-------------------------------------------------------------------
Federal Ban On Medical Marijuana Could Be Put On Trial (Press Release
From Americans For Medical Rights Responds To The Ruling Against Six
Northern California Medical Marijuana Dispensaries)
From: "ralph sherrow" (ralphkat@hotmail.com)
To: ralphkat@hotmail.com
Subject: Federal ban on Medical Marijuana could be put on trial
Date: Thu, 14 May 1998 15:42:38 PDT
Federal Ban on Medical Marijuana Could Be Put on Trial
Judge's mixed ruling suggests a jury should decide fate of cannabis clubs
SANTA MONICA, May 14 - Federal judge Charles Breyer today indicated that he
will issue a preliminary injunction against six medical marijuana providers,
in an initial ruling that hands significant victories to both the federal
government and the defendants.
The judge refused to grant summary judgment or a permanent injunction, as
requested by government lawyers. While the ruling means the government has
succeeded, thus far, in arguing that the providers may be violating federal
law, Judge Breyer clearly envisions that some of the defendants will not
close their facilities, and could risk contempt of court charges. Those
charges, the judge said, should be decided in a jury trial.
Dave Fratello, spokesman for Americans for Medical Rights, which sponsored
California's medical marijuana law, Prop. 215, said, "The government has been
told today that its policy of banning medical marijuana could be put on trial
as a result of this case. Many of us relish the prospect of that kind of
fight, because it is winnable."
"It has been proved time and again," Fratello said, "that the prohibition of marijuana
for medical use is a wildly unpopular policy. In the court of public opinion,
the federal government is already in a losing position. If medical marijuana
patient advocates are given their day in court, as the judge suggests, the
government could - and should lose big."The case against the six medical
marijuana providers, filed in January, is the second major federal assault
on California's medical marijuana law. First, immediately after passage of
the law in 1996, federal agencies threatened California doctors who might
"recommend" marijuana to their patients with harsh sanctions, including the
loss of prescription licenses. Those threats were turned back when another
federal judge, Fern Smith, issued a preliminary injunction against federal
punishment of physicians on April 30, 1997.
Fratello said, "It's clear that the federal government wants Prop. 215 to
fail in California. In fighting the cannabis clubs, the only medical
marijuana distribution system available to patients in California right now,
the government is fighting the spirit of our state law. These actions violate
the will of the voters, the rights of patients, and the principle of state and
local government control."
"Instead of fighting progress," Fratello said, "the federal government needs
to change its policy. Marijuana can and should be reclassified to be made
available by prescription. If the government wants to get rid of cannabis
clubs, the only justifiable and humane way to do it is to provide a real
alternative."
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Herrick Verdict In (Different Account From Another Orange County Witness)
Date: Thu, 14 May 1998 07:56:20 +0100
To: dpfca@drugsense.org, friends@freecannabis.org
From: Ellen Komp (ekomp@slonet.org)
Subject: DPFCA: Herrick Verdict In
Reply-To: dpfca@drugsense.org
I had to leave before jury deliberations, but reports are the jury
returned to ask why Prop 215 wasn't a factor, and were read the part of
the law covering possession and cultivation; nothing about asking the
state for a distribution system. They the returned with either guilty
on one felony and one misdemeanor count or possibly two felony counts
(I've gotten conflicting stories).
Sentencing will be on Friday, June 26. An appeal is planned.
The day started with the defense resting. No witnesses were called
because all avenues for defense had been closed.
Judge William R. Froeberg then gave the jury their instructions.
Jurors were given standard instructions, including ordering them not to
consider the penalty, that they must apply the law as stated, whether
or not they agree with it. H&SC 11360 a&b was read, but not 11362.5
(The Compassionate Use Act of 1996 a.k.a. Prop 215).
The jury was given the option of finding Herrick guilty on 11360b,
"every person who gives away. . . not more than 28.5 grams of
marijuana, other than concentrated cannabis, is guilty of a
misdemeanor." However, he said, first the jury must unanimously find
the defendant "not guilty" on the sales charges. To find the defendant
guilty of the lesser crime, the judge said, there must exist general
criminal intent, which can exist whether or not the person knows the
crime is unlawful.
Armburst, in his summation, said that sales mean trading for money or
favors and that "a donation is a favor." He compared the case to that
of a prostitute who can't accept money for her services but charges $50
to pet her dog.
He argued that it didn't matter that the prosecution failed to
pinpoint the exact dates the so-called crimes were committed; it was
close enough that they were on or about a certain date. He said that
whether or not Herrick actually received money or handed off marijuana,
he was just as guilty because he aided and abetted the crime. He read
the definition of aiding and abetting and said, "that doesn't mean what
it sounds like it says." He said that the person must know the purpose
of the action but doesn't have to know it's unlawful; in any case
because selling pot is a "general criminal intent" crime it does not
require intent to violate the law. "You might say, well, gee, that's
unfair. Well it's not, It's the law," he said. He compared it to a
motorist pleading ignorant to a speed limit law.
Petrosino took the podium and evoked the Magna Carta of 1290, asking
the jurors to raise their swords around Herrick to protect him, as the
original jurors had done. She said Armburst's summation reminded her of
an old law school saw: When you don't have the facts, argue the law.
That's what the DA did, she said.
She brought up the discrepancies in dates, amounts donated, and
identifying Herrick. She used some colorful examples of her own. To
illustrate the technique of leading questions (as she charged Mr.
Petrosa had done) she used the example of a woman telling a man she
loved him and asking, "Do you love me?" If he answers, I think so (as
witnesses in this case did), should she begin planning the wedding? So
should the jurors acquit.
She argued that someone's mere presence at a crime does not constitute
aiding and abetting. To aid and abet, she said, must be "With knowledge
of unlawful purpose." In this case, she said the purpose was to provide
marijuana for seriously ill Californians. She noted that "no one
disputes that Mr. Hoffer and Mr. O'Rear required marijuana, that they
were sick."
Petrosino compared accepting donations for a gift to the return
address stickers non-profit groups send to potential donors. The gifts
are given freely, and donations are not required in exchange. "There is
no sale in this case," she said. She argued that the prosecution had
not proven anything except perhaps the lesser charge of giving away
(she only mentioned this once and tried to emphasize that she didn't
really think they proved this either.) When Armburst suggested she
would try to argue for the lesser charge during his summation, she
objected (overruled).
Once more, she brought up the donation slips, making that point that
prosecution, with its burden of proof, should have subpeoned and
presented the donation slips to clarify discrepancies in dates and
amounts donated. Rumor had it she examined 800 slips in Armburst's
possession last Friday and couldn't find a single slip for patients #54
and #62 (the two in question).
She provided a chart explaining the types of reasonable doubt that
must lead to acquittal. Reasonable doubt, she said, is when the jury
"cannot say they feel an abiding conviction of truth."
She finished with a quote from "one of our Presidents": "What we need
in this Country is not division, not hatred. . . but compassion for
those who suffer." The Orange County Co-op, she said, felt compassion
for those who suffer and "shame on anyone who say they committed a
crime."
Morning recess was called. After the jury left, Armburst argued that
because Petrosino had mentioned 215 in her final argument, he should be
able to present the ballot pamphlet statement (by Hallinan, I believe)
that "patients who sell pot can still be arrested." The judge read her
words back and ruled against Armburst, saying Petrosino had only
appealed to the passion and compassion of the jury.
Armburst came back for his last word. He expanded upon Petrosino's law
school saw, implying she was relying only on reasonable doubt.
He stated that there was nothing presented to show that marijuana
prolonged life, only that it ended pain. He said "Mr. Pollard bought
marijuana for his friend, and there's probably nothing wrong with
that." He said the Petrosino argued Herrick was "trying to help."
That's true, he said, but "any street dealer can make the same claim--I
was just trying to help the guy out. . . and we'd never convict anyone
for marijuana, cocaine, heroin or methamphetamine."
Armburst pulled his meanest move by telling the jury that Petrosino
also had subpoena power over the phantom donation slips, to which
Petrosino objected, but it was overruled. After the jury left, she
moved for a mistrial because of this statement. The judge denied it,
instead admonishing Petrosino for repeatedly bringing up the slips
despite the fact that the court had ruled she did not lay proper
foundation to present them.
***
Ellen Komp
215 Reporter
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US Approval Sought For Pot Study ('San Jose Mercury News' Version
Of Yesterday's News About San Mateo County
Funding Medical Marijuana Research)
Date: Thu, 14 May 1998 17:19:36 -0700
To: mapnews@mapinc.org
From: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org (MAPNews)
Subject: MN: US CA: U.S. Approcal Sought for Pot Study
Sender: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Newshawk: Marcus-Mermelstein Family
Source: San Jose Mercury News (CA)
Contact: letters@sjmercury.com
Website: http://www.sjmercury.com/
Pubdate: Wed, 13 May 1998
Author: Alan Gathright - Mercury News Staff Writer
U.S. APPROVAL SOUGHT FOR POT STUDY
Goal is to clarify medicinal benefits
Hoping to break California's political stalemate over the use of medicinal
marijuana, San Mateo County officials decided Tuesday to seek federal
approval for a major clinical study of marijuana's medicinal benefits.
The San Mateo County supervisors voted 3-1 to approve $50,000 in initial
funding for a three-year, $500,000 study that would follow between 500 and
1,000 people who use marijuana to control such medical problems as nausea
triggered by cancer treatment and AIDS-related weight loss. County health
officials said they would contract with a researcher to file a study
application within six months, asking the U.S. Food and Drug Administration
to authorize marijuana as an investigative drug in the clinical trials.
Supervisors Mike Nevin, Mary Griffin and Rich Gordon voted for the study.
Supervisor Tom Huening said he supported medicinal marijuana in principle,
but found the study too costly.
County officials said the ultimate hope is that a first-class, strictly
controlled study could convince the federal government to reclassify
marijuana as a prescription medication for seriously ill people.
Under federal law, marijuana is classified as an illicit drug on a par with
heroin and cocaine. It can only be prescribed by doctors in a pill form,
called Marinol, which contains a synthetic version of marijuana's active
ingredient. But some patients find smoking ``natural'' marijuana more
effective and complain that Marinol is so powerful, it leaves users in a
stupor.
In November 1996, California voters passed Proposition 215, which legalized
marijuana for medicinal use under certain circumstances. But when so-called
cannabis centers distributed marijuana under the new state law to patients
with a doctor's approval, federal, state and local authorities repeatedly
acted to shut down the centers for improper sales. This left people
suffering from cancer, AIDS and other diseases able to obtain marijuana
legally only if their ``primary caregiver'' grows it for them.
Given the battle over the state law, San Mateo County officials want to
fund a study to get a definitive answer to the controversy over marijuana's
effectiveness as a medicine.
``We see this as the best and only alternative to legitimizing the use of
medical marijuana,'' said county Health Director Margaret Taylor.
Like many local jurisdictions across California, San Mateo County has been
legally thwarted from complying with Proposition 215.
Supervisor Nevin has already lobbied state Attorney General Dan Lungren for
approval of a pilot study to dispense contraband marijuana to patients at
county health clinics. But that plan died in January when federal officials
filed civil lawsuits to shut down six Northern California cannabis clubs,
saying they violated federal laws against marijuana possession, cultivation
and distribution.
``We can't do anything without the full support and cooperation of the
federal government,'' Nevin said. ``We need the Clinton administration's
blessing to be able to move on these clinical trials.''
County officials said their support for medicinal marijuana is rooted in
personal experience with sick friends. Taylor, the county health director,
said her late colleague Joni Commons, who died in January, used marijuana
to combat chemotherapy-related nausea in a 20-year battle with breast
cancer.
``She is what inspired me,'' Taylor said. ``Joni . . . found it to be the
best possible drug to alleviate her symptoms.
``She got it from her caregivers -- her kids.''
She added, ``If you talk to people on the street, most think this
(marijuana study) is a great idea, especially if you do it legally and
don't make people go to cannabis clubs.''
Nevin, a former police investigator, firmly believes most Californians
support medicinal marijuana and distinguish it from recreational drug use.
``We're trying to find a compassionate way of getting this drug to the sick
and dying people who need it,'' he said.
Marijuana's medical effects have been studied for decades. But last year, a
National Institutes of Health workshop reviewed past research and found it
lacking in the scope and size necessary to prove anything definitive about
the drug's benefits. Also last year, the White House drug policy director
announced $1 million in funding for the Institute of Medicine to review
studies already done on the medical use of inhaled marijuana.
The only current research into the medicinal benefits of smoking marijuana
is a two-year, $1 million study of 63 AIDS patients at the University of
California-San Francisco, according to the National Institutes of Health.
Researchers want to determine whether marijuana alters the concentration of
AIDS drugs, making them toxic or ineffective.
A state bill to fund study of medicinal marijuana nearly passed the
Assembly floor last August but stalled amid last-minute political
wrangling. Sen. John Vasconcellos, D-San Jose, the bill's author, said he
hopes to win its passage this summer.
``I think it's great that San Mateo County is helping to raise the
visibility of an issue that the people have spoken on,'' said Vasconcellos,
who has invited federal and state officials to a summit on medicinal
marijuana May 26 in Sacramento.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Girlfriend Of Alleged Crack Dealer Fatally Shot ('San Francisco Chronicle'
Notes 10 Police In San Francisco Trying To Apprehend A 21-Year-Old
Man Who Had Failed To Appear In Court Apparently Shot The Fugitive's
Teen-Age Girlfriend In The Head As The Two Made Their Getaway In A Car)
Date: Thu, 14 May 1998 17:32:06 -0700
To: mapnews@mapinc.org
From: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org (MAPNews)
Subject: MN: US CA: Girlfriend of Alleged Crack Dealer Fatally Shot
Sender: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Newshawk: compassion23@geocities.com (Frank S. World)
Source: San Francisco Chronicle (CA)
Contact: chronletters@sfgate.com
Website: http://www.sfgate.com/chronicle/
Pubdate: Thu, 14 May 1998
Author: Jaxon Van Derbeken, Chronicle Staff Writer
GIRLFRIEND OF ALLEGED CRACK DEALER FATALLY SHOT
Fugitive, 21, at large after eluding cops
A teenager was fatally shot yesterday when San Francisco police officers
opened fire as they tried to arrest her boyfriend, an alleged crack-cocaine
dealer who had failed to appear in court.
The shooting occurred at noon as about 10 officers from the San Francisco
Police Department, the FBI and other agencies tried to arrest Raymondo Cox,
21, outside the Oakwood Apartments, across from Lake Merced in the Lake
Shore neighborhood.
According to police, Cox jumped into a Ford Mustang driven by Michael
Johnson, 24, with Cox's 17-year-old girlfriend in the front passenger's
seat.
The Mustang sped toward two officers and shots rang out, shattering the
rear window of the car, police said.
The 17-year-old, whose name was not released, was shot at least once in the
head. ``We're not considering her as an innocent victim, but she is a
victim,'' said homicide Lieutenant David Robinson.
Initially, police spokesmen said officers fired the fatal shot.
But last night, Robinson said investigators have yet to reach that
conclusion, although they are certain that some officers opened fire.
``We're trying to determine for sure how the female was shot; perhaps it
was someone in the vehicle,'' Robinson said. ``We believe that two officers
(who were in the path of the Mustang) are the officers who fired . . . but
I have no facts to support that.''
Investigators were still interviewing law enforcement officers late last night.
According to police, officers were justified in opening fire. ``A car is a
multi-thousand-pound bullet,'' Robinson said. ``You have a right to defend
yourself to neutralize aggression.''
``It was pow . . . pow, pow, pow,'' said Oakwood resident Loni Brown, who
heard the screeching of tires and the sound of gunfire.
One officer was shouting: ``Did anybody get hit? Did anybody get hit?'' she
said.
Minutes later, the fleeing suspects slammed into the traffic median near
34th Avenue and Sloat Boulevard and collided head-on with an Oldsmobile,
officers said.
Cox and Johnson leaped out, abandoning the mortally wounded teenager. The
two then hijacked a Toyota Camry, yanking its driver, 68-year-old Zayed
Zawaydeh, from behind the wheel and shoving him to the ground.
One of the suspects shouted, ``Give me the car, give me your car,'' said
Zawaydeh, who had just left his home. ``I was afraid, I didn't know what to
say. Finally, I said, `Why do you want to take my car?' But he threw me to
the ground. He just pulled me out like a small bird.''
The crash occurred near the Lakeshore Plaza shopping center, and off-duty
firefighter Bob Jackson ran to scene and tried to revive the teenager. He
soon discovered that there was no hope. ``I just realized it was a lost
cause,'' he said. ``There was no pulse, no breath. She was dead.''
Cox and Johnson fled east on Sloat, driving Zawaydeh's 1987 gray four-door
Camry, with license number 2FAV515. They are considered armed and
dangerous.
Cox, a parolee with a history of narcotics convictions, was being sought on
a $50,000 bench warrant that was issued after he failed to appear in San
Francisco court in a crack-cocaine trafficking case. Police, the FBI and
other law enforcement agencies had gone to the apartment complex in
connection with the warrant and a pending drug investigation.
``They (Cox and Johnson) are involved in a narcotics enterprise,'' dealing
in cocaine and possibly other drugs, Robinson said. ```They are
distributors above street level.''
Reached last night at her home in Washington state, Cox's mother said she
was stunned by her only child's alleged involvement in the case. ``I want
him to please call me and to turn himself in,'' Chequita Cox said. ``I want
him to know that I love him and that I want to see him alive, not six feet
under.'' Chequita Cox said she sent her son to live with relatives in San
Francisco about six years ago. ``He told me he was working, but like many
kids his age, he didn't tell me what he was doing,'' she said, adding that
she last spoke to him on Mother's Day. ``I can't believe my son is walking
around with a gun and that he's dangerous.''
1998 San Francisco Chronicle
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Girl Dies In Busted Stakeout ('San Francisco Examiner' Version)
Date: Sat, 16 May 1998 02:47:05 -0400
To: mapnews@mapinc.org
From: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org (MAPNews)
Subject: MN: US CA: Girl Dies In Busted Stakeout
Sender: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Newshawk: Jerry Sutliff
Pubdate: Thu, 14 May 1998
Source: San Francisco Examiner (CA)
Contact: letters@examiner.com
Website: http://www.examiner.com/
Author: Ceric Brazil, Tyche Hendricks and Larry D. Hatfield
GIRL DIES IN BUSTED STAKEOUT
Cop may have fired fatal shot as fleeing suspect stepped on gas; fugitive's
mom urges him to give up
A police dragnet widened Thursday for two San Francisco men who escaped
after a teenage girl was gunned down in their car. It remained unclear
whether police or one of the fugitives fired the bullets that killed the girl.
Police sought suspected drug dealer Raymondo Cox, 21, and his friend,
Michael Johnson, in his early 20s, as Cox's mother and grand mother pleaded
through the media for him to give himself up.
It was unclear whether the fugitives were armed.
The teenager, who has not been identified and was believed to be Johnson's
girlfriend, was shot and killed, apparently by San Francisco police as they
tried to arrest Cox for missing a court appearance on drug charges. He also
was wanted for assault on a Daly City police officer, police said.
Cox and Johnson allegedly fled after the gunfire near Lake Merced, then
commandeered a motorist's vehicle in the Parkside District and escaped.
The girl was in the front passenger seat of a car in which the two suspects,
who authorities say tried to run police officers down, escaped early
Wednesday afternoon.
The girl was shot in the head.
"If you're printing this for my son to read, please tell him to please call
grandma, someone in the family (or) call me," said Cox's mother, Chequita
Cox, of Bellevue, Wash. "I love him. I just don't want to see him hurt."
His grandmother, Valerie Williams, with whom Cox lived in The City, also
pleaded with him to give up and expressed fears he would be gunned down by
police whether he was armed or not "The boy's in trouble," Williams said.
"OK, fine, but don't make it worse than it is."
Raymondo Cox has lived in San Francisco since he was 15 and first came to
The City to visit his grandmother, his mother said.
Police refused to identify the officers who fired or to release the name and
age of the victim, a juvenile, whose body was found in the car after a
head-on crash in the Parkside District.
The deadly events began shortly before noon at the Oakwood Apartments at 555
John Muir Drive on the west shore of Lake Merced near the Police
Department's firing range.
Police spokesman Sherman Ackerson said a team of SFPD plainclothes officers
from the joint FBI-SFPD fugitive recovery unit spotted Cox in a gray Mustang
in the sloping driveway of the big apartment complex.
Officers in the stakeout reportedly observed Cox completing a drug deal.
Cox was wanted on a $50,000 bench warrant issued in San Francisco for
failure to appear in court on charges of possession and sale of rock cocaine.
When one of the officers approached the car, its driver, believed to be
Johnson, apparently hit the gas "as if to run him down," Ackerson said.
Homicide Lt. David Robinson said two officers were believed to have fired at
the Mustang, registered to an uncle of Cox's, before it whipped out of the
driveway and sped north along John Muir Drive. Three shell casings were
recovered at the scene.
"I heard pow! Pow! Pow! Pow!" said Loni Brown, who lives in the apartment
complex. "Then one of the cops was saying, 'Anybody get hurt?"'
"We have to determine how she was shot," said Robinson. "We don't know if it
was the officers' rounds or the suspects' rounds."
But Robinson said there was no evidence from the scene or from witnesses
that the occupants of the Mustang had returned gunfire. The rear window of
the car was shattered.
Among the charges the fugitives will face, police said, is assault with a
deadly weapon and car jacking. "You can consider a car a multithousand pound
bullet," Robinson said.
The Mustang turned east on Sloat Boulevard but went out of control in the
1600 block opposite Lakeshore Plaza near 34th Avenue. The vehicle's left
rear tire was torn off as the car careered around the planted median strip
and crashed head-on into a westbound, Oldsmobile, whose driver was not
injured by the impact.
With the girl slumped lifeless in the front seat, the two suspects ditched
the car, police said.
One of the fugitives, possibly Johnson, accosted Zayed Zawaydeh, 68, a
retired grocer, who had just pulled out of his driveway and was stopped for
a red light.
"I saw this car running, but it was smoking, like it was on fire, and I
stopped for the light," Zawaydeh said. One of the suspects "came to me and
pulled me out like a small bear. He was a very strong ...... He just said,
'I want your car,' and he threw me out on the ground."
Zawaydeh was uninjured. He said he had not seen a weapon in his assailant's
possession. "I was really afraid," he said. "I didn't know what to say."
The dead girl was Johnson's girlfriend, according to Cox's grandmother. She
didn't know the girl's name. The two suspects were last seen driving
Zawaydeh's gray four-door 1987 Toyota Camry east on Sloat. Its California
license number is 2FAV515.
An all-points bulletin has been issued to law enforcement officials in
Northern California to be on the lookout for the suspects and the stolen car.
Off-duty San Francisco firefighter Bob Jackson was first to the scene of the
crash and tried to administer cardiopulmonary resuscitation to the young
woman, who had been shot through the ear.
"At first I didn't even know she was shot," Jackson sai~ "She had no pulse,
she wasn't breathing, but I started CPR because I just thought there was
just a chance I could bring her back." He stopped the CPR when paramedics
arrived. He detected no sign of life, he said. Police would not say whether
the dead girl was a suspect in the narcotics surveillance operation.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Four Candidates In Sole Primary Debate ('San Francisco Examiner'
Account Suggests Proposition 215 Was Not An Issue
To Any Of The Four Primary Contenders Vying For California's Governorship)
Date: Sat, 16 May 1998 02:04:14 -0400
To: mapnews@mapinc.org
From: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org (MAPNews)
Subject: MN: US CA: Four Candidates In Sole Primary Debate
Sender: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Newshawk: compassion23@geocities.com
Pubdate: Thu, 14 May 1998
Source: San Francisco Examiner (CA)
Section: A,1
Contact: letters@examiner.com
Website: http://www.examiner.com/
Author: Robert Salladay and Zachary Coile
FOUR CANDIDATES IN SOLE PRIMARY DEBATE
Lone Republican Lungren enjoys the sniping among Democrats Checchi, Gray, Harman
LOS ANGELES - Al Checchi's opponents in the Democratic gubernatorial
primary, reeling from his multimillion-dollar barrage of negative campaign
ads, seized the platform Wednesday of the lone primary campaign debate to
fire back at the financier.
Rep. Jane Harman and Lt. Gov. Gray Davis challenged Checchi assertions that
he is only highlighting their records as public servants.
"I watched in horror as Michael Huffington smeared Dianne Feinstein. And,
sadly, now it's happening among Democrats," Harman said, referring to
Feinstein's Republican opponent in the 1994 U.S. Senate campaign.
"These things happen because too many macho politicians say, "Do it my way,
or I will tell the media about something naughty you did when you were 12.'
If (Checchi) runs a divisive and negative campaign, you can expect a
divisive and negative governor."
Davis took aim at Checchi as well: "There are only 20 days left, you could
do a great service by focusing on the merits of your campaign rather than
the alleged deficiencies of your opponents."
Harman, who repeatedly says she is running a positive campaign, went on the
attack again during her closing remarks. She chided Davis for not being bold
enough, said Republican Attorney General Dan Lungren was too extreme and
Checchi was buying the election.
When she was through, Lungren looked at Harman and said: "Thanks for that
positive closing." He got a big laugh from the audience.
The debate was the first chance for the four major candidates - Checchi,
Davis, Harman and Lungren, the lone Republican in the group - to challenge
one another on the same podium. No other debates are scheduled, although
some news organizations are trying to arrange a Northern California match-up.
The 90-minute debate, which was not televised by any major network, took
place in an auditorium at the Los Angeles Times building with about 300
reporters and civic leaders present.
The satellite feed of the debate, picked up and broadcast live in the Bay
Area by BayTV and KQED-FM, went off the air for about 10 minutes.
Requests to candidates
Times executives had asked the candidates to stay away from personal attacks
and "focus your comments on issues and actions you would take" if elected
governor. They envisioned a forum, not a nasty exchange.
For much of the forum, the candidates politely answered direct questions,
but tried often to go on the attack.
Davis and Lungren, who at first got a laugh for wondering if he should jump
between the Democrats, nevertheless swiped at Checchi for his failure to
vote in four of the past six state elections.
Lungren, a former congressman, also questioned Checchi's attacks on Davis
and Harman as career politicians.
"How can you denigrate public service?" Lungren asked. "How can you tell
them you should have spent your time making money?"
Although Checchi spent much of the debate talking about his numerous plans
for education and government reform, he broke away on several occasions to
defend himself.
"I've been attacked for spending my own money from people who take money
from others," he said.
Of his attack ads, Checchi said "this election is about comparisons, and the
things I've talked about are factual, not personal."
Open primary
Although he is an overwhelming favorite for the Republican nomination,
Lungren was included in the debate because of the state's new open primary,
which allows voters to pick any candidate regardless of party. Checchi, for
one, insisted that Lungren be included because Checchi hopes to capture
Republican cross-over voters in the primary.
During opening remarks, the candidates laid out essentially the same themes
they have been selling in their barrage of TV ads - at an estimated $50
million the most expensive ad campaign in California's political history.
Checchi, who told the audience he is the grandson of immigrants, talked
about the coming new century and went through his list of proposals and
promises: cutting bureaucracy, adding more police, and offering tax breaks.
He said he has traveled the state meeting people and "through their eyes I
have also seen that people are concerned about their future and are
dissatisfied with politicians who say things are pretty good right now and
have no plan for the future. I reject the old politics that say we have to
be content with the way we are."
Harman repeated her mix of public and private experience, her fiscal
conservatism and the fact that she is a woman and mother. She took the
middle - and most specific - road when asked how she would spend the state's
current $4 billion surplus.
Harman said she would divide the money between education and a limited tax
cut. She said Lungren's call for eliminating the state's car tax was the
"cut-and-run approach."
Davis mentioned several times his work as chief of staff to former Gov.
Jerry Brown, his status as a Vietnam veteran and his experience as an
assemblyman, state controller and lieutenant governor. He said he wanted to
fix the schools, cut crime and work toward a more diverse state.
"I will work to bring this state together, and end divisive, wedge-issue
campaigns," Davis said.
Lungren highlighted what he said was his record as attorney general helping
drive down the crime rate in California. Asked about the increase in prison
spending, the fastest growing part of the state budget, Lungren said he
would not apologize for tougher sentencing laws he has backed.
"We'll stop building prisons when they stop committing crimes," he said.
For those who missed the live broadcast on BayTV, C-SPAN or KQED-FM, the
debate will be played on KCBS-AM radio from 8 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. Wednesday
and on BayTV this weekend and C-SPAN at 9 a.m. Sunday.
(c)1998 San Francisco Examiner
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Senator Lockyer's Pitch (Staff Editorial In 'The Orange County Register'
Says The Democratic Candidate For California Attorney General,
State Senator Bill Lockyer, Fully Supports Proposition 215
And Would Shift The Department's Emphasis More Toward Consumer Rights
And Civil Rights Cases And Away From 'Narcotics' Enforcement,
A Cornerstone Of Dan Lungren's Administration)
Date: Sat, 16 May 1998 19:14:22 -0700
To: mapnews@mapinc.org
From: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org (MAPNews)
Subject: MN: US CA: Editorial: Sen. Lockyer's Pitch
Reply-To: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Newshawk: John W.Black
Source: Orange County Register (CA)
Contact: letters@link.freedom.com
Website: http://www.ocregister.com/
Pubdate: Thu, 14 May 1998
SEN. LOCKYER'S PITCH
A change of emphasis would come to the California attorney general's office
if Democrat Bill Lockyer is elected. The former state Senate president
pro-tem, who still serves in the Senate, believes current Attorney General
Dan Lungren-a Republican now running for governor- has taken the wrong
track in some areas.
In an interview yesterday with the Register editorial board, Sen. Lockyer
indicated how he's likely to be distinctively different. He would shift the
department's emphasis more toward consumer rights and civil rights cases
and away from narcotics enforcement, a cornerstone of Mr. Lungren's
administration. And Sen. Lockyer would push to improve the technology and
management structure of a department that has more than 4,000 employees,
including 1,000 lawyers.
Sen. Lockyer criticized existing enforcement of child-support statutes,
noting there is a backlog of one million names of Californians that local
district attorneys want to find for collection purposes. Sen. Lockyer
conceded that much of the problem was a state computer system that didn't
work. As a politician representing Silicon Valley, he said, "You start by
enlisting some of the best brains in the planet who work in California" in
the computer industry.
In some other areas Sen. Lockyer had ideas that we think would move the
department beyond the rigidities of the Lungren administration. He fully
backs Proposition 215, the medical marijuana initiative passed by voters in
1996, and voted for it.
He believes physicians ought to be able to prescribe whatever pain-relief
medications are necessary to those in severe pain. He remembered the
suffering of his mother, who died of leukemia at 50, and of his sister, who
died from the same disease. "If you can give them morphine [which it is
legal to prescribe], you can give them marijuana," he said, speaking of
patients in general. He admitted the initiative "wasn't written well" and
would advocate statutes that better define, for instance, who is a
caretaker, and would allow the regulated distribution of marijuana to sick
people who need it, but with safeguards to prevent broader use.
He opposes new taxes on and censorship of the Internet and would favor
allowing local public schools and libraries to establish sensible use
policies, rather than the state.
He has been a major supporter of the 1993 law that limited the seizures of
innocent people's property under asset forfeiture laws, requiring a
conviction in court before the property is taken. (The previous state law,
and current federal law, allow seizures without a trial.)
He also sensibly favors shifting the emphasis of drug abuse offenders from
incarceration to treatment. In 15 years, prison costs have zoomed to $4
billion a year from $400 million. More than 150,000 prisoners are behind
bars in California, a majority sufferering alcohol or drug problems. Drug
treatment programs would help relieve overcrowding, he believes, in part
because they reduce recidivism.
In a couple of ways, Sen. Lockyer would act like Mr. Lungren. He supports
the actions of 40 state attorneys general, including Mr. Lungren, against
the tobacco companies. He believes a cigarette tax might be necessary to
"pay the social costs" of smoking and that government, through taxes, can
significantly change behavior. And, he is predisposed to viewing Microsoft
Corp. as a monopoly in terms of its operating system. All this could well
mean a hard eye on big business and a tilt toward intrusion, though he
professed a respect for the free market.
On the subject of taxes, he pointed out that he sponsored last year's $1
billion state income tax cut and was the sole Senate Democrat who opposed
the "car tax " that was imposed in 1991, and which now costs an average of
$184 a year for each car. "It's regressive, high," he said, but hasn't
endorsed Assemblyman Tom McClintock's new proposal to repeal the tax. "I
don't want to cut local services" which the tax pays for, Sen. Lockyer
said. And the state budget surplus expected this year could be only part of
a "temporary upswing in the economy" that soon could fade.
It seems to us that on these tax issues Sen. Lockyer wants it both ways. If
the car tax was wrong in 1991 then it's wrong now and ought to be repealed.
And if cigarette taxes would unfairly hit the poor and precipitate black
market activity, as happened in Canada, Then the taxes ought not be
imposed.
Government is about making hard public-policy choices. Sen. Lockyer aligns
with our views in some areas - First Amendment issues, the Internet, asset
forfeiture and medical marijuana - but on tax issues he almost reflexively
wants to keep revenues on the government ledger, instead of returning them
to the producers, the taxpayers.
But one thing seems certain: the attorney general's office under Sen.
Lockyer, if elected, would not be a continuation of the Lungren days, in
many significant ways.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Officers Train To Eradicate Pot Plants ('Tulsa World' Says Cops
From 20 Law Enforcement Agencies Have Been Training At Camp Grubor
This Week For The Annual Crackdown Starting In June In Eastern Oklahoma's
Marijuana Harvest - Herbicide Sprays Will Be Used For The First Time,
Making Oklahoma Only The Second State To Use The Method)
From: nora@november.org (Nora Callahan)
To: november-l@november.org (Multiple recipients of list)
Subject: [Fwd: Marijuana Crackdown]
Date: Thu, 14 May
While we are discussing war metaphor....
read this!
Date: Thu, 14 May 1998 13:19:36 -0500
From: Meg (river@busprod.com)
To: ajsmith@intr.net
CC: nora@november.org
Subject: Marijuana Crackdown
Oklahoma has now made itself into a "police state". The following is
from the May 14, edition of the Tulsa World:
***
OFFICERS TRAIN TO ERADICATE POT PLANTS
CAMP GRUBER - Officers from 20 law enforcement agencies have been
training here this week for the annual crackdown starting in June in
eastern Oklahoma's marijuana harvest.
Authorities are expecting a more efficient eradication program this year
because sprays will be used for the first time, making Oklahoma only the
second state to use the method.
Russ Higbie, chief agent over enforcement for the Oklahoma Bureau of
Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs, said the use of sprays gives officers an
eradication tool quicker than the old method of chopping down stalks and
then burning them.
"It is going to revoluntionize this entire project, making it possible
to eradicate thousands of more marijuana plants in a shorter period of
time," he said, noting that in the past "we had to whack it, stack it
and burn it."
The Bureau, the lead agency in the eradication program, joined hands
this week with the Okla. Army National Guard to provide the training at
Camp Gruber where the Guard frequently hold weekend and annual two week
drills.
The Guard also is a source of "federal funding" for the marijuana
operation and will provide equipment and manpower for surveillance from
helicopters, Higbie said.
Traditionally, the major marijuana alley in the state has stretched
through the eastern sector of the state, virtually all the way from
Kansas to Texas. Officers training with the Guard this week are from
nine counties, large and small municipal police departments, the
Oklahoma Highway Patrol and the Cherokee Nation.
Much of the training Wednesday centered on the officers descending from
a platform on ropes. Later this week they will test their skills at
coming down ropes from flying helicopters.
The rappel training is necessary, Higbie said, because in many areas of
the state it is impossible to land helicopters.
Higbie said the Bureau's marijuana eradication program started 10 years
ago, and the department of the Army began "blending in" by providing
monies and personnel to combat drug use.
Though he didn't have numbers readily available, Higbie said the program
has been a major success, resulting in high arrest and seizure rates
during the summer months.
While the primary marijuana corridor in Okla. is in the eastern part of
the state, Higbie said the "task force" also has worked operations in
the western sector.
The participation of the officers is important, he said, because they
have the qualifications to make the hundreds of arrests "occurring each
year".
The National Guard, he said is never put in a position of having to
"give testimony" or "be involved in the chain of custody of evidence".
They support us, he said, "by allowing us to work the towers and flying
the helicopters to work the surveillance and spotting mission through
their own funding."
Higbie said the chemical spraying program passed an environmental impact
study and is patterned after one in Hawaii, the only other state where
sprays are used on marijuana.
"We gave a demonstration of the spray late last year and were very happy
with it," he said.
In previous years, when marijuana was chopped down and then burned he
said, officers were eradicating an estimated 8,000 plants per week.
During the demonstration program last October, 50,000 plants were
eradicated in two days.
***
......this speaks for itself I think, the National Guard is already
taking everything Frank Keating said to heart. They now have the right
to help "law enforcement" with state as well as federal busts.
"Your doing fine Oklahoma", now has a whole new meaning, at least for
me. Makes me sad, I used to like it here, wanted to raise my kids, have
a home, a future......now I just want out, before its too late.
- meg
***
Date: Thu, 14 May 1998 20:50:14 -0700 (PDT)
From: bc616@scn.org (Darral Good)
To: hemp-talk@hemp.net
Subject: HT: SENT: to Tulsa Today: herbicide spraying is dangerous and wrong!
I just visited Marijuana HELL, otherwise known as Oklahoma,
won't you join me in saying HIGH on their BBS?
Linkname: Frameset for Public Policy Discussion Area
URL: http://www.tulsatoday.com/discussion2/index.htm
Link that you currently have selected
Linkname: MARIJUANA herbicide spraying is dangerous and wrong
URL: http://www.tulsatoday.com/discussion2/_disc1/0000003d.htm
-------------------------------------------------------------------
City Is Sued by a Woman Whose Home Was Raided ('New York Times'
Says A $20 Million Lawsuit Was Filed On Tuesday Against The New York City
Police Department And The City Over A No-Knock Search Warrant
That Led To A Vicious Drug Raid Last June In Brooklyn
That Violated The Rights Of A Woman And Her Two Children, Ages 6 And 1)
Date: Thu, 14 May 1998 20:38:25 -0400
To: mapnews@mapinc.org
From: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org (MAPNews)
Subject: MN: US NYT: City Is Sued by a Woman Whose Home Was Raided
Sender: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Newshawk: emr@javanet.com (Dick Evans)
Source: New York Times (NY)
Contact: letters@nytimes.com
Website: http://www.nytimes.com/
Pubdate: May 14, 1998
Author: Michael Cooper
CITY IS SUED BY A WOMAN WHOSE HOME WAS RAIDED
NEW YORK -- The no-knock search warrant, for a drug raid that the police
carried out last June at 396 New Jersey Ave. in East New York, Brooklyn,
was quite specific. "Upon reaching the second-floor landing," it said, "one
turns to the left and proceeds to the gray metal door clearly marked with
the letter and number '2M."' There was just one problem: There is no
apartment 2M at 396 New Jersey Ave. The only apartments on the second floor
are marked 2L and 2R. And both doors are red, not gray.
But the family that lives in apartment 2L claims that the discrepancy did
not prevent a team of police officers from breaking down its door about
8:30 a.m. on June 5. Instead of finding the heroin or handguns they were
looking for, the family said, the police found only a woman and her two
children, who were ages 6 and 1.
The woman, Sandra Soto, 27, held a news conference Wednesday to announce
that she had filed a $20 million lawsuit on Tuesday against the Police
Department and the city. "They just broke down the door," she said. "I told
them, 'Please, can I take the baby out of the crib?' She was screaming.
They said, 'No."' But police officials said Wednesday that they were
confident the officers had raided the right apartment, even if it was not
the one named in the warrant and even though no drugs or contraband were
found. And they questioned the timing of Ms. Soto's lawsuit, suggesting
that she was trying to capitalize on recent cases in which the police have
been accused of raiding the wrong apartments or carrying out improper drug
raids. "It's just like a number of other cases," Police Commissioner Howard
Safir said Wednesday at his weekly news conference, "that are popping up as
people line up to see if they can sue the city for big dollars with
attorneys who hold press conferences rather than litigate."
Ms. Soto's lawyer, Susan Karten, said that Ms. Soto filed a complaint with
the Civilian Complaint Review Board on the day of the raid and filed a
notice of claim against the city -- which paved the way for the lawsuit --
last July. "We believe that this incident, as well as the others that
followed in its wake," Ms. Karten said, "represents a continuing systemic
problem within the New York City Police Department with regard to the way
they confirm and verify information obtained by confidential informants in
connection with drug raids."
The search warrant stated that a confidential informer -- who had been a
heroin user for eight years and who said he had sold the drug from time to
time -- told a police officer that he had been in apartment 2M and had seen
a man named Lucky "cutting heroin and placing it in plastic glassine
envelopes" that were stamped with a percent symbol.
The informer also said that he had seen a 9-millimeter pistol and a
.38-caliber handgun in the apartment, according to the warrant. A police
official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said Wednesday that the
informer had proved reliable before and after the raid on New Jersey
Avenue. And he said the police felt sure that they had raided the right
apartment.
"He went on the description of the location, rather than any letters or
numbers on that door," the official said of the officer who led the raid.
Ms. Soto said that she did not know anyone named Lucky. "I don't mess with
anybody in the building," she said. "I'm always in the apartment."
-------------------------------------------------------------------
First International Conference On Heroin Maintenance - Update
(The Lindesmith Center Gives New Details And Registration Information
Regarding The Meeting June 6 In New York City)
From: enadelmann@sorosny.org
Date: Thu, 14 May 98 21:45:26 EST
To: #TLC__ACTIVIST_at_osi-ny@mail.sorosny.org, tlc-activist@soros.org,
#TLC__ASC_at_osi-ny@mail.sorosny.org, tlc-asc@soros.org,
#TLC__CRIM__JUST_at_osi-ny@mail.sorosny.org,
tlc-criminal-just@soros.org
Subject: First Internt'l Conf. on Heroin Maintenance - Update
Sender: owner-tlc-activist@soros.org
PLEASE FORWARD AND DISTRIBUTE THIS ANNOUNCEMENT TO OTHERS WHO MAY BE
INTERESTED.
REMINDER: IF YOU HAVE NOT ALREADY REGISTERED, TIME IS GETTING SHORT
AND SPACES ARE FILLING UP!
***
THE FIRST INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON HEROIN MAINTENANCE
Saturday, June 6, 1998
9:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.
New York Academy of Medicine
103rd Street and 5th Avenue
The use of heroin maintenance as pharmacotherapy for opiate addiction
is gaining acceptance. A landmark Swiss study has successfully
maintained heroin addicts on injectable heroin for almost two years,
with dramatic reductions in illicit drug use and criminal activity, as
well as greatly improved health and social adjustment.
This conference will mark the first U.S. presentation of the results
of the Swiss program by Professor Ambros Uchtenhagen, M.D., PhD.,
Principal Investigator of the Swiss National Project on the Medically
Controlled Prescription of Narcotics.
Heroin trials are also under way or under consideration in several
other countries. Leading clinicians, researchers, public health and
law enforcement officials from Australia, Canada, Germany, Great
Britain, The Netherlands, Spain, Switzerland, and the United States
will present their perspectives, plans and programs.
THE FIRST INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON HEROIN MAINTENANCE
PROGRAM SCHEDULE
9:00 Registration
9:30 Introductions
9:45 The Swiss Heroin Prescription Program
Thomas Zeltner, PhD, Director of the Swiss Federal Office of
Public Health
Ambros Uchtenhagen, MD, PhD, Principal Investigator, Swiss
National Project on the Medically Controlled Prescription
of Narcotics
11:00 Break
11:15 Developing Models for Heroin Maintenance Treatment
Australia: Gabriele Bammer, PhD, Senior Fellow, National
Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health, Australian
National University
Netherlands: Prof. Wim Van den Brink, Chairman, Dutch
Health Council Committee on Medicinal Intervention in Drug
Addiction
12:30 Lunch
Speaker: Craig D. Reinarman, PhD, University of California,
Santa Cruz -- "The Hidden History of Opiate Maintenance in
the United States"
2:00 Commentator Panel: Medical leaders provide their
perspectives on opiate treatment and anchor an audience
discussion
- Peter Beilenson, M.D., M.P.H. Commissioner of Health,
Baltimore, MD
- David C. Lewis, M.D., Director, Center for Alcohol &
Addiction Studies, Brown University
- Martin Schechter, M.D., Ph.D., Faculty of Medicine,
University of British Columbia
- Alex Wodak, M.D. Director, Alcohol & Drug Service, St.
Vincent's Hospital, Sydney, Australia
3:30 Concurrent Focus Sessions
1) Clinical and Treatment Issues
- Tony Barthael, Switzerland
- Robert Haemmig, Switzerland
- David Marsh, Canada
- William Shanahan, Great Britain
2) Research and Evaluation
- Nicky Metrebian, Great Britain
- Thomas Perneger, Switzerland
- Ambros Uchtenhagen, Switzerland
- Wim Van den Brink, The Netherlands
- Maria Victoria Zunzunegui, Spain
3) Legal/Policy Strategies
- Gabriele Bammer, Australia
- Alex Wodak, Australia
- Thomas Zeltner, Switzerland
5:00 Reception
***
REGISTRATION INFORMATION
The First International Conference on Heroin Maintenance
Saturday, June 6, 1998, 9 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.
The New York Academy of Medicine - 1216 Fifth Ave. New York, NY
Fees: includes lunch $40 per person; $20 per student: A limited number of
scholarships will be available upon request.
NAME:
ADDRESS:
CITY:
STATE:
ZIP:
TYPE OF PAYMENT (CHECK, VISA, OR MASTERCARD):
CARD#:
EXPIRATION DATE:
NAME AS SHOWN ON CARD:
SIGNATURE:
DATE:
DAYTIME PHONE:
***
GENERAL INFORMATION
ON THE MEETING LOCATION
The New York Academy of Medicine
1216 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY
Limited Parking is Available.
For more information call:
(212)822-7237
e-mail: ralcantara@nyam.org
Please Register by Mail or Fax:
(212)987-4735
For Online Registration:
WWW.NYAM.ORG/MEDED/ANNOUNCEMENTS/HEROIN.HTML
Make Checks Payable To:
NEW YORK ACADEMY OF MEDICINE
HOLD THE DATE!
***
Expanded Pharmacotherapies for the Treatment of Opiate Dependence
Friday, September 25, 1998, 9am - 5pm
at The New York Academy of Medicine
***
These conferences are sponsored by:
*Beth Israel Medical Center
*Columbia University School of Public Health
*The Lindesmith Center of the Open Society Institute
*Montefiore Medical Center
*The New York Academy of Medicine
*Yale University Center for Interdisciplinary Research on AIDS
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Why Needle Exchanges Stink (An Op-Ed In 'The Trentonian'
By New Jersey Governor Christie Whitman Ignores The Science
That Rebuts Her Position)
Date: Thu, 21 May 1998 15:59:27 EDT
Errors-To: manager@drcnet.org
Reply-To: borden@intr.net
Originator: drctalk@drcnet.org
Sender: drctalk@drcnet.org
From: David Borden (borden@intr.net)
To: Multiple recipients of list (drctalk@drcnet.org)
Subject: write to the Trentonian
Anyone want to write some letters to The Trentonian? Ken Wolski is one of
our members. In reply, Gov. Christine Whitman published one of the most
skillful pieces of demagoguery I've ever seen. But she's so far wrong that
it's not that hard to poke holes in her reasoning even so. One important
point is that since the beginning of the NJ needle exchange controversy,
Whitman has consistently focused on her objection to "government giving out
needles," as opposed to the more basic issue that her administration has
used armed agents of the state to prevent sterile syringes from being
provided even privately. Letters go to:
Attn: Letters to the Editor
The Trentonian
600 Perry St.
Trenton, NJ 08618
trentonian@aol.com
All letters must be signed and a daytime phone number must be included for
confirmation purposes.
***
Why needle exchanges stink
The Trentonian, 5/14/98
Recent statements by national figures as diverse as President Clinton and
Miss America have heightened the media's attention to the issue of
government-sponsored needle-exchange programs.
Citing studies that purport to show a direct link between needle-exchange
programs and a reduction in AIDS deaths among intravenous drug users, the
White House published a statement acknowledging the supposed effectiveness
of the program while refusing to provide federal funds for its expansion.
In issuing this essentially split decision, the White House missed an
important opportunity to take an unequivocal stand against drug abuse.
I have long been opposed to needle-exchange programs. That opposition has
nothing to do with AIDS. Rather, my opposition comes from two sources: I
am a mother and I am a governor.
As a mother, I learned early in my children's lives that there are some
issues on which you cannot equivocate. One of those issues is the use of
drugs. I also learned that children will see right through conflicting
messages. Such messages only confuse them.
Government cannot on the one hand say that drug use is bad and illegal, and
on the other provide the tools for this destructive behavior in the name of
health. Kids will not accept that. It is like saying, "Just say maybe."
As a governor, I have rejected this program, not because I am insensitive
to the plight of people with AIDS -- New Jersey spends nearly $60 million
annually to treat AIDS patients and to prevent the spread of the disease.
My opposition to an exchange program also goes beyond the fact that the
behavior it supports is illegal.
My refusal to consider such a program in New Jersey stems from the fact
that drug abuse continues to threaten the lives, health and safety of the
people of New Jersey.
For example, recent reports reveal that heroin use and overdose deaths are
up in New Jersey and across the nation. Every county in New Jersey is
reporting an increase in heroin use. In Essex, Morris, Somerset, Sussex
and Union counties alone, hospital admissions for heroin-related problems
are up by 22 percent. In the past 10 years, the proportion of New Jersey
students who admit to using heroin has tripled.
The potency and purity of heroin on the streets today is at its highest
ever. Street heroin today is from 70 to 90 percent pure. In the 1970s, it
was just 5 to 10 percent pure.
Eighty percent of the inmates in New Jersey prisons have drug problems, and
the growth of drug use in American is related to half of all street crime.
And drug users and their victims are not the only ones who suffer from
illegal drug abuse. Nationally, 11 percent of newborns are born with drug
or alcohol problems, problems that will affect them, and those around them,
for life.
Sadly, this is just the tip of the iceberg. That is why needle-exchange
programs cannot be discussed simply in terms of preventing AIDS. Drug use,
and its consequences, must be part of any honest review.
For these reasons, both as a mother and as a governor, I cannot support a
needle-exchange program. I only wish that the president had used his
unique platform to share his reasons for reaching the same conclusion. I
know it would have raised level of discussion and, perhaps, helped us in
our fight to both stop drug use and prevent AIDS.
Gov. Christie Whitman
Trenton
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Is The Drug War Racist? ('Rolling Stone' Interviews Glenn C. Loury
And Orlando Patterson, Two African-American Academics And Critics
Of America's War On Some Drug Users)
Date: Fri, 8 May 1998 06:37:29 -0700 (PDT)
To: mattalk@listserv.islandnet.com
From: arandell@islandnet.com (Alan Randell)
Subject: Is the drug war racist?
Newshawk: Alan Randell
Pubdate: May 14, 1998
Source: Rolling Stone
Contact: letters@rollingstone.com
Is the drug war racist?
The government's policy has scorched the inner cities and put a
generation of young black men behind bars. Two leading African-
American scholars reflect on the damage done.
By Samuel G. Freedman
America's war on drugs has ravished the inner cities it aspired to
save. Without curbing drug traffic, the crusade has sent a generation
of young black males into the criminal-justice system, which offers
them not rehabilitation but firsthand instruction in violent crime.
While blacks make up thirteen percent of the national population and
thirteen percent of the country's monthly drug users, they account
for thirty-five percent of arrests for drug possession, fifty-five
percent of convictions and seventy-four percent of prison sentences,
according to the Sentencing Project, a nonprofit that promotes
criminal-justice reform. Between 1986 and 1991, the number of blacks
held in state prisons on drug charges rose by 465 percent, the
project also reported. That increase partly reflects the inequality
of federal sentencing rules, under which a person convicted of
possessing five grams of crack cocaine receives the same five-year
mandatory minimum as someone caught selling 500 grams of powder
cocaine.
Such evidence has turned Glenn C. Loury and Orlando Patterson into
vociferous critics of the war. Two of America's leading public
intellectuals, both men espouse cautious, unromantic liberalism on
issues like affirmative action are socially conservative about family
values. Loury is an economist who won an American Book Award in 1996
for "One by One, From the Inside Out: Essays and Reviews on Race and
Responsibility in America". He also directs the Institute on Race and
Social Division at Boston University and was one of thirty-four
prominent scholars and law-enforcement officials who last September
signed a set of "principles for practical drug policies" that staked
a middle ground between what it called "two positions stereotyped as
'drug warrior' and 'legalizer.'" Patterson is John Cowles Professor
of Sociology at Harvard University and the winner of a 1991 National
Book Award for "Freedom in the Making of Western Culture." He decries
the drug war in his current book, "The Ordeal of Integration."
Both men speak as academics and as products of their divergent pasts.
Loury, who is forty-nine, grew up in a black working-class
neighborhood in Chicago. he later joined, then broke from, the
neoconservative movement and now calls himself "a recovering
reactionary." He is also a recovering freebase addict who went
through a highly publicized arrest and finally got clean in a halfway
house. Patterson, 57, was brought up in Jamaica, did graduate study
in England and served in the Seventies as special advisor to the
Democratic Socialist prime minister of Jamaica, Michael Manley.
ROLLING STONE: If ten years ago you had said to people, "We're going
to increase arrests and incarceration by several hundred percent over
the next decade," the response probably would have been that there
won't be any more drug problem. Arrests and incarcerations have gone
up, as promised, but the drugs are still here. What makes it so
difficult to reform our policy?
LOURY: There's an anxiety among people about drugs. I mean, this is
not just an inner-city issue. You've got it throughout rural and
urban life; I hear about drugs in the Brookline [Massachusetts]
schools where my kids go. The War on Drugs is a way of doing
something about it. It's away that we're determined to fight back.
It's easy to get that concern on the table. It's harder to get a
concern about the consequences of a particular way of fighting drugs
on the table.
What happens to the fellow who stands up and says, "Look at what's
going on with the incarceration of racial minorities in the country.
Look at the way in which we're criminalizing a whole class of young
black men. There is a tremendous cost of this policy"? The person who
stands up and says that isn't seen as credible. After all, he's
advocating on behalf of these bad guys. They're the threat, right?
ROLLING STONE: What is the cost when you criminalize a whole class of
young men?
PATTERSON: Horrendous. You not only send these people to prison but
you actually make them into criminals. The ones who go to prison end
up as professional criminals committing major crimes later on - the
costs of which are borne by the society in terms of property damage,
murder and police costs.
It's often been pointed out, though, that many drug crimes are, in
fact, victimless crimes. In a funny kind of way, that may well be
what explains why people buy into this scorched-earth approach to
controlling drugs. You don't have to account for people who are
victimized as a result of making criminals of these people and
sending them to prison.
LOURY: You've got social policy being fueled by very significant
resources on the ground. Peter Reuter, a criminologist who's a
student of these matters, said that something like $30 billion is
spent annually on the War on Drugs. So this is a massive
mobilization; these are some significant resources. If we propose to
spend $30 billion over five years on preschool education for kids,
after-school programs, summer jobs or whatever, people would be up in
arms in the Congress, saying, you know, "Midnight basketball doesn't
work." Michael Tonry, in his book, "Malign neglect: Race, Crime and
Punishment in America", makes a very strong case that the anti-drug
money substantially affects the behavior of police departments.
ROLLING STONE: You mean that because the dollars are there, the
public demands great numbers of arrests?
LOURY: Yes, exactly. What's success? Success is locking people up.
Success is cases, it's collars. And where does the police department
find people? It's going to go to the point of least resistance, where
there are transactions that are occurring on the street, where
neighborhoods are poorly organized so that it's easy to infiltrate
the rings that are selling the stuff.
I use this analogy: If we were having a war on prostitution and we
decided we wanted to lock up as many prostitutes as possible, you're
going to concentrate on people who are streetwalkers. You're going to
go down by the docks, to the wrong side of the railroad tracks, the
Combat Zone here in Boston. What you're going to find are poor woman
who are drug-addicted, who are welfare dependent, who are going to be
disproportionately minority. And you're going to lock them up.
Now we all know that sex for money is being transacted in this
society at many different levels and in many different ways. But a
policy designed to maximize the number of persons arrested for
selling sex for money will predictably fill up the jails with women
of a certain kind.
So the perspective from these communities well could be, "This is a
war on us." I use that kind of rhetoric cautiously because I don't
mean to contribute to conspiracy theorizing.
PATTERSON: The difference between [the criminal penalties for]
cocaine powder and crack cocaine is way out of proportion, and it
doesn't matter what the original motivation is. One doesn't have to
prove that this deplorable state of affairs originated in deliberate
racist practices. In fact, I don't think it did. Because there's good
evidence that the members of the African-American community wanted a
strong crackdown on crack and pushed for having extreme penalties.
ROLLING STONE: Part of what went with that was the idea that crack
was so addictive that you couldn't rehab from it. And once you
believe that, you take the whole idea of treatment off the table and
it becomes purely a debate over punishment.
LOURY: The animus against crack that you find in the African-American
community comes from the tremendous damage that crack addiction has
done to so many people. The last thing you want to learn is that your
son-in-law, your nephew, your cousin, is on the pipe. Because that's
going to be trouble for a long time, and you know the downside is
pretty far down.
Now, the anti-treatment people say treatment doesn't work, and it's
true that on any given attempt treatment has a relatively low cure
rate. You have to keep at it. But from my prospective, anybody who
pulls themselves up out of the gutter and says, "I want to go and try
and get my life together," there should be a place for them to go.
And if it doesn't work this time, as long as there's a place there
and they can go back - and they do go back - that should be paid for.
ROLLING STONE: Would you talk to some extent from your own
experience?
LOURY: It's dangerous business to try and make social policy on the
basis of one's biography. So I wouldn't, except to say I have
observed firsthand the difficulty of getting out from under the
allure and the obsession with some of these substances.
ROLLING STONE: How is it that criticizing the drug war has become
perceived as tantamount to being soft on drugs?
LOURY: You have to distinguish between the effect of a policy and the
symbolic meaning of a policy, which I think is important politically.
You know, we have sodomy laws on the books that are not enforced. My
view is that they're bad laws in some demonstrable sense, but it
might be very hard politically to get them off the books because an
effort to take them off is understood to be endorsing a certain way
of life.
Similarly, with drug policy, the discourse is shrouded with these
symbolic meanings. If you have a lot of pot-smoking hippies running
around denouncing all of the drug laws, then we know those are bad
people. The fact that the image of drug users and dealers is that of
a hooded-sweat-shirt-wearing, gun-toting sixteen-year-old hanging out
in a doorway - the black, urban, thug - gives you some indication of
the demonization. Once these people become the face of this problem,
those who say, "Let them out, don't hit them too hard" are people who
don't take the problem seriously. That's the construction of symbolic
meaning.
PATTERSON: There was a time when alcohol was also ethnically
identified, and the Irish in America were criminalized as a result.
As long as that association existed, no one could see alcoholism as
an illness. It wasn't until people were able to persuade themselves
that, in fact, alcoholism wasn't the problem of one single ethnic
group that they were able to see it as an illness.
LOURY: The degree of tolerance for alcohol use is relatively unique
in American history. But the policy of Prohibition is universally
recognized to have been a failure. It seems to me that we need to
recognize the same failure with drug policy.
PATTERSON: Having acknowledged all of this, the question is, "What do
we do now?" And it seems to me that this is something that political
will could be very effective in changing.
ROLLING STONE: But virtually no politician is willing to stand up
publicly and question the drug war. It's like the Cold War years and
no wants to normalize relations with China because they'll look soft
on communism. This issue is waiting for its Nixon.
PATTERSON: This is a fundamental problem in the American political
process, isn't it? There's nothing you can say about changing
traditional attitudes towards law-breaking behavior because of the
political fear that it will used against you. I don't know how
America got itself into this bind. But in the final analysis, it will
only be a powerful leader who also is courageous enough to risk his
popularity by saying, "This is ridiculous."
LOURY: Look at what the Republicans tried to do in the last
presidential election. When there was some statistic about marijuana
use among high-school students, there was a whole campaign about how
Clinton had had some marijuana smokers in the White House so he's
sending the wrong message. Which is ridiculous. These social trends
are not driven by the symbols that are given off by somebody who sits
in Washington, D.C. They're driven by the fundamentals on the ground
in a nation of 270 million people.
PATTERSON: I don't see why Clinton in his second term couldn't have
selected a few issues that are ostensibly unpopular. This would have
the political benefit for him of making him appear to be courageous.
And given the fact that the African-American community constitutes
such a major part of his base, he has a responsibility to take some
unpopular stands on important issues. And drug policy is one I would
certainly emphasize.
LOURY: This is what Clinton's "national conversation on race" should
partly be about. You don't have to frame it in terms of "You know the
drug policy is racist." But you can say that the policy is creating
distress and polarization and alienation among inner-city blacks. And
that is a problem.
PATTERSON: What I find irritating is that in prison not only is there
no rehabilitation but there's widespread use of drugs, which is quite
incredible. At least we could get to drug users at that point. If you
can't get to them in prison, you don't stand a chance in hell
outside.
If Clinton and others decided to come down heavily on the need to do
something about addiction in prison, that is politically easy to do.
And it reinforces the heavy stick - the stick rather than the carrot
approach.
ROLLING STONE: To what degree might religious leaders have a role in
turning the debate from punishment to treatment? Because you know
religion is going to speak in a moral way about issues of substance
abuse. At the same time, if you think about who houses Alcoholics
Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous groups, who runs rehab centers,
it's religious sector of society.
LOURY: If you're looking for a Nixon today on this issue, that's one
quarter where he or she might come from. Someone who is a Pat Robertson-
type person or a Gary Bauer-type person who woke up one morning and
said, "Oh my God, I've looked at this. We're criminalizing a whole
class of people. How big can the prison population be? What manner of
country are we? Real resources go into that prison system, diverted
from somewhere else. This is not the answer."
PATTERSON: I'm pessimistic about any such person coming on the scene
any time soon. There is another way we can consider changing policy,
and that is the enormous amount of money being spent on trying to
stop the drugs from flowing in. I read some figure - it's
preposterous. It's in the billions and billions of dollars. And it's
gotten us nowhere.
We have not succeeded in preventing the drugs from coming in, and,
therefore, we have to emphasize somehow trying to reduce the demand.
Perhaps we should shift some of the billions of dollars we're now
wasting on trying to prevent drugs coming into rehabilitation. I'm
not going to be spending any less, I'm not soft on drugs - I'm simply
saying, as a practical matter, instead of spending $50 billion on
Colombia or Bolivia, all of which is going just to sort of fill the
pockets of these corrupt generals, spend it here.
Since we're in a prison-building mode, let's start getting a little
creative and perhaps build some kinds of prisons that are more
rehabilitative centers rather than simply throwing these people among
hardened criminals. One of the disturbing things that has come out in
research in some ghetto areas is the fact that going to prison is not
any longer seen as a big deterrent.
ROLLING STONE: No, in fact it's become like a rite of passage.
PATTERSON: Right.
ROLLING STONE: I remember reporting on South Africa and talking to
people who'd been part of the resistance there and almost expected to
go into prison for their political actions. There was a Zulu term for
jail that translated to "the place of men."
PATTERSON: Then maybe we need to build a place of boys and relegate
some first-time offenders and nonviolent offenders there. I would use
some money on that instead of wasting it on military exercises in
Bolivia.
ROLLING STONE: Professor Loury, you've been a steadfast critic of
liberal solutions to social problems. Does this sound like one that
is both tough-minded and efficient?
LOURY: We're not talking about washing our hands of drug abuse,
becoming relativists and saying it doesn't matter. What's being said
is, "Can we think sensibly about how we can enter into people's lives
more constructively in order to try to produce something positive?"
Now the idea of rehabilitation has a bad odor. People laugh at you
when you talk of rehabilitation. Our prisons now don't rehabilitate;
what they do is incapacitate.
I'd like to see much greater funding for treatment and a focus on
the demand side of the drug market as well as the supply side. And a
ratcheting down of the punitiveness of the mandatory-minimum
sentencing. Those would be pillars of moderation.
PATTERSON: As a practical matter, it's simply politically not in the
cards right now to have decriminalization. I personally would think
that, in the long term, that may be the best approach. But in terms
of what's possible, I do not see this ever taking place.
But there are alternatives. One we actually tried in an ad hoc sort
of way in Jamaica. In the Seventies, we had a large number of young
people being arrested for ganja - marijuana - and the jails were
being filled up with people who perhaps aren't violent. What happened
in response was not so much decriminalization but that the police
were urged, essentially, to back off. And they did. The police
themselves did not want to decriminalize, because they found the use
of ganja laws an effective strategy to get people for other things.
So the laws are on the books and you can get arrested, but for the
typical user the probability of being arrested is very low. Some
version of this is one possibility for America.
LOURY: Never mind the point that we have an enlightened self-interest
in seeing that people come out of prison better than what they went
in. Because we're not going to put them in a spaceship and ship them
off to another planet. They're going to still be here, they're going
to have children, they're going to have an impact. Because we're in
this thing big time. I mean 1.7 million under lock and key on any
given day - and it's going up.
(Box)
Young, vulnerable and black
Black leaders are in a bind: it is on their turf that the drug war is
being fought. For years black politicians and church leaders
supported the War on Drugs because they saw the damage inflicted on
their communities by drugs like crack. Even today, Atlanta's
Democratic mayor, Bill Campbell, takes a tough line and tells ROLLING
STONE: "We must reject all proposals to legalize illicit drugs,
because it is morally reprehensible to consider an action that would
(a) erode our children's anti-drug attitudes of risk and social
disapproval and (b) make harmful and addictive drugs far more
accessible." Another black officeholder, Rep. J.C. Watts Jr., R-
Okla., argues that drug use is a "widespread epidemic that is
everyone's problem."
But the drug laws have had unforeseen and damaging consequences for
African-Americans. The discrepancy on sentencing for crack-cocaine
offenses (five years for possession of five grams of crack or sale of
500 grams of powder) is a notorious example. The U.S. Sentencing
Commission, which was established by Congress, declared that Congress
had made a mistake in enacting disparate sentences and recommended
that crack penalties be reduced. President Clinton and Congress
rejected the commission's recommendation. Many black politicians and
leaders, however, have spoken out on the inequities of the drug war.
- Erika Fortgang
"In the absence of a real War on Drugs and an urban policy, we have a
war on the young, vulnerable and black. Oddly, the rationale for the
disparity is to protect blacks from crack. That is racial
paternalism. What is at stake is the essence of the 1954 Supreme
Court decision - equal protection under the law."
- Rev. Jesse Jackson Sr. President, Rainbow/PUSH Coalition.
"Our drug policy has become a tale of two cities or, more accurately,
a tale of two classes - rich and poor."
- Rep. Donald Payne, D-N.J
"It is not about being soft on crime. It is not about condoning drugs.
It is about being able to look our children in the face and say: 'There
is fairness in our system of justice. There is fairness in our laws.'"
- Rep. Melvin Watt, D-N.C.
"Cocaine and crack cannot be separated. The right thing to do would
be to treat both of these lethal drugs under the same mode. The
problem that we have in our society today is we misidentify drugs, we
confuse the scene, and we have so many powerful burdens and powerful
penalties that no one really understands it."
- Rep. James Traficant, D-Ohio
"Maintaining the sentencing disparity fuels the belief that our
criminal-justice system is inherently unfair and racially unjust. Our
judicial system must be fair if we ever expect it to earn the trust
of our citizens. There is no such thing as a 'little justice.'"
- Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif.
Sources: The Drug Policy Foundation and the Congressional Black
Caucus.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Customs May Get $964 Million For Drug War ('Associated Press'
Says A US House Of Representatives Panel Approved A Proposal Thursday
To Increase Funding 31 Percent In Fiscal 1999, And To $1 Billion,
Or 25 Percent More In Fiscal 2000, After Republicans
Accused The Clinton Administration Of Withdrawing Its Support
Under Pressure From Labor Unions)
From: DMuscore@aol.com (DMuscore)
To: november-l@november.org (Multiple recipients of list)
Subject: Fwd: Customs May Get $964M for Drug War
Date: Thu, 14 May
Customs May Get $964M for Drug War
The Associated Press
By JIM ABRAMS
WASHINGTON (AP) - A House panel approved a proposal Thursday to significantly
boost the drug-fighting capabilities of the U.S. Customs Service after
Republicans accused the administration of withdrawing its support under
pressure from labor unions.
The bill would provide Customs with $964 million in fiscal 1999, 31 percent
above the administration request, and $1 billion in fiscal 2000, up 25
percent, for drug and other enforcement activities.
The money would be used to hire 1,700 additional Customs personnel and buy
new land and sea drug detection equipment.
The Ways and Means Committee approved the measure 29-0, but only after
Republicans, and several Democrats, sharply criticized the administration for
backing off a recent endorsement of the legislation.
``It's an outrage, a tragedy, that you have been put here in a sniveling
way,'' Rep. Nancy Johnson, R-Conn., said to Customs representatives at the
hearing. ``That the administration cannot speak honestly is simply a shame.''
``They're choosing labor union arguments over keeping drugs out of this
country,'' said Rep. Bill Thomas, R-Calif.
Customs officials indicated support for the legislation at a subcommittee
meeting on Tuesday. But after that, questions apparently arose over provisions
that could affect the collective bargaining powers of Customs employees.
The bill, sponsored by Rep. Philip Crane, R-Ill., gives the treasury
secretary future power to transfer 5 percent of Customs officers every year to
better meet new trafficking patterns and root out corruption.
It also gives the Customs commissioner the authority to unilaterally impose a
labor agreement if a dispute can't be settled in 90 days and the impasse has
an adverse impact on interdiction efforts.
Republicans cited a dispute in which Customs and employees have haggled for
nearly four years over a management attempt to establish a 4 a.m.-to-noon
shift at Miami's airport, a time period when many flights arrive from Latin
America.
Customs, in a statement Thursday said it ``deeply appreciates the efforts of
both Chairman Crane and Congressman (Bob) Matsui to provide us with the
additional resources and technology to combat drug smuggling and improve our
border operations.''
But at the hearing, Customs officials would neither support the bill nor
discuss what problems they might have with it. ``There has been no position
taken by the administration with respect to this bill,'' said acting assistant
commissioner for field operations Albert Tennant.
Democrats urged that the labor provisions be stricken or changed, saying they
set a dangerous precedent under which government managers could unilaterally
break contracts with employees. ``This is going to really demoralize the whole
issue of labor-management relationships when it comes to the interdiction of
drugs,'' said Matsui, D-Calif.
Matsui's amendment to eliminate the labor provisions was defeated by voice.
AP-NY-05-14-98 1833EDT
Copyright 1998 The Associated Press. The information contained in the AP
news report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise
distributed without prior written authority of The Associated Press.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Casual Smokers Complicate Addiction Theories ('Washington Post' Article
Syndicated In 'Seattle Times' Notes About 18 Percent
Of The Estimated 45 Million Tobacco Users In The United States
Don't Demonstrate Addictive Behavior And Can 'Take It Or Leave It')
Date: Fri, 15 May 1998 16:06:53 -0800
To: mapnews@mapinc.org
From: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org (MAPNews)
Subject: MN: US: Casual Smokers Complicate Addiction Theories
Sender: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Newshawk: John Smith
Pubdate: Thu, 14 May 1998
Source: Seattle-Times (WA)
Contact: opinion@seatimes.com
Website: http://seattletimes.com/
Author: John Schwartz and Leef Smith, The Washington Post
CASUAL SMOKERS COMPLICATE ADDICTION THEORIES
Peter Dubose Jr. hates smoking - just ask him.
"I think it's foul," says Dubose, a 28-year-old marketing manager from
Bethesda, Md. "It's disgusting."
So why is he smoking that cigarette? "I can't understand my own actions,"
he says, except to say he feels a powerful hankering for a smoke whenever
he's in a bar. He buys a pack - he doesn't want to bum from friends - but
"I throw the cigarettes away the next morning. The next time, I buy another
pack."
Dubose is a "social smoker," the sort of person many folks have trouble
believing exists. After all, tobacco experts and public-health advocates
have asserted for more than a decade that nicotine is at least as addictive
as cocaine and heroin, and that kind of addiction is commonly seen as an
icy death-grip that never lets you go.
In fact, according to official government statistics in recent years, there
are plenty of occasional smokers. David Mendez, an assistant professor of
public health at the University of Michigan, was analyzing smoking
statistics from surveys conducted for the federal Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention with his computer last spring when he noticed that
the percentage of people who said they smoke, but not on a daily basis,
made up 18 percent of the country's estimated 45 million smokers. "I had no
idea of what to expect," Mendez said, "but my impression was that it would
have been in the range of 5, 6, 7, 10 percent at most. No more than that. I
was surprised."
The Nature Of Addiction
The notion that there are so many smokers who can take it or leave it
raises questions about the nature of addiction and suggests to some
researchers that U.S. smoking patterns could be shifting.
The new data emerged from a change in the way the CDC collects information
about smoking. Before 1992, the National Health Interview Survey asked
people whether they had ever smoked 100 cigarettes in their lives and
whether they still smoked at the time of the survey.
In 1992, the CDC made a more subtle distinction in the second question,
asking whether those who had smoked still smoked regularly, less than once
a day or not at all.
"It's like we developed a new microscope or something so we could see
things we'd never seen before," said Gary Giovino, the chief epidemiologist
for the CDC's Office on Smoking and Health.
Because the new question has been used only since 1992, those statistics
cannot show whether occasional smokers constitute a growing trend.
But some researchers think that is the case.
Changing attitudes toward smoking do appear to be driving smokers to light
up less often, said Kenneth Warner, a researcher at the University of
Michigan School of Public Health. "Many of them have decided they're not
going to stand out on the window ledge in the dead of winter."
Social Behavior
Some younger people - who make up a large percentage of the
sometime-smoking crowd, according to CDC estimates - could be seeing
smoking not a "daily behavior but a social behavior you did with friends,
as drinking," Warner said.
That's certainly when Monique Apter, 31, lights up. "I smoke when I drink,"
she says, puffing away at an Arlington, Va., bar. "I'm not really a smoker.
I just like having something in my mouth."
Over by the pool tables at the same bar, Walter Teal, 35, has a cigarette
dangling rakishly from his lips as he sets up a bank shot. He could work
his way through half a pack whenever he was out with friends. But he began
to worry the habit might hurt his chances of meeting an ardently nonsmoking
Ms. Right, so he quit earlier this year.
Every woman he has dated since then is a social smoker.
So he is smoking again. "If you haven't smoked and then kiss someone who is
smoking, it's `yuck!' The best way to beat that is to have a cigarette," he
said, adding: "People will think up all kinds of excuses for a cig, won't
they?"
To understand how a supposedly addictive substance could have so many users
who can walk away, it is important to look at addiction - as the term is
used within the scientific community.
No substance, apparently, addicts everyone. Even among those who become
addicted, the amount of discomfort that accompanies quitting varies from
person to person. Ten percent to 15 percent of heroin and cocaine users,
for example, can simply drop their habit, never seeming to become addicted.
Only about 15 percent of those who drink alcohol become addicted. People
addicted to heroin and, later, scientists studying them, called these
non-addicts "chippers."
Saul Shiffman, a psychologist at the University of Pittsburgh, first
applied the notion of chipping to smokers in the late 1980s. "I was
estimating about 5 percent, but it was a very crude estimate," Shiffman
said. "Whether it has risen or I was just too conservative, I don't know -
since it really was a guess more than data." The fact that some people are
not addicted does not diminish the hold of addiction on the rest of the
smokers, Shiffman said. "We've got to realize that the stranglehold is real
- but it's not universal."
Teal and his fellow chippers aside, however, nicotine consistently ranks as
one of the toughest addictions to break. Seventy percent of smokers tell
pollsters they would like to quit but have been unable to do so. According
to a 1995 CDC survey comparing tobacco's physiological pull with that of
illegal drugs, cigarette smokers were more than twice as likely as users of
marijuana, cocaine or alcohol to report being unable to cut down.
Although Warner notes "there's no threshold under which there's no risk" of
getting lung cancer, heart disease or any of the other myriad ailments
linked to the tobacco habit and recommends that any smoker try to quit, he
acknowledges the risk associated with smoking a cigarette every day or so
"is minimal compared to someone who smokes 30 cigarettes a day."
`There's No Safe Level'
Public-health officials bristle at the thought that anyone might cautiously
recommend reducing the habit as opposed to kicking it outright. "Any
tobacco use increases the risk above no tobacco use," said Donald Sharp, a
medical epidemiologist at the CDC's Office on Smoking and Health. "That's
our take-home message: There's no safe level of tobacco use."
How much risk occasional smokers face - or the effect of social smoking on
the estimated $50 billion in smoking-related health costs - remains
unclear. No study has examined the risk of smoking a few cigarettes a day
or less, Sharp said, because the number of smokers with such light smoking
habits was thought to be too small to provide reliable data.
So in studies, occasional smokers are lumped in with people who smoke 10
cigarettes or fewer each day. At that level, a male smoker's risk of
getting lung cancer is 80 percent higher than a male nonsmoker's. For
reasons not yet fully understood, a female smoker's lung cancer risk is
higher, about five times the risk for smoking 10 or fewer cigarettes each
day compared with the cancer risk for nonsmokers. The average smoker bears
a 23-fold increase in cancer risk, and heavy smokers can increase their
risk by 50 times or more.
David Burns, a professor of medicine at the University of California at San
Diego who has studied the effects of low-level smoking and secondhand
cigarette smoke, said a person who picks up a cigarette only a few times a
year would certainly have a risk "too small to be biologically meaningful."
But he noted the fivefold risk for women who smoke 10 cigarettes a day or
fewer was roughly equivalent to the risk of cancer for asbestos workers.
"Do you know anybody who would say, `I just spray asbestos without any
protection once or twice a week. It's not really a problem for me.' "
to 1998 Daily News index for May 14-20