Pubdate: Wed, 02 Jun 2004 Source: Anderson Valley Advertiser (CA) Column: Cannabinotes Copyright: 2004 Anderson Valley Advertiser Contact: http://www.theava.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/2667 Author: Fred Gardner Note: Read Fred Gardner's columns at http://www.mapinc.org/author/Fred+Gardner Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/mmj.htm (Cannabis - Medicinal) Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/youth.htm (Youth) DIFFERENT WAR, ANALOGOUS LIE Last week the New York Times ran two apologies for its pro-war reporting on Iraq. One, by top editor Bill Keller, was sanctimonious and protective of writer Judith Miller, who should have been fired faster than you can say "Jayson Blair" for retailing false information about weapons of mass destruction. How long until we get an apology from the Times for beating the drums for the War on Drugs? The U.S. government's search for the harmfulness of marijuana has involved more personnel and more sophisticated technology and has cost many more billions of dollars than the search for Iraq's weapons of mass destruction -and has turned up just as little. The Times publishes WOD disinformation every day. It's ubiquitous, pervasive, a set of assumptions woven into the fabric of stories. For example, on May 31 the Times ran a 40+-inch feature story about a high school basketball star, JamesOn Curry, who sold marijuana to an undercover cop posing as a fellow student. Curry's scholarship offer to the University of North Carolina was withdrawn, but he got one from Oklahoma State. Sportswriter Ira Berkow wrings a tale of redemption from these facts. He leads with a detailed account (from the law-enforcement perspective) of Curry's arrest and prosecution: "On the February morning after he scored 47 points for Eastern Alamance High School, adding to his record as the highest-scoring prep basketball player in North Carolina state history, JamesOn Curry was called to the principal's office, where sheriff's deputies placed him and several other students in handcuffs and took them away. "Several months earlier, Curry, then 17 and the pride of Alamance County, was captured on videotape selling marijuana to an undercover police officer posing as a student in a vehicle in the school parking lot, according to the public information officer for the Alamance County sheriff. The officer carried a backpack that contained a hidden camera and a microphone. "The officer, who had also purchased marijuana from Curry in a school bathroom, was part of the county's five-month investigation and sting operation. The sweep netted 60 students in the 6 schools in the Alamance-Burlington district, including three of Curry's teammates, the district attorney said. Curry's take on the two drug deals was $95, the district attorney said. "When Curry pleaded guilty in April to six felony drug counts, Judge Kenneth C. Titus suspended his sentence, placed him on probation for 36 months and ordered him to perform 200 hours of community service." [This leniency was due to Curry's college prospects, i.e., hoops prowess; other kids did time.] The University of North Carolina had recruited Curry and gotten his parents to sign a letter of intent after his sophomore year in high school. Former "Tarheel" coach Matt Doherty told Curry that the commitment would be honored "as long as you don't rob a bank, or something." Explaining why North Carolina withdrew the offer, current coach Roy Williams says, "Well, he did rob a bank, or something." Berkow looks at things psychologically (A.J. Liebling's least favorite trait in a sportswriter), He describes Coach Williams's father, a drinker, as "a disruptive force during Williams's youth." He quotes Williams: "I've had a distant relationship with my father for most of my life. And I equate drugs like marijuana the way I do alcohol." Sic and double sic. Berkow quotes a high school teacher named John Moon who wants to "strangle" his former pupil. "Every day I think about all the warnings and advice JamesOn got about staying out of trouble," says the disappointed Moon, "and I wonder what more I could have done to prevent this." For openers, Mr. Moon, you could have protested the penetration of your school by runty narcs conducting "sting" operations which invariably involve entrapment. You and fellow faculty members could have organized to get the cops off campus and deal yourselves with any problems stemming from drug use by students. And if you felt so paternal towards JamesOn Curry ("If I had a son I would have wanted him to be JamesOn") you should have told him the facts about marijuana in a non-hysterical way and encouraged him to wait until his body and personality were more fully developed. Curry has been accepted at Oklahoma State. Berkow's angle is that OSU coach Eddie Sutton himself "was given a second chance" in life. "Sutton had previously coached at Kentucky, which was placed on probation for a recruiting violation under his watch" but OSU hired him. So Sutton got a second chance, and now he's a paragon of forgiveness, even allowing one so tainted as JamesOn Curry -a 6' 3" guard who happens to have broken records set by Michael Jordan-to play for Oklahoma State. The New York Times devoted two-thirds of a page (with photos of Curry and the two coaches) to a story that ostensibly described contrasting responses to a high school hoopster's pot bust. But the contrast was merely tactical; both Roy Williams and Eddie Sutton agree that Curry's crime was very grave indeed. A truly contrasting perspective could have been provided by a defense lawyer or supporter of Curry's who questioned the nature of the "sting," or whether the students should have gotten warnings before their humiliating arrest, or whether the punishment fit the crime. But Berkow of the Times didn't go there. By telling us that "the officer carried a backpack that contained a hidden camera and a microphone," etc., he implies that the "sting" was legit. They almost never are. To repeat: Eddie Sutton's "forgiveness" of JamesOn Curry is a non-story because it's so obviously in his self-interest. The real story involves the nature of Curry's crime: marijuana use. (Traffickers on his level are, as most district attorneys know, simply users trying to afford their own stash.) Many of the greatest and most durable players in the history of the National Basketball Association used marijuana. In 1999, according to NYT reporter Selena Roberts, some 70% of the players in the league were using. The implications are obvious -it's not a debilitating drug, for openers. But the Times's top brass pulled Roberts off THE story and never let her or anyone else go near it again. Rough analogy: Judith Miller is to Bill Keller as Lynndie England is to Don Rumsfeld. ----- "DRAGONFLY" RESISTS ORDER TO CLOSE "Effective June 1, 2004, the Dragonfly Alternative Healing Clinic is directed to cease operation," said the letter to owner Ken Estes from the City of Oakland, which arrived at the end of the day on Friday, May 27. A three-day week-end was coming up. Estes told his staff to tell all customers that the Dragonfly would remain open for business. When the staff opened the doors at 11 a.m. on Tuesday, June 1, there must have been 50 people waiting to get in. Estes, 46, in a wheelchair (he was in a motorcycle accident at 18 and is quadriplegic) expressed defiance: "If the Oakland police want to act like the federal government and start arresting people, they can start with me. My staff is ready to go to jail, too." The confrontation was created by the Oakland City Council when it voted in February to limit the number of cannabis dispensaries to four (no more than three downtown). Assistant City Manager Larry Carroll got the job of deciding which of the eight or nine extant clubs deserved legal recognition, based on "capacity, capitalization, complaint history and any other factorS necessary to the peace order and welfare of the public." In the end Carroll seems to have made longevity a key criit, taught others how to cultivate, established relationships with dispensaries or started their own in the boondocks. Bryan Epis deserves thanks, not imprisonment. And if ever there was a setting where cannabis use should be encouraged for harm-reduction purposes, it's Chico, site of a campus that perennial ranks among America's top "party schools." C-Notes has it on good authority that the local police are beginning to acknowledge that increased use of cannabis at Chico State has led to a reduction in alcohol-related problems. ----- OAKLAND DOUBLECROSSES ITSELF A week after an assistant city manager permitted four of eight or nine thriving downtown cannabis clubs to remain in business, the city manager herself has notified two of the winners -The Bulldog and the Third Floor-that they'll have to close or move because they're within 1,000 feet of a school. As recounted by Dale Gieringer of Cal-NORML: "When Bulldog manager Richard Lee went to pay [$20,000] for his license, he was informed that there had been a mistake, and that the city had decided to enforce a restriction banning clubs within 1000 feet of each other, but that Lee could get a license for his other club, SR71, on 17th street. The City Manager's office was unclear on its rationale for changing its policy, which was made without public consultation. "The City Manager's decision effectively cuts the heart out of Oaksterdam, which has been a thriving center for medical cannabis patients, with five clubs conveniently located within one block of the 19th Street BART station. Four of these are now to be closed with only one (CARE, at Telegraph and 19th) remaining open. "This decision makes no sense. Oaksterdam is the most BART-accessible center for medical marijuana patients in the Bay Area. Not only does it serve tens of thousands of patients, but it is a unique cultural and economic asset, attracting jobs, money and visitors to the community." C-Notes is living proof, having dropped about $200 at the Hat Guys, $150 at Best Music, and $150 at the Bibliophile over the years. And about $24 on jerk chicken at a Jamaican-Nigerian hole-in-the wall on TelegraphS Ishmael Reed's poignant book Blues City describes the tragic uprooting of the blues clubs on 7th Street by Oakland's elite. And here they go again.