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Legal marijuana measure progresses - "Our mission is popular with Alaskans"
(A letter to the editor of The Fairbanks Daily Newsminer says Alaskans
for Drug-Abuse Medicalization, a group seeking to decriminalize marijuana
and end criminal treatment of drug addiction in favor of medical treatment,
failed to meet the constitutionally imposed one-year deadline for signature
gathering and must forgo placement on the August 2000 primary ballot. Another
effort is being planned.)
Date: Tue, 1 Dec 1998 02:42:49 -0900
To: drctalk@drcnet.org
From: chuck@mosquitonet.com (Charles Rollins Jr)
Subject: CanPat - Legal marijuana measure progresses
Cc: Cannabis-Patriots-L@teleport.com
Sender: owner-cannabis-patriots-l@smtp.teleport.com
The following is a guest editorial submitted by Harold Prentzel.
See ya
Chuck
***
Fairbanks Daily Newsminer Monday, November 30, 1998
Legal marijuana measure progresses
"Our mission is popular with Alaskans"
By H. THOMPSON PRENTZEL
Alaskans for Drug-Abuse Medicalization failed to meet the constitutionally
imposed one-year deadline for signature gathering and must forgo placement
on the August 2000 primary ballot. We learned much about volunteer
petitioning in Alaska however and are presently redrafting our initiative in
hopes of qualifying for the November 2000 general election ballot. Our
volunteers gathered 8,249 signatures, or just over 33 percent of the 24,521
required. I personally submitted 1,044 voter registration applications to the
Division of Elections.
Alaska is a large place whose population is spread out. It is too cold to
write outside most of the year. Perhaps that's why proponents of the term
limits, English only, wolf snare, medical marijuana, and education endowment
initiatives offered per signature payments to their petitioners. Now thanks
to the enactment of Senate Bill 313 it is unlawful to pay petitioners for
each signature they solicit. The intent of this law is to restore the
initiative process to the use the authors of Alaska's Constitution intended
-- a grassroots method for making law circumspective of the legislative
process. Wealthy interests from in or out of Alaska can no longer buy
legislation via the initiative, thereby side-stepping legislative due process
(or closed caucus deal making). Alaskans for Drug-Abuse Medicalization looks
forward to the challenge of making the ballot with another all-volunteer,
albeit more experienced, effort.
Our goals of "medicalizing" instead of criminalizing illegal drug abuse
(other than marijuana), affirming adult constitutional privacy rights to
marijuana, and allowing medical marijuana in a way the feds can't quash
(mission impossible as long as the 10th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution
remains dormant) proved quite popular with the Alaskans we met. DAM's
difficulty was finding reliable volunteers to petition at the few appropriate
places, such as state fairs, music festivals and other public gatherings.
Those few people who volunteered to petition and followed through, should be
proud of their accomplishments nevertheless, despite falling two-thirds
short of signatures. Because of their efforts many more Alaskans are aware
that the 1990 marijuana recriminalization initiative was declared
unconstitutional in Superior Court in the case known as State vs. McNeil
(1993). They also know the state neither appealed its defeat in McNeil or
ceased enforcement of the new prohibition the voters narrowly passed. If
nothing else, DAM volunteers made clear to thousands that they have been
cheated out of the constitutional privacy rights to marijuana unanimously
stipulated by the Alaska Supreme Court in the 1975 Ravin decision.
The McNeil reasoning is simple. Voters cannot repeal rights that the high
court says are constitutionally protected. Our privacy clause (Article I,
section 22) has not been amended or deleted. The Supreme Court has not
reversed Ravin. As long as state revenues are used to raid homes and arrest
citizens for marijuana possession, while Ravin is valid and the privacy
clause intact, the message to our youth is clear. Our system of
constitutional law, along with a system of checks and balances between the
branches of government is fraudulent when pertaining to adult Alaskans
constitutional privacy rights to marijuana. Youth should rightly ask why
citizens should obey the law when state government does not?
Given this reality, we endeavor to complete the arduous task of allowing
Alaskans to choose drug policies morally and fiscally superior to those our
present have conceived. We can do better than we have by spending $400,000
to erect tents in our prison yards while waiting for cells in "for profit"
prisons to become available in order to house nonviolent drug offenders.
Alaskans for Drug-Abuse Medicalization is on a steep learning curve. We are
incorporating clauses to accommodate the Palmer farmers who expressed a
desire to grow industrial hemp. We are trying to attract support from the
legal community so Phillip Paul Weidner won't remain the only attorney who
sent a check. We are seeking suggestions for a better name and acronym. We still
have no computer, fax, or basic office equipment. We remain about $4,000 in
debt.
Readers should look for media reports of our petition application being
certified by the lieutenant governor. In the meantime please send donations
or suggestions to DAM, P.O. Box 73446, Fairbanks, AK 99707 or call (907)
479-8588 for information.
H. Thompson Prentzel III of Fairbanks is chairman of Alaskans for
Drug-Abuse Medicalization, a group seeking to legalize marijuana and
end criminal treatment of drug addiction in favor of medical treatment.
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Surrendering To A Calling (The Dallas Morning News portrays Dale Stinson,
who retired from the DEA after concluding that the federal government
wasn't really interested in eradicating narcotics traffic. He became
an Anglican pastor at St. Paul's Church in Midland, Texas.)
Date: Mon, 30 Nov 1998 18:02:44 -0800
From: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org (MAPNews)
To: mapnews@mapinc.org
Subject: MN: US TX: Surrendering To A Calling
Sender: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Reply-To: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Organization: Media Awareness Project http://www.mapinc.org/lists/
Newshawk: adbryan@onramp.net
Pubdate: 30 Nov 1998
Source: Dallas Morning News (TX)
Contact: letterstoeditor@dallasnews.com
Website: http://www.dallasnews.com/
Copyright: 1998 The Dallas Morning News
Author: Scott Parks / The Dallas Morning News
SURRENDERING TO A CALLING
Disenchanted ex-drug agent finds life more fulfilling as priest of Midland
church
MIDLAND - Missionary zeal. Either you've got it or you don't.
As a DEA agent in West Texas, Dale Stinson was gung-ho to bust dopers. When
he became disenchanted with the war on drugs, he traded gun and badge for a
cleric's collar and a crucifix.
Today, he works for Jesus. Solidly built and looking younger than his 54
years, he exudes the manner of a tough guy changed. Flecks of gray dot his
brown hair and handlebar mustache.
"I see spiritual warfare now," said Mr. Stinson, pastor of St. Paul's
Anglican Church in Midland. "There is a place for a warrior class of priests."
Mr. Stinson retired from the DEA and came to St. Paul's in 1996 after
concluding that the federal government wasn't really interested in
eradicating narcotics traffic. It was time, he believed, to join the battle
against the Dark Prince.
"Satan is not a weak individual who's just going to roll over," he said. "I
think law enforcement, just like the priesthood, is fighting evil. If we
fought World War II the way we fight the war on drugs, we'd be speaking
German and Japanese.
"There are parallels to Vietnam. We are there to hang in and put up a good
show."
Tough words that don't quite fit into a "go along to get along" philosophy.
But politics was never Mr. Stinson's strong suit, according to his friends.
"Dale was a go-getter," said Charles Boyd, an ex-drug agent who worked in
West Texas. "I mean, this guy didn't back up. He was a motivator, and he
was honest."
And then God called in his markers, sending Mr. Stinson to his first church
assignment in Midland. His new parishioners discovered that he didn't pack
a Glock and handcuffs under his vestments, but they could tell he was
streetwise.
"He had a background that was a little bit worldly," said Herb Ware Jr., a
Midland oilman and lay leader at St. Paul's. "He is a very strong person
yet a part of him is very cordial and understanding. He's a unique man, and
he's doing a beautiful job at St. Paul's."
As it turned out, Mr. Stinson was a lot like his parishioners -
conservative, traditional and attuned to small-town life.
Mr. Stinson was born and raised in rural upstate New York, surrounded by
the Adirondack Mountains. His family belonged to the Anglican Church, which
split from the Roman Catholic Church in the 1500s after England's King
Henry VIII fought with the Pope over the dissolution of his marriage.
"I grew up in the 1950s and '60s. It was what I thought to be a very moral
society; very unlike the moral relativism of today where so many people
think they can pick and choose which of the Ten Commandments to obey."
He enlisted in the Air Force after high school and became a communications
specialist in Panama. After his military hitch, he went to work for the
U.S. Department of State as a communications technician at the American
embassy in Mexico City.
Eventually, he realized the need for a college education and, bankrolled by
the GI Bill, he journeyed home to enroll in the State University of New
York in Albany.
The 1960s roared onto campus, and Mr. Stinson came face to face with
illegal drugs.
"I knew a guy who was fantastically talented in music," he recalled. "He
could have been a concert pianist, but he was useless and unreliable
because all he wanted to do was drop acid, or take speed and smoke dope. It
really bothered me."
Mr. Stinson earned a degree in archaeology and anthropology and toyed with
entering the priesthood. Instead, he signed up with the U.S. Immigration
and Naturalization Service in New York City.
Then came a transfer to the U.S. Border Patrol in southern Arizona. Amid
the desert cactus and rocky terrain, the twin complexities of illegal drugs
and illegal immigration confronted him - one guy with a gun in a green
patrol truck.
"It was a real epiphany," he said. "Some nights, I was the only one
patrolling for 250 miles along the border. Just think about it."
In 1983, at age 38, he transferred to the DEA and moved to El Paso. He
studied the arcane arts of the undercover drug agent and became known as
the gringo who spoke Spanish.
Then, he embarked on the most important case of his life. It wasn't even a
drug case. It was a murder case, and it forever changed DEA's relationship
with Mexico.
Special Agent Enrique "Kiki" Camarena was tortured and murdered by
high-level traffickers in Mexico. Mr. Stinson was one of the agents
assigned to investigate the case in 1985.
"I'm still emotional about it," he said, tears forming in his eyes. "For
myself and those of us who worked with Kiki, it was a tough experience; not
to mention for his wife and children."
The traffickers who killed Mr. Camarena eventually went to prison.
After a stint in Phoenix, Mr. Stinson became resident agent in charge of
the DEA office in Alpine, a Texas town of about 6,000 people in the Big
Bend country.
Alpine is the hub city for Brewster and Presidio counties, a mountainous,
10,000-square-mile region about the size of Delaware and New Jersey
combined. For years, the region has been a shipping corridor for marijuana,
cocaine and heroin coming out of Ojinaga, Mexico, the border town across
from Presidio.
When Mr. Stinson came to Alpine in 1990, Presidio County Sheriff Rick
Thompson had been in office for 16 years. Tall and attired in western wear,
the sheriff cut a John Wayne-like figure. He was said to be the area's most
popular law officer, a former president of the Texas Sheriffs Association.
Mr. Stinson, the DEA supervisor in Alpine, and his regional task force
found out that Mr. Thompson, in fact, was a drug trafficker. When the dust
cleared in 1992, the sheriff had been caught with 2,421 pounds of cocaine
stuffed in a horse trailer. He is now serving a life sentence.
"With Dale, if he knew you were doing something illegal, it didn't matter
who you were," said Dan Ruch, another ex-drug agent who worked with Mr.
Stinson. "He tried to put you in jail."
But for every person who applauded Mr. Thompson's arrest, it seemed another
person resented Mr. Stinson for uncovering official corruption on the Texas
side of the border.
Some local law officers in West Texas began complaining to his DEA
superiors, saying that he was uncooperative.
"Politically, they just devastated him," said Mr. Boyd, the former drug
agent. "Dale took a lot of flak."
Today, Mr. Stinson acknowledges that "doing the right thing" in the
Thompson case hurt him. He said he also resented new policies designed to
shift the DEA's focus from major traffickers to small-time dealers.
"It was disheartening," he said. "What's the sense of putting a bunch of
mopes in jail when you can get the guy who runs all the mopes?"
But more than anything, he said, a call from God led him to the priesthood.
In 1993, he began religious studies and prepared for his transition out of
DEA.
"It was like God said to me, 'OK, your formation is over and you've made
promises to me. And now I'm calling in all those markers you signed.' Maybe
the change in direction at DEA was a hurrying up of this," he said.
His gentler side
After three years as a priest in Midland, Mr. Stinson still takes target
practice with his 9 mm pistol. Some habits stay with you after 30 years in
law enforcement. But it is possible, he has learned, to moderate an
aggressive personality and cultivate a gentle side.
"By the grace of God and with his support, I've been able to change a lot
of my behavior," he said.
Today, he and his family live on a 13-acre spread outside Midland. His
wife, Chris, home-schools their daughters, Brianna and Katie. Mr. Stinson
also has three grown children from a previous marriage.
Most days, you can find him at the small St. Paul's Church, preparing a
sermon or tending to his flock of 35 parishioners. Or he might be found
riding horses with Brianna and Katie.
Professionally, his newest passion is a ministry for Midland police
officers. He encourages them to be themselves - rough talk and all, warts
and all.
"Chaplains are human beings," he said. "We've heard it all before."
And maybe, as he rides along with an officer on patrol, a life can be changed.
"I think one of the hardest things for a person in authority, especially
police officers, is to bend their knees to Christ," he said. "Any success I
had as a cop, I thought, 'Boy, I'm good!' Now, I know I'm only here by the
grace of God."
Mr. Stinson's life as a DEA agent also prepared him to deal with the
spiritual needs of drug dealers and other criminals. During his undercover
assignments, he discovered they are human, too.
"I am willing to talk to people who have been caught up in that scene and
try to talk them out of it and get them back on the right road," he said.
"Sometimes, the best thing that can happen is for them to get arrested and
put in jail. It could save their life."
Although he left the war on drugs behind, Mr. Stinson still stays in touch
with his old law enforcement friends and thinks about the future of a
society that seems awash in dope.
"Here in America, we try to say we can do whatever we want, break the
rules. It's a slippery slope. I don't know how much worse the drug problem
can get. It can just get more pervasive, and I guess that's worse."
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Selling Lies - Win At All Costs series
(Part of The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette's 10-part series about the newspaper's
two-year investigation that found federal agents and prosecutors have pursued
justice by breaking the law routinely. Prosecutors thrive on inmates
in federal prisons who routinely buy, sell, steal and concoct testimony
and then share their perjury with federal authorities in exchange
for a reduction in their sentences.)
Date: Wed, 2 Dec 1998 14:07:21 -0800
From: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org (MAPNews)
To: mapnews@mapinc.org
Subject: MN: US: Selling Lies - Win At All Costs series
Sender: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Reply-To: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Organization: Media Awareness Project http://www.mapinc.org/lists/
Newshawk: Nora Callahan http://www.november.org/
Source: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (PA)
Copyright: 1998 PG Publishing
Pubdate: Mon, 30 Nov 1998
Contact: letters@post-gazette.com
Website: http://www.post-gazette.com/
Author: Bill Moushey, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
Note: This is the fifth of a 10 part series, "Win At All Costs" being
published in the Post-Gazette. The part is composed of several stories
(being posted separately). The series is also being printed in The Blade,
Toledo, OH email: letters@theblade.com
SELLING LIES
By `Jumping On The Bus,' Prisoners Earn Time Off Sentences At Others' Expense
The business served a small but eager clientele.
From an office in Atlanta, Kevin Pappas, a former drug smuggler, sold
prisoners confidential information gleaned from the files of federal law
enforcement officers or, in some instances, from the case files of other
convicts.
By memorizing confidential data from those files, the prisoners could
testify to events that only an insider might know and help prosecutors win
an indictment or a conviction.
Well-heeled prisoners paid Pappas as much as $225,000 for the confidential
files, and in exchange for their testimony, prosecutors would ask judges to
reduce the prison terms of these new-found witnesses.
Pappas and Robert Fierer, an Atlanta lawyer, called their company
Conviction Consultants Inc., but a group of defense lawyers in Georgia had
another name for it: "Rent-a-rat."
Federal agents shut down the operation last year. Pappas and Fierer pleaded
guilty to obstruction of justice and income tax evasion in connection with
the scheme. Pappas struck a deal and became a witness for the government
against his former partner. He has not been sentenced, but Fierer was given
a 2 1/2-year term in prison. So far, federal authorities haven't explained
how Pappas gained access to confidential government files.
Pappas and Fierer aren't alone. A two-year Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
investigation found that inmates in federal prisons routinely buy, sell,
steal and concoct testimony then share their perjury with federal
authorities in exchange for a reduction in their sentences.
Often, these inmates testify against people they've never met. They
corroborate crimes they've never witnessed. Prosecutors win cases. Convicts
win early freedom. The accused loses.
Federal agents and prosecutors have been accused of helping move the scheme
along by providing convicts some of the information.
For years, inmates have warned federal authorities about the practice. One
inmate, Ramon Castellanos, offered to go undercover to trap those who buy
and sell testimony.
Another, Ramiro Molina, wrote the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Administration,
Attorney General Janet Reno and even President Clinton. "What's become of
innocent until proven guilty?" Molina wondered in one of those letters.
"What has happened to the truth in justice? What are we doing with the law,
bending it to be convenient and to whatever advantage necessary?"
In the meantime, testimony continues to be bought, sold, stolen. In South
Florida, the scam has become so prevalent that prisoners there have crafted
a name for it: "Montate en la guagua."
"Get on the bus," or, as inmates call it, "jump on the bus."
Getting Nowhere
When Molina was arrested for his role in a major drug-smuggling operation
between Colombia and South Florida, he figured he had one way out:
cooperate with the U.S. government.
Long before anyone on the outside knew he had been arrested in a
17,000-pound marijuana venture, he asked to speak with federal agents and
prosecutors. Authorities put him in touch with Special Agent Henry Cuervo
of the DEA, and Molina implicated others in the drug-smuggling ring. For
his cooperation, Molina's sentence was dramatically reduced; even though he
faced a life term, he ended up being sentenced to about eight years.
His statements were true, and prosecutors embraced them as such, Molina said.
But while in prison, Molina saw firsthand how some convicts make a living
off perjured testimony, and he became the first inmate to expose the scheme
in open court.
Neither the U.S. Attorney General nor federal prosecutors answered written
questions about the "jump on the bus" scheme for this story.
Molina described how individuals had paid for information so they could
"jump on the bus" and testify in the drug case against Panamanian dictator
Manuel Noriega and against two other accused cocaine smugglers, Salvatore
Magluta and Willy Falcone.
In the case involving Magluta and Falcone, the largest federal cocaine case
ever tried, Molina said another drug baron, Jorge Morales, invited him to
memorize a package of evidence so he could offer testimony.
Molina passed, but he later decided if he wanted to get out of jail, he had
no choice but to go along with the scheme in another case, he said. That
case involved the Mayas drug-smuggling clan of Colombia, one of the largest
such organizations ever. This time, an inmate named Hector Lopez was the
middle man, Molina said.
"Lopez provided me with vital inside information that came from agent
[Henry] Cuervo from DEA files for me to go to the grand jury on the Mayas
case," Molina told a judge and others in sworn statements obtained by the
Post-Gazette.
"Lopez wrote me a month before in a letter that told me exactly what to
say," Molina told federal authorities. He said Lopez also provided the
information to an inmate named Francisco Mesa, who eventually testified
before the grand jury with the same perjured testimony.
"In July 1994, Francisco Mesa told me that he never knew the Mayas," Molina
said. "I can no longer cover up this wrongdoing. . . . It is in my best
interest to cooperate in the war against drugs, but two wrongs can't make a
right."
Inmate Pedro Diaz Yera corroborated Molina's account. Yera also implicated
Lopez and Cuervo, the DEA agent, in letters he wrote to politicians and
judges.
As a result of Molina's information, he and Yera met with Nelson Barbosa, a
special agent with the FBI. They told Barbosa about what they say was
Lopez's and Cuervo's role in "jump on the bus" schemes. Both men said
Barbosa never contacted them again.
On March 25, 1995, they spoke to another FBI agent, Steven Kling, of Miami.
"We told him the same things we had relayed to Agent Barbosa," Molina said.
"He told me he would get back in touch with us within two to three days."
That was more than three years ago. The two are still waiting.
Buying Time
Luis Orlando Lopez was a player.
When federal agents broke up a major cocaine ring in 1991, Lopez, who is no
relation to Hector Lopez, was carrying 114 kilograms of cocaine and a small
cache of weapons in his car.
Lopez pleaded guilty and was sentenced to about 27 years in the Federal
Correctional Institution at Miami.
Then, he stumbled upon his ticket to freedom. In exchange for his
cooperation, he discovered that his prison term could be reduced
dramatically. Lopez turned to Reuben Oliva, a Miami attorney whose law
practice specializes in negotiating deals for those who provide substantial
assistance to prosecutors in exchange for sentence reductions.
During a court hearing, Oliva pointed out that Lopez provided critical
information to four federal agencies, helping them win guilty pleas against
arms dealers, fugitives, hit men and drug traffickers. "His cooperation has
resulted in the arrest of 13 persons, and he has provided information
regarding two others," Oliva said. "He has provided information regarding
state and federal fugitives, arms dealers, narcotics traffickers, violent
organized crime members, and he has done so at great risk to himself and
his family."
Because of the help Lopez provided, a Florida federal judge, in December
1996, reduced his sentence by 12 years. Lopez will be eligible for parole
next year.
Case closed. But there was a problem. The crimes committed by eight of the
men whom he testified against took place while Lopez was in prison.
How, then, could he have helped prosecutors? The answer is simple, said
Oliva. Federal prosecutors allowed Lopez's brother to gather evidence
outside the walls of prison. The prosecutors then credited Luis Lopez with
providing them with substantial assistance that helped him win his sentence
reduction.
That part of the story was never put on the court record, even when the
judge asked a prosecutor how an imprisoned man such as Lopez could know so
much.
In a letter to the U.S. Attorney General and to Lopez's judge, inmate Ramon
Castellanos wrote that Lopez told him he'd paid $60,000 to another inmate,
a government informant with a pipeline inside the federal bureaucracy, for
confidential information gleaned from federal agents who needed additional
witnesses to buttress their cases.
Castellanos said that Lopez then gave the information to his brother, who
gathered corroboration on the outside, but Castellanos said he has a
government memo that proves at least some of the information Lopez provided
was bogus. The memo in support of yet another sentence reduction states
that another man, Orlando Marrero, provided information about a federal
case that was identical to what Lopez provided.
Oliva said Castellanos' account concerning Lopez is generally accurate, but
he said he does not believe Lopez paid money to anyone for information. "I
do not believe Luis or his family have that kind of money," said Oliva.
Lopez did not respond to a written request for an interview. Neither the
Justice Department nor the United States Attorney for the Southern District
of Florida responded to written questions the newspaper posed about
concerns raised in this series.
In his letters, Castellanos provided documents concerning nine other "jump
on the bus" cases that he said he had firsthand knowledge about. In each of
those cases, inmates gave prosecutors bogus information in exchange for
reductions in their sentences, he said.
Castellanos, who is serving a 30-year sentence for cocaine distribution,
said a sentence reduction is not the reason he has come forward. "Let there
be no mistake about the motivation behind this complaint. I am not seeking
a sentence reduction. I am seeking a balance of justice," he wrote. "I'm
not an angel, only a human being who's made a mistake and is capable of
paying the price.
"However, other similarly suited individuals with cartel connections and
the aid of DEA and U.S. Customs are circumventing and manipulating the U.S.
justice system. The big guys are still dealing their way out of prison
while the little guy serves full-term sentences," Castellanos wrote.
In an interview earlier this year, Castellanos said he has provided
specific instances of this scam to FBI agents from South Florida. He told
them that he would go undercover to expose this process. He said he was
interviewed twice about it in the past year.
The agents haven't contacted him in months, and Castellanos said he doubts
they ever will.
Outside Help
The federal government was also aware of the activities of Pappas and Fierer.
Pappas had been out of jail for only seven months when he established
Conviction Consultants Inc. in the offices of Fierer's downtown Atlanta law
office, and from October 1995 to February 1996, investigators were secretly
recording some of their conversations about "jump on the bus" schemes after
an imprisoned man in Kentucky tipped off the agents.
During its investigation, the government uncovered several instances
involving perjured testimony before indicting Pappas and Fierer.
According to that indictment, Bruce Young, a convict from Nashville, Tenn.,
paid $25,000 to Fierer and Pappas in September 1995. After that, Fierer
wrote a letter to a prosecutor in Tennessee saying he had an informant who
"had some affection for Bruce Young and wanted to help." According to the
indictment, in a recorded conversation a few months later, Pappas told
Young: "You sat in jail and didn't do anything except pay money to buy
freedom."
The government also recorded conversations between Pappas and inmate Peter
Taylor, who was serving a 13-year sentence in Miami for smuggling
marijuana. Pappas told Taylor that a facade had to be created to make
prosecutors believe Taylor knew an informer whom he was going to join in
testifying in a case against another.
According to the indictment, Pappas encouraged Taylor to tell a prosecutor
he and the informer were "lifelong friends or something." In February 1996,
Fierer told Taylor the entire deal would cost him $250,000: $150,000 for
the consulting company, $75,000 for Fierer and $25,000 in expenses.
Rodney Gaddis also sought Pappas' help. Pappas contacted Gaddis, a
convicted bank robber, and told him he had found an informant willing to
provide exculpatory information about Gaddis. He told Gaddis to tell
federal prosecutors that he had known the informant for nine years and that
he looked like "Howdy Doody." Gaddis and the man, however, had never met.
Jumping Lessons
Richard Diaz, a former Miami police officer turned defense lawyer, said he
has seen firsthand how "jump on the bus" scams work.
As an example, he cited the case against Magluta and Falcone, two men who
were charged in the largest cocaine smuggling case to be brought in South
Florida. Diaz, who worked on a related case, said federal agents and
prosecutors were offering deals throughout the South Florida penal system
to anyone who would testify against Magluta and Falcone.
Jurors, however, acquitted the two men because the jurors said they didn't
believe much of the testimony, even though the jury foreman has now been
accused of accepting a $500,000 bribe to fix the case.
Diaz and others said the government offered the same types of inducements
to anyone who could testify against Noriega. "It was common knowledge in
the south Florida jails that anyone who had information to provide
regarding General Noriega would be looked upon very favorably," said Frank
Rubino, one of the cadre of lawyers who represented Noriega in his drug
case, which ended with a conviction and 20-year prison term.
Abundant Sources
To convicts, the information comes from a variety of sources.
With help, some secure evidence, transcripts, indictments and other
materials from cases then memorize that information before approaching a
prosecutor willing to make a deal.
Some get together with informants looking for others to corroborate their
testimony.
Others simply make it up.
In many cases, prosecutors help the convicts along by telling potential
witnesses precisely what they want to hear if the inmate expects to get a
deal, Diaz said. Informers quickly pick up on the basic facts. "If I did
something like that, I could lose my [law license]," Diaz said. "It's like
putting the cheese in front of the rat."
One way to curtail "jump on the bus" schemes would be to administer
polygraph tests to all witnesses. Justice Department rules require
polygraph tests for witnesses who are promised leniency, but defense
attorneys say they are seldom given.
Even though lawyers and inmates have alerted federal prosecutors and agents
about schemes related to "jump on the bus," very little has been done. Diaz
said that if the government acknowledged these abuses of the system, a
large body of cases would end up being reversed.
"It is easy to take the position that they don't know anything about this,"
he said. "It is easy to turn the cheek and deliberately look away from it."
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Inmate Exploited Prosecutors' Need For Witnesses - Win At All Costs series
(Part of The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette's 10-part series about the newspaper's
two-year investigation that found federal agents and prosecutors
have pursued justice by breaking the law routinely. With prosecutors' help,
Jose Goyriena, who was serving a 27-year prison sentence in Florida
for cocaine smuggling, sent four men to prison for life with perjured
testimony in exchange for a sentence reduction.)
Date: Wed, 2 Dec 1998 14:37:43 -0800
From: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org (MAPNews)
To: mapnews@mapinc.org
Subject: MN: US: Inmate Exploited Prosecutors' Need For Witnesses - Win At All
Sender: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Reply-To: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Organization: Media Awareness Project http://www.mapinc.org/lists/
Newshawk: Nora Callahan http://www.november.org/
Source: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (PA)
Copyright: 1998 PG Publishing
Pubdate: Mon, 30 Nov 1998
Contact: letters@post-gazette.com
Website: http://www.post-gazette.com/
Author: Bill Moushey, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
Note: This is the fifth of a 10 part series, "Win At All Costs" being
published in the Post-Gazette. The part is composed of several stories
(being posted separately). The series is also being printed in The Blade,
Toledo, OH email: letters@theblade.com
INMATE EXPLOITED PROSECUTORS' NEED FOR WITNESSES
Inmates inside the Federal Correctional Institution at Miami had written
letters of warning to federal authorities.
Jose Goyriena, who was serving a 27-year prison sentence, had been bragging
to them about "jumping on the bus."
He had obtained information from other convicts and government informants
about crimes he knew nothing about. Then he memorized that information and
offered it as testimony to federal prosecutors, the inmates said.
Despite the letters warning of Goyriena's scheme, prosecutors let him
testify again and again. He even offered to provide the same information
for a price to anyone interested in joining him.
With Goyriena's help, prosecutors sent four men to prison for life. They
also won indictments against several others, who later pleaded guilty.
In return, prosecutors promised that Goyriena's sentence for
cocaine-smuggling would be reduced by at least 10 years and that they would
seize only a small portion of the millions of dollars in assets he'd
acquired through smuggling.
Because of his capacity to lie, and the fact the government has used this
bogus testimony in many cases, Goyriena's name has appeared elsewhere in
the Post-Gazette series -- including a story about government misconduct in
the trial of Peter Hidalgo, which appeared Nov. 24.
In trials of Hidalgo, Andres Campillo and Joseph Olivera, lawyers for
Hidalgo and Olivera protested that Goyriena did not know their clients.
Campillo admitted that Goyriena had done some construction work for him,
but he denied any involvement with drugs.
Goyriena's lies didn't catch up with him until he was ready to testify in
the one case that he hoped would finally spring him for good. Prosecutors
planned to use Goyriena's testimony against drug baron Castor Gonzalez, but
didn't need it when Gonzales pleaded guilty.
Richard Diaz, a former Miami police officer who later became a criminal
defense lawyer, learned that Goyriena had been offering to sell information
he obtained to other inmates. Even though he had nothing to do with the
Gonzalez case, Diaz filed a motion to make sure the judge took a close look
at Goyriena's actions before allowing him to testify or granting him
further sentence reductions.
In that motion, Diaz included four sworn and notarized affidavits in which
inmates at the Federal Detention Center at Miami and the Federal
Correctional Institution at Miami said Goyriena offered to sell them
information so that they, too, could testify against Gonzalez and have
their sentences reduced.
Blas Duran, an inmate at FDC-Miami, said Goyriena, known in prison as "El
Gorrion," told him in January or February 1997 that the only way Duran
could get out of jail early was to "jump on the bus."
"I told him that I did not know what he meant by that," Duran wrote in a
sworn affidavit. "Gorrion told me that what he meant was that I could buy
information from him or anybody else offering information for sale and
provide the information to the respective government prosecutor, demand,
and most probably receive, a reduction in my sentence."
Another convict, Victor Gomez, said he heard an inmate offering Goyriena
information. Goyriena then planned to give that information to prosecutors,
even though he "had no direct, indirect or personal knowledge that [the
defendant] had ever done anything illegal," Gomez said.
A fourth inmate, Rafael Martinez, swore to the same set of materials.
Diaz said shortly after he filed his motion about Goyriena, he learned that
Goyriena had failed two polygraph tests administered by the government.
While Goyriena told inmates he was looking forward to freedom for his work,
the government put on hold its motion for sentence reduction because of the
fallout that began with Diaz's motion.
Appeals from others he helped convict are pending.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Feds Finally Use Safeguards But Only To Protect Their Own - Win At All Costs
series (Part of The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette's 10-part series
about the newspaper's two-year investigation that found federal agents
and prosecutors have pursued justice by breaking the law routinely.
There is a system in place to keep prisoners from trading lies for leniency.
They are supposed to be given polygraph tests to determine
if they are telling the truth. But that safeguard is often ignored unless
the person being accused is a law enforcement official.)
Date: Wed, 2 Dec 1998 14:41:03 -0800
From: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org (MAPNews)
To: mapnews@mapinc.org
Subject: MN: Feds Finally Use Safeguards But Only To Protect Their Own - Win At All
Sender: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Reply-To: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Organization: Media Awareness Project http://www.mapinc.org/lists/
Newshawk: Nora Callahan http://www.november.org/
Source: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (PA)
Copyright: 1998 PG Publishing
Pubdate: Mon, 30 Nov 1998
Contact: letters@post-gazette.com
Website: http://www.post-gazette.com/
Author: Bill Moushey, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
Note: This is the fifth of a 10 part series, "Win At All Costs" being
published in the Post-Gazette. The part is composed of several stories
(being posted separately). The series is also being printed in The Blade,
Toledo, OH email: letters@theblade.com
FEDS FINALLY USE SAFEGUARDS BUT ONLY TO PROTECT THEIR OWN
There is a system in place to keep prisoners from trading lies for
leniency. They are supposed to be given polygraph tests to determine if
they are telling the truth.
But that safeguard is often ignored.
Gilberto Martinez proved the system can work -- at least if the target of
the lies is a federal agent.
In early 1995, Martinez was arrested, convicted and sentenced to a federal
prison for drug-trafficking.
Like many other inmates, once he was in prison, Martinez found a way he
could help the government and, in the process, make himself some extra money.
Authorities said it was a classic case of "jumping on the bus."
Usually, the scam involves inmates who fabricate testimony against
suspected drug dealers or other common criminals, and some prosecutors,
eager for witnesses who will corroborate a crime, ignore safeguards such as
polygraph tests that help ensure a witness's credibility.
Martinez made a mistake. He tried to set up one of the government's agents.
The scheme behind bars began in October 1997, when Martinez contacted a
U.S. Customs Service internal affairs officer to say a fellow inmate,
Narcisco Rodriguez, had information about a corrupt agent. Rodriguez told
internal affairs officers that he had paid $28,000 in bribes to the agent
who was never identified in court papers.
In return, the agent had guaranteed that Rodriguez's brother, Luis
Rodriguez, would have his sentence reduced for cooperating with the federal
government, Narcisco Rodriguez said.
To test the veracity of their accounts, customs officials administered
polygraph tests to Luis and Narcisco Rodriguez. "Both men showed strong
deception," according to an affidavit.
There was no dirty agent, Martinez finally admitted. He planned to pocket
the $28,000 himself. Martinez, a former boxing promoter, pleaded guilty in
the scheme and had 1 1/2 years added to his prison sentence.
There were other repercussions. According to court documents, Martinez's
admission has raised questions about his earlier testimony that helped
federal prosecutors convict a former Miami Beach mayor of corruption and
helped snare some Metro Dade County police officers who were charged with
stealing drugs.
Both are appealing their convictions, basing their appeals on the prospect
that Martinez might have lied.
If he hadn't tried to finger a federal agent, Martinez's veracity as a
witness might never have been questioned.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
The Age Of Ritalin (Time magazine's cover article examines Americans'
rapidly increasing use of methylphenidate to treat
attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder in children. Production of Ritalin
has increased more than sevenfold in the past eight years, and 90 percent
of it is consumed in the United States.)
Date: Mon, 30 Nov 1998 08:58:40 -0800
From: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org (MAPNews)
To: mapnews@mapinc.org
Subject: MN: US: The Age Of Ritalin
Sender: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Reply-To: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Organization: Media Awareness Project http://www.mapinc.org/lists/
Newshawk: Steve Young
Source: Time Magazine (US)
Contact: letters@time.com
Website: http://www.time.com/
Copyright: 1998 Time Inc.
Pubdate: Mon, 30 Nov. 1998
Author: NANCY GIBBS
THE AGE OF RITALIN
What exactly does a normal child look like? We've long since passed the time
when childhood was an ungraded test--take your time, build your forts, play
your games, the clock does not start until high school, maybe college. We
give homework in first grade now. We're very busy people. And your parents
will do anything, just anything, to help you get ahead.
"We lived with it," says Tim, of his daughter's behavior--the tantrums, the
hitting, covering herself in Vaseline head to toe, day after day. He and his
wife Charlene took parenting classes through their church and tried to be
fair and firm. "We thought maybe she was just strong willed," Charlene said.
By the time they put four-year-old Erin in preschool near their home in a
town south of Los Angeles, "she couldn't keep her hands to herself,"
Charlene says. "She would hit other kids. And she would hug anyone at any
time. She would hold hands when other kids didn't want to. She would do
pesky, bothersome things to kids, like touching their hair or their
sweaters. It was as if, since she couldn't make friends, she was saying,
'I'm going to get you to relate to me.'" In class she was not able to stay
focused, even though the teacher-to-student ratio was 1 to 3.
Is there a parent in America who has heard the talk or read the best sellers
about attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and the drugs used to
treat it without wondering about his or her child--the first time he climbs
onto the school bus still wearing his pj's or loses his fifth pair of
mittens or finds 400 ways to sit in a chair? The debate goes straight to the
heart of our expectations and values. How dreamy is too dreamy? Where is the
line between an energetic child and a hyperactive one, between a spirited,
risk-taking kid and an alarmingly impulsive one, between flexibility and
distractibility? What if a little pill makes everything a bit easier, not
just for severely impaired kids but for those who teachers say are a little
too spacey or jumpy or hard to settle down? Is there something wrong with
the kids--or is there something wrong with us?
For years Ritalin has been a godsend for children who were so hot-wired they
were simply unreachable, and unteachable. In severe cases, the benefits of
Ritalin (and the family of related drugs) on these children's ability to
function and learn and cope are so direct that advocates say withholding the
pills is a form of neglect.
"I used to take her fingers from her face and tell her, 'This is Mom. This
is Planet Earth. This is today, and you need to brush your teeth,'" recalls
Natasha Kern, a Portland, Ore., literary agent who identified her daughter
Athena's troubles early on. These are the kids who get expelled from nursery
school for disrupting every story circle and demolishing every Lego tower.
Parents despair at seeing their children sad or lost or cast out; they hate
themselves when they lose their tempers after the sixth meltdown of the day.
These kids can be very bright, very charming--and impossible to live with.
"They think of things that are fun and creative at the rate of about 10 per
second," says Kern. "While you are trying to put out the fire they set
toasting marshmallows on the stove, they are in the bathtub trying to see if
goldfish will survive in hot water."
But it is not the severe cases so much as the borderline ones--the children
who occupy that gray area between clear dysfunction and normal
unruliness--who raise the tough ethical issues, both public and private. The
pace at which Ritalin use has been growing has alarmed critics for a while
now. Some doctors find themselves battling anxious parents who, worried that
their child will daydream his future away, demand the drug, and if refused,
go off to find a more cooperative physician. Some parents feel pressured to
medicate their child just so that his behavior will conform a bit more to
other children's, even if they are quite content with their child's
conduct--quirks, tantrums and all.
LONG DAY'S JOURNEY: For years Phylicia's mother resisted having her daughter
evaluated, despite her disruptive behavior. "I thought it was a matter of
patience. She needed more structure and she would grow out of it," says Weta
Payne. But eventually Weta saw that she needed help and got professional
advice. Phylicia went on Ritalin and tried behavior modification. Although
parents are advised to tell their children's school about any special needs,
Phylicia's mother kept her teachers in the dark--for fear of being
stigmatized. "I didn't want her to be labeled that she needs medication,"
says Weta
Many doctors won't discuss the matter publicly because the issues are so
hot. Production of Ritalin has increased more than sevenfold in the past
eight years, and 90% of it is consumed in the U.S. Such figures invite the
charge that school districts, insurance companies and overstressed families
are turning to medication as a quick fix for complicated problems that might
be better addressed by smaller classes, psychotherapy or family counseling,
or basic changes in the hectic environment that so many American children
face every day. And the growing availability of the drug raises the fear of
abuse: more teenagers try Ritalin by grinding it up and snorting it for $5 a
pill than get it by prescription.
"Let's not deny Ritalin works," says J. Zink, Ph.D., a Manhattan Beach,
Calif., family therapist who has written several books on raising children
and who lectures extensively around the country. "But why does it work, and
what are the consequences of overprescribing? The reality is we don't know."
For parents, even harder than the abstract social questions are the very
personal ones they confront when they see or hear that their child is
struggling. Will Ritalin help? Will it change her personality? Is it fair
for me to make this choice for him? Does it send the signal that she is not
responsible for her behavior? Is the teacher suggesting it just to make her
own day easier? Will he have to take it forever? What if all children would
be a little happier, perform a little better if they took their pills like
vitamins every morning? Do we have a problem with that?
Given all the debate about how to diagnose ADHD and how to treat it (and the
same for its related condition, attention-deficit disorder, or ADD), experts
in the field believed it was time to convene a kind of science court to sort
through the evidence and arguments on all sides. So last week in Bethesda,
Md., several hundred doctors, experts and educators gathered for a
long-awaited consensus conference held by the National Institutes of Health
to examine the data on how well Ritalin works. Conclusion: very well--better
than researchers imagined--but in ways and for reasons that are still not
entirely clear (see box).
And yet the real consensus that emerged was how much we still need to learn.
The experts warned that not enough is known about the risks and benefits of
long-term Ritalin use; that there is too little communication between
doctors, teachers and parents; and that a pill alone is no magic bullet.
Some combination of behavioral therapy and medication seems to be most
helpful for children with the severest problems, but there is no data to
determine what combinations work best.
Her parents took Erin to a psychiatrist just before her fifth birthday. "He
saw us for 45 minutes," Charlene says. "He read the teacher's report. He saw
Erin for 15 minutes. He said, 'Your daughter is ADHD, and here's a
prescription for Ritalin.' I sobbed." Charlene had a lot of friends who did
not believe in ADHD and thought maybe she and Tim were just being hard on
Erin. "I thought, 'Maybe there is something else we can do,'" Charlene says.
"I knew that medicine can mask things. So I tore up the prescription." Tim
thought that it was possible the doctor's diagnosis was too hasty and didn't
want to believe it. "Part of us said, 'How can he look at a kid for 15
minutes and judge?'" Says Charlene: "I believed she had ADHD, but I knew we
needed a two-pronged approach."
Among the most eloquent in his skepticism about the use of Ritalin for
children who are not severely disabled is Dr. Lawrence Diller, author of
Running on Ritalin (Bantam Books; $25.95). He wonders whether there is still
a place for childhood in an anxious, downsized America. "What if Tom Sawyer
or Huckleberry Finn were to walk into my office tomorrow?" he asks. "Tom's
indifference to schooling and Huck's 'oppositional' behavior would surely
have been cause for concern. Would I prescribe Ritalin for them too?"
In Diller's view, many Americans are so worried about their jobs, the
marketplace and their children's chances for success that they place
impossible pressures on kids to perform, at younger and younger ages. "In
order for them to succeed, we make them take performance enhancers," Diller
says. "A society that depends on medication to cope does so at its own
risk."
There used to be different niches for people with differences in talent,
skills and personality, he argues, but Americans are becoming more and more
programmed to force their children into a mold. "There is an emotional cost,
and eventually there will be a physical cost of taking square and
rectangular people and fitting them into round holes," he says. "Performance
enhancers--Ritalin, Viagra and Prozac--will remain popular until people
question this goal."
Three days after Erin started kindergarten, her parents got their first call
from the teacher. "She was a sweet lady. She tried to work with us,"
Charlene recalls. "But she said, 'I've been teaching 40 years, and I've
never seen a child like this.'" Adds Tim: "You could see Erin was trying to
sit still, but she was trying all these different ways--rocking, lifting one
leg, sitting on her hands." Because California law requires that schools
provide appropriate education for each child, the parents met with school
officials. After evaluating Erin, they said she was not a "special needs"
child and could be treated in the classroom. "The only ones who did not
believe that were us and the teacher," says Tim. "ADHD does not mean you are
missing a limb. She looked normal, but she was slightly off."
Given the explosion in ADHD diagnoses and Ritalin use over the past decade,
the disorder is surprisingly ill defined. No one is sure that it's a
neurochemical imbalance that can be corrected with medicine, much the way
daily insulin shots help diabetics. There is no blood test, no PET scan, no
physical exam that can determine who has it and who does not. For many
children, Ritalin is the answer simply because it works. "It's a fixed,
stable, low-dose drug," says Dr. Philip Berent, consulting psychiatrist at
the Arlington Center for Attention Deficit Disorder in Arlington Heights,
Ill. He argues that critics who claim diet, exercise or other treatments
work just as well as Ritalin are kidding themselves. "The quickest way to
end that criticism is to spend a week with a hyperactive child," Berent
says. "We aren't talking about kids who ODed on Halloween candy. The
protocol for diagnosing ADD [and ADHD] is very well defined."
But it's not hard to find doctors feeling a little queasy about the process.
An evaluation needs to be so nuanced that the checklist of symptoms used by
experts can seem like a terribly mechanical method for judging a condition
so individual and personal. For borderline kids, a thorough professional
assessment is essential.
Tim and Charlene kept resisting putting their daughter on Ritalin. "You
don't want your kid to personify the rumors--that the medication makes them
dopey or slow," Tim says. "That's the stereotype. All my co-workers and
family had opinions that were antimedication." But a year ago, they finally
tried it. "It was awesome," says Tim. "It worked great." At least for a
while, until they discovered that Ritalin heightened Erin's
obsessive-compulsive disorder. "She would turn the lights on and off seven
times. She would flush the toilet four times and stop; then three times and
stop; then four times and stop. There was a numerical sequence."
So long as it doesn't do any damage, what's the harm in giving even mildly
distracted or willful kids a pharmaceutical boost? For one thing, doctors
say, there is still some concern about side effects, such as decreased
appetite, insomnia or the development of tics. "A very small percentage of
children treated at high doses have hallucinogenic responses," the NIH
experts concluded, arguing that more research is needed to shape guidelines
for doctors and parents. For many families, of course, such risks seem a
small price to pay for the enormous relief Ritalin can offer.
But the parents with the most firsthand experience see other, more subtle
effects as well. Though Ritalin use can boost young children's self-esteem
just by helping them "fit in," teenagers often struggle with their
self-image, wondering if their whole personality is shaped by a pill. Some
parents balk at giving their child a drug related to "speed," even if it
isn't addictive.
Other parents talk about a "Ritalin rebound" and find themselves struggling
with whether the drug's benefits outweigh its costs. Kathleen Glassberg, a
computer-software sales representative in Long Island, N.Y., used to dread
her 12-year-old daughter's return from school each day--and the two-hour
crying jag that followed. "She'd hold herself together all day, but the
minute she got home she'd have this breakdown," Glassberg says. Glassberg
has carefully built an after-school routine of household tasks and
time-management techniques to help her daughter focus. "You'd be asking the
impossible to have my child come home, have a snack and do her homework
right away. So instead, she comes home, lays her books down, and we go for a
walk around the block. It gives her time to vent and re-attune herself."
Last spring Erin's parents took her off Ritalin and enrolled her at UC
Irvine's Child Development Center, a model program that specializes in ADD
and ADHD. She attended the school's summer program. "It was a horrid
summer," Tim recalls. "Behavior modification was controlling a lot of
things, but the impulsivity would snowball. She would be told not to touch
something--whether a car's gearshift or a radio or a computer. You'd say
'Don't touch,' and she would look at you and you could see she heard, but
you'd see her hand slowly moving toward it--and she knew if she touched it,
she would have to take a time out or lose her TV privileges--but she would
touch it anyway. And when the consequences happened, she would have an
hourlong temper tantrum. It made for a no-fun life."
There is also some argument about the age that treatment should begin.
Nearly half a million prescriptions were written for controlled substances
like Ritalin in 1995 for children between ages 3 and 6. "Kids ages 4 to 5
are just as impaired as older children, so there is no reason not to treat
them," says William Pelham Jr., director of clinical training in the
department of psychology at the State University of New York at Buffalo. He
adds, however, that before a physician treats such a young child with
stimulants, he should begin by suggesting techniques parents can use to
control his or her behavior.
But this is where treatment too often falls apart. Even doctors who have
seen Ritalin's positive, sometimes miraculous effects warn that the drug is
no substitute for better schools, creative teaching and parents' spending
more time with their kids. Unless a child acquires coping skills, the
benefits of medication are gone as soon as it wears off. "You can't just
give medicine and fail to teach," says Stephen Hinshaw, director of the
clinical psychology training program at the University of California,
Berkeley. Drug treatment may set the stage, but studies suggest that
children need constant reinforcement to help them control their impulses:
through behavioral therapy, special education, family therapy or a
combination of all three.
Even doctors who think ADHD may be underdiagnosed and are convinced of
Ritalin's broad benefits emphasize the need to integrate drugs and behavior
therapy. But it doesn't matter that children benefit from a multifaceted
response if their health insurance won't pay for it. The trend over the past
few years has been clear: the percentage of children with an ADHD diagnosis
walking out of a doctor's office with a prescription jumped from 55% in 1989
to 75% in 1996. The number receiving psychotherapy fell from 40% in 1989 to
25% in 1996. "The reason Ritalin use has gone up is that we are in an era
when psychiatric services are devalued and therapy is not paid for by
insurance companies," says Jeff Goodwin, a former pediatrician who teaches
at Walter Reed Junior High School in North Hollywood, Calif. "It is easier
for physicians to prescribe a drug and categorize a disorder as
hyperactivity than it is to deal with the problem. Health services are being
cut back, so you have doctors saying, 'Take this and live happily ever
after.'"
That is all the more reason for parents to gather as much information as
they can, get a second opinion--and a third--before starting medication. In
part it helps ensure that no one has unreasonable expectations about what
drugs can and cannot do. And it increases the chances that treatment will be
tailored to a child's individual needs. Vanderbilt University pediatrician
Dr. Mark Worlaich hopes forums like the NIH conference last week will help
correct some of the misinformation he sees every day. "The real issue that
sometimes gets lost is that kids need to be successful in their activities."
In August Erin began taking Luvox for her obsessive-compulsive disorder, and
in early October she started on Adderall, a combination of various
stimulants. "For 4 1/2 weeks, we've seen heaven on earth," says Tim. "We
have a semblance of family life." They spent a day recently at a church
festival. "There were a lot of people there," Charlene says. "Normally that
would produce a lot of anxiety for someone who has ADHD. But Erin had a
great time." She can play games longer, take car trips, do homework. "I have
a child I can relate to who is hearing me," Charlene says. "I'm not always
in an adversarial situation." The fact that the medication seems to be
working has liberated Charlene from irrational guilt. But she also sees that
everything in Erin's life matters. The school. The behavior therapy. The
rules and structure. The time and energy she and Tim devote to every waking
hour. For them, the little pill is a wonderful tool, but they have had to
learn to use it wisely.
--REPORTED BY ANN BLACKMAN/WASHINGTON, WILLIAM DOWELL/NEW YORK, MARGOT
HORNBLOWER/LOS ANGELES, ELISABETH KAUFFMAN/NASHVILLE AND MAGGIE
SIEGER/CHICAGO
Does Your Child Need Ritalin?
There is no definitive medical test for ADHD; that's part of the problem.
The best that doctors have come up with is a vague formula. Children are
said to have ADHD if they exhibit a combination of these (and other)
behaviors for at least six months:
1. Having trouble paying attention to details; making careless mistakes in
schoolwork
2. Having trouble concentrating on one activity at a time
3. Talking constantly, even at inappropriate times
4. Running around in a disruptive way when required to be seated or quiet
5. Fidgeting and squirming constantly
6. Having trouble waiting for a turn
7. Being easily distracted by things going on around them
8. Impulsively blurting out answers to questions
9. Often misplacing school assignments, books or toys
10. Seeming not to listen, even when directly addressed
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Voters Turn Down Legalization Of Narcotics (A different New York Times
version in The International Herald-Tribune)
Date: Tue, 1 Dec 1998 17:56:15 -0800
From: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org (MAPNews)
To: mapnews@mapinc.org
Subject: MN: US NY: WIRE: Voters Turn Down Legalization Of Narcotics
Sender: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Reply-To: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Organization: Media Awareness Project http://www.mapinc.org/lists/
Newshawk: Peter Webster
Pubdate: Nov 30, 1998
Source: International Herald-Tribune
Contact: iht@iht.com
Website: http://www.iht.com/
Copyright: International Herald Tribune 1998
Page: 1A
Author: By Elizabeth Olson, New York Times Service
SWISS VOTERS TURN DOWN LEGALIZATION OF NARCOTICS
Measure Sought to Cut Drug-Related Crime Through State Control
GENEVA-Swiss voters decisively rejected-on Sunday a radical measure to
legalize marijuana, heroin and cocaine, turning aside arguments that a
government-managed narcotics network would curb drug-related crime.
The proposal would have allowed any Swiss resident over 18 years old to buy
narcotics at state-approved pharmacies after consulting a doctor.
Nearly 74 percent of voters rejected the initiative, which had been
expected to fail, but not to such an overwhelming extent.
''It was a surprise," said Francois Reusser, spokesman for the committee
that launched the initiative "for a sensible drug policy."
"Voters reacted emotionally to the heroin aspect," he said. But Mr.
Reusser'said he hoped lawmakers would still consider liberalizing the use
and possession of cannabis, which federal statistics indicate is regularly
consumed by some 500,000 people in Switzerland.
If some of the marijuana smokers had gone to the polls, Mr. Reusser said,
the outcome might have been different. "It' s too easy to buy cannabis
here, or to smoke it on the road, or people would have voted," he said.
Despite that, he said the committee, backed by Socialists, medical doctors,
lawyers and drug experts, would consider a new campaign to collect the
signatures necessary to force a ballot vote on legalizing cannabis.
Government officials said the vote confirmed Switzerland's policy of
battling against illicit drugs, but also aiding the worst-off addicts
through a program that gives heroin and methadone to a controlled group of
abusers. This nation of 7 million has an estimated 30,000 to 36,000
hard-drug addicts, one of the worst problems in Europe.
Thomas Zeltner, chief of the federal health department, said Bern was ready
to review policies on soft drugs, which include marijuana and hashish. The
government is proposing new laws on drugs to be drawn up next year.
"There's a big gap between the legal regulation of cannabis and reality,"
Mr. Zeltner said. "We need to take some steps." He noted that solutions for
consumption might be different from those for cultivation and sale of
cannabis.
Unlike many other European countries, Swiss authorities pursue and punish
cannabis use, although not too successfully. Marijuana can frequently be
smelled in smoking compartments on trains. And, in the past three years,
some 150 shops have sprung up around Switzerland selling little bags of
dried cannabis leaves with "not for consumption" labels, and daring
authorities to prosecute.
The country's law prohibits the substance only when smoked, which put law
enforcement officials in a quandary. In the last month, they have begun
cracking down on the shops. But the Swiss cannabis dilemma also stems in
part from the fact that hemp has been widely grown, and used for various
products, in the country for decades.
The rejected initiative would have amended the constitution to say: "The
consumption, cultivation or possession of drugs, and their acquisition for
personal use, is not punishable."
The government campaign had warned that the proposal would give unfettered
access to drugs and attract drug tourists looking for easy availab' ility.
Instead of eliminating the black market, it would have created a new
illegal drug trade and severed Switzerland's ties to international police
assistance, Mr. Zeltner said.
to the 1998 Daily News index for Nov. 26-Dec. 2