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Without further ado, please enjoy the news:
RTw 05/20/94 COUNTERCULTURE ``BEATS'' CELEBRATE 50TH ANNIVERSARY
By Ransdell Pierson
NEW YORK, May 20 (Reuter) - Legendary figures of the "Beat Generation," who
fused counterculture, sexual experimentation and drugs into an art form,
converged on Greenwich Village for a 50th anniversary conference -- looking
grayer, sedate and even professorial.
Rather than dress and behave like rebels, they resembled literary statesmen
Friday, dignified and quite proper.
The Beats, led by poet Allen Ginsberg, descended on New York University for
a week-long round of lectures, art exhibits and poetry readings which runs
through Sunday.
NYU, not far from the coffeehouses and bars that served as living rooms for
the Beats during their heydey 1940's and 1950's, is sponsoring the May 17-22
gathering.
The conference features a major art exhibit, including Ginsberg photographs
and paintings by poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti, novelists Jack Kerouac and William
Burroughs, and artist Robert LaVigne.
Ginsberg, affluent from royalties and the lecture circuit, appeared
reserved and businesslike Friday during a seminar on Beats and the visual arts.
The 67-year-old poet -- who once posed nude, clasping his crotch in a
famous Beat photo and flaunted his homesexuality during the staid 1950s -- wore
a dark suit.
His beard, once long and wild, had been carefully trimmed. Ginsberg barely
cracked a smile as he autographed books for a score of fans and drew sunflowers
on the inside cover of one copy.
Asked about any emotional highlights of the conference, Ginsberg pondered
gravely and replied, "Getting together physically, although we're all in touch
by phone or letters."
Beat historian Regina Weinreich said she was electrified by readings from
celebrated poets Gregory Corso and Michael McClure.
But she acknowledged that the Beat conference was a little "on the sedate
side.
"Maybe," she quipped, "because there aren't any drugs around."
Harold Norse, a San Francisco Beat poet, said he had not seen so many
friends together since Ginsberg, Kerouac and Ferlinghetti were the focal point
of a group of nonconformists centred in New York and San Francisco decades ago.
Norse, who has not seen New York for 30 years, recalled how he met
Ginsberg in 1944, on a subway car headed for Greenwich Village.
"It was 3 a.m. and this skinny 18-year-old kid was standing up, reciting
Rimbaud."
The birth of the Beat movement is dated the same year, when Ginsberg met
Kerouac and Burroughs.
Kerouac, deceased author of "On the Road," coined the phrase "Beat
Generation" four years later, in 1948, saying his generation was beat, or weary,
"with all the forms, all the conventions of the world."
The literary group became a movement by 1957 after Ginsberg, who often
fuelled his visions with Benzedrine and marijuana, won a highly publicised
censorship trial in San Francisco for his homoerotic poem "Howl.""
The poem, a sweeping denunciation of the conformism of the America of
President Dwight Eisenhower, was a touchstone for a generation of protesters.
It was Kerouac's "On The Road," a semi-autobiographical novel about a group
of young men adrift in America, that became a bible of the Beats and that
inspired much of the 1960's Woodstock generation's yearnings to drop out of
conventional society.
REUTER
UPse 05/23/94 600 pot plants in Hastings house
HASTINGS, Mich., May 23 (UPI) -- State police Monday confiscated 600
marijuana plants growing in the basement of what one trooper called "a very nice
suburban home."
Arrest warrants were being sought for the couple who owns the home and their
son, a man in his mid-20s who was readying the six-to-nine- inch plants for
moving to the outdoors.
A state trooper who declined to be named said the couple knew that their son,
who did not live at the home, was using grow lights to nurse the young plants in
the basement of their home in Hastings Township.
The suspects' names were being withheld pending arrests. The trooper said
warrants were expected to be issued Tuesday charging the suspects with
manufacturing marijuana, which is a felony.
Troopers found the pot-growing operation after receiving a tip. The value of
the plants has not been determined.
The investigation also led police to the seizure of a handgun that had been
stolen in an unrelated burglary in Freeport, the trooper said.
RTw 05/23/94 YACHT FOUND IN CHANNEL WITH CANNABIS AND NO CREW
DOVER, England, May 23 (Reuter) - A Mary Celeste style mystery has developed
in the English Channel after the discovery on Monday of a yacht carrying a large
quantity of cannabis drifting at sea without a crew.
The 30-foot (10-metre) yacht was spotted by a fishing boat off the coast of
Kent. More than 100 kg (220 lb) of herbal cannabis was found on board, a customs
spokesman said.
The yacht's dinghy was later plucked from the sea, some distance away, by a
lifeboat. There was nobody aboard and it too was carrying cannabis. A Coastguard
spokesman said there were no clues to the yacht crew's whereabouts.
The crew's disappearance echoes the case of the brigantine Mary Celeste,
found floating off the coast of Portugal in 1872 without its crew and no
indication of their fate.
A customs spokesman said the yacht may have broken down and the crew then
attempted to reach the English coast in the dinghy. Coastguards were searching
the surrounding sea.
REUTER
WP 05/24/94 Criminalizing Jennifer Capriati
By Richard Cohen
NEW YORK
Those who are cynical about the erstwhile War on Drugs (a term abandoned by
the Clinton administration) had their case bolstered recently. Jennifer
Capriati, the extremely dangerous 18-year-old tennis star, was arrested in
Florida for possessing a small amount (about 20 grams) of marijuana. A terrified
nation - she had killer ground strokes - undoubtedly breathed a sigh of relief.
The cynics, of whom I am one, might have noted that if Capriati were 21 and
had possessed a gallon of vodka and, like every other Floridian, a legal
handgun, the law would have left her alone. Throw in a carton of cigarettes - as
addictive as chocolate, according to the cigarette companies - and no lawman
would or could have taken an interest in her. Guns, booze and cigarettes are
either mentioned in the Constitution or have strong lobbies in Washington - I
forget which.
Enough cynicism - even from a cynic. The fact is that the arrest of Capriati
points up the silliness of our drug laws. The former tennis star - she hasn't
played for almost a year - has since entered the Mount Sinai Medical Center in
Miami for rehab, although from what is not exactly clear. Above all, she seems
to be suffering from an acute case of teenage madness. The symptoms include
estrangement from her parents, consorting with "the wrong people" and, possibly,
abuse of drugs. In her case, it probably matters that she became a professional
tennis player at the age of 13. Women's tennis and child abuse sometimes amount
to the same thing.
But for all Capriati's fame and wealth ($1.5 million in "lifetime"
earnings), she is depressingly typical. Whatever her problems, they are hardly
criminal in nature. Yet, she was arrested for allegedly possessing an
insignificant amount of marijuana. This is a drug of such power that it has made
the entire government crazy. During the Reagan years, for instance, the
discovery of a single seed prompted the Feds to seize a luxury yacht. Yet for
some reason, of all the millions of people who have partaken of the weed, not a
single one is known to have died as a result. Would that cigarettes could make
the same claim.
Let me pause at this point to declare my steadfast opposition to drug use. I
do so without reservation. But eschewing the stuff myself and recommending it to
no one, I still have to wonder why we continue to treat drugs mostly as a
criminal matter, waging a war not against drugs themselves but against our own
people.
At the moment, some 330,000 people are in jail for drug violations. In the
federal prison system, more than 60 percent of the inmates are there for
violating drug laws - most relating to harder drugs than marijuana. But even
when it comes to pot, the numbers are appalling. The FBI reports that in 1992,
535,000 people were arrested for possession, sale or manufacture of marijuana -
this in a nation that doesn't have enough cops to start with. In six cases,
reports Rolling Stone magazine in a special report about drugs, life sentences
were imposed. As for harder drugs, mandatory minimum sentences are clogging the
jails with small-time "mules" who are quickly and easily replaced. The money's
very good.
The folly, not to mention the tragedy, of this policy ought to be apparent.
For some reason, the United States persists in treating drugs as a criminal, not
a health, problem. Certainly, the importation and selling of hard drugs is a
criminal enterprise and ought to be dealt with accordingly. But that lucrative
business - so lucrative it persists despite Draconian penalties for lawbreakers
- would soon wither if the government decriminalized the use of drugs. That was
the experience when Prohibition ended and there's no reason to think things
would be different now.
To that suggestion - advanced to one degree or another by Baltimore Mayor
Kurt Schmoke and former secretary of state George Shultz among others, and
contingent on much study - certain politicians cry bloody murder. Congressmen
who represent inner-city districts see drugs as such a scourge that they label
decriminalization as nothing short of capitulation. Decriminalization does seem
like capitulation - capitulation not to drug pushers or to the substance itself
but to human nature. We have been fighting this fight for a long time, spending
$20 billion a year, and have nothing to show for it. The true winners of the war
on drugs are drug pushers and companies engaged in the construction of prisons.
The rest of us are losers.
Whatever Jennifer Capriati's problems, they are not criminal. If she indeed
has a problem with drugs, particularly marijuana, she will probably be more
easily cured than if she were a habitual cigarette smoker (tougher to quit for a
lot of people than heroin) or a serious boozer. The whole idea that she was
arrested - rehab was her own idea - for possessing a small amount of marijuana
is preposterous. She's not a criminal, but a kid with some problems - one of
them now being a bust on a drug charge.
RTf 05/25/94 Dutchmen, Spaniard convicted in British drug case
LONDON, May 25 (Reuter) - A British court convicted three Dutchmen and a
Spaniard on Wednesday of trying to smuggle cannabis worth 57 million pounds ($86
million), the largest amount of the drug ever seized in Britain.
The four were arrested aboard a trawler in the North Sea 130 miles (210 km)
off Newcastle, northeast England, two years ago.
Officers who raided the ship found 850 canvas bundles of cannabis resin that
were to be smuggled by sea into various European countries.
The court in the northern city of Leeds found the ship's captain Jan
Wagenaar, 49, guilty of possessing drugs with intent to smuggle them into
Europe. Laurens Pels-Ryken, 30, Hans Pronk, 50, and Spaniard Rojeirio Santiago
Maya, 39, were convicted of similar charges.
The court heard that the ship, the Britannia Gazelle, picked up cannabis
from a Spanish vessel in the mid-Atlantic and was to meet up with smaller
vessels to take the cargo to a number of European destinations.
The jury failed to reach a verdict on two other Dutchmen arrested at the
same time. All six denied the charges.
REUTER
UPn 05/27/94 U.N. unveils anti-drug plan for Kazakhstan
By KARLYGASH EZHENOVA
ALMA ATA, May 27 (UPI) -- The United Nations announced Friday it was granting
Kazakhstan $500,000 to fight drug trafficking, as the former Soviet republic
struggles to combat a rising tide of narcotics-related crime.
U.N. Deputy Secretary General Giorgio Giacomelli said the money would go to
developing advisers and information exchanges, overhauling obsolete legislation,
training personnel and creating laboratories to fight the illegal drugs trade.
Giacomelli, who is the executive director of the U.N. international drug
control program, told a press conference in the Kazakh capital Alma Ata that it
was important for him to know how serious the Kazakh government was about
combating drug trafficking.
He said there was a danger that cash accumulated by Kazakh drug barons could
find its way into the pockets of corrupt officials, making it much harder for
the authorities to stamp out the drugs trade.
Kazakh Interior Minister Vladimir Shumov told reporters that the number of
drug users in the republic had increased four-fold to 12,500 over the last 10
years, with two thirds of all addicts under the age of 30.
He said the volume of illegal drugs in circulation had grown seven- fold over
the same period, and last year police had confiscated over 12 tons of narcotics.
"Kazakhstan has the biggest raw material base of any C.I.S. state for the
illegal production of drugs of the hashish group," Shumov said.
The smuggling of drugs from the other republics in the Commonwealth of
Independent States, especially opiates from neighboring Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan
and Tadzhikistan, was also on the rise, he said.
"By the nature of its geographical position, Kazakhstan serves as a staging
post for drug shipments from China and from the Golden Crescent region to
Europe," Shumov said.
Police throughout the C.I.S. are being faced with an unprecedented rise in
smuggling as drug traffickers from Pakistan, Afghanistan and elsewhere in Asia
infiltrate with ease the once tightly sealed borders of ex-Soviet republics.
Kazakhstan has itself turned into one of the world's major producers of
hashish, as stiff Soviet controls break down and farmers see in plants like hemp
a profitable cash crop to supplement their meager incomes.
WP 05/27/94 Stubborn (and Wrong) on Sentences
A CONFERENCE committee will sit down after the Memorial Day recess to work
out differences between the House and Senate versions of the crime bill. It is
an expensive and repressive measure generally. It will cost tens of billions of
dollars and greatly expand the list of federal crimes, dozens of which will
carry the death penalty. But there is at least one reasonable provision that
will actually save money. It would provide some leeway for judges sentencing
first offenders on relatively minor drug charges, and it would make that relief
retroactive. But the word is out that the Justice Department will oppose
extending this possibility to people already under sentence. Democratic
conferees are expected to fall into line.
The current mandatory minimum sentencing laws are extremely harsh and costly.
The Justice Department itself conceded last winter that federal prisons now
house about 16,000 inmates convicted of minor, nonviolent drug offenses because
of mandates that apply even to first offenders. Both the House and Senate
versions of the crime bill would allow a judge to use the sentencing guidelines
- which already carry high penalties - instead of the extreme mandatory minimums
when certain conditions are met. The defendant must not have used a gun or been
a leader in the crime. He must have cooperated with the police. And he must have
a clean record - no prior convictions in the Senate bill, nothing more than a
single 60-day misdemeanor in the House bill. This is not, by any definition, a
hard-core group.
The House bill would also allow this discretion in the case of prisoners who
meet the standards and who have completed what would have been their sentences
but for the mandatories. The U.S. Sentencing Commission estimates that about
1,600 prisoners would be eligible. They have already served considerable time.
They would not be released automatically but only after individual assessment.
Keeping them in prison for many years costs a great deal of money, serves no
real additional purpose and creates two classes of prisoners for people with
identical records sentenced before and after the day the crime bill is signed.
Reps. Henry Hyde and William McCollum, two of the most conservative
Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee, support retroactivity. But the
Justice Department is bent on eliminating it in conference. If Mr. Hyde and Mr.
McCollum can take a stand for good sense in this case, why is the department
reluctant to do as much?
APn 05/29/94 Weedstock
WARRENS, Wis. (AP) -- They came, they saw, they lit up. And, unlike President
Clinton, they did inhale.
About 1,000 people -- three times the population of this village -- gathered
this weekend to celebrate the 6th annual Weedstock festival, a paean to pot.
Banners proclaimed "Hemp, our premier natural resource," and "Thank you for
smoking pot."
Many pitched tents and rigged plastic windbreaks for shelter. Some came here
on bicycles pulling makeshift trailers piled with bedrolls and cooking gear.
"This is a great time," said Ben Masel, who organized this year's festival on
a 53-acre site about 50 miles east of La Crosse. "It brings people together, and
it gives us the chance to educate them to the agricultural benefits of hemp."
So far, Weedstock revelers have been cooperative, although some neighbors
complained about loud music and trespassing.
Monroe County sheriff's officials said Sunday they had made about 20
drug-related arrests and handed out 78 traffic citations.
Jennie Larscheid of Chaska, Minn., who brought her 12 Yorkshire terriers,
received one of the citations.
"I was fined $150 for not having lights on the back of my camper," she said.
"They tell me I can't leave unless I get them fixed. I guess I'll have to sell a
couple of dogs or something."
RTw 05/29/94 AUSTRALIAN DOCTORS URGE CANNABIS DECRIMINALISATION
CANBERRA, May 29 (Reuter) - Australia's top medical group has urged that the
possession of small amounts of cannabis by first offenders be decriminalised.
Jail terms for first-time offenders should be replaced by compulsory
rehabilitation programmes, the Australian Medical Association (AMA) said at its
annual conference on Sunday, in a significant softening of its position on
cannabis.
A criminal conviction for possession should be recorded only for repeat
offenders, it said.
The health consequences of imprisonment made it an inappropriate punishment
for the use or possession of small amounts of cannabis, the AMA's federal
president Brendan Nelson told reporters.
About 1,300 people were now in Australian prisons for the possession of
small amounts of cannabis for personal use, he said.
"That is not in their interest and it is not, arguably, in the interest of
the nation," Nelson said.
"We are not prepared to support any Australian getting a criminal record --
which can affect employment, psychological welfare, family relationships, a
whole range of things which contribute to ill-health -- simply because they have
been caught in the possession of a very small amount of cannabis."
But the AMA did not support the legalisation of cannabis and it would
strongly resist any moves in that direction because of evidence it can cause
mental and physical damage, he said.
He noted a recent government report which said 50 percent of Australian 14
to 19 year-olds surveyed had been offered cannabis in the previous year and that
40 percent had smoked it in the past.
REUTER
WP 05/29/94 Feud Hurts Bid to Stop Drug Flow; State,
Defense Battle Cuts Peru, Colombia From Radar Access
By Barton Gellman
Washington Post Staff Writer
An unresolved feud in the Clinton administration, which abruptly cut off
Peru and Colombia from access to U.S. counter-drug intelligence, has blinded all
three nations to many drug smuggling flights and threatened to fracture a
brittle alliance against the northward flow of heroin and cocaine.
The sudden halt in cooperation has created a significant opportunity for
traffickers, according to civilian and military narcotics experts. Relatively
few drug flights have ever been intercepted, but data on their origin and
destination has set the stage for raids on drug labs and storage facilities that
netted some 300 metric tons of contraband last year.
Because the State and Defense departments could not agree on a policy and
failed to coordinate their moves, Peru and Colombia received no warning and
scant explanation of the May 1 intelligence cutoff. On that day, the U.S.
Southern Command suspended operation of U.S. ground-based radars in those
countries and stopped allowing their nationals aboard U.S. surveillance flights
launched from Panama.
The two South American nations have begun to retaliate. Peru has banned the
American AWACS and P-3 surveillance craft from its airspace, and Colombia
threatened in writing last week to expel two U.S. radars.
At issue is the use of U.S. flight tracking data by Colombia and Peru to
locate and then force down or shoot down suspected drug planes. The United
States has long regarded any attack on civil aircraft as illegal under
international conventions and detrimental to U.S. interests as the world's
leading aviation power, but it sometimes has winked at quiet efforts against
drug traffickers.
The Pentagon, supported by the Justice Department and a recent review by
lawyers for eight government agencies, maintains that assisting in the shoot
downs breaks U.S. and international law. Senior State Department officials,
while acknowledging what one called "legal concerns," want to continue some form
of a policy one of them described as "equivalent to `don't ask, don't tell' " -
the United States would share the tracking data but express its official
disapproval of attacks in flight.
Beyond the legal concerns, the Defense Department worries about the
possibility that the two South American nations will accidentally down innocent
aircraft.
Days after U.S. F-15 fighters shot down two American helicopters in northern
Iraq, Defense Undersecretary Frank G. Wisner wrote on April 20 to Undersecretary
of State Peter Tarnoff. "Recent events in Iraq," said his classified letter,
underscored the need to protect innocent aircraft. The Defense Department would
stop the intelligence sharing on May 1, he wrote, unless Colombia and Peru
agreed not to use weapons against aircraft in flight.
What threw the interagency dispute into crisis was its uncommon rancor and
the willingness of U.S. adversaries to let it spill out into relations with
Colombia and Peru. Noteworthy because it accompanies new claims of bureaucratic
peace within the Clinton administration, the policy feud has "descended into
hatred," according to one senior participant.
Defense Department officials charge that the State Department deliberately
failed to provide advance notice of the May 1 cutoff to Peru and Colombia - or
even to U.S. ambassadors there - in order to create maximum backlash. When the
two countries protested, one Colombian diplomat said a State Department contact
told him the Defense Department stopped the aircraft intelligence "unilaterally"
and that the military "didn't even tell the State Department about it."
In a remarkable suggestion that one U.S. official likened to "treason," the
same State Department official even encouraged Colombia to lodge a strong
protest, according to the Colombian diplomat and another U.S. official with
knowledge of the conversation.
"I have been through a lot in 27 years of service," wrote Alvin Adams, U.S.
ambassador in Peru, in a classified May 3 cable to complain that he received no
word in advance. "Of the little I can remember in my advanced middle age, this
is - in my ken of experience - a standout." Adams asked "urgently for
coordinated guidance from you."
In Washington, two of the principal adversaries, Assistant Secretary of
State Robert S. Gelbard and Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Brian E.
Sheridan, each in charge of counter-narcotics policy for his department, are
said to be not on speaking terms. State Department officials, according to
sources there and on Capitol Hill, have told congressional Republicans that the
Pentagon is trying to walk away from the war on drugs. One State Department
official, who provided a reporter with the names of Republicans to call, said he
worried that there might be an "unfortunate perception" that the Clinton
administration is "in full retreat on narcotics."
"We are trying to understand what is going on inside the American
government," said a frustrated Peruvian official. "We are waiting for the
discussions between the agencies to come to a consensus."
The importance of the small aircraft to drug traffickers is not in dispute.
Coca leaf grown in Bolivia and Peru must move northward for processing in
successive stages to cocaine paste, cocaine base and - in Colombia - the pure
street drug. Because dense jungle prevents overland transport and the rivers
flow mainly east-west, the traffickers have what one U.S. general called "a
north-south problem."
U.S. intelligence officials believe nearly 1,000 flights a year head north
carrying some form of cocaine or heroin. Since the late 1980s the United States
has provided the backbone of an air tracking network capable of detecting and
intercepting the flights.
The idea, officially, was to pinpoint the where the planes took off and
landed and "fuse" that information with other intelligence in order to mount
ground attacks on drug labs and storage facilities. The ambitions of Peru and
Colombia to down the aircraft in flight were largely hypothetical until
recently, when Peruvian Tucano trainer aircraft armed with machine guns began
shooting effectively at the renegade flights.
Peru brought the issue into the open Nov. 4 with a dramatic shoot down of a
suspected drug plane near Pucallpa, Peru. Shortly after that, Colombia announced
its intention to shoot down drug flights.
Those developments raised alarms in the Joint Staff and the Pentagon's
civilian secretariat. Both grew sensitive to attacks on civil aviation after the
Navy's accidental downing of an Iranian Airbus in 1988 and the 1983 downing of
Korean Airlines Flight 007 by the former Soviet Union, which prompted one of the
last great Cold War confrontations.
Marine Lt. Gen. John J. Sheehan, the Joint Staff's director of operations,
requested legal and policy guidance, and Pentagon lawyers concluded that the
intelligence sharing was illegal.
A classified by the State Department's legal counsel, dated Feb. 9, agreed.
The assessment, obtained by The Washington Post, said providing flight data to
countries that shoot at aircraft involves "either the USG (U.S. government)
acquiescence in a violation of international law by another state or
participation in such act." The 1944 Convention on Civil Aviation, known as the
Chicago Convention, bans the use of weapons against nonmilitary aircraft for
virtually any reason.
An interagency legal review, with the Justice Department in the lead, then
stunned both sides of the debate by concluding that continuing the policy not
only would violate international law but would expose individual U.S. officials
and troops to criminal prosecution.
"U.S. law makes it a crime to willfully destroy, or attempt to destroy, a
civil aircraft registered in a country other than the United States while such
aircraft is in service," said the interagency review paper, adding that
providing flight tracking data could be considered aiding and abetting that
crime. Violations, the paper said, are "punishable by death."
State Department officials argue that the air traffic is so important to the
drug trade that the United States cannot afford to remove the threat that
narcotics planes will be shot down. Gen. Barry R. McCaffrey, chief of the U.S.
Southern Command, also supported the shootdown policy until its legal
implications became clear.
But other officials, including a senior Drug Enforcement Agency expert, said
interceptions of drugs in flight are a minor part of the drug war. Official
Pentagon statistics, undisputed elsewhere in the government, show that 200
kilograms of cocaine were forced down last year while 300 metric tons were
seized by other means in Colombia and Peru.
Far more important than the flight interceptions, officials said, are the
hard-won cooperative relationships with Colombia and Peru. With the Clinton
administration still deadlocked, those relationships now appear to be in
jeopardy.
"The U.S. cannot decide what we do in our airspace," said an angry
Colombian official in a telephone interview. "That's a sovereign decision and
we're not going to change it. If the U.S. doesn't cooperate with us, we'll
request its radars to be withdrawn."
Said a U.S. government official, expressing anger against his Pentagon and
State Department counterparts, "Why could these children not come together and
work this out? The real reason we can't fight effectively against the
narcotraffickers is that we're too busy fighting among ourselves."
Staff writer Pierre Thomas and correspondent Corinne Schmidt-Lynch in Peru
contributed to this report.
RTw 05/30/94 AUSTRALIA STIRS POLITICAL POT ON MARIJUANA
CANBERRA, May 30 (Reuter) - Australian Health Minister Carmen Lawrence,
confronted with her past support of marijuana use, said on Monday the new
conservative opposition leader Alexander Downer had also admitted using the
drug.
Downer, who ousted former leader John Hewson as Liberal Party leader last
week, said marijuana had been foisted upon him, Lawrence told parliament after
her own support for marijuana had been quoted to her.
"Unadulterated and taken under suitable conditions by normal, well adjusted
persons marijuana is a harmless inducer of a pleasant and relaxed state,"
opposition health spokesman Bronwyn Bishop quoted Lawrence as saying in her
student days.
Bishop was attempting to distract attention from her controversial support
for tobacco advertising last week.
However, Lawrence retorted: "There is at least one other person in this
house (parliament) who echoed some of my words, and that's the leader of the
opposition, Mr Downer."
Lawrence said Downer had been asked in 1985 whether he had ever smoked
marijuana. He had replied: "Even though it was illegal it was just everywhere
when I was a student."
"It was foisted upon me," he had added in the interview with The Melbourne
Herald.
Neither Downer nor Lawrence took advantage of parliamentary rules that let
members of parliament claim to have been misrepresented.
The Australian Medical Association called at the weekend for partial
decriminalisation of marijuana use. Lawrence said she now believed the issue had
to be considered.
REUTER
RTw 05/31/94 PORNO-WATCHING BISHOP RESIGNS IN SEYCHELLES
VICTORIA, May 31 (Reuter) - The Roman Catholic bishop of the Seychelles, who
has said he watches blue movies and has tried cultivating marijuana, resigned on
Tuesday after Rome called for him to step down.
"I admit to being a curious man and some of the scenes were quite
explicit," 53-year-old Bishop Felix Paul told a local magazine last month,
referring to his admission that he had watched pornographic films.
The bishop first scandalised his flock in the mainly Catholic Indian Ocean
archipelago, known as "the islands of love," last year when he spoke about his
unorthodox activities on state television.
The cleric also attacked the human rights record of President Albert Rene,
an austere socialist who overthrew the libertarian 1970s leader, Jimmy Mancham.
Bishop Paul, who has been in office since 1975, said he had later received
a "nasty" letter from Rome.
His resignation appears to have followed a visit to the islands last week
by Kenya-based Apostolic Pro-Nuncio Clemente Faccani.
REUTER
RTw 06/01/94 LOOSE BORDERS WITHIN EX-USSR HELP DRUG SMUGGLERS
VIENNA, June 1 (Reuter) - Drug smugglers are exploiting loose border
controls within the former Soviet Union to establish new routes to Western
Europe, the U.N. drugs agency said on Wednesday.
The Vienna-based U.N. International Drug Control Programme (UNDCP) said in
a statement it was concerned by an "alarming increase" in drug crime in former
Soviet central Asian republics.
"A UNDCP delegation...has returned from a mission to Kazakhstan, the Kyrgyz
Republic, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, where conditions are prime for opium and
cannabis crops and where there are nearly non-existent border controls and poor
controls of chemicals used in drug processing," it said.
It said new drug routes for opium and heroin trafficking had opened from
Afghanistan to Western Europe via neighbouring Tajikistan.
"Once within the Commonwealth of Independent States with practically no
border controls among member countries, the drugs are transported freely over a
number of new routes and sent on to markets in Europe and North America," the
statement said.
Tightened controls in India, Pakistan and Iran had forced drug traffickers
to move their operations to north Afghanistan and set up alternative routes to
the Balkan connection.
"One such route brings illicit drugs from Southwest Asia through
Tajikistan, The Kyrgyz Republic and Kazakhstan to Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and
the Baltic States and from there to Western Europe," the statement said.
Newly set up private banks and lack of proper controls had also made
money-laundring from illicit drug trafficking easier in all central Asian
countries, the UNDCP added.
REUTER
APn 06/01/94 Colombia-Drugs
By JAVIER BAENA
Associated Press Writer
BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) -- President Cesar Gaviria signed a decree prohibiting
drug use in public places and imposed other restrictions on a Constitutional
Court ruling that legalized drug use in Colombia.
The decree, signed Tuesday night, bans drug use on the streets and in work
places, schools, bars, hotels, restaurants, hospitals and parks.
Gaviria announced the decree May 18, saying he opposed drug use and citing
opinion polls that indicate most Colombians are also against the court's ruling.
The decree became law when he signed it.
Gaviria also said last month he wanted a national referendum on the court's
ruling, which legalized possession of small amounts of drugs. For a referendum
to be held, 850,000 signatures must be collected.
Under Gaviria's decree:
--Drug use is prohibited if the user is at the controls of a motor vehicle,
boat or aircraft. Violators face fines of up to $2,500, suspensions of licenses
and criminal sanctions.
--Athletes, minors and pregnant women are barred from using drugs.
--Employees who use drugs on the job can be fired without severance pay.
--Students caught using drugs on campus are subject to suspension or
expulsion.
The Constitutional Court ruled that laws prohibiting the use and possession
of small amounts of drugs violated a constitutional guarantee of "free
development of personality." Production, trafficking and sale of drugs remain
illegal.
There was no indication drug use rose significantly after the court ruling.
Apart from an occasional impromptu marijuana smoke-in by youths, drug use has
not been evident in public places.
Although Colombia is the world's main supplier of cocaine, drug use is lower
than in the United States and many other countries.
RTna 06/01/94 DUTCH PREACHER OPENS CHURCH TO DRUG DEALERS
By Chris Johnson
ROTTERDAM, Netherlands (Reuter) - The Netherlands is famous for its
tolerant attitude to drug use but many Dutch people think the Reverend Hans
Visser has gone too far.
He has invited drug pushers to sell heroin and crack cocaine in his
Rotterdam church.
"Many people may think I'm wrong, but in private lots of others, including
the police and local government, agree with me," Visser told Reuters in an
interview.
Visser's church, the Dutch Protestant Pauluskerk in the center of the port,
has been a day center for hard drug users for 15 years, providing food,
entertainment and night shelter for hundreds of addicts. Drug use at the center
has been officially tolerated since 1990 but dealing was always banned.
"Where there are drug users there will always be dealers and we were having
increasing problems with dealers coming in and making trouble," Visser said. "So
I said "Okay. You can work here but no violence and don't mix the drugs with
dangerous chemicals.' And, in the main, the strategy is working."
Visser asked two drug dealers to sell heroin and crack cocaine in the
church and accepted a contribution of $27 to $54 each week that was last week
paid to tax authorities.
He has no direct contact with the drugs, and leaves the regulation of sales
and quality to the dealers. Drugs are sold at street prices of about $43.25 per
gram for heroin and $67.57 for crack cocaine.
"I don't receive money for the drugs and I don't intervene in their
business or I would be regarded by the street mafia as the big boss," Visser
said. "That would be much too dangerous."
The Netherlands' official drug policy, introduced in 1976, is based on
treating addiction as a medical problem rather than a crime. While all drugs are
technically illegal, special "coffee shops" are allowed to sell hashish and
marijuana and police rarely prosecute drug users.
The approach aims to bring drug users out into the open and the government
claims success. While hard drug use is rising in many European countries, the
number of addicts in the Netherlands has stabilized at around 20,000 in a
population of 15 million and drug-related deaths have declined.
But Dutch tolerance has never extended to drug dealing and Visser has
provoked protests from local residents.
Angry people called a phone-in on local Radio Rijnmond last week to condemn
him and demand Dutch drug policy be hardened.
"Dutch policy has gone too far," said Jacob Pot, spokesman for the small
Dutch Calvinist and Evangelical Party, which represents many of Visser's fellow
churchmen in parliament. "Visser is a good man but drug dealing is against the
law and that law must be enforced."
Rotterdam police spokesman Ger de Jong said local officials were discussing
what action to take over the church.
"Junkies have used Visser's church to shoot up for a long time. We've known
about that and let it happen because it is better there than in the streets. But
dealing is different."
Visser wants to push Dutch drugs policy much further, making hard drugs
legal and taking the drugs industry away from the European trafficking mafia.
"My aim is decriminalization. That is the only human policy," he said.
"After 20 years a drug addict simply cannot get off the habit so we ought to
prescribe drugs for long-term users and register dealers so we can control them.
"It is not possible for the Netherlands to change on its own because if we
did we would become a Mecca for users. But we can play an important role in
Europe, leading opinion, and I have no doubt drugs will be legalized
eventually."
Whatever the outcome of the Dutch drugs debate, crack cocaine addict Edwin
Heuverzwijn, 36, says the center fulfils a vital role.
"Churches should be open for everyone but almost all of them are closed to
people like us. This is the only safe haven we have," he said.
REUTER
circa 06/01/94 U.S. Drug Allegations Upset Thais;
3 Legislators Accused In Trafficking Cases
By William Branigin
Washington Post Foreign Service
BANGKOK - U.S. allegations of drug trafficking by Thai legislators have
thrown Thailand's parliament into an uproar and raised the prospect of the first
major test of a new extradition treaty.
So far, three opposition legislators have been publicly named by U.S.
officials as suspects in drug-trafficking cases, and reports that others might
be implicated have aroused apprehension among jittery politicians.
The publicity has focused attention on the role of big money in Thai
politics and fueled concerns that the parliament's reputation is being damaged.
Thailand is a conduit for much of the heroin produced in the Golden
Triangle, the border area where Burma, Thailand and Laos meet. The huge profits
generated by the drug trade have sowed corruption among Thai politicians,
security officials and businessmen at the local and national levels, U.S. and
Thai sources charge.
According to a recent State Department report, efforts to fight drug
trafficking and money laundering in Thailand are hampered by such factors as
"widespread police and military corruption" and "the narcotics involvement of
some politicians."
More than 60 percent of the heroin entering the United States comes from the
Golden Triangle, U.S. officials estimate. Burma produces nearly 90 percent of
the triangle's annual yield of more than 2,500 tons of opium, the raw material
for heroin. Some analysts predict a record crop this year of more than 3,000
tons.
Last month, Thanong Siripreechapong, 42, was forced to resign from
parliament after a judge in San Francisco unsealed a 1991 indictment accusing
him of involvement in smuggling more than 45 tons of marijuana from Thailand to
the United States between 1973 and 1987. The indictment said Thanong was paid
more than $13 million in a series of deals.
Last year, the U.S. government seized about $1 million in assets - including
a Beverly Hills house and a Mercedes-Benz - that Thanong was found to have
acquired in the United States with proceeds from drug smuggling. He was notified
twice of U.S. forfeiture proceedings but did not appear.
Thanong denied the charges and said he wanted to fly to the United States to
clear his name. The U.S. Embassy here responded that it would facilitate the
trip, but that if he did enter the United States, he would be "arrested
immediately."
The Chart Thai party, the largest of five parties in opposition to the
coalition government of Prime Minister Chuan Leekpai, expelled Thanong after
finding inconsistencies in his testimony in parliamentary hearings. He had
represented the northeastern province of Nakhon Phanom, known as Thailand's
premier marijuana growing area.
Thailand now faces a dilemma over the prospect that U.S. authorities might
seek Thanong's extradition. The case already has generated a debate over whether
a Thai citizen can legally be extradited to stand trial in a foreign country.
Extradition of Thai nationals has previously been banned, but the current
constitution is ambiguous on the issue, and a 1992 extradition treaty with the
United States neither authorizes nor forbids it.
If the government decides Thanong cannot be extradited, it may decide to
prosecute him here, officials said. But it remains to be seen whether Thai
authorities could try him based on foreign evidence for offenses committed
before a new Thai conspiracy law took effect.
In a parliamentary session May 19, Mongkol Chongsuthanamanee, 48, tearfully
denied involvement in the drug trade after it was disclosed that he had been
denied a U.S. visa because his name is on a narcotics watch list. The U.S. Drug
Enforcement Administration has implicated Mongkol in a conspiracy to smuggle
heroin to the United States, but currently lacks evidence to indict him, a U.S.
official said.
Mongkol, who represents the opposition Chart Pattana party from Chiang Rai,
a northern town bordering the Golden Triangle, called the allegations against
him "rubbish." A brother, Arun Chongsuthanamanee, is seeking commutation of a
1992 death sentence for drug trafficking.
Mongkol is a protege of Narong Wongwan, who was in line to become Thailand's
prime minister in 1992 until the State Department confirmed that he too had been
denied a visa on suspicion of drug trafficking. Narong's nomination to head a
pro-military coalition was later scuttled, and Gen. Suchinda Kraprayoon was
chosen instead. Suchinda's accession to the premiership then prompted massive
protests in which hundreds of democracy demonstrators were killed by the army
before Suchinda was forced to resign.
Narong, who is still in parliament, remains barred from entering the United
States.
The allegations linking legislators to drug dealing came to a head after
Thai newspapers quoted Foreign Minister Prasong Soonsiri as telling a cabinet
meeting that he had a U.S. list of 17 politicians, including 10 opposition
legislators, suspected of being traffickers. Opposition legislators demanded
that he name the suspects.
Prasong dismissed the reports, and the U.S. Embassy denied providing any such
list. However, lists compiled by Thai academic and media sources quickly began
circulating, including one that named three senior members of the government.
"I have to confirm that several politicians, both at the local and national
levels, are suspected of being involved in the drug trade," Prime Minister Chuan
told parliament. He acknowledged having a list of suspected drug-dealing
politicians, but declined to disclose details.
RTw 06/02/94 U.S. PRISON POPULATION SETS RECORD IN 1993
WASHINGTON, June 2 (Reuter) - There are almost one million convicts in U.S.
prisons.
The number of inmates in overcrowded state and federal prisons in the
United States swelled by more than 65,000 in 1993 to a record 949,000 prisoners,
according to a Justice Department report.
The report by its information-gathering unit, the Bureau of Justice
Statistics, found a 7.4 percent increase last year in the state and federal
prison population, continuing a trend dating back to 1980 of more criminals
behind bars.
The report, released Wednesday, said the number of federal and state
inmates has gone up nearly 200 percent since 1980, mainly from more drug
offenders entering prison.
It said about half of the growth in the nation's prison population
reflected more arrests for drug violations. Fuelling the growth have been
so-called mandatory minimum sentences which require jail time for minor drug
offences.
In addition, more people have been arrested and sent to prison since 1980
for sexual assault, aggravated assault, robbery and burglary, the report said.
A third factor behind the higher inmate population has been a sharp
increase in the number of parole and probation violators being returned to
prison.
The report said state prisons at the end of 1993 held 18 to 29 percent more
prisoners than they were designed to handle while the federal prison system was
operating at 36 percent over capacity.
During 1993, the number of inmates in state prisons rose by seven percent
to 859,000 while the number of federal inmates went up nearly 12 percent to
90,000, the report said.
REUTER
WP 06/02/94 Prisons Hold A Record 948,881;
Since '80, Inmate Total Has Nearly Tripled
By William Claiborne and Pierre Thomas
Washington Post Staff Writers
The number of inmates in state and federal prisons climbed to nearly a
million last year, an almost threefold increase since 1980, according to a
Justice Department report issued yesterday.
Last year's growth alone represented an average weekly gain of about 1,250
prisoners. Congress is poised to stiffen penalties for dozens of crimes, thereby
exacerbating the problem. The Bureau of Justice Statistics said that nearly half
the increase in prisoners since 1980 was linked to drug offenders entering
prison. In 1992, the last year for which data on drug offenders were available,
prison commitments for drug offenses reached 30 percent of all new commitments,
the department said.
The "War on Drugs" produced longer federal and state sentences, mandatory
minimum terms and tighter parole policies for drug and violent crimes.
In addition to drug offenders, the numbers of people jailed for sexual
assault, robbery, aggravated assault and burglary have increased, the report
said. Those crimes accounted for nearly 50,000 people entering prison in 1992,
according to the Justice Department.
Inmate growth also was linked to increases in the number of parole and
probation violators returned to prison. In 1980, only 17 percent of state
prisoners were parole or probation violators, but by 1992 this had risen to 30
percent.
Overall, the nation's prisons held 948,881 inmates at the end of last year,
compared with 329,821 men and women in 1980. The average annual increase for the
14-year period was 8.5 percent.
At the end of last year, state prisons were estimated to be operating at
between 18 and 29 percent above capacity, while the federal system was estimated
to be 36 percent over capacity.
The rapid rise in incarcerations underscored the fiscal impact of rising
crime rates, primarily on state governments. Corrections officials estimate that
it costs at least $15,000 a year to house each prisoner, and say the cost of
building prisons has been rising annually. "In recent years, the increase in
correctional spending for states has been twice that for general fund increases
and even larger than in education spending," said Jon Felde, who studies
judiciary issues for the National Conference of State Legislatures.
"We have to find new ways to cope with the rate of criminality," he added.
Felde predicted that state governments would intensify their searches for
sentencing alternatives to incarceration. Joseph R. Biden Jr., chairman of the
Senate Judiciary Committee, said that the Justice Department report makes all
the more imperative the need for Congress to pass the crime bill, which
authorizes billions of dollars for prison construction besides lengthening
sentences for a number of crimes.
"But it is not enough simply to keep building prisons because - as the
statistics released demonstrate - the prison population keeps growing to fill
new spaces," he said.
Biden called for a "new approach" to fighting crime, balancing punishment
with innovative prevention programs and expanding cost-effective experiments
such as boot camps and special drug courts.
The report said that California had the most inmates in state facilities in
1992 (119,951), followed by Texas (71,103) and New York (64,569). Texas had an
additional 29,546 inmates in local jails awaiting transfer to state prisons. The
report stressed - and local law enforcement officials confirmed - that inmate
overcrowding and rising costs of incarceration have forced a number of states to
begin housing prisoners in local jails. At the end of last year, the report
said, 22 states reported a total of 50,966 such prisoners being held in local
jails or other facilities.
Texas reported that almost 60 percent of its prisoners were being held in
local jails even though they had been sentenced to state prisons, and four other
states - Louisiana, Virginia, New Jersey and West Virginia - held more than 10
percent of their prison populations locally, the report said.
Bud Meeks, executive-director of the National Sheriff's Association, said,
"Incarcerating people is a very expensive proposition for us. We feel the
increase because our local jails are turning into long-term facilities, which
they really are not equipped to be."
Meeks said one local jail in Fort Wayne, Ind., was housing 540 inmates, even
though it was built for 220. "That's happening all over... . It's a disaster
waiting to happen," Meeks said.
APn 06/02/94 Prisons
By MICHAEL J. SNIFFEN
Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The war on drugs and violent crime nearly tripled the
state and federal inmate population from 1980 to a record 948,881 last year, and
even stiffer prison sentences are on the way.
But despite the inmate population boom, "I don't know anyone now who feels
safer than 20 years ago," said Marc Mauer, assistant director of The Sentencing
Project, a foundation-supported group that advocates alternatives to prison.
Reporting on inmate populations at the end of 1993, the Justice Department
said Wednesday that the incarceration rate for prisoners sentenced to more than
a year also set a record -- 351 per 100,000 residents.
The United States locks up a larger portion of its people than any other
nation. In 1992, 455 of every 100,000 Americans were in prison or jail; South
Africa under its old government was next, at 311 per 100,000.
"Suddenly, we've gone wild on incarceration but there is no clear impact on
crime rates," said Professor Alfred Blumstein of Carnegie-Mellon University.
U.S. incarceration rates remained around 110 inmates per 100,000 people from
the 1920s through 1970s, Blumstein said, "then in the 1980s began shooting
straight up." But over the last 20 years, he said, "murder rates have remained
absolutely flat, robbery has grown about 1 percent per year and burglary has
declined somewhat."
Mauer of the prison-alternatives group observed that "the politics of the
crime bill shows the data don't have much impact on the debate."
House and Senate crime bills, now headed for compromise negotiations, would
stiffen the penalties for dozens of crimes and provide billions of additional
dollars for prison construction.
California has just enacted a law providing life in prison for some
third-time offenders that could add 85,000 inmates over five years to its
current total of nearly 120,000.
But Paul McNulty of the conservative First Freedom Coalition saw no reason to
stop building prisons just because crime rates have not improved. "That's like
saying, `stop bailing a boat with a hole because water is still coming in,'" he
said. "Violent offenders in prison are not committing crimes, and we will have a
storm of violence in the late 1990s" as current teen-agers reach their most
crime-prone years.
But experts from all sides agree too many low-level, nonviolent drug sellers
and couriers have been locked up as the drug war produced stiffer federal and
state sentences, mandatory minimum terms and tighter parole policies for drug
and violent crimes.
In its report, the Bureau of Justice Statistics attributed half the prisoner
growth since 1980, when inmates totaled 329,821, to increases in the number of
drug criminals.
From 1980 to 1992, the last year with full data, adult drug arrests more than
doubled from 471,200 to 980,700. At the same time, the likelihood of going to
prison for that crime increased fivefold, from 19 sentences per 1,000 arrests to
104.
Rising arrests and imprisonment rates also produced a smaller increase in the
number of people entering prison for sexual assault, robbery and aggravated
assault -- 50,000 more in 1992 than in 1980.
Drug criminals soared from 7 percent of new inmates in 1980 to 30 percent in
1992.
Philip Heymann, former deputy attorney general in the Clinton administration,
said up to 25 percent of federal inmates are serving 6 to 11 years for drug
crimes without violence and aren't major traffickers. "Other people quickly
replace them on the street," Heymann said.
Blumstein of Carnegie-Mellon agreed and added "our addiction to imprisoning
drug traffickers," even nonviolent small fry, "may be sending the less-serious
drug sellers to a graduate school for crime in prison."
McNulty, who served in the Bush administration, said, "We are probably
incarcerating some first-time, nonviolent drug offenders that we don't need to.
The number is probably less than (Attorney General) Janet Reno thinks, but more
than we Republicans have been willing to admit."
RTw 06/03/94 BELGIAN POLICE SEIZE 13.5 TONNES OF MARIJUANA IN ANTWERP
BRUSSELS, June 3 (Reuter) - Belgian police and customs seized 13.5 tonnes
of marijuana with an estimated street value of 1.3 billion francs ($39.5
million) in the northern port of Antwerp on Friday.
Two Canadians and an American were arrested in connection with the seizure,
a spokesman for the Antwerp public prosecutor's office told the Belga news
agency.
Police were tipped off on May 26 that the 45-year-old American would fly to
Belgium. He later contacted a 38-year-old Canadian and his 29-year-old
girlfriend.
The three were arrested after leading police to a container with nearly 500
bales of marijuana in the Antwerp port area.
Antwerp police, customs and public prosecutor's office were unavailable for
commment.
REUTER
RTw 06/06/94 SUPREME COURT STRIKES DOWN TAX ON MARIJUANA
By James Vicini
WASHINGTON, June 6 (Reuter) - The Supreme Court ruled Monday that states
cannot exact a tax on illegal drugs from someone convicted of drug possession.
The high court, in a 5-4 decision, struck down Montana's $100-an-ounce tax
on the possession of marijuana on the grounds that it violates constitutional
protection against double jeopardy by imposing successive punishments for the
same offence.
The decision has far-reaching application, as at least 22 other states have
imposed similar marijuana taxes.
In other decisions Monday, the high court also:
-- unanimously said prison officials may be held liable for acting with
deliberate indifference to an inmate's health or safety only if there was
knowledge of serious risk or harm and they still failed to take reasonable steps
to prevent it.
The court ordered more hearings in the case of Dee Farmer, a transsexual
inmate who sued prison officials after being raped in 1989 by another inmate at
a federal prison in Indiana.
-- said by a 6-3 vote that a sentencing judge may consider a defendant's
prior uncounseled misdemeanor conviction as long as it did not result in a
prison sentence.
That case involved a Tennessee man, who paid a fine for drunken driving
without hiring a lawyer. He then faced a longer sentence seven years later when
he pleaded guilty to cocaine trafficking charges.
In the marijuana tax case, Justice John Paul Stevens writing for the
majority, said the tax appears to be motivated more for punishment than for the
usual revenue-raising purposes.
"In addition, it purports to be a property tax, yet it is levied on goods
-- here the destroyed marijuana plants -- that the taxpayer neither owns nor
possesses," he said.
States simply could increase the criminal fine at the time of conviction,
he wrote, adding the tax "is a second punishment that must be imposed during the
first prosecution or not at all." Justices Harry Blackmun, Anthony Kennedy,
David Souter and Ruth Bader Ginsburg joined the decision.
The case spawned three separate dissenting opinions.
Chief Justice William Rehnquist said the marijuana tax was not so high to
be deemed "arbitray and shocking," when compared with other so-called "sin"
taxes on alcohol and cigarettes.
Justice Sandra Day O'Connor said the decision was unnecessary to protect
individual liberty because the excessive fines clause of the Constitution
protects criminals from the government going too far.
"Today's decision will be felt acutely by law-abiding taxpayers because it
will seriously undermine the ability of the state and federal governments to
collect recompense for the immense costs criminals impose on our sociey," she
said.
The third dissent was written by Justice Antonin Scalia, and joined by
Justice Clarence Thomas.
The case involved the Kurth family, whose ranch in Montana was raided in
1987. Six family members later were convicted on drug charges.
The state then assessed a tax of more than $800,000 on the amount of seized
marijuana. The tax bill was later reduced to $200,000 by a bankruptcy court
judge.
REUTER
APn 06/06/94 Drug Tax
By RICHARD CARELLI
Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) -- States may not force people to pay drug-possession taxes
in addition to criminal penalties, the Supreme Court ruled today.
Such taxes are barred by the Constitution's ban on double punishment for the
same crime, the court's 5-4 decision in a Montana case said.
Most states impose such taxes on people already convicted of drug-possession
crimes. Today's decision striking down the Montana tax calls into question the
validity of those laws.
In other actions today, the justices:
--Ruled that prison officials can be forced to pay damages when inmates are
attacked by fellow prisoners only if the officials knowingly disregarded an
excessive risk of harm.
--Ruled the federal Superfund law does not allow those who clean up their
environmental contamination to recover legal fees they incur in getting other
polluters to help pay for the cleanup.
--Refused to let a public school district charge church congregations higher
rents than other noncommercial groups for the weeknight or weekend use of school
buildings.
In the drug-possession tax case, the court's decision also freed a family
from having to pay $181,000 in dangerous-drug taxes for growing marijuana on the
Chouteau County, Mont., ranch and farm it used to own.
"Montana has not claimed that its assessment in this case even remotely
approximates the cost of investigating, apprehending and prosecuting (the
defendants), or that it roughly relates to any actual damages that they caused
the state," Justice John Paul Stevens wrote for the court.
"This drug tax is not the kind of remedial sanction that may follow the first
punishment of a criminal offense," he said, adding that the state might consider
increasing the fines for criminal convictions.
Stevens was joined by Justices Harry A. Blackmun, Anthony M. Kennedy, David
H. Souter and Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Justices Sandra Day O'Connor, Antonin
Scalia and Clarence Thomas dissented.
Rehnquist said the decision "drastically alters existing law."
"We have never previously subjected a tax statute to double jeopardy
analysis," Rehnquist said.
O'Connor called the ruling an "unwarranted expansion of our double jeopardy
jurisprudence."
Richard and Judith Kurth pleaded guilty after police and federal agents
raided their farm in 1987 and found 2,155 marijuana plants and more than 100
pounds of harvested marijuana.
Kurth had been a respected rancher and grain farmer, active in local and
state affairs. He was Montana's Conservation Rancher of the Year in 1971.
But by the mid-1980s, the Kurths' ranch was $2 million in debt. Trying to
save it, the Kurths began growing and selling marijuana. They recruited their
adult children and their spouses to help.
Richard and Judith Kurth went to prison; daughter Cindy Halley and her
husband, Clayton, son Douglas Kurth and his wife, Rhonda, and son William Kurth
all drew suspended prison sentences.
The family filed for bankruptcy protection but lost its ranch and farm.
Now on parole and living in Post Falls, Idaho, Kurth does odd jobs for
property management companies. In an interview with The Associated Press in
January, Kurth said he wasn't sure what stake he had in the Supreme Court case.
"They certainly can't get anything from us, because we don't have anything.
The government has seen to that," Kurth said. "They know that they've taken
absolutely everything from us."
Montana officials said the drug-possession tax was aimed at eliminating the
need for tracing and seizing boats, cars, homes and other items bought with drug
money. They said the tax was a revenue raiser.
But lawyers for the Kurths called it a punishment.
Today, the Supreme Court agreed with the Kurths.
The Constitution says someone cannot be tried twice for the same crime, and
the high court ruled 120 years ago that multiple punishments also are banned.
More recently, the court in 1989 prevented federal authorities from imposing
a civil penalty on a man who had been sentenced to prison and fined for mail
fraud.
The court ruled in the 1989 case that the civil penalty could be valid only
if it was closely related to the loss to the government caused by the
defendant's criminal conduct.
If the civil penalty is aimed only at deterrence or retribution, it
represents an unconstitutional second punishment, the court ruled then.
In today's decision, Stevens said the 1989 ruling does not apply because tax
laws are different from civil penalties.
The case is State Department of Revenue vs. Kurth, 93-144.
WP 06/07/94 Almost a Million
PRISON POPULATION figures released by the Justice Department last week are
startling. It has been common knowledge for some time that the number of
Americans in penal institutions has been going up steadily, but it is now close
to a million. That represents a three-fold increase over 1980 and an annual rate
of increase of 8.5 percent. That growth rate must be halted if for no other
reason than that it cannot be sustained financially.
This situation is the result of a number of factors. While some communities
report a decrease in crime over the past year or two, statistics are still much
higher than they were 15 years ago. Mandatory minimum sentences have swollen the
prison rolls, and much-needed tighter parole policies have kept the institutions
crowded. More and more drug offenders are being incarcerated - they make up 30
percent of new prison admissions - in part because of mandatory minimum
sentences. Bricks and mortar are not the answer. The country cannot keep up the
pace required to provide facilities for more than 1,000 new prisoners a week.
While crime prevention remains the long-run goal, there are realistic and
more immediate steps that can be taken to address the prison problem. The first
should be the elimination of mandatory minimum sentences, especially in drug
cases. Then a firm line must be drawn between violent and nonviolent offenders,
with nonprison alternative punishments found for the latter.
There is no question that those who commit murder, armed robbery, rape and
the like are a menace and need to be isolated not only to punish and perhaps
rehabilitate them but to protect society. But most other offenders can be
penalized without incarceration if resources are available. Nonviolent
criminals, even those who embezzle large amounts or betray the public trust, can
be made to pay confiscatory fines, to make reparation for their crimes and to
perform sentences of hard work under monitoring. We are not thinking of easy
alternative chores but of real penalties of appropriate duration that would
severely restrict private life and be seen by the public as justly punitive.
The supervision would be key. Intensive probation is expensive, but it works
and it saves money. Electronic monitoring of geographic restrictions is
ineffective if violations aren't spotted and punished. Work release is a joke if
prisoners simply walk away from a halfway house, as they have done in the
District. But even undertaken with sufficiently heavy monitoring, none of these
steps would cost as much as incarceration, and each might offer a better
prospect of rehabilitation.
There is much room for strenuous argument about all of this. We say only
that the argument should be going on in our mainstream politics now. Realistic
alternatives to prison need to be explored, not out of misguided sympathy for
criminals but rather for the sake of citizens who deserve protection from
violent criminals and more effective, less bankrupting penalties for the rest.
WP 06/07/94 Court Voids Tax on Illegal Drugs, Casting Doubt on a Popular Levy
By Joan Biskupic
Washington Post Staff Writer
The Supreme Court yesterday threw out a Montana tax on illegal drugs in a 5
to 4 ruling that casts doubt on the validity of marijuana taxes used by more
than 20 states to raise money.
The justices said the Montana law, invoked against marijuana farmers
convicted of drug crimes, wrongly punished people twice for the same offense.
The court rejected arguments from the Justice Department that the tax had a
strong revenue-raising, rather than punitive, purpose and ruled for the first
time that a tax could violate the constitutional protection against double
jeopardy.
"This tax, imposed on criminals and no others, departs so far from normal
revenue laws as to become a form of punishment," Justice John Paul Stevens wrote
for the majority.
Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, who was among those dissenting, countered that
the ruling "will be felt acutely by law-abiding taxpayers, because it will
seriously undermine the ability of the state and federal governments to collect
recompense for the immense costs criminals impose on our society."
Most of the tax laws O'Connor cited were enacted in the last three years as
part of the "war on drugs." The Montana statute called for plants to be taxed at
$100 an ounce or 10 percent of market value, whichever is greater.
Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, dissenting separately, compared the
Montana scheme to valid "sin taxes," such as those on cigarettes or alcohol,
which are intended to raise money and deter conduct.
A critical flaw in Montana's tax, according to Stevens, is its link to a
criminal conviction. Traditional taxes on proceeds from prostitution, gambling
and other wrongdoing levied independent of prosecution are not affected by the
decision.
The drug case began when Richard Kurth and five members of his extended
family began cultivating and selling marijuana in 1986 on their family farm in
central Montana. The justices noted that the Kurths had turned to the illegal
crop to save their grain and livestock ranch from bankruptcy.
In October 1987, two weeks after the Montana drug tax took effect, the farm
was raided and all the marijuana plants confiscated. Kurth was convicted of
felony drug charges, and his wife, Judith, their two adult children and their
spouses pleaded guilty to related charges.
The state then tried to collect an estimated $900,000 in taxes on the
marijuana; that amount was reduced to about $200,000 by a bankruptcy judge. But
that court and others that handled the Kurth case also concluded that the
assessment constituted a form of double jeopardy. The Fifth Amendment provides
that "No person ... shall ... be subject for the same offense to be twice put in
jeopardy of life or limb."
"As a general matter, the unlawfulness of an activity does not prevent its
taxation," Stevens wrote. "Montana, no doubt, could collect its tax on the
possession of marijuana, for example, if it had not previously punished the
taxpayer for the same offense, or, indeed, if it had assessed the tax in the
same proceeding that resulted in his conviction."
Stevens acknowledged that typically taxes arise from a state's interest in
raising money rather than in punishing people. "Yet at some point, an exaction
labeled as a tax approaches punishment," he said, pointing to the "high rate" of
the tax, that it was intended as a deterrent to drug dealing and that it is
conditioned on the commission of a crime.
"Taken as a whole, this drug tax is a concoction of anomalies, too far
removed in crucial respects from a standard tax assessment to escape
characterization as punishment for the purpose of double jeopardy analysis,"
Stevens said. He was joined by Justices Harry A. Blackmun, Anthony M. Kennedy,
David H. Souter and Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
Justice Antonin Scalia, like O'Connor and Rehnquist, wrote a separate
dissenting statement. Joined by Justice Clarence Thomas, Scalia said that the
Constitution's double jeopardy clause prohibits successive prosecution, not
successive punishment. He said the tax did not amount to a second criminal
prosecution.
The ruling in Montana Department of Revenue v. Kurth Ranch does not affect
states' ability to impose larger fines or forfeiture against drug defendants,
provided they do not breach the Eighth Amendment guarantee against excessive
fines.
James H. Goetz, the Kurths' lawyer, said the family had relocated to Idaho
and tried to start anew.
In a separate ruling yesterday, the court in a 6 to 3 vote said a criminal's
prior misdemeanor conviction can be used to lengthen a new prison sentence even
if the criminal did not have a lawyer helping him in the first case.
The Sixth Amendment requires that defendants charged with felonies, or
misdemeanors that can lead to prison time, be assisted by lawyers in their
defense. In this case, Kenneth O. Nichols argued that a drunken driving
conviction should not have been used to boost the prison time for a later drug
conviction (by two years) because he had not been represented by a lawyer at the
earlier proceeding. He maintained that consideration of the misdemeanor
conviction in establishing his sentence violated the Sixth Amendment, as
interpreted by court cases.
Yesterday the court for the first time allowed the use of minor-crime
convictions that lacked lawyer involvement.
Rehnquist, who wrote for the majority, said repeat offender laws penalize
"only the last offense committed" and " ... as a general proposition, a
sentencing judge may appropriately conduct an inquiry broad in scope" into the
prior convictions and past conduct of a defendant.
Justices Blackmun, Stevens and Ginsburg dissented in Nichols v. United
States, saying that uncounseled convictions lack reliability and should not be
used to justify a longer prison sentence.
RTna 06/08/94 UB40 TO COMPLETE N.ZEALAND TOUR DESPITE DRUG FIND
WELLINGTON (Reuter) - British rock group UB40 will be allowed to complete a
tour of New Zealand despite two band members being caught in possession of
cannabis, officials said on Thursday.
Police said the two, who were not named, were questioned at Auckland
airport Wednesday after a sniffer dog detected the drug. They were given
official warnings, but no charges were filed.
Immigration officials said they had decided to let the pair enter the
country and complete the tour.
The decision had been made after "considered judgment on the part of the
immigration officials handling the case," Immigration Service spokesman Bob
Patterson said in a statement.
REUTER
RTw 06/08/94 BRITAIN REJECTS POLICE CALL TO DECRIMINALISE DRUGS
(Eds: Adds British government refusal to relax laws)
LONDON, June 8 (Reuter) - The head of the international police group
Interpol backed British police calls on Wednesday for all drugs to be
decriminalised, but the government said no.
"I am in favour of decriminalisation but not in favour of legalisation,"
Raymond Kendall, secretary general of the International Criminal Police
Organisation, told BBC radio.
"I think we should accept the reality of the situation... that there are
many, many drug users who are living in a situation of illegality already," he
added.
Prime Minister John Major disagreed.
"I don't agree with softening the law," he told Sky News television. "It
would legitimise the taking of drugs. That leads from soft drugs to hard drugs,
and too often leads to crime."
"What I believe we need to do is cut off the supply of drugs and better
educate people."
Kendall said drug use was more of a social and health issue than a police
problem and that the legal emphasis should be placed on drug trafficking.
"Since they (drug users) cannot be brought into the justice system and the
police are simply cautioning generally the average cannabis user -- we have a
situation that says most of these people are not being dealt with by the law,
which is not a healthy situation to be in," he said.
Kendall later told the annual drugs conference of Britain's Association of
Chief Police Officers, which is also promoting decriminalisation, that police
had to concentrate on the organised crime syndicates that ran drug trafficking.
Interpol, based in Lyons, France, is devoted chiefly to fighting
international crime and aims to promote and assure mutual assistance between
police offices in its more than 150 member countries.
The police conference discussed various schemes to regulate the British
illegal drugs trade, worth an estimated five billion pounds ($7.5 billion) a
year.
REUTER
RTna 06/08/94 INTERPOL CHIEF URGES DECRIMINALIZATION OF DRUGS
LONDON (Reuter) - The head of the international police group Interpol called
Wednesday for the decriminalization of drug possession by users.
"I am in favor of decriminalization but not in favor of legalization,"
Raymond Kendall, secretary general of the International Criminal Police
Organization, told BBC radio.
"I think we should accept the reality of the situation ... that there are
many, many drug users who are living in a situation of illegality already," he
added.
Kendall said drug use was more of a social and health issue than a police
problem and that the legal emphasis should be placed on drug trafficking.
"Since they (drug users) cannot be brought into the justice system and the
police are simply cautioning generally the average cannabis user -- we have a
situation that says most of these people are not being dealt with by the law,
which is not a healthy situation to be in," he said.
"You will get immediate results if you take strong police action to seize
more drugs and arrest more traffickers. But you are not dealing with the basic
issue of drug abuse and that is where you have to get the message across," he
added.
Interpol, based in Lyons, France, is devoted chiefly to fighting
international crime and aims to promote and assure mutual assistance between
police offices in its more than 150 member countries.
Kendall's remarks coincided with the annual drugs conference of Britain's
Association of Chief Police Officers, which is also promoting decriminalization.
The group was discussing various schemes to regulate the illicit drug trade
in Britain which is worth an estimated $7.5 billion a year.
REUTER
UPn 06/09/94 Albania begins anti-drug campaign
TIRANA, June 9 (UPI) -- Albanian police arrested two more farmers for growing
cannabis as part of a government policy to crack down on the relatively new
problem of drug trafficking, a government official said Thursday.
Ludimilla Pajo, spokeswoman for the Ministry of Public Order, said the two
farmers were arrested in the Durresi district, some 15 miles (24 km) southwest
of Tirana.
Petrit Milaci, 51, and Nazmi Istrefi, 37, were each charged with growing
cannabis on 48 square-yard (40 sq-m) plots of land, she said.
Until recently, Tirana authorities shrugged off the danger of drug
trafficking in the country, arguing that Albanians were too poor to buy drugs.
Attitudes changed after it became clear Albania was being used as a conduit
for drugs heading to or from the more lucrative markets of Greece and Italy.
Tirana police chief Safet Stasa told United Press International he was afraid
Albania could become a staging point for drugs moved along the East-West route
and that growing prosperity would make Albanians victims as well.
The newspaper Gazeta Sitare said Albania has been drawn into a network of
stopover points extending into Turkey, Macedonia and Italy, with most of the
drugs intended eventually for the West European markets.
The ministry arrested six farmers from other districts for being in
possession of hashish and they were sentenced in October to 5-7 years in prison.
Another farmer was arrested earlier at Ersika, some 14 miles (20 km) from the
Greek-Albanian border, for planting 3.75 acres (1.5 hectares) with cannibis.
UPf 06/09/94 Ibero-American summit to tackle drug problem
By FEDERICO FULLEDA
BOGOTA (UPI) -- Drug production, trafficking and consumption figure
prominently on the agenda of next week's meeting of 19 Latin American countries,
Spain and Portugal.
Represented there will be the world's three largest producers of coca leaf
and cocaine -- Colombia, Peru and Bolivia. But the world's No. 1 drug consumer
-- the United States -- will be absent from the IV Ibero- American Summit on
June 13-15 in this port city, 705 miles north of Bogota.
According to the chairman of the Foundation for a Drug-Free Venezuela,
Vladimir Gessen, the Andean region produces every year some 1,170 tons of
cocaine, 75 percent of which is shipped to the $181- billion U.S. drug market.
The "business" has a heavy impact on Latin American economies.
According to Gessen, cocaine production in the Andean countries cost about
$5,000 per kilo, which represents an investment of $5.85 billion. The average
price on the U.S. wholesale market increases to $25,000 per kilo, for an
approximate income of $29.9 billion.
"Drug trafficking is everywhere and is corrupting institutions once thought
of as untouchable", said Venezuelan judge Mildred Camero after 32 suspect
traffickers were acquitted in May. "We must take a firm stand against drugs."
According to estimates by Mexico's attorney general's office, quoted by news
reports, drug traffickers in that country will reap this year some $30 billion,
equal to one sixth of the total cocaine consumption in the United States.
Since January 1993, Mexican authorities have seized 65.5 tons of marijuana,
16.3 tons of cocaine and 10 kilograms of heroine in the Tijuana region alone.
The summit's host, Presidenstrict anti- drug policy, but the last three
months of his mandate, ending in August, will be marked by a national
controversy over legalization of drugs.
On May 5, Colombia's Constitutional Court abolished penalties against
individuals detained with small quantities of cocaine, marijuana, or other
psycoactive substances deemed "for personal use."
Some saw in the ruling a first step toward legalization.
Gaviria said his government will abide by the court's ruling but does not
agree with it, arguing that such leniency would promote an increase in drug
consumption in the country.
Colombia has also repeated its demand to the international community for
tighter controls on the chemicals used to elaborate cocaine.
Peru is the world's largest producer of coca leaf, processed in base paste
and transferred to Colombia in clandestine flights to be elaborated into the
chloral hydrate alkaloid cocaine.
Authorities estimate that coca plantations cover some 200,000 hectares in the
Peruvian Amazon, where almost 700,000 hectares of forest have been razed and
desertified in a growing environmental disaster.
Paste-processing laboratories have dumped on the ground, rivers and lakes 9.7
million gallons of kerosene, 8.5 million gallons of sulphuric acid, 16 tons of
lime among other chemicals, with murderous impact on wildlife.
In Peru, where nearly 1 million people work in coca-related activities, drug
traffickers have formed alliances with guerrilla groups for mutual protection
against security forces, and corruption has spread to police, the military, the
courts and civilian authorities.
The Interior Ministry has estimated that Shining Path leader Oscar Alberto
Ramirez, a.k.a. "President Feliciano," has amassed a $200- million war chest
from drug traffickers' kickbacks in the Huallaga region where legal crops as
cassava, rice and corn yield only some $30 million a year.
Experts said the Peruvian economy receives every year between $600 million
and $1 billion from drug-trafficking activities.
Bolivian President Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada has warned about a
"narcoguerrilla" in the Andean countries unless a regional policy is quickly
implemented to fight against the organized gangs of producers and traffickers.
In the Bolivian region of El Chapare, where 60,000 tons of coca leaf are
produced every year, "nobody anymore chews coca -- the traditional use -- and
most of it goes for the production of drugs," Sanchez said.
A crop substitution program in El Chapare has eliminated 25,000 hectares of
coca plantations, which amounts to $50 million in compensation.
However, according to Felipe Caceres, executive secretary of the Special
Federation of Peasant Workers of the Tropics, the former coca growers who
received $2,000 per hectare of coca bushes destroyed are emigrating to Argentina
and Chile, taking with them some $20 million in compensation money, because the
government has not provided infrastructure for alternative activities.
In Montevideo, the weekly Brecha reported that the Uruguayan government had
set up last March a special unit under the Interior Ministry, to fight what is
perceived as an increasing infiltration of international drug gangs in the
country's economy and institutions. The government of President Luis Lacalle did
not confirm or deny the report.
In Paraguay,, the head of the National Narcotics Directorate, Ret. Gen.
Publio Fretes, stated the country urgently needs a law to stop money laundering.
"Money is being laundered on a regular basis in Paraguay," Fretes said.
"There is no other explanation for the ease with which so many people
mysteriously invest money in our country."
The head of Paraguay's National Antidrug Secretariat, Brig. Gen. (ret) Ramon
rosa Rodriguez, said that Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay, Chile, Bolivia and
Paraguay will coordinate their efforts against drugs.
UPce 06/09/94 Man sentenced for transporting marijuana
EAST ST. LOUIS, Ill., June 9 (UPI) -- A Rhode Island man has been sentenced
to more than six years in federal prison for his conviction of possession of 329
pounds of marijuana with intent to distribute.
Stephen Willis, 39, of Cranston, R.I., was sentenced Wednesday by U. S.
District Judge William Beatty in East St. Louis. The judge could have sentenced
Willis to a maximum of more than seven years in prison.
Willis was arrested last December while driving on Interstate 55-70 in
Collinsville, about 10 miles east of St. Louis. Illinois State Police found 329
pounds of marijuana concealed in hidden compartments inside a 1966 Porsche,
which Willis had been towing on a trailer.
Willis had been driving the marijuana from Arizona to Rhode Island, where he
planned to sell it for about $500,000, prosecutors said. Federal authorities
also confiscated the Porsche, which they said belonged to Willis's sister.
APn 06/10/94 Boot Camp Suspended
By LISA MARIE PANE
Associated Press Writer
HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) -- The governor abruptly suspended operation of a boot
camp-style school for troubled teen-agers Friday because of gangs, drugs and
fighting.
Gov. Lowell P. Weicker Jr. acted after the state's chief prosecutor delivered
a report sharply critical of the National Guard Youth Corps camp, the first
established in the nation under a federal program.
Fist-fights, sex, drug use and gambling disrupted the boot camp, Chief
State's Attorney John Bailey said in his report. Gang members had tried to
recruit other corps members before being expelled, Bailey said.
Brig. Gen. David D. Boland resigned as the program's director earlier this
month amid news reports about troubles at the camp, which opened last summer in
the southeastern Connecticut town of Niantic.
While there was sex between some of the girls and boys enrolled in the Youth
Corps, Bailey said reports of prostitution were unfounded.
He said only one fight at the camp involved weapons, and that most of the
drug use was confined to marijuana. He disputed reports of wide-scale gambling
at the camp and said it consisted mostly of small bets on the basketball court.
Connecticut's program was the first of 10 federally subsidized National Guard
Youth Corps camps. The other states are: Illinois, Arizona, Arkansas, Georgia,
New York, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Maryland and West Virginia.
Connecticut received about $4 million in federal funds, which was to be used
to educate 400 students in a year's time. The program had already graduated 180
students. Its last class of students will graduate July 2 as planned.
The camps are designed to help high-school dropouts earn equivalency
diplomas. Students who graduate from the five-month program leave with a $2,200
stipend from the government as an incentive to further their education.
The Weicker administration and the Connecticut National Guard said suspending
the program would give the state time to find ways to improve it. The program
could be resurrected within six months.
"Seeing as this is the premiere, any pilot you're going to find the bugs,"
said state Rep. Pamela Z. Sawyer.
Bailey recommended conducting background checks on applicants to determine if
they are gang members or use drugs. He also recommended random drug testing of
corps members.
RTw 06/10/94 U.N. MISSION SAYS NO DRUGS CULTIVATION IN LEBANON
BAALBEK, Lebanon, June 10 (Reuter) - A visiting U.N. drugs enforcement
mission said on Friday there was no trace of drugs cultivation in east Lebanon's
Bekaa Valley -- a hotbed for the narcotics trade during the civil war.
"Our tour confirmed there is no drugs cultivation in the Bekaa Valley,"
mission official Major-General Mohammad Mansour told reporters after a visit to
site in the fertile plain and flanking hills where narcotics used to be grown.
The Lebanese government began a campaign two years ago to eradicate the
cultivation, trafficking or production of drugs in Lebanon, especially the
Bekaa.
Another official of the United Nations mission said it would press donor
countries to help Lebanon find alternative crops for Bekaa farmers to ensure
that they don't go back to growing opium or cannabis.
The Beirut government has asked the agency to publish "realistic figures"
on Lebanon's drug production in order to refujte claims the country is one of
the largest opium and marijuana exporters in the world, newswpapers said this
week.
"We want the truth that Lebanon is no longer a drug producing country to be
told," the papers quoted Deputy Prime Minister Michel al-Murr as saying after
meeting members of the mission which arrived in Beirut on Monday.
Murr said the only drugs still available in Lebanon were those produced
three years ago which have been hidden.
REUTER
RTw 06/10/94 SINGAPORE TO HANG NIGERIAN DRUG-TRAFFICKER
SINGAPORE, June 10 (Reuter) - A 40-year-old Nigerian was sentenced to death
by the Singapore High Court for drug-trafficking, state television reported on
Friday.
Sabinus Nkem Okpebie was arrested at Singapore Changi Airport last
September with 6.58 kg (14.5 pounds) of heroin.
The drugs were hidden in the tubes of two televisions in his luggage.
Okpebie arrived from Jakarta and intended to fly on to Lagos, the Nigerian
capital, the report said.
Under Singapore's strict anti-drugs laws, the death sentence is mandatory
for anyone found guilty of trafficking more than 15 grams (half an ounce) of
heroin, 30 grams (one ounce) of morphine or 500 grams (18 ounces) of cannabis.
Singapore has hanged 59 people for drug trafficking since it introduced
tough anti-drug laws in 1975.
REUTER
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