SAN FRANCISCO - This should be an easy time for prosecutors to get reelected, what with crime dropping nationally as prisons bulge and the economy booms. Particularly in San Francisco, where a 33 percent drop in violent crime since 1995 beats the 26 percent decline in New York City as well as many other cities with tough-on-crime leadership. But nothing has ever come easy to Terence "Kayo" Hallinan, a pugnacious liberal who bills himself as "America's most progressive district attorney." [continues 730 words]
AN internal garda inquiry has been ordered into the circumstances surrounding garda dealings with a major Dublin drug dealer who was cleared of importing pounds 1m worth of heroin and ecstasy by the Dublin Circuit Criminal Court on Friday. Declan Griffin, a 29-year-old garda informant from Bunratty Road in Coolock, was cleared of the charges after a nine-day trial in which he alleged that Sgt Denis Palmer, his garda handler in 1995, had authorised him to bring the drugs into Ireland. Griffin told the court that gardai were to follow him to his drop-off contact, where the drugs would then be intercepted in the hands of the intended recipients. He said he had been authorised by Sgt Palmer, who was at Dublin Airport when Griffin was arrested by Customs officers, to bring the drugs into the country. Yesterday, Garda sources said that Commissioner Pat Byrne was ``extremely concerned'' that the jury did not accept the garda's version of what happened, and had ordered an immediate internal inquiry into the affair. [end]
AUSTIN -- The Texas Commission on Alcohol and Drug Abuse hopes some empty space can say a lot about the dangers of marijuana use. The agency announced a new billboard campaign last week aimed at young Texans. On one side of the billboard is a yellow memo that says, "We asked a group of pot smokers to come up with something clever for this billboard." An arrow on the memo points to the other side of the billboard, which is blank. "Through our school surveys, we've seen fewer teens who recognize the dangers of marijuana," said James Oberwetter, chairman of the commission. "We hope this media campaign encourages kids and their parents to talk about the harmful effects of marijuana." The billboards are up in San Antonio, Houston, Corpus Christi, El Paso, Laredo and the Waco, Temple and Killeen areas, officials said. Signs also are being placed in Austin. [end]
ALEXIA STEWART, one of two Britons freed after 19 months in an Indian jail on drugs charges, spoke yesterday of how she shared a 25ft by 15ft cell with 15 other women, including convicted murderers. At one end was a cage, where the most violent prisoners were confined. At the other was a shared lavatory - a hole in the ground. Thin and pale, Miss Stewart, 29, the daughter of an Oxford don, said she spent 20 out of every 24 hours in the dimly lit cell, keeping herself occupied by reading and doing embroidery. In the daily "fresh-air period", spent in a hot courtyard, she made brooms out of palm leaves and cleaned rice. [continues 430 words]
TALLAHASSEE - A bipartisan legislative task force on money laundering does not endorse additional funding as a solution. The Florida Department of Law Enforcement has assigned 16 special agents to fight money laundering in the Tampa Bay area, the financial center of Florida's Gulf Coast. But their focus on money laundering is secondary to narcotics and white collar crime. That may change soon, however, as money launderers in the southern end of the state scout for safer areas in which to cleanse the proceeds from drug transactions and fraud. [continues 1083 words]
BLANTYRE, Malawi (PANA) - The UN Development Programme and the UN Office for Drug Control and Crime Prevention, have launched a 516,950-US-dollar campaign against drug menace in Malawi. UNDP's press officer, Hazwell Kanjaye, said the fund aims at helping the country's current efforts at fighting drug use and trafficking. "The fund will also help develop legislation to build law enforcement capabilities in the fight," he told PANA. Malawi is increasingly being used as a conduit zone for cartels of South America en route to lucrative markets in South Africa or Asia. [continues 180 words]
Editor, Times-Dispatch: The Governor's plan to deal with drugs is very much like what the federal program has been since the '80s. Yet Virginia's chief executive says President Clinton has failed even though his administration has arrested more people than ever before. How will Jim Gilmore succeed with the same philosophy of trying to arrest and jail our way out of the drug problem? Mandatory sentencing laws have a history of passage during frenzied election-year campaigns. They were passed by Congress in the critical election years of 1984, 1986, and 1988. In the '50s the Boggs Act instituted mandatory sentences for drugs. That law was repealed within 20 years. The fact that it didn't stop drugs, but filled prisons with non-violent defendants, seems lost on Gilmore. [continues 168 words]
Border Agents Step Up Seizures WASHINGTON -- The guy looked pretty bulky. As he waited to walk from San Ysidro into Tijuana, border officials asked him a question southbound crossers are hearing more often these days: Anything to declare? Nope, he replied. So why did he look like the Michelin Man? Dubious customs agents found $107,000 in cash inside the lining of the man's clothes. Authorities believe the bills were proceeds of drug trafficking and that the 49-year-old Mexican was trying to smuggle the money into Mexico for drug lords based there. [continues 1158 words]
SAN LEANDRO (CA) -- Police dug up a hillside garden designed to grow an exotic African drug Thursday in what might be the first bust of its kind in Alameda County. The drug is a stimulant knows as khat (pronounced "cot") and is chewed or made into a tea that produces a high similar to amphetamine, said San Leandro police Lt. Ian Willis. Investigators dug up 533 khat plants from the back yard of a house at 1210 Estudillo Ave. The plants weighted 833 pounds and have an estimated value of $150, 000. Willis said. Several guns and $27, 000 in cash also were recovered. [continues 316 words]
The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). Largest and strongest rural-based rebel force, founded in 1964. Conducts attacks on political, economic, military and police targets. Many members persue criminal activities, carrying out hundreds of kidnappings for profit annually. Force has ties to narcotics traffickers, principally through the provision of armed protection for coca and poppy cultivation and narcotics production facilities. Up to 20,000 - 25,000 armed combatants and supporters, mostly in rural areas. The National Liberation Army. Cuban-inspired, anti U.S. guerrilla group formed in January 1965. Primarily rural based, although it has several urban fronts, particularly in the Magdalena Medio region. Entered peace talks with Colombian Civil Society in mid-1998. Responsible for oil pipeline bombings, extortion and this year's most dramatic mass kidnappings: a church group and an Avianca airplane. Approximately 3,000-5,000 armed combatants. [continues 144 words]
Media Intrusion Went Too Far, Says Commission Report New Westminster cops crossed the line when they clamped down on crack dealers along Columbia Street. A report Friday by the Police Complaints Commission faulted police handling of searches and media relations. Investigators found no evidence of any criminal wrongdoing. But two Royal City cops face possible disciplinary action for allowing TV cameras to film suspects during a search. The B.C. Civil Liberties Association filed the complaint after watching a CBC-TV item on the crackdown on street-level dealers last November. [continues 255 words]
Several of America's pre-eminent drug policy reform advocates will join Gov. Gary Johnson in Albuquerque on Tuesday to discuss alternatives to national drug policy. The forum, "Just say KNOW: KNOW the Facts, KNOW the Issues, KNOW the Alternatives" is scheduled for 7 to 10 p.m. at the Albuquerque Crowne Plaza Pyramid hotel. The free forum will be hosted by the New Mexico Drug Policy Foundation and will be open to the public. "This is an opportunity for the general public to get some accurate information about current federal drug policy," said Steve Bunch, the foundation's executive director. "One of the most important features of this forum is for the public to fully understand what Gov. Johnson has been talking about." [continues 355 words]
Re Canada shouldn't follow U.S. model (Opinion page, Oct. 19) by Ethan A. Nadelmann, in which he claims drug reform is both timely and necessary, not only in the U.S. but also in Canada. Nadelmann is not a preacher but a pragmatist. A trip to the library would confirm the truth that drug problems always have been, and always will be, with us. Nadelmann is not a moral reformer but a common sense reformer. Zero tolerance and the war on drugs is primarily a U.S. moral metaphor, driven as he so poignantly describes, "by vested pecuniary and institutional interests." [continues 185 words]
[image: Around 40 soldiers in combat gear marching toward a mountain - caption "On The Run: The United States is training Columbian soldiers, here on exercise near Bogota, to fight rebel forces. Republican leaders in the U.S. want Columbia's military to be strong so that the government has leverage in the peace talks with the rebels that began last week." ] Washington Bureau Chief Washington -- To many alarmed Republicans in Congress, the drug-funded insurgency in Columbia poses the twin evils of a potential leftist takeover combined with the scourge of narcotics spreading through the Americas. [continues 887 words]
Guidelines Should Help To Deal With Problem Drug-taking is, fortunately, rare in our schools, as are supplying or possessing drugs. As the new draft guidelines for teachers and others involved in managing drug misuse in schools point out, most pupils will go through their primary and secondary education without being involved in drugs. And many schools themselves will remain untainted by the scourge of drugs. But two high-profile incidents last year prompted Ministers to begin a process that resulted in the new proposed guidelines. The incidents were all the more shocking because they took place in primary schools. In one an 11-year-old boy unwittingly took heroin into school in his bag and in the other a seven-year-old took the same drug from his home and handed it to a teacher to prevent his mother causing herself further harm. [continues 365 words]
The U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency has flexed its 'zero tolerance' muscles in an effort to protect Americans from THC - the psychoactive component of marijuana - by halting a truckload of sterile, and, for all intents and purposes, THC-free hemp seeds on their way to a birdseed manufacturer in Baltimore. Seventeen tons of seed have been sitting in a metro Detroit warehouse since the shipment from Canada was seized in early August. Meanwhile, the Canadian and United States hemp industries are left to wonder what impact this action will have on their business. [continues 537 words]
The Health Minister, Mr John Thwaites, said yesterday the Government would decriminalise marijuana for personal use in small quantities. However, safe injecting houses and primary care facilities for drug users would be the Government's priority. "Our policy that we took to the election supports decriminalisation. However, it is not part of our priorities for immediate implementation," Mr Thwaites said. "We believe because of deaths from heroin overdose that the Government has to address that first." The Labor's drug policy has a strong harm minimisation and prevention focus. It comprises measures to prevent drug abuse at schools, preventing deaths from overdose including safe injecting trial, emphasising treatment and rehabilitation for users including decriminalising use and possession of small amounts of marijuana and improved policing of the drug trade. [continues 78 words]
A decision by Geelong Grammar to introduce drug tests for students suspected of using illicit drugs could contravene the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, a children's rights group has claimed. The National Children's and Youth Law Centre described the move as a "clear invasion on the privacy and personal liberties of students", citing articles 16 and 40 of the UN convention. "We now have a situation where the principal of the school can direct a student to undergo a urine test on the basis of a mere suspicion which is subjectively held," the centre director, Mr Louis Schetzer, said. [continues 301 words]
Thank you for focusing on the plight of Renee Boje ("Canada and US in Drug Debate," Oct. 19). Her story illustrates the US government's obsession with destroying anyone barely connected with challenges to marijuana policy. Renee Boje hurt no one. She presents no threat to any individual. Yet, she faces 10 years to life in prison along with extradition proceedings. Who benefits from such vindictiveness? Certainly not the US public, who will see hundreds of thousands of their tax dollars wasted if Renee is extradited, tried, and incarcerated. In return, the public gets nothing in the way of increased safety or security. [continues 81 words]
SO, the Pope has decided that the courageous Aussie nuns, determined to help try to stem the tide of lost heroin-soaked lives, should bog off and bury their heads in the sand when the subject comes up. Instead of even listening to what those good-hearted Sisters of Charity have to say about their selfless planned involvement in the NSW safe injecting room experiment, the Vatican simply ruled: No. Where's the spirit of charity, humanity, understanding and forgiveness in that? Er ... wot? [continues 51 words]
A drug addict, giving his name as Scott Flower, pulled up his shirt sleeve to show the needle tracks on his arm yesterday at St Canice's Parish Church, Kings Cross, and declared himself in favour of supervised shooting galleries. A heroin user for the past 11 years, he had "shot up" in all sorts of places, including places where he feared sitting down because of the risk of needlestick injury. He had seen fellow users die. Three days after the Vatican ruled against Catholic Church involvement in supervised "shooting galleries" for drug addicts, his life was as it was for hundreds of others in Kings Cross and elsewhere, feeding their addiction regardless of official arrangements. [continues 438 words]
Wesley Central Mission is expected to announce details tomorrow of the opening of a health centre for Melbourne heroin addicts, despite continuing public condemnation of the plan from inner city residents. The Wesley Central Mission superintendent, Mr Timothy Langley, said the centre, supposed to be a safe injecting room, is to open in response to two heroin deaths on church grounds this year. "Wesley Mission wants to complement the Premier's initiative by opening its own facility," Mr Langley said yesterday. [continues 108 words]
As the millennium draws nearer, we can't help but think about the upcoming election and the many propositions that come before the voters every year. Since 1996, Proposition 215, the proposition that permits marijuana use for medicinal purposes, has continued to benefit AIDS and cancer patients with no negative side effects reported. Unlike drugs and substances that are already legal, marijuana has never been the cause of death. The benefits of marijuana should be acknowledged. For example, it could save millions of dollars that are used each year to keep marijuana offenders incarcerated. It could be sold at prices similar to tobacco and taxed by the government. [continues 64 words]
Exchange Supporters Will Testify For Three Defendants In Fresno. Three times a week, Jane Boulger Austin wages war against AIDS - even if it means breaking the law. She sets up shop in public, sitting quietly under a tree, and efficiently doles out hundreds of clean hypodermic needles to drug addicts. In less than an hour, she can dispense more than 2,000 free syringes. She believes she is saving lives by slowing the spread of HIV and AIDS as well as hepatitis C. She could be cited and taken to court, like three of her peers, but it's a risk worth taking. [continues 503 words]
MEXICO CITY (AP) - A man described as a leader of one of Mexico's biggest drug organizations has been arrested, authorities announced Saturday. Juan Jose Quintero Payan, believed to be a member of the Juarez Cartel, was arrested Friday in Zapopan in the western state of Jalisco, said Mariano Herran Salvatti, Mexico's top anti-drug prosecutor. Quintero Payan, 57, was alone with a mistress at the time of his arrest, Herran said at a news conference. He was unarmed and no shots were fired. [continues 71 words]
Herald readers believe regulating the illicit drug trade would clean up crime, overdoses and addictions Ever since February 1993 when our youngest son, Peter, fell asleep after ingesting some street heroin, never to wake again, I have read everything I could about drugs and drug policy, and I don't think I have ever seen such a relentlessly stupid editorial on the subject as this one. Your argument for maintaining the prohibition of certain drugs appears to rest solely on your astoundingly naive belief that only illicit drugs are "mind-altering." If nicotine and alcohol were not mind altering, if they did not affect the way we feel, the way we perceive the world around us, who would ingest them? Try offering a pint of water to a golfer instead of beer at the nineteenth hole at your local golf course. [continues 80 words]
This editorial missed the point the think-tank was making about the drug war. Compare the drug war to Prohibition. Did Prohibition succeed in making liquor unavailable? No. Did Prohibition funnel money and power to the criminal underworld? Yes. Did Prohibition result in violence as gangs fought with police and themselves? Yes. Did Prohibition foster public corruption? Yes. Did Prohibition promote disrespect for the law? Yes. When prohibition was repealed, did the rate of alcoholism soar? No. Now compare that to the war on drugs. [continues 149 words]
An American woman's fight against extradition to the United States to face drug-conspiracy charges is highlighting the two countries' differing attitudes towards medical marijuana use. Renee Boje has claimed refugee status in Canada, claiming she's a political pawn in the U.S. government's war on drugs. The U.S. Justice Department is seeking Boje's extradition to Los Angeles to face charges of conspiracy to manufacture and possession of marijuana for the purposes of distribution. Boje, 30, was arrested in 1997 outside the Bel Air mansion of Todd McCormick, where police said she and another woman were seen watering and moving some of the 4,000 pot plants being cultivated there. Boje, a New York artist who says she was hired by McCormick to do illustrations for a book, has not admitted handling the plants. [continues 647 words]
Dupage Effort To Target Non-Violent Offenders Hardly a day goes by in a DuPage County criminal courtroom without a defense attorney telling a judge that drug use was the cause of his or her defendant's crime. When Illinois Atty. Gen. James Ryan was DuPage state's attorney, he called drug abuse "the most serious problem in DuPage County." Now, in an effort to stem crimes caused by the use of illegal drugs, a drug court, designed specifically for the habitual but non-violent offender, will begin operations in January in the Wheaton courthouse. [continues 672 words]
A pocket-size kit that allows drug users to test the purity of their purchases has gone on sale in Sydney. The EZI-Test kit is selling through at least one city shop for $12.95 and can be used to identify speed, ecstasy and the hallucinogen 2CB. Its availability has outraged anti-drugs campaigners, who say it offers little protection from illegal drugs and normalises drug use. But drug law reformers believe the kit may help reduce harm to drug users. [continues 289 words]
About three-quarters of Australians support decriminalising possession of small amounts of marijuana for personal use, a Newspoll has found. Life Education Australia executive director Terry Metherell said the poll, conducted last weekend, showed support for fines instead of criminal records in minor marijuana offences was strong across all age groups. It was strongest among people aged 25-34 (84 per cent) and weakest among those over 50 (66 per cent). "Married respondents or those with children or in full-or part-time work were more likely to favour the use of fines than respondents who were unmarried, without children or not in the workforce," Dr Metherell said. [continues 256 words]
SPRINGFIELD -- The Illinois State Police was delighted to see the latest results from the National Household Survey on Drug Abuse showing that youth drug use has decreased slightly over the past year. But I caution everyone--parents, teachers and other adults--not to become complacent with these results. Although the percentage of youth ages 12-17 having used drugs dropped from 11.4 to 9.9 percent, substance abuse is still a widespread problem. As children are now back in school, the number of situations increase where substance-abuse opportunities may present themselves. That is why substance-abuse prevention efforts must be sustained, even intensified, in order to continue producing tangible progress. [continues 143 words]
Your editorial suggests that the use of mind-altering substances is a crime in itself. Consider the legal drugs: caffeine is a toxic psychoactive substance available in coffee, tea, cola and chocolate. Acute alcohol intoxication actually has a more profound effect on the body than heroin and delirium tremens - from alcohol withdrawal - is potentially more dangerous than heroin withdrawal. If ingesting a mind-altering substance is a crime, than do you advocate building more jails to hold anyone who ever had a hangover and more juvenile detention centres for kids who drink too much of the real thing? Of course not! It would make more sense to educate them against substance abuse and offer treatment to those who victimize themselves. In any event, personal drug use is a health issue and it's nonsensical for us to use the justice system to punish unauthorized drug use; people who abuse medicine need medical help. [continues 112 words]
At $5,400, the 1995 shiny blue Volkswagen Golf seemed to be a steal, or so thought Helen Chappell and her son when they bought it this spring from the federal government. But two months later the engine quit. Suspecting a fuel problem, a mechanic at a Kansas City garage checked the gas tank -- where he found $82,000 in more than a dozen plastic bundles. The Chappells thought they had won the lottery. The federal government did not. U.S. Attorney Stephen Hill has filed a complaint in federal court, saying the money should go to the U.S. Department of Justice because the car and cash may have been used in illegal drug activity three years ago. [continues 1034 words]
ANGERED BY erratic Latin performance in the war against drugs, the American Congress on its own legislated tough economic penalties. The initiative may have bought some extra local effort in some Latin places. More likely, by provoking the nationalism of targeted Latin governments, it has weakened enforcement. That "certification" exempts the United States has had a particularly noxious effect, since Latins rightly regard the burning American demand for their illegal products as the engine driving the whole drug train. Which is how Latins, with American help, have now invented a bureaucratic device known as the Multilateral Evaluation Mechanism. Procedurally, it's a call for annual factual reports on how each of 34 Organization of American States members is stemming production, trafficking, consumption and crime. Politically, it's an attempt to cut the ground out from under American certification law by itemizing drug-war shortfalls without tempting punishment by the United States. The new tool "creates a new and level playing field in the evaluation process," says OAS Secretary General Cesar Gaviria. "All countries will evaluate all countries." [continues 113 words]
A City University of New York anthropologist who studies drug use was charged Monday with embezzling money from a federal grant to buy heroin for research subjects. The professor was also accused of using heroin while he was conducting a government-financed study of the drug and of misusing grant money for personal expenses. After a two-year investigation, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York brought charges in federal court against Ansley Hamid, an associate professor of anthropology at CUNY's John Jay College of Criminal Justice. Mr. Hamid, who has taught at John Jay for 15 years and has written extensively about drug culture and the use of crack cocaine, did not enter a plea. After surrendering his passport, he was released on $25,000 bond. [continues 674 words]
PARENTS who are considered to be under the influence of drugs may be banned from picking their children up from school under proposals issued by the Scottish Executive yesterday. The recommendations were made by the School Drug Safety team which was set up by the Executive following an alarming increase of drug-related incidents in primary schools. This year, one seven-year-old boy in Stirling handed over his mother's supply of heroin to a teacher claiming it was killing her. One 11-year-old boy at a Glasgow primary school was caught last year with more than ?500 worth of heroin stuffed in his shoe, which he claimed to be delivering to an addict for his father. [continues 394 words]
Your editorial tried, but failed, to define the arbitrary line you draw between tobacco, alcohol and other,recreational substances. You will never convince anyone that people drink rice cooking wine for the flavour. Alcohol kills more people, on a per user basis, than all illicit substances combined. Despite what you believe, tobacco is psychoactive. Between sloth and obesity and car accidents, cigarettes are a leading preventable cause of death. What message will illicit drug regulation send to my children? They understand why I do not permit them to drive, smoke, drink, stay up late or eat too much Halloween candy. [continues 157 words]
Opinion Shifted, Allen Inquest Told Even after Constable Paul Van Seters was charged with criminal negligence, the pathologist who conducted an autopsy on Kenneth Allen maintained he died of cocaine poisoning, not asphyxiation, a coroner's jury has been told. Gareth Jones, a member of the special investigations unit, was testifying yesterday at the inquest into the death of Allen, who was brought to 52 Division at Dundas St. W. high on cocaine on Nov. 29, 1991, after assaulting a streetcar conductor. [continues 237 words]
HUTCHINSON ISLAND, Fla. (AP) - A man on a seaside stroll Monday found something powdery white, and it wasn't sand. Ten bricks of pure powder cocaine weighing a total of about 50 pounds had been wrapped in layers of plastic and burlap before washing ashore on the Atlantic island's north beach. The man who found the cocaine with an estimated street value of $3.2 million hid the package in some nearby brush and called police, said St. Lucie County sheriff's spokesman Mark Weinberg. [continues 134 words]
The Customs Service, amid allegations of abusive drug searches, said Monday it will seek legal advice from U.S. attorneys whenever it wants to hold an airline passenger for more than eight hours. The new policy marks the latest effort by Customs Commissioner Raymond Kelly to change how the agency checks passengers for drugs. It revises a proposal for setting up an outside review process that Kelly announced in August. "While we are committed to making the customs clearance experience as expeditious and as pleasant as possible for the traveling public, we are continuing our strong enforcement posture to protect the citizens of this country against contraband of all types,'' Kelly said. [continues 465 words]
In Canada, alcohol kills 15,000 Canadians each year, and tobacco products cause 45,000 deaths per year - a drug which is in every convenience store in Canada. And then, of course, there is marijuana, which has never been recorded as causing a death. So I ask you, why is there a war on - illicit - drugs? To say that a glass of wine in no way compares to heroin is only ignorance. Alcohol and heroin are actually in the same class of drugs - - depressants of the central nervous system. Canadian youth die from alcohol-related tragedy more so than illicit drugs. [continues 97 words]
U.s., Canadian And California Laws Collide VANCOUVER - An American woman's fight against extradition to the United States to face drug-conspiracy charges is highlighting the two countries' differing attitudes toward medical marijuana use. Renee Boje has requested refugee status in Canada, claiming she's a political pawn in the U.S. government's war on drugs. The U.S. justice department is seeking Boje's extradition to Los Angeles to face charges of conspiracy to manufacture and possession of marijuana for the purposes of distribution. [continues 420 words]
Drugs create a fleeting and sometimes illusory enjoyment while narrowing or even foreclosing prospects for the future. The number of American youths willing to make that bad tradeoff rose steadily during the first half of the '90s, then began receding in 1997. Despite this welcome development, the percentage of schoolchildren using drugs in 1998 remained 1 1/2 to 2 times what it had been in 1991. Seattle and Washington state have not been exempt from these national trends. The National Institute on Drug Abuse has sponsored documentation of the consequences in area emergency rooms, treatment centers and prisons. In some instances, drug-related destruction continued to intensify into 1998. For example, last year in King County 144 people died with heroin in their blood, the worst annual toll in recent decades. [continues 729 words]
Calgary and other Canadian doctors are being asked to think again about using heroin for cancer and other pain. The plea is by Dr. Kenneth Walker, the Toronto obstetrician who successfully campaigned through the early 1980s to get heroin legalized. Although heroin was made legal 15 years ago, most Canadians know of it only as the illegal street drug over which society fights a never-ending battle to keep at bay. "They have to reconsider their decision," he said. "I spent six years of my life and hundreds of hours on this." [continues 747 words]
I was amazed on Oct. 24 when I opened the Register and saw a photo of the new section of the Theo Lacy jail that is being built-the common area to include a television. My 5-year-old daughter asked me, "Mommy,is that a hotel?" Isn't it ironic that all this money has been spent to add more beds to the jail, yet at the school where I teach they are adding more and more bungalows to our playground each year as our school population has more than doubled in size in the last 10 years and our playground space has been cut in half? If we'd put as much money into education as we do into jails don't you think we wouldn't need all of these jails? Joan Wiese, Garden Grove [end]
After a lopsided campaign in which proponents raised and spent hundreds of thousands of dollars and opponents made their case mainly by word of mouth, Maine voters Tuesday considered a proposal to legalize marijuana for certain medicinal uses. Voter approval would mean that the proposed legislation could take effect within 60 days. The citizen initiative asked voters: ''Do you want to allow patients with specific illnesses to grow and use small amounts of marijuana for treatment, as long as such use is approved by a doctor?'' [continues 408 words]
This week's meeting in Washington of drug czars from throughout the Americas represents merely the latest charade in the ongoing war on drugs. Year after year, decade after decade, governments announce their latest drug control strategies, sign the latest bilateral and multilateral agreements and proclaim that the light at the end of the tunnel is brighter than ever. Yes, say the Latin Americans, we will step up our efforts to reduce the production and export of illicit drugs to consumers in other parts of the world. Yes, say the North Americans, we will step up our efforts to reduce the demand for illicit drugs in our countries. [continues 719 words]
A new rule from the U.S. Department of Education will require students applying for federal financial aid to disclose any prior drug convictions. Scheduled to go into effect July 2001, the policy will deny federal financial aid - including the Pell grant, the Stafford and Perkins loans and work study - to students who admit prior drug convictions. The restriction will have dramatic effects for students, according to education experts and financial aid administrators. "UCLA students will definitely be affected because not everybody comes here as a full-fledged saint," said James Trent, associate professor of education. [continues 541 words]
The reality of the `mind-altering' editorial is different with y'all up there than with us down here. Down here, the notion of stopping drug use ends up with cities becoming combat zones with military-style policing. Please, don't go there. Prohibition is worse than a dead-end street. It creates a black market and the thugs take over. Then the citizenry - hopefully adequately represented by its local government - has to hire thugs to handle those thugs. Things get nastier. It will escalate. And protection will cost more and more. Allan Erickson Eugene, Ore. [end]
