Supporters of a controversial initiative on the ballot Tuesday in Detroit that would legalize marijuana use for medical purposes are confident the measure will pass. The proposal would create an exception in the city code for patients who have a doctor's permission to use the drug. Tim Beck, chairman of the Detroit Coalition for Compassionate Care, said he knows passage of "Proposal M" wouldn't affect state and federal laws that prohibit marijuana use and allow prosecution of those possessing or using the drug, but he thinks it's an important first step. [continues 235 words]
You can play a role for only so long. Sooner or later, the real person emerges. Ricky Williams is trying to portray someone - or something - he's not. Turns out, the only reason Williams, one of the best running backs in the NFL, is taking a leave of absence from football is because he couldn't face the reality of a situation entirely of his doing. Given this is my second Ricky Williams column in a week, I know this sounds like I'm talking out of both sides of my mouth. [continues 462 words]
Your June 22 editorial about illegal school searches highlighted a growing problem in the United States. These days zero tolerance poses a greater threat to students than drugs. According to the Monitoring the Future survey, more than half of all high school seniors have tried an illicit drug. Denying a majority of the nation's youth an education and the chance to grow up to become productive members of society is not in America's best interest. Most students outgrow their youthful indiscretions involving drugs. An arrest and criminal record, on the other hand, can be life-shattering. [continues 138 words]
It appears several Detroit public high schools committed a fascist faux pas by allowing their students to be lined up like criminals in the hallways and frisked by police and security officers. The searches, conducted in at least four schools, were reportedly not instigated by any known or suspected criminal activity. They were just a random pat-down for possible contraband like drugs or guns. At Mumford High School a search of about 1,800 students turned up no such items. [continues 320 words]
Some people head to the break room when they are having a bad day at work. Bill Hamilton, a Rossford police officer in charge of drug education and prevention in the city's public schools, sets his sights on the nearest kindergarten classroom. "If things aren't going well for me on a certain day I always end up in a kindergarten class," he said. "When Officer Bill walks in there I get all the hugs anybody could ever want to have." [continues 385 words]
COLUMBUS - Legislators are trying to overturn an Ohio Supreme Court decision in 2002 that pleased labor unions and infuriated business groups.Yesterday, the House of Representatives passed a bill to provide notice to workers that if they are injured at work, they may have to take a drug or alcohol test and if they fail it, they may not receive workers' compensation benefits. Also if they refuse or fail the test, they would have to prove that drugs or alcohol did not cause their injury, said the bill's sponsor, state Rep. Bob Gibbs (R., Lakeville). [continues 508 words]
COLOMBIA President Alvaro Uribe's visit to Washington generated some progress in U.S.-Colombian efforts to reduce coca production, a key component in reducing illegal drug shipments to this country. But the good news also came with a catch: Mr. Uribe's plea for a doubling of the congressionally mandated cap on the number of U.S. soldiers stationed there. That level now stands at 400; authorized military personnel would increase to 800, with an additional 600 civilian contractors assigned as well, if Mr. Uribe gets his way. [continues 313 words]
Area agencies are establishing a program to educate Hispanics about methamphetamine and inhalants. The Community Partnership, a substance abuse prevention group, will work with migrant communities in Defiance, Fulton, Henry, and Williams counties and with after-school programs in South Toledo. The work is funded by a three-year, $350,000-a-year grant awarded last fall by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' Center for Substance Abuse Prevention. Meth labs have been found in rural areas in part because meth makers use the same raw materials as farmers do for fertilizer and because rural areas can offer drug makers seclusion. [continues 570 words]
TORONTO - Canada plans to make government certified marijuana available in local pharmacies, a move that would make it only the second country in the world to allow the direct sale of medical marijuana. Officials are organizing a pilot project in the British Columbia province modeled on a year-old program in the Netherlands. Currently, there are 78 medical users in Canada permitted to buy government marijuana which is grown in Flin Flon Manitoba. An ounce sells for about $113, and the marijuana is sent by courier to patients or their doctors. But the department is changing the rules to allow participating pharmacies to stock marijuana for sale to approved patients without a doctor's prescription. [end]
Ohio Ruling Says Harsher Penalties Can Be Imposed Only If 'Recklessness' Is Verified COLUMBUS - Imposing more jail time on drug dealers plying their trade near schools could prove more difficult under a 5-2 Ohio Supreme Court ruling issued yesterday. Simply committing the crime within 1,000 feet of a school is not enough, the court found. Justice Paul Pfeifer, writing for the majority, drew a distinction between the school vicinity language and another portion of the same law calling for stiffer penalties if the crime was committed within 100 feet or within view of a juvenile, regardless of whether the offender was aware of it. [continues 428 words]
Closer Monitoring of Painkillers Sought WASHINGTON - The Bush administration announced an expanded crackdown yesterday on what it called the growing menace of prescription drug abuse, which is said to touch and harm more than 6 million Americans a year. Top administration officials said the initiative, the first comprehensive one of its kind, would increase state monitoring programs that detect suspicious prescriptions and patients suspected of doctor shopping. It also would increase education to doctors about how to detect potential prescription drug abusers. In addition, it will take on the burgeoning use of the Internet to purchase controlled drugs. [continues 287 words]
Heroin, Methamphetamine Seized; Possible Al-Qaeda Link Probed RIYADH, Saudi Arabia - U.S. sailors seized an estimated $3 million worth of drugs yesterday as an Arab sailing crew in the northern Arabian Sea tossed the bags overboard. Authorities were investigating whether al-Qaeda was linked to the shipment. The seizure of 85 pounds of heroin came a day after the U.S. Navy announced the confiscation Dec. 15 of two tons of hashish believed to be tied to Osama bin Laden's terror network. [continues 232 words]
While the focus of the $87.5 billion Congress approved for war-making and reconstruction was on Iraq, it is important to note that some of the package was designated for use in Afghanistan. The irony of the American taxpayer digging deep for Afghanistan - all deficit spending - is that it is estimated that Afghanistan's earnings from sales of opium in 2003 - 75 percent of world production - are approaching a billion dollars, almost as much as the United States is putting in and entirely destructive in terms of its impact on the world. [continues 376 words]
Thanks to Marilou Johanek for her column on Rush Limbaugh. However, in her rush to flush Rush, she could have mentioned more than the two-tiered drug enforcement policy that puts poor drug addicts in jail by the millions but lets self-important right-wing radio announcers go to rehab. Ms. Johanek could have pointed out that Rush and others like him have been instrumental in mobilizing poor, working, and middle-class (white) people to vote against their interests, like universal health care (Medicare for everyone), better and equitably funded public schools, regulations for large corporations, and the end of the anti-democratic North American Free Trade Agreement and World Trade Organization. [continues 124 words]
Love him or hate him, one thing you've got to admit about Rush Limbaugh: The man is brilliant. Canned by ESPN for making controversial remarks about Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Donovan McNabb and fingered by his former housekeeper for a prescription pain medication addiction - all in a matter of days - Rush is poised to be more popular than ever when he returns from his self-imposed exile. Forget the ESPN gig; that was small potatoes compared to the recent revelations about his drug use. [continues 595 words]
If the tables were turned, there is little doubt that Rush Limbaugh would be fulminating full-bore on the story of a liberal talk-radio host who confessed to being a drug addict. But, hey, that was what we would expect from the old Rush, who has gone from being a vociferous opponent of legalizing drugs a decade ago to more recently suggesting outright that legalization would be more effective than the government's so-called war on drugs. Now it turns out that this evolution in viewpoint might have been forged not on the ringing anvil of conservative certitude but in the intense state of euphoria attained by ingesting copious quantities of OxyContin and other painkilling drugs. [continues 341 words]
It is a case so terribly typical these days inside the echoing hallways of Lucas County Juvenile Court. There are two little boys and a crack cocaine-addicted mother. There are allegations of neglect and violence, arrest warrants, alcohol and drug detoxification programs, and suicide attempts. There's a Michigan father who wants one boy, an Ohio father who wants the brother. And here in this massive brick building in Toledo's downtown, there is an endless stream of attorneys and caseworkers and other strangers who will try to hammer out permanent solutions to questions of custody and care. [continues 561 words]
Police Probe Alteration to Vice-Narcotics Web Page The Toledo police vice-narcotics Web page went to pot - literally. The National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws thought police were turning over a new leaf when it saw the page's background filled with rows of pot leaves with the letters NORML under each leaf. The Washington-based group, dedicated to reforming marijuana laws, then realized it might have a bigger problem growing: the possible misuse of one of its logos. [continues 412 words]
Random drug testing would be adopted for Toledo police command officers under a labor contract recommended yesterday by a state-appointed arbiter. If adopted by City Council and the 140-member Toledo Police Command Officers ' Association, the 42-page report would end an impasse over replacing the previous contract, which expired Dec. 31, 2002. Mayor Jack Ford's staff briefed council on the report yesterday. Jay Black, Jr., the city's chief operating officer, said the administration has not decided whether to recommend approval of the agreement. [continues 305 words]
Ross Chaban is blunt when he talks about his previous thinking that most heroin addicts don't need lifelong methadone medication to prevent them from abusing heroin. "I was an idiot," Mr. Chaban said. It's not an easy admission for the executive director of Toledo-based Substance Abuse Services, Inc., northwest Ohio's only methadone clinic for heroin addicts. But it was clear that Toledo's strategy for treating addicts dependent on heroin, Oxycontin, and other opiates was not working. [continues 1221 words]
Authorities tried a new drug interdiction method yesterday on about a mile stretch of northbound U.S. 23/I-475 just south of Central Avenue in Sylvania Township. Two vehicles were stopped, but nothing was seized during the nearly four-hour effort. Authorities monitored drivers' behavior and watched for traffic violations within the checkpoint area from about 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. It was the first time about 10 members of the Toledo-Metro Drug Task Force, which included officers from Toledo and Sylvania Township police and the Ohio Highway Patrol, tried the enforcement effort. [continues 194 words]
WASHINGTON - About 22 million people in the United States abused or were dependent on alcohol, drugs, or both last year, but only a fraction received treatment, the government said yesterday. The 2002 National Survey on Drug Use and Health also said nearly 20 million people were current users of illegal drugs, with such use highest among young adults. More than one in five 18 to 25-year-olds, or 20.2 percent of young adults, were current users, with marijuana being the substance of choice, the survey said. [continues 299 words]
AMSTERDAM - the Netherlands this week will become the first country to make cannabis available as a prescription drug in pharmacies to treat chronically ill patients, a top Dutch health official said yesterday. The Dutch government has given the countries 1,650 pharmacies the green light to sell marijuana to sufferers of cancer,HIV, Multiple Sclerosis, and Tourette's, syndrome in a ground-breaking acceptance of the drugs medical value. [end]
BOWLING GREEN - Wood County sheriff's deputies continued yesterday to hunt for marijuana plants in farm fields as part of an annual eradication effort. Chief Deputy Mark Hummer said the department, working with state and federal authorities, had found and destroyed more than 400 mature marijuana plants with a street value of more than $400,000. As of yesterday, no arrests had been made in the operation, which began Thursday. A helicopter manned by the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Identification and Investigation is being used to spot the plants. Deputies use all-terrain vehicles to reach the illegal cultivation sites. In most cases, drug cultivators hide their crops in the fields of unsuspecting farmers, Deputy Hummer said, making it hard to find the offenders. The operation's goal is "pulling illegal drugs off the street," he said. [end]
Personnel from the Lucas County Sheriff's Office and the state's Bureau of Criminal Identification and Investigation flew over portions of western Lucas County Monday and discovered 198 marijuana plants with an estimated street value of about $200,000. Sheriff's Detective Rob Sarahman said it was one of the office's largest discoveries in recent years. The law enforcement officials found the illegal plants mixed in cornfields around Providence Township. He said the agencies used a helicopter to spot the plants from the sky. Detective Sarahman said seeing the plants, which are a different color than other legal plants that were growing in the area, was much easier from the air. [continues 172 words]
Terms such as inner city, drug-related, and crime-infested are some of the code words politicians, public figures, and the media use to identify African-Americans, and blacks should start challenging the definitions of those terms, a Columbus author speaking in Toledo said yesterday. Khari Enaharo, a Columbus talk-show host and author of the book Race Code War, said people in the United States are bombarded daily with negative images of African-Americans with little to counterbalance the effects. [continues 401 words]
Second Officer's Help Wanted In Oregon Middle Schools Oregon is hoping to expand its Drug Abuse Resistance Education program with a second officer who will teach part-time at the city's middle schools. City Council will consider a measure Monday night to apply for matching state funds. It's requesting $18,881 to help pay for the salary of officer Michael Poddany, who teaches the program to students at Coy, Starr, Wynn, and Jerusalem elementary schools. Last year the city received $14,028 to help offset the cost of officer Poddany's pay. [continues 271 words]
AUSTIN, Texas -- It's an odd country, really. Our largest growth industries are gambling and prisons. But as you may have heard, crimes rates are dropping. We're not putting people into prison for hurting other people. We're putting them into prison for using drugs, and as we already know, that doesn't help them or us. In 1998, more than 600,000 people in this country were arrested for possession of marijuana, a drug less harmful for adults than alcohol. A famous British medical journal, The Lancet, concluded last year: "On the medical evidence available, moderate indulgence in cannabis has little ill effect on health." And according to an ad campaign by Common Sense for Drug Policy, a Department of Health and Human Services study shows that less than 1 percent of marijuana users become regular users of cocaine or heroin. [continues 835 words]
GENOA - The Board of Education has voted unanimously to approve a policy requiring mandatory drug tests for athletes attending the district's middle and high schools. The policy will be in place when classes begin in the fall for the Ottawa County district, 15 miles southeast of Toledo. "This is a good excuse for students of Genoa to just say no," said Leslie Wyse, president of the school board. "I have not met one person from the community against the policy; several people asked me what took us so long." [continues 141 words]
Columbus -- Gov. bob Taft yesterday appointed Gary Tester director of the state Department of Alcohol and Drug Addictions Services. He will replace Luceille Fleming, who retires tomorrow. "It's a great honor" said Mr. Tester, 44. "Ohio is among a handful of states with a cabinet-level post on drug and alcohol issues." Mr. Tester of Toledo has been the chief of prevention services for ODDAS since November, 2000, at an annual salary is $81,972. Mr. Taft has not set his salary as director yet. [continues 80 words]
The Genoa Board of Education plans to join the ranks of schools that require mandatory and random drug testing for athletes - starting with its middle school students. The board intends to have the new policy in place by September. Seventh and eighth-grade pupils who participate in sports would be subject to testing. Ernie Cottrell, school board vice president, said the initiative is meant to prevent drug, alcohol, and tobacco use. "We have had several meetings with parents in the community and everyone is in favor of testing," he said. "Our hopes are that if there is a problem, that it gets caught before it becomes a major problem." [continues 570 words]
Another fine example of how far wrong we have gone to protect the rights of individuals: A defense attorney has called into question a drug-sniffing dog 's ability to correctly find drugs during traffic stops. Never mind that the dog was right on and the attorney's client had 113 pounds of suspected marijuana in his van. He's reaching for any kind of technicality to get him off. And of course a law professor chimes in to say, yes, let's question the dog's reliability. He thinks the government should check the dog's record. I guess the only way defense lawyers think a trial is fair is if they can use any kind of ploy to get their man off. Are there any defense attorneys out there who think our system has gone too far and it needs to be corrected? DAVID ANDERSON [end]
BOGOTA Colombia-- Colombia extradited 12 suspected drug traffickers to the United States yesterday, bringing to 79 the number of suspected smugglers President Alvaro Uribe's government has handed over to U.S. custody since taking office in August. Mr. Uribe, a close Washington ally, has intensified a U.S. backed crop-spraying offensive to destroy drug crops and stepped up the pace of arrests and extradition of drug smugglers to the United States. [end]
SAN FRANCISCO - A new study finds that high school students who smoke marijuana are likely to obtain lower math scores than their peers. Scores showed no difference on reading scores between users and those who abstained from the weed. The study by the Economist Rosalie Pacula from the public policy group RAND looked at 6000 standard test scores of those who started using marijuana after the tenth grade in 1990 and compared with results when they were in 12th grade in 1992. Those who started smoking marijuana had 15 percent lower scores in math than non-smokers but no difference in the reading test, she said. [end]
Lawyers Question Dogs' Reliability It started as a routine traffic stop on chilly New Year's day when Ohio Highway Patrol Trooper Stacey L. Arnold saw a minivan stray outside the lanes on the Ohio Turnpike. When the driver, Can T. Nguyen, appeared overly nervous, his hands trembling as he handed over his driver's license, Trooper Arnold headed over to her car to get her drug-detecting dog, Ringo. The black and tan Belgian Malinois alerted to drugs, giving the trooper the probable cause she needed to search the minivan. She found what she was looking for - 113 pounds of suspected marijuana in a cargo area. [continues 838 words]
WASHINGTON - The living's a little too easy in the summer time, according to national drug czar John Walters, who estimates that 5,800 teens each day will smoke marijuana for the first time this month. "Many parents don't know that new teen marijuana use spikes in the summer months," Mr. Walters said yesterday while introducing the "School's Out Don't Let Your Teen's Summer Go to Pot" anti-drug campaign. According to the National Household Survey on Drug Abuse of 2002, nearly a quarter of first time teen marijuana use occurs during June 'and July. Nearly 40 per-cent of all youngsters aged 12 to 17 who said they have used marijuana at least once said they had their first experience during the four-month period from May through August. [continues 161 words]
SAN FRANCISCO- Ed Rosenthal,the self proclaimed "guru of ganja" walked free yesterday after a federal judge sentenced him to just one day in prison, with time served for growing marijuana Rosenthal said was for medical purposes. U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer said Rosenthal, 58, genuinely believed that what he was doing was not against the law. In January a jury concluded Rosenthal was growing more than 100 plants, conspired to cultivate marijuana and maintained an Oakland warehouse for a growing operation. [end]
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Dennis Kucinich, a champion for down-to-earth issues such as blue-collar jobs and the beleaguered steel industry, is showing his spiritual side as he courts supporters in his bid for the Democratic presidential nomination. Peace activists, New Age gurus, and people who practice alternative religions. are among Mr. Kucinich's donors - many of them attracted to the Ohio congressman's stand on less-than-mainstream issues such as a call for a cabinet-level Department of Peace and his support for medical marijuana. [continues 237 words]
TORONTO -- The Canadian government introduced legislation today to decriminalize possession of small amounts of marijuana but set stricter penalties for those apprehended for trafficking the drug. The form the legislation took was a compromise between those in the Cabinet who see the drug as a minor nuisance and those who fear that anything approaching legalization would increase use by young people The Bush administration has been vocal in cautioning Canada that Washington would be forced to increase time-consuming border searches if decriminalization of marijuana is enacted. American officials say decriminalization would increase supplies and trafficking. [continues 117 words]
TAKOMA PARK, Md. - The bard of Baltimore, H.L. Mencken, once defined Puritanism as "the haunting fear that someone, somewhere may be happy." He would have found quite a few Puritans in his home state in recent days, trying to keep demon weed away from the seriously ill. Shrugging off their pressures, Maryland's Republican Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich signed a bill Thursday that, although it does not quite legalize the medicinal use of marijuana, does the next best thing. It reduces the maximum penalty for possession from a year in state prison and a $1,000 fine to a $100 fine in cases of "medical necessity," such as to relieve suffering from cancer treatment and other serious illnesses. [continues 576 words]
The next initiative petition to hit the streets of Toledo could be circulated by Sandra Coty, who wants to establish the Ohio Marijuana Party - and no doubt bring a whole new meaning to the phrase "high voter turnout." She showed up last week at the Lucas County Board of Elections to file paperwork to establish a political action committee which will allow her to raise money to pay for the work of circulating petitions - and growing her "grass roots" organization. "We have a lot of people in jail for a long, long time, who are nonviolent," she said. "I am trying to make it not a criminal offense to possess marijuana, so we don't have our jails full of nonviolent people. [continues 375 words]
We are funding a war-torn, drug-trafficking nation of corruption where children are slain in an effort to save Americans from using drugs. Eradication planes flying overhead are spraying more than just the coca plants. The money would be better spent on humanitarian aid for Colombians. We need reconstruction in our drug policies and honesty in education to protect Americans from heroin and cocaine. Our Drug Enforcement Agency has been kept very busy filling our prisons with nonviolent marijuana users while our streets are filling with deadly drugs. Our education program would have marijuana at the top of its list because it's the most popular drug, but the truth is that it doesn't kill its users, steal their morals, or control them against their own wills. It's time to invest in Plan U.S.A. It's time for a change. Carlton Street [end]
Blade Religion Editor While the world focuses its attention on the war in Iraq, the Rev. Pablo Jose Noguera is hoping Ohioans will help to ease the suffering in war-torn Colombia. "Now we have an international war in Iraq, but war has not stopped in Colombia," Mr. Noguera, a Presbyterian minister from Bogota, said during a visit to Toledo this week sponsored by the Interfaith Justice and Peace Center. In 2000, the U.S. Congress passed a $1.3 billion aid package known as "Plan Colombia," making the South American nation the third-highest recipient of American security funding, behind Egypt and Israel. [continues 446 words]
GOV. Bob Taft's projected $2 billion budget deficit is due in part to the cost of confining 43,500 people in state prisons. To cut prison costs - and avoid the appearance of being soft on crime - some states are turning to dead-end fixes. Other states, including Ohio, are counting on alternatives to incarceration to reduce prison costs. The cost to keep each Ohio inmate behind bars is $60.22 a day, or nearly $22,000 a year. Add in other operating and capital costs and you get a prison bill of $1.8 billion a year. [continues 604 words]
The Office of Management and Budget's report about the Drug Enforcement Administration's drug war performance confirms long-held suspicions. The report said the DEA isn't doing its job. That may not qualify as news. Also, the administration's budget for the agency remains pretty much the same, at $1.56 billion. That reflects less than a 1 percent increase and in part mirrors the Bush Administration's lack of confidence in the DEA. The OMB report states that the agency "is unable to demonstrate progress in reducing the availability of illegal drugs in the United States." Americans at every economic level are still adversely affected by the easy availability of illegal drugs that are steadily more pure. Last year President Bush recognized that illegal drug use is still widespread among the nation's youth and that the war on drugs of late has "lost ground." [continues 243 words]
A Toledo police officer caught smoking suspected marijuana pleaded innocent to a drug charge the same day a records clerk with the department was charged administratively after she was seen smoking marijuana with the former officer. Peggy Hymore, 41, of Oregon was charged Jan. 26 with marijuana possession, a minor misdemeanor. She pleaded innocent in Toledo Municipal Court on Tuesday, a day before she was to appear in court. A trial is set for Feb. 19. She resigned from the department Jan. 27. [continues 459 words]
Bond Set At $750K For B.C. Brothers Two Canadian brothers are to appear in Maumee Municipal Court again today after Ohio Highway Patrol troopers allegedly caught them on the turnpike with 352 pounds of a potent marijuana authorities estimate is worth $16 million. Arseni Mamontov, 25, was arraigned yesterday on felony charges of aggravated drug trafficking and drug abuse. His brother, Boris, 23, was charged with conspiracy to traffic drugs and drug abuse. The two Vancouver men, who also face traffic charges, were ordered held in the Lucas County jail in lieu of $750,000 bond each. [continues 493 words]
Recent surveys show youth alcohol and drug use is on the decline, but the trend hasn't been noticed at Connecting Point, the local family-support social agency's lead therapist said during a taping of The Editors. "We see a lot of kids," said Truman Claytor, who with the agency's chief executive officer, Jeff Deckebach, discussed the issue with Marilou Johanek, of The Blade editorial board. The program will be broadcast at 9 tonight on WGTE-TV, Channel 30, and at 12:30 p.m. Sunday on WBGU-TV, Channel 30. [continues 224 words]
The Ohio Supreme Court has just made a critical error in regard to protecting the rights of workers. I am very disappointed by the court's decision to overturn legislation that forced employees to prove that alcohol or drugs did not result in accidents that were then claimed through workers' compensation. This decision puts into question the court's judgment and desire to protect the general public. Employees who choose to use alcohol or drugs on the job put everyone else at risk. [continues 63 words]
It started as a routine traffic stop just after midnight about a year ago and turned into a year-long trend of drug arrests on the Ohio Turnpike and a small section of I-280. Two Seattle men were in a car traveling 73 mph in a 65-mph zone on the turnpike just east of Toledo Express Airport when they were pulled over by Ohio State Highway Patrol troopers. The men's stories about which Baltimore grandmother they were going to visit didn't jibe when they were questioned. [continues 544 words]
