Colombia Suffers 32,000 Casualties A Year Fighting A War Created By The West's Appetite For Drugs LONDON - "It is like that," says His Excellency Victor Ricardo, the Colombian ambassador to England. He gestures with an elegantly flannelled arm at a plant on top of the television in my office. "Only larger." I gaze at the plant, which looks particularly droopy and unthreatening, and try to imagine the amazing properties of its Latin American lookalike. The ambassador has done us the honour of dropping in for tea, and we are of course discussing the coca plant, the key ingredient of a $350-billion global industry. They pick it, mash it, boil it and then somehow turn it into a white powder which disappears at a prodigious rate up the noses of the western world. [continues 926 words]
Determined to set things right, or at least to help get them on a track to improvement, the mother of a Fort Bend County teen said she spends a couple of hours every morning on the telephone. She calls anyone she can think of who might know some answers or have some good advice to offer. She calls anyone she suspects might have some authority to investigate, or castigate, or legislate, or do anything to make things better. She tells them what happened to her son. Tells how he suffered a psychotic event, and was physically subdued and then confined in the county's juvenile detention center for several days. Tells how that delayed the qualified psychiatric treatment he needed for his mental illness, how it worsened his condition. [continues 616 words]
EL PASO (AP) - The annual bilateral tension over the United States' drug certification of Mexico is brewing. Under a congressional mandate, the U.S. State Department must review Mexico's drug-fighting efforts each year. If those efforts are viewed as inadequate, the U.S. government can impose economic sanctions. Certification has served mostly as a political tool to pressure Mexico into doing more to combat drug-trafficking within its borders. Barring any last-minute delays, the State Department plans to meet its March 1 deadline, officials said. [continues 257 words]
Two men arrested in a southeast Oak Cliff motel last week were passed out in a haze of fumes. Police knew before they opened the door that they had found another methamphetamine lab. "It was overpowering," said Sgt. Paul W. Turbyfill of the Dallas Police Department's meth lab squad. "We couldn't let anyone in without protective gear." Fumes from anhydrous ammonia, which is mixed with other chemicals to make methamphetamine, can burn skin and cause powerful explosions. But the risk is worth it to many users because methamphetamine, also known as speed, produces an intense high for little money. Use of the drug is skyrocketing in Dallas, police said. [continues 701 words]
Strict bans on drinking keep street people from seeking help -- so an Ottawa shelter is trying to teach moderation. Jennifer Kennedy reports. Brights 74 sherry, to be exact. Every day, from 7:30 a.m. until 10 p.m., staff serve mugs of the sherry to the group gathered in a tiny room in the Shepherd's shelter. The eight men and two women, their ages ranging from 31 to 71, get a maximum of one drink per hour, or sometimes less, depending on the behaviour and drunkenness of the clients. [continues 809 words]
EL PASO -- The annual bilateral tension over the United States' drug certification of Mexico is brewing. Under a congressional mandate, the U.S. State Department must review Mexico's drug-fighting efforts each year. If those efforts are viewed as inadequate, the U.S. government can impose economic sanctions. Certification has served mostly as a political tool to pressure Mexico into doing more to combat drug-trafficking within its borders. Barring any last-minute delays, the State Department plans to meet its March 1 deadline, officials said. [continues 255 words]
Some 27 states have passed or are considering laws in favor of the crop. GODFREY, ILL. - Steve Kohller looks out over the winter stubble on his 1,000-acre farm on the Illinois prairie. Several years of poverty prices for corn and soybeans have him dreaming of a new crop, one that would grow as tall as 14 feet and, he says, might someday rival soybeans in terms of cultivated acres throughout the Midwest. "It's not a savior," he says, wearing only a thin denim jacket against the bitter February cold. "But it may be the answer we've been looking for." [continues 827 words]
Voting: Activists Are Considering Campaigns In Six Counties Where They Say Prosecutors Are Not Sympathetic To Patients And Are Not Upholding Prop. 215. Paula Kamena would prefer to be a prosecutor, plain and simple, tackling any crime that dares to rear its head in tony Marin County. But these days, the district attorney of this famously liberal Bay Area enclave is finding herself a target. Advocates of medical marijuana are irate over what they consider Kamena's unsympathetic approach to patients on pot, and they want to oust the first-term district attorney from office. [continues 928 words]
