He Was Struck By Several Vehicles While Walking In Southbound Lanes The man struck and killed Friday night on Highway 1 was legally blind and had just been released from County Jail by mistake. Scott W. Bennett, 37, was walking down the middle of the two southbound lanes with his back to traffic when he was hit by a Volkswagen van at about 6:20 p.m., according to the California Highway Patrol. Two other cars struck him before his body was moved to the shoulder of the highway, about 2 1/2 miles from the jail. [continues 763 words]
Does cocaine make you fat? In his letter of Nov. 8, Martin Luschei states "fashionable Americans - too many of them fat - think using cocaine is harmless." Perhaps Mr. Luschei has found the solutions to America's drug problem. Just run TV ads showing all those obese junkies - and drug abuse is history! Or was he just indulging in a little gratuitous fat-people bashing? Yes, there is a growing problem of obesity in this country, but it's one we can't blame on drugs. Try blaming the multi-billion diet industry that continues to keep it a secret that DIETS MAKE YOU FAT (by reducing metabolism). If we taught our teen-agers to fear drugs as relentlessly as we teach them to fear even an healthy amount of body fat, Americans would stay a healthy size, and the Colombian drug lords would have to take up potato farming. Karen Burnett, Atascadero [end]
WASHINGTON - Government authorities believe that they have badly underestimated the flow of cocaine out of Colombia and other drug-producing nations, a realization that casts doubt on years of basic assumptions behind the war on drugs. Drug-intelligence officials are particularly alarmed over their discovery of a new high-yield variety of coca being grown and processed in Colombia, the No. 1 supplier of cocaine to the United States. That, together with a growing acknowledgment that their methods for measuring narcotics production may be seriously flawed, means that the government estimates of global drug trafficking are likely to "skyrocket" early next year, said officials in the drug-intelligence community. [continues 499 words]
AUSTIN, Texas - Sheesh, what a performance by the Congress of the United States. These people are so bad that taking shots at them sort of feels like picking on a 90-pound weakling. When was the last time you heard anyone say anything good about Congress - except after that lovely man John Chafee died, and even then many of the mourners promptly started screaming in horror at the thought of his replacement as chairman of the environment Committee. Robert Smith of the New Hampshire is so right-wing that he quit the Republican Party on grounds it isn't conservative enough, and then he came back when he saw the committee chairmanship, Lord save the wilderness. [continues 566 words]
A man who spent 1 1/2 years in prison for selling cocaine was set free on Wednesday after a judge overturned his conviction because it was tainted by police misconduct. Joseph Jones' 1998 guilty plea was among four convictions the Los Angeles County district attorney's office asked to be reversed Wednesday because police provided false evidence or testimony. Charges against a fifth man were dropped. The reversals are the latest fallout from a widening corruption probe of the Police Department. [end]
Activists' Illnesses Cannot Be Revealed In Trial Over Pot Growing LOS ANGELES - Two activists cannot use medical necessity as a defense against charges that they grew thousands of marijuana plants, a federal judge has ruled. They also cannot refer to their medical conditions, the medical uses of marijuana or California's Proposition 215, which allowed the personal use of marijuana for medical purposes, U.S. District Judge George King ruled Friday. Todd McCormick, who suffers from bone cancer, and Peter McWilliams, who has AIDS and cancer in remission, are accused of possessing marijuana with intent to distribute, distribution of marijuana, and conspiracy to grow marijuana. [continues 380 words]
Philippine police have arrested four Chinese men and seized 926 pounds of stimulants in the Philippines' biggest drug seizure ever, officials said Saturday. Authorities seized 13 plastic barrels containing $21 million worth of methamphetamine hydrochloride in Infanta town on Friday, said Police Director Jewel Canson, chief of the National Drug Law Enforcement and Prevention Coordinating Center. [end]
Drug users take many gambles in their lives, and a new study has provided a hint about which areas of the brain figure into bad decisions. Scientists from the National Institute on Drug Abuse have taken images to see which parts of the brain are engaged when people predict the consequences of their decisions. The researchers studied 11 people who were taking a gambling test designed to gauge whether people make bad decisions. The subjects were asked to choose cards from each of four decks, two "bad" and two "good." Choosing certain cards from the bad decks resulted in large rewards (in the form of poker chips), but other cards led to even larger penalties, so it was not profitable in the long run. Choosing from the good deck was more profitable in the long run because there were lots of cards with small rewards and penalty cards were not severe. People who tended to choose from the bad decks had less activity in the brain region called the ventromedial prefrontal cortex. People with damage in this area also do poorly on the gambling test. [continues 5 words]
FRESNO - A national expert on needle exchanges came to the defense of three activists arrested for passing out syringes to addicts, testifying Friday that their work saves lives without driving up drug use. "That's what one does when trying to reduce the spread of HIV in America," said Dr. Peter Lurie, who has led numerous studies on the effectiveness of needle exchange programs. Using a Central Valley analogy, Lurie testified that the clean needles - by replacing dirty needles - are wiping out HIV in the same way that pesticides remove mosquitoes and other so-called "vectors" that spread farm diseases. [continues 250 words]
Group Say Hallucinogenic Plant Is Sacred To Indians WASHINGTON - A California businessman is decrying the temporary rejection of his 13-year-old patent on a hallucinogenic plant because of a challenge by South American groups that claim the plant is sacred to Indians. "We remain totally confident that our patent is valid, and we are absolutely confident this frivolous challenge is doomed to failure," Loren Miller said in a statement. In 1986, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office issued Miller patent No. PP5,751 for a plant described in his patent abstract as "Da Vine" and characterized by its "medicinal properties." [continues 179 words]
Anti-Abortion Measure In Maine Is Voted Down Maine defeated a ban on certain late-term abortions and approved a proposal to legalize medical marijuana Tuesday as voters elsewhere decided on measures ranging from a fishing ban to sweeping tax changes. The anti-abortion proposal lost with 201,115 voters or 55 percent opposed and 162,963 or 45 percent in favor, with 88 percent of precincts reporting. The medical marijuana measure had 223,957 votes, or 61 percent, to 140,637 or 39 percent. [continues 360 words]
MEXICO CITY (AP) - A man described as a leader of one of Mexico's biggest drug organizations has been arrested, authorities announced Saturday. Juan Jose Quintero Payan, believed to be a member of the Juarez Cartel, was arrested Friday in Zapopan in the western state of Jalisco, said Mariano Herran Salvatti, Mexico's top anti-drug prosecutor. Quintero Payan, 57, was alone with a mistress at the time of his arrest, Herran said at a news conference. He was unarmed and no shots were fired. [continues 71 words]
Atlanta (AP) - A panel of federal judges on Friday overturned the death sentence of a man who was the first person sentenced to execution by the United States under a 1988 federal drug law. The United States has not executed anyone in36 years. A three-judge panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 2-1 that David Ronald Chandler of Piedmont, Ala., was not properly defended by his attorney during his dentencing phase. Chandler's conviction for arranging the slaying of an informant, however, still stands and the case was sent back to the lower court for resentencing. [continues 72 words]
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - The U.S. Justice Department on Wednesday asked a federal appeals court to reconsider a ruling that could allow seriously ill patients to use marijuana without being prosecuted. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals last month told a federal judge to rethink his order of last year that closed down some Northern California medical marijuana clubs, and consider an exemption for patients who face imminent harm without the drug and have no effective legal alternative. California Attorney General Bill Lockyer, who has vowed to uphold a successful state initiative allowing patients to use pot, had asked the Justice Department not to appeal the ruling. [continues 346 words]
ARCADIA - California's pot raiders seized about a quarter-million marijuana plants this year worth an estimated $1 billion wholesale - nearly double the amount they seized last year, and far higher than the previous 1985 record. Authorities said Wednesday the seizures reflected a shift in marijuana growing from the traditional North Coast to central and southern parts of the state. State Attorney General Bill Lockyer said 241,164 marijuana plants were confiscated during 1999 by dozens of law enforcement agencies as part of a program called the Campaign Against Marijuana Planting. [end]
Mr. Wallace: Some girls I like to hang with smoke a little pot and drink a little. I don't smoke pot and I'm not into alcohol and so far they haven't pressured me to join in. My mom wants me to stop hanging around with them because she thinks that eventually they'll put pressure on me to smoke and drink. I don't believe they ever will. We just moved to San Jose from Arizona and these girls have really made me feel welcome, especially at school. What can I do to convince my mother that teens are not under peer pressure all the time? [continues 173 words]
Report Says Officers Partied With Prostitutes LOS ANGELES (AP) - Police rented an apartment for on-duty sexual liasons with prostitutes who were enlisted to sell drugs officers stole from dealers, according to a report Friday on the widening police corruption scandal. The one-bedroom apartment near the Rampart station was described as a "crash pad" where officers partied like fraternity boys and had sex with girlfriends and hookers, the Los Angeles Times reported. The new allegations come as the LAPD investigation is expanding. [continues 141 words]
Keith Richards confesses to returning to an old habit on the Rolling Stone's most recent tour, saying he allowed himself "a little taste" of heroin. Tells Brit GQ mag he considers himself an "amateur chemist, a drugologist." Says he consults a 1903 medical dictionary. "I've abused drugs," he notes. "But I didn't go into them without boning up on them first." [continues 5 words]
Fort Lauderdale, Fa. (AP) - A former Drug Enforcement Administration agent was given the maximum sentence of 15 years in prison for shooting his partner while in a drunken stupor. Richard Fekete, 57, who pleaded guilty to manslaughter in the shooting of his partner, Shaun Curl, was also sentenced to 15 years probation, random drug testing and counseling. An undercover DEA agent testified that Fekete had got drunk at a Metro-Dade Police Christmas party and had to be helped to his car. [continues 81 words]
San Clemente - A man used vacuum-sealed aluminum cans to try to smuggle marijuana into the United States, but they couldn't pass the sensitive nose of a Border Patrol drug-sniffing dog, authorities said Thursday The 86 cans were found in hidden compartments on side panels and the undercarriage of the man's 1983 Ford LTD car when he was stopped Tuesday at an Interstate 5 checkpoint at the San Diego- Orange County line, authorities said. The Cans were unmarked and contained marijuana with an estimated value of $62,000, said Border Patrol spokesman Mario Villreal, who called the sealed cans a unique smuggling technique. [continues 4 words]
WASHINGTON - Gov. George Bush said he backs a state's right to decide whether to allow medical use of marijuana, a position that puts him sharply at odds with Republicans on Capitol Hill. "I believe each state can choose that decision as they so choose," the governor said recently in Seattle in response to a reporter's question. Aides said Bush dose not support legalizing marijuana for medical use. But his position supporting state self-determination opens the door to medical marijuana use in some places. President Clinton and most Republican lawmakers, by contrast, oppose all state medical marijuana legalization laws, saying they could lead to abuse. But Clinton - in a move philosophically in tune with Bush - has said Republicans in Congress went to far in seeking to block the District of Columbia's medical marijuana ballot initiative, which won 69 percent support last year. [end]
Stiffer Regulations Meant To Keep Controlled Substances In Right Hands A question was recently posed to me by a client, "Why must I have a pet seen for the ailment I described? Can't you just dispense me the pills?" Certainly, veterinarians have compassion and want to help, but just guessing can have its drawbacks. To compound this particular situation, the client asked me for the siezural control medication Phenobarbital, which is a controlled substance. Just as in the human medical realm, veterinarians must be acountable to the DEA for their use of controlled substances. Believe me, we are not punishing pet owners by asking to have a client record and pet treatment relationship. This premise is mandated by federal law. [continues 268 words]
Bogota, Colombia (AP) - A leader of the once-powerful Medellin cartel was among 30 people arrested Wednesday and slated for extradition to the United States in what authorities described as the biggest blow to Colombian drug trafficking since 1995. In a separate, unrelated operation, U.S. drug officials in Purerto Rico announced the arrests of 1,290 lower-level trafficking suspects in 15 countries and the seizure of more than two dozen drug-running boats in a two-week operation, mostly in the Caribbean. [continues 269 words]
Police seized more than a million Ecstasy pills and arrested 49 people in the Netherlands, Israel and other countries in a sweep carried out by hundreds of officers, Israeli authorities said Tuesday. The police estimate that the drug ring manufactured and distributed tens of tons of narcotics, supplying the drugs to Western Europe, Israel and the United States. There were 25 arrests in Holland, eight in Israel and the remaining 16 in other countries. [continues 5 words]
Robert Downey Jr.'s pleas for a lighter sentence and release from a prison drug treatment center were rejected Tuesday. Judge Lawrence A. Mira called the actor manipulative and said he had already given him several chances to rehabilitate himself. Downey, 34, was sentenced in August to three years in prison for violating probation from a 1996 drug conviction. He admitted during a hearing that he had missed scheduled drug tests. [continues 5 words]
Cities Allowed To Carry Out Their Ordinances SACRAMENTO (AP) - Gov. Gray Davis signed a bill that allows San Francisco, Berkeley and other cities to continue administering needle-exchange programs for intravenous drug users. The needle exchange bill signed Saturday requires cities and counties to use emergency powers to authorize needle-exchange programs, and exempts cities and employees from criminal prosecution for distributing syringes. Current state law, with a few exceptions, prohibits the furnishing, possession or use of hypodermic needles or syringes without doctor's prescription. [continues 157 words]
Los Angeles - A prosecutor accused a former state drug agent Thursday of operating a cocaine ring that stretched to Honolulu, while a defense attorney responded that his client was simply the scapegoat for an unsolved crime. Richard Wayne Parker, 44 is being retired for allegedly stealing 650 pounds of cocaine from an evidence locker and selling it. In June, a jury deadlocked on charges that included burglary and possession of drugs with intent to sell. [continues 5 words]
Bucking Polls, She Calls Issue An Important One Imperial Beach (AP) - Standing 30 feet from the border with Mexico, Republican presidential candidate Elizabeth Dole promised Thursday to reduce the flow of illegal drugs into the United States and pressure other countries to do the same. Dole said she would increase the number of U.S. Border Patrol agents from 8,000 to 20,000, and increase the use of anti-smuggling devices at the border. She would also cut off aid to nations that refuse to extradite suspected traffickers or that make no progress toward reducing their supply of drugs to the United States. [continues 302 words]
The 9th U.S. Court of Appeals did not "overturn" the lower court's decision on cannabis clubs, as The Tribune editorial suggested in last week's "Straight dope on marijuana." The appellate court remanded, or sent back, U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer's injunction on, in particular, the Oakland Cannabis Buyers Cooperative. They suggested that Judge Breyer rethink his judgment while taking into consideration the possibility that there may be an important exception to federal drug laws that would allow the distribution of medicinal cannabis. [continues 141 words]
Your editorial on the use and approval of medical marijuana was the most facile, excrementitious argument I've ever seen in my life. In the first place, your claim that the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals supports this idea is meaningless. With small exception, that appellate court is so left leaning they would just as soon repeal the Constitution and replace it with the Communist Manifesto. Secondly, your plea on behalf of the California voter is about as hypocritical as your first is silly. Where were you in the fight for the voters rights on Props 187 and 209? Hmmm? I'll tell you where. Right there with the 9th Circuit again. So please don't stick up for MY wishes, I'll fight my own battles. [continues 72 words]
Sooner or later California and the federal government are going to get it straight. We're talking about the use of marijuana for medical purposes. The 9th U.S. Court of Appeals ruled unanimously in San Francisco last week that cannabis clubs in the state (cannabis is the technical term for marijuana) can distribute the stuff as long as they are able to prove that the users can suffer great pain, perhaps serious harm, if they don't use it. The ruling, overturning a lower court decision, flies in the face of federal policy, which holds that marijuana is without medicinal value. [continues 247 words]
Lab Results Counter Story Told To Police If lab tests are accurate, an Atascadero woman's kidney stone may not float in a criminal court, prosecutors say. The district attorney's office says the brown, rock-like substance found in Denise J. Gafner's vehicle last summer was an illegal drug-not mineral formations from her urinary tract, as she claimed. Gafner, 41, was stopped while driving home from a birthday party on Aug. 1 when Atascadero police officer Tiffany Ayles pulled her over for swerving near Morro Road. [continues 264 words]
Congressional Ban Held Up D.C. Referendum WASHINGTON (AP) - Almost a year after the balloting, voters in the nation's capital learned Monday that nearly 70 percent of them favored medical use of marijuana. Votes on their referendum were finally counted after a judge overruled a congressional ban. That dosn't mean marijuana is now legal for medical purposes in Washington. Congress will get at least one more chance at the issue. As passed, District of Columbia ballot initative 59 would allow doctors to inform their seriously ill patients of the option of using marijuana to ease certain symptoms and side effects of treatment related to AIDS and cancer. [continues 173 words]
A fresh message about drugs, dristributed across the country by two national agencies, deserves the attention of every parent here on the Central Coast and every-where else where kids risk their health, their future and their lives for the thrill of getting high. The message may have a familiar ring, but the urgency struck us as greater than ever, even though the principal target is familiar: parents. "The most effective deterrent to drug use among kids isn't the police, or prisons, or politicians," says the blunt statement. "One of the most effective deterrents to drug use among kids is their parents. [continues 288 words]
Athlete Had Been Disciplined For Smoking Pot MANTECA, Calif. (AP) - A high school's effort to crack down on marijuana use backfired when it came to disciplining a football player who admitted to smoking pot during lunch. Travis McPherson, a defensive tackle and punter, sued to stay on the team and remain at Sierra High School after a school district panel ordered him transferred to another school for his senior year, a move that would bar him from playing. And in a rare legal setback for school officials under pressure to impose zero-tolerance drug policies, a judge agreed on Thursday, ordering McPherson reinstated at Sierra High and returned to Timberwolves' football squad. He also ordered school officials to erase the disciplinary action from his record. [continues 230 words]
MEXICO CITY - One month after being charged in the United States with laundering $9.9 million in suspected drug payoffs. Mexico's former top drug proscutor was found dead in his New Jersey apartment Wednesday of an apparent drug overdose. Mario Ruiz Massieu, 48 had been under house arrest in New Jersey since 1996 while battling extradition to Mexico, where he was accused of covering up the 1994 murder of his brother, ruling party leader Jose Francisco. [continues 5 words]
Facilities Must Prove Drug Is Needed By Patients SAN FRANCISCO - A federal appeals court created a potentially major opening in federal drug laws Monday, ruling that medical marijuana centers may be allowed to distribute cannabis if they can prove that the drug is needed to protect patients against imminent medical harm. In its decision, the three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said that a federal judge should have considered patients' medical needs for marijuana when he ordered a cannabis club in Oakland last year to stop distributing the drug. [continues 385 words]
WASHINGTON (AP) - Coast Guard sharpshooters have been firing from helicopters to knock out the engines of cocaine-laden boats in the Caribbean, officials disclosed Monday. The tactic - one not used since the 1920s Prohibition era - has already netted three tons of cocaine. The previously secret assaults have been used in recent weeks to stop smugglers who now use open-hull, low-profile boats called "Super Smugglers" or "Go-Fasts" that carry barrels of fuel and about a ton of cocaine each. [continues 223 words]
New York - If one needs another reason to say no to cocaine, here it is: Harvard scientists have identified two nasty heart-damaging and potentially life-threatening effects that explain why users are at risk for heart disease and stroke every time they take cocaine. "I hope this will be a wake up call for people who use cocaine," said Dr. Arthur Siegel, an assistant professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and director of internal medicine at McLean Hospital in Belmont, Mass. "They should know how dangerous cocaine could be." The findings, reported today in the Archives if Internal medicine, provide a biological explanation of how cocaine puts people at risk. There is no telling how many people suffer these consequences. - - Tribune wire reports [end]
Mexican Organizations Muscle Into Cultivation MORGAN HILL - As the helicopter clattered down a narrow canyon, Special Agent Sonya Barna gestured toward a break in the forest canopy where the ground cover shimmered with hues of blue and green. Barna would soon be on the ground, leading the 144th raid so far this year by the state Campaign Against Marijuana Planting or CAMP. Agents have been in the field only since Aug. 2, but had confiscated nearly 100,000 plants as of last week. The Attorney General's Office estimated the street value of those crops at $391 million. [continues 231 words]
Bill Stein's letter of the last week presents the "Republicans" view of the press asking questions about George W. Bush's personal life. I would like to take a more "Democratic" view. This view holds that private lives should be respected and definitely NOT given the scrutiny that seems so popular. However, GWB got himself in trouble by refusing to answer whehter he had used cocaine when the question was asked by activist groups WITHIN HIS OWN PARTY. In a sense, as a member of the Republican Party, GWB sets the standards for what questions may be legitimately asked. The Republican Party has continually raised personal morality and "virtue" as its banner - although the party is filled with people who have blemishes on their own records that are as bad as what they seem to demand of others (Gingrich, Hyde and Barr come immediately to mind) [continues 110 words]
MIAMI (AP) - Police seized more than 11,000 vials of a designer drug likely intended for teen-age rave parties in the largest U.S. seizure of ketamine, known on the street as "Special K". Officals estimated the potential value of the drugs seized Friday at $4 million. The drugs were discovered after officers pulled over a truck for a traffic violation, according to police. The driver matched the description of a suspect in the ketamine ring, authorities said. Officers found 2,162 vials of ketamine in boxes in the back. The driver, Geraldo Baptista, led them to a warehouse with thousands more, authorities said. [continues 130 words]
OAKLAND - Customs officals at the biggest mail depot on the West Coast have seized nearly a thousand pounds of smuggled opium after a two-month investigation. The investigation turned up a total of 923 pounds of opium that was confiscated in 88 separate but likely related-busts. The estimated street value is $7.9 million. [continues 5 words]
WASHINGTON - Fewer Americans are using illegal drugs on the job these days but drug use is growing among workers at medium-sized companies, according to a new study released Wednesday by the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. The National Household Survey on Drug Abuse, which questioned 7,957 households, found that companies with more then 25 workers and fewer then 500 saw substance abusers grow from 5 percent of their work force in 1994 to 8 percent in 1997. [continues 397 words]
I read that authorities have arrested Darwin Charlesworth for the cultivation of marijuana. I personally know Mr. Charlesworth to be a gentle, intelligent, forthright person. What he allegedly did was foolish considering the implacability of those who rule over us, but a crime? How can there be a crime here? Who is the victim? Don't crimes always generate a victim? It must be pointed out that because of the War on Drugs, the United States has the highest incarceration rate of any country in the world, with the possible exception of communist China. To release someone like Rex Allan Krebs in order to institutionalize Charlesworth reveals an out-of-control, Mad Hatter paucity of logic that defies belief. [continues 707 words]
A new report on marijuana by the Institutes of Medicine offers a rational approach to one of the nation's most controversial substances. In the most comprehensive review to date by a panel of distinguished medical experts, the IOM has concluded that certain chemicals inside marijuana known as THC and cannabinoids are, indeed, medicine. The medical challenge now is to isolate all of marijuana's helpful ingredients from the harmful ones in some new form, such as a pill or vapor that is inhaled. The political challenge is how to handle marijuana in the coming years (and they may be many) before a real alternative to the joint is on the market. [continues 196 words]
