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A Questionable Proposition (A Fresno Bee update on Proposition 215 in
California shares the perspectives of medical marijuana patients, but points
the federal government in the direction of the CHAMPS dispensary in San
Francisco.)
From: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org (MAPNews)
To: "MAPNews-posts (E-mail)" (mapnews@mapinc.org)
Subject: MN: US CA: A questionable propositon
Date: Wed, 19 Aug 1998 14:11:15 -0500
Sender: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Reply-To: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Organization: Media Awareness Project http://www.mapinc.org/lists/
Newshawk: Jo-D Harrison
Source: The Fresno Bee
Contact: letters@fresnobee.com
Website: http://www.fresnobee.com/
Pubdate: Tuesday, 10 Aug 1998
Author: Doug Hoagland
A QUESTIONABLE PROPOSITION
SAN FRANCISCO - John Lemos, a man of the Valley, has come to this city to
buy marijuana. Marijuana he uses as medicine; marijuana he uses to get
high - thanks to California voters and Proposition 215, the Medical
Marijuana Initiative of 1996.
Every month, Lemos makes the journey from his home in Hanford to CHAMP, a
club that sells pot. There are no such clubs in the Valley.
CHAMP stands for Californians Helping Alleviate Medical Problems, and it
sits at 194 Church St., which is rather fitting if you listen very long to
the club's supporters. They don't say it outright, but their inference is
clear: CHAMP's mission is heavenly.
It's here on a July afternoon that Janna, a club employee with two nose
rings and a ponytail of braids, checks Lemos' photo identification. Janna
says she has no last name, and she does it with a nasally air of authority
that suggests she would appreciate no more questions.
She and Lemos stand at an open doorway, the club's security door propped
open to welcome a fresh breeze and brilliant sunshine washing over San
Francisco.
Janna's job is to stop double dealing: People buying at CHAMP and then
reselling on the street. She says she does it with prayer. "Really, a
spiritual defense is our first line." You know she's not kidding.
But none of Janna's resources - spiritual or otherwise - is needed with
Lemos, a tall, angular man with bleached blond hair. Lemos is a legit
customer. He has AIDS. He started using marijuana to ease severe nausea from
chemotherapy. Now, he says, he takes 48 pills a day which kill his appetite.
Without marijuana, he has no appetite, he says.
Janna stands aside at the doorway and allows Lemos to climb a 19-step
staircase to CHAMP's second-floor space above a bar called The Transfer.
This is the Castro, San Francisco's pre-eminent gay neighborhood. The
sidewalks are big-city crowded. A Boston Market is across the street;
Blockbuster and Safeway are up the way.
Lemos, 51, takes the steps easily. Pretty good for a man who expected to be
dead by now. Six months. That's what the doctor gave him in 1989. "I've been
really lucky - I guess," Lemos says, irony creeping into his flat voice,
dark humor trailing right behind.
Maybe his work prepared him for all of this. He worked as a mortician before
they told him he was going to die. Resignation and fatigue have dulled a
once exuberant personality. Yet Lemos still is friendly and easygoing.
Amused, too, by the painting at the top of the CHAMP staircase. It's a loud,
irreverent depiction of Elvis Presley in Mickey Mouse ears and a red royal
robe. The King looks foolish, but what the hell. This is San Francisco.
This trip up the stairs, Lemos smiles again at Elvis as he steps into the
club to make his purchase.
The retailing of marijuana is where the battle over Prop. 215 now rages. The
initiative made it legal for Californians to grow and possess marijuana for
medical purposes.
The proposition's one catch: A doctor must recommend "that the person's
health would benefit from the use of marijuana in the treatment of cancer,
anorexia, AIDS, chronic pain, spasticity, glaucoma, arthritis, migraine or
any other illness for which marijuana provides relief."
But, says Evelyn James, spokeswoman for the U.S. Drug Enforcement
Administration in San Francisco, "There is nothing in the proposition that
says sales are legal."
And it's still against federal law to cultivate or distribute marijuana,
says Stephen Shefler, chief assistant U.S. Attorney in San Francisco. So
government lawyers are fighting the sales of marijuana at some clubs like
CHAMP.
"We are there to close them down because they are violating federal law,"
Shefler says.
CHAMP is not one of the defendants in an ongoing federal lawsuit against six
clubs, most in the Bay area. But the government likely will move to close
CHAMP if it succeeds in court later this month against the other clubs,
Shefler says.
Ken Hayes, CHAMP's executive director, vows to take a stand if the
government acts. But he also admits the club would have few options.
Ah, democracy in action - California style. Prop. 215 lurches forward with
all the grace of a staggering drunk with people like John Lemos trailing
behind to get their marijuana.
James at DEA says that trail is dangerous. She says little scientific
research has been conducted on the medical benefits of marijuana, and the
anecdotal evidence is suspect. "A lot of these people used marijuana before
recreationally, and they expect it to work. So their expectation creates an
effect regardless of what the chemicals cause," James says. Shades of the
placebo effect.
James also injects several C-words into the debate. Smoking marijuana is
"inherently carcinogenic and contributes to the further compromise of
delicate immune systems," she says, adding the DEA is not "anti-compassion."
"Legitimate," government-approved medications exist to ease pain and nausea,
James says.
MEDICALLY SPEAKING
John Lemos will confound some critics at this point. He says no healthy
person should be smoking marijuana. "It uses up brain cells. But I'm at a
point where it's a trade-off."
Doctors can't agree whether Lemos' choice is a smart one.
"There is no consensus," says Dr. Shaikah Matin, chief of pharmacy and
theraputics at Kaiser Permanente Medical Center in Fresno.
Dr. Marshall Flam, a veteran Fresno oncologist, agrees with the DEA
position: There are legal drugs to help with pain.
But another Fresno doctor says it's not so simple. Dr. Manthani Reddy
specializes in infectious disease. He treats 75 to 100 patients with HIV and
AIDS.
Reddy says a combination of new drugs, known as protease inhibitors, is
keeping AIDS patients alive longer than before. Some patients are even
returning to work. However, 20% have nausea or other side effects. They need
something to help. Marijuana is most effective for some, Reddy says.
He says it should be a treatment option despite a recent study that
questions the benefit of smoking pot. Funny thing about all this: At first,
Lemos didn't want to smoke marijuana.
He considered it "a low-life drug," far beneath him, when his doctor in
Monterey suggested it nine years ago.
Lemos was living in Salinas at the time. Managing three funeral homes.
Driving a Cadillac. Burying the dead was a good living.
He had done drugs before. But not marijuana. And he wasn't about to deal on
some street corner. He found some through acquaintances.
At first, Lemos made marijuana tea. Terrible stuff, he says, laughing. He
tells this part of his story in the Hanford home he shares with his male
partner of 16 years. Lemos is gay.
His partner has AIDS, too, but won't use marijuana. He doesn't like it, says
Lemos. He settles back on a rattan couch in green jogging shorts and a gray
T-shirt. A dry cough, a leftover of radiation treatment, interrupts the
conversation at times.
When Prop. 215 passed two years ago, Lemos went to a physician he sees in
San Francisco and got a form letter. It says Lemos has AIDS. It also says:
"Please extend to him/her all services to which they are entitled by virtue
of this diagnosis."
The letter clears Lemos with law enforcement, according to the California
Attorney General's Office. He probably wouldn't be prosecuted for possession
unless he was driving under the influence or had more than 28.5 grams of
marijuana, which translates into about 60 cigarettes, says Attorney
General's Office spokesman Matt Ross.
Lemos keeps much less at home and is circumspect about where he lights up.
Never around his daughters. (He was married and is now divorced.) Never
around his five young grandsons. Not at someone else's house.
When he chooses not to smoke marijuana, he takes Marinol pills. It's a
prescription drug. Legal. A pure form of THC, the ingredient in marijuana
that gets people high.
Lemos says Marinol relieves his nausea but works slower than marijuana.
Marijuana vs. Marinol is a big debating point in life after Prop. 215. And
here's something else to stir the pot, so to speak. In 1990, the Drug
Enforcement Administration did a survey, and more than 1,000 oncologists
responded, according to an August 1997 article in The New England Journal of
Medicine. Of doctors who believed they could directly compare the two drugs,
44% said marijuana was more effective; 13% said Marinol was more effective.
This might be important and relevant to a debate that will never end. But
all the surveys and doctors and prestigious medical journals can't obscure a
fact that Lemos considers when he visits the AIDS Memorial Grove in San
Francisco's Golden Gate Park.
"My daughters are going to bring me out here when I die," he says, basking
in the solitude. He sits on a boulder in a dry creek bed. Redwood, pine and
dogwood trees tower over him.
He wants his girls to scatter some of his ashes in the grove.
Sarah Ramos, 27 of Clovis, is Lemos' oldest daughter. She laughs about her
father trying to keep his illegal pot a secret when she was younger. He'd
pretend to be taking a shower. He'd stuff a rolled-up towel along the bottom
crack of the bathroom door. Ramos could smell it anyway.
Maggie Hill, 24 of Xenia, Ohio, is Lemos' other daughter. As a teen-ager,
she once told her dad: "How can you tell me how to run my life? You're just
a pothead."
Hill, who used to live in Hanford, voted for Prop. 215. She says sick should
be able to use marijuana if it makes them feel better. Statewide, 56% of
people apparently agreed.
And in the Valley? Majorities voted against the proposition. The no vote:
63% in Tulare County, 59% in Kings and Madera counties, 57% in Fresno
County, 56% in Merced County and 52% in Mariposa County.
A PEEK INSIDE CHAMP
The club is cozy and bright. (Actually, "club" is not how Ken Hayes,
executive director, wants CHAMP to be labeled. He calls it "a medicinal
plant dispensary.")
Whatever you call it, the place is welcoming. And intimate - no bigger than
two good-sized living rooms. Two couches armed with plump pillows and
several overstuffed chairs ring a pine coffee table. A CD of Motown hits
plays in the background; the music slides easily between the conversations
going around the coffee table, which is graced by a bouquet of blue,
lace-capped hydrangeas.
It's as if Martha Stewart has freshened up a '60s party scene. Sort of
mellow yellow Martha.
Function, not beauty, characterizes other items on the coffee table. There
are rolling papers to make marijuana cigarettes and antiseptic pads for
water pipes, also used in smoking marijuana.
"That way they can wipe down the pipe if they want to share," says Hayes.
"We're dealing with people who have compromised immune systems."
Hayes says CHAMP has 600 "consumers," 80% of whom have AIDS. They become
CHAMP members by producing a letter from a doctor outlining their medical
condition. Hayes says his staff verifies the doctor's authenticity by
checking state records on the Internet.
Once that's done, customers can buy different grades of marijuana kept in
quart-size Mason jars in a glass sales case. Quality varies and, with it,
price. One-eighth ounce usually ranges from $10 to $55 and makes three to
five cigarettes; a quarter ounce ranges from $18 to $105 and makes seven to
10 cigarettes, according to Hayes.
The marijuana is sold under such jolly names as "Big and Hairy," "Flarfy
Mean Purple" and "X-Mas in July." Hayes says he's trying to get away from
the fun and games by devising new names. "Really, this is plant medicine,"
he says.
Hence, purchases are limited and tracked by computerized records. Usually,
customers can buy a quarter ounce per day.
After buying, some people stay to smoke and chat. Listen in and you catch
the nothingness that lubricates conversations anywhere.
"You're looking good. Like you're feeling better."
"Thanks."
"I spent the weekend on the Russian River."
"Very nice."
But chat up someone as a reporter and things veer from a Seinfeld moment
with the speed of a Kramer entry. The mood gets so serious. Dan Larsen, 35,
leans forward on a wicker couch, his body language suggesting an old man
with wisdom to impart. Marijuana is "medicine," and it's the only thing that
calms his stomach and keeps down the other meds he takes for AIDS, he says.
An eighth of an ounce lasts him about 10 days.
Larsen rails against anyone who thinks Attorney General Dan Lungren, now
running for governor, was justified in his successful battle to close San
Francisco's best-known cannabis club in the spring. The club was run by
Dennis Peron, who helped draft Prop. 215.
(The case sprung from undercover tapes showing minors in possession of
marijuana, toddlers in smoking rooms and marijuana from the club being sold
by street dealers, according to the Attorney General's Office. Peron says he
was "a soft touch" to many who came to his club. But he charges that Lungren
targeted him to destroy the medical marijuana movement.)
"Tell them to get a life," Larsen says of Lungren supporters. "They should
learn more about this disease." He almost growls out the words, making it
impossible not to note the leather dog collar around his neck. Larsen wears
a yellow leather jacket, too, and walks with a cane. His hair is long. He
has the melancholy look of the streets.
Larsen lives in a general ward of a San Francisco hospital and comes to
CHAMP daily for something to do. Hospital officials are OK with the
arrangement, says Hayes, who summarizes Larsen's shrunken existence with a
few, brutal sentences. "His lover broke up with him. He's wasting. He looks
forward to coming here."
It's so different for John Lemos. He still has money and mobility. A
partner, too. And his family.
But the specter of sickness is ever present. "As time goes on, it gets
worse," he says. "In the last year, I've had more episodes."
The worst was pancreatitis in the spring. Lemos says he smoked some
marijuana to help his appetite, but it made the symptoms worse. "I don't
know if it was just in my head, but it didn't work."
Lemos dropped 30 pounds in the spring and even had the minister in to talk
about funeral arrangements. He was determined to die at home.
Recovery from the pancreatitis has been slow, and he still tires easily.
"But all and all, I'm doing pretty well," Lemos says, "especially compared
to a lot of other people."
MAKING A VISIT
Sometimes, Lemos will linger at the club. He says the staff can talk about
pain control other "than being loaded all the time." He's gotten advice on
meditation and soaking in hot tubs.
Clearly, CHAMP wants to be seen as more than a place that sells marijuana.
Two weeks ago, the club even dropped cannabis from its name. CHAMP had stood
for Cannabis Helping Alleviate Medical Problems. Now the C stands for
Californians.
Hayes, a smooth-faced 30-year-old who easily slips into crusade mode,
clearly knows a thing or two about marketing. But he insists his work is not
about creating an image.
His voice thick with emotion, Hayes says: "I'm in the business of providing
aid to sick and dying people. Unfortunately there has been a lot of
misportrayal, and I truly believe the media have had a role in that. I've
had media people come in and say, 'Start smoking so we can take pictures.' "
So, CHAMP now bars photographers from the club.
All this, of course, is politics, which is the luxury of people who aren't
sick. Aren't fatigued. Fatigue leaves you flat. Leaves you with the motions
of whatever your life has become. For John Lemos on a brilliant July
afternoon, that next motion is buying marijuana.
He doesn't linger at CHAMP on this day. Can't, in fact. A lab technician's
needle awaits him in another part of the city. Lemos, in stone-washed jeans
and a blue, two-button shirt, tries to decide what to buy.
He settles on an eighth of an ounce of high-grade marijuana nicknamed "I
Dare Ya." Sean Renault, a club employee, weighs the purchase on a digital
scale that's accurate to one-tenth of a gram. Lemos shows his photo ID
membership card; Renault scans Lemos' face for a match and teases: "With
those shades today I thought you were trying to trick me."
Lemos, sporting a pair of Ray-Bans, laughs, too. Then he pays with three
crisp 20s and gets $5, a yellow receipt and a plastic bag of marijuana in
exchange. Turning to go, Lemos explains his San Francisco doctor wants him
in for another blood test. Lemos has a liver problem caused by all the
prescription drugs he takes to fight AIDS.
He moves past the painting of Elvis with Mickey Mouse ears and quickly
negotiates the 19 steps to the street. People on Church Street stroll past
CHAMP. Cars speed by. A bus rumbles. Lemos melts into the crowd and is gone.
But he'll be back, as long as this club stays open.
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Three Strikes Stinks! (Orange County Weekly describes the campaign being
waged by FACTS, Families to Amend California's Three Strikes, to overturn
California's cruel but popular mandatory minimum sentencing guidelines,
which require a sentence of 25 years to life for a third felony.)
Date: Mon, 10 Aug 1998 01:09:47 EDT
Reply-To: friends@freecannabis.org
From: Tim Perkins (tperkins@pacbell.net)
To: Multiple recipients of list (friends@freecannabis.org)
Subject: O.C. Weekly, Cover Story
O.C. Weekly
Three Strikes Stinks!
Death, taxes and the self-inflicted stupidity of Three Strikes
By Steve Lowery
On a recent Saturday morning, Huntington Beach Assemblyman Scott Baugh
sat down with a handful of people, most of them from an Death, taxes and
the organization called Families to Amend self-inflicted California's
Three Strikes (FACTS). The fact stupidity of Three that he was
there-he's a self-described Strikes conservative Republican-and that he
had invited them to his office and greeted them at the door with a smile
was a great victory for FACTS, which has been told its cause is not only
lost but is also the political equivalent of a pox-infested blanket to
politicians in an election year.
Three Strikes was enormously popular when it was voted in as Proposition
184 in 1994. Politicians, with the dull roar of Willie
Horton ringing in their ears, have refused to even meet with FACTS for
fear of looking soft on crime. For Republican and Democratic
officials alike, questioning anything about Three Strikes-its
effectiveness, fairness or costs-is seen as political suicide.
Just the opportunity to talk to Baugh about Senate Bill 2048-authored by
John Vasconcellos (D-Santa Clara), the bill directs the state to
study the effectiveness, fairness and costs of Three Strikes-was
significant and validating but assumed to be symbolic.
"I figured a few minutes [with Baugh] and a pat on the head," said Sue
Reams, summing up the expectations of more than a few at the meeting.
So it was with a mix of excitement and unease that they reacted to
Baugh's wondering aloud if "it was too late to co-author the bill." He
was smiling as he said it, and the people from FACTS were unsure if
Baugh was serious. They told him the most they'd hoped for was that he
would abstain from voting on the bill. "Oh, I think I can do better than
that," he told them-still smiling-and made it clear that he would be
voting with them.
Many in the group were dumbfounded, wrestling with how to properly react
when a wildest dream comes true.
"Stunned," said Christy Johnson. "We've been beaten up so many times
that I've tried not to expect anything anymore. But when we came out
of there, I lost it; the tears just came. It was the best day I've had
in some time."
The fact that one Republican lawmaker decided to break ranks and vote
with FACTS on a bill that they themselves acknowledge is weak and
well below their ultimate aspirations may not seem like much. But the
fact that it would move Johnson to tears-a woman who has persisted
despite being yelled at, pushed, reviled and, she said, fired from one
job because of her efforts-tells you a lot about FACTS: they have been
forced to do what they can with not much for some time.
The smallest victory is significant when you are left for dead, and what
happened in Baugh's office would have seemed unfathomable
to FACTS not just last year, but a few weeks ago.
June 1998. The meeting begins on time, but the turnout is light. A few
women and fewer men sit around folding tables. The mood is familiar with
one another and with the stream that flows in from the Catholic Worker
house in Santa Ana (no one so much as cranes a neck when a voice
somewhere says someone is throwing bricks off the roof); so is the
agenda: amending perhaps the state's most untouchable law this side of
handicapped parking.
This is why they've come here every Thursday for the past year. These
are the regulars.
Johnson, the career girl scout who says she married Dan Johnson moments
after he'd been sentenced to 75 years to life for drug
possession. Charlene Williams, who relates how her son Larry got 25
years to life for the $50 he spent on a stolen cellular phone. Hope
Nimrod, who says son Max tried to get treatment for his drug problem but
always found the waiting list too long or the price tag too high and is
now doing 25 years to life for trying to buy $13 worth of narcotics from
an undercover police officer.
There are others here with stories of petty thieves and addicts, of
husbands, sons and grandsons caught in the wide net of California's
Three Strikes law. And there was a time when each one of them was new
and did what the new people do.
"The new ones scream," Johnson says. "You have no where else to go, so
you come here and scream because you can't believe that this is
actually happening in this country. You hear it all the time: 'How can
this happen? THIS IS THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA!'"
The new one tonight is Trudy, who speaks in a near-whisper and makes it
clear she'll have to leave by 8 p.m. She doesn't like to drive at
night. She's there because her grandson may be sentenced under Three
Strikes, and she wants to get as much information as possible. She
had heard about FACTS on TV and in the newspapers and figured they were
making great strides. But from the moment the meeting starts, her face
is in a virtual unchecked state of drop, of "This is it?"
FACTS looked so much bigger in the newspaper. This is a few people
sitting around a table talking about a bake sale. Going around the
table, asking each person what they can make-put Williams down for three
dozen chocolate-chip cookies-Trudy is incredulous: "I came here to talk
about the law. I thought you were going to get it changed, and I wanted
to know when that was going to happen." They try to explain to her that
Three Strikes is not going to change any time soon. It's a
popular law though, they believe, a misunderstood one. FACTS activists
believe that the people who overwhelmingly voted Three Strikes into law
with 72 percent of the vote would demand it changed if they were aware
it wasn't just putting away violent criminals for life but, more often
than not, imprisoning nonviolent offenders. Three Strikes, they
believe, was voted in for serious criminals, for Richard Allen Davis,
who murdered Polly Klaas, a man so enamored with misery he'd no
doubt revel in triggering a law that puts the likes of Ronnie Villa of
Anaheim-father of two, grandfather of four-in jail for 25 years
to life for stealing five bottles of Head and Shoulders shampoo a dozen
years after his last offense.
"It's very depressing when these crimes are so piddly," Doreen McCarthy,
Villa's public defender, reportedly said. "He's just an old
junkie who unfortunately has some very old robberies. It broke my
heart."
They figured that when news of cases like Villa's reached people, news
of the legislative analyst's office's report that said 75 percent of
second strikers and 50 percent of third strikers were for nonviolent
crimes, people would be moved. They thought that when Polly Klaas'
father, Marc, came out against the law because he said it was applied
too broadly and served no real deterrent that everything would change.
"I tell people we have to find real solutions; I don't think we can
solve the crime problem by just putting more people in prison for
longer amounts of time any more than we can solve the AIDS problem by
constructing more cemeteries," Klaas says. "These are back-end
solutions; more efforts have to be put in to finding front-end
solutions."
But nothing happened. Studies came and went that called the California
law "ineffective," and nothing happened. Statistics showed that while
crime dropped in California over the past four years (it had, in fact,
started dropping before Three Strikes), it fell as much or more in
states that either didn't have a Three Strikes law or rarely used it,
and nothing happened. News came that criminals were being released after
serving just a fraction of their sentences to make room for
the overcrowding Three Strikes caused; a 1996 report by the Campaign for
an Effective Crime Policy, a Washington, D.C.-based coalition of
criminal-justice and elected officials, estimated that to keep pace with
the law, the state would need to build 15 new prisons at a
price tag of $4.5 billion, and nothing happened.
When FACTS helped get a bill amending the law onto the state Senate
floor last year, it got walloped, 13-25. This year, they were
instrumental in getting another bill to the Senate only to be told by
insiders that the most they could hope for in an election year
was a bill to commission a study of Three Strikes. It passed the Senate
on partisan lines-Democrats voting for, Republicans against and is now
in the Assembly, where it figures to come up for a vote in early August.
That's nice, but already there are rumors that Governor Pete Wilson will
veto the bill, and they almost certainly won't have the votes to
override.
That is where things stand on this Thursday, another Thursday. The
Orange County chapter of FACTS-there are chapters in every major
California city and region-has been effective at getting things done:
collecting signatures; organizing letter-writing campaigns,
demonstrations and vigils; getting on TV and the radio; and speaking in
front of political conventions. The chapter has also proven
valuable symbolically, says Geri Silva, chairwoman of FACTS in Los
Angeles, "because of what Orange County represents in most people's
minds."
For all of that, Three Strikes still stands.
Mike Reynolds, the Fresno photographer who authored Three Strikes, says
that recent polling shows the law has more support today-79 percent-than
it did four years ago.
"The numbers speak for themselves and very loud," Reynolds says. "We
found a method by which we can truly deter crime. For the first
time, we can sort the wheat from the chaff between those who want to
make an honest to goodness effort to rehabilitate themselves and
those who aren't at all interested in that."
If Reynolds' poll numbers are accurate, it can mean one of only two
things: either the people at FACTS have not done a good enough job-or
had enough time-to change people's minds, or people by and large really
don't care. Criminals-any criminal in their eyes, no matter what the
offense-don't deserve consideration. Either way, it means a lot of work
for the people at FACTS, who've learned the value of pacing, a lifetime
of Thursdays perhaps. They bide their time, building and baking.
As 8 p.m. comes around, Trudy is gathering her things together as Dwight
Smith of the Catholic Worker in Orange County, suggests a
fund-raiser whereby a small file would be hidden in a slice of cake.
Everybody laughs, except Trudy. Seeing this, Smith says, "Maybe
we shouldn't be laughing about this." Barbara Brooks, another regular, a
woman who moments before had said, "My son has value; my son is
not a dog," is among the loudest to laugh.
"Yes, we should, Dwight," she says. "Yes, we should."
Three Strikes' straightforward approach, complete with catchy title,
seemed to offer a no-nonsense wedge through all the plea bargaining and
pandering that many people believe afflict the criminal-justice system.
Commit three felonies and go to jail for 25 years to life. But while
many people believed the felonies spoken of were for serious,
usually violent crimes-or at least crimes with the threat of violence
the fact is that Three Strikes encompasses more than 400 felonies,
many of them of the drug-possession andpetty-theft variety.
"Everywhere I speak, almost uniformly, people are astonished what people
are being put away for," says Carl Holmes, an Orange County
public defender and an outspoken critic of Three Strikes. "Almost
unanimously, I find when talking to people, they thought the law
would only affect violent criminals."
Though more than 20 other states have Three Strikes laws of some type,
only California's is so wide-ranging, so "irrational . . . crazy," says
UC Irvine criminologist Gilbert Geis. The state of Washington had the
first Three Strikes law, not California, but Washington's law dictates
that all three strikes be for violent or serious felonies.
According to the National Institute of Justice, by March 1996, there
were only 53 inmates incarcerated under Washington's Three Strikes;
there were 1,477 in California: 131 for petty theft, 63 for receiving
stolen property, and 172 for drug possession.
And though much of Three Strikes' appeal is derived from its apparent
ability to circumvent the criminal-justice bureaucracy, the law actually
allows for considerable discretion on the part of judges when
sentencing and prosecutors when deciding who shall be tried under the
law. However, it is discretion that many prosecutors and judges choose
not to use for fear of political reprisals. Few things are scooped up so
readily by political opponents as the appearance that a rival may be
soft on crime.
Ask Mike Dukakis.
Or Anthony Rackauckas. In 1997, state officials reportedly investigated
whether Assistant District Attorney Brent Romney had
asked a secretary to spend county time locating the files of 13 Three
Strikes cases handled by Rackauckas, a superior court judge. At the
time, Romney was planning to run against Rackauckas for DA. Most
observers believed Romney was attempting to make Rackaukas, who won the
election in June, appear soft on crime. He wasn't the only one.
After Rackauckas reduced the sentence of Ronald Lara of Anaheim, who was
reportedly picked up for check forgery, from 25 years to life to a year
in jail, Wallace Wade, Rackauckas' main rival in the election, said of
the Lara case, "It sounds to me like it's appropriate discussion in an
election."
In such an atmosphere, it's effective to paint criminals with a broad,
foreboding brush, creating an atmosphere Holmes calls "medieval.
The public has been whipped up into such a frenzy by politicians that
there is no distinction between serious and nonserious criminals.
Politicians have found crime a ready vehicle, and the results are really
very Draconian."
The results, as the members of FACTS know, are that criminals of any ilk
are seen less as people than monsters. Nearly everyone has a
story of a friend who abandoned him or her once his or her son or
husband was arrested. Johnson says she was fired from her job when
Dan went in two years ago-her former boss called later and asked her to
come back; she said no. "That was nice," she says-and had others abandon
her.
"There's a feeling that if you have someone in jail, you're entitled to
be shunned," she says. "You're entitled to be treated like
garbage."
For FACTS to make any of its arguments-that Three Strikes costs too much
money and is ineffective and immoral-it first must perform the Herculean
task of making the general public, if not care about these criminals,
then at least see them as human beings capable of rehabilitation as well
as being loved. In their public appearances, it's important for FACTS
members to exude normalness.
It's not that difficult a task. Brooks is typical of the kind of person
you meet when attending a FACTS meeting. Middle-aged, quiet
and unassuming, she is by no means a political animal, though she
describes herself as a "Christian conservative Republican." She's not
the type who thinks criminals should get anything less than what is
coming to them. She works at Fullerton Municipal Court, and she is
the first to say her son deserves to do time for his crimes. But life in
prison for evasion-a crime known as a wobbler, one that could be tried
as a felony or misdemeanor-seems wrong to her.
When Brooks attempted to get in touch with her state senator, Rob Hurtt,
whom she voted for in 1996, she says her calls were never returned.
"It didn't take me long to figure out that because my son was a
criminal, I was somehow guilty, too, in people's eyes," she says. "I
helped [Hurtt] get elected, and he can't take five minutes to talk to me
about this law? They've treated me like I'm nothing, like my
son is nothing. Well, he has value to his family and to God. His life is
worthy to be salvaged."
Another Thursday finds Johnson trying to track down Donald Dye. Someone
told her the story of Dye, a Seal Beach police sergeant who became
addicted to the prescription drug Vicodin in 1994 after he broke his
ankle chasing a suspect. To get the drug, Dye began visiting
residents of Leisure World under the guise of official business and
stealing pills after asking to use the bathroom.
"None of the victims wanted to prosecute him. None of them were in fear
for their safety. This is just a horrible tragedy," Deputy
District Attorney John Anderson, who, despite his sentiments, got Dye to
plea bargain to two strikes, reportedly said.
That means if Dye relapses or does something as seemingly minor as lift
a pair of socks or a bottle of aspirin-each previously used as
third strikes against convicts-he could find himself serving 25 years to
life. Johnson asks if anyone knows where she can write to Dye so
she can offer him encouragement and the help of FACTS. Johnson, who
lives in Laguna Beach, is undoubtedly FACTS' most visible member. She
has appeared on OCN with Three Strikes author Reynolds, and she has
organized demonstrations that have landed on the local news. She has
become adept at pointing out her girl-scout credentials, the fact that
she was selling Princess House crystal when she met her husband. She
never excuses his drug use-"It bothered me that he needed it," she says.
"He wasn't a bad person; he was sick"-but she's quick to show her
bulging photo album with pictures of her and Dan and their pet cat.
There are photos of prison visits cropped into collages with hand-cut
construction-paper backgrounds, something a young girl might do
to remember her prom night. There are pictures of her wedding, which was
performed moments after Dan's sentence was handed down. The
judge who sentenced him offered to marry them, but Johnson opted for a
justice of the peace because "it just didn't seem right the other
way." There are two pages of the wedding, featuring a beaming Johnson
with her new husband managing a sick grin, his wrists manacled to his
ankles.
Tall, with long brown hair streaked with gray that she many times sweeps
over a shoulder, Johnson is equally adept at playing the task
master, of doling out assignments and keeping meetings running
businesslike.
"Christy gets things done," says Silva. "She's very focused, very tough.
The type of person who doesn't worry about if it's going to get
done, only how it's going to get done."
"I first saw her handing out fliers at the beach, and people were
pushing her hand away, and she just never stopped," says Dale
Schneider of Garden Grove, a FACTS regular. "That got me interested.
Some people step up to leadership like they were meant for it."
But Johnson is just as likely to break down when listening to FACTS
colleague Reams tell her story of attempting to cure her son Shane
of his drug addiction through "tough love." Reams encouraged-near
insisted-that neighbors press charges against her son when he was
stealing things from their garages to get money for drugs. He went to
prison, where, Reams tells whoever will listen, "he learned more about
drugs, gangs and crime than he knew before."
What was worse was that when Shane was picked up on another drug charge,
the previous residential robberies his mother had insisted
her neighbors press wound up giving him three strikes. "Stories like
that break your heart," Johnson says, tearing up again.
The truth is that she and the rest of FACTS want people's hearts to
break. They know that the key to humanizing prisoners and their
plight could lie in the particulars of one case. They know all too well
that one case created Three Strikes and another made it law.
Written in 1992 by Reynolds, after his 18-year-old daughter Kimber
Reynolds was shot and killed by convicted felon Joe Davis when
she resisted his attempts to steal her purse, the bill was going nowhere
in the summer of 1993. Reynolds decided to bypass Sacramento
and use the initiative process, but by the end of September 1993, he had
collected just20,000 signatures.
On Oct. 1 of that year, Polly Klaas was abducted from her home by repeat
offender Davis. She was later found murdered. The crime
stunned and outraged the country. Reynolds visited Marc Klaas, and Klaas
signed his name to Reynolds' Three Strikes petition. Within
days, Reynolds had collected 50,000 signatures and the Three Strikes
initiative became the fastest qualifying voter initiative in California
history.
Now, with considerable clout, Reynolds again approached the Legislature
with a Three Strikes bill. It was easily passed, but
fearful that the Legislature might someday amend the law, Reynolds went
the initiative rout anyway, and in the fall of 1994, little
more than a year after the murder of Polly Klaas, Three Strikes was
passed by a nearly 3-to-1 margin.
"This is a very popular law because it's the right law," Reynolds says.
"The only way you can criticize the law is on a case-by-case basis."
That's one of the few things that Reynolds and critics of the law would
agree on. One of the main features of FACTS' Web site are 44 cases of
men affected by Three Strikes for nonviolent offenses, men like William
Anderson of Moreno Valley, who 27 years after being
convicted of robbery, received his third strike for attempted forgery.
And the Web site also tells the story of Robert Andri, who robbed two
banks on the same day in 1961 when he was 19. He turned himself in,
spent time in jail, and then, working sometimes as many three jobs,
raised enough money to start his own business. Success followed, and he
bought an oceanfront home in Laguna Beach. One day, with an intruder in
his house, he called the police and took out the unloaded gun he kept. A
few months after the incident, the police returned to his house,
informing him he was not allowed to have a gun and arresting him. He was
then sentenced under Three Strikes (though a probation officer
recommended 25 years to life, the judge in the case gave Andri five
years of probation). But, as of yet, none of those cases has captured
the public's imagination the way Polly Klaas' murder did. Perhaps
nothing can. Or perhaps it's that many believe, as Reynolds does, that
"after two strikes, we know what a person is capable of. The men who put
a .357 magnum to Kimber Reynolds' head would have been thought of as
just purse snatchers if she hadn't resisted," Reynolds says. "Suddenly a
purse snatcher is a murderer. It can happen that quick, and the public
is tired of waiting around for these ticking time bombs to go off."
Whatever the reasons, the repercussions of Polly Klaas' murder are still
strong. Though many politicians have told them in private
that they think Three Strikes is a bad law, their public attitude,
before the cameras and when the roll is called, is another subject.
Johnson remembers "picking my jaw off the floor" when she cornered one
prominent Democratic legislator to ask why he had voted against FACTS'
1997 bill only to have him bite back: "I'll vote no again. It's
political suicide for a Democrat to look soft on crime."
Which is why many believe that FACTS' cause, for now, has little chance
of success. Klaas believes that. He withdrew his support from
Three Strikes soon after signing Reynolds' petition, but he found in
campaigning against Prop. 184 a public that desperately wanted to
sympathize with him but had no interest in listening to what he had to
say.
"They voted out of consideration for Polly because the Three Strikes
people basically co-opted my daughter's name," he says. "It didn't
matter what we said. They rolled over us like a freight train. I think
Jesus Christ resurrected could have come out against it, and they would
have labeled him a liberal heretic."
Asked if he would lend his efforts to the current movement to amend the
law, Klaas gives a firm no. "It was just too painful the first
time," he says. "They're welcome to use my name, but I just couldn't do
it again. The way things are, it'd be like I was arguing against my own
daughter."
Another Thursday-a nice one-FACTS decides to have its meeting outside.
There is still a lot of disappointment that the group's town-hall
meeting, which was held in May, didn't attract any press coverage. And
there's concern that their upcoming event, a kind of combination
progressive political rally, concert and carnival to be held in Midway
City, will suffer a similar fate. Johnson is concerned about that, but
she's just as concerned with finding someone to volunteer to dress up in
the clown suit she has rented for the event.
"You know, when we started out, it was a lot easier to get coverage,"
Johnson says. "We were like this weird little group. You know,
we were cute. But as we've gotten more clout, more members, we're
starting to scare people."
That said, FACTS has not achieved its goal. "We've realized that to make
a difference, we have to build a strong organization," Silva
says. "I remember last year, when Christy and I thought getting 11,000
signatures was really going to make a difference. We've learned."
After the meeting, people mill about talking and then congregate quickly
around a faxed newspaper article from northern California.
The article is about a Fresno City Council member and his bid for an
Assembly seat. It cites the candidate's plea of no contest in 1986 to a
misdemeanor charge of unlawful sex with a minor. It turns out that one
of his biggest supporters is Reynolds, who, the article says, defends
the councilman by surmising "the past is the past."
Heads shake and tongues cluck; Brooks laughs, but she doesn't smile.
Johnson doesn't bother with the article; she's the one it was
originally faxed to with "THAT TWO-FACED PIECE OF SHIT!" scrawled at the
top of the page.
Instead, she allows herself to sit quietly in the dark. A reporter
breaks the silence.
"You know, the people I talk to say that this is a hopeless cause."
She begins to cry.
"This can't be hopeless; it just can't," she says.
The reporter offers that he meant it was "hopeless in an election year."
She collects herself, takes a drag on her cigarette.
"Yeah, I know. But we just have to keep going. Every day. That's all we
can do," she says. And then she asks the reporter if he might
consider wearing the clown suit.
Weeks later, Smith tells the group that a staffer for Baugh has
requested a meeting with those in Baugh's 67th district who wrote him
concerning Three Strikes. For the most part, those who wrote him did so
at a letter-writing booth set up by FACTS at the Midway Cityevent.
This comes a week after FACTS leaders met with Assembly members Jim
Morrissey (R-Santa Ana) and Richard Ackerman (R-Fullerton), the same
week The Orange County Register ran an editorial favorable to the FACTS
cause under the headline "The Law Strikes Out."
"We're not dead yet," Johnson says, ecstatic over the Baugh news. Of
course, death isn't the issue; it's life. And exactly what Baugh
might say, or whether he'll even be at the meeting, isn't exactly
certain. Which doesn't seem to bother her at all. At the moment, she
isn't concerned with details. What matters is the step and the symbol.
Besides, there will be time for details next Thursday.
Copyright 1998, Orange County Weekly, Inc. All rights reserved.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Time May Be Right For Private Prisons (According to the San Jose Mercury
News, the California Department of Corrections incarcerates 158,000 inmates
in three dozen prisons, and will need space for nearly 50,000 more prisoners
by 2003. With an eye toward an obviously lucrative market, the
Nashville-based Corrections Corporation of America is already constructing
three prisons in California.)
Date: Mon, 10 Aug 1998 18:22:44 -0400
To: mapnews@mapinc.org
From: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org (MAPNews)
Subject: MN: US AZ: Time may be right for private prisons
Sender: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Reply-To: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Organization: Media Awareness Project http://www.mapinc.org/lists/
Newshawk: Jerry Sutliff
Source: San Jose Mercury News (CA)
Contact: letters@sjmercury.com
Website: http://www.sjmercury.com/
Pubdate: Mon, 10 Aug 1998
Author: Howard Mintz, Mercury News Staff Writer
TIME MAY BE RIGHT FOR PRIVATE PRISONS
State's public prison system under scrutiny
Bans on private prison stall
FLORENCE, Ariz. -- Just as Highway 79 greets this prison town sweltering in
the desert, the barbed wire and drab concrete walls of the Central Arizona
Detention Center emerge from a seemingly endless stretch of cactus and rock.
On the outside, the sprawling compound looks like any new prison, with one
notable exception: There's a corporate insignia stamped on every flag,
plaque and badge in sight. Here in the scorched wilderness, the Corrections
Corporation of America is mixing profits and punishment -- a growing trend
that's sweeping a nation wondering where to put all its inmates.
For California, this emblem of the private prison industry is no mirage. In
fact, the Arizona lockup may turn out to offer a glimpse into what the
future holds for the state's already overburdened prison system.
California, with 158,000 inmates in three dozen state prisons, will need
space for nearly 50,000 more prisoners by 2003, according to the state
Department of Corrections.
``There is a prison crisis in this state,'' said David Myers, a former
Texas prison warden who heads the CCA's effort to expand into California
from a small office suite in Sacramento. ``And California has been late
coming to the private sector.''
Like it or not, private prisons may be on their way to California, which
has not approved funding for new public prison construction in eight years.
With an eye toward an obviously lucrative market, the CCA is already
constructing three prisons in California. Two of them are expected to be
used for federal inmates. But the other, now rising in the Mojave Desert,
is a suitor for state corrections officials.
Nashville-based CCA, founded in 1983 and the nation's largest private
prison operator, is spending $94 million on that prison in California City,
a town 68 miles southeast of Bakersfield, without any promises from the
state. In what is clearly a ``build it and they will come'' strategy, the
company is hoping its most ambitious prison project will turn out to be
California's first private prison for state inmates.
The company's gamble is being closely watched, from the powerful California
prison guards' union, which is waging major resistance to the private
prison industry, to town officials around the state eyeing private prisons
as economic salvation.
Timing stokes debate
The timing of CCA's foray into California is stoking the debate.
State corrections officials are already warning that failure to address the
projected shortfall in prison space could lead to an even more overcrowded
system and court orders to release inmates early. At the same time, some of
the state's most notorious public prisons are under more scrutiny than
ever, with Corcoran and Pelican Bay state prisons the subject of federal
investigations into allegations of brutality and civil rights violations.
To experts on crime and punishment, the question for California is whether
private prisons are an alluring fix for the anticipated space crunch and
problem-plagued state-run facilities or a bad trade-off that could lead to
even worse problems.
``We think there are serious problems with privatization,'' said Dale
Sechrest, a criminal justice professor at California State University-San
Bernardino. ``The thing that is disturbing about it is that they will say
they are doing a better job for less money when in fact they won't and they
can't.''
Foes of private prisons say it's bad policy to abdicate responsibility for
housing convicted criminals to the private sector, pointing to uprisings
and mismanagement at private prisons across the country, especially among
smaller operators.
Recently, Louisiana officials wrested control of a privately run juvenile
prison because of alleged abuses. Larger operations -- including CCA and
its 77 facilities -- are not immune. There have been 13 inmate stabbings,
including two deaths, at CCA's Youngstown, Ohio, prison. Six dangerous
inmates escaped from its prized Florence prison in 1996.
The U.S. Supreme Court in 1997 also stripped away efforts by the private
prison industry to insulate itself against prisoner lawsuits, ruling that
private prison guards can be sued for abuses. The ruling came in a case
alleging inmate mistreatment at a private prison in Tennessee.
Such problems have created unusual alliances against private prisons. The
California Correctional Peace Officers Association and the American Civil
Liberties Union, often fierce opponents in prison lawsuits, agree that
private prisons are not the answer to California's shortage of prison space.
``There is no question we are hearing more and more problems,'' said Jenni
Gainsborough, a private prison expert with the ACLU's National Prison
Project in Washington, D.C. ``I hope that will give (California) some
legislative pause.''
Private prisons, which began to appear in the early and mid-1980s, have
been a source of national debate for years.
Both sides offer up a host of studies and statistics that provide a
conflicting picture of whether private prisons really are cheaper. After
public hearings last year, the Little Hoover Commission, a state watchdog
panel, issued a report saying California needs to take a serious look at
privatizing some of its prison system. But two years ago, the U.S. General
Accounting Office issued a report questioning whether private prisons
actually save money.
Along with states from Florida to Arizona, the federal Bureau of Prisons
has relied heavily on the industry. The federal government last year turned
over operation of its Taft prison in a 10-year deal with Florida-based
Wackenhut Corrections Corp., CCA's main competitor.
The case for privatization
Private prison operators say they are simply more cost-efficient than their
public counterparts, able to handle the same task for less money. During a
recent tour of CCA's two prisons in Arizona -- one in Florence, 53 miles
southeast of Phoenix, and another largely devoted to federal immigration
inmates in Eloy, about 56 miles northwest of Tucson -- wardens and other
officials boasted of their ability to build a better prison.
At Florence, which houses about 2,000 state and federal inmates from around
the country, warden Michael Samberg points out the window to a $21 million
expansion under way on the prison grounds.
The company approved the expansion in March and it's expected to be done by
January -- a turnaround Samberg, a former Virginia corrections official,
said would take years in the public sector.
``Whatever I need, I get,'' he said. ``Do we pay attention to the stock? I
do. My company takes good care of me, including stock options. But if I
need to purchase a fence alarm, I'll purchase the best one. If I need a
Cadillac, I buy a Cadillac. If I need a Chevy, I buy a Chevy.''
To the inmates filling prisons like Samberg's, many of whom have spent time
in public lockups, the differences for the most part are subtle. Darren
Taylor, an inmate shipped to Florence from Alaska's state system, was
painting a mural on the wall of one of the prison corridors when asked
about his time in a private operation.
``It's all doing time,'' Taylor told a reporter during a July visit. ``If
you're doing time, it doesn't matter where it is.''
But attention to the bottom line is more noticeable in a private prison. As
he explained his company's philosophies in a recent interview, Eloy warden
John Gluch was handed the day's company stock price, a detail he admits
wasn't part of his job when he ran various Texas prisons.
The Florence facility demonstrates how a large operator like CCA can
thrive. The prison contracts with several states to house prisoners,
including a deal to handle more than 600 inmates from Alaska. As a result,
the company is usually certain it will not build unneeded prisons -- the
demand for prison space nationwide is insatiable.
California would be the mother lode for the private sector. ``California
takes them into the stratosphere,'' said Steve Martin, a Texas-based
corrections expert.
What remains unclear is whether the private prison industry can get a
toehold in California given the political battle picking up steam in the
Capitol. Legislators have lined up on both sides of the issue, with the
guards' union at the forefront of the fight to keep out private prisons.
Union officials insist that private prisons are not equipped to handle even
medium security inmates. They say companies employ low-paid, poorly trained
guards and care more about profits than public safety. The Department of
Corrections has expressed reservations about contracting with private
prisons, arguing more funding for public prisons is the better alternative.
``I don't think public safety should be contracted out to the lowest
bidder,'' argued Jeff Thompson, chief lobbyist for the guards' association.
``This would be a cut-rate, quick and cheap way to hand off a problem. (The
Legislature) ought to take a good look under the hood before they buy this
car.''
CCA counters that the union is trying to protect its turf by attacking the
private prison industry. CCA officials say with all the troubles
surrounding Corcoran, mixing privately run prisons into California can only
improve the system.
Precedent has been set
Despite the political opposition, there is precedent for the state to use
private prison operators. The state already contracts with about a dozen
minimum security private operators for inmates in pretrial services and
halfway-house settings. But that is a far cry from filling a prison like
the one going up in California City with serious felons sentenced to long
prison terms.
The California City prison, which is designed for 2,300 beds -- a
modest-sized facility compared with the state's larger prisons -- is
expected to be completed by the middle of next year. A new state-funded
prison tends to cost more than $200 million and takes years to build -- a
comparison backers of private prisons cite as reason to give the company a
chance to prove itself.
``We're running out of space,'' said state Senate Majority Leader Richard
Polanco, a Los Angeles Democrat who supports privatization. ``It's time for
the private sector to be given an opportunity to become part of the mix. If
we don't bring them on line, we'll see early releases (of inmates). Then it
will be shame on those that were shortsighted.''
In such places as California City and Mendota, a Central Valley town known
for its cantaloupes, the private prison industry can't arrive fast enough.
Mendota city officials are waiting with open arms for the $60 million
prison CCA is now constructing that's expected to be used for federal
immigration inmates.
``At this point, the pluses outweigh the minuses,'' said Alan Bengyel,
Mendota's city manager. ``I think cities like Mendota are just glad to have
a stable business that is not affected by the weather conditions. We need
prisons and they have to go somewhere.''
-------------------------------------------------------------------
CIA Intercession in San Francisco Recounted (The San Francisco Examiner
suggests the Central Intelligence Agency's recent self-exoneration regarding
its alleged assistance to Nicaraguan Contras via cocaine sales in California
seems suspect in light of stories the newspaper printed in the 1980s.)
Date: Mon, 10 Aug 1998 20:22:34 -0800
To: dpfca@drugsense.org
From: canorml@igc.apc.org (Dale Gieringer)
Subject: DPFCA: CIA-Cocaine Connection
Sender: owner-dpfca@drugsense.org
Reply-To: dpfca@drugsense.org
Organization: DrugSense http://www.drugsense.org/dpfca/
Friends:
The following story from the SF Examiner provides more collaboration of
the CIA-cocaine connection so much pooh-poohed in the mainstream media.
Note that one of the villains in this piece is former N. Cal. US
District Atty Joseph Russoniello, who went to such lengths to forfeit the
property of Humboldt County marijuana growers, but turns out to have had a
soft spot for CIA-sponsored cocaine dealers.
- Dale Gieringer, CAL NORML
***
San Francisco Monday Aug 10, 1998
CIA intercession in S.F. recounted
By Seth Rosenfeld OF THE EXAMINER STAFF
On a hot August day in 1984, a lawyer from CIA headquarters walked
into the office of a federal prosecutor in San Francisco to ask for a
favor.
The CIA man was reluctant to give his name or his government
affiliation, the assistant U.S. attorney recalled, and embarked on an
"opaque conversation" about what he called an "uncomfortable situation":
Drug agents had seized $36,020 from a defendant in the West Coast's
biggest cocaine bust. The defendant claimed the cash was not drug profits
but money belonging to U.S.-backed contra rebels fighting Nicaragua's
Sandinista government.
The defendant's lawyers were set to go to Costa Rica to question two
contra leaders about the money. The CIA feared this might cause unwanted
publicity and "potential . disaster" for the agency's contra operations,
the laconic CIA lawyer, Lee Strickland, said in a subsequent cable.
The Reagan administration's contra program already was under fire in
Congress, which had threatened to cut CIA funding for it.
"While the allegations might be entirely false, there are sufficient
factual details which could cause certain damage to our image and program
in Central America," Strickland's cable read.
At the prosecutor's office in the Federal Building at 450 Golden
Gate Ave., Strickland stressed that the agency would be "immensely
grateful" if the money were returned to the drug dealer, eliminating any
reason for the defense lawyer's potentially troublesome questions in Costa
Rica.
Although the U.S. attorney's office aggressively confiscates
suspected drug funds, it decided within a week to return the money. "The
United States attorney was most deferential to our interests," Strickland
said in another cable.
The CIA's discreet visit was described in a report last month from
the Department of Justice's office of inspector general, which examined
allegations that department officials protected drug dealers because of
ties to the contras or pressure from the CIA.
New light
The 407-page report by Inspector General Michael R. Bromwich sheds
new light on the controversial refund, saying it resulted partly from the
CIA's "desire to protect the public image of the contras or the CIA" and
thus raised a question of "propriety."
The study confirms that the Justice Department and the CIA withheld
information about the case from a late 1980s U.S. Senate inquiry, a former
Senate investigator said.
The CIA cables cited in the report also conflict with statements by
then-U.S. Attorney Joseph Russoniello, who has maintained that the money
was returned solely to avoid a costly legal fight over it.
The report affords a rare - if not entirely clear - view of secret
CIA operations. And it poses a troubling question that may arise when
intelligence agencies intercede in prosecutions: Are they protecting true
national-security interests, or avoiding public accountability?
Although a few significant California drug dealers appeared to
provide modest sums to the contras, the report said, none got special
treatment because of political activities. Allegations that their
trafficking was linked to the CIA were "not supported by the facts," it
said.
And neither the CIA nor any other national security arm reached out
to prosecutors on behalf of the dealers - except in the San Francisco
case, an instance the study called troubling.
Noting that the reason for the refund remains murky, the report
expressed concern that the CIA "considered the potential press coverage of
a contra-drug link to be sufficient reason to attempt to influence the
decision to return the money."
CIA spokeswoman Anya Guilsher declined to discuss the propriety of
the agency's action. The CIA intervened not to help the defendant, she
said, but because the CIA mistakenly believed one of the contra leaders to
be questioned in Costa Rica had worked with the agency.
'Frogman case'
The CIA stepped in after federal agents seized 430 pounds of cocaine
as divers unloaded it from a Colombian freighter on Jan. 17, 1983, at Pier
96 in San Francisco, in what became known as the "Frogman case."
Among some 50 people ultimately convicted was a Nicaraguan named
Julio Zavala. When drug agents raided his South San Francisco home, they
confiscated cocaine, two weapons and $36,020.
Judd Iversen, Zavala's lawyer, filed a motion seeking court
permission to take depositions in Costa Rica that, he said, would prove
the money belonged to a contra group and that U.S. agents sanctioned, or
were involved in, selling cocaine to fund the contras.
The late U.S. District Judge Robert F. Peckham ruled there was no
basis for allowing depositions about a CIA role in drug smuggling. But he
said Iversen could depose two contra leaders in Costa Rica about the
source of the money.
But by Aug. 14, 1984, prosecutors had opted to return the money to
Zavala and the depositions were canceled.
The government never conceded it was contra money. And Zavala, an
alleged leader of the drug ring, was convicted in 1985 on six felony
charges and sentenced to 10 years in prison.
A 1986 Examiner report on the refund sparked inquiries by Congress
and the State Department.
As noted in the inspector general's report, then-U.S. Attorney
Russoniello sent a letter to The Examiner's editor expressing outrage at
the suggestion that his office returned the money for political reasons or
tried to cover up a link between contras and drug traffickers. Zavala was
prosecuted fully, he said.
The letter, which he distributed to the media and Congress, also
said the refund "had nothing to do with any claim that the funds came from
the contras or belonged to the contras. It had to do with the fact that it
would have cost the taxpayers at least that much to fund the excursion to
Costa Rica."
But CIA cables and officials give a different account:
In late July 1984, the CIA's Costa Rica station sent a cable to CIA
headquarters in Langley, Va., reporting - in what the agency later called
a case of mistaken identity - that one of the contra leaders to be deposed
was a former CIA "asset," a person who had worked for the CIA.
"Station is concerned that this kind of uncoordinated activity" -
the depositions - "could have serious implications for anti-Sandinista
activities in Costa Rica and elsewhere," the cable said.
As a result, on Aug. 7, 1984, CIA lawyer Strickland visited the
prosecutor on the case, Assistant U.S. Attorney Mark Zanides, about the
"uncomfortable situation," the report said.
An Aug. 24, 1984, cable explained that the agency made this
"discreet approach" to "ascertain details of the subject prosecution and
to avoid inquiry into activities or other (CIA) interests."
The cable said "it was agreed by all that any litigation concerning
the currency seizure would be fruitless. In essence, the United States
Attorney could never disprove the defendant's allegation that (this) was
(CIA) money. Accordingly, at (the CIA's) request, the U.S. Attorney has
agreed to return the money to Zavala."
It added:
"We can only guess as to what other testimony may have been
forthcoming. . (the CIA) will continue to monitor the prosecution closely
so that any further disclosures or allegations by defendant or his
confidants can be deflected. . the United States Attorney was most
deferential to our interests. "
A CIA official - identified in the report only by the alias of Ms.
Jones - told the inspector that the burning issue in the Frogman case was
the potential claim that a CIA asset was diverting agency funds to the
drug trade and the risk of bad publicity.
The claim would be explosive, she said. "What would make better
headlines?"
When the inspector inquired if it was unusual for the CIA to ask
prosecutors for a favor, Jones said all intelligence agencies routinely
encounter problems in protecting their assets. She said her office - the
CIA's policy coordination staff - focused on protecting CIA interests
implicated in court cases, which involved contacting prosecutors.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Zanides said he reported his contact with
the CIA to Russoniello, who later ordered him to cancel the depositions
because of their cost, the report said. Zanides said he wasn't concerned
about refunding the money because it didn't jeopardize the prosecution, it
said.
The study concluded, "Zanides likely passed on this information, as
it is unlikely that a line assistant would not notify his superiors of
contact by an attorney from the CIA."
The CIA also contacted two of Zanides' superiors, a CIA cable said,
but both told the inspector they did not recall that. One of them added
that the agency's approach at the very least would have been reported to
Russoniello.
But Russoniello told the inspector the CIA never contacted him, and
that he knew nothing about it contacting anyone in his office, according
to the report. He said he didn't recall the considerations behind the
final decision to return the money, only that he decided it was not cost
effective to go to Costa Rica, the report said.
Russoniello told The Examiner, "I didn't know that they (the CIA)
had an interest." Zanides declined to comment.
Cables contradict Justice
The CIA cables also conflict with the Justice Department's denial in
the late 1980s that any intelligence agency had interceded in cases
involving allegations of contras and drugs, said Jack Blum, who
investigated the cases as special counsel to the Senate Foreign Relations
subcommittee on terrorism, narcotics and international operations.
Justice Department spokesman Will Mancino declined to comment on the
earlier denials.
The CIA withheld documents on the Frogman case from the
subcommittee, a report by the CIA acknowledged in January.
The agency's efforts to have the cash returned "did not appear to be
intended to influence the outcome of Zavala's trial," that report said,
but to protect its contra operations.
The CIA cables, it added, exaggerated the agency's influence on the
decision to refund the money.
CIA spokeswoman Guilsher said the agency does not often intercede in
criminal cases.
Such cases may pit protection of national-security operations
against prosecution of criminal suspects, said G. Robert Blakey, a law
professor at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana and former chief
counsel to the House Select Committee on Assassinations.
In the Frogman case, Inspector General Bromwich concluded that drug
dealer Zavala or his friends "fabricated the claim that the seized money
belonged to the contras. to salvage some of his drug profits."
But Bromwich called on the public, Congress and the CIA's inspector
general to "assess the propriety of (the CIA's) intervening in this
law-enforcement matter based, at least partly, on a desire to protect the
public image of the Contras or the CIA."
The inspector general's report was prompted by 1996 articles in the
San Jose Mercury News suggesting that CIA complicity in contra drug
trafficking largely was responsible for the crack cocaine epidemic. The
report found the paper's main allegations were not substantiated.
***
Dale Gieringer (415) 563-5858 // canorml@igc.apc.org
2215-R Market St. #278, San Francisco CA 94114
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Chicago A New Hub For Drugs (According to the Chicago Tribune, federal
officials say Chicago and its suburbs recently have seen a dramatic increase
in wholesale illegal drug operations in which cocaine and marijuana are
brought there for transfer elsewhere. One reason for the increase,
authorities say, is an illegal drugs network based in Ciudad Juarez, the
sprawling Mexican city just across the Rio Grande from El Paso, Texas. In
response, Vice President Al Gore is scheduled to come to Chicago on Monday to
announce the Chicago Narcotics Initiative.)
Date: Tue, 11 Aug 1998 18:53:38 -0400
To: mapnews@mapinc.org
From: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org (MAPNews)
Subject: MN: US IL: Chicago A New Hub For Drugs
Sender: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Reply-To: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Organization: Media Awareness Project http://www.mapinc.org/lists/
Newshawk: Steve Young (theyoungfamily@worldnet.att.net)
Pubdate: Mon, 10 Aug 1998
Source: Chicago Tribune (IL)
Section: Sec. 1, p. 1
Contact: tribletter@aol.com
Website: http://www.chicago.tribune.com/
Author: Douglas Holt
CHICAGO A NEW HUB FOR DRUGS
Ciudad Juarez, the sprawling Mexican city just across the Rio Grande from El
Paso, Texas, is a town too poor to provide its 1.5 million residents with a
sewage-treatment plant. But federal authorities consider the drug cartel
based there one of the world's most powerful.
Even after its leader, Amado Carrillo-Fuentes, died a year ago in a botched
plastic-surgery operation, the Juarez ring has continued generating tens of
millions of dollars in drug profits weekly, federal authorities say. The
cartel delivers cocaine by the ton to cities such as Dallas, Denver,
Houston, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Seattle.
But a growing hub of the enterprise, recent federal investigations have
shown, is Chicago. Juarez cartel drug cases now lead to Chicago more often
than any U.S. city, including New York or Los Angeles, according to the U.S.
attorney's office in El Paso.
"I think `ubiquitous' is probably a good word to describe the Chicago
connection," Assistant U.S. Atty. Sam Ponder said.
Federal officials say Chicago and its suburbs recently have seen a dramatic
increase in wholesale drug operations in which cocaine and marijuana are
brought here and stored before being divided and shipped elsewhere. One
reason for the increase, authorities say, is the Juarez connection.
On Monday, Vice President Al Gore is scheduled to come to Chicago to
announce a response. Gore and other federal officials plan to outline the
Chicago Narcotics Initiative, which will try to disrupt major drug
traffickers, money launderers and street gangs by drawing resources from the
U.S. Customs Service, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, the FBI and
the U.S. attorney's office, according to a draft of the plan obtained by the
Tribune.
So far this year, Chicago-based DEA agents have seized more than three times
as much cocaine and nearly 10 times as much marijuana as during all of last
year. And local customs officials have confiscated $16.1 million in
drug-related cash, more than twice last year's total.
While seizures are an imperfect indicator of drug-related activity--they
could reflect heightened law-enforcement efforts or just plain
luck--authorities see the across-the-board increases as a sign more drugs
and drug profits are flowing through Chicago.
But political pressure also has helped prompt the new federal response.
Earlier this year, Chicago Mayor Richard Daley complained federal
authorities were doing too little to fight drugs locally. Soon afterward,
the U.S. attorney's office reassembled a unit of prosecutors devoted to drug
cases.
Juarez became a major source of drugs to Chicago starting in the early
1990s, when Colombian drug traffickers began paying Mexican traffickers in
cocaine rather than cash. The shift made Mexican traffickers powerful
suppliers of cocaine in their own right. As a result, drug runners'
command-and-control centers, such as those that have long existed in Miami
and New York, began appearing in cities with stronger ties to
Mexico--especially Chicago, federal officials said.
"Over the last five years, a new center of gravity for drug trafficking in
the United States is really Chicago," said Donald Ferrarone, former special
agent in charge of the DEA's Houston office and one of the first
law-enforcement officials to notice the Chicago-to-Juarez connection based
on intelligence reports coming across his desk.
Drug trafficking in Chicago has long been ruled by the Herrera crime family,
with roots in Durango, Mexico. But "the Herreras had a very close
relationship with Carrillo-Fuentes and still have it" with his successors
running the Juarez cartel, said Peter Lupsha, a retired research scholar at
the Latin American Institute at the University of New Mexico.
Beyond family ties, Chicago offers drug traffickers the same infrastructure
favored by legitimate businesses: a central location and a ready network of
roads, rails and airports.
As a result, it's no surprise that as Carrillo-Fuentes built his drug empire
in the 1990s, Chicago became a prime place to warehouse drugs bound for
elsewhere and a location to consolidate cash before shipping it back to
Mexico, law-enforcement officials said.
The Juarez connection is by no means the only route for Chicago-bound
illegal drugs. Nigerian heroin rings have a significant Chicago presence.
Some Colombians deal directly with Chicago-based distributors. And in May,
DEA agents seized more than 1 1/2 tons of cocaine thought to have come from
Reynosa, Mexico. That cocaine was concealed under carrots at a West Side
produce company.
But for years, investigators have seen solid hints of a burgeoning
Juarez-to-Chicago drug pipeline. In 1995, Chicago police seized 1,615 pounds
of cocaine wrapped in newspaper from Juarez. Last month, Chicago police
confiscated 4,900 pounds of marijuana at a South Side warehouse from a
semi-truck that rolled in from El Paso.
And in 1997 in El Paso, Customs agents seized $5.6 million in small bills
stuffed in a hidden compartment of a semi-truck trying to cross into Juarez.
The truck came from Chicago.
That cash seizure was hailed as the largest on the U.S.-Mexico border. But
only a week earlier, two trucks from the same group got across and delivered
$20 million in cash to the Juarez cartel, said Rene Shekmer, an assistant
U.S. attorney in Michigan who was involved in the case.
Perhaps the most significant sign of the Juarez connection to Chicago came
in March, when a Cook County sheriff's police officer pulled over a Jeep
Cherokee in southwest suburban Burbank.
In what authorities described then as the work of an alert officer who took
time to investigate an illegal lane change, the driver was found to be
carrying $1.6 million in drug-related cash stuffed in two suitcases.
But it was no accident that the local officer arrested Roberto
Orozco-Fernandez, 36, who was living in a ordinary-looking house in Burbank,
where investigators found $50,000 more.
In March, federal authorities were tailing Orozco-Fernandez, who was thought
to be a hit man and money launderer for the Juarez cartel. They had reason
to think he was carrying a large amount of cash.
But the chance to arrest him on drug conspiracy charges came as
investigators were still gathering evidence for what would become the
nation's largest money-laundering investigation ever, a globe-spanning sting
dubbed Operation Casablanca. So they turned to local authorities for a
little help.
A Cook County sheriff's officer "pulled him over so it didn't tip off the
whole major project," said a law-enforcement official familiar with the arrest.
Such tactics are likely to continue, according to the Chicago Narcotics
Initiative plan that Gore plans to help unveil Monday.
"As occurred in March 1998, large seizures of drugs and money will be
referred to local law enforcement in order to conceal ongoing federal
undercover operations," according to a planning document outlining the
initiative.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
DrugSense Weekly, No. 59 (The weekly summary of drug policy news from
DrugSense includes the final third of an original feature article by Jeffrey
A. Schaler, Ph.D., "The Drug Policy Problem.")
Date: Wed, 12 Aug 1998 10:43:41 -0700
To: mgreer@mapinc.org
From: Mark Greer (MGreer@mapinc.org)
Subject: DrugSense Weekly, August 10,1998 No. 59
***
DRUGSENSE WEEKLY
In 10 minutes a week you can stay aware and informed on drug policy
developments worldwide.
Consider investing another 10 minutes to write a letter to the editor
using the email addresses provided in this publication.
You CAN make a difference!
***
DrugSense Weekly, August 10, 1998 No. 59
A DrugSense publication
http://www.drugsense.org/
***
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
* Feature Article
THE DRUG *POLICY* PROBLEM (PART Three)
Jeffrey A. Schaler, PhD
* Weekly News In Review
Drug War Policy-
UK - OPED: Why Banning Drugs Makes the Problem Even Worse
US - Editorial: Changing The Drug Laws
House Drug Testing Plan Blocked
Book Review: Bookshelf: Addicted to Abolition
OPED - Let's Just Say 'No' To Us Drug-War Justice
Incarceration-
U.S. Prison Population Tops 1.2 Million
Supermax Prisons Typify U.S. Attitudes On Crime
In Iowa, Some Prisoners are Behind Barns
Mayor - 'I'm Not Anti-Prison, I'm Not Anti-Growth'
OPED - Drug Courts
Medical Marijuana-
Medical Marijuana To Appear On Nevada Ballot
Ruling Delayed on Use of Pot as AIDS Relief
Marijuana Helped to Save My Life, Prominent Harvard Scholar Says
Editorial - Praise And Pillory
Judge Says Jailed Medical Marijuana Advocate Must Receive Medication
Sports & Drugs-
UK - Medical Journal Backs Use Of Drugs In Sport
International News-
Russia - Moscow Orders War on Drugs
Tracing Money, Swiss Outdo U.S. On Mexico Drug Corruption Case
Australia - Alarm At 'Deadly' Heroin Sold In ACT
UK - Heroin's New Image Hooks Teenagers
Burma - Tales of Terror Emerge From Victims
`Nothing Left' of Police Base in Colombia
* Hot Off The 'Net
McWilliams Speech Online
DrugSense Material used by NCIA
* DrugSense Tip Of The Week
The Sentencing Project
* Quote of the Week
John Kenneth Galbraith
* Fact of the Week
California Incarceration rate
***
FEATURE ARTICLE
***
THE DRUG *POLICY* PROBLEM (Part Three)
Jeffrey A. Schaler, PhD
Editor's note: This is the third and final chapter in Dr. Schaler's
excellent article. Parts One and Two can be read in issues No. 57 and No. 58
at: http://www.drugsense.org/nl/
We encourage submissions by other reform leaders on drug policy
issues. Send your article to MGreer@mapinc.org
PLAYERS IN THE DRUG POLICY GAME
The principal contenders in the current U.S. debate represent three
perspectives on drug policy in a free society: the prohibitionist or
"drug warrior" perspective, the public health perspective, and the
classical liberal or "libertarian" perspective.
DRUG WARRIORS
The "drug warrior" perspective is the foundation of our present drug
control policies. The drug warrior values a paternalistic state, which
plays the role of protective parent in relation to vulnerable
citizen-children. His focus is on strict enforcement of prohibition
and on the regulation of currently legal drugs (for example,
prescription drugs). Many drug warriors also advocate the expansion of
sanctions to include tobacco and alcohol. General Barry McCaffrey and
William J. Bennett--current and past "drug czars" respectively, former
director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse Robert J. Dupont, and
Congressman Charles B. Rangel are drug warriors sharing this point of
view. They typically believe that drugs cause addiction and crime. In
their view, public policies should aim to limit supply and punish users
and dealers. Thus we have the "war on drugs." Illegal drugs such as
heroin, cocaine, crack, LSD, "speed," and marijuana, and the people who
profit by selling them, are the enemy.
Here are some questions we need to ask in evaluating the "drug warrior"
perspective: Do drugs cause crime and addiction? Does prohibition
itself create lawlessness? Is it proper for government to regulate
behavior if that behavior harms no one but the user? Do people have a
right to own and use drugs as personal property? Is drug supply the
best predictor of use? Are social, economic, and psychological
problems related to drug use ignored and thereby perpetuated when
policy focuses on eliminating supply and punishing drug users and
dealers? Is the war on drugs a scapegoating device to distract citizens
from other social problems which they may feel helpless to solve? Does
prohibition serve the economic interests of prison builders, policy
makers, and drug dealers? Can drugs ever be controlled? If drug
prohibition can work outside a total police state, why is the drug
trade flourishing in prisons, the most totalitarian institutions of our
society?
LEGALIZERS
The public health perspective on drug policy is represented by people
who advocate the legalization and medicalization of drug use. They
regard addiction as a disease and criminal sanctions as inhumane and
wasteful of tax money. Hence they advocate treatment rather than
punishment for drug use. As Mayor Kurt Schmoke of Baltimore put it
years ago, "The war on drugs should be led by the Surgeon General, not
the Attorney General." Today the slogan of medicalization is "harm
reduction." The advocates of medicalization, e.g. the Drug Policy
Foundation in Washington, D.C. and The Lindesmith Center in New York,
generally also support "medical marijuana" laws such as those passed
recently in California and Arizona. Ironically, prohibitionists and
legalizers both embrace the medical model of addiction: they believe
that drug addiction exists, that it is a disease, and thus that it is
"treatable" as a disease.
In examining the public health perspective, we need to raise questions
like the following: does medical treatment of addiction work? Can it
ever work, or is it based on a logical mistake? Will medical control
(e.g., through prescription drugs) create the same problems of
lawlessness that are associated with prohibition? Does court-ordered
and state-supported treatment violate the drug user's First Amendment
rights? The late American Civil Liberties Union attorney Ellen M. Luff
addressed that issue in an important case that received national
attention in 1988 (Maryland v. Norfolk). Luff successfully argued
that court-ordered attendance in Alcoholics Anonymous constitutes state
entanglement with religion. Similar cases have emerged since then (e.g.
Griffin v. Coughlin, 88 N.Y. 2d 674, New York Court of Appeals, decided
11 June 1996; Kerr v. Farrey, 95 F.3d 472, 7th Cir. 1996; Warner v.
Orange County Dept. of Probation, No. 95-7055, 1997 WL 321553, 2nd
Cir., 9 September 1996, amended 14 May 1997). Should public funds be
spent on moral indoctrination in the name of public health? Again,
should the government control behavior that harms no one but the
individual involved?
Calls for state-supported treatment are echoed by prohibitionists and
legalizers alike. An important point here is that whether treatment for
addiction is voluntary or involuntary, state involvement in any
capacity--e.g. court-ordered attendance, state licensure of treatment
facilities, or state subsidies for treatment programs-violates the
invisible wall separating church and state. This is because all
treatment for addiction is essentially a religious activity. The state
has no business inside a person's head.
LIBERTARIANS
In the classical liberal, or libertarian, perspective (represented in
somewhat different ways by psychiatrist Thomas Szasz and economist
Milton Friedman), drug use is regarded not as a disease but as a
behavior based on personal values. It is regarded as an ethical rather
than a medical issue. Classical liberals cite the scientific evidence
that drug use is a function more of mind set and environment than of
chemistry or physiology. They challenge the notion of "loss of control"
that is integral to the prohibitionist and public health perspectives,
basing their claims on studies of drug users who controlled their
habits when motivated to do so. They do not believe that drugs or
addiction can cause crime. In their view drugs are property and as such
are protected by the Constitution; drug users need not be treated as
"barbarians at the gate" requiring exceptions to the constitutional
rule of law. The classical liberals believe that a free-market approach
to the trade of currently illegal drugs would reduce the crime and
lawlessness associated with them under prohibition. Valuing liberty
over health, they criticize medicalization as paternalistic and
statist. In their view, informal social controls, either relational or
self-imposed, are the appropriate focus of drug policy.
In judging the classical liberal perspective, we need to ask questions
like the following: If drug prohibition is repealed, will there be a
substantial increase in drug use? If there is, will the problems
associated with increased drug use pose a greater threat to freedom
than drug prohibition has? Will an American free market in currently
illegal drugs create international problems in trade with
prohibitionist countries?
WE NEED POLICY BASED IN FACT NOT FICTION
We need new ways of thinking about addiction-- ways of thinking
consistent with empirical findings on addiction and inconsistent with
mainstream ideas about drugs and the policies based on them. There are
no easy answers to the difficult questions I have posed here. However,
they must be addressed in the academic and policy making arenas. Too
often, professors are penalized for even asking those questions. It is
important that we choose the right course in drug policy, based on
fact, not fiction-and even more important that we once again be free to
choose.
FOOTNOTE (to title):
1. This article is excerpted from the introduction to Drugs: Should We
Legalize, Decriminalize, or Deregulate?, an anthology edited by J.A.
Schaler, published by Prometheus Books, Amherst, N.Y. (1998), part of
their Contemporary Issues series. This excerpt is reprinted here by
permission of the publisher, E-mail: PBooks6205@aol.com, phone orders
(24 hours): Toll free (800) 421-0351
REFERENCE Schaler, J.A. (1997). The case against alcoholism as a
disease. In W. Shelton & R.B. Edwards (Eds.) Values, ethics, and
alcoholism, pp. 21-49, Greenwich, Ct.: JAI Press Inc.
Jeffrey A. Schaler, Ph.D., a psychologist, is an adjunct professor of
justice, law, and society at American University's School of Public
Affairs in Washington, D.C. He is currently at work on a similar book
for Prometheus, co-edited with Magda E. Schaler, M.P.H., on smoking
rights and federal regulation, to be released later this year and is
writing a book for Open Court Publishers in Chicago entitled "Addiction
Is A Choice," to be released in 1999. E-mail: jschale@american.edu
http://rdz.acor.org/szasz/schaler
***
WEEKLY NEWS IN REVIEW
***
Domestic News- Policy
***
COMMENT:
A striking aspect of American drug policy is that no elected
Representative in Congress will even question its validity. This
outspoken criticism of prohibition by a Member of Parliament simply
couldn't happen in the US.
The dimensions of our political problem are made clear by the Times
editorial: a popular, "tough on crime" governor who is enlightened on
the issue of drug sentencing can't find legislative support to change
drug laws that everyone agrees are unfair.
On a lighter note, the buffoons in Congress waffled on drug testing; a
good thing, if you ask me- I want any who still indulge to be able to
toke up once in a while. The matching article about Waukegan High is
pathetic; Jack Benny must be spinning in his grave.
They say there's no such thing as bad publicity. If true, Satel's
incredibly dishonest trashing of Mike Gray's book in the WSJ (where
else?) probably helped far more than it hurt.
***
WHY BANNING DRUGS MAKES THE PROBLEM EVEN WORSE
Heroin use is soaring. Indeed, the Home Office in new research,
predicts an epidemic among young people as the drug spreads from the
inner cities to the comfy shires. Towns with serious hard-drugs
problems are the target of a network of pushers who are rebranding
heroin to make it more readily available and cheaper for children.
[snip]
Both Britain and America believe the solution lies in prohibition of
drugs. Yet 30 years of prohibition has made the US the drug sink of the
world. And Britain has the worst problems in Europe.
[snip]
Source: European, The
Contact: editor@the-european.com
Website: http://www.the-european.com/
Pubdate: Wed, 5 Aug 1998
Author: Paul Flynn, Labour MP for Newport West
URL: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v98.n659.a06.html
***
CHANGING THE DRUG LAWS
Four years ago, in one of his first proposals as Governor, George
Pataki announced that the time had come to revamp New York State's
rigidly Draconian drug laws. Enacted in 1973 under Gov. Nelson A.
Rockefeller, the laws mandated such penalties as 15 years to life for
being caught with four ounces of cocaine. Designed to suppress the drug
trade, these sentences rivaled those for murder and rape. But instead
of wiping out the drug markets, the laws overloaded prisons and court
dockets with addicts and low-level couriers.
[snip]
As it turned out, however, Mr. Pataki could not persuade many of those
in his own party to correct the mistakes of 25 years ago. So the
Governor has been quietly working around the edges to soften the impact
of the Rockefeller laws by pardoning individual prisoners and pushing
for alternative forms of incarceration, including drug treatment. Doing
the right thing quietly is better than not at all, of course, but it is
time to deal openly with a sentencing mess that many judges and law
enforcement officials have been protesting for years.
[snip]
Pubdate: Sat, 08 Aug 1998
Source: New York Times (NY)
Contact: letters@nytimes.com
Website: http://www.nytimes.com/
URL: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v98.n663.a08.html
***
HOUSE DRUG TESTING PLAN BLOCKED
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Republican leaders have apparently quashed, at least
for now, a plan by two Republican lawmakers to require drug testing of
House members and their staffs.
[snip]
Date: Wed, 05 Aug 1998 20:34:32 -0400
Size: 34 lines 1233 bytes
File: v98.n652.a13
URL: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v98.n652.a13.html
***
WAUKEGAN HIGH EYES RANDOM DRUG TESTS
Waukegan High School students could be required to submit to random
drug tests under a proposal being investigated by Waukegan school
officials that, if adopted, would make the district one of the first in
the nation to impose such a blanket policy. Although other school
districts have required drug testing of some students such as those
involved in athletics, few schools have carried the policy as far as
the one being reviewed by the Waukegan School District 60 Board of
Education.
[snip]
Source: Chicago Tribune (IL)
Contact: tribletter@aol.com
Website: http://www.chicago.tribune.com/
Pubdate: Fri, 7 Aug 1998
Author: Sheryl Kennedy
Section: Metro DuPage, p. 1
URL: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v98.n664.a07.html
***
BOOKSHELF: ADDICTED TO ABOLITION
At the turn of the last century, unrestricted access to morphine,
heroin and cocaine led to a great wave of addiction in the U.S.
Witnessing this devastation of people's lives, the nation responded
with anti drug laws. Somehow the simple lesson here-that drugs are
dangerous-has been forgotten by many of our nation's elites. Mike
Gray's "Drug Crazy" (Random House, 251 pages, $23.95) is the product of
such selective memory.
[snip]
Source: Wall Street Journal
Contact: letter.editor@edit.wsj.com
Website: http://www.wsj.com/
Pubdate: 5 Aug 1998
Author: Sally Satel
http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v98.n651.a11.html
***
LET'S JUST SAY 'NO' TO US DRUG-WAR JUSTICE
In the 18th century, the British government so routinely and wrongfully
confiscated property from American colonists that the Colonies
overthrew the crown and wrote their own constitution ensuring due
process and forbidding unjust seizures.
In the late 20th century, the United States government has returned to the
old and odious British ways: illegally seizing property under the guise of
fighting narcotics, and trampling due-process guarantees along the way.
[snip]
Source: Christian Sciense Monitor
Section: Opinion/Essays
Pubdate: Mon, 3 Aug 1998
Authors: Phil Harvey and Mike Tidwell
Note; Phil Harvey is president of DKT International, a non-profit
organization promoting reproductive health in developing countries and now
sponsoring a domestic civil liberties project. Mike Tidwell is author
of 'In the Shadow of the White House: Drugs, Death and Redemption on
the Streets of the Nation's Capital' (Prima, 1992).
URL: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v98.n653.a07.html
***
Incarceration
***
COMMENT:
The number of Americans under lock and key continues to rise, albeit
at a somewhat slower rate; attitudes towards those in prison remains
unselectively hostile, a mind-set encouraged by official rhetoric.
There continues to be growing awareness however, that the need to pay
for what amounts to a huge entitlement program may not sit too well
with the public when the bill is presented. Private prisons and prison
labor are among the ways of holding that bill to a minimum, but each
has its downside.
Finally, "drug courts" are another way to both cheaply extend the
reach of Big Brother and also extort fees for allies in the drug
treatment racket: it follows that the Dallas Morning News would
endorse the idea, especially if funded by the court's own victims via
"forfeiture."
***
U.S. PRISON POPULATION TOPS 1.2 MILLION
WASHINGTON - The nation's adult prison population grew to more than 1.2
million in 1997, its slow but steady rise fueled by inmates serving
longer terms for violent crimes while a constant stream of criminals
entered prison doors, the Justice Department reported yesterday.
The 5.2 percent growth to 1,244,554 federal and state prison inmates by
year's end was slightly below the 7 percent annual average growth
during the 1990s, the department's Bureau of Justice Statistics said.
That was a net gain of 61,186 inmates during the year - very close to
the annual average of 63,900 since 1990, when prison inmates numbered
only 774,000.
[snip]
Pubdate: Mon, 03 Aug 1998
Source: Standard-Times (MA)
Contact: YourView@S-T.com
Website: http://www.s-t.com/
Author: Michael J. Sniffen, Associated Press writer
URL: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v98.n646.a06.html
***
`SUPERMAX' PRISONS TYPIFY U.S. ATTITUDES ON CRIME
FLORENCE, Colorado - If, as some philosophers maintain, nothing tells
more about a society than its treatment of prisoners, the proliferating
super maximum security prisons speak eloquently of the fears and
attitudes about crime in American.
This minimum-contact, so-called ``supermax'' concept is epitomized in
the United States Penitentiary Administrative Maximum Facility (ADX) in
Florence. Inmates call it the Alcatraz of the Rockies. Advocates call
it unfortunate but necessary, given an increasingly violent prison
population. Critics call it a concept that didn't work in 19th-century
America and is in danger of overuse now.
[snip]
Source: Chicago Tribune (IL)
Contact: tribletter@aol.com
Website: http://www.chicago.tribune.com/
Pubdate: Sun, 2 Aug 1998
Author: Lisa Anderson, Chicago Tribune
URL: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v98.n648.a02.html
***
IN IOWA, SOME PRISONERS ARE BEHIND BARNS
CLARION, Iowa - Dripping sweat and dressed in a fluorescent orange
pullover, George Nelson, a prisoner doing time for theft, was not
exactly the kind of worker Wright County had in mind some 12 years ago
when officials provided $90,000 to help build a huge new egg factory.
[snip]
The idea of inmates working at private businesses is anathema to
organized labor.
"If prison labor is wrong in China, it's sure as hell wrong in Iowa,"
said Mark Smith, president of the Iowa Federation of Labor. "Prisoners
are being used to hold down wages."
[snip]
Source: Chicago Tribune (IL)
Contact: tribletter@aol.com
Website: http://www.chicago.tribune.com/
Pubdate: Fri, 7 Aug 1998
Author: Larry Fruhling
Section: Sec. 1, p. 6
***
MAYOR: "I'M NOT ANTI-PRISON, I'M NOT ANTI-GROWTH"
CALIFORNIA CITY - Hot on the heels of intense scrutiny by residents
about Mayor Larry Adams' letter to the Planning Commission last week
came this disclaimer Tuesday night, "I'm not anti-prison, I'm not
anti-growth."
[snip]
Tuesday's discussion brought out a few lone voices to speak against the
city's efforts to bring at least one more prison here. Until now the
overwhelming majority of residents, city officials and business owners
have voiced nothing but anticipation for the economic development
expected to follow prison construction.
The city is already smacking its lips at the thought of new jobs, a
resurrected real estate market, a supermarket, more retail stores,
maybe even a fast-food place.
[snip]
Pubdate: Thu, 06 Aug 1998
Source: Bakersfield Californian
Section: Local
Contact: opinion@bakersfield.com
Website: http://www.bakersfield.com
Author: Debby Badillo Californian Correspondent
URL: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v98.n667.a02.html
***
DRUG COURTS
The right way to address the continuing epidemic
Dallas County officials of face a dilemma concerning the continued
operation of to drug courts here.
County commissioners agree that drug trafficking is reaching the crisis
level. But they cannot all agree that funding two courts are strictly
for drug-related trials is fair, when there are so many other major
criminal cases are waiting to be heard.
What's the solution? Use more of the drug dealer s 'own money to pay
the cost of prosecuting the cases. District Attorney John Vance's
office has said it is willing to commit cash from drug forfeitures to
the budget for the two specialized Dallas County courts. That makes
good sense.
[snip]
Pubdate: Thu, 06 Aug 1998
Source: Dallas Morning News
Section: Local
Contact: letterstoeditor@dallasnews.com
Website: http://www.dallasnews.com
URL: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v98.n667.a02.html
***
Medical Marijuana
***
COMMENT:
After months in the background, the issue of medical marijuana is back
on center stage. For one thing, there are new ballot initiatives in
Nevada, Arizona, Oregon, and Washington State.
In Canada, a court considering a medical marijuana prosecution heard
compelling testimony from an impressive witness.
Prosecution of two patient-activists in Southern California with all
mention of 215 excluded by two blatantly biased judges underscores the
relentless opposition of law enforcement to any relaxation of
marijuana prohibition.
On the federal side, the continued incarceration of AIDS patient Peter
McWilliams in a setting where his medical regimen has been
compromised, is fast approaching the dimensions of blatant human
rights abuse.
***
MEDICAL MARIJUANA TO APPEAR ON NEVADA BALLOT
CARSON CITY, Nev. (AP) - Nevada's secretary of state on Monday
qualified a medical marijuana proposal - seemingly up in smoke for the
lack of just 43 signatures - for the November ballot.
[snip]
Source: Associated Press
Pubdate: Mon, 3 Aug 1998
URL: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v98.n647.a04.html
***
RULING DELAYED ON USE OF POT AS AIDS RELIEF
A judge has reserved his decision on whether Toronto AIDS activist
James Wakeford should have the right to use marijuana for medicinal
purposes.
[snip]
Source: Toronto Sun (Canada)
Contact: editor@sunpub.com
Website: http://www.canoe.ca/TorontoSun/
Pubdate: Fri, 7 Aug1998
Author: Sam Pezzano
URL: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v98.n664.a06.html
***
MARIJUANA HELPED TO SAVE MY LIFE, PROMINENT HARVARD SCHOLAR SAYS
Stephen Jay Gould tells Toronto court to allow medical use of drug
[snip]
Source: Toronto Sun (Canada)
Contact: editor@sunpub.com
Website: http://www.canoe.ca/TorontoSun/
Pubdate: Fri, 7 Aug1998
Author: Sam Pezzano
URL: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v98.n664.a06.html
***
EDITORIAL: PRAISE AND PILLORY
Rx: Marijuana
Judges have latitude to interpret the law, justifiably. But it is hard
to fathom, much less justify, the recent decision by an Orange County
Superior Court Judge, Robert Fitzgerald, that Marvin Chavez, who
founded the Orange County Cannabis Co-Op, cannot use Proposition 215 as
a defense in his trial on charges of selling marijuana.
[snip]
Pubdate: Sun, 2 Aug 1998
Source: Press-Telegram (CA)
Contact: speakout@ptconnect.infi.net.
Website: http://www.ptconnect.com/
URL: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v98.n660.a02.html
***
JUDGE SAYS JAILED MEDICAL MARIJUANA ADVOCATE MUST RECEIVE MEDICATION
LOS ANGELES (AP) -- A federal judge ruled Friday that a medical
marijuana advocate jailed on drug charges must have access to
medications to treat his AIDS and cancer.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Andrew Wistrich said he will ensure Peter
McWilliams receives the appropriate medicine, but the judge also turned
down a request to lower his $250,000 bail.
[snip]
Pubdate: Sat, 01 Aug 1998
Source: Fresno Bee, The
Contact: letters@fresnobee.com
Website: http://www.fresnobee.com/
URL: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v98.n642.a10.html
***
Sports and Drugs
***
COMMENT:
There was a more considered response to the issue of "doping" of
athletes from a prestigious medical source: The Lancet weighed in on
the side of choice.
MEDICAL JOURNAL BACKS USE OF DRUGS IN SPORT
A medical journal has joined those thinking the unthinkable about
drug-taking among athletes, arguing that sport has become so artificial
that it is hard to distinguish between acceptable and unacceptable aids
to success.
The Lancet says today that competitors are nowadays best described as
highly-paid "professional entertainers" in an arena where "fair play is
becoming an old-fashioned idea". Science, it says, already has a deep
influence on the eating habits of competitors, with the line between
drugs and nutritional supplements increasingly blurred.
The journal states: "How can the dignity of athletes be preserved
during testing? Why should an adult competitor not be allowed to make
an informed choice about a substance provided it is legally acquired?"
[snip]
Pubdate: Sat, 08 Aug 1998
Source: Telegraph, The (UK)
Contact: et.letters@telegraph.co.uk
URL: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v98.n661.a02.html
***
International News
***
COMMENT:
By all accounts, the Russian underworld has thrived on the Western
sponsored drug war. Not to be outdone, the government has now entered
the game and will be competing for their share of revenue from the
illegal drug market.
A long NYT article reviews the Byzantine saga of high level Mexican
corruption in detail, focusing on the seeming ineptitude
(unwillingness) of American agencies in nailing down a case against
the Salinas brothers.
Heroin remains a major concern in the non-US English speaking world
while, Burma, a major supplier of that heroin received unusual
exposure in at least one American paper, there was even a bold mention
of the involvement of the Burmese government in the heroin trade.
Finally, a short excerpt describes the deteriorating situation in
Colombia, Burma's Western Hemisphere counterpart.
***
MOSCOW ORDERS WAR ON DRUGS
MOSCOW'S mayor, Yuri Luzhkov, yesterday ordered police to stamp out its
drug problem by raiding bars, discos and clubs frequented by young
people.
[snip]
Pubdate: Sat, 08 Aug 1998
Source: Daily Telegraph (UK)
Contact: et.letters@telegraph.co.uk
Website: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/
Author: Marcus Warren, Moscow
URL: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v98.n662.a07.html
***
TRACING MONEY, SWISS OUTDO U.S. ON MEXICO DRUG CORRUPTION CASE
MEXICO CITY - When the young chief of Switzerland's drug police arrived
here in late 1995 to inquire about $132 million found in Swiss bank
accounts belonging to the influential elder brother of a former
president, he knew enough about Mexico's political underworld to be
wary of his official hosts.
[snip]
Yet while the Swiss are preparing to use that evidence in a civil court
action to confiscate the fortune of Salinas, the elder brother of
former President Carlos Salinas de Gortari, a much larger and more
experienced group of law enforcement officials in the United States has
been unable to make a similar case of their own.
[snip]
Source: New York Times (NY)
Pubdate: Tue, 04 Aug 1998
Contact: letters@nytimes.com
Website: http://www.nytimes.com/
Author: Tim Golden, New York Times
URL: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v98.n656.a02.html
***
ALARM AT 'DEADLY' HEROIN SOLD IN ACT
Children as young as 12 were among a record 42 heroin overdose victims
in Canberra last month.
Police and the ACT Ambulance Service have now issued a warning of
heroin in unprecedented quantities, deadly purity and cheapness,
flooding the market and leaving young people at risk.
[snip]
Pubdate: Sat, 08 Aug 1998
Source: Canberra Times (Australia)
Section: News, Page 3
Contact: letters.editor@canberratimes.com.au
Website: http://www.canberratimes.com.au/
Author: Peter Clack
URL: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v98.n664.a04.html
***
HEROIN'S NEW IMAGE HOOKS TEENAGERS
Battlefields on the front line
DRUG-PUSHERS have changed the image of heroin so successfully that its
use has reached epidemic proportions in many British towns and cities,
a government report said yesterday.
[snip]
"The heroin outbreaks spreading across Britain are primarily a product
of purposeful supplying and marketing. The precursor to all of this had
been the strong, sustained availability of pure, inexpensive heroin,
primarily from southwest Asia."
[snip]
Source: Times, The (UK)
Contact: letters@the-times.co.uk
Website: http://www.the-times.co.uk/
Pubdate: Tue, 4 Aug 1998
Author: Richard Ford
URL: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v98.n651.a10.html
***
TALES OF TERROR EMERGE FROM VICTIMS
Rape, torture murder are its instruments
Bangkok
As riot troops man strategic positions in tense Rangoon for today's
10th anniversary of the Burmese military's fierce suppression of a
pro-democracy uprising, human rights groups say that the army is
committing fresh atrocities at an alarming rate.
[snip]
Increasingly, the regime's concept of "development" is being extended
to grabbing control of the lucrative narcotics trade, analysts say.
Burma is one of the world's largest suppliers of heroin.
[snip]
Pubdate: Sat, 08 Aug 1998
Source: San Francisco Chronicle (CA)
Page: A 12
Contact: chronletters@sfgate.com
Website: http://www.sfgate.com/chronicle/
Author: Sandy Barron Chronicle Foreign Service
URL: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v98.n662.a10.html
***
'NOTHING LEFT' OF POLICE BASE IN COLOMBIA
BOGOTA, Colombia - The faint voice crackled over the two-way radio:
``The base has been destroyed. There is nothing left. The police have
been taken away as hostages, and the soldiers, too.''
The voice of Luis Rodriguez, a resident of Miraflores, related a tale
of catastrophe in a jungle village that hosts Colombia's largest police
anti-narcotics base.
[snip]
Source: Miami Herald (FL)
Contact: heralded@herald.com
Website: http://www.herald.com/
Pubdate: Thu, 06 Aug 1998
Author: Tim Johnson - Herald Staff Writer
URL: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v98.n661.a07.html
***
HOT OFF THE 'NET
Legalize-USA has done it again. Peter McWilliams outstanding speech
from the Libertarian Party national convention is now on-line for all
to hear.
Anyone who reviews this speech will be struck by the injustice and
incongruity represented by the fact that this brilliant patriot is
currently incarcerated and being held on an outrageous $250,000 bail. He is
not receiving proper medication for his AIDS and cancer, and is obviously
being persecuted for his beliefs.
McWilliams' speech to Libertarians: http://www.legalize-usa.org/video6.htm
***
Thanks to Paul Lewin for this heads up. An impressive feather in the
cap for all the hard working DrugSense volunteers and staff:
Thanks to the excellent work of DrugSense/MAP and its army of
volunteers, the prestigious National Center on Institutions and
Alternatives is focusing its "Myth of Month" on the ONDCP's anti-drug
media campaign.
As a result the quality documentation made available through the
DrugSense/MAP site, NCIA was able to forcefully call the anti-drug media
campaign what it is: a myth.
I hope you will let your supporters know about this site & their role
in its creation. The exact link is: http://www.igc.org/ncia/mythc.html
***
TIP OF THE WEEK
The sentencing Project has a web site with a good deal of information and
statistics that can help your letter writing, debates, and in providing
factual information to others about incarceration rates and much more.
Check out:
http://www.sentencingproject.org/
and
http://www.sentencingproject.org/pubs/tsppubs/prison~1.htm
***
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
`In all life one should comfort the afflicted, but verily, also, one
should afflict the comfortable, and especially when they are
comfortably, contentedly, even happily wrong' - John Kenneth Galbraith
***
FACT OF THE WEEK
California Incarceration Rates
There are more prisoners in the state of California alone, than in any
entire country in the world except Russia and China.
Source: Currie, E. Crime and punishment in America. (1998). New York, NY:
Metropolitan Books, Henry Holt and Company, Inc.
***
DS Weekly is one of the many free educational services DrugSense offers
our members. Watch this feature to learn more about what DrugSense can
do for you.
News/COMMENTS-Editor - Tom O'Connell (tjeffoc@drugsense.org)
Senior-Editor - Mark Greer (mgreer@drugsense.org)
We wish to thank all our contributors and Newshawks.
NOTICE:
In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is
distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior
interest in receiving the included information for research and
educational purposes.
REMINDER:
Please help us help reform. Send any news articles you find on any drug
related issue to editor@mapinc.org
PLEASE HELP:
DrugSense provides this service at no charge BUT IT IS NOT FREE TO PRODUCE.
We incur many costs in creating our many and varied services. If you
are able to help by contributing to the DrugSense effort please Make
checks payable to MAP Inc. send your contribution to:
The Media Awareness Project (MAP) Inc.
d/b/a DrugSense
PO Box 651
Porterville,
CA 93258
(800) 266 5759
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[End]
to the 1998 Daily News index for August 6-12