Attorney General Gary King generated front page headlines all over New Mexico with his advice that the feds might arrest and prosecute Health Department employees that distribute medical marijuana. "The production and distribution of marijuana is still a crime at the federal level ... and that is something that state laws can't change," said Tom Riley, spokesman for the Office of National Drug Control Policy. How wise is it to maintain the status quo that has wasted tens of billions of tax dollars during each of the last 37 years? Fiscal responsibility is often not compatible with government actions, but to spend a trillion dollars in about 40 years on a policy that was a failure before it was even implemented with nothing positive (but plenty of negatives) to show in return for the money is criminal. [continues 441 words]
(1) COUPLE FOUND GUILTY IN POT CASE Pubdate: Fri, 17 Aug 2007 Source: Sacramento Bee (CA) Copyright: 2007 The Sacramento Bee Author: Denny Walsh, Bee Staff Writer El Dorado Doctor and Husband Insist Their Plants Are Medicinal. An El Dorado County couple who insist they treat marijuana only as a medicine, but who ran afoul of the federal government's zero tolerance for the drug, were found guilty Thursday by a Sacramento jury of conspiring to grow and distribute marijuana. It took the jury less than three hours on the 10th day of trial to convict Marion P. "Mollie" Fry, a physician, and her attorney husband, Dale C. Schafer, of a conspiracy to distribute and grow at least 100 plants. [continues 6591 words]
Pay $1,200 for a Water Pipe? Are You High? The glass glows dull red, like a campfire ember, above the gas torch. The young artist, sitting on a stool in front of a wooden bench with a metal top, works with confident, quick motions, creating a tube by fusing white glass sticks together around a one-inch-thick cylinder of graphite. James Lynch, 27, has an average build, short, light-brown hair and a goatee. He's wearing Birkenstocks, a black T-shirt, shorts, and sporty-looking didymium shades that mute the searing orange and blue light of the torch. He soon moves on to a spherical glass shape, holding it over the flame by pencil-thin rods of glass, his fingers inches away from potential third-degree burns. Gloves wouldn't allow him the kind of control he needs. [continues 5179 words]
Workplace Drug Tests Showed A Big Decline In Cocaine Use Across The Country And Especially In South Florida. Cocaine use in South Florida's workforce has experienced a sharp decline this year compared to 2006, mirroring a national trend that shows the drug's use at a 10-year low, a leading U.S. testing firm reports. "The Miami-Fort Lauderdale area saw a dramatic decline of approximately 18.1 percent in cocaine positivity rates among workers," said Barry Sample, the director of science and technology for employee testing at Quest Diagnostics. "This drop may suggest that employees in the area either are choosing not to use cocaine or lack access to the drug." [continues 464 words]
Medical Approval in New Mexico Doesn't Make Pot Less Illegal to Feds The state Department of Health and its employees could face federal prosecution for implementing New Mexico's new medical-marijuana law, the attorney general has cautioned. And they wouldn't get any help from the attorney general: That office isn't authorized to defend state workers in criminal cases, according to a letter released Thursday. New Mexico as of July 1 has a medical-marijuana program run by the state Department of Health that not only legalizes the use of marijuana by certain patients but provides for state-licensed production and distribution of the drug. [continues 428 words]
WASHINGTON - The United States released a strategy Thursday in its efforts to fight the widespread poppy production in Afghanistan that's fuelling the Taliban and frustrating efforts to quell violence. The program will increase rewards for cutting out crops of poppies, the source of opium and related drugs, and planting alternatives. Those who don' t will face stiffer penalties. "We know that opium, maybe second only to terror, is a huge threat to the future of Afghanistan," said anti-drug czar John Walters, who heads the Office of National Drug Control Policy. [continues 363 words]
He's Looking for a Pardon. Marc Emery agrees his campaign-organizing effort for some 2008 U.S. presidential candidates is a bit unorthodox. He's Canadian, his political base of operations is the B.C. Marijuana Party in Vancouver, and he can be arrested if he sets foot into America. Still, "We have a saying up here: 'American politics is far too important to leave to the Americans,'" says Emery, 49, who is trying to raise cross-border support for dark-horse White House candidates. He likes liberal Democrat Dennis Kucinich well enough, but prefers Republican Ron Paul, a longtime libertarian who, like Emery, opposes the U.S. war on drugs. [continues 1000 words]
Recently, more than 200 federal, state and local law enforcement officers launched a huge marijuana-eradication effort in the mountains of Shasta County. The strike, dubbed Operation Alesia, was so big that even President Bush's drug czar, John Walters, flew out to Redding on July 12 to kick it off. "America's public lands are under attack," Walters said, charging that heavily armed Mexican drug cartels had turned the national forests into "ground zero for drug cultivation. These violent drug traffickers are endangering America's outdoor enthusiasts and sportsmen, and the sensitive ecosystems of our wilderness." [continues 362 words]
John Walters, President Bush's "drug czar," is using the tragedy of young people dying from use of "cheese" heroine to promote his current favorite program: random, suspicionless drug testing of all students. (See Thursday news story "Drug czar praises testing by Texas school districts.") Walters' grants will redirect $1.67 million in Department of Education funds to test kits, test administrators and laboratories. Students must miss class time to be tested. Schools risk being sued in case of error. The largest study of student drug testing ever done -- 76,000 students -- was conducted by the University of Michigan's Institute for Social Research. It found no difference in illegal drug use between students in schools that test and those in schools that do not. [continues 68 words]
DALLAS -- Fernando Cortez Sr. hopes that increased national awareness about "cheese" heroin will prevent other parents from experiencing the loss he did. His son, 15-year-old Fernando Cortez Jr., died March 31 after he took the drug -- a mixture of black tar heroin and crushed over-the-counter medicine such as Tylenol PM. "These issues need to be addressed," Cortez said, "to help moms and dads so they don't go through what I went through." John Walters, President Bush's "drug czar," was in Dallas on Wednesday to draw attention to the importance of random drug testing in schools and to award some grants. [continues 269 words]
Federal Official Visits Area, Meets With Local Task Force President Bush's drug czar praised Dallas leaders Wednesday for fighting "cheese" heroin use among youths - a move he said is vital to preventing its spread to other parts of the country. "That's one of the reasons we're trying to watch this closely," John Walters, director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, said during a news conference Wednesday at Dallas Independent School District headquarters. Mr. Walters spoke after receiving a briefing from the Cheese Heroin Task Force. DISD Superintendent Michael Hinojosa, Dallas County District Attorney Craig Watkins and some parents whose children died of cheese were among those who attended the briefing, which was closed to the public. [continues 431 words]
White House Official Hopes To Keep Cheap Heroin From Spreading WASHINGTON - President Bush's drug czar will get a front-line tour today of Dallas' battle with "cheese" heroin, a potentially lethal form of the drug often targeted at teenage users. John Walters, director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, will meet with representatives of the regional task force of local law enforcement, public health and education officials to learn more about a drug that has been linked to 23 student deaths since January 2005. Although cheese, a mix of black tar heroin and over-the-counter cold or sleeping pills, does not seem to be in use much beyond Dallas, the drug czar wants to find out what the federal government can do to help keep it from spreading. "He will get hopefully a first-hand and in-depth report and brief on exactly what this phenomenon, what this issue is about," said Scott Burns, deputy director for state, local and Indian affairs for the drug policy office. "Over the past six months to a year, we continue to hear more and more about cheese." Cheese has raised concerns among many anti-drug advocates because it is cheap - sometimes as little as $2 per dose - and is sometimes used in the recruitment of gang members. Plus, it poses risks of addiction for children who may not know they're buying heroin because of the innocuous name. Debbie Meripolski, executive director of the Greater Dallas Council on Alcohol and Drug Abuse, who has worked to arrange the briefing, said Mr. Walters will hear from her, Dallas police, educators and police from the Dallas Independent School District and a parent who has been involved in the area's efforts against cheese. [continues 522 words]
It sounded like a cool idea at the time, but were we ever really going to decriminalize marijuana? Is pot legal? The answer to that seems as cloudy as, well, you know. Responding to the complaint of a Toronto man charged with possession, the Ontario Court recently found Canada's marijuana laws to be without merit. "The government told the public not to worry about access to marijuana," said Judge Howard Borenstein. "They have a policy but not law.. In my view that is unconstitutional." [continues 1136 words]
[Re: "Lies, Damned Lies, and Marijuana," July 19] Mick Farren is to be commended for exposing the racist roots of marijuana prohibition. The original reefer madness myths have all been exposed as lies. Unfortunately, our government continues to lie about marijuana. Record numbers of U.S. citizens arrested for marijuana possession have been forced into treatment by the criminal justice system. The resulting distortion of treatment statistics is used by drug czar John Walters to make the claim that marijuana is "addictive." [continues 135 words]
By Pete Guither Four years ago today, I started this blog with the notion of maybe posting something once a week or so. 2,378 posts and 1.7 million page views later, I guess it's fair to say that this is an important part of me. Continues: http://blogs.salon.com/0002762/ A 37-year-old Kitchener, Ontario mother has been sentenced to 40 years in prison for transporting illegal drugs through the United States. [continues 326 words]
White House officials arranged for top officials at the Office of National Drug Control Policy to help as many as 18 vulnerable Republican congressmen by making appearances and sometimes announcing new federal grants in the lawmakers' districts in the months leading up to the November 2006 elections, a Democratic lawmaker said yesterday. Rep. Henry A. Waxman (Calif.), chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said documents obtained by his panel suggest that the appearances by the drug control officials were part of a larger White House effort to politicize the work of federal agencies that "may be more widespread than previously known." [continues 921 words]
WASHINGTON - A visit from the top White House drug official to Western North Carolina last year has raised questions in a congressional investigation into the politicization of the national drug policy office. John Walters, director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, met with GOP Reps. Patrick McHenry and Charles Taylor in their home districts in August. The meetings, each with local sheriffs, were held behind closed doors but highlighted in local newspapers at the time. According to a memo and e-mail messages obtained by a House of Representatives oversight committee, the visits appeared to be part of a larger plan to have officials from the Office of National Drug Control Policy visit districts of vulnerable GOP members of Congress. [continues 441 words]
Hype about "Operation Alesia" aside, the concentrated effort against backwoods marijuana growing in the north state is overdue, and Shasta County Sheriff Tom Bosenko deserves credit for organizing the campaign. Pot planters have hidden their gardens in California's forests for a generation or two, but the scale of the illegal operations has increased dramatically in the past decade and especially in the past couple of years. Following an old agricultural maxim -- "Get big or get out" -- growers have hidden networks of tens of thousands of plants out in our watersheds. In Shasta County, the Whiskeytown and Lake Shasta areas have become particularly popular. [continues 389 words]
Regarding Tom Fletcher's July 4 column: For non-violent offenders with chronic substance abuse problems, community courts are a cost-effective alternative to incarceration. I just hope Canada's community courts aren't misused for political purposes the way they are here in the U.S. Record numbers of U.S. citizens arrested for marijuana possession have been forced into treatment by the criminal justice system. The resulting distortion of treatment statistics is used by U.S. Drug Czar John Walters to make the claim that marijuana is "addictive." Zero tolerance drug laws do not distinguish between occasional use and chronic abuse. Canada should Just Say No to the American Inquisition. Robert Sharpe Policy Analyst Common Sense for Drug Policy Washington, DC [end]
Editor: Please consider publishing the following letter in response to Tom Fletcher's column (The Times, July 4). For non-violent offenders with chronic substance abuse problems, community courts are a cost-effective alternative to incarceration. I just hope Canada's community courts aren't misused for political purposes the way they are here in the United States. Record numbers of U.S. citizens arrested for marijuana possession have been forced into treatment by the criminal justice system. The resulting distortion of treatment statistics is used by U.S. Drug Czar John Walters to make the claim that marijuana is "addictive." [continues 122 words]
