1999 News
About Cannabis and Drug Policy
April 9-15

Friday, April 9, 1999:
• Portland-area police chiefs denounce racist auto stops (The Oregonian says Oregon State Police, 23 Portland-area police departments and police unions plan to send a unified message today that they will not tolerate police actions based on a person's race. The cops plan to sign a resolution that takes a strong stand against "race-based profiling." Spencer "Mike" Neal, a Portland attorney who specializes in police misconduct cases, dismissed the resolution as politics. "Talk is cheap," said Neal, who as a Filipino American has experienced racially motivated police stops, he said. "When I start seeing people being disciplined for those things, then I'll believe it.")
• Medical Marijuana Users Licensed (An Associated Press article in the Las Vegas Sun examines the policies being implemented by Mel Brown, the police chief in Arcata, California, with the help of a community task force. Brown personally issues photo identification cards bearing his signature to medical marijuana patients after confirming their doctor's recommendation. So far, he has issued about 100 "stay out of jail" cards. Arcata is in Mendocino County, where District Attorney Norman Vroman plans to announce a similar ID card system next month.)
• Hemp-Ventura (An Associated Press article excerpted from the Minneapolis Star-Tribune says that despite the support of Minnesota Governor Jesse Ventura, who was recently featured on the cover of Hemp Times, an industrial hemp bill that had been approved by the state Senate died in committee after it was sent to the House.)
• Reno calls on police to deal with 'profiling' incidents (An LA Times-Washington Post news service article in the Oregonian says U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno made an impassioned plea at her weekly news briefing Thursday, asking local police and other law enforcement officials to deal with citizen complaints about searches based on "racial profiles." A proposal to require a national study of why police stop and search drivers died in Congress last year but will be taken up again.)
• Marijuana smell insufficient reason for arrest: Court (The Toronto Star says Ontario's highest court ruled yesterday in the case of Peter Polashek that police do not have an automatic right to arrest someone for suspected drug possession based on the smell of marijuana coming from a vehicle. In Polashek's case, the officer couldn't say whether the smell of burned or unburned marijuana was coming from the car. Polashek's lawyer, Alan Young, said such incidents give rise to questions about whether police ever fabricate claims of smelling drugs as an excuse for a fishing expedition. Mr. Justice Marc Rosenberg, writing for a unanimous three-judge court, said "The sense of smell is highly subjective and to authorize an arrest solely on that basis puts an unreviewable discretion in the hands of the officer.")
• Bid For Zero Tolerance In Schools Doomed (The Age, in Melbourne, says most state and territory leaders at today's Premiers' Conference are expected to oppose Australian Prime Minister John Howard's push for a policy of zero tolerance towards drug users in schools.)
• ME Sufferer Grew 'Pot' To Ease Pain (The Daily Telegraph, in Britain, says Candace Kelly, a 51-year-old woman in Halwell, Devon, had her sentence for growing marijuana suspended because she used it medicinally to treat a form of chronic fatigue syndrome.)
• The Week Online with DRCNet, Issue No. 86 (The Drug Reform Coordination Network's original online drug policy newsmagazine includes - Driving while non-white; Search and seizure protections weakened; 53-year-old grandmother robbed, beaten while trying to buy cannabis for her arthritis; California's Y2K+1 crisis; Illinois bill criminalizes marijuana information on the internet; Report: Crises of the anti-drug effort, 1999; New Jersey Harm Reduction Coalition - action alert; Leaders of South American indigenous peoples challenge U.S. ayahuasca patent; Exhibit: "Human Rights and the Drug War" in Virginia; Gore 2000 or Gore 1984?; Lies, damn lies and statistics; Cato Forums: Jesse Ventura, prosecutorial abuse, forfeiture reform; Editorial: There oughta be a law: protecting the masses from themselves)
• DrugSense Weekly, No. 93 (The original summary of drug policy news from DrugSense opens with the weekly Feature Article, a Statement to the U.N. Commission on Narcotic Drugs, in Vienna, by Andria Efthimiou-Mordaunt. The Weekly News in Review features several articles on Drug War Policy, including - U.S. targets drugs, violence in schools, crime; Federal officials forge anti-drug partnership with Maryland, Oregon; General sends anti-drug message to kids; and, Drug war without a plan. Articles about Law Enforcement & Prisons include - Drug seizure money bypassing schools; Drug dealers' property on auction block; Providence police lack records on seized cars; We're all prisoners of our incarceration policies; and an editorial, Enough prisons? Pieces about Cannabis & Hemp include - When the means clash with the ends; The smoke clears: marijuana can be medicinal, but the smoke is not; and, Farmers lobby to legalize the growing of hemp. International News includes - Peruvian police seize two tons of cocaine; Thai villagers killed in apparent drugs dispute; Tories demand life sentences to combat drugs menace; 'Too pure' heroin claims 14 lives; Australia: More teenage girls using illicit drugs; and an Australian editorial: The PM must listen on drugs. Two items in the weekly Hot Off The 'Net note DrugSense is now providing web services for MarijuanaNews.com; and how Peter McWilliams' "Online Mall" helps support his case. The Tip of the Week provides a URL for the War on Drugs Clock, a good way to make a quick point. The Fact of the Week documents that the IOM Report is not new information with an excerpt from the 1972 Shafer Commission report. The Quote of the Week cites Albert Einstein.)
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  Saturday, April 10, 1999:

• After 11 years, man has "LSD" tattoo removed from forehead - free (The Associated Press says that thanks to a White Bird counselor, a dermatologist and a PeaceHealth hospital policy of community service, Curtis Surpless of Eugene is getting rid of the tattoo he received at the age of 16. Surpless started using hallucinogenic mushrooms when he was 9 and is currently in rehab, but the tattoo drew tons of unwanted attention and derision. Cops searched him. Workers at McDonald's and Greyhound refused to serve him. Even a Eugene Mission employee checked with a superior before helping him when he arrived in March.)
• San Mateo County Wants Pot Study (The San Francisco Examiner recounts the recent news about San Mateo County, just south of San Francisco, seeking permission from the federal government to carry out its own research to document the efficacy of medical marijuana.)
• Federalizing Crime (A staff editorial in the Houston Chronicle praises the American Bar Association's recent report on the trend in Washington, D.C., to federalize local crime problems. While 95 percent of all crime is prosecuted by the states and only 5 percent or less by the federal government, federalization has led to an unhealthy concentration of policing power at the federal level, clogged the dockets of federal courts and created disparate sentences for similarly accused defendants. Congress and President Clinton should stop the inappropriate federalization of criminal activities and let states combat local crime.)
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  Sunday, April 11, 1999:

• Case should give Ninth Amendment new life (An op-ed in the Oregonian by Randy E. Barnett, a former prosecutor and Boston University law professor, says the Oakland Cannabis Buyers' Cooperative deserves to win its appeal Tuesday to the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco. Oakland's brief argues that the people have reserved the power to enact popular initiatives. When the people pass an initiative protecting a particular liberty, judges should respect this unenumerated liberty as they would an enumerated right. In other words, the initiative process enables the voters of each state to decide themselves if a liberty is fundamental, rather than leave that decision solely to judges. While popular initiatives that restrict personal or economic liberties should be given the same constitutional scrutiny as any other state law, the people who approved medical marijuana ballot measures in California, Alaska, Arizona, Nevada, Oregon and Washington decided to protect a liberty.)
• Harsh sentences chop crime (A letter to the editor of the Oregonian reveals the ignorance of a man who is unfamiliar with the arrest rates for marijuana offenses and other basic aspects of the history of drug prohibition in America.)
• Cigarette-maker knew of danger (Another letter to the editor of the Oregonian defends the recent decision of a Portland jury to award a record $80.3 million to the family of a dead former smoker. Despite tort law, which clearly holds smokers personally responsible for the risks they take, the author contends Philip Morris also breached its responsibilities, negating Jesse Williams' responsibility and making the company - in reality, current tobacco consumers - liable for damages. The author claims "cigarettes are the only consumer product that, when used exactly as intended by the manufacturer, addicts, sickens and kills," which would seem to ignore substances such as alcohol and a number of FDA-approved and doctor-prescribed medicines.)
• Movement On 215 - In the Courts and the Capitals, the Case is Made for Medical Marijuana (Orange County Register columnist Alan W. Bock examines the federal and state developments that are converging in ways that could lead to dramatic break-throughs in the medical marijuana movement. On the federal front, the Institute of Medicine Report released March 17 shows that marijuana shouldn't remain a Schedule 1 controlled substance. On the state front, California Attorney General Bill Lockyer was elected to enforce California law. Barry McCaffrey and Janet Reno are appointed federal officials attempting to nullify a law put into place by the people of California. Lockyer's loyalty should be to the people who elected him and voted for Prop. 215. The federal government had every opportunity to challenge Prop. 215 in court. It chose not to do so. To try to nullify it by administrative fiat is despicable. Bock also reviews several pending court cases that could lead to reform, including Jon Gettman's rescheduling petition.)
• The Politics of Punishment (Sacramento Bee columnist Dan Walters writes in the Oakland Tribune that the California Senate Public Safety Committee on Tuesday approved state Senator Tom Hayden's bill to reform California's "three strikes" mandatory-minimum sentencing law by requiring the third offense to be a violent or serious one. The committee also approved another bill to study the "three strikes" law. But the Assembly Public Safety Committee cleared a $4.1 billion bond issue to build six more state prisons. The debate continues.)
• Principal Charged In Cocaine Sales (The Chicago Tribune says Delores Hill, 53, a principal known for tough words about drug abuse, has been charged with running a cocaine ring at the Tabernacle Church of God Elementary School in Brooklyn, New York. Authorities shut down the private, 160-student school when Hill was arrested along with the school nurse, a janitor and another worker after she allegedly sold cocaine to an undercover policewoman on school grounds.)
• Losing Battle To Revise Drug Law (Newsday, in New York, says reformers' campaign to soften the state's 1973 Rockefeller mandatory-minimum drug laws is stymied by several political factors. According to state lawmakers, those include the continuing opposition of Senate Republicans intent on building prisons; a change in Governor Pataki's position that some believe is linked to his national ambitions; and the reluctance of top Democrats to tackle an issue they say was used as recently as last year to label them as soft on crime. It doesn't matter that a statewide poll released last month showed that 69 percent of New Yorkers favored giving judges sentencing discretion.)
• Earth to Supreme Court: Woman's Purse More Than a Container (Marianne Means, a columnist for Hearst Newspapers, writes in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer about the U.S. Supreme Court's recent decision giving police even greater latitude in searching motorists. Men carry billfolds to hold money and credit cards, usually in those pockets the court is protecting. But women carry purses in order to keep with them at all times their most intimate possessions. The "Supremes" do not realize the mischief they are creating here. No self-respecting woman is likely to hand over the secrets of her purse to police snoops without a fight. We have not heard the last of this issue.)
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  Monday, April 12, 1999:

• Oregon Drug Deaths More Than Double In First Quarter Of 1999 (According to the Associated Press, the state Medical Examiner's office said Monday that 80 people died of "drug"-related causes, compared to 39 during the same period last year. However, as usual, the office didn't mention that nobody died from marijuana. And, as usual, the Medical Examiner didn't count the deaths from legal drugs such as tobacco, alcohol and pharmaceutical medicines - more than 100 times the deaths from illegal substances. Heroin again was the leading killer, playing a role in 70 deaths. Cocaine figured in 20 deaths. Last year, there were 235 drug-related deaths, 179 of them involving heroin.)
• House considers bill to bar communities from banning smoking in bars (The Associated Press says the Oregon House of Representatives' Commerce Committee held a hearing Monday on a bill to strip local governments' authority to prohibit smokers from lighting up in bars and taverns. HB 2806 is a response to a successful campaign by prohibitionists in Corvallis, the first Oregon city to ban smoking in all enclosed public places. Twice in the past two years, Corvallis city councilors and voters have upheld the decision. Under HB 2806, Corvallis could keep its ban, but other cities would be prevented from instituting their own drug policies.)
• Wheeler County officers seize mobile methamphetamine lab (The Oregonian notes the suspicions of a police officer in the rural north-central Oregon county - where approximately 1,600 residents are spread thinly over 1,713 square miles - were first raised because "strangers tend to be noticed.")
• Sacramento County Dismisses Cultivation Charges! (A forwarded e-mail message says charges were dropped against medical marijuana patient Robert DeArkland regarding 13 plants. The dismissal is thought to be the first such act of compliance by the county with the California Compassionate Use Act of 1996.)
• Cannabis Conundrum (The San Diego Union Tribune recaps the prosecution of medical-marijuana patient/activist Steve Kubby and his wife, Michele, to illustrate the failure to implement Proposition 215 in California. In the vacuum created by the failure of two successive attorneys general to defend the law, local district attorneys' varying interpretations mean some prosecutors file charges against people with just a few plants while others, such as the Kubbys, claim they need hundreds of plants for their own use.)
• AIDS Activist Rathbun Dies (The Associated Press says "Brownie Mary" Rathbun, the grandmotherly activist whose arrests for distributing pot brownies to AIDS patients built momentum for the medicinal marijuana movement, has died at 77 in San Francisco.)
• Cops Allege Drive-Through Drug Sales (A Reuters article in the San Jose Mercury News says Sadik Sufi, 26, the night manager of a Burger King in Novato, California, was arrested early Friday for allegedly using the drive-through window to sell cocaine.)
• Study Finds Link Between Incarceration, Prior Abuse (According to the Washington Post, a report made public yesterday by the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics said that almost half the women and a tenth of the men in state and federal prisons and local jails reported prior physical or sexual abuse. Among those in state prison systems, 16 percent of male inmates and 57 percent of female inmates reported prior abuse. A third of the female inmates in state prisons said they had been raped before their incarceration. Much of the abuse occurred when the future prison inmates were children.)
• Former Cop In Court (The North Shore News, in British Columbia, says Scott Randall Simpson, a 12-year veteran of the North Vancouver RCMP, appeared in court on Wednesday to face six marijuana trafficking charges. Simpson, 38, is also charged with possessing marijuana, psilocybin, hashish and stealing a "cobra fashioned smoking pipe.")
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  Tuesday, April 13, 1999:

• Drug death rate doubles in Oregon (The Oregonian notes yesterday's news about the 80 drug-related deaths recorded in the state during the first three months of the year, compared with 39 during the same period in 1998. Seventy deaths involved heroin, up from 27 a year ago. The newspaper continues to perpetuate the heroin "overdose" myth exposed more than two decades ago by the Consumers Union, blaming the deaths on increasing purity rather than toxic contaminants, or concurrent use of alcohol.)
• Bill wouldn't let local governments prohibit smoking in bars (The Associated Press says the Oregon House of Representatives' Commerce Committee heard testimony Monday on HB 2806, which would allow Corvallis to continue to be the only city in the state with its own drug policy.)
• Marijuana club challenges closure, wants jury trials (The Associated Press says lawyers for the Oakland Cannabis Buyers' Cooperative on Tuesday presented oral arguments for the club's appeal to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco. The cooperative said its forced closure last October by U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer violated the rights of its 2,000 patient-members, who should have been allowed to argue their medical necessity. The club also said the closure failed to recognize the legal effect of the city of Oakland's involvement in the club's operations. AP doesn't say when a ruling is due.)
• Mary Jane Rathbun, 77 (The Associated Press obituary for "Brownie Mary," the San Francisco activist, says her arrests for distributing marijuana brownies to AIDS patients built momentum for the medical marijuana movement.)
• 'Brownie Mary' Gave Pot To Dying AIDS Patients (The Reuters version in the Toronto Star quotes Dennis Peron saying, "Before it was a cliche, Brownie Mary was compassionate. She was willing to go to jail for her kids.")
• Activist Whose Pot Brownies Fueled Medicinal-Marijuana Push (The Chicago Tribune obituary)
• Brownie Mary in the San Francisco Chronicle (A list subscriber forwards relevant excerpts from Scott Ostler's column.)
• Existing Law Goes Bit Too Far (A staff editorial in the San Luis Obispo County Telegram-Tribune endorses California state senator Tom Hayden's bill to reform the state's "three strikes" law. In one case, a young man was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison for serving as a lookout for a drug deal. The law would work better if it were tempered - in certain situations - not with mercy, but with fairness.)
• 'Black Tar' Grimly Covers S.F. Streets (The San Francisco Chronicle previews Steven Okazaki's "Black Tar Heroin: The Dark End of the Street," a documentary premiering tomorrow on cable television as part of HBO's "America Undercover" series. The documentary follows the lives of five bruised and ailing San Francisco junkies as they alternately try to support their habits and kick them. The film director says he's frustrated by the city's lack of counseling and rehab programs. "The addict population has gotten much younger: The average age 10 years ago was 27; now it's 19 to 20," he says. "The mayor and the city government people should be ashamed. They're part of the problem.")
• Voices Of Our Time: Joseph D. McNamara (The San Jose Mercury News features the former cop and veteran drug-war critic saying, "I think that improved Internet communication in the long run is more likely to spread human freedom and prosperity, provided governments don't suppress it.")
• Feds To Join Local War On Drugs (The Standard-Times, in New Bedford, Massachusetts, says the White House drug czar, General Barry McCaffrey, has agreed to send a team of federal drug experts to New Bedford to help assess needs and to develop a drug-fighting strategy. Gen. McCaffrey's three paragraph letter to Mayor Frederick M. Kalisz Jr. does not specify when the team will arrive, nor what exactly it will do.)
• Probation Officer Sentenced To Prison (The Tampa Tribune says Debra D. Leeks, a 13-year veteran Polk County probation officer, was sentenced to 30 months in prison Monday for her role in shaking down a cocaine dealer under her supervision. Leeks pleaded guilty in December to conspiring to commit extortion, conspiring to obstruct justice, lying to federal agents and tampering with a witness. But Monday, appearing before U.S. District Judge Henry Lee Adams Jr., the resident of Lake Wales, Florida, declared her innocence.)
• Jury Clears Lawyers In Federal Case (The Tampa Tribune says the federal jury in Tampa, Florida, acquitted Paul D. Lazarus of Miami and Howard Freidin of Fort Myers, who were charged with conspiring to get an illegal sentence reduction for Daniel Hostetter, a cocaine dealer.)
• Strike A Balance In The Marijuana Debate (An op-ed in the Standard-Times, in New Bedford, Massachusetts, by John A. Benson Jr. and Stanley J. Watson Jr., the co-principal investigators of the Institute of Medicine's March 17 report on medical marijuana, reiterates the study's conclusions without clarifying its contradictions, or its failure to realistically "weigh the reality of this crude drug-delivery system against the benefits it might bestow." Nor do they acknowledge that the purported "risks" of smoking marijuana are theoretical rather than epidemiological. Instead, Benson and Watson say "Our review of the science behind marijuana and cannabinoids convinces us that the debate so far has been miscast. Rather than focusing on drug control policy, the medical marijuana debate should really be about the promise of future drug development." Like countless patients suffering right now give a hoot about helping pharmaceutical companies' bottom line.)
• Media Alert: "Sex, Drugs and Consenting Adults" Rebroadcast this Thursday, 4/15 (A bulletin from the Drug Policy Foundation, in Washington, D.C., says ABC is rebroadcasting last May's report by John Stossel on consensual crime in America. Check local listings for the time.)
• Another '60 Minutes' Apology on a Drug Smuggling Story (The Washington Post follows up on CBS' retraction of a story implying corruption on the part of Rudy Camacho, the San Diego district director of the U.S. Customs Service.)
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  Wednesday, April 14, 1999:

• Fundamentally Flawed (A letter to the editor of Willamette Week, in Portland, criticizes the task force created by Oregon Attorney General Hardy Myers that has proposed legislation to coerce patients with severe mental illnesses to take psychiatric drugs. The only way the mental-health system knows how to "treat" people is with powerful drugs. Many mental-health clients reject these drugs not because of "side effects" but because of real effects that can be painful, permanently disfiguring or even result in death.)
• Laws separate euthanasia and assisted suicide (The Oregonian vies with the Catholic Sentinel for right-to-life subscribers.)
• Brownie Mary's Legacy (A staff editorial in the San Francisco Chronicle eulogizes "Brownie Mary" Rathbun, the grandmotherly volunteer at San Francisco General Hospital whose marijuana-laced brownies helped launch the medical-marijuana movement. It isn't always the job of society's critics to find the exact solutions to painful problems. Raising the issue and marching forward can be enough. It would be a fitting legacy if a workable solution could be found to passing out Brownie Mary's goods to those who need it.)
• Driving While White (Alexander Cockburn's column in the Anderson Valley Advertiser, in California, summarizes an article in this month's Esquire magazine about "Operation Pipeline," by Gary Webb. According to Webb, Operation Pipeline takes us beyond the basic "driving while black" scenarios that presume that cops pull over people merely because they are black or brown and show that millions and millions of federal DEA dollars and training sessions by the thousand have sent cops out on the roads to look for the trace signs that spell "drug carrier." Police commands in 48 states now participate in Pipeline in some fashion.)
• State Spending Big Bucks To Tell Us What To Do (The San Francisco Examiner says more than ever before, the government wants to change the way you think. Public officials are spending billions on new campaigns, even buying expensive ads on prime-time television. It's called social marketing - part behavioral science, part propaganda, part Madison Avenue - and it has become the most popular political antidote to society's many shortfalls. California alone has spent $220 million on such propaganda since 1997. Federal anti-drug and anti-tobacco campaigns have $2.45 billion budgeted for advertising over the next five years. "The bottom line is it's all about politics," said Bob Belinoff, a sort of social marketing guru from New Mexico who has a Web site on the subject, www.mkt4change.com. "The people who are putting this stuff on the air are all politicians elected because of television.")
• Reefer Madness in Illinois (The online version of Wired magazine notes legislation drafted by Bill Mitchell, a Republican state representative, would make it a Class A misdemeanor to "transmit information by the Internet about a controlled substance knowing that the information will be used in furtherance of illegal activity." The bill passed the state house of representatives last week and was presented to a state senate committee on Wednesday.)
• Marijuana Legislation Raises Free-speech Concerns (The Associated Press version)
• Lawmakers: Marijuana Is A Dangerous And Addictive Drug (UPI says the New Hampshire House of Representatives voted "overwhelmingly" today to reject a bill sponsored by Tim Robertson of Keene that would have decriminalized possession of less than an ounce of marijuana.)
• U-Conn Star El-Amin Faces A Drug Charge (The Philadelphia Inquirer says Khalid El-Amin, who last month helped the University of Connecticut win its first national basketball championship, was arrested in Hartford yesterday and charged with possession of less than four ounces of marijuana. Star junior Richard Hamilton was with El-Amin, but was not charged. Members of the Statewide Narcotics Task Force also impounded the late-model red Cadillac the players were in.)
• Ann Landers: U.S. Approach To Drug Use Inhumane (A letter to the syndicated advice columnist, in the Washington Post, applauds her proposal last January to reduce the harm caused by marijuana laws.)
• Ancient Treatment Helps Fight Addictions (The Washington Post examines the increasing use of acupuncture as a treatment for people dependent on alcohol, nicotine, opiates and cocaine. The only place in Prince George's County that offers it, the Underground Railroad, is a private "community center for wellness and recovery" that opened two months ago in Suitland. Alaine Duncan of Hyattsville, a licensed acupuncturist, hopes to expand the center into a state-supported operation, similar to acupuncture detox programs in Baltimore and Portland, Oregon. The 1997 National Institutes of Health Consensus Conference on Acupuncture approved it for the treatment of various pains and ailments, including such things as tennis elbow, vomiting and dental pain.)
• Petition: Raise Your Voice to Congress Today for HEA Reform (A bulletin from the Drug Reform Coordination Network asks you to take two short minutes to raise your voice to Congress asking for a repeal of the provision in the Higher Education Act of 1998 that delays or denies all federal financial aid for any drug conviction, no matter how minor - including marijuana possession.)
• Canadian House of Commons debates medical marijuana (The Media Awareness Project provides a URL to a lengthy transcript of today's debate.)
• Green Light For USA To Operate From Curacao And Aruba (Jane's Defence Weekly says that last week, Dutch and U.S. government officials reached an agreement to station U.S. counter-drug forces in the Caribbean at Hato Airfield on the Dutch Antilles island of Curacao and Reina Beatrix on Aruba following the closure of U.S. bases in Panama.)
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  Thursday, April 15, 1999:

• NORML Weekly Press Release (NORML Foundation Family Custody Project victorious in New Jersey parenting rights case; Nevada decriminalization legislation clears first hurdle; Hawaii medical marijuana resolutions move forward in senate; U.K. researchers to use DNA technology in drug testing, tracking marijuana; New Hampshire lawmakers say no to marijuana decriminalization measure, halt further debate until 2001.)
• Appeals Court OKs city's restrictions on suspects (The Oregonian says a three-judge panel from the Oregon Court of Appeals issued a ruling Wednesday allowing Portland police to resume handing out exclusion orders that prohibit people charged with drug or prostitution offenses from going into designated parts of the city. A 1997 lower court ruling said that issuing a temporary exclusion order and prosecuting someone for the same drug arrest violated the constitutional ban on double jeopardy.)
• Police volunteer indicted in Portland bank robbery (According to the Oregonian, Louie Lira Jr., who was supposedly excluded from the United States altogether after drug and robbery convictions in California led him to be banished to his native Mexico, was indicted Wednesday by a federal grand jury in Portland. The longtime gang outreach worker and volunteer with the Portland Police Bureau faces charges of armed bank robbery and use of a firearm in the commission of a felony for monitoring a police scanner and giving suspects details that allowed them to escape.)
• State group offers proposals to reduce underage drinking (According to the Oregonian, yet another closed committee of self-designated experts appointed by Oregon Gov. John "Prisons" Kitzhaber, this one charged with examining the problem of alcohol use by minors, issued vague recommendations Wednesday that appear to be destined to lead to yet another hugely expensive and useless lawmaking bureaucracy. Underage alcohol use has dropped in recent years.)
• State says free beer at strip club a violation (According to the Oregonian, Dylan Salts, the manager of Scores cabaret in Salem, said he's ready to resume a recent tavern promotion offering two free beers for customers age 21 and over, even though Scores has no license to serve alcohol from the Oregon Liquor Control Commission. Scores argues that the club doesn't need a license if it gives away the booze instead of selling it.)
• Pot, Police, And Prostitutes (Seattle Weekly sex columnist Cherry Wong compares and contrasts pot and prostitution policies in America and the Netherlands. People make up their own minds about certain vices with or without the law on their side. By keeping prostitution illegal in most of this country, it's giving the message that Americans don't have the individual common sense to choose what's right or wrong for them. Ditto for the pot.)
• Ex-Candidate Faces Trial in Medical Marijuana Case (The Los Angeles Times examines the prosecution of medical marijuana patient/activist Steve Kubby in the context of Proposition 215's history and prospects. Prosecutors aren't even debating Kubby's tale of herbal success. Instead, they contend the number of plants cultivated by Kubby and his 33-year-old wife, Michele, were too many for personal medical use. "If the jury feels 265 plants is sufficient for medical use, then justice is done," said Christopher Cattran, a Placer County deputy district attorney. "If they decide 265 plants is too much, then justice is done, too." The case is set for trial May 18 in Auburn. Charles Lepp, a 46-year-old Vietnam War veteran who uses pot for a variety of ailments, including chronic back pain, post-traumatic stress disorder and manic depression, was acquitted in December in Lake County of charges that he grew 131 marijuana plants for sale.)
• Obituary - 'Brownie Mary' (The San Francisco Examiner says a candlelight vigil in memory of Mary Jane "Brownie Mary" Rathbun will be held in the Castro District Saturday night. A second memorial is being planned for May 1 at Laguna Honda Hospital.)
• Council Moves to Repeal Drug Tests for Members (The Los Angeles Times says the city council in South El Monte, California, voted 4-1 Tuesday to take the first step toward repealing "voluntary" random drug tests for its members.)
• Teacher Held on Charges of Shipping Drugs (The Los Angeles Times says William D. Hubbell, a junior high school teacher in Burbank and the son of a local school board member, was arrested Wednesday on suspicion of trafficking in cocaine after prohibition agents observed him shipping a box with $80,000 worth of cocaine to Hawaii.)
• Marijuana Lesser Of Two Evils? (The Summit Daily News, in Colorado, can't believe that a U.S. Department of Transportation study conducted by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration concluded drunk drivers pose a far greater threat than drivers who had smoked marijuana. The study shows marijuana's adverse effect on drivers is "relatively small" compared to alcohol and even some medicinal drugs. "Marijuana impairment represents a real, but secondary, safety risk. THC is not a profoundly impairing drug. Of the many psychotropic drugs, licit and illicit, that are available and used by people who subsequently drive, marijuana may well be among the least harmful.")
• Hemp Help - Two Area Republicans Are Among The Backers (The Capital Times, in Madison, Wisconsin, says two local Republicans, state representative Eugene Hahn, of Cambria, and state senator Dale Schultz, of Richland Center, are among the backers of a resolution calling on Congress to legalize the commercial production of industrial hemp.)
• 2 Correction Officers To Serve Time (UPI says Rafael Lopez and Victor Cabrera, two former New York City jail guards, were sentenced to 2 to 6 years for attempting to smuggle drugs into the Rikers Island jail. Both men were trapped in sting operations.)
• Quality of Life Policing: Giuliani Cop System Doesn't Work (An op-ed in Newsday, in New York, by Joseph D. McNamara, a former New York police officer, says that when Amadou Diallo, an innocent man, died in a hail of 41 bullets, so did quality-of-life policing, an errant style of law enforcement promulgated by Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and the two police commissioners he appointed, William Bratton and Howard Safir, who have been exporting it to other cities.)
• Fatal Error Shouldn't Undo The Good Done In New York (Columnist Mona Charen writes in the Daily Herald, in Arlington Heights, Illinois, that most New Yorkers are delighted with the change Mayor Giuliani has wrought.)
• Strawberry Arrested For Drugs, Solicitation (UPI says Darryl Strawberry, the baseball player for the New York Yankees, was busted Wednesday in Tampa, Florida, with three-tenths of a gram of cocaine after offering an undercover policewoman $50 for sex.)
• Study Slams Corruption On Border (According to the Houston Chronicle, a yearlong study by the General Accounting Office found that drug interdiction efforts in Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California are compromised by federal agents and other field staff on the payrolls of Mexican drug cartels.)
• Fairfax Teacher Suspended After Arrest On Drug Charge In D.C. (The Washington Post says Fred Benevento, a math teacher at Fairfax High School in Virginia and former head football coach at Langley High School, has been suspended without pay due to his arrest March 19 for possessing cocaine with intent to distribute. District of Columbia police conducting a stakeout said they found 13 bags of crack in his car. Benevento told police that the bags of cocaine "came flying through his open window" and that he "was just looking at them when the police officers arrived." Police found $136 on the man who allegedly sold Benevento the 13 bags.)
• Students Face Drug Charges (UPI says an unspecified number of Lake Brantley High School kids were among 32 people busted yesterday in Longwood, Florida, for selling marijuana and cocaine.)
• City Settles Firefighter's Suit In Controversial Drug Case (The Charlotte Observer says lawyers for Karen Goff, a former firefighter, and the city of Gastonia, North Carolina, agreed to a $30,000 settlement Tuesday arising from a search of Goff's locker that supposedly yielded cocaine. Prosecutors dropped charges after tests by the State Bureau of Investigation showed the substance to be inositol, an over-the-counter nutritional supplement. Then Goff filed suit, so the city did more tests and found traces of cocaine in the nutritional supplement. A laboratory worker for the city also said inositol is commonly used to dilute cocaine. Still more tests by a laboratory chosen by Goff's lawyers found no cocaine at all.)
• Firefighter's Back After Fine For Pot (The Edmonton Sun, in Alberta, says Dean Troyer, an Edmonton firefighter who was fined $2,500 after being convicted of growing medical marijuana, is back on the job. "The department is satisfied that the courts have dealt with this matter and it doesn't affect his job performance," said Jean Kirkman, a fire department spokesman.)
• US Company To Build 2 Plants For Hemp Processing In Canada (According to the Journal of Commerce, in the United States, Douglas Campbell, the president of the Canadian division of Consolidated Growers and Processors, says CGP plans to build two hemp-processing plants by 2001 in Manitoba.)
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