DrugSense Weekly, No. 91 (The original summary of drug policy news from DrugSense opens with the weekly Feature Article - A Viagra-model solution to the war on drugs, by Bernhard Haisch, Ph.D., who really is a rocket scientist. The Weekly News in Review includes several articles about Drug War Policy, including - High court limits drug testing of students; School drug testing proposal moves through senate; Senators pledge 1,000 more agents for border patrol; and, When a bad policy fails. Articles about Law Enforcement & Prisons include - The prison boom; America, land of prisons; and, Prison policy is both costly and irrational. Articles about Forfeiture include - When can police seize private property?; Stealing by the state; and, Property seizures trample the Constitution; News about Cannabis includes - Study: Marijuana helps fight pain; Let science run marijuana debate; Medical marijuana smoking to remain illegal; Lockyer gives quiet OK to S.F. pot clubs; Judge denies advocate's request to smoke pot; and, Federal judge lets lawsuit on medical marijuana go on. International News includes - Heroin users' starting-up age plummets into teens; Anti-drugs drive fails to stem abuse; RCMP drug raid was dopey; and, Top Mexican off-limits to U.S. drug agents. The weekly Hot Off The 'Net points you to the new Commons Sense for Drug Policy web site at http://csdp.org; and to the full text of the IOM report online. The Quote of the Week cites Thomas Jefferson.)
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Saturday, March 27, 1999:
Sheriff's deputies follow tip to drug lab (An Oregonian article about the bust of a methamphetamine lab Friday in a Southeast Portland apartment - the 11th such investigation this year - quotes Sgt. Lane Sawyer of the special investigations unit making false claims that "Methamphetamine is our fastest-growing threat" and that "Meth is the No. 1 drug of choice in Multnomah County.")
Gold Hill's police chief faces charges of assault, coercion (The Oregonian says David Crawford has been indicted in Jackson County on assault and coercion charges for allegedly roughing up a dirt-biker and threatening to arrest him for drunken driving if he complained. Chief Crawford already faces trial April 22 on two unrelated charges of coercion after an elderly Shady Cove couple complained that he threatened to burn down their home if they reported a July 1996 incident of road rage.)
Roseburg doctor faces penalty on pain control (The Oregonian says the Oregon Board of Medical Examiners intends to discipline Dr. Paul A. Bilder for failing to give six seriously ill or dying patients adequate pain medication.)
A Kilo Of Cocaine Hits The Streets, Courtesy Of The Police Department (The Charlotte Observer, in North Carolina, notes undercover prohibition agents in Bellevue, Washington, who allegedly sold 2.2 pounds of cocaine to a would-be dealer arrested him and kept his $17,000 - but failed to retrieve the cocaine. Unfortunately, the newspaper doesn't bother to explain how police can sell controlled substances on the street under a controversial clause in the Controlled Substances Act.)
Lockyer: U.S. Will End Push For Nuke Dump At Desert Site (The Sacramento Bee says the White House drug czar, General Barry McCaffrey, threatened California Attorney General Bill Lockyer with arrest Friday when Lockyer told McCaffrey that state law authorizes him to conduct certain marijuana-related research.)
DrugSense Focus Alert No. 103 - Califano in the Wall Street Journal (DrugSense asks you to write a letter to the editor of the business daily in New York to rebut the op-ed defending the "gateway" myth by Joe Califano of CASA.)
Prison Terms Change Crime Fighters (According to the Associated Press, three former high-profile public officials who were once proud to show how tough they were on crime spoke at a meeting Saturday of Families Against Mandatory Minimums in Arlington, Virginia. Webster Hubbell, a former associate attorney general in the U.S. Justice Department; former Pennsylvania Attorney General Ernie Preate Jr., and former California Republican leader Pat Nolan said they discovered the humanity of the prison population and the error of their crime-fighting ways when they became prisoners themselves. Preate said "we're on a collision course with social catastrophe" unless more is done to rehabilitate criminals and find alternatives to prison for the 65 percent of inmates locked up for nonviolent crime.)
Teacher Busted For Pot (UPI says Kaye Seymour, 44, was busted at Ravenswood Middle School in Orlando, Florida, for having marijuana in her car after a suspicious principal called police.)
Re: Water pistols with bong water to fool drug sniffing dogs (A list subscriber shares a recycling tip.)
Institute Of Medicine Says Marijuana Has Benefits (The Lancet, in Britain, summarizes the report released March 17 in the United States.)
Let them smoke pot (The version in Britain's New Scientist)
Why your brain is primed for a high (New Scientist briefly summarizes the recent Nature Neuroscience article about research by scientists at the University of California at Irvine who found that cannabinoids may be effective in treating dopamine-related movement disorders such as Parkinson's disease and Tourette's syndrome.)
You're Under Arrest, And On TV (The Economist, in Britain, says the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments Wednesday in two cases that raise the question of whether media "ride-alongs" with police carrying out search or arrest warrants violate the Fourth Amendment's prohibition against unreasonable searches and seizures. If the court decides to restrict the practice, many local-news and tabloid television shows will, at a stroke, be deprived of a staple subject. An amicus brief was filed by 26 media organisations.)
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Sunday, March 28, 1999:
Snohomish County Needs A New Jail For The Future (A timid staff editorial in the Everett, Washington, Herald heralds the construction of a new jail in Everett within 18 months, saying the current county jail, built just 13 years ago for 277 inmates, is already over its revised capacity of 477 prisoners, with 511 inmates. Unfortunately, the newspaper believes "Voters have repeatedly said they want stiff sentences attached to drug crimes," so its observation that the local "tough-on-drugs policy may be beginning to back-fire" falls a little flat. Even though Sheriff Rick Bart says 80 percent of crime in the county is directly related to alcohol and other drugs, the editors believe a new jail is still necessary. As with other American mass media, the newspaper instinctively shrinks from providing any estimate of what it would cost to fully enforce the laws against consensual crimes.)
Different Kind Of Drug War Being Waged In S. El Monte (The Los Angeles Times says the tiny San Gabriel Valley community of South El Monte is believed to be the first in California to approve voluntary, random drug tests for its City Council members. Councilwoman Blanca Figueroa sponsored the policy, which was approved 3-2 by the council, after her students - citing the cocaine possession conviction of Los Angeles City Councilman Mike Hernandez and Eastside Councilman Richard Alatorre's testing positive for cocaine - questioned how she could preach against drugs when two potential role models ran afoul of them. "It's voluntary only in name," said ACLU attorney Elizabeth Schroeder.)
What The Ruiz Ruling Wrought (The Houston Chronicle says in the early 1980s, U.S. District Judge William Wayne Justice first ruled that Texas' overcrowded prisons were unconstitutional, and set population limits. He also banned the use of building tenders, a hierarchy of inmates who helped maintain order through brutality and threats. Texas has spent an estimated $10 billion since then to comply with Judge Justice's humane micromanagement of the state prison system. The judge now says solitary confinement is unconstitutional, and the state is suing to regain control.)
The Way Things Are In Prison (The Houston Chronicle provides a brief, insider's history of Texas prisons through the eyes of Roger Pirkle, who entered his first state-run institution at 11 and emerged from his last one at 46, three years ago. A class-action lawsuit that grew out of complaints filed by him and David Ruiz led to the dismantling of the building tender system in the mid-1980s. The trouble was, they didn't do anything to fill the void. The gangs sprang up in 1984 and '85 - and, at first, prison officials didn't seem to mind. "They let us gamble. They let us smoke marijuana." They did all that because they had to to keep order by themselves. Then, the guards were co-opted into them. Then it got out of hand and they couldn't stop it. Now, when a kid comes into prison, he's going to be recruited. "If he doesn't join, he better be able to fight or he's going to be raped and turned out by somebody.")
8th Graders Face Lewdness, Drug Charges (UPI says residents of Belmar, New Jersey, are shocked with the Monmouth County prosecutor's decision to charge a group of rowdy kids with drug possession, lewdness, simple assault and improper touching.)
More Class Action documents (Carl Olsen, a founding member of the Drug Reform Coordination Network online library, publicizes his growing archive of documents about the lawsuit against the federal prohibition on medical marijuana being litigated in Philadelphia by public interest attorney Lawrence Elliott Hirsch.)
Medical marijuana not acceptable in Georgia (The Associated Press says Superior Court Judge J. Carlisle Overstreet sentenced paraplegic Lewis Edward Covar of Augusta to seven years' probation and a $1,000 fine for possession of marijuana, warning the newly created criminal to "keep it to yourself.")
Healer Weed (A Vancouver Province article focuses on "Jackie," a 61-year-old medical marijuana patient dying of cancer in Surrey, British Columbia, and the 700-member Compassion Club, in Vancouver. A devout, non-drinking Christian, Jackie had sold her car, turned her house over to her son, and was suicidal when a friend who is a prison guard recommended marijuana to her. It dulled the pain. She overcame the mid-afternoon depressions. A couple of puffs before bedtime and she'd sleep like a baby. She gained 50 pounds. The most recent poll shows 83 percent of Canadians sympathize. While Allan Rock, the health minister, dithers, police are taking a hands-off approach. Abbotsford lawyer John Conroy is preparing to force the issue by putting together a request for medical marijuana exemptions on behalf of about 500 members of the Compassion Club.)
Tories Demand Life Sentences To Combat Drugs Menace (According to Scotland on Sunday, David McLetchie, the leader of the Scottish Tory party, said yesterday that drug dealers convicted for the second time should be given mandatory life sentences.)
U.N. To Create Own Satellite Program to Find Illegal Drug Crops (The New York Times says the International Drug Control Program received unanimous approval last week in Vienna from 53 countries making up the U.N. Commission on Narcotic Drugs to acquire its own satellite system to monitor production in source countries. Pino Arlacchi, the executive director of the drug control program who has set a goal of eliminating drug cultivation in 10 years, estimated that the satellite monitoring could cost as little as $15 million a year, and would start in about a year. The accuracy of satellite spying is dubious, however. The Colombian government said it had eradicated 123,500 acres of coca last year, while the CIA said only 14,000 acres were defoliated.)
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Monday, March 29, 1999:
An Oregon initiative - the Innocent Property Initiative (John Flanery, the chief petitioner for a state ballot measure that would require a conviction and prevent forfeiture proceeds from being used by law enforcement, posts the text of the proposed law.)
Bill would use lottery money to treat addicts (The Associated Press says SB 118, a bill that would dedicate 1 percent of lottery proceeds to programs to help problem gamblers, has cleared the Oregon state senate Trade and Economic Development Committee. The measure would raise $6 million, 50 percent more than the current budget. It would also create a permanent funding source to help gambling addicts.)
Project puts 80 inmates to work in woods (The Oregonian says that starting in May, about 80 Oregon prisoners will spend two months in a new work program in a remote area of the Deschutes National Forest, living in tents pitched in the woods about 30 miles outside Bend and working 10 hours a day, six days a week. Creating work for Oregon inmates will have cost the state $34 million by the end of the budget biennium.)
Heroin Use Booming In Spokane (The Seattle Times says a Washington Department of Social and Health Services report released last week shows the number of Spokane County residents admitted for heroin treatment nearly quintupled between 1992 and 1998, from 78 to 367. Spokane County, in rural Eastern Washington, is the state's per capita leader in treating heroin addicts. Rates exceed those in Seattle during the mid-1990s' heroin boom. Roger Silfvast, head of Community Detox, said heroin prices have fallen to $20 to $25 for a large quarter-gram dose as dealers flood the market.)
San Francisco Million Marijuana March May 1 (A list subscriber posts details about the gathering noon-5 pm at Civic Center Plaza organized in conjunction with reform rallies elsewhere around the world.)
Taking A Hard Look At State's Jammed Jails (According to a staff editorial in the Orange County Register, one might have imagined that with a Democratic majority in both houses and a Democratic governor, and with prisons filled to the bursting point with some people who have little or no business being there, that the California legislature would be full of bills seeking to reform the prison and criminal justice system. Instead it's a mixed bag - and some of the legislation that in the past might have been viewed as "liberal" is being carried by conservative Republicans. It is time for Californians to take a step back from the urge to incarcerate, and to take a look at the ongoing and projected costs of locking up so many people for non-violent and victimless crimes.)
Congress nothing but trendy (Denver Post columnist Diane Carman observes that the Congressionally mandated loyalty oaths of the '60s and '70s have been replaced by the war on drugs. And once again federal financial aid programs are being manipulated for political gain. A new provision of the Higher Education Act denies financial aid to any student convicted of a drug offense, including marijuana possession. Murderers and rapists, on the other hand, can continue to receive financial aid under the act. Furthermore, the act makes no provision for enforcement. Obviously, Congress doesn't care about the fair and efficient administration of this program - or the justice system in general. Their reality has been completely distorted by the war on drugs and the political high they get from exploiting it.)
2 Colo Deputies Face Drug Charges (According to UPI, the FBI says Ouray County Undersheriff John Radcliff, his wife, the sheriff's two daughters and a deputy sheriff are among 19 people charged with methamphetamine trafficking in western Colorado.)
Next Hash Bash May Be Just For Tourists (The Detroit News previews the 28th annual Hash Bash beginning at noon Saturday at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. Michigan state Senator Beverly Hammerstrom, a Republican from Temperance - no kidding - has introduced a bill to nullify Ann Arbor's $25 fine for marijuana possession and enforce the state's $100 penalty. Hammerstrom's bill won easy approval in the Senate last week, and is expected to get a receptive hearing in the House.)
Behind the Blue Wall (An e-mail message publicizes a web site about New York Police Department officer Kenneth Eurell, convicted on federal RICO charges. The site also is said to detail Eurell's cooperation with the DEA against Colombian drug dealers and his former partner, Michael Dowd.)
Exclusionary Rule Challenge Fails (The Associated Press says the U.S. Supreme Court today rejected an appeal from a Florida woman, Alishia Pryor, who said her 11-year sentence for possessing and intending to distribute crack cocaine was twice as long as it would have been if authorities hadn't taken into account evidence they seized illegally. In a series of recent rulings, the court has narrowed the exclusionary rule, which, since 1914, supposedly bars evidence obtained by violating the Fourth Amendment. As a result, prosecutors can now use evidence illegally seized by police in deportation cases, grand jury and civil tax hearings and certain other legal proceedings. The justices never ruled that the exclusionary rule doesn't apply to sentencing, but the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals did so in rejecting Pryor's first appeal.)
Judge - Company's Drug Policy Violates ADA (The The Legal Intelligencer says a lawsuit filed on behalf of John A. Rowles, an epileptic, over drug testing in the workplace has led Chief U.S. District Judge Sylvia H. Rambo to rule that employers can be sued for wrongful discharge when their policy requires employees to disclose any prescription drugs they are taking that force them to reveal their medical conditions.)
No Green Light Yet (Newsweek magazine suggests the Institute of Medicine report on medical marijuana was so timid that the White House drug czar, General Barry McCaffrey, decided he didn't have to act on its conclusions that cannabis does not have a high potential for abuse, but does have medical value, conclusions that flatly contradict the rationale for its being a Schedule 1 controlled substance.)
Gallup Poll on Medical/Recreational Marijuana Use (A list subscriber forwards the results of a survey of 1,018 adults showing 73 percent would vote for medical marijuana but only 29 percent would vote for "legalization.")
Net Becomes Battleground In Drug War (The Washington Times admits the two new web sites sponsored by the office of the White House drug czar, General Barry McCaffrey, are just a reactionary response to all the "Web sites put out by people who think drugs should be legalized." But Allen St. Pierre, the director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, says the Internet is dominated by those who want to see drugs legalized because this is the general consensus.)
Mexican Politicians Face Probe (The Associated Press says in the past, men in top business and political positions were allowed to flee abroad until things cooled off in Mexico, but international pressure to clean up Mexico's drug mess has prosecutors cracking down on once mighty members of Mexico's freewheeling elite. The reputation for corruption earned by Mexican law enforcement, however, has helped make it possible for some Mexicans to believe that members of the ruling class are now the victims of a witch-hunt.)
Bin Laden Buys Child Slaves For His Drug Farms In Africa (The Daily Telegraph, in Britain, accuses Osama bin Laden, the world's most wanted terrorist, of buying child slaves from Ugandan rebels and using them as forced labour on marijuana farms in Sudan to fund his international terrorism network.)
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Tuesday, March 30, 1999:
Jury awards $81 million in Oregon smoking suit (The Associated Press says a jury in Portland, Oregon, ordered Philip Morris to pay a record $81 million to the family of Jesse Williams, who died of lung cancer in 1997 after smoking Marlboros for four decades. No similar verdict against the tobacco industry has survived on appeal.)
Prisoner allowed to cultivate while on probation (A San Francisco Bay area list subscriber recounts the case of Greg Richey. Busted for cultivation a year ago in San Bernardino County, California, Richey was sentenced yesterday to 250 days in jail and three years' probation. The court ruled that under Proposition 215, Richey could, while on probation, cultivate, use and possess marijuana - just what he was busted for.)
The Smoke Clears: Marijuana Can Be Medicinal, But The Smoke Is Not (A staff editorial in the Sacramento Bee infers that the political challenge posed by the March 17 Institute of Medicine report is "how to handle marijuana" in the coming years before a "real," that is, pharmaceutical, alternative to herbal cannabis is on the market. The report doesn't resolve the ongoing legal deadlock. The IOM does, however, provide considerable ammunition for relaxing federal law to allow states, which now regulate the practice of medicine, to decide medicinal uses of marijuana as well.)
Cop Who Planted Drugs Wins Round (The Cincinnati Post says Hamilton County Common Pleas Court Judge Robert Ruehlman granted a motion Monday to suppress a statement by fired Cincinnati police Sgt. John Sess in which he admitted planting marijuana in 1984 on Shadarle Ragan.)
Marijuana May Yield Medicines, Panel Says (The Washington Post conservatively interprets the Institute of Medicine report released March 17.)
Pot users take fewer road risks than drunks study says (The Toronto Star says a new University of Toronto study suggests that while marijuana, like alcohol, impairs performance, people who drive after smoking moderate amounts of pot compensate for any impairment by driving more slowly and cautiously.)
Pot called less risky than booze on the road (The Globe and Mail version)
Mexican banks to plead guilty to laundering drug money (The Los Angeles Times says that with their trial in Los Angeles just days away, two of Mexico's biggest banks have agreed to plead guilty to laundering millions of dollars for the Cali and Juarez drug cartels. Indicted as a result of the United States' "Operation Casablanca" sting, Bancomer will pay $9.9 million in fines while Banca Serfin will pay $4.7 million. Bancomer is the second-largest bank in Mexico and Banca Serfin is the third-largest. After the indictments were issued, U.S. authorities instituted forfeiture actions against the U.S. assets of 14 Mexican and Venezuelan banks and confiscated more than $68 million, including $16 million from Bancomer and $9.5 million from Banca Serfin.)
Cannabis Growers Bask In Spotlight (The New Zealand Herald says two Northland growers wanted to show the world the "honest and authentic" New Zealand, so they led a BBC travel show crew to a cannabis plot in the bush. But when the show screened in Britain recently, it upset expatriate New Zealanders who protested that it showed "the wrong image.")
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Wednesday, March 31, 1999:
Scoreboard: This week's winners and losers (Willamette Week, in Portland, briefly notes the lawsuit against the Portland police regarding the Marijuana Task Force's trap-and-trace device at American Agriculture has resulted in police deciding to give up "the dirt" to defense attorneys for cannabis cultivators, while trying to keep it secret.)
Suit may change how landlords operate (The Oregonian says Gregory Amerson and his sisters talked to at least eight attorneys before they finally found one who would take their groundbreaking case against the landlord of a suspected drug house in Northeast Portland. Now, without even being fully litigated, the case seems likely to increase the price for Portland landlords and tenants of the war on some drug users. The law firm that represented Amerson's family has already used it to encourage another landlord to evict tenants from a problem house.)
Latest jail fight pits sheriff vs. board (The Oregonian says a disagreement between Multnomah County Sheriff Dan Noelle and the county Board of Commissioners over 300 beds for inmates receiving treatment for alcohol and other drugs may impede planning for a $55 million, 225-bed, medium-security jail next to Bybee Lake in North Portland.)
Philip Morris told to pay $81 million in damages (The Oregonian says a Multnomah County jury ordered Philip Morris Inc. to pay record damages to the estate of Jesse Williams, a former Portland school janitor who died of lung cancer after smoking Marlboro cigarettes for 42 years. Jurors didn't buy the tobacco company's principal defense: that smoking is a personal choice and that choices carry responsibilities.)
Company documents prove key to verdict (According to the Oregonian, jurors say it was Philip Morris' own documents - some of them decades old - that led them to award $81 million to the estate of a Portland man who died of lung cancer. One juror, April Dewees, a science teacher at Sherwood High School, said she and other jurors were upset by documents that showed that Philip Morris apparently knew about the addictive properties and cancer-causing potential of cigarette smoke but avoided telling its customers.)
A Few Bills We Like (Willamette Week, in Portland, supports Oregon Senate Bill 529, sponsored by Sen. Lenn Hannon, R-Ashland, which would require insurance companies to increase coverage for mental-health and substance-abuse treatment programs.)
County Seeks Medical Pot Study Appproval (The San Mateo Independent says San Mateo County, California, submitted a proposal to the National Institute on Drug Abuse on March 19 seeking approval for a clinical study of the medical use of marijuana by AIDS and cancer patients. If it can obtain NIDA approval, the county will next seek the blessing of the Food and Diug Administration. Clinical trials in the county could start this summer at the earliest.)
House Panel Dumps Hemp Bill After Hearing Crime Concerns (The Minneapolis Star-Tribune says the Minnesota House of Representatives' Crime Prevention Committee voted 10 to 7 Tuesday against the hemp bill sponsored by Rep. Steve Dehler, R-St. Joseph, after Tim McCormick, the head of the Minneapolis office of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, testified there is no difference between marijuana and its fiber-crop cousin.)
ISU Financial Aid, Professors Don't Approve Of New Ban (The Indiana Statesman at Indiana State University examines the ramifications of the misguided U.S. Higher Education Act, which forbids loans and oher financial aid to students convicted of possessing marijuana.)
Drug convict gets new trial (The Associated Press says U.S. District Judge J. Garvan Murtha, in Vermont, set aside the 1992 conviction of Robert A. Bloomer Jr., who is free after serving seven years in federal prison for manufacturing and conspiring to distribute methamphetamine. Bloomer's appeal concerned the jury instructions of now-retired U.S. District Judge Franklin S. Billings, who said the jury "may" rather than "must" acquit if government prosecutors failed to prove Bloomer's guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. Billings, a former Vermont Supreme Court justice, also equated "reasonable doubt" with "substantial doubt," something the Second Circuit ruled was "clearly and ... obviously constitutionally deficient." Bloomer faces a new trial in six months.)
Phila. Man Guilty Of Dealing From Cell (The Philadelphia Inquirer says Michael Diaz, who admitted he set up cocaine sales from behind bars in a Philadelphia jail, was sentenced yesterday to two to four years in Bucks County Prison.)
Murder Suspect "Panicked" (UPI says the attorney for Roy Lee Carver, an Okeechobee, Florida man charged with the 1998 murder of Christian Giotis, a Clementsville cultivator, says Carver "panicked" when Glotis confronted him in the course of a marijuana rip-off, and he shot Glotis six times.)
The IOM report 'Marijuana and Medicine' on line (A list subscriber posts the URL for an .html version of the Institute of Medicine report released March 17.)
Reefer Madness Logic (Four letters to the editor of the Wall Street Journal rebut the recent op-ed by Joseph Califano trying to discredit the conclusion of the March 17 Institute of Medicine report that marijuana is not a "gateway" to harder drugs.)
Amazon Tribal Leaders Challenge U.S. Patent (The St. Louis Post-Dispatch says Amazon medicine men adorned in shell necklaces and exotic bird feathers visited the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in suburban Washington Tuesday in order to challenge the validity of a patent awarded a California entrepreneur for the main ingredient of their healing potion - the hallucinogenic plant ayahuasca. The 13-year-old patent has become an issue of such magnitude that it has stirred physical threats, led to the cancellation of U.S. aid to South American tribes and all but shut down "bioprospecting" for valuable plants in Peru, Ecuador and the rest of the Amazon basin.)
Cop probe launched (The Calgary Sun says the Edmonton Police Commission wants Alberta Justice to direct another police service to investigate allegations of coverups and possible criminal activity made against the capital's police service by one of its own. Yesterday, the commission held an emergency closed-door meeting to discuss what to do about a formal complaint made against Edmonton Chief John Lindsay by 24-year veteran Det. Kenneth Montgomery.)
Anti-Drugs Chief Backs 'Medicinal' Cannabis (The Times, in London, says Keith Hellawell, the Government's chief anti-drugs campaigner, endorsed the medical use of cannabis yesterday, saying doctors should be allowed to prescribe the class B drug to ease pain and suffering. "There appear to be many qualities within the herb that are likely to have an impact on different suffering," he told the Commons Home Affairs Select Committee.)
Cannabis 'No Longer Rebellious' (According to the Independent, in Britain, Keith Hellawell, the British drugs tsar, admitted yesterday that the use of cannabis is so commonplace among British schoolchildren that smoking it is no longer regarded as an act of rebellion.)
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Thursday, April 1, 1999:
NORML Weekly Press Release (Marijuana induces minimum driving impairment compared to alcohol, Toronto study says; Gallup poll shows Americans support medical marijuana by three to one margin; California Democrats adopt resolution supporting hemp; Senate okays bill forcing Michigan cities to impose criminal penalties for marijuana offenders; Crime committee kills Minnesota hemp bill)
Pedal Pusher (Willamette Week, in Portland, tries to make sense of a press release sent to it by a local bicycle messenger calling himself Jolly Dodger, who hopes to set up a non-profit organization to deliver medical marijuana to qualified patients. The Oregon Medical Marijuana Act clearly forbids such activity, but Geoff Sugerman of Oregonians for Medical Rights says Jolly Dodger's idea proves that the federal government needs to get involved in developing a regulated distribution system.)
Philip Morris case is far from over (The Oregonian says the tobacco company will appeal the $80.3 million judgment against it by a Portland jury. Punitive damages make up $79.5 million of the verdict.)
School informant project runs into objections (The Oregonian says the Brooklyn Action Corps, a neighborhood association in Southeast Portland, wants to put a stop to the Campus Crime Stoppers, a citywide school program that offers money to students to turn in their peers for criminal activity such as underage drinking and drug possession, even if it happens after school. "It scares a lot of people," said John Mathiesen, a member of the association. At a recent meeting attended by parents, teachers and others in the neighborhood, nobody was in favor of the program. Mathiesen pointed to a recent situation involving his son, an eighth-grader at Sellwood Middle School. He said his son and a classmate were falsely accused by another student of marijuana possession.)
Award sets off emotional ride (The Oregonian follows up on yesterday's news about a Portland jury awarding a record $80.3 million to the family of Jesse Williams, a dead smoker. The family is pretty happy about it.)
Overnight, Addicts Get Parkinson's, Scientists Get Breakthrough (The Seattle Post-Intelligencer describes how Dr. Phil Ballard and Dr. J. William Langston set out in 1982 to solve the mystery of a patient paralyzed by contaminated street drugs and ended up making a major breakthrough in the study of Parkinson's disease. "Addicts" in strangely frozen postures were turning up in emergency rooms all over the San Francisco Bay area. They had one thing in common. Each had been using designer street "narcotics." By chance, one researcher recalled reading an obscure journal report years earlier about a young college student who had ended up with identical symptoms after synthesizing his own drugs. Ballard found the article, though it wasn't even in the medical center library. It turned out that a contaminant called MPTP caused both the college student's symptoms and those of the street addicts. MPTP can slip across the blood-brain barrier, where it converts into a chemical that kills the dopamine-producing cells in the brain. A shortage of dopamine - the main neurotransmitter involved in coordinating movement - leads to Parkinson's disease.)
Dying AIDS Patient Peter McWilliams Demands Drug Czar Implement Recommendations From Institute of Medicine Report (A harrowing e-mail from the best-selling author and medical-marijuana patient describes his suffering, denied marijuana as he awaits trial on federal conspiracy charges in Los Angeles. Includes a URL to the complete 15-page letter to General Barry McCaffrey.)
Pot Has Little Effect On Driving, Study Says (The Orange County Register recounts the University of Toronto research suggesting that people who smoke moderate amounts of marijuana are not much more dangerous behind the wheel than completely sober drivers.)
Gang Escapes With $1 Million In Cigarettes (An Associated Press article in the San Jose Mercury News says an armed gang backed a truck up to a warehouse in Corona, California, Wednesday and made off with what was believed to be the state's biggest cigarette heist since the first of the year, when prices jumped nearly $1 a pack to about $3.50.)
When The Means Clash With The Ends (Daily Pilot columnist Joseph Bell, in Costa Mesa, California, comments favorably on the March 17 Institute of Medicine report on medical marijuana, as well as the recent study by the Justice Policy Institute of San Francisco that found no correlation between California's general drop in crime and its three-strikes sentencing law.)
Marijuana As Medicine - State Bill Inches Forward (The Little Rock Free Press says HB 1043, the Arkansas Medical Marijuana Act penned by state representative Jim Lendall, has been placed on the active agenda of the state House's Health, Welfare and Labor Committee, though it may not be taken up before the legislature is expected to adjourn on April 9.)
Drug Dealers Play Musical Chairs (A letter to the editor of the New London Day, in New London, Connecticut, by George Klinch Clarke, a local drug warrior, describes his efforts to promote the war and how they led him realize they were counterproductive.)
Drug Dealers' Property On Auction Block (The Philadelphia Inquirer runs a free ad for an April 24 auction in Bristol Township, to be conducted by the Bucks County District Attorney's Office, of personal property seized from convicted drug dealers during the last eight months. The auction is the 16th since 1987 in a series that has generated $745,342 to pay for undercover narcotics investigations and crime-fighting equipment. Another $872,909 has been raised by auctioning seized real estate.)
General Nonsense (The April issue of Reason magazine features senior editor Jacob Sullum reviewing the reign of error by the White House drug czar, General Barry McCaffrey. When McCaffrey took over the Office of National Drug Control Policy in 1996, he invited Americans to think about the difference between drugs as an enemy and drugs as a cancer. Lately, though, the former general has been prompting us to ponder the fine line between appalling ignorance and bald-faced mendacity. For example, McCaffrey wrote to USA Today in October that "Marijuana is now the second leading cause of car crashes among young people." But, typically, McCaffrey's allegation contradicts the government's own researchers.)
Culture Vultures: Call Off The War On Drugs (A contrarian but sometimes insightful and often delightful critique of the war on some drug users in the April issue of American Spectator magazine by Mark Steyn, a resident of New Hampshire, begins by observing that one of the few things his state does require of every grade school is that they post signs on the road warning motorists they are now entering a "Drug-Free School Zone." "It irks me. At board meetings, I'm tempted to stand up and demand we replace it with 'You Are Now Entering a Latin-Free School Zone' - which at least has the merit of being indisputable. And instead of being quietly ashamed of this stunted redefinition of education, we flaunt it as a badge of pride, out on the highway, even at a rural north country elementary school. For even kindergartners and first-graders must understand that they, too, are foot-soldiers in the 'war on drugs.' Best of all, like almost all other awards in the American school system, you get it automatically: every educational establishment in the state triumphantly displays the same sign, regardless of whether it's a Drug-Free School Zone or a School-Free Drug Zone.")
General Sends Anti-Drug Message To Kids (The Meriden Record-Journal, in Meriden, Connecticut, covers a talk Wednesday night by the White House drug czar, General Barry R. McCaffrey, who rallied the troops at the Aqua Turf Club in Southington. Laura Spitz of Burlington - a member of a state-based group called Efficacy that aims to legalize marijuana - said she purchased a $25 ticket to question the general's policies, but she was never picked to ask her question.)
Farmers Lobby to Legalize the Growing of Hemp (The New York Times says legislation to revive hemp passed in Hawaii this month and has been introduced in legislatures in North Dakota, Montana, Minnesota, Virginia, Vermont and Hawaii. In North Dakota, the Republican-controlled legislature also appears likely to enact laws promoting hemp. Until recently, the White House's Office of National Drug Control Policy asserted that making hemp legal would send the wrong message. But in late March its director, Gen. Barry McCaffrey, indicated in an interview that his opposition was softening. "If people believe that hemp fiber can be sold in the marketplace for a profit, and aren't actually trying to normalize the growing of marijuana around America, to the extent you want to grow hemp fiber we'd be glad to work with you," McCaffrey said. But as a profitable crop, he said, "I think it's going nowhere.")
Deals On Wheels (The Face, in Britain, prints a rare and excellent feature article portraying a day in the life of a messenger working for a marijuana delivery service in Manhattan. The article also explains how the underground marijuana economy works in New York, including an account of the origins and auspicious future of the market. Pot sellers such as "Dean," who makes $250,000 to $300,000 a year tax free, are indebted to New York Mayor Rudolph Giulani's recent crackdown on street dealers, which has expanded the pager trade, rapidly increasing the demand for deliveries to apartments and offices.)
Drug War Without A Plan - Needed: A Florida Drug Czar (A staff editorial in the Miami Herald calls for the creation of an office to coordinate and evaluate the efforts of "14 state agencies, thousands of private nonprofit social-service organizations and hundreds of police departments" waging the drug war. An audit showing the total budget of all those drug warriors or a cost-benefit analysis apparently doesn't interest the newspaper, however.)
Hemp Farmers High on Profits (The Winnipeg Free Press says 27 hemp farmers in Manitoba who planted approximately 1,700 of hemp grossed almost $500 an acre last year. This year, 125 Manitoba farmers are contracted to plant more than 12,000 acres, said Douglas Campbell, general manager of Consolidated Growers & Processors Canada. CGP hopes to build a $15 million, 25 employee hemp processing plant in Manitoba. There are no such facilities in Canada. All the crop is exported overseas or to the United States for processing.)
Joint Ventures (The online April issue of Saturday Night magazine, in Canada, features an excerpted account of a tour through the underground marijuana economy in Vancouver, British Columbia. Ten years ago, you could have symbolized the red-blooded British Columbia resource sector with a photograph of a commercial fisherman and a hog-fat chinook salmon. But now the salmon has turned into a bale of marijuana. Police estimate that the annual British Columbia crop is worth about $2 billion. Reform activists say it's larger, but nobody disputes that cannabis growing has become a mammoth resource industry in B.C., worth at least twice as much as all the wholesale fisheries revenues combined. Law enforcement authorities estimate they intercept only about one percent of exports to the United States.)
More Teenage Girls Using Illicit Drugs (The Sydney Morning Herald, in Australia, says a federal survey released yesterday, a week before Prime Minister John Howard is scheduled to unveil a new strategy in his war on drugs, shows 46 per cent of Australians admitted last year to having used illicit drugs - up from 39.3 per cent in 1995. More than half of teenage girls, 51.6 per cent, said they had used illicit drugs, up from 33.5 per cent in 1995. That compares with a rate for teenage boys of 50.6 per cent, up only marginally from 50.3 three years previously. Cannabis use among girls rose from 24.4 per cent to 44.8 per cent, while for teenage boys a small decrease was reported, from 44.7 per cent to 44.5 per cent. In fact, the survey shows women of all ages are using cannabis more. Even for those older than 60, the proportion using the drug climbed from 0.9 per cent to 4.3 per cent. For all age groups of women, the rise was from 24.4 to 35.1 per cent, compared to an increase among all men from 37.7 per cent to 43.7 per cent.)
Japan Police Seize 210 Kg Of Stimulants (According to Reuters, Japanese police on Thursday seized 462 pounds of a supposedly controlled substance they did not identify, the fourth largest haul of illegal drugs in the country's history, estimated to have a street value of $109 million. The haul brings the quantity of confiscated drugs this year to 650 kilograms, already surpassing the total for all of 1998.)
U.S. Exports Zero Tolerance (A translation of an article from Le Monde Diplomatique by Loic Wacquant analyzes the dubious punitive social policies that have evolved in the United States during the past two decades and are now being exported to Western Europe, including France.)
Weekly Action Report on Drug Policies, Year 5, No. 13 (A summary of European and international drug policy news, from CORA, in Italy)
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