Senate Keeps Plan For Phone Towers The Senate yesterday dropped plans to restore a proposed pay raise for D.C. Council members and remove a provision in the District's budget that would allow construction of two cellular telephone towers in Rock Creek Park. In approving the District's fiscal 2000 budget on a voice vote, senators said they would block council members' proposed 15.6 percent pay raise, instead permitting them raises of about 5 percent, to $84,000 a year. [continues 509 words]
She Says Officers Fail to Protect Her The 30-year-old mother was lounging in her apartment with her boyfriend when a story flashed on the television: three people found slain execution-style inside a Starbucks coffee shop near Georgetown. As the couple watched the story unfold that July Fourth weekend in 1997, the woman's boyfriend had his own story to tell. He knew who committed the grisly crime, he told her. And she knew the killer, too, he said. A mutual friend. [continues 1087 words]
A sudden spiritual awakening transformed Don Beckman from a troubled, hard-drinking lumberjack to a sober, grateful man of God. He studied the Bible and took his faith on the road as an evangelist. Along the way, Beckman discovered he had a special rapport with drug addicts, people with whom he thought he had nothing in common. This led Beckman and his wife, Carolyn, to Santa Barbara 30 years ago to open the Drug Abuse Preventive Center, a home for addicted men. The charity has endured its ups and downs -- an arson fire set by a resident in 1982 killed two men -- but the Beckmans continue their work, taking in about 15 addicts at a time. They've helped hundreds over the years. [continues 816 words]
Poor management and careless upkeep over several years has "needlessly endangered both staff and inmates" at Wasco State Prison, according to a scathing state audit released Friday. Those deficiencies caused two high-profile April incidents there: a seven-hour prison power outage and inmate procurement of confidential, personal staff information, it said. The auditors also offered scores of recommendations for shoring up security, infrastructure and staff training at the 8-year-old prison. The prison houses 6,000 inmates in minimum- and medium-custody facilities and at a reception center. [continues 593 words]
First it was trains, then planes, now it's automobiles. Under Government plans outlined yesterday, that last refuge of the smoker, the black taxi, is set to become a cigarette-free zone. Dodging accusations of "Nanny Blairism", Transport Minister Keith Hill announced proposals that would that result in fines or even jail for anyone who lights up inside a cab. A consultation document published by Mr Hill includes measures to make smoking in a taxi a criminal offence and to allow cabs to have special signs indicating "No smoking" alongside their "For Hire" signs. [continues 114 words]
Almost a year after they voted on whether marijuana should be legalized for medical use, District of Columbia residents finally were allowed last month to count the vote. Unfortunately, thanks to some members of Congress, the outcome--overwhelming approval--may not count for much. The voters had to wait a year for the vote-count because Congress, exercising its constitutional authority to govern the district, voted not to allow it. It passed a measure written by Rep. Bob Barr (R--Ga.) that deprived the district of money to conduct the count. And that threw the results into limbo. [continues 329 words]
"Are We Too High?" The cover of the latest issue of the American dance-culture publication Urb poses a question that's taking on an unfortunate resonance within the local rave community. The widely reported fatal overdose of a 21-year-old man at a party last weekend was the last thing the Toronto scene, already unnerved by two other apparently drug-related deaths linked to raves this summer, needed - not least because it has, once again, cranked the media's middle-class-panic machine into overdrive. [continues 716 words]
Washington - Attorney General Janet Reno wants to use state and local judges to help supervise released prisoners in community-wide plans designed to reduce the number who return to prison. "Too often, offenders leave prison and return to the community without supervision, without jobs, without houseing," she said on Thursday. "They quickly fall back into their old patterns of drug usage, gang activities and other crimes." Each year, 500,000 state prisoners are released and up to 22 percent have no continuing supervision through probation or parole. She wants to enlist state and local judges in overseeing such high-risk ex-prisoners. [continues 231 words]
The first U.S. detention center in Texas opened in Houston on Friday, with officials predicting it will be well used because federal courts in the state are experiencing a dramatic rise in prosecutions. Sean Marler, executive assistant to the warden, said the 1,118-bed, $35 million facility will address the growing need for facilities to house defendants awaiting trial or on trial in the Southern District of Texas. The U.S. Bureau of Prisons has always depended upon bed space leased from county facilities. [continues 161 words]
Boston's Antigang Tactics Considered With heroin use in Massachusetts running out of control, worried law enforcement and public health officials are turning to the techniques and strategies of the highly successful fight against youth violence in Boston in a search for solutions. The surge in heroin use was first recognized more than two years ago, but US Attorney Donald K. Stern said yesterday that law enforcement officials do not know what is causing the increase or how to curb it. What they do know, Stern said in a news conference at the Federal Courthouse in Boston, is that people are dying at an alarming rate. [continues 910 words]
On Aug. 9, U.S. Customs Service officials in Detroit made their move, seizing 18,000 kg – of Canadian birdseed. It was a simple case of zero tolerance. The seed came from industrial hemp, which – like marijuana – is a variety of the species Cannabis sativa. Although it is illegal to grow industrial hemp in most of the United States, it has always been legal to import it. On the other hand, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration will not allow any substance containing even trace amounts of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the psychoactive agent in marijuana, into the United States. So on the DEA's instructions, customs locked the birdseed up. Caught in the middle age farmers like Jean Laprise, president of Chatham, Ontario-based Kenex Ltd., the company that grew the hemp and sent it south. If the U.S. zero tolerance policy on industrial hemp continues, he says, the company's future is bleak. "I'll tell you right now," says Laprise, "that would break us." [continues 664 words]
My father died of cancer. The end of his life was quite painful, but he wanted to, and did, spend every last day that he could on this Earth with his loved ones. One major factor that contributed to his prolonged life was marijuana. Marijuana enabled him to fight off the nausea from the chemotherapy, making it easier to keep down his food. My dad was lucky that one of his physicians was compassionate enough to recommend marijuana in the first place-or he most likely would have died sooner. [continues 172 words]
TRAIL- Trail's crime prevention officer wants to see "drug-free zones" around J.L. Crowe Secondary and the city's new middle school next year. George Braithwaite told The Tab the special zones have been used in Kamloops for about three years. "The idea is to mark off two or three blocks around the schools as drug-free zones," said Braithwaite. "Police action starts when people are reported to special Student Crime Stoppers for possessing drugs or selling them in the specially-marked zones around the schools." [continues 402 words]
No need to ask Preston Manning if he's ever inhaled - he says he's never even touched the stuff. It was the first question fired at the visiting Reform leader yesterday during a question and answer session at Hillcrest high school. A young teenage girl demanded he explain what he intended to do "for the marijuana smokers of Ontario." "I would like to discourage marijuana smoking," Manning told 400 rowdy students to a huge round of boos. Although the kids didn't ask him if he'd ever smoked pot - U.S. President Bill Clinton claimed he did, but never inhaled - reporters pressed the Reform boss on it. [continues 158 words]
House Speaker Is In A Key Position To Bolster U.S. Assistance To Bogota WASHINGTON -- The arrests in Colombia this week of 31 suspected drug traffickers, including two believed by U.S. authorities to be among the most powerful in the world, underscore the attention American law enforcement officials are giving to Colombia as a leading supplier of heroin and cocaine to the U.S. The arrests by Colombian authorities, acting on indictments from a Miami federal grand jury, come as the South American nation seeks a major increase in U.S. aid to end a guerrilla insurgency by emphasizing links between the civil strife and rampant drug smuggling. [continues 1311 words]
