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Crack Trade Has Gravitated to 'The Walk' (A San Jose Mercury News reporter
and two narcs can't do anything thing about it as "everyone from street
people to engineers" engages in laissez-faire capitalism on East Santa Clara
Street in San Jose, California.)
Date: Sun, 03 May 1998 11:07:37 -0400
To: mapnews@mapinc.org
From: Melodi Cornett (mrhorse@kih.net)
Subject: MN: US CA: Column: Crack Trade Has Gravitated to `The Walk'
Sender: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Newshawk: Marcus-Mermelstein Family (mmfamily@ix.netcom.com)
Pubdate: Fri, 1 May 1998
Source: San Jose Mercury News (CA)
Contact: letters@sjmercury.com
Website: http://www.sjmercury.com/
Author: Jim Trotter
CRACK TRADE HAS GRAVITATED TO `THE WALK'
Even a modest elevation gain in the Santa Clara Valley makes for spectacular
viewing, and standing on this particular rooftop, with the sun coming at the
steep angles of early evening, I am once again impressed. The mountain
ranges are a study of shadow and light. The south end of San Francisco Bay
glimmers through the haze.
However, I'm up here with two guys who don't care about the view -- San Jose
police officers Moses Barreras and David Seminatore. Their binoculars are
trained on the street below.
``Look at this pair right here,'' says Barreras, handing me his glasses.
There is some sort of quick exchange between a man and woman. They separate,
with the woman getting in a car and the man strolling on down East Santa
Clara Street.
Barreras gets on the radio, but by the time the cruiser arrives on the
scene, the woman's car is blocks away, turning west into traffic on East San
Fernando Street.
Still, this kind of surveillance was key in a police department sweep last
month that netted dozens of arrests for selling crack cocaine along one of
San Jose's main drags. And while some police teams have moved on, Barreras
and Seminatore have this stretch of East Santa Clara Street as a
community-policing assignment.
``These are super good guys,'' said their boss, district Sgt. John Lax,
``good policemen and good investigators. The people they work with down
there love them.''
For whatever reason, the crack trade seems to gravitate to East Santa Clara
Street. In the recent sweep, Seminatore said, some 80 percent of those
arrested were from Alameda County. ``It turns out that they were taking BART
down to Fremont and then the 180 express bus to First and Santa Clara,'' he
said. ``Up there drugs and territory are controlled by gangs. That is less
so down here. They looked at this like a free, open market.''
The officers described a scenario in which the dealer might send a ``crack
fiend'' -- someone working for a small chip of the crystallized cocaine --
as a go-between to meet potential buyers in the parking lot at the Lucky
Store or elsewhere along the street.
``You wouldn't believe the span of people we've stopped for buying,'' says
Barreras. ``Everyone from street people to engineers. Yesterday we stopped a
guy who was a nurse. He told us he started doing crack because he heard it's
a good way to lose weight.''
We laugh.
Barreras says they've dubbed the street `the walk'' because that's what the
dealers try to appear to be doing -- just taking a walk.
``They're apprehensive,'' says Seminatore, ``but greed takes a higher
priority. They try to be clever to some degree, but they're too lazy to
actually do it.
``Look at these guys here, coming up. It's just that flagrant.''
As three young men walk below, one looks directly up.
``He made us already,'' says Barreras.
``They'll walk and tell others,'' says Seminatore.
I can't say for sure what the three are up to, but whatever it is, they vanish.
``We confront these guys, say, `Hey, how you doing?' '' says Barreras. ``We
ask them what they're doing here. Without fail, they always say, `Trying to
pick up girls.' At first, we might give them a chance, but they always turn
out to be selling.' ''
There are elementary schools and churches and neighborhoods along the
street. There are community groups that have worked long and hard with
various city agencies to build a healthy place to live and work. That means
reducing the number of the drug dealers, the chronic drunks, the other
dangers and nuisances.
Corporate Lucky Stores joined the fight this week, agreeing to change
alcohol sales policies and to make other positive changes at its store
directly across from Horace Mann Elementary. That was an important gesture
by Lucky, and a big win for the community. Overdue, the officers agree.
But the view from here on the roof is that the battle goes on.
Write Jim Trotter at the San Jose Mercury News, 750 Ridder Park Drive, San
Jose, Calif. 95190; call (408) 920-5024, or e-mail to jtrotter@sjmercury.com
via e-mail.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Lessons From A Killing (Extra!, published by the group Fairness and Accuracy
in Reporting, describes how the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights got the
San Francisco Chronicle to shift the focus of its racist portrayal of a
victim of a police beating away from his alleged drug problem and criminal
record.)
Date: Mon, 11 May 1998 12:00:26 -0700
To: mapnews@mapinc.org
From: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org (MAPNews)
Subject: MN: US: Lessons From a Killing
Sender: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Newshawk: Jim Rosenfield
Source: Extra!
Contact: http://www.fair.org
Fax: 212-727-7668
Pubdate: MAY/JUNE 1998
Author: Van Jones
Our Newshawk writes: "There's something to learn here about manipulating
the media."
LESSONS FROM A KILLING
Changing News Coverage of Police Brutality in San Francisco
In the fall of 1996, the San Francisco Police Review Commission held
hearings on the death of Aaron Williams, an African-American man suspected
of a $50 pet-store burglary who died in police custody. According to
witnesses and police sources, a team of police led by Officer Marc Andaya
repeatedly kicked Williams in the head and emptied three canisters of
pepper spray into his face. Despite the fact that Williams was having
difficulty breathing, the police finally hog-tied, gagged and left him
unattended in the back of a police van, where he died.
My organization, the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, and our project,
Bay Area PoliceWatch, organized around this case for two years. This is our
experience changing news coverage around the case and how it affected our
organizing campaign for justice for Aaron Williams.
In its first set of hearings, the police commission ruled that no
"excessive force" was used, that the cops' role in beating Aaron Williams
was fine. The police commission was able to get away with such a ruling
because of the abysmal media coverage leading up to the initial hearings on
the case.
The few news reports were ridiculously biased. The coverage made it look
like Aaron Williams hadn't been beaten to death, but died because of a
strange new malady, "sudden in-custody death syndrome" That's how the San
Francisco Chronicle (4/8/96), the Bay Area's leading daily newspaper,
described a new phenomenon in which victims of police beatings inexplicably
die, but it's somehow not a result of those beatings.
As often happens in coverage of police brutality, news reports during the
hearings focused on the background and alleged misdeeds of the victim. In
Williams' case, coverage focused on his alleged drug problem and referred
to him as a parolee.
There was virtually no mention of Andaya's record, which included 3 prior
complaints of police brutality, five lawsuits alleging racism and abuse,
and one other death of an unarmed man of color.
Examining the Message
After we lost the initial hearings, we brought in We Interrupt This
Message, a media activist organization that specializes in working with
groups that face media stereotypes and biased coverage. They asked us to
tell them what our initial media message and organizing goal had been.
Our initial media message had been "the San Francisco police department is
out of control." Not even the progressive press wanted to cover the story
with that message.
The problem was that people had to be completely critical of the San
Francisco police department in order to agree with us that police officers
shouldn't have beaten an unarmed man to death. People in the neighborhoods
with experience with police brutality might agree with that message, but
what about people from communities which rarely suffer from police
brutality?
What we were really asking people to agree with us about was not
particularly radical at all. Most people would agree that cops shouldn't
beat unarmed people to death. So we focused on that. And we had defined our
goal justice for Aaron Williams and his family. As a media message, that
was too vague. When Kim Deterime from Interrupt asked us what "justice for
Aaron" would look like, what we really wanted the police commission to do,
we said, "Fire Marc Andaya." She said, "Say that."
Like most grassroots groups, we knew exactly what our organizing goal
was-wejust didn't think we could say it to the media. We were thinking of
media as separate from, rather than in support of, our organizing effort.
Strategic Challenges
The next step was to look at the strategic media challenges ahead. Given
the biased media coverage so far, the Ella Baker Center faced three
challenges in achieving good coverage for the second round of hearings on
the case We had to rehumanize Aaron Williams, shift the focus from Williams
to Andaya and establish institutional accountability for what had happened.
We had to rehumanize Williams because he had been demonized in the press.
We had to rehumanize Aaron so people who had heard about the case through
the media could see him as something besides some crackhead parolee who
happened to die, and the loss to Aaron's family was felt by the community
as a whole.
Next, we had to shift the frame and the focus of the story from the
background and history of Aaron Williams, the victim, to the past misdeeds
of Marc Andaya, the perpetrator Shifting the focus of coverage to Andaya's
background and record-which is where it should have been in the first place
- was key to changing public opinion on the case.
Finally, we also had to establish institutional accountability for the
police brutality that was happening in our communities. We had to put a
name and a face to who was responsible for what happened in that
neighborhood. And we needed to turn the tables and hold the police
commission accountable for letting cops get away with murder
Sharpening the Target
We had to find a way to talk about Marc Andaya that let people know he was
a racist cop and a bad apple from the beginning. So we called him a name
that was becoming synonymous. with racist cops: We said, "Marc Andaya is
the Bay Area's Mark Fuhrman."
Since the police commission had the power to fire Andaya and they were
appointed by the mayor, we came up with a much sharper target: Mayor Willie
Brown's police commission. We started putting it in terms of "Willie
Brown's police commission protecting the Bay Area's Mark Fuhrman." "If
Willie Brown's police commission doesn't fire Marc Andaya, Aaron Williams'
blood is on Willie Brown's hands."
Our media strategy became integrated with our organizing campaign. Our
primary tactic was to stop business as usual at the police commission,
bringing 100 to 200 people to every police commission meeting and having
the media there to broadcast it all. This constantly ratcheted up the
pressure on the police commission, and on Mayor Brown to do something about
the commission.
Brown, who had been in the background, was suddenly in the hot seat.
Andaya, who had been presented as this nice police officer who had
unfortunately had somebody die on him with some strange malady, became what
he was, which was a menace and a terror to the African-American community.
And Aaron Williams, who before had been some black crackhead who happened
to die, became a valued member of a community and part of a family that was
devastated by his loss.
Victory for the Community
In a four-week period, we got close to two hours of television coverage.
The story went from being buried to the front page. And it made the front
page repeatedly for several weeks. We also shifted the coverage
dramatically. Both the San Francisco chronicle and the Examiner
editorialized against the police commission for refusing to fire Marc
Andaya. The coverage's focus went from Aaron Williams' background to Marc
Andaya's record to the institutional factors which allow police brutality
to happen-proving that you can use an individual story to talk about
institutional issues.
But more importantly for our communities, we collapsed the police
commission. By the time the campaign was over, all three of the
commissioners who had initially sided with Andaya had been removed or had
quit because of the tidal wave of media and community attention. And as a
result of unprecedented community pressure, Marc Andaya was fired.
On the day that Marc Andaya was finally kicked out of the police
department, the major stations interviewed Williams' aunt, her voice
broke when she said, "Now I can go to my nephew's grave.and tell him we got
some justice for him." For Aaron Williams and the thousands of police
brutality victims across the country, reframing media is a prerequisite to
any kind of coverage is justice.
Van Jones is director of the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights in
Cal46rnia. He recently won the Reebok Human Rights Award for his efforts on
behalf of police brutality victims, including Aaron Williams.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
New, Improved Medical Marijuana Drug Readied For Testing (Oncology Times,
without explaining how something can be both "new" and "improved," notes the
company that makes Marinol, the only form of medical marijuana approved
federally for use in the United States, hopes to be in Phase I clinical
trials of a new pharmaceutical form of marijuana by the second quarter of
this year. Unimed has also petitioned the U.S. Drug Enforcement
Administration to change Marinol from a Schedule II to a Schedule III drug.)
Date: Thu, 11 Jun 1998 01:57:35 -0400
To: mapnews@mapinc.org
From: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org (MAPNews)
Subject: MN: US: New, Improved Medical Marijuana Drug Readied for Testing
Sender: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Reply-To: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Organization: Media Awareness Project http://www.mapinc.org/lists/
Newshawk: Tom.Barrus@Cahners.com
Pubdate: May 1998
Section: Volume XX No. 5 p. 75
Source: Oncology Times
Contact: oncologytimes@compuserve.com
Author: Peggy Eastman
NEW, IMPROVED MEDICAL MARIJUANA DRUG READIED FOR TESTING
Washington, DC - The company that makes Marinol - the only medicinal
marijuana drug approved in the US - hopes to be in Phase I clinical trials
of a new pharmaceutical form of marijuana by the second quarter of this year.
A new form of medicinal marijuana would be good news to the patients who say
they prefer smoked marijuana to relieve their medical ailments rather than a
pill. Some came here recently to the staid National Academy of Sciences
building for a scientific workshop on medical marijuana - several in
wheelchairs with companion dogs - to state their case. Except for eight
patients grandfathered under the federal government's disbanded
compassionate use program, smoked marijuana is illegal in every state except
California.
Delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) is the most active ingredient of the
marijuana plant and the one believed to have medicinal value for patients
with cancer, AIDS, glaucoma, and a host of other illnesses and conditions.
"We are keenly interested in a new formulation for THC," said Robert E.
Dudley, PhD, Senior Vice President of Unimed Pharmaceuticals, Inc., in
Buffalo Grove, IL, speaking here at the last of three information-gathering
workshops sponsored by the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of
Sciences. Marinol is taken orally in gel capsules. Dr. Dudley said the
company wants to more nearly mimic inhaled marijuana, avoid the first pass
through the liver that occurs with the oral formulation, and develop a
faster-acting THC product. Drug delivery routes under consideration are
sublingual, nasal aerosol, and pulmonary aerosol formulations.
Approved Form
Marinol was approved in 1985 as an antiemetic for cancer patients undergoing
chemotherapy, and in 1992 it was approved for treatment of anorexia
associated with weight loss in AIDS patients. Today, Dr. Dudley said in an
interview, about 10 percent of Marinol sales are in oncology and about 90
percent in the HIV/AIDS treatment field. Sales data, he said, are strictly a
function of how Marinol is marketed.
Considering how much controversy swirls around providing marijuana to
patients legally, Dr. Dudley said, "I am always amazed when I meet
physicians who don't know that an approved THC product has been on the
market for 13 years." He added, "Oncologists don't know much about it; many
don't use it much. We need more awareness about Marinol among oncologists."
Dr. Dudley said he believes that the fact that Marinol is a controlled
substance has proved to be a hindrance to its acceptance by oncologists. In
1995 Unimed petitioned the US Drug Enforcement Administration to change
Marinol from a Schedule II to a Schedule III drug, he said. The company is
awaiting a US Department of Health and Human Services review of that
petition and expects final US Drug Enforcement Administration action on its
request this year. Rescheduling, said Dr. Dudley, would provide for improved
patient access to Marinol, availability of prescription refills of the drug,
increased pharmacy stocking, and a much higher comfort level among physicians.
"A lot of physicians are leery of prescribing Schedule I and II drugs," said
Dr. Dudley. "They feel they're being watched by the feds. Schedule I and II
drugs are viewed very differently from Schedule III drugs and non-scheduled
drugs." (Note by Tom Barrus, R.Ph., MBA - The DEA does not allow usual
prescribing of schedule I drugs. However, Dr. Dudley is correct about
feeling that, doctors who write prescriptions for schedule II drugs are
being watched by the feds. The DEA is watching them and counting the kinds
and numbers of pills they prescribe.)
He said the company knows Marinol is expensive (about $200 a month for the
average patient who uses it), but that there is coverage of the drug by
third-party payors. The expense of the drug - along with the fact that some
patients say smoked marijuana is more effective for them - is one reason
consumer advocacy groups such as the Marijuana Policy Project believe
patients who smoke marijuana for medicinal reasons should be allowed to do
so without risking breaking the law.
The Institute of Medicine investigators studying medicinal uses of marijuana
will produce a final report - expected to be finished by the end of this
year - on the health benefits and risks of the plant. One of the issues they
are examining is whether smoked marijuana is a "gateway drug" to other
illegal drugs.
"There is a tremendous amount of new science" on the medical benefits of
marijuana, said John A. Benson, Jr., MD, co-principal investigator of the
Institute of Medicine study and Emeritus Professor and Dean at Oregon Health
Sciences University. "My hope is that we'll go beyond asking for more
research and that we might offer some specific suggestions for research,"
said Dr. Benson.
In an interview, Dr. Benson added, "In general, patients like the plant.
They say, why bother [to do more research]? Or they say, 'Let us use the
plant while you do your research.' But that's not up to Drs. Benson and
Watson." Dr. Benson's co-principal investigator on the Institute of
Medicine's marijuana study is Stanley J. Watson, Jr., MD, PhD, Co-Director
and Senior Research Scientist at the University of Michigan's Mental Health
Research Institute.
Difficult Drug to Study
The use of medical marijuana is so political and controversial that it has
been hard to subject it to rigorous scientific scrutiny. In August, the
National Institutes of Health released the report of a panel that met the
previous February to review the scientific data on the potential therapeutic
benefits of marijuana and the need for, and feasibility of, more research.
The NIH panel concluded that the risks linked to marijuana, especially
smoked marijuana, must be considered not only in terms of immediate adverse
effects on the lung, but also in terms of long-lasting effects in patients
with chronic diseases who might use it for long periods of time.
The NIH panel felt that frequent and prolonged marijuana use might reduce
immune function (especially in patients with compromised immune systems);
they were also concerned about the dangerous combustion byproducts of smoked
marijuana on patients with chronic diseases. Thus they favored the
development of a smoke-free inhaled delivery system that could deliver purer
forms of THC or related cannabinoid compounds.
NIH Director Harold Varmus, MD, said the NIH is open to receiving research
grant applications for studies of the medical efficacy of marijuana, and
will put applications through "our normal scientific review."
The National Institute on Drug Abuse maintains a contract with the
University of Mississippi to grow marijuana for research purposes, according
to Institute sources. The Institute also has a contract with Research
Triangle Institute to package the product into cigarettes distributed for
NIH-approved research to scientists who have an Investigational New Drug
clearance from the Food and Drug Administration. A small portion of these
cigarettes - which are made according to standardized specifications from
marijuana of known origin and quality - go to eight patients legally
supplied with marijuana under the government's compassionate use program,
which has been discontinued.
At the Institute of Medicine workshop, speakers said marijuana's status as a
controlled substance discourages scientists from attempting to study its
therapeutic benefits. There is a "tremendous bureaucratic tangle to get a
protocol approved," said J. Richard Crout, MD, a former FDA official who now
runs Crout Consulting. He said that in addition to the constraints of the
Drug Enforcement Administration, state agencies may also become involved in
controlling marijuana trial protocols.
Nevertheless, other speakers said studies of cannabinoids are underway.
David Pate, a senior technical officer with HortaPharm, BV, in Amsterdam,
said his company is manufacturing a generic THC drug and that he is studying
another cannabinoid-like drug that goes to the same receptor as THC.
Smokeless Cannabinoids
Phyllis I. Gardner, MD, a dean at Stanford University and a consultant to
Alza Corporation in Palo Alto, CA, said if she had a choice, she would
choose inhalation as her first choice of delivery because it seems to
provide the most therapeutic benefit. She said Alza tried to make a
cannabinoid transdermal patch in the 1970s, but "it didn't work." She cited
transmucosal delivery as a promising route, noting that in general Americans
accept nasal delivery but do not accept rectal suppositories as readily as
Europeans do.
Reid M. Rubsamen, MD, Vice President for Medical Affairs of Aradigm
Corporation in Hayward, CA, said he is working on a respiratory-tract drug
delivery system for analgesics in which the patient holds a device with a
light that tells him how to breathe; a liquid-formulated drug flows through
the device in fine-particle, low-velocity aerosolized form. With this
system, he noted, more of a given drug goes into the alveoli.
Mahmoud A. ElSohly, PhD, President of ElSohly Laboratories, Inc., in Oxford,
MS, said he is studying delta-9-THC-hemisuccinate in suppository form as an
alternative to oral and smoked THC. He is testing this formulation on
patients with spasticity, and said he was "very encouraged" from preliminary
results.
The Institute of Medicine carefully warned observers at the Washington
workshop about the dangers of drawing inferences too hastily about what may
be in the final report on medical use of marijuana. It stated that
"observers who draw conclusions from the workshop about the Institute of
Medicine study, will be doing so prematurely. The goal of this meeting is
not to draw conclusions, but to listen to the evidence."
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Tobacco Black Market Rise Predicted (An Associated Press article in the Los
Angeles Times says new television advertisements sponsored by the tobacco
industry accuse members of Congress and the White House of courting a black
market, increased crime and teen smoking by supporting a Senate tobacco bill.
The White House says "Lawmakers could control any black market for tobacco
products by taking a page from alcohol regulation." If the legislation
passes, $5-a-pack cigarettes are predicted.)
Date: Fri, 01 May 1998 19:32:32 -0400
To: mapnews@mapinc.org
From: Mike Gogulski (syadasti@mapinc.org)
Subject: MN: US: Tobacco Black Market Rise Predicted
Sender: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Newshawk: Jim Rosenfield
Source: Los Angeles Times (CA)
Contact: letters@latimes.com
Website: http://www.latimes.com/
Pubdate: 1 May 1998
Author: Laurie Kellman, Associated Press Writer
TOBACCO BLACK MARKET RISE PREDICTED
WASHINGTON--Answering critics of legislation aimed at curbing teen smoking,
the Clinton administration says lawmakers could control any black market
for tobacco products by taking a page from alcohol regulation, licensing
every link in the chain of distribution. "The creation of a sound
regulatory system -one that will close the distribution chain for tobacco
products -will ensure that the diversion and smuggling of tobacco can be
effectively controlled," Lawrence Summers, deputy secretary of the
Treasury, told a Senate panel Thursday.
But the tobacco industry says otherwise in new television ads that accuse
members of Congress and the White House of courting a black market,
increased crime and teen smoking by supporting a Senate tobacco bill.
Suggesting that beefed-up enforcement would solve the problem is a big step
in the right direction, said industry spokesman Scott Williams. "The
administration just admitted that the threat of a contraband problem is
real," he said of Summers' proposal. Meanwhile, President Clinton extended
an olive branch to the tobacco industry by inviting companies to come back
to the negotiating table to help write legislation to cut teen smoking.
"I would hope that before this is over, they would come back and rejoin the
negotiations," Clinton said. "I think it would be better if they were at
the table."
He also said lawmakers and political parties should not accept
contributions from tobacco companies. "Until we get this matter resolved
with the teen smoking, I think it would be better if none of us did," he
told a news conference.
The chasm between Washington and an industry that for decades wielded
virtually unequaled power here split wide open three weeks ago when tobacco
company executives rejected Congress' leading tobacco bill. Sponsored by
Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., who chairs the Senate Commerce Committee, the
measure would cost tobacco companies $516 billion over 25 years, sharply
raise cigarette prices and curtail the industry's marketing ability.
Tobacco executives say that bill would drive companies out of business,
make their product unaffordable and spawn a black market beyond the
government's control. Contraband, they say, would cause all manner of
societal ills, from gang members hawking smokes to kids to a spurt in
organized crime.
A federal law adding $1.10 to the price of cigarettes would result in a
pack costing $5, once wholesalers and retailers add their own increases to
make up for reduced demand, the industry says. That $5 is well above the
level at which a black market would be created, cigarette-makers contend.
The Treasury Department disputes that calculation, saying the bill would
result in a price closer to $3.50.
At a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing Thursday, Democrats and the
administration went further, accusing the industry of participating in the
existing black market.
"Haven't the tobacco companies been shown to be complicitous in some of the
smuggling efforts?" Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., asked. He held up news
reports saying U.S. American tobacco companies and employees were involved
in smuggling.
"In some cases, there was complicity," replied Lawrence Summers, deputy
secretary of the Treasury. "There is no way in our judgment that
substantial smuggling of tobacco products could take place without the
complicity of those in the industry." Williams denied the charge.
"They wouldn't support or condone breaking the law," Williams told
reporters. "The black market hurts the tobacco companies. They lose sales."
Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee,
counseled caution. "If the companies become bankrupt or move offshore, it
is a whole new ballgame, and one which we cannot control," he said.
Summers' proposal for strictly licensing all levels of the tobacco industry
did not come with an estimated cost or a way to pay for it. The proposal,
likely to be offered as an amendment to McCain's bill, would target
manufacturers, wholesalers, exporters and importers, requiring federal
licenses. Every retailer would have to get a state license.
The proposal also would require that tobacco products be marked for
domestic distribution or for export, to ensure that excise taxes are
collected.
Critics, such as Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., called the proposal
naive, saying other areas of the law already are too weak to prevent
Mexican cigarettes from crossing the border into her state.
Copyright Los Angeles Times
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Casualties Of War (An essay in Hemp Magazine by Nora Callahan, director of
the November Coalition, recounts how the war on some drug users has
devastated her and her family. She says if every victim of this war in
America opposed it, it would end.)
Date: Sat, 30 May 1998 10:49:44 -0400
To: DrugSense News Service (mapnews@mapinc.org)
From: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org (MAPNews)
Subject: MN: US: Casualties of War
Sender: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Reply-To: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Newshawk: John E. Dvorak, Managing Editor, Hemp Magazine
Source: Hemp Magazine
Author: Nora Callahan, Director of The November Coalition
Pubdate: May, 1998
Contact: boston.hemp@pobox.com
CASUALTIES OF WAR
My own evolution to activism on the Drug War Front has been a long and
painful road. The mighty arm of the Drug War has slammed almost every area
of my life. In 1989, my brother was arrested for drug law violations. My
step-son struggled with drug addiction and my father began to loose a
twenty-year battle with cancer.
What is wrong with prohibition? I had to ask myself this question as War in
America pounded down with the fury that war always brings to society. For
five years, I was pulled down in the wake of destruction and drowning in
despair.
My step-son wanted and needed drug treatment. We had no financial reserves
to pay for it. In defeat, I took my own two children and abandoned David
and his father.
Chemotherapy began taking a terrible toll on my father. The pain of cancer
overwhelmed him. He fought valiantly, but the medicine that could ease his
suffering were illegal for his physicians to prescribe or recommend. As the
last convulsion came over him, I was at his side telling him gently, "It's
okay if you leave us, dad. It's okay to leave." Inside of my heart, I was
screaming and begging for death to come.
A few months after that agonizing separation, my brother lost at trial. He
was sentenced to more than twenty-seven years in federal prison. I was
stunned, grief-struck and riddled with questions.
What is wrong with prohibition? Where is the Drug War taking us as a
nation? Where did sensibility, compassion and forgiveness go? Will it ever
return to America?
War is destruction and I was an emotional casualty of war - a victim along
with what has fast become an incalculable number of American citizens.
The casualties of the War on Drugs are no longer calculable. There are
simply too many of us to count anymore. And so we go, a broken, tattered,
powerless lot, into the abyss of misery.
Last year, I began to rise above the ashes of despair, however, and I have
a question for the people that are reading my personal story.
What would happen if every victim of this war in America opposed it? It
would end.
I am now the Director of The November Coalition at the request of POW
David Perk and my brother Gary. Our organization is made up of the
casualties of the Drug War. Many of us are imprisoned. Others mourn for
loved ones in prison. Still others that have joined our efforts know that
their rights as free people are precarious. They know that America is
being destroyed by a drug civil war. We are weary of being victims and are
uniting a voice of opposition. Today there are many groups that are working
feverishly for drug law reform. Please join us in opposing this war.
For thirty years, our federal and state legislators have been deaf to the
prisoners' thin, fragmented cry. The Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich,
has introduced legislation that will send a person with so little as a
couple pounds of a harmless plant to the federal gallows. Gingrich's "Death
Penalty Importation Act" has the support of 33 members of the House of
Representatives.
Many of you may not believe that it will come to this-that executions for
possessing marijuana will ever take place. But let me ask you this, who
among you believed two decades ago that growing marijuana could bring a
sentence of life in prison? It has for many. We are headed down a
dangerous, deadly road and if we do not stop this war-who will?
United, we can stand strong, demand peace and end this futile and
destructive policy. Divided, we can not. The stakes are higher than mere
personal choice-it is now life or death. I urge you to find a place in the
drug reform movement and help us bring peace and healing to this nation.
Our lives and freedom depend on it.
We publish a bi-monthly newspaper that chronicles the destruction of war
and directs people who are willing to oppose it.
Our contact information is:
The November Coalition
PO Box 309
Colville, WA 99114
Phone: (509) 684-1550 or Conseulo at (509) 738-4444
Email: moreinfo@november.org.
Website: http://www.november.org/
-------------------------------------------------------------------
The Right Wing Is On Drugs (This magazine finds marijuana law reformers in
Canada tend to have a conservative outlook.)
Date: Sat, 04 Jul 1998 22:56:31 -0400
To: maptalk@mapinc.org
From: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org (MAPNews)
Subject: MN: Canada: PUB ARTICLE: The Right Wing Is On Drugs
Sender: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Reply-To: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Organization: Media Awareness Project http://www.mapinc.org/lists/
Newshawk: Dr. Kate (Kathy Galbraith)
Source: THIS magazine
Pubdate: May/June 1998
Contact: thismag@web.net
Website: http://www.THISmag.org/
Author: Nate Hendley
Editors note: Journalist Nate Hendley is a long time participant in the
Canadian Media Awareness Project and their email list - MATTALK:
http://www.islandnet.com/~creator/cmap/
THE RIGHT WING IS ON DRUGS
How Conservatives Tuned In, Turned On And Took Over The Legalization Debate
In Canada
Patrick Basham's been thinking a lot about drugs lately, which is something
you can't really avoid when you live in Vancouver. As Canada's opiate and
marijuana capital, Vancouver has the highest rate of HIV infection among
intravenous drug users in the Western world and some of the strongest pot
in North America. It's also one of the few places in Canada where needle
drug users openly spike in the streets, especially in the squalid 40 square
blocks that make up the down town eastside.
Basham, who used to live near the eastside, recalls seeing people injecting
heroin and cocaine, "literally every day...at eight in the morning, people
would be shooting up, making sales. At the office, I'd tell people the
latest thing I was offered for sale."
Last fall, Basham attended a drug-policy conference organized by the Hoover
Institute, a prestigious American think-tank. That conference combined
with his daily experience seeing addicts in his neighborhood, convinced him
that "something had to be done and soon."
"I used to believe the costs of legalization outweighed the benefits" he
recalls. "Then I moved to the other side."
So Basham put together a recent one-day conference where speakers discussed
"Sensible Solutions to the Urban Drug Problem" and debated the merits of
legalization, decriminalization and harm reduction. But despite all the
dope-talk, it was no West Coast hippie-fest. That's because the conference
was sponsored by the Fraser Institute. A hard-right B.C.-based policy
centre, the Fraser is better known for opposing the welfare state than
supporting progressive drug policy.
Basham, who works as a director of the institute's social affairs centre,
points out that all his organization is doing is playing catch-up with the
United States. A number of American right-wing individuals and groups have
preached the legalization line for years.
Like the Fraser Institute, these right-wing reformers are less interested
in dropping acid than rescinding what they consider dangerously expanded
state powers, unclogging courts and saving money in incarceration costs.
But most rightist reformers are fueled by anti-government ideology, not any
sympathy for drug addicts, and some of their proposals seem as amazingly
awful as the Drug War itself.
Still, right-wingers do hold one major advantage over the type of people
who've populated the reform movement until recently. When it comes to
talking about legal hash and heroin, conservatives in suits are generally
taken more seriously than tie-dyed hippies or liberals with mushy notions
of law and order. "The Fraser Institute is seen as a very creditable
organization." says Basham. "Which is one of the reasons we decided to hold
this conference. We want to make drug legalization a creditable debate."
Marc Emery's also concerned about credibility, which is why he takes care
to keep his hair short, wear a suit jacket in public and talk intelligently
when pontificating on drug policy matters. "When you're watching TV, and
it shows a bunch of hippies smoking pot in a public park, that's not likely
to impress many older viewers," he says.
In spite of his concerns about public image, Emery has little fear of
making a complete ass of himself if it helps the anti-Drug War cause.
Probably the nation's best-known drug activist, he's been kicked out of
courtrooms for heckling judges and handed out joints in front of court
buildings.
A self-described "Ayn Rand stripe libertarian," Emery believes that
government "has no useful social purpose except to make people's lives more
miserable." He opposes unions, the welfare state, universal health care and
people who think it's immoral to make money off drugs.
Back in 1994, Emery opened a Vancouver shop called HempBC, a business that
aimed to be a head shop with a difference. Emery's timing was good: by the
early nineties, drug law reform was slowly re-entering public consciousness
after lying dormant for more than a decade.
North America's brief fling with drug reform- 11 U.S. states decriminalized
marijuana in the seventies and Canada seemed on the verge of doing the
same- died abruptly after Ronald Reagan was elected president. Reagan
ignited America's War on Drugs in 1981, and Canada followed suit three
years later with Brian Mulroney's election.
The Drug War was so pervasive by the time HempBC got off the ground that a
lot of the items Emery sold- such as pot growing books and magazines like
High Times- were technically illegal. That didn't bother Emery much, and
last year he opened a companion business in Vancouver called the Cannabis
Cafe. The cafe was North America's first Amsterdam-style hash bar, where
patrons could munch on veggie food and take advantage of vaporizers at
their tables should they feel the need to take a toke.
Emery grossed $3.5 million in sales last year and at one point employed 43
people at his HempBC store. American journalists were so impressed they
put Emery on the cover of the Wall Street Journal and featured him in
Rolling Stone.
But Vancouver police were less impressed and raided HempBC twice. This
spring, Emery, who is facing 17 pot-related charges, lost his business
license and was forced to sell the cafe and store to his employees. Since
then, he's focused on selling marijuana seeds and publishing Cannabis
Canada magazine, the great White North's answer to High times.
Wildly optimistic, Emery predicts "medical marijuana will be decriminalized
this year....followed by full decriminalization a year later." The federal
liberals, however, don't seem to be on the same time line. Last year, they
proclaimed the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act (Bill C-8) into law,
making a six-month jail term the maximum for simple marijuana possession.
The same bill allows police to seize property where a single pot plant is
found, and proscribes seven-year stretches for people caught with cocaine
or heroin.
Meanwhile, roughly 600,000 Canadians hold criminal records for pot
possession, which can make it impossible to cross the border or get certain
jobs. And our government spends about half a billion a year on drug law
enforcement, with few signs of letting people like Emery run legal drug
operations.
Some federal politicians do support reform, but it's unlikely many would
have endorsed the platform Emery used during his 1996 mayoral bid. Emery
promised to turn Vancouver's welfare recipients into pot grower's, provided
they stop accepting social assistance benefits. "Anyone can grow pot."
Emery notes. "Invalids, old people. we'd set them up."
Emery ended up in fifth place with 1500 votes. Unsuccessful as a
politician, Emery's provided a far more valuable service for the reform
cause: by running HempBC and the Cannabis Cafe for as long as he did, he
gave Canada a glimpse at what post-Drug War society might look like.
"Our intent was to pretend marijuana was legal," explains Emery. "our motto
was "Revolution through Retail." We figured retail sales would pay us to
promote our point of view."
To find out where Marc Emery developed his singular world view, it's
necessary to go to London, Ontario, where he ran a used book store called
City Lights in the eighties.
Outraged that the Criminal Code outlawed literature that "promoted" drug
use, Emery unsuccessfully tried to get himself arrested by stocking his
store with High Times . He also took time in 1984 to help found the
Freedom Party of Ontario. (FP), an organization that remains the "only
political party that supports legalizing drugs," in the words of leader
Robert Metz.
The Freedom Party is small- it garnered only one to two-and-a half per cent
of the vote in the dozen ridings it contested in the 1995 provincial
election- but its presence helps explain right-wing support for
legalization. Like the split between social democrats and revolutionaries
on the left, the right houses at least two overlapping but often
antagonistic bodies: libertarians and social conservatives.
Social conservatives, says Osgoode Hall law professor and drug law activist
Alan Young, "tend to be motivated by what they call "family values." Their
general approach to drug use is that it's destructive to families and kids."
Libertarians, as their name implies, view individual liberties as paramount
and big government as satanic. they also believe, as Metz does, that
people have the "right to intoxicate themselves with any substance... As
long as they're not harming anyone else, the state shouldn't interfere."
Metz, who thinks marijuana should have the same legal status as asparagus."
says his views are widely shared among right-wingers, but that most of them
won't talk about it.
The Freedom Party, however, feels so strongly about drug policy that they
offered financial support when fellow Londoner Chris Clay tried to overturn
Canada's pot laws. In 1995, Clay was hit with possession and trafficking
charges after an undercover officer bought cannabis plants at his store,
Hemp Nation. With activist Alan Young, Clay launched a constitutional
challenge that stated pot had been arbitrarily placed in Canada's Criminal
Code and wasn't harmful enough to criminalize.
To fund his challenge, Clay sold $25. "victory bonds" redeemable for a
quarter ounce of pot once marijuana was legalized. The Freedom Party
bought a thousand bucks worth of them.
Despite this support, Clay ended up losing his case- receiving probation
and a small fine- and anyway, it's doubtful the FP's assistance counts for
much. Not only is it a fringe party, libertarianism has always been
regarded as suspicious by Canadian voters.
But libertarian arguments against the Drug War have been making their way
into some pretty major Canadian news media lately. Last year, the Ottawa
citizen (with Neil Reynolds, former president of the Libertarian party of
Canada, in the editor's chair) surprised readers with a series of
editorials that endorsed legalizing all drugs. The Citizen based its
arguments on a premise Metz or Emery would have no quarrel with: drug
prohibition is immoral because it implies that "free human beings are not
capable of making their own decisions about what they should ingest into
their own bodies."
Coming as more of a shock was the ultrareactionary Alberta Report
magazine's sympathetic cover story on Chris Clay's trial. The Report's
story on Clay didn't quite come out and say pot is good for you, but it
editorialized strongly against the excesses of the Drug War.
As harsh as Canada's War on Drugs has been, we've got nothing on our
cousins to the south. In the United States, you can lose your house, bank
account and driver's license for even minor marijuana offences.
The U.S. spends more than $30 billion on anti-drug efforts and sets the
death penalty for non-violent drug crimes such as large-scale pot
cultivation. Back in 1980, about one in 15 prisoners entering state jails
had been charged with drug offences; 13 years later, that figure was
roughly one in three. And most U.S. drug prisoners are non-white-- a
reflection of laws that call for federal penalties 100 more times severe
for crack cocaine (primarily considered a "black drug", than powder
cocaine(used primarily by whites).
As a result of these extreme policies, there is a far more radical reaction
against the Drug war in the U.S. than anything you'd find in Canada. Take
judge Jim Gray a conservative Republican in Orange County, California.
Judge Gray wants to allow the' sale of marijuana, heroin, and cocaine In a
"strictly controlled, regulated fashion" to adults.
The products would be sold in pharmacies, wrapped in a plain brown paper
and wouldn't be advertised. Such a regulatory system, says the judge,
would eliminate the black market for drugs, drastically clear court dockets
and jail space, and "drive the criminals out of the business."
Judge Gray isn't the only right-winger in America with these ideas:
libertarian economist Milton Friedman was talking about legalizing heroin
back in the seventies. Ultra-conservative publisher William F. Buckley has
used his National Review magazine to publish pro-legalization cover
stories. And a conservative comrade of Buckley's named Dick Cowan used to
head up the National Organization for reform Of Marijuana Laws (NORML)
Billionaire currency speculator George Soros has poured a small fortune
into American drug reform initiatives under the auspices of his
libertarian-oriented Open Society Institute. The U.S. Libertarian Party,
which wants to legalize all drugs, has elected nearly 200 officials, and
former leader Ron Paul, currently sits as a Republican congressman from Texas.
For the most part, the U.S. Congress remains bitterly opposed to
legalization, but in Europe dramatic changes have been going on. Spain,
Italy, and Germany all recently decriminalized marijuana or other drugs.
France is contemplating wide-scale legal reforms and there is growing
pressure in Britain to decriminalize pot. Even in the U.S., two states-
Arizona and California passed referendums that legalized medical marijuana
in 1996. indeed, Young insists he's seen "greater movement (toward
legalizing drugs) in the past five years," and many would agree with him.
This March, the Canadian government officially lifted a 60-yr.-old ban on
growing commercial hemp, the non-intoxicating sister plant of marijuana.
used to make rope and clothes, not joints, help was demonized for years
because of its association with pot. the Liberals legalized the stuff
because of fierce lobbying efforts from an unlikely coalition of farmers
and bankers. Farmers, especially those who grow tobacco, were looking for
a new, low-maintenance crop. Bank of Montreal, which sponsored a pro-hemp
symposium in Vancouver, scented profits in the wind from a legal commercial
hemp industry.
And although the liberals introduced the extremely punitive controlled
Drugs and Substances Act last year, there was opposition. Weirdly enough,
it came from the hidebound senate. After the bill passed the house of
commons in the fall of 1995, it went to the Senate, where a legal committee
recommended criminal sanctions on pot be dropped. This led to one of the
more amusing media stories of recent times: elderly Senators endorsing
decrim while their supposedly more progressive Commons counterparts offered
feeble excuses as to why it couldn't be done.
C-8 was made law without the pot provisions recommended by the Senate but
since then, it's been a Reform MP, Jim Hart of Okanagan-Coquihalla, B.C.,
who has done the most to keep the decrim debate before the House. Last
fall, Hart put forward a private member's motion to investigate the
possibility of legalizing medical marijuana. Motion M-260 would allow
people with serious ailments such as cancer, AIDS, glaucoma and epilepsy to
use medical cannabis without fear of going to jail.
Hart launched the motion after meeting with a constituent with a skull
fracture who found "marijuana was the only thing that offers him any
relief". Asked if his support for medical pot contradicts social
conservative cant that all illicit drug use is immoral, Hart says, "The
conservatism I believe in is listening to the grassroots, responding in a
compassionate manner." He opposes recreational pot use but says most of his
fellow Reformers feel (M-260) was a worthwhile motion"
Alan Young is buoyed by these signs of conservative support, but bristles
at the notion that the drug reform movement's been taken over by
right-wingers. "This issue transcends traditional political stances," he
insists. "Anyone with the proper education will support decriminalization
or legalization"
The War on Drugs was started by conservatives , so the fact that so many
right-wingers are defecting from the cause might be a sign the battles
really coming to a close. That's good news for people who worry about the
police kicking in their doors, but bad news if the kind of proposals
proffered by the right are actually put into place.
Currently, in both Canada and the U.S., the poor bear the worst brunt of
the Drug War; statistics show that they're far more likely to be arrested
on flimsy drug charges and sentenced to long terms than middle-class users.
Libertarian reforms would end the police-state tactics that people in
low-income neighborhoods currently endure but wouldn't do much for them if
they got addicted.
The "right to self-intoxication" that Metz talks about comes with its own
self-correcting corollary: get stoned if you want, but don't expect free
treatment if you get high too often. Libertarians would privatize health
care, including rehab, which means state-run needle exchanges, methadone
clinics and treatment centres offering low or no-cost services would no
longer exist. Private rehab would still flourish, but how many street
addicts could come up with the cash for a high-priced detox bed?
Even if you could care less about the health and well-being of drug users,
public-health treatment programs make good fiscal sense. Providing clean
needles to prevent the spread of HIV is a lot cheaper than treating AIDS
patients. Even Margaret Thatcher recognized this reality, which is why she
legalized needle exchanges in England back in the eighties.
Offering free methadone, which heroin addicts use to ease the pain of
withdrawal, might seem obscene to non-drug users, except that methadone
spares everyone a lot of misery. On methadone, opiate addicts are far more
likely to hold down jobs and maintain normal family lives. Also, methadone
patients commit fewer crimes because they don't have to rob people to pay
for expensive smack habits.
If they're blind to the benefits of public health, libertarians also have
some pretty bad ideas about how a legal drug market might operate. In
Europe, the model has been toward state regulation: the pot-head haven of
Amsterdam, for example, operates under strict government rules that
prohibit hash bars from advertising their wares, making sales to minors and
selling hard drugs. In places such as Switzerland, opiate addicts can get
legal heroin, but only if they register and inject at state clinics. These
kinds of initiatives- however successful they've been in eliminating black
markets and lowering crime and HIV among needle users- are anathema to
libertarians who view any degree of government control as an affront to
individual liberty.
"Never let the government regulate drugs," snaps Emery, "That's maybe more
insidious than keeping it illegal. The government shouldn't decide what is
dangerous and what isn't." Emery believes the free market's more than up to
the task of selling coke and cannabis.
But one has only to look to the example of tobacco and alcohol companies to
realizes how problematic this is. Until very recently, both industries
have taken a completely hands-off attitude to the potential harms of their
products. U.S. tobacco companies, in fact, denied for decades that there
could be any health problems associated with cigarettes.
"I'm a little uneasy about heroin brought to you by Nike," says Neev
Tapiero. "If someone were in a position to make money of heroin, it
wouldn't be beneath corporations to do it.."
Tapiero lives in Toronto and acts as spokesperson for the Medical Marijuana
Centeres on Ontario, an above-ground but highly illegal collective of pot
clubs. He supports the legalization of all drugs- provided the government
plays a role in how they're sold- and an extensive social-services net.
primarily concerned with getting medical pot to his clients, not arguing
about ideology, Tapiero insists drug policy reform is "not a left-wing or a
right-wing issue."
Patrick Basham agrees. "On this issue, we might find our greatest allies
on what used to be the traditional left."
Combine the left's traditional support for the disadvantaged with the
right's mistrust of ill-considered state spending and you could have a
powerful anti-Drug War mix. But you'd also have a very tenuous one: the
legalizers might unite, but that's only because the War on Drugs is such a
clear and present danger that reformers would be foolish not to seek
alliances. Once it's over it's doubtful all the various advocates of
legalization could agree on the terms of withdrawal.
The choices range from well-regulated access to narcotics and widespread,
accessible treatment, to a laissez-faire model where the free market rules
and government does nothing. Drug peace, orderly distribution and good
health care, or the right to pursue individual happiness with a syringe and
no safety net for burnouts. In the end, the real problem might not be in
ending the Drug War, but in securing the most humane peace.
to 1998 Daily News index for April 30-May 6