A Parrish man whose home was raided for the marijuana plants he cultivated to help treat his wife's disease said he has turned down a plea bargain proffered by the state. Robert Jordan, who grows marijuana to help treat Cathy Jordan's Lou Gehrig's disease, said he refused the state's plea deal because it required him to give up his right to a fair trial or stop cultivating the plant. The State Attorney's Office and Jordan's attorney have negotiated for weeks about possible charges against Jordan. Jordan said potential charges are "still up in the air" as the talks continue, but he expects he will be charged soon. [continues 631 words]
PARRISH - Four days after lobbying Tallahassee lawmakers to legalize marijuana for medicinal purposes, an activist couple were busted by police for growing pot at their home in Parrish. Manatee County deputies uprooted two full-grown backyard marijuana plants belonging to wheelchair-bound Cathy Jordan, who suffers from Lou Gehrig's disease, and disabled Vietnam veteran Robert Jordan. Although neither was arrested Monday, officers confiscated 21 seedlings that the Jordans insist were intended to stabilize her neurodegenerative disease, also known as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS. [continues 945 words]
The sheen emanating from Donnie Clark's emerald vegetable garden is blinding. There are hulking heads of lettuce, spinach and broccoli -- plants that will not land him in federal prison this time around. Myakka City's most famous folk hero now spends his days puttering around in his backyard plot, sun on his cheeks, dirt under his nails, the weight of the past no longer square on his shoulders. His life has been one of wild adventure, unrelenting mischief, lengthy confinement and abnormal forgiveness, and if he had not been born the son of a Manatee County commissioner 70 years ago then surely an imaginative screenwriter would have invented him. [continues 1751 words]
On Oct. 24, a federal district judge blocked Florida's controversial law that mandates drug tests for temporary-assistance applicants. According to Judge Mary Scriven, compelled drug testing violates the Constitution's Fourth Amendment ban on illegal search and seizure and that individuals retain a right of privacy against such intrusive, suspicionless searches by the state, even when applying for temporary assistance. "The constitutional rights of a class of citizen are at stake," Scriven wrote, confirming that the Constitution protects all of us from unreasonable searches, even if we are poor. [continues 80 words]
A federal judge this week shot legal holes through Florida's requirement that all welfare applicants undergo drug testing. We hope Gov. Rick Scott, who promoted the ill-advised tests, backs off the policy before more money is wasted defending it in court. The judge temporarily suspended the drug testing requirement, faulting the fact that results lack confidentiality and noting that the policy violates constitutional protections. That's because it forces welfare applicants to be tested even when there are no grounds to reasonably suspect that they are drug users. [continues 294 words]
Florida banned the sale and possession of a class of designer drugs - misleadingly marketed as "bath salts" - with little fanfare this year. Attorney General Pam Bondi issued an emergency order in January, temporarily banning MDPV, one of the chemicals found in some of the products. The Legislature subsequently passed a bill that permanently makes it illegal to distribute or possess bath salts laced with MDPV or one of five other man-made chemicals; Gov. Rick Scott signed the legislation in late May. [continues 566 words]
Without doubt, it is the popular thing to do. Save the taxpayer money. Keep someone who is using illegal drugs off the public dole. Prevent the government from subsidizing the drug habits of people on welfare. To that end, Gov. Rick Scott has signed legislation that will require all those applying for Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, or TANF, to undergo drug testing, and to pay upfront for the test. If the applicant passes, he or she will be reimbursed for the cost of the test and, assuming all paperwork is in order, begin to receive benefits. A failure -- that is, evidence of illegal drug use -- will preclude the applicant both from a reimbursement for the test cost and from receiving benefits. [continues 691 words]
Pressed by a community increasingly affected by prescription drug abuse, Sarasota County commissioners responded Tuesday with a new, strict set of regulations. The rules are designed to preserve access to legitimate pain-management practitioners but keep out illicit businesses -- those that feed a black-market trade in addictive narcotics. The county's new requirements represent a step forward -- if they withstand potential legal challenges and can be properly enforced. The community also should recognize that crackdowns alone cannot solve the growing problem of opiate addiction. Prevention and educational efforts, as well as broader treatment options, are needed. [continues 555 words]
More Bureaucracy For Those Who've Paid Their Debts to Society Rick Scott, the governor who wants to remove regulatory hurdles, has helped put a big roadblock in the path of freed felons hoping to fully participate in civic life. The governor and Cabinet, sitting as Florida's executive clemency board, voted last week to toughen the process nonviolent felons must go through to get their civil rights restored. Before this change, the state used a reformed, streamlined process to restore rights for nonviolent felons who completed their sentence, finished probation and made full restitution. [continues 453 words]
Accept Company's Offer and Implement Monitoring Program Maybe the opponents of a statewide system for monitoring the prescription of high-powered narcotics are holding out for more money from the pharmaceutical industry. It's doubtful. But that strategy is the only logical reason for Gov. Rick Scott and House Speaker Dean Cannon to oppose implementation of the system. Last year, in response to rising numbers of deaths related to prescription painkillers and Florida's status as the go-to state for drug buyers, the Legislature passed a law that calls for a prescription-drug monitoring program. The strong consensus among legitimate pain-management specialists, drug-abuse experts and law enforcement officials is that a statewide data base is the most important component of an effective monitoring program. Legislatures in a majority of the states have created data bases and reported declines in drug-abuse problems - as Florida has experienced increases. [continues 145 words]
In 1919, the United States went dry. The great experiment of Prohibition began. It was a great "success." It criminalized a large part of the population who still wanted to drink and created organized criminals. It was 14 years before the country decided that Prohibition was a bad idea with decidedly worse, unintended consequences. Upon its repeal, those thousands of gangsters who thrived under Prohibition were out of work; however, our government then banned certain drugs. And the war on drugs has been as successful as Prohibition in keeping the suppliers wealthy. The war is going so well that it stretches from the poppy fields of Afghanistan to the coca and marijuana fields of South America, Mexico and North Port. Our prisons are full of users and dealers; a shooting war is going on in Mexico and East Los Angeles, and the billions of dollars, pesos, euros, etc., spent each year to stop the drug trade are going down a black hole. Many of the people holding up banks, robbing convenience stores, or breaking into houses are doing it to buy drugs. One definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over, and expecting a different outcome each time. I think it's just dumb. Rick Garms Englewood [end]
SARASOTA - U.S. Rep. Vern Buchanan, R-Bradenton, intends to announce today that he will file legislation intended to crack down on "pill mills" that provide prescription pain killers to addicts and drug dealers. He has yet to release the details. Buchanan held a public forum on Monday at which he, law enforcement and a special state prosecutor asked the Legislature to start a patient database that investigators say they need to monitor the drug transactions and addicts who may be "doctor shopping." [continues 76 words]
With eight Floridians dying daily because of prescription drug abuse, it was expected that Gov. Rick Scott's decision to pull the plug on the pill-monitoring program would draw criticism in the state. But the decision is also drawing the ire of state lawmakers from as far away as Kentucky and West Virginia. Florida is the largest of 12 states without a system to track prescription narcotics, and the state's hundreds of storefront pain clinics attract drug dealers and addicts from around the Southeast. [continues 624 words]
Regarding your Feb. 6 editorial, Florida is one of many states grappling with overcrowded prisons. Throughout the nation, states facing budget shortfalls are pursuing alternatives to incarceration for nonviolent drug offenders. A study conducted by the RAND Corp. found that every additional dollar invested in substance abuse treatment saves taxpayers $7.48 in societal costs. There is far more at stake than tax dollars. The drug war is not the promoter of family values that some would have us believe. Children of inmates are at risk of educational failure, joblessness, addiction and delinquency. Not only do the children lose, but society as a whole. Incarcerating nonviolent drug offenders with hardened criminals is the equivalent of providing them with a taxpayer-funded education in anti-social behavior. [continues 76 words]
Budget Shortfalls Provide Impetus For Needed Change Prisons are one of many areas of state government that Gov. Rick Scott has targeted for cuts in his budget proposal, which he is expected to release Monday. Scott has vowed to carve $1 billion from the corrections budget over the next seven years. That would be almost a 42 percent reduction from the current funding level of $2.4 billion. Like many of the spending cuts that Scott has proposed over the last month, his plans for prisons are short on details. [continues 791 words]
TAMPA - On the fourth floor of a hivelike, 1970s-vintage lab building on the University of South Florida's medical campus, Thomas Klein has spent 25 years studying marijuana's effects on the immune systems of mice, blowfish and human beings. If anyone should be able to answer the question that has surrounded pot for decades -- How bad is it for you? -- it should be Klein. Klein, 66, a tall, courtly professor of immunology and molecular medicine, can tell you he is very close to solving a few puzzles about the connection between cannabinoids -- the active compounds in marijuana -- and common allergies. But like other researchers in the field, Klein says marijuana's health effects remain a daunting mystery. [continues 1719 words]
Irvin Rosenfeld speaks fluidly and fast, breaking off a conversation to take another call and returning to the first one precisely in mid-sentence, juggling intricate idea strands like the stockbroker he is. You would never take him for a guy who smokes 10 to 12 joints of marijuana a day. Rosenfeld is not anyone's idea of mellow and laid-back. Apart from his day job, he has just written a book, "My Medicine." It is the story of his lifelong endurance of a rare bone condition, his battle for the legal right to control it with marijuana, and his membership in an exclusive club -- with 13 people at its largest, and now four still alive -- of patients who receive regular monthly cannisters of relatively mild weed, grown, rolled and shipped courtesy of the National Institute on Drug Abuse. [continues 1042 words]
SARASOTA - State and federal laws prohibit pharmacists from filling prescriptions they know to be fraudulent, yet local police conducting sting operations are instructing pharmacists to break those laws. Instead of arresting a suspect for passing a bogus prescription, detectives are telling pharmacists to fill the prescription while officers wait outside, ready to arrest the person carrying the pills. Police get better evidence for court, and the suspect faces more time in prison on a more serious drug trafficking charge. But caught in the middle are pharmacists who must balance their professional obligations as a health care provider with helping law enforcement in an action that is a crime and could put their professional licenses at risk. [continues 769 words]
Governor Should Sign Bill Restricting Private Pain Clinics Florida's governor should sign recently approved legislation that aims to clamp down, hard, on "pill mills" -- businesses that earn a fortune off the shady and exploitive dispensing of narcotic painkillers. If signed into law, much of the measure, SB2272, would not take effect until late this year. In the meantime, the city of Bradenton is considering a moratorium on any new permits for such establishments. Several other Florida cities and counties have either passed similar restrictions or are considering them, the Herald-Tribune's Halle Stockton reported last week. (In Sarasota County, a community consortium is preparing a measure.) [continues 444 words]
Thirteen states in America have made it legal in the past 13 years to smoke marijuana for medical reasons. Another two states have eased the penalties against using marijuana for medicinal purposes. Three states have licensed nonprofit corporations to grow medical marijuana and two state legislatures, in California and Massachusetts, are conducting hearings on whether to legalize pot. In Europe, seven countries have decriminalized marijuana. In Latin America, the former presidents of Brazil, Colombia and Mexico -- all demoralized by the violence associated with the illegal drug trade -- have proposed the repeal of prohibition. [continues 696 words]
