Portland NORML News - Thursday, December 17, 1998
-------------------------------------------------------------------

The NORML Foundation Weekly Press Release
(Increasing Marijuana Reform Legislation Anticipated
In 1999 State Legislatures)

From: NORMLFNDTN@aol.com
Date: Thu, 17 Dec 1998 17:53:30 EST
Subject: NORML WPR 12/17/98 (II)

The NORML Foundation Weekly Press Release

1001 Connecticut Ave., NW
Ste. 710
Washington, DC 20036
202-483-8751 (p)
202-483-0057 (f)
www.norml.org
foundation@norml.org

December 17, 1998

***

Increasing Marijuana Reform Legislation Anticipated In 1999 State
Legislatures

December 17, 1998, Washington, D.C.: Marijuana law reform will be a
key issue of debate within several state legislatures this year, NORML
Executive Director R. Keith Stroup, Esq. predicted today. Stroup said
that key political gains made by reformers in 1998 will likely persuade
many state legislatures to take a hard look at all aspects of marijuana
law reform, including medical marijuana, industrial hemp, and
decriminalization.

"The rising tide of public opinion in favor of reforming our nation's
marijuana laws -- as was evident at the November elections and elsewhere
-- will not go unnoticed by our state legislators," he said. "It is time
for the marijuana reform constituency to reassert ourselves politically,
and 1999 marks our best opportunity in several years to move forward with
progressive legislation."

Already, several state legislators have announced their intentions to
push for marijuana reform in 1999. In Hawaii, Gov. Ben Cayetano
announced that he will back legislation legalizing the use of marijuana
for medical purposes. New Hampshire Rep. Timothy Robertson (D-Keene)
said he will spearhead similar legislation, and also endorsed a proposal
to decriminalize simple marijuana possession. "It is silly to prosecute
someone because they have a different lifestyle than I do," he said.

The following summaries examine some of the events of 1998 that may
likely serve as catalysts for marijuana reform in 1999.

INDUSTRIAL HEMP REFORM

The hemp legalization movement took several pivotal steps forward
this year. In Canada, for the first time in over 50 years, hundreds of
farmers cultivated and harvested commercial quantities of hemp. In the
United States, two large-scale research studies released this year
definitively documented hemp's potential as an economically viable
domestic cash crop. A state-sponsored study by North Dakota State
University ("Agricultural Economics Report No. 402: Industrial Hemp as an
Alternative Crop in North Dakota," Kraenzel, et al., July 23, 1998)
recommended legislators amend state law to allow for the legal
cultivation of hemp for research purposes. A second study by the
University of Kentucky ("Economic Impact of Industrial Hemp in Kentucky,"
Thompson, et al., July 1998) concluded that legalizing hemp production in
that state could lead to hundreds of full-time jobs and millions of
dollars in worker's earnings. Authors speculated that hemp would rank
second only to tobacco products as a cash crop to state farmers, and
could yield profits as high as $600 per acre.

Legislators in twelve states debated reform bills this year.
Proponents are hopeful that this year's political gains at home and
abroad will persuade several states next year to finally pass effective
hemp reform legislation. "The studies undertaken in North Dakota and
Kentucky demonstrate that research supporting hemp legalization is sound,
and the Canadian example serves as a model for implementation," NORML's
Stroup said. "These developments provide an ample base for any
supportive legislator who wants to enact domestic hemp reform."

MEDICAL MARIJUANA REFORM

Voters approved every medical marijuana proposal put before them on
the November ballot, overwhelmingly demonstrating their support for
legalizing medical marijuana in Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, the District
of Columbia, Nevada, Oregon, and Washington state. This strong showing
will likely inspire legislators in additional states to move forward with
medical use legislation in 1999. It may also encourage legislators in
those states with existing, yet dormant, medical marijuana laws, to
devise ways to activate those laws to protect patients.

"National polls and the November vote clearly demonstrate that a
majority of Americans from all political backgrounds support legalizing
medical marijuana," Stroup said. "This is a politically safe issue for
state politicians that is strongly supported by their constituents."

DECRIMINALIZATION

Voters in Oregon voted 2 to 1 in November to reject a proposal that
sought to impose criminal penalties for the simple possession of
marijuana. The voters retained a 1973 state law decriminalizing minor
marijuana offenses.

"The resounding vote by Oregon's citizens rejecting criminal
penalties for marijuana smokers should ignite a long-overdue national
debate over our current marijuana policies that result in the arrest of
over half a million marijuana smokers each year," Stroup said.

Presently, ten states have decriminalized minor marijuana offenses.
These laws remove criminal penalties for minor marijuana possession and
replace them with a small fine. The last state to approve
decriminalization was Nebraska in 1978, and the last state to engage in
any serious debate on the subject was New Hampshire in 1997.

NORML TO PLAY AN ACTIVE ROLE IN 1999

Stroup said that NORML plans to play a supportive role in several
states' marijuana reform efforts next year, and anticipates providing
guidance and expert witnesses at legislative hearings on the issue.
Presently, NORML is mailing legislative handbooks outlining strategies on
lobbying for effective marijuana law reform to sympathetic state
politicians .

For more information on state marijuana reform legislation, please
contact either Keith Stroup or Paul Armentano of NORML @ (202) 483-5500.

				- END -
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Medical Marijuana Act: Don't Act Yet (Stat, the newsletter
of the Oregon Medical Assocation, says that despite the passage
of the Oregon Medical Marijuana Act, Oregon physicians should not
"take action" until "all the issues" are resolved - like maybe a thousand
years from now - even though the new law requires only that a physician
express the opinion on a patient's chart that marijuana may help
the patient's condition.)

Date: Tue, 22 Dec 1998 10:28:13 -0800
From: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org (MAPNews)
To: mapnews@mapinc.org
Subject: MN: US OR: MMJ: Medical Marijuana Act: Don't Act Yet
Sender: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Reply-To: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Organization: Media Awareness Project http://www.mapinc.org/lists/
Newshawk: Dave Fratello (amr@lainet.com)
Pubdate: Thu, 17 Dec 1998
Source: STAT, the newsletter of the Oregon Medical Assocation
Volume: XXVIII, No. 11

MEDICAL MARIJUANA ACT: DON'T ACT YET

Although Oregon's medical marijuana law passed by the voters last month
became effective last week, physicians are advised against taking action
until all issues are resolved. It may be months before the Health Division
adopts rules laying out exactly how the act will be implemented.
Meanwhile, a task force called into session by Oregon Attorney General
Hardy Myers is studying a multitude of thorny enforcement issues the law
presents. OMA, along with the Health Division and the Board of Medical
Examiners, is participating in the process. At this point there is
insufficient guidance for physicians called upon to provide written
documentation for the issuance of a registry card. More significantly, the
federal government has not announced what it will do with respect to those
who aid in the growing, possession, delivery, and use of this controlled
substance. The Oregon law does not immunize physicians from either federal
criminal exposure or from revocation of their DEA certificates.

OMA director of medical legal affairs Paul Frisch advises, "At this point
it would be mistake for physicians to participate in an activity which may
or may not be the subject of conflict between state and federal law, much
less a complicated scenario currently lacking an administrative rule
infrastructure. Physicians who are willing to participate in the medical
marijuana process would be well advised to wait until the Health Division
makes its rules and the federal government takes an official position on
the act itself".
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Re: Medical Marijuana Act: Don't Act Yet (Dr. Rick Bayer,
a chief petitioner for the Oregon Medical Marijuana Act, comments on
the advisory from Paul Frisch, the Oregon Medical Association's director
of medical legal affairs. When the federal threat no longer looms large,
the OMA will mellow. By spring, things will work out if reformers keep up
their educational efforts.)

From: "Rick Bayer" (ricbayer@teleport.com)
To: "Rick Bayer" (ricbayer@teleport.com)
Subject: OREGON MEDICAL MARIJUANA ACT: DON'T ACT YET
Date: Thu, 24 Dec 1998 11:05:56 -0800

Friends

This is from the official newsletter of the OMA that I have been getting
regularly for almost two decades. The goal of the OMA with this article
is to protect doctors from federal penalties, such as loss of the
doctor's ability to prescribe controlled substances (a federal rather
than a state license). When that threat no longer looms large, I think
the OMA will mellow (like they did with Death With Dignity). Even the
most empathetic docs don't want to lose their license and the feds can
be nasty.

In the mean time, please keep educating everyone about med mj. If you
know someone who won't read much, at least try to get them to go to
http://www.teleport.com/~omr and link to the bibliography and read the
JAMA paper by Dr. Grinspoon (or download it and give it to your doctor
and/or friends). We should continue to educate and bolster public
opinion.

The Oregon attorney general has provided a reasonable set of guidelines
and the OHD rules will start being developed next month with a May 1,
1999 deadline. We sincerely hope our Oregon legislature does not betray
voters like they did with Measure 16 (Death With Dignity).
Nevertheless, my opinion is that the real bottleneck is the feds and by
the Spring, things will work out if we keep at it.

Although people need access to med mj now and no law (including M67) is
perfect, I sincerely believe that Oregon patients are better off now
since M67 passed than they were before we won our victory. Things will
get better as the Oregon Medical Marijuana Act *evolves* into a permit
system and the feds figure out their gameplan (which will give the OMA
and Oregon docs some direction), but as mentioned, it will take several
months. In the meantime, let us keep up our educational efforts.

Thank you very much for your continued support and have some great
holidays.

Rick

Rick Bayer, MD, FACP
6800 SW Canyon Drive
Portland, OR 97225
503-292-1035 (voice)
503-297-0754 (fax)
mailto:ricbayer@teleport.com

***

> Pubdate: Thu, 17 Dec 1998
> Source: STAT, the newsletter of the Oregon Medical Assocation
> Volume: XXVIII, No. 11
>
> MEDICAL MARIJUANA ACT: DON'T ACT YET

[snipped to avoid duplication. - ed.]
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Trooper thankful to escape close call (The Oregonian
interviews an Oregon state trooper who is trying to recover
from a devastating wreck caused by a drunken driver. The drunk
got 60 days for maiming a state trooper - a lot less time
than most convicted marijuana growers.)

The Oregonian
letters to editor:
letters@news.oregonian.com
1320 SW Broadway
Portland, OR 97201
Fax: 503-294-4193
Web: http://www.oregonlive.com/

Trooper thankful to escape close call

* Motorists are asked to turn on their lights to remember those killed by
drunken drivers

Thursday, December 17 1998

By Michelle Roberts
of The Oregonian staff

Oregon State Trooper Bob Rosage guesses he's pulled about 1,100 drunken
drivers off the road during his two-decade career in law enforcement.

But it was the one who took him off the road two months ago that he'll never
forget.

On Oct. 24, Rosage was waiting along the shoulder of northbound Interstate 5
near Albany for a suspected drunken driver when the suspect rear-ended his
patrol car, pushing it forward 115 feet.

"It was pretty scary," Rosage said. "It made me realize that anything can
happen to you at any time. You really don't realize that until you come that
close. It's just a half a heartbeat between being one place and being another."

Rosage, 47, escaped the accident with only minor injuries. Oregon State
Police are asking drivers to remember victims who were not so lucky.

This weekend will mark the eighth annual observance of "Lights on for Life,"
in which Oregon State Police and law enforcement agencies nationwide ask
travelers to drive with their headlights on in remembrance of those who have
been killed by drunken drivers.

The effort will run morning through night on three consecutive days,
beginning Friday and ending Sunday.

During last year's observance, six people were killed in five separate
traffic crashes in Oregon. In 1996, one person was killed.

Last December alone, 49 people died in car crashes. Of those accidents, 16
were alcohol-related, according to state police records.

Rosage said he plans to participate in the remembrance that could easily
have included him.

"I was just looking at some pictures of (the patrol car wreckage) this
morning," Rosage said. "It's hard to believe I am still here. If I rolled up
on that accident, I would expect somebody to be dead."

Rosage was trapped in his demolished car for half an hour after the crash.

"I was knocked out. In fact, there was a bunch of radio traffic between me
and the dispatch center that I have absolutely no recollection of," Rosage
said. "When I finally came to, there was a nurse sitting in the car with me
telling me, 'Everything's going to be OK.' "

Rosage returned to his patrol work almost two weeks ago, but he still
battles headaches caused by whiplash. He goes to physical therapy once a
week. "I just can't stress to people how drunk driving can change lives in
an instant," he said.

The driver who slammed into the back of Rosage's patrol car, Erik Alan Lund,
29, of Portland, was sentenced earlier this month to 30 days in jail and 30
days compensatory service by telling others the lesson he's learned about
driving drunk.

Lund told police he drank five beers before deciding to drive home from the
University of Oregon-UCLA football game. He pleaded guilty to charges of
drunken driving, reckless endangerment and fourth-degree assault.

In addition to the jail time and compensatory service, Lund was sentenced to
five years probation and ordered to pay fines and restitution of $33,701,
including replacement of the patrol car and a $5,000 payment to Rosage for
psychological trauma.

It was the second time during his career that Rosage was struck by a drunken
driver. While working for the Lane County Sheriff's Office in 1976, a
drunken driver in Springfield hit Rosage head on.

"I've been working real hard on DUIs for a long time," Rosage said. "I was a
primary investigator on 13 fatal accidents in one year, and all of them
involved impaired drivers. When you start putting people in body bags every
weekend, you start getting a little concerned."

Rosage said he holds no anger toward Lund, whose wife, Suzette, suffered a
broken leg in the accident.

"I'm glad nobody got killed," Rosage said. "As far as any personal feelings
against him, there are none. I never saw him that night, so he's just a name
in the paper to me -- another drunk driver."
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Advocates seek assurance of adequate pain treatment (The Oregonian
says the Portland-based Compassion in Dying Federation is leading
other advocacy groups in pushing the federal government to assure
that patients entering hospitals clearly understand their right
to request adequate pain treatment.)

The Oregonian
letters to editor:
letters@news.oregonian.com
1320 SW Broadway
Portland, OR 97201
Fax: 503-294-4193
Web: http://www.oregonlive.com/

Advocates seek assurance of adequate pain treatment

* Compassion in Dying leads a campaign urging a federal agency to ensure
patients are told of their right to request painkillers

Thursday, December 17 1998

By Erin Hoover Barnett
of The Oregonian staff

Advocacy groups are pushing the federal government to assure that patients
entering hospitals clearly understand their right to request adequate pain
treatment.

Led by the Portland-based Compassion in Dying Federation, the effort targets
the federal Patient Self-Determination Act and the way it is applied in
California. But the groups hope the issue will be addressed nationwide. A
recent national study found that 50 percent of patients who died in
hospitals had suffered moderate to severe pain.

The Patient Self-Determination Act, passed by Congress in 1990, requires
federally financed health care facilities to offer patients the option of
filling out an advance directive when they are admitted. Patients use an
advance directive to describe the care they would want if they became unable
to communicate.

The patient advocacy groups are asserting that the Patient
Self-Determination Act also requires patients to be told of their right to
request pain medication. The groups sent a letter Wednesday to the Health
Care Financing Administration outlining their view.

"Our belief is if patients were better informed about their right to request
pain medication, they would be more likely to make such a request, and would
thereby increase the likelihood that their pain is properly and adequately
treated," said the letter to the federal agency. It was signed by B. Kirk
Robinson, president of the Compassion in Dying Federation, and Kathryn L.
Tucker, the organization's director of legal affairs.

Backing the letter are five national organizations focused on end-of-life
issues, including Americans for Better Care of the Dying and the American
Pain Foundation. The American Bar Association, an early supporter of the
Patient Self-Determination Act, and two California hospice and cancer-pain
groups sent separate letters to the federal agency making the same point.

The groups are making California their test case. Their letter asserts that
the right to know about pain-control options is particularly well defined in
California in that state's Pain Patient's Bill of Rights.

The groups assert that patients in California are not uniformly told of
their options for aggressive pain management.

"It's not as if there's a single facility that is in noncompliance. There is
no facility that is doing what we are urging be done," Tucker said. "I don't
think providers have even thought that this is something they are obliged to
do."

California caregivers see the need for change. "Pain is a common problem,
and it's very prevalent and undertreated. Documents like the Patient
Self-Determination Act should reflect the real, everyday clinical issues,"
said Betty Ferrell, chairman of the Southern California Cancer Pain
Initiative, which sent its own letter.

The groups suggest that the federal government require written information
-- brochures and posters, for example -- describing patients' rights to
request pain drugs, choose opiate medication and be referred to a pain
specialist.

The Health Care Financing Administration issued a statement Wednesday:
"While we would need to see the letter before being able to comment on it,
we want to make sure Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries have access to the
highest quality health care and can participate in decision-making about
their care."
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Acquittal shows difficulty of prosecuting gang murder suspects
(The Associated Press says it took a jury just 30 minutes Wednesday
to find a Portland man not guilty of murder in a 1995 gang shooting
after two key witnesses refused to cooperate with prosecutors
during the trial.)

Associated Press
found at:
http://www.oregonlive.com/
feedback (letters to the editor):
feedback@thewire.ap.org

Acquittal shows difficulty of prosecuting gang murder suspects

The Associated Press
12/17/98 11:07 AM

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) -- The speedy acquittal of a suspect in a gang killing
shows the difficulty prosecutors have in getting witnesses to help in such
cases for fear of retaliation.

A jury took just 30 minutes Wednesday to find a Portland man innocent of
murder in a 1995 gang shooting after two key witnesses refused to cooperate
with prosecutors during the trial.

The witnesses now face possible jail sentences themselves.

Tyrone Anthony Thurman, now 19, was accused of shooting Troy Alex McCollum,
16, in the head in what prosecutors described as a retaliatory killing
between Crips and Bloods gangs.

McCollum died shortly after the Jan. 25, 1995, shooting, which occurred
about a block from the police department's Northeast Precinct.

Two of McCollum's friends, James Cortez Wade Jr., 20, and Dwayne Tyrone
McClinton, 21, were with him the night of the shooting. But Wade testified
Wednesday that he would refuse to answer questions about the case. His
lawyer, Stephen Houze, told Multnomah County Circuit Judge Ellen Rosenblum
that Wade feared for his safety and that of his family.

Houze said someone shot at Wade's father after the McCollum killing, perhaps
as a warning or thinking that they were shooting at Wade.

"He is simply unwilling to put his life and the lives of his family at
risk," Houze said.

Houze said Wade is so frightened that he ignored the urgings of his mother,
Victoria Wade, a Portland police officer, who tried to persuade him to testify.

James Wade Jr. is serving a 10-year prison sentence in the August 1996
beating death of a woman in a park.

After Wade refused to testify, Rosenblum ruled that he was in contempt of
court. She is scheduled to sentence him Thursday. He faces an additional six
months in jail.

McClinton repeatedly answered "No" when Senior Deputy District Attorney
Marilyn Curry asked whether he remembered telling detectives about the
killing. McClinton's attorney, Brendan Dummigan, told Rosenblum that
McClinton also feared for his life.

Prosecutors are considering perjury charges against McClinton, Curry said.
He could be sentenced to as much as five years in prison if convicted, Curry
said. McClinton is in jail on a probation violation.

Police arrested Thurman the night of the shooting, but he was released
before a grand jury indicted him. He fled to the East Coast, where he was
arrested in April.

Curry told jurors that killing McCollum was a continuation of a dispute that
started the previous day, when Thurman, a Crip, allegedly fired two shots at
a car McClinton was driving.

The next evening, McClinton saw Thurman and Domanick D. Campbell, 21, near
on the street. McClinton told Wade and McCollum to flee, Curry said.

The three fled, and Thurman allegedly chased them on a bicycle, shooting
McCollum, a Blood, in the forehead, she said.

Thurman's attorney, Scott Raivio, told the jury that the murder case against
Thurman was weak because no witnesses placed him at the scene or with the
gun. In addition, witnesses gave conflicting stories about what the shooter
was wearing.

"To convict a young man of murder on this evidence would be a wrong beyond
belief," Raivio said.

(c)1998 Oregon Live LLC

Copyright 1997 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not
be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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Please Send Dave Herrick a Card or Letter in Jail (A list subscriber
notes this is the second Christmas behind bars for the California medical
marijuana martyr and former San Bernardino County deputy sheriff.)
Link to earlier story
From: "ralph sherrow" (ralphkat@hotmail.com) To: ralphkat@hotmail.com Subject: Fwd: Please Send Dave Herrick a Card or Letter in Jail Date: Thu, 17 Dec 1998 23:53:19 PST From: WBritt420@aol.com Date: Thu, 17 Dec 1998 02:46:03 EST To: remembers@webtv.net, ralphkat@hotmail.com, tperkins@pacbell.net Subject: Please Send Dave Herrick a Card or Letter in Jail This is Dave's SECOND Christmas behind bars. I'm sure he could use a card or letter to help lift his spirits. His address is: David Herrick P-06857 B-5-B-229U P.O. Box 5500 Wasco, Ca 93280-5500 Bill
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Ex-Tucson cop indicted on charges stemming from corruption probe
(The Arizona Daily Star says Jose Ernesto "Ernie" Medina was indicted
yesterday on charges stemming from a federal investigation into corruption
in the Tucson police department.)

From: "Bob Owen@W.H.E.N." (when@olywa.net)
To: "_Drug Policy --" (when@hemp.net)
Subject: Ex-Tucson cop indicted on charges stemming from corruption probe
Date: Thu, 17 Dec 1998 20:34:17 -0800
Sender: owner-when@hemp.net

Thursday, 17 December 1998

Ex-Tucson cop indicted on charges stemming from corruption probe

By Hipolito R. Corella
The Arizona Daily Star

A former Tucson police officer was indicted yesterday on charges stemming
from a federal investigation into corruption in the department, law
enforcement sources say.

Although the federal grand jury indictment was not available last night,
charges against Jose Ernesto ``Ernie'' Medina, 32, could mirror those of
Medina's friend, Arturo Fred Heuser.

Last October, a federal grand jury indicted Heuser, 30, on bribery and
aiding and abetting charges. Authorities say Heuser promised an undercover
narcotics agent $5,000 to help him get his driver's license reinstated.

Authorities were expected to arrest Medina today in Phoenix. He's been
living there since his resignation from the Tucson Police Department last
summer.

Investigators targeted Medina as part of a police corruption investigation.
It began last spring after another former officer approached an undercover
agent about a kickback for help in getting a friend's car out of impound.

The undercover agent was pretending to be on the take as part of the federal
investigation, sources have said.

Heuser, a self-employed car salesman and long-time acquaintance of Medina,
is free on $5,000 bond.

A second former Tucson police officer still is being investigated for his
part in the case, officials say. That officer was on the force about 10
years before he quit in June 1997.

Federal authorities say Heuser paid all but about $1,000 of the money he
promised the undercover officer in return for getting a new driver's
license, according to a federal complaint and investigators.

According to his indictment, the alleged bribery occurred between April and
Oct. 9, the day Heuser was arrested.

Local and federal officials have maintained tight control of information in
the case, but police sources have said that Heuser and Medina had maintained
a friendship despite warnings from superiors that Heuser's business dealings
might be questionable.

Medina was still on the force when police say he introduced Heuser to the
undercover narcotics agent.

The investigation focused on whether Medina and the other officer tried to
bribe the undercover agent to perform various ``services'' - such as
destroying police reports.

No reports were altered, officials have said.

Medina was hired by the Tucson Police Department in 1989. He made headlines
in 1994 when he and another officer were fired for allegedly padding their
overtime.

He was rehired a year later and received back pay. Medina maintained that
any mistakes he made on his overtime slips were unintentional.

Also in 1994, Medina was reprimanded after a complaint to internal affairs
officers from the former boyfriend of a woman - a topless dancer - Medina
was dating at the time, according to his department personnel file.

The ex-boyfriend complained that he was being ``targeted and harassed'' by
Medina and another officer because of his past relationship with the dancer.

He said the two officers repeatedly stopped him for various traffic
violations, the file shows.

Medina's punishment was not more severe because the ex-boyfriend admitted to
police that some of the traffic stops were warranted, according to the file.

Still, Medina was to be suspended for eight hours for insubordination
because he had ignored orders to stop taking strippers on ride-alongs during
his patrols.

The suspension was not implemented because Medina had been fired as a result
of the overtime investigation.

Medina returned to the force in the spring of 1995, but began a medical
leave in August 1996. After he exhausted his time off three months later,
the department kept him on unpaid leave until he was ordered to return to
work in September 1997.

That month Medina filed for ``accidental disability retirement.'' His claim
was rejected last January, records show.

The public safety retirement board approved a temporary disability
retirement for Medina in March, contingent on his leaving the department.

Personnel records do not indicate why he qualified for a disability
retirement.

Medina resigned in July, about four months after the federal investigation
started.
-------------------------------------------------------------------

Court upholds cash forfeiture of $9 million (The Houston Chronicle
says the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Wednesday upheld the forfeiture
of more than $9 million in cash deposited in a Houston bank
by Mario Ruiz Massieu, a former Mexican official who was in charge
of investigating drug cartels.)

From: "Bob Owen@W.H.E.N." (when@olywa.net)
To: "_Drug Policy --" (when@hemp.net)
Subject: Court upholds $9 mil cash forfeiture
Date: Thu, 17 Dec 1998 20:37:22 -0800
Sender: owner-when@hemp.net

December 17, 1998, 08:39 p.m.

Court upholds cash forfeiture of $9 million

By ED ASHER
Copyright 1998 Houston Chronicle

A federal appellate court has upheld the forfeiture of more than $9 million
in cash deposited in a Houston bank by a former Mexican official who was in
charge of investigating drug cartels.

A jury last year determined that the money deposited by Mario Ruiz Massieu,
a former deputy attorney general of Mexico, was earned by drug trafficking.

The money was deposited by a Ruiz Massieu associate in a Galleria-area
branch of Texas Commerce Bank between March 1994 and February 1995.

In an April 1997 decision, a civil jury agreed with the government that it
was drug money. The jury decided Ruiz Massieu had to forfeit $7.9 million to
the U.S. government but could keep $1.1 million that he claimed came from
the sale of a beach house in Mexico.

U.S. District Judge Nancy Atlas later ruled that the government could seize
all $9 million.

Ruiz Massieu, who claimed the money came from his brother, appealed to the
5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals contending that Atlas had made many
procedural errors. But that court ruled Wednesday that Atlas had made no
procedural or legal errors and said the seizure of all $9 million was
proper.
-------------------------------------------------------------------

Police Find $1 Million During Traffic Stop (The St. Louis Post-Dispatch,
in Missouri, says two police made the largest seizure of suspected drug money
in St. Louis County's history after stopping a man on Interstate 44
for two moving traffic violations and because one of his headlights
wasn't working.)

Date: Thu, 17 Dec 1998 19:02:41 -0800
From: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org (MAPNews)
To: mapnews@mapinc.org
Subject: MN: US MO: Police Find $1 Million During Traffic Stop
Sender: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Reply-To: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Organization: Media Awareness Project http://www.mapinc.org/lists/
Newshawk: MMcNamara@bridge.com (McNamara, Mark P.)
Source: Saint Louis Post-Dispatch (MO)
Contact: letters@pd.stlnet.com
Website: http://www.stlnet.com/
Forum: http://www.stlnet.com/postnet/index.nsf/forums
Copyright: 1998, St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Pubdate: 17 Dec 98
Section: METRO
Author: Lance Williams

POLICE FIND $1 MILLION DURING TRAFFIC STOP

St. Louis County police seized more than $1 million in suspected drug
trafficking money in a weekend traffic stop on Interstate 44. The seizure
is the largest in St. Louis County's history and one of the largest in this
area, authorities said Wednesday.

Two patrol officers, James Hilderbrand and Todd Isermann, stopped a 1993
Ford Explorer about 9:51 p.m. for two moving traffic violations and because
one of the headlights wasn't working.

The vehicle was pulled over on westbound I-44 near the St. Louis County
line. I-44 is a major drug shipment route connecting Mexico and the
southwestern United States to the Northeast.

After talking with the driver, the officers became suspicious and asked if
they could search the vehicle. The driver allowed them to do so.
Hilderbrand checked the inside lining of the roof and found the money.

"There really wasn't much too it," said Hilderbrand, who has worked with
the department for six years. "Once the liner was pulled down, it exposed
everything."

Police found 38 bundles of money in vacuum-sealed bags, wrapped in masking
tape and connected with rope. The currency ranged from $5 to $100 bills.
Hilderbrand said drug traffickers often tie the bundles together so they
can remove the money all at once without damaging the roof liner.

Hilderbrand said the driver and passengers denied knowing anything about
the money or where it came from.

The driver and passengers, who were traveling from Chicago to cities in the
southwestern United States, were detained for about two hours and all
information about them was passed on to federal Drug Enforcement
Administration investigators. The vehicle was returned to the driver.

The DEA is now investigating the case, but no charges have been filed.

St. Louis County police will probably receive a major portion of the money
under U.S. forfeiture laws. St. Charles and St. Louis police also aided in
the investigation Friday night and could share in the forfeiture. The U.S.
Department of Justice will decide how to divide the money. Hilderbrand was
involved in the county's largest previous forfeiture of $179,000 about a
year ago.

"I was extremely happy and shocked when I found out how much money we
found," he said.

This weekend's incident was one of several large seizures in the area in
the past year.

In April, the Illinois State Police found $2.8 million, the largest highway
cash seizure in the department's history, during a traffic stop in April
along Interstate 57 near Effingham. They also found cocaine residue in the
vehicle during that stop.

Interstate 44 was also the site of another major seizure in July near
Springfield, Mo. Authorities had been told to watch for a suspicious
tractor-trailer at a particular weigh station. When they looked inside they
found $2.9 million.
-------------------------------------------------------------------

Suburban Drug Force Disbanding (The Chicago Tribune
says the Cook County Metropolitan Enforcement Group, an alliance of state,
county and local police that for years was some suburban cities' only weapon
against small-time drug dealers, will disband at the end of the month
after 21 years. Reasons for the group's slow death over the last two years
include the proliferation of law-enforcement task forces at the county, state
and federal levels - some of whose duties overlap those of MEG. As these
task forces have formed, some of the local departments that assigned officers
to MEG pulled them out and redeployed them to the other groups. The reason
is economics: By having officers take part in task forces that seize
more assets, local departments typically get more money.)

Date: Thu, 17 Dec 1998 19:02:20 -0800
From: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org (MAPNews)
To: mapnews@mapinc.org
Subject: MN: US IL: Suburban Drug Force Disbanding
Sender: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Reply-To: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Organization: Media Awareness Project http://www.mapinc.org/lists/
Newshawk: Steve Young
Pubdate: 17 Dec 1998
Source: Chicago Tribune (IL)
Section: Metro McHenry
Contact: tribletter@aol.com
Website: http://www.chicagotribune.com/
Forum: http://www.chicagotribune.com/interact/boards/
Copyright: 1998 Chicago Tribune Company
Author: Eric Ferkenhoff and Brad Webber

SUBURBAN DRUG FORCE DISBANDING

The Cook County Metropolitan Enforcement Group, an alliance of state,
county and local police officers that for years was smaller suburbs'
only weapon to battle drug dealers, announced Wednesday that it will
disband at the end of the month after 21 years.

Talk of MEG's demise had surfaced before, including in 1990, when the
General Assembly dramatically cut the group's state funding. Its
future fell into further question over the past two years, as the
number of officers assigned to the group dwindled from 48 to 25.

But the final blow came during a closed meeting Wednesday, when
Illinois State Police made official their intention to pull nine of
its 10 officers from the alliance on Dec. 31.

With that, the group's policy board voted unanimously to close down.
Except in emergencies, the Cook County MEG will quit taking new cases
beginning Jan. 1, though the group will keep a skeleton staff on duty
to wrap up pending cases.

For all practical purposes, however, several top MEG officials
acknowledged Wednesday that the group, begun in 1977, is dead unless a
rescue plan can be devised.

"There has been a steady decline in personnel and equipment," said
Col. Tom Yokley, head of operations for the state police. "When you
come to a point in time when you're not effective, you can get to the
point where you put officers' safety in danger. I'm not saying we're
there yet, but we're headed in that direction."

He added: "The bottom line is you have to make business decisions.
This has been coming for some time. This was not a decision by just
the state police."

MEG is a state-funded task force that chiefly works on undercover
cases throughout Cook County and targets smaller drug operations that
don't meet the threshold for federal agencies to become involved. The
Cook County group, one of about a dozen MEGs statewide, is composed of
officers from 10 Cook County suburbs, including Palatine, South
Holland, Hazel Crest and Mt. Prospect, as well as from state police,
the Cook County sheriff's department and the Cook County Forest
Preserve District police.

Yokley said the board's decision to shutter the Cook County MEG will
have no effect on the state's other MEG units, including those in
DuPage and Lake Counties.

The Cook County group, which has made nearly 340 arrests so far this
year and recorded drug seizures totaling more than $100 million
through September, receives about $388,000 in state funds. It also
receives membership fees ranging from $1,000 to $10,000 from about 50
local departments that call on the group for investigative help but
that don't lend any of their own officers.

Officials gave many reasons for the group's slow death over the last
two years, including the proliferation of law-enforcement task forces
at the county, state and federal levels--some of whose duties overlap
those of MEG. Often, said Lynwood Police Chief David Palmer, the
chairman of MEG's policy board, these larger task forces focus on more
lucrative drug traffickers selling higher volumes of drugs.

As these task forces have formed, some of the local departments that
assigned officers to MEG pulled them out and redeployed them to the
other groups. The reason, said Palmer, is simple economics: By having
officers take part in task forces that seize more assets, local
departments typically get more money.

The other task forces, he added, "have worked very well. But in some
cases, they're wrecking the efforts of local law enforcement because

the bodies are shrinking at the local level."

Some MEG officials on Wednesday privately questioned the timing of the
state police decision, coming just a month before governor-elect
George Ryan takes office and in the absence of a permanent state
police director.

But Yokley said: "The diminishing resources pretty much dictated
this."

In MEG's absence, officials said, other task forces at the county and
state levels likely will fill the void.

"We'll survive," said Bartlett Police Chief Dan Palmer. "We'll still
deal with the issues. (But) I prefer the status quo."

Others were less certain.

"We will lose the capability of fighting drugs on the street level,"
said Hazel Crest Police Chief Peter Fee. The smaller dealers, he said,
are "the most visible. That's what citizens see. If somebody sees what
they believe to be a drug transaction in their community, they want
that stopped. MEG has been our tool."
-------------------------------------------------------------------

County Drug Unit Loses Officers, May Shut Down
(The version in The Daily Herald, in Arlington Heights, Illinois)

Date: Thu, 17 Dec 1998 19:01:58 -0800
From: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org (MAPNews)
To: mapnews@mapinc.org
Subject: MN: US IL: County Drug Unit Loses Officers, May Shut Down
Sender: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Reply-To: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Organization: Media Awareness Project http://www.mapinc.org/lists/
Newshawk: Steve Young
Source: Daily Herald (IL)
Contact: fencepost@dailyherald.com
Website: http://www.dailyherald.com/
Copyright: 1998 The Daily Herald Company
Pubdate: 17 Dec 1998
Author: Steve Warmbir
Section: Sec. 1

COUNTY DRUG UNIT LOSES OFFICERS, MAY SHUT DOWN

A special unit of police officers targeting small and mid-level drug
dealers in suburban Cook County won't be investigating any new cases and
may soon be closed for good.

The decision of the board overseeing the Metropolitan Enforcement Group of
Cook County came after the Illinois State Police decided to remove nine of
its 10 officers from the unit and deploy them elsewhere in Cook County at
the end of the year.

That leaves 15 officers in the unit, most assigned by municipal police
departments.

"We're trying to keep it alive," said Warren Millsaps, deputy director of
the group. "The state police are certainly stinging us."

"This is pretty much like the last two bullets in the body that's already
been shot four or five times," Millsaps said.

The MEG board will meet again in mid-January to see if an expected change
in the state police administration, after George Ryan becomes governor,
will make any difference.

Local police departments also are expected to say then if they are willing
to increase their manpower commitment to the unit.

At least until the January meeting, the MEG unit will continue its
investigations and wrap up cases.

MEG includes such Northwest suburban towns as Bartlett, Elk Grove Village,
Mount Prospect and Palatine.

The state police pullout is the latest step by a police agency to remove
people from the unit, which has been dwindling in manpower in recent years.
Local police departments, for instance, have cut down their commitments to
the unit.

Master Sgt. Lincoln Hampton said the state police decided to pull its
officers out because MEG wasn't running that efficiently given its lack of
manpower. Also, without enough people, officer safety was an issue, Hampton
said.

The state police had been questioned why it was seemingly making the
decision just before a new administration would be put in place.

"It's a loose thread," Hampton said. "Why leave this around now for the
next administration?"

"We're still concerned about drug activity in Cook County," Hampton said.

MEG suffers from competition with other police units targeting drug
dealers, said Lynwood Police Chief David Palmer, chairman of the MEG policy
board.

Some local police departments are more quick to loan officers to units that
target bigger operations because police departments see more money from
seized assets.

MEG is important because it goes after small and mid-level drug operations,
the kinds of cases other units aren't interested in, Palmer said.

"MEG is not outmoded," Palmer said. "We have chosen, for the community
good, to stay at the street and mid-level (dealers)."
-------------------------------------------------------------------

Policeman Accused Of Running Drug Ring (The Orange County Register version
of yesterday's news about Joseph Miedzianowski, the veteran Chicago police
officer who was charged Wednesday with running a drug ring that allegedly
distributed millions of dollars worth of cocaine and heroin between Chicago
and Miami.)

Date: Thu, 17 Dec 1998 10:52:29 -0800
From: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org (MAPNews)
To: mapnews@mapinc.org
Subject: MN: US IL: Policeman Accused Of Running Drug Ring
Sender: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Reply-To: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Organization: Media Awareness Project http://www.mapinc.org/lists/
Newshawk: John W. Black
Pubdate: 12-17-98
Source: Orange County Register (CA)
Contact: letters@link.freedom.com
Website: http://www.ocregister.com/
Copyright: 1998 The Orange County Register

POLICEMAN ACCUSED OF RUNNING DRUG RING

A veteran Chicago police officer was among 10 people charged Wednesday with
running a drug ring that allegedly distributed millions of dollars worth of
cocaine and heroin between Chicago and Miami.

Joseph Miedzianowski, 45, was arrested Wednesday as he reported to work at
the Chicago police department's gang crimes unit.

Miedzianowski, an officer for 27 years, brokered drug deals, served as a
go-between with feuding drug lords and eventually took over daily control of
the operation, prosecutors said.
-------------------------------------------------------------------

Cop Charged In Drug Ring (The Chicago Tribune version)

Date: Thu, 17 Dec 1998 19:01:48 -0800
From: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org (MAPNews)
To: mapnews@mapinc.org
Subject: MN: US IL: Cop Charged In Drug Ring
Sender: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Reply-To: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Organization: Media Awareness Project http://www.mapinc.org/lists/
Newshawk: Steve Young
Source: Chicago Tribune (IL)
Contact: tribletter@aol.com
Website: http://www.chicagotribune.com/
Forum: http://www.chicagotribune.com/interact/boards/
Copyright: 1998 Chicago Tribune Company
Pubdate: 17 Dec 1998
Author: Matt O'Connor and Steve Mills
Section: Metro Chicago

COP CHARGED IN DRUG RING

A veteran Chicago gang crimes officer was arrested Wednesday on charges
that he was part of a cocaine and heroin operation that stretched from
Chicago to Miami, offering it protection for a year but then, boldly,
taking control of its local business.

The arrest represents the first part of a three-part investigation that,
according to sources, is focusing on several police officers who are
suspected of shaking down or robbing drug dealers of money and
cocaine--charges similar to those in the Austin and Gresham Districts that
rocked the department two years ago.

The officer charged Wednesday, Joseph Miedzianowski, 45, allegedly made
hundreds of thousands of dollars over three years as he alerted drug
traffickers to police investigations, robbed and extorted from dealers and
even brokered cocaine deals, court documents contend.

When dealers would fly from Florida to Chicago to deliver cocaine or
heroin, sources said, the officer would flash his badge to escort them
through the airport security and ensure the drugs were delivered.

Federal officials said Miedzianowski of the 8500 block of West St. Joseph
Avenue also funneled guns to drug dealers and stole ammunition from the
Cook County sheriff's shooting range with inside help.

Miedzianowski, an officer for 22 years, and 11 other suspects--some of whom
are alleged to be gang members--were charged in federal court with
conspiracy to distribute and possess cocaine and heroin. Miedzianowski was
the only police officer charged.

The arrests broke now, according to sources, because a telephone operator
in Miami misread wiretapping orders and called Miedzianowski, letting him
know he was under investigation and his calls were being recorded. Sources
said Miedzianowski, whose home phones and beeper were bugged, then began to
contact cohorts, forcing police to arrest him. They had planned to continue
the investigation into January.

FBI agents are investigating whether other Chicago officers interfered with
cases involving drug suspects by falsely claiming to other officers that
they were informants assisting with investigations.

U.S. Atty. Scott Lassar said the investigation of Miedzianowski began only
a few months ago, although Police Supt. Terry Hillard acknowledged that
complaints Miedzianowski had shaken down or robbed drug dealers in the past
had been examined by internal affairs investigators.

The complaints could not be substantiated, and Hillard said he would order
a review of those internal investigations in light of the federal charges.

A supervisor at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, where
Miedzianowski worked on a task force in the early 1990s, also has alleged
he stole from drug dealers in a lawsuit she filed against him. The federal
suit, filed in 1995, is pending.

According to the charges, Miedzianowski began working for two "large-scale"
drug traffickers in 1995, earning $12,000 a month for warning them about
investigations. The traffickers were identified as Mohammed S. Omar and
Juan Martir.

Omar was charged. Martir was named as an unindicted co-conspirator; he is
cooperating with prosecutors, sources said.

In the summer of 1996, according to the charges, Miedzianowski took another
step in the organization and began acting as a middleman between dealers.
He allegedly brokered drug transactions, buying between 1 and 2 kilograms
of cocaine every week or 10 days, according to the charges.

By year's end, after Martir had moved to Miami, Miedzianowski had taken
control of the Chicago drug operation, according to the charges.

It was a status that Lassar said was unusual, if not unheard of, for a
crooked police officer, and one that raises questions of how he could run a
drug operation without his colleagues--or internal affairs--finding out.

"You work with a partner only eight hours a day. . . . These guys aren't
married to their partners," said Hillard at a news conference.

He added: "If there were red flags up and we didn't know, that's what I
need to find out."

When Martir was arrested in Miami in February, according to the charges,
Miedzianowski allegedly persuaded Martir not to cooperate in other
investigations.

Miedzianowski, according to other officers, was hardworking and aggressive.

"He's one of the best policemen I've ever worked with, and we were on the
same team together," said George Figueroa, a gang investigation specialist
who's worked with Miedzianowski. "He's smart. He has a lot of informants."

In the mid-1980s, Miedzianowski and his longtime partner, John Galligan,
were suspended for roughing up a minister who was a supporter of Mayor
Harold Washington. The two were cleared and later sued the city, getting
their jobs back and an $80,000 settlement. Galligan declined to comment
Wednesday.

Miedzianowski and nine of the other defendants made initial appearances in
federal court Wednesday afternoon.

Prosecutors Brian Netols and Jonathan King said they will seek to hold them
pending trial, saying they are dangers to the community and risks to flee.

Miedzianowski, who made $55,000 a year as a police officer, had a share of
at least two businesses--a Harlem Avenue salon called Sanctuary of Hair and
a Belmont Avenue tattoo parlor.

At Sanctuary of Hair, 5445 N. Harlem Ave., owner Irek Marciniec said he has
known Miedzianowski for about a year. He said FBI agents searched the shop
for 3 1/2 hours on Wednesday and left with several boxes of files.

Among the other places searched was the home of a Cook County sheriff's
officer suspected of supplying Miedzianowski with ammunition stolen from
the sheriff's shooting range.

At Miedzianowski's modest, one-story home, dozens of federal officers spent
the day loading an unmarked blue van with material they had gathered.
Sources said they seized a large numbers of weapons and ammunition.
-------------------------------------------------------------------

$750,000 Awarded In False Arrest Case (The Miami Herald notes the war
on some drug users just got more expensive locally Wednesday as a federal
jury in Broward awarded the judgment to a man in Hollywood, Florida,
after a judge ruled his civil rights were violated by two police officers
in a 1996 drug arrest. In a rare decision, U.S. District Judge
Wilkie Ferguson Jr. held Sgt. Jeff Marano and former Officer Tony Fernandez
responsible for violating Dwight Edman's rights before the jury could even
deliberate the matter. The judge based his verdict Tuesday on Marano's
admission that police had no probable cause to arrest Edman.)

Date: Thu, 17 Dec 1998 19:13:22 -0800
From: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org (MAPNews)
To: mapnews@mapinc.org
Subject: MN: US FL: $750,000 Awarded In False Arrest Case
Sender: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Reply-To: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Organization: Media Awareness Project http://www.mapinc.org/lists/
Newshawk: General Pulaski
Pubdate: Thu, 17 Dec 1998
Source: Miami Herald (FL)
Contact: heralded@herald.com
Website: http://www.herald.com/
Forum: http://krwebx.infi.net/webxmulti/cgi-bin/WebX?mherald
Copyright: 1998 The Miami Herald
Author: COREY DADE, Herald Staff Writer(email: cdade@herald.com)

$750,000 AWARDED IN FALSE ARREST CASE

Hollywood cops, city held liable

A federal jury in Broward on Wednesday awarded $750,000 to a Hollywood man
after a judge ruled his civil rights were violated by two police officers in
a 1996 drug arrest.

The 10-member jury announced the award to Dwight Edman, 21, after a rare
decision by U.S. District Judge Wilkie Ferguson Jr. to hold Sgt. Jeff Marano
and former Officer Tony Fernandez responsible for violating Edman's rights
before the jury could even deliberate the matter. The judge based his
verdict Tuesday on Marano's admission that police had no probable cause to
arrest Edman.

"We are obviously extremely grateful that the jury understood and
appreciated the significance of what Dwight Edman endured, and appreciated
the gravity of the violations," said Edman's attorney, Hugh Koerner.

For his part, Marano was ordered to pay Edman $200,000 in damages; Fernandez
$75,000. The city of Hollywood was ordered to pay $275,000 for damages
stemming from false arrest, and another $200,000 for violating state notary
laws regarding flawed arrest records. The jury dismissed a battery charge
against the city.

Edman likely will have difficulty collecting the entire award. In most
instances, a city indemnifies its officers for any court judgments. The
Hollywood Commission must decide whether to pay the officers' portion.

City Manager Sam Finz declined to comment until he read the verdict.

State law may prevent Hollywood from paying its full portion. Florida caps
monetary court judgments against municipalities at $100,000 and only the
state Legislature can authorize more.

Attorney Bruce Jolly, who represented Marano and Fernandez, couldn't be
reached for comment late Wednesday. Nor could Hollywood Assistant City
Attorney Dan Abbott, who defended the city, or acting Police Chief Al
Lamberti.

Edman, then 18, and his friend Jerome Watson, then 19, were arrested Jan.
31, 1996, as they left the Ventura Motel, 720 N. Federal Hwy., to buy a
pizza. The area is a hotbed of drug trafficking and prostitution. Police
charged them with delivering a fake cocaine rock to Marano, who was working
undercover.

Koerner said Edman, who had long disputed police descriptions of a drug
deal, was strip-searched. Edman claimed in the lawsuit that Fernandez
squeezed pressure points behind his ears in interrogating him. A
psychologist testified during the five-day trial that Edman suffers
post-traumatic stress disorder from the ordeal, a contention Jolly
relentlessly attacked.

Edman's parents, including his father, Barrington Edman, an 18-year
Miami-Dade Corrections sergeant, testified that their son had become
depressed and easily angered. Still living in Hollywood, Edman said he
feared retaliation from police after filing the suit last year.

"I have been worried not knowing if I'd have a run-in with these guys,"
Edman said. "I always felt like now that they have my name, that they might
have a little grudge; if they pulled me over, something might have happened.

"I'm happy with the jury's decision but more grateful that it has brought
closure to all of this, and I can move on."

Prosecutors dropped charges against Edman in June 1996 when Marano admitted
the arrest was a mistake and that a probable-cause affidavit by Fernandez
was incorrect. The affidavit, in which officers are supposed to swear the
information included is true, was one of several blank forms signed in bulk
by police before the arrests were made. Marano admitted the affidavit was
presigned with his name in violation of state laws requiring a notary to
witness such signatures.

Watson spent nearly two months in jail because he couldn't raise the $1,000
bail, said Raag Singhal, Watson's lawyer at the time. He eventually pleaded
no contest and was sentenced to probation.

Marano and his subordinates arrested Edman and Watson as members of the
controversial street crimes unit known as the Raiders. Then-Police Chief
Rick Stone disbanded the Raiders in February 1997 and dispersed its members
between the patrol division and an expanded community-oriented policing
team.

In April of that year, Stone publicly exonerated the unit and announced he
was closing a yearlong internal probe into a dozen allegations ranging from
brutality to false arrests to sexual battery, which also were being
investigated by Broward prosecutors.

Stone said allegations against officers were sustained in only one case --
the Edman arrest. He placed formal reprimands in both Marano's and
Fernandez's personnel files and ordered them to take a test on department
procedure.

Citing another lawsuit filed days after Edman's, Stone earlier this year
yanked Marano from the street and placed him on desk duty. Fernandez was
fired in May for repeatedly violating department rules shortly after wearing
a sexually explicit T-shirt to a sensitivity and diversity training session.
-------------------------------------------------------------------

Human Body Makes Own Version of Chemicals Found in Marijuana
(A scientifically illiterate but nonetheless interesting article from
Knight Ridder News Service in The Salt Lake Tribune grapples
with the belated realization that our brains and bodies are flooded
with a natural form of cannabis. Called cannabinoids, after the
euphoria-inducing plant Cannabis sativa, this family of compounds
blocks pain, erases memories and triggers hunger. Newer studies
show they also may regulate the immune system, enhance reproduction
and protect the brain from stroke and trauma damage.)

Date: Thu, 17 Dec 1998 15:09:43 -0600
From: "Frank S. World" (compassion23@geocities.com)
Organization: Rx Cannabis Now!
http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/Lobby/7417/
To: DRCNet Medical Marijuana Forum (medmj@drcnet.org)
Subject: US WIRE: Human Body Makes Own Version
of Chemicals Found in Marijuana
Sender: owner-medmj@drcnet.org
Source: The Salt Lake Tribune
Contact: editor@sltrib.com
Website: http://www.sltrib.com/
Pubdate: Thursday, December 17, 1998

HUMAN BODY MAKES OWN VERSION OF CHEMICALS FOUND IN MARIJUANA

KNIGHT RIDDER NEWS SERVICE

WASHINGTON -- Amid this year's clamorous battles to legalize medical
marijuana stands this little-known fact: Our brains and bodies are flooded
with a natural form of the drug.

Called cannabinoids, after the euphoria-inducing plant Cannabis sativa, this
family of compounds blocks pain, erases memories and triggers hunger. Newer
studies show they also may regulate the immune system, enhance reproduction
and protect the brain from stroke and trauma damage.

Discovered in humans just a few years ago and, until recently, virtually
unstudied, the compounds have become one of the looming mysteries of the
nervous system -- and a field of exploding scientific interest.

Already, scientists are testing cannabinoids with hopes of harnessing the
medical power of marijuana to treat pain without its high, smoke or
political baggage. A key challenge is separating the curing power of the
compounds from their mind-altering side effects.

``That's the Holy Grail of this field,'' said Steven Childers, a
pharmacologist at the Wake Forest University School of Medicine in
Winston-Salem, N.C.

Because cannabinoids are so numerous in the brain, they also could help
explain the workings of some of our body's most complex, and least
understood, systems.

The scientists who discovered the cannabinoids in the brain called the
substance anandamide, Sanskrit for eternal bliss.

Our brains contain receptors that interact with the anandamide we produce.
In an accident of nature and chemistry, compounds in pot are shaped
similarly and therefore trigger similar but more potent effects. The same is
true of the plant drugs nicotine and cocaine.

Now, scientists are beginning to understand just what natural cannabinoids
might be doing in the human body.

``We're opening doors now we couldn't even have predicted existed,'' said
Childers, president of the International Cannabinoid Research Society.

For example:

-- This week Herbert Schuel and Lani Burkman of the University of Buffalo in
New York reported that cannabinoids help control the exquisite synchrony of
timing during reproduction by slowing overeager sperm if they try to
approach an egg before it's ready for fertilization. This may also explain
why heavy pot users, both men and women, are sometimes infertile.

-- Cannabinoids have been found to suppress and enhance the body's defenses
against diseases and tumors, a duality that has researchers puzzled. ``It's
a science clearly in flux,'' said Thomas Klein, an immunologist at the
University of South Florida. ``The more we learn, the more confused we
are.''

-- While pot warnings -- ``This is your brain on drugs'' -- have long
spotlighted the drug's damaging effects on the brain, research last summer
from the National Institute of Mental Health shows cannabinoids protect
brain cells from stroke or trauma damage.

-- Last year, scientists at the Neurosciences Institute in San Diego showed
that cannabinoids block the formation of new memories in slices of animal
brain tissues. This power to forget might keep brain from filling up or
getting overwhelmed with unimportant memories.

Cannabinoid research in animals already has scientists considering drugs
that might be quite powerful in exploiting an untapped chemical system
within the brain to solve an array of medical problems.

``While no one wants a drug that disrupts memory, maybe you could boost
memory by blocking cannabinoids,'' said Billy Martin, a professor of
pharmacology at the Medical College of Virginia and one of a handful of
people who have studied cannabinoids since the 1970s. Blocking the effects
of cannabinoids might also be a route to a weight-loss drug. ``If marijuana
gives you the munchies, maybe blocking cannabinoids will be helpful in
treating obesity,'' he said. ``It's hard to say what's ahead.''

Researchers' largest hopes are focused on using a synthetic form of
cannabinoids to block pain, including chronic nerve pain that can't be
adequately blocked with existing drugs.

Animal studies show cannabinoids can block other kinds of pain almost before
they begin -- stopping the pain signals before they reach the spinal cord or
brain, working as well as morphine. That power suggests they could be
substituted for morphine, which is addictive and must be used in increasing
doses over time.

Cannabinoids enhance morphine's power; combining the drugs could vastly
reduce the dosages needed to kill pain, offsetting problems of addiction and
drug tolerance. Cannabinoids also counteract nausea, another plus for
patients with cancer and AIDS.

``It might be possible to manipulate levels of the body's own cannabinoids.
You could create drugs like Prozac that block the body's reuptake of
cannabinoids or inhibit their breakdown so they stay active longer,'' said
Andrea Hohmann, who previously worked with Walker and now researches pain at
the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research.

``These kind of manipulations may not have the unwanted side effects of
marijuana and aren't going to carry the same kind of political baggage.''

Medicinal marijuana has its supporters -- including voters in Alaska,
Arizona, Nevada and Washington state who said in referendums this fall that
they favored that use for the drug. But many physicians argue that proof of
marijuana's beneficial effects is hazy and that pot smoke, more toxic than
cigarette smoke, is too great a health hazard.

Use of pot is favored by some doctors for treatment of pain and wasting from
cancer and AIDS. It also has been recommended to reduce the damaging effects
of high fluid pressure within the eye.

But a study in the Archives of Opthalmalogy last month calculated that a
glaucoma sufferer would have to smoke about 3,000 joints each year to bring
the pressure down. And it's unknown which of the plant's many chemicals are
helping.

(c) Copyright 1998, The Salt Lake Tribune
-------------------------------------------------------------------

Natural Form Of Marijuana In Humans A Medical Mystery
(A lengthier version in The Chicago Tribune)

Date: Mon, 21 Dec 1998 20:26:00 -0800
From: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org (MAPNews)
To: mapnews@mapinc.org
Subject: MN: US: Natural Form Of Marijuana In Humans A Medical Mystery
Sender: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Reply-To: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Organization: Media Awareness Project http://www.mapinc.org/lists/
Newshawk: Steve Young
Source: Chicago Tribune (IL)
Pubdate: 18 Dec 1998
Section: Sec. 1A
Contact: tribletter@aol.com
Website: http://www.chicagotribune.com/
Forum: http://www.chicagotribune.com/interact/boards/
Copyright: 1998 Chicago Tribune Company
Author: Usha Lee McFarling

NATURAL FORM OF MARIJUANA IN HUMANS A MEDICAL MYSTERY

WASHINGTON -- Amid this year's clamorous battles to legalize medical
marijuana stands this little-known fact: Our brains and bodies are flooded
with a natural form of the drug.

Called cannabinoids, after the euphoria-inducing plant Cannabis sativa,
this family of compounds blocks pain, erases memories and triggers hunger.
Newer studies show they also may regulate the immune system, enhance
reproduction and even protect the brain from stroke and trauma damage.

Discovered in humans just a few years ago and, until recently, virtually
unstudied, the compounds have become one of the looming mysteries of the
nervous system, and a field of exploding scientific interest.

Scientists are testing cannabinoids with hopes of harnessing the medical
power of marijuana to treat pain without its high, smoke or political
baggage. A key challenge is separating the curing power of the compounds
from their mind-altering side effects.

"That's the holy grail of this field," said Steven Childers, a
pharmacologist at the Wake Forest University School of Medicine in
Winston-Salem, N.C.

Because cannabinoids are so numerous in the brain, they also could help
explain the workings of some of our body's most complex, and least
understood, systems.

"It's obviously important because there's so much of it. And we never knew
it existed before," said J. Michael Walker, a Brown University psychologist
who has conducted some of the first studies of how cannabinoids block pain.

"It could help us understand movement, it could help us understand memory,
it could help us understand pain. We don't really know how any of these
things work."

There has always been evidence, from the intoxicating effects cannabis
evokes in smokers, that it contains powerful compounds.

The sticky, flowering buds of the plant have been harvested as medicine for
centuries. Five thousand years ago, Chinese physicians used the plant to
treat malaria, absent-mindedness and "female disorders."

African tribes used it to treat snakebite and the pain of childbirth.
Indian physicians prescribed it for headaches.

Sifting through the plant's chemical stew in the early 1960s, Israeli
pharmacologist Raphael Mechoulam discovered more than 60 cannabinoids in
marijuana, including the famous and psychoactive compound THC.

In 1992, a team led by Mechoulam and William Devane trumped that discovery
by showing that humans produced their own cannabinoids. They called the
substance anandamide (Sanskrit for "eternal bliss").

Our brains contain receptors that interact with the anandamide we produce.
In an accident of nature and chemistry, compounds in pot are shaped
similarly and therefore trigger similar but more potent effects. The same
is true of the plant drugs nicotine and cocaine.

Now, scientists are beginning to understand just what natural cannabinoids
might be doing in the human body.

"We're opening doors now we couldn't even have predicted existed," said
Childers, president of the International Cannabinoid Research Society.

For example:

- This week Herbert Schuel and Lani J. Burkman of the University of Buffalo
reported that cannabinoids help control the exquisite synchrony of timing
during reproduction by slowing anxious sperm if they try to approach an egg
before it's ready for fertilization. This may also explain why heavy pot
users, both men and women, are sometimes infertile.

- Cannabinoids have been found to both suppress and enhance the body's
defenses against diseases and tumors, a duality that has researchers
puzzled. "It's a science clearly in flux," said Thomas Klein, an
immunologist at the University of South Florida. "The more we learn, the
more confused we are."

- While pot warnings--"This is your brain on drugs" - have long spotlighted
the drug's damaging effects on the brain, research last summer from the
National Institute of Mental Health shows cannabinoids protect brain cells
from stroke or trauma damage.

- Last year, scientists at the Neurosciences Institute in San Diego showed
that cannabinoids block the formation of new memories in slices of animal
brain tissues. This power to forget might keep the brain from filling up or
getting overwhelmed with unimportant memories.

Cannabinoid research in animals already has scientists considering drugs
that might be quite powerful in exploiting an untapped chemical system
within the brain to solve an array of medical problems.

"While no one wants a drug that disrupts memory, maybe you could boost
memory by blocking cannabinoids," said Billy Martin, a professor of
pharmacology at the Medical College of Virginia and one of a handful of
people who have studied cannabinoids since the 1970s.

Researchers' largest hopes are focused on using a synthetic form of
cannabinoids to block pain, including chronic nerve pain that can't be
adequately blocked with existing drugs.

Animal studies show cannabinoids can block other kinds of pain almost
before they begin, stopping the pain signals before they reach the spinal
cord or brain, working as well as morphine. That power suggests they could
be substituted for morphine, which is addictive and must be used in
increasing doses over time.

Cannabinoids enhance morphine's power; combining the drugs could vastly
reduce the dosages needed to kill pain, offsetting problems of addiction
and drug tolerance. Cannabinoids also counteract nausea, another plus for
patients with cancer and AIDS.

"It might be possible to manipulate levels of the body's own cannabinoids.
You could create drugs like Prozac that block the body's reuptake of
cannabinoids or inhibit their breakdown so they stay active longer," said
Andrea Hohmann, who previously worked with Walker and now researches pain
at the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research.
-------------------------------------------------------------------

Just Say 'Wait a Minute' (The New York Review of Books
discusses "The Fix," by Michael Massing, and "Drug Crazy - How We Got Into
This Mess and How We Can Get Out," by Mike Gray. Malcolm Gladwell writes,
"Drugs" really aren't that much fun - at least not in the way that
straitlaced adolescents and anxious parents think that they are. This is a
critical point, but so often overlooked that it is worth examining in more
detail.)

Date: Thu, 03 Dec 1998 07:02:04
From: indirect@ozemail.com.au
Subject: The New York Review of Books [fwd]
To: pot-news@va.com.au
Reply-To: pot-news@va.com.au
Subj: US: Just Say 'Wait a Minute' 'The Fix' and 'Drug Crazy'
From: Peter Webster
Date: Tue, 1 Dec 1998 17:53:25 -0800
Newshawk: Peter Webster
Pubdate: 17 Dec 1998
Source: The New York Review of Books
Copyright: 1998 The New York Review of Books
Page: p4
Contact: nyrev@nybooks.com
Website: http://www.nybooks.com/nyrev/
Author: Malcolm Gladwell
Note: Our newshawk writes: "The NY Review of Books has usually ignored
books on drugs and drug policy, so this review, the first item in the
issue, is unusual. As for Letters to the Editor, they seldom publish any
except from well-known persons. But anyone with some credentials after his
name, please do write on this one to at least encourge the them to follow
up with more such reviews."

JUST SAY 'WAIT A MINUTE'

a review of:

The Fix by Michael Massing 335 pages, $25.00 (hardcover) published by Simon
and Schuster

Drug Crazy: How We Got into This Mess and How We Can Get Out by Mike Gray
251 pages, $23.95 (hardcover) published by Random House

1.

On a hot, muggy night in the summer of 1976, Ron and Marsha "Keith"
Schuchard held a thirteenth-birthday party for their daughter in the
backyard of their suburban Atlanta home. The Schuchards were English
professors, comfortably middle class, and they worried about their
daughter. Her personality had suddenly taken a turn for the worse. She was
moody and indifferent and only wanted to hang out with her friends. When
she asked for a party, the Schuchards were briefly encouraged, because they
thought she was coming out of her shell. But as the night wore on, they
grew more and more alarmed.

The "guests" - many of whom they had never seen before - kept to the shadows
of the backyard. Cars pulled up in the driveway, with teenagers yelling
"Where's the party?" One girl tried to use the phone but seemed to have
difficulty dialing. Looking out on the gathering from their upstairs
window, the Schuchards could see little flickers of lights in the corners
of the lawn. Finally, when the last of the kids had gone home, the couple
went outside in their pajamas and crawled around in the backyard grass with
flashlights, trying to figure out what had happened. They found beer cans
and empty wine bottles. But what they also found - and what bothered them
the most - was marijuana butts and roach clips.

That teenagers occasionally do things - and ingest things - that do not meet
the approval of their parents is not, of course, all that unusual. But this
particular case was different. In fact, in his new book, The Fix, Michael
Massing locates the beginning of what he calls the drug counterrevolution
at that moment, late at night, in the suburbs of Atlanta. The Schuchards
decided that the reason for their daughter's disaffection was not normal
adolescent angst, nor was it the malt liquor and the wine. It was the
marijuana. "We had a sense," Keith Schuchard would say later, "of something
invading our families, of being taken over by a culture that was very
dangerous, very menacing." The next morning, Schuchard demanded that her
daughter give her the names of everyone at the party, and called each
parent in turn. She began researching the dangers of marijuana. She fired
off a letter to Robert DuPont, the director of the National Institute on
Drug Abuse (NIDA), and so impressed him when they met that he asked her to
write a handbook on parents and drug abuse. She obliged with Parents,
Peers, and Pot, a vitriolic attack on the drug culture that claimed pot did
everything from causing "enlarged breasts" among adolescent boys to
destroying the immune system. It was the biggest best seller in NIDA
history, with more than a million copies printed.

By this point, Schuchard had hooked up with a neighbor, Sue Rusche, and
formed Families in Action, the country's first antidrug parents' group, and
was intensively lobbying the president's drug adviser. By 1980, she and
other concerned parents had joined together to form another, still larger
antimarijuana group, the National Federation of Parents for Drug-Free Youth
(NFP), and by January of the following year, with the election of Ronald
Reagan, the NFP became one of the most powerful grass-roots lobbying groups
in the land. "The dream we dared to speak of rather timidly three years ago
in this auditorium," Schuchard said at a national drug abuse convention in
the spring of 1981, "seems well on its way to realization - that is, the
growth of the parents' movement for drug-free youth from a handful of
scattered individuals and groups to an increasingly cohesive, articulate,
and powerful national movement."

To Massing, American drug policy has never really recovered from the rise
of the likes of Keith Schuchard. In the 1970s, during the Nixon
administration, American drug policy had followed a strict medical model.
The focus was on the hard-core user of drugs like heroin, not casual users
of "soft" drugs like marijuana. Millions of federal dollars were spent on
providing on-demand treatment for heroin users and liberalizing access to
methadone. Drug policy was directed by psychiatrists, and users were
patients. The parents' movement turned that policy upside down. Their
concern was not with inner-city addicts, but with suburban teenagers, not
with heroin but with pot, and not with treatment but with "zero tolerance."
The NFP helped to re-create Nancy Reagan as antidrug crusader. They
successfully pushed for the appointment of Carlton Turner as the White
House drug adviser, and Turner represented the antithesis of the old drug
policy. As Massing writes:

To start, Turner rejected their idea of
distinguishing between hard-core and occasional
users. In his view, there was no such thing as
"casual" or "recreational" drug use. Nor did he
accept the distinction between "hard" and "soft"
drugs. To his mind, that was "a very smooth
public relations ploy to get the American public
to accept all kinds of drugs. It was like soft
drinks - you can drink them with impunity if you
don't mind a few cavities." From now on, Tuner
asserted, all types of drugs were to be regarded
as equally dangerous, and all types of drug use
as equally reprehensible.

In the Reagan years, the budget for treating drug addicts was cut to about
a quarter of what it had been just ten years earlier, while billions of
dollars were added to the budget for drug reinforcement, overseas
interdiction, and prisons. The key outside strategist, pushing the new
director, was now another NFP activist, the group's treasurer, a
middle-aged Massachusetts businessman named Otto Moulton. Moulton, Massing
writes, was a "giant teddy bear" of a man, with a "round belly, fleshy
face, and flock of curly locks," who was obsessed with the threat posed to
American civilization by marijuana. In his basement he had a huge
collection of drug literature and paraphernalia, and he would regularly
fire off "Otto Bombs" - letters packed with extensive documentation - to
public officials. Moulton, Massing writes, came to "exercise a sort of veto
power over what people said and wrote about drugs." Nancy Reagan's office
would send him materials for approval. Moulton, meanwhile, would try to use
his contacts to cut off federal money for drug treatment clinics. The
parents hated the government's emphasis on heroin - which they considered a
marginal menace. They hated the idea that addicts might be treated as
patients, and they pressured Nancy Reagan into spending her time with
schoolchildren and to stop meeting with recovering addicts.

Then, with the election of George Bush, came the appointment of William
Bennett as drug czar. He was an English professor and a moralist who knew
nothing whatsoever about drugs, which, according to the perverse logic of
the counterrevolution, made perfect sense, because the point of the
counterrevolution was to take control of the fight against drugs away from
the professionals and give it to the parents, and to transform it from a
medical crusade into a moral one. In the late 1980s, even as the crack
epidemic was first starting to explode in inner cities, Bennett and his
drug office remained stubbornly focused elsewhere. "Our office was created
not because of the hard-core user problem, but because of concern about
exploding drug use in the suburbs and among young people," Massing quotes
Bruce Carnes, one of Bennett's top aides, as saying. "It was not directed
at hard-core addicts. They consumed the vast bulk of the drugs, and
contributed a significant part of the crime, but they weren't the main
threat to your kids becoming drug users." The drug war was all about "our
kids" now.

2.

The Fix is about the consequences of this counterrevolution. It is the
story of what was lost when the parents' movement turned our attention away
from treatment and hard drugs. In particular, it is the story of an
improbable, all-too-brief golden age in American drug policy, a period of
no more than two or three years in the middle of the Nixon administration,
when America, in Massing's eyes, suddenly got it right. His heroes are two
young men on Nixon's staff, Jeff Donfeld and Bud Krogh (the White House
fixer who would later get swept up in the Watergate scandal), and Jerome
Jaffe, a liberal psychiatrist who in the 1960s pioneered some of the most
success-ful drug treatment programs in the country.

Donfeld was one of Nixon's domestic policy staff, and his portfolio was
drugs. He was a "brash conservative" who despised the 1960s
counter-culture. But before long he became fascinated with the success of
an experimental methadone treatment in Chicago, the Illinois Drug Abuse
Program (IDAP), which had shown great success in reducing crime,
unemployment, and heroin use. Donfeld turned to Krogh, who had been given
the responsibility for attacking the crime problem in the District of
Columbia, and convinced Krogh that it might be worth trying out the Chicago
program in the District. "The District of Columbia became a laboratory in
my mind," Massing quotes Krogh as saying,

a place where we could put more funding into
treatment and see what happened.... The
administration's emphasis had been so
overwhelmingly on the law-enforcement side, that I
concluded that if we could get a substantial portion
of the addict population into some kind of
treatment program, where they would have a
chance to function and not be driven to commit
street crimes, that would be a very important
contribution to the law-enforcement side.

The plan worked. Early results from the D.C. pilot project showed stunning
drops in criminal activity among those enrolled in treatment. Emboldened,
Krogh went to John Ehrlichman, arguing that the program should be
instituted nationally, and by the summer of 1971 - after a complex round of
bureaucratic maneuvering - Nixon called a bipartisan group of congressmen to
the White House and announced that he was appointing Jaffe to head "a new,
all-out offensive" against drugs, using treatment as its principal weapon.
To fund the effort, Nixon more than doubled the federal money available for
treatment programs, to $105 million. By 1973, the total drug budget would
reach $420 million, eight times greater than the amount when Nixon had
first taken office. Most of that money was put directly into creating drug
treatment and methadone replacement programs for heroin users, creating,
for the first - and, as it turned out, the last - time in American history,
treatment on demand for intravenous drug addicts. "By the spring of 1973,"
Massing writes, (excerpt)so many [drug treatment] slots had been created
that some cities had excess capacity, and Jaffe, seeking to take advantage,
was setting up mechanisms to coax more addicts off the street.... [He] was
urging cities to create outreach teams to scour copping zones. To make it
easier for addicts to gain access to programs, Jaffe was issuing contracts
to cities to set up IDAP-like central intake units. And, to help get more
drug offenders into treatment, he was expanding [his agency's] Treatment
Alternatives to Street Crime program....

The results, at least as reflected in national crime statistics, were
impressive. In 1972 crime fell nationally for the first time in 17 years.
Crime was down 4.1 percent in Chicago, 4.5 percent in Philadelphia, 8.8
percent in Boston, 15.8 percent in Detroit, and 19 percent in San
Francisco. In the District of Columbia, where treatment on demand had been
in place longest, crime fell 26.9 percent in 1972. In New York the crime
rate fell 18 percent, even though drug arrests and incarceration rates were
down sharply that year. The administration that was known for its
conservatism and its insistence on law and order had taken the most liberal
approach possible to the drug program - and it had worked.

So what happened? Massing gives a number of explanations, but the gist of
each is the same: that the drug treatment community never succeeded in
explaining its ideas to the general public. Jaffe wanted resources devoted
entirely to reducing the demand for drugs, and giving up on the fruitless
game of reducing the supply. But that's a hard sell at the best of times,
and as the country drifted steadily rightward in the early 1980s it became
all but impossible. Nixon coined the phrase "drug war" in introducing the
Jaffe plan.

But later presidents would discover that the true political power in that
phrase lay in taking it literally: in fighting drugs at the source with
guns and soldiers and helicopters. Jaffe's approach also involved creating
a hierarchy of illicit drugs, in which heroin was at the top of the list
and commanded most of the attention and marijuana was at the bottom. But by
the end of the 1970s the drug treatment fraternity, through sheer arrogance
or laziness or both, had allowed the message that heroin was the most
dangerous of drugs and marijuana the least dangerous to be distorted into
something even less publicly palatable, namely that heroin was bad and that
marijuana was good.

Massing, for example, retells the extraordinary story of how the Carter
administration's drug adviser - Peter Bourne - was forced to resign. In
December 1977, Bourne decided to attend a party headed by NORML - the
pro-marijuana lobby group headed by Keith Stroup.

If nothing else, Keith Stroup knew how to throw a
good party, and the event, held in a posh Dupont
Circle townhouse, drew several hundred lawyers,
congressional aides, politicians, bureaucrats, and
lobbyists, plus assorted marijuana growers and
paraphernalia merchants. Waiters carried silver
trays bearing caviar and thick joints rolled from the
finest grass. Around ten o'clock, a charge went
through the crowd: Peter Bourne had arrived.

Mobbed by well-wishers, he was quickly escorted
upstairs to a private room where the inner circle
was gathered. Among those present were Hunter
Thompson, David Kennedy (Robert's son), and
Keith Stroup. A small, bulletlike container of coke
was being passed among the people in the room.

Bourne stayed for a short while, then headed back
downstairs and left.

When six months later this story emerged - that the White House drug czar
had been to a party where cocaine was used - Bourne was forced to resign.
Bourne maintained, in his own defense, that he didn't use the drug at the
party. But that was hardly the issue. What was he doing at a NORML party to
begin with? Should it surprise anyone that parents like Keith
Schuchard - confronting marijuana use in their children for the first
time - would read about this in the paper and conclude that federal drug
policy didn't, exactly, reflect their concerns?

There is a more fundamental problem here, though, that goes beyond
politics. It wasn't just that the parents' movement and the
counterrevolution felt that their interests were being slighted by a
hard-drug, treatment-based approach, or that the public, in the end, finds
interdiction much more satisfying than more passive demand-reduction
measures (such as methadone treatment). It was that the parents felt that a
treatment-based approach was incompatible with a true war on drugs. For the
parents, Massing writes, "the notion of recovery meant that addicts could
get well - a message that, they felt, undermined their warning to young
people not to use drugs." Treatment, to the hard-liners, is part of the
problem. Massing quotes Carlton Turner: "Under President Reagan, I didn't
believe that our philosophy should be that it's all right for kids to use
marijuana, cocaine, PCP, and Quaaludes, that - 'Hey, that's all right, go do
it, and then when you wake up and become a heroin addict, we'll put you on
methadone.' That's not what this country is all about."

It is hard to overestimate the gulf between these two positions. They are
so irreconcilable, so intractable, that they have made it almost impossible
to discuss drug policy in this country in an understandable and rational
manner. This fall, for example, when President Clinton's drug czar, General
Barry McCaffrey, announced that he wanted to make methadone more widely
available, one of the first to attack the plan was New York mayor Rudy
Giuliani, who argued that instead of replacing one kind of addiction with
another the goal should be to "try to make America drug free." This, of
course, is a strange position for someone as obsessed with law and order as
Giuliani. How does he think the 30,000 addicts in New York currently taking
methadone would finance their habits if the government were suddenly to
take their free methadone away? By getting jobs at McDonald's?

But then, Giuliani's position is hardly stranger than McCaffrey's previous
decision to dramatically escalate the drug war in Mexico. McCaffrey has
stated on several occasions that he doesn't think the United States can do
much to stop the flow of drugs across the border, but he has channeled
millions of dollars toward hardening the border anyway because, as he told
Massing, if smugglers are forced out to sea "there'll be less murder and
corruption of democratic institutions in Mexico and the United States."
Thus has the drug debate descended into incoherence. We have a drug czar
who does not believe in practicing interdiction practicing interdiction and
a mayor who prides himself as a crime fighter opposing the one drug
strategy that has been proven to fight crime.

3.

One way to appreciate just how far apart these two positions are is to
consider a relatively simple question. How much fun are drugs? One of the
principal claims of what used to be called the "drug culture" was that
drugs are really, really fun, and the parents' movement has always taken
that claim at face value. Nancy Reagan's "Just Say No" campaign was about
abstinence because the assumption was that, to the overwhelming majority of
teenagers, even the smallest initial exposure to pot or cocaine or heroin
would prove irresistible. This same assumption is behind the drug
counter-revolution's hostility to treatment. William Bennett, Massing
writes, simply didn't believe that anyone addicted to drugs would
voluntarily decide to try to end their addiction. The addict, as Bennett
put it in one of his early speeches, "is a man or woman whose power to
exercise such rational volition has already been seriously eroded by drugs,
and whose life is instead organized largely - even exclusively - around the
pursuit and satisfaction of his addiction." Bennett would never have used
the word "fun," of course, in connection with drug use, but that's
essentially what he's implying. Drugs are so appealing that why would
anyone want to give them up?

There is something poignant about this attitude. The great unspoken anxiety
of those who do not use drugs as adolescents (and I'm assuming Nancy Reagan
and William Bennett fall into that category) is that they are missing out
on something fabulous, and, of course, it is this very same anxiety that
drives those who are using drugs toward even more extravagant claims on
their behalf. It is a mutually reinforcing loop, but it has no particular
grounding in reality because, of course, drugs really aren't that much
fun - at least not in the way that straitlaced adolescents and anxious
parents think that they are. This is a critical point, but so often
overlooked that it is worth examining in more detail.

Earlier this year, for example, a group of researchers at the University of
Michigan led by the psychiatrist Ovide Pomerleau published a short report
in the journal Addiction. Pomerleau and his colleagues polled four separate
groups of people about how they felt when they first experimented with
cigarettes: heavy smokers, light smokers, ex-smokers, and never-smokers.
What they found is that there are huge differences in how much pleasure
people derived from their first few cigarettes. In fact, the amount of
pleasure neophyte smokers experienced correlates closely with how heavily
they ended up smoking later in life. Of the people who experimented with
cigarettes a few times and then never smoked again, only about a quarter
got any sort of pleasant "high" from their first cigarette. Of the
ex-smokers - people who smoked for a while but later managed to quit - about
a third got a pleasurable buzz. Of people who were light smokers, about
half remembered their first cigarette well. Of the heavy smokers, though,
78 percent remembered getting a good buzz from their first few puffs. How
much people smoke depends, in other words, an awful lot on how much they
like smoking.

Put that way, the conclusion of the study sounds really obvious and almost
silly. But it's an important point. We often assume that the reason most
teens don't take up smoking is that we have successfully armed them against
the powerful lure of nicotine: convinced them that it is a dangerous and
filthy habit, made cigarettes hard for minors to buy, made it impossible to
smoke inside buildings or in restaurants. What Pomerleau is suggesting is
that for an awful lot of us - not all of us, of course, but many of
us - cigarettes don't present a powerful lure at all. We don't start smoking
because smoking makes us feel sick.

This is true, in some sense, for nearly all addictive drugs. In the 1996
Household Survey on Drug Abuse, 1.1 percent of those polled said that they
had used heroin at least once. But only 18 percent of those had used it in
the past year, and only 9 percent had used it in the past month. That is
not the profile of a universally likable drug. The figures for cocaine are
even more striking. Of those who have ever tried cocaine, less than 1
percent - 0.9 percent - are regular users. Some of that other 99.1 percent
are, no doubt, recovered addicts, people who painfully reclaimed their
lives from the grip of the drug. But an awful lot of them are people who
snorted once or twice and were left either ambivalent or nauseated. Even a
drug as mild as pot evokes as many negative reactions as positive: some
people find it delightful. Lots of others complain it makes them paranoid
or simply puts them to sleep.

The only drug that gets consistently high marks is Ecstasy. Ecstasy is
wonderful. It makes you love everyone without reservation. But that's also
why the appeal of Ecstasy is necessarily limited. Who really wants to love
everyone without reservation? The first - and only - time I used cocaine was
at a New Year's Eve party in Toronto, in the late 1980s. Someone pulled me
into a back room and offered me a line. I snorted half of it, and waited
for my world to explode. When it didn't, I snorted the second half, and for
my pains all I got was an itchy nose and a bad headache.

This is not to say that no one likes drugs. Of course, some people do. It's
just that what is most striking about almost all drugs is how
extraordinarily selective their appeal is. 99.1 percent of cocaine
experimenters don't go on to become users. We, as a society, take that as
evidence of something intrinsically problematic with cocaine. But doesn't
it really suggest that there is something intrinsically problematic with
those 0.9 percent who become regular users? This is really the issue at the
heart of the great, irreconcilable difference between the Jaffe camp and
the parents' camp. It isn't just that the parents think that drugs are
fun - when they are not - it's that parents think the problem is about drugs,
when it is really about users.

This same mistake is made by those who take the libertarian position on
drugs, and who believe that most of the problems associated with drugs are
the result of the fact that they are illegal. In his new book Drug Crazy,
Mike Gray paints a lively and quite convincing portrait of all the
corruption and futility of drug prohibition. He makes a devastating
argument against interdiction, for example, pointing out that all of the
heroin consumed in the United States every year can fit inside a single
steel cargo container. (To put that in perspective, in a typical month the
port of Los Angeles alone processes about 130,000 cargo containers from
incoming ships, of which customs inspectors have the time and resources to
inspect only about 400.) These are fine arguments. But when Gray starts to
actually talk about the people who use these drugs, he - like so many on the
exact opposite end of the spectrum - starts to lose his way.

Gray tells the story, for instance, of Dr. William Stewart Halsted, one of
the founders of the Johns Hopkins Hospital. Halsted was a world-famous
surgeon, renowned for his skill and ingenuity, a happily married man with
an "exemplary" private life. He was also, unbeknownst to almost everyone, a
morphine addict for all of his adult life, and despite years of trying, was
never able to cut his addiction to less than 180 milligrams of morphine a
day. Halsted's story, Gray writes,

is revealing not only because it shows that a
morphine addict on the proper maintenance dose
can be productive. It also illustrates the incredible
power of the drug in question. Here was a man
with almost unlimited resources - moral, physical,
financial, medical - who tried everything he could
think of to quit, and he was hooked until the day
he died.

The first of these three sentences is undoubtedly true. Halsted was taking
morphine to break his previous addiction to cocaine, the same way that
addicts today take methadone to break their addiction to heroin, and these
kinds of maintenance regimens can, under ideal circumstances, permit
addicts to lead normal lives. That was part of the logic behind the Jaffe
model. The second sentence, however, is simply wrong. Halsted's addiction
tells you nothing whatever about the incredible power of the drug in
question, because there are plenty of people who are able to quit cocaine
without the need of additional drugs, and plenty more who would have found
it possible to break a morphine habit. All Halsted's addiction tells you is
something about Halsted: that he was one of those people - like the 0.9
percent of cocaine experimenters who take up the drug regularly, or the
handful in Pomerleau's study who took their first puffs and liked it - who
have some kind of intrinsic affinity for addictive drugs. We don't really
know, of course, what precisely this intrinsic affinity is. Some of it is
probably genetic. There are also probably certain environmental effects
that can powerfully reinforce these addictive tendencies. The point is
simply that addiction is not a universal response to drugs.

Massing brackets his discussion of the politics of the drug war with a
detailed and fascinating profile of a drug treatment referral center in
Harlem. He follows, in particular, a woman named Yvonne Hamilton, charting,
over the course of several years, her ultimately successful battle against
cocaine addiction. Two of Yvonne's siblings, Massing tells us, turned out
well: one was a pastor in Queens and another a high school teacher. But
Yvonne was in trouble from the beginning. She was sampling her mother's
tranquilizers and bottles of liquor while barely into her teens. In junior
high, she began smoking pot. In high school, she took LSD, and then after
school, while working, she developed a drinking problem. When, in 1985, she
first freebased cocaine, her life changed forever. "At once," Massing
writes, "she felt a burst of pleasure go off in her brain. It quickly
surged down her body, tingling her skin, roiling her stomach, grabbing her
groin. 'I'll do this drug until the day I die,' she told herself."

Yvonne Hamilton is different from most of us: different from her family,
and different from most people in East Harlem, for whom the abundantly
available drugs on the street there hold no particular appeal. What the
parents do not understand is that the key to the drug war is not about
broadcasting antidrug messages, or teaching kids how to say no, or crawling
around your backyard looking for roach clips. It is, as Massing argues
persuasively, about understanding precisely what makes people like Yvonne
Hamilton different, and giving her the kind of help and attention her
difference demands.
-------------------------------------------------------------------

Marijuana Can Affect Fertility, Damaging Sperm, U.S. Study Says
(A Reuters article in The Toronto Star uncritically passes along
Tuesday's news about the latest drug-warrior junk science
from the United States suggesting cannabis may have medical utility
as a birth-control adjunct - plus commentary from list subscribers, including
a letter to The Toronto Star faulting the newspaper for publishing propaganda
from US ideologues.)

Date: Thu, 17 Dec 1998 09:37:29 -0500
To: mattalk@islandnet.com
From: Dave Haans (haans@chass.utoronto.ca)
Subject: TorStar: Marijuana can affect fertility,
damaging sperm, U.S. study says
Newshawk: Dave Haans
Source: The Toronto Star (Canada)
Pubdate: Thursday, December 17, 1998
Page: A34
Website: http://www.thestar.com
Contact: lettertoed@thestar.com, ombud@thestar.com

Marijuana can affect fertility, damaging sperm, U.S. study says

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- Scientists say they have shown how active
ingredients in marijuana can affect fertility by damaging sperm function.

Natural body compounds known as anandamides, similar to compounds found in
marijuana, may be important for helping sperm get to and fertilize an egg,
Herbert Schuel and colleagues at the University of Buffalo in New York said
yesterday. And cannabinoids in marijuana are similar enough to anandamides
to confuse the body.

Human sperm contain receptors, a kind of chemical doorway, that the active
ingredients in cannabis can use.

"We've known for 30 years that very heavy marijuana smoking has a drastic
effect on sperm production within the testis, which can lead to higher rates
of infertility," Schuel said. "Our new findings suggest that anandamides and
THC in marijuana smoke may also affect sperm functions required for
fertilization in the female reproductive tract."

It was known for years the cannabinoids in marijuana are similar enough to
anandamides to use the same chemical doorways into brain cells. Schuel's
group found sperm also carry receptors for anandamides, and cannabinoids
will attach themselves to these receptors, given a chance.

***

Date: Thu, 17 Dec 1998 10:32:41 -0500
To: mattalk@islandnet.com
From: Dave Haans (haans@chass.utoronto.ca)
Subject: Sent to the Star's Ombud: A few questions

I sent this off to the Toronto Star's Ombud, regarding the article they
published today. If you'd like to try to get through to the Star that
these articles are really misleading, and shouldn't be reprinted, the email
address is ombud@thestar.com. Every time there is a major screw-up by The
Star (or even just something that irks a lot of people), the Ombud
publishes a column explaining the Star's position.

Sent message:

Hi!

I have a few questions regarding the article, "Marijuana can affect
fertility, damaging sperm, U.S. study says" (Thursday, Dec 17, 1998).

Every time the results of one of these studies is published, it is clear
that there is a lot of information which is left out. As a graduate
student with a primary interest in drugs and drugs policy, I often find
that the information left out is critical to the integrity of the study.
In this case, the name of the journal wasn't even published. That's
information which is *always* available in other medical or science
articles. How sure is The Star in this case that the research wasn't
simply written on a chalk board or napkin in Buffalo? :)

A further problem is that these articles are never immediately available to
researchers who may be interested in looking at the original source. It
seems to be a continuing tradition of anti-drug 'researchers' to report
their findings in a journal that won't be available for weeks, or sometimes
months -- allowing the often misrepresented or purely ludicrous findings to
be accepted without criticism. If you needed a reason to *not* reprint
these articles (which are always news service articles originating in the
U.S.), this is it.

Getting to the point, the present article does not say in which journal the
report was (or will be) published; it does not say whether this is an
animal or human study; it does not say what the sample size was; it does
not say whether these results are even applicable to humans!

In fact, a quick search on the Internet shows that Dr. Schuel is primarily
interested in the effects of marijuana-like substances on the sperm of sea
urchins -- I have included the information from his own university below,
as Note 1. It is quite likely that the present study has also used sea
urchins as subjects -- a major point that was not included in the Reuters
article.

If I may indulge you further, you may recall that I raised similar concerns
about a Star article (Teenagers at risk from marijuana, U.S. study says --
April 1, 1998). As it turns out, the newspaper article made the claim that
marijuana was dangerous for at-risk youths. After finally being able to
read the source article, I found that the subjects involved were referred
to the study by justice workers; they all had a history of severe substance
abuse problems (over 50% had, by age 15, consumed heroin, cocaine, tobacco,
alcohol, and hallucinogenics -- clearly not 'typical' youth); and that the
article failed to make a strong case for marijuana's 'dangerousness' --
especially in light of the serious poly-drug use these teenagers were
experiencing. All of these factors (and these aren't the only ones)
seriously damage the acceptability of the findings.

So, we read another article that makes some bold claims, yet doesn't give
even a minimum of information needed to determine whether what the article
says is true, or another case of U.S. drug war propaganda. The fact that
the article states that "we've known for 30 years that very heavy marijuana
smoking has a drastic effect of sperm production in the testis, which can
lead to higher rates of infertility" is an example of a claim that has not
been substantiated. In fact, there have been no epidemiological studies
which have shown increased infertility in marijuana-using *humans*, and
studies of overall reproductive rates have found no reduction of
reproductive rates in countries where a higher rate of marijuana use is
found. In short, the claim above is unfounded, and misleads the reader as
a matter of course.

I would be very interested in your views on this. It seems to me that The
Star would not publish articles which are known to include false or even
seriously misleading information -- however, The Star has indeed published
many articles following the same broad outline as this one. Since a drug,
and not a person, is involved, The Star may be less likely to be critical
of these types of articles. However, The Star still should, in my opinion,
seriously evaluate its science reporting in cases of articles like this --
does The Star want to try to make sure it gets its facts right, or does it
prefer to expend less energy, and continue to be used to transmit U.S. drug
war propaganda? I feel that this is a valid question to ask.

Cheers,

Dave Haans

Contact info:

[snip]

Note 1:

From: http://wings.buffalo.edu/smbs/acb/anafacul.html#Schuel

SCHUEL, Dr. Herbert

Analysis of the processes of fertilization and early embryonic development
using sea urchin gametes as a model system; acrosome reaction in sperm;
reduction of sperm fertility by cannabinoids; exocytosis of the cortical
granules in eggs; the prevention of polyspermy; and assembly of the
fertilization envelope.

1. Schuel, H., Berkery, D., Schuel, R., Chang, M., Zimmerman, A.M., and
Zimmerman, S. Reduction of the fertilizing capacity of sea urchin sperm by
cannabi-noids derived from marihuana. I. Inhibition of the acrosome
reaction induced by egg jelly. Mol. Reprod. Devel., 29:51-59, 1991.

2. Chang, M., and Schuel, H. Reduction of the fertilizing capacity of sea
urchin sperm by cannabinoids derived from marihuana. II. Ultrastructural
changes associated with inhibition of the acrosome reaction. Mol. Reprod.
Devel., 29:60-71, 1991.

3. Chang, M.C., Berkery, D., Laychock, S.G., and Schuel, H. Reduction of
the fertilizing capacity of sea urchin sperm by cannabinoids derived from
marihuana. III. Activation of phospholipase A2 in sperm homogenate by
delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol. Biochem. Pharmacol. 42:899-904, 1991.

4. Schuel, H., Chang, M.C., Berkery, D., Schuel, R., Zimmerman, A.M., and
Zimmerman, S. Cannabinoids inhibit fertilization in sea urchins by reducing
the fertilizing capacity of sperm. Pharmacol. Biochem. Behav., 40:609-615,
1991.

5. Chang, M.C., Berkery, D., Schuel, R., Laychock, S.G., Zimmerman, A.M.,
Zimmerman, S., and Schuel, H. Evidence for a cannabinoid receptor in sea
urchin sperm and its role in blockade of the acrosome reaction Mol. Reprod.
Devel. 36:507-516, 1993.

6. Schuel, H., Goldstein, E., Mechoulam, R., Zimmerman, A.M., and
Zimmerman, S. Anandamide (arachidonylethanolamide) , a brain cannabinoid
receptor agonist, reduces sperm fertilizing capacity in sea urchins by
inhibiting the acrosome reaction. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, Vol. 91 pp.
7678-7682,1994.

Dave Haans
Graduate Student, University of Toronto
WWW: http://www.chass.utoronto.ca:8080/~haans/

***

Date: Thu, 17 Dec 1998 16:29:17 -0600
From: PatCohoe (patcohoe@mb.sympatico.ca)
To: mattalk@listserv.islandnet.com
Subject: marijuana can affect fertility us study says

I heard this story more than 20 years ago when I was still in high
school, and I believed it then. I don't believe it now. This was on
CBC radio. This is one of the more despicable lies told by the drug
warriors, a story told by big brother to frighten us helpless little
children. I am very impressed how virtually every anti marijuana study
comes with no references while the activists who respond to this
nonsense usually has some good references.

These jerks who publish this propaganda (the press) do not serve the
public, they help big brother muddy the waters. The greater the mass of
conflicting information the harder it is to make informed decisions, and
the easier it is for big brother to feed us his shit. Is the Star
article an indication of how well researched most press reports are?
This is a deeply disturbing thought.

Pat Cohoe

***

Date: Thu, 17 Dec 1998 20:57:59 -0500
From: Stephen Carpenter (sjc@delphi.com)
To: "DRCTalk Reformers' Forum" (drctalk@drcnet.org)
Subject: Re: U.S. study shows marijuana can affect fertility
Mail-Followup-To: drctalk@drcnet.org
Reply-To: drctalk@drcnet.org
Sender: owner-drctalk@drcnet.org

Wooo hooo

A great Anti-oxident....
one of the best anti-emtics in the world.
Helps pain control, relaxing...

and it has been shown to help with birth control! woo hoo....I think this is
a definite positive to add to the list of medicinal uses :)

-Steve

***

Date: Fri, 18 Dec 1998 13:56:32 -0600
From: David C Dalton (tussis@playnet-kc.com)
To: "DRCTalk Reformers' Forum" (drctalk@drcnet.org)
Subject: Re: U.S. study shows marijuana can affect fertilit
Sender: owner-drctalk@drcnet.org

This is especially nice, considering that birth control pills commonly cause
"moodiness" and loss of libido.

I've never known marijuana to cause either of these problems. ; )

Tussis

***

From: "kenbo01@ozemail.com.au" (kenbo01@ozemail.com.au)
To: "DRCTalk Reformers' Forum" (drctalk@drcnet.org)
Date: Fri, 18 Dec 1998 02:22:50 "GMT"
Subject: U.S. study shows marijuana can affect fertility
Reply-To: drctalk@drcnet.org
Sender: owner-drctalk@drcnet.org

I haven't read the study described here, but from all the evidence
given, it seems that any effect cannabinoids might have on fertility
is temporary. Assuming the research is sound, I think this article
is important in clearing up misconceptions the public may have regarding
cannabis and fertility. Knowing that cannabinoids can affect fertility
by mimicking the body's natural anandamide, means that we know it is
not the result of some mysterious and undescribed "toxicity".

Regards

Ken

***

Date: Fri, 18 Dec 1998 21:45:26 -0700 (MST)
From: bryan krumm (krummb@unm.edu)
To: "DRCTalk Reformers' Forum" (drctalk@drcnet.org)
Subject: marijuana and fertility
Reply-To: drctalk@drcnet.org
Sender: owner-drctalk@drcnet.org

It stands to reason that if the endogenous cannabinoid sysytem is
tied to normal reproductive function, that dysfunction of the endogenous
cannabinoid system may lead to infertility which can only be corrected
through the use of exogenous cannabinoids. Perhaps marijuana smoking will
some day be found to cure certain types of infertility. I'm tired of
researchers making half-assed claims when we are just beginning to
understand the health related implications of the endogenous cannabinoid
system.

Bryan

***

Date: Thu, 17 Dec 1998 20:57:40 -0900
To: "DRCTalk Reformers' Forum" (drctalk@drcnet.org)
From: chuck@mosquitonet.com (Charles Rollins Jr)
Subject: Re: U.S. study shows marijuana can affect fertility
Sender: owner-drctalk@drcnet.org

I have always wonder why the US, and other WOD researchers seem to make a
lot of noise about Cannabis's natural estrogenic properties. Do they say at
least 300 plants also can claim the same. Plants like Oats, Rice and Coffee
also have estrogen mimickers in them.

What about research led by Jaques Auger? His research showed that males
decrease sperm quantity in progressing generations of the world's male
population.

A possible reason why, is no one in power really discuses this phenomenon
is, if you look at the research and take all factors into account we can not
blame cannabis. The most obvious reason for male sexual disfunction is toxic
waste. Waste that the world population is being exposed to at increasing
levels. If people started realizing this, then the same people whose
industries have bought our elected officials in DC would be held accountable.
They (the offending industries) have spent too much money to let that happen.

***

From: CroneSpeak@aol.com
Date: Fri, 18 Dec 1998 16:41:54 EST
To: "DRCTalk Reformers' Forum" (drctalk@drcnet.org)
Subject: Re: U.S. study shows marijuana can affect fertility
Sender: owner-drctalk@drcnet.org

In the Fall of '94, The Discover Channel did a special presentation of this
subject titled Assault on the Male. What was suggested is that the
scientists who are investigating world wide various phenomena associated with
this assault are pointing fingers at our petro-chemical industry. Plastics
extruded from oil are leaching estrogen into our air, even happening with
plastic test tubes in labs, according to this presentation. Run-off into our
waterways from petrochemically produced pesticides is increasing levels of
estrogen in our water to the point that male alligators are becoming female
alligators. : ) The conclusion, as I recall it, was a scientist shaking his
head in despair saying that the assault on the male is as serious as if we had
been bombed with nerve gases daily for 50 years with the only difference being
that the public would at least be aware of the planes overhead bombing them
and are not aware of the implications of this assault.

What amazed me after seeing this, is that it was never picked up by mainstream
media to warn the public. I was more naive in '94 about media than now. : )

Then, in '96, I think, I saw an article in Eugene Weekly, our local
alternative newspaper, on this subject pretty much duplicating the information
from the TV documentary.

Hmmmm...if we adopt the premise that everything is as it should be and the
Universe is unfolding perfectly and on time, then would the presence of such
high levels of estrogen in water and air be the planetary adjustment to
testosterone driven practices which threaten the integrity of the entire
biosystem? ; )

Blessed Be

Linda Lee

***

Date: Sat, 19 Dec 1998 01:48:16 -0900
To: "DRCTalk Reformers' Forum" (drctalk@drcnet.org)
From: chuck@mosquitonet.com (Charles Rollins Jr)
Subject: Re: U.S. study shows marijuana can affect fertility
Reply-To: drctalk@drcnet.org
Sender: owner-drctalk@drcnet.org

Robert,

>I'm not sure whether you're making a joke, Chuck. If not, what's so
>obvious about that?

No I am not making a joke, the one factor that has increased in the past 50
years is the earths inhabitants exposure to toxins. Between 1940 and 1982
the production of synthetic chemical increased around 350 times.

The decrease in the sperm count in the word male population was pretty well
documented several years back. Further more animal studies done by Dorothea
Sager at the University of Wisconsin showed that animals who were exposed to
PCB's at an early age generally were unsuccessful in reproducing even though
the males sperm appeared normal.

I realize that pretty much all of this is still theory. But the evidence
supporting this theory is continuing to mount. Don't you believe it's strange
that the government makes so much noise about cannabis and fertility
especially since (from what I have seen) most of their research was done in
the 1970's. Yet, this same government is ignoring mounting evidence,
evidence that has repeatedly been reproved over the years linking exposure
to toxins and infertility?

See ya
Chuck

***

From: HSLotsof@aol.com
Date: Sat, 19 Dec 1998 22:47:48 EST
To: "DRCTalk Reformers' Forum" (drctalk@drcnet.org)
Subject: fertility/toxicity
Reply-To: drctalk@drcnet.org
Sender: owner-drctalk@drcnet.org

Within the last few months it ws reported on national TV news that a UK study
had found in all UK rivers and in some signficantly that fish, previously
normally sexed, were now being found to be hermaphrodites. The science
presenters considered this research to be of major importance, thugh it
immediately disappeared from popular disucssion. The researchers could not
determine the cause of the sexual changes but, speculated one cause could be
the use by women of birth control pills, the active ingredients of which were
cleared via urine which after disposal through the sewerage systems may have
contaminated the rivers.

I am not necessarily agreeing with the conclusions but, we as a species are
certainly making a mess of this planet. Of course, the conclusion allowed men
to blame it on women.

Howard Lotsof
-------------------------------------------------------------------

MPP's view of the Monitoring the Future survey data (A press release
from the Marijuana Policy Project, in Washington, DC, critiques the federally
funded survey to be released tomorrow, and says the MPP's newly released
online report, "Marijuana Prohibition Has Not Curtailed Marijuana Use by
Adolescents," examines the government's data and concludes that criminal
penalties have had no effect on adolescent marijuana use rates. "When teen
marijuana use is down, the drug warriors say, 'Our policies are working, so
let's stay the course.' When use is up, they say, 'We blame the legalizers!
We must stay the course.' They can't have it both ways. It's time for the
drug warriors to take full responsibility and admit that prohibition is a
useless, wasteful, cruel strategy.")

Date: Fri, 18 Dec 1998 17:51:02 -0500
From: Marijuana Policy Project (MPP@MPP.ORG)
Organization: Marijuana Policy Project
Reply-To: MPP@MPP.ORG
Sender: owner-mppupdates@igc.apc.org
Subject: MPP's view of the Monitoring the Future survey data
To: MPPupdates@igc.org

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
DECEMBER 17, 1998

MPP Offers an Opposing Viewpoint to the Government's Spin
of the Monitoring the Future Survey Data

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Citing the Monitoring the Future survey's perennial
finding that adolescent marijuana use is exceedingly high, the Marijuana
Policy Project (MPP), a Washington, D.C.-based advocacy organization,
accused the government's prohibitionist marijuana strategy of failing to
achieve its stated goals.

MPP's newly released report, "Marijuana Prohibition Has Not
Curtailed Marijuana Use by Adolescents," examines the government's data
and concludes that criminal penalties have no net effect on adolescent
marijuana usage rates. (MPP's report is available on-line at
http://www.mpp.org/adolescents.html)

"Simply put, arresting adults does not prevent kids from smoking
pot," said Chuck Thomas, director of communications for the Marijuana
Policy Project. MPP's report found:

* "Monitoring the Future surveys since 1975 have consistently
found that about 85% of the nation's high school seniors
consider marijuana easy to obtain.[1] Fluctuations in the
severity of penalties and the number of arrests during
this time period have had no effect on availability."

* "The removal of criminal penalties for marijuana possession
in several states `has had virtually no effect either on
the marijuana use or on related attitudes' among young
people, according to government-funded researchers."[2]

"Marijuana prohibition is a fraud," said MPP's Chuck Thomas.
"The drug czar's claim that criminal penalties are necessary to prevent
adolescent marijuana use is simply not credible."

"Prohibition exists to fund prisons and drug enforcement
bureaucrats -- period," said Thomas. "Teens are the victims, because the
government spends valuable resources on the criminal justice system
instead of on effective education."

"When teen marijuana use is down, the drug warriors say, `Our
policies are working, so let's stay the course.' When use is up, they
say, `We blame the legalizers! We must stay the course'," said Thomas.
"They can't have it both ways. It's time for the drug warriors to take
full responsibility and admit that prohibition is a useless, wasteful,
cruel strategy."

There have been more than 10 million marijuana arrests in the
United States since 1970, with a record-breaking 695,201 arrests in
1997. About 85% of all marijuana arrests are for possession -- not
manufacture or distribution.[3]

[1] _National Survey Results on Drug Use from the Monitoring the Future
Study, 1975-1995_, L. Johnston, J. Bachman, and P. O'Malley; U.S.
Department of Health and Human Services, National Institute on Drug
Abuse; Washington, D.C.: USGPO, 1996.

[2] "Marijuana Decriminalization: The Impact on Youth, 1975-1980,"
_Monitoring the Future Occasional Paper 13_, L. Johnston, J. Bachman,
and P. O'Malley; Ann Arbor, MI: Institute for Social Research, 1981;
Pp. 27-29.

[3] FBI Uniform Crime Reports, _Crime in the United States: 1997_,
published in November 1998.

- END -

***

HOW TO SUPPORT THE MARIJUANA POLICY PROJECT:

To support MPP's work and receive the quarterly newsletter,
"Marijuana Policy Report," please send $25.00 annual
membership dues to:

Marijuana Policy Project (MPP)
P.O. Box 77492
Capitol Hill
Washington, D.C. 20013

http://www.mpp.org/membrshp.html
202-232-0442 FAX
-------------------------------------------------------------------

Stripped in search, teens sue police (The Toronto Sun
says two Toronto high school students are alleging they were strip-searched,
assaulted, threatened and falsely imprisoned while being investigated
for possessing marijuana.)

From: creator@islandnet.com (Matt Elrod)
To: mattalk@listserv.islandnet.com
Subject: Canada: Stripped in search, teens sue police
Date: Thu, 17 Dec 1998 08:21:58 -0800
Lines: 56
Newshawk: creator@mapinc.org
Source: Toronto Sun (Canada)
Contact: editor@sunpub.com
Pubdate: Thursday, December 17, 1998
Author: Sam Pazzano

Stripped in search, teens sue police

Two Toronto high school students are alleging they were
strip-searched, assaulted, threatened and falsely imprisoned while
being investigated for possessing marijuana.

The then 15-year-old and 16-year-old Downsview Secondary School
students are suing the officers involved, the police force, North York
school board, principal Meredith MacFarquhar and vice-principals Fred
Faber and Nancy White for $250,000 in total damages in the Feb. 12,
1998 incident.

Their lawyer, Sandra Antoniani, said they are suing for assault,
battery, negligence and false imprisonment.

"One of the defendant police officers indicated he would beat the
16-year-old if he shook his socks while removing them," their
statement of claim states.

The 15-year-old was forced to strip down to his underwear and had his
genitals observed and touched by officer Ricky Ramjattan in the
presence of White, a woman, the suit alleges.

The claim states the teen felt threatened when Ramjattan, said to the
other officers, "Did anyone remember to bring the rubber gloves?"

"No," replied the other two.

Then, an officer "further assaulted the teen by taking hold of his
underwear, pulling open the front area and looking at the genitals,
and then pulling the back and looking at his buttocks, the claim
states.

"He suffered embarrasment and humiliation at the hands of the
defendants (the police) and in being interrogated in a demeaning and
aggressive manner," the suit states.

"The parents were mortified because they were not advised and by the
way this was handled," Antoniani says.

No charges were laid and the police "had no basis in law for
arresting, confining or strip-searching the teens," the suit alleges.

It claims they were never told they were under arrest.

The police deny any improper touching or threatening of the teens and
school board spokesman Ross Parry says, "School officials did not do
anything improper."

Copyright (c) 1998, Canoe Limited Partnership.
-------------------------------------------------------------------

Woman Drops Pants In Airport After Customs' Smuggling Claim
(According to The Edmonton Sun, workers at Pearson Airport in Toronto
say a Toronto woman, 20, who arrived on a flight from Jamaica was accused
by a Customs officer of smuggling drugs in her body cavities. The irate woman
suddenly removed her pants and underwear in front of about 30 stunned people
and bent down in front of the officer to show she had no drugs,
workers said.)

Date: Thu, 17 Dec 1998 19:02:12 -0800
From: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org (MAPNews)
To: mapnews@mapinc.org
Subject: MN: Canada: Woman Drops Pants In Airport After Customs' Smuggling
Sender: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Reply-To: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Organization: Media Awareness Project http://www.mapinc.org/lists/
Newshawk: creator@mapinc.org
Pubdate: Thursday, 17 December 1998
Source: Edmonton Sun (Canada)
Contact: sun.letters@ccinet.ab.ca
Website: http://www.canoe.ca/EdmontonSun/
Forum: http://www.canoe.ca/Chat/home.html
Copyright: 1998, Canoe Limited Partnership.
Author: Tom Godfrey

WOMAN DROPS PANTS IN AIRPORT AFTER CUSTOMS' SMUGGLING CLAIM

TORONTO -- Canada Customs officers are looking into an incident in
which a black woman stripped below the waist in a public area of
Pearson airport after being accused of drug smuggling.

"It appears she disrobed voluntarily. It was a voluntary act in a very
public area," Customs spokesman Mark Butler said yesterday.

Butler said there was little he could say since the woman wasn't
charged, but sources said the incident happened three weeks after
Customs officers were accused of targeting black people for drugs upon
returning from Jamaica.

Airport workers said a Toronto woman, 20, arrived on the flight about
11 p.m. last Monday and a Terminal 2 Customs officer accused her of
smuggling drugs in body cavities.

The irate woman suddenly removed her pants and underwear in front of
about 30 stunned people and bent down in front of the officer to show
she had no drugs, workers said.

"There's no drugs and there's no need to search me," the angry woman
told the officer.

The workers said the woman was told to put back on her clothes and was
then taken to a local hospital to undergo drug checks before being
released.

Butler said X-rays and stool sample would be the usual drug checks at
hospital.

He said there's no report the woman was singled out or harassed, but
Customs officials are looking into the incident.

"We don't target passengers based on their ethnic background," Butler
said of searching Jamaican flights. But he added, "certain parts of
the world pose a higher risk for drugs."
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Huge Pot Bust York's Largest (The Toronto Sun says prohibition agents
raided two homes in Markham yesterday and shut down what police estimate was
the largest-ever pot-growing operation in York Region, with 6,000 plants.)

Date: Thu, 17 Dec 1998 19:02:14 -0800
From: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org (MAPNews)
To: mapnews@mapinc.org
Subject: MN: Canada: Huge Pot Bust York's Largest
Sender: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Reply-To: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Organization: Media Awareness Project http://www.mapinc.org/lists/
Newshawk: creator@mapinc.org
Pubdate: Thursday, 17 December 1998
Source: Toronto Sun (Canada)
Contact: editor@sunpub.com
Website: http://www.canoe.ca/TorontoSun/
Copyright: 1998, Canoe Limited Partnership.
Author: George Christopoulos

HUGE POT BUST YORK'S LARGEST

6,000 plants seized

Afternoon raids at two Markham homes yesterday shut down what police
estimate was the largest-ever pot-growing operation in York Region.

Narcotics officers found the basements, and the main floors of two
rented homes filled with nearly 6,000 marijuana plants.

The noon bust all but shut down the estimated $6-million-a-year
pot-growing operation, Sgt. John Sheldon said last night.

"This has put a major dent in the drug-trafficking trade in York
Region," he said. "It's a relief that none of this stuff hit the streets."

One home on Soho Cres., in the McCowan Rd.-16th Ave. area, had nearly
1,700 plants growing in the basement alone.

"It was an elaborate, sophisticated operation," Sheldon
said.

A 37-year-old Toronto man was arrested at a nearby Hewlett Cres. home
where officers discovered a second hydroponic marijuana-growing operation.

His name was being withheld until later today for investigative
reasons. The man is charged with possession for the purpose of
trafficking, possession of a controlled substance and two counts of
producing a controlled substance.

"There was one floor that was for pot seedlings," Sheldon
said.

Home-grown marijuana contains on average about 25% THC, the chemical
that causes the high. Field-grown Mexican dope, by comparison,
averages 5%.

Sheldon could not say how potent the seized pot was.
-------------------------------------------------------------------

Today in the history of the drug war (A list subscriber notes in 1973,
the Canadian deputy minister of health confirmed that Health Department
officials had been ordered to make no comment on the the LeDain Report.)
Link to earlier story
From: creator@islandnet.com (Matt Elrod) To: maptalk@mapinc.org, mattalk@listserv.islandnet.com Subject: Re: MAP: Today in the history of the drug war Date: Thu, 17 Dec 1998 08:20:48 -0800 Lines: 5 December 17, 1973 Dr. Maurice LeClair, deputy minister of health, confirmed that Health Department officials had been ordered to make no comments on the final report of the LeDain commission on the non-medical use of drugs.
-------------------------------------------------------------------

New Zealand Select Committee Report Recommends Law Review
(A press release from New Zealand NORML says New Zealand's parliamentary
inquiry into the mental health effects of cannabis has resulted in a
recommendation that "the Government review the appropriateness of existing
policy on cannabis and its use and reconsider the legal status of cannabis.")
Link to earlier story
Date: Thu, 17 Dec 1998 17:09:27 +1300 From: The Hemp Store (hempstor@ihug.co.nz) Subject: NZ: select committee report recommends law review! To: NORML NZ (hempstor@ihug.co.nz) Reply-To: pot-news@va.com.au This is it - the one we have been waiting for, and its good! Everyone - this means YOU! - get on the phone to talkback radio, write letters to your MP, the Prime Minister Jenny Shipley, Leader of the Opposition Helen Clark, Clem Simich (Minister of Police), Bill English (Minister of Health), write to newspapers, do whatever you can to publicise this report and make the legislative review a reality. The full report should be at Bennet's Government Bookshops tomorrow (Friday 18/12). I don't know yet if it will be on the net. Check http://www.parliament.govt.nz/ or http://www.executive.govt.nz/ or http://www.moh.govt.nz/ As soon as I can track down an electronic version of the report - or type it in - I'll send it out to you all. NORML NZ's press release follows.... kia kaha, Chris Fowlie *** NORML National Organisation for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, New Zealand Inc. PO Box 3307 Auckland NZ Tel: (09) 302-5255 Fax: (09) 303-1309 MEDIA RELEASE -- DECEMBER 17, 1998 INQUIRY INTO THE MENTAL HEALTH EFFECTS OF CANNABIS NORML welcomes recommendation to review the law and demands an immediate moratorium on arresting cannabis users and legislative change from the Government The National Organisation for the Reform of Marijuana Laws today welcomed the report of Parliament's Health Select Committee that has recommended "the Government review the appropriateness of existing policy on cannabis and its use and reconsider the legal status of cannabis." "On behalf of taxpayers and cannabis users, we call upon the Minister of Police to tell his troops to stop arresting responsible cannabis users, and let them concentrate on real crime. We have the second highest drug arrest rate in the world - a cannabis bust every 35 minutes - and that's something the Government and the police force should be ashamed of." "We sincerely hope the Government will heed the recommendations of the Inquiry, which we note is the first held here since 1973. We've had sixty years of prohibition, and all it's done is cause more problems than it's solved. If they do not take action on these matters, including reviewing the legal status of cannabis, then it will reveal that they really do not care about the health and well-being of New Zealanders. "We need legislative change in order to fully address the problems raised by the report. It is only through an environment of tolerance and compassion, rather than persecution and punishment, that we can help people who experience problems related to their drug use. "NORML recommends allowing cannabis users to grow their own plants, and the development of a legally-comtrolled and regulated market for cannabis products, similar to the Dutch-style cannabis cafes. After twenty years of tolerance, drug use in the Netherlands is now amongst the lowest in the world, and their health professionals are much better placed to deal with any problems that do arise. "It should be noted the committee's recommendations were almost all related to improving education, research and treatment services. The only recommendation relating to the criminal status of cannabis is that that should be reviewed. NORML has been lobbying for such a review for decades, and we would be only too pleased to help the Government formulate a new approach to cannabis use in New Zealand. "This Inquiry heard that many of the harms often associated with cannabis use are actually created by its prohibition, while the actual harms presented by cannabis have been exaggerated" he said. "The justification for arresting cannabis users is simply not valid. We need to stop punishing all cannabis users, help those who have problems, and leave the rest alone. "The Health Committee are saying cannabis should be a health issue, not a criminal law enforcement issue. This is something NORML has been saying for years, and we recommended that to the Inquiry, as did numerous other groups such as the Ministry of Health and the NZ Drug Foundation. "Prohibition only serves to divert police from real crime, creates additional crime and violence, and drives cannabis use underground and away from health professionals. Cannabis prohibition has not stopped anyone from using cannabis, but it has created unnecessary harm." said Chris Fowlie. FOR MORE INFORMATION OR ADDITIONAL COMMENT: NORML spokesperson Chris Fowlie 09 302-5255 Health Committee Chair Brian Neeson 04 471-9999 Health Committee Clerk David Wilson 04 471-9524 *** NORML NZ P.O. Box 3307 Auckland New Zealand Office: +64 9 302-5255 Fax: +64 9 303-1309 NORML New Zealand http://www.norml.org.nz NORML TV on the net http://www.ntv.co.nz Subscribe to NORML News Online! send mailto:hempstor@ihug.co.nz with 'subscribe' in subject line
-------------------------------------------------------------------

Parole Officers Back Heroin Trial (An op-ed in The Daily Telegraph,
in Australia, by Greg Oates, the president of the Probation and Parole
Officers' Association of New South Wales, says "We are filling our jails
in NSW faster than they can be built. There is no hope of stemming the flow
of illicit drugs into the country. People are not safe on the streets
and parents mourn their children, dead or imprisoned. It is a disaster.
We believe all political parties have a moral obligation to stop politicking
on this subject and to introduce an on-going inquiry into how to combat
the use of illicit drugs with emphasis on early intervention, treatment
and harm minimisation. We support a heroin trial.")

Date: Thu, 17 Dec 1998 19:01:42 -0800
From: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org (MAPNews)
To: mapnews@mapinc.org
Subject: MN: Australia: OPED: Parole Officers Back Heroin Trial
Sender: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Reply-To: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Organization: Media Awareness Project http://www.mapinc.org/lists/
Newshawk: kenbo01@ozemail.com.au (Ken Russell)
Source: Daily Telegraph (Australia)
Contact: dtmletr@matp.newsltd.com
Pubdate: Thu, 17 Dec 1998
Source: Daily Telegraph (Australia)
Page: 12
Author: Greg Oates

PAROLE OFFICERS BACK HEROIN TRIAL

GOOD on the Lord Mayors for their stance on a heroin trial (Daily
Telegraph, December 15). There is another aspect to the heroin problem
which they have highlighted.

Our members deal with thousands of people who have become the criminal
flotsam and jetsam of prohibition policies.

We are often unable to assist them to live within the law, because of
meagre resources, and have little choice but to bring about their
incarceration or their return to prison when they fail again.

We are filling our jails in NSW faster than they can be built.

There is no hope of stemming the flow of illicit drugs into the country.
People are not safe on the streets and parents mourn their children, dead
or imprisoned. It is a disaster.

We believe all political parties have a moral obligation to stop
politicking on this subject and to introduce an on-going inquiry into how
to combat the use of illicit drugs with emphasis on early intervention,
treatment and harm minimisation. We support a heroin trial.

GREG OATES President, Probation and Parole Officers' Association of NSW
-------------------------------------------------------------------

Alcohol And Drug Problems Rife In Jails (The Advertiser, in Australia,
says a national study conducted by the Australian Medical Association
has found that up to 83 per cent of the nation's prisoners continue to suffer
from alcohol and other drug problems while in jail, and as many as one
in four inmates continues to use heroin when in jail, while half of all
prisoners suffer from hepatitis C and hepatitis B.)

Date: Thu, 17 Dec 1998 19:01:58 -0800
From: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org (MAPNews)
To: mapnews@mapinc.org
Subject: MN: Australia: Alcohol And Drug Problems Rife In Jails
Sender: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Reply-To: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Organization: Media Awareness Project http://www.mapinc.org/lists/
Newshawk: kenbo01@ozemail.com.au (Ken Russell)
Source: Advertiser, The (Australia)
Contact: advedit@ozemail.com.au
Website: http://www.advertiser.com.au/
Pubdate: 17 Dec 1998
Page: 7
Author: Mark Steene

ALCOHOL AND DRUG PROBLEMS RIFE IN JAILS

UP TO 83 per cent of the nation's prisoners continue to suffer from alcohol
and drug problems while in jail, the Australian Medical Association says.

Up to one in four inmates continue to use heroin when in jail, while half
of all prisoners suffer from hepatitis C and hepatitis B, a national study
conducted by the AMA has found.

The study's findings will be used as the basis for a meeting soon between
the State Human Services Minister, Mr Brown, and the AMA'S South Australian
president Dr Rod Pearce.

Mr Brown said yesterday: "The Government is very conscious of the health
risks in prisons and has already implemented a number of policies to try to
reduce the transmission of disease."

"We're also very aware of the need to provide health and medical treatment
to cope with the special problems of prisons.

"One particular problem is the very high proportion of Aboriginal prisoners
who need specialist services."

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[End]

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