Searches To Include Students' Coats, Book Bags And Purses, Not Just Lockers Some Akron schools will soon have a few four-legged guests visiting their classrooms and looking for trouble. The district's security team will begin using drug-sniffing dogs over the next few months for surprise checks at all of its middle and high schools. The district typically uses dogs to search buildings and lockers after school and after students have been dismissed for the day and left campus. [continues 242 words]
Akron Municipal Court Judge Marvin Shapiro is doing the right thing by giving drug offenders a second chance to get treatment ("Drug offenders offered amnesty," Akron Beacon Journal, Oct. 30). Relapse is part of recovery, and Akron's drug court is definitely a step in the right direction. But an arrest should not be a necessary prerequisite for treatment. Would alcoholics seek treatment for their illness if doing so were tantamount to confessing to criminal activity? Likewise, would putting every incorrigible alcoholic behind bars and saddling them with criminal records prove cost-effective? [continues 213 words]
Their Enemy Is All-Too Familiar WASHINGTON: Asa Hutchinson, the former Republican representative from Arkansas now serving as head of the Drug Enforcement Administration, has a reputation as a straight shooter. When he was up for confirmation a few months ago, even Democrats who had strongly opposed his views as a manager of the impeachment proceedings against Bill Clinton testified in support of his nomination. The other morning, Hutchinson was the guest at one of the breakfast interviews arranged by Godfrey Sperling Jr. of the Christian Science Monitor. Asked what the events of Sept. 11 had done to the war on drugs, Hutchinson readily admitted that the diversion of government resources to the anti-terrorism campaign had left his agency stretched thin. [continues 685 words]
Broader Screening At Issue. Medina County District Among Those Possibly Affected By High Court Decision. WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Supreme Court agreed yesterday to decide whether schools may give drug tests to nearly any student involved in after-school activities, from the chess club to cheerleading, without evidence the student or the school has a drug problem. The court's decision in the case, expected to be handed down before next summer, has implications for some school districts in Ohio -- including one in Medina County -- that conduct drug tests on students. [continues 788 words]
Treatment Beats Jail For Drug Users And Taxpayers Alike Drug courts work on a system of incentives. They offer drug users many good reasons and opportunities to break their drug habit and stay out of jail or face the music. The proposition is simple. In the Akron drug court, it is: Complete at least a year of treatment or serve up to 180 days in jail. If the offenders stay in treatment and are free of drugs for at least the last 90 days of the program, drug charges against them are dropped. If they drop out of the program, their original jail sentence is reinstated. [continues 287 words]
Akron Judge Provides Court Dropouts Another Chance To Get Treatment Akron's drug court gives addicts a second chance. If they complete the one-year program, the charge against them is dismissed. Now, the judge who presides over drug court wants to give those who dropped out yet another opportunity to get back on track. Judge Marvin Shapiro has deemed November an amnesty month for drug court dropouts. About 150 people who failed to complete drug court -- and who currently have contempt warrants on file -- will get letters in the mail from Shapiro this week. [continues 297 words]
For more than 30 years, I have witnessed the modus operandi of the terrorists who perpetrated the Sept. 11 attack on our nation. I have seen the faces of the men, women and youngsters whose lives have been devastated by addiction to cocaine, heroin or their derivatives. Each once-clean person who has engaged in the use, abuse and trafficking of these substances has unknowingly collaborated with these terrorists. The faceless enemy who has invaded our country and, the past decade, attacked American embassies, government buildings and innocent people abroad has had at hand trillions of dollars. [continues 741 words]
Misuse Of Powerful, Widely Prescribed Vicodin Linked To Rapid Hearing Loss, Even Deafness LOS ANGELES: A powerful and potentially addictive painkiller used by millions of Americans is causing rapid hearing loss, even deafness, in some patients who are misusing the drug, according to hearing researchers in Los Angeles and elsewhere. So far, at least 48 patients have been identified by doctors at the House Ear Institute in Los Angeles and several other medical centers who have treated patients with sudden hearing loss. The hearing problems appear to be limited to people who abuse Vicodin and other chemically comparable prescription drugs by taking exceptionally high dosages for several months or more, doctors said. [continues 1044 words]
Bulb Planting Tuesday Helps Spread Awareness A new weapon has been added to the arsenal of the war against drugs: the red tulip. The National Family Partnership is striving to make the spring flower just one more symbol of its anti-drug message, just one more reminder to kids of the dangers of drug abuse and the commitment of families and communities to keep young people drug-free. The organization is encouraging families, schools, businesses and organizations across the United States to plant red tulip bulbs Tuesday, which has been designated National Plant the Promise Day. [continues 388 words]
BOGOTA, COLOMBIA: Pressure is growing on Colombia to abandon peace talks in favor of a military solution to its nearly four-decade war against drug-funded Marxist guerrillas, as the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States focus worldwide attention on international terrorism. The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) is on the State Department's global list of 29 terrorist groups, in part because of attacks on U.S. oil interests in Colombia. [continues 234 words]
Mtv Pushes `Because I Got High' Video To Wee Hours. Film Scenes Cut, Shows Tread Carefully It doesn't take much effort to find tales of substance abuse on television. Just yesterday morning, you could hop around channels and find: MTV reporting on Backstreet Boy A.J. McLean's return to performing after a stint in rehab; ESPN Classic discussing tennis star Jennifer Capriati's rebound from personal problems that included reports of drug use; and a replay of the TV movie The Boy in the Plastic Bubble, where a group of high-schoolers pass a couple of joints during a classroom break. [continues 375 words]
1983 Mercedes Wagon Operates On Hemp Oil, Crosses U.S. For Cause ST. PAUL, MINN.: Grayson Sigler of Hampton, Va., wanted to visit a friend in Seattle. The trip grew into a beacon for the national call to legalize hemp. The Hemp Car, a 1983 Mercedes 300TD wagon built to run on diesel fuel, is circling the country exclusively on industrial-grade hemp oil. Sigler, his wife and two documentarians making the 10,000-mile trek spent yesterday in the Twin Cities, visiting two Minneapolis head shops and the steps of the state capitol building in St. Paul. [continues 402 words]
Barring Aid To Students Is Short-Sighted The war on drugs is claiming more casualties. As many as 34,000 applicants for federal student loans, grants and work-study funds stand to lose that assistance if they have a drug conviction. A 1998 law aimed to crack the whip even harder against drug abuse. According to U.S. Rep. Mark Souder of Indiana who sponsored the bill, the targets of the law were students who were convicted of drug possession or dealing while on federal student aid. [continues 211 words]
Organizers In Medina Reject Norml's Request For Booth Lighters Sparked Controversy Last Year MEDINA - Organizers of the Medina County Fair have just said no to a group of activists seeking to legalize marijuana. John Hartman, president of the Cleveland Chapter of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, said fair officials contacted him yesterday, saying the group's application to set up a booth at the weeklong fair, which opens July 30, has been rejected. Hartman said fair officials reiterated their objection from last year to the group's selling lighters that encourage the legalization of marijuana. [continues 252 words]
DEAR ANN: This is in response to the letter from DEA administrator Donnie Marshall about ecstasy. The ecstasy knockoff known as PMA that has been taking the lives of young Americans is today's version of bathtub gin. The black market has no controls for quality or user age. Unlike legitimate businesses that sell alcohol, illegal drug dealers do not ask for ID. They push trendy, synthetic ``club drugs'' when given the chance. The drug war fails miserably at its primary mandate -- protecting children from drugs. [continues 423 words]
Ecstasy Isn't Something You Find In A Pill Peace, love and happiness don't come on demand, but it's hard to get that across when teen-agers want quick answers and quick results. To a number of young people, the route through pills and powders, weed and alcohol seems more inviting than the time it takes to develop self-confidence and a secure base for happiness. According to a 2000 survey of teens by the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University, 51 percent said they expect never to try illegal drugs, down from 60 percent in 1999. The survey noted that for the sixth consecutive year, teens identified drugs as their greatest concern, that marijuana was easier to buy than cigarettes and that ecstasy, a synthetic drug that acts simultaneously as a stimulant and a hallucinogen, is prevalent. [continues 333 words]
Justices Say Drug Remains Illegal For All Purposes John Precup insists he's not a criminal even though he frequently breaks the law. He's a 37-year-old Mansfield resident with multiple sclerosis who has been smoking marijuana regularly to combat persistent nausea and dizziness. And as president of the Ohio Patient Network, he has been lobbying state lawmakers for several months to try to get them to recognize the medicinal use of marijuana. His efforts, however, were dealt a major blow yesterday, when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a federal law classifying marijuana as illegal made no exception for ill patients. [continues 573 words]
Drug Interdiction Is Not A Gentle Game. Has It Worked? For years, the United States has been calling its attempt to stem the flow of drugs (and the use of them), a war on drugs. The horrible collateral consequences of that war -- the downing of a missionary plane by the Peruvian air force -- should call into question not only the actions of those involved but also the credibility of the U.S. interdiction program. A Peruvian A-37 jet, acting on information from an American surveillance plane but ignoring the U.S. crew's reservations regarding the status of the plane, fired on and killed missionary Veronica Bowers and her 7-month-old daughter, Charity. [continues 327 words]
COLUMBUS, Ohio (Associated Press) -- In the end, a doctor known for her love of life died like so many of those in the rock 'n' roll world that she admired so much: choking on her vomit from a drug overdose. The mystery of 39-year-old Joanna Demas' death was much like the one surrounding her life. Family members and colleagues described Demas, who once posed for Playboy, in contradictory ways. "This is my worst nightmare,'' her husband, Peter Way, told The Columbus Dispatch for a story Sunday. "I am absolutely devastated.'' [continues 496 words]
