There is a medical marijuana bill in committee in the Wisconsin Legislature. We need the people's help to get it passed by calling their politicians in Madison. It's being held there by representatives who are good people but under-informed. What we are asking for in not a pot-smokers' law. Many of us vaporize it or eat it, which gives us the cannibnoids that help fight obesity, cancers, fibromyalgia, phantom pains and muscle spasms from paraplegia and other neuromuscular ailments. [continues 93 words]
Dear Editor: I'm writing in support of the Jacki Rickert Medical Marijuana Act. There will be public hearings on Dec. 15 by both the Assembly and Senate health committees. I strongly recommend that the bill be passed to the floor for debate and possible passage into law with the governor's signature. I am a paraplegic. With my particular condition, the pharmacy drugs I should take for muscle spasms and nerve pains would have killed me from kidney failure. Cannabis hemp has been the most effective agent in relieving both symptoms of this ailment. It has proven far safer than any pharmacological product or chemical preparations such as Marinol, which can cause death. [continues 78 words]
U.S. efforts to help the Mexican government battle powerful organized crime networks are falling short, and a recent sharp spike in violence south of the border poses a growing threat to U.S. citizens, senators and independent experts told officials from three federal agencies yesterday on Capitol Hill. Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard (D), who said his state is the principal American gateway for drugs and human smuggling from Mexico, called the Mexican cartels the principal criminal threat for the 21st century. But he criticized Washington's response as disjointed and called for more intelligence-sharing and better coordination. [continues 727 words]
House Panel Finds Federal Appointees Attended Many Events on Taxpayers' Dime When Karl Rove's office requested special help for beleaguered Republican congressional candidates in the months before the 2006 elections, the head of the Office of National Drug Control Policy jumped to the task. Director John Walters was called a "superstar" by a Rove aide after carrying half-million-dollar grants to news conferences with two congressmen and a senator. Walters's visits to Utah, Missouri and Nevada were among at least 303 out-of-town trips by senior Bush appointees meant to lend prestige or bring federal grants to 99 politically endangered Republicans that year, in a White House campaign that House Democratic investigators yesterday called unprecedented in scope and scale. [continues 1054 words]
"We Are Now in a Race Against Time." When retired Army Gen. Barry R. McCaffrey visited Afghanistan in February for meetings with 23 senior Western and local military, intelligence and political officials, he came away with a cautiously optimistic view of the prospects for reform and political stability there. McCaffrey, a respected division commander in the 1991 Persian Gulf War and commander of U.S. military operations in Central America and South America, now teaches at West Point. A copy of his trip report, written for his colleagues there but widely circulated in Washington and obtained from one of the recipients, included the following blunt observations: [continues 596 words]
JAZINCE, Yugoslavia--A silver truck with two large trailers pulled up to this border crossing with Macedonia recently, and Hasan Koshtanjevci leaned out the window to tell customs officials that he was carrying clothing meant for destitute ethnic Albanians in Kosovo. But when the two U.N. policemen who patrol the crossing peeked beneath a canvas tarp at the rear of the truck, they found a Volkswagen Golf and a Mercedes-Benz, both headed north into the chaotic and crime-ridden environment of post-war Kosovo. The U.N. police ordered the truck back to Macedonia. [continues 785 words]
U.S., Other Nations Balk Over Plan to Give Aid to Afghanistan, Burma, Colombia The United Nations plans to seek new international backing next week for the most ambitious counternarcotics effort in its history, but the United States and other wealthy nations are resisting pleas to fund the program partly because it would spend billions of dollars in some of the world's most corrupt or repressive nations, such as Afghanistan, Burma and Colombia, according to U.S. and U.N. officials. [continues 1145 words]
