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

Crusader's Image Takes Hit ('The San Jose Mercury News'
Continues To Act As A Mouthpiece For Santa Clara County
Law Enforcement Officials - Now The Newspaper Quotes
Secret Grand Jury Testimony By Two Former Co-Workers Police Believe
Is Damaging To Peter Baez, Co-Founder Of The Defunct
Santa Clara County Medical Cannabis Center)

Date: Tue, 9 Jun 1998 12:12:38 -0700
To: mapnews@mapinc.org
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Subject: MN: US CA: Crusader's Image Takes Hit
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Newshawk: Marcus-Mermelstein Family 
Source: San Jose Mercury News (CA)
Contact: letters@sjmercury.com
Website: http://www.sjmercury.com/
Pubdate: Mon, 8 Jun 1998
Author: Raoul V. Mowatt - Mercury News Staff Writer

CRUSADER'S IMAGE TAKES HIT

Under scrutiny: Testimony by two former co-workers is damaging to the
co-founder of a defunct pot center.

In little more than a year, the authorities' image of medicinal cannabis
crusader Peter Baez has dramatically shifted. To them, he's gone from a
good Samaritan trying to supply the seriously ill with much-needed medicine
to a con man who ripped off his clients and sold far more marijuana than he
can account for.

Baez's point of view on the accusations is as clear as it is contrary: He
believes himself an innocent target of an effort to discredit the medicinal
marijuana movement.

But a recently unsealed grand-jury transcript contains new damaging
testimony, some of it from people once close to the 34-year-old Gilroy
activist and co-founder of the now-defunct Santa Clara County Medical
Cannabis Center. Awaiting trial on seven felony charges as well as surgery
for his colon cancer, Baez still is convinced he can beat the rap.

``They basically took cops and paralegals in the DA's office and made them
doctors, accountants and lawyers,'' Baez scoffed. ``It's politics that are
screwing me in San Jose.''

In a three-day proceeding in mid-May, Santa Clara County Deputy District
Attorney Denise Raabe called 22 witnesses to support charges that Baez sold
marijuana to five patients without obtaining a prerequisite doctor's
recommendation, ran a drug house and committed grand theft. Baez faces up
to nine years in prison if convicted of the seven felonies.

The 350-page transcript veers from extremely technical financial
information to anecdotal evidence that Baez's business practices were
suspicious. But perhaps the most interesting testimony came from two people
who left the center long before it closed last month.

One of them wants to establish a new marijuana dispensary and the other had
once planned to. Baez alleges the two were ``disgruntled'' and their
interest in setting up pot centers prompted them to perjure themselves.
``Why? Because they want money,'' Baez said. ``I think they are very weak
witnesses.''

But one of those said he was telling the truth and that it was typical of
Baez to deny responsibility for his own actions. ``He's got a chip on his
shoulder the size of Mount Rushmore,'' said Dennis Augustine, the center's
former medical director, in an interview. ``It's not surprising to anyone
who has worked there.''

Doctors' orders at issue

One former employee, Judy Brunner, testified she became increasingly
uncomfortable with Baez during her four months at the center. As many as a
dozen times, she said, Baez claimed to have confirmed a doctor's
recommendation soon after receiving a file -- although she saw from her
master telephone console that he had not made a call.

Brunner said Baez would also recruit marijuana growers, giving them slips
of paper to signify that the cultivators were working for a pot dispensary
-- and to give a veneer of legality. In exchange, Brunner said, Baez would
demand a pound of free pot.

Brunner said Baez also once bought marijuana from her at $150 an ounce and
sold it at $520 an ounce -- despite his promise to sell it at a reduced
rate.

``I felt that he was betraying everyone that had supported him in doing
this for the people who are very ill,'' Brunner testified.

Brunner said Baez wrote her a three-page letter defending himself against
her allegations.

`Buy low and sell high'

Responding to the accusation that he was overcharging clients, Baez said in
the alleged letter that he priced pot the same as Dennis Peron, the
controversial San Francisco-based medical marijuana advocate. ``His motto
to us was to buy low and sell high,'' Baez allegedly said in the letter.

Augustine, who is still hoping to start his own medicinal marijuana center
in San Jose, also testified things seemed awry during his stint with Baez.
In July 1997, he gave a $10,000 donation to the center on the condition he
join Baez and co-founder Jesse Garcia on the dispensary's board of
directors. His pledge was largely meant to pay back a loan the center had
incurred, Augustine said.

But soon after the donation, Baez bought a Toyota sport utility vehicle
that cost about $9,600, according to testimony. Later, Augustine said Baez
told him he never paid off the loan.

Baez, a former bank employee who now lives on disability because of colon
cancer and AIDS, has said he bought the vehicle with the help of his
father. He also says he has financial records that prove that's how the
vehicle was purchased.

As part of fundraising efforts, Augustine said he repeatedly asked to see
the center's books so he could provide potential donors with bona fide
information. But he said Baez responded by dismissing the requests.
Augustine also testified he later got a treasurer's report from Baez that
showed the center's profit from April to October of last year was less than
$200.

But according to testimony from authorities, the center sold about $150,000
in marijuana in its first year, some $74,000 of which couldn't be accounted
for. Investigators created a database out of the center's financial
records. Their days-long effort included several assumptions in Baez's
favor, prosecutors said.

``We were very careful in coming up with the numbers,'' Raabe said in an
interview.

Expenses scrutinized

According to testimony, Baez illegally supported himself with center funds
-- paying for amenities such as satellite service, bowling and beer. He
also allegedly used center money to pay his rent, which would mean he was
not entitled to about $14,000 in federal subsidized housing aid that he
received.

Baez denies those charges and complains the lead investigator on the case,
Sgt. Scott Savage, always had been against Proposition 215 and eventually
tried to intimidate both him and at least one other center worker. But in
early press reports, Baez said he and partner Garcia got along well with
Savage.

``We were obviously stupid back then, thinking we were working with someone
who was honest and sincere,'' Baez said. ``There are some bad cops in the
San Jose Police Department, and unfortunately, I think I've got one
climbing all over my back.''

Police spokesman John Carrillo said Savage did not wish to comment, but
added that Savage was innocent of any wrongdoing.

Raabe also had a series of doctors testify for the grand jury that they did
not recommend marijuana for the five patients at the center of the
prosecution's case.

In some instances, the doctors said they never spoke to anyone affiliated
with the center. But in one case, a doctor acknowledged it's difficult to
advocate the use of marijuana in today's political climate -- a sentiment
Baez says has kept some physicians from supporting him during his legal
troubles.

``Now, did you ever approve the use of marijuana for Buyer Number 3?''
Raabe asked Dr. Morton Garfield.

``I don't think so, because you know, I'm caught in this difference between
the federal government and the California initiative,'' Garfield replied.
``And we've been warned that we can't do it, so I don't.''

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

War On Drugs Called A Waste ('The Houston Chronicle'
Covers A Press Conference Called By The Drug Policy Forum Of Texas,
Whose Members Denounced The United Nations' Plans
For An Expanded Drug War As Counterproductive)

Date: Tue, 09 Jun 1998 22:35:26 -0400
To: mapnews@mapinc.org
From: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org (MAPNews)
Subject: MN: TX GE: War on drugs called a waste
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Newshawk: Tammera Halphen (webdcyner@sprynet.com)
Source: Houston Chronicle (TX)
Contact: viewpoints@chron.com
Website: http://www.chron.com/
Pubdate: June 8, 1998
Author: R.A. Dyer

WAR ON DRUGS CALLED A WASTE

Activists say the effort is only causing crime and corruption

By R.A. DYER

Copyright 1998 Houston Chronicle

Activists in Houston called Monday for an end to the war on drugs -- even
as President Clinton was advocating a global strategy to fight illegal
narcotics during his address to a special session of the United Nations.

"We can teach our children personal responsibility and protect them from
drugs, but we cannot protect them from the crime, violence and corruption
of the black market, or from the abuse of power . . . that occur in the
futile fight against that market," Jerry Epstein, the Drug Policy Forum of
Texas president, said Monday.

Speaking at a news conference to coincide with the United Nations' special
session on drugs, which continues through Wednesday, about a dozen
activists joined Epstein in expressing opposition to the drug war. The
activists represented organizations -- including the American Civil
Liberties Union of Texas and the National Organization for the Reform of
Marijuana Laws -- that gathered outside the Houston Drug Enforcement
Administration office with picket signs.

Some present favored the decriminalization of narcotics, saying drugs that
now are illegal should instead be regulated and taxed. Others called for a
reduction in the length of drug sentences. But all agreed that existing law
enforcement efforts generally are counter-productive.

G. Alan Robison, Drug Policy Forum of Texas founder, said most politicians,
fearful of appearing to be soft on drugs, won't discuss alternatives to law
enforcement. "Our policies are misguided," said Robison, a professor of
pharmacology at the University of Texas Health Science Center. "We should
stop putting people in prison for using drugs -- that doesn't work. . . .
Ignorance, fear and greed are the three things driving the drug war.
There's vested interests that want to keep this thing going."

During the U.N. General Assembly special session on Monday, Clinton called
for a global strategy to fight illegal drugs and for an end to the debate
over whether consuming or producing countries were more responsible for the
international drug problem. The special session prompted a letter-signing
campaign by the Lindesmith Center, a Washington-based think tank opposed to
drug control policy in the United States. In an open message to U.N.
Secretary-General Kofi Annan that appears to have been signed by hundreds
of global leaders and Nobel Prize laureates, the Lindesmith Center claimed
that "the global war on drugs is now causing more harm that drug abuse
itself."

"In many parts of the world, drug war politics impede public health efforts
to stem the spread of HIV, hepatitis and other infectious diseases," states
the letter, which bears the signatures of former broadcast journalist
Walter Cronkite, former California Sen. Alan Cranston and San Francisco
Mayor Willie Brown.

"Human rights are violated, environmental assaults perpetrated and prisons
inundated with hundreds of thousands of drug law violators. Scarce
resources better expended on health, education and economic development are
squandered on ever more expensive interdiction efforts. Realistic efforts
to reduce drug-related crime, disease and death are abandoned in favor of
rhetorical proposals to create drug-free societies."

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

Did Feds Try To Set Up Patricia Hearst Shaw On Drug Charge?
(According To 'The Associated Press,' Patricia Hearst Shaw,
The Newspaper Heiress Who Was Kidnapped In 1974 And Convicted Of Robbing
A Bank With Her Captors, And Who Is Seeking A Pardon, Is Quoted
In The June 15 Edition Of 'The New Yorker' Saying That When She Called Police
About A Package Delivered To Her Connecticut Home, The DEA Showed Up,
Prepared To Arrest Her)

Date: Tue, 09 Jun 1998 10:20:49 -0400
To: mapnews@mapinc.org
From: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org (MAPNews)
Subject: MN: US: Wire: Did Feds Try To Set Up
Patricia Hearst Shaw On Drug Charge?
Sender: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Reply-To: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Organization: Media Awareness Project http://www.mapinc.org/lists/
Newshawk: Patrick Henry (resist_tyranny@hotmail.com)
Pubdate: Mon, 08 Jun, 1998
Source: Associated Press

DID FEDS TRY TO SET UP PATRICIA HEARST SHAW ON DRUG CHARGE?

Patricia Hearst Shaw, the newspaper heiress who was kidnapped in 1974 and
convicted of robbing a bank with her captors, claims federal drug agents may
have tried to set her up.

Hearst Shaw, who spent two years in jail for a robbery she said she was
forced to commit, tells the June 15 edition of The New Yorker that the setup
may have to do with her request for a presidential pardon.

Her lawyer said someone may have been trying to discredit her and ruin her
chances at a pardon. He has asked Attorney General Janet Reno to look into
the matter.

``We're not ruling anything in and we're not ruling anything out,'' George
Martinez told The Associated Press when asked if he believed the government
was involved in the incident. ``We just don't know what's going on.''

In February, a package was delivered to her Connecticut home by United
Parcel Service. Thinking the package might be a bomb, she refused to open it
and called police.

``I always look my mail over because of having spent 18 months with
terrorists who thought up things like this,'' she told The New Yorker.
``They would sit around and dream up ways to kill people.''

Minutes later a truck pulled up that she assumed was part of a bomb squad. A
man and a woman came to her door and flashed badges identifying themselves
as federal Drug Enforcement Administration agents.

The agents said they did not know who sent the package, which they said
contained narcotics, but were prepared to arrest Hearst Shaw for accepting
them. They said they were tipped off to the delivery.

However, since Hearst Shaw did not take the box into her home and contacted
police right away, she had done ``everything right,'' according to the agents.

The agents asked if she knew of any reason why someone would send her drugs.
She claimed someone may have been trying to hurt her chance at a pardon,
which had come up for consideration by the Justice Department two weeks
beforehand.

While Martinez would not say whom he suspected, he wrote Reno that the DEA
had begun a ``campaign of harassment'' against Hearst Shaw and asked whether
the government was trying to trap her.

``Has the DEA or the DOJ (Department of Justice) been involved in devising
or manufacturing evidence to inculpate Ms. Hearst and Mr. Shaw?'' the letter
said.

The Justice Department has promised a ``detailed and expeditious'' response
to his letter, Martinez said.

Federal authorities declined to comment. A call late Monday to the DEA
office in Washington was not returned. The Justice Department said no one
was available for comment.

Hearst Shaw said she still has flashbacks from the time she spent with the
Symbionese Liberation Army. Her prison term was commuted by President Jimmy
Carter, but she is hoping to clear her name with a pardon.

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

Opiates For The Masses (An Op-Ed In 'The Wall Street Journal'
By Anti-Harm-Reduction Crusader Dr. Sally Satel,
Opposing The First International Conference On Heroin Maintenance
Saturday, Sponsored By The New York Academy Of Medicine)

Date: Wed, 17 Jun 1998 12:42:21 -0700
To: mapnews@mapinc.org
From: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org (MAPNews)
Subject: MN: US WSJ: Commentary: Opiates for the Masses
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Organization: Media Awareness Project http://www.mapinc.org/lists/
NewsHawk: Mark Greer
Source: Wall Street Journal
Contact: editors@interactive.wsj.com
Website: http://www.wsj.com/
Pubdate: Wed, 8 Jun 1998
Author: Sally Satel

COMMENTARY: OPIATES FOR THE MASSES

One hundred years ago, German chemists introduced heroin to the world. On
Saturday the New York Academy of Medicine held a conference celebrating the
drug's latest use, "heroin maintenance": medically supervised distribution
of pure heroin to addicts. The academy's First International Conference on
Heroin Maintenance introduces to our shores the latest example of the
pernicious drug-treatment philosophy known as "harm reduction."

Harm reduction holds that drug abuse is inevitable, so society should try
to minimize the damage done to addicts by drugs (disease, overdose) and to
society by addicts (crime, health care costs). According to the Oakland,
Calif.-based Harm Reduction Coalition, harm reduction "meets users where
they are at . . . accepting for better or worse, that drug use is part of
our world."

Its advocates present harm reduction as a rational compromise between the
alleged futility of the drug war and the extremism of outright
legalization. But since harm reduction makes no demands on addicts, it
consigns them to their addiction, aiming only to allow them to destroy
themselves in relative "safety"--and at taxpayer expense.

Specious Choice

The recent debate over needle exchange illuminates the political strategy
of harm reductionists. First, present the public with a specious choice:
Should a drug addict shoot up with a clean needle or a dirty one?
(Unquestioned is the assumption that he should shoot up at all.) Then
misrepresent the science as Health and Human Services Secretary Donna
Shalala did when she pronounced "airtight" the evidence that needle
exchange reduces the rate of HIV transmission. In fact, most needle
exchange studies have been full of design errors; the more rigorous ones
have actually shown an increase in HIV infection.

And so it is with heroin maintenance. First, the false dichotomies: pure
vs. contaminated heroin; addicts who commit crime to support their habit
vs. addicts who don't. Then the distortion of evidence. The Lindesmith
Center, one of the conference sponsors, claims that "a landmark Swiss study
has successfully maintained heroin addicts on injectable heroin for almost
two years, with dramatic reductions in illicit drug use and criminal
activity as well as greatly improved health and social adjustment."

In fact, the Swiss "experiment," conducted by the Federal Office of Public
Health from 1994 to 1996, was not very scientific. Addicts in the 18-month
study were expected to inject themselves with heroin under sterile
conditions at the clinic three times a day. They also received extensive
counseling, psychiatric services and social assistance (welfare, subsidized
jobs, public housing and medical care). Results: The proportion of
individuals claiming they supported themselves with illegal income dropped
to 10% from 70%; homelessness fell to 1% from 12%. Permanent employment
rose to 32% from 14%, but welfare dependency also rose to 27% from 18%. The
rate of reported cocaine use among the heroin addicts dropped to 52% from
82%.

These numbers may look promising, but it's hard to know what they mean.
Verification of self-reported improvement was spotty at best. And addicts
received so many social services--five times more money was spent on them
than is the norm in standard treatment--that heroin maintenance itself may
have played no role in any overall improvement.

Definitions of success were loose as well. Anyone who kept attending the
program, even intermittently, was considered "retained." By this standard,
more than two-thirds made it through--a much higher retention rate than in
conventional treatment. But considering that the program gave addicts
pharmaceutical-grade heroin at little or no cost, it's astonishing that the
numbers weren't higher. It turned out that the patients who dropped out
were those with the most serious addiction-related problems--those who had
been addicted the longest, were the heaviest cocaine users, or had HIV--the
very groups that are of the greatest public-health concern.

What's more, the researchers did not compare heroin maintenance with
conventional treatments such as methadone or residential,
abstinence-oriented care. They abandoned their original plan to assign
patients randomly to heroin maintenance or conventional methadone--because,
among other reasons, the subjects, not surprisingly, strongly preferred
heroin.

"The risk of heroin maintenance is the incentive it provides to 'fail' in
other forms of treatment in order to become a publicly supported addict,"
says Mark Kleiman of UCLA School of Public Policy. And in fact, once the
heroin maintenance project started, conventional treatment facilities
reported a sharp decline in applications, even though the rate of drug use
remained steady.

The Swiss heroin experiment was born out of desperation. In the mid-1980s,
the Swiss government became disenchanted with drug treatment and turned to
a policy of sanctioned drug use in designated open areas. But this was
unsuccessful; the most visible failures being the squalid deterioration of
Zurich's Platzspitz Park (the notorious "Needle Park") and the
syringe-littered Letten railway station.

It is telling that harm reduction efforts have evolved in countries that
provide addicts with a wide array of government benefits. Rather than throw
up their hands at the poor record of drug rehabilitation, the Swiss and
others should acknowledge the extent to which welfare services enable
addiction by shielding addicts from the consequences of their actions,
financing their drug purchases and encouraging dependency on public
largesse.

Nonetheless, Switzerland has ardently embraced heroin maintenance. The
Federal Office of Public Health plans to triple enrollment next year to
about 3,000; and in 2004 the Swiss Parliament plans to decriminalize
consumption, possession and sale of narcotics for personal use.

Not everyone shares Bern's enthusiasm. Wayne Hall of Australia's University
of New South Wales was an independent evaluator for the World Health
Organization who assessed the experimental plan of the Swiss project. "The
unique political context . . . of the trials . . . meant that opportunities
were lost for a more rigorous evaluation," he wrote. In February, the
International Narcotics Control Board of the United Nations--a
quasijudicial body that monitors international drug treaties--expressed
concern that "before [completion of] the evaluation by the World Health
Organization of the Swiss heroin experiment, pressure groups and some
politicians are already promoting the expansion of such programmes in
Switzerland and their proliferation in other countries."

And indeed, the trials' principal investigator and project directors have
traveled to Australia, Austria, Germany, the Netherlands and elsewhere
promoting heroin maintenance. They won a sympathetic hearing in the
Netherlands, which plans to begin a heroin experiment next month. This
isn't surprising; after all, this is a country that has a union for
addicts, the Federation of Dutch Junkie Leagues, which lobbies the
government for services. In Rotterdam last month, I visited a Dutch
Reformed church where the pastor had invited two dealers in to sell
discounted heroin and cocaine. He also provided basement rooms where users
could inject or smoke heroin.

Nothing in Return

Even if heroin maintenance "worked"--if it could be proved that heroin
giveaways enhanced the addicts' health and productivity--we would still
have to confront the raw truth about harm reduction. It is the
public-policy manifestation of the addict's dearest wish: to use free drugs
without consequence. Imagine extending this model--the use of
state-subsidized drugs, the offer of endless social services and the
expectation of nothing in return--to America's hard-core addicts.

Today the U.N. General Assembly opens a special session on global
drug-control policy. Harm reduction advocates will tell the world body that
drug abuse is a human right and that the only compassionate response is to
make it safer to be an addict. The Swiss and the Dutch seem to view addicts
as irascible children who should be indulged, or as terminally ill patients
to be palliated, hidden away and written off. But heroin maintenance is
wrong. As an experiment, thus far it is scientifically groundless. As
public-health policy it will always be a posture of surrender.

Dr. Satel is a psychiatrist and lecturer at the Yale University School of
Medicine.

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

Remarks By President Clinton To The Special Session
Of The United Nations General Assembly (Transcript Of Today's Speech
In New York)

Date: Tue, 9 Jun 1998 20:45:31 EDT
Errors-To: manager@drcnet.org
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Originator: drctalk@drcnet.org
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From: Arthur Livermore 
To: Multiple recipients of list 
Subject: Text of Clinton's UN speech

June 8, 1998

REMARKS BY THE PRESIDENT TO THE SPECIAL SESSION OF THE UNITED NATIONS
GENERAL ASSEMBLY

THE WHITE HOUSE

Office of the Press Secretary
(New York, New York)

For Immediate Release June 8, 1998

REMARKS BY THE PRESIDENT
TO THE SPECIAL SESSION OF THE
UNITED NATIONS GENERAL ASSEMBLY

United Nations
New York, New York

10:50 A.M. EDT

THE PRESIDENT: Mr. Secretary General, President
Udovenko, Executive Director Arlacchi, distinguished fellow
leaders. Today we join at this Special Session of the U.N.
General Assembly to make common cause against the common threat
of worldwide drug trafficking and abuse.

Let me begin by thanking my friend, President
Zedillo, for his vision in making this session possible, and for
his courageous resolve against drugs. And I thank all the
nations represented here who are committed to fight for our
children's future by fighting drugs together.

Ten years ago, the United Nations adopted a
path-breaking convention to spur cooperation against drug
trafficking. Today, the potential for that kind of cooperation
has never been greater, or more needed. As divisive blocks and
barriers have been dismantled around the world, as technology has
advanced and democracy has spread, our people benefit more and
more from nations working and learning together. Yet the very
openness that enriches our lives is also exploited by criminals,
especially drug traffickers.

Today we come here to say no nation is so large and
powerful that it can conquer drugs alone; none is too small to
make a difference. All share a responsibility to take up the
battle. Therefore, we will stand as one against this threat to
our security and our future.

The stakes are high, for the drug empires erode the
foundations of democracies, corrupt the integrity of market

economies, menace the lives, the hopes, the futures of families
on every continent. Let there be no doubt, this is ultimately a
struggle for human freedom.

For the first time in history, more than half the
world's people live under governments of their own choosing. In
virtually every country, we see the expansion of expressions of
individual liberty. We cannot see it all squandered for millions
of people because of a perverse combination of personal weakness
and national neglect. We have to prove to the drug traffickers
that they are wrong. We are determined and we can make a
difference.

Nations have shown that with determined and
relentless efforts, we can turn this evil tide. In the United
States, drug use has dropped 49 percent since 1979. Recent
studies show that drug use by our young people is stabilizing,
and in some categories, declining. Overall, cocaine use has
dropped 70 percent since 1985. The crack epidemic has begun to
recede. Last year, our Coast Guard seized more than 100,000
pounds of cocaine. Today, Americans spend 37 percent less on
drugs than a decade ago. That means that over $34 billion
reinvested in our society, rather than being squandered on drugs.

Many other nations are making great strides. Mexico
set records for eradication in 1997. Peruvian coca cultivation
has been slashed 42 percent since 1995. Colombia's growing
aerial eradication program has destroyed tens of thousands of
hectares of coca. Thailand's opium poppy growth is steadily
decreasing, this year alone down 24 percent.

The United States is also a partner in global law
enforcement and interdiction efforts, fighting antidrug and --
funding antidrug and crime training for more than 82,050*
officials last year. In 1997, Latin America and Caribbean
governments seized some 166 metric tons of cocaine. Better
trained police, with improved information sharing, are arresting
more drug traffickers around the world.

Joint information networks on suspicious financial
transactions are working in dozens of countries to put the brakes
on money laundering. By the end of the year 2000, the United
States will provide assistance to an additional 20 countries to
establish and strengthen these financial intelligence units. We
must, and we can, deprive drug traffickers of the dirty money
that fuels their deadly trade.

We are finding strength in numbers, from the
Anti-Drug Alliance the Western Hemisphere forged at the recent
Summit of the Americas, to the steps against drugs and crimes the
G-8 leaders agreed to take last month. The U.N. International
Drug Control program, under Executive Director Arlacchi's
leadership [# 8,250 officials] is combatting drug production,
drug trafficking and drug abuse in some of the most difficult
corners of the world, while helping to make sure the money we
spend brings maximum results. I applaud the UNDCP's goal of
dramatically reducing coca and opium poppy cultivation by 2008.
We will do our part in the United States to make this goal a reality.

For all the achievements of recent years we must not
confuse progress with success. The specter of drugs still haunts
us. To prevail we must do more, with dynamic national
strategies, intensified international cooperation and greater
resources.

The debate between drug supplying and drug consuming
nations about whose responsibility the drug problem is has gone
on too long. Let's be frank -- this debate has not advanced the
fight against drugs. Pointing fingers is distracting. It does
not dismantle a single cartel, help a single addict, prevent a
single child from trying and perhaps dying from heroin. Besides,
the lines between countries that are supply countries, demand
countries, and transit countries are increasingly blurred. Drugs
are every nation's problem, and every nation must act to fight
them -- on the streets, around the kitchen table, and around the
world.

This is the commitment of the United States. Year
after year, our administration has provided the largest antidrug
budgets in history. Our request next year exceeds $17 billion,
nearly $6 billion of which will be devoted to demand reduction.
Our comprehensive national drug control strategy aims to cut
American drug use and access by half over the next 10 years,
through strength in law enforcement, tougher interdiction,
improved treatment, and expanded prevention efforts. We are
determined to build a drug-free America and to join with others
to combat drugs around the world.

We believe attitudes drive actions. Therefore, we
wage first the battle in the minds of our young people. Working
with Congress and the private sector, the United States has
launched a major antidrug youth media campaign. Now, when our
children turn on the television, surf the Internet, or listen to
the radio, they will get the powerful message that drugs are
wrong and can kill them.

I will be asking Congress to extend this program
through 2002. With congressional support and matching dollars
from the private sector, we will commit to a five-year, $2
billion public-private partnership to teach our children to stay
off drugs.

Other nations, including Mexico, Venezuela, and
Brazil, are launching similar campaigns. I had the pleasure of

talking with the President of Brazil about this at some length
yesterday. I hope all our nations can work together to spread
the word to children all around the world -- drugs destroy young
lives; don't let them destroy yours.


The United States is also working to create a
virtual university for the prevention and treatment of substance
abuse, using modern technology to share knowledge and experience
across national borders. We will launch this effort next month
in New Mexico, with an international training course on reducing
drug demand. Government officials and other professionals from
Mexico, El Salvador and Honduras will work with experts on drug
abuse and gang prevention from the U.S. The course will be
linked via satellite to the U.S. Information Agency's Worldnet
system, so that anyone with access to Worldnet can tune in.

Our National Institute for Drug Abuse in the United
States, which funds 85 percent of global research on drugs, will
post on the Internet live videotapes of its drug prevention and
treatment workshops. This means that anyone, anywhere, with
access to a computer and modem -- a parent whose child is
addicted to drugs, a doctor trying to help, a researcher looking
for a cure -- anyone will be able to obtain the latest, most
advanced medical knowledge on drugs.

Such sharing of information, experience and ideas is
more important than ever. That is why I am especially pleased to
announce the establishment of an international drug fellowship
program that will enable professionals from all around the world
to come to the United States and work with our drug fighting
agencies. The focus will be on the priorities of this special
session: demand reductions, stimulants, precursors, money
laundering, judicial cooperation, alternative development, and
eradication of illicit crops.

These fellowships will help all of us. It will help
our nations to learn from one another while building a global
force of skilled and experienced drug crusaders.

Together we must extend the long arm of the law and
the hand of compassion to match the global reach of this problem.
Let us leave here determined to act together in a spirit of trust
and respect, at home and abroad, against demand and supply, using
all the tools at our disposal to win the global fight against
drugs and build a safe and healthy 21st century for our children.

Thank you very much. (Applause.)

END 11:06 A.M. EDT

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

Word Stats From Clinton's UNGASS Speech (A List Subscriber
Notes The Top Drug Warrior Used The Word 'Children' Seven Times,
But Words Such As 'Disease' And 'Science' Not At All)

Date: Mon, 8 Jun 1998 23:08:58 EDT
Errors-To: manager@drcnet.org
Reply-To: tim.meehan@utoronto.ca
Originator: drctalk@drcnet.org
Sender: drctalk@drcnet.org
From: tim.meehan@utoronto.ca (Tim Meehan)
To: Multiple recipients of list 
Subject: Word Stats from Clinton's UNGASS Speech
Organization: Townhouse Nine Communications - http://th9.simplenet.com

Number of occurrences of the following words in Bill Clinton's UNGASS
speech (available at http://library.whitehouse.gov):

disease: 0
sick: 0
science: 0
cannabis: 0
marijuana: 0
medical: 1
drug-free: 1
doctor: 1
youth: 1
Internet: 2
interdiction: 2
addict(ed): 2
help(ing): 5
abuse: 5

child(ren): 7

-Tim

***

Date: Mon, 8 Jun 1998 23:57:49 EDT
Errors-To: manager@drcnet.org
Reply-To: David.Hadorn@vuw.ac.nz
Originator: drctalk@drcnet.org
Sender: drctalk@drcnet.org
From: David.Hadorn@vuw.ac.nz (David Hadorn)
To: Multiple recipients of list (drctalk@drcnet.org)
Subject: Re: Word Stats from Clinton's UNGASS Speech

I have reviewed his speech, but I'll be "evidence", "compassion", and
"logic" were never mentioned either.

D

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

Press Briefing By Drug Czar Barry McCaffrey, Donna Shalala, Janet Reno
And Mack McLarty (Transcript Of The Briefing Held On The Occasion
Of The United Nations General Assembly Special Session On Drugs)

Date: Tue, 09 Jun 1998 18:53:36 -0700
To: drctalk@drcnet.org
From: Arthur Livermore (alive@pacifier.com)
Subject: CanPat> Secretary Shalala: "it's a kind of pseudo-intellectualism"
Sender: owner-cannabis-patriots-l@teleport.com

June 8, 1998

PRESS BRIEFING BY U.S. NATIONAL DRUG POLICY DIRECTOR GENERAL BARRY
MCCAFFREY, SECRETARY OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICE DONNA SHALALA,
ATTORNEY GENERAL JANET RENO, AND SPECIAL ENVOY TO THE AMERICAS MACK
MCLARTY

THE WHITE HOUSE

Office of the Press Secretary
(New York, New York)

For Immediate Release
June 8, 1998


PRESS BRIEFING BY
U.S. NATIONAL DRUG POLICY DIRECTOR GENERAL BARRY MCCAFFREY,
SECRETARY OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICE DONNA SHALALA,
ATTORNEY GENERAL JANET RENO,
AND SPECIAL ENVOY TO THE AMERICAS MACK MCLARTY

The United Nations
New York, New York

11:25 A.M. EDT

GENERAL MCCAFFREY: Let me, if I may, briefly make some
opening comments and begin by -- I'm Barry McCaffrey, the U.S. National Drug
Policy Director; and am joined by the Attorney General Janet Reno, and
Secretary of Health and Human Services Donna Shalala, and Mr. Mack McLarty,
who has been our Special Envoy for Latin American issues -- underscore the
participation of the U.S. national delegation this morning of Secretary Dick
Riley, who is our Secretary of Education. It was an important statement for
the President not only to give this address, but also to be joined by the
senior officials of his government who work on the U.S. national drug
strategy.

Very briefly, let me comment on the President's remarks.
First of all, it was our purpose to underscore that there was a year's hard
work behind the three days of this absolutely enormously important gathering
of 150 nations and more than 30 heads of government. And that hard work was
in many ways put together not only by the active intervention of Mexican
leadership and others, but also by Mr. Arlacchi of the UNDCP, as you know,
based in Vienna. It is a viewpoint of many of us, to include President
Clinton and our government, that he bring to bear on this subject a renewed
sense of energy and vision which we think can produce some enormous good in
the years to come.

The President tried to make several fundamental statements;
first, that there is a commonality in the problem shared in the world
community, that it's no longer appropriate to talk in terms of producer
nations, transit and consumer, but to recognize that there are some 200
million addicts in the world community. And in addition, we have been quick
to underscore in the United States that we are now a drug producing nation,
and we're seeing the rise of methamphetamines and chemically-produced
drugs as part of that new threat on the drug issue in the United
States.

Secondly, the President made the point that this was
an issue that had to be addressed through community of action.
And we began that process at Santiago, Chile, a few months back,
when at the second Summit of the Americas we had 34
democratically-elected heads of government in the region come
together and commit to a process, using the Organization of
American States as the mechanism, to cooperation on the
north-south access. So it's a question of community.

Third, the President committed ourselves to stand
behind the leadership of the U.N. in an attempt to fundamentally
change the nature of the drug threat to all of us. We believe it
is possible -- this is not a war that has been fought and lost,
this is the beginning of an international effort which has seen
enormous beginning success in Thailand, in Pakistan, in Peru, and
now we're beginning to see movement in Bolivia. We believe it is

possible to very drastically slash the production of these
illegal drugs, and, even more importantly, to reduce drug demand.
And certainly Thailand is a model to many of us to also reduce
the demand coefficient. The United States, as the President
mentioned, has also successfully reduced, for example, cocaine
consumption by more than 70 percent in the last decade.

And, finally, I think all of us believe that the
notion of cooperation is going to be fundamental to what we're
trying to achieve, and cooperation not just in the obvious areas
of intelligence sharing, of cooperation in interdiction, of
detection and monitoring, but in the more important ways of
sharing evidence and judicial extradition of those who are wanted
in one country for violating the law of another, and most
importantly, of cooperation on demand reduction. And I would
underscore that Mexico and the United States, since we have a
very special relationship, have begun that process of having very
close contacts, using Secretary Shalala and others to reduce and
to share information on demand reduction.

Finally, the President announced that -- when you
hear the number it's rather dramatic -- that he is now asking for
continued bipartisan support from the U.S. Congress for a $2
billion, 5-year campaign to speak to our own children and to
their adult mentors about the destructive impact of drugs. And
that will go nationwide in July, and you will see on television,
radio, the Internet, print media, billboards, sponsorship
programs, public-private partnerships, one of the most
sophisticated efforts, guided in large part by a Partnership for
a Drug Free America group, Mr. Jim Burke and others, which we
hope will provide another important element to the reduction of
drug use in the United States.

On that note, if you can, let me introduce the first
of the three most important people in my life, Secretary Shalala,
the Attorney General and Secretary Dick Riley.

Madam Attorney General.

Q What about your wife?

GENERAL MCCAFFREY: Well, she didn't make the cut
today -- I'm sorry. (Laughter.)

ATTORNEY GENERAL RENO: We defer to her.

Today is a very important day, for we have seen the
nations of the world come together to focus on how they,
together, can fight drugs. No nation can wage this battle alone
and we all need to be allies.

I have long said that our efforts against drugs must
be long-range and they must be comprehensive if we are to deal
with the violence, the suffering, and the problems associated
with drugs. We must vigorously enforce our drug laws and go
after those organizations that flood our streets with drugs, with
violence. We must do so by disrupting and dismantling their
operations.

Secondly, we must also teach our young people that
using drugs is a dangerous road to nowhere, and we must enhance
prevention programs in every way possible.

Finally, we must continue the common sense treatment
programs that are so successful in cutting down on the demand.
If there is no demand, there is no drug business. And we must
work together to ensure that those who go to prison for using
drugs, or who abuse drugs, have the treatment that will enable
them to come back to the community when they are released from
prison with a chance of success.

These are all important steps that can work and are
working, but they must be carried out comprehensively and
together by us all. No nation can sit on the sidelines; by
working together, all our nations can help make our communities
safer places in which to live.

SECRETARY SHALALA: Thank you, General McCaffrey.

One of the themes today is that all the senior
members of the President's Cabinet see themselves as part of the
international drug control and prevention efforts. Last month,
at the World Health meetings, Dr. Gro Brundtland, the new
Director General of WHO, called for more global cooperation on
global health problems. And we certainly see drug abuse as a
global health problem and are committed to gathering our
resources and our will and our efforts to fight drug abuse
together. And that's why our antidrug strategy includes sharing
with other nations our most effective ways for curbing drug abuse
and addiction.

We've held prevention training courses all over the
world, including Bangladesh and Thailand and Peru and Colombia
and Japan and many of the nations in Europe, as well as Central
and South America. We've also shared our drug research findings.
For instance, under our bilateral health agreement, our research
scientists are collaborating with Russian scientists on addiction
treatment. And our guide to preventing drug use among children
and teens has been translated into a number of languages,
including Spanish.

And several nations, including Mexico and Turkey,
have launched their own high school drug use epidemiology
studies, based on our monitoring the future study. In other
words, our underlying research is being used around the world as
models, as nations put their own surveillance systems in place
and culturally sensitive translations of some of the strategies
that we've used and the materials that we've used.

The initiatives that the President announced today,
the virtual university and the international drug fellowship
program, we believe will reinforce these international efforts in
prevention and in research.

We've got a very good story to tell the world about
fighting drug use. It's no accident that it's dropped here in
the past decade. It took a lot of leadership, but more
importantly, it took consistency and our willingness to be nimble
and to change programs, to change materials, to change
strategies, as we will demonstrate this summer, as we learned new
things.

But our children are still vulnerable, and the
President has challenged us to cut the rate of drug use on the
demand side in half within 10 years. And to reach that target,
we've asked Congress for the largest antidrug budget in history
-- $17 billion, including $6 billion to fight drug demand with
very strong media campaigns and very solid prevention, research,
and treatment programs.

There is no silver bullet, as General McCaffrey has
consistently pointed out. It takes a full-court press, a complex
set of prevention and research and treatment programs to really
have an impact, and a particular focus on young people.

As we harness global cooperation, we're also asking
Congress to step up and pass the President's budget, to pass his
antidrug budget, which will have not only an enormous impact on
our own country, but will help our international efforts, which
are considerable.

MR. MCLARTY: This global approach the President
outlined today, as did President Zedillo and other speakers will
as well, I think has as one of its critical foundational pieces
the Summit of the Americas process that began in Miami, and as
General McCaffrey referred to, a multilateral approach and
alliance, indeed, was agreed upon at the Santiago Summit.

The progress that has been made in terms of that
cooperation, the President noted in his remarks, in
Bolivia and Peru, where we see substantial crop eradication, as
well as Mexico. And I think has changed some of the basic
patterns of not only the narco traffickers' distribution routes,
but also the more fundamental aspects of their business. And I

think that we are making real progress in that regard. But it is
clearly not only a supply, but a demand effort, indeed.

I think the President's assessment that progress,
real progress, which General McCaffrey, Secretary Shalala and
General Reno have spoken to, should not be confused with the
complete success in this very sustained effort that is absolutely
critical.

And I think, finally, the line has not only blurred
in terms of demand and supply, which we see certainly in this
hemisphere, but also in terms of foreign and domestic issues, but
in terms of security and economic issues as well. Clearly, the
effort we are making against narco traffickers is absolutely
critical in terms of building stable and prosperous economies
throughout our hemisphere.

It will indeed take a community of action. I will
have the opportunity to meet with a number of heads of state from
Latin America who are here, in our common effort against the
narco traffickers. And the United Nations is certainly the
proper place to move forward in a critical endeavor in the coming
months and years.

Q The President said today we must and we can
deprive traffickers of their dirty money that strengthens the
drug trade. Apparently, that's what Operation Casablanca tried
to do. But was it worth it, given what appears to be the damage
it has created between the United States and Mexico?

GENERAL MCCAFFREY: Well, first of all, let me begin
with a fundamental understanding that the U.S. probably spends
$57 billion a year on illegal drugs. So I remind people, the
United States does not have the world's addict population, we
have too much money. So the money out of Western Europe and the
United States, to some extent, fuels this international crime
threat. And that crime threat -- Secretary Rubin has provided
brilliant leadership over the last three years to find common
laws, particularly in this hemisphere, to combat money laundering
and asset seizure. There's been enormous progress.

Now, secondly, let me just underscore our enormous
pride in the dedication of U.S. law enforcement -- in the
Department of Treasury and Justice -- in aggressively pursuing
international crime. The problem is not Colombia or Panama or
the Cayman Islands or Peru or the United States. The problem is
international crime that is corrosive to the democratic
institution of all these countries.

Now, I'm also persuaded, as are the rest of the
President's team, that we have to do this in partnership with our
neighbors and with absolute respect and deference for their own
sovereign institutions.

There's probably some room here for -- I think the
Attorney General may wish to speak to it, but there's some room
here for us to look through how we can even more effectively
coordinate these in the future.

Q -- damage done by Casablanca -- according to
Mexican authorities.

GENERAL MCCAFFREY: I think there is a common belief
on the part of both these Presidents, Zedillo and Clinton, that
one of the dominant threats to our democratic institutions and
our families is the drug issue. And so there's no question but
that this threatens both populations and requires a mutually
respectful partnership to confront it.

Q They're asking the General if he will take
agents and extradite them to Mexico. Is that proper?

Q On behalf of the United States Correspondents
Association, we welcome you here, ladies and gentlemen, to this
briefing. The first question, as it should have been, is -- as
you've been watching television lately, you've been seeing some
active lobbying going on which purports that the drug strategy of

the United States is a failure, to put it bluntly. It seems to
be backed by a good number of influential people, from this
context, probably the most surprising one is Perez de Cuellar,
the former Secretary General here. Is that likely to have any
impact on the American strategy?

GENERAL MCCAFFREY: We're listening very carefully
to the viewpoints of a very diverse community and we have great
respect for the insights of some of the people that are
represented in that ad. We've tried to share as widely as we can
that the administration's strategy does take into account a
fairly comprehensive approach that is based fundamentally on the
reduction of drug demand. So I think in many cases, this is a
1990s reaction to a 1950s perception.

Having said that, in addition, I think there are
probably mixed agendas out of some in this debate. I think we
are -- certainly Secretary Shalala and I, and Secretary Riley
believe that the heart and soul of the U.S. strategy is watch our
budgets, the 1999 budget. And if you go back three years ago, it
has a 33-percent increase in drug prevention funding. There is a
dramatic increase in drug treatment funding. And now we're
linking it to the criminal justice system.


Let me, if I can, defer to the Attorney General and
Secretary Shalala, to talk to about just the nature of our own
approach.

ATTORNEY GENERAL RENO: I think in the last several
years we have focused on a balanced approach that includes
prevention, education, treatment and enforcement. For example,
in enforcement we have shown significant results with drug courts
which use a carrot and stick approach of cooperate with us in
treatment or face a more serious sanction each step of the way.
And I think balanced approaches like this, provision for
treatment, thoughtful follow-up with after-care are making a
significant difference.

SECRETARY SHALALA: There are no substitutes for the
initial prevention strategies -- and that is parents and teachers
and the institutions in our society at the community level
sending a consistent message to young people and reinforcing that
message and helping young people go through that transition
through to adolescence drug free. And there's no silver bullet
for this and there's not a chance that we're going to give up and
throw up our hands and walk away from what we think is a
fundamental public health issue.

GENERAL MCCAFFREY: And one which, I might add,
we're actually doing in the 15-year context quite well at. We're
dissatisfied with it. We think -- in 1979, 14 percent of the
population was regularly using drugs. Now it's 6 percent. But
it's still historically unacceptably high. And so the President
has committed us to a long-term approach to grind it down by more
than half. And we are persuaded we can do that.

Q I have a question for the Attorney General.
The foundation that Mr. Sorros, George Sorros backs is in favor
of legalizing drugs. I'd like your attitude on that. And I have
a question for Secretary Shalala, if the U.N. is to be a focal
point for this war on drugs worldwide, shouldn't the U.S. pay its
dues of $1.6 billion to the organization?

ATTORNEY GENERAL RENO: I'm opposed to the
legalization of drugs because I have seen so many instances in
which people who were abusers were motivated into treatment by
the threat of sanction. And I think the balanced approach that
includes vigorous enforcement and focus on traffickers and
appropriate sanctions against users, coupled with treatment can
have a dramatic impact.

SECRETARY SHALALA: In particular, we believe that
public health issues ought to be based on science. And there is
clear evidence that marijuana is dangerous to our health and,

therefore, we ought not to be making public policies,
particularly in this area, that do not reflect the danger of
those drugs -- no matter what those drugs are. There is no such
thing

as a soft drug, and there is no such thing as a drug that is
illegal that is not dangerous. And the new research on marijuana
in particular makes that very clear.

Q The program laid out by Mr. Arlacchi includes
an important element, the idea of inducing countries that are
drug producers to go into crop substitution that would eliminate
their production of narcotics. There have been reports in recent
days that the United States government is unwilling to contribute
funds to the carrying out of this program in certain countries,
particularly Afghanistan and Myranmar. Could you shed some light
on this and tell us if that is correct or not?

GENERAL MCCAFFREY: Let me begin by saying that the
plan is not on the table yet. Mr. Arlacchi's evolving thinking
on the elimination of coke and opium production in the coming
decade is not yet in the form of a plan that's on the table --
never mind with an attendant cost estimate package to go with it.
So much of this is sort of presumptuous thinking.

Now, the second assertion many of us would make is
that it is not clear to me that resources will bulldoze the
solution. We've had dramatic successes in Peru with somewhat
modest help from the international community. The most important
ingredient at stake was Peruvian political will and the
reintroduction of civil law and civil police into the growing
areas of the Huallaga Valley, along with alternative economic
development that the United States has sustained.

Now, we also understand that there are problems in
both Burma, Afghanistan, and elsewhere, where the U.S. has a
principal foreign policy goal of this support for democratization
and human rights and the status of women in society in the case
of the Taliban in Afghanistan. How we will sort out those other
extremely important democratic principles is not yet clear.

But it is clear to all of us that drug production in
Burma is an enormous threat to the People's Republic of China, to
Vietnam, to Cambodia, to Thailand, to Japan, and to the United
States. So we've tried to make the case -- this is not a
consumer nation versus producer nation. This is a regional
problem in which Pakistan, as an example, has more than we think
-- possibly, 3 million addicts to heroine. So it's a problem for
regional community solutions, not just funding for alternative
economic development.

Q This is a question for the Attorney General. I
wish you'd get on to the Operation Casablanca again. The Mexican
President's speech had a tinge of bitterness about governments
acting on their own and not respecting the sovereignty of others,
and I was wondering, if you had Operation Casablanca to do over
again, how would you do it over?

ATTORNEY GENERAL RENO: One doesn't engage in what

ifs. But what one does is look to what the issues are. And
clearly, the mutual problem that both nations face is what do we
do about drugs and money laundering. And we will continue to
focus every effort on that. We will also continue to work with
the government of Mexico in every way possible. My colleague,
Jorge Madrazo, the Attorney General of Mexico, has been a superb
partner in this effort and we will continue those efforts.

In any investigation, there may be problems that
arise, but we always work through those for the ultimate goal of
real impact on drug trafficking and money laundering which
threaten the people of both nations.

Q Attorney General Reno, we have heard how
important it is for information sharing and international

cooperation. The United States decided not to inform Mexican
officials about the Operation Casablanca, arguing that you feared
that by doing so agents could be in danger. My question is the
following: Telling President Zedillo and Mexican officials like
Jorge Madrazo, the Attorney General, would have increased the
danger for your agents?

ATTORNEY GENERAL RENO: In some investigations the
circumstances are such that great care has got to be taken and
it's very closely held. In this instance, the investigators
determined that it must be very closely held, even with respect
to officials in this nation, in order to ensure the safety of the
individual. Again, it is not a matter of disrespect, it is a
matter of trying to do -- conduct an investigation, to focus on
money laundering, to focus on those who launder the money and
launder the misery, while at the same time, protecting the lives
of the agents involved.

Q General, with all due respect, last week Mr.
Arlacchi did give us a dollar figure for the cost of his
proposals. He said it would be about a half-billion dollars a
year for the next 10 years, and if you factor in existing money
it could come down to about quarter of a billion. Is that within
the area that the U.S. could participate in if you do determine
the programs are worthy of funding? And how likely is it that
you would be able to get that money from Congress?

GENERAL MCCAFFREY: Again, I think it's premature to
speculate on a funding package to go along with Mr. Arlacchi's
visionary thinking, which we are absolutely supportive of. So
what we're doing this week, these three days, is building
political consensus to look at the problem as one that effects us
all, threatens us all and requires a sense of partnership.

Now, I think there will be a discussion down the
line of the mechanisms we might use. There is already, as you're
aware, U.N. money going into both Afghanistan and Burma, and
there is some good coming out of this. Mr. Arlacchi's last visit
there resulted in probably a two-ton destruction of opium gum.

But we're at the beginning stages of this.

The only thing I would also ask you to consider by
way of analogy is that the cost to the world community of living
with this scourge is so enormous that it's not clear to me the
resources required to address the problem will dominate the
debate. In the United States we assert we lose $110 billion a
year, direct cost to our society, from drug abuse by six percent
of our population. And we've put on the table a $17 billion
package to confront this issue.

But in the long run we don't believe money will
continue to grow in the coming years of the counterdrug effort.
We actually think this will work; drug abuse will go down, we
will spend less money on the national strategy. And I think Mr.
Arlacchi's leadership may well lead us to similar conclusions in
the international arena.

Q To go back to the issue of Burma, I was
wondering if there is a new thinking in the administration as to
how to deal with the problem of crop eradication in Burma. It
has not been a success. The government is not being particularly
cooperative. There is a U.N. program for eradication -- the
extent of the problem there. Other than saying that it is a
regional problem, is there any new ideas and strategies within
the U.S. administration to deal with that?

And, two, the Burmese government has refused to
extradite Kuhn Sah to the United States, nor has it brought Kuhn
Sah to trial for his involvement in the drug empire there. What
is the U.S. planning to do about that?

GENERAL MCCAFFREY: Well, Burma is a very special
case. Many of you are aware of the numbers. We believe they've
produced some 60 percent nearly of the world's supply of heroin

and it's become a massive threat to their regional partners. If
anyone is directly a threat it's the Vietnamese, the Chinese, the
Thai and their other partners.

And I have also suggested, in the international
community we have lost sight of the fact that if you look at
comparative levels of suffering, the hill people of the Burmese
nations have suffered more injury from opium production than
anyone else. It's been enormously destructive of their own way
of life, and it's just a terrible tragedy.

Now, what we do about it is not clear. There is
without question a regional sense of concern and growing
cooperation to confront the issue. We are aware that the Chinese
are actively involved in this dialogue. We do have a modest U.S.
presence in Burma that is trying to monitor the situation, and we
remain supportive of U.N. efforts with rather modest programs
also, which are in Burma. But I would agree, there has not been
any real progress in lowering the rates of drug production, nor

are we satisfied with the democratic issue or the human rights
issue. So it's a dilemma for us to address. I hope you ask Mr.
Abe Rosenthal at some point.

MR. TOIV: Last question here.

Q Can you answer the extradition question of Kuhn
Sah?

GENERAL McCAFFREY: I don't know that we've even
answered that.

ATTORNEY GENERAL RENO: What is important,
generally, is that we develop procedures for bringing people to
justice so that there is no safe place to hide. And that's the
reason it's important that we meet here today to learn how we can
improve our extradition efforts, what we can do to build trust
that can make sure that drug traffickers know there is no safe
place to hide.

Q This is to the General or anybody else. I
think that most people who are in the antidrug or count ourselves
in the antidrug community, whether it is journalistic or law
enforcement or therapy, believe that the pro-drug, which is for
the drug legalization community in America, is getting more and
more powerful, not necessarily among the general public, but
certainly in the intellectual and academic community as this ad
and many other ads will show. They're making headway in it and
they give the -- they never put forward a plan, obviously,
because they don't have one. But they're making it more and more
success in getting people to believe that the drug war has ended
-- we don't even want to call it a "drug war" anymore, but let
that go -- has ended in failure and that the community, that the
people within the intellectual, literary, academic communities --
are moving towards some form of legalization either by referenda
or whatever.

What is it you think that the United States
government or anybody else can do to arouse the literary and the
intellectual and academic communities to support the antidrug
movement far more than they do now?

GENERAL McCAFFREY: Well, first of all, I share your
concern. I am very disturbed by it. The foreign affairs article
was something we've tried to refute and had some difficulty in
getting our own ideas in print.

Having said that, let me -- to some extent, it's the
mouse that roared. If you look at the polling data of the
American people, there is not s shred of support for drug
legalization. That will not happen in the United States, no
matter how you word the question. That's why we're seeing very
subtle nuanced, indirect approaches to drug legalization -- the
medical marijuana issue, hemp as a solution to the nation's
textile problems, whatever.

So I'm a little bit skeptical. And, in addition,
when I go to the editorial boards, the most creative people in

America, in television and the new media -- when we visited
Hollywood, we find a great wealth of support for a non-drugged,
non-stoned America. So I was very upbeat.

Let me, if I can, defer to my colleagues.

ATTORNEY GENERAL RENO: My message to them is that's
the wrong way to go. The best way to go is to join with General
McCaffrey, Secretary Shalala and others in developing a balanced
approach that focuses indeed on enforcement, focuses on the major
traffickers, but recognizes that many people are in prison today
because they had a combination of use and some street dealing.
Those people are coming out to the community sooner rather than
later. Let's make sure we get them treatment while they're in
prison and after-care when they're out so that they can come back
with a chance of success. Let's make sure we develop
comprehensive intervention programs.

A drug court started in Miami in 1989; there are no
over 200 across the country, and they are having an impact, again
through some evaluations and research that show it, not just
speculation. Again, we need to focus, as the President has
focused, for these next years, on prevention programs that work.
If we provide that balance and if we focus on comprehensive
community efforts that give our young people a chance to grow
with a positive future, I think we can make a difference. And
the academic world has been right there with us. We need to
bring some others along.

SECRETARY SHALALA: I agree with Janet. I think
that it's a kind of pseudo-intellectualism, because there's no
scientific base to their conclusions. These drugs are harmful
and there's no way they could make the case that they're not
harmful or that they won't lead to the worst kind of public
health effects. And just because they have enough money to make
it fashionable, it doesn't mean that they're right. And we
believe that they're fundamentally wrong and that, more
importantly, that there's no scientific basis for suggesting that
the legalization of drugs would, in fact, improve the public
health.

GENERAL MCCAFFREY: A viewpoint that we are joined
in by Harvard University, University of Michigan, Johns Hopkins,
UCLA, Pennsylvania Medical College -- this is an awfully
widespread academic support for what we're trying to achieve.

I think that's probably about the last question.

Thank you.

END 12:00 P.M. EDT

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

Clinton Challenges Globe On Drugs ('The Associated Press' Account
Of Clinton's Speech At The United Nations Notes He Included
Several Fund-Raising Stops In His Itinerary)

Date: Tue, 9 Jun 1998 12:11:13 -0700
To: mapnews@mapinc.org
From: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org (MAPNews)
Subject: MN: UN GE: Wire: Clinton Challenges Globe on Drugs
Sender: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Reply-To: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Organization: Media Awareness Project http://www.mapinc.org/lists/
Newshawk: Marcus-Mermelstein Family 
Source: Associated Press
Pubdate: Mon, 8 Jun 1998

CLINTON CHALLENGES GLOBE ON DRUGS

UNITED NATIONS (AP) -- President Clinton challenged world leaders on Monday
to work together attacking illegal drugs and stop wasting time ``pointing
fingers'' of blame at each other. He also announced a $2 billion media
campaign aimed at young people.

``The debate between drug-supplying and drug-consuming nations about whose
responsibility the drug problem is has gone on too long,'' Clinton said in
the opening address at a U.N. General Assembly special session on drugs in
which he praised Mexico for its cooperation in fighting the movement of
drugs into the United States.

``Let's be frank,'' he said. ``This debate has not advanced the fight
against drugs. Pointing fingers is distracting. It does not dismantle a
single cartel, help a single addict, prevent a single child from trying and
perhaps dying from heroin.''

``Let there be no doubt: This is ultimately a struggle for human freedom.''

About 150 nations were represented at the U.N. session.

In his speech, Clinton announced a $2 billion, five-year media campaign
against drugs, targeting young people with a message that ``drugs destroy
young lives; don't let it destroy yours.'' Similar campaigns will be
launched in Mexico, Venezuela and Brazil, Clinton said, adding that he
discussed the issue with Brazilian President Fernando Henrique Cardoso on
Sunday.

Only $175 million of the $2 billion would be federal funds; the rest would
be contributed by corporations and philanthropic organizations.

To emphasize the importance Clinton placed on the anti-drug effort, he
brought along Attorney General Janet Reno; his drug policy adviser, Barry
McCaffrey; Latin American envoy Mack McLarty; and Health and Human Services
Secretary Donna Shalala.

Clinton said the drug problem is too severe for any nation to ignore.

``No nation is so large and powerful that it can conquer drugs alone. None
is too small to make a difference. All share a responsibility to take up
the battle. Therefore, we will stand as one against this threat to our
security and our future.''

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who met privately with Clinton before
the session, called the drug scourge ``a tragic reality'' and appealed to
member nations to work seriously to find common ground.

In his 11-minute speech, Clinton described U.S. successes in reducing drug
use and made a special point of thanking Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo
for his country's cooperation in combating the trafficking of drugs into
the United States.

Clinton cited Zedillo's ``courageous resolve against drugs.'' The two
presidents met later at a New York hotel and discussed the diplomatic
fallout from Operation Casablanca, a major U.S. money-laundering sting that
led to the arrests last month of 42 people -- including about two dozen
Mexican bankers.

The Mexican government strongly protested that U.S. drug agents had carried
out the sting operation without prior approval or notification to Mexico
City. It has suggested asking for extradition of some U.S. agents involved,
although U.S. officials said extradition was not raised in Monday's
meeting.

After their 40-minute session at the Waldorf Astoria in midtown Manhattan,
Clinton and Zedillo issued a joint statement of their intent to combat drug
trafficking ``in conformity with the laws in each country.'' There was no
U.S. apology or guarantee of prior notification in future operations.

Zedillo told Clinton that his government was investigating whether
Casablanca violated any Mexican laws but had not yet come to any
conclusions, said James Dobbins, senior director for inter-American affairs
at the National Security Council. Dobbins said there was ``no negative
tone'' in their talks.

Clinton did not mention the controversy in his U.N. speech, but his
national security adviser, Sandy Berger, told reporters aboard Air Force
One en route to New York that the administration will not consider
extraditing the agents.

``I think that would be a very bad idea,'' Berger said.

In his address to the General Assembly, with Clinton sitting in the
audience, Zedillo made a thinly veiled reference to the Casablanca
controversy. He called for a ``balanced strategy'' to combat drug
trafficking ``so that no one can become the judge of others and no one
feels entitled to violate other countries' laws for the sake of enforcing
its own.''

Critics of the session held a news conference nearby to criticize the
United Nations for ``more of the same old failed policies.''

``The U.N. drug summit is perhaps the biggest pep rally ever in the failed
global war on drugs,'' said Ethan Nadelmann, director of the private
Lindesmith Center, a drug policy research institute.

In a letter published Monday in The New York Times, about 500 people
decried the routing of resources to ``ever more expensive interdiction
efforts'' without adequate attention to ``realistic proposals to reduce
drug-related crime, disease and death.''

Those who signed it included former Secretary of State George Shultz,
former U.N. Secretary-General Javier Perez de Cuellar and former Greek
President George Papandreou.

Despite Clinton's appeal to avoid finger-pointing, other leaders suggested
that U.S. demand is causing the drug problem and said they needed more
money from the United States to combat it.

``How can we truly expect small, poor countries such as mine to defeat the
wealthy drug lords if the rich countries, with their wealth of resources,
are unsuccessful in limiting the demand?'' Prime Minister Denzil Douglas of
the tiny Caribbean nation of St. Kitts and Nevis said in his speech to the
assembly.

From New York, Clinton flew by helicopter to Westport, Conn., to attend a
fund-raising reception for Democratic gubernatorial candidate Rep. Barbara
B. Kennelly at the studio where Martha Stewart records her syndicated
television show, ``Martha Stewart Living.'' The reception was held in a
tent outside the studio.

A separate luncheon inside the studio raised $500,000 for the Connecticut
Democratic Party. Clinton attended both events but spoke only at the
reception. Later, he flew back to New York for a Democratic Congressional
Campaign Committee fund-raiser expected to pull in more than $1 million.

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

Clinton Seeks To Calm Mexico, Urges Unity On Drugs ('Reuters' Coverage
Of The US President's Speech At The United Nations)

Date: Tue, 09 Jun 1998 10:28:14 -0400
From: Scott Dykstra (rumba2@earthlink.net)
Reply-To: rumba2@earthlink.net
To: cannabis-patriots-l@teleport.com
Subject: CanPat - US Laundering probe on Mex. soil
Sender: owner-cannabis-patriots-l@teleport.com

07:28 PM ET 06/08/98

Clinton seeks to calm Mexico, urges unity on drugs
(Adds Clinton, Zedillo meeting)

By Randall Mikkelsen

UNITED NATIONS, (Reuters) - President Clinton on Monday
sought to mend fences with Mexico over a secret U.S.
money-laundering probe on its soil, and urged international
unity in the fight against drug trafficking.

``Drugs are every nation's problem, and every nation must
act to fight them,'' Clinton told the opening of a three-day
special session of the United Nations general assembly devoted
to curbing the use and trafficking of illegal drugs.

``Together, we must extend the long arm of the law, and the
hand of compassion, to match the global reach of this problem,''
Clinton said.

Clinton, speaking as U.S. anti-drug tactics have come under
renewed fire from Mexico and others for running roughshod over
the rights of other countries, announced new domestic and
international measures to fight the scourge.

He praised Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo for his resolve
in the fight against drugs and later met privately for more than
an hour with the Mexican leader.

But U.S. officials made no pledges they would not conduct
another secret operation like the Operation Casablanca money-
laundering sting against Mexican bankers and others which was
revealed by U.S. authorities last month.

At a news briefing, Attorney General Janet Reno said the
United States had intended no disrespect to Mexico but acted to
protect the lives of the agents involved.

``In this instance the investigators determined it must be
very closely held,'' she said.

Said a U.S. official, ``this has been a very difficult
episode for the two governments.''

Clinton and Zedillo said in a joint statement released after
the meeting that the drug battle was best fought through
''improved cooperation and mutual trust, with full respect for
the sovereignty of both nations.''

The leaders also agreed to strengthen efforts to combat
money laundering and improve communication.

But Zedillo, still smarting from being kept in the dark
about Casablanca, reminded U.N. members in his speech that
sovereignty must be respected.

``We must all respect the sovereignty of each nation so that
no one can become the judge of others and no one feels entitled
to violate other countries' laws for the sake of enforcing its
own,'' Zedillo told the U.N. immediately after Clinton spoke.

In last month's operation, the result of a three-year
undercover probe, U.S. agents lured Mexican bankers to a fake
casino in the United States. As a result, some 150 people were
arrested, $50 million was seized and three Mexican banks were
indicted.

Mexico has called for extradition of U.S. customs agents
involved in the sting, but White House National Security Adviser
Samuel Berger said, ``we think it would be a very bad idea.''

James Dobbins, a U.S. National Security Council official
responsible for Latin America, said Mexico was still
investigating whether its laws had been violated in the sting,
and that Clinton and Zedillo did not discuss the issue.

In his speech, Clinton proposed a 10-fold expansion, to $2
billion, of a media campaign funded by public and private
sources aimed at discouraging drug use by American youth.

The campaign would last five years, costing the government
about $195 million each year.

Clinton also said the United States would use the Internet
to distribute international research on drug abuse prevention
and treatment, and form an academic program to bring drug
experts from around the world to share their knowledge.

In addition, Clinton said the United States would be adding
20 countries to a list of dozens receiving U.S. assistance to
track the laundering of drug profits.

But officials made no pledges to financially support a
proposed United Nations program to eradicate drug crops by 2008,
which cost about $5 billion, or $1 billion to the United States,
to implement.

Clinton said in his speech that lines had blurred between
nations traditionally regarded as producers, consumers, or
traders of drugs, and finger-pointing over responsibility for
the drug trade was counter-productive.

The U.N. drug summit has drawn many groups challenging
American drug policies. They say too much money is going into
law enforcement rather than treating and preventing addiction.

In an open letter to U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan over
the weekend, about 500 prominent figures around the world --
including former secretary-general Javier Perez de Cuellar of
Peru -- said that the ``global war on drugs is now causing more
harm than drug abuse itself.

REUTERS

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

Chirac, Rising From Electoral Blunder, Seeks To Lead Again ('Washington Post'
Article In 'The International Herald-Tribune' Notes The UN Owes
The Attendance Of Bill Clinton At Its Global Drug War Session
To Jacques Chirac, The Former French President And Prohibitionist
Repudiated By His Own People)

Date: Wed, 10 Jun 1998 22:38:12 -0700
To: mapnews@mapinc.org
From: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org (MAPNews)
Subject: MN: UN GE: Chirac, Rising From Electoral Blunder, Seeks to Lead Again
Sender: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Reply-To: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Organization: Media Awareness Project http://www.mapinc.org/lists/
Newshawk: Peter Webster
Source: International Herald-Tribune
Contact: iht@iht.com
Website: http://www.iht.com/
Pubdate: Mon, 8 Jun 1998
Author: Jim Hoagland, Washington Post Service

CHIRAC, RISING FROM ELECTORAL BLUNDER, SEEKS TO LEAD AGAIN

PARIS---There was still a tinge of shock in Jacques Chirac's voice as the
French president recounted discovering in mid-May that President Bill
Clinton, Prime Minister Tony Blair and other leaders attending the Group of
Seven summit meeting did not intend to go to the United Nations for the
special session on the world's drug problems that begins Monday.

"This seemed unthinkable to me," recalled Mr. Chirac, who immediately began
lobbying the leaders of the world's richest countries and Russia to add a
trip to New York "as an act of faith" and compassion. "How could we have
this meeting be meaningful without the participation of the leaders of
major drug-consuming countries, which contribute so much to the problem?"
he asked.

U.S. and UN officials confirm that President Chirac's energetic and
emotional intervention at the Birmingham, England, summit meeting helped
get Mr. Clinton, Mr. Blair and others to rearrange their schedules to be
present at the special session on drugs in New York. Each head of
government or state will speak for seven minutes at the one-day conference.

"We cannot change the world in seven minutes," Mr. Chirac remarked May 29
in an hour-long interview in his Elysee Palace office. "But we can show
that we will just not sit by and abandon the world' s desperate and
destitute."

Mr. Chirac's speech at the United J Nations and his initiative to get
others to attend the meeting are big steps in his comeback from the
political roadside where he was left for dead a year ago after his call for
early elections led to his coalition's loss of National Assembly control.

Less than a month after he took on the rest of the European Union and
forced a compromise in the choice of a new head of the European Central
Bank, Mr. Chirac made clear in the interview that he is finding his voice
again and that he intends to claim a larger role for France on the global
scene.

This is likely to be a mixed blessing for Mr. Clinton, as hinted by the
troublesome changes Mr. Chirac inspired in the American president's
schedule for Monday.

Mr. Clinton's policies face increasing challenge from the French president,
who says he is acting in the name of global social justice and seeking to
ease the inevitable transition " to a multipolar world, equipped with a
wellfunctioning multilateral system."

Throughout the interview, Mr. Chirac laid strong emphasis on his personal
admiration for Mr. Clinton and on France's determination to cooperate with
American global leadership where possible.

But he did not hesitate to underline differences on sensitive topics like
Washington's extensive use of economic sanctions, the future of NATO and
the authority of the United Nations.

The one subject he would not discuss was the eerie similarity between
coverage by the U.S. press of the pursuit of Mr. Clinton by special
prosecutor Kenneth Starr and recent headlines here raising the possibility
of a criminal investigation implicating the French presidency in burgeoning
carnpaign finance scandals.

"I never discuss France's domestic politics with a foreign publication,"
Mr. Chirac said, indicating between the lines that he did not believe that
the separate controversies on opposite sides of the Atlantic had impaired
his or Mr. Clinton's abilities to govern. "Reason always wins out in the
end," he said as a general comment.

Foreign affairs have provided Mr. Chirac with a lifeboat in which to ride
out a political shipwreck that would have ended the career of a lesser
politician. Last June he called parliamentary elections a year early and
saw his conservative coalition lose its commanding majority to the
Socialists and Communists,- enabling Lionel Jospin to become prime minister
and form a government.

Under the French system Mr. Jospin, a Socialist who is to visit Washington
June 17-20, controls the country's domestic agenda, while Mr. Chirac, a
Gaullist, has a major say only in foreign policy and defense.

The two men are considered the most likely candidates for president when
Mr. Chirac's mandate expires in 2002, but they have worked to keep signs of
rivalry out of public view.

The public honeymoon may now be ending, as labor strife presents Mr. Jospin
with his first serious political challenges at home and as Mr. Chirac feels
comfortable in raising his profile on a number of issues, including
U.S.French relations.

His most pointed remarks concerned emerging differences between Washington
and Paris over the future mission of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization
which Mr. Chirac said France wili not permit to be turned into "a Western
alliance that would exercise military force anytime anywhere in the world.
That would be an immense danger for world peace."

Mr. Chirac discussed with Mr. Clinton over lunch at Birmingham the French
misgivings about the strategic concept the United States wants NATO to
adopt at its 50th anniversary sumnnit in Washington next spring.

Discussions of the strategic concept were formally launched at a NATO
foreign ministers gathering on May 28 in Luxembourg.

The administration and its supporters in the recently concluded U.S. Senate
debate on NATO enlargement have strongly indicated that they will Push for
a significant widening of NATO responsibilities and "power projection,"
including missions outside Europe.

"If NATO gives itself the right to intervene where it wants and when it
wants, other powers would immediately start doing the same thing, with as
much justification," Mr. Chirac said.

To pre-empt that, France will insist that NATO military operations outside
the alliance's European zone of selfdefense be approved by the UN Security
Council.

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

UN Aide Would Fight Drugs With 'Alternative Development'
('The New York Times' Notes Pino Arlacchi, The Director Of The UN
International Drug Control Program, Is Proposing A Glorified
Crop Substitution Program To Eliminate The Cultivation Of Opium And Coca
In 10 Years, As Well As Substantially Reducing Marijuana)

Date: Mon, 08 Jun 1998 23:58:14 -0400
To: mapnews@mapinc.org
From: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org (MAPNews)
Subject: MN: UN GE: U.N. Aide Would Fight Drugs With 'Alternative
Development'
Sender: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Reply-To: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Organization: Media Awareness Project http://www.mapinc.org/lists/
Newshawk: emr@javanet.com (Dick Evans)
Source: New York Times (NY)
Contact: letters@nytimes.com
Website: http://www.nytimes.com/
Pubdate: Mon, 8 Jun 1998
Author: Christopher Wren

U.N. AIDE WOULD FIGHT DRUGS WITH 'ALTERNATIVE DEVELOPMENT'

UNITED NATIONS -- With President Clinton and other world leaders coming
here Monday for a special session of the General Assembly on the world's
drug problems, the U.N.'s top anti-narcotics official has submitted a
two-pronged strategy that moves beyond the conventional approach of
intercepting illegal drugs and arresting traffickers.

Pino Arlacchi, the executive director of the U.N. International Drug
Control Program, proposes the ambitious target of eliminating opium poppies
and coca plants, the raw ingredients of heroin and cocaine, in 10 years as
well as substantially reducing marijuana.

To achieve this, he advocates so-called alternative development programs
that would induce opium and coca growers to switch to less profitable legal
crops by bringing roads, hospitals, schools and a better life into remote
rural areas that depend on drug crops to survive.

Additionally, Arlacchi has proposed that nations reduce the demand for
drugs by half over the next decade through prevention and treatment
programs. Neither idea is new, but Arlacchi said they had proved promising
enough to try on a broader scale.

"These two cards have not been played in full," he said in an interview.
Alternative development has sometimes been viewed as costly and
unrealistic, since opium and coca growers are reluctant to grow legal crops
that would earn less income and be harder to take to market.

Middlemen make the rounds of peasants to buy their raw opium and coca paste.

What is needed, Arlacchi said, is political authority to enforce
eradication and development involving more than crop substitution. "We
would propose an alternative way of life," he said. "They can be rich
peasants if they grow opium, but they can die if they don't have roads and
hospitals."

Peru and Colombia have tried alternative development, Arlacchi said, and
Peru has reduced its coca fields by 40 percent in two years.

Bolivia has promised to phase out its coca over the next five years, he
said. Arlacchi said the cost would run far less than potential donors like
the United States anticipate. With some programs already in place, he
estimated that alternative development would require an additional amount
of less than $250 million a year over the next decade.

In comparison, the U.S. government's annual drug control budget exceeds $16
billion. Gen. Barry McCaffrey, the Clinton administration's anti-drug
chief, said that he agreed with demand reduction, but was not persuaded
that it would be easy to get Afghans and Burmese, who together grow 90
percent of the world's opium, to change to other crops.

But McCaffrey added in a telephone interview from Washington, "We're
supportive of Pino Arlacchi's focused high-energy leadership."

Arlacchi, whose enthusiasm belies a tough reputation earned fighting the
Mafia in his native Italy, cited what he said were some conspicuous
successes against drug trafficking in the last decade. "We destroyed the
myth of the invincibility of the drug cartels," he said. He said that the
Medellin and Cali cocaine cartels in Colombia had been crushed and that
some Asian opium warlords surrendered by striking deals with the military
government in Burma that let them keep their freedom and money. Thailand
virtually eliminated opium production through alternative development, he
added, and Pakistan had sharply cut back opium growing as well.

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

Drug Crazy And The UN Drug Summit (A Press Release
From Fenton Communications, Issued In Conjunction With The United Nations
Special Session To Expand The Global War On Some Drug Users,
Gives A Timely Plug For 'Drug Crazy,' The Blistering New Expose
Of The War On Drugs By Mike Gray, Screenwriter For 'The China Syndrome')

Date: Wed, 10 Jun 1998 10:54:47 -0700 (PDT)
To: hemp-talk@hemp.net
From: Kelley (showquality@seanet.com)
Sender: owner-hemp-talk@hemp.net

Monday June 8, 7:59 am Eastern Time

Company Press Release

SOURCE: Fenton Communications

Drug Crazy and the UN Drug Summit

NEW YORK, June 8 /PRNewswire/ -- Fenton Communications issued the following
statement:

President Clinton and 25 heads of state are gathering at the United Nations,
June 8-10, to expand the war on drugs. The same policies that have been
failing for over 80 years will be blindly celebrated without any serious
dialogue.

Meanwhile, there is growing public awareness that this war is a disaster on
every level. On Monday, a two-page ad will run in the New York Times signed
by hundreds of world leaders and experts pleading with the United Nations to
open up the debate. Television spots attacking the drug war are now running
on CNN and other networks. And a new book has just been released that
dramatically exposes the futility and stupidity of the drug war.

20 years ago, writer Mike Gray blew the lid off the nuclear power industry
with his screenplay, ``The China Syndrome.'' For the last six years, the
drug war became his obsession and the result is ``Drug Crazy'', the most
blistering expose of the war on drugs ever written. Published by Random
House and available now in bookstores, the book is a vivid accessible
portrait of decades of failure, corruption and confusion.

``Anyone who thinks the war on drugs is succeeding should read this book,''
wrote Elliott Richardson, former U.S. Attorney General. ``Never did I think
one could learn so much about the drug crisis all in one place,'' wrote
Daniel Schoor (NPR). Alvin Poussaint of Harvard Medical School wrote, ``It
is an eye- opener. I highly recommend this book to everyone concerned about
developing an effective strategy toward drug abuse.''

SOURCE: Fenton Communications

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

Don't Expect Real UN Action Against Drug Traffic (Op-Ed
In 'The International Herald-Tribune' By Jeffrey Robinson,
Author Of 'The Laundrymen,' A Survey Of The World Of Money Laundering,
Says That By The Time Dessert And Coffee Are Served Tuesday Night
At The Special Session Of The United Nations, Everything Will Return
To Business As Usual, Including The Inability Of The United Nations
To Have Any Effect On The Global Drug Problem)

Date: Tue, 09 Jun 1998 11:09:38 -0400
To: mapnews@mapinc.org
From: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org (MAPNews)
Subject: MN: UN GE: OPED: Don't Expect Real UN Action Against Drug Traffic
Sender: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Reply-To: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Organization: Media Awareness Project http://www.mapinc.org/lists/
Newshawk: Peter Webster
Pubdate: Mon, 08 Jun 1998
Source: International Herald-Tribune
Contact: iht@iht.com
Website: http://www.iht.com/
Author: Jeffrey Robinson

DON'T EXPECT REAL UN ACTION AGAINST DRUG TRAFFIC

LONDON --- A two-day Special Session of the General Assembly opens this
Monday at the United Nations in New York, intended as a major assault on
the global drug problem,. By the time dessert and coffee are served Tuesday
night, everything will return to business as usual, including the inability
of the United Nations to have any effect on the global drug problem.

They have gone this route before. In 1988 the General Assembly adopted the
Convention Against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic
Substances. Ten years later, a quarter of the member states had still not
signed on, and among the rest fewer than 30 bothered passing legislation
that even came close to resembling the model in the convention.

The United Nations' impotence stems directly from individual members'
interests. Too many countries flourish in the narco-economy.

Worldwide, more money is spent on illicit drugs than on food, making illicit
drugs the planet's largest and most lucrative cash crop.

The devastation wreaked by drugs on everything from families to democracies
is too often shrouded by glass skyscrapers---witness Miami, now the economic
capital of South America. Or by the dividends of international banking
groups---bad loans to Latin America in the 1970s were repaid thanks to drug
money. Or by the huge invisible earnings of global financial
centers---witness Britain selling its sovereignty in the murky world of
offshore banking.

Ultimately, rhetoric is easier than turning the war on drugs into a war on
the business of drugs.

As in any multinational industry drug trafficking thrives on cash flow and
reinvestment. Cash from the streets gets put into the world's banking
system, moved in and out of shell companies and through secret banking
jurisdictions, then repatriated, disguised as legitimate profit.

The United Nations has conceded that as much as $300 billion worth of drug
money is currently immersed in this money laundering cycle. Yet more than 50
UN member states openly sell phony shell companies.

It is not just the Caribbean---the Cayman Islands, for example, with oue
bank for every 57 citizens. It is also Western Europe (Switzerland,
Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, the Charmel Islands), the Middle East, Latin
America, Eastern Euroope, Africa (Nigeria in particular) and the Pacific.

Two months ago, preparing a French television film based on my book, "The
Laundrymen," I phoned a company-formation agent in London to wonder,
blatantly, where I could hide money. The person suggested Niue. Where is
that? The person didn't know.

It turns out to be a British Commonwealth sandbar in the middle of the
Pacific, population 2,321. It has been put on the map by Panamanian lawyers
acting for Colombian drug barons.

For $135, white-collar professionals operating legally in UN member states
will hook anyone into the network of countries, companies and banks used for
hiding dirty money.

Company-formation agents are backseat passengers on this bandwagon. Sitting
up front are otherwise legitimate bankers, lawyers and accountants who have
mined colossal fortunes out of brokering dirty money.

The United States has the world's strictest regulations against money
laundering---perhaps not surprisingly, as it is the largest consumer of
illicit drugs. Yet there are no laws in the United States or in any other
member state which hold white-collar professionals criminally responsible
for not knowing that way down the line the ultimate beneficial owner of the
money turns out to be a drug baron.

Relying on "plausible deniability," these professionals need only look to
their immediate client to claim: "I'm not dealing with a trafficker. I'm
doing business with a lawyer.

Requiring them to identify everyone involved at every level back to the
ultimate beneficial owner of the rnoney would effectively thwart the
traffickers' ability to launder his profits.

And the community of nations-should ruthlessly ostracize governments which
countenance trafficking and money laundering. Shutting down businesses in
member states, that rely on secret banking and phony shell companies in
rogue states would send the correct zero-tolerance message. You beat the
traffickers by bankrupting them.

But that means taking on globally influential bankers, lawyers and
accountants, and at least a quarter of the member states. Where are the
politicians with the stomach for this fight?

[The writer's books include an updated edition of "The Laundrymen," a survey
of the world of money laundering. He contributed this comment to the
International Herald Tribune.]

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

Tobacco Bill May Be Dead, Lott Says ('The Seattle Times' Says The US Senate
This Week Will Make What Could Be Its Final Attempt To Keep The McCain
Tobacco Bill Alive)

From: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org (MAPNews)
To: "MN" 
Subject: MN: US: WA: Tobacco Bill May Be Dead, Lott Says
Date: Fri, 12 Jun 1998 06:47:07 -0500
Sender: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Reply-To: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Organization: Media Awareness Project http://www.mapinc.org/lists/
Newshawk: John Smith
Pubdate: Monday 08 June 1998
Source: Seattle Times (WA)
Contact: opinion@seatimes.com
Website: http://www.seattletimes.com/
Author: Jim Abrams

TOBACCO BILL MAY BE DEAD, LOTT SAYS

WASHINGTON - The Senate this week makes what could be its last effort to
keep a tobacco bill alive. Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, an opponent of
the legislation, says it is past revival.

"At this point it's dead in the water and there may never be a vote on the
McCain bill," Lott said yesterday on CNN's "Late Edition." "The problem is
greed has set in."

Sponsored by Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., the bill would raise cigarette taxes
and more closely regulate tobacco.

"The delay has gone on long enough," President Clinton said in his weekly
radio address Saturday. "The Senate should do nothing else until it passes
tobacco legislation, and it should pass it this week."

Lott and other critics say the legislation, which raises $516 billion over
25 years by raising the price of a pack of cigarettes by $1.10, goes too far
beyond its basic intention of curbing teenage smoking.

"This is now about money grubbing, this is about taxing people and spending
it on a myriad of programs, so there's the real addiction here," he said.

On Friday, Democrats and Republicans blamed each other for what appeared to
be the near-demise of the bill. Republicans objected to Democratic attempts
to cut off debate while Democrats were angry that they were being forced to
vote on GOP amendments to the bill they didn't like.

Lott said there would be votes this week on an amendment aimed at cutting
teen smoking and illegal drug use, and on another amendment, a top GOP
priority, ending tax rules that penalize married couples.

There also is a vote scheduled to cut off debate and move to final passage
of the tobacco bill.

White House counsel Paul Begala, also on CNN, said if Republicans block a
bill now, it's going to be an issue during this fall's election.

"They are either going to have a bipartisan accomplishment, which is what
the president prefers, or they are going to have a partisan election-year
issue. We'll resolve this from the voters, to see who is on the side of Big
Tobacco and to see who is on the side of our kids," he said.

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

US Official Defends Mexico Sting ('The Associated Press'
Notes Retired General Barry McCaffrey Defended 'Operation Casablanca'
In A News Briefing With Attorney General Janet Reno And Other US Officials
During A UN General Assembly Special Session On Drugs)

Date: Tue, 09 Jun 1998 10:32:58 -0400
To: mapnews@mapinc.org
From: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org (MAPNews)
Subject: MN: UN GE: Wire: U.S. Official Defends Mexico Sting
Sender: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Reply-To: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Organization: Media Awareness Project http://www.mapinc.org/lists/
Newshawk: Marcus-Mermelstein Family
Pubdate: Mon, 08 Jun 1998
Source: Associated Press

U.S. OFFICIAL DEFENDS MEXICO STING

UNITED NATIONS (AP) -- The top U.S. drug policy official defended using U.S.
undercover agents in a money-laundering sting in Mexico but acknowledged
Monday "there is room" for better tactics in the cross-border war on drugs.

Mexico has criticized the three-year operation as a violation of its
sovereignty. American undercover agents appear to have operated in Mexico
without securing government approval for the sting, which U.S. officials
said involved 167 arrests and led to the seizure of $96 million and several
tons of drugs.

Retired Gen. Barry McCaffrey defended the operation in a news briefing with
Attorney General Janet Reno and other U.S. officials during a U.N. General
Assembly special session on drugs.

McCaffrey said one country cannot fight the drug problem alone.

``We have to do this in partnership with our neighbors and with absolute
respect and deference for their own sovereign institutions,'' said
McCaffrey, director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy.

He acknowledged, however, that ``there is room here for us to look through
how we can even more effectively coordinate these (operations) in the future.''

Later, he told reporters that while the United States was proud of the job
the U.S. agents did, ``we'll just have to find a way to do this better in
the future.''

Reno said that the U.S.-Mexican effort to fight drugs was still on course.

In a speech to the General Assembly earlier Monday, Mexican President
Ernesto Zedillo referred indirectly to the operation, which has prompted
Mexican officials to call for the extradition of the U.S. agents to face trial.

He called for a ``balanced strategy ... so that no one can become the judge
of others; and no one feels entitled to violate other countries' laws for
the sake of enforcing its own.''

U.S. officials have said they needed to keep the operation secret to ensure
the safety of American agents.

``It is not a matter of disrespect,'' Reno said in explaining why Mexican --
and even top U.S. officials -- were not informed of the sting. The goal, she
said, was to conduct an investigation ``while at the same time protecting
the lives of the agents involved.''

Also Monday, Colombian President Ernesto Samper told world leaders at the
drug summit that his country, the world's leading producer of cocaine, has
been unfairly criticized by the international community.

Samper said Colombia spends more than $1 billion a year fighting drugs --
equal to 21 percent of what it would cost to provide education for all
Colombian children.

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

New Chief May Scrap Drug Tests On Police (The Aberdeen, Scotland,
'Evening Express' Says That, Acting In Response To Unspecified Complaints
From Senior Officers, Andrew Brown, The New Chief Constable
Of Grampian Police May Scrap The 'Voluntary' Urine Testing Scheme
Instituted In 1996)

From: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org (MAPNews)
To: "MN" 
Subject: MN: UK: New Chief May Scrap Drug Tests On Police
Date: Fri, 12 Jun 1998 06:50:57 -0500
Sender: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Reply-To: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Organization: Media Awareness Project http://www.mapinc.org/lists/
Newshawk: J M Petrie (jmpetrie@wintermute.co.uk)
Date: Monday June 8, 1998
Source: Evening Express (Aberdeen, UK)
Contact: editor@ee.ajl.co.uk
Author: Ewan Cameron

NEW CHIEF MAY SCRAP DRUG TESTS ON POLICE BY EWAN CAMERON

Controversial random drug testing of Grampian Police could be scrapped under
new Chief Constable Andrew Brown.

He is re-evaluating the force's tough stance on drug use at work following
complaints from senior officers.

Depending on the outcome of the investigation, the scheme -- which is the
brainchild of former Chief Constable Ian Oliver -- could be scrapped or
revamped.

Every year 10% of the force are voluntarily tested for drug use -- a move
which sparked controversy when it was announced in September, 1996.

Mr. Brown said: "The fact the scheme is here already demonstrates that the
police service is not slow to adapt to new procedures. All the issues will
be looked into in our review."

When the scheme was announced two years ago, Mr. Oliver said he knew it
would cause controversy among his officers and staff.

But he added: "I believe the only way to address the problems which drugs
now cause within our society is through a partnership involving all
institutions and agencies who can in any way influence the behaviour of
those likely to succumb to the menace."

Screening involved sending urine samples to an outside lab where tests were
carried out to detect, amongst other things, speed, cannabis, cocaine or
methadone.

At the moment, anyone who applies for a job with the force must agree to be
tested, as must anyone who is referred "with cause" -- because their
performance shows possible signs of drug abuse.

Staff are allowed to decline tests "without prejudice". Anyone who fails a
test is offered treatment, with misconduct action only considered if he or
she refuses treatment or has a relapse.

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

[End]