1999 News
About Cannabis and Drug Policy
February 26-March 4

Friday, February 26, 1999:
• Cigarette sales go down in Oregon (According to the Associated Press, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Thursday that local sales of cigarettes decreased 11.3 percent from 1996 to 1998, despite a 2.7 percent increase in Oregon's population. The CDC says a tax increase of 30 cents to 68 cents a pack, passed by voters in November 1996, contributed to a 6.3 percent decline in cigarette sales. However, AP doesn't mention the latest state figures showing an increase in tobacco consumption among 11th-graders, or the extent to which cigarette consumers may be boycotting the formal market.)
• Group criticizes Oregon's assisted-suicide report (The Associated Press says Americans for Integrity in Palliative Care, a group opposed to physician-assisted suicide that lists former Surgeon General C. Everett Koop among the nine doctors and two lawyers who founded it late last year, criticized an Oregon state report on the Death With Dignity Act Thursday, saying the study's positive conclusions are unfounded. The group said, for example, that just because patients didn't convey cost concerns to their doctors didn't mean that the patients weren't worried about their pocketbooks.)
• Prison mistakenly feeds TV reporter a false story (The Associated Press says a public information officer at Eastern Oregon Correctional Institution in Pendleton taking part in a drill caused a false story to be broadcast by KATU, Portland's ABC affiliate.)
• U.S. to Fight Man's Plea to Use Medicinal Marijuana (The Los Angeles Times describes the plight of Peter McWilliams, the best-selling author, AIDS patient and medical-marijuana activist in Los Angeles who is being killed by the federal government. Prosecutors are preventing him from using marijuana while he awaits trial on marijuana cultivation charges, and will fight his motion for mercy at a pretrial hearing today.)
• War Against Medical Marijuana Causes Misery (A letter to the editor of USA Today from Peter McWilliams scorns the White House drug czar, General Barry McCaffrey, for abandoning the field while people are still dying from his mistakes.)
• Ann Arbor Hash Bash Days Numbered (UPI says state senators Mike Rogers and Beverly Hammerstrom have introduced a bill intended to end Ann Arbor's annual "hash bash" at the University of Michigan by prohibiting local governments from instituting lower drug penalties than the state imposes. Currently, possesssion of marijuana in Ann Arbor carries a $25 fine while state law mandates a $100 fine and 90 days in jail. A similar proposal over drug penalties was introduced in Michigan in 1998, but got stymied in the Democratically controlled House.)
• Hash Bash Organizer Fires Back At Critics (According to the Ann Arbor News, James Millard, the organizer of this year's Hash Bash, said an effort by Michigan legislators to toughen up Ann Arbor's relatively lenient marijuana ordinance in an effort to stop young people from coming to Ann Arbor the first Saturday in April only provided publicity for the event. "We can drop all our advertising money" for the Hash Bash because of the news coverage, Millard said.)
• GOP Lawmaker Seeks To Reform Drug Sentencing (The Times Union, in New York, says state senator John DeFrancisco, a conservative from Syracuse, announced Friday he was introducing a bill to reform the state's Rockefeller laws. DeFrancisco's bill would allow more lenient prison sentences for non-violent, low-level drug dealers by doubling the quantity of drugs that would have to be sold or possessed before the tougher terms kicked in.)
• New York Mayor Tilts To Totalitarianism (New York Times columnist Bob Herbert, syndicated in the Standard-Times, in New Bedford, Massachusetts, says New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani likes to push people around. His latest targets are people suspected of driving drunk. The cops have been given the power to seize their vehicles on the spot. Why bother with an annoyance like due process? Hizzoner makes the rules. And he says even if the drivers are acquitted they may not get their cars back. Richard Emery, a local attorney, says "The problem is that Giuliani has a vision of what is essentially an unconstitutional society. He views privacy and the rights of innocent citizens as a far lower value than law enforcement's domination of not only the streets, but also private areas of people's lives. He's doing it for what he believes are good reasons. He wants a civilized society. One understands his vision. It's not new. But it's an idealistic, totalitarian vision that tramples on everything a free society stands for.")
• Accountability Comes With Aid (An op-ed by Indiana U.S. Representative Mark Souder in the Cavalier Daily at the University of Virginia, in Charlottesville, defends the Higher Education Act's ban on student loans to pot smokers. "There are those organizations, though, who work to create controversy and twist common sense principles in order to advance their own agendas. Take the Drug Reform Coordination Network, for example. My office has received calls from college newspapers from all over the country who have been fed propaganda by this group. If their website is any indication - the address includes the manifesto, 'stopthedrugwar' - their primary goal can only be the legalization of drugs.")
• Blacks Getting AIDS At Record Rates (The Associated Press says about 1,000 health care providers and activists gathered Thursday in Washington, D.C., for the first medical conference on AIDS among black Americans - almost 20 years into the AIDS epidemic. AIDS in the United States is evolving from a disease that once affected mostly white homosexuals into one largely affecting poor blacks, infected from dirty drug needles or heterosexual encounters. Blacks make up 12 percent of the U.S. population but a devastating 45 percent of new AIDS cases. AIDS is the leading killer of blacks between 25 to 44. Blacks receive poorer care than whites and die faster. One in 50 black men and one in 160 black women are estimated to be infected.)
• Gains Cited In Drug War (The Associated Press says the U.S. State Department today released a massive 733-page annual report on the illicit drug trade worldwide. The International Narcotics Control Strategy Report claims the United States and allied countries made "solid gains" in 1998, citing progress in crop reduction and drug interdiction. Separately, President Clinton was issuing his assessment of the counterdrug performance of 28 countries.)
• Violence plagues city's top pot spot (The Vancouver Province, in British Columbia, says the badly beaten body of Allister Irvine Marselje, 21, who made a living by weighing, bagging and delivering one-gram bags of marijuana to sellers at the Cross Town Traffic Cafe at 314 W. Hastings St., was found Dec. 5 in a downtown Vancouver dumpster. Mark Smith, a friend of Marselje's and a pot dealer who now runs a private smoking club off a hallway in the cafe, said last year's shift of power to "ruthless gangsters" dramatically altered the culture in the area.)
• Clinton OKs Mexico Antidrug Efforts (The Associated Press says that, as expected, the U.S. president on Friday certified Mexico as a fully cooperating ally in America's war on some drug users, even though seizures of illegal drugs along the border decreased in the past year. At the time, Colombia was certified and Haiti was decertified with a national interest waiver, as were Cambodia, Nigeria and Paraguay. Afghanistan and Burma were decertified with no national interest waiver. All told, 22 countries were certified as fully cooperative with American counterdrug efforts. Meanwhile, a 733-page State Department study titled "International Narcotics Control Strategy Report" and released simultaneously with the certification announcement said Mexico continues to be the primary route for northbound South American cocaine and is a major source of marijuana, heroin and methamphetamine.)
• Mexico, Colombia Drug Efforts Approved (The UPI version)
• Mexico Engaged In War Vs Drugs, McCaffrey Says (According to a different Associated Press article in the Orange County Register, the White House drug czar on Thursday told the House Government Reform Committee's panel on criminal justice, drug policy and human resources, that it would be a mistake for the U.S. government to decertify Mexico as an ally in the United States' war on some drug users.)
• Judge gets three years in prison for laundering drug money (A Canadian Press article in the Ottawa Citizen says lawyers for Justice Robert Flahiff of Quebec Superior Court, who was found guilty in January of laundering $1.7 million while he was still a lawyer, immediately filed an appeal, paving the way for Flahiff's possible release later Friday.)
• Paraguay angry with US decertification in drug war (The Associated Press notes Paraguay reacted sarcastically Friday to the U.S. decision to decertify it as an ally in its war on some drug users, saying it understood the concerns of a nation with such a huge appetite for controlled substances. Paraguay's $10 billion official economy is "dwarfed" by its black market. One study estimated the revenue generated just from smuggling at $12 billion a year.)
• Expert Rejects Zero Tolerance Stand (According to the Age, in Australia, Mr John Fogarty, who recently retired from the Family Court and is now a board member of Defence for Children International, a United Nations-affiliated child-welfare group, yesterday condemned the zero-tolerance heroin strategy that the Prime Minister, Mr Howard, is considering. "The idea that deep-seated social and personal issues of young persons leading to drug use can be miraculously overcome by prosecuting and imprisoning is nonsense. It is akin to a reversion to the penal attitude of 200 years ago at the beginning of the establishment of our society," Mr Fogarty said.)
• Dutch Minister Takes High Tone Over Marijuana Jobs (According to Reuters, the Netherlands' social affairs minister, Klaas de Vries, said this week he was astonished at a decision by officials in Leeuwarden to subsidise the work experience of four unemployed people by having them sell marijuana in coffee shops. Municipal officials, citing the law, don't see what the fuss is about.)
• The Week Online with DRCNet, Issue No. 80 (The Drug Reform Coordination Network's original publication featuring drug policy news and calls to action includes - UN drug control board laments reform, urges member nations to tow the drug war line; Iran says executing drug smugglers "unsuitable solution" - but US legislators want to try it here; DEA chief Constantine rips US drug war efforts, bemoans Mexican situation; Jesse "the Governor" Ventura on the drug war; Sen. McCain seeks radical cutbacks in methadone maintenance; California officials comment on medical marijuana; South Carolina mulls making sale of urine a felony offense; American Farm Bureau reverses position on hemp at convention; Canada: terminally ill man will continue to smoke marijuana despite conviction; Author of "Drug Crazy" lecturing in Dallas March 2nd; and an editorial: Mr. Ventura comes to Washington)
• DrugSense Weekly, No. 87 (The original summary of drug policy news from DrugSense opens with the weekly Feature Article - Black leaders and public health advocates criticize misinformation by drug czar. The Weekly News in Review features several articles about Drug War Policy, including - DEA chief: drug fight lacks desire; Customs admits its own drug corruption; Border patrol adds high-tech tools to its arsenal; Editorial: ACLU is off base on city drug tests; Bad hair days; Testing the drug test labs; and, Drunken drivers' cars to be seized at arrests. Articles about Mexican Drug Policy include - Mexico greets Clinton like an old friend; Mexico's troubadours turn from amor to drugs; and, Minuet in Mexico. Articles about Law Enforcement & Prisons include - Authorities release account of shooting, say marijuana found in house; Shaking this habit will be tough; Texas inmates tell US judge of abuses; and, The Nazi comparison. Articles about Medical Marijuana include - The politics of pot: a government in denial; AIDS groups plead for 'medical marijuana'; and, Kubbys reassure Libertarians. International News articles include - MP's marijuana motion gathering steam; Addicts fuel 7 bil. Industry; And, Freeh advice on drugs: inject money and political will. The weekly Hot Off The 'Net provides a Happy99.exe Virus Explanation and Fix; and notes the Kubby Web Site has been updated. The Tip of the Week points to some Windows "Tune Up" Hints. The Quote of the Week cites Thomas Carlyle.)
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  Saturday, February 27, 1999:

• State sees more neglected children, many left to wander (The Oregonian prints a classic piece promoting the war on some drug-using parents, alleging that throughout Oregon, "Parents who can't hear their children crying through a fog of drugs or alcohol" leave "Toddlers wandering alone in busy parking lots. Children living in homes full of garbage, rats and lice." The newspaper avoids discussing one aspect of the impossible task faced by caseworkers, who give the highest priority to removing children from the homes of parents who use cannabis or other illegal substances, failing to note the actual numbers involved or the fact that the vast majority of parents who use alcohol or other drugs do so responsibly.)
• Moose reiterates volunteer policies (The Oregonian says Portland Police Chief Charles Moose alerted staff Friday that background investigations must be carried out on all civilian volunteers. Moose's memo comes in the wake of the arrest for bank robbery of Louie Lira Jr., a former gang outreach worker and police volunteer who turned out to have re-entered the country illegally after being expelled for robbery and drug convictions in California.)
• Smokers responsible for plight (A letter to the editor of the Oregonian raises an issue the newspaper ignored in its sympathetic article about the $110 million lawsuit against the tobacco company, Philip Morris, which went to trial last week in Portland. Namely, how the family of Jesse Williams, a man who smoked Marlboros for 42 years, apparently until he died, in 1997, can get around the issue of personal responsibility as defined by tort law.)
• No space: Jail sends 19 home (The Herald, in Everett, Washington, says the Will County jail has exceeded its 318-bed limit by more than 100 prisoners. Will County Executive Chuck Adelman said, "When I first came on the county board, law enforcement accounted for a third of the budget. Now it accounts for about three-quarters. . . . We've got some tough decisions in the next few years." Ending the war on some drug users apparently hasn't occurred to anyone, however.)
• Renegade Jurors (A letter to the editor of the Washington Post from Laura Kriho corrects the newspaper's recent article about jury nullification, noting her conviction in Colorado was for an unprecedented crime - sitting on a jury and not reading the mind of a prosecutor and not volunteering information that wasn't asked.)
• DEA Is Sued Over Border Shooting (The Associated Press says the family of Abecnego Monje Ortiz, an unarmed 18-year-old Mexican man shot in the back and paralyzed last month by Wilbur Honeycutt, a drug task force officer stationed in Texas on the U.S.-Mexico border, is seeking $25 million from the Drug Enforcement Administration.)
• Ex-tobacco executive charged in smuggling scheme (The Associated Press says Leslie Thompson, a former R.J. Reynolds marketing executive, was arrested this week in Detroit on money laundering charges for allegedly helping smugglers scheme to sell nearly $700 million worth of cigarettes on the Canadian black market. Two dozen people have been convicted in the case and are awaiting sentencing. In December, Northern Brands International, an R.J. Reynolds subsidiary, admitted helping the smuggling ring and paid $15 million in fines and forfeitures.)
• Veteran Bensenville Police Officer Is Accused Of Evidence-Tampering (The Chicago Tribune says William Wassman, a 14-year veteran of the police department in Bensenville, Illinois, was charged Friday with switching evidence that eventually was used to convict an unnamed defendant in a 1995 cocaine possession case. Steps are being taken to vacate the conviction, according to Joseph Birkett, a DuPage County state's attorney.)
• Agitation for softening harsh drug statutes more vocal than ever (The Associated Press says vocal opposition to New York state's mandatory minimum Rockefeller Drug Laws has never been louder. Calls for reform from the chief judge of the state's highest court, Judith Kaye, and the state's newly elected attorney general, Eliot Spitzer, have been seconded by Human Rights Watch and a group that includes Warren Anderson, Douglas Barclay and John Dunne, three former Republican state senators who voted in favor of the laws when they were first passed 25 years ago.)
• The Cost Of Banning Dope (Syndicated columnist William F. Buckley writes in the New York Post about the pretrial death sentence being inflicted by the federal government on medical marijuana defendant Peter McWilliams in California. In the heated polemical traffic on the McWilliams case one letter stands out, from ex NORML director Richard Cowan: "One of the problems that the marijuana reform movement consistently faces is that everyone wants to talk about what marijuana does, but no one ever wants to look at what marijuana prohibition does. Marijuana never kicks down your door in the middle of the night. Marijuana never locks up sick and dying people, does not suppress medical research, does not peek in bedroom windows. Even if one takes every reefer madness allegation of the prohibitionists at face value, marijuana prohibition has done far more harm to far more people than marijuana ever could.")
• AIDS Epidemic Hitting African-Americans The Hardest (The Baltimore Sun covers the first medical conference on AIDS among black Americans, where about 1,000 health care providers and activists gathered in Washington, D.C. AIDS in the United States is evolving from a disease that once mostly affected white homosexuals into one largely of poor blacks, often infected from dirty drug needles or heterosexual encounters. Blacks make up about 14 percent of the U.S. population but a devastating 45 percent of new AIDS cases, receive poorer care than whites and die faster. Prisons are one cause of the disproportionate spread of AIDS to black women. Disproportionate allocation of medical resources outside black communities is another.)
• Health Workers Fight An AIDS Racial Divide (A lengthier version in the Austin American-Statesman identifies the source as Cox Interactive Media.)
• Details Surface Of Deputy's Drug Arrest (The Charlotte Observer says Sgt. Bryant Reginald Hudson, a sheriff's deputy in Sumter County, North Carolina, was arrested Wednesday for allegedly selling cocaine to pay for his sick child's medical expenses.)
• McCaffrey Wants Mexico Certification (The Associated Press says the Clinton administration was expected to announce today that it would certify Mexico as a fully cooperating ally in the United States' war on some drug users. The White House drug czar, General Barry McCaffrey, warned drug warriors in Congress that refusing to certify Mexico would send an unwise and wrongheaded political message.)
• Many Mexicans See Little Use For Certification (Reuters says there is a growing realization among all classes that the United States' annual certification ritual is not a viable policy with regard to Mexico. One thing is for sure. Next year's certification exercise, which will coincide with the start of a presidential election campaign, will be far more stormy. If the United States were to take the plunge and decertify Mexico, it could play straight into the hands of Mexican politicians with a nationalist agenda, analysts said.)
• Despite Flood Of Drugs, U.S. Says Mexico Is Staunch Ally (According to the Wilmington Morning Star, in North Carolina, President Clinton certified Mexico and Colombia Friday as fully cooperative allies in the United States' war on some drug users, even though most "hard drugs" flooding the United States come from those countries.)
• Mexico, Colombia Certified As Anti-Drug Allies (The New York Times version in the San Jose Mercury News)
• Clinton OKs Mexico's Effort At Fighting Drugs (The Des Moines Register version)
• Clinton Praises Mexico As He Certifies It As Partner In Drug War (The Associated Press version in the Orange County Register)
• U.S. Certifies Mexico As Drug War Ally (The Cox Interactive Media version in the Austin American-Statesman)
• Mexico Grumpy But Pleased With Drug Certification (An Associated Press article in the San Diego Union Tribune quotes an undersecretary at the Foreign Secretariat saying Mexico was happy "that an obstacle has not been imposed to cooperation." "It should be us who certify the United States," said Vicente Yanez, the president of the National Chamber of Manufacturing Industries.)
• Quebec Judge Sentenced To 3 Years (The Associated Press version of yesterday's news about Robert Flahiff, a Quebec Superior Court judge, remaining free on bail pending his appeal of a three-year sentence for laundering more than $1 million in drug money while he was still a lawyer)
• Are cannabis and psychosis linked? (The Lancet, in Britain, continues its unscientific revisionism on cannabis issues, asking an epidemiological question and finding an Australian drug warrior to provide a subjective answer that ignores what little epidemiological evidence exists. Wayne Hall, executive director of National Drug and Alcohol Studies at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, makes the classic error of looking only at the schizophrenia patients for whom cannabis was not effective. Using the same logic and methodology, one could blame Thorazine for causing or exacerbating psychosis by studying only those whom it didn't help. And both Hall and the Lancet examine the issue without context or degree, as if it hadn't been established long ago that alcohol use is much more prevalently associated with psychosis.)
• Start Heroin Trials, Urges Australian Politician (The Lancet says Jeff Kennett, the premier of Victoria, where heroin-related deaths outnumber traffic fatalities so far this year, has lent his support to national heroin maintenance trials.)
• Acne and Ecstasy - Spots might show that drugs are destroying your liver (In a monument to reductionist thinking, New Scientist, in Britain, uses the cases of two German patients exposed to a street drug supposed to be MDMA to assert that a rash that looks like acne may identify people who risk suffering severe side effects from ecstasy. Not mentioned - the same sort of rash is a not uncommon side effect of some antidepressants. As well as, one assumes, whatever contaminants tainted the street drugs used by the two German patients.)
• Weekly Action Report on Drug Policies, Year 5, No. 8 (A summary of European and international drug policy news, from CORA, in Italy)
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  Sunday, February 28, 1999:

• Grand jury finds shooting by Bend officer justified (The Oregonian says a Deschutes County grand jury Friday found that the Bend policeman who shot and killed 21-year-old Adam Gantenbein acted in justifiable self-defense. The family of Gantenbein, who moved to Bend from Portland several months ago, says he was a "nice guy" whose steady behavior is at odds with police accounts of the incident. Adam's father, Calvin Gantenbein, a former Portland Police officer, said that he and another retired Portland police officer had interviewed people who witnessed the shooting. What those witnesses said "does not match what the police were saying," he said in an interview Saturday. They intend to conduct their own investigation. "The family questions why the police department and the DA's office find it necessary to violate Oregon public records law," he said.)
• Thurston County wraps up case against marijuana advocate (The Associated Press says Gideon Israel is supposed to report to the Thurston County Jail on Monday to begin serving a nine-month sentence for conspiracy to deliver and manufacture marijuana and possession with intent to deliver LSD and psilocybin mushrooms. Israel is the former proprietor of Rainbow Valley, 42 acres on the Black River south of Littlerock, where he lived and held rock concerts for 12 years. The People's Land Trust has filed a lawsuit against the county task force and the King County Sheriff's Office, seeking to save Rainbow Valley from forfeiture.)
• Showdown Looms On California Medical Pot Law (An editorial in the Auburn Journal by the newspaper's city editor, Pat McCartney, says this week, two high-profile cases in Placer County will test California's medical marijuana law. On Monday, Rocklin dentist Michael Baldwin and his wife Georgia will return to court in Auburn to answer felony cultivation charges. The next day, online magazine publisher Steve Kubby and his wife, Michele, will attend a preliminary hearing before Superior Court Judge James D. Garbolino, seeking the return of some of the marijuana they grew. All we need is some compassion to implement Proposition 215. In Steve Kubby's case, it's a matter of life or death.)
• Rational Talk On Pot A Rare Event (Jim Wasserman, a columnist for the Fresno Bee, says marijuana is an old cause that never quite dies. Although the government blows ever more money trying to eradicate it and imprisons ever more citizens trying to stop it, people will still drift into a Fresno art gallery on a Thursday night to talk about it. But outside, it's a law-and-order world, where corporations make drug testing the newest solution and elected officials make illegal drugs impossible to talk about rationally. You wouldn't even know medical marijuana is legal locally.)
• War On Drugs Is Not Right (A letter to the editor of the Log Cabin Democrat, in Arkansas, says reform of medical marijuana laws has been supported by the DEA's own administrative law judge, Francis L. Young, the editor of the New England Journal of Medicine, the New York City Bar Association and the National Research Council of the National Academy of Science.)
• Is There A Ventura In Kentucky's Future? (Robert T. Garrett, a columnist for the Louisville Courier-Journal, says Annie Shimp is the stuff of nightmares, or at least insomnia, for Kentucky Gov. Paul Patton. She's a swing voter who is highly disgruntled with both major political parties. She might vote for a Jesse Ventura-type candidate, if there were an option comparable to the new Minnesota governor on this year's ballot. Shimp, 66, of Prospect, called the newspaper the other day to find out how to help Gatewood Galbraith obtain the 5,000 signatures he needs to qualify this fall as an independent candidate for governor. She thinks his idea of restoring hemp cultivation on Kentucky farms is a good one.)
• Crack's Legacy: First of Two Articles - The War on Drugs Retreats, Still Taking Prisoners (The New York Times notes the worst legacy of the crack cocaine scare the newspaper took the lead in hyping in 1986 has been the harsh laws passed by Congress that have increased the number of incarcerated drug offenders by more than 400 percent, shifted money from schools to prisons and transformed police work, hospitals, parental rights, and courts. Marijuana was never mentioned in the floor speeches in Congress when the drug laws were rewritten in 1986, but the new penalties for crack were accompanied by harsher sentences for most "drugs." Ten years later, more people were sentenced under the federal system for marijuana than for any other substance. What the prison boom has not done, however, is reduce illicit drug use. The most recent National Household Survey on Drug Abuse, for 1997, estimated about 14 million people had used an illegal drug in the last month, a number barely changed since 1988. Of those, 600,000 had smoked crack, unchanged since 1988. In Congress, which enacted the 1986 drug laws without a single hearing, another major legacy has been an inability for more than a decade to engage in policy discussions about prisons and drugs.)
• N.J. Police Superintendent Is Fired (The Associated Press says New Jersey Governor Christie Whitman fired State Police Superintendent Col. Carl Williams on Sunday after he said in an interview with the Star-Ledger of Newark that minority groups were more likely to be involved in drug trafficking.)
• Mom Mourns Son Lost To Mean Streets (The Vancouver Province, in British Columbia, travels to Calgary to interview the grieving mother of 21-year-old Allister Marselje, who died trying to navigate safely through the seamy underbelly of the marijuana culture in Vancouver created by prohibition. Allister's beaten body was discovered last December in a dumpster behind the Cross Town Traffic Cafe, a smoke-easy off Vancouver's West Hastings Street where Marselje earned a living weighing out gram bags. Police believe he was the victim of a struggle for power and money in the city's lucrative, world-famous marijuana underworld, killed because he was believed to have information about a contract on the life of a major player in the cafe's business. The contract may not even have existed. Charged with Allister's murder is Alhaj Hadani, 28; Ross Living, 22, and Jamie Yochlowitz, 25. All three will appear in court tomorrow to set a trial date.)
• Re: Mom Mourns Son Lost To Mean Streets (A letter sent to the editor of the Vancouver Province says prohibition, not marijuana, killed Allister Marselje. A 1998 study by the U.S. National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse found the number of state inmates incarcerated for violent crime who were under the influence of cannabis alone at the time of their offense was too small to be recorded statistically. The report found 21 percent of state inmates incarcerated for violent crime were under the influence of alcohol alone when they committed their crime. Only 3 percent were under the influence of cocaine and 1 percent were under the influence of heroin alone.)
• Judge Sentenced For Laundering Drug Cash (The Chicago Tribune version of Friday's news about Robert Flahiff, the Quebec Superior Court judge who is free on bail while appealing a penalty of 3 years in prison for laundering more than $1 million in drug money between 1989 and 1991, while he was still a lawyer)
• Clinton Certifies Mexico As Full Partner In Drug War, Despite Reports Of Corruption (The Buffalo News, in New York, says President Clinton on Friday gave his stamp of approval to Mexico as a fully cooperating ally in the "crusade against drugs," despite testimony from U.S. law enforcement officials that illegal-substance syndicates south of the border had gained enormous power.)
• A Forgiving Relationship (An editorial in the San Diego Union Tribune ponders President Clinton's whirlwind summit in Merida this month with Mexican President Zedillo. Mexico detests the certification process and the annual criticism it foments from its overbearing neighbor to the north. It is American drug consumption that provides the rich incentives for narco-criminals, whose work undermines law and order in Mexico. "We feel that it's a unilateral, subjective and unfair process," said Mexico's former ambassador to the United States, Jesus Silva-Herzog. "It's difficult for us to understand how is it possible that the largest consumer of drugs in the world becomes the judge." There is a vast disparity between living standards in Mexico, a nation of 95 million people with an average per capita income of $4,400 per year, and the United States, where, with 250 million people, per capita income averages seven times that.)
• Sinaloa: Mexico's Capital Of Drug Crime (The San Francisco Examiner rewrites a recent Los Angeles Times article about the social disintegration in the Mexican state caused by prohibition in America.)
• Mexico Holds Former Police Chief For Drugs - Reports (According to Reuters, El Universal newspaper and Reforma daily said Rodolfo Leon Aragon, the former head of Mexico's equivalent of the FBI, the federal judicial police, was arrested Friday in the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca on charges of taking up to $1 million in bribes from the Juarez drug cartel. Leon Aragon's detention meant police had carried out six of the just-under-40 arrest warrants issued last weekend in connection with the drugs trade and money-laundering operations in the state of Quintana Roo.)
• Pilots Face Tough New Breath Tests (The Mail on Sunday says Britain's aviation minister, Glenda Jackson, is reacting to fears that pilots are flouting the ban on consuming alcohol 48 hours before flying by unilaterally requiring pilots to submit to breath tests. Foreign pilots are the main target. Refusal to take the tests will result in an immediate ban from flying into or out of UK airports.)
• Anger as police take pupils to cannabis cafes (The Daily Telegraph, in Britain, says certain parents and teacher groups are angry about a plan to take 60 schoolchildren to visit cannabis cafes in Amsterdam's red light district as part of a drugs education project run by police. Police believe the teenagers need to have a rounded picture of drug-taking, even if that means taking them to places where drugs are legal and taken freely. A spokesman for the National Confederation of Parent Teacher Associations said: "There is a danger that in giving children too much information about drugs, we encourage them to experiment.")
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  Monday, March 1, 1999:

• Public Health Emergency: Oregon health officials remain silent as record drug deaths fall hardest on the poor, minorities (A bulletin from Floyd Ferris Landrath, who exchanges needles for intravenous drug users at the Harm Reduction Zone in Portland, discusses the recent report that heroin-related deaths in Oregon have hit a new high. Local health officials are showing the usual dereliction of duty by failing to respond to a study on the health emergency caused by the war on some drug users, published by Dr. Ernest Drucker in the January-February issue of Public Health Reports, the official journal of the U.S. Public Health Service.)
• Quiet Death In Oregon (A New York Times staff editorial in the International Herald-Tribune says Oregon's unique physician-assisted suicide law seems to show that it is possible to make law and bureaucratic rules that allow people to take responsibility for themselves, without the state or anyone else abusing them. That is cause for relief.)
• Clicking For Contraband (The San Francisco Chronicle says the black market has never been more accessible. Anyone with a computer and an Internet account can find all sorts of contraband for sale on the Web: machine guns, marijuana, prescription drugs, switchblade knives, endangered species, Cuban cigars and much more. Even when law enforcers are aware of black market activity, it is not easy to take action.)
• Juvenile Jail Sought (The San Jose Mercury News says the Alameda County Board of Supervisors is proposing to spend $250 million to build a 540-bed jail for kids to relieve crowding at its juvenile hall, despite some concerns that too many children will end up locked away. Targeted to open in 2003, the jail would be second in size only to Los Angeles' facilities, which hold about 1,500 children. Alameda County probation officials say the expansion is desperately needed, in part because a rise in juvenile crime is predicted over the next several years.)
• Bill Seeks To Clarify Who Gets Drug Loot (The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette says the large amount of supposedly drug-tainted cash forfeited to police has prompted Sen. Wayne Dowd, D-Texarkana, to introduce Senate Bill 555. Dowd's bill seeks to resolve some of the conflict between state and federal authorities over which entity gets the booty in such seizures and how seized property is recorded. Dowd claimed that agencies are taking forfeiture cases to federal court so they can keep more of the loot. Dowd also said he had heard stories of prosecutors using forfeited vehicles for personal use. SB 555 would put an end to prosecutors' practice of releasing some people while signing forfeiture orders against their property. Dowd said no one's property should be taken without a judge's order.)
• Crack's Legacy: Second Of Two Articles: Soldiers of the Drug War Remain on Duty (The New York Times says it was the escalation of the drug war that brought military-style policing, particularly SWAT teams, into most American cities. The police said they felt outgunned and underarmored against gangs. But now that the worst violence associated with the gang and crack wars of the '80s has faded, the police presence has remained and, in many cases, escalated. The expanding role of SWAT teams across the country has been fed by the forfeiture laws that allow the police to keep much of what they take in raids. But there are no figures on the total amount of property seized by all police departments nationwide.)
• Lawyer says people's militia may be answer to combating police brutality (The Associated Press says New York City attorney Roger Wareham and a civil rights group called the December 12th Movement are planning a commmunity forum Monday evening at a Harlem church. The purpose of the meeting is to consider forming a people's militia, because local, state and federal officials have failed to address the problem of police brutality in the city.)
• N.J. Police Superintendent Is Fired (The Associated Press follows up on yesterday's news about New Jersey Governor Christie Whitman firing State Police Superintendent Col. Carl Williams on Sunday after he said in an interview with the Star-Ledger of Newark that minority groups were more likely to be involved in drug trafficking.)
• N.J. Police Leader Fired As Critics Claim Bias (The version in the Charlotte Observer, in North Carolina)
• NJ Gov. Ousts Police Superintendent (The UPI version)
• Police Chief Fired Over Remarks (The New York Times version in the San Jose Mercury News)
• Emergency Last Minute Plea For Help (A bulletin from a publicist for the federal medical marijuana class action lawsuit being litigated by Lawrence Elliott Hirsch seeks donors to help as many patients as possible attend oral arguments March 3 in Philadelphia.)
• Treatment of Tourette's Syndrome With Delta-9-Tetrahydrocannabinol (The March issue of the American Journal of Psychiatry features a report by four German physicians about their single-subject experiment documenting the efficacy of the primary psychoactive substance in marijuana as medicine for the neuropsychiatric disorder.)
• Dear Abby: Battle Lines In Drug War Not So Easily Drawn (Abigail Van Buren, America's venerable syndicated advice columnist, says marijuana laws are overdue for an overhaul, that she looks favorably on the use of marijuana as medicine, and recommends parents learn the facts about marijuana by reading "Marijuana Myths, Marijuana Facts," by Lynn Zimmer, Ph.D., and John P. Morgan, M.D., published by the Lindesmith Center.)
• McCaffrey Denies Rumors of Resignation (An excerpt from Semena, a magazine in Colombia, quotes General Barry McCaffrey, the White House drug czar, denying a recent Washington Times claim that he will leave soon for the American Red Cross.)
• Hemp BC's Final "Show-Cause Showdown" With the City (A news release and call to action issued by Cannabis Culture magazine, in Vancouver, British Columbia, notes a city hearing on March 8 will be the hemp store's last chance to renew its business licence. Actually, the "decision" seems to have been made already. The only thing that might make a difference is a public outcry. Hemp BC's Sister Icee has already attended four of the city council hearings. The hearings, characterized by the local media as a "kangaroo court," have been fraught with shows of bad faith, disrespect for the Supreme Court of BC, and blatant lying by the city and its lawyers. Fear-mongering police officers, instrumental in past busts against Hemp BC, have been called as witnesses to slander Icee's store. In the gallery, a disaffected public hiss and boo at the outrageous injustice of the city's machinations.)
• Censoring Pot (A letter to the editor of the National Post says the United Nations' International Narcotics Control Board recent criticism of Canadians' freedom of speech deserves the scrutiny of the International Misleading Rhetoric Control Board.)
• Mexico Drug Certification Likely (The Associated Press says congressional critics of the Clinton administration's decision to certify Mexico as an ally in the United States' war on some drug users are moving to formally challenge the president. But opponents - mostly in the House - seem unlikely to muster the necessary votes.)
• Paraguay Suggests Politics Behind U.S. Drugs Policy (Reuters says Paraguay attacked U.S. drug policy on Monday, after the United States' government decertified Paraguay Friday as an ally in its war on some drug users. Paraguay suggested political considerations unrelated to the drug war explained how the United States' government went about certifying or not certifying various nations.)
• Prescriptions Put 80,000 In Hospital: Study (According to the Age, in Melbourne, Australia, a study released today in the Journal of Quality in Clinical Practice, written by Ms Libby Roughead, a pharmacist at the school of pharmacy and medical science at the University of South Australia, More than 80,000 people are taken to hospital each year because of adverse drug reactions, between 32 per cent and 69 per cent of them avoidable. Between 2.4 per cent and 3.6 per cent of all Australian public hospital admissions were likely to be "drug-related," costing hospitals at least $900 million annually. Meanwhile, a study by the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners found that 50 per cent of adverse events in general practice were drug-related. Apparently neither study estimated the number of pharmaceutical-related deaths.)
• Parents Fit Secret Cameras To Spy On Their Children (The Daily Telegraph, in Britain, says American parents, who 30 years ago got high and hallucinated that there was a police state in placid middle America, are resorting to Cold War espionage techniques to fight drug and alcohol abuse, bugging their children's telephones, installing secret cameras in clock radios and sending strands of hair retrieved from pillows for analysis at drug laboratories.)
  Bytes: 127,000 Last updated: 4/14/99
  

  Tuesday, March 2, 1999:

• NORML Special News Bulletin: Federal Bill Reintroduced To Legalize Medical Marijuana (A press release from NORML says Rep. Barney Frank, the Massachusetts Democrat, introduced the "Medical Use of Marijuana Act" today in Congress. Keith Stroup of NORML said, "Historically, states have been more receptive to the medical marijuana issue than the federal government," noting that 36 state legislatures have passed laws recognizing marijuana's medical value. "This legislation addresses this paradigm and effectively gets the federal government out of the way of those states that wish to make marijuana available as a medicine." Co-sponsors of the bill include Reps. Tom Campbell, R-Calif.; John Conyers, D-Mich.; John Olver, D-Mass.; Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.; Pete Stark, D-Calif.; and Lynn Woolsey, D-Calif.)
• Minorities cringe at the sound of sirens (The Oregonian notes a group monitoring the effect of a one-year-old law that gives police virtually limitless powers to stop and search anyone delivered a report to the state legislature Monday. House Bill 2433, sponsored by "the law enforcement community" and passed by the 1997 legislature, allows police to stop a person if an officer "reasonably suspects" the person is about to commit a crime. While the newspaper suppresses the actual results of a survey of Oregon minorities included in the report, it suggests minorities do not think relations with police have declined since the law went into effect because civil rights violations by police couldn't get much worse anyway.)
• Lawmakers May Soften Drug Penalties To Cut Prison Costs (The Seattle Times says skyrocketing prison costs are causing Washington legislators to concede mandatory minimum sentencing hasn't worked, especially with drug offenders. House Bill 1006, introduced by state Rep. Ida Ballasiotes, R-Mercer Island, would free judges from imposing mandatory sentences on controlled-substance violators and allow some offenders to be sentenced to treatment programs in lieu of more prison time. The bill is popular. It was approved unanimously by the House Criminal Justice and Corrections and has the backing of prosecutors, judges and most lawmakers.)
• State Liquor Board is due for a wholesale makeover / Five things you can do to support the McCoys (Seattle Times columnist Michelle Malkin gives an update on the city of Seattle's attempt to close the business of innocent restauranteers Oscar and Barbara McCoy under a drug-abatement law. The Washington Liquor Control Board is accused of serving as a patsy for the city attorney in helping to close Oscar's II. Tomorrow a grass-roots group called Citizens for Free-Market Liquor will file a statewide initiative to privatize liquor sales. Exempt from market forces and political accountability, the liquor agency has gradually amassed unchecked authority and personnel. Plus a list subscriber tells you how to help prevent the closure of Oscar's II.)
• 3 Strikes Law Found to Be of No Effect (The Los Angeles Times says a new study by the Justice Policy Institute, to be released today and published this fall in the Stanford Law and Policy Review, says California's law mandating 25 years to life for a third felony offense has had no measurable effect on reducing violence. Crime has fallen at about the same rate in counties that aggressively enforce the three strikes law as in those that do not. The study also found that the one age group most affected by the law, felons ages 30 to 39, have committed more crimes. "In other words, the age group that is most likely to be sentenced under three strikes witnessed increases in felony arrests and violent crime," the study reports. About one fifth of third-strike inmates were found guilty of a violent offense, including robbery. By contrast, 37 percent were convicted of property crimes, such as theft, and 30 percent were found guilty of "drug" offenses, mostly possession.)
• Real Justice in Riverside, California. Tyisha Miller (A list subscriber forwards a statement that it's "time to force the Riverside Police Department to admit the drug tests for the four police officers that gunned down Tyisha Miller got lost. . . . That explains why the retired doctor was blown away in Redlands. He got access to those test results and they had to kill him.")
• Incarceration Won't Solve Drug Problem (Los Angeles Times columnist Robert Scheer comments on Sunday's seminal New York Times article about the role of the 1986 crack cocaine scare in exacerbating America's prison-industrial complex. There are 400,000 people in American prisons simply because the government claims it must save them from themselves. What will it take for Americans to give a damn that so many people who pose little or no threat to others are nonetheless languishing in prison due to an out-of-control "drug war" that has irrationally defined their vices as more dangerous than others that are demonstrably more risky to others? Even driving drunk is punished much less severely than the mere possession of crack cocaine. The nation's drug war is irrational, racist, draconian and hugely expensive.)
• Medical marijuana legal on Thursday (The Juneau Empire notes the law approved by Alaska voters last November goes into effect March 4.)
• Judge keeps supervision of prisons - System remains cruel, he says; AG to appeal (The Dallas Morning News says after three weeks of hearings in January and February, U.S. District Judge William Wayne Justice issued a 167-page decision Monday finding that Texas prisons are still brutal and inhumane, and ordered Texas prisons to remain under federal oversight. Attorney General John Cornyn said "All along we felt the final decision would be made by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans, and that's where we head next.")
• California Medical Marijuana Bills (A news release from California NORML says two medical marijuana bills have been introduced in Sacramento by state senator John Vasconcellos. The first, S.B. 847 would establish a $1 million medical marijuana research program. The second, S.B. 848, would establish a distribution system based on recommendations from the Attorney General's working group on medical marijuana.)
• What casualties has the drug war left behind? (Molly Ivins, the Ft. Worth Star-Telegram's syndicated columnist, recapitulates yesterday's seminal New York Times article on what fear of crack cocaine has done to the American criminal justice system. "Unless you are a drug user or know somebody in the joint, all this may seem far removed from your life. It's not. They're taking money away from your kids' schools to pay for all this, from helping people who are mentally retarded and mentally ill, from mass transit and public housing and more parkland and . . .")
• Pataki To Propose Stiffer Sentencing Laws (The Times Union, in New York, says Governor George Pataki, the former cannabis consumer, will propose next week a ban on parole for nonviolent felons. Last year, the governor succeeded in abolishing parole for violent felons. Now, his focus is on nonviolent offenders.)
• Firing Renews Police Debate (The San Jose Mercury News says the allegation that police single out minorities for car stops has arisen again and again, in class-action lawsuits from Gloucester County, N.J., to Toledo, Ohio, to Eagle County, Colo.; in a new suit in Maryland; in judges' findings; in calls for federal legislation - and now, in the firing of New Jersey's state police superintendent, Col. Carl Williams.)
• Police Chief Fired For Race-Drugs Slur (The Irish Independent version)
• Political Fallout Over NJ State Police Col. Carl Williams (The Philadelphia Inquirer says a day after New Jersey Governor Whitman ousted Col. Carl A. Williams as the head of the state police for saying the drug trade is handled mostly by minorities, a top black leader and Democratic legislators demanded that she delay the nomination of her attorney general to the state Supreme Court until his office completes a review of the state police force.)
• Racial Attitudes In Jersey's State Police (A staff editorial in the New York Times says New Jersey Governor Christine Todd Whitman did the right thing in dismissing Col. Carl Williams as superintendent of the state police. Williams' comments linking minorities with drug trafficking provided new insight into the possibility that racial profiling may be deeply rooted in the police agency.)
• Judge Says Ban Against Hemp Growing Doesn't Hurt Kentucky Farmers (The Lexington Herald-Leader says U.S. District Judge Karl S. Forester has dismissed a lawsuit filed last May by Kentucky farmers and the 100-member Kentucky Hemp Growers Cooperative Association, seeking to overturn the state and federal ban on industrial hemp. The judge never actually examined the law and how it affects hemp. Forester ruled that the farmers do not have standing to challenge the law that prohibits growing hemp because they are not being hurt by it. And they are not being hurt by the law because nobody grows hemp.)
• Number Of Blacks In Prison Nears 1 Million (A Boston Globe article in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer says an analysis of Justice Department statistics by the National Center on Institutions and Alternatives, an Arlington, Virginia, legal reform group, shows the number of black adults behind bars will hit the 1 million mark - roughly one in 10 black men - for the first time in 2000. That represents nearly an eightfold increase from 30 years ago. "We're incarcerating an entire generation of people," said Laurie Levensen, a former federal prosecutor and associate dean at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles.)
• "Effective National Drug Control Strategy" released (A news release from Common Sense for Drug Policy, in Virginia, says the Network of Reform Groups, a coalition of two dozen organizations working for more sensible drug policies and representing more than 100,000 people, will release a report tomorrow while the White House drug czar, General Barry McCaffrey, testifies before a House subcommittee on his year 2000 budget request. The report - available online - used government data and independent research to show current policies have failed to protect America's children from drug abuse and failed to reduce the availability of cocaine and heroin. The report also suggests a comprehensive alternative strategy.)
• U.S. Congressmen Want Mexico Blacklisted For Drugs (Reuters says a group of Republican congressmen introduced a resolution Tuesday to overturn President Clinton's decision last Friday to certify Mexico as a fully cooperating ally in the United States' war on some drug users. But Republican Sen. Paul Coverdell of Georgia said he did not think decertification of Mexico would pass in the Senate.)
• Drug War Pretenses (A staff editorial in the Orange County Register about the annual battle over certifying Mexico as an ally in the drug war says the president will pretend that Mexico is cooperating. The Mexican government will go along with the pretense. But the annual pretense is only a small part of a larger, ongoing game of pretense and denial. The government pretends that the drug war is a good idea. It pretends that dealing with drug use as a law-enforcement problem rather than a personal or medical problem doesn't make every aspect of drug use worse rather than better. Until citizens are ready to deal with the larger game of "Let's Pretend," the annual pretense over certifying Mexico will continue.)
  Bytes: 116,000 Last updated: 3/14/99
  

  Wednesday, March 3, 1999:

• Health Care: Drinking and Voting (Willamette Week, in Portland, promotes Oregon Senate Bill 529, the Mental Health Parity Act, which would force insurance companies to deal with disorders such as depression, schizophrenia and alcoholism the same way they deal with chronic physical illnesses such as asthma and diabetes - without imposing arbitrary limits on the amount of money spent, the length of a patient's stay or the number of visits allowed. A poll commissioned by the Oregon Medical Association, released March 3, shows 85 percent of Oregon voters favor parity for mental illness, and 66 percent favor parity for chemical dependency. But SB 529 remains bottled up in the Senate Health and Human Services Committee. Chairman Bill Fisher, a Roseburg Republican, said he would not schedule a hearing.)
• Crime and Justice: The Snitch Switch (Willamette Week says a bogus police report circulating among gang members in Northeast Portland makes Isaac Harden look like an even bigger stool pigeon than Aaron Walker, who testified against Isaac and Danny Harden in their recent attempted-murder trial. As a result, when Harden enters prison, he'll be considered a snitch, a marked man.)
• Sidestepping Side Effects (A letter to the editor of Willamette Week, in Portland, says the newspaper's recent article on Ritalin failed to mention the serious side-effects children can suffer. Some have developed Tourette's syndrome after long-term use.)
• Pot shots: Peron stages sit-in at Migden's office (The San Francisco Bay Guardian says medical marijuana activist Dennis Peron and a handful of supporters staged a 45-minute sit-in at the San Francisco office of state assembly member Carole Migden on Feb. 26 to protest Migden's refusal to sponsor a bill that would legally reschedule marijuana in California if and when it's rescheduled by the federal government.)
• California State Sen. John Vasconcellos Has Just Touched The Tip Of The Iceberg (A letter to the editor of the Los Angeles Times explains the mindset among federal judges caused by Congress killing the federal sentencing commission. As a result, judicial timidity is subverting the constitution and murdering medical marijuana defendant Peter McWilliams. California officials should storm the Bastille and protect their citizen from a federal government gone mad.)
• Marijuana Brings Relief (A testimonial letter to the editor of the Bangor Daily News from a veteran caregiver who is currently watching her sister-in-law die "an inch at a time" from pancreatic cancer urges Maine voters to support a November ballot measure that would legalize marijuana for medical conditions.)
• Place Called Mena - Just Some Facts (Wall Street Journal editorial writer Micah Morrison clues in corporate America to what is probably the real Clinton administration scandal - the officially sanctioned smuggling of illegal drugs through Mena airport while Clinton was governor.)
• Report Due This Month On Medical Marijuana (An otherwise unremarkable letter to the editor of USA Today by Francis X. Kinney from the Office of National Drug Control Policy reiterates federal policy on medical marijuana - but notes the comprehensive review of existing research on marijuana's potential "benefits and harms" will be released by the National Academy of Science's Institute of Medicine "this month.")
• Medical Marijuana Bill Introduced (The Associated Press says U.S. Rep. Barney Frank of Massachusetts proposed legislation Wednesday that would reclassify marijuana as a Schedule II drug, meaning it could be prescribed by doctors under certain conditions, just as cocaine and other controlled substances are. The bill would set aside the federal ban on marijuana in those states where voters have permitted medical use of the drug, but would not affect states that have not permitted such use.)
• DRCNet Newsflash (A bulletin from the Drug Reform Coordination Network alerts online activists to two developments - a "48 Hours" newscast on chronic pain, and opposing op-eds by U.S. Rep. Mark Souder and DRCNet's Adam J. Smith in the Cavalier Daily at the University of Virginia, regarding the Higher Education Act's ban on loans to student pot smokers.)
• US Criticism Of China Rings Hollow In US Prisons (Boston Globe columnist Derrick Z. Jackson contrasts the U.S. State Department's report last week on human rights abuses in China with Sunday's New York Times article about human rights abuses in America attributable to the crack cocaine scare of 1986. It is increasingly difficult for the United States to demand that China be on the "right side of history" when you could take many parts of the State Department report, change only the location, and have the same report about the United States. For example, the State Department complains that China is in denial about racism against its ethnic minorities, yet nearly every serious study of the American criminal justice system has found that it profoundly discriminates against African-Americans and Latinos.)
• Dad lacks strength to read dead son's journal (A letter to the editor of the Province, in British Columbia, from a father whose son was poisoned in 1993 by adulterated street heroin, says prohibition also killed Allister Marselje, who weighed out gram bags of cannabis in a Vancouver smoke-easy. Bigoted and ignorant citizens are needed to maintain the war on drugs. Jean Chretien, the Canadian prime minister, could do something, but refuses to lift a finger to save the lives of our children. Allister's death must be laid at Chretien's door.)
• Canada To Study Medical Marijuana (The Associated Press says Canada's health minister, Alan Rock, has authorized clinical trials to determine if marijuana is a useful medicine for people suffering from terminal illnesses and other painful conditions. Rock stressed during debate in Parliament Wednesday that the decision did not mean the government was moving toward wider legalization of marijuana for non-medical purposes. Aside from gathering scientific evidence, The health minister also said he wants officials to examine how to provide access to a safe supply of medical marijuana for those who might need it.)
• Rock agrees to pot trials (The Canadian Press version)
• Canada Orders Clinical Trials Of Medical Marijuana (The Reuters version)
• Dope Inquiry Aside, Status Quo To Stay (The New Zealand Herald says that despite a parliamentary committee's report in December encouraging the Government to review cannabis policies, the Minister of Police, Clem Simich, has indicated that no changes are in the pipeline.)
• New Drug Army Rules Atop 'Golden Triangle' (According to an Associated Press article in the Seattle Times, the U.S. State Department calls the United Wa State Army, one of many ethnic groups not controlled by the central government of Myanmar, part of "the world's biggest armed narcotics-trafficking organization." A generation ago, the Wa were feared headhunters. Now, Thai officers monitoring the border say the Wa are becoming the masters of the Golden Triangle, where the frontiers of Myanmar, Laos and Thailand converge. Tensions have risen as the central government has demanded that the Wa head back toward their old strongholds near China. The Wa, unwilling to lose heroin gateways through Thailand, have ignored the order and begun preparing for war.)
  Bytes: 67,400 Last updated: 4/21/99
  

  Thursday, March 4, 1999:

• A Garden Gone To Seed (A letter to the editor of the Source, in Oregon, says locking up drug dealers and throwing away the key does no good so society as a whole, especially when forfeiture laws give police a motive to fabricate evidence.)
• California NORML Report on 1999 State Marijuana Legislation (A bulletin from California NORML summarizes six bills that have been introduced to the legislature, and includes the URL for current legislative information and who to lobby.)
• Alaska Medical Marijuana Law Starts (The Associated Press says the medical marijuana law approved by 60 percent of voters in November goes into effect today. Ned Tuthill wishes the law had come about a few years earlier. The retired airline pilot was busted for growing his own medicine to ease chronic pain caused by a severe car crash. The terms of his probation forbid him from smoking marijuana. "I have period of times when my pain is so severe that I just can't do anything," said Tuthill, 48, who says other pain medications nauseate him.)
• Fairmont State Baseball Coach Quits (The Associated Press says Donnie Retton, the baseball coach at Fairmont State University in West Virginia and brother of Olympic gold medalist Mary Lou Retton, has resigned after being charged with drunken driving and possession of marijuana.)
• Dopamine Apparently Isn't The Pleasure Chemical After All (An Associated Press article in the Orange County Register says a study published today in the journal Nature suggests dopamine, discovered in 1957, may not be the brain's only "feel good" chemical. Scientists trying to unlock the secrets of drug addiction may therefore have been off target for the past two decades. The report infers that the brain chemical, rather than being the key player in the pleasure process, is only a "messenger" and just one of several components of addiction.)
• Brain Chemical Dopamine May Not Be Addiction Key (A longer version in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer)
• Role Of Dopamine In Doubt (The version in the Augusta Chronicle, in Georgia)
• War On Drugs Needs A New Battle Plan (Cox news service columnist Tom Teepen, writing in the Arizona Daily Star, notes the war on some drug users has failed, and discusses the proposals put forth yesterday in a report issued by the Network of Reform Groups.)
• Frank Supports Medical Marijuana (The Worcester Telegram & Gazette, in Massachusetts, notes local U.S. Representative Barney Frank introduced a bill Tuesday that would reclassify marijuana as a Schedule II controlled substance, meaning it could be prescribed by doctors.)
• Abuse of Female Prisoners in U.S. Is Routine, Rights Report Says (According to the Washington Post, a report scheduled for release today by Amnesty International USA finds that women inmates in the nation's prisons and jails are routinely subjected to sexual abuse by male guards. The document also describes serious problems with medical care, including the use of shackles while prisoners are giving birth. Primarily as a result of the war on some drug users, the number of female inmates rose about 11 percent each year between 1985 and 1996, compared with 7.9 percent for men.)
• The Politics Of Pot - A Government In Denial (Eric Schlosser, in Rolling Stone magazine, devastatingly critiques the failure in the United States of governments and politicians at all levels to deal rationally with marijuana-related issues.)
• Ottawa to test medicinal use of pot (According to the Calgary Herald, Health Minister Allan Rock announced in the House of Commons Wednesday that the government plans to conduct human clinical tests to determine if smoking marijuana can reduce pain in terminally ill patients, a first step toward legalizing the drug for medical purposes.)
• Ottawa Approves Clinical Marijuana Trials (The Globe and Mail version, in Toronto, says the Canadian Health Department has already consulted with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration - which is also planning similar trials - about acquiring a supply of the herb for the clinical trials. Making marijuana available to patients by prescription will not require an amendment to the criminal code, a Health Department source said.)
• Rock OKs Clinical Trials Of Medicinal Marijuana (The National Post version notes the health minister's announcement comes more than a year after an Ontario judge, Justice Patrick Sheppard, ruled that it was legal for Terry Parker, an epilepsy patient in Toronto, to grow and use marijuana for medical use. Sheppard said criminalizing Parker deprived him of his "right to life, liberty and security.")
• Canada to test medical marijuana (The Ottawa Citizen version)
• Marijuana health test backed (The Toronto Star version)
• Canada Orders Clinical Trials Of Medical Marijuana (The Reuters version)
• Medicinal marijuana - background materials (The Canadian Foundation for Drug Policy posts the URL for House of Commons' transcripts and media reports related to the announcement by Minister of Health Alan Rock about the clinical trials for medical marijuana.)
• An Outpost In The Banana And Marijuana Wars (The New York Times says that when American troops in December helped destroy more than one million marijuana plants in the rugged northern regions of St. Vincent, the Caribbean island nation, growers were outraged. There is also a marked hostility against Clinton for waging war with Europe over banana trade preferences, the backbone of the legitimate economy. Some government and business leaders say the United States risks undermining its anti-drug efforts if banana growers turn to drugs - not just marijuana - as an alternative. At the very least, the banana issue is creating such deep resentment that it may compromise the willingness of Caribbean countries to continue cooperating in anti-drug efforts. "When Caricom countries meet in July, I think you'll see a bold statement of resistance," said Ivelaw Griffith, a Caribbean expert at Florida International University in Miami.)
• Simich Taken To Task For Marijuana Comment (According to the Dominion, New Zealand Police Minister Clem Simich was taken to task yesterday by a former undercover policeman for saying in Parliament that marijuana was harmful, while at the same time allowing undercover policemen to use the drug. Simich also had a novel theory to explain police perjury. The former agent, whose name has been suppressed by the High Court, claimed officers were required to smoke marijuana every day during their training to familiarise themselves with its affects and to build up tolerance. The former agent is a spokesman for a group of more than 50 former policemen who are claiming exemplary damages from the police for stress and addiction. A recent survey showed a 20 per cent to 50 per cent rate of drug addiction among undercover agents.)
  Bytes: 99,200 Last updated: 5/13/99
  

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