1999 News
About Cannabis and Drug Policy
June 4-10

Friday, June 4, 1999:
• Denying personal visits inhumane (A letter to the editor of the Oregonian protests plans to allow video-only visits with inmates at Oregon's newest prison, Two Rivers Correctional Institution, under construction in Umatilla.)
• Robert Galambos (A list subscriber notes the California medical-marijuana patient has been sentenced to nine months in prison, but is free pending his appeal.)
• Ruling Helps The State Keep Seized Property (According to the Wisconsin State Journal, the state Supreme Court ruled 4-3 Thursday that prosecutors don't have to comply with state laws requiring them to file forfeiture actions to keep any property they believe was acquired through crime. Instead, the court said suspects are the ones who have to file a lawsuit to get their property back. The decision came in the case of Leonard L. Jones, whose $1,783 was seized by police because it was found with a scale and "items used to smoke crack cocaine.")
• Officers Halt Vehicles, Check For Drugs On I-94 (The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, in Wisconsin, says a "drug checkpoint" on Interstate 94 in southern Milwaukee County singled out northbound vehicles for searches for several hours Thursday. "Drug check point ahead . . . traffic may slow," an electronic message board near W. College Ave. warned motorists approaching the checkpoint zone for much of the afternoon. A lieutenant from one southeastern Wisconsin sheriff's department said: "We're looking for cars that obviously fit a profile, and we're looking to see if we can find anyone" with drugs. Law enforcement officials were extremely short on specifics.)
• Felon's Firearms Conviction Is Overturned (The Providence Journal-Bulletin, in Rhode Island, says Robert A. Vigeant, a convicted felon with reputed ties to organized crime - and the son of Providence City Councilor Josephine Joan DiRuzzo - may soon be a free man after serving just 13 months of a 19-year sentence in federal prison. The federal appeals court in Boston tossed out Vigeant's conviction last month for being a felon in possession of a firearm, chastening the government for obtaining a warrant to search Vigeant's house in Narragansett without probable cause as part of a probe into a drug and money-laundering ring.)
• Question and remarks from a New York POW (A list subscriber recounts a visit today to the Bedford Hills Women's Maximum Security Housing Project, in New York, to meet Jan Warren, who has served 12 years of a 15-years-to-life sentence for selling 7 ounces of cocaine in a police sting. Most of the women there have the dreaded "to life" tacked on their sentences. The problem is that New York state is not releasing most prisoners who have served their mininum number of years. Inmates are worried that the reason may be a federal government mandate that federal funds used for state prisons require state inmates to serve seven eighths of their maximum sentence.)
• Yes, Ease Drug Laws (A letter to the editor of Newsday, in New York, from John F. Dunne, says when he was a member of the New York State Senate in 1973, he supported the enactment of the Rockefeller mandatory-minimum drug laws. His "unhappy" conclusion, after the hard experience of the last quarter century, is that those measures have failed to achieve their goals. Instead, they have handcuffed judges, dangerously crowded prisons, and denied sufficient drug treatment alternatives to nonviolent addicted offenders.)
• Court upholds medical marijuana defense (The Miami Herald recaps yesterday's news about the Florida Supreme Court re-affirming the state's medical necessity defense for medical marijuana patients. Despite the ruling, the state attorney general's office believes the legislature will try to close what the newspaper calls a "loophole" and outlaw the common-law defense. Such a move would likely get a warm reception from Gov. Jeb Bush.)
• Jacksonville, Fla-Based Drug-Screening Firm Sees Rapid Growth (The Florida Times-Union says Medical Express Corp. has grown about 800 percent in the past four years and is expected to generate about $2 million in sales this year, $400,000 more than last year. Nationally, drug testing is big business.)
• Join the Children's Postcard Campaign (Activists from Family Watch and the November Coalition invite you to donate $8 for 14 full-color postcards designed to raise political awareness about the 1.7 million parents imprisoned for drug-related offenses, an injustice that has created a generation of drug war orphans.)
• Cannabis compassion club surfaces (The Nelson Daily News, in British Columbia, says that with the Canadian government currently looking into the medical use of marijuana, the Nelson Cannabis Compassion Club has decided to go public and is holding a potluck and information night on Monday.)
• Healing Dope (The Calgary Herald sympathetically describes the Universal Compassion Club, a local medical marijuana buyers' group founded in January by Grant Krieger. Krieger was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 1978, and he has been distributing marijuana to the ill for five years now, after seeing how it relieved his own pain. He first turned to pot in 1994, after 16 frustrating years of unsuccessful treatments led Krieger to attempt suicide. Not being able to walk or control his own bowel movements pushed him one night to swallow 40 Demerol and 30 sleeping pills. "They wouldn't give me anything after that" for pain.)
• The Week Online with DRCNet, Issue No. 93 (The Drug Reform Coordination Network's drug policy newsmagazine features original articles such as - Arrest the racism: ACLU report on racial profiling in America; Australian Medical Association endorses heroin prescription trial; Adding alcohol to Partnership ads?; Supreme Court establishes due process protections for defendants accused of operating a continuing criminal enterprise; Canada's House declares support for medical marijuana; Children And The Drug War postcard campaign; Newsbriefs; and an editorial by Adam J. Smith - Sells like teen spirits.)
• DrugSense Weekly, No. 100 (The original summary of drug policy news from DrugSense opens with the weekly Feature Article - How to be a MAP NewsHawk, by Richard Lake of the Media Awareness Project. The Weekly News in Review features several articles about Drug Policy, including - 'Zero tolerance' comes up short; Opposition to plan to test welfare applicants for drugs; Putting alcohol in ads on drugs is resisted; The heroin prescribing debate - integrating science and politics; and, Marcia Hood-Brown. Articles about Law Enforcement & Prisons include - A crime against women; Why your child could wind up in jail; Rush to vengeance; and, Swing and a miss on 'three strikes'. An editorial about Cannabis & Hemp is titled - Medical research on marijuana right. International News includes - Ministers pledge to halve UK drug abuse; UK: What a waste as drugs tsar publishes his first annual audit; UK: War the enforcer can't win; Canada: Money laundering targeted; Canada: Drug policy called 'bad joke'; Canada: Ottawa looking for steady supply of dope; Canada grows more pot than parsley; and, China: With the needle came AIDS. The weekly Hot Off The 'Net features updated contact info for Redbook and Glamour, two mainstream magazines that present a pro reform slant; plus the updated Kubby Files web pages. A new feature, the Reform Cartoon of the Week, features the work of Grady Roper of Texas. The Quote of the Week cites Heinrich Heine.)
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  Saturday, June 5, 1999:

• Supply firm questions timing of police raid (The Oregonian says the Marijuana Task Force on Thursday raided the American Agriculture hydroponics supply store in southeast Portland, as well as the homes of the store's owner and manager. No arrests were forthcoming, suggesting nothing was found except an excuse to close the business and intimidate the owners by confiscating computers and business records. The raids came a month after a judge questioned why police had investigated the business for four years without bringing charges, and three months after it filed a federal lawsuit over the MTF's illegal use of a "trap and trace" telephone tap. During a court hearing May 4, Officer Nathan Shropshire testified that the Marijuana Task Force was formed in February 1995 for the purpose of investigating American Agriculture and owner Richard H. Martin Jr. When asked whether the purpose of the task force had changed, Shropshire said no.)
• Sonoma Medical Marijuana Benefit June 18 (A news release from California NORML says a benefit concert for the Sonoma Alliance for Medical Marijuana will feature Midnight Sun and Biocentrics 7 pm-midnight at the Sebastopol Community Center.)
• Citizenship Revoked Without Court (The Associated Press says the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco ruled Friday that federal officials don't have to go to court before revoking an immigrant's citizenship for failure to disclose past crimes or arrests. The decision overturns a nationwide injunction issued last year by U.S. District Judge Barbara Rothstein of Seattle that protected more than 4,500 naturalized citizens from administrative revocation of their citizenship by the INS. One of the nine lead plaintiffs' "arrest" was for investigation of possessing a marijuana plant that was actually a fern.)
• Tiburon NORML Party June 26 (A news release from California NORML says a $100-per-ticket benefit for national NORML at the home of Dr. Richard Miller in the East Bay community of Tiburon will feature R. Keith Stroup, Ethan Nadelmann, Marsha Rosenbaum, Tony Serra and other reform luminaries.)
• Interview Not Exactly Impromptu (Houston Chronicle columnist John Makeig describes his unusual interview with Harris County Court-at-Law Judge Janice Law, who wisely protected herself by dragging in a court reporter and her personal lawyer. Apparently the judge was feeling defensive about a jury that acquitted a teen whose car allegedly smelled of marijuana, even though there was no smoke. The judge defended her decision to let the jury smell a plastic baggie of weed seized from the car.)
• Alcohol's Effect On Fetuses Discussed (The Wisconsin State Journal covers a lecture Friday by Kenneth Lyons Jones of the University of California at San Diego to about 100 other developmental-toxicology scientists attending a conference at UW-Madison. "Fetal alcohol syndrome is the most common recognizable cause of mental retardation in the United States. It's a cause that is totally preventable," he said. Showing slides of affected children, Jones noted mass media often decry effects of illegal drugs such as marijuana, cocaine and heroin. "You can tie them all in a bundle and they don't have anywhere near the effect that alcohol does on the unborn baby," Jones said. While the mass media have been demonizing illegal drug users, the number of expectant mothers who admitted drinking alcohol increased from 12.4 percent in 1991 to 16.3 percent in 1995.)
• Judging Youth (A letter to the editor of the Chicago Tribune observes that Martin Luther King Jr.'s dream that someday young people would be judged by their character has been supplanted by the reality of judging young people by their urine. Adults are telling youth that negative drug test results are much more important than positive actions.)
• Kentuckians Get Out The Word About Hemp (The Lexington Herald-Leader says the Woodford County Chamber of Commerce, with Mayor Fred Siegelman's blessing, sponsored a ribbon-cutting yesterday at the new Kentucky Hemp Museum in Versailles. Ironically, the activists who belong to the Kentucky Hemp Growers Cooperative Association have been much more successful at promoting reform bills in at least 12 other states than at home. The problem has always been the Drug Enforcement Administration, but even the DEA is now coming around. For example, the agency has stopped arguing that hemp cannot be distinguished in the field from marijuana. Discussions, which have included the White House drug czar, General Barry McCaffrey, are apparently at a delicate stage.)
• A Conspirator for the Constitution (Washington Post columnist Nat Hentoff says John Whitehead, an attorney and president of the Rutherford Institute, was identified by "some members of the press" as one of the leading figures in a massive right-wing conspiracy against the President alleged by Hillary Rodham Clinton. It turns out Whitehead is an eloquent and insightful critic of the assault on the Fourth Amendment and other Constitutional rights in the name of the drug war by the Clinton administration and the U.S. Supreme Court.)
• RCMP Weeding Out B.C. Pot Growers (The Calgary Herald shows extreme bias and betrays its journalistic mission in an article claiming the Mounties are using increasing arrests "to crush the marijuana culture in the Kootenay region." Unfortunately, just as in Portland and other North American cities, the local newspaper fails to explain there are probably 10 marijuana growers for every prison cell in the region and every law-abiding citizen is going to have to work about five full-time jobs in order to afford the taxes it would take to create the police state necessary to detect, arrest, prosecute and imprison even half of them. Similarly, the newspaper fails to explain that all taxpayers are doing is eliminating the most incompetent growers and personal-use cultivators with the least security, thereby subsidizing the largest, best organized and most ruthless ones. However, the paper does note the stepped up enforcement is threatening availability of medicine at the Universal Compassion Club, Grant Krieger's new medical-marijuana dispensary in Calgary.)
• Puritanical About Pleasure (A letter to the editor of the Globe and Mail, in Toronto, criticizes the Canadian government's quest to remove any psychoactive effect from marijuana before allowing it to be used as medicine.)
• MP's Shows The Depth Of Ignorance (A letter to the editor of the Calgary Herald criticizes politicians in Canada who justify their opposition to medical marijuana with concerns about children's perceptions. Adolescents don't listen well to politicians or police for information on damages of drugs: exaggerating the dangers of cannabis will not solve anything. And Calgary Centre MP Eric Lowther's contention that medications exist that "do everything and more" than cannabis is the epitome of all the ignorance surrounding cannabis.)
• MPs Have Pot Legalization All Wrong (A letter to the editor of the Calgary Herald rebuts MP Art Hanger's contention that "By legalizing weed, we're sending the wrong message to young people that it is no worse than smoking. It is certainly worse than smoking." By allowing tobacco to be legal the message is: "Tobacco is less harmful than marijuana." That is clearly a falsehood. Nearly every year half a million U.S. citizens die every year from tobacco-related diseases, but none from marijuana.)
• Mice, Cocaine Prove Canucks Are Mellow (According to the Edmonton Sun, a study published in yesterday's issue of Science magazine says scientists are at a loss to explain why identical laboratory experiments in the United States and Canada involving cocaine and cloned lab mice yielded significantly different results. The study is causing ripples in the scientific community because it suggests slight environmental differences can be as much of a factor as slight differences in genetics. Dr. John Crabbe, a behavioural neuroscientist at Oregon Health Services University in Portland, said "We went nuts trying to control differences. We sent probably 2,000 e-mails and phone calls to try to eliminate every possible environmental difference. Yet three strains of Edmonton mice responded more to coke. They ran around more. Why? When you get the answer, let me know.")
• Unproven Drug Allegations Rend U.S. Relations With Mexico City (The Houston Chronicle says a top-level meeting of Cabinet ministers that ended in Mexico City Friday was originally intended to be a showcase of chummy U.S.-Mexican relations. But it illustrated instead how the two countries can't seem to get past the divisive issue of drugs. The showcase was upset by articles in the Washington Post and the New York Times that cited unnamed U.S. officials who accused the family of Carlos Hank Gonzalez, one of Mexico's richest, and Jose Liebano Saenz, the private secretary to President Ernesto Zedillo, of having links to the country's drug cartels. Mexican Secretary of State Rosario Green told reporters that the stories were shadowy efforts to throw the meeting off balance. She demanded that the Clinton administration hand over any proof. Before major meetings between U.S. and Mexican officials, stories consistently appear in the American press that suggest drug corruption at the highest levels of Mexico's government and society. Green put it off to "conservative" elements on the U.S.-side of the drug debate. Some analysts say the leaks may be coming from American law enforcement agencies.)
• 1st Executions In 5 Years Spark Scant Outcry On Drug-Riven Island (The Chicago Tribune says the Caribbean island of Trinidad ended a five-year moratorium on capital punishment Friday, hanging the first three members of a "gang of eight" convicted of killing four people during a 1994 drug dispute. "Throughout the Caribbean, there is a growing clamor for capital punishment to deter violent crime associated with drug-smuggling." The eight hangings may clear the way for dozens of other executions in the Caribbean.)
• Trinidad executes 8 killers (A lengthier version in the Oakland Tribune identifies the source as the Associated Press.)
• Trinidad Hangs Drug-Gang Members (The Los Angeles Times version)
• Trinidad Sends Three Killers To The Gallows (The version in Britain's Guardian)
• EU Protests As Three Are Hanged In Trinidad (The Daily Telegraph version)
• Trinidad Three Hanged Despite Pleas (The Independent version)
• Bootleg Wheeze That's Costing The Exchequer A Packet (Scotsman columnist John Ivison recounts Canada's failed experiment with prohibitory cigarette taxes as a rebuttal to the World Bank's recent report arguing that increasing cigarette taxes are a good way to cut smoking.)
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  Sunday, June 6, 1999:

• On The Road To Addiction? (A letter to the editor of the Oregonian expresses curiousity about whether Oregon's first authorized medical-marijuana user, No. 00001, will suffer all the dire consequences the government has been warning about for the last 75 years.)
• Smokers, not industry, pay (A letter to the editor of the Oregonian points out who is really paying for the multistate tobacco-industry settlement - $4 a carton more since December. And it looks like none of the settlement money will be be used to address smokers' health problems.)
• Prisons Near Capacity (According to the Oakland Tribune, Robert Presley, a former cop and California state senator who heads the state's correctional agency, says that in just two years, "every nook and cranny" in the state's huge prison system will be filled with inmates. There are 160,000 inmates now, eight times the 1980 prison population. And despite massive prison construction in the 1980s and early 1990s, all but a few inmates are doubled up in cells designed for one person or housed in gymnasiums and other temporary quarters. Legislative Democrats quickly trashed Gov. Davis' prison construction program. Republicans are not displeased with Democrats' no-prisons posture. "Let's say a federal judge steps in and begins releasing inmates and let's say one of them rapes and murders someone," muses one senior Republican legislator. "Who'll get the blame?")
• Appeals Court Rules In Favor Of Pot Advocate (The Hawaii Tribune-Herald expands on Tuesday's news about the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that Hawaiian hemp activist Aaron Anderson is entitled to bring a civil lawsuit against Hawaii County. The court said Anderson provided enough evidence to show that prosecutor Jay Kimura either knew about alleged ongoing constitutional violations by former deputy prosecutor Kay Iopa and approved of them, or was deliberatey indifferent to them.)
• Terence McKenna ~ New Update (A list subscriber forwards a note from the ailing psychedelic author's brother. Future bulletins will be posted at a web site.)
• Ethics panel rejects fine of UF professor as 'pitifully low' (The Miami Herald says the Florida Commission on Ethics on Thursday rejected a $2,000 fine for Charles Thomas, a criminology professor at the University of Florida who earned $3 million as a consultant to Wackenhut while he was also being paid to advise the state on prison policy. The decision means Thomas, a nationally recognized expert on prison privatization, now faces a much stiffer fine for his conflict of interests, perhaps as high as $30,000.)
• Why Losing Food Stamps Is Now Part of the War on Drugs (An op-ed in the Los Angeles Times by Herman Schwartz, a professor of constitutional law at American University and author of "Packing the Courts: the Conservatives' Campaign to Rewrite the Constitution," explains the cruel, counterproductive consequences that have resulted from an amendment by Sen. Phil Gramm to the 1996 welfare law. No one convicted of a felony state or federal drug law after Aug. 22, 1996, can ever get food stamps again. It makes no difference if the offender is sick, pregnant, a parent of a small child, in a treatment program, has been drug-free for years, is a first-time offender, works or is seeking work, a student or anything else. Nothing the offender can do will restore food-stamp eligibility, and administrators are allowed no discretion. There is one escape hatch: A state may choose not to go along with the federal ban or modify it.)
• Viagra Siezed In Drug Raids (Scotland on Sunday says Tayside police detectives found a stash of the impotence drug during dawn swoops in the Dundee area, proving a black market exists for it.)
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  Monday, June 7, 1999:

• Philip Morris Targets Punitives (The Nation recaps a recent Associated Press article about lawyers for the tobacco company putting Oregon Attorney General Hardy Myers on notice they intend to dispute the state's 60 percent share of a recent judgment against the company by a jury in Multnomah County due to the $206 billion tobacco settlement in November between the industry and 46 state attorneys general.)
• Phoenix police admit inflating street value of drug seizures (The Associated Press says the $500 million value police placed on nearly 997 kilograms of cocaine they seized last month works out to about $500 per gram. The DEA estimates the street value of cocaine at about $80 to $160 per gram. Phoenix police say the inflated values serve a purpose. "The significance is to try to say what the impact is on society," said Phoenix police Lt. Al Thiele. "That's how much they have to steal to pay for it.")
• Ohio State 1999 Hempfest (Heath Wintz of the marijuana-law reform group, For A Better Ohio, describes the 12th annual Spring Hempfest May 5 at Ohio State University in Columbus. Things went off without a hitch. Even the OSU police were supportive.)
• Ready supply and upper limits (A list subscriber makes some good points explaining why medical marijuana patients are concerned about state ballot initiatives sponsored by Americans for Medical Rights that severely restrict the number of plants patients can cultivate.)
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  Tuesday, June 8, 1999:

• Woman convicted of growing marijuana wants medical dispensation (The Associated Press says Pamela Jill Stafsholt of Grants Pass, Oregon, who was convicted on Dec. 3, the same day the Oregon Medical Marijuana Act took effect, has petitioned to have her terms of probation changed so she can use cannabis to relieve the nausea caused by her treatment for arthritis. Otherwise, Deputy District Attorney Allan Smith will have her sent to prison for failing a drug test, apparently because she lawfully took the prescription drug, Marinol.)
• Hemp-Growing Gardens Proposed for S.F. (The San Francisco Chronicle says Supervisor Mark Leno proposed Monday that nonprofit gardens in the combined city and county be allowed to grow and process industrial hemp.)
• Orange County prosecutor among dozen arrested on drug charges (The Associated Press says Deputy District Attorney Bryan Ray Kazarian, 35, is being held without bail and faces a life sentence if convicted of tipping off drug ring leaders.)
• Drug czar backs medical cannabis (The BBC says the British government's drug czar, Keith Hellawell, has told BBC News Online he supports the use of cannabis for medicinal purposes. He also said it would not be "a tragedy" if one of his six grandchildren experimented with drugs. And he rejected the notion of a "slippery slope" from cannabis use to drugs that, in his phrase, cause "most harm" - heroin and cocaine.)
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