If any of you passed our copy of the article to others, please give them a link to the rather large entire article. Corrected copy in the MAP archives: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v02/n898/a05.html Original at the High Times website: http://www.hightimes.com/News/2002_05/norml.html Thank you. [end]
They ran out of beer early at the jammed, raucous, spit-and-baling-wire emergency party that closed this April's National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws annual conference in San Francisco. Thirsty guests found thirstful ways to compensate for the suds, and if you ignored the computers and filing cabinets, it was easy to forget you were violating fire codes at an ad hoc shindig at a hotshot law office. The wife and I decamped around midnight, not content with the five cases of water trucked in to replenish the sweat the crowd had been shaking on each other jitterbugging to a 40-piece (stationary) marching band. We landed in a little North Beach boite. At one point, my New Yorker was aghast to see a purse all by its lonesome on the floor by the jukebox. Voicing her alarm, she was told don't be silly, woman - this is San Francisco. [continues 8168 words]
The nation's harshest drug laws -- a legacy of New York Gov. Nelson Rockefeller -- are now entering their 30th year. Attempts at reforming New York State drug laws drags on while 19,000 people languish in prison. The law was intended to target big-time dealers -- and some of the incarcerated are indeed violent offenders. But up to 90 percent of them, estimates Rev. John H. Cole of the United Methodist church, are addicted, low-level street dealers, guilty only of selling small amounts of heroin or cocaine or crack. [continues 1653 words]
Rep. Mark Souder Deflects Blame For Withdrawing Loans From Students With Drug Convictions IN JANUARY, the Department of Education announced the bad news: More than 29,000 students were denied financial aid under a part of the Higher Education Act that refuses loans to students with drug convictions. The law has sparked one of the fastest-growing student movements, Students for Sensible Drug Policy, now present on more than 200 Campuses nationwide. For more than three years, SSDP has been waging a coordinated campaign for the law's repeal. Now, the congressman who wrote the troublesome legislation, Indiana Republican Mark Souder, is showing signs of weakness. He blames the Department of Education for "misinterpreting" the law. Souder maintains that he never intended it to affect people busted before they went to college; only students currently getting federal aid, he now says, must be clean. Souder is even threatening to drag education officials before Congress to explain their actions, after the Education Department declared that it lacks the authority to reinterpret the law. [continues 235 words]
Who Sent The Anthrax? Who Knows? The Feds Are Too Busy Cracking Down On Medical Marijuana And Physician-Assisted Suicides. AT A TIME when seventy-three percent of Americans support allowing doctors to recommend medical marijuana, the Drug Enforcement Administration is moving fast to shut down patient cooperatives in California. Only a month after ardent drug warrior Asa Hutchinson was confirmed as the agency's new chief, agents raided the office of a doctor and her lawyer husband in Cool, California, who focused their shared practice on advising medical-marijuana clients. More than 6,000 confidential patient records were seized. In Lockwood Valley, near Los Angeles, two dozen agents tore up hundreds of plants on a ranch that supplied the Los Angeles Cannabis Resource Center. In Octoher, hundreds of plants and thousands of patient files were removed, and bank accounts frozen, at the LACRC, a well-established club known for carefully selecting only very ill patients. [continues 1494 words]
A Florida Clear Channel radio station agreed to host a show on marijuana decriminalization. It's never made it on the air. Rick D. Day, the executive director of Texas NORML, the marijuana rights group, swears he had no intention of lighting up a joint on his new radio show at KTRA-AM in Dallas/Ft. Worth. So it presumably wasn't concern over any on-site combustibles that caused the Clear Channel Communications station to walk away from the contract it signed with him. [continues 1139 words]
Think General McCaffrey Is Wrong? Wait Till You Meet John Walters, Bush's Choice For Drug Czar. Last May, when President George W. Bush strolled into a Rose Garden ceremony to introduce John Walters, the man he had chosen to be his new drug czar, did anyone wonder why it had taken so long to announce a nominee for his unfilled Cabinet post? Walters was reportedly the first choice, and if one took the president's somewhat balanced statements on the Drug War at face value, Walters certainly seemed a surprising selection. After all, in January Bush had said, "I think a lot of people are coming to the realization that maybe long minimum sentences for first-time users may not be the best way to occupy jail space or heal people from their disease." DId the acknowledged problem drinker, who had spoken of prevention, treatment, and empathy during his presidential campaign, cringe just a bit as he present Walters, a bomb-'em-back-to-the Stone Age Drug War protege of William Bennett? [continues 1257 words]
American School Kids Are Being Subjected To "News" Programs That Contain Covert Government-Sponsored Anti-Drug Messages. Channel One, the company that beams TV news programs and commercials into thousands of schools in the U.S., has broadcast dozens of news segments that contained anti-drug messages in the past three years -- and received millions of dollars' worth of ad credits from the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy for doing so, Salon has learned. The arrangement, in which taxpayers' money was used to underwrite a covert anti-drug message shown to millions of schoolchildren in the guise of a supposedly objective news program, appeared to violate the ONDCP's publicly stated policy that news and editorial pieces would not be eligible for the ad credit program. [continues 5269 words]
Proposition 36, the California law ordaining treatment instead of jail for drug users, went into effect July 1. But will some counties just use it to slam people into jail if they fail a urine test? As ever, the devil is in the details. California's Proposition 36-designed to divert 36,000 small-time drug offenders a year from incarceration to treatment-was inaugurated July 1. But drug users might want to consider their locale along with what they put into their bodies. Control of how to implement the initiative the state's voters passed by a 61%-39% margin last November falls to local authorities, and each one of the state's 58 counties has a different plan-with some still emphasizing punishment over treatment. [continues 3652 words]
With no fanfare, the White House drug office pulls the plug on its controversial program to pay TV networks for putting anti-drug messages in popular shows. The White House program to financially reward television networks for anti-drug messages embedded in sitcoms and dramas was born in secrecy, achieved stunning midlife notoriety and now has been quietly terminated. The acting director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, Edward Jurith, signed a directive May 31 killing the program, first revealed by Salon in January 2000. [continues 1392 words]
It can't get worse. That's what many scientists, health advocates and drug war reformers thought while doing battle with hyperactive drug crusader General Barry McCaffrey, the head of the Office of National Drug Control Policy in the Clinton administration. McCaffrey took a fierce stance that helped produce skyrocketing arrests for drug possession, steady militarization of the drug battle and short shrift for treatment. The bellicose nature of the Clinton drug effort was sometimes difficult to understand, since the drug warrior image was a tad out of step with the overall tone of the Clinton-Gore administration. [continues 2954 words]
Will the Supreme Court's ostrich-like ruling shut down the medical marijuana movement? Monday's Supreme Court decision against medical marijuana made one thing crystal clear. At every level -- executive, legislative and judicial -- the U.S. government remains steadfast in its opposition to the demon weed. Even if it's being smoked by bald old ladies in wheelchairs. Law enforcement officials, advocates and analysts disagree about the possible impact of the court's 8-0 decision that a federal law classifying marijuana as an illegal drug makes no exception for ill patients. [continues 2246 words]
John Walters, a hard-line drug warrior, is the leading candidate to replace Barry McCaffrey. Advocates say he's a throwback to the bad old days of Bill Bennett. April 20, 2001 - John Walters, a hard-liner who was former drug czar William Bennett's deputy during the first Bush administration, has emerged as the leading candidate to become director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, according to a knowledgeable drug policy source. The source, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that three reliable sources, including one in the White House, told him on Thursday that Walters was likely to be chosen to head the drug office. The White House declined to comment on the report. [continues 465 words]
Two Missouri police officials quoted then governor John Ashcroft as having told them he'd "'look the other way'" should they ignore an upcoming Missouri State Supreme Court ruling that might direct asset forfeiture monies to be distributed to local school boards in accordance with the state constitution. The statements were made independently and at different times by both a sheriff in uniform and a police chief at a meeting at the office of then US Attorney for the Western District of Missouri, Jean Paul Bradshaw, a decade ago, according to Don Burger, then an official with the US Department of Justice. Representing Justice, Burger attended in his role as a community affairs specialist seeking to steer to Missouri schools and treatment programs some of the drug-bust money being illegally kept by police. [continues 1858 words]
Although His Arrest For Growing 60 Plants Could Have Landed Him In Federal Prison, Alex Ashcroft Was Tried In State Court And Avoided Jail -- Despite His Uncle's Crusade For Tougher Federal Drug Laws And Mandatory Prison Sentences The nephew of Attorney General-designate John Ashcroft received probation after a felony conviction in state court for growing 60 marijuana plants with intent to distribute the drug in 1992 -- a lenient sentence, given that the charges against him often trigger much tougher federal penalties and jail time. Ashcroft was the tough-on-drugs Missouri governor at the time. [continues 788 words]
A Panel Convened By Gov. Gary Johnson Calls For The Legalization Of Marijuana And A Shift In Focus From Penal Measures To Treatment For Drug Offenders. Jan. 5, 2001 - Maverick New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson, one of the most vocal Republican critics of the war on drugs, unveiled a series of proposals Thursday calling for the radical overhaul of the state's drug policies. The recommendations of a panel convened by the New Mexico governor call for the decriminalization of "personal use" marijuana and offer comprehensive policy prescriptions aimed at education, healthcare and the penal system that emphasize prevention and treatment instead of punitive measures. [continues 2281 words]
Referenced: The Salon special report (in two parts): http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v00/n043/a09.html http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v00.n046.a04.html Fighting 'Cheech & Chong' Medicine: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v00/n1059/a03.html Bookmarks: MAP's links to articles by: Daniel Forbes: http://www.mapinc.org/forbes.htm Barry McCaffrey: http://www.mapinc.org/mccaffrey.htm And to ONDCP Media Campaign items: http://www.mapinc.org/campaign.htm DAN FORBES DETAILS THE BREAKING OF THE ONDCP INCENTIVES STORY [continues 1231 words]
Did The White House Drug Office Go Too Far In Trying To Stop The Spread Of Medical Marijuana Initiatives? July 27, 2000 - NEW YORK -- When voters in California and Arizona passed ballot measures legalizing medicinal marijuana in November 1996, White House drug czar Gen. Barry R. McCaffrey mobilized his troops to combat the spread of what he had previously called "Cheech & Chong" medicine. McCaffrey quickly proposed that doctors who "recommend or prescribe" marijuana be stripped of their DEA registration -- that is, their ability to write prescriptions for controlled substances -- and be excluded from treating Medicare and Medicaid patients. But a group of California doctors and patient advocacy groups sued to enjoin those restrictions, and a federal judge agreed. [continues 3591 words]
Did The White House Drug Office Go Too Far in Trying To Stop the Spread of Medical Marijuana Initiatives? NEW YORK -- When voters in California and Arizona passed ballot measures legalizing medicinal marijuana in November 1996, White House drug czar Gen. Barry R. McCaffrey mobilized his troops to combat the spread of what he had previously called "Cheech & Chong" medicine. McCaffrey quickly proposed that doctors who "recommend or prescribe" marijuana be stripped of their DEA registration -- that is, their ability to write prescriptions for controlled substances -- and be excluded from treating Medicare and Medicaid patients. [continues 3629 words]
