1999 News
About Cannabis and Drug Policy
January 8-14

Friday, January 8, 1999:
• City police continue drive to expand force (The Oregonian notes the police state just got a little bigger in Portland, though Chief Moose had to comb through the reject pile.)
• What's Not To Like? (LA Weekly says Dr. Kathleen Boyle of the UCLA Drug Abuse Research Center has a problem. The social psychologist began a two-year study last July into the use of medical marijuana by people with AIDS. The university-funded project seeks to document both the satisfaction and dissatisfaction of medical-marijuana patients and their issues and concerns. The hitch is that Dr. Boyle can't find anyone who's used it and says it doesn't work for them.)
• Cop Plays Rebellious Student To Set Up School Drug Busts (The San Jose Mercury News says a 19-year-old prohibition agent on her first assignment spent four months undercover at San Benito High School setting up 25 students in what apparently is the largest drug sting in the school's history. Police netted one-third of a pound of methamphetamine, 2,500 hits of LSD, and 20 vials of what's believed to be Ecstasy. Hinton played her role to the hilt, with a new Mustang, baggy clothes, slang, and her willingness to spend money. She got into trouble with school officials so often she spent hours on trash patrol. She was suspended once and expelled once and was issued numerous detentions for not completing assignments, playing hooky or cussing out teachers or the vice principal.)
• 'Student' Leads Drug Bust (A slightly different version, apparently from a different edition)
• 24 Students Arrested In Hollister Drug Sting (The San Francisco Chronicle version)
• California Officers Charged In Prison Drug Trade (A Scripps Howard News Service article says the Corrections Department's new Office of Internal Affairs - created last summer as a result of legislative hearings into alleged officer abuses at Corcoran State Prison - concluded its biggest employee drug smuggling case this week at Ironwood State Prison, where agents found unspecified quantities of unidentified drugs they connected to Officer Richard Melendez, who was arrested Dec. 30. Corrections officials do not have any statistics about institutional drug-smuggling cases involving officers and other prison employees, but two separate investigations at San Quentin put an officer, two cooks and a parolee with a violent past in custody, and several other recent cases are described.)
• Be-In About Drugpeace (A press release from the Drug Policy Foundation publicizes the 11th Annual Digital Be-In tomorrow in San Francisco, co-sponsored by DPF and developed in conjunction with the Macworld Expo. The program includes the launching of the Drug Peace Campaign, an "internet-based political action committee whose mission is to seek a peaceful end to the 'War on Drugs' by encouraging more intelligent approaches to drug-related legislation and drug education.")
• 16th Street Shooting Gallery (Another San Francisco Examiner follow-up on the heroin-related death of Boz Scaggs' son features a somewhat sensationalized portrait of the Mission District neighborhood where Oscar Scaggs died. The addicts in the neighborhood have found that heroin is far more readily available than treatment programs. According to the San Francisco Department of Public Health, there are about 13,000 heroin "addicts" in The City - but the number of casual users isn't mentioned. In any case, only 4,000 were getting treatment last year.)
• Young, Rich And Strung Out (The San Francisco Chronicle uses the occasion of Oscar Scaggs' heroin-related death to assert that heroin use is increasing, and ludicrously but sensationally asserts it is emerging as the "drug of choice" for the Bay Area's well-off kids. Anyone wondering how non-lethal street doses of heroin can be so toxic should note in San Francisco, it's sometimes cut with shoe polish.)
• Colo. Court Upholds Plea Bargains (The Associated Press says the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Friday reversed the Singleton decision issued last summer by a three-judge panel from the same court. An unspecified majority affirmed that it is legal to offer something of value in exchange for testimony, as long as it's a prosecutor offering leniency to one defendant for testimony against another defendant. The judges affirmed the conviction in Kansas of Sonya Singleton on charges of cocaine trafficking and money laundering. The ruling said if Congress had intended to overturn the accepted practice, "it would have done so in clear, unmistakable and unarguable language.")
• US Court Upholds Plea Bargaining (A different Associated Press version)
• U.S. v. Singleton - 01/08/1999 (A list subscriber posts a URL leading to a copy of today's ruling by the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.)
• 545 Pounds Of Marijuana Found, 3 Arrested In Stash-House Raid (The Arizona Daily Star says the investigation started with a tip. Tucson residents who suspect there may be a stash house in their neighborhood should call 88-CRIME or MANTIS at 547-8800. Pima County sheriff's Sgt. Paul Leonardi, who is assigned to the Metropolitan Area Narcotics Trafficking and Interdiction Squad, said he wasn't surprised about finding an apparent stash house in a quiet, middle-class neighborhood. "We've been in the Foothills - east, west, north. . . . It's all over town.")
• 46 Police Shells Found At Drug Bust Scene (According to the Houston Chronicle, police in Pasadena, Texas, say the two men they killed were trying to buy cocaine. But one of the two men killed, Keithen Briscoe, was a criminal justice major at Prairie View A&M University and the other, Empra TaDar Moore, was a December criminal justice graduate. Robert Moore, 19, a passenger in his brother's car who was shot in the shoulder, said "They killed my brother for no reason," adding that his brother was not involved in drugs.)
• A Jury's Duty (The Fort Worth Star-Telegram says the Lone Star Fully Informed Jury Association plans to take four proposals to the state legislature this year. One proposal would prohibit asking potential jurors their views on religion, politics or the law being prosecuted. Another proposal would prevent prosecutors from excusing potential jurors because they disagreed with the law relevant to a case. What has sparked the most dissent is the group's assertion that jurors should vote with their conscience instead of the law and the evidence. "Americans at the end of World War II told German citizens that they should have followed their conscience instead of their government," says Tom Glass. "Today's courtroom system tells jurors the exact opposite. You have to do whatever the law tells you to do.")
• State Rep. Jim Lendall Introduces Medical Bill (An article from the Arkansas NORML bimonthly newsletter says the newly elected legislator from Southwest Little Rock has introduced HB 1043, permitting the medical use of marijuana. After perusing ballot initiatives passed by six western states, Lendall modeled his bill mainly after the Washington state initiative. Plus commentary on the medical potential of industrial hemp by Portland NORML's webmaster.)
• Gore Spreads Farm Aid On Visit To Iowa (Reuters says Vice President Al Gore made his first campaign swing through Iowa Friday, dispensing federal aid to hog farmers and describing "drug" use as a crisis in rural America. Gore also attended a town meeting in Des Moines to discuss methamphetamine, the use of which has skyrocketed in rural areas.)
• Landlord Admits Plotting To Have Tenants Killed (The Miami Herald says Alvin Weiss of New York, whom prosecutors have characterized as "the ultimate slumlord," has pleaded guilty to paying a hit man to give fatal doses of heroin to two of his tenants in rent-controlled apartments. The murder plots went awry when the would-be killer was nailed by police with the heroin.)
• Drug Policy Foundation Action Alert - Gaines and PBS (The Drug Policy Foundation, in New York, asks you to write a letter to the U.S. Pardon Attorney and your congressional representatives asking for the release of Dorothy Gaines, a single mother of three, whose case is to be featured in a 90-minute "Frontline" broadcast Jan. 12 titled "Snitch." Gaines is a first-time offender sentenced to almost 20 years in prison solely on the testimony of other defendants who were facing mandatory minimums but who ended up receiving less time than Gaines because of their statements.)
• Police Chief Orders Probe Into Drug Raid At Birthday (The Vancouver Sun, in British Columbia, says the police chief in Abbotsford has ordered an internal investigation into a drug raid at a house where 13 children were attending a birthday party. As the children watched, a prohibition agent shot and killed a dog.)
• Axworthy Launches Dialogue On Drugs (According to UPI, Canadian Foreign Minister Lloyd Axworthy said in Jamaica today that the problem of "narcotic drug abuse" in the Americas "will only be solved by moving beyond legal approaches and viewing them from a broad human perspective." Axworthy said Canada is launching a dialogue among the hemisphere's foreign ministers to address the impact of illicit drugs on the region's societies.)
• Nicaragua Holds Canadian On Marijuana Charges (The Reuters version of Wednesday's news about Nicaragua jailing a Canadian horticulturalist on charges that he his commercial hemp farm was a front for an illegal marijuana farm)
• Colombian Rebels Say They Might Switch, Fight Coca (According to a Knight Ridder news service article in the Seattle Times, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, says it might be willing to switch sides in the drug war and actually work to eradicate coca crops if President Andres Pastrana gives it direct control of one of Colombia's 1,072 townships - an area equivalent to a large U.S. county. However, in a speech yesterday opening the highly touted peace talks, FARC rebel commander Joaquin Gomez decried increasing U.S. anti-drug assistance as a smoke screen for counterinsurgency efforts. "U.S. leaders spend huge sums of money through the Colombian security forces to harm civilians with bombings, strafings and indiscriminate fumigation, wiping out fields and barnyard animals and leaving a good part of the land sterile," he said.)
• Hong Kong, Japan Police Seize $53 Mln In "Ice" (Reuters confuses methamphetamine with "ice," a related drug, in describing the bust of 14 people with 100 kilograms aboard an ocean-going vessel in Japan.)
• Heroin Deaths Soar (According to the Herald Sun, in Australia, the Victorian Institute of Forensic Medicine released statistics yesterday showing about 250 people had died from so-called heroin overdoses last year, a jump of 64 from the previous year.)
• The Week Online with DRCNet, Issue No. 73 (The Drug Reform Coordination Network's original compilation of news and calls to action regarding drug policy, including - Murder charges against four in Baltimore dismissed for lack of court space; Rehnquist to Congress: stop federalizing crime; Special report: Canadian citizens, investors busted for hemp to help Nicaraguan hurricane victims; Ann Landers speaks out on the drug war, marijuana laws; Syringe exchange protest in New Jersey; Medicinal marijuana in Hawai'i: A review of events; Dutch marijuana use half that of America, study reveals; Media alert: PBS Frontline to air "Snitch"; and an editorial by Adam J. Smith: New Hope in California.)
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  Saturday, January 9, 1999:

• Man says he will sue over medical pot (The Oregonian engages in a little agitprop designed to spread ill will about the Oregon Medical Marijuana Act by publicizing an empty threat by an ill-mannered medical marijuana patient in Newport to sue Abby's Pizza for not letting him smoke cannabis - something the voter-approved initiative clearly does not allow.)
• Confusion begins to surface over medical marijuana law (The Associated Press version)
• Judge orders immediate arrest of 5 racketeering defendants (The Oregonian says the Multnomah County judge ordered the arrests after one of the convicted racketeers who was released pending sentencing was shot in a gang-related dispute Sunday. As usual, the newspaper doesn't say what enterprise the racketeers were engaged in.)
• Cheap, available fertilizer being used to make illegal drug (An Associated Press with a Salem, Oregon, dateline says anhydrous ammonia, a cheap, readily available fertilizer, is increasingly being used in the manufacture of illegal methamphetamine in the Northwest. Sgt. David Dewey of the Pierce County, Wash., Sheriff's Department, said about 85 percent of the approximately 165 meth labs uncovered in Washington in 1998 used anhydrous ammonia.)
• Inmate found hanging in cell (The Associated Press says Oregon prison officials withheld identification of the inmate pending notification of his family. The unknown casualty was the fifth inmate in an Oregon state prison to commit suicide since August.)
• Medical Marijuana Files Are Admissible - Decision a setback for San Jose cannabis club (The San Francisco Chronicle says Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge Diane Northway ruled yesterday in a hearing regarding the upcoming trial of Peter Baez that prosecutors can use financial records and 265 patients' confidential medical files seized by police in a search of the now-defunct Santa Clara County Medical Cannabis Center.)
• Baez Loses Key Evidence Ruling (The San Jose Mercury News version)
• David Herrick update (An Orange County list subscriber forwards news from the medical marijuana patient and former sheriff's deputy in San Bernardino County, California, sentenced to four years in prison for distributing a quarter ounce of medicine to authorized patients. Includes a letter from California NORML to Attorney General Bill Lockyer, asking him to review the case, and instruct his office to file a brief which reflects his stated intention to follow the will of the voters in implementing Prop. 215.)
• Court Reverses Ban on Leniency For Witnesses (The Washington Post version of yesterday's news about the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversing one of its own three-member panel's Singleton decision, which found that prosecutors were engaged in bribery of a witness when they offered leniency to one defendant in exchange for testimony against another)
• Plea-Bargain Ruling Reversed (The Associated Press version in the San Jose Mercury News)
• Court Approves Policy Of Leniency For Testimony (A different Associated Press version in the Miami Herald)
• Plea-Bargain Ban Reversed By Full Court (The Philadelphia Inquirer version)
• Re: Singleton reversal (A list subscriber posts a URL leading to the full text of the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals decision. Plus list subscriber commentary.)
• Suspect in drug bust that left 2 men dead held for questioning (A Houston Chronicle follow-up on the case of the two criminal justice students killed in the course of a cocaine bust in a Pasadena parking lot.)
• It's Time To Honestly Review Drug Policy (A letter to the editor of the Standard-Times, in New Bedford, Massachusetts, from a Barnstable town councilor, says it has become obvious that, like alcohol prohibition before it, the policy of criminalizing drug use, and particularly marijuana use, has created far more harm to the user and society than the use of such substances ever could.)
• School crossing guard charged with selling cocaine while on duty (The Associated Press says a 39-year-old woman in Magnolia, New Jersey, was arrested Thursday afternoon after she sold cocaine to undercover prohibition agents for the third time in a month.)
• Guard Charged In Drug Sales (The Philadelphia Inquirer version)
• Tonight! Prohibition on the History Channel (A list subscriber forwards information about "Prohibition: Thirteen Years that Changed America," on cable television. Plus a URL where you can view the documentary later on the web.)
• Hastert Seeks to Make Education a Hill Priority (The Washington Post says the new speaker of the US House of Representatives, J. Dennis Hastert, in his first public appearance since taking over Wednesday from Newt Gingrich, announced a $2.5 million grant to expand public school drug and safety programs.)
• Pressured FDA Seeks More Funds (According to an Associated Press article in the San Jose Mercury News, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration says it's 500 employees short and $165 million in the hole because of six years of budgets that didn't keep up with inflation. The Clinton administration is seeking an extra $30 million to hire 60 more inspectors.)
• 2 Dead Mexican Police Found Near Brownsville (The Houston Chronicle says the bodies of a retired commander of the Federal Judicial Police in Mexico City, and an active member of the agency, were found Friday morning on the banks of the Rio Grande, in Texas. The two Mexicans had been the subject of a search since they were reportedly abducted in Mexico on Dec. 27.)
• Hemp Grower's Qualifications Questioned (The Toronto Star follows up on the case of Hemp Agro International being charged with marijuana cultivation in Nicaragua. Paul Wylie, the Canadian horticulturalist with the industrial hemp company who's been jailed in Nicaragua for 18 days, supposedly obtained his Ph.D. from the University of Guelph, but the school says it's never heard of him.)
• Alone and accused in a Nicaraguan prison - Guelph man in hemp case talks of jail ordeal (The Toronto Star publishes a jailhouse interview with Paul Thomas Wylie, the Canadian horticulturalist employed by Hemp Agro International who has been charged in Nicaragua with growing marijuana, not hemp. It has already been admitted, by the American embassy in Managua, that members of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency were involved in inspecting the property and the crop.)
• Mexican Drug Officials Found Dead (UPI notes the fate of two more prohibition agents from a country where the historical association between the illegal-drug culture and peace movement never existed.)
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  Sunday, January 10, 1999:

• Smelling Salts, Please (A letter sent to the editor of the Gazette Times, in Corvallis, Oregon, complains that a DARE officer in nearby Philomath who was charged with domestic violence will be allowed to plead guilty to lesser charges and then resign from the police force - meaning he can re-apply for the vacant position and everything will be just fine.)
• Web Site Review - 'Campaign For The Restoration And Regulation Of Hemp' (The Seattle Times' technology writer thinks the web site for the Cannabis Tax Act campaign is spiffy. D. Paul Stanford, of Portland, hopes to place the comprehensive marijuana-law reform initiative on the ballot in Washington, Oregon, California, and perhaps other states by 2000.)
• Party rancor, new faces backdrop to session opener (An Associated Press article contains nothing ostensibly relevant to drug policy, but provides a glimpse of the Oregon legislature as it begins a new session.)
• U.S. Sen. John Kitzhaber? Don't rule it out (Another Associated Press article with nothing obviously relevant to drug policy provides a fawning portrait of Oregon Governor John "Prisons" Kitzhaber - who has presided over the planning, expansion or construction of more prisons than all of his predecessors combined - who seems to be positioning himself to run against Republican Senator Gordon Smith.)
• Re: Views from a Medical Technologist (A list subscriber in Washington state forwards a physician's email contrasting cannabis with tricyclic antidepressants, which can easily destroy the liver. Plus some gratuitous commentary from Portland NORML's webmaster, Phil Smith, about his experience.)
• Rumor from the Farm: MJ to be Schedule III (A list subscriber says that, according to Dennis Peron, founder of the San Francisco Cannabis Buyers' Club, Peron has been told by one of the authors of the Institute of Medicine's review of the literature on medical marijuana - the $1 million project commissioned by the White House drug czar two years ago - that the review will recommend moving marijuana to Schedule III, where physicians would have little trouble prescribing it. Plus commentary from Dave Fratello, Jon Gettman and other list subscribers.)
• Evidence legal in cannabis center case (The Contra Costa Times version of yesterday's news about a Santa Clara Superior Court judge allowing prosecutors to use confidential patient medical records in the trial of Peter Baez, the founder of a now-defunct San Jose-based medical marijuana dispensary.)
• Drug Tests a Waste (A letter to the editor of the Oklahoman says drug testing in schools is not a panacea that will halt illicit drug use. In some ways, drug testing may actually encourage "drug" use.)
• Oregon not only victim in Houston's failed drug war (An attorney's op-ed in the Houston Chronicle says the city of Houston is now a victim of America's War on Drugs as it defends itself against a multimillion dollar lawsuit filed by the family of Pedro Oregon, the innocent Houston man who was shot to death by six prohibition agents who broke into his home without a warrant. To fight a drug war effectively, citizens must accept the reality that the battles are local and not national. All that is required is imagination and the courage to confront leaders in your community about their failure.)
• Senseless Sentencing: A Federal Judge Speaks Out (An op-ed in the Des Moines Register by Robert W. Pratt, a U.S. district judge for the Southern District of Iowa, describes the iniquitous and expensive failures of federal mandatory minimum sentencing guidelines for drug offenders. For each million dollars spent on long prison terms, a 1997 RAND study found that 13 kilograms of cocaine were removed from the street. The study found that shorter sentences for more dealers removed 27 kilograms per million dollars spent. Spending the same million dollars on treatment could result in a reduction of over 100 kilograms. This information should allay the fear that any reduction in penalties for drug offenses will be seen as an endorsement of drug use. We must reject the idea that coming to grips with reality is being "soft on crime.")
• Federalizing Crime, Ironically, Conservatives Are Expanding Federal Power (A staff editorial in the Des Moines Register agrees with the op-ed by Judge Pratt. Federal courts were never meant to duplicate state courts, but in recent years, as the result of an annual test of manhood in Congress, their steady growth in criminal cases, mostly for illegal drugs, is threatening to overwhelm their resources.)
• Report: Suppression of evidence has led to wrongful convictions (According to the Associated Press, a Chicago Tribune analysis of thousands of court records in homicide cases shows that prosecutors throughout the country have hid evidence, leading to wrongful convictions, retrials and appeals that cost taxpayers millions of dollars. The records show prosecutors have won convictions against black men, hiding evidence the real killers were white. They also have prosecuted a wife, hiding evidence her husband committed suicide. And they have prosecuted parents, hiding evidence their daughter was killed by wild dogs. Since a 1963 U.S. Supreme Court ruling designed to curb misconduct by prosecutors, at least 381 defendants nationally have had a homicide conviction thrown out because prosecutors concealed evidence. Next week, three former DuPage County prosecutors will face trial on charges of conspiring to frame Rolando Cruz, who served about 10 years on death row before being acquitted of murder at his third trial. If the former prosecutors are convicted, it would be a first in the United States.)
• Teen Crime Wave Called Myth (A Cox News Service article in the San Francisco Chronicle says a study funded by the MacArthur Foundation and released yesterday by Franklin Zimring, a law professor at the University of California at Berkeley, shows that fear rather than fact is fueling unnecessarily harsh juvenile justice policies throughout the United States. The two-year study of juvenile crime statistics charges that laws aimed at youthful lawbreakers are based on "deeply flawed analyses of juvenile violence statistics." Youth behavior has not been changing, police behavior has. Police have been reducing the threshold of what constitutes assault and aggravated assault, the study charges, resulting in the apparent increase in crime.)
• Where It All Begins With 'Narco' (Washington Post columnist Molly Moore says it's almost impossible to pick up a Mexican newspaper without narco-headlines detailing the exploits of narco-kidnappers, narco-cops or narco-politicians. Or, for that matter, to hold a conversation without at least one reference to a narco-something-or-other. In the last decade, use of the "narco" prefix has exploded in Mexico, indicating just how deeply and rapidly the drug trade has permeated the country's social, cultural, economic and political institutions. Large, ostentatious edifices built with loads of money and little taste are dubbed "neo-narco" or "early narco." Narco-traffickers not only pray to narco-saints, but shower their local narco-churches and favorite narco-priests with narco-alms.)
• Mayor wants Grand Forks to . . . Go To Pot (The Calgary Herald says Brian Taylor, a former hippie who traded his long hair for a "mayor's cut" when he was elected mayor of Grand Forks, wants to turn the town just north of the U.S. border into Canada's chief supplier of medical marijuana.)
• The hemp grower, conspiracy theories and Nicaragua (The Toronto Star says Paul Wylie, a Canadian employee of Hemp Agro International who was busted in Nicaragua on charges that the company's hemp farm was really marijuana, says he has a BA in horticultural genetics from the University of Guelph. His business partners and financiers claim he has a PhD. But his sister-in-law doesn't believe he attended a post-secondary school, and the University of Guelph has no record of the mysterious Canadian. And contrary to previous reports, Nicaragua, like the United States, makes no distinction in law between industrial-grade hemp and marijuana.)
• Nicaragua hemp farm will live on, says Hamilton-area entrepreneur (A Canadian Press article in the Calgary Herald says Grant Sanders, the owner of a hemp farm in Nicaragua, says he isn¹t about to pull the plug on the operation - even though it landed his partner in jail. Nicaraguan officials have destroyed the crop. Earlier this week, Nicaraguan Judge Orieta Benavides ordered Sanders and six other partners in Hemp Agro International to stand trial on suspicion of growing marijuana on a 100-hectare plantation outside Managua.)
• Straw Gives Go-Ahead To Convict Criminals On Hearsay Evidence (The Daily Telegraph, in Britain, says Jack Straw, the Home Secretary, has proposed that written evidence from frightened or intimidated witnesses, or those who have died or are too ill to attend court, "or any other hearsay evidence from absent witnesses," should be automatically admitted in court "in the interests of justice," without cross-examination. Straw says the changes are needed to convict more drug dealers.)
• ACM-Bulletin of 10 January 1999 (An English-language news bulletin from the Association for Cannabis as Medicine, in Cologne, Germany, focuses on Britain's first legal harvest of marijuana for medical use, and other research in England on the properties of endocannabinoids to reduce blood pressure.)
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  Monday, January 11, 1999:

• Sanctioning Owen unethical (A letter to the editor of the Columbian, in Vancouver, Washington, by Sandra Bennett, the notorious Portland, Oregon, anti-pot zealot, says it's unethical for the state of Washington to punish Lt. Gov. Brad Owen for allocating state funds to oppose a drug-policy-reform ballot initiative. The ethics violations should have been levied against out-of-state entities for encroaching on Washington's political process.)
• Re: "Snitch" on PBS Frontline Tuesday Night (Peter McWilliams, the best-selling author, AIDS and cancer patient and medical-marijuana defendant indicted by the federal government in California, says he will be watching the television documentary on federal informants with great interest Tuesday night, since his own indictment is based entirely on information and grand jury testimony provided by Scott Imler and two of his employees at the Los Angeles Cannabis Buyer's Club. McWilliams says Imler has been allowed to continue operating the club in return for his testimony against McWilliams, all the while manufacturing and selling more marijuana each year under federal protection than McWilliams and co-defendant Todd McCormick are accused of being involved with.)
• Drugs Smuggled Into Three Prisons With Alleged Help of Corrections Officers (The Associated Press rewrites a recent Scripps Howard News Service article about the recent arrests of several California prison guards and other correctional employees.)
• Blue Nitro Worries Poison Experts (The San Francisco Examiner tries to launch a nationwide drug menace over a legal "dietary supplement" and chemical analog to GHB, or gamma-hydroxybutyrate - a colorless, odorless substance known as liquid ecstasy that allegedly became popular on the dance club scene and has been documented as one of several date-rape drugs.)
• Execution Of Farris Would Be Big Mistake (Ft. Worth Star-Telegram columnist Bob Ray Sanders urges Texans to ask Governor George W. Bush to stop the execution of Troy Dale Farris, convicted of the December 1983 slaying of a Tarrant County deputy sheriff. Because his case involved an obviously bungled investigation, destroyed and/or tampered evidence and, at the least, misstatements by a law enforcement official, Farris should be a free man today. One complication involves marijuana discovered on the slain deputy.)
• The Flip Side Of A Fair Trial (The second part of a five-part series on prosecutorial misconduct, in the Chicago Tribune, says a Tribune analysis of hundreds of all types of criminal cases since Dec. 31, 1977, found 326 state court convictions in Illinois - 207 of them in Cook County - have been reversed because of prosecutorial misconduct. Eight defendants in Cook County who had been sentenced to death won new sentencing hearings due to prosecutorial misbehavior, with only two resulting in reimposition of a death sentence. A Tribune study of homicide cases across the country also revealed 381 reversals since 1963 for two of the most serious types of misconduct - using false evidence or concealing evidence suggesting innocence.)
• Mainers likely to vote on medical use of marijuana (Without explaining how or why, Foster's Daily Democrat, in Dover, New Hampshire, says the proposal by Mainers for Medical Rights will first go before state lawmakers. If the Legislature does not approve the measure, it will be sent to a referendum in November because it is a citizen initiative. The latter part of the article includes a medical marijuana patient's persuasive testimony about the herb's effectiveness.)
• Federal Drug Fighters To Open Office In City (The Standard-Times, in New Bedford, Massachusetts, says the DEA hopes to open a permanent office in New Bedford within six months to combat what agents describe as a pipeline for heroin traffickers from Providence and New York. Nationally, drug agents are seizing heroin with a purity level of around 40 percent, but purity levels in Massachusetts and the rest of New England hover at 60 percent and higher. Heroin seized in Massachusetts has tested as high as 90 percent pure. And the street price has dropped from as much as $20 for a small, postage-stamp-size bag a decade ago to as low as $5.)
• Rep. Barr Admits to Criminal Adultery (According to best-selling author Peter McWilliams, Larry Flynt released convincing evidence tonight that Rep. Bob Barr had an adulterous affair with the woman who is now his wife while he was still married to his previous wife. Adultery is illegal in Georgia, Rep. Barr's home state. Barr is the House Republican and impeachment activist who sponsored an amendment to the District of Columbia budget bill prohibiting the district from conducting a vote on any issue that would have lessened penalties against marijuana, thereby quashing Initiative 59, the medical marijuana ballot measure.)
• Snaring Criminals In The Web (The Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel, in Florida, describes the work of a member of the Palm Beach County Sheriff's gang unit, who trolls the Internet trying to monitor gang activity, and to turn that surveillance into drug arrests.)
• Police, for Now, Hold the Power In the Liberty City Drug Wars (The Washington Post says more than 200 city, state and federal law enforcement officials have been a powerful presence in one of Miami's most chronically troubled neighborhoods in recent days, questioning young black men on street corners, nosing their cruisers through the trash-strewn streets, and watching the rhythms of life from unmarked cars. "Operation Draw the Line" is intended somehow to pacify Liberty City's war on some drug users, which has caused a dozen deaths in recent months, five in December alone. Most major American cities have their versions of Liberty City.)
• Dear Abby: Ten Resolutions For Drug-Free Families (General Barry McCaffrey, the White House drug czar, writes a letter to the syndicated advice columnist suggesting how parents can supposedly discourage their kids from using alcohol and other drugs.)
• DrugSense Focus Alert - Ann Landers (DrugSense asks you to take a few minutes to write a letter to the syndicated advice columnist, responding to her recent column saying "the laws regarding marijuana are too harsh. Those who keep pot for their own use should not be treated as criminals.")
• Libertarians blast Congress for spending $23 million to develop anti-drug killer fungus (A press release from the Libertarian Party headquarters in Washington, D.C., says legislation passed by Congress late last year authorizing $23 million for research into genetically altering soil-borne fungi called "mycoherbicides," so they would attack and kill marijuana, poppies, and coca, is a dangerous plan that could cause an environmental catastrophe.)
• Drug Use Down, Drug Deaths Up (UPI says an article in the January-February issue of the journal Public Health Reports by Dr. Ernest Drucker, a professor of epidemiology at the Montefiore Medical Center of Albert Einstein College of Medicine, shows the number of illegal-drug users in the United States has declined dramatically since 1979, but cocaine and heroin-related deaths and emergency room visits have climbed sharply in the same period. While rates of illicit drug use are similar among blacks, Hispanics and whites, blacks are 3.5 times as likely to die of drug-related overdoses as whites and have 7.5 times the rate of drug-related emergency room visits. These disparities, he told United Press International, are due to tighter enforcement for blacks. Drucker blames U.S. drug policy, and contends decriminalizing drug use could help.)
• U.S. Drug Policy Failing, Report Says (The Reuters version)
• Study Links Drug Use To Child Abuse (According to the Associated Press, a report issued Monday by CASA, the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse run by Joseph Califano at Columbia University, says parental abuse of alcohol and other drugs is largely responsible for a surge in child abuse and neglect. Providing treatment for addicted parents would reduce the supposed need to remove children from their families. The study notes that the number of child welfare cases has more than doubled over 10 years, from 1.4 million in 1986 to more than 3 million in 1997.)
• Drugs, Alcohol Fuel Child Abuse (The version from UPI, which does not consider alcohol to be a drug)
• Adult Abuses Hurt U.S. Child Welfare - Report (The Reuters version)
• Grand Forks mayor pitches pot plan (The Calgary Herald follows up on yesterday's article about Brian Taylor, the mayor of Grand Forks, British Columbia, who wants to make his town Canada's chief supplier of medical marijuana. Taylor now says he would like Calgary multiple sclerosis patient Grant Krieger to consider his little city as a source of supplies for the nationwide medical marijuana club Krieger is organizing. "Right on," said Krieger.)
• Chasing Andy Sipowicz (An angry but well-written column in the Toronto Globe and Mail by Spider Robinson insightfully criticizes the mindset of prohibition agents in Abbotsford, British Columbia, who carried out a marijuana bust while a children's birthday party was going on - after first surveilling the residence for two hours. Andy Sipowicz on television's NYPD Blue has been perhaps the most eloquent exponent - at least since Clint Eastwood quit playing Dirty Harry - of the proposition that sometimes an officer just has to "tune up" a suspect - that is, beat a confession out of him, or kill him. Ah, "but only when you know you're right." That's who I want arbitrating the complex moral dichotomies of our time, someone sure to be infallible: an ill-educated overweight civil servant with a jaundiced world-view and a 9 millimetre.)
• Birthday party raid is the latest SWAT fiasco (Kenneth Whyte, editor-in-chief of the National Post, in Canada, pens a column about prohibition agents' ill-fated home invasion in Abbotsford, British Columbia. The frightening fact is that so-called SWAT teams mess up like this all the time.)
• Fighting Rising Drug Abuse Inside Mexico's Borders (The New York Times alleges an increase in drug abuse among Mexican youth, especially with regard to cocaine. A 1997 report by the Ministry of Health says that in the last six years cocaine use has quadrupled among Mexicans ages 12 to 19, although Mexico's drug problem remains small compared with that of the United States.)
• Experts Question Strength Of Colombian Rebel Group (The Dallas Morning News says there is a growing consensus that estimates of FARC's strength and links to drug trafficking are nowhere near what Colombian and U.S. officials are asserting. International human rights groups, including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, have accused U.S. officials of exaggerating rebel links to drug traffickers in order to justify an expanded military involvement. U.S. officials say they do not accuse all or even most FARC members of involvement in the drug trade. Some government estimates suggest that only around 20 percent of FARC members provide protection for drug facilities and farmers.)
• MPs Captured By The Pro-Cannabis Lobby (A staff editorial in the Evening Post, in New Zealand, rejects the recent call to reconsider marijuana prohibition in New Zealand made by the parliamentary select committee on health.)
• High Hopes As UK Tests Cannabis For Medical Use (According to Reuters, the governing body for British pharmacists announced on Monday that two clinical research doctors will volunteer to run the first government-sanctioned trials on the therapeutic value of cannabis. The Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain said two separate trials, examining the effects of both herbal cannabis and synthetic cannabinoids on spasms in multiple sclerosis patients and on post-operative pain sufferers, will follow new protocols to give the results scientific weight. British doctors were allowed to prescribe cannabis until 1973.)
• Cannabis can help relieve the symptoms of some illnesses (The BBC says new British guidelines for conducting trials into the medical use of cannabis are to be published Monday by the Medical Research Council and the Royal Pharmaceutical Society. For some unexplained reason, however, the BBC says the results of the trials must be accepted by the World Health Organisation before the UK government can legalise cannabis for medical use.)
• Lord Who Blew UKP7M On Heroin Dies Aged 44 (The Guardian, in Britain, says Lord Bristol, twice jailed for possessing heroin, an addiction on which he admitted blowing UKP7 million, died in his sleep yesterday morning. His agent, Simon Pott, said he believed the 7th Marqess had had a flu-type bug. The Old Harrovian's adult life was spent unashamedly in the fast lane.)
• Kenya Rivals Colombia In Drug Trafficking (All Africa News Agency says vast areas of Mount Kenya Forest and other parts of Kenya have been cleared and planted with bhang bushes. The plantations are protected by guards armed with bows and arrows while government officers are restricted from approaching. Where police are acquitted after shooting into a crowd of protesting students, "experts" say a complete generation has been destroyed by drugs and that traffickers have targeted schools where widespread bhang smoking is now a serious issue.)
  Bytes: 181,000 Last updated: 2/3/99
  

  Tuesday, January 12, 1999:

• Concert in Portland Friday, Jan. 22, to benefit the Campaign for the Restoration and Regulation of Hemp (A news release from CRRH, sponsors of the Oregon Cannabis Tax Act, says the show at the Aladdin Theater features Huffy, Jealous Rage, Pedro Luz, the Daylights, Nicotine, and Hurricane Joe.)
• Portland, Ore., Monthly Potluck (Floyd Ferris Landrath of the American Antiprohibition League publicizes meetings for drug policy reformers on the last Sunday of every month in 1999 - including Jan. 31.)
• Alameda County Joins Lawsuit Against Feds (A bulletin from California NORML says the Alameda County Board of Supervisors voted today to join the city of Oakland in a legal brief in support of the Oakland Cannabis Buyers' Cooperative. The brief, filed in the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, argues that the U.S. Constitution doesn't allow federal law to automatically override California voters' rights.)
• Colorado Senator Introduces Prison Moratorium Bill (An action alert from the Colorado Hemp Initiative Project asks Coloradans to write letters to state legislators and everyone to write letters to Colorado media regarding SB 95, a moratorium on prison construction sponsored by Senator Dorothy Rupert, a Democrat from Boulder.)
• Border Patrol Can Be Sued for Stops (The Associated Press says the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, in a 2-1 decision Tuesday, reinstated a class-action lawsuit on behalf of two groups: Hispanics who drive in an eight-county area of southern Arizona at any time, and people of any ethnicity who drive in the same area after dark, ruling that the U.S. Border Patrol can be sued for stopping drivers just because they look Hispanic.)
• U.S. Supreme Court Nullfies Colorado Ballot Initiative Rules (A list subscriber forwards a summary and URL leading to the full text of the court's decision today in Buckley v. American Constitutional Law Foundation. The court affirmed the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals' ruling that three sections of the Colorado law regulating initiative petitions were invalid. Specifically, the court held that Colorado could not require petition circulators to be registered voters or to wear identification badges, and that it could not require proponents of an initiative to report names and addresses of all paid circulators and amounts of money paid to each circulator.)
• Supreme Court Strikes Down Colorado Ballot Initiatives System (The Associated Press version)
• Supreme Court on Ballot Initiative Regulations (A list subscriber forwards the syllabus of today's decision and a URL for the full text, noting the decision affects the signature collection process in every state that has the ballot initiative.)
• Juries And The Law (A letter to the editor of the Ft. Worth Star-Telegram rebuts several erroneous assertions in a recent article about the Lone Star Fully Informed Jury Association's plans to take four proposals to the state legislature this year regarding jury nullifaction. Like it or not, the U.S. Supreme Court decided in 1794 that jury nullification is a basic, constitutional right of the American people. Chief Justice John Jay wrote: "The jury has the right to judge both the law as well as the fact in controversy.")
• Utmost Care (A staff editorial in the Ft. Worth, Texas, Star-Telegram, says Troy Dale Farris, scheduled to die by lethal injection Wednesday night, should be granted a stay of execution and have his case re-examined. The murder scene was trampled by investigating officers, much of the evidence was lost or stolen, and at least one law enforcement official removed marijuana from the dead deputy's pocket. Although the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals concluded that the circumstantial and forensic evidence offered at the trial "failed to connect [Farris] to the killing," it affirmed Farris's conviction.)
• Witness May Be Able To Testify In Oregon Case (According to the Houston Chronicle, prosecutors and an attorney for a key witness in the criminal trespass trial of James Willis, a former Houston police officer charged in connection with the shooting death of Pedro Oregon Navarro during a botched drug raid, said Monday that they were working to clear the way for Rogelio Oregon, Pedro's brother, to testify. Last week, attorneys for the Oregon family hinted that Rogelio Oregon might not cooperate unless they were assured that prosecutors wouldn't use his immigration status against him.)
• State Lawmaker Attempting To Legalize Industrial Hemp (According to the Milwaukee Sentinel Journal, Wisconsin state representative Eugene Hahn, a Republican whose uncle was a hemp farmer during World War II, said Monday that he's drafting a bill to legalize industrial hemp to help Wisconsin farmers facing bankruptcy from plummeting pork prices. During the 1940s the hemp industry accounted for 30,000 acres and 10 processing plants in Wisconsin.)
• Dear Abby: Warning Signs Help Identify Drug Abuse (The Chicago Tribune's syndicated advice columnist prints some "warning signs of a potential problem" for parents of teen-agers, from the White House drug czar, General Barry McCaffrey.)
• Channel Surfing: Snitches (The Chicago Tribune previews tonight's broadcast of a documentary on federal drug informants by the Public Broadcasting Service's "Frontline.")
• Interview With Eric Sterling For 'Snitch' (The Public Broadcasting Service's "Frontline" interviews the man who served as a congressional legal adviser from 1979 to 1989 and who helped write the current mandatory minimum federal sentencing laws for drug offenders. He later disavowed the legislation and become a reform activist and founder of the Criminal Justice Policy Foundation.)
• Snitch (A transcript of the "Frontline" documentary on the role of federal informants and mandatory minimums in the war on some drug users, produced by the Public Broadcasting Service)
• Supreme Court: Garbage Search Upheld (An excerpt from an article about several U.S. Supreme Court decisions Monday, in the News & Observer, in North Carolina, says the court refused to consider a case from Urbana, Illinois, that raised the issue of whether police have the right to conduct a warrantless search of a homeowner's trash when the trash can is adjacent to the house or garage, well within the property line. In a 1988 case, the court upheld the search of a garbage can left at the curb. But Monday the court rejected an appeal of a cocaine-related conviction by Joseph Redmon, who placed his can at the top of his 28-foot driveway.)
• Publisher Larry Flynt Levels Accusations at Rep. Bob Barr (CNN says the Hustler magazine publisher is accusing Republican Rep. Bob Barr of Georgia - the nemesis of Initiative 59, the Washington, D.C., medical-marijuana ballot measure - of hypocrisy and lying under oath.)
• Clerics lose bid to legalize pot (According to the Toronto Star, a Canadian federal court has ruled that "The constitutionality of legislation controlling cannabis in the face of religious requirement is a possibly serious issue," and gave Walter A. Tucker and Michael J. Baldasaro of the Church of the Universe until Jan. 10 to refile their suit against the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act.)
• Mayor gets protection (The Toronto Star says Fredericton Mayor Brad Woodside got a free $2,200 home security system two months ago after declaring a war on drugs in the city.)
• Mexico Governor Has Secret Accounts Abroad - Paper (According to Reuters, a Mexico City daily, El Universal, said Tuesday that an intelligence report by Mexico's Interior Ministry had traced the ownership of $10 million stashed away in secret bank accounts in California, Switzerland, the Cayman Islands and the Bahamas, to Mario Villanueva Madrid, governor of Mexico's Caribbean state of Quintana Roo.)
• Colombian Death Squads Endangering Peace Talks, Analysts Say (The Houston Chronicle says a three-day rampage by paramilitary death squads that killed at least 139 people began just a day after peace talks opened last week between the government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, Colombia's largest anti-government militia. Colombians are demanding that their government either negotiate with the outlawed militias or fight back, but the government is owned by the same small landed class that funds the paramilitary groups. Some of the groups provide protection for illegal-drug traffickers.)
• New Zealand press release (A list subscriber forwards a statement from New Zealand's ruling National Party saying any change to cannabis laws would require a non-party-line "conscience vote" in Parliament. The party is obligated to respond to a Parliamentary select committee's recent report, and is supposed to do so on an evidentiary basis, but instead claims - with no scientific reference at all - that more than 20 percent of cannabis users face mental health problems.)
• Doctors Check Cannabis For Medical Benefit (The version in the Dominion, in New Zealand, of yesterday's Reuters article about the governing body for British pharmacists saying two clinical research doctors would volunteer to run the first government-sanctioned trials on the therapeutic value of cannabis.)
• Doctors Volunteer To Test Cannabis (The Daily Telegraph, in Britain, says the two doctors who have volunteered to run the country's first official patient trials involving cannabis are Dr Anita Holdcroft, from Hammersmith Hospital, London, who will investigate whether the drug or some of its components can relieve post-operative pain; and Dr John Zajicek, of Derriford Hospital, Plymouth, who will run a second trial investigating the effects of cannabis on multiple sclerosis sufferers.)
  Bytes: 176,000 Last updated: 6/4/99
  

  Wednesday, January 13, 1999:

• Making a hash of the law (A mean-spirited staff editorial in the Bend, Oregon, Bulletin, tries to arouse ill will over the Oregon Medical Marijuana Act by publicizing an empty threat by an ill-mannered medical marijuana patient in Newport to sue Abby's Pizza for not letting him smoke cannabis - something the voter-approved initiative clearly does not allow.)
• The drug war is a war on people (A letter to the editor of the Lynnwood Enterprise, in Lynnwood, Washington, from a member of the Washington Hemp Education Network responds to the yuletide bust and jailing in Tacoma of a blind man with AIDS and his caregiver mother for three cannabis plants. The prosecutor's office has reportedly decided to drop charges, but what about the family's dignity? Does society really desire protection from the helplessly ill?)
• Cannabis Club Exerts Legal Rights (The Oakland Tribune says the city of Oakland, California, filed a legal brief Monday in support of the Oakland Cannabis Buyers' Cooperative, which is appealing an Oct. 19 order by U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer to close the club down. The city is banking on the 9th and 10th amendments to the Constitution in an amicus curiae brief in the 9th U.S Circuit Court of Appeals, arguing that the Constitution doesn't allow federal law to automatically trump states' rights.)
• Lockyer On Medical Pot (A letter to the editor of the San Francisco Examiner says bravo for California Attorney General Bill Lockyer's commitment to enforce Proposition 215.)
• KGB-Ing America (An op-ed in the Anderson Valley Advertiser, in Boonville, California, by Tony Serra, a San Francisco criminal defense attorney, says that when he started to practice law in the late 1960s, he confronted a phenomenon that he hoped would diminish, but which has instead increased steadfastly - the KGB-ing of America. In every criminal case in our alleged system of justice, some type of informant or spy mentality is now present.)
• Urgent Alert: Oklahoma Gov. Deciding Foster Parole, Calls and Letters Needed (The Drug Reform Coordination Network asks you to write a letter seeking mercy for the medical marijuana patient originally sentenced to 93 years in prison for growing his own medicine.)
• A.C. family stands to lose home under forfeiture law (The Atlantic City Press describes the federal government's plan to forfeit a family's home in Atlantic City - dispossessing 10 children - because a marijuana transaction was discussed there. Plus a request from FEAR - Forfeiture Endangers American Rights - asking you to write a protest letter.)
• PBS Frontline's "Snitch" now online (A bulletin from the Media Awareness Project features the URL for a RealVideo version of the television documentary aired last night by the Public Broadcasting Service.)
• Journal Blasts U.S. Drug Policy (UPI says the lead article in the latest issue of Public Health Reports, the official journal of the U.S. Public Health Service, harshly criticizes U.S. drug policy, and reveals how increased U.S. drug enforcement has fueled overdose deaths and drug-related emergencies. "From a public health point of view, drug prohibition is a disaster," said Dr. Ernest Drucker, a professor of epidemiology and social medicine at Montefiore Medical Center in New York and the author of the study. "While our government officials claim success in reducing drug use, drug-related deaths and diseases have increased sharply. That's the best measure of the impact of our drug policies - and they are failing.")
• New Marijuana Strain Boosts Drug Trade (According to USA Today, U.S. and Canadian prohibition agents say British Columbian indoor cannabis growers are achieving potency rates of about 25 percent to 30 percent THC. Police say the herb is so potent it is being traded pound-for-pound for cocaine in the United States, and the cocaine obtained by Canadian drug dealers in exchange for the marijuana has begun fueling a fledgling crack cocaine trade north of the border. However, as documented just yesterday by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, and on page 61 of the January issue of High Times, and by the Flower Therapy medical marijuana dispensary in San Francisco before it closed under threat of federal prosecution, it's not unusual for indoor sinsemilla growers in the United States to achieve similar potency levels.)
• High on Hemp (The Victoria Times Colonist, in British Columbia, says hemp seed wholesalers are chipping away at mainstream mores about marijuana by using its natural seeds in foods neither the health conscious or health oblivious can ignore. Hemp seed is a highly versatile natural source of protein, fibre, vitamins, and essential fatty acids and amino acids. Gone are the days when hemp seed was peddled by hippies smoking pipes and wearing bad hemp suits, said Viteway's Paul Griffin and Canadian Hemp Corporation's Richard Plotnikoff.)
• Hustler's Hitlist - The other trial? Politicians v Larry Flynt (The Morning Herald, in Sydney, Australia, mischaracterizes the muck raked up against Rep. Bob Barr, the nemesis of Washington, D.C.'s medical marijuana ballot measure, claiming Barr did not perjure himself.)
• Smoke And Mirror (A letter to the editor of the Independent, in Britain, notes more people in the Third World die from American tobacco than there are Americans who die from Third World heroin and cocaine.)
• DrugSense Weekly, No. 81 (The original summary of drug policy news from DrugSense leads with a feature article, Anti-drug programs miss mark, by Marsha Rosenbaum. The Weekly News in Review features several articles about Drug War Policy, including - Drug war key may lie in past; Clinton to request funding for prison anti-drug program; Pressured FDA seeks more funds; Editorial: changing the guard; Marad calls for added private anti-drug efforts. Articles about Law Enforcement & Prisons include - Treating the cause; 'Win at all costs': the Justice Department responds; Police keep cash intended for education; Court reverses ban on leniency for witnesses. Articles about Drug Use Issues include - Young, rich and strung out; It's madness not to investigate pot's medical use; What's not to like? International News articles include - Australia: heroin deaths soar; Alone and accused in a Nicaraguan prison; 2 dead Mexican police found near Brownsville; British anti-drugs chief attacks 'arrogance' of professional classes; Colombian rebels say they might switch, fight coca. The weekly "Hot Off The 'Net" features Frontline's "Snitch," Ernest Drucker's new article, and DrugPeace. The DrugSense Tips Of The Week focus on the May DPF Conference and the FEAR on-line chat group. The Quote of the Week cites Howard Rheingold telling the digerati to get active. The Fact of the Week - Drug testing a poor indicator.)
  Bytes: 93,100 Last updated: 2/2/99
  

  Thursday, January 14, 1999:

• NORML Foundation Weekly News Release (Body's Own Marijuana-Like Agents Holds Hope For High Blood Pressure Patients; Marijuana For Pain, MS Trials Approved In England; Support for Medical Marijuana, Industrial Hemp Strong, State Survey Shows; Oklahoma Governor To Decide Medical Marijuana Patient's Fate This Month)
• Federal agents arrest man who aided police (According to the Oregonian, the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service says Louie Lira, who did anti-gang work in Portland for the last eight years and served as an unpaid volunteer with the Portland Police Bureau's Crisis Response Team, is really Gerardo Morales Alejo, who was deported to Mexico in 1985 after robbery and drug convictions in California.)
• Weapons will boost firepower for police (The Oregonian says that with little discussion or debate, the Portland city council awarded a $103,771 contract Wednesday to Specialized Armament Warehouse of Chandler, Arizona, to provide the Portland Police Bureau with 175 semiautomatic rifles. Officials didn't cite any local incidents that might have turned out more favorably if police had had bigger guns.)
• Air scope turns up heat on crime (The Oregonian says the Oregon State Police have a new helicopter equipped with a Forward-Looking Infrared Detection unit, or FLIR, that will allow them to find the warm bodies of fleeing felons in the dark. One assumes the unit will spend the rest of its time flying around looking for midnight gardens.]
• Three firefighters slightly injured after propane explosion (The Associated Press notes Multnomah County has apparently resorted to forfeiture by other means in its campaign to take the property where a Portland prohibition agent was justifiably homicided in 1979 during a warrantless break-in.)
• Senate briefing I-692 (A list subscriber forwards a notice from Washington state senator Jeanne Kohl about a Department of Health briefing in Olympia Jan. 21 regarding implementation of Initiative 692, the voter-approved medical marijuana law.)
• A Drug Sniffing Society (Officials at Boise High School who are considering urine tests for students who wish to participate in extracurricular activities cause Boise Weekly columnist Bill Cope to come out against the drug war. One of these days, we Americans - Idaho Americans in particular and Canyon County Americans in particular - are gonna have to sit down and figure out exactly what and how much we're willing to give up to keep waging the war on illegal drugs. Don't expect it to happen anytime real soon, though. To conduct a reasonable community discussion that might result in some reasonable community solutions, it's going to take some reasonable community leaders. At this point in the endless war, you'd have more luck spearing squid out of Lake Lowell than in finding a local official with the guts to suggest the drug problem has not been, nor will it be, solved by the us-versus-them policy that's been flopping about on the deck of America's ship of state for three decades now, all the time crushing more and more of what keeps the boat afloat in the first place.)
• Political Shift May Usher In New Pot Club (The San Francisco Chronicle says that despite pledges from the federal government to shut her down, Jane Weirick, the executive director of the San Francisco Patients Resource Center, plans to open a new medical marijuana dispensary. She hopes to have the facility running in six weeks or less, as soon as she locates a building to house the club. The Oakland Cannabis Buyers' Cooperative has agreed to handle the club's eligibility paperwork and issue membership cards. Organizers are hoping the election of Bill Lockyer as Attorney General will lead to a compromise with the federal government that would allow medical marijuana dispensaries to re-emerge in California to fulfill the mandate of Proposition 215.)
• 2 Convicted for Running Indoor Marijuana Farms (A cautionary tale in the Los Angeles Times says Drug Enforcement Administration agents picked up the trail of the defendants, Daniel Carson Adams, and his son-in-law, Earl Martin Torgerson, by staking out a hydroponics equipment store in North Hollywood and following one of the suspects after he purchased supplies. Six defendants have now been convicted for growing more than 1,800 plants in three houses. All face mandatory minimum federal sentences, except the leader of the conspiracy, Gary Manuel Margado, who was the chief witness against the others, apparently in an attempt to shorten his 10-year term.)
• San Francisco Marijuana Reform Forum Feb. 11 (A bulletin from the Lindesmith Center West publicizes a public meeting featuring Keith Stroup of NORML and Dale Gieringer of California NORML.)
• South Dakota Governor Proposes Mandatory Jail For Drug Offenses (USA Today says Gov. Janklow told state lawmakers in his State of the State address that anyone caught with "drugs" in South Dakota should have to spend at least 30 days in jail.)
• Marijuana Inhaling May Be Healthy (The Daily O'Collegian at Oklahoma State University covers a campus teach-in by the Drug Policy Forum of Oklahoma. Michael Pearson, the forum's organizer and a registered pharmacist, said studies have proven marijuana to be helpful with multiple sclerosis, spinal cord injury spasms, high blood pressure, migraines, joint pain, menstrual problems, asthma and rheumatism. Pearson said patients get prescriptions for Valium from doctors and then trade it on the black market for marijuana, which is rumored to be more effective. Drug companies are reluctant to accept the drug because a plant is difficult to patent, he said, and because marijuana works as an anti-depressant. "What would happen to Prozac and other drugs that make up half [the drug companies'] money?")
• Progress Made In War On Drugs, Federal Official Reports (The Daily Herald, in Arlington Heights, Illinois, says Donald Vereen Jr., deputy director of the U.S. Office of National Drug Control Policy, told the Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce that use of marijuana among eighth-graders did not increase in 1997.)
• Drug Testing Expands (The Washington Post, which apparently does not consider alcohol to be a drug, says the number of "drug addicts" released on parole and probation in Maryland who are now required to take twice-weekly urine tests has increased five-fold in the past two months under the state's new "Break the Cycle" program. Under the plan, all 25,000 drug addicts on parole and probation in Maryland eventually will be required to undergo treatment and frequent testing - and face swift, escalating punishments if they skip a treatment session or test positive for "drug" use. The enterprise faces a range of obstacles, particularly if large numbers of ex-offenders test positive and the state is unable to "punish them effectively.")
• Clinton To Propose Spending $6 Billion To Battle Crime (The Orange County Register says President Clinton was scheduled to venture across the Potomac River today to Alexandria, Virginia, to unveil a new community-policing initiative. The five-year, $6 billion anti-crime package would fund the last 11,500 police officers of the 100,000 a Clinton initiative began to put on the street in 1994.)
• Police don't have to tell how to get seized property back, high court rules (An Associated Press article in the Miami Herald says the U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday unanimously threw out a California couple's lawsuit, prompted by the difficulty they had recovering cash taken by police during a search of their home. Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote, "Once the property owner is informed that his property has been seized, he can turn to . . . public sources to learn about the remedial procedures.")
• DrugSense Focus Alert! PBS Frontline gives reform a major boost (DrugSense asks you to write a letter to the Public Broadcasting Service and other media praising Frontline for its Jan. 12 television documentary on federal drug informants. Plus URLs where you can view or listen to the program.)
• Pray For Peace Foundation News, December 1998-January 1999 (A periodic summary of drug policy and other news from the Pray for Peace Foundation, whose members are "committed to the legalization of sacred natural medicines for spiritual healing, for all people.")
• Anti-pot fungus poses eco hazard (Now magazine, in Canada, says the U.S. Congress passed a $690 million anti-drug package this week that included $23 million for a fungus purported to kill marijuana, poppy and coca plants. Unspecified scientists are criticizing the project, saying other plants may be susceptible to the bio-engineered fungus. For example, they note that an alkaloid similar to one in the coca plant is also present in tobacco and coffee plants.)
• 900 In Trials To Test Claim That Cannabis Has Medical Benefits (The Daily Mail, in Britain, says the legalisation of cannabis moved a step closer yesterday as doctors announced details of the first medical trials for the herb. Over the next three years, 900 sufferers of multiple sclerosis and post-operative pain will be given regular doses of cannabis through an inhaler or as a pill. If the drug is shown to ease the volunteers' symptoms without causing side effects, doctors could be prescribing cannabis pills to some of Britain's 85,000 MS sufferers within five years.)
• Weekly Action Report on Drug Policies, Year 5 No. 2 (A summary of European and international drug policy news, from CORA in Italy)
  Bytes: 91,100 Last updated: 2/23/99
  

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