Massive Drug Sting in 1998 Could Mean Up To 20 Years In Prison For Defendant LOS ANGELES - A San Luis Obispo man was convicted Monday of federal drug charges, just 18 months after similar charges stemming from the same arrest were dropped. In both cases, Howard Leasure, 42, argued that a methamphetamine lab found on his property was actually a Native American sweat lodge. Leasure was convicted in a federal district court in Los Angeles on Monday of allowing members of a drug ring to manufacture methamphetamine -- an estimated $1 million worth over a one-year period -- at his address on the 1000 block of O'Connor Way in San Luis Obispo. [continues 447 words]
LOS ANGELES (AP) - A judge dismissed the convictions of seven adults and two juveniles on Tuesday, the latest criminal cases reversed as the result of a police corruptions scandal in which officers are accused of framing innocent people. The latest dismissals included the first cases not directlyl involving former police Officer Rafael Perez who broke the scandal open with his allegations that officers at the city's Rampart Division fabricated evidence and lied in court to win convictions on phony charges. In some cases, he said, innocent people were even shot. [continues 90 words]
San Francisco Adopts Ordinance To Protect Ill SAN FRANCISCO - The San Francisco board of supervisors put its stamp of approval Monday on a plan to issue identification cards to medical marijuana users. The board voted 10-1 in favor of adopting a city ordinance designed to allow qualified cardholders to obtain high-grade pot from several San Francisco dispensaries and dispel their fears of being arrested for possession of drugs. "For people who are suffering, this is a giant step because here's a medicine that I think really, really works. Reefer madness is dead," said Gary Farnsworth, a director at the San Francisco Patients Resource Center. His center is one of several medical marijuana dispensaries in San Francisco. [continues 331 words]
MEXICO CITY - A Mexican court convicted businessman and former newspaper owner Amado Cruz Anguiano Monday of laundering millions of dollars for the Arellano Felix drug cartel, and sentenced him to 4 1/2 years in prison. Cruz was accused of overseeing the financial operations of the Tijuana-based Arellano Felix cocaine cartel. His conviction marks one of the first against a leading member of that group, whose leaders - the Aurellano Felix brothers - remain at large despite warrants for their arrest, the government news agency Notimex reported. [end]
Adolescents in small-town and rural America are much more likely than their peers in urban centers to have used drugs, according to a private study released Wednesday. The report urges the government to reverse the alarming trend by funding the war on drugs in nonmetropolitan areas. Eighth-graders in rural America are 104 percent likelier than those in big cities to use amphetamines, according to the study released by the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University. [end]
President Alberto Fujimori said Tuesday that police had captured the chief of Peru's top drug cartel in the Amazon jungle. Adolfo Cachique was arrested early Tuesday in the central jungle province of Contamana along the banks of the Ucayali River, 355 miles north-eas of Lima. Fujimori described Cachique and his brothers as leading "the most important narcotics gang operating in Peru" and said the alleged drug boss was a major supplier of cocaine to the United States. [end]
The move will nearly double the number of cases overturned as a result of the ongoing police corruption probe. The scandal, the worst for LAPD in decades, has centered on an anti-gang unit at Rampart. Twenty officers have either resigned, been relieved of duty, suspended without pay or fired since the scandal surfaced in September. Four prison inmates already have been freed and 11 convictions overturned. The district attorney's office will seek reversal of nine more convictions, all originating at Rampart, said Sandi Gibbons, a district attorney's spokeswoman. The majority of those cases were from 1997 and involved defendants either pleading guilty or no contest to weapons or drug charges, Gibbons said. One of those convicted is currently in custody on a parole violation. [end]
San Francisco supervisors approved a city ordinance Monday calling for identification cards for people who qualify to use medical marijuana. The board voted 10-1 for the ordinance, which would allow cardholders to obtain marijuana medical marijuana at several San Francisco dispensaries. The board is scheduled for a second vote Jan. 31 for final approval of the ordinance. Proponents ofthe program said the identification system is important to prevent the arrest or detention of legitimate medical marijuana users. [end]
For about two years the White House and the television industry have been engaged in a cozy little enterprise that, on the surface, seems to promise benefits for everyone. The administration's anti-drug campaign gets a boost. The television industry gets to add dollars to the bottom line. But on closer inspection, it is a deeply unhealthy arrangement that should disturb anyone who believes in the need for all media - the entertainment industry as well as the networks - to remain free from government meddling. [continues 176 words]
The endorsement of David Blakely by the Deputy Sheriff's Association is amazing. Their best position would have been to decline to endorse, remain neutral. Why? The job of sheriff's deputies is to keep our communities safe. One of their duties is to pursue the bad guys. In the realm of bad guys are illegal drug users, illegal drug pushers, illegal drug manufacturers, rapists and murderers. Upon the arrest of the bad guys, the sheriff's deputy creates records/files. [continues 150 words]
Anti-Gang Division Overhauled After Worst Department Scandal In Decades LOS ANGELES (AP) - Chief Bernard Parks said Wednesday he expects three officers to be charged in the worst police scandal to strike the city in decades, adding his department is overhauling its anti-gang unit to see that such a scandal never happens again. "We believe that we have submitted sufficient evidence to warrant filing on three cases," Parks told reporters. "We believe that the district attorney ... will eventually come to those same conclusions that we have." [continues 373 words]
A prison guard arrested for allegedly smuggling marijuana into the Lompoc penitentiary didn't get caught with his hand in the cookie jar. Federal prosecutors said it was a box of Cheez-It crackers. John Scott Brooks, 28, of Lompoc, was arrested during a Jan. 9 sting outside a Santa Maria store after he allegedly accepted two pounds of marijuana packaged in two Cheez-It boxes to be given to inmates. He was to get $2,000. They were the same size boxes sold in the prison commissary and were, according to FBI documents filed with the U.S. Attorney in Los Angeles, to be delivered to inmates by being dropped in a garbage can. [end]
Panama Is Second Stop Of Her Trip To Latin America PANAMA CITY - Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright arrived here Saturday in a bid to patch up feelings that were hurt when neither she nor President Clinton attended the recent ceremony in which control of the Panama Canal was turned over to Panamanians. Albright went on a brief tour of the Miraflores Locks section of the canal and recalled how, in the 1970s, she and other members of the Carter administration were proud of the decision to turn the waterway over to Panama. [continues 438 words]
This article was originally posted with an incorrect source, the Washington Post. Thanx to the reader for pointing out the error and sorry for any inconvienence. The corrected article is posted at: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v00/n047/a03.html [end]
Government Reviewed Scripts Of Popular Shows PASADENA (AP) - The federal government used financial incentives to get television networks to work anti-drug messages into the scripts of some popular TV shows. The White House drug office even got the opportunity to review scripts before the shows aired. The arrangement, first disclosed Wednesday by the online news service Salon.com, raised questions about the independence of networks and their willingness to let others influence what goes on the air. Among the shows reviewed by the government were NBC's top-rated "ER," CBS's "Chicago Hope" and "Cosby," ABC's "The Carey Show" and "The Practice," and Fox's "Beverly Hills 90210," according to Salon.com. [continues 321 words]
Dear Dr. Gott: I have been using marijuana to overcome the unpleasant consequences of chemotherapy for cancer. Am I running any health risks? Dear Reader: Although authorities estimate that over 50 percent of people will illegally use marijuana sometime in their lives, many medical experts endorse the use of the drug - or its active ingredient, delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol - for cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy. Unfortunately this practice is, at the time of this writing, against the law, except when THC is physician-prescribed. [continues 221 words]
A former California Highway Patrol officer accused of taking part in the theft of 650 pounds of cocaine from a state narcotics evidence locker pleaded innocent in federal court and was ordered held without bail. George Michael Ruelas, 40, of Temecula entered his plea Monday. He is the half-brother of Richard Wayne Parker - a state narcotics agent recently convicted on charges of narcotics possession and distribution involving the stolen cocaine. [end]
Federal police discovered 2.87 tons of marijuana hidden in a cargo truck in western Mexico, the attorney general's office announced Monday. Police found the drug seperated into nearly 500 packages when they searched the truck at a highway checkpoint near Uruapan in the state of Michoacan. In a separate investigation, police in the central state of San Luis Potosi found more than nearly 450 pounds of marijuana hidden in a stationary gas tank that was among a shipment of household goods. In the northern border city of Ciudad Juarez, police discovered nearly 20 pounds of cocaine in the trunk of a car. [end]
People Battling Addictions, From Drugs To Sex, Find Support George Rowland's whirlwind of addiction began when he was just 7. At an age when most kids are fascinated with toys, Rowland was preoccupied with finding a way to get high. He found that high in alcohol and eventually wound up a self-described "homeless drunk." The disease destroyed Rowland's two marriages and emotionally ravaged his children. After 20 years of battling alcoholism and drug addictions, Rowland finally decided to clean up. [continues 665 words]
In the latest fallout from the ongoing Los Angeles Police Department corruption probe, prosecutors said they would ask a federal magistrate to remove a drug conviction that put a man in prison for five years. The request was expected to be made today, just one day after a judge cut three years off a drug dealer's prison sentence because of now-suspect testimony from former Officer Rafael Perez, who is at the heart of the scandal engulfing the Los Angeles Police Department's Rampart station. Both cases involve Perez, who pleaded guilty to stealing cocaine from a police evidence locker and is providing information on police corruption in an effort to receive a lighter sentence. [end]
