> Date: Fri, 1 Jun 2007 11:44:11 -0700
> From: webmaster@... (Drug Sense)
> Subject: DrugSense Weekly, June 1, 2007, #501
>
>
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>
> DRUGSENSE WEEKLY
>
>
***********************************************************************
>
> DrugSense Weekly, June 1, 2007
> #501
>
> Read This Publication On-line at:
> http://www.drugsense.org/current.htm
>
> ------------------
>
> TABLE OF CONTENTS:
>
> * This Just In
>
> (1) Medical Marijuana Law Expanded
> (2) Italy: Paramilitaries To Fight School Drug
> Abuse
> (3) Liberal Or Conservative, Canada's Core Drug
> Policy Is Worthless
> (4) Colombian Mayor's 2003 Death Detailed
>
> * Weekly News in Review
>
> Drug Policy-
>
> (5) Drug Bill Aims To Cut Sentencing Disparity
> (6) Column: Sentencing Disparity Hurts Blacks
> (7) Column: War On Drugs Kills Blacks
> (8) Column: Let's Go Dutch
>
>
> Law Enforcement & Prisons-
>
> (9) Senate OKs Bill To Reduce Prison Need
> (10) Drug Court To Help Half As Many
> (11) Column: Public Gets It, That More Crime
> Prevention Is Needed
> (12) Web: How Much For All That Heroin?
> (13) DEA Teaches Meth-Cooking 101
>
> Cannabis & Hemp-
>
> (14) Medical Marijuana Advocate Convicted
> (15) Ending The Marijuana Monopoly
> (16) Appeal Court Increases Pot-Farm Labourer's
> Sentence
> (17) Tod H. Mikuriya, 73, Dies; Backed Medical
> Marijuana
>
> International News-
>
> (18) OPED: Why The U.S. Is Losing Its War On
> Cocaine
> (19) Editorial: You Can't Fight Drugs With Guns
> (20) Ottawa Officials Told To Negate 'Myths'
> About Injection Sites
> (21) Study Backs Safe-Injection Site's Work
> (22) Researchers Slam Ottawa's 'Politicization
> Of Science'
>
> * Hot Off The 'Net
>
> Supervised Drug Injection Sites? / By Tony
> Newman
> Top Brass Implicated In House Of Death
> Cover-Up / By Bill Conroy
> Cultural Baggage Radio Show
> Photos From MPP's 2007 Party At The Playboy
> Mansion
> Public Health, Booze, And The Drug War / By
> Dr. Tom O'Connell
> On Harmony ... / By Mary Jane Borden
>
> * What You Can Do This Week
>
> 2nd Annual NORML Aspen Legal Seminar
>
> * Letter Of The Week
>
> Prohibition Doesn't Work / David Hutchison
>
> * Feature Article
>
> The Witnesses Who Would Not Witness / Jo-D
> Harrison
>
> * Quote of the Week
>
> William J. Clinton
>
> DrugSense needs your support to continue this
> newsletter and many
> other important projects - see how you can help at
> http://www.drugsense.org/donate.htm
>
>
***********************************************************************
>
> THIS JUST IN
>
=======================================================================
>
> (1) MEDICAL MARIJUANA LAW EXPANDED
>
> Pubdate: Fri, 01 Jun 2007
> Source: Burlington Free Press (VT)
> Copyright: 2007 Burlington Free Press
> Author: Nancy Remsen, Free Press Staff Writer
>
> MONTPELIER -- Steve Perry of Randolph Center
> welcomed news Thursday
> that a bill expanding eligibility for the state's
> medical marijuana
> registry would become law -- even though the
> governor refused to sign
> it.
>
> Perry copes with a degenerative joint condition
> that causes severe
> pain and muscle spasms. Traditional painkillers
> fail to provide
> relief, he said, but marijuana has helped. Now
> he will be able to
> register with the Department of Public Safety and
> have protection from
> state prosecution while using the otherwise illegal
> drug.
>
> The bill broadened the eligibility established in
> Vermont's 2004 law
> by allowing those with chronic debilitating
> conditions, not just life-
> threatening diseases, to participate in the program.
> It also increases
> the number of plants that participants may grow
> at home and reduces
> the annual registration fee from $100 to $50.
>
> The marijuana bill is the fifth piece of
> legislation Gov. Jim Douglas
> has allowed to become law this year without
> his signature. Jason
> Gibbs, the governor's spokesman, said that generally
> Douglas exercises
> this option when he doesn't agree with the
> policy but recognizes a
> measure has strong support in the Legislature.
>
> In the case of the marijuana bill, Gibbs said,
> "The governor has
> compassion for people who are suffering from
> debilitating diseases,
> but he can't in good conscience sanction a
> violation of federal law."
>
> [snip]
>
> Continues:
> http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v07.n665.a13.html
>
> ===
>
> (2) ITALY: PARAMILITARIES TO FIGHT SCHOOL DRUG ABUSE
>
> Pubdate: Wed, 30 May 2007
> Source: Guardian, The (UK)
> Copyright: 2007 Guardian Newspapers Limited
> Author: John Hooper, in Rome, The Guardian
>
> The paramilitary Carabinieri, a tough force which
> until recently was
> stationed in Iraq, could be sent into schools to
> search for drugs. The
> proposal follows widespread alarm in Italy at what
> is seen as rapidly
> growing drug use among the young.
>
> Livia Turco, the health minister in Romano
> Prodi's centre-left
> government, said the consumption and trafficking of
> drugs by students
> had reached the point at which it was time to begin
> checks throughout
> Italy. Ms Turco, who has control of a Carabinieri
> detachment, said her
> initiative reflected "a sense of responsibility
> towards parents".
>
> Parental concern has spiralled in recent months,
> largely because of
> photos and videos posted on the web that
> give an impression of
> widespread anarchy in the country's classrooms.
> Earlier this month, a
> video was posted on the internet, apparently showing
> a teacher rolling
> a marijuana "spliff" in front of his pupils. It
> was later shown on
> television.
>
> Last month also saw the death of a 15-year-old
> pupil at a school near
> Milan. It was found that just prior to his death
> he had been smoking
> cannabis; and at the postmortem, traces of
> cocaine were also found.
>
> Whether these high-profile incidents reflect a
> growing phenomenon is
> unclear. But official statistics indicate that
> drug use has become
> extremely common among urban youths.
>
> A recent survey by the health authorities in Milan
> found that almost
> 70% of 15- to 24-year-olds had used cannabis.
> That compares with a
> nationwide average of 25% and a Europe-wide average
> of 17% in a survey
> for Drug Watch International in the 1990s.
>
> In theory, the Italian authorities are
> enforcing a policy of zero
> tolerance. The previous, conservative government of
> Silvio Berlusconi
> introduced legislation that abolished the
> distinction between soft and
> hard drugs and made it illegal to be found in
> possession of even small
> quantities of narcotics.
>
> [snip]
>
> Continues:
> http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v07.n662.a10.html
>
> ===
>
> (3) LIBERAL OR CONSERVATIVE, CANADA'S CORE DRUG
> POLICY IS WORTHLESS
>
> Pubdate: Thu, 31 May 2007
> Source: Edmonton Journal (CN AB)
> Copyright: 2007 The Edmonton Journal
> Author: Dan Gardner, The Ottawa Citizen
>
> We Have Nothing to Show for Decades of
> Arrests, Punishments and
> Seizures
>
> Have you heard the news? Stephen Harper thinks
> he's Ronald Reagan.
> "The Conservative government is set to launch a
> regressive war on
> drugs," a Liberal press release says.
>
> The war is scheduled to start this week, when the
> government releases
> a new National Drug Strategy that will --
> according to a report in
> this newspaper last week -- get tough on drugs.
> More law enforcement.
> More treatment and prevention.
>
> But less "harm reduction" -- including the
> end of support for
> "Insite," Vancouver's safe-injection facility.
>
> And so the lines have been drawn. On one side are
> those who say they
> are defending the liberal Canadian approach
> against a Reagan-era war
> on drugs. On the other are those who say the liberal
> Canadian approach
> amounts to government aiding and abetting drug
> use and must be
> replaced by a strong effort to stop use before it
> starts.
>
> As emotionally satisfying as it would be to have
> a good bash at the
> Tories, I'm afraid I can't. It's not that they're
> right. They're not.
> Insite and other harm-reduction policies are
> supported by extensive
> peer-reviewed research. The government's
> preferred package -- more
> enforcement, tougher sentences, more treatment and
> prevention -- has
> failed ever since Richard Nixon's White House first
> assembled it back
> in the days when disco was cutting edge.
>
> [snip]
>
> Continues:
> http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v07.n663.a06.html
>
> ===
>
> (4) COLOMBIAN MAYOR'S 2003 DEATH DETAILED
>
> Pubdate: Wed, 30 May 2007
> Source: Los Angeles Times (CA)
> Copyright: 2007 Los Angeles Times
> Author: Chris Kraul, Times Staff Writer
>
> A Paramilitary Boss' Testimony Underscores Militias'
> Grip on Political
> and Business Life in the Nation.
>
> SINCELEJO, COLOMBIA -- This is the chronicle of
> a death foretold.
>
> Mayor Eudaldo "Tito" Diaz knew he was a marked
> man. He had resisted
> right-wing paramilitary fighters in El Roble, a
> town in the northern
> state of Sucre, and the assassins had him in their
> sights. In a town
> hall meeting, he confronted Colombian President
> Alvaro Uribe, grabbing
> the microphone and warning that he was going to be
> killed.
>
> Two months later, Diaz was seized by a dozen
> men in several cars,
> apparently betrayed by members of his personal
> security team.
>
> He was taken to the notorious paramilitary
> "concentration camp," a
> ranch called El Palmar where several mass graves
> have been found. He
> was tortured for five days before being shot to
> death.
>
> The assassination of Diaz, a 47-year-old doctor,
> affords a glimpse of
> the nightmare that war-torn Colombia has
> experienced for decades. The
> nation relived the nightmare this month with
> the testimony of
> paramilitary capo Salvatore Mancuso, as he
> confessed to drug
> trafficking, mass murder, extortion and usurping
> vast tracts of land -
> -- all with the help of corrupt politicians.
>
> In the four northern states, including Sucre, that
> Mancuso controlled,
> politicos who resisted were ruthlessly cut down.
> Diaz became one of
> the victims in April 2003.
>
> "My father died wanting a better country, where
> mafias can't traffic
> in drugs and loot cities, where innocent people
> aren't killed at the
> whim of politicians to perpetuate themselves in
> power," said Juan
> David Diaz, the late mayor's 28-year-old son, who
> also is a doctor and
> who now heads the local victims rights group
> Movement of Victims of
> State Crimes, based here in Sucre's capital.
>
> [snip]
>
> Continues:
> http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v07.n660.a05.html
>
>
***********************************************************************
>
> WEEKLY NEWS IN REVIEW
>
=======================================================================
>
> Domestic News- Policy
> ----------------------------------
>
> COMMENT: (5-8)
>
> If legislators would take heed to Newton's Third
> Law of motion when
> creating drug policy, we would not spend so much
> time correcting the
> tragic "equal and opposite reaction" we so often
> find ourselves in.
> The U.S. Sentencing Commission has finally made a
> small step towards
> reforming the 1980's crack-cocaine laws which
> voraciously ripped
> through our black communities. Two midwestern
> columnists explore
> this issue concluding with the education/treatment
> solution which we
> are, hopefully, moving towards.
>
> Another columnist, a recovering addict from
> Hawaii, turned the
> tables by insinuating addiction also lies on
> the side of the
> prohibitionist who must "first admit that we have
> a problem" before
> recovery can begin. He reveals that the UK has
> already taken this
> step and that we all should be following the Dutch
> model.
>
> ===
>
> (5) DRUG BILL AIMS TO CUT SENTENCING DISPARITY
>
> Pubdate: Sun, 27 May 2007
> Source: Buffalo News (NY)
> Copyright: 2007 The Buffalo News
> Author: Dan Herbeck, News Staff Reporter
>
> Alters Guidelines For Crack Crimes
>
> A federal commission has taken a small step
> toward eliminating a
> cocaine sentencing disparity that has upset
> civil rights advocates
> for almost two decades.
>
> [snip]
>
> Since the late 1980s, federal sentences for
> crack cocaine crimes
> have been far more severe than those for
> crimes involving equal
> amounts of powdered cocaine. Because crack is a
> bigger problem in
> poor urban neighborhoods and powdered cocaine use
> is more prevalent
> among the wealthy, civil rights groups claimed
> the disparity was
> unfair to minority groups.
>
> [snip]
>
> An amendment approved last month by the
> Sentencing Commission would
> not eliminate the mandatory minimums but would
> decrease the advised
> sentences for many crack cocaine crimes. Some
> sentences would be cut
> by 20 percent.
>
> [snip]
>
> Continues:
> http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v07/n656/a04.html
>
> ===
>
> (6) COLUMN: SENTENCING DISPARITY HURTS BLACKS
>
> Pubdate: Sun, 27 May 2007
> Source: News-Sentinel, The (Fort Wayne, IN)
> Copyright: 2007 The News-Sentinel
> Author: Sylvia A. Smith
>
> WASHINGTON -- Looking for a way to improve the
> responsibility-taking
> among black fathers? Or to improve the
> economic standing and
> stability of black families overall? Or for
> confronting these
> statistics: One of every three black kids is
> being raised by a
> never-married mother; one of 20 white children is
> being raised by a
> never-married mom.
>
> One step to addressing this complicated problem
> is to rewrite a law
> that forces federal judges to send people to jail
> for mere
> possession of one type of drug, a substance
> more commonly used in
> the black community than by whites. Crack
> cocaine is created by
> adding powder cocaine to baking soda and water
> and then baking the
> mixture. The result is broken into "rocks" and
> can be sold in very
> small quantities. In the mid-1980s crack
> became a significant
> problem in cities.
>
> To try to get a grip on what some called
> the crack epidemic,
> Congress set the penalty for possession of a tiny
> amount of crack (
> "tiny" being the size of two sugar packets,
> enough for 10 to 15
> doses ) as an automatic five-year prison sentence.
> Possession of the
> same amount of powder cocaine generally gets
> probation; Congress has
> declared that judges don't have to send a powder
> cocaine possessor
> to jail until the amount of the drug reaches
> the 200-sugar-packet
> size, which produces 2,500 to 5,000 doses.
>
> She [Eleanor Holmes Norton, the District of
> Columbia's House
> representative] said while Congress ignored what
> it had wrought --
> not for racist reasons but in an attempt to get a
> grip on the crack
> problem of the 1980s -- "a whole generation
> of black people are
> condemned now to losing the family culture, and
> a whole generation
> of black children are being raised with no father."
>
> There are so few black men for middle-class black
> women to marry --
> men without a record, capable of getting a job
> -- that "there is a
> whole generation of black women who will
> never be married," she
> said.
>
> [snip]
>
> [Rep. Mark ] Souder agrees that the statistics
> about black men in
> prisons are irrefutable. But he's unwilling to
> lay that all at the
> door of the crack-powder sentencing disparity.
>
> [snip]
>
> What is not in dispute is that a
> disproportionate percentage of
> black men are in U.S. prison cells.
>
> For reasons of fairness and to help lessen the
> mistrust in the legal
> system, Congress would be wise to tackle this.
>
> Continues:
> http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v07/n655/a04.html
>
> ===
>
> (7) COLUMN: WAR ON DRUGS KILLS BLACKS
>
> Pubdate: Sun, 27 May 2007
> Source: Chicago Sun-Times (IL)
> Copyright: 2007 The Sun-Times Co.
> Author: Monroe Anderson
>
> [snip]
>
> Their front-page tragedies put faces on
> debilitating statistics.
> Black American males between the ages of 15 and
> 24 have the highest
> firearm homicide rate of any demographic group
> in our nation. Ten
> times more black males are shot to death in
> that age range than
> white males. According to the Centers for
> Disease Control and
> Prevention, about 52 percent of this nation's
> gun-murder victims are
> African American, even though we represent less
> than 13 percent of
> the total population. If all Americans were
> killed with firearms at
> the same rate as African-American males between
> the ages of 15 and
> 24, there would be more than a quarter of a
> million gun murders in
> the United States annually.
>
> Make no mistake about it: This is still that
> same sad story of
> black-on-black crime. But the magnitude is new.
> I attribute it to
> the "war on drugs." Two decades ago, Congress
> went on a "get tough
> on drugs" rampage. The results have visited
> devastating collateral
> damage on the African-American community. Black
> men have unfairly
> and disproportionately been targeted as enemy
> combatants in this
> trumped-up war. A black man is 13 times more
> likely to go to state
> prison than a white man.
>
> And while drug use is consistent across all
> racial groups, blacks
> and Latinos are much more likely to get busted,
> prosecuted and given
> long sentences for drug offenses, according to
> the latest report by
> Human Rights Watch. That explains why African
> Americans, who make up
> 13 percent of all drug users, are 35 percent of
> those arrested for
> drug possession, 55 percent of those convicted
> and 74 percent of
> those sent to prison.
>
> [snip]
>
> One of my sons could be next -- or one of
> yours. We need to stop
> this cancer from further spreading. We need to
> scale down the raids
> and scale back the sentencing on nonviolent
> offenses. We need to put
> our energies into educating to prevent
> incarcerating.
>
> [snip]
>
> Continues:
> http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v07/n653/a02.html
>
> ===
>
> (8) COLUMN: LET'S GO DUTCH
>
> Pubdate: Sun, 27 May 2007
> Source: Honolulu Star-Bulletin (HI)
> Copyright: 2007 Honolulu Star-Bulletin
> Author: Rich Figel
>
> Unlike Ours, Their Approach to Drugs Actually Works
>
> THE WAR ON DRUGS is a disaster. Just read
> the daily headlines:
> arrests and record drug seizures every week;
> worldwide violence
> related to drug cartels and gangs; new ( and
> deadlier ) drugs
> targeted to kids. The very fact that our
> government believes we need
> drug testing in schools is a tacit admission
> that the current
> strategy isn't working.
>
> So what do we do about it?
>
> The first step in recovery is admitting you have
> a problem. That's
> something Great Britain recently did. Two
> months ago, the United
> Kingdom Drugs Policy Commission issued a brutally
> honest report that
> concluded Britain's own War on Drugs was "a
> total failure." The
> panel included a diverse group of experts,
> ranging from health
> professionals to law enforcement officials.
>
> Their frank assessment found that decades of
> Brit-style "Just Say
> No" campaigns had little impact on deterring
> drug use. The report
> stated: "Whether we like it or not, drugs are and
> will remain a fact
> of life. On that basis, the aim of the law
> should be to reduce the
> amounts of harm caused to individuals, their
> friends and families,
> their children and their communities."
>
> [snip]
>
> THEY RECOMMENDED a shift from the current
> "criminal justice bias" to
> recognizing addiction as a health and social
> problem. The report
> also advocated "supervised drug consumption
> rooms" as a means of
> preventing overdoses, and getting addicts into
> treatment.
>
> It's not as if these are radical new ideas. Other
> European countries
> have already implemented sensible policies, and
> the Brits themselves
> have some experience in this area. From the
> 1920s to the 1960s,
> heroin was routinely prescribed to U.K. addicts.
> The population of
> junkies remained stable at around 2,000 during
> that period. When the
> laws were changed in 1971, the black market for
> heroin exploded. The
> United Kingdom now has 300,000 addicts.
>
> [snip]
>
> Does the Dutch way work? Thirty years ago, there
> were about 30,000
> heroin addicts in the Netherlands. Today, the
> number of junkies is
> the same, even though the population has grown
> by 6 percent. That
> means fewer new users are becoming addicted.
>
> By treating junkies with prescription heroin,
> they also found that
> addicts commit fewer crimes to support their
> habits -- which
> translates to less government spending, as
> well. Numerous studies
> show it's much cheaper to treat drug users than
> imprison them. For
> every dollar spent on treatment, taxpayers
> save more than $7 in
> prison costs, according to one analysis.
>
> [snip]
>
> We are a nation in denial. Instead of taking
> responsibility for
> being the world's largest consumer of illegal
> substances, we blame
> other countries for supplying them. Parents
> would rather point
> fingers at schools or the media, when the
> truth is many kids are
> using "legal" drugs they can find in their own
> parents' medicine
> cabinets.
>
> As a recovering addict, I've seen the damage
> done by alcohol and
> drugs. Some people ( like me ) cannot handle the
> stuff, and
> shouldn't touch it. Abstinence for all, however,
> isn't realistic or
> necessary. That's why I believe the best we
> can do is to lessen
> demand and reduce harm.
>
> Continues:
> http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v07/n659/a10.html
>
>
=======================================================================
>
> Law Enforcement & Prisons
> -------------------------
>
> COMMENT: (9-13)
>
> Let's hear a big Hallelujah for the great
> state of Texas! After
> years of topping the incarceration per capita
> charts, a bill is on
> the way to the Governor which will clear out
> jail cells by moving
> low-level inmates to supervised programs and
> enhance drug treatment
> programs. As we say down in these here parts,
> YeeHaw!!
>
> Unfortunately, a county in the more 'enlightened'
> state of
> Washington cut it's Drug Court program in
> half last week due to
> budgetary constraints.
>
> A Florida columnist used Memorial Day to honor
> victims of our Drug
> War. After recounting a few of the recent
> 'mistaken deaths" and
> reviewing the effects of training police
> officers as soldiers, he
> concludes that the majority of citizens now want
> treatment/education
> as an 'exit strategy'.
>
> Two articles about the DEA caught my eye this
> week. Slate published
> an interesting article covering the method used
> to calculate costs
> of prohibited substances by the agency. And
> I'm sure few readers
> missed the Colorado article which calmly
> revealed that students of
> their Citizens Academy assisted local agents in
> the manufacturing of
> methamphetamine.
>
> ===
>
> (9) SENATE OKS BILL TO REDUCE PRISON NEED
>
> Pubdate: Mon, 28 May 2007
> Source: Dallas Morning News (TX)
> Copyright: 2007 The Dallas Morning News
> Author: Emily Ramshaw, The Dallas Morning News
>
> Early Releases, Other Steps May Show New Lockups Not
> Needed
>
> AUSTIN - A bill that permits early release
> for certain prison
> inmates and gives those on parole a chance to
> shorten their terms
> passed the Senate on Sunday, but it may not make
> it to a House vote
> today before the Legislature adjourns. The
> bill, crafted by Sen.
> John Whitmire, D-Houston, and Rep. Jerry Madden,
> R-Richardson, aims
> to reduce prison populations and keep the state
> from having to build
> new lockups.
>
> [snip]
>
> TDCJ [Texas Department of Criminal Justice]
> officials have argued
> that there's no avoiding the need for
> construction of three new
> prisons they predict a shortfall of 11,000
> prison beds by 2011.
>
> But Mr. Madden and Mr. Whitmire say they can cope
> with that
> shortfall by moving thousands of low-level or
> parole-ready prison
> inmates into supervised community programs, and
> by bolstering
> substance-abuse programs to free up beds used
> by minor drug and
> alcohol offenders.
>
> The budget includes funding for many of these
> programs, including
> adding 8,000 prison beds in the next few years
> for drug treatment
> programs.
>
> Despite the new programs, the budget does include
> funding for three
> new prisons, but only if the legislative budget
> board deems they are
> necessary. Earlier language forcing the TDCJ
> to evaluate the
> effectiveness of diversion programs before
> building new prisons was
> stripped from the budget.
>
> [snip]
>
> Continues:
> http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v07/n658/a10.html
>
> ===
>
> (10) DRUG COURT TO HELP HALF AS MANY
>
> Pubdate: Sat, 26 May 2007
> Source: Herald, The (Everett, WA)
> Copyright: 2007 The Daily Herald Co.
> Author: Jim Haley
>
> The Program Works, But It's Short On Staff - And
> Money
>
> [snip]
>
> With the help of an intensive Snohomish County
> drug program commonly
> called Drug Court, the single mom put her life
> together, beat the
> addiction, got her kids back and is thriving
> with a job at a
> Lynnwood retail store.
>
> Now, it's likely that the number of people like
> Forget who can be
> helped by Drug Court will steadily drop.
>
> The county's judges have decided to reduce the
> number of people in
> the program from the current level of 150 to 75.
>
> [snip]
>
> The decision to gradually reduce the number of
> people in the program
> was not an easy one, said Judge George Bowen,
> who heads the Drug
> Court program. He acknowledges that a client
> load of 200 or 300
> could be met if enough money were available.
>
> The program has one full-time coordinator who
> works a big caseload,
> including initial interviews, with the help of an
> intern.
>
> [snip]
>
> Of the 257 people who have graduated from
> the program over the
> years, only 17 have committed new crimes, about a
> 94 percent success
> rate.
>
> The judges made getting a second coordinator
> an emphasis in last
> year's county budget request, but the money was cut.
> Bob
> Terwilliger, court administrator, said the judges
> will make another
> attempt this year to get additional funding
> from the Snohomish
> County Council.
>
> [snip]
>
> Continues:
> http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v07/n647/a02.html
>
> ===
>
> (11) COLUMN: PUBLIC GETS IT, THAT MORE CRIME
> PREVENTION IS NEEDED
>
> Pubdate: Mon, 28 May 2007
> Source: Florida Times-Union (FL)
> Copyright: 2007 The Florida Times-Union
> Author: Tonyaa Weathersbee, The Times-Union
>
> On this Memorial Day, I'd like to pause a moment
> to remember those
> who have lost their lives - or much of what's
> left of them - in a
> different sort of war.
>
> It's a war that's fueled by a lust for a foreign
> product other than
> oil; a product whose distribution has become one
> of the only sources
> of commerce and power for people in poor,
> predominantly black
> communities.
>
> It's a war that has packed prisons and
> desolated neighborhoods. A
> war which, after raging for three decades, has
> done little to curb
> people's appetite for the product.
>
> That product is cocaine. The war is the War on
> Drugs. This war costs
> more than $40 billion a year. It's a war
> rooted in economics and
> addiction, but one that is being fought by
> police and prisons.
>
> And there's no exit strategy in sight.
>
> [snip]
>
> When police are made to feel that they are
> soldiers in a war,
> they're going to rally to each other. That's
> what warriors do -
> commend each other for staying alive. The
> problem, however, is that
> when police are made to feel like warriors,
> entire communities are
> liable to become battlegrounds.
>
> That means that instead of making those
> communities safer, they make
> them scarier. People like Johnston and
> Singletary wind up getting
> hurt or killed because they happened to get in
> the way of pursuits
> of penny- ante dealers; dealers whose presence
> will surely be
> replenished by others once they're sent away.
>
> That's no victory. That's just running in place.
>
> [snip]
>
> Sixty-one percent of people polled by the
> University of North
> Florida recently agreed that the crime rate
> should be tackled by
> more attention to social problems instead of
> devising more
> punishments.
>
> More than half said Duval County wasn't
> spending enough money on
> crime prevention and intervention programs for
> juveniles. That's
> encouraging, because it means that people want
> the criminality to
> stop without people like Johnston and Singletary
> paying with their
> lives.
>
> They want the War on Drugs to be fought with
> the right weapons.
>
> And to finally end.
>
> Continues:
> http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v07/n659/a08.html
>
> ===
>
> (12) WEB: HOW MUCH FOR ALL THAT HEROIN?
>
> Pubdate: Thu, 24 May 2007
> Source: Slate (US Web)
> Copyright: 2007 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive
> Co. LLC
> Author: Michelle Tsai
>
> HOW MUCH FOR ALL THAT HEROIN?
>
> The Art And Science Of The Dea'S Drug Valuations
>
> Federal prosecutors charged 44 people in a
> drug-smuggling ring
> Wednesday, having confiscated a stash that
> included 350 kilograms of
> high-grade heroin from Colombia, 220 kilograms
> of cocaine, 1
> kilogram of methamphetamine, and 150 pounds of
> marijuana. The
> authorities pegged the value of the heroin alone
> at $35 million. How
> do law-enforcement officers put a price tag
> on seized drugs?
>
> They check the DEA's own price list. The agency
> keeps tabs on local
> busts all over the country, testing drug samples
> and recording data
> like price, quantity, purity, where the stuff was
> headed, and how it
> was to be mixed with other substances.
> Informants and undercover
> agents also give regular updates on both retail
> and wholesale prices
> of illegal drugs. The information compiled by
> all 21 field offices
> goes into a quarterly report called "Trends in
> Trafficking," which
> is sent around to police departments. It's hard
> for regular citizens
> to get their hands on that useful report, but
> some of the same data
> appear in this detailed publication from the
> Office of National Drug
> Control Policy.
>
> Based on word on the street, for instance, the
> DEA knows that an
> eight ball of cocaine-about 10 lines-goes for
> $125 to $200 in New
> York City, upward of $200 north of the city,
> and up to $300 in
> western New York state. The anti-drug agency
> also tracks how pure
> products are. A gram of coke in Georgia will cost
> $75 to $100 and is
> probably 38 percent to 86 percent pure. Better
> not to buy in South
> Carolina, however, where a gram will be of lower
> quality-25 percent
> to 55 percent pure-and more expensive at $50 to
> $170.
>
> [snip]
>
> Continues:
> http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v07/n643/a07.html
>
> ===
>
> (13) DEA TEACHES METH-COOKING 101
>
> Pubdate: Mon, 28 May 2007
> Source: Denver Post (CO)
> Copyright: 2007 The Denver Post Corp
> Author: Felisa Cardona, Denver Post Staff Writer
>
> DEA TEACHES METH-COOKING 101
>
> DEA Holds Awareness Class to Show Citizens How
> Easy It Is to Make
> the Drug.
>
> Cooking methamphetamine takes only a few hours
> and requires simple
> household ingredients, like striker plates from
> matchbooks, the guts
> of lithium batteries, drain cleaner.
>
> "It's pretty gross," said Matt Leland, who works
> in career services
> at the University of Northern Colorado and who
> recently helped cook
> the drug in a lab. "If someone was truly
> interested in manufacturing
> meth, it would not be that hard."
>
> The Drug Enforcement Administration invited
> Leland and other
> citizens - - such as software engineers, a
> teacher, a pastor and a
> school principal - to make methamphetamine
> last week in a lab at
> Metropolitan State College of Denver.
>
> [snip]
>
> The class was held as part of the DEA's first
> Citizens Academy in
> order to give the public a close-up view of what
> the agency does to
> keep drugs off the street.
>
> Although meth remains a significant problem
> across the U.S., the
> number of clandestine labs has dropped because some
> of the
> ingredients are harder to obtain.
>
> [snip]
>
> Jeff Sweetin, the DEA's special agent in
> charge of the Rocky
> Mountain region, says methamphetamine is now
> largely a smuggling
> issue. Most of the product comes from Mexican
> cartels that
> manufacture the drugs in "superlabs" where
> cooks are capable of
> quickly making pound after pound, he said.
>
> Sweetin said Mexican authorities are trying to stop
> the
> manufacturing of meth in their country by
> implementing the
> restrictions on ingredients that exist in the U.S.
>
> "They are a full partner in our meth issues
> right now," Sweetin
> said.
>
> [snip]
>
> Continues:
> http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v07/n659/a09.html
>
>
=======================================================================
>
> Cannabis & Hemp-
> ---------------------------
>
> COMMENT: (14-17)
>
> In a federal court government employees once again
> demonstrate their
> ethical bankruptcy. Will the feds allow
> University of Massachusetts
> agronomy professor Lyle E. Craker to grow
> research marijuana as the
> editorial, below, recommends? From Canada, a
> glimmer of common
> sense, or is it?
>
> Last week I highlighted what I thought would be
> all the obituaries
> for Dr. Tod Mikuriya. Not so. This week saw
> versions of the New York
> Times obituary also printed in the San Jose
> Mercury News; the
> Chicago Tribune; and one of Canada's two
> national newspapers, the
> Globe and Mail.
>
> ===
>
> (14) MEDICAL MARIJUANA ADVOCATE CONVICTED
>
> Source: San Francisco Chronicle (CA)
> Pubdate: Thu, 31 May 2007
> Copyright: 2007 Hearst Communications Inc.
> Author: Bob Egelko, Chronicle Staff Writer
>
> Ed Rosenthal was a free man, but not a happy
> one, after a jury
> convicted him Wednesday for a second time of
> violating federal drug
> laws by growing marijuana for medical patients.
>
> Rosenthal, 62, of Oakland -- an authority on
> cannabis cultivation,
> former columnist for High Times magazine and
> longtime advocate of
> legalizing marijuana -- was fuming that the same
> federal judge who
> declined to imprison him had also refused to let
> him argue to jurors
> that his purpose was healing people, not dealing
> drugs.
>
> "Once again, the jury was not allowed to hear
> valuable information
> it needed to make an unbiased and fair
> decision," Rosenthal said
> outside court after he was convicted of three
> felony charges. After
> the jurors learn that they were "compelled to
> make an immoral
> decision," he said, they will regret the
> verdict for the rest of
> their lives.
>
> Jurors left the federal courthouse in San Francisco
> without
> discussing the case. Assistant U.S. Attorney
> George Bevan declined
> comment. Rosenthal's lawyers said they would ask
> the judge to throw
> out the convictions at a hearing next week.
>
> [snip]
>
> The charges normally carry a sentence of at
> least five years in
> prison, but U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer
> sentenced Rosenthal
> to only a day in jail, which he had already
> served. Breyer said
> Rosenthal had believed he was acting legally
> because Oakland had
> designated him as its agent in the city's medical
> marijuana program.
>
> [snip]
>
> In both trials, Breyer barred evidence that
> the marijuana was
> intended for medical use under Proposition 215,
> the 1996 California
> initiative allowing patients to use the drug
> with their doctor's
> approval. He also excluded evidence about
> Rosenthal's designation as
> an agent by the city of Oakland.
>
> Left without a defense, Rosenthal's lawyers
> called no witnesses at
> the retrial, and instead argued that the
> prosecution's case was
> tainted by the testimony of some of Rosenthal's
> former friends and
> business partners who had been granted leniency.
>
> Defense lawyers also did all they could to
> remind jurors of the
> state law -- addressing them as "fellow
> Californians" during opening
> and closing arguments, and urging them to do the
> right thing without
> fear of repercussions. But prosecutor Bevan
> told jurors they were
> bound by Breyer's instructions, which required
> them to apply federal
> drug laws.
>
> Continues:
> http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v07/n662/a02.html
>
> ===
>
> (15) ENDING THE MARIJUANA MONOPOLY
>
> Source: Los Angeles Times (CA)
> Pubdate: Thu, 31 May 2007
> Copyright: 2007 Los Angeles Times
>
> [snip]
>
> DISCUSSION OF medical marijuana has always been
> heavy on rhetoric,
> elisions and grandiose claims. What it has
> lacked is reliable
> research that might bring some of the
> discussion into line with
> reality. This is because access to the
> government's monopoly supply
> of research-grade marijuana is so restricted
> that the necessary
> research is effectively impossible. Now the
> Drug Enforcement
> Administration's chief administrative law judge is
> recommending that
> the federal drug police allow competition in
> growing marijuana for
> research purposes. The administration should follow
> her
> recommendation.
>
> At issue is the supply of research-grade
> marijuana produced at the
> University of Mississippi and overseen by the
> National Institute on
> Drug Abuse. This supply is supposed to be made
> available to
> DEA-registered researchers who have undergone a
> rigorous review and
> approval process by the U.S. Public Health
> Service. However, both
> medical marijuana advocates and scientists say
> the institute
> routinely refuses to make its supply available
> even to licensed
> researchers for properly authorized studies.
> There are at least two
> FDA-approved studies that cannot go forward
> because no research
> samples are available.
>
> This leaves researchers -- and the 12 states
> that have so far
> approved marijuana for medical purposes -- in
> a Catch-22: Drug
> warriors object that there is no research
> demonstrating marijuana's
> efficacy while preventing such research from being
> done. Since 2001,
> a scientist with the University of Massachusetts
> Amherst has vainly
> petitioned the DEA for permission to produce,
> under conditions that
> even the DEA acknowledges present little risk
> of diversion for
> illicit use, another supply of research-grade
> marijuana.
>
> In a recent ruling, Judge Mary Ellen Bittner
> agreed that that
> request would be in the public interest. Given
> its narrow confines,
> Bittner's recommendation makes sense. It has no
> bearing on the DEA's
> licensing of researchers, which would remain in
> place, nor would it
> remove the burden of proof on scientists who want
> access to
> research-grade marijuana. It would merely
> prevent situations in
> which, the judge noted, legitimate researchers
> who have completed
> all due diligence are still refused access to
> research samples.
>
> [snip]
>
> Continues:
> http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v07/n661/a11.html
>
> ===
>
> (16) APPEAL COURT INCREASES POT-FARM LABOURER'S
> SENTENCE
>
> Source: Winnipeg Free Press (CN MB)
> Pubdate: Tue, 29 May 2007
> Copyright: 2007 Winnipeg Free Press
> Author: Mike McIntyre
>
> A Chinese immigrant from Toronto who was duped
> into working on one
> of Manitoba's largest-ever marijuana grow
> operations has been hit
> with a stiffer sentence by the province's highest
> court.
>
> Fai Tan Ng was originally given a one-month
> penalty after pleading
> guilty to production of marijuana.
>
> The Manitoba Court of Appeal has now agreed
> with the Crown's
> argument the penalty is too light and increased
> it to a full year.
>
> However, Ng "poses no danger to the community"
> and will be allowed
> to serve his sentence in the community, the court
> ruled.
>
> The arrest of Ng and 27 other accused in 2004 made
> national
> headlines and drew a large volume of support for
> their plight. They
> were found stacked like sardines inside a tiny
> home on a sprawling
> property near Sundown, Man., which housed a
> multimillion-dollar pot
> facility.
>
> The accused had all been lured from Ontario to the
> Prairies with the
> promise of quick cash in exchange for some "farm
> labour".
>
> In Ng's case, he had recently lost his job as a
> cook, had limited
> ability to speak English and was struggling to
> support his family.
>
> He was told by a friend of a job that could pay
> upwards of $500 per
> day and was eventually put on a bus and driven
> to Manitoba. It was
> only upon arrival that Ng and the others realized
> they weren't going
> to be dealing with grain or dairy farming.
>
> [snip]
>
> Continues:
> http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v07/n658/a03.html
>
> ===
>
> (17) TOD H. MIKURIYA, 73, DIES; BACKED MEDICAL
> MARIJUANA
>
> Source: New York Times (NY)
> Pubdate: Tue, 29 May 2007
> Copyright: 2007 The New York Times Company
> Author: Margalit Fox
>
> Dr. Tod H. Mikuriya, a California psychiatrist
> who was widely
> regarded as the grandfather of the medical
> marijuana movement in the
> United States, died on May 20 at his home in
> Berkeley. He was 73.
>
> The cause was complications of cancer, his
> family told California
> news organizations.
>
> Dr. Mikuriya, who helped make the use of
> marijuana for medicinal
> purposes legal in California, spent the last
> four decades publicly
> advocating its use, researching its effects and
> publishing articles
> on the subject.
>
> He was an architect of Proposition 215, the
> state ballot measure
> that in 1996 made it legal for California
> doctors to recommend
> marijuana for seriously ill patients. He was
> also a founder of the
> California Cannabis Research Medical Group and
> its offshoot, the
> Society of Cannabis Clinicians.
>
> As a result of his work, Dr. Mikuriya was
> considered a savior by
> some, a public menace by others. To his
> supporters, he was a
> physician of last resort: for years, a stream
> of patients with
> illnesses like cancer and AIDS made their way
> to his private
> practice in Berkeley. Dr. Mikuriya sometimes
> wrote a dozen or more
> recommendations for marijuana each day; at his
> death, he was
> reported to have approved the drug for nearly
> 9,000 patients.
>
> Elsewhere, however, Dr. Mikuriya's work found
> little favor. In 1996,
> for instance, Gen. Barry R. McCaffrey,
> director of the Office of
> National Drug Control Policy under President Bill
> Clinton, publicly
> derided the doctor's medical philosophy as
> "the Cheech and Chong
> show."
>
> [snip]
>
> Dr. Mikuriya saw his work, he often said, as a
> means of righting a
> historical wrong, namely the backlash against
> medical marijuana that
> began in the "Reefer Madness" era of the late 1930s.
>
> "It had been available to clinicians for one
> hundred years until it
> was taken off the market in 1938," he told The
> East Bay Express, a
> Northern California newspaper, in 2004. "I'm
> fighting to restore
> cannabis."
>
> [snip]
>
> Among doctors who support the therapeutic use of
> marijuana, many are
> publicly circumspect when asked if they ever
> take a taste of their
> own medicine. Not so Dr. Mikuriya. As The Los
> Angeles Times reported
> in 2004, "He willingly acknowledges, unlike
> most of his peers in
> cannabis consulting, that he does indeed smoke
> pot, mostly in the
> morning with his coffee."
>
> Continues:
> http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v07/n657/a05.html
>
>
=======================================================================
>
> International News
> ---------------------------
>
> COMMENT: (18-22)
>
> We start off this week with an overview of the
> failure of U.S. drug
> policy in South America by Hugh O'Shaughnessy, in
> the Independent on
> Sunday newspaper. Prohibition has resulted in,
> "Production as high
> as ever, street prices at a low, and the
> governments of the region
> in open revolt." Some highlights: Evo Morales,
> a coca farmer, was
> elected president in Bolivia, while Hugo
> Chavez (president of
> Venezuela) has denounced U.S. DEA agents as
> spies, preventing them
> from operating in the country. In Ecuador, newly
> elected President
> Rafael Correa has barred the U.S. from using Manta
> airfield, and has
> refused to allow U.S. aerial spraying. In
> Colombia, president Alvaro
> Uribe "is in deep political trouble as his
> opponents dig up
> unsavoury evidence of his past," and the
> Colombian congress is
> dragged down by scandal. "Big business is also
> caught up in drug
> dealing. In March, Chiquita Brands
> International, a U.S. banana
> multinational, was fined $25m by the U.S.
> Justice Department for
> having funded the AUC, the principal Colombian
> death squad which is
> closely linked to international drug-smuggling."
> Cocaine at record
> low prices in the U.S.A. Bill to U.S. taxpayers?
> A bargain at only
> $25 billion. Concludes O'Shaughnessy, "drugs
> clearly can't be
> controlled by armies and police forces."
>
> In a separate unsigned editorial, the
> Independent on Sunday added,
> "the world is finally beginning to realise
> that you can't beat
> narcotics with machine guns and policemen's
> truncheons... in parts
> of the world where the US is not the sole
> decider of the policy of
> the international community, more hopeful
> approaches are being
> tried. In Afghanistan, the British Government,
> responsible for
> security in the poppy-growing areas in the south,
> may be prepared to
> allow opium to be produced legally for medical
> purposes."
>
> In Canada, moves by the minority conservative
> government of Stephen
> Harper to portray the supervised injection center
> in Vancouver as a
> failure in a pretext to close it, has drawn a
> firestorm of protest.
> Reports appeared in the Canadian press last
> week that top Health
> Canada officials ordered the debunking of
> "myths" about the safe
> injection center, Insite. But experts say the
> "myths" appear to be
> something the government just made up. "These
> 'myths' illustrate the
> poor understanding of whoever crafted these
> myths," said Dr. Julio
> Montaner, clinical director of the B.C. Centre
> of Excellence for
> HIV/AIDS. "We have never ever said anything close
> to this." And why
> were these straw-man "myths" cooked up in the
> first place? Admitted
> one Health Canada official: "the document was
> developed in reaction
> to the assertions of Vancouver activists."
> Ironically, a report in a
> British medical Journal (Addiction) this week
> "endorsed the benefits
> of Vancouver's controversial safe-injection
> site for heroin
> addicts," finding, "Insite increased the rate
> of addicts entering
> detox by 30 per cent."
>
> Meanwhile, in what may be a first in the history of
> drug
> prohibition, "five leading scientists" in Canada
> publicly announced
> a "boycott" on "bidding for Health Canada
> contracts to conduct
> further research into Insite's operation... We
> wish to state our
> deep concern regarding the subversion of
> science for ideological
> ends, and express our commitment to speak out
> against this threat...
> This case is an alarming example of a recent
> trend towards the
> increased politicization of science." The
> scientists include Dr.
> Michael Hwang of the Centre for Research on
> Inner-City Health at St.
> Michael's Hospital, and Benedikt Fischer, a
> director of the B.C.
> Centre for Addictions Research at the
> University of Victoria.
>
> ===
>
> (18) OPED: WHY THE U.S. IS LOSING ITS WAR ON COCAINE
>
> Pubdate: Sun, 27 May 2007
> Source: Independent on Sunday (UK)
> Copyright: Independent Newspapers Ltd.
> Author: Hugh O'Shaughnessy
>
> America has spent billions battling the drug
> industry in Bolivia,
> Colombia and Peru. And the result? Production
> as high as ever,
> street prices at a low, and the governments of
> the region in open
> revolt.
>
> [snip]
>
> The estimated $25bn (UKP13bn) that Washington
> has spent trying to
> control narcotics over the past 15 years in
> Latin America seems to
> have been wasted.
>
> In 2005, according to UN guesses - and, amid
> merciless political
> spinning of what few facts there are- Colombia,
> Peru and Bolivia,
> the main producers of cocaine, had the
> capacity to produce 910
> metric tons a year. As more productive
> strains of coca bushes
> appear, production has been increasing.
> Unsurprisingly, the price of
> cocaine on U.S. streets has tumbled, according
> to the White House
> drug tzar John Walters, to $135 (UKP70) a gram,
> a fraction of the
> $600 a gram it was fetching in 1981. The purity
> of cocaine has gone
> from 60 per cent in mid-2003 to more than 70 per
> cent last October.
> Like the conflict in Iraq, the US's other
> great war is now being
> visibly lost.
>
> [snip]
>
> But the determination of Morales, the leader of
> a poor country of
> nine million people, is only a tiny part of Latin
> America's
> rejection of the "war on drugs". In a
> Venezuela enriched by high
> prices for its oil exports, President Hugo
> Chavez, himself a
> political and financial supporter of Morales
> and ally of Fidel
> Castro, is placing strict controls on his
> country's co-operation
> with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).
> The
> democratically elected Chavez sees the DEA as an
> arm of a government
> which was involved with the right-wing coup
> d'etat in 2002, which
> toppled him briefly.
>
> He sees it as devoted as much to Washington's
> political and military
> strategies in Latin America as to the battle
> against narcotics. The
> plain-speaking Chavez, who has called President
> Bush "a devil", has
> accused the DEA of spying.
>
> Pedro Carreno, Chavez's justice minister, has
> said that Venezuela
> would not allow the DEA to mount anti-drug
> operations on its
> territory. Chavez has also forbidden overflights
> by U.S. government
> aircraft. Carreno suggested that instead of Plan
> Colombia, the U.S.
> "should apply a Plan Washington, New York, or
> Miami, so that they
> fly over their own air space, and take care
> of their coast and
> border because 85 per cent of the drugs that are
> produced in Latin
> America go to the United States."
>
> Now a third Latin American leader, the newly
> elected President
> Rafael Correa of Ecuador, has announced that his
> country will ignore
> U.S. instructions in the "war on drugs". He has
> announced that he
> will no longer allow U.S. forces to occupy a
> large base at the
> Pacific port of Manta, which was leased to
> them by a previous
> government and which the Pentagon says is used for
> aircraft
> monitoring cocaine shipments between Peru and
> Colombia.
>
> [snip]
>
> But it is in the Colombian capital city,
> Bogota, that the "war on
> drugs" is seriously falling apart. Colombia's
> president, Alvaro
> Uribe, is in deep political trouble as his opponents
> dig up
> unsavoury evidence of his past.
>
> [snip]
>
> Earlier this month, the Vice President,
> Francisco Santos announced
> that "more than 40 members of congress" could go
> to prison because
> of their links to drugs and death squads. More than
> a dozen
> senators, congressmen and political insiders
> have been arrested.
> This month, two police generals were sacked.
>
> The truth is also emerging about the Colombian
> army, beloved of the
> U.S. government but widely hated by many Colombians
> for its
> closeness to the death squads. Senator Patrick
> Leahy ordered a
> temporary freeze on tens of millions of dollars of
> U.S. military aid
> after the Colombian army commander, General Mario
> Montoya, was found
> to be deeply involved with the death squads.
>
> Leahy condemned the waste of U.S. money in
> Colombia: "When Plan
> Colombia began, we were told it would cut by
> half the amount of
> cocaine in five years. Six years and $5bn later,
> it has not had any
> measurable effect on the amount of cocaine
> entering our country."
>
> Big business is also caught up in drug dealing.
> In March, Chiquita
> Brands International, a U.S. banana multinational,
> was fined $25m by
> the US Justice Department for having funded the
> AUC, the principal
> Colombian death squad which is closely linked
> to international
> drug-smuggling.
>
> [snip]
>
> The failure to stem the supply of heroin is
> illustrated by the fall
> in price of a gram, from UKP70 in 2000 to UKP54
> in 2005. The annual
> number of drug offenders jailed more than
> doubled between 1994 and
> 2005 and the average length of their sentences
> went up. The courts
> handed out nearly three times as much prison
> time in 2004 as they
> did 10 years earlier.
>
> Last month, an inquiry for the UK Drug Policy
> Commission said: "The
> research suggests that the greatest reductions in
> drug-related harm
> have come from investment in treatment and harm
> reduction. However,
> the bulk of expenditure on drug policy in the UK
> is still devoted to
> the enforcement of drug laws".
>
> In Britain, as in Latin America, drugs clearly
> can't be controlled
> by armies and police forces.
>
> Continues:
> http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v07.n652.a09.html
>
> ===
>
> (19) Editorial: YOU CAN'T FIGHT DRUGS WITH GUNS
>
> Source: Independent on Sunday (UK)
> Pubdate: Sun, 27 May 2007
> Copyright: Independent Newspapers Ltd.
>
> The worldwide "war on drugs" that relies on
> armies and police to
> destroy crops and arrest traffickers has
> failed. The attempt to
> suppress the Latin American drugs trade at
> source, first decreed by
> Richard Nixon in the 1970s, has achieved
> nothing. Despite the
> spending of $25bn(UKP13bn) of U.S. taxpayers'
> money, cocaine
> production in Colombia, Peru and Bolivia has
> increased, as has
> cocaine consumption in the U.S. and the rest
> of the rich world.
>
> As Hugh O'Shaughnessy argues today, the world is
> finally beginning
> to realise that you can't beat narcotics with
> machine guns and
> policemen's truncheons. As this newspaper
> reported last month, in
> parts of the world where the U.S. is not the
> sole decider of the
> policy of the international community, more
> hopeful approaches are
> being tried. In Afghanistan, the British
> Government, responsible for
> security in the poppy-growing areas in the south,
> may be prepared to
> allow opium to be produced legally for
> medical purposes. If the
> price can be set at the right level, Afghan
> farmers would prefer the
> lower but more certain returns of growing a
> legal crop to those of
> an illegal one. It would bring a large sector of
> the Afghan economy
> within the law and make diversification and
> development more likely.
>
> This is an increasingly urgent issue. As our
> sister newspaper, The
> Independent, reported last week, poppy-growing
> is spreading in the
> lawless badlands of Iraq. This reversal of the
> direction of
> causality from that found in Latin America,
> where illegal drug
> production leads to instability and lawlordism,
> only reinforces the
> argument against a punitive approach to
> tackling the sources of
> narcotics supply. Once illegal drug production
> is in the hands of
> gangsters it becomes difficult to prise open their
> grip.
>
> [snip]
>
> Continues:
> http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v07.n653.a01.html
>
> ===
>
> (20) OTTAWA OFFICIALS TOLD TO NEGATE 'MYTHS' ABOUT
> INJECTION SITES
>
> Source: Vancouver Sun (CN BC)
> Pubdate: Tue, 29 May 2007
> Copyright: 2007 The Vancouver Sun
> Author: Peter O'Neil, Vancouver Sun
>
> Bureaucrat Gave Order Last Fall, Just Before
> Health Minister Refused
> to Extend Vancouver Facility's Permit
>
> OTTAWA -- A top federal health bureaucrat ordered
> other officials to
> debunk five "myths" -- widely held but false
> public views -- about
> Vancouver's supervised injection site last fall.
>
> The five myths were: That supervised injection
> sites are "commonly
> used" in other countries; that they operate
> "all across Canada;"
> that they are legal; that they present "a
> complete solution" to
> drug-use harms; and that the injection site
> "has the complete
> support of the community."
>
> Jo Kennelly, senior policy adviser to Health
> Minister Tony Clement,
> ordered the debunking document just before
> Clement announced his
> refusal last fall to extend the permit for the site.
>
> [snip]
>
> The document shoots down each of the so-called
> myths -- but there is
> no indication which individuals or groups were
> espousing these
> views.
>
> [snip]
>
> Dr. Julio Montaner, clinical director of the B.C.
> Centre of
> Excellence for HIV/AIDS, said it was "stupid"
> to imply unanimous
> support.
>
> "These 'myths' illustrate the poor understanding
> of whoever crafted
> these myths. We have never ever said anything
> close to this."
>
> [snip]
>
> Clement spokesman Erik Waddell said Friday the
> myth-busting document
> was developed in reaction to the assertions of
> Vancouver activists.
>
> "The five statements in that document are
> representative of
> statements made to our office by various
> community groups in
> Vancouver," Waddell, who didn't identify the
> groups, said in an
> e-mail.
>
> [snip]
>
> Continues:
> http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v07.n658.a01.html
>
> ===
>
> (21) STUDY BACKS SAFE-INJECTION SITE'S WORK
>
> Source: Globe and Mail (Canada)
> Pubdate: Fri, 25 May 2007
> Copyright: 2007, The Globe and Mail Company
> Author: Rod Mickleburgh
>
> Use of Centre Increases Rate of Addicts Entering
> Detox 30%,
> London-Based Medical Journal Finds
>
> VANCOUVER -- On the eve of the expected
> unveiling next week of the
> federal Conservatives' long-waited anti-drug
> strategy, a significant
> new study has endorsed the benefits of
> Vancouver's controversial
> safe-injection site for heroin addicts, a pilot
> project many fear
> Ottawa will end.
>
> The study, published today in the London-based
> medical journal
> Addiction, found that use of the city's
> supervised injection
> facility known as Insite increased the rate
> of addicts entering
> detox by 30 per cent.
>
> As well, the study determined users of North
> America's only
> safe-injection site were more likely to reduce
> their heroin intake
> and pursue formal treatment programs such as
> methadone once they
> left detox.
>
> The dramatic findings appear to echo precisely
> what the ultimate
> arbiter of the facility's fate, federal Health
> Minister Tony
> Clement, has said Insite needs to demonstrate
> to prove its worth:
> lower drug use and success in fighting addiction.
>
> They also fly in the face of an earlier RCMP
> report critical of the
> site, asserting there is "considerable
> evidence" that allowing
> addicts to shoot up safely increases the use
> of illegal drugs.
>
> [snip]
>
> Underscoring widespread skepticism among many
> researchers over the
> government's alleged anti-harm-reduction agenda
> is a decision by
> five leading scientists to boycott bidding for
> Health Canada
> contracts to conduct further research into
> Insite's operation.
>
> In an open letter to senior Health Canada
> policy analyst Tracey
> Donaldson, the group said the five-month time
> frame is too short,
> compensation is insufficient and successful
> bidders must agree to
> keep mum over their research for six months.
>
> "In no way is that acceptable to any academic," one
> of the
> scientists, Benedikt Fischer of the University
> of Victoria, said
> yesterday. "And how can anyone produce anything
> meaningful in such a
> short time that goes beyond what has already
> been done by other
> researchers?
>
> [snip]
>
> Continues:
> http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v07.n644.a07.html
>
> ===
>
> (22) RESEARCHERS SLAM OTTAWA'S 'POLITICIZATION OF
> SCIENCE'
>
> Source: Vancouver Sun (CN BC)
> Pubdate: Sat, 26 May 2007
> Copyright: 2007 The Vancouver Sun
> Author: Frances Bula, Vancouver Sun
>
> VANCOUVER - Canadian scientists, doctors and public
> health
> researchers have started openly protesting
> against what they call
> the federal Conservative government's U.S.-style
> "politicization of
> science" in the controversy over
> supervised-injection centres for
> drug addicts.
>
> Prominent addictions researchers from B.C.,
> Ontario and Quebec have
> written an open letter to Health Canada
> criticizing the department's
> recent proposal call for new research on the
> centre in spite of four
> years of existing research at the site showing
> positive outcomes.
>
> They say the terms for the new research
> ensure that it will be
> superficial, inadequately funded and subject to
> an unreasonable
> demand that researchers not be allowed to
> talk about it for six
> months after reports are submitted.
>
> "Clearly what that does is to muffle people who
> might have something
> to say until after the curtain has dropped on this
> piece of
> political theatre," Benedikt Fischer, a director
> of the B.C. Centre
> for Addictions Research at the University of
> Victoria, said in an
> interview Friday. "Overall, we get the feeling
> that what this is
> about is there's an attempt to instrumentalize
> science in a fairly
> cheap way for politics."
>
> [snip]
>
> "We wish to state our deep concern regarding
> the subversion of
> science for ideological ends, and express our
> commitment to speak
> out against this threat," says the piece by Dr.
> Michael Hwang of the
> Centre for Research on Inner-City Health at St.
> Michael's Hospital.
> "This case is an alarming example of a recent
> trend towards the
> increased politicization of science."
>
> [snip]
>
> Last month, Health Canada put out a request
> for proposals in six
> different areas of research on the site. Among
> the specifics asked
> for are the site's impact on overdose rates,
> users' progression to
> treatment, public injection and drug-related
> litter, among others.
>
> There are also contracts for researching the
> staffing requirements
> and for comparing Vancouver's drug scene with other
> cities.
>
> [snip]
>
> Continues:
> http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v07.n649.a02.html
>
>
***********************************************************************
>
> HOT OFF THE 'NET
> -------------------------------
>
> SUPERVISED DRUG INJECTION SITES?
>
> New Research in Canada Shows They Reduce HIV,
> Overdose Deaths, and
> Even Help Encourage Addicts into Treatment
>
> By Tony Newman
>
> http://www.drugpolicy.org/news/053107vancouver.cfm
>
> ===
>
> DOJ, DHS TOP BRASS IMPLICATED IN HOUSE OF DEATH
> COVER-UP, DEA TESTIMONY SHOWS
>
> By Bill Conroy,
>
> Rarely do we get a front row seat in the theatre
> of power when the
> curtain is pulled back to reveal the set
> design as it is under
> construction.
>
>
http://narcosphere.narconews.com/story/2007/5/31/202322/456
>
> ===
>
> CULTURAL BAGGAGE RADIO SHOW
>
> Last: 05/25/07 - Celebration of the life of Dr. Tod
> Mikuriya with
> interview segments from the good doctor as
> well as thoughts and
> remembrances of his sister Beverly and his
> friends Michael and
> Michelle Aldrich and DrugSense's Richard Lake.
>
> Audio:
> http://drugtruth.net/007DTNaudio/FDBCB_052507.mp3
>
> ===
>
> PHOTOS FROM MPP'S 2007 PARTY AT THE PLAYBOY MANSION
>
> http://www.mpp.org/
>
> ===
>
> PUBLIC HEALTH, BOOZE, AND THE DRUG WAR
>
> By Dr. Tom O'Connell
>
> The flap over Public Health officials' inability to
> stop a honeymooner
> from flying round-trip to Europe with a rare, drug
> resistant form of
> Tuberculosis begs comparison with the tactics
> of the drug war, in
> which heavily armed SWAT teams routinely serve
> search warrants to look
> for drugs. The drug war can thus be thought of as
> merely a variant of
> Public Health-- one practiced by police in accord
> with Department of
> Justice standards -- a kind of Epidemiology run
> amok.
>
> http://doctortom.org/
>
> ===
>
> ON HARMONY ...
>
> By Mary Jane Borden
>
> "It's not necessary to be a government agent
> provocateur. Even the
> most well meaning among us can create chaos and
> division unless we
> consider our words and actions carefully..." Mike
> Gray, Common Sense
> for Drug Policy
>
> http://www.ohiopatient.net/v2/content/view/817/2/
>
>
***********************************************************************
>
> WHAT YOU CAN DO THIS WEEK
> --------------------------------------------------
>
> 2ND ANNUAL NORML ASPEN LEGAL SEMINAR
>
> Last Chance To Join NORML, Tommy Chong, Anita
> Thompson, And The
> Nation's Top Pot Law Attorneys At The 2nd Annual
> NORML Aspen Legal
> Seminar
>
> The conference will take place on Friday, June 8
> through Sunday, June
> 10 at the Gant Hotel in downtown Aspen, one of
> the nation's most
> marijuana-friendly cities.
>
> http://norml.org/index.cfm?Group_ID=7275
>
>
***********************************************************************
>
> LETTER OF THE WEEK
> ------------------------------------
>
> PROHIBITION DOESN'T WORK
>
> By David Hutchison
>
> For the most part, I agree with Alan Ferguson's
> columns. But at 60,
> I've also been around long enough to hear all
> the pros and cons on
> the subject of drugs.
>
> Considering the size of B.C.'s marijuana
> industry, it seems the
> public has made the decision that it is
> going to take drugs.
>
> I don't support drugs. I just recognize that,
> if the government
> abdicates its responsibility to control and
> distribute drugs, then
> criminals will take up the slack.
>
> Any suggestion police can control the drug
> flow is ludicrous.
>
> We have no choice but to begin to realize what
> America did in the
> late '30s with alcohol -- that it is better
> and safer to control
> distribution and remove crime from the industry.
>
> Gangs like the Hells Angels are making
> billions, while we have
> homeless on the street, an over-taxed justice
> system and the death
> and destruction of families.
>
> The war is over, and it's time to move on. I say
> this as a
> grandfather of four and I don't say it lightly. As
> families, we must
> set the best example possible for our children
> and grandchildren.
>
> But we also have to recognize that prohibition
> doesn't work -- never
> has, never will.
>
> David Hutchison New Westminster
>
> Pubdate: Fri, 25 May 2007
> Source: Province, The (CN BC)
>
>
***********************************************************************
>
> FEATURE ARTICLE
> -------------------------------
>
> The Witnesses Who Would Not Witness
>
> By Jo-D Harrison
>
> The only fairly comfortable "players" in any
> court room setting are
> the judge and the attorneys. Defendants, with
> their freedom on the
> line, usually carry the majority of the pressure.
> Jurors, who often
> hate the fact that they are even present,
> slowly realize that the
> defendant's fate is in their hands. This
> week, though, it was 7
> citizens proudly refusing to participate as
> prosecutorial witnesses
> who reminded us that the full power of the
> court can strike all
> those who enter it.
>
> The judge issued the following stern warning
> to each witness:
>
> "I also want you to understand that should you
> refuse the Court's
> order, which is to testify in accordance with the
> -- in response to
> the prosecution's questions, I can hold you in
> contempt and if I
> hold you in contempt, you then will be subject to
> certain penalties,
> including the possibility of incarceration or
> fines -- and/or fines.
>
> In addition, the Government has the
> possibility of seeking a
> criminal indictment against you for failure to
> follow the Court's
> order."
>
> Fortunately all witnesses were set free in
> the recent Rosenthal
> re-trial, but, none of them knew this as they
> uttered the following
> statements:
>
> ETIENNE HERSCH FONTAN: "With respect to the Court,
> Your Honor, I, as
> an American citizen and a veteran of this
> country, I see this as no
> reason to answer any of these questions. I
> completely disagree with
> this Court's actions with all respect to the
> Court. And I cannot
> proceed with any answering of any of your questions.
>
> As a sovereign American citizen, I disagree
> with this Court's
> actions and I respect the Court, and I respect
> the words you have
> spoken toward me. But I stand firmly in my
> belief that I will not
> answer any of the questions. And I understand the
> repercussions that
> are available.
>
> I've been a product of this system before in
> the military. I
> understand the incarceration and what the
> Government can do to me,
> and I've been the subject of its guinea pig as
> a Gulf War veteran
> and I've suffered because of that. And there is
> nothing you can do
> to change my mind. I stand firmly behind my belief."
>
> BRIAN LUNDEEN: "I'm going to refuse to answer
> questions. I love to
> tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth,
> and if I swear to do
> that, I'm going to by God get the opportunity."
>
> EVAN SCHWARTZ: "I respectfully refuse to
> answer this question."
>
> DEBORAH JOE GOLDSBERRY: "Sir, respectfully,
> again, I feel like this
> prosecution is against the will of my community,
> against the will of
> the voters of the United States, not just of
> California. I believe
> that it is causing imminent harm, potentially
> death to my friends,
> my family, the people that I love. I believe it
> would be immoral and
> illegal for me to participate.
>
> And as much as I respect the Court, I can't wait
> until you guys are
> on our side of this thing. This thing is
> going to change, and I
> appreciate that, and I'm sure you all do. I have
> no idea why we are
> here. This is a literal joke.
>
> And the truth is I can't participate. I have
> thought about the harm.
> I've taken the threats seriously. They have sent
> the DEA after me. I
> am living in fear and that is going to do
> nothing to break my will
> because I'm a good citizen. I support this
> community."
>
> JAMES SCOTT BLAIR, aka JIM SQUATTER: "At this
> time, I guess I'm
> defying the Court's order."
>
> CORY OKIE: "With all due respect to the Court,
> I refuse to answer
> that question."
>
> Jo-D Harrison is our DrugSense Membership
> Coordinator and part of
> our Web Support Team.
>
>
***********************************************************************
>
> QUOTE OF THE WEEK
> ------------------------------------
>
> "There is nothing wrong with America that cannot
> be cured by what is
> right with America." - William J. Clinton
>
>
***********************************************************************
>
> DS Weekly is one of the many free educational
> services DrugSense
> offers our members. Watch this feature to
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>
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> selection and analysis by
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>
> We wish to thank all our contributors, editors,
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> writing activists. Please help us help reform.
> Become a NewsHawk See
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> ===
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