-------------------------------------------------------------------
NORML Weekly News (Senate Okays Massive Anti-Drug
Package In Tobacco Bill; New Hampshire Judge Dismisses
Farmers Request To Grow Hemp; Washington State
Democrats Back Medical Marijuana Initiative)
From: NORMLFNDTN@aol.com
Date: Thu, 11 Jun 1998 19:08:21 EDT
Subject: NORML WPR 6/11/98 (II)
The NORML Foundation Weekly Press Release
1001 Connecticut Ave., NW
Ste. 710
Washington, DC 20036
202-483-8751 (p)
202-483-0057 (f)
www.norml.org
normlfndtn@aol.com
June 11, 1998
***
Senate Okays Massive Anti-Drug Package In Tobacco Bill
June 11, 1998, Washington, D.C.: The Senate narrowly approved an
amendment to the tobacco-control bill on Tuesday that seeks to spend $16
billion targeting and enhancing penalties against marijuana users.
Amendment 2451, spearheaded by Sen. Paul Coverdell (R-Ga.), funds state
efforts to "establish state registration programs" for convicted
marijuana sellers, drug test teenage driver's license applicants, drug
test junior high and high school students, allow law enforcement to check
motorists for the presence of marijuana metabolites, and encourage small
businesses to adopt drug-free workplace programs. The measure also
amends the Higher Education Act of 1965 by prohibiting anyone convicted
of a felony drug offense from receiving any student loan, grant, or work
assistance.
"These Republican-backed anti-drug measures treat otherwise law
abiding marijuana smokers as if they were enemies of the state," said
NORML Executive Director R. Keith Stroup, Esq. "Tens of thousands of
hard-working, productive citizens -- including many of the best and
brightest college students -- would be unfairly penalized by these
draconian proposals."
Stroup called the provision to register convicted marijuana sellers
especially disturbing. The amendment states that anyone "who is
convicted of a criminal offense involving drug trafficking [must]
register a current address with a designated state law enforcement agency
for up to ten years following" the date of conviction or release from
prison. The provision further says that the information collected under
the registration program "may be disclosed for any purpose permitted
under the laws of the state." Presently, several states have enacted
similar registration laws for those individuals found guilty of
committing sex offenses against children.
Attorney Tanya Kangas, Director of Litigation for The NORML
Foundation, said that many of the drug testing initiatives proposed by
the amendment appear unworkable and may be unconstitutional.
"Implementing federal legislation to give law enforcement the authority
to screen for drug metabolites will violate privacy and search
protections," she said. "Blood tests are excessively invasive; urine
tests do not indicate impairment and cannot be collected consistent with
constitutional standards for traffic stop searches. We can restrict
people from driving while impaired without violating the Constitutional
as this amendment proposes."
The proposal mandates law enforcement to suspend the license of any
driver who tests positive for drug metabolites. Marijuana metabolites
may be present in urine for periods of 30 to 40 days after last use of
the drug.
Kangas also questioned the fairness of federally-encouraged
suspicionless drug testing in schools and the workplace. Presently, the
Supreme Court maintains that drug testing by the state without
individualized suspicion is legal only if there exists "special needs,
beyond the normal need for law enforcement."
The provision denying federal student loan assistance to convicted
marijuana felons is similar to a House amendment approved earlier this
year. NORML National Campus Coordinator Aaron Wilson said that both
pieces of legislation unfairly punish marijuana users. "It is outrageous
that Congress would pass this law denying financial aid to students for
non-violent drug offenses, while a felony conviction for a serious
violent crime brings no such penalty," he said. "What kind of message is
Congress sending?"
Senators voted 52-46 for the anti-drug amendment, with all but two
Republicans supporting it and all Democrats opposed. The tobacco measure
still needs approval from the Senate and the House.
"Attaching this amendment to the tobacco-control bill is nothing more
than a sneak attack by Republicans to escalate the war on marijuana
smokers," Stroup said.
For more information, please contact either Keith Stroup or Paul
Armentano of NORML @ (202) 483-5500.
***
New Hampshire Judge Dismisses Farmers Request To Grow Hemp
June 11, 1998, Hopkington, NH: A New Hampshire federal magistrate
dismissed a suit today brought by parties seeking to enjoin Drug
Enforcement Administration (DEA) officials from prosecuting farmers who
cultivate hemp.
New Hampshire state Rep. Derek Owen and the New Hampshire Hemp Council
of Keene filed suit in U.S. District Court on April 30 asking the court
to bar the agency from using federal anti-marijuana laws to prohibit hemp
cultivation. Owen, who co-sponsored unsuccessful legislation this spring
to "permit the development of an industrial hemp industry in New
Hampshire," sought the order so he could plant hemp on his farm this year.
The federal judge ruled that the court lacked "subject matter
jurisdiction" to hear the case because state law also forbids the
cultivation of hemp. Plaintiff's attorney, Gordon Blakeney of Concord,
said he will file an immediate objection to the ruling.
Plaintiffs argued that marijuana and hemp are two botanically
different strains of the species Cannabis sativa, and that the federal
law is ambiguous because it refers to a classification of plants
"commonly understood to include more than one distinct variety."
Plaintiffs further contended that Congress intended only to criminalize
the psychoactive variety of Cannabis sativa and not the non-psychoactive
strain. Blakeney also said that no criminal intent exists in legitimate
hemp cultivation.
A similar federal suit filed by a coalition of Kentucky farmers
against the DEA and the Department of Justice remains pending.
For more information, please contact either Attorney Gordon Blakeney @
(603) 225-2310 or Allen St. Pierre of The NORML Foundation @ (202)
483-8751.
***
Washington State Democrats Back Medical Marijuana Initiative
June 11, 1998, Yakima, WA: Democrats approved a resolution supporting
passage of the Washington State Medical Marijuana Initiative (I-692) at
last week's State Democratic Convention.
State Sen. Jeanne Kohl (D-Seattle) called the party support
"wonderful." Kohl, along with Sen. Pat Thibadeau (D-Seattle), sponsored
legislation this spring to exempt "seriously ill patients ... from
liability and criminal prosecution for limited, personal possession and
use of marijuana." The legislation died in committee when Republican
Sen. Alex Deccio (R-Yakima), Chairman of the Senate Committee on Health
and Longterm Care, refused to call the issue for a vote.
Initiative 692 is based upon the Kohl/Thibadeau bill. The initiative
mandates that "patients with terminal or debilitating illnesses who, in
the judgment of their physicians would benefit from the medical use of
marijuana, shall not be found guilty of a crime under state law for their
possession and limited use of marijuana." The proposal would also exempt
"primary caregivers" who assist patients with their medical marijuana
treatment from state criminal prosecution.
The Seattle-Post Intelligencer previously endorsed the measure last
month.
Proponents of I-692 must gather approximately 182,000 signatures by
July 2 to place the measure on the November ballot.
For more information, please contact Dr. Rob Killian of Washington
Citizens for Medical Rights @ (206) 781-7716 or Keith Stroup of NORML @
(202) 483-5500.
- END -
-------------------------------------------------------------------
WHEE Update (Steve Hagar Of 'High Times' Magazine Gives An Update
On The Magazine's Second Annual Celebration Of Cannabis Culture
Near Eugene, Oregon, In Mid-July)
Date: Fri, 12 Jun 1998 01:45:29 -0700
From: Paul Freedom (nepal@teleport.com)
Organization: Oregon Libertarian Patriots
To: Cannabis Patriots (cannabis-patriots-l@teleport.com)
Subject: CanPat - MESSAGE FROM STEVE HAGER!
Sender: owner-cannabis-patriots-l@teleport.com
HELLO ALL WHO WANT AN ACTIVIST BOOTH!
PERHAPS YOU ALL WHO WANT A BOOTH CAN
DECIDE HOW MANY AND WHAT YOU WANT TO
DO TO VOLUNTEER. ANY IDEAS ON STEVE'S
LETTER HERE ARE WELCOMED. I AM A BIT CONFUSED
AS TO HOW TO PUT THIS TOGETHER. I SUPPOSE THAT'S HOW
THESE THINGS GO :-)
SO LET ME KNOW!
PAUL
Subject: forty two days to 420 at whee2!
Date: Thu, 11 Jun 98 18:02:39 -0400
From: Steven Hager (phoenix420@hightimes.com)
"Serenity in the heart of choas"
motto, Mission Control
TO ALL CREW CHIEFS:
Don't call me on the phone, just email.
Completing the crew schedule is top priority. Need to know what day
people arrive and what jobs they do. If you're a crew chief, email me a
list of who's on your crew and when they arrive and depart.
Mission Control arrives on site on Friday, July 10th. Bulk of crew
arrives on Monday, July 13th.
We need Scott's big blow-up tent and every other canopy and tarp we can
hustle. If anyone has any big tents or tarps they can bring, let us know.
We'll have to construct some nice facades for the Front Gate, Info Booth,
Healing Center, HIGH TIMES booth and Doggie Village.
We need to install the Observation Deck behind the stage.
After that's done, painting and sign construction should begin. We want
to cherry the site out with some really colorful graphics. We're bringing
a great artist to run the painting crew. He did the poster art that's on
the flyer. He's going to need helpers.
I would like to construct a large white bird with a phoenix head similar
to the big birds Peter Schumann uses in the Bread & Puppet Theater. They
have huge wings made of white fabric that are supported by runners
dressed in white. Although I can get this made in New York, if someone in
Oregon knows a good puppet or stage designer, please let me know ASAP.
Has everyone received flyers? Request them from Liz Lapof at HIGH TIMES.
You can email her at llapof@hightimes.com. Please help distribute flyers.
Yes, we need an estimate on a crew kitchen. We're exploring options and
need to know if anyone knows a good chef who cooks for vegans as well as
meat eaters. We like to recruit sisters to balance the vibe, dudes we
have plenty.
WHEE! has three stages:
1) set-up, tune-up, shake-down,
2) run the movie,
3) tear down, clean up, restore.
Now, I know how good all of you are with management details. We need to
construct an operations manual that explains what each crew does, who the
crew chiefs are, and how anyone can pitch in and do anybody else's job
(providing they have been given that authority by Mission Control).
Everyone on the crew must read this manual before starting work.
All crew chiefs should prepare a list of how many people working in their
crew, when they will arrive, and what they will be doing each day they
are on site.
If you are a crew chief with no crew, you need to tell us how many people
you need, and on what days.
Scott and Doulan should provide radios to their own crews. Mission
Control must have a couple of these.
In order to make the scene more manageable, we'd like to keep the crew
sizes down to the bare essentials. We're anticipating a very peaceful
audience and want to focus security on making sure people visit the box
office on their way into the show.
Mission Control supervises all operations. Mission Control includes Steve
Hager, Mike Esterson, Anthony Countey, Zen 108 and all Crew Chiefs, aka
The Temple Dragon Crew. Run by consensus, Mission Control can't be opened
unless all the keys are in all the cylinders.
MISSION CONTROL DAILY SCHEDULE
8 AM breakfast
8 PM After dinner council
hanta yo!
Steve Hager
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Bail Reinstated For Cancer Patient In Marijuana Case ('Los Angeles Times'
Version Of Yesterday's News About Todd McCormick)
Date: Fri, 12 Jun 1998 04:09:32 -0400
To: mapnews@mapinc.org
From: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org (MAPNews)
Subject: MN: US CA: Bail Reinstated for Cancer Patient in Marijuana Case
Sender: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Reply-To: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Organization: Media Awareness Project http://www.mapinc.org/lists/
Newshawk: Jim Rosenfield
Pubdate: Thu, 11 Jun 1998
Source: Los Angeles Times (CA)
Contact: letters@latimes.com
Website: http://www.latimes.com/
Author: David Rosenzweig, Times Staff Writer
BAIL REINSTATED FOR CANCER PATIENT IN MARIJUANA CASE
Actor Woody Harrelson will not have to forfeit the $500,000 bond he posted
for a cancer patient facing criminal charges for growing more than 4,000
marijuana plants.
Nor will Todd McCormick, the 27-year-old defendant, be sent back to jail
while he awaits trial in Los Angeles federal court.
A bail revocation hearing for McCormick came to an unexpected end Wednesday
after federal prosecutors and defense lawyers hammered out a settlement.
Under terms of the stipulation, which was approved by U.S Magistrate James
McMahon, McCormick renewed his promise not to use marijuana and any hempseed
derivatives, but he can use Marinol, a legal drug containing a synthetic
form of marijuana.
McCormick, who has a rare form of bone cancer, says he needs to use
marijuana to relieve pain.
Harrelson posted bail for McCormick after drug agents raided the Bel-Air
mansion where he grew the plants under artificial light.
As a condition of the bond, McCormick promised to refrain from using
marijuana and submit to regular substance-abuse tests.
When a series of tests produced positive results earlier this year, the
government moved to revoke his bail. McCormick insisted that he hadn't taken
marijuana and suggested that the positive readings stemmed from his use of
Marinol, which was prescribed by a physician, or from his use of hempseed
oil, which he said he was taking as a nutritional supplement.
Wednesday's turnabout apparently came after the judge and prosecutors were
presented with evidence from a Mississippi-based laboratory that it could
detect the difference between marijuana and Marinol.
Copyright Los Angeles Times
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Alcoholism `Cure' Ends In One Death ('The San Jose Mercury News'
Says Four Members Of A Los Angeles Storefront 'Alcohol And Drug'
Recovery Group Were Being Held Wednesday On Charges That They Killed
A 32-Year-Old Man By Tying Him Up And Force-Feeding Him Alcohol
In A Misguided Attempt At Aversion Therapy)
Date: Sat, 13 Jun 1998 01:13:54 -0400
To: mapnews@mapinc.org
From: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org (MAPNews)
Subject: MN: US CA: Alcoholism `Cure' Ends In One Death
Sender: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Reply-To: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Organization: Media Awareness Project http://www.mapinc.org/lists/
Newshawk: Marcus-Mermelstein Family
Pubdate: Thu, 11 Jun 1998
Source: San Jose Mercury News (CA)
Contact: letters@sjmercury.com
Website: http://www.sjmercury.com/
ALCOHOLISM `CURE' ENDS IN ONE DEATH
LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Enrique Bravo lost his battle with alcohol. And
prosecutors contend it was the cure that killed him.
Four members of a storefront alcohol and drug recovery group were being held
Wednesday on charges that they killed the 32-year-old man by tying him up
and force-feeding him alcohol May 25 in a misguided aversion therapy.
The Los Angeles County coroner's office has not determined the cause of
death, but it was being investigated as a homicide, coroner's spokesman
Scott Carrier said.
District attorney spokeswoman Sandi Gibbons said she could not confirm
details of the allegations on Wednesday.
However, Deputy District Attorney Craig Renetzky, quoted in the Los Angeles
Times, alleged that Bravo was fed ``nothing but alcohol'' and was kept
restrained in a room with another man, who survived the treatment.
``The idea was that the guy would later hate alcohol so much he wouldn't
drink anymore,'' Renetzky said. ``But the guy died.''
Bravo, of Little Rock, was pronounced dead at Grupo Liberacion y Fortaleza
on Lankershim Boulevard in the Sun Valley area of the San Fernando Valley.
The four defendants were workers or volunteers, and some had been through
the same program, the prosecutor said.
Alberto Saguache, 38; Armando Nestor Sakaqil, 29; Dante Rosillo Barrera, 32
and Jose Robert Rodriguez, 45, pleaded not guilty on June 2 to one count
each of involuntary manslaughter and two counts each of false imprisonment.
They remained jailed in lieu of $50,000 each pending a preliminary hearing
today, Gibbons said.
Those familiar with alcohol-treatment programs said the treatment allegedly
given Bravo was neither common nor accepted.
``This is obviously some kind of bizarre notion of how you help people get
clean and sober,'' said Bill Gallegos, chairman of the Los Angeles County
Alcohol, Tobacco and Drug Policy Coalition, a coalition of 50 organizations
involved in drug- and alcohol-abuse prevention.
Effectively dealing with alcoholism requires programs to deal with
psychological, emotional and even genetic roots of the problem and requires
patients to ``commit their lives to a day-by-day process of staying clean,''
Gallegos said.
Bravo may have been one of those who turned to an unlicensed and
unsupervised program because of a widespread shortage of treatment
facilities, Gallegos said.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Fund cuts for DARE are sought - Program fails to stem drug abuse - Driscoll
(The Houston Chronicle says Houston City Councilman Ray Driscoll called
Wednesday for a 50 percent cut in funding for the Houston Police Department's
DARE program, characterizing the popular nationwide effort as good public
relations for police but ineffective in combating drug use among youth.
Houston's DARE program costs $3.7 million a year for 63 officers to teach
about 27,000 fifth-graders and 24,000 seventh-graders. Driscoll said the Drug
Abuse Resistance Education program had been taught by police "in Houston for
12 years. Drug use among youth continues to rise. Something is wrong." Mayor
Lee Brown, the former White House drug czar who began the DARE program when
he was police chief, predicted the city council would spare the program.)
Date: Thu, 28 Jan 1999 22:00:15 -0800
From: Jim Rosenfield (jnr@insightweb.com)
Subject: Fund cuts for DARE are sought / Program fails to stemdrug
abuse - Driscoll
Cc: dare-list@ns2.calyx.net
Houston Chronicle, 06/11/98
Fund cuts for DARE are sought / Program fails to stemdrug abuse - Driscoll
By MATT SCHWARTZ Staff
City Councilman Ray Driscoll called for a 50 percent cut in funding to the
Houston Police DARE program Wednesday, calling the popular nationwide effort
good public relations for police but ineffective in combating drug use among
youth.
"We're spending a lot of money on PR (public relations) and T-shirts,
pencils and signs, but we're not getting any results," said Driscoll, who
has criticized the program in the past. "We've had it in Houston for 12
years. Drug use among youth continues to rise. Something is wrong."
He issued his call to chop city funding to Drug Abuse Resistance Education
in the form of an amendment to Mayor Lee Brown's proposed fiscal 1999
budget. The amendment will be considered by City Council in two weeks.
Driscoll said there have been numerous studies in recent years in which
researchers reported that DARE had little or no effect on substance abuse by
teens.
"I have been to DARE graduations," Driscoll said. "I have spoken to high
school kids about the DARE program and very few of them can tell me what it
was. They say something like, `I remember that. I went through that.' What
did you learn? They say, `Drugs are bad.' I don't think you have to go
through a DARE program to learn that."
Driscoll said that he would offer a substitute amendment next week that the
50 percent funding cut should go to existing anti-drug programs with a
successful track record.
Councilwoman Martha Wong agreed with Driscoll. "I think there are some
programs that are more successful than DARE," she said.
Afterward, Brown, who began the DARE program in Houston when he was police
chief, predicted council would spare the program the budget knife.
"Anyone who has visited a DARE graduation will know that it makes a
difference," the mayor said. "Anyone who has talked with a child who has
been through the DARE program, knows that it makes a difference."
Houston Police Chief C.O. Bradford said about 27,000 fifth-graders and
24,000 seventh-graders participate in local DARE programs.
Asked what effect cutting the DARE funding by half would have, Bradford
said, "I think we would have to reduce the number of students by half. We
would have to decide which of the schools would not have the opportunity to
experience the DARE program."
HPD's DARE program costs $3.7 million a year to operate, $3.3 million of
which is salaries and benefits for the 63 officers who work with the
program, Bradford said.
He questioned what people are looking for when they say DARE does not work.
He likened it to driver education classes.
"It's not so they won't have an accident, it's to better prepare them when
they hit the road," Bradford said. "That's what DARE does."
The University of Houston is studying the local DARE program and the results
of the study are expected this summer. Bradford said that if the study
indicates the program needs modifying, he would support that.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
A NORML Contest Gets A Treatment ('The Mountain Eagle' In New York
Says Rick Brightman, General Manager Of The Company That Owns 'My Shopper,'
Refused To Accept An Advertisement From The Schoharie County Chapter Of NORML
Announcing A High School Essay Contest On The Theme, 'How Does The War
On Marijuana Threaten America's Constitutional Democracy?')
Date: Fri, 19 Jun 1998 19:46:06 -0400
To: DrugSense News Service (mapnews@mapinc.org)
From: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org (MAPNews)
Subject: MN: US NY: A NORML Contest Gets A Treatment
Sender: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Reply-To: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Organization: Media Awareness Project http://www.mapinc.org/lists/
Newshawk: Walter F. Wouk
Pubdate: Thursday, June 11 1998
Source: The Mountain Eagle
Contact: FAX (607)652-5253
A NORML CONTEST GETS A TREATMENT
When Walter F. Wouk, president of the Schoharie County Chapter of NORML
(the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws), began
submitting ads to local newspapers and shopper's guides announcing a high
school essay contest on the theme, "How does the war on marijuana threaten
America's constitutional democracy?" his intent was to call attention to
the U.S. Constitution.
Wouk said, "I was stunned when the ad was rejected by the My Shopper."
According to Wouk, Rick Brightman, general manager of the Norwich and
Sidney Pennysaver Corporation, My Shopper's parent company, refused to
accept the ad and told Wouk "to refrain from submitting ads for NORML to
any of our publications, as we cannot accept them."
In a letter dated June 2, 1998, Brightman told Wouk that "You are, at the
core of the matter, advocating the legalization of a currently illegal
drug, and in this case promoting the concept among teenagers."
Wouk is concerned by the growing disregard for the U.S. Constitution in our
schools. He said, "The sight of police officers, with drug sniffing dogs,
roaming the halls of local schools does little to instill the spirit of
liberty in our children." According to Wouk, "the goal of this essay
contest is to make young people aware of the growing threat to the freedom
that they take for granted," he said.
Wouk acknowledged that Brightman has a legal right to reject NORML ads, but
questions his selective values. Wouk said, "he has no problem accepting
ads from organizations that promote alcohol use." Wouk pointed out that
alcohol is an illegal drug for teenagers and it's also their drug of
choice. "Brightman's goal is to suppress information that deals with the
marijuana issue in a truthful manner," said Wouk
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Free Heroin A Fix For Drug Problems? ('Baltimore Sun' Columnist
Michael Olesker Interviews A Junkie About Yesterday's News
That A Heroin Maintenance Program May Be Launched In Baltimore,
And, Surveying The Damage Wreaked On The City By The War
On Some Drug Users, Concludes Nobody Knows Whether Heroin Maintenance
Will Work, But Everybody Knows 30 Years Of The War On Some Drug Users
Has Failed Beyond Redemption)
Date: Thu, 11 Jun 1998 21:00:40 -0400
To: DrugSense News Service
From: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org (MAPNews)
Subject: MN: US MD: Column: Free Heroin A Fix For Drug Problems?
Sender: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Reply-To: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Organization: Media Awareness Project http://www.mapinc.org/lists/
Newshawk: Richard Lake
Pubdate: Thu, 11 Jun 1998
Source: Baltimore Sun (MD)
Columnist: Michael Olesker
Contact: letters@baltsun.com
Fax: 410-332-6977
Website: http://www.sunspot.net/
FREE HEROIN A FIX FOR DRUG PROBLEMS?
In yesterday's early-morning drizzle, he was standing on Park Heights
Avenue, near the abandoned wreck of the old Avalon movie theater that once
inexplicably showed off a "Mayor Schmoke Makes Us Proud" poster and more
recently (and still inexplicably) showed a "Rehrmann for Governor" poster,
and he was faced with the day's usual business: Finding a little heroin to
put into any convenient vein in the abused wreck of his body.
"Free?" he said.
"That's what they're talking about," he was told.
The morning newspaper, in a front-page story headlined "Test of `heroin
maintenance' may be launched in Baltimore," described the possibility of a
controlled study here in which heroin would be distributed to hard-core
addicts, in an effort to reduce crime and AIDS and other narcotics fallout.
"Free?" he asked again.
He had to think about this for a minute. He wore a blue jogging suit
acquired during a recent shoplifting jaunt a few blocks from here. The suit
hung loosely from his bony frame. Ducking out of the morning's scattery
raindrops now, he stepped around clumps of trash on the sidewalk and stood
beneath the Avalon's battered marquee.
Once, this theater rang with the laughter of children whose parents had no
concerns about leaving them unattended for an entire afternoon. Later, it
became a radio station whose music captured the glad rhythms of its time.
For about three decades, though -- roughly the time of America's failed
30-year war on drugs -- the building's been abandoned and allowed to rot,
and has become one of the symbols of decay along lower Park Heights Avenue,
which some police call the city's grubbiest narcotics thoroughfare.
Such is the result of decades of American politicians striking noble poses
as grand protectors of the people, and then turning the whole business over
to the cops, who are so overmatched in sheer numbers that neighborhoods
have fallen, and are populated by those who wander its streets in search of
a fix, who break into houses, who knock over old ladies for their purses
and have fueled the abandonment of cities such as Baltimore.
"Well, I ain't saying," the guy in the jogging suit says now. He means,
about the heroin distribution plan. All efforts involving institutional
effort are to be pondered: Is this some kind of setup? Will there be
registration forms, unwanted tails by the cops, strange substances more
insidious than heroin secretly slipped into injections?
He knows the thinking behind the plan, because everyone does: All other
efforts have failed. This guy's been doing heroin for nearly a decade. He
runs a jumble of figures through the air -- the cost of a shot, the amount
of money needed to be swiped or the amount of goods needed to be stolen and
the number of hits he needs a day.
All of it equals a city ravaged by thousands of desperate people, and
scores of places like lower Park Heights Avenue and the old Avalon theater.
Remember the Avalon and the city's last campaign for mayor? When Kurt L.
Schmoke's campaign workers put his infamous "Makes Us Proud" poster across
the marquee, it provoked hoots of bitter invective. Proud? Of this dump? Of
a place allowed to deteriorate while City Hall looked the other way?
Then, as if no lessons had been learned, Eileen M. Rehrmann's campaign
workers put up her poster on the same marquee a few weeks ago. This time,
there were such outcries the poster was taken down. But the hoots took on a
new angle this time: If she could trumpet her campaign on such a dump, she
was just one more isolated suburban lady cut off from the city's realities.
So now there's a new plan for what may be the city's harshest reality,
narcotics: Fight it by yielding a little. Offer heroin to those addicts who
have refused, or failed, at traditional drug treatment.
"It's not going out on the streets and handing out heroin," Baltimore
Health Commissioner Dr. Peter L. Beilenson told The Sun's Scott Shane. "It
would be carefully controlled by health care providers under a research
protocol."
Beilenson, by the way, was one of scores of health officials, politicians
and educators who sent a letter last week to U.N. Secretary General Kofi
Annan declaring, "The global war on drugs is now causing more harm than
drug abuse itself," noting that annual revenue generated by illegal drugs
is now about $400 billion, or "the equivalent of roughly eight percent of
total international trade.
"This industry," the letter said, "has empowered organized criminals,
corrupted governments at all levels, eroded internal security, stimulated
violence, and distorted both economic markets and moral values. These are
the consequences not of drug use per se, but of decades of failed and
futile drug war policies."
On Park Heights Avenue, nobody has to explain this to the guy in the
jogging suit, nor to those living in the neighborhood who see the junkies
on street corners, who worry over vulnerable old ladies with their purses,
who watch the endless exodus to suburbia, and who see the old Avalon
theater as the symbol of a community whose bones have been picked over.
Is this new plan the answer? Not even the street junkies know, and they're
at the heart of it. But everybody knows, 30 years of so-called wars on
drugs have failed beyond redemption.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Attitudes Affect Who Uses Marijuana, Survey Finds ('Dallas Morning News'
Account Of A New Survey From University Of Michigan Perpetuating The Myth
That High Rates Of Fear, Ignorance And Intolerance Among Teens
Correlate With Low Rates Of Marijuana Use)
Date: Sat, 13 Jun 1998 01:13:52 -0400
To: mapnews@mapinc.org
From: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org (MAPNews)
Subject: MN: US: Attitudes Affect Who Uses Marijuana, Survey Finds
Sender: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Reply-To: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Organization: Media Awareness Project http://www.mapinc.org/lists/
Newshawk: Joey4rigs@aol.com
Pubdate: Thu, 11 Jun 1998
Source: Dallas Morning News
Contact: letterstoeditor@dallasnews.com
Website: http://www.dallasnews.com
Author: Maggie Fox, Health And Science Correspondent
ATTITUDES AFFECT WHO USES MARIJUANA, SURVEY FINDS
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Attitudes toward drug use strongly affect whether
teen-agers use marijuana, researchers said Tuesday.
Marijuana use among high school students soared in the 1970s, fell in the
1980s and is creeping back up again in the 1990s. Jerald Bachman and
colleagues at the University of Michigan say attitudes are the reason.
``The overwhelming factor was the student's attitude, whether they thought
it was dangerous,'' Bachman, a social psychologist, said in a telephone
interview.
Bachman's team looked at written surveys of more than 140,000 high school
students, done from 1976 through 1996.
The students were asked whether they used marijuana and what their attitudes
toward the drug were, among other things.
Students who were religious, who made good grades, who did not skip school
and who did not go out much at night were much less likely to use marijuana.
This held true in the 1970s, the 1980s and the 1990s.
But there were big variations in overall marijuana use over time. ``For
example, a 12th grader in 1978 was fully three times as likely to be a
current marijuana user (defined as any use in the past 30 days) as a 12th
grader in 1992,'' the researchers wrote in a report in the American Journal
of Public Health. ''Why did its popularity fluctuate so much?''
``Attitudes about specific drugs -- disapproval of use and perceptions of
risk or harmfulness -- are among the most important determinants of actual
use,'' the researchers wrote.
Teen-agers in the 1980s were much more likely to say they disapproved of
marijuana use, or to know about the dangers of marijuana, than teen-agers in
the 1970s, Bachman said.
Bachman said he believed the surveys accurately reflected whether the
teen-agers were actually taking drugs. Past analysis showed the respondents
were answering truthfully, and were not just giving answers they thought
interviewers wanted to read.
Bachman, who has studied drug use by teen-agers for 30 years, said education
campaigns did work. He said schools, politicians and the media had hit hard
on drugs in the 1980s, but talked about them less now.
``They have become complacent, yes,'' he said.
High-profile deaths of young athletes who took cocaine in the 1980s helped
scare teen-agers off that drug, he said. And in the early 1980s teen-agers
could see fellow students who were ''burned out'' by marijuana use.
He also said the attitude toward the individual drug was important. Cocaine
use and marijuana use did not parallel one another -- indicating that it was
knowledge of the drug itself, and not overall attitudes about drugs in
general, that was important.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Fruit Flies Open New Understanding About Effects Of Alcohol
('The Associated Press' Describes Genetic Research By A Team
Led By Dr. Ulrike Heberlein Of The Gallo Center At The University
Of California At San Francisco, Published In Thursday's Issue Of The Journal
'Cell,' Giving The First Clear Evidence Of A Link Between A Substance
Called Cyclic AMP And A Subject's Reaction To Alcohol)
Date: Fri, 12 Jun 1998 01:29:12 -0400
To: mapnews@mapinc.org
From: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org (MAPNews)
Subject: MN: US: Wire: Fruit Flies Open New Understanding
About Effects Of Alcohol
Sender: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Reply-To: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Organization: Media Awareness Project http://www.mapinc.org/lists/
Newshawk: Patrick Henry (resist_tyranny@hotmail.com)
Pubdate: Thu, 11 Jun 1998
Source: Associated Press
Author: Daniel Q. Haney, AP Medical Editor
FRUIT FLIES OPEN NEW UNDERSTANDING ABOUT EFFECTS OF ALCOHOL
BOSTON (AP) -- Drunken flies that carry a genetic mutation named
``cheapdate'' are helping scientists unravel one of life's mysteries: why
some people can hold their liquor better than others.
The research found that fruit flies -- and perhaps people, too -- are
especially apt to get inebriated if they naturally produce low levels of a
chemical called cyclic AMP.
These are, of course, just flies, but scientists have long known that the
basic processes of life in such simple creatures often turn out to be
virtually identical to the ones involved in more complicated animals, like
people.
Indeed, given too much alcohol, speck-size fruit flies act remarkably like
humans on a bender. They become hyperactive and uncoordinated, buzzing about
erratically. After a few minutes, they fall into a dazed stupor and then
pass out.
A team led by Dr. Ulrike Heberlein of the Gallo Center (named for the
California wine family) at the University of California at San Francisco
created thousands of fruit flies with genes randomly knocked out. One of the
flies, it turned out, couldn't hold its alcohol. They dubbed its genetic
flaw ``cheapdate.''
The researchers put flies inside a 4-foot glass dome -- called an
inebriometer -- and pumped in alcohol vapor. The dome is crisscrossed with
mesh landings. Ordinarily, the flies like to stay near the top. But as they
got drunk, they fell from level to level.
Ordinary fruit flies take 20 minutes to hit bottom. But the cheapdate
mutants tumbled down in 15 minutes.
Further research found that the easy drunks were missing a gene called
``amnesiac,'' so-called because its deletion causes bugs to have very poor
memories. Flies missing this gene are believed to have lower than usual
production of cyclic AMP, a chemical messenger known to be involved in many
critical processes, including memory and responses to some hormones.
The study, published in Thursday's issue of the journal Cell, is the first
clear evidence in a living creature of a link between cyclic AMP and
reaction to alcohol. The scientists blocked other steps in the production of
this chemical and found these, too, made the flies more prone to drunkenness.
``If you're a fly and your cyclic AMP levels are low, then you are sensitive
to alcohol,'' Heberlein said. ``In people, it's been studied, but it's not
so clear.''
In a laboratory dish, alcohol stimulates human cells to make more cyclic
AMP. However, long-term exposure has the opposite effect, making cells
gradually produce less of the chemical. No one knows for sure if the same
thing happens inside the body.
However, the fruit fly experiment suggests it does, said Dr. Hugo J. Bellen
of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston.
People who can hold their liquor, especially at a young age, are more likely
to become alcoholics than are those who get drunk easily. This tendency is
inherited.
Bellen said the accumulating evidence raises the possibility that individual
variations in production of cyclic AMP might contribute to the way people
handle alcohol.
For instance, those whose normal production is low might get a big boost of
cyclic AMP when they drink, while those with naturally high production get
less of a kick.
However, these high producers could over time be more susceptible to
alcoholism, because chronic exposure to the higher levels of booze they can
tolerate suppresses their cyclic AMP production. So they drink to bring
their cyclic AMP back up to normal.
Certainly, the body's response to alcohol is more complex than this, and the
theory is still speculative. But Bellen said the fruit fly study ``opens the
door to understanding the chronic response to and need for a drug, in this
case alcohol.''
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Nations Agree To Cooperate In War On Drugs ('The San Francisco Chronicle'
Summarizes The Just-Ended United Nations General Assembly Special Session
On Expanding The Global Drug War By Noting That, In Fact, No Such Cooperation
Was Actually Pledged Because The Delegates, From About 150 Countries,
Were Divided About How To Wage The Drug War)
Date: Fri, 12 Jun 1998 17:06:23 -0700
To: mapnews@mapinc.org
From: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org (MAPNews)
Subject: MN: UN GE: Nations Agree To Cooperate in War on Drugs
Sender: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Reply-To: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Organization: Media Awareness Project http://www.mapinc.org/lists/
Newshawk: tjeffoc@sirius.com (Tom O'Connell)
Source: San Francisco Chronicle (CA)
Contact: chronletters@sfgate.com
Website: http://www.sfgate.com/chronicle/
Pubdate: Thu, 11 Jun 1998
NATIONS AGREE TO COOPERATE IN WAR ON DRUGS
But U.N. delegates divided on best tactics
United Nations World leaders wrapped up a three-day U-N. drug summit
yesterday by expressing broad agreement that combatting the drug trade
requires a coordinated global campaign.
But the delegates, from about 150 countries, were divided about how to wage
the drug War.
The 'summit concluded with the endorsement of a plan for governments to
work together to curb trafficking, reduce demand, improve judicial
cooperation, combat money-laundering and reduce the illegal cultivation of
narcotic crops by 2008.
However, the U.N. General Assembly special session on drugs underscored
broad differeuces bctween drug producing countries of Latin America and
Asia and themajor consumers - including the United States -on how best to
direct limited resources in the fight.
Speakers from Colombia, Burma Mexico and other producing nations applauded
U.N. proposals to reduce illicit cultivation by providing farmers in
developing nations with financial incentives to stop growing opium poppies,
coca and cannabis.
Several developed countries,including Germany, Japan and Australia,
endorsed those plans. But few promised substantial, new funds to pay for
them, although Canada's solicitor general, Andy Scott, said his government
Would consider additional payments.
U.S. drug czar Barry McCaffrey, speaking to reporters Monday, avoided
committing the United States to support of the U.N. crop substitution
program, saying the global drug war required MONre than "just funding for
alternativ economic development. tt
During his speech Monday, president Clinton announced a $2 billion, five
year anti-drug media campaign targeted at young people.
Sandro Tucci, a U.N. spokesman, said the conference had succeeded in
convincing governments that reducing demand in rich countries was a
priority.
But some private drug research organizations expressed disappointment that
more was not said about ways to treat and rehabilitate addicts.
"Like the drug war itself, the U.N. drug summit was a failure" said Dr.
Ethan Nadelmann, director of the Lindesmith Center. "Rather than producing
the intended unity, the drug summit exposed deep divisions ... between drug
war zealots who advocate spending on a failed policy and the reformers who
want new approaches.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Drugs War Just 'An Exercise In Futility' (An Account In Britain's 'Guardian'
About The United Nations Special Session On Drugs Focuses On The Speech
Given Outside The General Assembly By Omayra Morales, A Member Of
The Andean Council Of Coca Leaf Producers - Four Years Ago, She Said,
The Columbian Government Vowed To End Coca Cultivation Within Two Years -
Coca Was Then Being Grown On 100,000 Acres - Today's Figure Is 250,000 Acres)
Date: Sat, 20 Jun 1998 16:46:37 -0800
To: mapnews@mapinc.org
From: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org (MAPNews)
Subject: MN: UN GE: Drugs War Just 'An Exercise In Futility'
Sender: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Reply-To: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Organization: Media Awareness Project http://www.mapinc.org/lists/
Newshawk: Martin Cooke
Pubdate: Thu, 11 Jun 1998
Source: Guardian, The (UK)
Contact: letters@guardian.co.uk
Website: http://www.guardian.co.uk/
Author: Mark Tran in New York
DRUGS WAR JUST 'AN EXERCISE IN FUTILITY'
One of the stranger moments in yesterday's United Nations drug summit came
as it ended with the adoption of an ambitious plan to slash the supply and
demand.
"Fraternal greetings from all growers of coca poppy and marijuana in
Columbia," declared Omayra Morales, a member of the Andean council of coca
leaf producers, outside the general assembly, while inside presidents, prime
ministers and other dignitaries spoke of the need for urgent action.
Mrs Morales portrayed the war against drugs as an exercise in futility.
Four years ago, she said, the Columbian government said it would end coca
cultivation within two years. Coca was then being grown on 100,000 acres.
Today's figure was 250,000 acres.
Fumigation of coca fields, Mrs Morales said, had only forced growers deeper
into the Amazon region. "There have been many protests and demonstrations,"
she said. "In response, there has been a military offensive against the
leaders of the protests."
She added: "Fumigation with herbicides is a violation of the norms that say
we can protect the environment."
Mrs Morales provided a human reminder that the war against drugs is not
going well. Since 1961, UN drug control strategies have put eradication of
illegal opium centre stage. Yet according to the Lindesmith Centre, an
institution backed by the financier George Soros, opium production is
rising sharply. Coca cultivation has doubled since 1985, according to UN
figures, and drug prices are falling.
Critics of the UN approach warn that eradication efforts will lead to
greater deforestation without reducing supply. Coletta Youngers of the
Washington Office on Latin America said the United States was "addicted to
failed policies".
[The?] Non-governmental organisation says the increasing use of the
military against drugs will undermine democratic rule in Latin America and
lead to human rights abuses.
Some UN officials yesterday criticised efforts to stamp out drug supply.
"Such policies have had no effect on supply, and crop substitution does not
work without the development of markets and infrastructure like
transportation," said one. A European diplomat was more scathing: "What a
farce. I've never heard such platitudes."
But others pointed to the value of discussing other key issues such as
money laundering.
Although the summit ended with the adoption of an ambitious plan to cut
supply and demand,it remains to be seen whether countries will come up with
the hard cash to fund the proposal.
It was advanced by Pino Arlacchi, former Mafia fighter and head of the UN
International Drug Control Programme, who puts the cost of the plan at
between UKP2.5 billion and UKP3 billion during the next 10 years. That is
well above current funding levels; his programme received UKP100 million in
1998-99.
The proposal calls for tighter international controls on chemicals that go
into making the finished product, and better tracking of money laundering.
He also wants to offer farmers alternative development schemes so they can
substitute other crops such as rice and coffee, for drug plants.
President Bill Clinton, who said people must "wage this fight around the
world and around the kitchen table", did not put any more money on the
table for the programme. General Barry McCaffrey, the US drug tsar, was
lukewarm about the Arlacchi plan, saying it was too soon to talk about
money.
Washington will almost certainly refuse to give money to at least two
opium-growing countries, Burma and Afghanistan, because of their repressive
regimes.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
The Drug War - A War On Poor, Lower Classes (Alexander Cockburn's Column
In 'The Los Angeles Times,' Written On The Occasion Of The UN Special Session
To Expand The Global War On Some Drug Users, Gives A Brief
But Devastating History - According To HR Haldeman's Diary, Nixon Emphasized
That 'You Have To Face The Fact The Whole Problem Is Really The Blacks -
The Key Is To Devise A System That Recognizes This While Not Appearing To')
From: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org (MAPNews)
To: "MN"
Subject: MN: US: CA OPED: The Drug War: A War On Poor, Lower Classes
Date: Fri, 12 Jun 1998 07:00:54 -0500
Sender: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Reply-To: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Organization: Media Awareness Project http://www.mapinc.org/lists/
Newshawk: kevzeese@laser.net (kevin b. zeese)
Pubdate: Thu, 11 Jun 1998
Source: Los Angeles Times (CA)
Contact: letters@latimes.com
Website: http://www.latimes.com/
Author: Alexander Cockburn
THE DRUG WAR: A WAR ON POOR, LOWER CLASSES
Historically, the drug wars have been a pretext for social and political
repression.
"We believe the global war on drugs is now causing more harm than drug abuse
itself." This was the banner on a double-page ad in the New York Times on
Monday, timed to coincide with the big United Nations' special session in
New York on drugs. Hundreds of prominent people from around the world signed
on to the view that the drug war has been a disaster and "the time has come
for a truly open and honest dialogue about future global drug control
policies."
The statements to which the signatories put their names are mostly
unimpeachable common sense: "Drug war politics impede public health efforts
to stem the spread of HIV, hepatitis and other infectious diseases. Human
rights are violated, environmental assaults perpetrated and prisons
inundated with hundreds of thousands of drug law violators."
All true, and every phrase repeated, proved and doubly proved year after
year.
So why does the drug war grind on, decade after decade, immune to reason,
often grotesque in its hypocrisy? How can one listen without laughing to the
solemn posturing of the U.S. government about the recent sting on Mexican
banks for their washing of drug money, without a word about corresponding
drug-money laundering by U.S. banks?
The answer is plain enough, particularly if one takes a look at the history
of drug wars over the past 150 years. These drug wars are either enterprises
that expand the drug trade or pretexts for social and political repression.
In either case, the aim of halting the production, shipment and consumption
of drugs is not on the agenda.
In the mid-19th century, the British fought two drug wars to force the
Chinese to accept imports of opium from India. Nearly a century and a half
later, as it contemplated intervention against the Soviet Union in
Afghanistan, the Carter administration initiated the spending of covert
billions on what was, if we view it realistically, another drug war, as one
of President Carter's own advisors predicted. As he later recalled, David
Musto, a White House member of the president's Council on Drug Abuse, told
his boss that "we were going into Afghanistan to support the opium growers
in their rebellion against the Soviets."
As covert U.S. military aid soared, so did Afghan opium production, tripling
between 1979 and 1982. By 1982, in U.N. and Drug Enforcement Administration
figures, the Afghan heroin producers--romanticized by U.S. politicians and
press as "freedom fighters"--had captured 60% of the heroin market in
Western Europe and the U.S. They had of course the all-important asset of
being anti-communist.
All the millions sent by the U.S. to Bolivia, Colombia and Mexico, allegedly
to battle drug lords, have never made a dent in the drug trade. But they
have helped Latin American armies and police crush peasant insurgencies and
murder labor organizers.
Domestically, the "drug war" has always been a pretext for social control,
going back to the racist application of drug laws against Chinese laborers
in the recession of the 1870s when these workers were viewed as competition
for the dwindling number of jobs available. The main users, middle-class
white men and women taking opium in liquid form as "tonics," weren't
harassed. But the Chinese Exclusion Act allowed Chinese opium addicts to be
arrested and deported.
In the 1930s, the racist head of the federal Bureau of Narcotics and
Dangerous Drugs, Harry Anslinger, was renaming hemp as "marijuana" to
associate it with Mexican laborers and claiming that marijuana could "arouse
in blacks and Hispanics a state of menacing fury or homicidal attack."
As he was so often, President Nixon was helpfully explicit in his private
remarks. H.R. Haldeman recorded in his diary a briefing by the president in
1969, prior to launching of the war on drugs: "Nixon emphasized that you
have to face the fact the whole problem is really the blacks. The key is to
devise a system that recognizes this while not appearing to."
So what was "the system" duly devised? The 1986 Anti-Drug Abuse Act, with
its 29 new minimum mandatory sentences, and the 100-to-1 sentencing ratio
between possession of crack and powder cocaine, became a system for locking
up a disproportionate number of black people.
So to call for a "truly open and honest dialogue" about drug policy, as all
those distinguished signatories in the advertisement requested, is about as
realistic as asking the U.S. government to nationalize the oil industry.
Essentially, the drug war is a war on the poor and the dangerous classes,
here and elsewhere. How many governments are going to give up on that?
Alexander Cockburn Is Coauthor With Jeffrey St. Clair of
"Whiteout: the Cia, Drugs and the Press," to Be Published Next
Month by Verso
Copyright Los Angeles Times
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Expanding The Losing War On Drugs (An Op-Ed In 'The Chicago Tribune'
By Syndicated Columnist Steve Chapman About This Week's United Nations
Special Session On Drugs Notes The American Drug War Has Been A Failure,
But That Doesn't Stop The US Government From Pressing Other Countries
To Adopt Its Methods)
Date: Thu, 11 Jun 1998 09:29:49 -0800
To: mapnews@mapinc.org
From: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org (MAPNews)
Subject: MN: UN GE: OPED: Expanding The Losing War On Drugs
Sender: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Reply-To: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Organization: Media Awareness Project http://www.mapinc.org/lists/
Newshawk: Steve Young
Pubdate: Thu, 11 Jun 1998
Source: Chicago Tribune (IL)
Section: Sec. 1, page 23
Contact: tribletter@aol.com
Website: http://www.chicago.tribune.com/
Author: Steve Chapman
EXPANDING THE LOSING WAR ON DRUGS
The theme of this week's United Nations special session on drugs was
simple: "A Drug-Free World: We Can Do It." President Clinton
enthusiastically echoed that goal in his Monday address to the meeting.
Clearly, government leaders are not about to let their grandiose plans be
inhibited by petty concerns like cost, practicality or personal liberty.
Nothing will be allowed to stand in the way of the effort to force people
to do what their rulers have decreed is good for them.
The American drug war has been a failure, but that doesn't stop the U.S.
government from pressing other countries to adopt its methods. Clinton
called for greater cooperation among law enforcement agencies, expanded
programs to eradicate fields of marijuana, coca and opium abroad,
additional money for anti-drug propaganda and, of course, more arrests.
"With determined and relentless effort, we can turn this evil tide," he
insisted.
Don't bet on it. Despite huge increases in spending on both law enforcement
and prevention, drug use in the United States has been rising in recent
years, particularly among the teenagers and young adults who have been
bombarded since birth with the message that drugs are a demonic force.
Foreign governments, at our urging, are burning more drug crops, but the
amount grown still overwhelmingly exceeds the amount destroyed. Every time
soldiers descend on one area, production merely shifts to a different part
of the country--or a different country entirely. If U.S. military and law
enforcement agencies had slowed the flow of drugs into this country, the
shortage would push up prices on the street--but prices have declined.
Meanwhile, non-violent offenders are being incarcerated on a vast scale.
More than half a million people are arrested annually for merely possessing
marijuana, a drug far safer than many legal ones. The number of drug
offenders behind bars has skyrocketed by 700 percent since 1980.
The zealotry of the "zero tolerance" approach allows no compromise with
rationality. The Department of Health and Human Services has long refused
to acknowledge the scientific evidence that allowing addicts access to
clean hypodermic syringes can slow the spread of the AIDS virus--and when
it finally admitted the truth this year, it nonetheless refused to spend a
nickel of federal AIDS prevention funds on this proven strategy. Marijuana
has been shown to have a variety of legitimate medical uses, but the
Clinton administration has done its best to prevent California and Arizona
from allowing the therapeutic use of pot.
If the punitive approach were the answer, we would no longer have a
problem. But the punitive approach, to a large extent, is the problem. Most
of the crime associated with the trade stems not from the physiological
effects of drugs but from the laws against them. This illegality keeps
prices artificially inflated, forces addicts to turn to crime to pay for
their habits and assures the advancement of hard-core criminals willing to
employ violence as a business strategy.
We saw the same problems during Prohibition--and we solved them by
accepting that we would never achieve an alcohol-free society. As a direct
result of the repeal of the Volstead Act, crime plunged, and it stayed down
for decades. But so intense is the paranoia about drugs that the option of
tolerance is treated as unthinkable.
Why is that? We assume that only the threat of severe punishment can deter
people from mass addiction. But forbidden fruit can be alluring simply
because it is forbidden. Alcohol consumption actually rose during
Prohibition.
In recent years, the drugs that have declined in popularity are the ones
that are legal--alcohol and tobacco. Thanks to a growing awareness of the
hazards of drinking and smoking, Americans have become more cautious and
responsible in their conduct. In the Netherlands, where marijuana can be
legally sold and consumed, teenagers are less likely to use pot than
adolescents here. If marijuana were treated the same way here, the likely
result would not be more drug use but a shift in use from cigarettes and
booze to cannabis--a net plus for public health.
But the drug warriors refuse to consider any moderation of their policy.
Like the generals and politicians who got us into Vietnam, they pretend
that if we just redouble our efforts, we can achieve whatever we want. So
Americans should expect to be at this task indefinitely, looking in vain
for that light at the end of the tunnel.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
The War On Drugs - Vietnam All Over Again (Text Of An Advertisement
For The Book 'Drug Crazy,' By Mike Gray, Printed In Today's 'New York Times')
Date: Thu, 11 Jun 1998 01:00:59 -0400
To: rlake@mapinc.org
From: Richard Lake
Subject: US GE: NYT AD: The War on Drugs: Vietnam All Over Again
Newshawk: http://www.drugsense.org/csdp/
Source: The New York Times
Section: National Page
Pubdate: THURSDAY, 11 June 1998
Contact: letters@nytimes.com
Website: http://www.nytimes.com/
Editor's Note: The 1/4th page ad, below, provides an opportunity for action.
Please call every book store in your phone book and ask if they have DRUG
CRAZY in stock. Tell them you saw a large ad for it in the NYT today. If
they say 'no' tell them that you are trying to find several copies for
friends, but that you will call around to see if anyone else has it in
stock before considering a special order. This takes only a little time,
and may encourage stores to stock and display it. This is what I plan to
do. A review of DRUG CRAZY is online at:
http://www.drugsense.org/crazy.htm
THE WAR ON DRUGS: VIETNAM ALL OVER AGAIN
A President and his general locked in a failed policy, unwilling to admit
the war cannot be won. Lives lost. Billions wasted. Sound familiar?
As General Barry McCaffrey, the drug czar, calls for more troops and more
weapons, the dispatches from the front tell us we're still losing the war
in spite of the body count.
If people aren't in the streets yet, they may be after they read "Drug Crazy"
In 1978, Mike Gray wrote "The China Syndrome," the movie that blew the lid
off the nuclear power industry. Now, "Drug Crazy" is about to do the same
thing to the war on drugs.
[PHOTO OF BOOK]
"Anyone who thinks the war on drugs is succeeding should read this book."
Milton Friedman
"Gray brings a filmic sense of drama and action to a gritty, scorching look
at the failure of America's war on drugs." Publishers Weekly
"It shifts the burden of proof from the critics of existing policy to its
defenders. No mean feat!" Elliott Richardson
"This is a book that every American should read and take seriously." George
McGovern
Paid for by Common Sense for Drug Policy, Kevin Zeese, President.
Visit www.drugsense.org
Common Sense for Drug Policy, 3619 Tallwood Terrace, Falls Church, Va 22041
-------------------------------------------------------------------
'The New York Times' Now Opposes The War On Drugs - And You?
An Open Letter To My Media Brethren From An Old Media Whore,
Peter McWilliams (The Best-Selling Author Responds To The Recent About-Face
By One Of The Nation's Most Influential Newspapers,
Noting Its Staff Editorial Tuesday Reverses An Unwritten Policy
He Suggests Was Implemented In October 1990, When Many In The Media
Gathered In Restin, Virginia)
From: "Peter McWilliams" (peter@mcwilliams.com)
Date: Thu, 11 Jun 1998 09:14:10 +0100
The New York Times Now Opposes the War on Drugs. And You?
An Open Letter to My Media Brethren from an Old Media Whore, Peter
McWilliams
In a dramatic editorial epiphany, the New York Times on June 9, 1998,
published its new view that the War on Drugs has failed. Couched in
criticism of the United Nation's new 10-year-plan aimed at "a drug-free
world," the editorial neatly dismantles the 84-year-old United States drug
policy as well. After all, the new UN drug policy is merely US drug policy
sent to Berlitz.
When the Times observes that the "militarized war on drugs...has torn apart
societies and built up some of the world's most repressive armies," we need
look no further than any American inner city. The War on Drugs has become a
war waged by the American government against American minorities, the
disenfranchised, and the sick. Ask any inner-city African American: "Which
do you fear more, drugs or the police?" Ask any AIDS patient, "Which is more
harmful, medical marijuana or the laws against it?"
The Times wrote that the "claims" made by those who follow the US/UN policy,
"get in the way of effective programs to reduce drug use" and said a
law-enforcement approach to drug use and addiction was "misdirected,"
"failed," "designed primarily to recycle unrealistic pledges and celebrate
dubious programs," and is "unrealistic and harmful."
The one nod the Times makes to the current drug policy was a paragraph, one
sentence long, that began in patriotic Drug War media pabulum, but ends with
a fact that can no longer be denied by rational human beings. "While there
is a place for crop substitution, law enforcement, interdiction and other
programs to cut drug supply, these steps rarely deliver promised results."
The War on Drugs can never be won. Nobel Laureate in economics Milton
Freidman applied the immutable rule of the free marketplace, "Where there is
a demand, there will be a supply," to the drug marketplace and determined a
"drug-free America" was not only an impossibility, but our attempts to
implement the impossible was "destroying our freedoms in the process." Even
if you think that drugs are the worst plague upon humanity since income tax,
if you spend even an hour researching, you'll find that drug prohibition is
much, much worse.
In October 1990, many in the media gathered in Restin, Virginia, to decide
what to do about the War on Drugs. The cocaine epidemic was at its seeming
worst, and the white middle class saw addiction to an illegal drug firsthand
for the first time. (The epidemic had, in fact, already peaked and was
rapidly declining as more and more people learned, "This stuff ain't good
for me" and stopped.) The media, in a frenzy and charmed by William Bennett,
decided to treat the War on Drugs as though it were a real war fought
against a foreign power.
Drug War propaganda was published, unchecked, as gospel truth; Iran/Contra
was swept under the rug; the drug warriors were treated as heroes; the
entrepreneurs who supplied the undeniable demand were demonized as "drug
dealers;" addicts were portrayed as spineless, immoral, criminals instead of
human beings with horrible illnesses in need of medical treatment; and drug
users were not adults making adult choices, but traitors who were aiding and
abetting the enemy.
Isn't it time all this ended? Shouldn't the media return to objective
reporting in the War on Drugs? Bill Moyers, who served as Lyndon Johnson's
press secretary during the Vietnam buildup, looked deeply into the War on
Drugs and declared it, "another Vietnam." Walter Cronkite, one of the first
major broadcasters to come out against the War in Vietnam, has come out
against the War on Drugs--well ahead of his media brethren, again.
After all, right-thinking, patriotic, good-hearted American media covered
Vietnam for almost a decade as a "good" war. That same media, seeing Vietnam
was not a good war after all, had the courage to then say, "In the light of
new evidence, here's what we think now." Today, very few people, including
the heroes who fought in that war, will say Vietnam accomplished more good
than harm for the United States. One exception, interestingly, is Barry
McCaffrey, who still believes Vietnam was one hell of a good war.
The War on Drugs is not a good war.
The bold Times editorial seems to lay down a challenge to the media: "We've
dared to tell you what we think. What do you think?" What is your current,
state-of-the-art, scientifically up-to-date view of the War on Drugs? You
owe it to your readers, and your country, to take a fresh, hard look at that
question, and then answer it honestly.
Thank you.
Peter McWilliams
Writer and publisher
Prelude Press
8159 Santa Monica Boulevard
Los Angeles, California 90046
peter@mcwilliams.com
www.mcwilliams.com
-------------------------------------------------------------------
DrugSense Focus Alert No. 67 - 'Wall Street Journal' (DrugSense
Asks You To Write A Letter To The Newspaper In Opposition To
Its '500 Drug Geniuses' Editorial And Ask It To Cut Its Intellectual Losses)
Date: Thu, 11 Jun 1998 12:13:11 -0700
To: cannabis-patriots-l@teleport.com
From: Arthur Livermore (alive@pacifier.com)
Subject: CanPat - URGENT! FOCUS Alert No. 67 Wall Street Journal
Sender: owner-cannabis-patriots-l@teleport.com
FOCUS Alert No. 67 Wall Street Journal
CALL TO ARMS! THIS NONSENSE MUST STOP!
The Wall Street Journal has long distinguished itself as short sighted,
myopic and completely devoid of logic and reason on the topic of drug
policy. The paper seems to have the same blind spot to the incredible
damage that's been done by the "War on Drugs" as do our political leaders.
Below is an example of their latest diatribe in which they attack the 500
really high profile signers of the letter to the United Nations that ran in
a 2 page ad in the NY Times recently. The temerity of this paper to
question such an august group is mind boggling.
WE NEED BIG NUMBERS ON THIS ONE - WE'RE TRYING TO MOVE MOUNTAINS! PLEASE
SEND SOMETHING - EVEN A ONE LINER IF NOTHING ELSE.
WRITE A LETTER - HELP CHANGE THE WORLD
Just DO It!
***
PLEASE SEND US A COPY OF YOUR LETTER OR TELL US WHAT YOU DID ( Letter,
Phone, fax etc.)
Please post your letters or report your action to the MAPTalk list if you
are subscribed, or return a copy to this address by simply hitting
REPLY to this FOCUS Alert or E-mailing to MGreer@mapinc.org
***
CONTACT INFO
letter.editor@edit.wsj.com
editors@interactive.wsj.com
Please send your letter to _both_ addresses to insure the most impact and
the best chance of publication.
Wall Street Journal
200 Liberty Street
New York,
NY 10281-0001
212-416-2500
212-416-3299 (Verified fax number)
"EXTRA CREDIT"
FAX Your letter, a 500+/- word Op-Ed, or a second statement expressing your
concern to WSJ attitudes to
212-416-3299 (Verified fax number)
***
ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Newshawk: The Media Awareness Project of DrugSense
Pubdate: Wednesday, 10 June 1998
Source: The Wall Street Journal
Section: Lead Editorial
Contact: editors@interactive.wsj.com
Website: ht://www.wsj.com/
500 DRUG GENIUSES
With 500 of the world's prominent people serving as foot soldiers, there's
now a war on against the war on drugs. As the U.N. General Assembly opened
a special anti-drugs session this week, an international group of eminences
urged the world to cede victory to the drugs' allure and concentrate its
money and attention on making the addicts more comfortable.
"The global war on drugs is now causing more harm than drug abuse itself,"
said a letter appearing Monday in newspapers and bearing the signatures of
500 people rounded up by an outfit bankrolled by financier George Soros,
the man who underwrote the successful California effort to legalize
"medical marijuana." "Punitive prohibitions" should be dropped in favor of
approaches based on "common sense, public health and human rights."
The letter is mostly the sort of high-minded pabulum needed to attract such
famous names as former U.N. Secretary General Javier Perez de Cuellar or
former U.S. Secretary of State George Shultz. The word "legalize" never
appears. Nor do the words cocaine, heroin, marijuana, methamphetamine or
designer drugs. For the "We Believe" signers, it's all just "drugs." We
hope all these sophisticated folks won't feel their judgment is being too
terribly offended if we say quite bluntly: They have just been enlisted in
Mr. Soros's legalization crusade.
It's a remarkable collection: former White House general counsel Lloyd
Cutler, Milton Friedman, Willie Brown, Richard Burt, Bob Strauss, Joycelyn
Elders, Ahmet Ertegun, Harvey Cox, Charles Murray, Bishop Paul Moore Jr.,
former FDA Commissioner and Stanford President Donald Kennedy, Ruth
Messinger, Walter Cronkite, anti-biowarfare crusader Matthew Meselson of
Harvard, Gunter Grass, Ivan Illich, Jesus Silva Herzog of Mexico. They're
all listed at www.lindesmith.org/news/un.html.
We have a few favorites. Anita Roddick, the founder of the Body Shop, who's
famous for worrying about testing cosmetic chemicals on animals. And--this
takes the cake--Naderite Sidney Wolfe, who's dedicated his life to
allegations that various prescription drugs are "unsafe." No doubt Dr.
Wolfe would advocate package inserts listing such side-effects as crack
babies and headlong dives out windows.
The notion that drug use is both a human right and an unstoppable urge is
at root an immoral one, with its suggestion that some human lives are not
worth saving from the scourge of addiction. Fortunately, this defeatist
attitude is still in the minority. The mainstream view remains the one
articulated by French President Jacques Chirac as the U.N. session opened:
"The great crusade against drugs will not end until we have done [away]
with this cancer eating at our societies."
Critics of this approach include a diverse crew of leftists and
self-described realists and libertarian economists who believe in
backward-sloping demand curves. It occurs to us to suggest that the future
of the debate would profit if all of these people stated publicly whether
they themselves use any of these drugs recreationally.
They argue that years of effort have done little or nothing to stem the
flow and consumption of narcotics. Some add that de-criminalizing drug use
is the best way to bring down drug lords and to eradicate the pernicious
political and social effects of their illegal activities. All seem to
believe that drug use and abuse are part of the human condition, and that
governments should concentrate on making addicts less of a threat to
themselves and their societies by providing safer access to drugs and the
adult addicts' attendant diaper-changing services, which they call "public
health."
It still strikes us as a hard sell to families who've bankrupted themselves
trying to bring a son or daughter out of heroin hell. Or parents battling
to make sure their children aren't among those down at the local high
school or middle school using marijuana. Pedophilia and child prostitution
may also be part of the human condition, but you don't hear anyone arguing
that they should be legalized or at least made safe and sanitary.
None of this can obscure the fact that the current war on drug
trafficking--and the political corruption, economic distortion, crime, AIDS
and other social ills that flow from it--is not going well. This week's
session at the United Nations, however, at least begins to point in the
right direction. The proposals we are hearing are for a more cross-border
approach to a cross-border problem. Up to now most countries have focused
their efforts internally, with a more global approach mostly breeding
recriminations. This time the heads of state are on the right track, and
perhaps something useful will slowly come from this session.
If the war on drugs isn't working, the answer is not to abandon the fight.
We suspect that unlike the 500 famous authors of this week's petition,
ordinary people have much less tolerance for the drug culture or its
denizens.
***
Sample Letters (SENT 6/11)
Below are two sample letters. Both were sent to the WSJ today.
***
500 DRUG GENIUSES vs ONE BLIND NEWSPAPER
Dear Editor:
The Wall Street Journal has long distinguished itself as short sighted,
myopic and completely devoid of logic and reason on the topic of drug
policy. You have outdone yourself in "500 DRUG GENIUSES" (WSJ 6/10). Given
your otherwise generally sound editorial opinions and occasional
brilliance, I find this both unfortunate and confusing.
It is mind boggling that you have the unmitigated gall to dismiss the
opinions of 500 acknowledged leaders like Walter Cronkite, George Schultz,
and former UN General Secretary Javier Perez de Cuellar.
How can any rational thinker analyze our drug policy and fail to conclude
that it is a monumental failure? We have more people in prison than any
industrialized nation. We've spent hundreds of billions of dollars on the
drug war. Weve destroyed families and lives and undermined Constitutional
freedoms. We've made inner city children, that should have been young
business men, into drug dealers. And what do we have to show for all this
effort? Any child or adult with a few dollars in his pocket can buy any
illicit drug in existence anywhere in the country. If you don't believe it,
ask your kids.
The fact that the supposed beacon of free enterprise and conservative
thinking cannot see the lunacy, hypocrisy, and inconsistency inherent in
our nations second failed experiment at prohibition is a mystery I cannot
fathom.
Mark Greer
A TRUE Conservative
(contact info and phone)
***
June 11, 1998
Editors, The Wall Street Journal:
Shame on you, editors of the Wall Street Journal. Your editorial entitled
"500 DRUG GENIUSES" (June 10, 1998) was a mean-spirited attack on well
respected individuals who did nothing more than ask the defenders of the
status quo to justify their decades of drug war failure. Isn't this type of
cordial dissent the very bedrock of our democracy? In stark contrast, your
sensationalized accounts of 'crack babies and headlong dives out windows'
was a cheap ploy to elicit support for a policy that has a worse success
rate than the welfare state.
Sincerely,
Paul Lewin
Common Sense for Drug Policy
***
Mark Greer
Media Awareness Project (MAP) inc.
d/b/a DrugSense
MGreer@mapinc.org
http://www.DrugSense.org/
http://www.mapinc.org
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Re - Opiates For The Masses (Letter Sent To The Editor
Of 'The Wall Street Journal' By A Psychiatrist Who Specializes
In Addiction Treatment Rebuts A Letter Opposing Heroin Maintenance
By Prohibitionist Dr. Sally Satel)
Date: Thu, 11 Jun 1998 00:28:36 -0400
To: mattalk@islandnet.com, maptalk@mapinc.org, harmred@drcnet.org
From: Richard Lake (rlake@mapinc.org)
Subject: SENT: Re: Opiate for the Masses - wsj, 68 oped (FWD)
Contact: editors@interactive.wsj.com
Website: http://www.wsj.com/
***
Psychiatrist Sally Satel is a more eloquent spin doctor than the best of
the Washington lobbyists.
In her op-ed piece, "Opiate for the Masses" (WSJ, 6/8), she calls a
drug harm-reduction policy "pernicious" and the choices it
presents society as specious.
Glossing over the documented failure of our current drug policies, she
states "since harm reduction makes no demands on addicts, it
consigns them to their addiction, aiming only to allow them to destroy
themselves in relative safety - and at taxpayer expense." She
then cites a recent Swiss study of heroin maintenance to buttress her
political views.
The demands on heroin addicts are their cravings for heroin - that is
why they are addicts.
Providing a safe and reliable source of heroin to those addicted to
this drug frees them from their cravings so they have a chance to use
their brains to get a better life. They don't have to worry about
their next fix, who to hustle, what to steal, getting busted, or
whether the 'heroin' real or rat poison.
Data from both the Swiss experiment and from the Widnes Clinic in
Liverpool, England show that if you supply addicts with heroin in a
context of basic human dignity and allow access to public health
services, about 5% per year will experience spontaneous remission and
start to have productive lives - a 50% success rate over ten years -
and that is without any formal substance abuse treatment.
This is far different from Dr. Satel=B9s view of only allowing them to
destroy themselves.
Dr. Satel documents that the Swiss heroin maintenance study markedly
decreased illicit drug use, homelessness, infectious disease and
criminal behavior and increased productive employment and health.
Yet she dismisses these results with ignorance, stating "it's hard
to know what they mean" and implying the study wasn't scientific.
She doesn't acknowledge that research on a severely addicted
population is difficult at best or that the research supporting the
use of the expensive, prescribed medications so highly touted by
psychiatry is based on minuscule populations, far less than the 1146
hard-core heroin addicts in the Swiss study.
Her final assault on heroin maintenance is that it is done at taxpayer
expense. Ignoring the fact that addicts will pay for their drug, she
fails to acknowledge that the Swiss government, always concerned about
economic efficiency, assessed the overall cost of heroin maintenance
for addicts and calculated they saved money with this approach.
She also fails to acknowledge that when this controversial program was
presented to the Swiss electorate in a referendum, 71% approved it as
their national policy.
Then, after perniciously labeling proponents of harm reduction as
advocating drug abuse as a human right, Dr. Satel attains the heights
of speciousness by offering no solutions of her own.
Our current War on Drugs pushes addicts into prison or shooting
galleries, the former frightfully expensive for our society, the
latter a reservoir of deadly illness for our public health.
Obviously lacking in compassion or effectiveness, it is Dr. Satel and
her politics that consign both addicts and our society to a needlessly
destructive hell.
Gene Tinelli, M.D., Ph.D. Addiction Psychiatrist Department of
Psychiatry Health Science Center State University of New York
Syracuse, NY 13210
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Delamere Denounces Drug Hypocrisy ('The Dominion' In Wellington,
New Zealand, Covers The Speech Presented By New Zealand Customs Minister
And Associate Health Minister Tuariki Delamere At The United Nations
Special Session On Expanding The Global Drug War - 'If We Are Going To Stand
A Chance In Convincing Our Young People About The Risk Of Drug Use
We Need To Address The Hypocrisy That Young People See When Adults,
Including Politicians, Occasionally Openly And Legally Abuse Alcohol
And Then Turn Around And Condemn Youth For Using Marijuana')
Date: Thu, 11 Jun 1998 09:48:46 +1200 (NZST)
To: mattalk@islandnet.com
From: David.Hadorn@vuw.ac.nz (David Hadorn)
Subject: NZ: Delamere denounces drug hypocrisy
This story is based on a press release, made available yesterday, concerning
Delamere's prepared remarks. Does anyone have access to a transcript of his
actual speech?
***
Source: The Dominion (Wellington, NZ)
Pubdate: June 11, 1998
Contact: editor@dominion.co.nz
Delamere denounces drug hypocrisy
It was hypocritical for adults, including politicians, to abuse alcohol but
condemn young people for using marijuana, Customs Minister Tuariki Delamere
told the United Nations today.
Mr Delamere, who is also Associate Health Minister, was in New York speaking
at a United Nations General Assembly special session on drug problems.
"If we are going to stand a chance in convincing our young people about the
risk of drug use we need to address the hypocrisy that young people see when
adults, including politicians, occasionally openly and legally abuse alcohol
and then turn around and condemn youth for using marijuana," Mr Delamere said.
Mr Delamere's son, Jean-Paul, has been convicted on cannabis charges and Mr
Delamere has admitted using the drug when he was young.
Providing honest information was one of the keys to reducing drug-related
harm, particularly for young people who might experiment because of stories
that played down the risks or glamorised drugs, Mr Delamere said.
There was a need to better communicate to young people the dangers of using
any type of drug, including alcohol and cigarettes.
The number of people on methadone treatment had increased considerably
during the past three years, Mr Delamere said. Many had reduced both their
drug use and criminal activity and had improved their health and stabilised
their lives
Introducing needle exchange 10 years ago had helped prevent the spread of
HIV virus and New Zealand's infection rate of less than 1 percent was among
the lowest in the world.
Mr Delamere said much more had to be done to help Maoris, who were
disproportionately represented in drug statistics. It was heartening to
hear people at the Healing Our Spirits conference in New Zealand this year
saying it was time for Maoris to take responsibility for drug-use prevention
among their own people.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Mexico Protests Handling Of Money-Laundering Sting By US Agents
('New York Times' Update On The Diplomatic Uproar
Over 'Operation Casablanca')
Date: Fri, 12 Jun 1998 17:13:34 -0700
To: mapnews@mapinc.org
From: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org (MAPNews)
Subject: MN: NYT: Mexico Protests Handling of Money-Laundering Sting by U.S. Agents
Sender: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Reply-To: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Organization: Media Awareness Project http://www.mapinc.org/lists/
Newshawk: Marcus-Mermelstein Family
Source: New York Times (NY)
Contact: letters@nytimes.com
Website: http://www.nytimes.com/
Pubdate: Thu, 11 Jun 1998
Author: Tim Golden
MEXICO PROTESTS HANDLING OF MONEY-LAUNDERING STING BY U.S. AGENTS
On a Saturday night in May, some accused Mexican drug traffickers and their
banker friends strolled out of a casino in Mesquite, Nev., piled into
limousines, and set off for what was to be a wild night of women at a
desert brothel called "The Chicken Ranch."
When they were quickly arrested in an elaborately choreographed sting that
reached from San Diego to Aruba, it concluded one of the most ambitious
undercover campaigns that U.S. law-enforcement agents have ever waged
against Latin American drug cartels.
Less than a month later, however, the three-year investigation appears
likely to make history less for the 167 arrests and the scope of the
drug-money laundering system that it smashed than for the extraordinary
diplomatic uproar it has inspired.
According to senior officials from both countries, the battle has brought
to a head what has been a lengthy, bitter and behind-the-scenes struggle
over how U.S. law-enforcement agents will be allowed to work in Mexico.
Nearly five years after Mexico and the United States forged a partnership
under the North American Free Trade Agreement, the furor has underscored
both the resilience of Mexico's nationalist sensitivities on
law-enforcement matters and the U.S. government's stubborn mistrust of
Mexico's criminal-justice apparatus.
"There are a lot of things that we have not accepted and that we are not
going to accept," said Mexican Foreign Minister Rosario Green. "We Mexicans
are very jealous of our national sovereignty."
Angered at what they view as the trampling of criminal laws and diplomatic
rule by undercover agents working in Mexico, Mexican officials say they may
prosecute the Americans for enticing the jailed bankers to commit crimes.
U.S. officials say Mexico has also proposed that law-enforcement
cooperation between the two countries could be suspended if such operations
take place again without their consent.
So frustrated have Clinton administration officials grown during more than
a year of secret negotiations over what protection will be accorded U.S.
law-enforcement agents assigned to Mexico that Attorney General Janet Reno
recently told Ms. Green that the United States may pull most of its
drug-enforcement agents out of the country.
Already, the Americans have abandoned hopes of gaining formal authorization
for the agents to carry guns, as they have done informally for years.
Instead, the United States is pushing for broader diplomatic immunity,
something Mexican officials have steadfastly opposed.
U.S. officials describe the possibility of a mass withdrawal of drug agents
as remote, given the likelihood that Mexico would only allow them to return
under more restrictive terms.
But they also acknowledge that the Drug Enforcement Administration has
already pulled back two teams of agents who recently came under threat from
drug traffickers in the two main cocaine-transit cities along the border,
Tijuana and Ciudad Juarez.
When the arrests were announced in May, with the indictment of officials
from 12 Mexican banks unsealed in Los Angeles, Treasury Secretary Robert
Rubin and Reno hailed the the action as "the largest, most comprehensive
drug-money laundering case in the history of U.S. law-enforcement."
According to interviews with almost two dozen U.S. and Mexican officials,
the case began after Customs Service agents in Los Angeles noticed a new
currency in the shadowy financial world through which Latin America's
biggest drug organizations move and hide their money.
Big Mexican bank drafts, drawn on the dollar accounts that Mexico's newly
privatized banks keep in the United States, were becoming instruments of
choice.
By 1994, Customs agents determined that drug profits in the United States
were being wired through U.S. banks or shipped in bulk back to Mexico,
where Mexican bankers, charging a one or two percent commission, would
issue drafts in dollars.
An Old Operation Helps Trace New Drafts
In a stroke, the dealers and the bankers created a highly-liquid currency
that was hard to trace. Drug traffickers could choose between cashing the
drafts, redepositing them or swapping them for, say, Colombian pesos with a
legitimate businessmen who might then use the dollars to buy goods in the
United States.
Customs agents began to infiltrate the system by using undetected pieces of
a successful operation they had set up against Colombian drug dealers years
earlier -- a phony business near Los Angeles, old drug connections and
experienced covert operatives.
The basic idea, one agents said, was to "play it again." Recalling Ingrid
Bergman's famous line from the 1942 film, they named the operation
"Casablanca."
At the heart of the scheme, agents said, was an extraordinary "cooperating
informant," a man whom the drug traffickers and their bankers know as an
urbane, enterprising Colombian money launderer named "Javier Ramirez."
Working with an undercover team of Customs agents and police detectives,
Ramirez, a protected federal witness whose identity remains secret,
entertained traffickers at the warehouse offices of the front company
outside Los Angeles; flew them to Las Vegas on a private jet; even visited
them in Mexico.
The inquiry concentrated initially on money launderers associated with
Colombia's Cali cartel. But the agents' focus shifted in November of 1995,
when they were dispatched by Cali operatives to a routine money pick up
outside of Chicago.
Barely six weeks later, two senior agents were dispatched to Mexico City to
meet with Mexican officials.
In the face of sharp criticism from opposition politicians who are now
weighing a huge bailout of the troubled banking system, Mexican officials
have acknowledged only one meeting -- one at which the Customs agents
briefed a former deputy attorney general who is a member of the political
opposition.
In fact, U.S. officials said the agents laid out most of what they knew to
the former deputy attorney general, Rafael Estrada Samano, and asked for
his help. They said they then gave a separate , less detailed presentation
to a deputy minister of finance, Ismael Gomez Gordillo.
Americans Are Called Vague About Needs
"We asked him to conduct a joint investigation with us," said one official
with direct knowledge of the meeting with Estrada. "That would have
included them covering meetings with the traffickers, conducting
surveillance. Estrada said he had to check with his boss and would get back
to us. But they just wouldn't respond to us. And after a couple of months,
we gave up."
In an interview Tuesday, Mexican Attorney General Jorge Madrazo said he
believed the Americans had been vague about both the investigation and
their needs. He acknowledged that Gomez Gordillo also met with the agents,
but said they had asked him only for information on some Mexican bank
accounts, which he provided.
While U.S. officials have defended the secrecy of the operation as
necessary to protect the lives of undercover agents, it has gone largely
unnoticed that senior Mexican law-enforcement officials knew for more than
two years that Customs agents were investigating money laundering by
Mexican banks, and that the operation was apparently never jeopardized as a
consequence. But from the Mexico City briefings, Customs officials grew
suspicious about the lack of response they got.
"It was obvious that something was screwed up, whether it was corruption or
something else," one law-enforcement official said. "And that did factor
into our decision not to go back to them later on."
"The Doctor," who agents identified as Victor Manuel Alcala Navarro,
introduced Javier Ramirez and his purported launderers to an ever-widening
group of Mexican bankers.
But he also introduced the agents to his boss, a man they identified as
Jose Alvarez Tostado and came to believe was the principal money launderer
for the Juarez cartel.
In little more than a year, the agents managed to launder more than $62
million in drug profits funneled from sales in the United States and
Canada. But they might have done far more. At one Illinois safehouse of the
gang, they found a ledger documenting the collection of $200 million by
part of the organization over a period of about 18 months.
"We were so conservative about what we did and how much we moved that we
were constantly in danger of losing our credibility with the bankers," said
one Customs official. The bankers, he said, far from being enticed to break
laws, were uniformly introduced to the agents by drug traffickers. "We
could have done not millions of dollars, but hundreds of millions."
Fears in Washington and Reactions Overseas
But senior Mexican investigators who have pursued the Juarez gang sharply
criticized the U.S. operation.
"The Customs guys didn't even get the name of their main target right," one
Mexican officials said dismissively. "It's Juan Jose Castellanos
Alvarez-Tostado. And he's not such a big deal."
The Mexicans noted that they have worked closely with agents from both the
Drug Enforcement Administration and the FBI, dealt with a much wider part
of the same drug organization, and could easily have helped Customs agents
had they been asked.
The agents, however, received clear instructions from above.
In briefings last November and December for Reno, Rubin and a few of their
subordinates, officials said there was considerable discussion of possible
"collateral effects" once the investigation went public: diplomatic
troubles; an impact on the Mexican financial markets; even the possibility
that the weak Mexican banking industry, could have trouble getting
interbank loans.
But several officials said it was Rubin -- whose Treasury Department has
often been depicted by other officials in Washington as skeptical about
Mexican corruption and skittish about tough U.S. measures to fight it --
who insisted that the operation proceedin secret.
Those left out, they said, included not only the Mexican government but
senior officials at the White House, the State Department and even the
Treasury itself.
While senior Mexican officials initially praised the operation after its
disclosure, they said they did so after being told that none of the
undercover work was done on Mexican soil. When they read the indictments
and saw that wasn't so they were incensed.
"It is very clear that there is an ignorance of Mexican law on the part of
the United States," said Madrazo, the attorney general, "or if not the
United States, at least among the agents who participated in this."
Officials Wonder What to Do With Data
U.S. officials acknowledged that the repercussions are more than a matter
of diplomacy.
Hopes of wrangling a form of diplomatic protection for U.S. agents in
Mexico, "administrative and technical immunity," have been discarded.
Thoughts of following up the investigation are fading. Although Customs
officials have the name of a Mexican army general and the rough identities
of federal police agents who were said by one of the suspects to have
laundered illicit profits, the U.S. agents are debating whether even to
pass them on.
A handful of the suspects who couldn't be lured to the United States have
been arrested in Mexico. But the one whom U.S. officials believe knew the
most, an investment banker named Enrique Mendez Urena who was said to have
worked for the trafficker Carrillo Fuentes, did not fare well.
After Mendez's name and Mexico City address were sent to Mexican officials,
he was arrested in Puerto Vallarta, and then suddenly died of massive head
injuries. The state police, who apparently arrested him, said he was acting
strangely and hurt himself in jail.
Copyright 1998 The New York Times Company
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Red Tape Smothering Hemp Crop (The Toronto 'Globe And Mail'
Says The Canadian Government's Pledge To Allow Farmers
To Grow Industrial Hemp This Summer Is Being Stymied By Ottawa's Concern
About Imagined Abuses - New Regulations Require Each Farmer
To Be Checked For A Criminal Record, For Example, And Each Application
Also Requires Global Positioning Co-ordinates Of The Acreage To Be Planted
So That Surveillance Satellites Can Keep An Eye On It)
Date: Sun, 14 Jun 1998 11:32:49 -0700
To: mapnews@mapinc.org
From: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org (MAPNews)
Subject: MN: Canada: Red Tape Smothering Hemp Crop
Sender: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Reply-To: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Organization: Media Awareness Project http://www.mapinc.org/lists/
Newshawk: cohip@levellers.org (Colo. Hemp Init. Project)
Source: Globe and Mail (Canada)
Contact: letters@globeandmail.ca
Website: http://www.globeandmail.ca/
Pubdate: Thu, 11 Jun 1998
Author: Wallace Immen
RED TAPE SMOTHERING HEMP CROP
Health Canada's "bureaucratic constipation" turns farmers' hopes into pipe
dreams.
When people talk about hemp, they sound euphoric, even if the distant
relative of marijuana can't make anyone high. "This is unbelievable. The
response has been absolutely amazing." Says Les Patterson of Vancouver's
Bowen Island Brewing, describing the company's new ale brewed with hemp
rather than hops. Ruth Shamai says: "Hemp makes beautiful fabric: strong
like linen and it drapes like cotton and it resists ultraviolet rays." Her
Toronto company, The Natural Order, wants to make cosmetics and fabric from
Canadian hemp.
Ontario car-parts maker Kenex Ltd. is so impressed bu hemp's ability to
replace plastic that it wants to buy tonnes of Canadian hemp to make into
panels for the auto companies. Farmers planting the first commercial hemp
crop since the 1930's have a ready market for as much as they can grow. The
trouble is that, more than a month into the growing season, the seeds are
still not in the ground because of red tape in Ottawa. Health Canada
started taking applications in March, but is only now mail9ing out growing
permits to farmers across the country. "I think there is pressure on the
government from the United States" where hemp growing is not legal, aid
Brian Taylor, mayor of Grand Forks, B.C. Mr. Taylor, a leader in the
campaign to legalize hemp growing, says it remains controversial because
industrial hemp is a cousin of the marijuana plant. U.S. drug officials
have resisted hemp legalization because they are worried that people might
try to smoke it.
But the buzz-producing ingredient, tetrahydrocannabiol, has been bred out
of industrial hemp. Mr. Taylor said. The plants contain less than 0.3 per
cent THC, compared with 10 per cent or more in marijuana.
"You could say I'm a little frustrated," said farmer Kevin Miles, who hopes
to soon get the seeds to plant 300 acres in hemp. "I should have had the
seeds in long ago. The earlier you get it in, the bigger the tonnage per
acre."
Mr. Miles, 35, who represents the third generation to work his family farm
at tWaterford, near Brantford in Southern Ontario, said he wants to
diversify his crop of sweet corn and pumpkins.
But it hasn't been easy.
Ottawa's concern about the possible abuses of hemp growing led to
requirements that each farmer be checked for a criminal record.
The application also requires global positioning co-ordinates of the
acreage to be planted so that surveillance satellites can keep an eye on
it.
Samples of the crop will also have to be analyzed in a laboratory to make
sure it doesn't have too much THC.
"I don't disagree with getting a licence, but it is an extremely onerous
business," said The Natural Order's Ms. Shamai, who last year had a licence
to grow an experimental hemp crop on an Ontario farm.
She said phone calls to the government's Hemp Project offices in Ottawa go
unanswered. Callers are directed to an Internet site that is packed with
regulations and numerous complicated forms that must be submitted to get a
growing permit. "Farmers here have been frightened off." Mr. Taylor said.
"We expected mass planting in British Columbia, but it hasn't happened."
He attributed that to "bureaucratic constipation in Ottawa. I've been
fighting it for years." Mr. Taylor became enthusiastic about the commercial
advantages of hemp while he was a leader of an earlier campaign to legalize
marijuana.
He said officials can easily tell the difference between hemp and marijuana
growing in the field.
"Until we deal with the paranoia that hangs around marijuana, we're not
going to get into a major industry." Mr. Taylor added.
He expects that the public will become desensitized to the drug issue once
a successful crop is harvested this year.
Mr. Miles said he has contracts to sell his hemp crop at $275 a tonne,
which is about the same price as soybeans and much higher than the pumpkins
he had in the field last year.
But rather than harvesting four tonnes an acre, he says he will be lucky to
get three an acre if he gets the seeds in now.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Hemp Dreams Up In Smoke For Farmers ('Ottawa Citizen' Version)
Date: Sun, 14 Jun 1998 23:47:30 -0500
To: mapnews@mapinc.org
From: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org (MAPNews)
Subject: MN: CANADA: Hemp Dreams Up In Smoke For Farmers
Sender: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Reply-To: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Organization: Media Awareness Project http://www.mapinc.org/lists/
Newshawk: cohip@levellers.org (Colo. Hemp Init. Project)
Source: Ottawa Citizen (Canada)
Pubdate: 11 Jun 1998
Contact: letters@thecitizen.southam.ca
Website: http://www.ottawacitizen.com/
Author: Dawn Walton of The Ottawa Citizen
National - Ottawa Citizen Online
HEMP DREAMS UP IN SMOKE FOR FARMERS
Would-be growers leave fields bare as federal government fails to
grant licences in time for planting
Industrial hemp may be touted as the new billion dollar crop, but for
hundreds of farmers across the country, trying to cash in on Canada's
first foray into the commercial hemp industry has been a monumental
headache.
Dozens, perhaps hundreds of farmers haven't received their
hemp-growing licences from the federal government even though planting
season has already ended in western Canada and seeding in the eastern
provinces could only continue through this weekend at the latest. The
delay means the true value of what could be a Cinderella crop won't be
known until the end of the 1999 growing season.
"The viability for profitability is going down day by day," said
Douglas Brown, of West Hemp Enterprises Inc., a Vancouver-based firm
which has been set up to help farmers in the West get licences and
obtain hemp seeds.
Although banned since 1938 because of its dubious relative named
marijuana, industrial hemp regulations were specifically put in place
by Health Canada in March so farmers could legally plant the crop this
year. Hemp contains only trace amounts of tetrahydrocannabinol, or
THC, the substance that is found in higher quantities in marijuana and
produces a high when ingested.
Industrial hemp can be used in everything from car parts to textiles
to food additives to pharmaceutical substitutes. The crop is so
versatile that the United States imports $100 million U.S. worth of
the product every year.
Still hemp has been saddled with the drug culture image and
cultivating it commercially is being rigorously regulated by the drug
surveillance unit of Health Canada's therapeutic products program.
"If they meet all the requirements, the licences are issued,"
explained Jean Peart, manager of the unit's hemp program. "If they
don't meet the requirements, we get back to them to tell them what
their deficiencies are and sometimes this takes four or five times.
Then if they qualify, they get a licence."
Ms. Peart could neither estimate how many licences have been granted
nor how many applications have been made to get involved in all facets
of the fledgling industry. Those figures will be released at the end
of this month.
Among other requirements, would-be growers need to submit to a
criminal check and provide Health Canada with the global positioning
coordinates marking the perimetre of their hemp fields. Seed
distributors and processors also have to meet similar stringent test
including studying Canada's seed acts.
"There are some (growers) who are quite frustrated," said David
Sippell, managing director of Canterra Seeds Ltd. in Winnipeg, which
is the largest hemp seed distributor in western Canada.
Canterra has sold hemp seeds to about 125 farmers across the four
western provinces who will harvest an estimated 5,000 hectares of hemp
for fibre and grain this year.
Of all the growers who originally expressed interested in the crop,
Mr. Sippell figures about 25 per cent still have not obtained licences.
"There are some who just gave up. Who just simply said 'What is going
on?' and just said 'I'm not going to play with this anymore' because
they thought they had completed the information. Then they were asked
for more information and then asked again for more information and
then asked a third time for more during a busy time of year when
people are planting. They just say, 'Thanks very much, but no thanks.'
So they just gave up. And there are many others who on June 1 simply
said, well, 'Planting is over. If I plant my crop now it's too late.
It's going to be frosted out in the fall.' So they simply gave up
because of their licence not being granted in time."
Harold Moore, a 71-year-old semi-retired farmer from Peace River,
Alta. who has a degree in agriculture, is one of the growers who gave
up.
He applied for a research licence last November to plant a mere
fraction of a hectare of hemp at his 1,200 hectare farm located about
400 kilometres northwest of Edmonton. He wanted to determine if hemp
planted in his region would produce seeds considering the extremely
short growing season.
"I also wanted to see what kind of yields we've got in our particular
climate and soil to see if it's going to be a paying proposition
before we bought machinery," Mr. Moore said.
He filed the paperwork, obtained letters of reference from scientists
supporting his project and supplied Health Canada with the global
positioning requirements for his tiny plot of land. Mr. Moore said he
exchanged several faxes with Health Canada including one that asked
for police checks of his references, but when the May 15 deadline for
planting in his region passed, he quit.
"I could see and I was told by other people that did obtain a research
permit, that it was delay, linger and wait and keep asking questions
that were trivial and unnecessary," he said. "I could see no matter
how many faxes I sent back, they could find some other excuse for some
dog gone thing that was wrong in."
Similarly, Joe and Dolores Sabourin of Scout Lake, Sask. gave up on
their plan to plant about 50 hectares of the crop on their
3,755-hectare farm once their May 31 seeding deadline came and went.
They spent three years researching the crop, hoping it could be a
lucrative addition to their already diversified farm located about 150
kilometres south of Moose Jaw.
"It's been just more delay and more delay. How long does it take to
recognize we're just ordinary folks wanting to grow a crop so we can
pay our debts?" Mrs. Sabourin asked.
Mrs. Sabourin said some farmers don't have the luxury of time while
Health Canada works the kinks out of the system. "For the guy losing
his farm this year, there isn't a next year is how we look at it.
People here are living that close to the edge," she said.
She thinks hemp should be regulated just like other crops -- by the
federal and provincial agriculture departments.
A collection of farmers have recently formed the Canadian Hemp Growers
Association which will lobby the federal government to take hemp out
of Health Canada's hands.
Despite criticisms, a number of farmers have planted seeds and will be
harvesting hemp grain and fibre this fall.
Seed distributor and hemp processing firm Kenex Ltd., which is located
in Pain Court, Ont. near London, has contracted with about 50 farmers
located across Canada who have already planted about 400 hectares of
hemp.
"It's been a very difficult season in setting up the new procedures.
We have gotten through it fortunately," said general manager Bob L'Ecuyer.
Copyright 1998 The Ottawa Citizen
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Official - Flourishing, Potent Pot Turn Canada Into A Drug-Exporter
('The Associated Press' Notes Canadian Solicitor-General Andrew Scott
Told Wednesday's Final Gathering Of The UN General Assembly Special Session
On Drugs That Canada Has Become An Exporter Of Cannabis,
Though He Apparently Failed To Give Credit To Prohibition's Role
In Bringing That About)
Date: Fri, 12 Jun 1998 00:45:26 -0400
To: mapnews@mapinc.org
From: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org (MAPNews)
Subject: MN: UN GE: Wire: Official: Flourishing, Potent Pot Turn Canada
Into A Drug-Exporter
Sender: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Reply-To: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Organization: Media Awareness Project http://www.mapinc.org/lists/
Newshawk: compassion23@geocities.com
Source: Associated Press
Pubdate: Thu, 11 Jun 1998
Author: Robert H. Reid, Associated Press Writer
OFFICIAL: FLOURISHING, POTENT POT TURN CANADA INTO A DRUG-EXPORTER
UNITED NATIONS (AP) -- Flourishing marijuana crops have turned Canada into
an illicit-drug exporter, according to a Canadian official.
Canada has become a major producer of cannabis, ``especially indoors,''
Solicitor-General Andrew Scott said during Wednesday's final gathering of
the U.N. General Assembly special session on drugs.
``Indeed, we have become an exporting country,'' Scott said. ``Cannabis is
the most commonly used illicit drug in Canada, followed by cocaine and
heroin with moderate use of synthetic drugs.''
U.S. and Canadian officials believe marijuana harvesting now ranks as
British Columbia's most lucrative agricultural product, with illegal
revenues estimated at anywhere from $400 million to more than $3 billion a year.
In the past year, the U.S. Customs Service has nearly doubled its
enforcement effort along the northern border -- especially focusing on
Washington state -- because of a surge of high-quality marijuana smuggled in
from British Columbia.
U.S. officials said the Canadian product is so potent that it can sell for
as much as $6,000 a pound in parts of California -- 10 times the typical
price for marijuana from Mexico.
As a result of the crackdown in the West, U.S. officials say Canadian
growers are stepping up operations in Ontario to exploit markets in New
York, Michigan and New England.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Lack Of UN Resolution Gives Refugee Status To Drug Pushers
(Toronto 'Globe And Mail' Editorial By Prohibitionist Jeffrey Simpson
Notes The United Nations Special Session On Expanding The War On Some Drugs
Wasn't Even Able To Pass A Resolution Saying Trafficking In Illegal Drugs
Is 'Contrary To The Purposes And Principles Of The United Nations,'
Upholding The Decision Last Week By Canada's Supreme Court
To Allow Refugee Status To A Convicted Sri Lankan)
Date: Thu, 11 Jun 1998 11:29:34 -0400
From: Carey Ker
Subject: Canada GE: OPED -- Lack of UN resolution
gives refugee status to drug pushers
To: mattalk@islandnet.com
Newshawk: carey.ker@utoronto.ca
Source: The Globe and Mail
Contact: letters@globeandmail.ca
Pubdate: Thursday, June 11, 1998
Author: Jeffrey Simpson
Lack of UN resolution gives refugee status to drug pushers
Thursday, June 11, 1998
By Jeffrey Simpson
OTTAWA
OTTAWA -- AT last month's Group of Eight summit in
Birmingham, the leaders spent a lot of time worrying about
international crime, including the drug trade. Their
communique read, in part, that "there must be no safe havens
either for criminals or for their money."
British Prime Minister Tony Blair said: "The drug trade . .
. generates crime, ruins lives, poisons economies and
undermines law and order around the world." Canada's own
Jean Chrétien added that "international crime and drugs are
becoming a problem of a big international dimension."
This week, the United Nations is the venue for a major
conference on drug trafficking. That conference will build
on dozens of UN resolutions condemning drug trafficking as
threatening to, among other things, health, political and
economic structures, development, political stability,
national security, democratic institutions. As recently as
1992, the General Assembly voted to "reiterate its
condemnation of the crime of drug trafficking in all its
forms."
The international organization, amid all this condemnation,
has never passed a specific resolution, however, stating
that drug trafficking is "contrary to the purposes and
principles of the United Nations."
Any reasonable person might think such a resolution
unnecessary, given the dozens of others deploring
trafficking, but the lack of such a resolution helped
persuade Canada's Supreme Court by a 4-2 majority to allow a
drug trafficker to claim refugee status.
The court's decision, a technicality that squeezed through a
loophole, overturned decisions of (a) the Immigration
Department, (b) the convention refugee determination
division of the Immigration and Refugee Board, (c) the
Federal Court's trial division, and (d) the Federal Court of
Appeal.
The facts are these. Veluppillai Pushpanathan left Sri Lanka
in 1983, arrived in Canada in 1985 and claimed refugee
status. Two years later, without his claim being
adjudicated, Mr. Pushpanathan was granted permanent-resident
status under what was called in bureaucratspeak, "an
administrative program."
In plain English, he received an amnesty brought about by a
huge backlog of refugee claims. That backlog, in turn, arose
in part from the chaos created by a 1985 Supreme Court
ruling known as the Singh decision, which overturned the
refugee-determination system of the day.
Eight months after receiving his permanent status, Mr.
Pushpanathan was arrested and pleaded guilty to heroin
trafficking. He and his fellow crooks possessed heroin with
a street value of $10-million. He received an eight-year
sentence, but under Canada's generous parole laws he was
freed in less than four years and promptly claimed refugee
status in order to remain in Canada.
Government agencies and lower courts repeatedly turned him
down over six years. But not the Supreme Court. The court
majority acknowledged that drug trafficking constituted a
problem, but insisted that "there is no indication in
international law that drug trafficking on any scale is to
be considered contrary to the purposes and principles of the
United Nations."
Refugee determination is a human-rights matter; drug
trafficking, while serious, is not. So ruled the court in
arguing that drug trafficking in Canada was not sufficient
grounds to deport someone because his actions were contrary
to the "purposes and principles of the United Nations." Mr.
Pushpanathan might yet be deported if he can be found a
threat to Canadian society, but his drug trafficking should
not negate his claim to human-rights protection as a
refugee.
This judgment, of course, will be watched (and laughed at by
crooks) around the world. Never before, apparently, has a
court so restrictively interpreted what constitutes the
"purposes and principles of the United Nations." Just
because the UN hasn't specifically passed a resolution
including drug trafficking as against the "purposes and
principles of the United Nations," Mr. Pushpanathan can
stay, at least for now. Canada's chronic difficulties in
deporting anyone may mean he'll be in this country
forever.
If Mr. Pushpanathan had committed a drug-trafficking offence
outside Canada, he would not be allowed in. Happily for Mr.
Pushpanathan, he committed his crime in Canada and applied
for refugee status. By using all the available appeals, and
by finding supporters on the Supreme Court who don't think
drug trafficking contravenes the "purposes and principles of
the United Nations," Mr. Pushpanathan is still here, still
appealing and probably still smiling.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Downer Pledges $15M Drug Fight ('The Sydney Morning Herald'
Says Australia's Foreign Minister Told The United Nations Drug Summit
That Australia Had Allocated $15 Million For Drug-Control Programs
In The Asia-Pacific Region)
Date: Wed, 10 Jun 1998 19:32:45 -0800
To: mapnews@mapinc.org
From: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org (MAPNews)
Subject: MN: UN GE: Downer Pledges $15M Drug Fight
Sender: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Reply-To: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Organization: Media Awareness Project http://www.mapinc.org/lists/
Newshawk: Ken Russell
Pubdate: Thursday, 11 June 1998
Source: Sydney Morning Herald (Australia)
Contact: letters@smh.com.au
Website: http://www.smh.com.au/
U.N. SUMMIT: DOWNER PLEDGES $15M DRUG FIGHT
Describing the international drug problem as "one of the major non-military
threats to regional and international security", the Foreign Minister, Mr
Downer, announced here that Australia had allocated $15 million for
drug-control programs in the Asia-Pacific region.
Addressing the United Nations drug summit, Mr Downer said the Australian
initiative aimed "to enhance the security of our borders and our streets by
concentrating on supply and health treatment in our own region".
Mr Downer said $5.7 million would be allocated over four years to develop
an Asia-Pacific regional law enforcement program, while an additional
$6.1million would be used to extend Australia's law enforcement liaison
network.
$1 million would go to a Sydney-based group fighting money-laundering in
the Asia-Pacific, and another $1 million would fund eradication of drug
crops in South-East Asia and the development of alternative crops.
Mr Downer also announced increased funding for the prevention of HIV/AIDS,
and for the treatment and education of people infected with it and for
health projects targeting high-risk groups such as intravenous drug-users.
He said the initiatives were in international accord with the "Tough On
Drugs" program announced last November by the Prime Minister, Mr Howard.
"The production, trafficking and consumption of illicit drugs not only
ruins lives and livelihoods, it ruins security," Mr Downer said.
However, the summit has drawn wide criticism, with The New York Times
calling it well-intentioned but misdirected.
"The leaders are mostly extolling failed strategies to combat the problem,"
the paper said.
"Studies show treatment programs are far more cost-effective than efforts
overseas. But it is politically safer to advocate fighting drugs abroad
than treating addicts at home."
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Potential Health System Cost Savings From Medical Marijuana
(A New Zealand Physician And List Subscriber Notes The New Zealand
Drug Policy Forum Trust Is Embarking On An Analysis Of The Potential
Cost Savings To The New Zealand Health Care System If Medicinal Cannabis
Were Legal And Used To The Fullest Extent Appropriate)
Date: Thu, 11 Jun 1998 16:58:45 +1200 (NZST)
To: drugtalk@adca.org.au, drctalk@drcnet.org, mattalk@islandnet.com
From: David.Hadorn@vuw.ac.nz (David Hadorn)
Subject: Potential health system cost savings from mmj
The New Zealand Drug Policy Forum Trust is embarking on an analysis of the
potential cost savings to the NZ health care system if medicinal cannabis
were legal and used to the fullest extent appropriate, given usual
cost-effectiveness considerations.
We are looking for data concerning the extent to which cannabis might be
able to substitute for currently used pharmaceutical preparations for each
of the indications for which cannabis is generally considered safe and
effective (at least by people who know what they're talking about). I take
these to be:
· nausea and vomiting, especially produced by chemotherapy
· muscle spasms, especially associated with major neurological diseases
· epilepsy
· glaucoma
· migraine headache
· anorexia, especially but not limited to that produced by AIDS and cancer
· certain psychological or mental-heath related conditions, including (some
cases of) depression, anxiety, and stress-related conditions.
Obviously not all patients with the above conditions will benefit from
cannabis. Indeed, that's the question: what proportion of patients will?
Ideally we would like to find analyses that have concluded: X percent of
patients who take Y drug for Z indication could get equivalent relief from
cannabis, properly administered etc.
I doubt this has been done, however. Probably the closest we will come is
reviewing and summarizing the results from studies in these settings. Has
anyone already derived summary estimates of effectiveness rates based on
these studies?
Published studies aren't the last word, however, and we are also looking for
testimony from people with substantial experience in this area - not
individual patient testimony, mind you - but practitioners (of whatever
sort) who have had an opportunity to see cannabis succeed and fail over time
in a substantial series of patients. Anybody like that out there?
This should be interesting.
Thanks
David
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Synod Puts Drugs On Church Agenda (Britain's 'Guardian' Says That,
For The First Time In The 27-Year History Of The General Synod
Of The Church Of England, Drug Policy Will Be On The Agenda
At Next Month's Meeting, Including The Decriminalisation Of Cannabis)
Date: Thu, 11 Jun 1998 23:21:01 -0400
To: mapnews@mapinc.org
From: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org (MAPNews)
Subject: MN: UK: Synod puts drugs on church agenda
Sender: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Reply-To: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Organization: Media Awareness Project http://www.mapinc.org/lists/
Newshawk: webbooks@paston.co.uk (CLCIA)
Source: Guardian, The (UK)
Contact: letters@guardian.co.uk
Website: http://www.guardian.co.uk/
Pubdate: Thu, 11 Jun 1998
Author: Clare Garner
SYNOD PUTS DRUGS ON CHURCH AGENDA
FOR THE first time in the General Synod's 27-year history, drugs are on the
agenda. Next month members of the Church of England are to debate drugs
policy, including the decriminalisation of cannabis and the prescription of
heroin.
The Rev Kenneth Leech, a community theologian at St Botolph's, Aldgate, who
has worked in the drugs field for the past 35 years and who is in favour of
the decriminalisation of cannabis, has written a background report for the
Synod debate.
In his paper, entitled: Drugs and the Church, he criticises the
Government's "failure to see how drugs policy has itself helped to produce
the present appalling situation."
Of the Government's White Paper: Tackling Drugs to Build a Better Britain,
published in April, Mr Leech writes: "The most positive aspect of the
document is the recognition that treatment costs less, and works better,
than prohibition.
However, the long-term policy implications of this recognition need to be
taken more seriously than any government has so far done."
Apart from an information pack produced by the Board for Social
Responsibility in 1986, the last publication on drugs from an official
Church of England source was a booklet, also by Mr Leech, entitled: The
Drug Subculture: a Christian Analysis. His previous booklet was published
in 1969 and warned of the dangers of abandoning the prescription of heroin.
Mr Leech was asked by the Church's Board for Social Responsibility to write
a report for July's General Synod in York on account of his broad
experience of the drug scene.
He founded the Soho Drugs Group in 1967, was a founder member of the
Institute for the Study of Drug Dependence and has written extensively on
the subject.
In his latest report Mr Leech goes on to urge churches to fill the
spiritual vacuum in young people which is presently being filled by drugs.
"The association between drugs and spirituality still seems almost indecent
to many people, yet the evidence that this so is considerable," he writes.
"We need to recognise that many young people have, after taking psychedelic
drugs, moved beyond reliance on the drug-induced experience. They have made
what Allan Y Cohen once termed the 'journey beyond trips', and this quest
has been going on now for over 30 years. It is evident in many of the 'new
spiritual movements'.
"It is widely recognised both inside and outside the Church that there is a
profound spiritual emptiness at the heart of our society and a quest for a
richer 'inner life'," he said, adding that "drugs are closely related to
this emptiness and this quest. The role of priests and pastors, as well as
Christians, in helping this quest along, is very important."
Yesterday he said: "The search for something beyond the humdrum of everyday
life is being satisfied by drugs in a way that religion used to. Quite
often the Church just offers another version of the humdrum."
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Weekly Action Report On Drug Policies, Year 4, Number 15
(Summary For Activists Of International Drug Policy News, From CORA In Italy)
From: cora.belgique@agora.stm.it
Comments: Authenticated sender is (cora.belgique@agora.stm.it)
To: "CORAFax -EN-" (cora.news@agora.it)
Date: Fri, 12 Jun 1998 18:30:23 +0000
Subject: CORAFax 15 (EN)
Sender: owner-hemp@efn.org
ANTIPROHIBITIONIST OF THE ENTIRE WORLD ....
Year 4 No. 15, June 11 1998
***
Weekly Action Report on Drug Policies
Edited by the CORA - Radical Antiprohibitionist Coordination,
federated to
- TRP-Transnational Radical Party (NGO, consultive status, I)
- The Global Coalition for Alternatives to the Drug War
***
director:Vincenzo Donvito All rights reserved
***
http://www.agora.stm.it/coranet
mailto:cora.news@agora.stm.it
***
NEWS FROM THE CORA
***
Th. CONGRESS OF THE CORA / ELECTED REPRESENTATIVES / MOTION
Thierry Meyssan, Secretary; Marco Cappato, Treasurer; Jean-Francois
Hory And Pol Boel, Presidents. Nicola Giovannini, Michel Hancisse,
Eric Picard, Giulio Manfredi, Ottavio Mazzocchi, Roberto Spagnoli and
Gerard Jubert, political direction.
MOTION APPROVED BY UNANIMOUS VOTE
The 9th congress of the CORA, held in Paris on days 5, 6 and 7 of June
1998, having heard the reports of the Secretary and of the Treasurer:
- establishes that the antiprohibitionist cause needs to stand on an
organized political structure whose priority is to reform policies
and laws on drugs on a national and international level, and whose
aim is to reestablish legality to fight the crime against humanity
represented by prohibitionist political strategies;
- asks that the Transnational Radical Party assume a greater and
more urgent responsibility in the antiprohibitionist cause, certain
that this battle could only be strengthened by being linked to the
vaster battle against that bureaucratic control of society and
institutions which is rapidly taking foot as a system of government
and power on an international level;
- in case the request above meets the Transnational Radical Party's
consensus, the CORA will decide to hold a special congress on the
occasion of the of the Radical Party's next congress, committing its
political leaders to create the right conditions for a merging of the
CORA in a refounded Radical Party. This merging will have to be
ratified by the special congress;
- The CORA commits itself to pursue the programmatic ends that have
been indicated in the Secretary's report.
***
RUSSIA / APPEAL TO THE DUMA
N. Gerasimenko and V. Davidenko, respectively President and
Vice-President of the Health Commission of the Russian Duma , and the
deputeee Askerhanov have presented an appeal to their Duma colleagues
for a modification of the prohibitionist law on drugs approved the
10th of last December.
TRP / U.N. GENERAL ASSEMBLY ON DRUGS
A note of the Transnational Radical Party released on the 8th of June
says that "the political strategies of the Unite Nations are
expression of a totalitarian and ideologically motivated bureaucracy.
They can be overcome only by the force of legality and human rights,
through legalization of all drugs".
U.N. CONFERENCE ON DRUGS / INTERVENTION OF THE TRP
Marco Cappato, representing the Transnational radical Party, said:
"All international conventions for fighting drugs have failed. Pino
Arlacchi's plan is a terrible mistake".
***
NEWS FROM THE WORLD
***
000067 06/06/98
E.U. / SPAIN / MADRID
DRUG ADDICT
LA STAMPA
Distribution of methadone in parish churches: this is the shocking
idea of an Anti-drug Agency in a Madrid District.
***
000074 10/06/98
E.U. / FRANCE
DRUG ADDICT / GHB / ALARM
L'EVENEMENT DU JEUDI
GHB has reached also France. The substance, known as 'liquid Ecstasy'
is a cheap substitute for heroin. It originated as a pharmacological
product.
***
000068 06/06/98
E.U. / GERMANY
DRUG ADDICT / TYPE / SITUATION
SUEDDEUTSCHE Z.
Heavy drug addicts are between 250.000 and 300.000; pharmacological
product addicts are 1.400.000; alcoholics in need of care are
2.500.000; tobacco addicts are 6 millon out of 17 million smokers.
***
000072 10/06/98
EUROPE / RUSSIA
DRUG MAFIA
LIBERATION
A Russian specialist says that unified customs between Russia and
other ISC countries could become a 'drug unification' easing the work
of drug traffickers.
***
000063 03/06/98
SOUTH AMERICA
DRUG MAFIA / HERION / EXPORT
EL PAIS
In virtue of their alliance with the Colombians, Mexican drug cartels
have gone from being petty drug dealers to being producers of ultra
refined heroin, surpassing thus the Asiatic mafia for control of the
drug market in the USA.
***
000066 06/06/98
E.U. / GB
HEALTH / CANNABIS
FINANCIAL TIMES
A study by the State Department on health care says that use of
cannabis is justified in therapies against AIDS and some forms of
cancer.
***
000058 03/06/98
E.U. / GB
INFORMATION
THE TIMES
Anti- drug information will be introduced in English school programs,
in agreement with the Home Office Advisers.
***
000059 07/06/98
E.U. / GB
INITIATIVE
THE TIMES
Alan Duncan, spokesman for the Tory party, is going to publish a book
in favour of legalization of drugs. Immediate criticism on the part of
William Hague, head of the party.
***
000071 08/06/98
E.U. / FRANCE / PARIS
INITIATIVE / ANTIPROHIBITION / DEMONSTRATION
LE FIGARO / LIBERATION 08/06 / LE MONDE 09/06
'Prohibitionism is a crime': at the closing of the congress of the
CORA activists of various organizations have marched in the streets of
Paris against article L 630 of the public health code on drugs.
***
000060 06/06/98
WORLD
INITIATIVE / APPEAL
CORRIERE DELLA SERA 06/06 / HERALD TRIBUNE 10/06
Drugs: Punishment is not an answer. This is the content of an appeal
to the U.N. against hyper-prohibitionism signed by over 400 prominent
personalities from all over the world. Among these: Emma Bonino,
George Soros, Daniel Cohn Bendit and George Shultz.
***
000061 07/06/98
E.U. / FRANCE
LAWS / DEPENALIZATION / HOSTILITY
LE MONDE
President Jaques Chirac has criticized Holland because its laws on
drugs ore 'completely different' from those of other E.U. partner
countries.
***
000062 04/06/98
OCEANIA / NEW ZEALAND / AUCKLAND
MARKET / CANNABIS
THE TIMES
University studies show that all the cannabis sequesterded in one year
by police forces is less than half of what is actually grown, but is
nonetheless still worth 700 million NZD.
***
000064 12/06/98
E.U. / GB
ORGANIZATION
THE ECONOMIST
While on one hand the Government encourages night life in London, it
is trying on the other to find ways to fight 'rave parties' and 'acid
houses', preferred meeting places for Ecstasy consumers.
***
000073 10/06/98
E.U. / ITALY / MILANO
ORGANIZATION / HEROIN
LA STAMPA / CORRIERE DELLA SERA
A traffic that exchanged drugs for weapons directed to Kossovo has
been stopped. The drugs were also used to finance foreign politicians
and Islamic terrorists.
***
000065 03/06/98
E.U. / SPAIN
PREVENTION / CAMPAIGN / TELEVISION
EL PAIS
The Secretary of State for the Home Department and directors of
Telemadrid, Canal 9 and Sogecable have signed an agreement for the
creation of an anti-drug campaign. The main objective of this campaign
is to prevent drug consumption and to produce television programs
about the activities of the Plan Nacional sobre Drogas.
***
000069 04/06/98
AMERICA / USA
WAR ON DRUGS
CORRIERE DELLA SERA 4-7/6 / IL GIORNALE 4/6 / LA REPUBBLICA 7/6
The USA are against funding the new U.N. plan against drug traffic.
Nonetheless, Pino Arlacchi replies 'The USA are with me in the fight
against drugs' and says that the news published on the Washington Post
is nonsense.
***
000070 05/06/98
AMERICA / MEXICO
WAR ON DRUGS
HERALD TRIBUNE / FRANKFURTER
Operation Casablanca, carried out by the USA, has brought to the
arrest of 20 bankers. Mexican authorities approve the outcome but not
the method because they weren't informed about the plan.
***
000075 10/06/98
WORLD
WAR ON DRUGS
MISCELLANEOUS FROM 5/6 TO 10/6
The United Nations conference on drugs has opened in New York. The
project by Pino Arlacchi, director of the UNDCP, of substituting drug
cultivation with alternative types of cultivation in Asia and South
America has been put under the exam of 150 countries. The plan has
found heavy criticism on the part of the American Government and
press.
***
000076 08/06/98
AMERICA / COLUMBIA
WAR ON DRUGS / COCA
LE FIGARO
Colombian police forces have been conducting for the past four years a
war against drug traffic. Nonetheless Columbia remains the first
producer in the world of coca leafs.
***
CLIPPINGS
***
ITALY- The region of Tuscany is putting forth an agricultural plan to
spread cultivation alternatives to those of the coca leaf in South
America. Colombian peasants will follow a special course held in the
Tuscan countryside. ( editor's note: Arlacchi clones are sprawling
...)
WORLD - The Global Days Against the Drug War have had success: over
100 organizations from 55 cities around the world have already
organized an initial international coordination.
***
CORA
-COORDINATION RADICALE ANTIPROHIBITIONNISTE
-ANTIPROHIBITIONIST RADICAL COORDINATION
-COORDINAMENTO RADICALE ANTIPROIBIZIONISTA
Federated with the Transnational Radical Party NGO
with category I consultative status at the UN
Emailto:cora.news@agora.it
http://www.agora.stm.it/coranet
Emailto:cora.belgique@agora.it
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[End]
to 1998 Daily News index for June 11-17