1999 News
About Cannabis and Drug Policy
January 15-21

Friday, January 15, 1999:
• Waiting to Exhale (Eugene Weekly, in Eugene, Oregon, interviews Gary Webb, author of the San Jose Mercury News' "Dark Alliance" expose about the CIA-Cocaine-Contra scandal, prior to his Jan. 16 talk at the United Methodist Church in Eugene. Webb, whose appearance will be sponsored by Eugene Media Action, tells the newspaper that ". . . given what has come out since my series - there were two investigations that were done, by the Justice Department and by the CIA internal investigations - I didn't go nearly far enough in retrospect. The CIA knew a lot more about this than I would have imagined, and they've now admitted it. The problem is you haven't seen these stories in the paper because they contradict everything they were writing two years ago. The agency has basically confessed and nobody wants to hear the confession because [the big papers] had all declared them innocent.")
• Police Intrusions (A staff editorial in the Orange County Register says police in Buena Park, California, who have begun to randomly stop cars in search of unlicensed drivers, violate constitutional protections against unreasonable searches and seizures. "Unfortunately, the D.A. is correct that these kinds of searches have been deemed by the Supreme Court to pass muster," said Tim Lynch of the Cato Institute in Washington, D.C. In 1987 the California Supreme Court said drunken driving checkpoints are constitutional. In 1990 the U.S. Supreme Court issued a similar verdict.)
• Prison Shootings To Be Reviewed (According to the Orange County Register, California Attorney General Bill Lockyer's office will "independently assess the circumstances of each" of two dozen shootings of inmates by guards at Corcoran State Prison. Last fall, a special state review panel concluded that five fatal shootings and 19 incidents in which inmates were wounded between 1989 and 1995 were unjustified. Guards argued the shootings were needed to break up fights, even though California is the only state that breaks up inmate fights by shooting to kill.)
• Woman Cleared In Deputy Shooting (The Tulsa World says a pistol-packing 70-year-old was cleared Thursday of criminal wrongdoing for shooting a law officer during an ill-fated drug raid in 1996. After the prohibition agents' warrant was ruled invalid, Mary Lou Coonfield was able to invoke Oklahoma's "Make My Day" law, enacted in 1991, which states that an "occupant of a house is justified in using physical force, including deadly force, against another person who has unlawfully entered the house if the occupant reasonably believes that the other person might use any physical force, no matter how slight, against any occupant of the house.")
• A Small Victory in the War on Drugs (An op-ed in the Dallas Morning News tells a poignant tale about a Texan vacationing in London who apologizes to a Colombian for U.S. drug policy - and gets a surprising response.)
• Repeal Of Drug Zones Law Is Sought (The Baltimore Sun says Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke will ask the City Council to eliminate Baltimore's "drug-free zones" law on behalf of Baltimore Police Commissioner Thomas C. Frazier, who wants the council to help devise legislation that would allow officers to more effectively seize illegal guns and drugs.The council established 50 drug-free zones in 1989, but prosecutors and judges have opposed the law because they consider it an infringement on the constitutional right to assemble. Schmoke noted that the city's circuit courts are so clogged that four first-degree murder suspects were set free.)
• Shot By DEA Agents (According to UPI, police in Orlando, Florida, are saying little about the fatal shooting Thursday by Drug Enforcement Administration agents of a man in a sport utility vehicle said to be a former Central Florida law enforcement officer.)
• Former Deputy Killed (UPI says a man killed for refusing to obey federal DEA agents Thursday in Orlando, Florida, has been identified as Robert Pasteur, a former Orange County Sheriff's deputy.)
• Theories On Ritalin Revamped - Found To Stimulate Regulator Of Mood (The San Diego Union Tribune says a new study published in the journal Science suggests that Ritalin diminishes hyperactivity not by lowering dopamine levels in the brain, as previously thought, but by boosting serotonin levels, like an antidepressant.)
• Study Shifts Thought On How Ritalin Works (A slightly longer version in the Orange County Register is identified as coming from Scripps Howard News Service.)
• Research outlines how drugs calm kids (The Associated Press version)
• Tajikistan, Rakhmonov To Speak On Drugs (Itar-Tass, in Russia, says Tajik President Emomali Rakhmonov will address the nation on Friday on the problem of illegal drugs, which has acquired immense scope in the Central Asian republic.)
• Two Hang For Drug Trafficking (Reuters says the staunchly anti-drug city-state of Singapore hanged two of its citizens Friday for trafficking in an unspecified drug. More than half of the 300 people executed in Singapore since 1975 have been convicted drug traffickers. Singapore mandates the death sentence for anyone over 18 guilty of trafficking more than 15 grams of heroin, 30 grams of morphine or 500 grams of cannabis.)
• The Week Online with DRCNet, Issue No. 74 (The Drug Reform Coordination Network's original compilation of news and calls to action regarding drug policy, including - 10th Circuit overturns Singleton ruling: feds may trade leniency for testimony; "Snitch"; Voice of the prisoner; Forfeiture scandal in Missouri; Report: prohibition and public health; Health emergency 1999; City of Oakland files states' rights brief in defense of cannabis co-op; Peyote foundation tests patience of local law enforcement, may test Arizona religious freedom law; and an editorial by Adam J. Smith: Buying testimony, perverting justice)
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  Saturday, January 16, 1999:

• Haze of Uncertainty (The Daily Courier, in Grants Pass, Oregon, says the state's new law that allows the use of marijuana for medicinal purposes is still embroiled in a . . . haze of uncertainty. The Dubs Cancer Center at the Rogue Valley Medical Center, for example, is waiting for the Oregon Medical Association to release guidelines in the spring.)
• Applications Coming In From Around The State (The Daily Courier, in Grants Pass, Oregon, says the state isn't issuing medical marijuana registration cards yet, since the Oregon Medical Marijuana Act doesn't require the state Health Division to iron out its procedures until May 1, but several people have already applied. The newspaper then provides some helpful information to patients on how to submit applications for registration cards.)
• Law Enforcement Group Drafting Legislation To Revise Marijuana Law (The Daily Courier, in Grants Pass, Oregon, notes the Oregon Association of Chiefs of Police is drafting legislation to gut Measure 67, the medical marijuana initiative voters approved in November. Follow this link to the Oregon legislature's web site for the email addresses of your state senator and representative - and please send a brief protest note.)
• State approves plan to employ prison inmates (The Oregonian says the state Prison Industries Board, trying to fulfill Measure 17's mandate to provide full employment to all inmates, finalized two contracts Friday that will supposedly provide private-sector work to 65 prisoners. Research Data Design Inc. of Portland agreed to use a minimum of 6,000 hours of inmate labor a month to staff a portion of a new telemarketing center under construction at the Snake River Correctional Institution in Ontario. Under the second contract, Acorn Engineering Co., the nation's largest supplier of prison plumbing fixtures, will sell unfinished stainless steel toilets and sinks to the Corrections Department. Inmates will assemble and weld the fixtures, which will be used in four new Oregon prisons slated for construction. Only about 60 percent of eligible inmates now work full time.)
• Police arrest gang violence suspects (The Oregonian says police from the Portland Gang Enforcement Team and Youth Gun Anti-Violence Task Force surrounded the Rodeway Inn in Vancouver, Washington, for hours Friday before they took seven suspects into custody and seized a cache of weapons. Police believe the suspects are connected to two recent gang-related shootings and the seizure of 3 1/2 ounces of crack cocaine in North Portland. The men, from Anchorage, Alaska, had been feuding with members of a Portland gang called the "Flips.")
• Making I-692 Work (A staff editorial in the Seattle Times says Pierce County Prosecutor John Ladenburg held up his end of Initiative 692, Washington state's new medical-marijuana law, when he announced this week he would not charge a blind AIDS patient and his mom after they were arrested for growing three marijuana plants in their home. Unfortunately, it is I-692's chief sponsor, Dr. Rob Killian, who flunked the first test of the law by not providing documentation to his patient.)
• Sixteenth California News Summary (According to UPI, Los Angeles City Attorney Jim Hahn said he will begin enforcing a new state law immediately that allows him to step in and evict "drug" users and dealers when landlords fail to do so. The City Council unanimously approved a plan today to fund Hahn's new Narcotics Eviction Team. It's not clear whether the standard is a conviction, indictment, or merely an accusation.)
• New Attorney General Concentrates On Civil Rights (According to the San Francisco Examiner, Bill Lockyer, the newly elected Democrat, said Friday on the anniversary of Martin Luther King's birthday that he will double the budget and staff devoted to combating civil rights violations in California. One thing he won't be doing, he added, is look for ways to prosecute people who distribute marijuana under the state's medical marijuana provision.)
• Failed Drug Policies And The Heroin Glut (A letter to the editor of the San Francisco Chronicle says increased heroin use isn't limited to "young, middle- and upper-middle class-kids like the 21-year-old son of blues rocker Boz Scaggs." The heroin glut is global and occurring despite record budgets for such never-proven concepts as "drug Interdiction." It's another convincing indicator of the failure of prohibition.)
• Police Arrest Miami Coach (The Tulsa World says Rusty Dean Roark, a first-year teacher and wrestling coach at Miami High School, in Miami, Oklahoma, was arrested at the school with a student 2 a.m. Friday and charged with possession of a controlled substance - methamphetamine - on school grounds, possession of marijuana, possession of drug paraphernalia and possession of a weapon while in commission of a felony.)
• Advocates On Both Sides Gear Up For Medical Marijuana Battle Here (The Daily Herald, in Arlington Heights, Illinois, says the Illinois Drug Education Alliance is launching a campaign today to block attempts to bring medical marijuana to Illinois. They also are working to repeal a 1978 law that allows marijuana to be used for research in Illinois. Judy Kreamer, a past president of the group, proved that marijuana can make people who don't use it insane, saying "People can get marijuana to treat athlete's foot," without offering a shred of evidence.)
• Judge Rules Against Drug Stops (The Des Moines Register says Polk County District Judge Robert Blink ruled Friday that the Iowa State Patrol went too far last July when troopers questioned drivers merely because they had pulled over after seeing signs on Interstate Highway 80 that warned, "Drug Stop 4 Miles Ahead." There was no drug stop. Instead, plainclothes troopers were waiting at the Mitchellville rest stop to see who pulled in to hide or dispose of drugs before proceeding to the supposed checkpoint.)
• Drug Smugglers And Cops Match Wits (An Associated Press article with an Indianapolis dateline describes the highway drug interdiction efforts of state troopers and border agents in every state, coordinated through Operation Pipeline, a federal Drug Enforcement Administration program. Its hub is the El Paso Intelligence Center, or EPIC, a one-story brick building at Biggs Army Airfield in El Paso, Texas, where more than 250 state and federal law enforcement officials track smugglers, scan criminal databases to link cases, and provide 24-hour intelligence to officers in the field. Despite Operation Pipeline, the drug business is worth $52 billion a year in the U.S. according to the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy.)
• Giuliani changes his stand on methadone for heroin addicts (According to the Associated Press, the mayor of New York City told the New York Times that drug treatment experts had persuaded him not to eliminate methadone programs, which researchers across the country consider the best hope for most recovering heroin addicts.)
• Mayor Relents On Plan To End Methadone Use (The New York Times version)
• After Crash, Police Informant Use Re-Evaluated (The Asbury Park Press, in New Jersey, says the state attorney general is considering setting guidelines for police use of "civilian sources" in the wake of a Sunday night crash that left a woman maimed and an informant for the New Jersey state police charged with drunken driving and aggravated assault. Joseph M. Everett, the driver, whose extensive record includes numerous motor vehicle violations, was freed from a cell only two days earlier so he could assist in a police investigation.)
• Bureaucrat (A list subscriber posts the email address of the White House drug czar, General Barry McCaffrey. You have a constitutional right to petition for a redress of grievances at MCCAFFREY_B@a1.eop.gov.)
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  Sunday, January 17, 1999:

• Torn police relations resist repair (The Oregonian says hardly anyone attended a forum Saturday morning meant to promote healing between police and Northeast Portland residents. Last August when neighborhood residents tried to tell police Chief Moose how they felt about not having any civil rights, police fired beanbags at them from shotguns.)
• The union of kids and coolers (Oregonian columnist Steve Duin wants to throw a wet blanket on ski tours organized by ISTours of Seattle that take Portland-area high school students to the slopes and spas of Whistler, 75 miles north of Vancouver, British Columbia. Alcohol consumption is a popular part of the affair.)
• Should high schools in Clark County institute voluntary urine tests for students? (Two editorial writers for the Columbian, in Vancouver, Washington, take opposing sides in discussing a proposal before the Camas School District to begin a "voluntary" drug testing program for students.)
• Pot law's vagueness concerns activists (The Olympian, in Olympia, Washington, says Thurston County law enforcement officials have vowed to follow the state's new medical-marijuana law to the letter, but local activists say patients should not be subject to arrest or jail simply because of vagueness in the new law. Fred Mayer, an Olympia man whose wife uses medical mariuana, said he is concerned that the initiative does not define what a 60-day supply is. Some patients may need more marijuana than others, he said.)
• Tiny North Coast town site of unusual public hearing (The Sacramento Bee says residents of Humboldt and Mendocino counties in California's "Emerald Triangle" marijuana-growing region are still angry at prohibition agents' tactics during "Operation Greensweep" nearly a decade ago. Under the terms of a federal lawsuit settlement, residents are gathering in Redway for an unusual two-day public hearing to begin Monday, complete with a court reporter to provide a stenographic record and a retired appellate judge with the authority to issue findings. The Drug Enforcement Administration and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms are required to come up with environmental guidelines governing future raids on outdoor cannabis stands, and the hearings will take testimony about the public's concerns.)
• Rehab Parents Lament Loss Of Kids (The Oakland Tribune says officials locally and elsewhere in California and around the nation are wresting children away from supposedly unfit parents at a much faster rate than before. This is happening because new state and federal laws - passed in response to an alleged flood of abused children from drug-addicted families entering the foster system at ever younger ages - emphasize finding good, permanent homes for the children as soon as possible. In California, the number of children in foster care by the end of 1997 had soared to more than 92,000, after climbing an average rate of 6.2 percent in each of the previous five years. Stepped-up adoptions have failed to keep pace with the supply of kids. The term "legal orphans" has been coined to describe the unadopted children.)
• Alleviate Pain (A letter to the editor of the Chicago Tribune says virtually all end-of-life pain is controllable with available medications, but unfortunately some physicians impose it upon patients with self-righteous cant about its worth. Others are too intimidated by the FDA, which has made far too many pain patients unwitting casualties of the war on drugs. Perhaps the most hopeful result of the legalization of assisted suicide in Oregon is that the amount of pain medication prescribed for severe pain has increased dramatically there. Because patients have a legal alternative, physicians are finally taking their duty to alleviate pain seriously.)
• APB Online Launches Police And Crime Internet Service (A press release on PRNewswire says APB Online, the first and only Internet news service devoted to covering police and criminal-justice issues, has been launched at http://www.apbonline.com.)
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  Monday, January 18, 1999:

• Drug War Chipping Away At America's Grip On Basic Rights (An excellent column in the Columbus Dispatch by Steve Stephens comments on the DEA's seizure of $19,000 from the automobile of Los Angeles Laker Corie Blount, a resident of Columbus, Ohio, who was pulled over on Christmas Eve because the tint on his car windows was deemed too dark. The police undoubtedly would intervene if citizens began seizing squad cars and returning them only when cops proved the vehicles were not being used for doughnut runs. But the rules applying to citizens do not apply to the authorities. Maybe that's why we have so many authorities.)
• DEA agent charged in shooting (The Associated Press says Joseph Armento, an off-duty federal Drug Enforcement Administration agent, was charged with shooting into an occupied vehicle and unlawful wounding in Hampton, Virginia, after a parking lot confrontation left two men wounded, one critically. The incident early Thursday morning started when three men leaving a bar got into an argument with Armento and two other off-duty DEA agents.)
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  Tuesday, January 19, 1999:

• Glaring Bias (A letter to the editor of the Bulletin, in Bend, Oregon, says the paper's recent staff editorial about a medical marijuana patient who wanted to light up at a Waldport pizza parlor maligned Oregon voters when it said that "Some laws get the supporters they deserve.")
• Victim of police shooting led dual lives (The Associated Press describes the curious case of Peter C. Gilbaugh, who held down a $55,000-a-year job, shot the occasional round of golf, and lived in a tiny room in a low-income building with a bathroom down the hall. That's where he was shot to death on Dec. 31 during a late-night struggle with police who were called after he urinated on a neighbor's door. Authorities have not released information about Gilbaugh's blood-alcohol level at the time of the shooting, but his friends say Gilbaugh was a friendly, level-headed man even when he had been drinking.)
• Raids on California's medical marijuana outlets eased (The Washington Times, in the District of Columbia, says California's new attorney general, Bill Lockyer, promises that when local law enforcement agents refuse to shut down pot clubs, he will not intervene. Mr. Lockyer also cautioned activists not to expect his office to jump in and help them if and when local district attorneys or federal authorities make arrests. "I'm not interested in frivolous windmill tilting," Mr. Lockyer said. "If I can think of a theory under which I can defend the state law the people passed, I will. But my inclination is toward consensus, not confrontation, with the policy-makers.")
• Richard Evans re-arrested in San Francisco (A list subscriber forwards a disturbing message from the medical marijuana activist about strange and frightening police activity in San Francisco. Prohibition agents raided his home again late at night a week ago and held him incommunicado for five days.)
• Helicopters In Pot Raids Kill Birds, Spook Stock, Residents Say (An Associated Press story in the San Jose Mercury News says residents of California's rugged north country testified Monday in Redway that prohibition agents hunting for marijuana in low-flying helicopters routinely kill birds, stampede farm animals, violate environmental laws and terrify innocent homeowners. The public hearing where more than two dozen people testified was ordered as part of a settlement in a lawsuit challenging Operation Greensweep, an August 1990 drug raid.)
• Maine Doctor Should Look At The Facts Of Marijuana (A letter to the editor of Foster's Daily Democrat, in Dover, New Hampshire, from a woman with glaucoma, responds to some questionable comments about marijuana and glaucoma by Dr. Dora Ann Mills, director of Maine's Health Bureau.)
• Hunt For Cannabis Cure (The Daily Mail, in Britain, says two separate research initiatives this year will try to establish if cannabis has medicinal properties. The one carried out by a private company, GW Pharmaceuticals, will involve an "aerosol mixture of pure cannabis." The second, organised by the Royal Pharmaceutical Society, will examine whether the active ingredients in cannabis can be extracted and formulated into a new medication somebody can make a lot of money off of.)
• These Women Could Be The First To Take Cannabis Legally - But Should They Be Allowed? (The Daily Mail interviews several British patients and "pillars of the community" who currently break the law by using marijuana as medicine. Each could be among the first Britons who will inhale cannabis legally as part of a unique and controversial new study trying to establish if the herb has medicinal effects. Why the women would break the law now in order to purchase cannabis from street dealers if it didn't alleviate excruciating pain and muscle spasms isn't explained.)
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  Wednesday, January 20, 1999:

• Program Pays Students To Snitch On Classmates (An Associated Press article in the Columbian, in Vancouver, Washington, notes the mayor of Portland, Oregon, Vera Katz, unveiled the Campus Crime Stopper program Tuesday, which will pay students up to $1,000 to snitch on classmates who tote weapons, drink alcohol or use "drugs" around school. The mayor said the program would be launched in three school districts around Portland.)
• Crime Stoppers wants students to report weapons, drug use (The Oregonian version says the teen-age snitch idea was originated by a police officer at a high school in Boulder, Colorado. Similar programs already exist in Salem, Oregon; Charleston, South Carolina; Thousand Oaks, a suburb of Los Angeles; Indianapolis, Canada and Britain.)
• Burned-out landowner might sell to county (The Oregonian says Multnomah County wants the property in North Portland owned by Larry Anderson. The county raided his home, charged him with methamphetamine trafficking - later reduced to possession - shot his four dogs, and destroyed his business. Then a mysterious fire broke out and burned his house down. Anderson doesn't think he has much choice now but to accept the county's offer for his land. David Crowther, a Portland prohibition agent, was fatally shot there in 1979 during an illegal drug raid that led to the resignation of three detectives who had lied to obtain their search warrant.)
• NewsBuzz: Volunteering Information (Willamette Week says Louie Lira, a volunteer with the Portland Police Bureau's Crisis Response Team and an employee of the Youth Gang Outreach program, is suspected by the FBI of using his police-issued scanner to facilitate a Nov. 4 bank robbery.)
• Mad Season bass player Baker dies of overdose (The Seattle Times doesn't say whether Seattle musician John Baker Saunders, who went by the single name Baker while in Mad Season, died from alcohol or whatever. According to the Consumers Union, it couldn't have been from heroin. Toxicology tests are pending.)
• Medical Cannabis Proponents Steve and Michele Kubby Jailed - Bail Set at $100,000 (Jeff Jones of the Oakland Cannabis Buyers' Cooperative forwards a message from the son of Steve Kubby, who runs one of the most important sites on the web about medical marijuana and was the Libertarian candidate for California governor in November's election. Busted for cultivating an unspecified number of plants by the South Lake Tahoe Drug Task Force, Kubby was made to stand with just a shirt on in the middle of a snowstorm and then punished in jail because he was too sick to fill out the intake form - and could suffer a stroke at any time while denied medicine and medical attention.)
• Libertarian candidate for governor arrested (An account from best-selling author and federal medical-marijuana defendant Peter McWilliams says Steve Kubby has already experienced three hypertensive episodes in jail, and his blood pressure is dangerously high. A deputy district attorney at their home personally ordered the Kubbys arrested. Police and sheriff's deputies also seized the Kubbys' computers, which are their source of income. Steve overheard his arresting officers say, "That 215 doesn't apply here. Maybe it'll work in San Francisco, but not out here.")
• Libertarian Candidate For Governor Arrested In Marijuana Investigation (The Associated Press version says prohibition agents in Tahoe City, California, found "some 300" marijuana plants in the home of Steve Kubby, who uses cannabis as part of his treatment for cancer and hypertension, and his wife - who also has a doctor's recommendation to use cannabis. The couple's attorney said the marijuana was being legally grown and that the amount of bail - $100,000 - was "insane.")
• '98 Gubernatorial Candidate, Wife Jailed In Placer County, Calif. (The U.S. Newswire version notes Kubby was instrumental in the passage of Proposition 215. What happens when you don't win an election for Governor in California? Like in many third world nations, you go directly to jail without passing Go.)
• News From The Libertarian Party Of California (The state party that solicited Steve Kubby to run as its candidate for governor denounces the medical marijuana patient's arrest on cultivation charges and challenges Attorney General Bill Lockyer to live up to his pledge to implement Proposition 215.)
• Supreme Court Refuses To Hear 3-Strikes Case (The San Francisco Chronicle says the U.S. Supreme Court left California's three-strikes law intact yesterday, refusing to hear the appeal of a man sentenced to 25 years to life for stealing a bottle of vitamins from an Albertson's grocery store that the sentence amounted to cruel and unusual punishment.)
• High Court Rejects '3 Strikes' Appeal (The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette version)
• Despite Concern, Court Lets 'Third Strike' Stand (The version in the News & Observer, in Raleigh, North Carolina)
• Drug-crazed teen hurts self in rampage (The Arizona Daily Star says a 17-year-old Canyon Del Oro High School student seriously injured himself yesterday after running in front of a school bus. When paramedics arrived, they found the teen under the bus ripping out wires. The youth told a friend he was on acid, but Department of Public Safety Officer Jason Stevens said he suspects the teen may have been on PCP, or phencyclidine hydrochloride, an overdose of which can cause symptoms similar to an acute schizophrenic reaction, putting the person at a high risk for suicide or violence toward others.)
• Wild Shootout Leaves 1 Dead, 1 Wounded In Fort Worth (The Ft. Worth Star-Telegram, in Texas, says a convoluted feud over a drug debt alleged by one man who fled a car wreck, leaving another man holding his drugs to be arrested, led to an attempted slaughter yesterday and a sniper ambush on the would-be attackers.)
• Teacher charged on drug and weapons offenses opts to resign (The Associated Press says Alexander Horvath, 48, a high school science teacher in East Brunswick, New Jersey, who was initially suspended without pay after police said they found knives, illegal hollow-point bullets and marijuana in his van on Nov. 6, will use sick and personal days accumulated over his 26-year career to be paid until his retirement date of Oct. 1.)
• Olympic Medals Sought In Drug Cases (The Associated Press says the White House drug czar, General Barry McCaffrey, will try to have duplicate medals awarded to Olympic athletes known to have lost to competitors using illegal drugs, particularly swimmers beaten by East Germans in the 1976 and 1980 games. McCaffrey plans to pursue the matter at next month's world doping summit despite the IOC's recent rejection of at least two similar pleas.)
• Former Mountie Won't Do Time For Corruption (The Toronto Star says Jorge Leite, the former drug agent with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police convicted of corruption in Portugal for selling out the RCMP to the Cali drug cartel, walked out of court with a suspended sentence and a $1,500 fine. "I think if they [RCMP] had done a thorough investigation they would have found that everyone on that drug squad was corrupt," said Carlos Leite, Jorge's brother.)
• DrugSense Weekly, No. 82 (The lead article in the original summary of drug policy news from DrugSense is an Open letter to newly elected California AG Bill Lockyer, by Dr. Tom O'Connell. The Weekly News in Review features several articles about Policy, including - Drug prohibition and public health; US drug policy failing, report says; Drug use down, drug deaths up; A drug sniffing society; Medical marijuana - the six-state sweep. News about Law Enforcement & Prisons includes - Channel surfing: Snitches; Interview with Eric Sterling for "Snitch"; Federalizing crime, conservatives are expanding federal power; Federal drug fighters to open office in city. Articles about Drugs include - Sixties drug is in again; New marijuana strain boosts drug trade; Blue nitro worries poison experts. International News includes - UK: Doctors volunteer to test cannabis; Fighting rising drug abuse inside Mexico's borders; Kenya rivals Colombia in drug trafficking; Tajikistan, Rakhmonov to speak on drugs; Colombian death squads endangering peace talks. The weekly Hot Off The 'Net notes Steve Kubby has been arrested. The Quote of the Week cites Carl Sagan. The Fact of the Week documents that the U.S. incarceration rate rose from 313 per 100,000 in 1985 to 645 per 100,000 currently, three to 10 times higher than rates in modern democratic societies.)
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  Thursday, January 21, 1999:

• NORML Foundation Weekly News Release (Advocates Anticipate Reopening San Francisco Medical Marijuana Facility; State Marijuana Eradication Program Poses Environmental, Human Hazards, Residents Testify; American Farm Bureau Drops Opposition To Hemp)
• Bill would add restrictions to assisted-suicide law (The Associated Press says two at least Oregon legislators want to thwart the will of voters a third time, and have introduced separate bills intended to restrict Oregon's physician-assisted suicide law, the Death With Dignity Act. Senator Neil Bryant, a Republican from Bend, denied his bill was meant to nullify the law. The sponsor of the other bill isn't named.)
• Bill would tighten assisted-suicide restrictions (The Oregonian version)
• Ruling will halt use of civilians to oversee convicts on parole (The Oregonian says Multnomah County Circuit Judge David Gernant ruled Wednesday that the county just stop using civilian employees to supervise convicts on parole or probation. Multnomah County Employees Union Local 88 filed a lawsuit in February challenging the county's use of civilian "corrections technicians." The county currently has 133 parole and probation officers supervising nearly 11,000 convicts. The newspaper doesn't say so, but at least half of all related costs to taxpayers are attributable to the war on some drug users.)
• Report says temporary judgeships unconstitutional (The Associated Press says the Oregon constitution allows nonelected judges to serve "temporarily," but it stops short of setting a time frame. A Joint Committee on the Creation of New Judgeships appointed by the legislature has concluded that any pro-tem judge serving regularly for more than two years is not temporary. But there are 34 full-time pro-tem judges in Oregon who have been serving for more than two years, and are on the bench almost as often as the state's 163 elected circuit court judges. So the committee recommended that lawmakers spend about $4 million a year for 16 new judgeships. It's not clear if someone could appeal a sentence or decision by an illegal judge regarding a drug penalty, but assuming more than 50 percent of all cases involve illegal drugs, the remedy would mean the cost of Oregon's war on some drug users would increase more than $2 million.)
• Police Sergeants Off Hook In Ostrich Scheme (The Columbian, in Vancouver, Washington, says a Vancouver Police Department internal-affairs investigation has cleared Sgt. Rex Gunderson, still a patrol supervisor, and Sgt. Byron Harada, who died of cancer last October, of a scheme to defraud investors in their ostrich-egg "business.")
• Medicinal Marijuana Advocate, Wife Busted (The Sacramento Bee version of yesterday's news about the cultivation bust of the cancer patient and 1998 Libertarian candidate for California governor)
• Libertarian Candidate For Governor Arrested In Marijuana Investigation (The Associated Press version in the Oakland Tribune)
• Libertarian Candidate, His Wife Jailed After Raid (The San Jose Mercury News version)
• Medicinal Marijuana Advocate Arrested For Cultivation (The Tahoe Daily Tribune version)
• Candidate Arrested For Pot (The Tahoe World version)
• Former Calif. Governor Hopeful Held On Drug Charge (The Reuters version)
• Outrage In Law (A staff editorial in the Orange County Register says the arrest of the Libertarian candidate for governor is outrageous, and raises yet again the question of whether Proposition 215 will ever be implemented properly in California. It would be helpful to hear more from Attorney General Bill Lockyer, who could do much to ensure compassionate and uniform enforcement of the law. The refusal of the local sheriff's department to provide Mr. Kubby any marijuana while he is in jail is outrageous. But it highlights the need to develop guidelines for the implementation of Prop. 215, a responsibility the previous attorney general shirked.)
• DrugSense Focus Alert - Steve Kubby Arrested (DrugSense asks you to write a letter protesting the cultivation bust of the medical marijuana patient and 1998 Libertarian candidate for California governor.)
• Kubbys Released OR! (The Media Awareness Project breaks the news that medical marijuana patients Steve and Michele Kubby have been released from jail on their own recognizance following their cultivation bust in Tahoe City, California.)
• Poppy Plea (New Times, in California, says Arroyo Grande residents Tom Dunbar and Jo-D Harrison, raided last May by the Narcotics Task Force and busted for a legitimate medical marijuana grow and 200 poppy plants in the back yard, have accepted a plea bargain. Dunbar will plead "no contest" to possession of opium and Harrison will plead to possession of more than an ounce of marijuana, giving him a six-month jail sentence and her one year of informal probation. Rather than fight the charges, the couple decided to focus their energies on building a life together - they were married Jan. 1.)
• Hawaiian Officer Warns On Cannabis (The Dominion, in New Zealand, says Honolulu police officer Leighton Kaonohi, founder of the No Hope in Dope programme, has just returned to Hawaii after a two-week observation trip to New Zealand. He said New Zealand politicians appeared to be seriously considering loosening the law on cannabis use and possession, and police were half-hearted about enforcing the law. "I was appalled. In America, I know of no law enforcement agency that would ever succumb to legalisation in any form," he said. The high proportion of people of indigenous heritage in prisons - 80 per cent in Hawaii and 50 per cent in New Zealand - was a direct result of drug use, he said.)
• Will Foster's parole is denied! (A bulletin from NORML, in Washington, DC, says Oklahoma Governor Frank Keating has refused to free the medical marijuana prisoner originally sentenced to 93 years in prison.)
• HPD chief unveils plan to expand DARE programs (The Houston Chronicle says that five months after an independent study found the city's $3.7 million a year DARE program largely ineffective, Houston Police Chief C.O. Bradford on Wednesday announced plans to expand the drug awareness program so it reaches students in fourth grade and 10th grades, as well as parents.)
• Prisons Aren't Answer To Drug Problem (An op-ed in the Des Moines Register by an attorney in Cedar Rapids says roughly 60 percent of the inmates in Iowa prisons have been arrested for drug offenses. The drug war - with its billions of dollars spent, with its mandatory jail sentences, with its additional prisons - hasn't reduced demand one whit. The London Economist raised the question, "How long will the American people permit this bloody and useless war to continue?" The answer is - just as long as people fall for the propaganda that decriminalizing drugs will make zombies of us and just as long as they fall for the political propaganda that drug usage can be controlled or eliminated by force.)
• NYPD to begin seizing cars of people arrested for drunk driving (According to the Associated Press, New York City Police Commissioner Howard Safir said Thursday that police would implement a Zero Tolerance Drinking and Driving Initiative in the next month, under which anyone arrested for driving drunk will have their car forfeited.)
• Ex-trooper gets jail for cocaine theft (The Morning Call, in Allentown, Pennsylvania, says Charles F. Ondo, an undercover state trooper who stole 2-1/2 kilos from an evidence room in Bethlehem to feed his own addiction, was sentenced Wednesday to eight months in prison. According to the prosecutor, the sentence was more than a civilian with no criminal record in a similar situation may have gotten.)
• $6 million study to sniff out the appeal of coffee (The Associated Press says Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, is due to open its Institute for Coffee Studies in the next six months with $6 million from trade groups in top coffee-growing nations in South America. "We're going to help people get over the idea that coffee is caffeine," said Peter Martin, the director of Vanderbilt University's Addiction Center, who will head the institute. "Caffeine actually is a very small component of coffee. There are a lot of other components in coffee that are not very well understood." Some studies have suggested coffee can help relieve depression, treat alcoholism and prevent colorectal cancer. The institute's mission is to understand why.)
• ACLU of Florida Defends Man Who "Just Said No" to Workplace Urine Test (A news release from the American Civil Liberties Union describes a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of preemployment drug testing, filed on behalf of "Magic Man" Thomas Baron, an accountant who lost his job with the city of Hollywood, Florida.)
• Most Overdoses On Legal Drugs (The Age, in Australia, says statistics prepared for the newspaper by the Victorian Injury Surveillance System at Monash University Accident Research Centre, leading public hospitals, and the Metropolitan Ambulance Service, show that slightly more than 1 per cent of all hospital admissions, or about 10,000 patients a year, are being treated in Victoria for drug overdoses. Most overdoses involve prescription or legal drugs, including tranquillisers, anti-depressants and analgesics. Doctors said the number of victims suffering overdoses was higher than the hospital statistics indicated because hundreds of victims were not brought to hospitals.)
• Public Schools Accept Drug Culture (The Independent, in Britain, says a survey of 2,400 pupils in 20 schools, carried out by the Schools Health Education Unit, found that one in three 14-year-olds in leading public schools had tried "drugs" and one in ten was a regular user. The survey also showed that more than four out of ten sixth-formers have tried "drugs." The heads of the fee-paying schools who commissioned the survey are said to be "stunned" by the findings. A report from the Headmasters' and Headmistresses' Conference argues that illegal drug-taking "is no longer limited to a disaffected and rebellious few. It is part of the culture of teenagers." The report also suggests that schools should end the "zero option" of expelling pupils for all drug offences.)
• Weekly Action Report on Drug Policies, Year 5, No. 3 (A summary of European and international drug policy news, from CORA in Italy)
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