-------------------------------------------------------------------
Couple Weren't 'Just Two Dead Junkies' (An 'Associated Press' Article
In The Seattle 'Post-Intelligencer' Says The Mother Of A Woman Addicted
To Heroin Who Hanged Herself With Her Fiance From The Steel Bridge
In Downtown Portland Believes The First Step To Curing Addiction
Is Not A Medical One, It Is Lifting The Social Stigma Of Being Addicted)
Subject: HT: Couple weren't 'just two junkies'
Date: Wed, 22 Jul 98 10:38:08 -0700
From: YES on 692 (cdpr@eventure.com)
To: "Hemp Talk" (hemp-talk@hemp.net)
Sender: owner-hemp-talk@hemp.net
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Associated Press
July 21, 1998
"Couple weren't 'just two dead junkies'"
"Grieving Mother speaks out about the horror of addiction"
Portland, OR - When Mora McGowan threw herself off the Steel Bridge in
downtown Portland and let a noose break her fall, her mother did not go to
the scene.
Barbara Sage did not see Mora's lifeless body, nor the corpse or Mora's
fiance, who hanged himself at the same time and was dangling next to her.
Since the July 1 suicide, Barbara has kept her grief to herself. The she
heard something that broke her silence. Somebody said, "They were just two
dead junkies."
She was prompted to tell her story to Margie Boule, a columnist for The
Oregonian: "I want people to know they weren't just people hanging there who
didn't have lives and friends and family.
"These two people were so loved. They were like everybody else. The had dreams."
Shedding light on the human side of a 25-year old often dismissed by
strangers as a drug-dependent slacker, Sage read from Mora's diary.
"Someday, somebody is going to read this. I don't know who it will be. It
might be my great-grandchildren, it might be a stranger. Whoever it is,
they're going to read this and think, Wow. Mora McGowan was really something."
As a girl, the blue-eyed, blond-haired Mora loved animals and dreamed of
becoming a veterinarian. But, as she grew up, she realized she would have to
deal with sick and dying animals and shied away.
As a teenager, Mora battled depression but always emerged from a crowd being
remembered as funny and kooky - someone who laughed a lot. After graduating,
she worked as a model.
But by April 1997, a heroine addiction began robbing her of hope and dreams.
Sage remembers holding Mora when she retched all night, shaking and crying.
"Her self-esteem was being destroyed," Sage said. "She would say, 'I'm scum.
I'm no good.'" Mora fell more than $10,000 in debt and charged her
$200-a-day habit to credit cards.
Mora was hysterical when she called Sage the night before she and her
boyfriend died. Sage hurried to Mora's house and found her daughter weeping
in bed with slashed wrists. Sage called 911.
By the next morning, Mora was home from the hospital and told her mom, "I'm
either going to get drugs out of our life, or I'm going to end it."
"It gave me a sense she was talking about the future," Sage said. "I had no
idea that would be the last time I would see her alive."
Sage hugged Mora goodbye at noon and told her and her fiance that she loved
them. When authorities phoned Sage that afternoon, her sister answered the
phone. "She put her arm around me and had me sit down. She said 'those two
kids on the bridge...' and I said 'Oh no.' That's all I could say. 'Oh no.
Oh no.'"
Sage is certain addiction is a disease.
But the first step in curing it is not a medical one, she said. It is
lifting the social stigma of being addicted. In this sense, she believes her
daughter's death serves as a reminder. "I'm sorry my daughter was addicted,
and I sure didn't want her to die," Sage said. "But I'm not ashamed of her.
Addiction has nothing to do with status, morals or intelligence. Addicts
aren't 'those people.' The are us. All of us."
***
Timothy W. Killian
Campaign Manager
Initiative 692
Washington Citizens for Medical Rights
***
em: cdpr@eventure.com
url: http://www.eventure.com/I692
***
Postal Box 2346
Seattle, WA 98111
ph: 206.781-7716
fx: 206.324.3101
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Resisting The Law (A Staff Editorial In 'The Orange County Register'
Calls The Four-Year Prison Sentence For Medical Marijuana Defendant
David Herrick 'Outrageous' And Says It Is Difficult To Avoid The Suspicion
That Orange County Prosecutors And Judges Are Thwarting The Will
Of Californians Who Voted For Proposition 215)
Date: Wed, 22 Jul 1998 03:45:54 -0400
To: mapnews@mapinc.org
From: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org (MAPNews)
Subject: MN: US CA: Editorial: Resisting The Law
Sender: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Reply-To: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Organization: Media Awareness Project http://www.mapinc.org/lists/
Newshawk: Dave Fratello (amr@lainet.com)
Pubdate: Tue, 21 Jul 1998
Source: Orange County Register (CA)
Contact: letters@link.freedom.com
Website: http://www.ocregister.com/
RESISTING THE LAW
In November 1996 California voters passed Proposition 215, which then became
Section 11362.5 of the California Health and Safety Code. In so doing the
people expressed a strong desire for government authorities to create or at
least to facilitate a small "white market" for seriously ill people whose
doctors believed they could benefit from the use of marijuana.
Indeed, one of the purposes of the initiative was: "(C) To encourage the
federal and state governments to implement a plan to provide for the safe
and affordable distribution of marijuana to all patients in medical need of
marijuana."
Most California law-enforcement officials opposed Prop. 215 when it was on
the ballot. But as officials sworn to uphold the law as it is, not as they
might prefer it, they could have been expected to shrug off the electoral
defeat and then try to find a way to implement the law with as little harm
as possible.
The initiative didn't mandate, for example, setting up a government program
to grow, check for the validity of physicians' recommendations and
distribute medical marijuana, although that would be one possibility. But it
clearly asks law-enforcement officials to make a good-faith effort to
cooperate with those who are trying to implement the law, perhaps even
working with them to develop reasonably clear guidelines to distinguish
between a good-faith effort to provide marijuana to sick people and ordinary
street sales.
Looking at the way local officials have chosen to deal with Marvin Chavez,
leader of a group he calls the Orange County Cannabis Co-Op, and former San
Bernardino County Sheriff's Deputy David Lee Herrick, a volunteer with the
Co-Op, it is difficult to avoid the suspicion that local officials are doing
the opposite. Instead of making distinctions and trying in good faith to
implement a law that will undoubtedly require a trial-and-error process,
they are refusing to make distinctions.
"I don't see any difference between Mr. Herrick and a street dealer," said
Orange County Deputy District Attorney Carl Armbrust after Mr. Herrick was
sentenced Friday to four years in prison for selling marijuana. He has been
in jail since March 18, 1997. Mr. Herrick had in his possession several
baggies identified as those of the Orange County Cannabis Co-Op, with a
large "NOT FOR SALE" label. Superior Court Judge William Froeberg, who heard
Mr. Herrick's case and imposed the sentence, refused to let the jury hear
any arguments regarding California's medical-marijuana laws, although the
jury had requested such information.
To the outside observer, this approach looks more like an effort to prove to
Californians that Prop. 215 was a mistake than a good-faith effort to
implement it without strengthening the black market.
Mr. Armbrust is using a clever ploy. Prop. 215 specifically stated that for
medical patients and caregivers a physician's recommendation creates a
defense against charges of possession and cultivation, but it doesn't
mention sales. So the D.A.'s office contends that any time money changes
hands - even if it's called a voluntary donation and there's no evidence
anywhere in the police reports or the court record that the stuff is being
distributed to anybody but people with a bona fide physician's
recommendation - it's a sale and it's a crime.
But the most relevant appeals court case on medical marijuana, People v.
Peron, was clear on the matter: "Although the sale and distribution of
marijuana remain as criminal offenses under section 11360, bona fide primary
caregivers for section 11362.5 patients should not be precluded from
receiving bona fide reimbursement for their actual expenses ..."
Mr. Herrick's conviction and extraordinarily stiff sentence will be
appealed, of course. Sharon Petrosino, his attorney, told us there were
issues of possible prosecutorial misconduct, plus the fact that the judge
forbade any testimony on either Prop. 215 issues or medical necessity
issues, that should make an appeal be considered favorably.
Meanwhile, David Herrick has been sentenced to four years, essentially for
trying to help implement Prop. 215 and being honest about it when some
police came to his motel room by mistake. Outrageous.
The case highlights our long-held belief that local officials need to work
conscientiously and soberly to implement the will of the people rather than
laboring to prove that Prop. 215 was foolish. As we read the polls, almost
everybody in California believes this except a few zealous prosecutors. Will
even an appeals court decision get their attention?
-------------------------------------------------------------------
California Struggles With Issue Of Medical Marijuana ('The Washington Times'
Says The Future Of Proposition 215 And Cannabis Buyers Clubs May Be Decided
In California's Fall Gubernatorial Election)
Date: Wed, 22 Jul 1998 02:19:56 -0400
To: mapnews@mapinc.org
From: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org (MAPNews)
Subject: MN: US CA: California Struggles
With Issue Of Medical Marijuana
Sender: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Reply-To: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Organization: Media Awareness Project http://www.mapinc.org/lists/
Newshawk: compassion23@geocities.com (Frank S. World)
Pubdate: Tue, 21 Jul 1998
Source: Washington Times
Contact: letter@twtmail.com
Website: http://www.washtimes.com/
Author: Thomas D. Elias, Special To The Washington Times
CALIFORNIA STRUGGLES WITH ISSUE OF MEDICAL MARIJUANA
SAN FRANCISCO - The war in California over the legality of medical marijuana
has produced as much confusion this summer as a weed-induced high. The
state's most liberal cities and counties have struggled to find a legal way
to distribute marijuana to medical patients, while federal and state
authorities have fought to close the few remaining cannabis buyers' clubs.
The battle likely will move to both the ballot box and a jury trial this
fall, with pot-supplying cooperatives in three northern California cities
remaining open in defiance of a federal court order to shut down. The co-ops
now face contempt of court charges, and pro-marijuana activists are eager to
see whether any jury will convict their leaders.
Regardless of how the courts or the fall election affect medical marijuana,
cities such as San Francisco and Oakland insist they'll keep trying to put
pot in the hands of AIDS patients, epileptics and others whose conditions
are eased by the narcotic. "It won't be an easy task to find a way to do
this legally," says San Francisco District Attorney Terence Hallinan. "But
it's necessary."
Adds the city's mayor, Willie Brown, "We'd be remiss if we didn't do
anything. At least 10,000 people in this city need the marijuana." Mr. Brown
said since the city's only buyers' co-op was closed by court order, the city
attorney and Mr. Hallinan have been crafting an ordinance "to allow for the
greatest security in any court test."
Across the bay, Oakland's city government took action early this month to
allow patients to grow their own pot. The council passed an ordinance
allowing patients acting on a doctor's recommendation to possess 1.5 pounds
of marijuana at a time, and also to grow as many as 144 plants at once, with
48 of them in the flowering phase, when potency is highest.
Even pro-medical marijuana activists say that is about three times more than
any patient should need, and it is three times the standard that California
Attorney General Dan Lungren set last year for legal possession by a
patient. Possessing marijuana for medical reasons on a doctor's
recommendation has been legal in California since 1996, when voters passed
Proposition 215 by a 55 percent to 45 percent margin.
But federal law still forbids the sale and use of pot, and Mr. Lungren and
California Gov. Pete Wilson have fought efforts to set up government-run
distribution networks.
They argue it would open a back door to total legalization of the narcotic.
Mr. Lungren is the Republican candidate for governor and his former top
deputy, David Stirling, is the GOP candidate to succeed him as attorney general.
"We're now left in legal never-never land," says Scott Imler, co-author of
Proposition 215 and director of the Los Angeles Cannabis Buyers' Club, one
of three surviving clubs not covered by the May shutdown order. "I'm now
very disappointed we did not include distribution in the proposition.
That was a political decision, to keep clubs from becoming a campaign
issue." Mr. Imler believes the fall election will decide the fate of medical
marijuana in California, and possibly in the nation, because other states
often follow California's lead in passing ballot initiatives.
"Electing Lungren and Stirling would mean four more years of chaos, because
they are adamant about not allowing distribution of medical marijuana," Mr.
Imler said. "If they're elected, the only solution would be for the federal
government to declare this a prescription drug -- and they haven't shown any
great eagerness to do that."
State Sen. John Vasconcellos, a Democrat who has fought for years to
legalize medical use of the weed, agreed. "We're going to present Wilson
with a bill this fall to set up legal forms of distribution with solid
checks about medical necessity," he said. "But we have no illusions that he
will sign it. He vetoed two medical marijuana bills before Proposition 215
passed and he wants to run for president.
He'll veto this one, too, no matter how many safeguards we put in it."
Meanwhile, six clubs still distribute marijuana to California patients, with
all but Mr. Imler's group operating in northern California cities.
Pro-medical marijuana elected officials such as Mr. Hallinan also see two
possible positive signs in the U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer's order to
close clubs. His decision, which said federal law takes precedent over state
laws on the subject, did not preclude the use of a medical necessity defense
in the upcoming jury trial.
Judge Breyer also left open the possibility that federal courts might not
stop distribution of pot to chronically ill patients who are too weak to
grow their own.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
The Drug War Can't Abide Honest Stats ('Los Angeles Times' Columnist
Robert Scheer Says A Simplistic And Dishonest Approach Is At The Heart
Of The US Government's New $2-Billion Anti-Drug Advertising Campaign,
As Well As The US Drug Czar's European Trip Where He Showed
His Imperviousness To Truth, And Also The Simplistic And Dishonest
Approach Of Lumping Marijuana In With Illegal Hard Drugs, Which Is
At The Heart Of The New Advertising Campaign McCaffrey Announced Last Week)
Date: Tue, 21 Jul 1998 22:50:56 +0000
From: Peter Webster (vignes@monaco.mc)
Subject: The Drug War Can't Abide Honest Stats
LA Times
Tuesday, July 21, 1998
COLUMN LEFT / ROBERT SCHEER
The Drug War Can't Abide Honest Stats
A simplistic and dishonest approach is at the heart of the new
$2-billion anti-drug advertising campaign.
By ROBERT SCHEER
Oops, drug czar Barry R. McCaffrey made a big factual error last
week, claiming the murder rate in Holland is twice as high as that of the
U.S. because of permissive Dutch drug policies. In fact, the U.S murder
rate as a percentage of the population is 4.5 times higher than in Holland.
Hey, no problem, what good is being drug czar if you have to worry
about facts? If there's one thing we know after 20 years and billions of
dollars fighting the drug war, it's that the war will never be won with
honest statistics.
McCaffrey is a retired general unencumbered by prior familiarity with
the medical aspects of drug addiction or methods of prevention and
treatment. No matter; in the doctrine of the U.S. drug war, the patient is
the enemy. In appointing this tough general to direct the U.S. Office of
National Drug Control Policy, President Clinton proved that he was as
asinine on drug policy as those who had never held a joint in their hands.
Clinton scored big politically, but the result is a continuation of a war
on our own citizens with disastrous consequences.
The Dutch have rejected the war metaphor. While drugs remain
officially illegal, they have differentiated between marijuana--which can
legally be sold in small quantities in set locations to adults--and hard
drugs. Hard drug usage is viewed primarily as a medical problem with
emphasis on treating rather than incarcerating the user. The focus is on
"harm reduction"--education, treatment, needle exchange and methadone
substitution.
On his brief stopover in Holland last week, McCaffrey pointedly
refused to visit one of the Amsterdam "coffee shops" that legally sell
small quantities of pot, saying, "I am not sure there is much to be learned
from watching somebody smoking pot." How obtuse! Even the temperance
fanatics of old thought they could learn something of the evil goings-on in
saloons by occasionally inspecting one.
McCaffrey might have learned that smoking pot tends to lead to far
less aggressive behavior than drinking alcohol; that the mood in those
coffee shops is downright torpid. In fact, adolescent marijuana use is
twice as high in the U.S. as Holland. Alcohol is the main abuse problem in
both countries.
I write this with a Bloody Mary near at hand and am not in favor of
banning alcohol, but the evidence is overwhelming that it's a far more
damaging drug than marijuana. In the U.S., there are more than 100,000
alcohol-related deaths a year; there is still not one officially recorded
death attributed solely to marijuana use.
Marijuana use may pose some social problems, although they're not as
easily documented as those presented by a number of legally prescribed
drugs. Lumping marijuana with illegal hard drugs is a continuing absurdity
that leads young people to distrust all anti-drug warnings. Yet this
simplistic and dishonest approach to the drug problem is at the heart of
the new $2-billion anti-drug advertising campaign McCaffrey announced last
week.
Why not use that money to follow the Dutch example of honest education
about the drug problem and treatment of those who are addicted? Treating
drug addiction as a medical rather than a criminal problem works, but
serious drug treatment is only available to 10% of those in prison who need
it. Yet we continue to waste billions on failed war-fighting scenarios.
Drugs are more available than ever. Opium production has doubled in
the past decade. The only drug war "victory" has been to increase the
profitability of the illegal drug trade that now, according to United
Nations statistics, produces $400 billion in revenues, an astounding 10% of
all world trade.
What madness to continue the current strategy at ever greater human
and financial cost. In 1980, we spent $4 billion fighting the drug war, and
the drug war hawks told us that was not enough. Now we spend eight times
more, and they tell us the end is not in sight.
In 1980, 50,000 Americans were in prison on drug-related charges. The
figure is now 400,000, many for personal use, making this one of the
largest human rights violations in the world. Yes, because the very idea of
jailing people on the basis of personal behavior for a victimless crime
represents a basic violation of freedom.
This is a war fought in a contradictory and racist manner aimed
primarily at the urban ghetto. Only 13% of drug users are black, but they
make up far more than a majority of those imprisoned on drug charges. These
people are in prison as sacrifices to the gods of the drug war who will not
let go of their holy crusade no matter how many lives are broken.
***
Robert Scheer Is a Times Contributing Editor.
E-mail: Rscheer@robertscheer.com
Search the archives of the Los Angeles Times for similar stories. You will
not be charged to look for stories, only to retrieve one.
Copyright Los Angeles Times
***
Scheer's column deserves out thanks and encouragement.
This letter, appropriately modified, was also sent to the LAT as an LTE.
Dear Mr. Scheer-
Your column on McCaffrey nails the general very accurately for his
dishonesty. However it also mistakenly implies that the federal policy
for which he is chief lobbyist is really concerned with reducing the
adverse impact of drug use on American youth.
After intense study of our policy I've come to the sad conclusion that drug
prohibition is an institutionalized fraud, now primarily concerned with its
own self preservation as a policy justifying repression for profit. In that
respect, it occupies the same position as slavery did on the eve of the
Civil War - the federally endorsed law of the land which many depend on for
their livelihood, even as they realize beyond any question that it is
destructive, fundamentally flawed, and based on false premises.
It cannot continue to grow indefinitely; one hopes it can someday be
terminated with less direct threat to our national existence than the Civil
War.
Thomas J. O'Connell MD
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Police Shot Man 12 Times In Raid ('The Houston Chronicle' Says An Autopsy
Shows That Houston Prohibition Agents Who Forced Their Way
Into Pedro Oregon Navarro's Apartment Without A Warrant Shot The Innocent Man
12 Times, Including Nine Times In The Back - Nine Of The 12 Shots Also Had
A Downward Trajectory, Suggesting The Officers Involved May Be Charged
With Murder)
Date: Wed, 22 Jul 1998 00:50:33 -0400
To: mapnews@mapinc.org
From: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org (MAPNews)
Subject: MN: US TX: Police Shot Man 12 Times In Raid
Sender: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Reply-To: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Organization: Media Awareness Project http://www.mapinc.org/lists/
Newshawk: adbryan@onramp.net
Pubdate: Tue, 21 Jul 1998
Source: Houston Chronicle (TX)
Contact: viewpoints@chron.com
Website: http://www.chron.com/
Author: S.K. Bardwell
POLICE SHOT MAN 12 TIMES IN RAID
Autopsy report indicates that nine shots were in the back
Houston police who forced their way into Pedro Oregon Navarro's apartment
without a warrant shot him 12 times, including nine times in the back, an
autopsy showed.
The autopsy also indicated that nine of those 12 shots had a downward
trajectory, indicating they were fired from a position over Oregon, 23.
"The Houston Police Department is aware of and has received a copy of the
Harris County medical examiner's report," HPD spokesman Robert Hurst said
Monday.
"The department is cooperating fully with the Harris County District
Attorney's Office in their investigation."
A Mexican government envoy, Erasmus Martinez, flew here from Mexico City on
Monday and met with Oregon's family at his home in the 6700 block of Atwell.
He also met for more than an hour with HPD Assistant Chief Mike Thaler, who
is acting chief while Chief C.O. Bradford is out of town, Hurst said.
After the meeting, Martinez expressed confidence in the investigations by
HPD and the district attorney office's civil rights division, but said that
his government may ask that the U.S. Justice Department look into the matter
as well.
Oregon was shot to death July 12 after members of the gang task force
assigned to the Southwest Patrol Division raided Oregon's apartment. The
raid reportedly was on the basis of information from a confidential informant.
Sources have said the officers arrested that informant just prior to the raid.
Bradford has said there are indications the officers violated HPD policy
requiring that all informants meet certain criteria and be registered with
the department.
The officers said they opened fire after Oregon pointed a pistol at them. No
drugs were found in the apartment of Oregon, who is survived by a widow and
two daughters.
The autopsy report says Oregon had a gunshot wound to the head, left hand
and left shoulder and nine wounds to the back.
Other than three wounds -- to the shoulder, hand and back -- all the shots
were noted as traveling downward through Oregon's body, indicating they were
fired from above his body.
Oregon's family has said the officers continued shooting him after he had
fallen to the floor. Bullet holes were found in the floor where Oregon fell.
"All the wounds are disturbing," said attorney Paul Nugent, hired by
Oregon's family. Nugent met Monday evening with medical examiner Dr. Joye
Carter to discuss the autopsy findings.
The report said four bullets were recovered from Oregon's body, as well as
two bullet fragments. The other shots apparently traveled through his body.
Officer Lamont E. Tillery, 30, was shot in the shoulder during the melee but
saved from serious injury by his bulletproof vest.
Ballistics tests determined that Tillery was shot by a fellow officer. A
weapon was recovered from Oregon's bedroom, but it is unknown whether that
gun had been fired.
Relieved of duty with pay pending the outcome of investigations are Officers
Tillery, David R. Barrera, 28, Pete A. Herrada, 28, David Perkins, 30, and
James R. Willis, 28, and Sgt. Darrell H. Strouse, 34.
Copyright 1998 Houston Chronicle
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Mayor Aims To Abolish Methadone Programs - Treatment Experts Are Angered
('The New York Times' Says That As New York Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani
Outlined His Plans To Dramatically Expand His Workfare Program
To Include Drug Addicts, He Veered Unexpectedly From His Prepared Speech
Monday And Announced His Intention To Try To Reduce Methadone Treatment
Programs For Heroin Addicts)
Date: Wed, 22 Jul 1998 12:15:20 -0700
To: mapnews@mapinc.org
From: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org (MAPNews)
Subject: MN: US NYT: Mayor Aims to Abolish
Methadone Programs; Treatment Experts Are Angered
Sender: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Reply-To: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Organization: Media Awareness Project http://www.mapinc.org/lists/
Newshawk: Holly Catania (hcatania@sorosny.org)
Source: New York Times (NY)
Contact: letters@nytimes.com
Website: http://www.nytimes.com/
Pubdate: Tue, 21 Jul 1998
Author: Rachel L. Swarns
MAYOR AIMS TO ABOLISH METHADONE PROGRAMS; TREATMENT EXPERTS ARE ANGERED
As Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani outlined plans to dramatically expand his
workfare program to include drug addicts, he veered unexpectedly from his
prepared speech Monday and announced his desire to abolish all methadone
treatment programs for heroin addicts in New York City.
Giuliani, who criticized the programs for substituting a dependency on
methadone for a dependency on heroin, conceded that he could not
unilaterally take such action. Federal and state officials provide about 92
percent of the financing for methadone treatment in New York, Federal
officials say. But Giuliani said he would still lobby to reduce the role of
the programs in the city, which has the largest concentration of recovering
heroin addicts in the country.
"Over a period of time, hopefully within the next two, three or four years,
we will phase out and do away with methadone maintenance programs in the
City of New York," Giuliani said.
His comments quickly created a furor in the drug-treatment community.
Methadone treatment has been embraced by the National Institutes of Health,
Gen. Barry R. McCaffrey, the White House's top drug official, and other
drug rehabilitation experts who have all called for an expansion of the
program, which they describe as the best hope for recovering heroin
addicts.
"He said what?" asked Don Des Jarlais, the director of research for the
Chemical Dependency Institute of Beth Israel Medical Center and an expert
on heroin addiction. "From a public health standpoint, that has to be one
of the more ridiculous things for any public official to have said over the
past 30 years.
"It implies that he was either misunderstood or misspoke, or he does not
have much of an understanding of drug abuse treatment for heroin
addiction," Des Jarlais said.
Federal drug officials also expressed astonishment. "The Mayor of New York
City said that?" said one official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
"Does he realize this is scientifically considered to be the best treatment
for heroin?"
The Mayor caught even some of his own city officials by surprise as he
strayed from the prepared text of a speech that focused on his plan to
require virtually all adults on welfare to work for their benefits by the
year 2000.
Under the new policy, only the most severely disabled people will continue
to receive cash assistance without working. The rest -- currently about
340,000 adults -- will be required to participate in workfare or to find
private-sector jobs. The initiative, which is modeled after a similar
policy in Wisconsin, would create the largest welfare program in the
country to have a universal work requirement.
But Giuliani, who has been promising to enforce a universal work
requirement for months, received the most sustained applause from
supporters and welfare officials when he announced his plan to end the
methadone treatment program. He described drug addiction as the most
serious stumbling block on the road to putting most people on welfare to
work, but he emphasized that drug addicts should learn to recover the hard
way, without the help of medication.
"What we should be teaching in drug-treatment programs is the more
difficult, but the much more loving and caring, attempt to try to
reintegrate into a person the ability to take care of their own life,"
Giuliani said.
Giuliani, who revolutionized the city's welfare system by creating a
workfare program that has sharply reduced the welfare rolls, has already
pushed hundreds of the disabled and the drug-addicted into workfare.
Additionally, welfare officials have begun to discourage the poor from
applying for welfare, urging them to rely on relatives, charity and work.
And this year, the number of people on public assistance plunged to its
lowest point since 1967.
But putting the universal work requirement into practice will be a much
more daunting feat, and the problems posed by welfare recipients suffering
from drug addiction is only one of many obstacles ahead.
Only about 22 percent of adult welfare recipients are working, and city
officials must now confront the task of moving about 260,000 people into
workfare or private-sector jobs over the next 18 months.
Some welfare caseworkers, union officials and advocates for the poor doubt
the city can develop enough workfare positions, private-sector jobs or
child care slots to support such a transition. A similar plan announced in
1996, in which Giuliani promised to create a workfare force of 100,000 over
two years, never materialized. Today, about 36,000 people participate in
workfare, and city officials say that number is expected to increase by
only about 4,000 over the next year.
But Giuliani dismissed doubts about his plan Monday, saying he was
confident that New York City's strong economy and workfare program could
easily absorb thousands of welfare recipients.
"We're going to end welfare by the end of this century completely,"
Giuliani said during a news conference in Manhattan. "Everybody in this
city will work, with the possible exception of people who are truly
disabled or, for some short period of time, are unable to work.
About 30,000 people on public assistance have been excused from working, he
said, because they were participating in drug-treatment programs. Under the
new plan, he said, drug addicts will work and receive treatment. Since
March of this year, 1,139 drug addicts have been assigned to workfare
slots, city officials said. They did not have estimates for the number
expected to be working in the next 12 months.
Ideally, welfare recipients will find private-sector jobs, Giuliani said.
But he emphasized that the workfare program could easily absorb those who
are not able to find work.
But union officials are wary. Earlier this year, they sued the city,
asserting that it used welfare workers to replace civil servants in
hospitals. The city responded by pulling all welfare workers out of the
city hospitals. Stanley Hill, executive director of District Council 37,
said his group would carefully monitor any workfare expansion.
Advocates for the poor also fear the city will not spend enough money on
support services for welfare recipients moving into the work force.
Wisconsin increased spending on each welfare recipient by about 60 percent,
expanding child care and other services.
But city officials said Monday that there were no plans to substantially
increase the investment in day care even though the city suffers from a
severe child-care shortage. Nor are there plans to determine whether the
people who leave welfare or who do not apply after expressing interest
actually find jobs or simply languish in poverty.
"I think the Mayor is right to emphasize work, but it's important to know
what's happened to people who are denied assistance initially or leave the
rolls later," said Jack Krauskopf, the dean of the Graduate School of
Management and Urban Policy at the New School for Social Research.
Krauskopf, who ran the city's department of social services in the 1980's,
said the Mayor's universal work requirement was a worthy goal. "But it's a
very difficult goal to get to," he said.
Copyright 1998 The New York Times
-------------------------------------------------------------------
New Call To Legalize Cannabis ('The Legal Intelligencer,'
A Daily Legal Newspaper In Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Says Attorney
Lawrence Elliott Hirsch And A Group Of 164 People From 49 States
Have Filed A Groundbreaking Lawsuit In US District Court In Philadelphia
Demanding That Laws Prohibiting The Medical Use Of Marijuana Be Struck Down
As Unconstitutional)
Date: Thu, 23 Jul 1998 01:19:17 -0700
To: mapnews@mapinc.org
From: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org (MAPNews)
Subject: MN: US: New Call to Legalize Cannabis
Sender: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Reply-To: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Organization: Media Awareness Project http://www.mapinc.org/lists/
Newshawk: Patrick Rumsey (dirtroad@mcn.org)
Source: The Legal Intelligencer (daily legal newspaper in Philadelphia, PA)
Website: http://www.legalcom.com/
Pubdate: Tue, 21 Jul 1998
Author: Shannon P. Duffy (spdlegal@aol.com) U.S. Courthouse Correspondent
NEW CALL TO LEGALIZE CANNABIS
Local Attorney Launches Grassroots Effort With Class Action
Demanding that laws prohibiting the medical use of marijuana be struck down
as unconstitutional, a group of 164 people from 49 states has filed a
groundbreaking lawsuit in U.S. District Court here that essentially demands
a peaceful surrender in one of the major battles in the war on drugs.
"The right to consume, ingest or smoke a plant that grows wild in nature,
such as cannabis, is antecedent to and more fundamental than the right to
vote," attorney Lawrence Elliott Hirsch writes.
"There can be no more cruel and unusual punishment than to deprive a
seriously ill or disabled person of the only remedy that has been found to
work. To compound that punishment by incarcerating that person and forcing
him to take debilitating pharmaceuticals is precisely the sort of crime
against humanity committed in the late Soviet Union in which dissidents
were confined to psychiatric institutions and forcibly given drugs."
Unlike most class-action lawsuits where just a handful of typical
plaintiffs represent a group of hundreds or thousands, the approach taken
Kuromiya v. The United States of America is to present the stories of each
of the 164 plaintiffs who claim to represent 97 million Americans who could
benefit from the therapeutic effects of cannabis.
The term "cannabis" is clearly the term preferred by Hirsch. "Defendant
(the government) refers to cannabis as 'marijuana,' the most dangerous drug
in America," he writes.
One-by-one, the lawsuit describes the experiences of the plaintiffs,
beginning with Philadelphia resident Kiyoshi Kuromiya, a 55-year-old man
who has been battling AIDS since 1988 who insists that cannabis is the best
medication for dealing with his "wasting syndrome" because it not only
suppresses nausea, but enhances his appetite.
The list of maladies that the plaintiffs claim cannabis can ameliorate
grows long as one reads on in the testimonials - everything from glaucoma,
an eye disorder long known to benefit from cannabis, to spinal cord
injuries, depression, pre-menstrual syndrome, chronic pain, Lou Gehrig's
disease, and even alcoholism and asthma.
Many detail frustrations with prescription drugs that never worked or
caused debilitating side effects. A consistent theme in the stories is the
discovery of the wonders of cannabis and its one pleasant side effect,
bliss.
But many also detail their run-ins with the law or their constant fears of
being arrested. While most attest that they currently smoke cannabis on a
daily basis, several say they only wish they could, but that the specter of
a long prison sentence keeps them from doing so.
"Categorically, cannabis as a medicine is the safest therapeutic substance
known to man," Hirsch writes. "There has never been one recorded incidence
of overdose associated with cannabis while aspirin kills 1,000 to 1,500
people a year in the United States."
White-haired and sporting a close-cropped beard, starched white shirt and
American flag-motif tie, Hirsch seems at ease straddling the fence between
the establishment forces he plans to wage legal warfare against and the
counterculture forces, such as the National Organization for the Reform of
Marijuana Laws, that are sure to rally by his side.
The class action suit for cannabis rights is the main effort currently
being handled by his newly formed Hirsch & Caplan Public Interest Law Firm.
But the plaintiffs in the suit were clearly chosen to represent Middle
America and to present compelling tales of the need for the drug.
Prohibition of therapeutic cannabis, Hirsch argues, "is an arrogant
legislative act, far exceeding any legitimate power of Congress. The People
aver that Prohibition is enforced to protect and advance special interests
who believe that cannabis, produced from the land by farmers and The People
as a medicine, would negatively affect their corporate profits and
dividends."
Hirsch said he firmly believes the conspiracy theory, which goes something
like this: The government, the medical profession and the pharmaceuticals
industry are in cahoots to spread lies about the dangers of "marijuana"
because they know that cannabis is a miraculous curing agent that promises
no profits since users can grow it themselves.
But that's not the argument Hirsch plans to use to win the case, according
to the suit.
The lawsuit is almost purely based on the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
"Enactment of prohibition laws without Constitutional Amendment is
unconstitutional," Hirsch writes.
"The People have been converted to criminals if they possess cannabis, even
cannabis seeds; or if they cultivate or market cannabis. The People cannot
freely discuss cannabis without the threat of prosecution for conspiring to
violate the prohibition. The People have been the targets of a ruthless
campaign of lies, cover-ups, and pervasive propaganda to retain the
prohibition of cannabis, which The People contend is this country's most
valuable natural resource."
Hirsch argues that the federal government's classification of cannabis as a
drug or a narcotic "is arbitrary and without scientific merit." To the
contrary, he says, cannabis, or hemp, is simply a plant, and more
specifically an herb.
"Just as it is not a crime to smoke tobacco, or to ingest caffeine, or to
have a beer to relax after a hard day's work, neither can it be construed a
crime to use cannabis. It is no different than using other herbal remedies
like aloe vera, cayenne, chamomile, chasteberry, echinacea, ephedra,
garlic, ginger, ginkgo, ginseng, goldenseal, hawthorn, hops, licorice, milk
thistle, nettle, passion flower, peppermint, St. John's wort, senna and
Witch Hazel."
Hirsch argues that the drafters of the Constitution also understood the
promises made in the Declaration of Independence and that they "undertook
to secure conditions favorable to the pursuit of happiness."
In the Bill of Rights, he argues, the founding fathers "recognized the
significance of man's spiritual nature, of his feeling and of his
intellect. They knew that only a part of the pain, pleasure and
satisfactions of life are to be found in material things. They sought to
protect Americans in their beliefs, their thoughts, their emotions, and
their sensations."
To accomplish that goal, Hirsch says, the Constitution "conferred, as
against the government, the right to be let alone - the most comprehensive
of rights and the right most valued by civilized men."
Once it was decided that there would be a strong, central, federal
government, Hirsch says, many people - notably Thomas Jefferson, James
Madison and, later, John Adams - wanted to make sure that the power of that
government was severely limited.
"They wanted to be certain that the government did what it needed to do,
and nothing more," he argues. "Other than defending the borders,
establishing treaties, settling disputes, keeping a level playing field for
commerce, and ensuring the free flow of goods and ideas, they wanted to
make sure the government left the people blessedly alone."
To protect that right today, Hirsch argues, "every unjustifiable intrusion
by the government upon the privacy of the individual, whatever the means
employed, must be deemed a violation of both the First and the Fourth
Amendments."
Even before reading some of the over-the-top rhetoric, the lawsuit itself
stands out from the crowd, weighing in at 128 single-spaced pages packed
with more than 78,000 words - hardly a model of compliance with Rule 9(b)
of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure which call on lawyers to draft
lawsuits in the form of a "short, plain statement."
Hirsch's document, which verges on the length of a novel, arguably serves
the purpose of a slew of papers one might find in a courthouse file after a
case has been in litigation for many months, as well as some that are
rarely found there.
In other words, it looks like it could function as a lawsuit, depositions,
responses to a motion to dismiss, expert witness reports, and a brief in
opposition to a summary judgment motion all wrapped up in one. Add to that
a political manifesto, a closing argument, press releases, a few chapters
from a history book, and a glossary of important terms.
The table of contents shows that the stories of the class plaintiffs make
up most of the body of the lawsuit, running from page 3 to page 110.
Hirsch then goes on to offer some "Basic American History," followed by a
history of cannabis use as both a drug and as hemp for rope, paper and
other useful goods, and scientific explanations of the cannabis plant, its
seed and its oil.
The suit then attacks the THC pill, also known as Marinol, for being much
less effective than the whole plant.
The history of the prohibition on marijuana is explained next, beginning
with the Reefer Madness of the 1920s and '30s, culminating in the Marijuana
Tax Act of 1937 and leading to the current Controlled Substances Act of
1970.
Hirsch said he has served the suit on the Justice Department and is
awaiting their response. He says he's ready for whatever they have.
When asked if the government will try to argue that marijuana is dangerous
and that those who want to use it for therapeutic purposes can find safer
more effective cures in drug stores, Hirsch says, "Let them try."
"I'm ready to put my experts up against their experts."
The lawsuit is available for viewing at Hirsch's Website by pointing an
Internet browser to www.fairlaw.org.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Study - GOP Enjoys Tobacco's Perks (An 'Associated Pres' Article
In 'The Los Angeles Times' Says A New Report By Democrats On The House
Government Reform And Oversight Committee Shows That While Republicans
In Congress Took Numerous Rides Aboard Jets Owned By Tobacco Companies
Before The Senate Killed The McCain Tobacco Bill, Sponsored By An Arizona
Republican, A Wide Array Of Other Corporations Provide Jet Travel
To Lawmakers Of Both Parties)
Date: Wed, 22 Jul 1998 01:14:57 -0400
To: mapnews@mapinc.org
From: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org (MAPNews)
Subject: MN: US: Study: GOP Enjoys Tobacco's Perks
Sender: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Reply-To: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Organization: Media Awareness Project http://www.mapinc.org/lists/
Newshawk: Jim Rosenfield
Pubdate: Tue, 21 Jul 1998
Source: Los Angeles Times (CA)
Contact: letters@latimes.com
Fax: 213-237-4712
Website: http://www.latimes.com/
Author: Laurie Kellman, Associated Press Writer
STUDY: GOP ENJOYS TOBACCO'S PERKS
WASHINGTON - Republicans in Congress took numerous rides aboard jets owned by
tobacco companies in the 17 months before the GOP killed a Senate tobacco
bill the industry strongly opposed, a Democratic study of election records
shows. The report by Democrats on the House Government Reform and Oversight
Committee also showed that a wide array of other corporations -from the
health industry to casino and insurance interests -provide jet travel to
lawmakers of both parties. Federal election law requires the lawmakers to
reimburse companies for the travel.
As House Republicans prepare to defend their 11 -seat majority in this
fall's elections, Rep. Henry Waxman, the ranking Democrat on the panel, said
the report is evidence that the GOP killed a broad anti-smoking bill last
month as a favor to the tobacco industry.
"As far as Republicans are concerned, 'Air Tobacco' is their official
airlines," said Waxman, D-Calif., who issued the report Monday.
"As far as tobacco companies are concerned, this is a way for them to buy
greater influence with Republicans who run the Congress."
The anti-smoking bill sponsored by Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., would have
charged the industry at least $516 billion over 25 years and denied
companies the lawsuit protection they demand.
The report, which analyzed federal election records of the number of
reimbursement payments between January 1997 and May, shows tobacco companies
provided lawmakers more private air travel than any other corporate
interest, and that Republicans by far received the bulk of such perks.
Waxman, one of Congress' staunchest smoking foes and a leading proponent of
campaign finance reform legislation, said the study of Federal Election
Commission records found that of the 236 Republican travel payments to
corporations, 84 of them went to the tobacco industry.
In contrast, Democratic entities made 23 payments to corporations.
Democratic staff members said they could find no Democratic payments to
tobacco companies.
Federal election laws require lawmakers to report the amount of the
reimbursement, the date of payment and the name of the recipient. But no
other details are required of lawmakers, which makes it impossible to
determine how many flights were taken by each lawmaker.
Waxman said his staff tried to get that information from Republicans, who
refused.
Democrats charged that despite the reimbursements -at the cost of
first-class or charter airfare -the private jet trips amount to subsidized
travel in accommodations far more luxurious than upgraded commercial seats,
and cheaper than the cost of chartering a private plane. Companies pick up
the remainder of the cost, which can be tens of thousands of dollars.
Republicans say they reimbursed the companies for the cost of the flights
according to federal election laws. Since those same laws often require
lawmakers to write several checks for the reimbursement of the cost of one
flight, the number of checks written does not accurately reflect the
frequency with which Republicans used tobacco company planes. No Republicans
interviewed could provide an accurate count of the number of private flights
their lawmakers made.
The Democratic report contains "a wildly inflated count," said Republican
National Committee spokesman Mike Collins.
Waxman's own report proves that the industry "had no influence over
(legislative) decisions whatsoever," said Rep. John Linder, R-Ga., chairman
of the National Republican Congressional Committee, because it accuses the
GOP of being influenced by tobacco companies even when the party was
pursuing a bill tobacco companies staunchly opposed.
Copyright Los Angeles Times
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Drug Chief Mitigates Slap At Dutch After Tour ('The Washington Post'
Says General Barry McCaffrey Now Considers Dutch Drugs Policy
To Be A 'Mitigated' Rather Than An 'Unmitigated' Disaster)
Date: Wed, 22 Jul 1998 19:46:43 GMT
To: drctalk@drcnet.org
From: Dave Fratello (amr@lainet.com)
Subject: McC in Wash Post/softening criticism
Sender: owner-drctalk@drcnet.org
Well, DRCTalk has seemed to be dark since the server change, so here's my
contribution. I feel sort of obliged at this point to forward this final
piece about McC and the Dutch. All the controversy convinced him to drop
two letters from his criticism of the program. You have to read the whole
story to see which two...
-- dave fratello
***
The Washington Post
Tuesday, July 21, 1998
DRUG CHIEF MITIGATES SLAP AT DUTCH AFTER TOUR
McCaffery Softens His Criticism of Drug Policies
By Michael Grunwald
Less than two weeks ago, White House drug policy chief Barry R. McCaffrey
sparked an international stir by attacking Dutch drug-fighting policies as
"an unmitigated disaster." Yesterday, he offered a new description of their
efforts: "very impressive."
McCaffrey is still no fan of the permissive Dutch attitude toward
marijuana, and he was appalled by a "heroin provision" experiment for
addicts he saw during a one-day dash through the Netherlands last week. But
he said he was pleasantly surprised by aggressive Dutch efforts to rein in
drug smuggling, "drug tourism" and drug-related violence.
He even said that the United States could learn a great deal from the
expansive Dutch approach to funding drug treatment, especially methadone
programs for heroin users.
"I am envious of their ability to deliver drug treatment and health care to
heroin addicts," said McCaffrey, director of the Office of National Drug
Control Policy. "Our program is inadequate in coverage."
It was quite a change of tune for McCaffrey, who made front-page news in
the Netherlands with his "unmitigated disaster" comment during a July 9
appearance on a CNN talk show. McCaffrey said on the program that Dutch
acceptance of marijuana as a harmless "soft drug" has fueled dramatic
increases in crime and warned that official toleration of nearly 1,200
"cannabis clubs" in the Netherlands was setting a terrible example for
Europe. The Dutch ambassador to the United States, Joris Vos, responded
that he was "confounded and dismayed" by McCaffrey's remarks.
McCaffrey, a four-star general who served with distinction in the Vietnam
War and the Persian Gulf War, has courted controversy since President
Clinton named him to lead America's war on drugs in 1996. He was a bitter
critic of needle exchange programs, then muted his criticism somewhat after
Clinton endorsed them as a useful tool against AIDS. He praised Mexico's
top anti-drug official, Gen. Jesus Gutierrez Rebollo, as "an honest man,"
then professed shock when Gutierrez was arrested in a corruption sting
after just 10 weeks in office.
Yesterday, in a news conference about his week-long swing through six
European countries, McCaffrey acknowledged that he had overstepped with his
"unmitigated disaster" criticism of the Dutch. "In a more balanced vein,
I'd suggest that there are areas of agreement and areas of disagreement,"
he said. "Friends can disagree with friends."
Dutch officials yesterday said they welcomed his more conciliatory tone. "I
think he made a good visit and learned a lot," said embassy spokeswoman
Madelien DePlanque. "He doesn't agree with everything we do, but he's
entitled to an opinion."
McCaffrey visited a methadone program in Amsterdam and said he came away
impressed by the ease with which Dutch heroin addicts can get treatment. In
America, he said, methadone clinics are few and far between, and addicts
who do find them often face a maze of bureaucratic obstacles; only 115,000
of the estimated 800,000 U.S. heroin addicts currently get methadone.
McCaffrey also said he now believes that the Dutch are doing an "excellent
job" cracking down on serious drug crimes and getting tough with
"drug-dazed" foreign tourists who visit the country for its
marijuana-selling "coffee shops."
But McCaffrey is not quite ready for America to go Dutch when it comes to
drug abuse. He criticized the toleration of cannabis clubs as "legal
hypocrisy." He distributed statistics indicating dramatic across-the-board
increases in crime and drug-related deaths in the Netherlands since 1978.
He said he was disturbed by his visit with Rotterdam scientists who are
dispensing heroin to 750 addicts. And he warned that "this beautiful,
clean, quiet little country" has become a production and distribution hub
for much of the European drug trade.
"They just haven't connected their problems to their attitudes towards drug
abuse," McCaffrey said. "They seem to think marijuana is benign. It's not
benign."
McCaffrey refused to visit a cannabis club, explaining that he already
knows what people look like when they smoke pot. But he's done calling
Dutch policy an "unmitigated disaster."
"You can say it's a mitigated disaster," he said.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Why Dutch Drug Policy Threatens The US (A Translation Of An Excellent Op-Ed
In The Dutch Newspaper, 'Het Parool,' By Craig Reinarman, Author
Of 'Crack In America - Demon Drugs And Social Justice,' An American
Professor And Visiting Scholar At The University Of Amsterdam, Who Explains
To The Dutch That The US Drug Czar, General Barry McCaffrey, Lied About
The Netherlands' Experience Because The US Drug Control Complex Fears
Dutch Drug Policy Like The Catholic Church Feared Galileo - They Must Believe
The Dutch Model Is A Failure, Or Their Whole Cosmology Shatters)
Date: Tue, 21 Jul 1998 19:30:52 -0300 (ADT)
Sender: Chris Donald (ai256@chebucto.ns.ca)
From: Chris Donald (ai256@chebucto.ns.ca)
To: mattalk@listserv.islandnet.com
Subject: Essay: Dutch response to US Drug Czar's invented "facts"
WHY DUTCH DRUG POLICY THREATENS THE U.S.
Source: Het Parool [The Word]
Pubdate: Tue, 21 Jul 1998
Author: Craig Reinarman
He said it would be a "fact finding tour," but U.S. Drug Czar, General
Barry McCaffrey, made it clear before he ever left home that he would bring
his own "facts" about Dutch drug policy. He did his best impersonation of
a man "listening" during his few hours here, but in the end it was clearly
a "fact bringing" tour. Dutch officials and journalists immediately caught
him with his evidentiary pants down and chastised him for making false
claims about drug use and crime in the Netherlands.
Such slanders are nothing new. A few years ago, McCaffrey's predecessor
claimed that all the Dutch youth in Vondel Park were "stoned zombies." An
earlier Drug Czar proclaimed "you can't walk down the street in Amsterdam
without tripping over junkies." It is said that truth is the first
casualty of war, and drug wars are no different.
My Dutch friends and colleagues ask me in astonishment why Drug Czars
behave in such a strange manner? U.S. officials are threatened by Dutch
drug policy because it cuts against the grain of the moral ideology
underlying U.S. drug policy. That ideology runs deep in American culture
and politics. The U.S. has a history of hysteria about intoxicating
substances dating back to the 19th century Temperance crusade. For over a
hundred years, Americans believed that Satan's "demon drink" was the direct
cause of poverty, ill health, crime, insanity, and the demise of
civilisation. This fundamentalist crusade culminated with national alcohol
prohibition in 1919.
Alcohol Prohibition Agents quickly took over the job of creating U.S. drug
policy. Without debate, they chose criminalization. A series of antidrug
scares since then has led to the criminalization of more drugs and the
imprisonment of more drug users for longer terms. What animated each of
these scares, from the crusade against alcohol on, was less public health
than the politics of fear - fear of change, of "foreigners," of the
working class, of non-whites, of rebellious college students, of lost
control.
Having scapegoated drugs for so long, U.S. politicians cannot contemplate a
"tolerant" system like the Dutch. They compete for votes on the basis of
whose rhetoric is "tougher" on drugs. The Right-wing Republicans who
control Congress call President Clinton "soft on drugs" even though more
drug users are imprisoned now than ever. Clinton appointed McCaffrey Drug
Czar not because the General has any training in drugs, but because he was
a military man who would symbolize "toughness."
U.S. drug policy has been getting "tougher." The Czar's budget was
increased from $1 billion in 1980 to $17 billion this year. The number of
drug offenders imprisoned in the U.S. has increased 800% since 1980,
helping the U.S. achieve the highest imprisonment rate in the
industrialized world -- 550 per 100,000 population, compared to the
Netherlands' 79 per 100,000. Under the banner of the war on drugs, a kind
of creeping totalitarianism tramples more human rights and civil liberties
each year: tens of millions of "clean" citizens subjected to supervised
urine tests at work; hundreds of thousands searched in their homes or, on
the basis of racist "trafficker profiles," at airports or on freeways;
possessions seized by the state on suspicion alone. And U.S. school
children have been bombarded with more antidrug propaganda than any
generation in history.
The results of all this suggest why U.S. officials are lashing out. Their
own surveys show that illicit drug use by American youth has increased in
five of the last six years. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration
admits that hard drugs are just as available, less expensive, and more pure
than ever. Hard drug abuse and addiction among the urban poor remain
widespread. Some judges have even refused to apply harsh drug laws.
Opinion polls now show a majority of Americans do not believe the war on
drugs can be won. More and more are voicing their opposition and seeking
alternatives to punitive prohibition. The drug policy reform movement in
the U.S. is growing larger and more diverse.
And when these pesky heretics argue that there are alternatives to punitive
prohibition, one of their key examples is Dutch drug policy. U.S. drug
warriors wish the Netherlands example did not exist, but since they cannot
make even small countries disappear, they are reduced to making up their
own "facts" about it.
Dutch drug policy is a threat to drug warriors precisely because it has NOT
led to what McCaffrey called an "unmitigated disaster." Dutch society has
its drug problems, of course, but no more and often less than most other
modern democracies. In fact, more people have tried cannabis in the U.S.
where millions have gone to prison for it than in the Netherlands where
citizens may buy it lawfully. The U.S. drug control complex fears Dutch
drug policy like the Catholic Church feared Galileo - they MUST believe
the Dutch model is a failure, for if it is not their whole cosmology
shatters.
U.S. drug control ideology holds that there is no such thing as use of an
illicit drug, only abuse. Drug use patterns in the Netherlands show that
for the overwhelming majority of users, drugs are just one more type of
genotsmiddelen [food, spice, or intoxicant giving pleasure to the senses]
that the Dutch have been importing and culturally domesticating for
centuries.
U.S. officials tend to lump all illicit drugs together, as if all were
equally dangerous and addictive. Dutch drug policy makes pragmatic
distinctions based on relative risks. When U.S. officials are confronted
by the scientific evidence that cannabis is among the least risky drugs,
they fall back on the claim that it is a "stepping stone" to hard drugs.
But here, too, the evidence from Dutch surveys is heresy: despite tolerant
policies and ready availability, most Dutch people never try cannabis, and
most who do try it don't continue to use even cannabis very often, much
less harder drugs. In short, the Dutch facts are a Drug Czar's nightmare.
Leaders more secure about the effectiveness and fairness of their own drug
policies would feel less need to attack Dutch drug policy. Dutch officials
do not proselytize, urging other nations to adopt their methods, and the
U.S. is obviously not obliged to adopt any part of the Dutch approach. By
the same logic, the U.S. should realize that other societies do not share
its phobias and do not appreciate its tendency toward drug policy
imperialism -- particularly when what the U.S. offers is repressive,
expensive failure.
We inhabit an increasingly multi-cultural world, which is also a
multi-lifestyle and multi-morality world. Drug policy, therefore, cannot
be as simple as stretch socks - "one size fits all." Neither European
integration nor globalized markets erase differences in language, culture,
behavior, or politics. Thus, a cookie cutter approach in which each
nation's drug policy is identical =96 whether punitive prohibition or any
other model =96 makes no sense. Dutch drug policy has bravely broadened
the range of possibilities to examine, which is as useful for those who
want to learn something as it is fearful for those who do not.
Dr. Reinarman is Professor of Sociology at the University of California,
Santa Cruz, and Visiting Scholar at the Centrum voor Drugsonderzoek at the
Universiteit van Amsterdam. His most recent book is "Crack In America:
Demon Drugs and Social Justice," with Harry G. Levine et al.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Crime Finds Home On US-Canada Border ('USA Today' Says British Columbian
Marijuana Trades Pound-For-Pound For Cocaine And Is Flooding The West Coast
Of The United States, Contributing To An Increase In 'Crime' Along The Border
With Canada To Levels Surpassing The Rum-Running Days Of Prohibition)
Date: Wed, 22 Jul 1998 18:45:33 -0500
To: mapnews@mapinc.org
From: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org (MAPNews)
Subject: MN: US: Crime Finds Home On U.S.-Canada Border
Sender: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Reply-To: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Organization: Media Awareness Project http://www.mapinc.org/lists/
Newshawk: compassion23@geocities.com (Frank S. World)
Source: USA Today (US)
Pubdate: Tue, 21 Jul 1998
Contact: editor@usatoday.com
Website: http://www.usatoday.com/news/nfront.htm
Author: Martin Kasindorf, USA TODAY
CRIME FINDS HOME ON U.S.-CANADA BORDER
BLAINE, Wash. - With official attention in Washington riveted on the
U.S.-Mexican border, crime along the USA's undefended border with
Canada is climbing to levels surpassing the rum-running days of
Prohibition.
From the moose wallows of Maine to the raspberry fields of Washington
state, border authorities are wrestling with these problems:
For 18 months, shipments of the $7,000-a-pound British Columbia marijuana
known as "B.C. Bud" have been deluging the West Coast. The popular drug is
so potent that dealers trade it pound for pound for cocaine, U.S. Border
Patrol agents say. One means of transporting B.C. Bud: sea kayak. The arrest
in New York City of a suspected terrorist who had entered the U.S. from
Canada has spotlighted the Ottawa government's willingness to offer
political asylum to radicals fleeing the Middle East. The suspect, when
discovered, was building a bomb, allegedly to plant in the subway. Some
congressmen now worry that more would-be terrorists will try to infiltrate
from Canada. Aliens from Asia who are smuggled into the United States from
Canada are drowning in the St. Lawrence and Niagara rivers. Some Mohawk
Indians exploit their 11,000-resident reservation's strategic position on
New York's border with Ontario and Quebec. At least 12 times since 1994,
arrest reports in both countries have alleged Mohawks' involvement in
smuggling drugs and people to the United States as well as cigarettes and
liquor to Canada to evade that country's high taxes. Last month, a former
Mohawk chief was indicted by federal prosecutors for racketeering. Smuggled
merchandise ranging from Beanie Babies to embargoed Iranian carpets is
crossing the porous frontier, and inspectors say they're seizing 10% of it
at best. "Not to denigrate the war on drugs, but we have the war on rugs,"
says Tom Leupp, chief Border Patrol agent in Swanton, Vt.
For decades, the 4,000-mile border was the peaceful domain of
migrating moose and pleasure-seeking tourists. Canadians and Americans
still breeze through border crossings without filling out documents or
showing proof of citizenship. Most tourists are asked a few polite
questions by inspectors as they sit in their cars at checkpoints, then
go on their way.
But troubles are mounting. Although the northern boundary remains far
less violent than the U.S.-Mexican border, there has been an upswing
in alien smuggling and drug crimes. The Border Patrol apprehended
almost twice as many illegal aliens in 1997 than in 1988, and
marijuana confiscations jumped 87% from 1996 to 1997.
Now, overworked Border Patrol agents are pleading for reinforcements
to guard vast expanses of woods and farm fields along the border,
often marked only by an occasional boundary stone. A Senate committee
last month urged the Border Patrol to deploy more agents along the
Canadian border; for now, only 291 of the Border Patrol's 7,700 agents
are assigned to the Canadian line.
What finally turned Congress' attention northward was the specter of
international terrorism. Several recent arrests have brought home the
possibility that terrorists are establishing themselves in Canada,
because of that government's relatively easy-going attitude toward
asylum, then slipping into the USA:
Gazi Ibrahim Abu Mezer, 24, a Palestinian from Israel, won refugee
status in Canada and kept it despite two criminal convictions there.
Arrested three times by the Border Patrol while trying to sneak into
Washington state here at Blaine, the major crossing point in the west,
he was freed by an immigration judge pending a deportation hearing.
Then, in July, 1997, New York police arrested him and another
Palestinian as they allegedly were within hours of pipe-bombing the
city's subways. Mezer is on trial in Brooklyn on federal conspiracy
charges.
New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani charged the U.S. Immigration and
Naturalization Service with negligence. Justice Department Inspector
General Michael Bromwich blamed the trouble on Mezer's "easy entry
into Canada" and a shortage of Border Patrol agents in the Northwest.
"We got him three times," says Gene Davis, deputy Border Patrol chief
here. "What bothers me about the Mezer case is, how many times did we
not get him - or others?"
Tracking terrorists
Hani Abdel Rahim al-Sayegh, 29, fled to Canada from Saudi Arabia after
the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing killed 19 U.S. airmen. While Canadian
authorities were considering asylum, they got a Saudi tip that Sayegh
had driven a signaling car in the attack. Canada deported him to the
United States after he agreed to provide information. He later reneged
on his plea bargain and is being held in a federal detention center.
Canada accepted Mohammed Hussein al-Husseini in 1991, but returned him
to his native Lebanon in 1994 after he admitted membership in the
Iran-financed Hezbollah organization and said a Hezbollah support
network was active in Canada. Hezbollah has been linked to terrorist
attacks against Israel and the U.S. Marine barracks in Lebanon. A
member of the Abu Nidal gang tried to enter the United States at
Champlain, N.Y. in January, 1996, with false documents. Yousef Khalid
Salem, 41, was deported to Lebanon.
The FBI declined to discuss the terrorist threat from Canada. The
Canadian Security Intelligence Service, Canada's equivalent of the
CIA, has been more forthright. In April, the intelligence agency
reported, "Most of the world's terrorist groups have established
themselves in Canada, seeking safe haven, setting up operational bases
and attempting to gain access to the USA."
Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Texas, chairman of the House immigration
subcommittee, cites Canada's "chilling" asylum record as a reason to
preserve a controversial 1996 immigration law that would make crossing
the border far more complicated.
Though the technology isn't ready, the measure requires the INS to
install by Oct. 1 a nationwide computerized system matching an entry
document from every visiting alien with an exit document as the alien
leaves the United States. Canadians who like the current system want
an exemption from the new paperwork, saying the law was aimed at
tracking visa overstayers and wouldn't block terrorism.
Knowing "who's coming in, why they're coming and how long they're
staying" would help track terrorists, Smith responds. As for
Canadians' sensibilities, it's "fairness and equity" to make them
complete the same forms Mexicans will. "The time has come to treat
both borders the same," he says.
If Smith prevails, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce says, the result could
be titanic traffic backups for American citizens and noncitizens
alike, as resentful Canadians fill out the new entry and exit forms.
An imbalance in border policing
Powerful Texans and Californians in Congress have dictated border
policing efforts for years, pressuring federal agencies to deploy most
of its resources on the Southwest.
The 291 Border Patrol agents assigned to the Canadian boundary monitor
the terrain between border checkpoints, the 90 northern crossings
staffed by customs and immigration inspectors. The crossings include
both busy locations such as Detroit and Buffalo and quiet stations
such as Sweetgrass, Mont.
Many of the smaller ports of entry are unstaffed at night, so agents
must rely on remote sensors, tips from farmers and their friendships
with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police to track night crossers.
In pending appropriations bills, Congress is recognizing the
imbalances. The Senate Appropriations Committee told the INS to "begin
deploying" more Border Patrol agents outside of the Southwest. But
every dollar allocated for new construction projects in the
committee's bill - lights, fences, roads and Border Patrol stations -
goes to the boundary with Mexico.
Northern-based federal crime fighters chafe at their backwater status.
Steve Casteel, who heads the Drug Enforcement Administration regional
office in the Pacific Northwest, says he feels like "the right fielder
on a Little League team."
Raw statistics don't yet justify a massive reallocation of resources.
The 16,344 illegal aliens caught in northern Border Patrol sectors in
fiscal 1997 would represent only 1% of the 1,368,707 arrests on the
Mexico border. The 1,487 pounds of hydroponically grown B.C. Bud
seized at Blaine last year were a big deal here, but the Border Patrol
in McAllen, Texas, seized 113,272 pounds of marijuana in that period.
Border Patrol agent Ray Gaudreau, of Swanton, Vt., says his area's
biggest shortfall isn't more agents. What is needed, Gaudreau says, is
money to put arrested aliens on planes for distant homelands. Now,
they may be sent back to Canada, free to try again.
In the Southwest, 90% of arrested illegal entrants are Mexicans. In
steady annual numbers, the north in the 1990s has recorded arrests of
110 nationalities, including Turks, Kazakhs, Russians, Chinese,
Punjabi Indians and Pakistanis.
Thousands of mainland Chinese have been smuggled to Canada with false
documents, paying up to $70,000 for the complete travel package.
Buying time in Canada by making phony asylum claims, many Chinese
ultimately filter down to New York City sweatshops and restaurants,
Royal Canadian Mounted Police Corporal Fred Bowen says.
About half of would-be illegal entrants from Canada sign up with
smuggling rings. They often can be cruelly incompetent.
A Malaysian woman being ferried to Youngstown, N.Y., in a flimsy
inflatable raft drowned in the icy Niagara River in 1989.
In 1996, 51-year-old Naseem Taj of Pakistan died when St. Lawrence
River waves swamped her overcrowded boat crossing the
smuggling-plagued Akwesasne Mohawk reservation.
"Canada lets everybody in, and two days later they're coming down
here," Gaudreau says. A few years ago, Canada lifted visa requirements
for tourists from South Korea and Costa Rica. Within weeks, the Border
Patrol began seeing waves of illegal immigrants from those countries.
Proud of its tradition of haven, Canada approves 40% of political
asylum applications, compared to the 17% approved by the United
States. But the Canadian Immigration and Refugee Board's Rachel
Labelle says Ottawa is getting a bad rap over terrorism.
Canada bars known terrorists. Last year, immigration judges rejected
775 applicants from Israel, mainly Palestinians, approving only 21.
Experts differ on the scope of the terrorist threat from Canada, which
has become home to radical Indian Sikhs, Sri Lankan Tamil Tigers and
Algerian fundamentalists.
The publicized recent cases "may be the tip of a significant iceberg,"
says former CSIS strategic planning chief David Harris, a former
Canadian intelligence official and now president of Insignis Strategic
Research in Ottawa.
Brian Jenkins, a Rand Corp. consultant, is less concerned about a
terrorist threat. In 10 years, he says, there have been only a handful
of attempted terrorist border crossings, none harmful. "It doesn't
rise to the level of peril," Jenkins says.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
'I Was Reduced To A Lab Rat' ('The Ottawa Citizen' Recounts The Case
Of Dorothy Proctor, Who Is Suing The Canadian Government For $5 Million
For Giving Her Experimental LSD While She Was A 17-Year-Old Inmate
In Solitary Confinement At Kingston Prison In 1961)
Date: Wed, 22 Jul 1998 13:17:07 -0700
To: mapnews@mapinc.org
From: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org (MAPNews)
Subject: MN: Canada: "I Was Reduced to a Lab Rat"
Sender: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Reply-To: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Organization: Media Awareness Project http://www.mapinc.org/lists/
Newshawk: creator@mapinc.org
Source: Ottawa Citizen (Canada)
Contact: letters@thecitizen.southam.ca
Website: http://www.ottawacitizen.com/
Pubdate: Tue 21 Jul 1998
Author: Mike Blanchfield
`I WAS REDUCED TO A LAB RAT'
Ex-inmate Dorothy Proctor says she was used in LSD experiments. Federal
documents appear to corroborate her claim, Mike Blanchfield writes.
His voice pierced the darkness. ``Dorothy,'' the psychologist said,
``There's a new medicine out and I would like you to take it because it
might help you, so that you don't ever have to come back to The Hole, so
that you can calm down and get through your period with us.''
This was the basement of the federal prison in Kingston, the area staff
referred to as ``segregation'' or ``disassociation.'' To inmates, it was
``The Hole.''
In this five-by-eight-foot, windowless cell lit by a single bulb, reeking
from a plugged toilet, Dorothy Proctor was about to have her first
experience with a powerful hallucinogenic drug called lysergic acid
diethylamide, or LSD-25. It was some time in 1961, several years before the
drug became part of the '60s counterculture, eight years before it was
illegal in Canada.
Ms. Proctor remembers taking five blue pills, 200 milligrams of LSD. It
was, she recalls, a very bad trip.
``The ceiling and the floor started meeting each other,'' she says. ``The
walls started to melt. The bars became snakes and started coming at me.
I remember dry screaming -- screaming but nothing coming out -- no one there
to help me, things all over my body.''
The details of that first exposure are seared into Ms. Proctor's brain. ``I
was reduced to a lab rat,'' she says, ``a monkey in a cage.''
She says the effects of those LSD treatments continue to haunt her today.
Ms. Proctor, now a long-recovered drug addict, says she is still plagued by
flashbacks. According to a Corrections Canada report, her symptoms are
consistent with a recognized psychiatric disorder -Post-Hallucinogen
Perceptual Disorder (PHPD) -- that was identified in the late 1950s.
She must fold her arms across herself or clasp her hands together in order
to sleep; she avoids her reflection in mirrors, store windows or pools of
water so she won't feel like she is being sucked into them; she imagines
her skin bubbling and oozing if she looks at it too long. The LSD
experiment whetted her appetite for other drugs, she contends, contributing
to her becoming a cocaine and heroin addict after she was released.
She complained in 1996 to Corrections Canada, which investigated and
corroborated her story last year. The department recommended she receive
compensation and an apology. The federal government has yet to respond. It
referred the matter to a Montreal research institute for further
consultation.
Tired of waiting, Ms. Proctor launched a $5-million lawsuit earlier this
month against the government and the men who gave her LSD while she was in
prison. The defendants in the case have yet to issue a statement of
defence.
Ms. Proctor's experience sounds like a storyline from television's The
X-Files. However, the government's files corroborate many of her claims.
For decades, those documents gathered dust. They were re-opened last year
by a board of inquiry from Corrections Canada, which was investigating Ms.
Proctor's complaint.
Those files provide a glimpse into an era when bureaucrats, psychiatrists
and prison wardens viewed LSD as a magic pill to cure criminal behaviour, a
drug that could break down criminals' defences so their personality could
be rebuilt, moulding them into respectable citizens.
``If you told this story to the typical Canadian citizen, I don't think
they would have believed it happened,'' says Ms. Proctor's lawyer, James
Newland, who has examined more than 300 pages of government files
pertaining to his client. ``People are now aware that it did happen, and
their government did this.''
To him, the inference in her file is clear: Prison officials, with the full
knowledge of senior federal bureaucrats, were determined at all costs to
test a dangerous drug on a defiant teenager, who had embarrassed the system
by escaping the penitentiary and who openly defied authority every chance
she got.
During an investigation last year, Corrections Canada found evidence in its
files of an LSD experiment involving 23 inmates, including Dorothy, at the
Prison for Women in the early '60s. Corrections tracked down one of the
women, and said the story she told had ``an almost unbelievable similarity
in terms of anecdotal reports'' to the harrowing tale recounted by Ms.
Proctor.
``When I was locked with chain and padlock in my cell after one of my LSD
treatments, I can remember slashing my left arm, and when it was bleeding,
little tiny black things crawled out of my arm and floated with the blood.
These were spiders. After the bleeding stopped, my arm stopped crying and
howling and it wasn't swollen any more.
``That first night I couldn't remember how the spiders got in my body and
some time in the middle of the night it came to me. Spider semen crawled
up my legs and into my vagina and some crawled up my body and entered
through both ears. That night I wadded up toilet paper and `plugged' my
vagina, anus and ears. I never slept.''
Corrections investigators concluded that officials tried to explain the
experiment to Ms. Proctor and obtain verbal consent. But they could find no
written consent forms. Even if they had, the investigators concluded an
inmate in solitary confinement could never give informed consent. (Written
consent forms did not become a necessity until the 1970s.)
As Ms. Proctor told Corrections Canada investigators last year, ``I'm
assuming because of my circumstances and my environment I probably would
have said, `Yes' to anything.''
***
Dorothy Proctor entered the Kingston Prison for Women in 1960 as one of
society's castoffs. At 17, she was facing a three-year robbery sentence,
her first conviction as an adult.
She was the product of a broken home and a life on the streets. Her mother
abandoned her shortly after her birth in Glace Bay, N.S. She was raised by
grandparents and various relatives. She was sexually abused as a girl. Her
teenage years were lived on the run, across Canada and parts of the U.S.
She was reunited with her mother in the late 1950s. A juvenile court judge
had ordered her to be sent to her mother, who lived in East Coulee, a small
town in the heart of Alberta's Badlands. Dorothy took off again in 1959,
bored with her rural surroundings and feeling ostracized from other
children in the community because of her mixed-race background. Her mother
was white and her birth father -- no longer in the picture -- was black.
She linked up with a couple of other young people. Their run ended in
Chatham, Ont. in early 1960, when they were convicted of stealing a car.
Dorothy received three years in Canada's only federal penitentiary for
women.
She arrived in prison with an air of self-assuredness and ``sophistication
beyond her 17 years,'' wrote a prison social worker.
She moved gracefully and had an expressive way of talking with her hands.
``Dorothy is a striking looking girl of mixed origin. She has light
coffee-colored skin, very dark eyes and black wavy hair,'' the social
worker wrote.
All of that hid a ``lonely child who craves affection,'' the social worker
remarked.
Dorothy adapted poorly to prison life. She fought occasionally with other
inmates, smashed small items a couple of times, and once she tried to slash
her left wrist. Usually, she simply refused to get out of bed in the
morning, for which she was routinely written up on for ``offending against
good order and discipline.''
On July 24, 1960, Dorothy became the first inmate to escape the Prison for
Women. She had rolled up towels and an extra pillow under her covers and
hid until dark at the back of softball diamond.
She scaled the 10-metre wall -- a combination of stone, chain link and
barbed wire -- using a bench from the the park and a blanket from her cell.
By September, she had criss-crossed the country again, winding up back in
East Coulee. After three months as a fugitive, she was arrested again when
her mother called the Mounties.
Her defiant behaviour behind bars continued. She smashed a broom handle on
a matron's knuckles. She refused to get out of bed.
Dorothy's lawyer believes Corrections officials selected her for the LSD
experiment because they found her an embarrassment to the system.
Her prison break earned national headlines, and she openly defied the
warden in front of her guards, says Mr. Newland.
On Feb. 24, 1961, Dorothy was summoned to the office of Supt. Isabel
Macneill. She refused to get up. Three male guards were sent from the men's
penitentiary to get her. She broke free in the prison laundry room. Dorothy
flung an iron, narrowly missing a guard's head. Supt. Macneill arrived just
in time to hear ``abusive and indecent language.''
Within months, Dorothy received her first dose of LSD in solitary confinement.
***
At the time, the drug was legal, but unknown outside mental health circles.
It was touted as a shortcut through the often long and difficult
psychotherapy process. By 1962, more than 1,000 research papers had been
published on its therapeutic and experimental effects. However, the method
was soon discredited, and the drug was outlawed in Canada in 1969.
One month before the fight in the laundry room, Dorothy sat in the office
of Dr. George Scott, the prison's head of psychiatry and a respected prison
physician.
Dr. Scott prided himself on being on the vanguard of psychiatric
developments. When a new drug like LSD came along, he believed it was the
responsibility of scientists such as himself to test it. In the post-war
years, Dr. Scott felt driven to test new therapies. Though some of these
approaches have been criticized, Dr. Scott stands by them today.
In a recent interview, he enthusiastically recalls how he became a convert
to electro-shock therapy in the 1950s.
``The man who pioneered shock treatment was actually the man in charge of a
hospital for epileptics. He noticed that when epileptics had a fit they
were lucid for maybe two or three days. He got thinking about it. He tried
finding a drug that he could inject that would produce a fit
He found the
patients improved themselves.''
Dr. Scott does not remember Dorothy Proctor. He estimates he has seen tens
of thousands of patients since then. (Dr. Scott was stripped of his license
to practice medicine by the Ontario College of Physicians and Surgeons in
August 1995 after pleading guilty to having sex with a
patient.)
However, as government files show, Dr. Scott was clearly excited about the
possibility of treating Dorothy in the early 1960s. He saw her during ``an
extremely interesting orientation interview,'' according to a Feb. 3, 1961,
report he wrote. Dr. Scott said he wanted to see Dorothy ``on a fairly
intense (basis)'' over the following three to four months.
``I feel it will be of great psychological significance to see how she
attempts to handle the therapeutic relationship,'' Dr. Scott wrote.
He tried to convince her to enter into ``treatment'' with him, but Dorothy
was reluctant. Dr. Scott's report doesn't specify the treatment he had
offered.
He again urged Dorothy to take therapy, according to his report dated May
16, 1961.
``She inquired what `therapy' meant,'' Dr. Scott wrote. ``This was
explained to her and it was pointed out that the therapeutic situation was
designed to develop some understanding within herself of her own weak
points.''
Again, Dr. Scott's report does not specify the nature of the therapy being
recommended.
Again, he noted, ``this case is extremely interesting from the therapeutic
point of view, in that it will entail a fairly intense therapeutic
relationship over a period of months.''
In his June 6, 1961, report, Dr. Scott noted that Dorothy was ``mystified
that interest has been taken in her from a psychiatric point of view, and
while she is pleasant and co-operative, does not really `need this type of
treatment' in her opinion.'' Again, ``treatment'' is never defined in Dr.
Scott's report.
In July 1961, Dorothy escaped for the second time, but was quickly
re-arrested. In August 1961, she was sent to The Hole.
Supt. Macneill personally outlined the reasons in a letter to Dorothy dated
Aug. 17, 1961: refusal to work in the sewing room; refusal to wear proper
clothing at meals; ``insolence and threatening talk'' to a
prison staffer; defying Supt. Macneill herself on one particular occasion.
She told Dorothy her attitude was deplorable and that any attempt to gain
parole would be ``futile unless supported by recommendations from this
institution.''
Supt. Macneill continued: ``You will have very few privileges at present -
if you co-operate 100 per cent you will get privileges gradually, but you
must never again think you can get away with flaunting (sic) authority.''
It was then that Dorothy was administered LSD for the first time.
Last year's Corrections report concluded solitary confinement ``was not a
venue suited to the administration of LSD.''
There is another interesting aspect to this trip to The Hole -there's no
official mention of it in Dorothy's conduct file.
Dorothy's ``Conduct Sheet'' is part of her official government file. The
five-page document lists 20 offences from April 26, 1960 to Sept. 4, 1962
- everything from failing to get out of bed to fighting to damaging
property, including the Feb. 24, 1961, laundry room incident where she
threw the iron and swore at Miss Macneill. The penalties are also
well-documented, including token fines, reduced meal privileges, and trips
to The Hole - including her first sentence, seven days beginning June 27,
1960.
The record shows a gap between the laundry room incident and another
incident on Jan. 23, 1962, in which Dorothy was fined $5 for smashing a
radio. According to the Conduct Sheet, the August 1961 trip to The Hole
never happened.
However, officials in Ottawa were well aware of it.
On Oct. 23, 1961, Mark Eveson, a psychologist who was also working with
Dorothy (and who is one of the defendants in the current lawsuit), wrote a
two-page letter to the physician in charge of penitentiary medical services
with the federal Department of Justice.
Of Dorothy's bad acid trip, it said only that it ``produced no change in
the behaviour, and
we felt that either the initial dose was too heavy to
induce anxiety and recall, or, that this drug was unsuccessful with this
kind of personality usually termed psychopathic.''
To that date, none of Dr. Scott's reports offered any diagnosis that
concrete. Until then, no one had labelled Dorothy a psychopath.
Mr. Eveson concluded Dorothy had undergone ``a remarkable change in
behaviour'' as a result of LSD. All her ``excessive violence'' had
disappeared. ``She is now working well and is no longer a behaviour problem
in the institution, and I feel that treatment has been highly successful.''
His conclusion was premature. Three months later, Dorothy smashed a radio;
in March 1962, she attacked a guard and got 10 days in The Hole; the
following month she attacked Supt. Macneill with a crutch when a kitten was
taken away from her - an attack for which she was sentenced to another
week in solitary.
In a Nov. 6, 1962 letter to Supt. Macneill, Mr. Eveson concluded: ``I do
not think this young person is suitable for parole.'' He made no mention of
the LSD treatments a year earlier.
***
Today, Dorothy Proctor lives a quiet life, in an undisclosed part of
Canada. It is a modest life lived in fear and anonymity.
After she got out of prison in 1963, she got hooked on cocaine, heroin and
soft drugs. She cavorted with high-level crime figures on the eastern
seaboard. She had the furs and the fine food, and then she lost it all. In
the early 1970s, she was down and out on Skid Row in Vancouver. That's when
the RCMP recruited her to work as an undercover agent.
For the next two decades, she used her street smarts to infiltrate criminal
drug organizations across Canada gathering intelligence for police. She has
worked in Ottawa, where she has helped lead police to top-level drug
dealers. She has plenty of enemies, many of whom want to see her dead. She
won't allow herself to be photographed, and she won't divulge where she
lives.
In the late '80s, clinging to her Catholic faith for support, she beat her
drug habit and has been clean since. She no longer works with police.
Two years ago, she launched two complaints through the Solicitor General of
Canada. The first was against the RCMP, alleging they'd breached their own
code of conduct for using her as a sexual plaything during her 20 years
working for them.
The Mounties, as is their practice, investigated her complaint internally.
They sent her a terse two-page letter dismissing it. They told her their
records showed the officers in question were never alone with her at any
time. The complaint centred on an Ottawa-area narcotics officer with whom
she worked between November 1982 and March 1983. The RCMP turned the tables
and accused her of making sexual advances to police.
``These independent witnesses were interviewed and without going into any
specifics it is evident from their responses that your sexual advances
towards them
were neither appreciated nor accepted,'' says a letter sent
to her earlier this year.
Dorothy isn't surprised. She calls the Mounties ``schoolboys'' who circle
their wagons and cover each other when trouble strikes one of their rank.
``I just wanted to rattle their cage and let them know I remember what they
did to me,'' she says.
Her other complaint centred on the LSD experiment. This time, investigators
found a paper trail that appeared to support her allegations.
The files don't dispute that Dorothy was one of about two dozen women to
receive LSD while inmates in the early '60s. The government has shelved its
first report - the one completed last year by the Corrections board of
inquiry that recommended compensation - in favour of further study by the
McGill Centre for Medicine, Ethics and the Law. It recently received an
extension on its May reporting deadline.
This time, Dorothy is getting support from outside the government. The
Canadian Association of Elizabeth Fry Societies and the B'Nai Brith League
for Human Rights have joined her fight against the government.
They both say the government should stop stalling and compensate her. In
the long run, they say it would be cheaper for taxpayers than a long legal
battle. Kim Pate, executive director of Elizabeth Fry, says the
government's reluctance to address the LSD issue is indicative of deep
disregard for women's penal issues.
She says little has changed since a royal commission investigated the
outbreak of violence at the Prison for Women in 1994, when male riot guards
strip-searched female inmates. In her findings, Justice Louise Arbour, then
of the Ontario Court of Appeal, concluded the women's prison system
``operates with virtually no public scrutiny or accountability.''
Dorothy Proctor realizes most Canadians have little sympathy for the
travails of an ex-inmate. But she believes they ought to have some concern
about how their government wields power.
``In my opinion, the ultimate abuse is when the government abuses you,''
she says. ``What they said to me is, `You are worthless, you are a piece of
trash and we can use you anyway we want.'
``I'm not bitter. I'm not angry. I've already forgiven them. The only thing
I feel is betrayal.''
-------------------------------------------------------------------
[End]
to 1998 Daily News index for July 16-22