With the General Accounting Office (GAO) declaring that White House ads touting the benefits of the new Medicare law stray into a gray area of political advocacy, another, less noticed GAO opinion states that an election-year, anti-medical-marijuana initiative by the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) was perfectly legal. In the run-up to the November 2002 elections, with medical marijuana initiatives on the ballot in several states, ONDCP Deputy Director Scott Burns wrote to local prosecutors stressing their role in "fighting the normalization of marijuana." [continues 247 words]
Comments Made Before the U.S. House of Representatives Feb. 12, 2004 Mr. Speaker, the publicity surrounding popular radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh's legal troubles relating to his use of the pain killer OxyContin hopefully will focus public attention on how the federal drug war threatens the effective treatment of chronic pain. Prosecutors have seized Mr. Limbaugh's medical records to investigate whether he violated federal drug laws. The fact that Mr. Limbaugh is a high profile, controversial, conservative media personality has given rise to speculation that the prosecution is politically motivated. Adding to this suspicion is the fact that individual pain patients are rarely prosecuted in this type of case. [continues 722 words]
Read This Publication On-line at: http://www.drugsense.org/dsw/2004/ds04.n338.html TABLE OF CONTENTS: * This Just In (1) Roadside Drugs Tests 'Could Be Flawed' Say Researchers (2) Selling Pot At Pharmacies Considered (3) Peru's Coca Growers Demand Help (4) Groups Sue For Marijuana Ads On Metro * Weekly News in Review Drug Policy (5) U.S. Is Working to Make Painkillers Harder to Obtain (6) Legal Marijuana Campaign Restarts (7) Battle Is Brewing Over Property-Seizure Proposal (8) Lee Principal Resigns After Cocaine Arrest [continues 557 words]
1) Ashcroft Busts Chong: In February, U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft gleefully announced that his drug warriors busted 50 individuals, including pot-comedy icon Tommy Chong, as part of a Justice Department-led undercover drug paraphernalia trafficking operation code-named Operation Pipe Dreams. It seems that although Chong's Internet-based hand-blown-glass bong company had refused several previous attempts by Ashcroft's crusaders to have a bong shipped to paraphernalia-intolerant Pennsylvania, someone at company HQ inadvertently shipped an autographed bong to an assistant U.S. attorney. Chong was sentenced to nine months in federal prison. [continues 512 words]
Celebrating the People Who Have Made the World Groovier and Groovier Since 1968 "Things are a lot groovier now," declared former reason Editor-in-Chief Robert W. Poole back in 1988, on the occasion of reason's 20th anniversary. During the magazine's first two decades, he pointed out, all sorts of political and cultural changes had occurred, most of them unambiguously for the better. The Vietnam War was history, stagflation had been vanquished, and technology that enabled everything from cleaner, more fuel-efficient cars to automated teller machines to videocassette recorders had vastly improved everyday life. As important, "numerous personal freedoms we take for granted were very tenuous in 1968." By 1988, the women's movement had revolutionized the home and workplace, gays were out of the closet for good, and the acceptance of other alternative lifestyles and generally rising standards of living had created a far looser, more liberated society. [continues 2942 words]
Recently I underwent minor knee surgery. For the post-operative pain I was given Oxycontin, a powerful narcotic related to morphine. Oxycontin has been on the prescription drug market for about seven years. Soon after its introduction, it became a popular recreational drug in rural America, so much so that it acquired the moniker "hillbilly heroin." The drug has apparently moved upmarket, as evidenced by the news that the teenage son of rock musician and television star Ozzy Osbourne has become addicted to the substance. Oxycontin is both quite addictive and potentially dangerous: It's estimated that in the past couple of years several hundred people have suffered fatal overdoses from the drug. [continues 501 words]
Recently I underwent minor knee surgery. For the post-operative pain, I was given Oxycontin, a powerful narcotic related to morphine. Oxycontin has been on the prescription drug market for about seven years. Soon after its introduction, it became a popular recreational drug in rural America, so much so that it acquired the moniker "hillbilly heroin." The drug has apparently moved upmarket, as evidenced by the news that the teenage son of rock musician and television star Ozzy Osbourne has become addicted to the substance. Oxycontin is both quite addictive and potentially dangerous: It's estimated that in the past couple of years, several hundred people have suffered fatal overdoses from the drug. [continues 501 words]
America's New Patriot Act and Patriot II Trash the Constitution and Brand Political Dissent As Terrorism. America's war on Iraq, and now possibly Syria, has drawn public and media attention away from the burgeoning state security apparatus focused on US domestic matters. Those who think they know better than the rest of us have set their sights on dissidents of all stripes, including afficionados of a certain plant. No matter the Marine Corps Semper Fi inked on your bicep, to indulge in a bowl on your back porch brands you a dissident. In the broadest sense under the post-9/11 regime, just about any crime is terrorism. If it's been on TV it must be true: Drug use equals terrorism. Or so the White House has instructed the citizenry to the tune of $150 million and more a year. [continues 3315 words]
Recently I underwent minor knee surgery. For the post-operative pain I was given Oxycontin, a powerful narcotic related to morphine. Oxycontin has been on the prescription drug market for about seven years. Soon after its introduction, it became a popular recreational drug in rural America, so much so that it acquired the moniker "hillbilly heroin." The drug has apparently moved upmarket, as evidenced by the news that the teen-age son of rock musician and television star Ozzy Osbourne has become addicted to the substance. [continues 546 words]
Scripps Howard News Service (SH) - Recently I underwent minor knee surgery. For the post-operative pain I was given Oxycontin, a powerful narcotic related to morphine. Oxycontin has been on the prescription drug market for about seven years. Soon after its introduction, it became a popular recreational drug in rural America, so much so that it acquired the moniker "hillbilly heroin." The drug has apparently moved upmarket, as evidenced by the news that the teenage son of rock musician and television star Ozzy Osbourne has become addicted to the substance. Oxycontin is both quite addictive and potentially dangerous: It's estimated that in the past couple of years several hundred people have suffered fatal overdoses from the drug. [continues 511 words]
Las Vegas - Supported by a teetering prosthetic leg held together with brown mailing tape, John Stargel went to Nevada's Bureau of Vocational Rehabilitation seeking job training. But the 53-year-old former construction worker was refused assistance after he noted to his case worker that he is a legal smoker of medicinal marijuana, which voters here approved in 2000. "So one state agency approves my medicine, and another says that if I take my medicine, I can't get any help. Wow," said Mr. Stargel, whose doctor authorized his marijuana use to offset his chronic pain. [continues 1914 words]
Ventura couple gets burned in crossfire between state and federal medical marijuana laws Lynn and Judy Osburn were preparing for a day of working with their horses on September 28, 2001, when they heard the deep thump of a helicopter suddenly shattering the silence of the Ozena Valley. A line of 15 unmarked SUVs and one Ventura County Sheriff's car pulled up to their horse gate as their four dogs exploded in furious barking and horses scattered through the sage scrub in a panic. [continues 1526 words]
Lynn and Judy Osburn were preparing for a day of working with their horses on September 28, 2001, when they heard the deep thump of a helicopter suddenly shattering the silence of the Ozena Valley. Sitting in the kitchen of their two-story wood and stucco house, set back from the only road a quarter-mile or so in a little copse of pinyon pines deep in the Los Padres National Forest, their hearts sank. A line of 15 unmarked SUVs and one Ventura County Sheriff's car pulled up to their horse gate. As the caravan roared up the gravel drive, their four dogs exploded in furious barking and horses scattered through the sage scrub in a panic. [continues 3898 words]
Letter-writer Robert Cooper seems to be having problems with reality himself in his letter of June 12, "Liberals never cease to amaze," in which he takes previous letter-writer Stan White to task for advocating the end of marijuana prohibition. Ending cannabis prohibition is something that has support from the entire political spectrum including prominent conservatives like William F. Buckley Jr., former secretary of state George Schulz, Nobel-winning economist Milton Friedman and the libertarian CATO Institute, to name a few. [continues 128 words]
Read This Publication On-line at: http://www.drugsense.org/dsw/2003/ds03.n304.html * This Just In (1) Study: Teen Anti-drug Ads Make An Impact (2) Antidrug Flights To Resume In Peru (3) Teen Has Drug Sentence Cut From 26 Years To One Year (4) Pot Guru Predicts The Cure For Reefer Madness * Weekly News in Review Drug Policy (5) DEA Uses RAVE Act Threats to Block Montana NORML/SSDP Benefit (6) Drug Czar Stymied (7) City Loses Exclusion Zone Fight (8) Defense of MBTA's Ad Policy Is Costly [continues 170 words]
WASHINGTON Proponents of looser marijuana laws got a number of reasons to celebrate in recent weeks. Maryland drastically reduced the penalty for anyone caught using marijuana as medicine. A few days later, the Canadian government proposed a law that would turn possession of a small amount of pot from a crime into an offense akin to a traffic violation. It's all good news for the handful of American lawmakers who favor liberalized drug laws among them Texas Rep. Ron Paul, R-Surfside, a physician and former Libertarian presidential candidate. [continues 723 words]
The drug warriors are nervous, very nervous. Last month, Maryland's Republican governor signed legislation reducing the maximum punishment for anyone caught using marijuana as medicine to a $100 fine. Eight states are even more lenient, having legalized medical marijuana; and Canada is expected to soon decriminalize possession of small amounts of the drug. With all this going on, the office of the nation's drug czar is getting more desperate to keep the marijuana genie in the bottle. According to the Office of National Drug Control Policy, marijuana is a greater menace than any other illicit substance. A hysterical letter from ONDCP sent in November to every local prosecutor in the nation declared that "no drug matches the threat posed by marijuana" and continued with claims that "marijuana and violence are linked" and "marijuana is not a medicine, and no credible research suggests that it is." [continues 674 words]
House Republicans anticipated smooth sailing for legislation to reauthorize the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP), including its controversial antidrug media campaign. But Democrats rebelled in late May over provisions that would have allowed drug czar John Walters to use the publicly funded advertising as he saw fit to oppose state ballot initiatives or even specific candidates. The ads, mostly on television, have stirred controversy since Walters took over and began running strident drugs-equal-terrorism spots that declare that personal use of marijuana supports terrorism. [continues 924 words]
The drug warriors are nervous, very nervous. Last month, Maryland's Republican governor signed legislation reducing the maximum punishment for anyone caught using marijuana as medicine to a $100 fine. Eight states are even more lenient, having legalized medical marijuana; and Canada is expected to soon decriminalize possession of small amounts of the drug. With all this going on, the office of the nation's drug czar is getting more desperate to keep the marijuana genie in the bottle. The Office of National Drug Control Policy has resorted to extreme claims, suggesting in past television ads that smoking marijuana promotes terrorism, or will make you shoot your friend. In one ad that ran last year, two male teens are smoking pot in a comfortable den when one picks up a gun he thinks is unloaded and accidentally shoots his buddy. The text at the end says, "Marijuana can distort your sense of reality." [continues 814 words]
