WHILE THE WASHINGTON media are all a-titter about the expected confirmation battle over Attorney General-designee John Ashcroft - does he or doesn't he have a statue of Robert E. Lee tucked away in his closet? - next to no attention is being paid to the fact that a vital cabinet-level position remains unfilled. Drug Czar Barry McCaffrey is gone - can't you feel the void? - but no one is even speculating about who President-elect George W, Bush will name to succeed him. [continues 716 words]
While George Bush Sr. didn't face the same sort of energy crisis that George Bush Jr. now faces -- with OPEC scrooging the oil supply and Venezuela getting uppity with its share of the black-gold mine -- he did more than rattle sabers on the pretext of stopping one. The Gulf War, so preached by pundits galore, was all about oil; got to keep the lifeblood of American commerce pumping, right? Sort of. Before smart-bombing the daylights out of Iraq, Bush had a smart plan to wean America off of oil, at least partially (can't let all those family oil wells go bust, now can we?). On June 12, 1989, the self-proclaimed "environmental president," unveiled a plan to cut down on air pollution caused by petrol fuels. [continues 867 words]
Dear Editor; It was a pleasant surprise to read the Ogdensburg Journal s January 4, 2001 article "Pataki Urges Drug Law Reform". Finally a prominent New York politician has admitted the Rockefeller Drug Laws are "out of step with both the times and the complexities of drug addiction". A person found guilty under the current drug laws can face a sentence longer than someone convicted of second degree murder, rape, or child molestation. I wonder if the editor of the Ogdensburg Journal will label Governor Pataki a pro drug use person as he has members of the group ReconsiDer: A forum on drug policy. [continues 247 words]
A long-standing dispute over whether county or federal authorities run the war on drugs at Pittsburgh International Airport was resolved yesterday, but officials involved in the negotiations refused to explain how. County Manager Robert Webb participated in the hourlong discussions, as did District Attorney Stephen A. Zappala Jr. and representatives of the county police, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and the Airport Authority. "What happened today has led to an agreement among all the different agencies involved out at the airport, and that agreement will bring about the most ambitious effort ever in Western Pennsylvania to target parties who traffic in narcotics," said Michael Manko, Zappala's spokesman [continues 302 words]
A Teen's Death, A Mother's Determination And A Church's Concern Set Off A Community's War On Drugs. PROSPECT -- The suicide of a 19-year-old boy spurred 550 people from the county to a series of anti-drug speeches at the Prospect United Methodist Church. Myles Brewington, who was 19, shot himself to death on Dec. 23 in a trailer known to be a drug hangout, said his mother, Sandra Brewington. She believes her son abused cocaine, and that led to his suicide. Investigators are still running drug tests on his blood, she said. [continues 491 words]
As a nation we now have nearly half a million people behind bars on drug charges, more than the total prison population in all of Western Europe. And the burden of this explosion in incarceration falls disproportionately on black and Latino communities. Deaths attributable to marijuana are very rare. In fact, deaths from all illegal drugs combined, including cocaine and heroin, are fewer than 20,000 annually. By contrast, more than 450,000 Americans die each year from tobacco or alcohol use (not counting drunk driving fatalities). Should we outlaw liquor and cigarettes? Ask anyone who remembers our nation's disastrous experiment with alcohol prohibition. [continues 87 words]
Drug War Priorities Favor Prosecution Over Treatment A new study conducted for a Chicago university questions the priorities of the anti-drug effort in Chicago. According to the Roosevelt University study, for every $1 spent on treatment of drug abuse in Cook County, about $6 is spent on law enforcement, prosecution and incarceration. As staff writer Alice Hohl reported Monday, the situation is partly a result of the nationwide "law-and-order mentality." It is the driving force behind the war on drugs that spends billions of dollars each year in an effort to arrest drug users and low-level distributors. [continues 207 words]
PARIS -- There was a better case in 1961 for fighting a war in Vietnam, which proved a disaster, than the Clinton administration has made for intervening today in Colombia. The arrival of the Bush administration offers Washington a chance to back off. It could be the last chance. The authors of the Colombian intervention have convinced themselves that illegal drug production can be repressed in Colombia, a country the size of Central Europe--much of it unsettled, without roads, some of it incompletely mapped--to a degree that would significantly reduce the supply of cocaine for sale in the United States. [continues 737 words]
Traffic Starring: Michael Douglas, Don Cheadle, Dennis Quaid, Benicio Del Torro, Catherine Zeta-Jones Directed by: Stephen Soderbergh Written by: Steve Gaghan Rating: AA (coarse language, substance abuse, mature theme) Playing at: Coliseum, SilverCity, StarCite, World Exchange, Orleans, Cinema 9, South Keys, AMC Kanata The traffic in Traffic runs through the San Ysidro-Tijuana border like water through a torn stocking: drugs, policemen, informers, corruption and hypocrisy go back and forth along 28 lanes of cars, trucks, tourists and cocaine. It's as unstoppable as greed. Traffic is a drug thriller that tells us the drug war is a war we've pretty much lost. You can shrink the supply but you can't shrink the demand, and in fact, you can't really shrink the supply much, either. [continues 874 words]