The City Council decided there won't be an ordinance allowing medicinal marijuana in the city. Instead, the council voted Tuesday to send letters to state and federal officials urging them to support state Senate Bill 187, which would develop a plan to implement California's voter-approved Proposition 215 legalizing pot use with a doctor's recommendation. The proposition conflicts with a federal ban on marijuana use. In May, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that there is no medical necessity exception to the U.S. Controlled Substance Act. [end]
A McGill University researcher will be seeking scientific evidence that pot really works to relieve chronic pain. "Finally, a chance to tackle cannabis as a medicine, not just something to make you giggle," said Dr. Mark Ware of the McGill pain clinic at the Montreal General Hospital. Ware will be conducting the first Canadian clinical study on marijuana and pain. The year-long pilot study, financed by Health Canada, is expected to start in January. Ware will investigate well-known but anecdotal claims about marijuana smoking and its effects on severe pain. [continues 451 words]
Drug user guilty of murder Authorities say it is possibly the first time in the country that someone has been charged with felony-murder in an OxyContin overdose. TAZEWELL - Ground up in a spoon, mixed with water and drawn into a needle, one OxyContin pill is as dangerous as a loaded gun. So when Nicholas Dickerson died from an overdose of the prescription painkiller, Tazewell County authorities figured that the man who sold him the drug, then helped him inject it, might as well have pulled the trigger. [continues 862 words]
Editor, Times-Dispatch: In his column, "The Other Candidate: Sisyphus Has Got Nothing on This Redpath Guy," A. Barton Hinkle writes, "Spend much time around Libertarians and you get the sense some of them are a trifle - well, nuts." After reading this column I would say that if I spent much time around Hinkle I would get the sense he is a trifle - well, pompous. The Libertarian Party is America's largest and most successful third party. The party fielded candidates for 255 of the 435 seats in the U.S. House as well as 25 of the 33 Senate seats up for election in 2000 - the first time since the Socialist Party of the early 20th Century that any third party has contested a majority of the seats in Congress. David Broder of The Washington Post has been quoted as saying, "The party to watch in the 21st Century may well turn out to be the Libertarians." Because they are in reality one of the two big-government parties, Republicans across the country are losing votes - and because of that a Senate seat in Washington state - to Libertarians. [continues 114 words]
CHESAPEAKE -- To ensure that officers get pay raises, the Chesapeake Police Department intends to cut a program that teaches thousands of children about the dangers of drugs and alcohol, officials said Tuesday. Since 1987, the city's Drug Abuse Resistance Education -- or D.A.R.E. -- program has sent officers into elementary and middle schools, providing instruction sprinkled with real-life stories, and building trust with children. Aside from instruction about drugs and alcohol, the program teaches children to resist peer pressures to start smoking and join gangs. [continues 387 words]
LIMA, Peru -- Police have arrested two former high-level officials from disgraced ex-president Alberto Fujimori's administration on corruption charges. Former Attorney General Blanca Nelida Colan was arrested Wednesday on charges of cover-up, perjury, official negligence and illicit enrichment, a judicial spokeswoman said. Jose Portillo, former head of Peru's election board, was arrested in connection with the alleged forgery of 1 million signatures to help Fujimori's coalition qualify to run in elections last year, the spokeswoman said. [continues 131 words]
The location of the final methamphetamine town meeting has been changed. The meeting, which will start at 7 p.m. today, will be in the Mayflower Municipal Building. A special addition has been made to the line-up of speakers for today's meeting, a local woman whose life has been touched personally by the drug. The purpose of the meeting is to share facts with the community so citizens can help law enforcement in the war on drugs. By becoming familiar with usage warning signs, common ingredients and long and short-term dangers of the drug, police hope citizens will have the knowledge to help them. The meeting is sponsored by the Faulkner County Sheriff's Office as well as local police departments. [end]
Emergency-room visits after drug use rose 12 percent in the Twin Cities area and to record levels in other metropolitan areas last year, partly because of more incidents involving heroin and Ecstasy, a survey says. The survey of hospital emergency rooms in 21 metro areas showed increases in drug-related visits in seven, including the Twin Cities -- and declines in two. The others stayed about the same as their 1999 totals, according to the report released Wednesday by the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. [continues 335 words]
ELK CITY - An Oklahoma Highway Patrol trooper seized more than 800 pounds of cocaine - the largest single amount of cocaine ever taken from one bust in Oklahoma - found in a motor home Wednesday on Interstate 40. The drugs have a wholesale value of $50 million and a street value of up to $1 billion, authorities said. The seizure, which almost doubles the amount of cocaine seized last year by the patrol, began as a routine traffic stop on a stretch of I-40 about 35 miles east of the Texas border near Elk City in Beckham County, the patrol said. [continues 242 words]
Narcotics: Worried About Use Of Substances Such As Ecstasy, Random Testing Is Increased. SAN DIEGO -- Alarmed by rising use of Ecstasy and other "party drugs" by military personnel at bases nationwide and abroad, the services are striking back by increasing random drug testing, booting out first-time offenders and court-martialing anyone caught selling narcotics. Although the number of personnel who test positive for drug use still is tiny in an active-duty force of 1.4 million, military brass are worried that the growing popularity of a new crop of drugs will reverse the military's two-decade-long pattern of declining drug use among its troops. [continues 1126 words]
West End Residents To Join Street Patrol FRUSTRATED west end residents packed a community centre last night, vowing to battle the prostitutes and johns who have moved into their neighbourhood. Anger and fear combined to create a volatile mix, sometimes igniting the crowd of children, young mothers, the middle-aged and seniors. It was standing room only at the Burnell Street centre as neighbours quickly grabbed the 100 folding chairs. The back of the hall filled and then the aisles. They came, they said, to snatch back their streets. [continues 562 words]
