Police Sniff Their Way To An Arrest MOORESTOWN - Who let the dog out? That is what police were trying to find out Monday evening when, they said, they uncovered a house where marijuana plants were being grown. Police also seized $58,000 in cash. Moorestown police went to the Browning Avenue home of Marco F. Ditullio, 51, after neighbors complained that his dog was running unattended in the neighborhood. Officer Richard Naff said that when he arrived, he smelled burning marijuana. Ditullio was arrested and charged with possession of marijuana and possession with intent to distribute marijuana. He was released after posting bail. [continues 59 words]
Bookmark: Reports about Colombia: http://www.mapinc.org/area/Colombia Chapter 19 of a continuing serial If Pablo Escobar had ever doubted that the United States was hot on his trail, those doubts vanished after the U.S. Embassy in Bogota refused to issue visas for his wife and children to flee to the United States in February 1993. Escobar had always tried to avoid picking a fight with America, but now the Americans' latest moves clearly distressed him. Ambassador Morris Busby received by mail a newspaper clipping in an envelope that appeared to have been hand-addressed by the fugitive. The clipping was about the decision to turn back his family, and in a quotation from one of Escobar's defenders, one line was circled: ". . . is it valid to cancel the visas of children because one is persecuting the father?" [continues 1413 words]
Bookmark: Reports about Colombia: http://www.mapinc.org/area/Colombia Chapter 18 of a continuing serial By January 1993, the Americans directing the search for Pablo Escobar had managed to produce elaborate organizational charts for his Medellin drug cartel. The charts were displayed in the secret vault at the U.S. Embassy in Bogota and inside the Delta Force outpost in Medellin. Some of the information had been gleaned from months of electronic eavesdropping on Escobar and his associates by Centra Spike, the secret U.S. Army unit. Some had been coerced from people interrogated by Col. Hugo Martinez and his police Search Bloc, and some came from informants recruited by the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Search Bloc to work in Medellin. Of these, according to an informant known as "Rubin," some were members of Los Pepes, the death squad that was methodically killing Escobar's hit men, relatives, lawyers and business associates. [continues 1217 words]
Bookmark: Reports about Colombia: http://www.mapinc.org/area/Colombia Chapter 16 of a continuing serial The Americans based at the Search Bloc headquarters in Medellin occupied a small room where they slept on cots or air mattresses. They covered the walls with giant photo-maps of the city of Medellin and surrounding areas. Whenever the American electronic eavesdropping experts from Centra Spike would forward the coordinates for a target, "Col. Santos," the Delta Force chief and his men would locate the exact spot on their maps. Col. Hugo Martinez, the Colombian commander of the Search Bloc, was always glad to receive the information, and usually acted upon it, but he was too proud to permit the Americans to help plan his assaults. [continues 1227 words]
The Clinton administration will urge Congress to give Colombia's neighbors more money to prevent the escalating war on drugs in Colombia from driving traffickers across its borders, a senior U.S. official said yesterday. Under Secretary of State Thomas Pickering, who visited Colombia last week, said the United States would have to pay more attention to regional aspects of the drug trade as the Colombian offensive begins. Congress has approved $180 million for antidrug programs in the neighboring countries as part of the $1.3 billion package for Colombian President Andres Pastrana's multinational Plan Colombia - a three-year program aimed at wiping out the cocaine and heroin trade and making peace with rebels. [end]
Bookmark: Reports about Colombia: http://www.mapinc.org/area/Colombia Chapter 17 of a continuing serial Up in their Beechcraft spy plane over Medellin one day, the Centra Spike operators were stunned by what they overheard. They had just picked up a brief radio transmission from Pablo Escobar. They plotted the coordinates, then sent the data to the Search Bloc headquarters. There, the unit's commander, Col. Hugo Martinez, shared the information with his top officers. [continues 1307 words]
Bookmark: Reports about Colombia: http://www.mapinc.org/area/Colombia Chapter 15 of a continuing serial After her husband was murdered by his former boss Pablo Escobar, Dolly Moncada began providing valuable information to the Americans who were helping direct and finance the hunt for the fugitive drug lord. Among her suggestions was that the authorities talk to Colombian drug traffickers held in American jails. Soon after Dolly was debriefed by the DEA in Washington, D.C., in late 1992, an incentive was offered to jailed Colombian drug dealer Carlos Lehder, a former associate of Escobar's. Lehder, seeking a reduced sentence, responded with his own suggestions for closing in on his former ally. [continues 1076 words]
Bookmark: Reports about Colombia: http://www.mapinc.org/area/Colombia Chapter 14 of a continuing serial At least one person in Colombia felt there was no mystery at all about the vigilante group that called itself Los Pepes. The day after several of Pablo Escobar's properties were bombed in January 1993, the fugitive drug boss sent a note to Col. Hugo Martinez, who headed the police Search Bloc. The message flatly accused Martinez of ordering the "terrorist actions" against the homes of his relatives. Escobar did not mention Los Pepes. Instead, he wrote: "Personnel under your supervision set car bombs at buildings in El Poblado, where some of my relatives live." [continues 988 words]
Bookmark: Reports about Colombia: http://www.mapinc.org/area/Colombia Chapter 13 of a continuing serial The hunt for Pablo Escobar grew uglier in 1993. In his desk at the Search Bloc headquarters, Col. Hugo Martinez kept a growing pile of grisly photographs of the dead. Displaying the photos to a Delta Force operator one afternoon, the colonel said of Medellin cartel members his men had not yet found, "As long as I'm the commander here, they're not going to live." [continues 1138 words]
Bookmark: Reports about Colombia: http://www.mapinc.org/area/Colombia Chapter 12 of a continuing serial Officially, the U.S. Embassy in Bogota was silent on the sudden emergence in early 1993 of Los Pepes (People Persecuted by Pablo Escobar), a vigilante group apparently dedicated to violent retribution against the fugitive drug lord. The gang in the steel vault on the fifth floor of the embassy - Ambassador Morris Busby, CIA Station Chief Bill Wagner, and the Drug Enforcement Administration country chief, Joe Toft - was not displeased. Nor were the DEA agents, Delta Force operators and Centra Spike electronic surveillance experts at the Search Bloc headquarters outside Medellin. [continues 1338 words]
Bookmark: Reports about Colombia: http://www.mapinc.org/area/Colombia Chapter Nine of a continuing serial Four days after Pablo Escobar's escape from prison in July of 1992, a team of American DEA agents took a leisurely tour of La Catedral, the site of Escobar's luxury prison suite. The mountaintop "prison" was now a hot tourist attraction for top-ranking American and Colombian officials. CIA station chief Bill Wagner would tour it days later with a video camera, accompanied by several members of his staff. The visits confirmed all the worst suspicions about Escobar's supposed imprisonment, but it also gave the Americans a rare glimpse into the life and mind of the world's most famous fugitive. [continues 1261 words]
Bookmark: Reports about Colombia: http://www.mapinc.org/area/Colombia Chapter 11 of a continuing serial On Jan. 30, 1993, a car bomb exploded in Bogota, blowing a crater several feet deep in the street and sidewalk and taking a savage bite out of a bookstore. Bogota was accustomed to car bombs by now, but even by that weary city's standards this was a nightmare. The bookstore bomb was estimated to have contained 220 pounds of dynamite. [continues 1325 words]
Bookmark: Reports about Colombia: http://www.mapinc.org/area/Colombia Two days after his escape from prison in July of 1992, Pablo Escobar sent a taped statement to selected Colombian TV and radio reporters. It was signed: "Colombian jungle zone, Thursday, July 24, 1992. Pablo Escobar and comrades." This was a bit of theater, because Escobar was actually only a few miles from the prison, ensconced on a private estate in a wealthy suburb of Medellin. Judging from the aggrieved tone of the statement, he was in a petulant mood. He alternated between indignation at the Colombian government and resentment that his comfortable life in prison had been so disrupted. He portrayed himself as a misunderstood victim. [continues 927 words]
Bookmark: Reports about Colombia: http://www.mapinc.org/area/Colombia Chapter Seven of a Continuing Serial Col. Hugo Martinez was delighted when he got the news, in Madrid, that Pablo Escobar had walked out of jail. No one knew better than the colonel what a charade that imprisonment had been. Martinez had spent nearly three years hunting Escobar before his infamous 1991 "surrender" to a luxury prison cell guarded by his cronies, which Martinez viewed as the evasive drug lord's most ingenious escape to date. [continues 1053 words]
Bookmark: Reports about Colombia: http://www.mapinc.org/area/Colombia Chapter Eight of a Continuing Serial Two years later, in the summer of 1992, the Americans working with the Colombian police search team were more impressed by its new commander's will than his methods. This tall, taciturn colonel nicknamed "Flaco" (Skinny) meant business. Martinez had been the driving force behind the first hunt, which had hounded Escobar to his surrender in 1991. He began this second, more intensive search by rounding up top people from the first operation and recruiting police and army veterans to create a new, elite Bloque de Busqueda, or Search Bloc. It would eventually number 600 men. [continues 757 words]
Saul "Gordo" Febo Said A Contractor Gave The Van. He Said It Was Titled To Then Councilman Milton Milan'S Girlfriend. CAMDEN - Convicted drug lord Saul "Gordo" Febo testified yesterday that Camden Mayor Milton Milan conspired with him and a city contractor in 1996 to conceal the source of a van being given to Milan free of charge. Febo, who ran Camden's largest open-air cocaine market until his arrest in 1998, told the jury in the mayor's federal corruption trial that when Milan was a city councilman in late 1996, he wanted a gratis 1990 Chevrolet Lumina from Domenic "Shorty" Monaco, who was bidding on the city's towing contract. [continues 1066 words]
Bookmark: Reports about Colombia: http://www.mapinc.org/area/Colombia Chapter Six of a Continuing Serial After an unnerving trip from Bogota, the two Delta soldiers finally arrived at the Medellin headquarters of the Colombian police units searching for Pablo Escobar in July of 1992. The two Americans slept that night in sleeping bags on the floor of a storehouse just inside the main gate of the Holquin police academy - close enough, they thought, to be obliterated by a car bomb parked outside. [continues 1461 words]
Bookmark: Reports about Colombia: http://www.mapinc.org/area/Colombia Chapter Five Of A Continuing Serial The Delta soldiers who arrived in Colombia just four days after Pablo Escobar left his prison in July 1992 had initially hoped to hunt down the notorious narco-terrorist themselves. Given the clumsy track record of the Colombians, it seemed the best chance of finding Escobar quickly. Delta specialized in this kind of quick strike. The men trained constantly and could move rapidly anywhere, day or night. They preferred orders that explained the what and why of a mission without precisely spelling out the how. This time the initial order was, vaguely, to assist in the hunt for Escobar, who had escaped from prison just four days before. [continues 1159 words]
Bookmark: Reports about Colombia: http://www.mapinc.org/area/Colombia Chapter Four Of A Continuing Serial Hopes at the U.S. Embassy soared when a Delta Force team led by Col. Jerry Boykin arrived in Bogota late in the evening of Sunday, July 26, 1992. Ambassador Morris Busby's request for Delta to assist in the hunt for Pablo Escobar, much to his surprise, had sailed through Washington. The State Department had approved it and passed it up to the White House, where President George Bush consulted with Joint Chiefs Chairman Colin Powell and then instructed Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney to give the ambassador anything he needed. The word was that Bush, who had poured millions into a new effort to stanch the flow of drugs from South America, had taken a strong personal interest. [continues 1157 words]
Bookmark: Reports about Colombia: http://www.mapinc.org/area/Colombia By walking out of prison in July of 1992, Pablo Escobar had done his enemies a favor. He had gone from prisoner to prey. Morris D. Busby, the U.S. ambassador to Colombia, knew this opportunity would not last long. If Escobar was not apprehended quickly, before he had a chance to securely set himself up as a fugitive, the search might drag on for months or years. [continues 1392 words]
Bookmark: Reports about Colombia: http://www.mapinc.org/area/Colombia Pablo Escobar was arguably the richest and most violent criminal in history. Forbes Magazine in 1989 listed him as the seventh-richest man in the world. A small-time gangster and car thief from Medellin, the second-largest city in Colombia, Escobar violently consolidated the cocaine industry there in the late 1970s. Elected as an alternate to Colombia's Congress in 1983, Escobar enjoyed widespread popularity among the poor in Colombia, especially in his home state of Antioquia. [continues 301 words]
Bookmark: Reports about Colombia: http://www.mapinc.org/area/Colombia Eight years ago, at the request of the Colombian government, U.S. military and spy forces helped fund and guide a massive manhunt that ended with the killing of Pablo Escobar, the richest cocaine trafficker in the world. While portraying the pursuit of Escobar as essentially a Colombian operation, the United States secretly spent millions of dollars and committed elite soldiers, law enforcement agents and the military's most sophisticated electronic eavesdropping unit to the chase. [continues 5270 words]
Airline Workers In Texas Had Allegedly Shipped 10 Tons Of Marijuana Since 1998. Phila. Was One Distribution Point. A federal grand jury has accused 34 people of participating in a major marijuana-smuggling ring that allegedly used six American Airlines employees to get the drug to distribution points in Philadelphia and Puerto Rico. Paul E. Coggins, U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Texas, announced the indictment Thursday along with the arrests of 20 of the 34 people charged with conspiracy and drug trafficking. [continues 270 words]
As Jury Selection Ended, Prosecutors Named 2 Key Witnesses Who Would Talk About Camden's Mayor. CAMDEN - Convicted drug lord Jose Luis "J.R." Rivera will take the stand in the federal corruption trial of Camden Mayor Milton Milan to testify that the $65,000 loan he gave Milan in 1994 came from proceeds of his multimillion-dollar cocaine ring, federal prosecutors said yesterday. Confessed drug dealer Saul Febo will also testify at Milan's trial about a free car he helped Milan obtain in late 1996 from Camden businessman Domenic Monaco, whose company held the city's towing contract, prosecutors said. [continues 921 words]
It Is The Hard Drug Of Choice In Glasgow. The Addiction Rate There Is Higher Than In The U.S. GLASGOW, Scotland - One by one, the young addicts filed into the small, spare room at the Drug Crisis Center, their faces drawn and their limbs withered. They deposited used needles in plastic containers and received new ones from a staff member. Then they headed back to the streets to buy more heroin and shoot it into their emaciated bodies. This constant, daily parade of more than 100 addicts to the center's needle-exchange program is testimony to Scotland's heroin epidemic. This former industrial city 40 miles west of Edinburgh counts an estimated 10,000 heroin addicts among its 600,000 inhabitants. It loses about 70 to overdoses each year, a rate nearly 10 times that of the rest of Britain. [continues 1194 words]
They were told that a U.S. role would be limited and that the conflict would not become another Vietnam. MANAUS, Brazil - U.S. Defense Secretary William S. Cohen promised Latin American defense ministers yesterday that Colombia's expanding drug war would not prove to be another quagmire like Vietnam. But in interviews, defense leaders from countries bordering Colombia said they feared they would suffer escalating cross-border movements of Colombian drug traffickers and the guerrillas that thrive on protecting them. [continues 548 words]
Voters in Burlington County and the First Congressional District will have the opportunity to vote for Legalize Marijuana candidate Edward Forchion even though he may be headed to jail. Forchion pleaded guilty last month to arranging a deal for 40 pounds of cannabis. Two days after his guilty plea he was arrested in Strawberry Mansion after buying three ounces of marijuana. He said the Philadelphia arrest was "a sign from God" that he should not have pleaded guilty, and he asked the Public Defender's Office in Trenton to enter a motion to withdraw his guilty plea. Forchion, who acknowledges he does not have a chance of getting elected, wanted to remain on the ballot to draw attention to his issue but feared the guilty plea would prevent him. But the State Attorney General's Election Division ruled Forchion is eligible to stay on the ballot until he is sentenced. That isn't scheduled until December. [end]
LIMA, Peru - The good news on the Andean coca-war front: The price of coca leaf, the raw material used to make cocaine, is soaring, as buyers fear that a coming crackdown in neighboring Colombia will cause shortages. The bad news: Higher coca prices are likely to tempt some Peruvian farmers to turn away from such substitute crops as specialty coffee and pineapples and return to the illicit but more profitable coca. That would be a serious setback to the U.S.-led Andean drug war, in which a reduction in Peru's coca-growing is considered the biggest victory. [continues 560 words]
He called for spending $2.8 billion more over five years. In Florida, Gore campaigned on his targeted tax-cut plan. CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa - George W. Bush accused the Clinton-Gore administration yesterday of firing blanks in the war against drugs and proposed to increase spending by $2.8 billion over five years to curb illegal drug use, particularly among teens. "Unfortunately, in the last 71/2 years, fighting drug abuse has ceased to be a national priority," said the Republican presidential nominee. "Drug policy has been pursued without urgency, without energy, and without meaningful success." [continues 820 words]
After refusing several plea offers that he said would compromise his principles, a South Jersey advocate for legalizing marijuana agreed yesterday to a lesser charge. In exchange for a light sentence and one more chance to address the jurors, he admitted to introducing two parties to a $20,000 cannabis deal. Yesterday would have been the second day of his trial. "I did it for my kids," Edward Forchion said of the plea agreement as he left Camden County Superior Court yesterday. "But I still believe what I believe." [continues 771 words]
Edward Forchion, accused in a 40-pound drug deal, said he was like Rosa Parks. He refused a plea offer. With an opening statement in which he compared himself to Rosa Parks and discounted the merits of marijuana laws, Edward Forchion - a self-described eccentric advocate of legalizing cannabis - began his defense yesterday against charges that he conspired to distribute 40 pounds of marijuana. The first day of Forchion's trial in Camden County Superior Court started with a juror's being excused after a teary episode. She told the judge that she could not be part of a decision in the case, according to Forchion. [continues 496 words]
Despite a judge's order, Edward Forchion plans to bring up jury nullification. Jury selection is to begin today. Barred from trying to convince a jury that the government's marijuana laws are unconstitutional, Edward Forchion - an advocate for the legalization of marijuana who is to go on trial this week on a charge of conspiracy to distribute 40 pounds of cannabis - has vowed to press on anyway. Yesterday, Judge Stephen Thompson of Camden County Superior Court reaffirmed another judge's ruling to bar Forchion from introducing the concept of jury nullification to his jury. [continues 425 words]
When President Clinton announced his trip to Colombia, he said his purpose was "to seek peace, to fight illicit drugs, to build its economy, and to deepen democracy." Nothing could be further from the truth. The Clinton administration seeks not peace but rather a military solution to the 40-year-old civil war in Colombia. About three-quarters of its record-breaking aid package to Colombia is for the military and police. Like Presidents Kennedy and Johnson in Vietnam, Clinton is convinced that superior firepower can destroy a deeply entrenched, armed insurgency. [continues 710 words]
Speakers at yesterday's session of the alternative Shadow Convention in West Philadelphia launched a blistering attack on the drug policies of both Democrats and Republicans, calling the nation's decade-long "war on drugs" an expensive failure. They sharply criticized both parties for perpetuating an approach they say puts a disproportionate number of African Americans and Latinos behind bars for excessively long sentences, and for continuing to fund drug-enforcement efforts at the expense of other important social needs. "Drug prohibition is tearing this country apart," said Gary Johnson, New Mexico's Republican governor, who has drawn national attention for his campaign to legalize marijuana. "We're absolutely numb to what's happening in this country. We need a new drug strategy." [continues 691 words]
Use Among Teens Isn't The Best Measure Of Success Or Failure A week from today, the Shadow Convention in Philadelphia will focus on one issue we know won't be discussed at the Republican and Democratic conventions: the nation's failed drug war. The presidential candidates will say as little as possible about drugs during this year's campaign. And if they do say anything, we can predict what it will be: lots of talk about getting tougher on drugs, and on the countries where drugs are produced, and on the people who buy and sell them, and perhaps a little lip service to the need for more "treatment" - as long as it's "tough." [continues 766 words]
In The Shadow Of The Conventions, Addressing Issues Of Poverty, Inequality, Campaign Reform And Drugs. Events called the Shadow Conventions 2000 will be held in Philadelphia and Los Angeles at the same time as the major-party conventions this summer. They are being staged by a coalition of activists concerned that the major parties are not forcefully addressing issues such as income inequality and the persistence of poverty, campaign finance reform and what the activists see as the failure of the war on drugs. [continues 1029 words]
My son Michael was one of the victims discussed in the article "Heroin victims' parents try to save others" (Inquirer, May 15). I was willing to tell Michael's story because I wanted to prevent other families from experiencing the tragedy of losing a child to drugs. Although the article told about the things we are doing now to help others, it did not do justice to the effort we put into trying to save our own children. My son did not just start drinking at age 12 and then die of a heroin overdose at age 20. There were many years of his disease progressing and our constant attempts to help him. [continues 414 words]
When the dust settles and any denunciations cease, religious scholar Huston Smith hopes people will know at least the core idea of his newest book. "Only the slightest of barriers separates us from our sacred unconscious," he assrts. "It is infinitely close to us." That sounds mainstream, in an Eastern sort of way. Why, then, should Cleansing the Doors of Perception threaten a fuss? Because Smith, graybearded and 81, dares to take us back through forbidden doors, now locked and illegal, that he entered half a lifetime ago. "To have become overnight a visionary - one who not merely believes in the existence of a more momentous world than this one but who has actually visited it - was no small thing," he writes. Smith seems to be describing the same wondrous encounter with the divine that mystics have sung of for millennia. [continues 1179 words]
MAYS LANDING, N.J. - An Atlantic City police officer fired after being caught on videotape beating a prisoner defended his actions yesterday, saying he felt threatened and never meant to hurt the man. "I felt I used the amount of pain necessary to effectuate his arrest," he told a Superior Court jury. Thomas DiLorenzo, 33, is charged with aggravated assault and official misconduct in the 1998 beating of a fan at a Van Halen concert at Trump Marina Hotel Casino. Jack Hagopian, 21, of Havertown, Pa., was arrested after security guards saw him light up a marijuana cigarette in the casino. [continues 290 words]
A recent report by Human Rights Watch has documented something African Americans have known for years: The U.S. war on illegal drugs has been waged unfairly against blacks. The findings in "Punishment and Prejudice: Racial Disparities in the War on Drugs" are based on U.S. government statistics. Among other proposals, HRW calls for the repeal of mandatory sentencing laws for drug offenders, improvement in drug-abuse treatment, alternative sanctions and an end to racial profiling. The popular perception is that African Americans are America's greatest drug offenders. But whites use illegal narcotics at a rate five times that among African Americans. Yet blacks are far more often arrested and imprisoned for drug offenses. In the 10 states with the largest disparities (including New Jersey), blacks are jailed for illegal drug offenses up to 57 times more often than whites. Their numbers have swollen America's penal institutions at an alarming rate. [continues 540 words]
The editorial "Funding the drug war" on further aid to Colombia (Inquirer May 24) states: "This shapes up as a close call - an expensive involvement that doesn't come with a guarantee. ... It's a risk worth taking." The information I have from those treating addictions is that dollars spent for treatment are 15 to 20 times more effective than military solutions. I would rather support spending funds for health care, including mental-health programs, than a military solution that involves violence and the approval of violence. The American people increasingly recognize that violent behaviors must not be encouraged. Charley Peterson, Newtown [end]
Your argument that it is in the national interest of the United States to fight the drug war at its source (Editorial, May 23) is sound as long as it does not overlook the war being fought at the other end of the drug pipeline - the American end. That war is prosecuted by an American force as needy of financial assistance as Colombia - the Coast Guard. It is indeed ironic that, as the Clinton administration and Congress debate giving more than a billion dollars and military equipment to Colombia, our own Coast Guard is forced to work with obsolete gear. [continues 127 words]
Frank Fulbrook's concern about the future of Camden (OpEd column, May 23) is well placed. Cities have real problems that need real solutions, but making illicit drugs more available to those inheriting these cities is not one of them. The argument for legalization of illicit drugs rests on the false idea that this fight is lost. In fact, we have made tremendous strides in reducing the demand for illicit drugs - use of all illicit drugs is down 50 percent since 1985 and there are 9.7 million fewer regular drug users. [continues 103 words]
I would like to express my gratitude to Rose Ciotta for the kindness and compassion she showed while researching the article "Heroin victims' parents try to save others" (Inquirer May 15). So much more needs to be said regarding the serious lack of funding and treatment centers and the problems caused by insurance companies denying coverage for drug/alcohol abuse treatment. The laws regarding minors also curtail the recovery process: At the age of 14, a drug-addicted child can decide whether he/she will go into treatment. The current tactics in this "war on drugs" are obviously not working because the death toll continues to rise and the ages of the victims are younger every day. This plague does not discriminate against age, race, social or economic status. Kathleen Berry, Philadelphia [end]
Experts Testified Before Congress About How Limited And Underfunded Intervention Options Are WASHINGTON - Facilities to treat heroin addicts are scarce or inadequate, even though the drug is hooking younger, middle-class addicts in the Philadelphia suburbs and elsewhere, experts and addicts told a congressional panel yesterday. "More middle-class and suburban youths are being introduced to heroin," Charles O'Brien, director of the Center for Studies of Addiction at the University of Pennsylvania, testified. "We even have [Penn] university students involved in this." [continues 634 words]
Felix Jimenez to run region's DEA office A longtime soldier in the war on drugs has become the new federal narcotics sheriff in the Philadelphia region. Felix Jimenez, 51, took over the Drug Enforcement Administration's Philadelphia office in January, with the primary goal of stemming the flow of heroin that is flooding the region. The heroin sold in Philadelphia is the second-cheapest among major U.S. cities, after San Francisco, according to the DEA. It is also the nation's most potent - with a 71 percent purity level, compared with a national average of 41 percent. [continues 327 words]
The Will Of The People Is At Odds With Federal Drug Rules. PORTLAND, Maine - Bryan Clark grows his medicine in his bedroom. In a makeshift cardboard structure under harsh white lights are four marijuana plants. Clark, an AIDS patient whose weight had fallen from 250 pounds to 118, smokes pot to relieve pain, quell nausea, and spur his appetite. He picked up a plant and plumped the soil. The leaves were pale green and delicate - an unlikely source for the furor that has enveloped Maine. [continues 1237 words]
Drug war's new general in region There he was, face down on a hotel bed, handcuffed and bleeding, a gun pressed to his head. "Why are you looking at me?" the Cuban drug dealer hissed at him. "You think you're going to identify me? You are seconds from dying." Miami, 1983: An undercover sting had gone wrong. Now, the dealer had the drop on a young DEA agent. An hour earlier, the agent had tucked a loaded pistol under a pillow beside him. Would the dealer spot it? Would the agent need to use it? [continues 1245 words]
SANTA CRUZ, Calif. - Andrea Tischler is perched atop ground zero of California's escalating medical-marijuana wars. She and a partner recently opened the nation's first "bed, bud and breakfast," a cozy Victorian inn with a backyard oasis where medicinal-pot users can fire up right next to the clothing-optional hot tub. "This inn will be a comfort zone for people with a medical need for marijuana," said Tischler, a former teacher. "While it may be the nation's first, many more will follow." [continues 422 words]
Prosecutors could not prove that the man, who is living in Bucks County, knew he was dealing with drug traffickers. A federal judge yesterday refused to return a Colombian lawyer to his homeland to face drug-related charges, saying prosecutors lacked proof the lawyer knew he was dealing with narcotics traffickers when he used a Colombian businessman to help transfer money to his mother in Bucks County. "If we're going to do a certificate of extraditability for him, then we might as well do one for the mother," U.S. Magistrate Judge Charles B. Smith told federal prosecutors. "It was her money that was being used." [continues 396 words]
