1998 News
About Cannabis and Drug Policy
December 10-16

Thursday, December 10, 1998:
• The NORML Foundation Weekly Press Release (High Court Overturns Iowa Blanket Search Law, Marijuana Conviction; Clinton Administration Calls Amendment Nixing DC Medical Marijuana Vote "Sensible"; Michigan Man Must Return To Virginia Jail To Serve Out 24 Year Old Marijuana Conviction; Jamaican Custom Officials To Order Drug Tests For Airline Passengers; Congress Allocates $23 Million To Develop Anti-Marijuana Fungus)
• State outlines medical pot use (An Associated Press article in the Eugene, Oregon, Register-Guard, says state Attorney General Hardy Myers issued a set of guidelines for the Oregon Medical Marijuana Act Wednesday, spelling out how police should comply with the voter-approved law. A spokesman for Oregonians for Medical Rights said the guidelines follow the law closely.)
• Smoke Clears On Medical Marijuana (The Yahoo! version)
• Medical marijuana law stymies police (The Oregonian version hides behind unnamed sources in order to assert that nonmedical users will take advantage of the Oregon Medical Marijuana Act to escape prosecution, without explaining how such recreational users would get a physician to stand up for them in court.)
• Court upholds Rider's marijuana conviction (An Associated Press article in The Register-Guard, in Eugene, Oregon, says an Oregon appeals court on Wednesday upheld the 1997 conviction of Portland Trail Blazers guard Isaiah Rider for marijuana possession.)
• Memorial fitting for officers who died in duty (A staff editorial in The Columbian, in Vancouver, Washington, speaks favorably about a proposed memorial for public safety officers in Clark County who have died in the line of duty, including two Prohibition agents killed in 1932, B.W. Turner and Edward Vlasich, whose misfortune is recounted.)
• Help Keep Marvin Chavez Free: Write the Probation Department (A list subscriber says your letter could help save the medical marijuana patient and founder of the Orange County Cannabis Co-op from wasting years in prison. Complete instructions included.)
• Teen Crime Wave Called Myth (The San Francisco Chronicle says the MacArthur Foundation's two-year study of juvenile crime statistics found that laws aimed at youthful lawbreakers are based on "deeply flawed analyses of juvenile violence statistics." "We're not any more violent than we were 10 or 20 years ago. We're just paying more attention to the violence," said Franklin Zimring, author of the study and a law professor at the University of California at Berkeley. Zimrlng's findings will be published as a book by Oxford University Press but were released at a news conference yesterday.)
• Three-Strikes' Economics (A staff editorial in The Orange County Register says the California legislature should take small but definite steps to reform the voter-approved "three strikes" law, so the third strike must be violent to trigger a lengthy sentence.)
• Supreme Court Prohibits Police From Routinely Searching Vehicles (The Denver Post notes the Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that police officers cannot routinely search motorists and their cars after stopping them for traffic violations.)
• No Blanket Searches (A staff editorial in The Las Vegas Review-Journal applauds the US Supreme Court's unanimous ruling that a routine traffic violation doesn't justify a warrantless search of a vehicle.)
• Pot Use 'No Big Deal' To Teens (The Daily Herald, in Arlington Heights, Illinois, gives the usual one-sided coverage of an anti-marijuana conference Wednesday at the College of DuPage, where 200 people from throughout the area supposedly learned how to teach teens to shun pot.)
• Man Sues Drug Task Force (The Dayton Daily News, in Ohio, says Howard Johnson of Spring Valley has filed a $13 million lawsuit charging the Greene County Drug Task Force engaged in a "pattern of corrupt activity" to finance itself. In April, Johnson's brother, Fairborn businessman Bobby Johnson, filed a $10.4 million lawsuit against the task force, alleging it similarly engaged in a pattern of corrupt activity by trying to force him to pay it money and surrender property in order to have false charges dismissed.)
• Texas Tobacco-Suit Lawyers Reportedly Get $3.3 Billion (According to an Associated Press article in The Seattle Times, The Dallas Morning News said today that the lawyers involved in the Texas tobacco settlement have been awarded nearly $3.3 billion by a national arbitration panel, the largest attorney-fee award in US history.)
• Take a toke, minimize stroke, research says (According to a Knight-Ridder news service article in The Calgary Herald, a study reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences says researchers at the National Institute of Health, led by A.J. Hampson, found that cannabidol, one of a class of marijuana constituents called cannabinoids, is a powerful antioxidant. When tested on rat neurons in a lab dish, the substance prevented the death of brain cells during conditions simulating a stroke.)
• Five Months In Jail For Pot Promoter (The Edmonton Journal says Alberta provincial court Judge David Tilley sentenced Ken Kirk to five months in jail Wednesday, even though Kirk uses cannabis to help control his epilepsy and other medical problems, including bipolar disorder and a chronic inflammation of the lower back. The judge said Kirk's crimes were aggravated by the large amount of pot police seized from him, the fact he re-offended while on bail and because he sold to a minor.)
• Pot-for-Health Claim Still Draws Jail Term (The Edmonton Sun version)
• Drug trade violence stalks Tijuana (An Associated Press article in The Detroit News says Tijuana sits between the haves and the have-nots: those in Mexico who have cocaine, marijuana, heroin and speed, and those in the United States who do not but will pay lots for it. With 2 million people, there is an average of one murder every 30 hours, the overwhelming majority connected to the smuggling of drugs, arms or undocumented workers. US officials seized more than 188 tons of drugs worth an estimated $308 million at five Mexico-California border crossings in the 1998 fiscal year - up 44 percent. Struggles between mid-level and emerging dealers have made 1998 the bloodiest on record: 156 homicides in Tamaulipas state, 49 in Chihuahua, and 216 in Sinaloa.)
• Drugs-Related Deaths Double In Glasgow (According to The Independent, in Britain, a new police report says illegal-drug-related deaths in the Scottish city have more than doubled in the past year. The increase - to 63, of which 55 were directly linked to heroin - breaks a downward trend over the previous three years. No word on whether more people die from falling down stairs, as is the case in the United States.)
• Weekly Action Report on Drug Policies, Year 4, No. 41 (A summary of European and international drug policy news, from CORA in Italy)
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  Friday, December 11, 1998:

• Trap and trace device at American Agriculture (An investigative list subscriber reports the Marijuana Task Force in Portland has been using its illegal "trap and trace" device at the American Agriculture hydroponics store to bust cannabis cultivators all over Oregon. A busted grower in Bend allegedly has a tape recording of MTF Officer Nathan Shropshire spilling the beans.)
• Hemp jewelry kit for kids at Sears (Paul Stanford, a chief petitioner for the Oregon Cannabis Tax Act, a proposed initiative that would legalize industrial hemp, notes at least one Portland franchise of the nationwide retailer is offering kids something new for Christmas this year.)
• Veteran acquitted on marijuana charge (An Associated Press article in The Contra Costa Times says a jury on Thursday acquitted Charles Lepp in connection with his cultivation of 131 marijuana plants. Lepp's was the first medical marijuana case taken to trial in either Lake or Mendocino counties since voters approved Proposition 215 in 1996.)
• Media Culpa - Cracking the CIA (Seattle Weekly columnist Mark Worth says the Central Intelligence Agency is finally admitting what the San Jose Mercury News and many independent political journals have been saying for more than two years - that the CIA, at the very minimum, turned a blind eye to the Nicaraguan Contras' cocaine-for-weapons operation.)
• Committee Debates Sentences For Small-Time Drug Dealers (According to an Associated Press article in The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, the soon-to-retire Wisconsin Department of Corrections secretary, Michael Sullivan, told the 18-member Criminal Penalties Study Committee that it should consider sending small-time drug dealers to rehabilitation and training programs instead of prison. However, the committee is examining ways to make the state's sentencing guidelines tougher under "truth-in-sentencing" legislation signed by Governor Tommy Thompson in June.)
• Elderly Brothers Face Drug Charges (The Washington Post says police arrested Russell Bailey, 79, and his brother, Oliver Bailey, 83, after a Talbot County narcotics task force raided their house in Trappe, Maryland. Police say the two found an enterprising way to stretch those Social Security checks - by selling crack cocaine and marijuana out of their rural home.)
• Crack Mom Seeks Release From Prison (The Rock Hill Herald, in South Carolina, says the case of Cornelia Whitner, a South Carolina woman convicted of child neglect because she used crack cocaine while pregnant, has become a rallying point for women's groups and doctors who say jailing pregnant women with substance abuse problems discourages them from seeking proper prenatal care.)
• Court Official's Arrest (UPI says Bennie Hugh Frazier, the chief of U.S. District Court pretrial services in Miami, Florida, where he manages a staff of about 50 officers and is responsible for recommending bail amounts for those charged with federal crimes, was busted in Liberty City trying to buy $50 worth of crack cocaine.)
• Hidden Danger in Your Milk? Reporters File Suit To Thwart Fox-TV Coverup (A list subscriber forwards the URL for a web site where two veteran investigative reporters have posted documentation about their lawsuit alleging they were fired by FOX-owned WTVT Channel 13 in Tampa, Florida, for refusing orders to broadcast false and slanted stories about BGH, the dairy hormone banned in Europe and elsewhere because of human health concerns.)
• Cold kills more than 700 Americans a year (A list subscriber forwards an Associated Press item noting the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has found that about 700 more Americans die every year from cold weather than from marijuana. No word when the government plans to launch a war on hypothermia.)
• Alcohol-Linked Traffic Deaths Still In Decline (The Orange County Register says the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta attributed 16,189 traffic deaths in the United States in 1997 to alcohol, a 6 percent decline from 1996. Alcohol was a factor in 39 percent of traffic deaths.)
• FBI housecleaning: 19 fired last year for misconduct (An Associated Press article in The Miami Herald says the Federal Bureau of Investigation fired 19 employees for misconduct last year, including an unspecified number of agents charged with drunken driving and "drug" use.)
• Strip searchers transferred (A Canadian Press article in The Toronto Sun says trustees for the Greater Essex County District School Board have decided that a vice-principal and a gym teacher who strip searched 19 students in Grade 9 at Kingsville District Secondary School will be suspended without pay for 10 days and transferred to different schools.)
• Give Authority Figures An Inch - They'll Take A Mile (Calgary Herald columnist Debra Harper comments on the strip-search of 20 boys in Grade 9 near Windsor, Ontario. How ironic, as the world celebrates the 50th anniversary of the United Nations human rights declaration, to be reminded how easily, swiftly and righteously those rights can be swept away. This is what authoritarianism looks like. This is how it treats our children. This is what they have come to expect. If you are disgusted by this kind of abuse, where were you when half your neighbours were baying for harsher punishment when teenagers break the law? If we want kids to learn values and responsibilities, civility and civilization, they have to see it first.)
• Medium 'Uses Cannabis To Talk To The Dead' (The Eastern Daily Press, in Britain, says it took just a few minutes for a jury in Norwich Crown Court to convict a spiritual medium of possessing cannabis, despite her claim that she uses it to "get to the other side.")
• The Week Online with DRCNet, Issue No. 70 (The Drug Reform Coordination Network's original summary of drug policy news and calls to action, including - Exemplary citizen to be extradited on 25-year-old $10 marijuana conviction; Supreme Court strikes down car search law; Congressional report - Citibank facilitated Salinas money laundering; Exciting resources available online; Job opportunity; Fellowships and academic opportunities; Giving the gift of hope; and an editorial by Adam J. Smith, Human rights declared but not observed.)
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  Saturday, December 12, 1998:

• Man found guilty of killing his mother now faces death penalty (The Associated Press says a jury in Portland, Oregon, convicted Harrison Lee Bletson of aggravated murder Thursday. Witnesses said Bletson went on a crack cocaine binge the day before his mother was killed, but the possibility that he was a sociopath before using crack isn't mentioned.)
• Jury convicts Portland man of felony murder at illegal club (The Oregonian says Edwin Lasaun Williams faces a minimum of 25 years in prison for a gunfight at an after-hours drinking and gambling club in Northeast Portland.)
• Australian Study Finds Marijuana Not a Significant Driving Hazard - Evidence Contradicts Drug Czar McCaffrey, Impugns Rationale for Drug Testing (A press release from California NORML provides more details about "The Prevalence and Role of Alcohol, Cannabinoids, Benzodiazepines and Stimulants in Non-Fatal Crashes," a study published in May of this year by researchers at the Department of Clinical and Experimental Pharmacology at the University of Adelaide, the largest and latest research to contradict claims by U.S. drug warriors, led by Drug Czar Barry McCaffrey, that marijuana is a major road safety hazard.)
• Governor Backs Medicinal Marijuana (According to an Associated Press article in The Honolulu Star-Bulletin, Hawaii Governor Ben Cayetano said Thursday night he would propose a bill when the Legislature convenes next month to make it legal for people to use marijuana if they have a legitimate medical reason to do so. Cayetano said the state needs to be a leader in the issue if it hopes to become a health and wellness center for the Pacific.)
• Drug Crime Punishment Bill Filed (The Oklahoman says a Republican state representative, John Sullivan of Tulsa, has introduced a bill in the legislature that would give the death penalty to adults who sell "drugs" to minors.)
• 2nd Officer Placed on Paid Leave in Shakedown Probe (The Dallas Morning News says another Dallas police officer, Quentis R. Roper, a former local football standout, is suspected of stealing thousands of dollars from drug dealers and undocumented Mexican immigrants and has been placed on paid leave pending the outcome of a criminal investigation. The investigation into the alleged shakedowns became public Sunday night when Officer Daniel E. Maples Jr. turned himself in because he feared drug dealers would hurt his loved ones.)
• Was Justice Denied On The Border? (The San Antonio Express-News says a senior FBI agent and a Texas Ranger who investigated the killing of an 18-year-old goatherder, Esequiel Hernandez Jr., by a camouflaged Marine leading an anti-drug patrol near Redford, Texas, contend the military obstructed an inquiry of the death. They want a grand jury to consider the matter for a third time.)
• Lawyers In Tobacco Case Will Receive $8.2 Billion (The New York Times says dozens of attorneys who represented the first three states to settle with the tobacco industry over alleged health care costs - Florida, Mississippi and Texas - were awarded $8.2 billion in fees Friday, the richest legal payday in the nation's history. The fees will be paid by cigarette smokers, who weren't represented in the legal wranglings.)
• Tobacco Case Lawyers Awarded Billions In Fees (The Associated Press version in the New Bedford, Massachusetts, Standard-Times)
• Forfeiture To Aid Narcotics Bureau (The Oklahoman says a judge in Grady County Thursday allowed the forfeiture of $122,210 in cash that will benefit the Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics.)
• Failed Drug Policy (A letter to the editor of The Minneapolis Star-Tribune ridicules Linda Bayer, the hack from the White House drug czar's office who criticized syndicated columnist Molly Ivins' recent apostasy on the drug war.)
• Groom who brought marijuana to court gets married - and sentenced (The Associated Press says a judge in Edwardsville, Illinois - where marijuana is not decriminalized - presided over the marriage of a man, then sentenced him minutes later for bringing marijuana into the courthouse. The groom, Ewel Simon Greene, had been arrested at the courthouse Friday when a deputy using a metal detector discovered a metal pipe in his pocket. Greene got one year's probation and a $100 fine on misdemeanor charges of marijuana and drug paraphernalia possession.)
• Activist Denounces Prison System (The Cincinnati Enquirer says Angela Davis, best known for the trails she blazed in the late 1960s and early 1970s, spoke to a packed auditorium at Northern Kentucky University Friday night and criticized today's prison system.)
• Pfizer hires Dole to talk about health (The Associated Press says the pharmaceutical company has hired former senator and presidential candidate Bob Dole for a television advertising campaign to raise awareness about impotence, hoping to improve sales of Viagra.)
• In D.C., Marijuana Dispute Hits A Raw Nerve (The Philadelphia Inquirer suggests District of Columbia residents are less upset about the ramifications for medical-marijuana patients than they are about the lack of local control evidenced by Congress's quashing of Initiative 59, the medical-marijuana initiative that won handily, according to exit polls.)
• Free Speech Becomes Drug War Casualty (Chicago Sun-Times columnist Robyn Blumner says first the drug warriors took away the Fourth Amendment right to be free from unreasonable searches. Now Congress has decided that the right of citizens to be heard in an election is disposable - that is, if Congress doesn't like the election results. Our government's doomsday rhetoric about drugs is no longer being swallowed whole. Which makes the powers that be very nervous, and correspondingly makes this a dangerous time for free speech.)
• US Gang Threatens To Kill Toronto Cops (The Toronto Sun says Toronto police have assigned heavily armed emergency task force officers to protect their drug squad colleagues after Rema Posse, a violent gang based in New York City and Jamaica, made threats to kill Toronto cops - including one phoned in to the newspaper. Toronto prohibition agents executed 75 warrants and filed more than 169 charges against gang members between May and September.)
• UVic poised to fire pot-growing prof (The Times Colonist, in Victoria, British Columbia, says the president of the University of Victoria is calling for the dismissal of a sociology professor found guilty of operating a marijuana grow operation. Under the Human Rights Code, it is discriminatory to fire someone for an offence unrelated to their employment.)
• Yeoman Of The Weed (An account in The Economist, in Britain, about the marijuana growers on the Caribbean island-nation of St. Vincent who have organized against the United States' eradication efforts there, says the farmers' plea for regulation is not as reasonable as it sounds. Ignoring the example of Cayman Islands banks, the magazine says the United States would never agree to decriminalisation, and if it did, or itself legalised marijuana, the price of ganja would probably collapse.)
• Medicopolitical digest - Lords criticise government's response to cannabis report (The British Medical Journal says the chairman of the House of Lords science and technology committee, which produced a report last month saying physicians should be allowed to prescribe herbal cannabis to patients, has called on the government to "give more mature consideration to our recommendations.")
• Ecstasy Users Face Consequences Of Neurotoxicity (The Lancet, in Britain, says "experts" who met at the Novartis Foundation conference in London on Dec. 4 asserted that the drug methylenedioxymethamphetamine, or MDMA, also known as ecstasy, is a human neurotoxin, and one dose could be enough to damage serotonergic neurons. The "experts" said the functional consequences of such lesions remain unknown, but could include mood disorders and memory difficulties. A decade of research has shown that MDMA causes a deficit of brain serotonin in every animal species tested, said George Ricaurte of Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in Baltimore, though such lesions have persisted for no more than 7 years in any animal.)
• More On Serotonin System (A related article in The Lancet notes there are actually at least 14 distinct types of serotonin receptors. This week, US scientists report that genetically engineered mice lacking the 5-HT1A inhibitory serotonin receptor are more anxious than their normal littermates and that they behave like mice that have been given antidepressants. "Our speculation," says senior author, Laurence Tecott, of the University of California at San Francisco, "is that both these abnormalities - anxiety and antidepressive responses - can be accounted for by disinhibition of serotonin system activity.")
• Drug Smugglers' European Union (The Guardian, in Britain, says the arrest of Gungor Tekin, a famous Turkish soccer player who started serving a 23-year sentence in a British jail this week after being convicted of heroin smuggling, has cast light on the new international links of the heroin trade. What has emerged from the case and other recent operations is that there is now a European criminal community that is cooperating far more successfully than their ministerial counterparts.)
• Myths Stubbornly Resist Debunking - "Character weaknesses" demolished (A translation of an article from Tages Anzeiger, in Switzerland, presents a brief historical overview of current American drug policy, emphasizing its basis in myth, and the harm caused by myths that stubbornly endure. They lead to false generalisations, faulty assumptions, half-truths, cliches, and repression, yielding ground but slowly to rational argument and the sweet voice of reason.)
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  Sunday, December 13, 1998:

• Drug Probes Find Smugglers In The Military (The Los Angeles Times says the American military has encountered an unexpected enemy in its war on drugs: U.S. servicemen smuggling marijuana and cocaine into California for Mexican drug rings. At least 50 Marines and sailors have been investigated "in recent years" for drug running, according to the Naval Criminal Investigative Service. Eight military probes involving 20 Marine and Navy suspects were launched in the past year alone. And here's an interesting statistic: Out of an active duty force of 1.4 million, 4,888 servicemen and women were discharged in fiscal 1998 for drug-related misconduct - mostly marijuana and cocaine use.)
• Marines Reportedly Smuggled Drugs (The Associated Press version)
• State Corrections Program Is Failing Us (Two letters to the editor of The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel call for a blue-ribbon commission to be appointed to reconsider Wisconsin's rapidly expanding correctional system.)
• Failing To Police Their Own - Win At All Costs series (The tenth and final part of The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette series about the newspaper's two-year investigation that found federal agents and prosecutors break the law routinely. The Office of Professional Responsibility is the arm of the US Justice Department that is supposed to enforce the law and ethics among federal prosecutors. That's why Roger Pilon, a former Justice Department official, was surprised to learn that the men who leaked erroneous information about him to newspapers - leaks that violated federal privacy laws - included top attorneys at the OPR. No one was ever punished.)
• Hyde Amendment Makes Violations Costly - Win At All Costs series (The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette continues its series about the newspaper's two-year investigation that found federal agents and prosecutors break the law routinely. Last year, Congress provided a measure of recourse for some victims of overzealous federal prosecutions. Legislation introduced by U.S. Representative Henry Hyde now allows defendants to recover reasonable defense costs if they can show a federal case was "vexatious, frivolous or in bad faith." The claims are starting to add up to serious money.)
• Congress Steps In To Protect Whistleblower - Win At All Costs series (The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette continues its series about the newspaper's two-year investigation that found federal agents and prosecutors break the law routinely. Dr. Frederick Whitehurst, an FBI chemist, began reporting his concerns to OPR in 1986 that FBI Crime Laboratory managers lacked proper training, routinely ignored or tried to cover-up problems in handling evidence, that lab employees sometimes lied as witnesses to bolster government cases, and that some lab officials had rewritten reports he and others had produced. In response, the Justice Department suspended and publicly humiliated him.)
• Aggressive Attorney At OPR Targets Prosecutor, Loses On All Counts - Win At All Costs series (Part of The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette series about the newspaper's two-year investigation that found federal agents and prosecutors break the law routinely. The US Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility, in one of its largest investigations ever, spent two years looking into charges against William R. Hogan, a prosecutor in the Chicago U.S. Attorney's office. Based on OPR findings, he was fired in 1996, but vindicated last August by a judge who determined that the exhaustive OPR investigation showed he was guilty of no wrongdoing.)
• Win At All Costs series - sidebars end the series (The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette concludes its series on corruption in the Justice Department with an invitation to write to two key congressmen asking for stronger oversight.)
• 'Strong-Willed' Prosecutor Unmoved By Spotlight (The Roanoke Times, in Virginia, portrays Joan Ziglar, the tough local prosecutor who extradited Alfred Martin, a businessman and father of three, from Michigan because he walked away from his 10-year jail sentence in 1974 after being sentenced for selling $10 of marijuana.)
• Marijuana's Relief, Etc. (Four letters to the editor of The News & Observer, in North Carolina, find fault with the reasoning of Linda Bayer, the hack from the White House drug czar's office who criticized syndicated columnist Molly Ivins' recent apostasy on the drug war.)
• Border Agency Protects Its Own Despite Misdeeds (The Miami Herald says its investigation of the U.S. Customs Service's employment practices in Florida found that the agency has promoted officers caught dating drug smugglers, wrecking an agency car after drinking, tampering with evidence, and helping a key witness leave the country. The newspaper's investigation, prompted by disclosures that the Customs Service's head agent in South Florida got the job after 2 1/2 years of failed management elsewhere, reveals a culture that often protects favored employees from their own mistakes yet hammers those who go public with criticism.)
• FBI: Serious Crime Rates Dropping (The Associated Press says the Federal Bureau of Investigation reported Sunday that serious crimes dropped another 5 percent in the first half of 1998, extending a six-year trend. The half-year report comes weeks after the FBI's final 1997 figures, which showed the national murder rate reaching its lowest point in 30 years.)
• Justices Limit Searches By Police In Traffic Stops (The Philadelphia Inquirer notes the US Supreme Court has ruled that a routine traffic violation doesn't automatically give police the right to search an automobile.)
• A Selective Drug War (A letter to the editor of The Washington Times says Viagra enthusiast Bob Dole is a recreational drug user.)
• University President Wants Pot-Growing Professor Fired (The Miami Herald notes the president of the University of Victoria, in British Columbia, wants to fire Jean Veevers, a sociology professor convicted of growing and selling marijuana who was fined $15,000 and given a conditional 12-month sentence to be served in the community.)
• Veevers is a threat (The first of two letters to the editor of The Times Colonist, in Victoria, British Columbia, calling for the dismissal of sociology professor Jean Veevers, recently convicted of running a marijuana-grow operation, says "if we are able to remove all drug pushers, our community would be less-crime-ridden and a far more pleasant place to live.")
• Brazen Drug Dealers Frustrate Mexico, US (The Washington Post begins the annual debate over certification of Mexico as an ally in the United States' drug war with an article about suspected corruption in Quintana Roo, "the first narco-state in Mexico," according to one U.S. official.)
• ACM-Bulletin of 13 December 1998 (An English-language news bulletin from the Association for Cannabis as Medicine, in Cologne, Germany, features more details about the recent medical research in Spain showing that THC induces programmed death in certain brain tumor cells, but not in healthy cells.)
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  Monday, December 14, 1998:

• Brownie Mary Could Use a Pick-Me-Up (San Francisco Chronicle columnist Scott Ostler notes "Brownie" Mary Rathbun, the 69-year-old grandmother who baked pot brownies for AIDS patients she knew from volunteering at San Francisco General Hospital, has been hospitalized herself after a recent fall. She'll be at Ralph K. Davies Medical Center a long time, but hardly anyone stops by. "It's sad," says a friend. "No one has brought Mary her favorite medicine.")
• Inmates On Hold Burden Jails (The San Jose Mercury News says that even as crime in California falls to its lowest levels in decades, a ballooning population of prisoners awaiting trial is filling the state's county jails to record levels. Unsentenced inmates - men and women whom judges have refused to release until their cases go to trial and who cannot come up with bail - were once a minority in the state's jails. But in the past 10 years, their ranks have swollen by 50 percent, surpassing those jailed for minor crimes, according to statistics from the California Board of Corrections.)
• Texas Ranger Says Military Acted To Obstruct Border Death Inquiry (According to an Associated Press article in The Houston Chronicle, Sergeant David Duncan, who investigated the killing of 18-year-old goatherder Esequiel Hernandez Jr. along the Mexican border by camouflaged Marines on a drug-interdiction mission, told the San Antonio Express-News that the military obstructed an inquiry into the death and says he wants a grand jury to consider the case a third time.)
• DC & Medical Marijuana on All Things Considered (A transcript of a National Public Radio newscast about Congress quashing Initiative 59, the District of Columbia medical-marijuana initiative.)
• Have You Been Drinking or Using Drugs? Police Officers Will Soon be Able to Answer Both Parts of This Question in Just Minutes (A former prohibition agent's press release on Business Wire says LifePoint Inc., a Rancho Cucamonga, California-based company will soon be marketing a saliva test that will allow police to check drivers for the ingestion of illegal drugs. The former Los Angeles cop also asserts that alcohol is not a drug, and cites two articles from The Journal of Forensic Sciences, in 1993, and The New England Journal of Medicine, in 1991, which he claims show about 50 percent of drivers under the influence are actually under the influence of drugs other than alcohol, disregarding evidence from around the world showing that cannabis users are safer than drivers who use no substances at all.)
• New Surveillance Proposed for Bank Accounts (Reuters and Wired say a proposed government plan that has drawn fire as an Orwellian intrusion into Americans' privacy would require US banks to monitor their customers and alert federal officials to "suspicious" behavior.)
• Marijuana Advocates Continue Push For Legal Use (Reuters summarizes the recent annual conference in Washington, DC, sponsored by the National Organization for Reform of Marijuana Laws. Activists do not agree on the best way to legalize marijuana, but all agree that the success of multiple medical marijuana initiatives Nov. 3 marks a watershed for their movement. Some believe medical marijuana should be the first goal and the acceptance of marijuana at a grass-roots level will lead ultimately to wider progress for personal freedoms.)
• Rx: Marijuana (Dan Baum, author of "Smoke and Mirrors," writes in The Nation that he once thought the main problem for medical marijuana patients was marijuana's classification under Schedule I of the Comprehensive Drug Abuse and Control Act of 1970, which describes it as having a high potential for abuse and no accepted medical use. Moving it to Schedule II would make clinical research possible and eventually permit prescriptions. In the present political climate, however, this course seems unlikely.)
• Herbal Medicine (A letter to the editor of Time wonders why the magazine's special issue on herbal medicine never mentioned marijuana, the one herb thousands of Americans take for anxiety, fatigue, chronic depression, nausea, pain and other ailments.)
• Loud music as addictive as drugs, study says (The Ottawa Citizen says a study published last week in Ear and Hearing, by researchers at Northeastern University, supposedly found that people who "need" high-decibel music experience the same withdrawal symptoms as substance abusers. The group adapted a 32-question survey used to diagnose alcoholism and recruited 90 self-professed loud-music lovers, eight of whom showed signs of addiction. However, according to Will Hunter, a substance-abuse specialist and one of the researchers, "There really is no need to be worried. It needs to be clinically significant distress or impairment - which means pretty serious.")
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  Tuesday, December 15, 1998:

• Patient Who Was Denied Liver Transplant For Using Medical Marijuana Dies (A press release from California NORML notes medical malfeasance has caused the death of Ed Plotner, who was removed from a liver transplant list for using medical marijuana. Plotner suffered from multiple hepatitis infections, and had used marijuana to combat severe appetite and weight loss. Unlike alcohol and other drugs such as cocaine and heroin, marijuana is not a risk factor for hepatitis, nor does it cause liver damage.)
• We Kill Them With Kindness (An op-ed in The San Francisco Chronicle says "compassionate" programs such as welfare are only making life worse for street people, who just spend their checks on alcohol and other drugs. The author says in the last decade, San Francisco has spent well more than $1 billion trying to "solve" the homeless problem, yet it is worse today, despite the healthy economy.)
• Heroin Big Killer In San Francisco (The Associated Press says a health department study released Tuesday says that out of 86 drug-related deaths among the homeless last year, 40 were connected to heroin. Neither AP nor, apparently, the health department, mentions the number of homeless who died from hunger, exposure, lack of medical care, or prohibition, since apparently those are not considered public health issues.)
• Underage drinking cases clogging Vermont courts (The Associated Press says Vermont's crackdown on underage drinking is clogging the state's courts and forcing court officials to stop offering diversion programs to some offenders.)
• Committee Endorses Call for Hemp Study (The Associated Press says a Virginia House of Delegates committee endorsed a measure Monday calling for a study of industrial hemp. The resolution, sponsored by Mitchell Van Yahres, a Democrat from Albemarle, asks federal officials to let the state's universities experiment with cultivation of industrial hemp for commercial use. The General Assembly will consider the measure during the session that begins Jan. 13.)
• Must State Become A Criminal to Fight Drugs? (A letter to the editor of The Richmond Times-Dispatch, in Virginia, responds to the recent article about Customs Service agents violating airline passengers while engaging in drug-seeking behavior.)
• Pot-Like Agents May Affect Fertility (UPI says investigators from the University at Buffalo in New York told the annual meeting of the American Society of Cell Biology in San Francisco that they had discovered that sperm contain receptors for cannabinoids such as THC, the most prevalent of the dozens of psychoactive substances found only in cannabis. Unfortunately, the researchers then ignored the epidemiological evidence and engaged in speculation that led them to revive the drug-warrior myth that heavy pot use may reduce fertility.)
• Teens, Depression & Drugs (According to Washington Post columnist Abigail Trafford, Alan I. Leshner, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, divides teenage "drug abusers" into two categories: the Sensation Seekers, who are the majority, and the depressive Self-Medicators, supposedly a minority, even though an estimated 8 million to 10 million children have an untreated mental illness. Traditional drug-prevention strategies aren't designed for depressives and aren't effective with them - but Trafford and Leshner still want to lock them all up. Both fail to acknowledge, or just flat-out lie about the fact that society isn't about to provide universal psychiatric care on demand; that pharmaceutical antidepressants don't work for some people, and can cause severe, permanent, debilitating side effects, unlike cannabis; that a large body of historical and medical research documents the utility for many people of treating mood disorders with cannabis; that cannabis is not a drug of abuse, and to the extent it may raise dopamine levels like drugs of abuse, it does so in the same manner as some pharmaceutical antidepressants; and that it is cruel as well as counterproductive to treat depressive teens who self-medicate with cannabis as "drug abusers," when self-medication with cannabis may allow them to function more productively, happily, and normally than otherwise.)
• Errors, Sensationalism Hurt Papers' Credibility (According to The Associated Press, a nationwide survey released today by the American Society of Newspaper Editors found that about 80 percent of adults said newspapers sensationalize the news. Those who had firsthand experience with reporters and editors are some of their biggest critics. And the public thinks reporters are out of touch with their readers. Thirty-one percent said they had been the subject of a news story or had been interviewed by a reporter. Of that group, 24 percent said they were misquoted and 31 percent found errors in the story.)
• It's A Question Of Trust (A staff editorial in The Victoria Times-Colonist, in British Columbia, says the president of the University of Victoria is right to seek the dismissal of Jean Veevers, the sociology professor convicted of commercial cultivation marijuana charges.)
• Re: It's a question of trust (A letter sent to the editor of The Victoria Times-Colonist says that if politicians, police, teachers, and priests should be held to a higher level of accountability, then politicians should represent their constituents. A majority of Canadians believe that cannabis should be decriminalized, so why is cannabis still prohibited?)
• Colombian may be extradited to U.S. (An Associated Press article in The Dallas Morning News says Jaime "Jimmy" Orlando Lara, an alleged drug boss accused of shipping heroin to U.S. cities, could be the first person extradited to the United States under a December 1997 Colombian law that restored extradition of citizens for trial abroad.)
• Judge Acclaims Ability of Cannabis Grower (The Irish Times says a horticulturist who grew four-foot cannabis plants in his home was commended for his technical ability by Judge Kieran O'Connor at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court - who gave Wayne O'Connor a three-year suspended sentence and fined him £100 for possession of the herb.)
  Bytes: 48,900 Last updated: 12/23/98
  

  Wednesday, December 16, 1998:

• Urban Pulse - Flesh and Blood (Willamette Week, in Portland, says local doctors estimate that as many as 70 percent of Portland's injecting drug users are carriers of Hepatitis C, and during the last six months, 11 heroin users in the city have been afflicted with necrotizing fasciitis - better known by its tabloid nickname, "flesh-eating bacteria.")
• Re: Urban Pulse - Flesh and Blood (A letter sent to the editor of Willamette Week says the shopper's suggestion that diseases associated with heroin use are "drug-related" is to miss, or deny, the central problem, which is the unregulated market.)
• kxlporwamcar1 (An Associated Press article with a garbled headline at the Eugene, Oregon, Register-Guard web site says Harrison Bletson, the Portland crack addict who murdered his mother when she refused to give him money, has been sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole after 30 years.)
• Bread Control - It's No Longer Just About Guns (A sarcastic letter to the editor of Willamette Week uses the logic of prohibitionism to call for a ban on bread, urging readers to "Think idiotically, act globally!")
• Marijuana arrests soar for students on Gig Harbor peninsula (According to The Associated Press, sheriff's officials say at least 16 students in the area of Gig Harbor, Washington, have been caught with marijuana at school over the last 10 days. "Marijuana is back to the time when it was in its heyday" on the Gig Harbor Peninsula, said Pierce County sheriff's Sergeant Ross Herberholz.)
• Wash. sting describes bargain-hunting smokers as smugglers (The Spokesman-Review, in Spokane, Washington, notes smokers in eastern Washington are upset over a half-day sting Monday near Stateline, Idaho, where agents of the Washington Liquor Control Board confiscated cigarettes and wrote $250 citations for bargain-hunters who preferred Idaho's tax of 28 cents per pack over Washington's tax of 82.5 cents per pack.)
• Cross-border holiday shoppers may be breaking law (An Associated Press story on the same topic, in the Eugene, Oregon, Register-Guard)
• Couple arrested for Web site classified ads for cocaine, sex (An Associated Press article in The Register-Guard, in Eugene, Oregon, says a couple in Bothell, Washington, was arrested after police investigated classified advertisements on a popular Web site that offered and solicited sex and cocaine.)
• Cocaine, Sex Listed Among Web Site's Classified Ads (The Seattle Post-Intelligencer version)
• WSU frat suspended after alcohol-related incident (An Associated Press article in The Register-Guard, in Eugene, Oregon, says Kappa Sigma, a Washington State University fraternity in Pullman, Washington, that is already on probation for its role in last spring's riot, is being suspended and faces closure because of members' party habits.)
• Medical marijuana court hearings . . . (A bulletin from the Sonoma Alliance for Medical Marijuana asks concerned Californians to show their support for Proposition 215 by attending hearings Dec. 18 and Dec. 21 regarding two separate medical-marijuana cases in Sonoma County. The first case involves Lori Converse and William McConnell, and the second involves Ed Learn and Will Larson.)
• FBI Picks Up A Prison Probe Some Say Was Stifled By Union (The San Mateo County Times says the Federal Bureau of Investigation has taken up an investigation into brutality by guards at Pelican State Prison in California. State officials had pledged to reform the supermaximum penitentiary in 1995, but just a few months after investigators started working, the warden cut short their probe and the investigators then found themselves the subject of repeated investigations by the Corrections Department.)
• DARE Still Finds Support With Pueblo-Area Principals (The Boulder Daily Camera says that while some cities and districts are dropping Drug Awareness Resistance Education, principals in at least one corner of Colorado say they plan to stick with the program.)
• Drug Survey (A staff editorial in The Ft. Worth, Texas, Star-Telegram notes a full 10 percent of the members of the Class of 1998 at Keller and Fossil Ridge high schools said in a survey taken last spring that they had used heroin. In response, school district officials are working with Keller Police Chief Bill Griffith on a comprehensive plan to replace the Drug Abuse Resistance Education program that is taught to most of the district's fifth graders.)
• Prosecutors: Chicago police officer ran cocaine, heroin ring (The Associated Press says Joseph Miedzianowski, a 22-year police veteran and member of the gang crimes unit, brokered drug deals, served as a go-between with feuding drug lords, and eventually took over daily control of a drug ring that allegedly distributed millions of dollars worth of cocaine and heroin between Chicago and Miami.)
• Veteran Chicago Police Officer Charged In Drug Ring (The Chicago Tribune version)
• An Experiment Gone Awry Half Of State's 400 Breweries (The Wisconsin State Journal presents a brief but interesting history of alcohol Prohibition in the state, where 400 breweries flourished in 1920, but fewer than 200 re-opened in 1933. Some breweries managed to stay in business by manufacturing their own malt and selling to home brewers, who worked around Prohibition by fermenting in their basements or cellars. Pabst, in particular, created a healthy demand for its malted barley by openly marketing to home brewers. Prohibition did little to reduce the amount of alcohol consumed by Wisconsinites.)
• Ex-coach pleads guilty to sex, drug charges (The Cincinnati Enquirer says Thomas Oswald, a former Little League coach in Hamilton accused of giving a 16-year-old girl "drugs" and money to induce her to have sex with him and to pose naked for photos, pleaded guilty Tuesday to 15 criminal charges.)
• Facing charge, he stops playing Santa (The Philadelphia Enquirer says for the last eight years, Michael Maltman has brought joy to the hearts of Westville youths by dressing as Santa Claus and parading up and down Broadway in the days leading up to Christmas. This year, he is facing five years in prison on charges of possessing crack cocaine. However, in the spirit of the holidays, many of the borough's 5,000 residents have come out in support of Maltman, and 50 of them rallied behind him Monday at a special council meeting on the issue.)
• Liquor/Beer Regulations (A letter to the editor of the Louisville, Kentucky, Courier-Journal, from the president of Expressway Liquors, who is also president of Champions For a Drug Free Kentucky, responds to news about local college students who died in an alcohol-related incident by pointing out the hypocritical double standards and regulations allowing beer to be purchased more easily than hard alcohol.)
• Cops Sued Over Drug Arrest Await Verdict (The Miami Herald says a federal jury in Broward is deliberating today whether two police officers in Hollywood, Florida, violated the civil rights of a man who claims he was wrongly arrested on drug charges in 1996.)
• U.S. study shows marijuana can affect fertility (Reuters uncritically passes along yesterday's news about the latest drug-warrior junk science from the United States suggesting cannabis may have medical utility as a birth-control adjunct.)
• Army Role In Mexico Rights Abuse Alleged (According to The Irish Times, Mrs Rosario Ibarra, 71, a leading campaigner for "disappeared" persons who is currently visiting Ireland, said disappearances are increasing in Mexico as a result of intensified military efforts against drug trafficking. Mrs Ibarra, who was the first woman candidate for the Mexican presidency, and a senator for the Democratic Revolutionary Party between 1994 and 1997, also criticised the UN Human Rights Commission for being reluctant to challenge Mexico over documented abuses. A commission investigation into disappearances announced last August had yet to begin, she said.)
• Mitch Damage Seen Upping Drug Traffic In Caribbean (Reuters quotes Derek Haines, Chief Superintendent of the Caymans Drugs Task Force, saying Tuesday that the destruction of roads and bridges in Central America by Hurricane Mitch may force South American traffickers to move more illegal drugs through the Caribbean rather than over land, through Mexico.)
• Italian Researchers Say The Sweet Doesn't Mimic Marijuana (According to The Philadelphia Inquirer, scientists in Italy said today that, contrary to earlier reports, certain substances in chocolate do not appear to mimic the effects of marijuana on the brain. "Furthermore, they said, most of the substances - known as endocannabinoids - are broken down in the digestive system before they reach the brain.")
• Chocolate "Addiction" a Fiction? (Reuters says research by Italian scientists, reported in the journal, Nature, suggests the much-touted marijuana-like properties of chocolate may not contribute to chocolate cravings after all. The researchers found milk and cocoa do contain substances that mimic marijuana's effects, but not enough to have psychoactive effects. However, the research team apparently wasn't very sure, and recommended studies to determine if low doses of such substances could affect behavior.)
• DrugSense Weekly, No. 78 (The weekly summary of drug policy news from DrugSense leads with the feature article - The U.S. Supreme Court and your rights, by Mark Greer. The Weekly News In Review includes several articles on Effective Activism - Drug war; The main thing; Drug crusade has produced everything but success. Articles about Policy include - McCaffrey blasts medicinal marijuana; New FDA chief vows to put science first; Column: Dumping DARE a good start; Texas tobacco-suit lawyers reportedly get $3.3 billion. Articles about Law Enforcement include - Editorial: Three-strikes' economics; Corruption in the system; Drug probes find smugglers in the military. Drug Use Issues are discussed in - Teen meth use outpaces treatment; Rise in cigarette smoking doesn't bother Burma government; Toxic markers called 'poor man's drug.' International news includes - UK: Drugs and weapons seized as police arrest 70 in dawn raids; UK: Drugs-related deaths double in Glasgow; UK: Drug smugglers' European Union; Mexico: Brazen drug dealers frustrate Mexico, US; Heroin use going up among US teen-agers. The weekly Hot Off The 'Net section has yet another full page ad in The New Republic. The DrugSense Tip Of The Week features a hot tip on searching the DrugNews Archive. The Quote of the Week cites Tom Armstrong. The Fact of the Week shows treatment beats interdiction.)
  Bytes: 127,000 Last updated: 1/1/99
  

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