A CAMPAIGN to eradicate poppy farming for heroin in Afghanistan has been ineffective partly because President Hamid Karzai "has been unwilling to assert strong leadership", according to a leaked memo by US diplomats. A message sent earlier this month from the US embassy in Kabul, the Afghan capital, said that provincial officials and village elders had impeded destruction of significant poppy acreage and that top Afghan officials, including Mr Karzai, had done little to overcome that resistance. The claims were angrily denied by the Afghan leader, who claimed that the international community had not done enough to help his country. [continues 327 words]
Dear Editor: I moved up to Canada with my wife last September from the U. S. She is Canadian and I am American. I could not believe the Anti-American sentiment I have seen in the news and read in the paper. Everyone bashed George Bush (who I wholeheartedly support) and praised John Kerry. I am from Kerry's home state of Massachusetts and thank God every day he did not win the election. I think Kerry has the same poor leadership qualities as Paul Martin. [continues 244 words]
Saints preserve me, I never thought I'd live long enough to hear the special assistant to the director of the National Institute of Drug Abuse say, somewhat defensively, "Like any mass processing, it's not a perfect process. But the marijuana we provide and produce is almost entirely free of seeds and stems." Government Sez: We've Got Righteous Weed. The remarks by Steve Gust were in response to a complaint by users of government-produced medical marijuana (that would be the good kind of marijuana, the medical kind, rather than the felonious marijuana that leads to heroin, insanity and bank robberies) that the product they were receiving was "Mississippi ditch weed." [continues 524 words]
Seattle - Betty Hiatt's morning wake-up call comes with the purr and persistent kneading of the cat atop her bedspread. Hiatt blinks awake. It is 6 a.m., and Kato, an opinionated Siamese who Hiatt swears can tell time, wants to be fed. Reaching for a cane, the frail grandmother pads with uncertain steps to the tiny alcove kitchen in her two-room flat. Her feline alarm clock gets his grub, then Hiatt turns to her own needs. [continues 1609 words]
A federal budget squeeze could choke off the money behind school programs that tackle issues such as violence, bullying, and alcohol and drug abuse. Dollars for the Safe and Drug Free Schools initiative could dry up in 2006 under President George Bush's proposed budget. The recommendation is drawing protests from Ohio education and social service officials, who say state and local dollars won't be available to continue the services. The president's spending plan eliminates $437 million now distributed nationally through Safe and Drug Free Schools, the backbone of school-based substance abuse prevention and intervention efforts. Ohio schools receive more than $13 million, while the Ohio Department of Alcohol and Drug Addiction Services gets about $3.2 million for youth programs. The money brings to life myriad programs that touch all of Ohio's 1.8 million students in some way, says Staci Kelts of the Ohio Department of Education. Kelts helps oversee Ohio's use of the dollars, which flow to every district in the state. [continues 329 words]
It's hard not to feel a sneaking sympathy for Tom Sizemore. An actor of moderate talents and bad habits, Tom is one of the hundreds of thousands of Californians obliged to take a daily drug test. In his case it's a condition of probation. Clean pee: stay free. For others, with no criminal record, the morning bottle is as routine as the metal detector and full-body wipedown at the airport. The amount of urine provided daily by the drug-tested of California would float the Queen Mary (currently at anchor in Long Beach). Schoolchildren are tested. So are transport employees, job applicants, athletes, cops, prisoners; indeed, any employee in a "drug-free workplace" that intends to protect itself against negligence suits. [continues 650 words]
Paranoid Growers, Outnumbered Cops, Guardsnakes: Dispatches From The Pot Belt THE OLD MAN'S STORY begins in a cabin in the deepest hills of Eastern Kentucky. "The state police," he says, emphasizing the pole, "come up the road on his four-wheeler. I could hear him coming from a long, long way. He comes up and I'm sitting on the porch and he says to me, 'Could I buy a glass of water?' He was so thirsty, said he was 'terrified' driving up these hollers, looking for pot." [continues 3134 words]
Up until the start of this year nobody had heard of pensioner Patricia Tabram. But her cannabis cooking skills have made her sought-after property. Jamie Diffley went to meet her. Getting hold of Patricia Tabram was no easy task. Ring her phone and an answering machine kicks in straight away. "This is grandma speaking," it begins before going on to give the number of her agent in London, the same literary agent that looks after legendary drug-dealer Howard Marks. [continues 1349 words]
President Bush doesn't admit to or make mistakes: Iraq war, refuses to take an oath to testify, past drug use. He feels as long as there is no tangible proof the public doesn't know, nor will it ever. Just refuse to answer questions. It is damaging to kids when they find their president hasn't been truthful about drug use. If you pretend you never did drugs, and people find out you did, you lose their trust and respect. Say whatever you want, but this isn't the way God calls us to act as Christians. [continues 131 words]
I was surprised, but hardly shocked, to hear that President Bush all but admitted to illicit drug use in a secretly taped conversation. I'm only disappointed by the sleazy way the disclosure was disclosed and by the president's reluctance to set the record straight. Like many of the rest of us parents, he says he doesn't want to talk about any of his alleged past drug use because he doesn't want other youngsters to try it. Unfortunately, experience shows, silence is a self-defeating way to discourage kids from drug use. [continues 721 words]
Nearly three dozen medical marijuana clubs operate in San Francisco, but city officials have yet to regulate them. That may change. This week, Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi requested a hearing to discuss issues and policies related to Proposition S, the 2002 voter-approved measure that directed the city to explore growing and distributing pot for medicinal uses. Specifically, Mirkarimi wants the hearing to focus on licensing medical marijuana clubs, regulating them through zoning restrictions and setting up consumer protection guidelines. Supervisor Bevan Dufty held a similar hearing in 2003 to look at the city's options. [continues 493 words]
I do not care if President Bush has smoked pot in the past. I do not care if he has used cocaine in the past. I do care, however, about what is happening to our country today. We are mired in an unjust war, the economy is ailing, and our president is spending his time trying to fix something that isn't broken. Bush may have had a reason to have the munchies in the past, but it is his cravings today we need to worry about. Jeff Goodman Phoenix [end]
Conversations Secretly Taped Say More About Culture Than About Him Revelations this past weekend that author Doug Wead secretly taped conversations with his close friend, President George W. Bush, for use in a book reveals less about the president that it does about Wead and our culture. Between street cameras, hidden spycams, cell-phone hackings and involuntary "outings" -- and now (again) "friends" who secretly tape-record friends -- privacy is long dead. And with it, perhaps, is the trust implicit and candor permitted in friendship. [continues 675 words]
MAYBE THE dubya stands for weed. Local cannabis advocates were buzzing yesterday about newly surfaced tapes that reveal a "hypocritical" George W. Bush admitting he tried pot. Medicinal marijuana users and recreational tokers alike were surprised by the president's admission, revealed on a recording secretly made by the appropriately named Doug Wead, a former aide to Bush's father, George Bush Sr. "I wouldn't answer the marijuana questions," Bush says on the tape. "You know why? Because I don't want some little kid doing what I tried." [continues 103 words]
NEW YORK - Private conversations with George Bush secretly taped by an old friend before he was elected president foreshadow some of his political strategies and appear to reveal that he acknowledged using marijuana, The New York Times reported Saturday. The conversations were recorded by Doug Wead, a former aide to George W. Bush's father, beginning in 1998, when Bush was weighing a presidential bid, until just before the Republican National Convention in 2000, the Times said in a story posted on its Web site. [continues 234 words]
A state government building is about the last place a marijuana user would go armed with a tin containing 300 joints. When you're one of seven federally sponsored medical marijuana patients, however, you can bring your marijuana anywhere you want. Irvin Rosenfeld, a 51-year-old stockbroker from Fort Lauderdale, Fla., testified before a state House committee Thursday on a measure that would allow a person with a debilitating medical condition to possess 2.5 ounces of usable marijuana. Immediately after the two-hour committee session in the Stratton Building, secretary of state police officers stopped Rosenfeld and asked to see the contents of his silver tin, which contained dozens of marijuana cigarettes and roughly 2 ounces of cannabis. Rosenfeld was ushered to a security office where his credentials were verified by his pharmacist and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. [continues 349 words]
President Bush Proposed an Almost-Unchanged Allocation of $550 Million As Continuation of Antidrug Plan Colombia. WASHINGTON - The Bush administration is proposing to keep military counter-drug aid to Colombia almost unchanged in the next fiscal year despite calls by some members of Congress to spend more on social programs, according to its budget request released Monday. Bush is asking Congress to allot $550 million to combat drugs in Colombia in fiscal 2006, with the military and police receiving more than $393 million -- about $10 million less than in fiscal 2005, a State Department official said. [continues 389 words]
DES MOINES - Two area senators are right in the middle of a proposal to legalize marijuana for medical reasons in Iowa. But they say the proposal may not even make it to a debate. Sens. David Miller, R-Fairfield, and Keith Kreiman, D-Bloomfield co-chair the Senate Judiciary Committee. The committee has 48 bills before it. One is Senate File 64, which seeks to legalize marijuana for specific medical use. The even split between Republicans and Democrats in the Senate means the parties share chairmanships. Both co-chairs must agree in order for a bill to come to committee debate. Miller said Wednesday that won't happen. [continues 840 words]
Whatever else changes during George Bush's second term, joyfully welcomed by eternal optimists yesterday, you can bet your life that the "war" on drugs will continue. You can also bet that, by no coincidence, the narcotics trade will go on growing. This undoubted fact tends not to appeal to politicians who believe that opposition to drugs is a policy second only to support for motherhood and apple pie. Drugs are "evil", after all. Yet if that's the case, pursuing a prohibition strategy that puts the trade into the hands of murderous criminals in every corner of the world scarcely sounds like virtue. [continues 602 words]
"Even after the CIA's inspector general issued his findings in 1998, the major newspapers could not muster the talent or the courage to explain those extraordinary government admissions to the American people. Nor did the big newspapers apologize for their unfair treatment of Gary Webb. Foreshadowing the media incompetence that would fail to challenge George W. Bush's case for war with Iraq five years later, the major news organizations effectively hid the CIA's confession from the American people. [continues 863 words]
