Of all the risks involved with pot smoking, the biggest one is getting arrested and thrown in prison with violent criminals. Last year more than 734,000 Americans were arrested for marijuana violations - more than for murder, rape, armed robbery and assault combined! Our court system and prisons should be reserved for people who harm others - not just potentially themselves. KIRK MUSE, Mesa, Ariz. [end]
Used in moderation, neither marijuana nor alcohol will ruin your life. But if you're caught with pot, the legal system will see to it that your life becomes a shambles. Sanctioning alcohol use while persecuting pot smokers is the height of hypocrisy. Thank you for providing the facts so Americans can make up their minds intelligently. STU ALDERMAN, Reno, Nev. [end]
Successful, hardworking people smoke marijuana. To paint them as dumb and on the way to using other drugs is no different from characterizing those who drink alcohol as reckless drivers and child abusers. KIRK BATTLE, Conway, S.C. [end]
The claim that marijuana is a gateway drug is true for one reason: to buy pot, one must rely on an illegal-drug dealer. This dealer probably has connections to other illegal substances like cocaine and heroin. Legalize pot, and the connections will be severed. The government is wasting too much money fighting a drug that at best has medicinal value and at worst is not all that dangerous. The war on drugs would gain credibility if pot weren't enemy No. 1. BENJAMIN L. MOAN, Flagstaff, Ariz. [end]
Thanks in large part to big money, Americans at least had a chance to vote on marijuana laws. For this, pro-pot activists George Soros, John Sperling and Peter Lewis should be applauded. But the opportunity to vote on legalizing pot is a painful reminder that the democratic process is intricately connected to the almighty dollar. As for drug czar John Walters and the rest of the Federal Government, they would be wise to listen to the people and stop stepping on the states. That would be democracy! MATTHEW ALBRIGHT, Toronto [end]
Inhaling To Cure Ailments Is A Lot Older Than You Might Believe Should Profs. Cheech and Chong ever receive university tenure teaching the medical history of their favorite subject, the course pack would be surprisingly thick. As early as 2737 B.C., the mystical emperor Shen Neng of China was prescribing marijuana tea for the treatment of gout, rheumatism, malaria and, oddly enough, poor memory. The drug's popularity as a medicine spread throughout Asia, the Middle East and down the eastern coast of Africa, and certain Hindu sects in India used marijuana for religious purposes and stress relief. Ancient physicians prescribed marijuana for everything from pain relief to earaches to childbirth. Doctors also warned against overuse of marijuana, believing that too much consumption caused impotence, blindness and "seeing devils." [continues 468 words]
Well, No. But the Latest Research Suggests the Health Risk From Occasional Use Is Mild, and It Might Ease Certain Ills I never smoked pot in junior high because I was convinced it would shrivel my incipient manhood. This was the 1980s, and those stark this-is-your-brain-on-drugs ads already had me vaguely worried about memory loss and psychosis. But when other boys said pot might affect our southern regions, I was truly terrified. I didn't smoke a joint for the first time until I was 21. [continues 2935 words]
Can It Go Legit? How the People Who Brought You Medical Marijuana Have Set Their Sights on Lifting the Ban for Everyone The drug czar is ready for pro wrestling. He already has the name, and now he's got the prefight talk down cold. In every speech he makes in Nevada, where Bush appointee John Walters has traveled to fight an initiative that would legalize marijuana, he calls out his three sworn enemies as if he were Tupac Shakur. The czar has a problem with billionaire philanthropists George Soros, Peter Lewis and John Sperling, who have bankrolled the pro-pot movement, and he wants everyone to know he's ready for battle. At an Elks lodge meeting in Las Vegas, he ticks off their names and says, "These people use ignorance and their overwhelming amount of money to influence the electorate. You don't hide behind money and refuse to talk and hire underlings and not stand up and speak for yourself," he says. By the end of a similar speech at a drug-treatment center in Reno, he says, "Let's stop hiding. I'm here. Where are you?" The czar is bringing it on. [continues 3253 words]
Afghanistan's Villages Are Drying Out-Because Hash Farmers Need The Water Ask the villagers of Dalicharbolak how bad things are in the desert and they show you a boy named Saifudden. He is five, but looks two. He is too weak to walk, crawl or do anything but loll in his bearer's arms. He is bald, and his arms and legs are like sticks. Mohammed Akbar, 48, says Saifudden is an orphan. "Well, soon anyway." Akbar explains that Saifudden's father fled this ravaged village three months ago because of the drought and that his mother is dying fast. Ask about food and the villagers say that, born in the year the rains first failed, Saifudden has never tasted fruit, vegetables or meat. Ask about water and their anger boils over. "They're killing us here," says Akbar, pointing over the horizon to the lush plains upstream. "They're taking all the water. [continues 1261 words]
Tim Padgett reported on the political movement in Bolivia and elsewhere in South America to let the growth of coca leaves flourish, even though they are the raw material of cocaine [LETTER FROM BOLIVIA, Aug. 5]. Despite the fact that it is American citizens who abuse drugs, the U.S. government targets the farmers who grow coca rather than the users of cocaine. Other countries are told that they are responsible for restricting drugs supplied to the U.S., but it is clear that without a market here, the farmers, drug cartels and pushers would have no one to buy the products of their coca leaves. When will the U.S. understand that the government can't stop people from taking drugs? And when will the U.S. stop spending taxpayer dollars to force the rest of the world to accept our values? [continues 110 words]
Taking The Side Of The Coca Farmer A Maverick Politician Stirs A Continent And Puts Washington's Drug War At Risk To understand why Evo Morales has come within a llama's hair of being President of Bolivia - and why his formidable political power is giving U.S. officials fits - pay attention when he and his top advisers open their mouths. That is, see what they're chewing: coca leaves, treasured by Andean Indians like Morales as a sacred tonic and as their most lucrative cash crop but better known to Americans as the raw material of cocaine. [continues 707 words]
A Maverick Politician Stirs a Continent and Puts Washington's Drug War At Risk To understand why Evo Morales has come within a llama's hair of being President of Bolivia - and why his formidable political power is giving U.S. officials fits - pay attention when he and his top advisers open their mouths. That is, see what they're chewing: coca leaves, treasured by Andean Indians like Morales as a sacred tonic and as their most lucrative cash crop but better known to Americans as the raw material of cocaine. Over the past five years, the U.S. has got Bolivia to uproot almost all of its coca shrubs - only to see Morales, 42, and his left-wing Movement to Socialism engineer an astonishing protest this year that could force Bolivia's next government to let the plants flourish again. "The coca leaf," says Morales, whose party took the second largest bloc of seats in parliamentary elections in June, "is our new national flag." [continues 635 words]
Thanks for reporting the facts about industrial hemp (Society, Feb. 18). Hemp is no more a drug than hazelnuts are, yet the U.S. government doesn't seem to grasp this fact. A clean, renewable source of fuel and fiber, hemp belongs under the jurisdiction of the Department of Agriculture, not the Drug Enforcement Administration. It's ironic that this government meddling is occurring during the Bush Administration, which touts itself as probusiness and anti-Big Government. Jeff Robertson, Green Environmental Coalition [continues 77 words]
The U.N. fears the Internet is providing a haven for drug dealers. But how easy is it, really, to find narcotics on the Web? How easy is it to buy illegal drugs on the internet? Pretty darn easy, according to a new study by the United Nation's International Narcotics Control Board. The report, issued Wednesday, warns that drug traffickers are finding myriad ways to conduct their illegal transactions in cyberspace -- leaving law enforcement officers struggling to keep up. The INCB study details the ways traffickers communicate with each other and with their clients, often commandeering unrelated chat rooms to set up deals, or using Web courier services to transport their contraband packages. [continues 1250 words]
Not If You Want To Get High, Anyway. But If Hemp Isn't A Drug, Why Is The DEA Treating It Like Heroin? LEXINGTON, KY - No one is saying Kentucky doesn't offer its share of distinctive intoxicants. Bourbon and tobacco have long been popular drugs here, and even in these abstemious times, a well-known member of the political class will occasionally pour his visitors a glass of moonshine from a Mason jar with plumped cherries bobbing on the bottom. [continues 1800 words]
Not if you want to get high, anyway. But if hemp isn't a drug, why is the DEA treating it like heroin? No one is saying Kentucky doesn't offer its share of distinctive intoxicants. Bourbon and tobacco have long been popular drugs here, and even in these abstemious times, a well-known member of the political class will occasionally pour his visitors a glass of moonshine from a Mason jar with plumped cherries bobbing on the bottom. But the farmers around Lexington are mostly old-fashioned men with a serious problem: the decline in demand for U.S. tobacco. [continues 1777 words]
The arrest of Governor Jeb Bush's daughter on charges of prescription fraud put a strange light on a familiar drug Like most doctors, I've watched with concern the growing use of so- called club drugs--psychotropic substances that catch on from time to time among teenagers and young adults and become the rage at dance clubs and all-night raves. I know about ecstasy, Rohypnol and ketamine. But I was taken by surprise last week when Noelle Bush, daughter of Florida Governor Jeb Bush (and the President's niece), was arrested in Tallahassee trying to buy Xanax, having allegedly borrowed the name of a retired doctor and called in a bogus prescription. Xanax, after all, is a widely prescribed antianxiety medication--a cousin of Valium--and hardly fits the profile of a Gen X party drug. [continues 369 words]
Windsor family isn't perfect is a headline that goes back so many generations, it has lost its shock value. But after the British tabloid News of the World revealed that PRINCE HARRY, 17, third in line to the throne, had spent last summer boozing it up at a local pub and smoking cannabis both there and on the grounds of Highgrove, his dad's country home 100 miles from London, the media have gnawed on the story like a Labrador retriever with a steak bone. Like so many royal tales before it, Harry's travails offer hacks an irresistible chance to slalom between salivating prurience (was he having sex too?) and tongue-clucking high-mindedness (how hard this must be on the poor Queen!). [continues 640 words]
John Ashcroft wants to mobilize the Justice Department to fight terror. Is he going too far? Most attorneys general embody only the first half of what their title promises, but not John Ashcroft. Last week he announced a sweeping "wartime reorganization and mobilization" of his law-enforcement troops, converting the Department of Justice into something more like a Department of Antiterrorism. Fewer FBI agents will fight local crimes and the drug war; they will walk the al-Qaeda beat instead. Hundreds of crime fighters at headquarters will be transferred to field offices on America's "front lines." And 10% of the budget-$2.5 billion-will be redirected to counterterrorism. [continues 622 words]
The Taliban Won Plaudits And Profits For Banning Opium. But War Will See The Drug Trade Surge. Kandahar, the citadel of Taliban rule, has its own version of Wall Street called the opium bazaar, just beyond the stalls selling raisins and pistachios. And the Taliban is guilty of insider trading. Two summers ago, some of the biggest customers in the clamorous lane were local Taliban commanders who had been tipped off that the supply was about to be choked--Taliban supreme leader Mullah Mohammed Omar declared poppy cultivation to be "un-Islamic"--and saw the chance to make a killing. [continues 959 words]
The War On Terrorism May Mean A War On Drugs As part of its crackdown on terrorism, the United States has opened a campaign against the terrorists' financial assets. Accounts traced to Osama bin Laden and the Al-Qaeda network are to be found and frozen. One of the terrorists's most important financial assets, however, might be harder to tackle: the money that comes from drug trafficking. The cash generated by drug sales, even if unlaundered in offshore havens, can still fund terrorist operations. Afghanistan's poppy fields have long supplied the world with heroin, but never on the present scale. "The national crisis caused by three decades of permanent war has made drug production an important - and often the only available - source of income for Afghan peasants," says Major General Alexander Lyakhovski, a top Russian military expert on Afghanistan. Under the Taliban, Lyakhovski says, Afghanistan has emerged as the world's main supplier of opium and heroin. According to Russian law enforcement officials, Afghanistan currently grows opium poppies on 90,000 hectares, yielding some 5,000 tons of raw opium a year. Heroin is processed from this raw material in over 400 labs spread all over the country. [continues 204 words]
America's "War On Drugs" has cost untold billions, made a mockery of the Bill of Rights and been a total failure. Congratulations to those European governments that have dropped this bankrupt policy [WORLD, Aug. 20]. The only ones who ever benefited were the police, the prison industry and drug dealers. Richard Weil St. Paul, Minn. The U.S. ought to take a page from the book of countries like Belgium, the Netherlands and Portugal (and a puff or two wouldn't hurt either) and decriminalize marijuana. Our local, state and federal authorities need to focus more time and money on the real criminals, not on busting a guy for possessing a tiny amount of "happy smoke." [continues 161 words]
More Families And Legislators Are Revolting Against The Push To Consume Antihyperactivity Medications In Sheila Matthews' view, it was a heartening event for the back-to-school season: the signing of a law in Connecticut that she and others hope will relieve the growing pressure on parents to put their kids on drugs to control attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). The New Canaan homemaker helped gather support for the bill and was understandably proud to be in the Governor's office last week for the ceremony. [continues 840 words]
The technology that the nine justices of the Supreme Court wrestled with last week was relatively crude: a heat-sensing gun pointed at a house in Florence, Ore., by federal agents on the lookout for homegrown marijuana. In 1992, a cop using the device had spotted a lot of excess heat coming off high-intensity grow lights. Police searched the house, found more than 100 plants and arrested one of its occupants--a small-time marijuana grower named Danny Kyllo. Kyllo appealed the case all the way to the highest court, arguing that by using infrared technology to pry into his home, the government had conducted an unconstitutional search. [continues 750 words]
A Surprising Supreme Court Ruling Sheds Light--And Other Beams--On The Latest Snooping Technology. The technology that the nine justices of the Supreme Court wrestled with last week was relatively crude: a heat-sensing gun pointed at a house in Florence, Oregon, by federal agents on the lookout for homegrown marijuana. In 1992, a cop using the device had spotted a lot of excess heat coming off high-intensity grow lights. Police searched the house, found more than 100 plants and arrested one of its occupants--a small-time marijuana grower named Danny Kyllo. Kyllo appealed the case all the way to the highest court, arguing that by using infrared technology to pry into his home, the government had conducted an unconstitutional search. [continues 752 words]
Mexico's Top Druglords, The Bloodthirsty Arellano Felix Brothers, Horrify Even Tijuana There are two ways to get a piece of the action at any of the big drug markets along the border: pay off--or kill off--anyone who stands in your way. But to gain exclusive control of the most lucrative gateway of all, says a veteran U.S. drug cop, a drug cartel has to pay and kill "beyond where any have ever gone before." And so few boundaries--national, moral, legal--constrain the border's worst bad guys: Benjamin Arellano Felix, 49, and his kid brother Ramon, 36. The two baby-faced playboys head the Tijuana cartel, which sits atop Mexico's $ 30 billion drug-trafficking underworld and may be the most powerful organization in the country of any kind. Each year they smuggle to the U.S. hundreds of tons of cocaine, plus marijuana, heroin and methamphetamine, ferried on ships, on planes and inside truckloads of legitimate merchandise. The Arellanos are thought to have hundreds of millions of dollars stashed away, and that's after bribing Mexican officials, cops and generals to the tune of some $75 million a year. [continues 1507 words]
Sales were strong on Santa Monica Boulevard last week. Prices were neatly posted; customers paid by credit card; computers tracked inventory; a Better Business Bureau plaque gleamed behind the counter. On the lounge TV, a video showed Los Angeles County Sheriff Leroy Baca praising the place: "A great success...things are done properly and people who need services are getting those services." But the success and services of the Los Angeles Cannabis Resource Center and similar medical-marijuana distributors across the country could soon be history. Last week the U.S. Supreme Court in a unanimous decision declared that illness is no excuse for legalizing marijuana--not even to ease the suffering of patients with cancer, AIDS or other life-threatening diseases. The folks on Santa Monica Boulevard, however respectable, are committing a federal crime as they collect baggies of Maude's Mighty Moss ("large and luscious reddish green buds, easy to break and roll," $18 a gram) and Adobe ("compressed green bud, fresh and tasty, with seeds and stems," $4 a gram). [continues 503 words]
The deaths of two members of an American missionary family [in a small plane shot down by the Peruvian military, which thought the plane was involved in drug smuggling] should serve as a wake-up call [NATION, May 7]. With innocent missionaries being killed, Colombia torn apart by prohibition-fueled violence and America's prison population at record levels, perhaps it's time for politicians to drop the drug-war hysteria. As a Christian, I feel I should ask myself, What would Jesus do? The answer is not to persecute, incarcerate and deny forgiveness to drug users-the essence of America's zero-tolerance drug policy. [continues 267 words]
I once knew a girl who fell deeply in love at the vulnerable age of 15; her paramour was drugs. The girl would look at you with wide, dark eyes that seemed simultaneously to plead for understanding while pushing you away. There wasn't much room for anyone else in her life. Every time I see another mug shot of Robert Downey Jr., I think of that girl. Those eyes... I overheard a comment by a stranger last Tuesday, when the news of Downey's latest arrest was released. "Did you see his mug shot?" the man was saying to his companion. "More like a smug shot. He was practically smirking." [continues 749 words]
As Bush Proposes A Hard-line Drug Czar, Many States Are Retreating From The "Lock-'em-up" Approach How do you feel about the war on drugs? That may depend a bit on how you feel about the never-ending drama of Robert Downey Jr. Already facing a court date this week for a drug-related arrest in November, Downey was busted again last week when police found him lurking after midnight in an alleyway behind a motel in Culver City, Calif. He was cited for suspicion of being under the influence of a controlled substance. [continues 864 words]
At first glance, the stuffy basement room in the Maricopa County courthouse seems unremarkable: a black-robed figure looming over the dais; lawyers and sheriff's deputies at the ready; a line of 72 convicted felons up for sentencing. First comes the lanky forklift driver caught with crystal meth. Then the surly mechanic, father of three, busted for cocaine. And the pale 19-year-old with shorn red hair, on probation for using marijuana, who has failed his latest drug test. He shuffles his feet as his mother looks on, wipes away a tear and mumbles, "I messed up." [continues 416 words]
A Gruesome Shoot-down On The Amazon Hints At A Large And Growing U.S. Narcowar In Latin America. A Report From The Front Lines Iquitos is the kind of town you might expect to read about in the pages of Joseph Conrad, tucked hard along the Amazon and alive with equal parts danger and promise. It draws missionaries of all kind, zealots intent on changing the world by starting here. It was two such crusades--one to stop the narcotraffic that runs on this river and one that is trying to bring Jesus to its darkest corners--that collided 140 miles east of town April 20 when a Peruvian jet shot down an unarmed Cessna carrying missionaries back from an upriver stint. [continues 2376 words]
The Swiss Move To Legalize The Cultivation, Sale And Consumption Of Marijuana Switzerland may no longer be known just as the land of chocolate and cheese; marijuana could soon become as much a part of the Alpine landscape as edelweiss. Last week the Swiss government approved a law, still to be endorsed by the Parliament, that legalizes the production, sale and use of marijuana, making Switzerland's policy toward the drug one of the most liberal in Europe. Sale of hard drugs such as heroin and cocaine will remain illegal. "No research shows that marijuana is more harmful or addictive than alcohol and tobacco," says Georg Amstutz, spokesman for the Federal Office of Public Health. [continues 430 words]
Will The Feds Use A 1980s Anti-Crack Law To Destroy The Rave Movement? Nearly three years after her daughter's death, Phyllis Kirkland still visits her grave every day. She drives over from the Monroeville, Ala., dentist's office where she works. She weeps. Jillian was only 17--"a beautiful 17," her mom chokes--when she died from a drug overdose after a sweaty night of dancing at the State Palace Theatre, a nightclub about a four-hour drive away, in New Orleans. [continues 2158 words]
They're Chic, Mellowing And Way Addictive At last, America's most notorious hip-hopper and many of the parents who hate him have something in common. Pills. Specifically, prescription painkillers like Vicodin. Eminem, who sports a Vicodin tattoo on his left arm, is the pill's unofficial spokesperson. Last month, in his duet with Elton John at the Grammys, he rapped, "I'm on a thousand downers now/ I'm drowsy." It's easy to imagine that, as they glared at the TV, boomers around the country alleviated their annoyance at Eminem's notoriety by swallowing the very drug their nemesis was naming. [continues 602 words]
The Swiss Move To Legalize The Cultivation, Sale And Consumption Of Marijuana. Switzerland may no longer be known just as the land of chocolate and cheese; marijuana could soon become as much a part of the Alpine landscape as edelweiss. Last week the Swiss government approved a law, still to be endorsed by the Parliament, that legalizes the production, sale and use of marijuana, making Switzerland's policy toward the drug one of the most liberal in Europe. Sale of hard drugs such as heroin and cocaine will remain illegal. [continues 456 words]
Methamphetamine has become Asia's drug of choice. Our writer reports on the culture of speed - and recounts his own addiction Jacky talks about killing him, slitting his throat from three till nine and hanging him upside down so the blood drains out of him the way it ran from the baby pigs they used to slaughter in her village before a funeral feast. He deserves it, really, she says, for his freeloading, for his hanging around, for how he just stands there, spindly-legged and narrow-chested and pimple-faced with his big yearning eyes, and just begs for another hit. [continues 5673 words]
Our Writer Reports On The Culture Of Speed--And Recounts His Own Addiction Jacky talks about killing him, slitting his throat from three till nine and hanging him upside down so the blood drains out of him the way it ran from the baby pigs they used to slaughter in her village before a funeral feast. He deserves it, really, she says, for his freeloading, for his hanging around, for how he just stands there, spindly-legged and narrow-chested and pimple-faced with his big yearning eyes, and just begs for another hit. [continues 5671 words]
After Years Of Ignoring The Program's Failure, DARE's Anti-drug Mavens Design A New Curriculum For A New Generation Of Teenagers Here's a news flash: "Just Say No" is not an effective anti-drug message. And neither are Barney-style self-esteem mantras. While most Americans won't be stunned by these revelations, they've apparently taken a few DARE officials by surprise. According to the New York Times, after years of ignoring stubbornly low success rates, coordinators of the 18-year-old Drug Abuse Resistance Education program are finally coming around to the news that their plan to keep kids off drugs just isn't working. That means a whole new DARE program - one which critics hope will sidestep existing pitfalls. [continues 582 words]
After Years Of Treating Addicts Like Criminals, Reports Time.com's Jessica Reaves, There's Increasing Public Pressure To Give Them Treatment Rather Than Jail It's a familiar scene: A man in his mid-30s waits outside a courtroom, his eyes dull, his posture slack. An attorney sits nearby, trying to ignite some optimism in his client - maybe it won't be so bad - but the man knows better. He knows because he's already tested the system so many times. He's been arrested with cocaine, heroin, marijuana, not to mention various and sundry pills. He knows he's betrayed pledges to get clean, and turned his back on years of rehab. Now it's time for him to pay his debt to society once again: That's right. Back to the drug treatment center. Oh, yeah - and maybe a few months of jail time. [continues 1685 words]
Drug Abuse, HIV And Tuberculosis, Combined With The Old Scourge Of Alcoholism, Are Lowering Russia's Population In his 20 years on this earth, Dima has seen a lifetime of abuse. At 16 he shot his first heroin, and in the years since he has lived on and off the streets of St. Petersburg. What life is left for him is likely to be brutal and short. "I can't say this is how I hoped to die," he says. "But at least I'll have plenty of company where I'm going." [continues 1582 words]
OxyContin Is A Leading Treatment For Chronic Pain, But Officials Fear It May Succeed Crack Cocaine On The Street For a woman dying of cancer, Terry Sanborn didn't seem to suffer. She and her unemployed husband Stephen lived on Medicaid and $512 a month in Social Security in a quiet blue-collar cul-de-sac in tiny Bangor, Maine. But they managed to pay $78,000 in cash for that roomy house at the bottom of Hershey Avenue, with a swing set in the backyard. They forked over an additional $17,000 for a Ford Econoline van. Not until drug agents raided the place did neighbors know how they were able to afford it all. [continues 739 words]
Finding New Party Drugs Like K And Ecstasy Won't Be Easy In the past few months, it's become nearly impossible to buy Ketaset in New York City's underground drug market. Made by Fort Dodge, an Iowa-based pharmaceutical firm, Ketaset is a brand of ketamine, a compound that blocks certain neuroreceptors, causing hallucinations in high doses and, in lower doses, a fuzzy dissociation -- like the warmth of a couple of Jim Beams. Legally, it's used as an anesthetic. Illegally, one snorts ketamine because the fuzziness lasts half an hour and doesn't produce bourbon's four-Advil hangover. [continues 741 words]
In the past few months, it's become nearly impossible to buy Ketaset in New York City's underground drug market. Made by Fort Dodge, an Iowa-based pharmaceutical firm, Ketaset is a brand of ketamine, a compound that blocks certain neuroreceptors, causing hallucinations in high doses and, in lower doses, a fuzzy dissociation--like the warmth of a couple of Jim Beams. Legally, it's used as an anesthetic. Illegally, one snorts ketamine because the fuzziness lasts half an hour and doesn't produce bourbon's four-Advil hangover. [continues 742 words]
Americans seem to be addicted to something that is bad for them booze, excessive getting and spending. Drugs, naturally, are at the top of the hell list -- they kill, they addle, they lie at the heart of a vast criminal enterprise, and the feckless "war" against them mostly wastes billions of public dollars every year. Traffic is the epic of our despair on this topic, an attempt to gather all the strands of the issue in one place and implicitly show how they entangle people at every level of society. [continues 465 words]
The Actor's Latest Arrest Supports The Idea That Drugs Rewire The Brain If anyone ever had good reason to say no to drugs, it was surely Robert Downey Jr. The actor, 35, had already seen a promising career held back by substance abuse. He had been separated from his wife and son and lost his freedom--twice. But since his release from prison last August, Downey seemed to be turning his life around. He was in the middle of a ratings-boosting guest run as Calista Flockhart's romantic interest on Ally McBeal. He was set to star in a film with Julia Roberts and Billy Crystal and to take a turn onstage in Mel Gibson's production of Hamlet. He had proclaimed in one interview after another that he was ready to put drugs behind him. [continues 680 words]
Trained As A Drug-Gang Enforcer, Carlos Castano Is Decimating Colombia's Rebels With His Bloody In-your-face Tactics Time's Tim Mcgirk Visits Him Mid-battle "No, it's not like the days of Che Guevara, where you sat around a campfire in the jungle playing the guitar," says Carlos Castano, laughing. He is probably the most feared - and elusive - man in Colombia. "Even in the jungle, I have the Internet and mobile phones. Why, the other night I watched a Kevin Costner movie, Message in a Bottle, on satellite TV." Since 1996 Castano has seized control of hundreds of small private armies recruited by Colombia's druglords, industrialists and owners of the big cattle ranches and emerald mines. [continues 1434 words]
The sign on the gate says it all: You are now leaving the European Union. You're not of course, but life in the Free Town of Christiania, as the neighbourhood in the leafy outskirts of Copenhagen likes to call itself, seems like time travel to the 1970s -- a simpler time of hippies, drugs and rock 'n' roll. Christiania was a military compound and barracks abandoned by the Danish army at the start of the turbulent 70s. Soon after the army moved out, squatters moved in and began converting the army's vacant buildings into homes and shops. [continues 754 words]
The war on drugs has prompted Washington to shore up a beleaguered ally. The problem is that nobody in Colombia has clean hands, and critics fear a quagmire... Along with the presidency, Bill Clinton inherited from President Bush the Somalia deployment - a well-meaning overseas military operation that turned into a nightmare. And as his parting gift, Mr. Clinton will leave his successor an expanding U.S. military commitment in Colombia, which could just as easily turn nasty. President Clinton last week visited the troubled country to showcase the $1.3 billion in mostly military U.S. aid being sent ostensibly to help Colombia's security forces fight the war on drugs. But nothing is that simple in a country that has been in the grip of an almost 40-year civil war in which all of the major protagonists - the left-wing guerrillas of the FARC and ELN groups; the right-wing paramilitary groups; and the government's own army (which will be the prime beneficiary of the aid) - have been linked both with ugly human rights abuses and with narco-trafficking. Peace talks between the government and the guerrillas, which began after the government recognized guerrilla control over huge swaths of territory, have failed to resolve the conflict, and concerns over Colombia's expanding narcotics exports have prompted Washington to intervene on the government side. [continues 361 words]
The Supreme Court's overruling of a California decision on medical marijuana, says TIME.com's Jessica Reaves, underscores the need for reassessment of national laws governing drug use They've been trying for four years now, but Californians just can't seem to shake those stodgy federal drug laws. Tuesday, at the White House's request, the U.S. Supreme Court issued an emergency ban (by a vote of 7 to 1) on the distribution of marijuana for medical purposes. Striking down a U.S. Court of Appeals ruling in San Francisco that would have made "medical necessity" a defense against federal drug statutes, the Justices indicated they would consider the case for their fall docket. [continues 335 words]
