As a teen-ager, Bill Clinton shook President John F. Kennedy's hand in the Rose Garden and set his sights on the White House. But now, in the twilight of his own presidency, Clinton has gone one step too far in emulation of his role model. Clinton stopped in Colombia last week, just long enough to hand the government a check for $1.3 billion, which he insists will be used exclusively to fight the war against illegal drugs. If only life were so simple. In Colombia, it's not. [continues 687 words]
Drug War: U.S. Aid Is Headed To Land Locked In Civil War Where Right, Left Tap Into Drug Trade. PRESIDENT CLINTON went to Colombia on Wednesday to build support for his new war effort there. In July Congress approved $1.3 billion for Clinton's ``Plan Colombia,'' a massive U.S. leap into the big muddy of anti-drug and anti-guerrilla warfare in the hemisphere's longest-running civil war. As the presidential campaign at home focuses on whose tax cut -- Al Gore's or George W. Bush's -- is the better deal, few are watching Clinton's lame-duck launch into a new Latin American quagmire with its haunting echoes of quagmires past. [continues 1328 words]
The time may have come to retreat from the front lines of the war on drugs and regroup. Statistics tell a story of defeat. In 1980, the United States spent $5 billion on the drug war and arrested 40,000 folks on drug charges, most of them minor league, nonviolent offenses. Today, we spend about $40 billion and arrest 450,000 people for drug-related offenses, primarily marijuana possession. (That, by the way, is more people than are arrested, for any reason, in all of Europe, which has a larger population.) [continues 418 words]
Supreme Court Grants White House Request It just got tougher for medical marijuana patients to buy their drug. The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday granted an emergency request from the Clinton administration to stop an Oakland cannabis club from distributing medicinal marijuana. While the north state doesn't have a cannabis club, many patients patronize clubs in Oakland or Humboldt County when they can't grow their own or when their supply runs short, said Redding attorney Eric Berg, who has defended medical marijuana patients prosecuted for using the drug. [continues 548 words]
Despite the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling barring distribution of medicinal marijuana in California to people whose doctors prescribe it, local cannabis supporters are optimistic they will win the fight in the long run. Supporters, including San Francisco District Attorney Terence Hallinan, said Tuesday that they are not quite willing to give up the court battle. But they concede that the quest to legalize the medical use of marijuana will most likely be resolved in Congress and the White House rather than in court. [continues 878 words]
Supreme Court: Ruling halts dispensing, may signal showdown between state, federal law. The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday blocked a judge's month-old order allowing an Oakland pot club to distribute medicinal marijuana. But the high court's action, which had been urged by the Clinton administration, may be just a prelude to resolving a long-simmering legal conflict that pits California's voter-approved Proposition 215 against established federal drug laws. The justices' decision to issue the emergency order signals their possible interest in reviewing lower court rulings that have opened the door for California and other Western states to dispense marijuana in certain cases without running afoul of federal law. [continues 696 words]
There is something unsettling about the press coverage of the presidential race. Last week, President Bill Clinton signed a waiver of the human-rights provisions imposed by Congress on the $1.3 billion drug-war package to Colombia, and not a single reporter bothered to ask the candidates -- one of whom, after all, will have to deal with the consequences -- what they thought of it. Do George W. Bush and Al Gore support our becoming embroiled in a three-way civil war? We know where they stand on "family" (they're for it), but not whether they are in favor of more than a billion dollars being spent to fight the drug war abroad while 3.5 million addicts at home can't get the treatment they need. Or whether they endorse the cavalier abandonment of the congressionally mandated human-rights benchmarks. [continues 726 words]