Thursday, January 21, 1999:
NORML Foundation Weekly News Release (Advocates Anticipate Reopening San Francisco Medical Marijuana Facility; State Marijuana Eradication Program Poses Environmental, Human Hazards, Residents Testify; American Farm Bureau Drops Opposition To Hemp)
Bill would add restrictions to assisted-suicide law (The Associated Press says two at least Oregon legislators want to thwart the will of voters a third time, and have introduced separate bills intended to restrict Oregon's physician-assisted suicide law, the Death With Dignity Act. Senator Neil Bryant, a Republican from Bend, denied his bill was meant to nullify the law. The sponsor of the other bill isn't named.)
Bill would tighten assisted-suicide restrictions (The Oregonian version)
Ruling will halt use of civilians to oversee convicts on parole (The Oregonian says Multnomah County Circuit Judge David Gernant ruled Wednesday that the county just stop using civilian employees to supervise convicts on parole or probation. Multnomah County Employees Union Local 88 filed a lawsuit in February challenging the county's use of civilian "corrections technicians." The county currently has 133 parole and probation officers supervising nearly 11,000 convicts. The newspaper doesn't say so, but at least half of all related costs to taxpayers are attributable to the war on some drug users.)
Report says temporary judgeships unconstitutional (The Associated Press says the Oregon constitution allows nonelected judges to serve "temporarily," but it stops short of setting a time frame. A Joint Committee on the Creation of New Judgeships appointed by the legislature has concluded that any pro-tem judge serving regularly for more than two years is not temporary. But there are 34 full-time pro-tem judges in Oregon who have been serving for more than two years, and are on the bench almost as often as the state's 163 elected circuit court judges. So the committee recommended that lawmakers spend about $4 million a year for 16 new judgeships. It's not clear if someone could appeal a sentence or decision by an illegal judge regarding a drug penalty, but assuming more than 50 percent of all cases involve illegal drugs, the remedy would mean the cost of Oregon's war on some drug users would increase more than $2 million.)
Police Sergeants Off Hook In Ostrich Scheme (The Columbian, in Vancouver, Washington, says a Vancouver Police Department internal-affairs investigation has cleared Sgt. Rex Gunderson, still a patrol supervisor, and Sgt. Byron Harada, who died of cancer last October, of a scheme to defraud investors in their ostrich-egg "business.")
Medicinal Marijuana Advocate, Wife Busted (The Sacramento Bee version of yesterday's news about the cultivation bust of the cancer patient and 1998 Libertarian candidate for California governor)
Libertarian Candidate For Governor Arrested In Marijuana Investigation (The Associated Press version in the Oakland Tribune)
Libertarian Candidate, His Wife Jailed After Raid (The San Jose Mercury News version)
Medicinal Marijuana Advocate Arrested For Cultivation (The Tahoe Daily Tribune version)
Candidate Arrested For Pot (The Tahoe World version)
Former Calif. Governor Hopeful Held On Drug Charge (The Reuters version)
Outrage In Law (A staff editorial in the Orange County Register says the arrest of the Libertarian candidate for governor is outrageous, and raises yet again the question of whether Proposition 215 will ever be implemented properly in California. It would be helpful to hear more from Attorney General Bill Lockyer, who could do much to ensure compassionate and uniform enforcement of the law. The refusal of the local sheriff's department to provide Mr. Kubby any marijuana while he is in jail is outrageous. But it highlights the need to develop guidelines for the implementation of Prop. 215, a responsibility the previous attorney general shirked.)
DrugSense Focus Alert - Steve Kubby Arrested (DrugSense asks you to write a letter protesting the cultivation bust of the medical marijuana patient and 1998 Libertarian candidate for California governor.)
Kubbys Released OR! (The Media Awareness Project breaks the news that medical marijuana patients Steve and Michele Kubby have been released from jail on their own recognizance following their cultivation bust in Tahoe City, California.)
Poppy Plea (New Times, in California, says Arroyo Grande residents Tom Dunbar and Jo-D Harrison, raided last May by the Narcotics Task Force and busted for a legitimate medical marijuana grow and 200 poppy plants in the back yard, have accepted a plea bargain. Dunbar will plead "no contest" to possession of opium and Harrison will plead to possession of more than an ounce of marijuana, giving him a six-month jail sentence and her one year of informal probation. Rather than fight the charges, the couple decided to focus their energies on building a life together - they were married Jan. 1.)
Hawaiian Officer Warns On Cannabis (The Dominion, in New Zealand, says Honolulu police officer Leighton Kaonohi, founder of the No Hope in Dope programme, has just returned to Hawaii after a two-week observation trip to New Zealand. He said New Zealand politicians appeared to be seriously considering loosening the law on cannabis use and possession, and police were half-hearted about enforcing the law. "I was appalled. In America, I know of no law enforcement agency that would ever succumb to legalisation in any form," he said. The high proportion of people of indigenous heritage in prisons - 80 per cent in Hawaii and 50 per cent in New Zealand - was a direct result of drug use, he said.)
Will Foster's parole is denied! (A bulletin from NORML, in Washington, DC, says Oklahoma Governor Frank Keating has refused to free the medical marijuana prisoner originally sentenced to 93 years in prison.)
HPD chief unveils plan to expand DARE programs (The Houston Chronicle says that five months after an independent study found the city's $3.7 million a year DARE program largely ineffective, Houston Police Chief C.O. Bradford on Wednesday announced plans to expand the drug awareness program so it reaches students in fourth grade and 10th grades, as well as parents.)
Prisons Aren't Answer To Drug Problem (An op-ed in the Des Moines Register by an attorney in Cedar Rapids says roughly 60 percent of the inmates in Iowa prisons have been arrested for drug offenses. The drug war - with its billions of dollars spent, with its mandatory jail sentences, with its additional prisons - hasn't reduced demand one whit. The London Economist raised the question, "How long will the American people permit this bloody and useless war to continue?" The answer is - just as long as people fall for the propaganda that decriminalizing drugs will make zombies of us and just as long as they fall for the political propaganda that drug usage can be controlled or eliminated by force.)
NYPD to begin seizing cars of people arrested for drunk driving (According to the Associated Press, New York City Police Commissioner Howard Safir said Thursday that police would implement a Zero Tolerance Drinking and Driving Initiative in the next month, under which anyone arrested for driving drunk will have their car forfeited.)
Ex-trooper gets jail for cocaine theft (The Morning Call, in Allentown, Pennsylvania, says Charles F. Ondo, an undercover state trooper who stole 2-1/2 kilos from an evidence room in Bethlehem to feed his own addiction, was sentenced Wednesday to eight months in prison. According to the prosecutor, the sentence was more than a civilian with no criminal record in a similar situation may have gotten.)
$6 million study to sniff out the appeal of coffee (The Associated Press says Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, is due to open its Institute for Coffee Studies in the next six months with $6 million from trade groups in top coffee-growing nations in South America. "We're going to help people get over the idea that coffee is caffeine," said Peter Martin, the director of Vanderbilt University's Addiction Center, who will head the institute. "Caffeine actually is a very small component of coffee. There are a lot of other components in coffee that are not very well understood." Some studies have suggested coffee can help relieve depression, treat alcoholism and prevent colorectal cancer. The institute's mission is to understand why.)
ACLU of Florida Defends Man Who "Just Said No" to Workplace Urine Test (A news release from the American Civil Liberties Union describes a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of preemployment drug testing, filed on behalf of "Magic Man" Thomas Baron, an accountant who lost his job with the city of Hollywood, Florida.)
Most Overdoses On Legal Drugs (The Age, in Australia, says statistics prepared for the newspaper by the Victorian Injury Surveillance System at Monash University Accident Research Centre, leading public hospitals, and the Metropolitan Ambulance Service, show that slightly more than 1 per cent of all hospital admissions, or about 10,000 patients a year, are being treated in Victoria for drug overdoses. Most overdoses involve prescription or legal drugs, including tranquillisers, anti-depressants and analgesics. Doctors said the number of victims suffering overdoses was higher than the hospital statistics indicated because hundreds of victims were not brought to hospitals.)
Public Schools Accept Drug Culture (The Independent, in Britain, says a survey of 2,400 pupils in 20 schools, carried out by the Schools Health Education Unit, found that one in three 14-year-olds in leading public schools had tried "drugs" and one in ten was a regular user. The survey also showed that more than four out of ten sixth-formers have tried "drugs." The heads of the fee-paying schools who commissioned the survey are said to be "stunned" by the findings. A report from the Headmasters' and Headmistresses' Conference argues that illegal drug-taking "is no longer limited to a disaffected and rebellious few. It is part of the culture of teenagers." The report also suggests that schools should end the "zero option" of expelling pupils for all drug offences.)
Weekly Action Report on Drug Policies, Year 5, No. 3 (A summary of European and international drug policy news, from CORA in Italy)
Bytes: 115,000 Last updated: 5/13/99
