FORT WORTH - Fort Worth narcotic officers converged on three warehouse shops Thursday morning where they discovered a methamphetamine lab that officials say appears to have been in operation for about five years. Lt. Ric Clark, narcotics section supervisor, said the man who leases the shops was apparently tipped off to the searches after hearing police chatter on a scanner. The 35-year-old man tried to flee the area, Clark said, but was stopped by two narcotics officers watching the warehouse. [continues 119 words]
AUSTIN - A rave party that drew thousands of people over the weekend from across the country ended with one man dead and Travis County officials puzzling over how to better control a wild night-life scene. Thousands of young adults poured into a makeshift dance hall Saturday night in southeast Travis County, turned the lights down and started a dance party that lasted until sunrise. They came from as far away as Oklahoma, Louisiana and New York, the Austin American-Statesman reported Monday. [continues 269 words]
After 20 Years, The Anti-Drug Program Gets Mixed Reviews, But Some School Districts Say It Is Effective With Younger Students. LAKE WORTH - Cleaning horse stables won't necessarily steer children away from using drugs and alcohol, but Lake Worth officer Chauncy London hopes it will teach students to be responsible. London, 40, is in charge of Lake Worth's Drug Abuse Resistance Education program, which is offered in elementary school and high school in the small northwest Tarrant County district. [continues 446 words]
SAN FRANCISCO - Would it be forcing things too much to suggest that San Francisco may be going to pot? The city by the Bay is considering growing its own crop of marijuana. The city Board of Supervisors voted Monday to put a measure on the November ballot that would allow the city to explore the idea of growing pot and distributing it to seriously ill patients who have permission from their doctors. Supporters say such a program on city-owned land could double as agriculture job training for the unemployed. [continues 159 words]
GRAND PRAIRIE - A Grand Prairie narcotics sergeant has been suspended after an audit revealed about $1,000 missing from a drug unit cash fund, police said. The department's internal affairs unit is investigating Sgt. Blaine Smith's control of a cash fund used to purchase narcotics in undercover drug cases. Smith is on paid administrative leave pending the outcome of the inquiry. A discrepancy in the fund was discovered after a new sergeant assigned to the unit requested an audit of the narcotics money. [continues 293 words]
The Swisher County district attorney is expected to drop the charges against the last defendant accused in the 1999 Tulia drug bust, which drew national attention after critics said it was racially motivated. Zuri Bossett, a 22-year-old single mother who lives in Amarillo and is eight months pregnant, was accused of selling 1.4 grams of cocaine to an undercover officer three years ago. Her trial was scheduled for Tuesday, the anniversary of the day 43 people were indicted for selling drugs to officer Tom Coleman. [continues 68 words]
FORT WORTH - Drug Enforcement Administration Director Asa Hutchinson brought his national "Meth in America: Not in Our Town" tour here Thursday, warning of the health and environmental risks of the widely used drug that costs as little as $5 per hit. Flanked by prosecutors and law enforcement officials, Hutchinson called methamphetamine "one of the most destructive drugs in our society today." At a news conference at the Radisson Plaza Hotel, he vowed to make it tougher for methamphetamine cooks and traffickers to obtain large quantities of the chemicals needed to produce batches of the drug that's also known as "the poor man's cocaine." [continues 176 words]
LONDON - Prime Minister Tony Blair's government moved Wednesday to relax its marijuana laws, guaranteeing that most users will get off with a warning while police focus enforcement efforts on harder drugs. Under the proposal, marijuana would be downgraded from a Class B to a Class C drug, making its use and possession less serious crimes, Home Secretary David Blunkett told the House of Commons. Police could still arrest those caught with marijuana, who could receive up to two years in prison. But in most cases, police would confiscate the drug and issue a warning. [continues 239 words]
WASHINGTON - Authorities in North Carolina have seized $1.4 million worth of narcotics and have convicted more than 80 Marines and sailors of using or distributing designer drugs, officials said Tuesday. It was one of the biggest drug investigations involving the military in recent years. Although narcotics cases in the military are not rare, they usually involve fewer people. A recent drug scandal at the Air Force Academy, for example, implicated 38 cadets. Officials said Tuesday that a two-year investigation, code-named Operation Xterminator, was conducted by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service office at Camp Lejeune, N.C., outside of Jacksonville, along with state and local authorities. [continues 189 words]
As we approach the Independence Day celebration this year, I think again of the words that launched this great nation. In particular, these phrases come to mind: that "all men are created equal" and that all of us are "endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights, and among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness." Is there any more important right than that of life itself? On June 6, Libertarian Party political director Ron Crickenberger and campus coordinator Marc Brandl were arrested for civil disobedience while protesting a federal government crackdown on medical marijuana clinics. This action was a purposeful one demonstrating that Libertarians recognize the importance of this right. [continues 95 words]
Star-Telegram Staff Writer FORT WORTH - The city's DARE program - the most widely used anti-drug effort in Texas schools - has been eliminated and the gang-prevention unit slashed by more than half, Chief Ralph Mendoza said Tuesday. The cutbacks were in response to a yearlong, $1.2 million study that offered 266 recommendations for streamlining the department, Mendoza said. The Drug Abuse Resistance Education program, known as DARE, ended with the school year last month, and the DARE police positions will be shifted to patrol, another area the study recommended beefing up, Mendoza said. [continues 567 words]
FORT WORTH -- It was about 4:30 a.m. last Saturday when Randy Kalmoe snorted heroin and then sat at his computer to chronicle the drug's effects. In the half-page journal entry, the Aledo High School senior wrote that it was the first time he had used the drug and he wanted to detail psychological and physical changes he felt after ingesting one capsule, and then another. Kalmoe's first experiment with the drug was his last. Robert Kalmoe walked into his son's bedroom about 10:30 that same morning to find the unfinished journal entry on the computer screen and his son unconscious. Three days later, the 18-year-old died at Harris Methodist Fort Worth, the victim of an apparent overdose, according to preliminary autopsy findings. [continues 742 words]
BOGOTA, Colombia - The head of Colombia's anti-narcotics police was removed on Friday after about $2 million in U.S. drug war aid allegedly vanished into the pockets of some of his officers. The widening corruption scandal had already led to the suspension of some U.S. aid to Washington's key drug-war ally and the dismissals of at least 12 police officers. Gen. Gustavo Socha was reassigned to a police unit that provides security to dignitaries, said Gen. Ernesto Gilibert, chief of the Colombian National Police. [continues 343 words]
True crime writer Barbara Davis was sentenced Thursday to two years' probation for possession of GHB, a charge that stemmed from a 1999 drug raid during which her son was killed by police. Davis, 51, hugged her attorney after senior state District Judge C.C. "Kit" Cooke announced the sentence in a Fort Worth courtroom. Before sentencing, Davis received support for probation from witnesses including an assistant U.S. attorney based in Houston, a former Rowlett police officer and a member of her church - First Baptist Church of Haltom City. [continues 393 words]
Don Erler's April 4 column on the "one-strike-you're-out" policy of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development failed to fully acknowledge the law's potential collateral damage. The zero tolerance law requires that entire families be evicted from public housing if anyone, even a guest, uses drugs. The youthful indiscretions of a rebellious teen-ager could result in homelessness for an entire family. According to the Monitoring the Future Survey, more than half of all high school seniors have tried an illegal drug at least once. Exposing 50 percent of all families living in public housing to the dangers of living on the street is not the answer to America's drug problem. [continues 110 words]
A continuing debate between liberals and conservatives centers on crime and punishment. Right-thinkers generally prefer being tough on criminals, even against liberals' justified caution that incarcerating miscreants can harm their innocent families, because we care about the happiness and safety of communities. Last Friday, I was reminded of my fondness for toughness when the driver of a large pickup zoomed through crowded 60-70 mph freeway traffic at close to 90. A huge traffic fine - which, of course, might well take food out of the mouths of his children - is utterly inadequate. The law should permit forfeiture of these vehicles-cum-missiles being demolition-derbied at, say, 20-plus mph over the speed limit or being operated by drunken drivers. [continues 448 words]
American officials have quietly abandoned their hopes of reducing Afghanistan's opium production substantially this year and are bracing for a harvest large enough to inundate the world's heroin and opium markets with cheap drugs. Although American and European officials have considered measures like paying Afghan opium poppy farmers to plow under their fields, they have concluded that continuing lawlessness and political instability will make significant eradication all but impossible. Instead, U.S. officials said, they will pursue a less ambitious strategy: persuading Afghan leaders to carry out a modest eradication program as opium poppies are harvested over the next two months, if only to show that they were serious in declaring a ban on production in January. [continues 440 words]
The Buzzard Point neighborhood where U.S. Park Police said they encountered former District of Columbia Mayor Marion Barry sitting in a parked car is a desolate swath of Southwest Washington dotted with warehouses. Asked Sunday what the 66-year-old four-term mayor was doing there Thursday night, Barry's attorney, Frederick D. Cooke Jr., said: "I didn't ask him why he was at Buzzard Point. I don't know what he was doing sitting there." Police conducted a field test on substances found in Barry's car, and it came up positive for traces of cocaine and marijuana. Barry was not arrested after police determined that there was not a sufficient amount of illegal drugs found to file charges. [continues 54 words]
Where does one draw the line? How far into students' privacy will administrators delve? Where in the U.S. Constitution does it say that publicly schooled students are exempt from its protections and guarantees? The issue of mandatory drug testing raises these perplexing questions, and many districts are anxiously awaiting the Supreme Court's ruling on its legality, which likely will not be announced until this summer. Hopefully, the court will not extend 1995's 6-3 decision it issued declaring mandatory drug testing for athletes legal to include students in any extracurricular activity. [continues 598 words]
SAN FRANCISCO - "Liar! Liar!" came the voices from the crowd. Drug Enforcement Administration chief Asa Hutchinson stopped short, caught midsentence. He had started by saying: "Science has told us so far there is no medical benefit for smoking marijuana." Hutchinson pushed on with his message, reiterating President Bush's newly aggressive anti-drug policy, which links casual drug use to terrorism and objects to state laws, such as the one in California, that allow the medicinal use of marijuana. Just hours before Hutchinson's appearance Feb. 12, federal agents - with no help from San Francisco police - seized more than 600 pot plants from a medicinal marijuana club. They also arrested the group's executive director and three suppliers, including pot guru Ed Rosenthal, author of Ask Ed: Marijuana Law. Don't Get Busted. [continues 209 words]
