-------------------------------------------------------------------
CBS' 60 Minutes "Smoking to Live" on-line (Paul Stanford of the Oregon
Cannabis Tax Act initiative campaign says the 1991 television special
on medical marijuana, updated and re-broadcast with Morley Safer
on July 12, 1998, can now be viewed in real-time at the crrh.org web site.)
Date: Thu, 26 Nov 1998 11:47:32 -0800
To: dpfor@drugsense.org
From: "D. Paul Stanford" (stanford@crrh.org)
Subject: DPFOR: CBS' 60 Minutes "Smoking to Live" on-line
Sender: owner-dpfor@drugsense.org
Reply-To: dpfor@drugsense.org
Organization: DrugSense http://www.drugsense.org/
Happy Thanksgiving. We certainly have a lot to be thankful for this holiday
season. I am very thankful that after more than 20 years of activism, the
tide is turning our way again.
CRRH is posting a new video on our web site. The CBS' 60 Minutes episode
which aired on July 12, 1998, with Morley Safer is on-line at:
http://www.crrh.org/hemptv/news_60min-mmj.html
This show was originally broadcast in 1991. It features Dr. Lester
Grinspoon of Harvard Medical School and Ken and Barbara Jenks. Ken was a
hemophiliac who contracted AIDS/HIV from a blood transfusion in 1980. He
unknowingly infected his wife. They were arrested for growing two marijuana
plants and fought to become among the handful of patients allowed access to
the US government's medicinal cannabis program. At the time this was first
broadcast in 1991, there were 14 people in the USA who received a
prescription for cannabis. Barbara Jenks died in 1992 and Ken died in 1993.
Today there are 8 people left who receive this US government cannabis.
Barbara and Ken talk about their ordeal and how marijuana helps improve the
quality of their lives. Dr. Lester Grinspoon explains how his son, while
undergoing chemotherapy for terminal cancer in the 1970's, found that
marijuana cured much of his discomfort.
Travel safely and thank you!
Yours truly,
D. Paul Stanford
***
Date: Sat, 28 Nov 1998 09:24:47 -0600
To: "DRCTalk Reformers' Forum" (drctalk@drcnet.org)
From: "Carl E. Olsen" (carl@COMMONLINK.NET)
Subject: Re: CBS' 60 Minutes "Smoking to Live" on-line
Reply-To: drctalk@drcnet.org
Sender: owner-drctalk@drcnet.org
The show was originally broadcast in 1991. At that time, I got a
transcript from Burrell's.
http://www.commonlink.com/~olsen/MEDICAL/safer.html
http://www.calyx.com/~olsen/MEDICAL/safer.html
I also have the text of the Florida court decision at:
http://www.commonlink.com/~olsen/MEDICAL/jenks.html
http://www.calyx.com/~olsen/MEDICAL/jenks.html
Sincerely,
Carl Olsen
------------------------------------------------------------------- New Leaf For Pot Club (The Orange County Register interviews medical marijuana patient Marvin Chavez, recently convicted for distributing pot in connection with his role as founder of the Orange County Cannabis Co-op. In response to the district attorney's office doing anything and everything it can to make sure Proposition 215 is narrowed down to the size of a needle's eye, the cooperative has gone underground.) Date: Fri, 27 Nov 1998 20:58:16 -0500 To: dpfca@drugsense.org From: Richard Lake (rlake@mapinc.org) Subject: DPFCA: US CA: New Leaf For Pot Club Sender: owner-dpfca@drugsense.org Reply-To: dpfca@drugsense.org Organization: DrugSense http://www.drugsense.org/dpfca/ Newshawk: John W. Black Source: Orange County Register (CA) Contact: letters@link.freedom.com Website: http://www.ocregister.com/ Copyright: 1998 The Orange County Register Pubdate: Thursday, 26 Nov 1998 Author: Teri Sforza, OCR News Focus: NEW LEAF FOR POT CLUB Law: Since the convictions of the co-op's leaders, the advice is 'grow your own.' The marijuana plants grow stocky and strong in Marvin Chavez's garden. Along the fence, beside the shed. Leaves green. Buds firm. Stalks sturdy. Chavez squeezes a bud tenderly as it basks in the warm morning light. This, he says, is his medicine. And the law lets him alone. "I'm here, standing up for my rights," he said. "I'm expecting the worst. But my spirit is strong." Chavez is the man who was found guilty last week on three felony counts of selling or transporting marijuana. And yes, Chavez is the still-zealous founder of the Orange County Patient, Doctor, Nurse Support Group, the local "cannabis club" that popped up after Proposition 215 passed in 1996 and has been foundering since his arrest. "I'm under a court order not to hand out medicine to patients," said Chavez, who will be sentenced in January and faces up to eight years in prison. "And I'm abiding by that court order. But the organization will still operate in its own way." Two things have become very clear in the wake of Chavez's case: how patients can legally obtain marijuana under Prop. 215, and how they can't, at least as far as the Orange County District Attorney's Office is concerned. One cannot distribute baggies of marijuana marked with "RX" in exchange for "donations." That is a marijuana sale under California law, and selling marijuana is illegal. But one can grow one's own marijuana, if one has a doctor's recommendation to use the drug. When Chavez was arrested for distributing the marijuana and taking the donations, police and prosecutors knew of the backyard garden at his Santa Ana home. But they did nothing about that. "He was arrested twice, once by us and once by the Garden Grove Police Department," said retired prosecutor Carl Armbrust, who won the convictions against Chavez. "They called me up and said, 'Mr. Chavez has 14 or so marijuana plants growing! What should we do with them?' "And I said, 'Leave them.' Because he's entitled to them," Armbrust said. "He is a patient and had a doctor's authorization, and under the 215 law, he's entitled to them." Chavez, who says he suffers from severe back pain, began crusading for Prop. 215 months before it passed. After it succeeded, he filed fictitious business names for the co-op, got it a business license and worked to familiarize people with the new law. At its height, the co-op had more than 200 members. But now, some of the co-op's pagers have been disconnected. Even before the Chavez verdict, co-op volunteer David Herricks was convicted on more serious charges. And co-op co-director Jack Shachter goes to trial next month. People, afraid, are returning to the black market, where it's hard to know exactly what they're getting. "We have real concerns about quality," said Ana Boyce, the Mission Viejo nurse who helped write Prop.215. The co-op is dedicated to the memory of her late husband, J.J., who died of cancer in 1995. "The co-op will continue," she vowed. "To be safe, there won't be any money exchanges at all. We're trying to encourage people to grow their own." But that's not so easy. Shirley Reaves, a director of the co-op who suffers from spinal problems, lives in an apartment in Chico. She shares the garden area with her neighbors and certainly can't grow marijuana there. "My only option is to grow indoors, and I don't have the facilities or the technology or the knowledge to do that," she said. "My health has been really bad since Marvin's arrest," she said. "I haven't been able to get any marijuana." Chavez's attorneys will appeal his convictions on the ground that the judge did not allow them to mount a defense under Prop. 215. Attorney James Silva called Orange County officials "strict constructionists" when it comes to the medical marijuana law. "Of all the counties where there has been open distribution of medical marijuana, Orange County has elected to address it with an iron fist," said attorney J. David Nick, Silva's partner on the case. "The DA's office is doing anything and everything it can to make sure this law is narrowed down to the size of a needle's eye." Armbrust has heard it all before. "In Orange County, our DA has always been pretty hard-line as far as what the law is," Armbrust said. "We don't bend the rules. I don't want to say we're 'zero tolerance,' but pretty close to zero tolerance." Armbrust tells a story from very early in his career. Aman was on trial for a traffic violation. Running a stop sign. Armbrust put the officer who wrote the ticket on the stand. Did the man stop at all? Armbrust asked. "Yes," the officer said. "He stopped 1 foot over the line." Armbrust, incredulous, blurted out something he is far to seasoned to say today: "You gave him a ticket for stopping 1 foot over the line?" And the officer said something Armbrust has never forgotten: "The line is the line. The law is the law." It's the same line of argument the medical marijuana advocates plan to use. "Eventually, the will of the people will prevail, and the government will concede and realize this is medicine," Boyce said.
------------------------------------------------------------------- A Late Bloomer Joins the Marijuana Debate (A patronizing and intellectually dishonest feature article in The New York Times about Lynn Zimmer, the sociology professor at Queens College in New York, and the recent book she co-authored, "Marijuana Myths, Marijuana Facts - A Review of the Scientific Evidence," claims that "academic experts" have not been favorable when reviewing the book, "calling it a well-researched compilation of opinion that occasionally leaves out information that might cast marijuana in a negative light," without even citing the source of such alleged nonsense, or mentioning that even the Journal of the American Medical Association admitted the book was "'extraordinarily well-researched.") Date: Thu, 26 Nov 1998 12:20:53 -0800 From: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org (MAPNews) To: mapnews@mapinc.org Subject: MN: US: NYT: A Late Bloomer Joins the Marijuana Debate Sender: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org Reply-To: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org Organization: Media Awareness Project http://www.mapinc.org/lists/ Newshawk: Jeff Seymour Source: New York Times (NY) Pubdate: Thursday, 26 Nov 1998 Contact: letters@nytimes.com Website: http://www.nytimes.com/ Copyright: 1998 The New York Times Company Section: Metro, Public Lives Author: David Firestone A Late Bloomer Joins the Marijuana Debate LYNN ZIMMER wasn't even in the same room as a marijuana cigarette until 1980, when she was 33 years old. By then she already had two children and was working on her Ph.D. in sociology. Somehow, as the child of working-class parents in upstate Binghamton, she had sidestepped the turbulence of her generation, and its sweetly pungent perfume. "When I graduated from high school in 1965, I had never even heard of marijuana," she said. "By 1967 I had a child and was taking care of my family and going to school at night, and working in a day-care center mornings. So I had no interest in the 60's. I guess I saw it on television." But for all the frenzied experimentation and generational struggle that took place outside her window back then, the debate over marijuana has only grown in intensity in the ensuing decades. And suddenly, Ms. Zimmer finds herself in its dead center. Now teaching sociology at Queens College, she has become at once an academic authority on the drug and a passionate advocate of its decriminalization. Ms. Zimmer's arguments about marijuana's essential harmlessness, collected in a recent book co-written with a City University colleague, Dr. John P. Morgan, have become a flashpoint in the battle over legalization, which gained steam earlier this month when five Western states voted to permit the medical use of marijuana. Groups that favor liberalizing the nation's drug laws have been promoting the book, which bears the somewhat presumptuous title of "Marijuana Myths, Marijuana Facts," as a kind of bible on the subject, saying it effectively shoots down the accepted wisdom that the drug is a physically harmful gateway to crack and the abyss. Academic experts have been far less kind, calling it a well-researched compilation of opinion that occasionally leaves out information that might cast marijuana in a negative light. Opponents of drug use have condemned it as an invitation to surrender in the war against drugs. "There's no doubt marijuana leads to trouble and I can show you 10 books that prove that for every one like the one you just showed me," Police Commissioner Howard Safir, a former drug enforcement agent, told MSNBC earlier this year. "The fact that these two professors are teachers leads me to wonder if they are fit to be leading a classroom." Under Safir and Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, marijuana arrests in New York have soared to record levels this year, 30 years after the drug became the token of the counterculture, and the arrests are likely to reach 40,000 by the end of the year, eight times the number six years ago. Most of those arrested are charged with possession of the drug. To Ms. Zimmer, all this effort is a waste of taxpayer money, a misguided extension of the quality-of-life campaign that runs counter to a growing public perception, cherished by many baby boomers, that marijuana holds little intrinsic danger. "We now are getting into the adult population many more people who have had experience with marijuana," she said, at the dining room table of her apartment in Chelsea. "Many have children and are concerned about their children, so they're a little ambivalent, but I think they are questioning some of the exaggerated claims about marijuana's dangers and certainly questioning the utility of putting people in jail for engaging in a behavior that 70 million people have engaged in." Some of that perception has been fostered by several large foundations that are promoting the relaxation of drug laws, and Ms. Zimmer, 51, has been the beneficiary of some of their largesse. Her book was published by the Lindesmith Center, a group funded by the financier George Soros, who has made a worldwide campaign of finding a less punitive response to drug use than the current laws. She served for a time on the board of directors of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, known as Norml, and her book is dedicated to Dr. Lester Grinspoon, the Harvard professor who serves as chairman of the Norml Foundation's board. Ms. Zimmer said she first became interested in the subject after conducting a study in 1986 of Operation Pressure Point, an attempt by the Police Department to rid the Lower East Side of drugs, an effort that she and others judged ineffective. She later became more interested in the various claims being made about the dangers of marijuana, most of which she determined were exaggerated, and which she attempts to debunk in her book. But in the polarized world of the drug debate, the book inevitably came to be considered a partisan argument, particularly because it rarely acknowledges any downside to marijuana. "The book puts forward as many myths as it debunks," said Mark A.R. Kleiman, a drug policy expert at the University of California at Los Angeles, who himself favors decriminalizing possession. "If you didn't know anything and read the book and you're not too critical about methodology, you'd be impressed. Otherwise you sort of say, come on." But Ms. Zimmer, straightforward and almost prim in her love of research and statistics, remains confident that any thorough review of the scientific literature will produce the same conclusions. And no, she said, although she did smoke the occasional joint, she never seriously indulged. "I was way too busy for that," she said.
------------------------------------------------------------------- Weekly Action Report On Drug Policies, Year 4, Number 39 (A summary of European and international drug policy news, from CORA in Italy) Date: Mon, 30 Nov 1998 18:10:27 +0100 To: cora.belgique@agora.stm.it From: CORA Belgique (cora.belgique@agora.stm.it) Subject: CORAFax No. 39 (EN) Sender: owner-hemp@efn.org CORAFax No. 39 (EN) ANTIPROHIBITIONIST OF THE ENTIRE WORLD .... Year 4 No. 39, November 26 1998 *** Weekly Action Report on Drug Policies Edited by the CORA - Radical Antiprohibitionist Coordination, federated to - TRP-Transnational Radical Party (NGO, consultive status, I) - The Global Coalition for Alternatives to the Drug War *** director: Vincenzo Donvito All rights reserved *** http://www.agora.stm.it/coranet mailto:cora.news@agora.stm.it *** CORANEWS ITALY-INADEQUATE FUNCTIONING OF PUBLIC SERVICES FOR DRUG ADDICTS This is the theme of a questioning in parliament on the part of Senator Pietro Milio, of the Lista Pannella. In Salerno, for reasons of public order, distribution of methadone takes place in a suburban area of the city, causing great problems for those who are undergoing the treatment. *** ITALY-EUROPEAN ELECTIONS On the 19th of November the CORA will organise many demonstrations to launch the campaign for an anti prohibitionist bill, against the stubbornness of the Government. *** NEWS FROM THE WORLD 000367 23/11/98 E.U. / NL ADDICITION DIE PRESSE A research conducted by the Jellinek-Klinik in 13 high schools shows that adolescents often use cocaine during parties, and that alcohol and marijuana have not lost their popularity. *** 000357 19/11/98 E.U. / FRANCE ADDICTION LE FIGARO The first official report on violence in French schools shows that 10% of the violent events that happen is related to drugs. *** 000358 19/11/98 E.U. / GERMANY ADDICTION SUEDDEUTSCHE Z. Three years ago drug addicts started to hope that they could stop using drugs quickly and without pain through the Urod therapy. New tests performed on animals show instead that with Urod abstinence effects last longer and are physically harder than with other therapies. *** 000359 26/11/98 E.U. / ITALY ADDICTION PANORAMA An article in Panorama describes an evening with the Anonymous Narcotists. They sit around a table, talk about their experiences and about how they can stop using drugs. Often, in fact, they manage to do so. There are 43 of these centres in 14 Italian cities, and help is offered via phone and Internet. *** 000350 23/11/98 E.U. / ITALY CONSUMERS CORRIERE DELLA SERA The Minister of Interiors has had a meeting with members of the Antagonist Movement. There is a basis for dialogue , but not on the theme of drugs, because the Minister is against legalising ilght drugs. *** 000351 20/11/98 E.U. / GB CONSUMERS EL PAIS / LIBERATION / THE TIMES The British Police has sounded an alarm about the diffusion of two new syinthetic drugs that have effects 33 times more powerful than the ones caused by ecstasy. One of these substances, called flatiner, has already caused three death cases in the past months. The other is called DOB, and is even stronger. *** 000361 24/11/98 E.U. / GB CONSUMERS THE TIMES A report by the Prison Service says that pisoners manage to carry drugs and other black market goods in and out of the prison by using paper airplanes that get flown over the external walls. *** 000352 20/11/98 E.U. / ITALY CRIME IL SOLE 24 ORE An ISTAT research shows that petty crime has by now spread all over, and that there no longer are any 'crime free' areas. The research has registered 48.2 crimes regarding drug production and sale per every 100 thousand inhabitants. This type of offence is the third most frequent after robberies and theft. *** 000362 23/11/98 AMERICA / USA CRIME LA REPUBBLICA A new report by the FBI shows an inversion of tendencies regarding crime. All sorts of offences are diminishing, and generally speaking the atmosphere in big cities is different. Young people of the 'crack generation' have had an opportunity to work and to build a future for themselves, and therefore the consumption of drugs and the spreading of violence have diminished. *** 000364 23/11/98 AMERICA / MEXICO DRUG MAFIA FRANKFURTER The so-called 'war on drugs' has been shown to be a failure. The DEA says that Mexican drug traffickers handle a gross budget of 30 billion USD a year (10% of the country's entire earning). Not only, but Mexico's most famous pop groups sell thousands of copies of their records by singing the heroic lives of the drug mafia bosses. *** 000356 19/11/98 E.U. / GB HEALTH THE TIMES Dr Thomas Stuttaford, who is against any hypothesis of therapeutic use of cannabis, has shown all the dangerous effects it can have. Loss of memory, psychotic syndromes, physical symptoms from abstinence, greater risk of cancer, leukaemia in children of women who have used cannabis... *** 000363 18/11/98 EUROPE INFORMATION LE FIGARO 18/11 / CORRIERE DELLA SERA 22/11 / L'EXPRESS 25/11 Legalization of cannabis and relative legislation have been discussed during the European Week on Prevention of Drug Addiction. 15 countries of the European Union have agreed to use the same information campaign for young people. *** 000353 19/11/98 E.U. / GERMANY / MUNICH INITIATIVE FRANKFURTER Bavaria does not have centres for controlled distribution of heroin like Frankfurt does, but Munich has an automatic syringe dispenser. The machine, though, attracts drug pushers and when the siringes have been used they usually end up in the litter, where children can find them. *** 000354 20/11/98 E.U. / SPAIN PREVENTION EL PAIS Mr. Gonzalo Robles, of the Plan Nacional Sobre Drogas, is working especially on prevention. He has released the outcome of a special information programme for 11 and 12 year old students who live in socially dangerous areas. The consumption of alcohol has been reduced by 47% and the consumption of tobacco has been reduced by 24%. *** 000355 19/11/98 E.U. / GB PREVENTION THE TIMES The Government has launched a new anti-drug campaign for young people that works through a special Internet website, although the site is linked to several other ones in which the positive effects of using LSD and smoking marijuana are explained. *** 000365 24/11/98 E.U.. / GERMANY / MAINZ PREVENTION FRANKFURTER Politicians and experts of various extraction have met in Mainz to discuss future policies on drugs. The only real point on which everyone agreed is that more money must be invested in prevention. *** 000366 22/11/98 E.U. / GB PREVENTION THE TIMES Since militaries have to pass antidrug tests and are expelled if found positive, why shouldn't the civillian personnel that work with them have to undergo the same treatment? This is the object of a discussion between the army and worker unions. *** 000368 22/11/98 E.U. / ITALY TRAFFIC IL MESSAGGERO 22/11 / LA REPUBBLICA 23/11 Human Rights Watch and the American secret services say that the presence in Italy of Ocalan, leader of the PKK, is a good pretext to remind everyone that he also is the leader of a group that finances itself through drug traffic by using, among others, the 'baby pushers' of Hamburg. *** 000360 19/11/98 AMERICA / COLUMBIA WAR ON DRUGS SUEDDEUTSCHE Z. The Columbian Ambassador in USA has presented the Americans with a very singular proposal by his Government: if 50 cows are given to every Columbian family that grows coca, this will induce them to change their jobs. -------------------------------------------------------------------
[End]
The articles posted here are generally copyrighted by the source publications. They are reproduced here for educational purposes under the Fair Use Doctrine (17 U.S.C., section 107). NORML is a 501 (c)(3) non-profit educational organization. The views of the authors and/or source publications are not necessarily those of NORML. The articles and information included here are not for sale or resale.
Comments, questions and suggestions. 
Next day's news
Previous day's news
to the 1998 Daily News index for Nov. 26-Dec. 2
to the Portland NORML news archive directory
to 1998 Daily News index (long)
This URL: http://www.pdxnorml.org/981126.html
