on trial next
Wednesday, Assistant U.S. Atty. Brian Netols told U.S. District Judge Ann
Williams.

As Crittleton's voice cracked with emotion as he entered his guilty plea,
Williams offered him tissue from a box on her clerk's desk and said, "Take
your time."

He then described an 18-month career in law enforcement marked by a pattern
in which he and other Austin District cops behaved more like street gang
members.

The defendant, who said he was known in the Austin neighborhood by street
names "G" and "G-Money," told of ransacking apartments and houses in the
search for cash and drugs while on duty.

In the plea agreement, Crittleton recounted how he and co-defendants Edward
Lee Jackson, known as "Pacman," and Cornelius Tripp, known as "Peanut," or
"Nut," went to an apartment on Huron Street on Dec. 11, 1996, believing it
was a drug stash house.

Crittleton said Jackson had been staking out the apartment, which belonged
to a drug dealer, for about three weeks.

According to Crittleton, Jackson searched the kitchen and told the others
he had recovered a bag there that later turned out to hold 221 grams of
cocaine and eight golfball-sized chunks of rock cocaine.

When a sergeant arrived on the scene, Crittleton said Jackson showed him
the 221 grams of cocaine, but not the rock cocaine.

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

From The Moyers Family To Yours (Lengthy 'Washington Post' Preview
Of The Bill Moyers Documentary On PBS Plugging The Rehab Industry
And Therapeutic State, 'Close To Home,' Inspired By His Son's Recovery
From Polydrug Abuse)

Date: Sun, 29 Mar 1998 06:51:20 -0500
To: DrugSense News Service 
From: Richard Lake 
Subject: MN: US: WP: From the Moyers Family to Yours
Sender: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Newshawk: rlake@mapinc.org
Source: Washington Post
Author: Patricia Brennan, Washington Post Staff Writer
Contact: http://washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/edit/letters/letterform.htm
Website: http://www.washingtonpost.com/
Pubdate: Sun, 29 Mar 1998

FROM THE MOYERS FAMILY TO YOURS

Sharing What They Learned About Addiction

Bill Moyers and Judith Davidson Moyers sat in the lobby of a fashionable
Washington hotel, talking about their PBS series on addiction, aptly titled
"Close to Home," and recalled how much they had learned about the subject
since the day in 1989 when they discovered -- to their astonishment -- that
their eldest son was hooked on drugs.

But when William Cope Moyers, now 38, arrived to join the conversation,
they found out they hadn't learned everything.

"I've never asked you this question," Moyers said to his son. "If you
hadn't gone into treatment that last time, what would have happened?"

Cope paused, then said: "There's no question in my mind that I would be
dead. That's not an over-dramatization. That's not a simplification. It
could have been an overdose. I could have been shot to death. I could have
committed suicide. I was desperate."

If Judith and Bill Moyers knew little about addiction then, they know a
great deal more now. Much of what they have learned became "Moyers on
Addiction: Close to Home," airing in five installments over three evenings,
Sunday, Monday and Tuesday at 9. It is the centerpiece of a group of public
television programs treating the subject this week: "Straight Talk With
Derek McGinty" (Monday at 10:30 p.m. on WETA) and on Wednesday, MPT's
"Newsnight Maryland" at 7 and "Stories of Hope and Recovery" at 8 p.m.

Bill Moyers came to Washington as deputy director of the Peace Corps during
the Kennedy administration. He was special assistant to President Lyndon B.
Johnson and then publisher of Newsday. During his career in television, he
has won dozens of awards, including more than 30 Emmys, and written five
best-sellers. Judith Moyers is president of their production company,
Public Affairs Television, has co-produced a dozen series with him and has
several Emmys. They have served on the boards of foundations, agencies and
schools.

Cope, eldest of their three children, now acknowledges drinking and using
marijuana in high school, as did many other students. But not everyone's
parents had raised the success bar as high as his.

"When I was growing up, I was aware that they were good at what they did
and my father was very successful at a young age," said Cope. "So I wanted
to match them or be better than them. That's lethal, combined with being
addictive."

He hadn't known then, of course, that he was addictive. By the time he did,
it was almost too late.

"I experimented with drugs not because of who I was or who I wasn't but
just because it was there," he said. "Marijuana, in my case, helped hook
me. It is not an innocent drug. It changes your perception, it changes your
moods and for a select group of people, it hooks 'em."

Eventually, he said, "I was addicted to everything -- a drug is a drug is a
drug for addicts and alcoholics -- anything that would get me out of myself."

Judith and Bill Moyers grew up in Texas in teetotaling Southern Baptist
families -- their fathers were deacons; Bill Moyers is an ordained
minister -- and they knew little about drug or alcohol addiction.

"We were strict parents," said Judith Moyers. She and Bill, their daughter
and sons attended church regularly. He recalled that they often
congratulated themselves "that none of our kids had become immersed in the
drug culture.

"How naive I was," he said.

By 1989, Cope, then 30 and a reporter for Newsday, was roaming what he
calls "the underbelly of Harlem, totally incapable of anything but getting
high. And I wasn't getting high anymore. I was totally out of control, had
been for two years. I was on the streets."

In reality, he was less than 20 blocks from where he and his first wife
lived on Central Park West, but in his perception, "I had no place to go. I
couldn't go home. I was terrified." He spent two weeks, he said, "locked up
in the psycho ward of St. Vincent's Hospital in New York."

His parents were stunned. Only the day before, Bill Moyers had asked his
son to meet him for lunch and expressed his concern. "I said to him,
'Something's not right.' Cope told me he was having trouble with his
marriage. And I looked him in the eye and said, 'Are you using drugs?' And
he said, with this wonderful who-me look on his face, 'No, Dad.' I felt
such a surge of relief because obviously I wanted to believe it. That's
what I wanted him to say, and he said it, and I believed it. And so the
band played on."

For Judith Moyers, there was shame. "We didn't tell anybody. We told our
other children, but we didn't tell our best friends for months . . . . We
knew nothing about what we ought to do, about what he ought to do, where to
go for treatment, what kind of doctor to get. Should we do a lot? Should we
be supportive? Should we be tough-love people and say, 'It's all up to you.
Let us know when you're fine'? We didn't know what tack to take."

They arranged for him to go to the Hazelden drug treatment clinic in
Minnesota and went there for family treatment. "That's when we began to get
what's going on," she said.

Bill Moyers agreed: "That was the turning point for me and the beginning of
the reeducation. I grew up in a culture where, almost unspoken -- but there
were comments -- alcoholism is a moral failing. If somebody was a drunk,
that person lacked character, lacked willpower. And I have to acknowledge
that even after our son 'crashed,' I struggled with that, with moral
character."

Judith said she recalled Bill's telling Cope: "You can choose to be sober.
It's up to you whether to choose or not."

At Hazelden's family counseling, Bill Moyers learned the good news and the
bad news. "Addiction is not something that somebody gives somebody else,"
he said. "It's not like carrying a virus, and it's not like unsanitary
hands. You didn't cause it and you can't cure it. So there was an end to
guilt.

"But there was a growing fear that he might not make it. Two of Cope's
former good friends in treatment are dead now. Addiction kills. There's a
high attrition rate. Recovery is hard. So guilt was replaced with this fear
that he might not make it."

Their son's road to recovery has been difficult and erratic, with at least
two relapses. "I wish I could tell you that in 1989 I got sober," he said.
"I didn't."

Over the next few years he would undergo three rounds of rehab at two
centers. Cope's experiences, and his parents', became the catalyst for what
Moyers believes to be the most comprehensive series yet about substance
addiction.

"This is not about use or abuse," said Bill Moyers. "This is about
compulsive, obsessive use of a substance that has taken over your life.
Addiction is not voluntary. About 20 percent of people, according to
studies, are able to stop on their own, whether it's cigarettes, drugs or
alcoholism. And 9 out of 10 people who drink don't become alcoholics -- but
they still have drunk- driving accidents. We do try to make that
distinction. Lots of documentaries have treated drug abuse and the drug
war, but this is the first time, our research shows, that television has
treated the subject of addictions."

They called the series "Close to Home" because of the family connection and
because they wanted to "disabuse people of the idea that addiction is
somewhere else, the notion that it's not in my home, in my workplace, in my
neighborhood -- it's over there some place."

The first show, "Portraits of Addiction," is Bill Moyers's favorite because
"it's got people telling stories." Among the recovering addicts who speak
candidly is a former police undercover agent who says she was obliged to
use cocaine in front of pushers and got hooked, and a journalist who
eventually served as researcher for this series.

"This series is full of people who wanted to tell their stories, who wanted
to be on camera," said Judith Moyers. "It's significant that people feel
they are able to do that today. Twenty years ago people would not have done
it."

Even today, however, some won't.

"One woman who is a lawyer has to take her methadone [a synthetic narcotic
used in treating heroin addiction] before she could practice law, and she
said the stigma would be too great," said Judith.

"And one woman told me she had been sober for 20 years but never talked
about it openly. She said, 'I would have to talk with my kids and
grandchildren about what they would think about their mother and their
grandmother being on national television telling her story.' She got back
to us in a week and said they said, 'Go for it, Mom.' "

The second installment, "The Hijacked Brain," pictures an addict's
electronically monitored brain -- she is a volunteer -- changing as she is
given cocaine intravenously, changes that researchers believe are
permanent. Bill Moyers compared an addicted brain to one that has suffered
a stroke: "A stroke kills certain cells of the brain, but a person can
relearn around that hole in the brain, can in effect rewrite the brain to
compensate for the loss."

Judith Moyers likens addiction to diabetes, "a progressive disease that is
not curable but highly treatable. You can see it in the brain; we can
locate it."

The third program, "Changing Lives," focuses on treatment and features
Hazelden and Ridgeview Drug and Alcohol Treatment Program near Atlanta,
where Cope stayed 115 days after what he called a "short but very intense"
five-day relapse in 1994. He had been sober 3 years.

"That's where it all ended and all began," he said. "[Addiction] had just
rolled over me, flattened me like a steamroller. It had just crushed me. I
was done. I knew that if I was going to survive, literally, I needed to do
what they told me to do. My insurance would only pay for a certain number
of days of treatment, so I paid out of my own pocket. I was there longer
than anybody else."

It was at Ridgeview, he said, that he gave up "listening to what was going
on in my own brain and trying to dictate my own progress and tell other
people what I needed to be doing. I just listened to what other people told
me and did what they told me to do. If I was ever going to see my wife and
children [now 5, 3 and 1] again as a healthy father, I knew I had to stay
in treatment until I got better."

Part four, "The Next Generation," explores efforts to prevent addictive use
among the estimated 20 percent of American children who live in a home with
an addicted or alcoholic person. Among its stories are those of a
heroin-addicted Seattle couple and their two children, and of a high school
junior in Florida who participates in a program for teens at risk for
addiction.

The fifth installment, "The Politics of Addiction," looks at government
programs, including Arizona's Proposition 200. It mandates treatment for
non-violent drug offenders, including moving people out of incarceration
and into treatment.

"That represented a sophistication about drugs that had not been manifested
before in an election," said Bill Moyers.

Among those with whom he talks are drug offenders in Maricopa County's
tent-city jail outside Phoenix; and, in Washington, retired Gen. Barry
McCaffrey, director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy.

Although Moyers mentions his son when he opens the series, he and Judith
spent some time grappling with how to deal with their own family connection.

"We talked about doing a book based on our experience and decided that
journalists shouldn't make themselves the story, or the story of the
journalist shouldn't become the story of the documentary, and it just sort
of hung there for a while," said Bill Moyers. "If we did a series and
didn't acknowledge that there was a personal issue, people would say, 'What
kind of journalism is that? He's not forthcoming, he's not disclosing the
full truth.' We decided we would deal with Cope's story as one of the
undercurrents that had moved us to the decision."

With funding from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and Mutual of America,
the Moyerses began hiring researchers and production personnel in March
1996. They chose to focus on substance addiction, rather than other
addictions such as gambling, sex, eating disorders and "workaholism."

"It was a big undertaking," said Judith. "And we thought we should have
some people on the production team that would know the subject first-hand."

They decided to invoke the name of Alcoholics Anonymous co-founder Bill
Wilson, said Bill Moyers. "We ran a classified ad saying, 'If you're a
friend of Bill W's and have any experience with documentary production, get
in touch with the post office box number.' We had a lot of response, but
not a lot had had experience with documentary production."

The Moyerses' experience also caused them to look carefully at their
genealogy.

"This should be part of a health profile," said Judith, "because if there
is [addiction], you might want to make special considerations in your
lifestyle."

"You don't know who in the family is susceptible," said Bill Moyers. "If
you're the son or daughter of an alcoholic, your chances of becoming one
yourself is four times greater than another person. Genetics is clearly a
factor in much of the picture, but it's not the only factor."

As it turns out, Bill Moyers is the grandson of an alcoholic, but he did
not know that. He knew his mother was adamantly opposed to drinking, but
not until she was in her eighties did she and her sisters talk openly about
their father.

"My grandfather was what we called a drunk, but it was a well-kept family
secret," said Moyers. " 'Sometimes he'd have a little too much, but he was
always a good man,' my mother would always say."

Meanwhile, Cope Moyers, after having returned to work for CNN, decided to
move his second wife and children to St. Paul, Minn. With a family to
support, but no job, he began reading the classified ads.

"I had never needed to do that," he said. "I'd always had a good job. I
rarely missed a day of work in the eight or nine years that I was working.
So I'm reading the classifieds and there was a job description for a public
policy analyst at Hazelden Foundation."

He is now Hazelden's director of public policy. When he talks to patients,
"I tell them that I was basically dragged kicking and screaming there, I
had to pay to get in, and I stayed a lot longer than I wanted to stay, and
I couldn't wait to get out. Now I drive there every day and they pay me.
And I've got the keys to the place. And therein lies the miracle of recovery."

In the final installment, the cameras are rolling as Bill Moyers walks down
the halls of Congress to cover a meeting of the National Leadership Forum
and encounters Cope, there to represent Hazelden at the same meeting.

"He's about a head taller than Bill," related Judith, "and he came loping
across the lobby and did his usual thing, the big bear hug."

Bill Moyers, newsman, sees an opportunity to get his son on tape: "I say,
'You know, we've been through all of this for 10 years or so now, and I've
never asked you why you've gone public."

Cope Moyers, former newsman, laughs and says: "No comment!"

His father smiled at the recollection. "That's totally unscripted," he said.

(c) Copyright 1998 The Washington Post Company

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

Reason For Dramatic Drop In Crime Puzzles The Experts ('New York Times'
Covers A Conference Saturday In Chicago
Sponsored By 'The Journal Of Criminal Law And Criminology'
At Northwestern University School Of Law And Says Definitive Reasons
For The Dramatic Drop In Crime Throughout The United States
Elude The Experts)

Date: Sun, 29 Mar 1998 20:20:16 -0500
To: DrugSense News Service 
From: Richard Lake 
Subject: MN: US: NYT: Reason for Dramatic Drop in Crime Puzzles the Experts
Sender: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Newshawk: "Dick Evans" 
Pubdate: Sun, 29 Mar 1998
Source: The New York Times
Author: Fox Butterfield
Contact: letters@nytimes.com
Website: http://www.nytimes.com/

Reason for Dramatic Drop in Crime Puzzles the Experts

Crime has declined dramatically for six years, but new studies prepared for
a national conference of academic experts on crime suggest that
criminologists are no closer now to understanding the reasons than when the
downturn was first detected.

"The closer we look at the drop in crime, the more complex it gets," Eric
Monkkonen, a professor of history at the University of California at Los
Angeles, said in an interview before the conference, which took place in
Chicago on Saturday.

"It's like cancer," said Monkkonen, an expert on the history of homicide in
American cities. "The more we know, the more what looks like one problem
becomes a series of problems."

The papers commissioned by The Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology
at Northwestern University School of Law, restated most of the favorite
explanations offered for the drop in crime: improved police tactics, more
criminals behind bars, a better economy and a revulsion by young people in
the nation's inner cities against the culture of drugs and guns that
spawned much of the violence of the late 1980s.

There were some novel ideas suggested: that the decline in violence could
be traced to a drop in alcohol consumption, or that the reduction reflects
a return to greater social stability after the upheavals in politics, the
economy and the family in the 1960s.

But there was no consensus on an explanation -- even as mayors and police
commissioners across the country are taking credit for their falling crime
rates. "Our ultimate concern is policy," Monkkonen said, "but now we see
there can't be any one single policy" that resolves the United States'
crime problem. The policy problem is exacerbated because crime is local,
with enormous variations in crime rates from city to city, and even from
block to block. The reasons crime has declined in New York may be very
different from why it has dropped in Los Angeles -- or why it has increased
in some places, including Baton Rouge, La., and Indianapolis.

Nevertheless, several of the papers propounded what seems to be an
increasingly dominant view among criminologists that there are multiple
causes for the drop and that they center on a reversal of the dynamic that
drove crime rates higher in the 1980s.

At the heart of this line of explanation is a recognition that what
accounted for the sudden growth in homicide, with the advent of the crack
cocaine epidemic in 1984, was a rise in murder by young people, most of it
committed with handguns.

Homicides by adults age 25 and older actually have been declining since
1980, said Alfred Blumstein of Carnegie-Mellon University and Richard
Rosenfeld of the University of Missouri at St. Louis. "All of the increase
in the level of homicide in the United States during the growth period of
the late 1980s and early 1990s," they wrote, "was due to the trends in the
younger ages, because homicide rates for those 25 years old and older did
not go up."

Similarly, because murder by adults was already declining, the biggest
reduction in homicides since 1991 has been in those by young people,
Blumstein and Rosenfeld said.

The experts regard the killings of four students and a teacher at a school
in Jonesboro, Ark., as an indication that juvenile violence remains a
troublesome issue, far higher than it was in 1984 before killings by young
people made a sharp increase, even though the rate of juvenile violence has
declined for three years.

The professors found that just as murders by juveniles using handguns
increased more than 100 percent between 1985 and 1994, the drop in
homicides by young people is almost entirely a result of fewer killings
involving guns. Because there have been two different trends -- the
long-term decline in murder by adults, and the sudden increase and then
drop in killings by juveniles -- there are different factors at work in
each trend, Blumstein said in an interview before the conference.

For adults, the crucial reasons are a decline in murder of spouses as
American society has changed; a reduction in traditional barroom brawls as
the neighborhood tavern has disappeared, and more people in prison, he
said. For young people, the causes appear to be a change in drug markets,
as older, more established dealers have taken control, and the impact of
new police tactics that focused on seizing guns from young people,
Blumstein said. In a separate paper examining the drop in homicide in New
York City, Jeffrey Fagan, a criminologist at Columbia University, and
Franklin Zimring, the director of the Earl Warren Legal Institute at the
University of California at Berkeley, found a further complexity -- a sharp
divergence between the trends for murders committed with a gun and those
without a gun. From 1985 to 1992, in the middle of the crack epidemic,
homicides without a gun began to decline steadily, dropping 35 percent,
while murders with a gun doubled, they wrote. Since 1992, both rates have
fallen. The early and consistent drop in murders without a gun at least
partly undercuts New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani's claims that his use of
tough police tactics is responsible for New York's decline in violence, the
professors note, and it "remains a pleasant mystery that shrouds the whole
explanation of variations in New York City homicide in fog." One factor may
be a change in behavior by young people themselves, said Richard Curtis, an
associate professor of anthropology at John Jay College of Criminal Justice.

In a paper based on 10 years of observation of residents and drug dealers
in the Bushwick section of Brooklyn in New York City, he said that many
young people there, frightened and sickened by the spate of drug deals,
killings and arrests, and the epidemic of AIDS, had turned away from the
violence of street life and found legitimate jobs starting in 1993. Curtis
gives Giuliani's police little credit for this transformation, viewing
their repeated sweeps through Bushwick and arrests of its residents as
largely angering the young people. Left unsaid is what would have happened
without such police pressure.

Still another theory was put forward by Gary LaFree, a sociologist at the
University of New Mexico, who believes the decline in crime nationwide
results from a return to stability, with people more confident in
government, more affluent with an improved economy, and more settled as
society has come to accept a variety of nontraditional family arrangements
that began in the 1960s.

Particularly important, LaFree suggested, is that more young people than
ever before are in school, from prekindergarten to college, as schools have
replaced many of the functions of the family.

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

Crime Decline Baffles Experts ('San Jose Mercury News' Version)

Date: Mon, 30 Mar 1998 14:55:39 -0500
To: DrugSense News Service 
From: Richard Lake 
Subject: MN: Crime Decline Baffles Experts
Sender: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Newshawk: Marcus-Mermelstein Family 
Source: San Jose Mercury News (CA)
Contact: letters@sjmercury.com
Author: Fox Butterfield, New York Times
Pubdate: Sun, 29 Mar 1998

CRIME DECLINE BAFFLES EXPERTS

One theory: U.S. Has Finally Adjusted To The Convulsive Changes Of The 1960s

Crime has declined dramatically for six years, but new studies prepared for
a national conference of academic experts Saturday in Chicago suggest that
criminologists still don't completely understand why.

``The closer we look at the drop in crime, the more complex it gets,'' said
Eric Monkkonen, a professor of history at the University of California-Los
Angeles.

The papers, commissioned by the Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology at
Northwestern University School of Law, restated the favorite explanations:
improved police tactics, more criminals behind bars, a better economy and
inner-city young people's revulsion for drugs and guns.

And some new explanations were offered: a drop in alcohol consumption and
the return to social stability after upheavals in politics, the economy and
the family in the 1960s. But there was no consensus -- even as police and
politicians take credit for falling crime rates.

``Our ultimate concern is policy,'' Monkkonen said, ``but now we see there
can't be any one single policy'' that resolves the United States' crime
problem.

The reasons for a decline in New York may be different from the drop in Los
Angeles -- or an increase in Baton Rouge, La., or Indianapolis.

Nevertheless, several of the papers propounded what seems to be an
increasingly dominant view among criminologists that although the drop has
multiple causes, it centers on a reversal of the dynamic that drove crime
rates high in the 1980s.

At its heart is a recognition that what accounted for that sudden growth in
homicide, beginning with the crack-cocaine epidemic in 1984, was a rise in
killings by young people, most of them carried out with handguns.

Homicides by adults 25 and older have declined since 1980, said Alfred
Blumstein of Carnegie-Mellon University and Richard Rosenfeld of the
University of Missouri at St. Louis.

``All of the increase in the level of homicide in the United States during
the growth period of the late 1980s and early 1990s,'' they wrote, ``was
due to the trends in the younger ages, because homicide rates for those 25
years old and older did not go up.''

And now, because murder by adults was already declining, the biggest
reduction in homicides since 1991 has been among young people, Blumstein
and Rosenfeld said. The experts see the recent killings in Jonesboro, Ark.,
as an indication that -- although the rate of juvenile violence has
declined for three years -- juvenile violence remains troublesome, far
higher than it was in 1984.

Scholars found that, just as slayings by juveniles using handguns increased
more than 100 percent between 1985 and 1994, the drop in homicides by young
people is almost entirely a result of fewer gun killings.

For adults, crucial is a decline in murder of spouses as American society
has changed; a reduction in traditional barroom brawls as the neighborhood
tavern has disappeared; and more people in prison, he said.

For young people, the causes appear to be older people taking over drug
markets and police seizure of guns from youths, Blumstein said. Ten years
of research in the Bushwick section of Brooklyn also show that many young
people there, sickened by the spate of drug deals, killings and arrests,
turned away from the violence of street life and found legitimate jobs
starting in 1993.

Another theory was put forward by Gary LaFree, sociologist at the
University of New Mexico, who believes the decline nationally results from
a return to stability, to confidence in government, to increased affluence
and to the society feeling more settled as it comes to accept a variety of
non-traditional family arrangements that began in the 1960s.

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

Corrupt From The Top ('Washington Post' Says The Chance Discovery
By A State Highway Patrol In Guerrero, Mexico, Of The Chief
Of The Morelos Anti-Kidnapping Squad Dumping The Body Of A Victim
Of Police Torture Has Exploded Into A National Scandal,
And Previously Powerless Citizens Are Finding A Potent Coalition Of Allies)

Date: Sun, 29 Mar 1998 06:59:58 -0500
To: DrugSense News Service 
From: Richard Lake 
Subject: MN: Mexico: WP: Corrupt From the Top
Sender: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Newshawk: rlake@mapinc.org
Source: Washington Post
Author: Molly Moore, Washington Post Foreign Service
Contact: http://washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/edit/letters/letterform.htm
Website: http://www.washingtonpost.com/
Pubdate: Sun, 29 Mar 1998

CORRUPT FROM THE TOP

DRUG-RUNNING BY HIGH OFFICIALS JARS MEXICAN STATE

CUERNAVACA, Mexico-"Are you Pedro?" shouted the voice from the bridge. "Are
you Tono?" came the reply from the darkness below, using the arranged
passwords for the ransom exchange. Seconds later, a knapsack filled with
$39,000 in pesos dropped to the ground.

The suspected kidnapper snatched it up, only to be surrounded by two
undercover police officers.

As the Guanajuato state police officers leveled their service revolvers at
the man clutching the money bag, according to an account of the incident by
the state's attorney general, they were stunned to discover he was the
chief of the anti-kidnapping police unit from the neighboring state of
Morelos.

Almost instantly, eight men wearing ski masks and armed with AK-47 assault
rifles cornered the two undercover agents while the police commander made
his getaway.

Weeks later, on Jan. 18, in a nearby state, police caught the same Morelos
anti-kidnapping unit commander on an isolated stretch of highway. He and
one of his officers were dumping the battered corpse of a kidnapping
suspect who died of injuries suffered during police torture, according to
charges filed by Mexican authorities.

This time Armando Martinez Salgado, 50, founder of the Morelos
anti-kidnapping squad, did not get away.

That chance discovery by a Guerrero state highway patrol has exploded into
a national scandal that has rallied a growing public and political
intolerance of crooked officials and of the government that has long
protected them.

The scandal in Morelos, a central Mexican state that is a popular
playground for wealthy Mexicans and foreigners, has not only brought down
the top echelon of the state law-enforcement apparatus, it threatens to
force the ruling party governor from office amid allegations that range
from ignoring the villainous practices of his underlings to having ties to
drug traffickers and organized-crime mafias.

"We see corruption everywhere -- the governor, the attorney general,
everywhere," said Carmen Genis Sanchez, president of Civic Cause, a
citizens' activist organization. "And we've reached the point where we say,
'We're fed up!' "

The extent of the corruption uncovered within the Morelos state police and
attorney general's office has shocked even a country long callous to
nefarious public officials.

The federal attorney general's office, which has taken over the
investigation, is examining charges that state law-enforcement officials
not only protected kidnappers but also conducted as many as 60 percent of
the kidnappings, rescued the victims, kept the ransom and often jailed
innocent people to appear credible with the public.

Since his arrest, former top law-enforcement officer Martinez has testified
that he was a longtime friend of the former Juarez drug cartel chief Amado
Carrillo Fuentes, who died last year and had owned several properties in
Morelos, including a mansion two blocks from the governor's house in this
capital city.

New records have surfaced showing that Hugo Salgado Castaneda, whom Morelos
Gov. Jorge Carrillo Olea recently selected as his top aide, was the
attorney the cartel used for many of its real-estate transactions in Morelos.

The governor, who declined to be interviewed for this article, has said he
was unaware of the connection.

Now, outraged but previously powerless citizens are finding a potent
coalition of allies who are willing to take up their cry -- opposition
politicians who are gaining control of an increasing number of government
positions.

And, as in the case of Morelos, where the national ruling Institutional
Revolutionary Party (PRI) does not control the state legislature, these
opposition legislators have the authority to challenge the leaders of the PRI.

Last weekend, 100,000 residents packed Cuernavaca's main plaza and voted in
an unprecedented nonbinding referendum called by opposition political
leaders; 94 percent called for the governor to step down.

"Morelos offers a lesson for the entire country," said state legislative
deputy Juan Ignacio Suarez Huape, a member of the left-of-center Party of
the Democratic Revolution (PRD) and one of the lawmakers threatening to
launch impeachment proceedings against the governor. "We're seeing the
transition to democracy."

The acting state president of the ruling party, Victor Cinta Flores, tried
to play down the referendum, calling it "a stupid trick."

He added: "The entire state is at peace, everyone -- workers, students,
peasants, housewives. The only ones who are not at peace are those 17
idiots [non-PRI legislators] who have been working on provoking scandal
with the support of the national press."

But even the Roman Catholic Church has joined the fray: The local bishop
has excommunicated Martinez and two of his subordinates.

The former anti-kidnapping squad chief -- who Mexican newspapers reported
was wearing a diamond-encrusted Piaget watch stolen from a German kidnap
victim when he was arrested -- is now in prison on charges that he
participated in kidnappings in as many as four Mexican states.

Neither he nor his attorney could be reached for comment.

The state attorney general and chief of state police have been released
from prison on bail, and virtually the entire anti-kidnapping squad has
been placed under house arrest.

Morelos, a state just south of Mexico City famous for its year-round
springlike weather and dramatic mountain vistas, has been a weekend getaway
for wealthy Mexicans and a retirement mecca for thousands of U.S. citizens
for decades.

In recent years, however, the state has become even better known for its
ruthless kidnapping gangs and the new breed of rich Mexicans it has begun
to attract -- the country's most powerful drug cartel leaders.

For several years, victims of Morelos's growing kidnapping trade -- which
numbers more than 200 abductions a year -- have accused state police of
collusion with the kidnapping rings.

But complaints usually met with the same response from state officials as
that received by neighboring Guanajuato Attorney General Felipe Arturo
Camarena Garcia when he called the Morelos attorney general after his
undercover officers' encounter under the bridge with anti-kidnapping police
chief Martinez.

"He told me I was badly informed and he had confidence in his people,"
Camarena said in a telephone interview. "When I explained that there was no
way for Martinez Salgado to know about the password and the exact place [of
the ransom drop-off] he simply said, 'I trust my people.' "

Camarena persuaded a magistrate to grant an arrest order against the police
official. But before the warrant could be executed, Martinez was caught
disposing of the badly beaten body of Jorge Nava Aviles, 24, on a deserted
Guerrero highway.

He told arresting officers that Nava had died of a heart attack while being
transported by police.

But a coroner's report and further investigation indicated Nava had died
about eight hours earlier while being tortured at the state police offices.

"To this day, nobody has had the decency to tell me why they killed my
son," said Maria Magdelena Aviles, 42, who watched state police and
military officers take him into custody without an arrest warrant and
learned of his death two days later on the evening news. "My son had been
kidnapped, tortured and murdered, and thrown away in the state of Guerrero."

(c) Copyright 1998 The Washington Post Company

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

Cannabis Campaign - Thousands March For Cannabis Law Reform
(Britain's 'Independent On Sunday' Says More Than 16,000 People
Attended The Rally In London It Sponsored Yesterday
In Support Of Cannabis Decriminalisation - Editor Rosie Boycott Declares,
'We Want Politicians To See That It Isn't Going To Lose Them Votes
To Look At The Issue')

Date: Sat, 28 Mar 1998 20:40:02 -0500
To: DrugSense News Service 
From: Richard Lake 
Subject: MN: UK: Cannabis Campaign: Thousands March For Cannabis Law Reform
Sender: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Newshawk: Martin Cooke 
Pubdate: Sun, 29 Mar 1998
Source: Independent on Sunday
Author: Graham Ball and Clare Garner
Contact: Email: cannabis@independent.co.uk
Mail: Independent on Sunday, 1 Canada Square, Canary Wharf, London E14 5DL
England
Editor's note: The IoS Cannabis Campaign has web pages at
http://www.independent.co.uk/sindypot/index.htm

THOUSANDS MARCH FOR CANNABIS LAW REFORM

A crowd of more than 16,000 people gathered in London yesterday to give
massive and vocal support to the Independent on Sunday's cannabis campaign,
write Graham Ball and Clare Garner.

In a carnival atmosphere the demonstrators - many in wheelchairs - gave an
unmistakable show of growing national support for the decriminalisation of
the drug.

Although a large number openly smoked cannabis on the march, police made no
arrests during the demonstration. Two people were detained for
drugs-related offences later.

Rosie Boycott, editor of the IoS, which launched its campaign last
September, said she was "thrilled" by the turnout.

"There was every age group, every strata of society, and it was very
well-behaved. Nobody flouted the law and nobody was arrested during the
march. The police were incredibly helpful and full of jokes," she said. "We
want politicians to see that it isn't going to lose them votes to look at
the issue."

In the biggest march of its kind for 30 years, protesters met at Reformer's
Tree in Hyde Park and walked down Park Lane and Piccadilly to Trafalgar
Square, where campaigners, including Labour MP Paul Flynn and veteran
cannabis campaigner Howard Marks, called for the drug to be decriminalised.

Some estimates put the turnout at well over 16,000, possibly up to 25,000.
Scotland Yard, more cautiously, put the figure at around 11,000.

Meanwhile, a poll on national Talk Radio revealed that two-thirds of people
want cannabis legalised. The Home Secretary, Jack Straw, has repeatedly
said he will not seek to change the law on cannabis.

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

Cannabis Campaign - Pot Power (Britain's 'Independent On Sunday'
Gives A Vivid Description Of Yesterday's Rally In London
For Cannabis Decriminalisation, Noting The Diversity Of Demonstrators
And Motives)

Date: Sat, 28 Mar 1998 20:52:00 -0500
To: DrugSense News Service 
From: Richard Lake 
Subject: UK: Cannabis Campaign: Pot Power
Newshawk: Martin Cooke 
Pubdate: Sun, 29 Mar 1998
Source: Independent on Sunday
Author: Ros Wynne-Jones
Contact: Email: cannabis@independent.co.uk
Editors note: The IoS Cannabis Campaign has web pages at
http://www.independent.co.uk/sindypot/index.htm

POT POWER

Thirty years after the first cannabis rally, veterans and new campaigners
gathered to fight a law that has left two generations alienated and
criminalised.

They came. They saw. They sang from Bob Marley's "Legalise It". Some
smoked. Some even inhaled. It was the big day for the Cannabis Campaign and
the people came in thousands from around the country, from Europe and some
from even further afield.

There was a sense of deja-vu as the marchers gathered in Hyde Park, the
scene of the first cannabis rally in July 1967. Some people remembered
seeing Lennon and McCartney there, others, now respectable businessmen,
recalled being arrested for raining flowers on police. Many of yesterday's
marchers, however, had only seen archive footage on television. Caroline
Coon, who set up Release in response to the arrests that day, remembered
that the weather was better then.

Many things have changed in the intervening 31 years. The hippies of the
'67 press reports have been replaced by modern-day crusties and
eco-warriors. The equivalent of the flower children is a generation of
young people newly politicised over drugs in the wake of the Criminal
Justice Act, which outlawed rave parties and their repetitive rhythms. One
thing, however, has not changed: the use of cannabis remains illegal, with
more than 70,000 arrests for related offences in 1995. "It seems hard to
imagine," Ms Coon said. "Three decades later and we're still marching for
the same thing."

Hyde Park, then, where the Rolling Stones once passed a 10-foot spliff
around the crowd, and the Editor of the Independent on Sunday, Rosie
Boycott, rolled her first joint the same year, was full of the resonances
of the past. Its message, however, was very much in the present, at its
most poignant near the front of the march, where people in wheelchairs
endured a gruelling two miles because in order to buy a substance which
could ease the symptoms of MS, Aids and anorexia, and combat the
side-effects of chemotherapy, they are forced to break the law.

"I'm a criminal," said James Thornton, a 40-year-old MS sufferer from Kent.
"Cannabis eases my cramps, steadies my muscle spasms, helps me relax - but
they tell me I can't buy it."

Inevitably some of the constituents of the Cannabis Campaign would be a
little late, or may even turn up next Saturday. At 3pm stragglers were
still arriving at Trafalgar Square. Many had brought their children; prams
alongside ageing baby-boomers, young radicals and elderly smokers. One
wonders whether these children will grow up to be a post-prohibition
generation who will one day ask their parents: "Was dope really illegal
then?" or whether in 2028, they will still be holding Decriminalise
Cannabis rallies.

Walking along Piccadilly among the banners and faces painted with cannabis
leaves, with the scent of marijuana heavy in the air, it seemed incredible
that in 1998 people really need to march about cannabis, a part of millions
of people's daily lives. But then, the march wasn't just about cannabis. A
celebration of hedonism, it was also about people's freedom to enjoy
themselves and how they choose to treat their own bodies in the face of
illness, and how this law, above all laws, has alienated two generations of
people by making them criminals.

"I'm here because my son was arrested for possession of cannabis," said one
woman, who had been unsure whether to come but was having a "fantastic day
out". Another woman said her daughter, now a heroin addict, had first come
into contact with hard drugs through buying soft and she wanted to see the
drugs separated in the market place. "I'm here because ." a thin looking
man called Toby, trailed off, suddenly quite unable to remember what he was
doing in Hyde Park. "Oh yeah, cannabis," he finished eventually, to cheers
from his friends from Manchester University.

As the colourful crowd wove its way along Park Lane to the beat of drums,
blue-haired anarchists alongside true-blue libertarians and a sea of green
balloons amid placards declaring "William Straw for Home Secretary", I
thought I saw the minister's son at Reformer's Tree. It wasn't him, but it
could have been because - as Mr Straw learned to his chagrin -
well-educated middle-class boys also support the decriminalisation of
cannabis. Had Mr Straw Jr been there, he might have appreciated his
new-found hero status. Mr Straw Snr might have taken issue with the
home-made posters with the face of Dawn Alford, the Mirror journalist to
whom his son sold cannabis.

Allen Ginsberg, who was arrested at the '67 demonstration, and Malcolm X,
who addressed the same rally, are not here to see the new campaign.
Jonathan Aitken, who signed the famous '68 full-page advert in the Times in
favour of the decriminalisation of cannabis, was nowhere to be seen. Nor
was William Rees-Mogg, the former Times editor who wrote, at the time of
Mick Jagger's arrest for cannabis possession, of the sinisterness of
breaking "a butterfly on a wheel". It didn't matter. Thousands of new
people have taken their place, and thousands more will take theirs, until
the law is changed. They came. They saw. They sang from Bob Marley's
"Legalise It". Some smoked. Some even inhaled. It was the big day for the
Cannabis Campaign and the people came in thousands from around the country,
from Europe and some from even further afield.

There was a sense of deja-vu as the marchers gathered in Hyde Park, the
scene of the first cannabis rally in July 1967. Some people remembered
seeing Lennon and McCartney there, others, now respectable businessmen,
recalled being arrested for raining flowers on police. Many of yesterday's
marchers, however, had only seen archive footage on television. Caroline
Coon, who set up Release in response to the arrests that day, remembered
that the weather was better then.

Many things have changed in the intervening 31 years. The hippies of the
'67 press reports have been replaced by modern-day crusties and
eco-warriors. The equivalent of the flower children is a generation of
young people newly politicised over drugs in the wake of the Criminal
Justice Act, which outlawed rave parties and their repetitive rhythms. One
thing, however, has not changed: the use of cannabis remains illegal, with
more than 70,000 arrests for related offences in 1995. "It seems hard to
imagine," Ms Coon said. "Three decades later and we're still marching for
the same thing."

Hyde Park, then, where the Rolling Stones once passed a 10-foot spliff
around the crowd, and the Editor of the Independent on Sunday, Rosie
Boycott, rolled her first joint the same year, was full of the resonances
of the past. Its message, however, was very much in the present, at its
most poignant near the front of the march, where people in wheelchairs
endured a gruelling two miles because in order to buy a substance which
could ease the symptoms of MS, Aids and anorexia, and combat the
side-effects of chemotherapy, they are forced to break the law.

"I'm a criminal," said James Thornton, a 40-year-old MS sufferer from Kent.
"Cannabis eases my cramps, steadies my muscle spasms, helps me relax - but
they tell me I can't buy it."

Inevitably some of the constituents of the Cannabis Campaign would be a
little late, or may even turn up next Saturday. At 3pm stragglers were
still arriving at Trafalgar Square. Many had brought their children; prams
alongside ageing baby-boomers, young radicals and elderly smokers. One
wonders whether these children will grow up to be a post-prohibition
generation who will one day ask their parents: "Was dope really illegal
then?" or whether in 2028, they will still be holding Decriminalise
Cannabis rallies.

Walking along Piccadilly among the banners and faces painted with cannabis
leaves, with the scent of marijuana heavy in the air, it seemed incredible
that in 1998 people really need to march about cannabis, a part of millions
of people's daily lives. But then, the march wasn't just about cannabis. A
celebration of hedonism, it was also about people's freedom to enjoy
themselves and how they choose to treat their own bodies in the face of
illness, and how this law, above all laws, has alienated two generations of
people by making them criminals.

"I'm here because my son was arrested for possession of cannabis," said one
woman, who had been unsure whether to come but was having a "fantastic day
out". Another woman said her daughter, now a heroin addict, had first come
into contact with hard drugs through buying soft and she wanted to see the
drugs separated in the market place. "I'm here because ." a thin looking
man called Toby, trailed off, suddenly quite unable to remember what he was
doing in Hyde Park. "Oh yeah, cannabis," he finished eventually, to cheers
from his friends from Manchester University.

As the colourful crowd wove its way along Park Lane to the beat of drums,
blue-haired anarchists alongside true-blue libertarians and a sea of green
balloons amid placards declaring "William Straw for Home Secretary", I
thought I saw the minister's son at Reformer's Tree. It wasn't him, but it
could have been because - as Mr Straw learned to his chagrin -
well-educated middle-class boys also support the decriminalisation of
cannabis. Had Mr Straw Jr been there, he might have appreciated his
new-found hero status. Mr Straw Snr might have taken issue with the
home-made posters with the face of Dawn Alford, the Mirror journalist to
whom his son sold cannabis.

Allen Ginsberg, who was arrested at the '67 demonstration, and Malcolm X,
who addressed the same rally, are not here to see the new campaign.
Jonathan Aitken, who signed the famous '68 full-page advert in the Times in
favour of the decriminalisation of cannabis, was nowhere to be seen. Nor
was William Rees-Mogg, the former Times editor who wrote, at the time of
Mick Jagger's arrest for cannabis possession, of the sinisterness of
breaking "a butterfly on a wheel". It didn't matter. Thousands of new
people have taken their place, and thousands more will take theirs, until
the law is changed.

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

Cannabis Campaign - How Reason Helped Break The Taboo
(Britain's 'Independent On Sunday' Says Support For Decriminalisation
Is Growing As A Result Of Several Factors - The Support Of Readers,
Other Media, The Persistence Of 'Independent On Sunday'
Editor Rosie Boycott - And The December Bust Of The 17-Year-Old Son
Of British Home Secretary And Anti-Cannabis Zealot Jack Straw
For Selling Hash To A Reporter)

Date: Sat, 28 Mar 1998 21:02:06 -0500
To: DrugSense News Service 
From: Richard Lake 
Subject: MN: UK: Cannabis Campaign: How Reason Helped Break The Taboo
Sender: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Newshawk: Martin Cooke 
Pubdate: Sun, 29 Mar 1998
Source: Independent on Sunday
Author: Graham Ball
Contact: cannabis@independent.co.uk

HOW REASON HELPED BREAK THE TABOO

The events in Hyde Park yesterday have already passed into history.
Curators from the City of London Museum were on hand throughout the day to
photograph the march and collect ephemera for the capital's official archive.

But how did the Independent on Sunday's campaign to decriminalise cannabis
come to make history?

Three factors are responsible for propelling the campaign so far. Firstly
the support of readers who recognised the flaws in the outdated and
confused arguments deployed by those who want to carry on treating cannabis
as a dangerous drug, such as heroin, which must be controlled by the strict
application of the criminal law.

Secondly the way in which the debate was so enthusiastically taken up by
other elements of the media.

Thirdly the persistence of Rosie Boycott, the editor, who identified a
faint pulse in an issue that many had believed to have been long dead.

Prior to yesterday people had not taken to the streets of London in support
of cannabis law reform for 30 years. Now they have sent an unmistakable
message to the Government and broken the taboo that has obscured this issue
for so long.

It is ironic that outside the efforts of the Independent on Sunday, the
single most effective event in spreading awareness of the need for a new
approach to cannabis should come courtesy of the household of the Home
Secretary, Jack Straw.

Mr Straw, who has implacably refused to sanction open debate on the subject
of decriminalising cannabis, found himself at the sharp end of the argument
last Christmas, when his son, William, a 17-year-old sixth-former, was
enticed into supplying a small amount of the drug to a tabloid reporter.

Here was the proof that cannabis use is now virtually ubiquitous, that
otherwise respectable law-abiding people share the habit. To prosecute,
convict and blight a young life for such a minor misdemeanor would be
excessive.

Throughout the campaign our own and other opinion polls have recorded a
slow but steady shift towards acceptance of the idea of decriminalising
cannabis.

A poll last month of the 243 MPs elected to Parliament for the first time
last May showed 65 per cent were in favour of a royal commission being set
up to consider drugs and the law.

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

Cannabis Campaign - Frisco Fights To Sell Dope
(Britain's 'Independent On Sunday' Gives An Update On Legal Battles
In San Francisco And Elsewhere In California
Over Medical Marijuana Dispensaries)

Date: Sat, 28 Mar 1998 20:57:28 -0500
To: DrugSense News Service 
From: Richard Lake 
Subject: MN: UK: Cannabis Campaign: Frisco Fights To Sell Dope
Sender: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Newshawk: Martin Cooke 
Pubdate: Sun, 29 Mar 1998
Source: Independent on Sunday
Author: From John Carlin in Washington
Contact: Email: cannabis@independent.co.uk

FRISCO FIGHTS TO SELL DOPE

San Francisco is at war with Washington and the issue, dramatised in a
march through California's fairest city last week, is cannabis use. The
outcome of the war could be San Francisco becoming the first city in the
world officially to provide cannabis to its citizens.

At stake is the survival of a Californian initiative, approved as
Proposition 215 in a statewide referendum in November 1996, allowing for
the growth and distribution of marijuana when the purposes are medicinal.
US federal law forbids the growth and distribution of marijuana in all
circumstances. Six "cannabis clubs", shops where the sick can buy marijuana
with doctor's prescriptions, are facing closure on instructions from the
Justice Department in Washington.

In a measure of how uniquely tolerant San Francisco is in a nation not
celebrated for its broad-mindedness, the city's district attorney took part
in Tuesday's march and addressed a crowd of several hundred. Terence
Hallinan, San Francisco's top law enforcement officer, issued a challenge
to the federal government in Washington.

He said that if Washington enforced the law, San Francisco would flout it.
City health officials and police would combine, he said, to run marijuana
distribution centres for the seriously ill. The alternative would be not
only greater suffering for people with Aids, glaucoma and cancer, but also
increased crime.

Upon learning of Mr Hallinan's challenge federal government officials said
if he acted on his words he would be jailed. It would be interesting to see
if Washington had the courage to act on such a threat. For not only do the
majority of California voters approve of Proposition 215, so does San
Francisco's hugely popular mayor, Willie Brown.

He was one of three California mayors who wrote to President Clinton
recently imploring him to stop the Justice Department from shutting down
the marijuana dispensaries.

"At stake is the well-being of 11,000 California residents who depend on
the dispensaries to help them battle the debilitating effects of AIDS,
cancer and other serious illnesses," Mayor Brown wrote. "If the centres are
shut, many individuals will be compelled to search back alleys and street
corners for their medicine. This will not only endanger their lives, but
place an unnecessary burden on our local police department."

The owner of one dispensary, Peter Baez, was arrested on Monday and
released on bail on Tuesday. His cousin, Joan Baez, denounced the
''farcical charges" against him.

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Marijuana Supporters Light Up In London (Brief 'Orange County Register'
Version)

Date: Tue, 31 Mar 1998 12:55:51 -0800
To: mapnews@mapinc.org
From: jwjohnson@netmagic.net (Joel W. Johnson)
Subject: MN: US: Marijuana Supporters Light Up in London
Sender: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Newshawk:John W.Black
Source: Orange County Register (CA)
Contact: letters@link.freedom.com
Website: http://www.ocregister.com/
Pubdate: Sun, 29 Mar 1998

MARIJUANA SUPPORTERS LIGHT UP IN LONDON

About 10,000 protesters, some openly smoking marijuana, marched in London
on Saturday demanding legalization.

More than a dozen groups, which argue that marijuana is less harmful or
addictive than cigarettes and alcohol, organized the march from Hyde Park
Corner to Trafalgar Square.

Two people with multiple sclerosis, a sometimes progressive neurological
illness, joined the march in wheelchairs.

"I have been smoking cannabis (marijuana) for two years on my doctor's
advice," said MS sufferer Verity Leeson, 20. "It helps my condition, it's a
good painkiller and it relaxes me."

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Love Poet's Drug Pangs May Have Killed Her Baby
(Britain's 'Sunday Times' Says Newly Released Letters
From Elizabeth Barrett Browning Show The Beloved Woman Poet
Feared That An Attempt To Shake Her Morphine Addiction
By Going 'Cold Turkey' Cost The Life Of Her Unborn Baby)

Date: Sun, 05 Apr 1998 21:29:56 -0400
To: DrugSense News Service 
From: Richard Lake 
Subject: MN: UK: Love Poet's Drug Pangs May Have Killed Her Baby
Sender: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Newshawk: "(Zosimos) Martin Cooke" 
Source: Sunday Times (UK)
Contact: editor@sunday-times.co.uk
Pubdate: 29 March 1998
Author: John Harlow, Arts Correspondent

LOVE POET'S DRUG PANGS MAY HAVE KILLED HER BABY

ELIZABETH Barrett Browning, Britain's most beloved woman poet, feared that
an attempt to shake her morphine addiction by going "cold turkey" cost the
life of her unborn baby, newly released letters have revealed.

The hitherto censored family letters detail for the first time her efforts
to give up the opiate she had been using for seven years to cope with
depression following the early death of her brother.

Barrett Browning was at the heart of the most romantic scandal of Victorian
England. The traditional version tells that, having suffered a spinal
injury at the age of 15, she was confined to a bedroom by her tyrannical
father for 25 years. Then Robert Browning, the fashionable poet six years
her junior, fell in love with her published verse and wooed her secretly
until in 1846 she fled with him to Italy, where they lived happily.

However, volume 14 of Barrett Browning's collected letters, in a series by
Philip Kelley and Scott Lewis, two academics, has lifted the veil on the
most turbulent period of her life. The first letter in the new collection
was written as the newlyweds, along with her spaniel Flush, fled to Le
Havre; the public exchanging of rings and wedding ceremony had to wait
until they were settled in Florence nine months later.

Riddled with guilt, Barrett Browning wrote a daily stream of 7,000-word
letters to her family begging for a forgiveness, which only her sisters
would finally bestow.

"The letters were passed around her aunts, so the sisters censored
Elizabeth's more brutally frank commentary on her new life. We had to
decode family over-scorings to produce the first authentic account of the
culture shock Elizabeth felt during her first taste of freedom," said
Kelley, a London-based American scholar.

The poet's account of her first miscarriage has never been published
before. She says that, on the prompting of her maid, she had been trying to
cut back on her regular doses of morphine despite six weeks of "night
pains", which culminated in the loss of her first child.

"Everything I did wrong - sitting on a rug to bake myself, taking hot
coffee to boil myself at other times, choosing the worst [sitting]
positions possible out of an instinct of contrarity and yes, until the
event, believing like a child that I had just caught cold and nothing else
was the matter," she wrote to her sisters Arabella and Henrietta.

A week later she had changed her mind about the opiate. She says: "I am
going to do my very best to leave off the morphine, but gradually, though
it was by no means the cause of anything that happened. On the contrary, I
should have done better by not diminishing it when I did."

Her utter inexperience of real life, having spent so many years cosseted in
a bedroom at Wimpole Street, resulted in a series of almost farcical
domestic crises: she did not know how to make a pot of tea and burnt 50
holes in her best silk dress while trying to stoke a fire.

Dr Kay Ridgeway, a researcher at the University of Texas in Waco, where
most of Browning's letters are held, said: "The combination of morphine,
fresh air and sex had a miraculous effect on the 40-year-old Elizabeth. She
got noisily loud and involved in everything, from culture to Italian
politics. These letters show there was never a less Victorian Victorian."

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Crime Kings Meet To Carve Up Europe (Britain's 'Sunday Times'
Says According To Newly Disclosed French Intelligence Reports,
Representatives Of The World's Leading £500 Billion A Year
Organised Crime Syndicate, Including Mobsters From Russia, China, Japan,
Italy And Colombia, Held A Summit To Discuss Carving Up Western Europe
For Drugs, Prostitution, Smuggling And Extortion Rackets)

Date: Sun, 05 Apr 1998 21:46:45 -0400
To: DrugSense News Service 
From: Richard Lake 
Subject: MN: Crime Kings Meet To Carve Up Europe
Sender: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Newshawk: "(Zosimos) Martin Cooke" 
Source: Sunday Times (UK)
Contact: editor@sunday-times.co.uk
Pubdate: 29 March 1998
Authors: Andrew Alderson and Carey Scott, Paris

CRIME KINGS MEET TO CARVE UP EUROPE

"Dividing Europe's spoils of crime"

IN the ancient French town of Beaune, the strange mix of nationalities and
expensive limousines escaped the notice of most residents, who were more
interested in the price of wine at a nearby auction.

Only now has the reason for an autumn gathering of Russian, Chinese,
Japanese, Italian and Colombian "businessmen" at a hotel in the heart of
Burgundy become apparent. According to newly disclosed French intelligence
reports, representatives of the world's leading organised crime syndicates
were holding a summit to discuss carving up western Europe for drugs,
prostitution, smuggling and extortion rackets.

Immaculately dressed gangsters from a dozen of the world's most ruthless
crime rings met to consider greater co-operation, a pooling of expertise
and, most importantly, to welcome their Russian "brothers" to the elite
"club" responsible for a worldwide industry estimated to be worth £500
billion a year.

Since the Beaune summit in November 1994, there have been two other
gatherings of crime bosses on chartered yachts in the Mediterranean,
according to senior intelligence sources in Europe and America.

The message from the summits is clear: international criminal gangs are
more organised than ever, even down to dividing up territories in European
cities. "They split the cities into suburbs," said Serge Sabourin, of
Interpol, the global police intelligence body. "In rural areas they are
divided by type of activity."

Police believe the gangs liaise to ensure they are not crowding individual
drug routes, agree the amount of drugs that each can bring into countries
to avoid flooding markets, share equipment such as boats and arms, and hire
out specialists to each other, particularly in the growing "cyber-crime"
industry.

The new French intelligence reports have come to light after a high-profile
murder trial in France, which threw up links between one of the six
victims, a Russian millionaire businessman, and the mafia.

The Beaune summit was the first time French intelligence was able to
monitor the entry of senior Russian gangsters into the country. The Russian
mafia is understood to have been represented by Vyacheslav Ivankov, known
as "the Jap" because of his Far Eastern appearance. Two days later a
Georgian film producer was gunned down in Paris after being branded a
traitor by the organisation.

Ivankov, who is said by Russian police to have earned £200,000 a day, has
subsequently been jailed for 10 years for extortion in the United States.
But his Moscow-based group has continued to expand, particularly into
northern Europe, specialising in prostitution and fraud.

According to European and American intelligence sources, the Russians have
emerged as significant players on the western European stage in recent
years. There are now more than 8,000 organised crime groups in Russia, with
two-thirds of the country's economy said to be under their sway. Two
hundred of them have criminal ties in 50 countries.

Russian mobsters control massive extortion, fraud and prostitution rackets
in Germany, Italy, Holland and Belgium and are beginning to get a foothold
in Britain. In Italy, their influence in some parts of the country is
already greater than that of the Italian mafia, according to police.

At the Beaune summit, the Italian mafia was represented by the Gambino clan
from New York, whose boss is John Gotti, currently serving a life sentence
for murder and racketeering. He is said to be so powerful that he still
runs his empire from prison in America. Police say the Gambino clan, which
has its roots in Italy and numbers about 500 people, has concentrated on
southern Europe, specialising in arms, narcotics, gambling and loan-sharking.

Alongside them were representatives from at least three other groups. They
included:

The Sun Yee On triad from Hong Hong, which is reputed to have more than
30,000 members worldwide. The group is prominent in Britain, Holland,
Belgium and France. It is involved in loan-sharking, prostitution,
money-laundering, smuggling illegal immigrants and counterfeit currency.

The Yakuza from Japan. Police believe there are about 100,000 mainly
white-collar members, who tend to stay out of legitimate business and run
prostitution, debt-collection and big-business rackets. They have strong
ties with extreme right-wing groups.

The Colombian cocaine cartel from Medellin. It was formerly led by Pablo
Escobar, the infamous drug baron killed during a shoot-out with police.
Today the cartel is more fragmented and has been overtaken by a Colombian
rival, the Cali cartel, led by Orlando Sanchez.

Arnaud de Borchgrave, director of the global organised crime project at the
Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington, said:
"We know organised crime groups have met to carve up the planet . . . There
has been an astonishing growth in transnational groups. The legal economy
has gone global and the crime economy has gone global as well."

The London-based National Criminal Intelligence Service is particularly
concerned by the growth of Turkish drug traffickers in Britain. This
weekend Huseyin Baybasin, 41, a Turk, was arrested in Holland during a
massive anti-drug smuggling swoop in Britain, Holland, Belgium, Italy,
Turkey, Germany and Romania. Five people were also arrested in London,
three of whom were charged yesterday with various offences.

Additional reporting: Michael Sheridan, Hong Kong and Mark Franchetti, Moscow

Dividing Europe's spoils of crime

TURKISH GANGSTERS are responsible for 80% of the heroin smuggled into
Britain each year. They also specialise in money laundering throughout
western Europe

THE GAMBINOS and other American-based mafia groups have forged strong links
in Italy and concentrate their activities in southern Europe. They are
responsible for arms smuggling, illegal gambling and loan shark ventures

TRIAD GROUPS from Hong Kong are responsible for prostitution operations in
Holland and Belgium. At their most vicious, they imprison young girls as
sex slaves

COLOMBIAN CARTELS, particularly the Cali and those from Medellin, flood
Italy, Germany and other western European countries with hundreds of tons
of cocaine a year

RUSSIAN MAFIA GROUPS, the Organisatsya, emerged as big-time crime "players"
at the 1994 Beaune summit. They have established extortion, fraud and
prostitution rackets in Germany and Italy, and are spreading westwards.

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