Though it has been used by politicians for years as a popular vote-grabber, the rhetoric that advocates "getting tough on crime" has helped sway the nation's prison system away from reform and toward mere retribution. And that, according to a panel of religious leaders and legal scholars, is not true justice but a growing vindictiveness that pushes prisoners toward non-human status in the eyes of the public and the prison system. Too often, they said, minimum mandatory sentencing guidelines leave judges little leeway in dispensing true justice by considering the particulars of each case. [continues 523 words]
He Prefers To Wait For Clinical Trials, Reliable Source. Pain specialist Dr. Brian Knight isn't keen to prescribe marijuana under Health Canada's new rules, which came into effect this month. The Edmonton anesthesiologist is concerned that patients will get their cannabis from illegal sources and that the drug will be of uncertain quality. Knight prefers to wait until clinical trials show it works. That said, he acknowledges he once filled out the paperwork under the previous rules to help a patient win an exemption from possession charges. "At that time I filled it out for her because she was quite desperate," he said. He warned her it would do her no good because she would have to get her marijuana through a clinical trial -- and there were none in Edmonton. [continues 388 words]
SAN FRANCISCO - A federal appeals court has ruled it is unconstitutional for judges to add time to drug traffickers' sentences after a jury conviction, a decision that ends a 17-year practice and could ultimately affect thousands of cases in Arizona and eight other Western states. In a 2-1 decision Thursday, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco struck down a 1984 law allowing judges to hold hearings after a jury conviction to determine if more time could be added to the sentence based on the amount of drugs involved. [continues 261 words]
Before he was charged with murder last month, Dr. Denis Deonarine made $650,000 a year, five times the average family practitioner's income. "I am a workaholic," he said. "I work my . . . (backside) off, to put it mildly." Patients said they endured hours sometimes in a crowded waiting room to see him. He took weekend rounds at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center for nearly a year, arriving at 8 a.m. and leaving at midnight. Some of his sickest patients say he gave them his home number for emergencies, saw them any time of day and, in some cases, made the difference between life and death. [continues 2864 words]
Doug Crellin was a happy man. With another pint of lager and a whisky chaser in front of him the taxi-driver was celebrating his day-off in fine style. The clock in the Albert pub was ticking towards 11, but - unlike millions of drinkers in the rest of Britain - closing time did not worry Crellin. He is a Manxman and last month the Isle of Man government scrapped all licensing hours. 'It is brilliant. It was a great idea,' Crellin said, raising his glass and grinning. [continues 532 words]
The military is having enough trouble recruiting without the embarrassment of a drug scandal at Fort Bragg. Perhaps the recent accusation of drug use, involving 13 members of a military-police brigade, will serve as a catalyst for a different approach; courts- martial and discharges don't seem to be stopping drug use. The last thing the military needs is another image problem. Perhaps a good place to start would be with the acknowledgment that there is more to the problem than image. Officials at Fort Bragg, elsewhere in the Army and in the military as a whole should realize that 13 soldiers in one unit, on top of 11 charged last year from the 82nd Airborne, are symptoms of a serious internal problem. [continues 279 words]
MARIJUANA USE is far from having been decriminalized and enforcement has become a lot tougher since the early 1990s. In Maryland, as in the rest of the nation, arrests for possession of marijuana roughly doubled between 1992 and 2000. There were nearly 15,000 Maryland arrests last year. That's not because marijuana use increased. Much attention has been given to the rise in school-age marijuana use, which also doubled over this time. However, for the whole population over age 12, the rate of use has been almost steady since 1990; adults have been quitting marijuana more rapidly than in the past. For adolescents, marijuana has become the third-most-common reason for arrest; for adults it is fifth on the list. [continues 589 words]