1999 News
About Cannabis and Drug Policy

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Tuesday, June 8, 1999:
• Woman convicted of growing marijuana wants medical dispensation (The Associated Press says Pamela Jill Stafsholt of Grants Pass, Oregon, who was convicted on Dec. 3, the same day the Oregon Medical Marijuana Act took effect, has petitioned to have her terms of probation changed so she can use cannabis to relieve the nausea caused by her treatment for arthritis. Otherwise, Deputy District Attorney Allan Smith will have her sent to prison for failing a drug test, apparently because she lawfully took the prescription drug, Marinol.)
• Hemp-Growing Gardens Proposed for S.F. (The San Francisco Chronicle says Supervisor Mark Leno proposed Monday that nonprofit gardens in the combined city and county be allowed to grow and process industrial hemp.)
• Orange County prosecutor among dozen arrested on drug charges (The Associated Press says Deputy District Attorney Bryan Ray Kazarian, 35, is being held without bail and faces a life sentence if convicted of tipping off drug ring leaders.)
• Drug czar backs medical cannabis (The BBC says the British government's drug czar, Keith Hellawell, has told BBC News Online he supports the use of cannabis for medicinal purposes. He also said it would not be "a tragedy" if one of his six grandchildren experimented with drugs. And he rejected the notion of a "slippery slope" from cannabis use to drugs that, in his phrase, cause "most harm" - heroin and cocaine.)
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  Monday, June 7, 1999:

• Philip Morris Targets Punitives (The Nation recaps a recent Associated Press article about lawyers for the tobacco company putting Oregon Attorney General Hardy Myers on notice they intend to dispute the state's 60 percent share of a recent judgment against the company by a jury in Multnomah County due to the $206 billion tobacco settlement in November between the industry and 46 state attorneys general.)
• Phoenix police admit inflating street value of drug seizures (The Associated Press says the $500 million value police placed on nearly 997 kilograms of cocaine they seized last month works out to about $500 per gram. The DEA estimates the street value of cocaine at about $80 to $160 per gram. Phoenix police say the inflated values serve a purpose. "The significance is to try to say what the impact is on society," said Phoenix police Lt. Al Thiele. "That's how much they have to steal to pay for it.")
• Ohio State 1999 Hempfest (Heath Wintz of the marijuana-law reform group, For A Better Ohio, describes the 12th annual Spring Hempfest May 5 at Ohio State University in Columbus. Things went off without a hitch. Even the OSU police were supportive.)
• Ready supply and upper limits (A list subscriber makes some good points explaining why medical marijuana patients are concerned about state ballot initiatives sponsored by Americans for Medical Rights that severely restrict the number of plants patients can cultivate.)
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  Sunday, June 6, 1999:

• On The Road To Addiction? (A letter to the editor of the Oregonian expresses curiousity about whether Oregon's first authorized medical-marijuana user, No. 00001, will suffer all the dire consequences the government has been warning about for the last 75 years.)
• Smokers, not industry, pay (A letter to the editor of the Oregonian points out who is really paying for the multistate tobacco-industry settlement - $4 a carton more since December. And it looks like none of the settlement money will be be used to address smokers' health problems.)
• Prisons Near Capacity (According to the Oakland Tribune, Robert Presley, a former cop and California state senator who heads the state's correctional agency, says that in just two years, "every nook and cranny" in the state's huge prison system will be filled with inmates. There are 160,000 inmates now, eight times the 1980 prison population. And despite massive prison construction in the 1980s and early 1990s, all but a few inmates are doubled up in cells designed for one person or housed in gymnasiums and other temporary quarters. Legislative Democrats quickly trashed Gov. Davis' prison construction program. Republicans are not displeased with Democrats' no-prisons posture. "Let's say a federal judge steps in and begins releasing inmates and let's say one of them rapes and murders someone," muses one senior Republican legislator. "Who'll get the blame?")
• Appeals Court Rules In Favor Of Pot Advocate (The Hawaii Tribune-Herald expands on Tuesday's news about the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that Hawaiian hemp activist Aaron Anderson is entitled to bring a civil lawsuit against Hawaii County. The court said Anderson provided enough evidence to show that prosecutor Jay Kimura either knew about alleged ongoing constitutional violations by former deputy prosecutor Kay Iopa and approved of them, or was deliberatey indifferent to them.)
• Terence McKenna ~ New Update (A list subscriber forwards a note from the ailing psychedelic author's brother. Future bulletins will be posted at a web site.)
• Ethics panel rejects fine of UF professor as 'pitifully low' (The Miami Herald says the Florida Commission on Ethics on Thursday rejected a $2,000 fine for Charles Thomas, a criminology professor at the University of Florida who earned $3 million as a consultant to Wackenhut while he was also being paid to advise the state on prison policy. The decision means Thomas, a nationally recognized expert on prison privatization, now faces a much stiffer fine for his conflict of interests, perhaps as high as $30,000.)
• Why Losing Food Stamps Is Now Part of the War on Drugs (An op-ed in the Los Angeles Times by Herman Schwartz, a professor of constitutional law at American University and author of "Packing the Courts: the Conservatives' Campaign to Rewrite the Constitution," explains the cruel, counterproductive consequences that have resulted from an amendment by Sen. Phil Gramm to the 1996 welfare law. No one convicted of a felony state or federal drug law after Aug. 22, 1996, can ever get food stamps again. It makes no difference if the offender is sick, pregnant, a parent of a small child, in a treatment program, has been drug-free for years, is a first-time offender, works or is seeking work, a student or anything else. Nothing the offender can do will restore food-stamp eligibility, and administrators are allowed no discretion. There is one escape hatch: A state may choose not to go along with the federal ban or modify it.)
• Viagra Siezed In Drug Raids (Scotland on Sunday says Tayside police detectives found a stash of the impotence drug during dawn swoops in the Dundee area, proving a black market exists for it.)
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  Saturday, June 5, 1999:

• Supply firm questions timing of police raid (The Oregonian says the Marijuana Task Force on Thursday raided the American Agriculture hydroponics supply store in southeast Portland, as well as the homes of the store's owner and manager. No arrests were forthcoming, suggesting nothing was found except an excuse to close the business and intimidate the owners by confiscating computers and business records. The raids came a month after a judge questioned why police had investigated the business for four years without bringing charges, and three months after it filed a federal lawsuit over the MTF's illegal use of a "trap and trace" telephone tap. During a court hearing May 4, Officer Nathan Shropshire testified that the Marijuana Task Force was formed in February 1995 for the purpose of investigating American Agriculture and owner Richard H. Martin Jr. When asked whether the purpose of the task force had changed, Shropshire said no.)
• Sonoma Medical Marijuana Benefit June 18 (A news release from California NORML says a benefit concert for the Sonoma Alliance for Medical Marijuana will feature Midnight Sun and Biocentrics 7 pm-midnight at the Sebastopol Community Center.)
• Citizenship Revoked Without Court (The Associated Press says the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco ruled Friday that federal officials don't have to go to court before revoking an immigrant's citizenship for failure to disclose past crimes or arrests. The decision overturns a nationwide injunction issued last year by U.S. District Judge Barbara Rothstein of Seattle that protected more than 4,500 naturalized citizens from administrative revocation of their citizenship by the INS. One of the nine lead plaintiffs' "arrest" was for investigation of possessing a marijuana plant that was actually a fern.)
• Tiburon NORML Party June 26 (A news release from California NORML says a $100-per-ticket benefit for national NORML at the home of Dr. Richard Miller in the East Bay community of Tiburon will feature R. Keith Stroup, Ethan Nadelmann, Marsha Rosenbaum, Tony Serra and other reform luminaries.)
• Interview Not Exactly Impromptu (Houston Chronicle columnist John Makeig describes his unusual interview with Harris County Court-at-Law Judge Janice Law, who wisely protected herself by dragging in a court reporter and her personal lawyer. Apparently the judge was feeling defensive about a jury that acquitted a teen whose car allegedly smelled of marijuana, even though there was no smoke. The judge defended her decision to let the jury smell a plastic baggie of weed seized from the car.)
• Alcohol's Effect On Fetuses Discussed (The Wisconsin State Journal covers a lecture Friday by Kenneth Lyons Jones of the University of California at San Diego to about 100 other developmental-toxicology scientists attending a conference at UW-Madison. "Fetal alcohol syndrome is the most common recognizable cause of mental retardation in the United States. It's a cause that is totally preventable," he said. Showing slides of affected children, Jones noted mass media often decry effects of illegal drugs such as marijuana, cocaine and heroin. "You can tie them all in a bundle and they don't have anywhere near the effect that alcohol does on the unborn baby," Jones said. While the mass media have been demonizing illegal drug users, the number of expectant mothers who admitted drinking alcohol increased from 12.4 percent in 1991 to 16.3 percent in 1995.)
• Judging Youth (A letter to the editor of the Chicago Tribune observes that Martin Luther King Jr.'s dream that someday young people would be judged by their character has been supplanted by the reality of judging young people by their urine. Adults are telling youth that negative drug test results are much more important than positive actions.)
• Kentuckians Get Out The Word About Hemp (The Lexington Herald-Leader says the Woodford County Chamber of Commerce, with Mayor Fred Siegelman's blessing, sponsored a ribbon-cutting yesterday at the new Kentucky Hemp Museum in Versailles. Ironically, the activists who belong to the Kentucky Hemp Growers Cooperative Association have been much more successful at promoting reform bills in at least 12 other states than at home. The problem has always been the Drug Enforcement Administration, but even the DEA is now coming around. For example, the agency has stopped arguing that hemp cannot be distinguished in the field from marijuana. Discussions, which have included the White House drug czar, General Barry McCaffrey, are apparently at a delicate stage.)
• A Conspirator for the Constitution (Washington Post columnist Nat Hentoff says John Whitehead, an attorney and president of the Rutherford Institute, was identified by "some members of the press" as one of the leading figures in a massive right-wing conspiracy against the President alleged by Hillary Rodham Clinton. It turns out Whitehead is an eloquent and insightful critic of the assault on the Fourth Amendment and other Constitutional rights in the name of the drug war by the Clinton administration and the U.S. Supreme Court.)
• RCMP Weeding Out B.C. Pot Growers (The Calgary Herald shows extreme bias and betrays its journalistic mission in an article claiming the Mounties are using increasing arrests "to crush the marijuana culture in the Kootenay region." Unfortunately, just as in Portland and other North American cities, the local newspaper fails to explain there are probably 10 marijuana growers for every prison cell in the region and every law-abiding citizen is going to have to work about five full-time jobs in order to afford the taxes it would take to create the police state necessary to detect, arrest, prosecute and imprison even half of them. Similarly, the newspaper fails to explain that all taxpayers are doing is eliminating the most incompetent growers and personal-use cultivators with the least security, thereby subsidizing the largest, best organized and most ruthless ones. However, the paper does note the stepped up enforcement is threatening availability of medicine at the Universal Compassion Club, Grant Krieger's new medical-marijuana dispensary in Calgary.)
• Puritanical About Pleasure (A letter to the editor of the Globe and Mail, in Toronto, criticizes the Canadian government's quest to remove any psychoactive effect from marijuana before allowing it to be used as medicine.)
• MP's Shows The Depth Of Ignorance (A letter to the editor of the Calgary Herald criticizes politicians in Canada who justify their opposition to medical marijuana with concerns about children's perceptions. Adolescents don't listen well to politicians or police for information on damages of drugs: exaggerating the dangers of cannabis will not solve anything. And Calgary Centre MP Eric Lowther's contention that medications exist that "do everything and more" than cannabis is the epitome of all the ignorance surrounding cannabis.)
• MPs Have Pot Legalization All Wrong (A letter to the editor of the Calgary Herald rebuts MP Art Hanger's contention that "By legalizing weed, we're sending the wrong message to young people that it is no worse than smoking. It is certainly worse than smoking." By allowing tobacco to be legal the message is: "Tobacco is less harmful than marijuana." That is clearly a falsehood. Nearly every year half a million U.S. citizens die every year from tobacco-related diseases, but none from marijuana.)
• Mice, Cocaine Prove Canucks Are Mellow (According to the Edmonton Sun, a study published in yesterday's issue of Science magazine says scientists are at a loss to explain why identical laboratory experiments in the United States and Canada involving cocaine and cloned lab mice yielded significantly different results. The study is causing ripples in the scientific community because it suggests slight environmental differences can be as much of a factor as slight differences in genetics. Dr. John Crabbe, a behavioural neuroscientist at Oregon Health Services University in Portland, said "We went nuts trying to control differences. We sent probably 2,000 e-mails and phone calls to try to eliminate every possible environmental difference. Yet three strains of Edmonton mice responded more to coke. They ran around more. Why? When you get the answer, let me know.")
• Unproven Drug Allegations Rend U.S. Relations With Mexico City (The Houston Chronicle says a top-level meeting of Cabinet ministers that ended in Mexico City Friday was originally intended to be a showcase of chummy U.S.-Mexican relations. But it illustrated instead how the two countries can't seem to get past the divisive issue of drugs. The showcase was upset by articles in the Washington Post and the New York Times that cited unnamed U.S. officials who accused the family of Carlos Hank Gonzalez, one of Mexico's richest, and Jose Liebano Saenz, the private secretary to President Ernesto Zedillo, of having links to the country's drug cartels. Mexican Secretary of State Rosario Green told reporters that the stories were shadowy efforts to throw the meeting off balance. She demanded that the Clinton administration hand over any proof. Before major meetings between U.S. and Mexican officials, stories consistently appear in the American press that suggest drug corruption at the highest levels of Mexico's government and society. Green put it off to "conservative" elements on the U.S.-side of the drug debate. Some analysts say the leaks may be coming from American law enforcement agencies.)
• 1st Executions In 5 Years Spark Scant Outcry On Drug-Riven Island (The Chicago Tribune says the Caribbean island of Trinidad ended a five-year moratorium on capital punishment Friday, hanging the first three members of a "gang of eight" convicted of killing four people during a 1994 drug dispute. "Throughout the Caribbean, there is a growing clamor for capital punishment to deter violent crime associated with drug-smuggling." The eight hangings may clear the way for dozens of other executions in the Caribbean.)
• Trinidad executes 8 killers (A lengthier version in the Oakland Tribune identifies the source as the Associated Press.)
• Trinidad Hangs Drug-Gang Members (The Los Angeles Times version)
• Trinidad Sends Three Killers To The Gallows (The version in Britain's Guardian)
• EU Protests As Three Are Hanged In Trinidad (The Daily Telegraph version)
• Trinidad Three Hanged Despite Pleas (The Independent version)
• Bootleg Wheeze That's Costing The Exchequer A Packet (Scotsman columnist John Ivison recounts Canada's failed experiment with prohibitory cigarette taxes as a rebuttal to the World Bank's recent report arguing that increasing cigarette taxes are a good way to cut smoking.)
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  Friday, June 4, 1999:

• Denying personal visits inhumane (A letter to the editor of the Oregonian protests plans to allow video-only visits with inmates at Oregon's newest prison, Two Rivers Correctional Institution, under construction in Umatilla.)
• Robert Galambos (A list subscriber notes the California medical-marijuana patient has been sentenced to nine months in prison, but is free pending his appeal.)
• Ruling Helps The State Keep Seized Property (According to the Wisconsin State Journal, the state Supreme Court ruled 4-3 Thursday that prosecutors don't have to comply with state laws requiring them to file forfeiture actions to keep any property they believe was acquired through crime. Instead, the court said suspects are the ones who have to file a lawsuit to get their property back. The decision came in the case of Leonard L. Jones, whose $1,783 was seized by police because it was found with a scale and "items used to smoke crack cocaine.")
• Officers Halt Vehicles, Check For Drugs On I-94 (The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, in Wisconsin, says a "drug checkpoint" on Interstate 94 in southern Milwaukee County singled out northbound vehicles for searches for several hours Thursday. "Drug check point ahead . . . traffic may slow," an electronic message board near W. College Ave. warned motorists approaching the checkpoint zone for much of the afternoon. A lieutenant from one southeastern Wisconsin sheriff's department said: "We're looking for cars that obviously fit a profile, and we're looking to see if we can find anyone" with drugs. Law enforcement officials were extremely short on specifics.)
• Felon's Firearms Conviction Is Overturned (The Providence Journal-Bulletin, in Rhode Island, says Robert A. Vigeant, a convicted felon with reputed ties to organized crime - and the son of Providence City Councilor Josephine Joan DiRuzzo - may soon be a free man after serving just 13 months of a 19-year sentence in federal prison. The federal appeals court in Boston tossed out Vigeant's conviction last month for being a felon in possession of a firearm, chastening the government for obtaining a warrant to search Vigeant's house in Narragansett without probable cause as part of a probe into a drug and money-laundering ring.)
• Question and remarks from a New York POW (A list subscriber recounts a visit today to the Bedford Hills Women's Maximum Security Housing Project, in New York, to meet Jan Warren, who has served 12 years of a 15-years-to-life sentence for selling 7 ounces of cocaine in a police sting. Most of the women there have the dreaded "to life" tacked on their sentences. The problem is that New York state is not releasing most prisoners who have served their mininum number of years. Inmates are worried that the reason may be a federal government mandate that federal funds used for state prisons require state inmates to serve seven eighths of their maximum sentence.)
• Yes, Ease Drug Laws (A letter to the editor of Newsday, in New York, from John F. Dunne, says when he was a member of the New York State Senate in 1973, he supported the enactment of the Rockefeller mandatory-minimum drug laws. His "unhappy" conclusion, after the hard experience of the last quarter century, is that those measures have failed to achieve their goals. Instead, they have handcuffed judges, dangerously crowded prisons, and denied sufficient drug treatment alternatives to nonviolent addicted offenders.)
• Court upholds medical marijuana defense (The Miami Herald recaps yesterday's news about the Florida Supreme Court re-affirming the state's medical necessity defense for medical marijuana patients. Despite the ruling, the state attorney general's office believes the legislature will try to close what the newspaper calls a "loophole" and outlaw the common-law defense. Such a move would likely get a warm reception from Gov. Jeb Bush.)
• Jacksonville, Fla-Based Drug-Screening Firm Sees Rapid Growth (The Florida Times-Union says Medical Express Corp. has grown about 800 percent in the past four years and is expected to generate about $2 million in sales this year, $400,000 more than last year. Nationally, drug testing is big business.)
• Join the Children's Postcard Campaign (Activists from Family Watch and the November Coalition invite you to donate $8 for 14 full-color postcards designed to raise political awareness about the 1.7 million parents imprisoned for drug-related offenses, an injustice that has created a generation of drug war orphans.)
• Cannabis compassion club surfaces (The Nelson Daily News, in British Columbia, says that with the Canadian government currently looking into the medical use of marijuana, the Nelson Cannabis Compassion Club has decided to go public and is holding a potluck and information night on Monday.)
• Healing Dope (The Calgary Herald sympathetically describes the Universal Compassion Club, a local medical marijuana buyers' group founded in January by Grant Krieger. Krieger was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 1978, and he has been distributing marijuana to the ill for five years now, after seeing how it relieved his own pain. He first turned to pot in 1994, after 16 frustrating years of unsuccessful treatments led Krieger to attempt suicide. Not being able to walk or control his own bowel movements pushed him one night to swallow 40 Demerol and 30 sleeping pills. "They wouldn't give me anything after that" for pain.)
• The Week Online with DRCNet, Issue No. 93 (The Drug Reform Coordination Network's drug policy newsmagazine features original articles such as - Arrest the racism: ACLU report on racial profiling in America; Australian Medical Association endorses heroin prescription trial; Adding alcohol to Partnership ads?; Supreme Court establishes due process protections for defendants accused of operating a continuing criminal enterprise; Canada's House declares support for medical marijuana; Children And The Drug War postcard campaign; Newsbriefs; and an editorial by Adam J. Smith - Sells like teen spirits.)
• DrugSense Weekly, No. 100 (The original summary of drug policy news from DrugSense opens with the weekly Feature Article - How to be a MAP NewsHawk, by Richard Lake of the Media Awareness Project. The Weekly News in Review features several articles about Drug Policy, including - 'Zero tolerance' comes up short; Opposition to plan to test welfare applicants for drugs; Putting alcohol in ads on drugs is resisted; The heroin prescribing debate - integrating science and politics; and, Marcia Hood-Brown. Articles about Law Enforcement & Prisons include - A crime against women; Why your child could wind up in jail; Rush to vengeance; and, Swing and a miss on 'three strikes'. An editorial about Cannabis & Hemp is titled - Medical research on marijuana right. International News includes - Ministers pledge to halve UK drug abuse; UK: What a waste as drugs tsar publishes his first annual audit; UK: War the enforcer can't win; Canada: Money laundering targeted; Canada: Drug policy called 'bad joke'; Canada: Ottawa looking for steady supply of dope; Canada grows more pot than parsley; and, China: With the needle came AIDS. The weekly Hot Off The 'Net features updated contact info for Redbook and Glamour, two mainstream magazines that present a pro reform slant; plus the updated Kubby Files web pages. A new feature, the Reform Cartoon of the Week, features the work of Grady Roper of Texas. The Quote of the Week cites Heinrich Heine.)
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  Thursday, June 3, 1999:

• NORML Weekly Press Release (Canada's House declares support for medical marijuana; Florida high court dismisses state's challenge to medical marijuana necessity defense; NIDA solicits would-be pot farmers for marijuana research projects; England: Nearly 100 MPs support bill to legalize medical marijuana.)
• Marijuana (The Los Angeles Times recaps part of yesterday's news about the California senate approving a $3 million medical-marijuana research program - but not the part about the senate approving another bill that would require the state to develop a plan to distribute marijuana to people who have a doctor's recommendation to use it.)
• Pot returned in Placer County case - Deputies follow court order (The Auburn Journal, in California, recounts yesterday's news about cancer patient Robert De Arkland, 70, retrieving his medicine from the Placer County sheriff's office.)
• Marijuana And Miracles (An op-ed in the Sacramento News & Review by Steve Kubby, the medical-marijuana patient, activist, defendant and 1998 Libertarian gubernatorial candidate in California, explains the documented efficacy of marijuana in preserving his life, and the injustice of his persecution at the hands of prohibition agents in Placer County who have ignored Proposition 215.)
• Marijuana - America's Most Profitable Plant (The spring issue of Whole Earth features San Francisco criminal defense attorney Tony Serra railing eloquently against official efforts to undue Proposition 215 - and the jurors that let them get away with it. "Jurors have become mad dogs, they have been so conditioned by media and police propaganda. . . . I can still win a jury trial. At this office, we do marijuana case after marijuana case, and we win many of them. But it's nothing like the sixties, when all levels of society showed a robust interest in actualizing constitutional rights and expanding the common denominator for justice. It is fairly dismal out there now.")
• Calif. Police Sued For Profiling (The Associated Press says the American Civil Liberties Union filed a federal lawsuit Thursday in San Francisco against the California Highway Patrol and the California Bureau of Narcotics Enforcement, asking for unspecified damages and an injunction forbidding the two police agencies from engaging in racial profiling. The lawsuit also asks that the agencies collect data on the race and ethnic background of motorists stopped for traffic violations. The suit stems from an incident on June 6, 1998, when Curtis Rodriguez, a Hispanic attorney from San Jose, documented five traffic stops in which the drivers were all Hispanic. Rodriguez's car was the next to be stopped without just cause - and searched without permission or a warrant.)
• Man Granted Trial In Hemp Birdseed Case (The Honolulu Star-Bulletin recounts yesterday's news about the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco ruling that Big Island hemp activist Aaron Anderson, who was prosecuted for buying sterilized hemp birdseed, must be allowed to go to trial with his lawsuit claiming his civil rights were violated.)
• Ad Blitz Latest Push To Reform Drug Laws (The Times Union, in Albany, New York, says an advertising blitz urging an end to mandatory-minimum sentences for drug offenders enacted in 1973 during the Rockefeller administration will hit airwaves across New York next week as advocates make a final push for reform before the legislature ends its regular session June 16. The Lindesmith Center in Manhattan is preparing the ads on behalf of several reform groups.)
• Give Judges Discretion In Drug-Case Sentencing (A letter to the editor of the Times Union, in Albany, New York, from Warren M. Anderson, the former New York state Senate majority leader, comes out in favor of reforming the state's Rockefeller-era mandatory-minimum sentencing guidelines.)
• Woman Kept In Jail Sues VA Officials (The Washington Post says Cassondra Sue Betancourt, 37, is seeking $550,000 from the Virginia attorney general and other state officials because she was kept in a Richmond area prison for 161 days after the Virginia Court of Appeals overturned her conviction. Betancourt was convicted of murdering her boyfriend by spiking his drink with cocaine, but the appeals court ruled that there was not enough evidence to rule out an accidental overdose or suicide.)
• Court OKs Ky. Tax On Illegal Drugs (The Cincinnati Post recaps Monday's news about the U.S. Supreme Court rejecting a double-jeopardy claim and allowing Kentucky to continue to impose its tax on marijuana and other illegal substances. The decision sets in motion plans for broader enforcement of a statute on the books since 1994.)
• High court changes its mind on hearing medical malpractice case (The Associated Press says the Florida Supreme Court on Thursday rejected a plea from state Attorney General Bob Butterworth seeking to abolish the "medical necessity" defense sought by medical-marijuana cultivator George Sowell of Chipley. Sowell had been convicted of possession and cultivation of marijuana and sentenced to probation two years ago. But the 1st District Court of Appeal overturned the conviction because the trial judge had not allowed Sowell the medical necessity defense. Sowell, who is in his 60s, received a kidney transplant 17 years ago after the drugs he was taking for his glaucoma caused kidney failure.)
• Drug Court May Be National Model (The Las Vegas Sun says Nevada's newest weapon against crime - an expansion of the Drug Court program to cover early-release parolees - will be the star attraction this week at the National Drug Court Conference in Miami. District Judge Jack Lehman left Wednesday to explain the program to 2,500 representatives of the nation's 400 other drug courts. Lehman spearheaded the creation of a Drug Court in Nevada - the first in the nation - more than six years ago and smiles when he talks about how only 14 percent of those who complete the program commit additional crimes. No word on what percentage drops out of the coerced treatment regimen.)
• Teens Give Adults A D+ In Fighting Youth Drug Use (A Reuters article in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch says a nationwide survey of teen-agers sponsored by Uhlich Children's Home in Chicago and conducted in January and February by Teenage Research Unlimited, a research company based in Northbrook, Ill., found that young Americans give adults a barely passing grade on their efforts to stop them from drinking, smoking and using "drugs." Tom Vanden Berk, president of Uhlich Children's Home, said "We thought that we needed to turn the table on adults, and give teen-agers a chance to grade adults on issues of importance to the well-being of young people.")
• Drug Fight Has Fostered Racial Bias, ACLU Reports (According to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, a report released Wednesday by the American Civil Liberties Union says the war on drugs has significantly increased the number of traffic stops based on race. Ira Glasser, the ACLU's executive director, pointed to such problems as the DEA's "Operation Pipeline," which has trained at least 27,000 law enforcement officials how to spot drug couriers on highways in such a way as to create a perception that blacks, Hispanics and other minorities are more likely to possess illegal drugs. The ACLU is calling on police departments to begin documenting incidents of racial profiling.)
• Racial Profiling Tied to Drugs (The Associated Press version in the Statesman Journal, in Salem, Oregon)
• Nation's War On Drugs Has Increased Highway Stops Based On Race, ACLU Says (The Baltimore Sun version)
• ACLU: Drug War Increases Racial Profiling On Roads (The St. Petersburg Times version)
• Gouk's Survey Says Legalize Medicinal Marijuana? (The Nelson Daily News, in British Columbia, says a recent survey by Jim Gouk, a member of Parliament representing Kootenay, Boundary and Okanagan, showed 49.9 per cent of respondents supported the commercial growth of marijuana for medicinal purposes. Only 19.6 per cent were "totally" opposed and 30.5 per cent wanted more information. Though careful not to endorse any type of illegal activity, Gouk does recognize the importance of marijuana to the area. "I think a lot of people would be shocked if they knew the impact that the growth of marijuana has on the growth of this area," said Gouk. "These people go out and buy cars and eat in restaurants . . . the spinoffs are tremendous.")
• Clinical pot leaves you sober, yet feeling no pain (The Toronto Globe and Mail says Canadians who are chosen to take part in clinical marijuana trials will likely find themselves inhaling vapours from a thick green-brown liquid that doesn't make people "high." GW Pharmaceuticals, a British firm that makes marijuana soup, is negotiating with the federal government to test its products. The Canadian government is also talking to the U.S. government about a supply of the drug that could be used in a separate clinical trial looking at the medicinal benefits of smoking marijuana. Ottawa is also looking at a long-term solution in which Canada's supply of the herb would be produced domestically.)
• Canada quietly looks at testing marijuana inhaler (Reuters says Canada is quietly investigating the possibility of testing a marijuana inhaler being developed by GW Pharmaceuticals that would help ease the pain of suffering patients but stop short of making them high. The British company has been testing vaporised marijuana, heated and inhaled through a nebulizer. "It's not that there's some strange marijuana somewhere that doesn't have a psychoactive effect," says Mark Rogerson of GW Pharmaceuticals. "It's just that the dosage required to relieve the pain would be much less than what is required to make you high." The company is trying to deliver the drug through an inhaler to avoid the harmful action of smoking and hopes to have a product on the market within five years. Tests have already been conducted on healthy volunteers and, within two weeks, trials in Britain will begin on multiple sclerosis patients.)
• Mexico OKs Drug Suspect Extradition (The Associated Press says Mexico's Supreme Court ruled Thursday that Miguel Caro Quintero, a man suspected of being a top drug trafficker, can be extradited to the United States to face charges - if and when he is arrested by Mexican police. Caro Quintero is wanted on several U.S. charges, most recently a 1994 indictment in Arizona alleging money laundering and marijuana trafficking, said Jim Molesa, a DEA agent in Phoenix.)
• Trinidad Gallows Ready As Drug Gang's Time Runs Out (The Times, in London, says last-minute legal efforts to save the lives of nine convicted murderers - members of a vicious drug gang - on Trinidad and Tobago's death row appear unlikely to succeed. A series of hangings due to begin there tomorrow have divided the small twin-island nation in the southern Caribbean. The newspaper says public pressure for wider use of the death penalty has grown in recent years with the escalating cocaine trade from South America to the United States and Europe, which has left as by-products a heap of bullet-ridden corpses, soaring crime, drug abuse and embittered relatives of victims. One infers the reason there isn't more public pressure to end drug prohibition to achieve the same ends lies with the media's unwillingness to allow an open discussion.)
• Japan OKs Birth Control Pill After Decades of Delay (The Los Angeles Times says Japan decided Wednesday that it will legalize the birth control pill, 34 years after the contraceptive was first submitted for approval, and after three decades of propaganda about its dangers. By contrast, in a country where politics are dominated by men, Viagra was quickly approved five months ago.)
• Changes to Cannabis Laws - Some Questions (An e-mail from HEMP SA - Help End Marijuana Prohibition South Australia - responds to the South Australian governor's assent today to a new decree limiting the number of cannabis plants people can grow for their personal use from 10 to three. Before making such a big change in drug policy, the problem should be studied. SA's laws have seen a flattening of the supply pyramid. More people are growing less cannabis. Mr Bigs have been overtaken by Mr & Ms Smalls and the big guys don't like it - but the Government has acted on the basis of police allegations that "criminal syndicates" are taking advantage of the 10-plant limit. Section 45A-7 of the Controlled Substances Act gives police the power to prosecute anyone who is growing even one cannabis plant for commercial sale or supply. The police already had the power to crack down hard on criminals. They didn't need a new law to do it. The proposal also discriminates against outdoor growers and will encourage cultivators to shift indoors.)
• Weekly Action Report on Drug Policies, Year 5, No. 21 (A summary of European and international drug policy news, from CORA, in Italy)
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  Wednesday, June 2, 1999:

• House OKs statewide drunken-driving car forfeiture measure (The Associated Press says the Oregon House of Representatives voted 32-16 Tuesday for HB 3304, which now goes to the Senate. Rep. Bill Witt, R-Portland, opposed the bill because people charged with driving drunk but not necessarily convicted could lose their cars. And Rep. Floyd Prozanski, D-Eugene, said he feared the bill could result in a hodgepodge of forfeiture laws around the state because local governments wouldn't be bound by the state guidelines.)
• Senate backs bills to get medical marijuana program going (The Associated Press says two bills approved Wednesday by the California Senate would require the state to develop a plan to distribute marijuana to people who have a doctor's recommendation to use it; and allocate $1 million for the first part of a three-year study to determine whether marijuana is a safe, therapeutic drug. Sponsored by Sen. John Vasconcellos, D-Santa Clara, the bills are similar to measures the senate passed last year but which died in the assembly.)
• Bob DeArkland's cannabis returned by police (California medical-marijuana patient/activist Bob Ames says the Placer County sheriff's department today returned some growing equipment and a small amount of medicine, eight months after taking them. They made their point, though - DeArkland won't grow again until local prohibition agents tell him how many plants is too many.)
• Medical pot case against journalist dropped (The San Francisco Bay Guardian notes the state of California has dropped charges against Chico journalist and medical-marijuana patient Pete Brady. Meanwhile, the federal government successfully prosecuted B.E. Smith for growing 87 marijuana plants at his Trinity County home, despite his attempt to invoke Proposition 215.)
• Berkeley Pot Arrests Soar (A press release from California NORML says the city of Berkeley's use of felony arrests for petty pot sales as a tool to rid city sidewalks of street people almost tripled the number of marijuana arrests there last year, from 38 to 109. A 1979 ordinance directs police to make pot enforcement their "lowest priority.")
• Pot Advocate Sows Seed of Doubt (The San Francisco Chronicle notes the U.S. Court of Appeals in San Francisco agreed yesterday that the indictment of Hawaiian hemp activist Ernest Anderson for "promoting a detrimental drug - marijuana," by purchasing legal, sterilized hemp seed, may have been politically motivated and based on evidence that the prosecutor knew was false. The San Francisco court overturned the U.S. District Court in Hawaii, ruling that a lawsuit filed by Anderson should go to trial. At issue is whether Hawaii County should pay damages for violating Anderson's free speech rights by offering to dismiss charges if he would quit writing letters to local newspapers. Plus an e-mail with more details about the case from Anderson's original co-defendant, Roger Christie.)
• Bell Talks Of Son's Alleged Molestation (UPI says syndicated radio talk show host Art Bell's mysterious but temporary departure from the airwaves last year was due to his son being kidnapped and sexually molested by a gay, HIV-positive substitute teacher at his school in Nye County, Nevada. Bell said his 16-year-old son, Arthur, was heavily plied with alcohol and marijuana by Brian Eugene Lepley, who bound the boy in chains, took him to Tecopa Hot Springs, Calif., and forced him to perform sex acts. Lepley was convicted and is serving a life sentence for the assault. The boy told authorities he never would have been lured into such a position if it weren't for the drugs.)
• Appeals Court Throws Out Man's Conviction For Possession Of Marijuana (According to the Associated Press, the Wisconsin 3rd District Court of Appeals ruled today that Michael Wilson of Antigo was wrongly convicted because a policeman unlawfully invaded a porch area immediately outside the back door of his home before smelling burned marijuana.)
• Sheriff Reports On Arrests, Complaints About Festival (According to the Associated Press, the sheriff's department in Sauk County, Wisconsin, said Tuesday that the Weedstock festival at a farm between Baraboo and Portage over Memorial Day weekend led to 49 arrests, 43 traffic citations and 28 drug investigations. The previous year 27 people were busted for marijuana possession and 43 traffic citations were issued.)
• Drug-Dealing Matriarch Receives 65-Year Prison Term (According to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Circuit Judge Timothy G. Dugan tacked on a 25-year term of probation for Nancy K. Ezell, 47. Ezell is the ninth person in the 10-defendant crack-cocaine case to go to prison, including one of her daughters who was sent away for 45 years. Ezell had previously been involved in a 1987 "John Doe investigation" into drug use among police officers.)
• Marijuana Ruling Rocks DUI Docket - Hundreds of Cases Threatened by Georgia Court Action (APBNews.com says the Georgia Supreme Court has nullified a law presuming any driver to be illegally impaired who tests positive for marijuana. The court apparently reasoned that the law was unconstitutional because Georgia, under a 1981 law, said police would have to prove a medical-marijuana patient was driving dangerously in order to make an arrest. But the more recent DUI law arbitrarily and unfairly created a different burden of proof for "recreational" users.)
• Court Strikes DUI Law For Marijuana Users (The version in the Fulton County Daily Report, in Georgia)
• Technology Deployed In Drug War (The Associated Press says thermal imaging cameras are the item that state and local police request most often from the Office of National Drug Control Policy's technology "transfer," that is, giveaway program, funded by Congress since last year. No bigger than camcorders yet so sensitive they can detect a temperature variance of a quarter of a degree, the $13,000 thermal cameras are used by police to find out if people are growing marijuana in their homes or handing over baggies containing "narcotics" - although the wire service doesn't say how the cameras can ascertain what is in a baggie. General Barry McCaffrey, the ONDCP director, contradicted his oft-stated assertion that "we can't arrest our way out our drug problem," saying, "We know these systems work, and we know the cops need these tools." He is seeking yet more money from Congress for more technology transfers.)
• Ann Landers: Alcohol and Drugs Do Not Cause Domestic Violence (A letter in the Washington Post to the syndicated advice columnist, from an assistant district attorney in Albany, New York, says alcohol and other drugs do not cause domestic violence. Abuse is about power and control, although the abuser may use alcohol and other drugs as an excuse to seek forgiveness. To some, that may seem like an overgeneralization, unless the prosecutor can cite even one case from his experience involving a cannabis consumer who habitually or even occasionally stoked up on marijuana, and no other substances, before abusing his family.)
• Bar Raised For Drug Convictions (The Washington Post says the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 6-3 yesterday that a jury must unanimously agree not only that drug trafficking racketeers committed a particular series of offenses, but also on which specific violations they committed. Unless jurors are forced to focus on specific acts, Justice Stephen G. Breyer wrote for the majority, jurors may "simply conclude from testimony, say, of bad reputation, that where there is smoke there must be fire." The court threw out the conviction of Eddie Richardson, the leader of a Chicago street gang. During Richardson's 1997 trial, the judge told jurors that to convict, they must agree Richardson committed at least three alleged offenses. But the judge refused Richardson's request that he tell jurors they must agree on which three particular offenses were committed.)
• High Court Tightens Drug-Lord Conviction Rules (The Houston Chronicle version)
• Drug Education (According to the ADCA News of the Day, distributed by the Alcohol and Other Drugs Council of Australia, the National Centre for Research into the Prevention of Drug Abuse thinks that teaching schoolchildren about illicit drugs may just tend to increase their curiosity about such substances and ultimately their rates of use. Director Tim Stockwell suggested that education programs which focused on legal drugs were much more successful because drugs such as tobacco and alcohol cause more harm than illicit drugs.)
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  Tuesday, June 1, 1999:

• Arcata medicinal pot program serves as state model (The Santa Rosa Press Democrat says the core of a registry-card system administered in Arcata, California, by Police Chief Mel Brown is about to be adopted throughout Mendocino County and weighs heavily in the recommendations being drafted by a California state task force charged with implementing Proposition 215. One result of local support for patients has been the phenomenal growth of the nearly-500-member Arcata-based Humboldt Medicinal Cannabis Center, which is moving into a new two-story building just three blocks from the police department. Greg Allen, a 47-year-old lawyer who serves as the club's president said, "A lot of us have come to see the police as our friends.")
• A Return To The Goal Of Reforming Inmates (The Los Angeles Times says two out of three California parolees get sent back to prison within two years, and some officials are reconsidering the discredited idea of rehabilitation - known these days by aliases such as life skills, job training, and drug treatment. Of the 160,000 inmates locked away in California's 33 penitentiaries, more than half will be getting out in the next two years. Whenever prison experts, victims and politicians debate crime and punishment, one of the assumptions is that rehabilitation has been tried and it failed. But the history of rehabilitation in California shows that even in its heyday it wasn't practiced on a wide scale.)
• '3 Strikes' Policy On Drugs Near OK (The New Haven Register says the policy committee of the public school board in Cheshire, Connecticut, last week voted 2-1 for a "three strikes and you're out" rule for public school students who use alcohol or other drugs off-campus. If approved by the full board in July, the policy would permanently prohibit students who violate the "three strikes" regulation from participating in sports or other extracurricular activities.)
• Drug-War Supporters Turned Freedom Fighters (The June issue of High Times gives the monthly "Freedom Fighter" award to 54-year-old Cliff Thornton and his wife, Margaret, who try to educate the public about prohibition's failures with their group Efficacy, a human-rights organization they started out of their living room in Windsor, Connecticut.)
• Court Allows Drug Trafficking Trial (The Associated Press says the U.S. Supreme Court, without comment, turned away a double-jeopardy appeal today, allowing Kentucky to prosecute two men on cocaine-trafficking charges after having required them to pay a tax on the illegal drug. Joseph Nicholson and Robert Bird claimed their prosecutions, following payment of the drug tax after their arrests, would unlawfully punish them twice for the same crime.)
• The Assassin's Beeper Code Was 007 (A gangbusters Christian Science Monitor article gives a glorious but one-sided portrait of Bridget Brennan, appointed a year ago as New York's Special Narcotics Prosecutor. With a $12 million annual budget and a staff of more than 200, she heads the only office in the U.S. dedicated solely to investigating and prosecuting drug offenses, from street-level dealers in Washington Heights to sophisticated undercover operations that span the globe.)
• Pot Hoax (An editorial in Reason magazine by Jacob Sullum says the Institute of Medicine report released March 17 confirms marijuana is medicine. The IOM report also confirms it was the White House drug czar, General Barry McCaffrey, who was perpetuating a hoax during initiative campaigns in California and Arizona, rather than those who promoted medical marijuana reform or voted for it.)
• Why Your Child Could Wind Up In Jail (The June issue of Redbook magazine says parents who are shocked to learn that their kids are hooked on drugs are even more shocked by what happens when they cry for help. For every three Americans in treatment, another six need help but can't get it. Only about a sixth of all prisoners who urgently need treatment receive it, and the treatment they do receive is inadequate. While criminal penalties aren't discouraging drug use, they are discouraging some users from getting help, even when it's a matter of life and death.)
• Silver Bullet Or Poison Chalice: The Biowar Against Drugs (The June issue of Scientific American critiques Congress's approval last year of $23 million for research on plant pathogens designed to eradicate coca, poppies and hemp. Article I of the 1972 Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention bans the development, production and stockpiling of biological agents intended "for hostile purposes or in armed conflict." The greatest concern, however, is that the development of drug-crop pathogens will inevitably provide expertise that could be applied in much more aggressive, offensive biological warfare targeting food crops.)
• A Crime Against Women (The June issue of Glamour magazine says Amy Pofahl's MDMA-kingpin husband cut a deal that dumped her in prison for a quarter century, and freed him after four years. She and thousands of other women guilty of relatively minor crimes end up doing more time than men due to a controversial federal law, the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986, and particularly a 1998 amendment adding "conspiracy" to the list of offenses covered.)
• Snitch Culture (The June issue of Playboy magazine says snitch culture has become a crucial element of the war on drugs, and is so embedded in our judicial system that there is now an entire industry of convicts who buy information from other criminals or friends on the outside that allows them to rat and cut off years from their sentences. The November Coalition's Nora Callahan, an advocate for drug war prisoners, notes there are thousands of people in prison because of bought testimony, with no other evidence against them. According to a January 12 broadcast by Frontline, only 11 percent of drug prisoners are kingpins; 52 percent are users or low-level street dealers.)
• When They Get Out (The June issue of Atlantic Monthly features a sequel to the magazine's December cover story, "The Prison-Industrial Complex." The politics of opinion-poll populism has encouraged elected and corrections officials to build isolation units, put more prisons on "lockdown" status, abolish grants that allowed prisoners to study toward diplomas and degrees, and generally make life in prison as miserable as possible. People haven't become more antisocial; their infractions and bad habits are just being punished more ruthlessly, without any thought about rehabilitation. Since fewer than 10 percent of prisoners are sentenced to life, we can expect that more than 90 percent of prisoners will be released. Without making contingency plans for it - without even realizing it - we are creating a disaster that instead of dissipating over time will accumulate with the years.)
• Marijuana Stolen From Pot Crusader (According to the Calgary Herald, multiple sclerosis patient Grant Krieger says the Universal Compassion Club has been temporarily put out of business by thieves who broke into one of the medical-marijuana club's Calgary premises early Monday morning and stole a stash of pot intended for seriously ill members.)
• Does pot lead to politics? (A letter to the editor of the Calgary Sun says even if so many politicians admit to using marijuana - including Gore, Clinton and now, apparently, Canadian Health Minister Allan Rock - most people are unharmed by it.)
• A Potted Rock (A staff editorial in the Toronto Globe and Mail says Canadian health minister Allan Rock has has been sounding out people as far away as England about he feasibility of buying medical marijuana from them. This sounds like the Scots searching for a source of medicinal Scotch in Morocco, or the French looking for a robust Burgandy in Sweden. The government's position is so obtuse that one's advice for what to do sounds like a simpleton's suggestion. Mr. Rock, put out a contract on medical marijuana to tender. Guarantee that bidders won't be prosecuted, then watch what a good source of medicinal-quality, cheap, home-grown drug comes rolling in. And, oh yes, while you're at it, you might just decriminalize Canada's world-famous marijuana in the first place.)
• Feds slow to act (A staff editorial in the Sudbury Star notes Canadian Health Minister Allan Rock has announced details of medical marijuana trials will be released in late June, but says such trials should have started before now. It has taken two years to transform the minister's sympathy into action.)
• Mandatory Drug Tests A Failed Idea (Christine Dirks, a columnist for the London Free Press, in Ontario, criticizes a proposal by the government of Premier Mike Harris to institute mandatory drug testing for welfare recipients. The Tory proposal isn't about true welfare reform. It's about bashing the poor, perpetuating stereotypes and dividing society along class lines. It's not about helping people on welfare become job-ready, it's about portraying them as low-lifes who abuse the system and deserve to be cut off.)
• Drugs Freely Available In Jail, Con Survey Says (According to the Edmonton Sun, Reform Party member of Parliament Randy White charged yesterday in Ottawa that a national inmate survey he obtained shows it's just as easy to get crack, cocaine, heroin and pot inside Canadian federal prisons as it is on the outside. Corrections Canada's 1995 inmate survey shows that out of 15,000 federal inmates, 1,300 cons used crack or cocaine daily while another 1,300 admitted to using heroin and 5,400 to marijuana. Spot checks by Corrections show that drugs found in 1999 urine tests have dropped to 12 percent, from 39 percent between 1995-98.)
• Drug Policy Called 'Bad Joke' (The Calgary Sun version)
• Money Laundering Legislation Tabled (The Ottawa Citizen says the Canadian government proposed legislation Monday in the House that would plug some big holes that allow up to $17 billion to be laundered in and through Canada every year.)
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  Monday, May 31, 1999:

• Rush To Vengeance - Vivid Documentary Skillfully Weaves In Bigger Questions Of The Three Strikes Law (Chicago Tribune television critic Steve Johnson says Michael J. Moore's 75-minute documentary about California's "three strikes" law, "The Legacy: Murder & Media, Politics & Prison," opening the season for "P.O.V." Tuesday night, is a vivid portrait of how populist politics, the press's and public's disregard for details and an emotion-stirring crime can turn a seemingly simple idea into monumentally short-sighted policy.)
• Opinion On Campus (Excerpts from an article in the National Review's "Special Education Supplement" document the opinions of the Class of '98 about whether marijuana and other currently illegal substances should be "legalized." Seniors at seven of the 12 colleges surveyed came much closer to approving legal marijuana than they did as freshmen, ranging from 42 percent to 48 percent. But prohibitionists always outnumbered those favoring reform, though at some schools, prohibition mustered only a plurality of support. At all twelve schools, majorities ranging from 72 percent to 94 percent opposed "legalizing" all drugs, a response indistinguishable from 1995.)
• Putting Alcohol in Ads on Drugs Is Resisted (The New York Times recaps how the White House drug czar, General Barry McCaffrey, is battling a bill introduced in Congress at his own suggestion by Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard, D-Calif., that would allow the inclusion of anti-drinking messages in the government's $1 billion anti-drug campaign. "To say that MADD is a little upset over Gen. McCaffrey and the direction he has chosen to take would probably be an understatement," said Karolyn Nunnallee, the national president of Mothers Against Drunk Driving. The American Medical Association, the American Public Health Association, the American Society of Addiction Medicine and other medical, church and community groups also support the bill. Opposition in the House is forming around Rep. Anne Northup, R-Ky., who says, ". . . drugs are unique and we shouldn't confuse the messages and diminish them. . . . The message about drugs is don't ever do it, not at any age and type. That is not the message about alcohol, just like it's not the message of sex.")
• Ill will (U.S. News & World Report says the U.S. House Appropriations subcommittee wants to slash four of the seven jobs in the drug czar's legislative affairs office because it is often slow to respond to Congress - an unforgivable political sin. Bob Weiner, the drug czar's spokesman, says "It's a pissing match between staffs . . . it ain't going to go anywhere.")
• Chelmsford Man Praises The Healing Herb (The Sudbury Star, in Ontario, says medical-marijuana patient Barry Burkholder is in constant pain and suffers from chronic arthritis, clinical depression and hepatitis C. Both he and some medical experts say marijuana relieves the symptoms of his various physical and emotional afflictions. For example, Dr. Beverly Potter's book, "The Healing Magic of Cannabis," makes grandiose claims for the healing herb. Potter says pot has a soothing, even a restorative effect on arthritis, back pain, asthma, depression, epilepsy, glaucoma, insomnia, menstrual cramps, migraine headaches and multiple sclerosis. Even so, Burkholder was arrested last September and charged with possessing cannabis oil for the purpose of trafficking.)
• Drug Trials Win AMA Approval (The Age says delegates to the Australian Medical Association's national conference in Canberra yesterday passed a motion put forward by Victorian doctors endorsing the use of heroin-maitenance trials to manage, and ultimately treat, addiction to the drug. The AMA's stance increases pressure on the Prime Minister, Mr John Howard, to end his opposition to alternative therapies for heroin addicts.)
• Prescribed Heroin Will Save Lives, Say Doctors (The version in the Australian)
• Britain In Grip Of Drugs Culture (The Toronto Star says Britain is in a drugs frenzy, with an epidemic of tabloid stories about high-flying celebrities and low-life "addicts" laying bare the extent of the craze. The Office for National Statistics estimates Britons spends up to $16 billion a year on illegal drugs, with some 300 million drug deals believed to take place in London alone. "What we are finding is the normalization of drug-taking," said drugs tsar Keith Hellawell. Last week the government unveiled tough new targets to crack down on drug abuse.)
• Swiss Hemp Grower Sent To Jail (The Associated Press notes briefly a court in Martigny, Switzerland, on Monday sentenced Bernard Rappaz to 16 months in prison for producing 8.5 tons of dried cannabis and selling it stuffed in cushions, which were advertised as having therapeutic qualities. The guilty verdict derived from a federal "narcotics" law. A list subscriber forwards more details from a Swiss hempster, including confirmation that appeals are available, and even likely to prevail.)
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  Sunday, May 30, 1999:

• 'Zero Tolerance' Comes Up Short (An op-ed in the Orange County Register by Mark T. Greenberg and Brian K. Baumbarger of Penn State University says there is little scientific research to show that zero tolerance or other "get tough" measures are effective in reducing school violence or increasing safety. On the contrary, there is a growing body of research showing a clear association between disciplinary exclusion and further poor outcomes such as delinquency, substance abuse and school dropout. Disciplinary exclusion should be reserved for students who present a clear and present danger to others.)
• Hartman In-Law Sues Pfizer (The Houston Chronicle says the brother of the wife of actor Phil Hartman is suing Pfizer Inc., contending that his sister was under the influence of the anti-depressant drug Zoloft when she killed her husband and herself a year ago. The lawsuit, filed in Los Angeles Superior Court Thursday by Gregory Omdahl, alleges Pfizer has done "all that it can to downplay the possibility that Zoloft causes violence or suicide in some people." Omdahl also sued Dr. Arthur Sorosky, a Los Angeles psychiatrist who gave Hartman's wife a sample of the drug provided to him by a Pfizer salesman.)
• Shed Some Light On 'Racial Profiling' (A staff editorial in the Tulsa World says Army Sgt. Rossano Gerald has sued the Oklahoma Highway Patrol because he was stopped twice within 30 minutes after crossing the state line last August; because he and his 12-year-old son were detained for two hours inside a patrol car in 90-degree heat with the windows rolled up and the air conditioning turned off; because the troopers looking for drugs searched his car without his permission, causing a reported $1,089 in damages; and because he was arrested for DWB - Driving While Black, or Driving While Brown. The case has propelled Oklahoma into the middle of a national debate over racial profiling. Collection of national figures on traffic stops is an idea well worth pursuing.)
• Trying To Count All The Cops Is Hard (Houston Chronicle columnist Thom Marshall observes that Houston and Harris County seem to be proliferating countless police officers toting guns and badges and representing myriad city, county, state and federal law enforcement agencies. Marshall invites readers to participate in a project launched by Bryant Reed of La Porte, aimed simply at listing all the police groups in the area, such as the HPD, Sheriff's Department, Metro PD, constables, U.S. Marshals, the Houston ISD PD, highway patrol, the Texas Rangers, the FBI, INS, DEA, ATF, CIA - even the Harris County Hospital District.)
• Revelers' Tents Sprout Like Weed In Sauk County Farm Field During Marijuana Festival (The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, in Wisconsin, says almost twice as many people showed up this year for the annual Weedstock Festival in Sauk County as last year, perhaps showing that good weather can influence people more than marijuana. Weedstock organizer Ben Masel had some complaints about the size and intensity of the law-enforcement force. Masel said some officers were making up traffic violations as an excuse to pull people over. "We even had people pulled over because their tires were bald, which the officer noticed at night, as they are driving at 35 miles an hour - not likely," Masel said.)
• Opposition To Plan To Test Welfare Applicants For Drugs (The New York Times says that starting in October, Michigan welfare applicants under 65 in three locations yet to be chosen will be required to take drug tests or forfeit their benefits. "The state is starting from the assumption that the poor are criminals," said Kary L. Moss, executive director of the ACLU of Michigan. "The state is saying that if you want money for food and shelter you have to give up the Fourth Amendment rights that others have.")
• Hair Tests Raise Doubts (The Baltimore Sun says the use of hair samples to detect traces of illegal drugs is drawing criticism for its alleged inaccuracy and bias against dark-haired people, particularly African-Americans. General Motors, Anheuser-Busch, BMW, Rubbermaid and several big-city police departments are among the more than 1,000 employers using the hair test. More workers are being hair tested all the time, but the scientific consensus from the National Institute of Drug Abuse and the Society of Forensic Toxicologists is that hair tests are not sufficiently reliable for widespread use. No hair-testing laboratories have been approved by the FDA. Sixteen members of the U.S. House of Representatives sent a letter May 14 to the Secretary of the Army requesting a review of Army policy on hair testing, and expressing concern about the case of Duane Adens, who received a bad-conduct discharge in July solely on the basis of a false positive. As a result of his federal conviction, said Adens, "I will never be able to get a good job. I lose my voting rights. Something I worked hard at for 14 years is going to be taken away from me - for no reason at all.")
• Legalizing Pot Sends Wrong Message, Say Calgary MP's (The Calgary Herald says the newspaper's survey of regional members of Parliament shows varying opinions about decriminalizing marijuana. Some Reformers are strongly against "legalization," while others agree with a recent call for clinical trials to determine the medical benefits of the weed.)
• Cocaine Is Being Passed Around Like After-Dinner Mints (An op-ed in the Observer, in Britain, by Adam Edwards, the son of a judge, a former editor of a London magazine, and a cocaine user since the early 1970s, reveals how widespread cocaine use is today, in the wake of revelations involving Lawrence Dallaglio and Tom Parker Bowles and as the Government launches a new anti-drugs crusade. "Cocaine is the drug of choice for the professional classes under 40. In the past year, I have seen it taken by a Conservative politician, several lobbyists, a Guards officer, two QCs, a solicitor, a senior stockbroker, a merchant banker and a score of media men and women, including PRs, publishers, writers, Fleet Street executives and television and film producers. . . . Britain's professionsl classes are awash with the drug. I have not been to an event where it has not been readily available. Cocaine is to the current generation, rightly or wrongly, what marijuana was to the previous generation: an apparently innocent recreational amusement.")
• ACM-Bulletin of 30 May 1999 (An English-language bulletin from the Association for Cannabis as Medicine, in Cologne, Germany, features news about the Canadian House of Commons supporting the legalization of pot for medical reasons; and the U.S. government making marijuana easier to get for research.)
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  Saturday, May 29, 1999:

• A unique opportunity to help Voter Power (Stormy Ray, a multiple sclerosis patient and chief petitioner for the voter-approved Oregon Medical Marijuana Act, sends a fundraising plea for the political action committee that supported Measure 67 and is now working to make sure patients are able to get medication, and education about what they can and cannot do under the new law. "A lot of the patients I meet around our state are over 55 years old. Many like me, missed the entire drug scene and don't know anything about marijuana, except for them it works. . . . One man was washing his medical marijuana in 'Dawn' dish soap. He thought that was how to 'clean' it. He was asking 'Does this stuff always give you a headache?' He was poisoning himself!")
• Official OCTA2k Petition Signature Count (A bulletin from the Campaign for the Restoration and Regulation of Hemp, the sponsors of the Oregon Cannabis Tax Act voter initiative, says 4,605 signatures were on-hand as of yesterday. To get on the November 2000 ballot, the comprehensive reform bill will need 66,748 signatures by July of next year.)
• PBS on June 1 (A list subscriber says "Point of View," the Public Broadcasting Service's showcase for independent, non-fiction films, will air "The Legacy: Murder & Media, Politics & Prisons" on Tuesday night. "The Legacy" looks at how California's "three strikes" law was enacted, and how broadcast media and political campaigns influence the public debate about criminal-justice issues.)
• Medical Research On Marijuana Right (A staff editorial in the San Antonio Express-News says the Clinton administration's easing of restrictions on obtaining marijuana for medical research is a sound decision.)
• Police Find Marijuana 'Farm' At Nursing Home (The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, in Missouri, doesn't say what led police to raid a St. Louis nursing home Friday. Officers found 200 marijuana plants and arrested an unnamed 34-year-old employee who had allegedly set up an elaborate growing operation behind a false wall.)
• Man Wins Pot-Smoking Case In Levy County (The Gainesville Sun says Michael Stauff of Bronson, Florida, was acquitted by a jury Thursday of possessing half a joint after presenting a 1997 letter from one of his former physicians. Stauff told the jury smoking marijuana relieves the back pain he suffers since having a disk removed, and also improves his appetite, which has been lagging since he was diagnosed with hepatitis C. During jury selection, assistant state attorney John Wentzlaff asked a pool of potential jurors how many believed more work should be done to determine the effectiveness of marijuana as medicine. "When all 12 of them raised their hands to that question, I knew we were going into the trial with a jury predisposed to believe the defendant's argument," Wentzlaff said. It took the jury just minutes to make a decision. Unfortunately, Stauff is still in jail after allegedly selling 20 Percocets for $100 to an undercover agent with the sheriff's department the night before the trial.)
• Acquittal In Marijuana Case (The UPI version)
• Informant Who Succumbed To Drugs Sentenced (The Tampa Tribune, in Florida, says Charles D. Combs, who robbed eight banks to pay for his crack-cocaine habit while working as a confidential informant for St. Petersburg prohibition agents, was sentenced Friday to more than 10 years in federal prison.)
• Warriors' Cry (A letter to the editor of the Washington Post points out how its syndicated columnist, David Broder, is confused about the difference between drug abuse and drug use. The IOM report suggests marijuana users are not drug abusers and therefore should not be coerced into rehab programs.)
• Vote Today for Industrial Hemp! (A list subscriber alerts others to an online poll at the Michael Reagan Radio Show website. So far, legalizers are winning with 64 percent support.)
• Are People With Schizophrenia Drawn To Smoking Pot? (Britain's New Scientist recounts recent research published in NeuroReport by Daniele Piomelli and colleagues at the University of California at Irvine. High levels of anandamide, a natural THC-like substance, are apparently produced in response to the excess dopamine associated with schizophrenia. This might explain why schizophrenics often smoke marijuana.)
• Where There's Smoke . . . (According to New Scientist, two new reports in the latest issue of Tobacco Control, a crusading journal published by the British Medical Association, allege the tobacco industry exacerbates deforestation and causes fatal house fires. The first report, by Helmut Geist, a forestry scientist formerly at the University of Dusseldorf, blames tobacco growers for clearcutting and building wooden barns in South Korea, China, Malawi, Zimbabwe and Uruguay. The second paper, by Andrew McGuire of the Trauma Foundation, based at San Francisco General Hospital, blames Philip Morris for the 1,000 people in the U.S. who die each year in fires started by cigarettes, because it can't develop a self-extinguishing cigarette that smokers will buy.)
• How To Make Money Out Of Quitting (According to New Scientist, a report just out from the World Bank says nations can limit smoking and improve their economies by raising taxes on cigarettes, banning advertising, and investing in how-to-quit programmes.)
• Quick Text Tracks Down Drug Users (New Scientist says police, sports regulators and employers will soon have a new drug testing technology. A hand-held unit called the Cozart RapiScan tests saliva for cannabis, cocaine, amphetamines, ecstasy, opiates and benzodiazepines.)
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  Friday, May 28, 1999:

• Victory (An e-mail from Mike Assenberg of Waldport, Oregon, says the Mormon Church has changed its mind about excommunicating him for his legal use of medical marijuana.)
• Federal Court Issues Injunction Against Four Oregon Laws on Gathering Signatures for Initiatives, Referenda (A press release from Portland lawyer Daniel Meek says the U.S. District Court in Portland issued an injunction this afternoon against enforcement of four Oregon statutes. Signature gatherers no longer have to be registered Oregon voters, and no longer have to display a notice stating that the person obtaining the signatures is being paid. Chief petitioners and political committees are also no longer required to disclose the names of paid circulatorc and the amount paid to each.)
• New petitioning rules in Oregon (A list subscriber forwards an excerpt from a press release issued by the Coalition for Initiative Rights, which explains the ramifications of today's ruling by the U.S. District Court in Portland blocking enforcement of four Oregon statutes regulating the gathering of signatures for initiatives and referenda. Now anyone can gather signatures!)
• Crime victim measures get final House OK (The Associated Press says the Oregon House of Representatives has given final approval to an eight-measure ballot package aimed at replacing Measure 40, approved by voters in November 1996 but overturned by the state supreme court last summer. The eight measures would supposedly ease the burden of crime victims, but some just make prosecutors' lives easier and impose new burdens on defendants and convicts. The package would, among other things, expand police search and seizure powers and admissibility of evidence; require that jurors in criminal trials be registered voters and not have committed a felony in 15 years; prohibit the retroactive release of a prisoner if a new law reduces the sentence for the crime committed; and sets a tougher standard for granting bail before trial.)
• DA says keep school expulsion records private (The Associated Press says Mark Huddleston, the district attorney in Ashland, Oregon, has denied a parent's request to examine Ashland High School records of students expelled over drugs and weapons, even if such students' names are blacked out. The petitioner, Paul Copeland of Ashland, said he wanted to see the records so he could judge whether the school district is handling expulsions fairly since it enacted a zero tolerance policy on drugs last year.)
• Million Marijuana March (A letter to the editor of the Seattle Times shames the newspaper for not deeming it newsworthy that 4,000-5,000 marijuana-law reformers marched May 1 from Volunteer Park to Westlake Center.)
• Straight Edger Charged In Assault At West Valley Party (The Salt Lake Tribune, in Utah, suggests a group of Straight Edge members who believe that nobody should be allowed to smoke, drink or use "drugs" burst uninvited into a party, asked if anyone was drinking alcohol, and proceeded to punch six people and spray them in the face with mace.)
• Marijuana Laws Inching Leftward (The Aspen Daily News covers NORML's 1999 legal seminar, continuing through Saturday in the Colorado resort town. R. Keith Stroup, executive director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, told an audience made up mostly of lawyers that "For the first time in 20 years, the political tide is moving ever so slowly in our direction. People say they are worried about crime, but they mean violent crime, not somebody smoking a joint in their home.")
• Officer Is Cleared In Death Of A Suspected Drug Dealer (The New York Times says a Manhattan grand jury has declined to indict a police officer in the death of Kenneth Banks, a suspected crack cocaine dealer. Banks' skull was fractured after he was hit on the head by a police radio thrown by officer Craig Yokemick during a chase in Harlem last Oct. 29.)
• Hemp: It's Rope, Not Dope - Farmers, Activists Seek To Legalize Crop (The San Francisco Chronicle says a small corps of techno-savvy activists based in Lexington, Kentucky, is playing a big role in the national campaign to legalize industrial hemp. Using e-mail, faxes and cell phones, and in friendly, easy-going Southern style, the Bluegrass group, whose members include actor and part-time Kentuckian Woody Harrelson, have been doggedly educating state lawmakers and activists across the country who are pressuring the government to lift the hemp ban.)
• AIDS sufferers could smoke marijuana under Stefanini bill (The MetroWest Daily News, in Framingham, Massachusetts, says a bill championed by state Rep. John Stefanini, D-Framingham, would add AIDS to a list of illnesses that the state would theoretically allow to be treated experimentally with marijuana. There's only one small hitch: Massachusetts has no legal source of marijuana. In part because there is no marijuana supply, no one is enrolled in any experimental program.)
• Colleges Report Increases In Arrests For Drug And Alcohol (The Chronicle of Higher Education says its annual campus crime survey shows arrests for illegal drugs and alcohol at the nation's colleges and universities increased 7.2 per cent and 3.6 per cent, respectively, from 1996 to 1997. The increases mark the sixth consecutive year such arrests have increased. As in past years, many campus police officers and safety experts attribute the increases not to increased alcohol or drug use by students, but to more aggressive enforcement efforts and toughened policies restricting drinking on campus.)
• Canada Close To OKing Medicinal Marijuana (The Orange County Register, in California, notes a measure calling for the "legalization" of medical marijuana passed May 25 in the Canadian House of Commons.)
• Rock Stirs The Pot With Comments (The Calgary Sun says Canadian Health Minister Allan Rock all but admitted yesterday he's smoked pot. But the lawyer in him made sure his admission wouldn't hold water in court. "As former attorney general of Canada, I am keenly aware of the right against self incrimination in this country. I fully intend to invoke that right," he said yesterday. Rock strongly signalled he intends to give home-grown pot a whole new meaning, saying he wants to produce a 'made in Canada' brand. However, his department is still trying to figure out where the marijuana will be grown, who will grow it and under what conditions.)
• Commons A-Buzz Over Grown-In-Canada Pot (According to the Toronto Star version, the Canadian health minister, Allan Rock, said yesterday he would announce next month details about clinical trials for pain patients. Rock said the benefits of having medical marijuana grown in Canada under the watchful eye of the government are that "you'd have a consistent percentage of THC, consistent quality, [and] a level of cleanliness which is consistent." But he didn't explain why one size must fit all, or why private enterprise can't produce to specs what is shaping up to be the Canadian government's own cannabis cup winner.)
• Through Pot Haze, Rock Stands Solid (The National Post version)
• Ottawa Looking For Steady Supply Of Dope (The Toronto Globe and Mail version)
• Canada Grows More Pot Than Parsley (According to the Calgary Herald, the first-ever RCMP report on Canada's $18-billion illicit street-drug trade estimates at least 800 tonnes of marijuana was grown domestically last year. By comparison, Canadians last year sprouted 727 tonnes of parsley, which, of course, by weight is mostly water. "This estimate appears overwhelming," the report states, and, in fact, investigators believe it's "quite conservative.")
• 'Mindboggling' Marijuana Crop Tops 800 Tonnes (The Ottawa Citizen version inclues the URL to the RCMP report.)
• Money Laundering Targeted (The Toronto Star says legislation that is expected to be introduced by an unspecified power in Canada's House of Commons as early as today would require banks to report "suspicious transactions of $10,000 or more." The bill would also require anyone entering or leaving Canada to declare anything above $10,000 or risk having the undeclared money forfeited to Canada Customs. The new measures are intended to dramatically slash the $17 billion supposedly laundered every year by organized crime in Canada.)
• The Week Online with DRCNet, Issue No. 92 (The Drug Reform Coordination Network's original drug policy newsmagazine features these stories - Thanks, and another special offer through June 30; Medical marijuana activist convicted in federal court: jury not allowed to hear evidence of medicinal use; Four guards charged in beating death of Nassau County inmate; Senate juvenile justice bill passes in wake of Colorado school shooting, would dramatically increase surveillance and drug testing; New York assembly speaker says no to Rockefeller drug law reform . . . or does he?; Policy change may allow for non-government funded medical marijuana research.)
• DrugSense Weekly, No. 99 (The original summary of drug policy news from DrugSense opens with the weekly Feature Article - "How To Legalize Drugs," a new book by Jefferson M. Fish, Ph.D. The Weekly News in Review features several articles about Drug War Policy, including - The Zogby New York poll; Pot politics; Texas heroin massacre; 'Don't do drugs'; College drug arrests up for sixth year; and, DEA chief announces his resignation. Articles about Law Enforcement & Prisons include - When they get out; The Rockefeller drug laws; The racial issue looming in the rear-view mirror; Snitch culture; and, Of merchant ships and crack-sellers' cars. News about Cannabis & Hemp includes - U.S. eases curb on medical marijuana research; Hemp campaign gains momentum; and, Guilty verdict in high-profile pot case. International News includes - UK: Thousands will lose the right to trial by jury; Eton claims success in drugs crackdown; and, Australia: Battle lines drawn as summit deepens. The weekly Hot Off The 'Net column provides URLs for a new site to aid those charged with drug crimes; and a G.W. Bush drug war parody site. The Fact of the Week documents the total value of federal forfeitures in 1994. The Quote of the Week cites a recent comment by Allan Rock, the Canadian minister of health.)
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  Thursday, May 27, 1999:

• Urgent Message re: HB 3052 (An e-mail from Portland attorney and medical-marijuana patient advocate Leland Berger provides more details about the Oregon legislature's imminent vote on a bill sponsored by Rep. Kevin Mannix that would nullify much of the Oregon Medical Marijuana Act. Chair Neil Bryant was erroneously informed by Marion County District Attorney Penn that HB 3052 was not controversial. Please call this short list of state senators to acquaint them with the facts.)
• Doctors in Oregon for class action lawsuit (A list subscriber forwards a message from the Action Class for Freedom of Therapeutic Cannabis, which is seeking an Oregon physician for its lawsuit being heard in Philadelphia challenging the federal ban on medical marijuana.)
• Tacoma Activist Busted (A list subscriber says medicinal-marijuana cultivator Charlie Grissom has been busted and feels abandoned.)
• State Panel Nears Approval To Dispense Marijuana (The San Mateo County Times says a task force appointed by California Attorney General Bill Lockyer charged with implementing Proposition 215, comprised of everyone from patients to pot growers to police to physicians, meets again this afternoon in Sacramento. A legislative bill containing the task force's proposal should come up within a few weeks.)
• Chamber Of Commerce Snubs 'The Head Shop' (The Lompoc Record, in California, says Lompoc Valley Chamber of Commerce officials turned down one of the City's newest businesses for membership Wednesday. Critics of the business say it promotes the drug culture by selling water pipes, often known as bongs to marijuana users. David Gage, the owner, noted his business and the sale of those pipes is legal. He says the pipes are for tobacco use only. Gage said he was surprised by the board's decision because his store does not allow tobacco products to be sold to minors, while another business that belongs to the chamber has been in trouble with the law for such sales. "The vast majority come in and say 'This is a neat store. I'm really glad you're here,'" Gage said.)
• Prayers for Terence McKenna (List subscribers forward news that the Hawaiian "psychedelic philosopher" has been diagnosed with brain cancer and is not expected to live more than 90 days. Think good thoughts for Terence at 2 pm Sunday, May 30, PDT, 9 pm GMT.)
• Hemp activist beaten by police (A terrorized list subscriber introduces and forwards a disturbing first-person account from Ben Valdez, Jr. Valdez was brutally beaten up May 20 by a squad of black-clad, ninja-masked police in Salt Lake City, Utah, who broke down his door on the basis of a wrong-name warrant.)
• Update on Kriho Case (The Jury Rights Project forwards a petition for rehearing that the Colorado Attorney General's office filed May 20 with the Colorado Court of Appeals. If the petition is denied, the state will probably take its appeal of the reversal of Laura Kriho's conviction for contempt of court to the Colorado Supreme Court.)
• Texas Heroin Massacre (Mike Gray in Rolling Stone magazine examines the much-publicized deaths of young heroin users in Plano, Texas - without challenging the heroin "overdose" myth. Gray erroneously blames the relative potency of black-tar heroin for its toxicity, implying that diluting heroin with any contaminant in the world will only make it safer, while also suggesting that kids can easily derive powdered heroin from black tar. But an otherwise well-researched article explains how the media came to identify Plano as the heroin capital of America - quite unfairly, since cities like Tampa, Florida; Baltimore; and Parsippany, New Jersey, were going through exactly the same thing. When Prime Time Live was about to hit town, one official said, "If this goes wrong, everybody's house is gonna be worth $50,000 less." A law-enforcement crackdown is about to yield disparately harsh sentences for the Hispanics involved, but the crisis continues because prohibition encourages everyone's participation in a conspiracy of silence and denial.)
• A Setback For Fetal Rights In Wisconsin Alcohol Case (The Chicago Tribune says the Wisconsin 2nd District Court of Appeals on Wednesday reversed a lower court and ruled that a woman who drank herself into a stupor in her ninth month of pregnancy cannot be charged with attempted murder of her fetus. The only state that criminalizes such behavior is South Carolina. In 1996, that state's Supreme Court upheld the child-neglect prosecution of a woman who had used crack cocaine while pregnant. Courts in 21 other states have rejected criminal prosecution of pregnant women for behavior that harms their fetuses, but the U.S. Supreme Court has so far been silent on the issue.)
• Silver Softens Drug Law Stance (The Times Union, in Albany, New York, says Sheldon Silver, the Democratic Speaker of the New York state Assembly, seems to be backing away from his previous opposition to reforming the state's Rockefeller-era mandatory-minimum sentencing guidelines for drug offenders. However, Silver said at a closed-door meeting of his Democratic conference earlier this week that he was opposed to Gov. George Pataki's proposal, which links reform to the elimination of parole for all felons.)
• Strawberry Pleads No Contest (The Washington Post says one-time star outfielder Darryl Strawberry was sentenced yesterday in Florida to 18 months of probation and drug testing, after his bust for offering $50 to an undercover policewoman led to the discovery of cocaine in his wallet. Strawberry, who is recovering from colon cancer, is on administrative leave from the New York Yankees and faces the possibility of suspension from baseball as a multiple offender of its drug aftercare program.)
• Production, Analysis And Distribution Of Cannabis And Marijuana Cigarettes (A news release from the National Institute on Drug Abuse website says NIDA is "soliciting proposals from qualified organizations having the capability to grow, harvest, extract, analyze, store and manufacture marijuana cigarettes, and distribute cannabis, and marijuana cigarettes to NIH grantees and other researchers to support basic and clinical research." RFP No. N01DA-9-7078 will be available electronically on or about June 14 at the NIDA website.)
• Special Interest: Fighting Spirits (The Washington Post says the White House drug czar, Barry R. McCaffrey, has betrayed his own congressional allies and scuttled his own reform proposal, which would have allowed part of his $1 billion anti-drug advertising budget to target alcohol abuse. U.S. representatives Lucille Roybal-Allard, D-Calif., and Frank R. Wolf, R-Va., sponsored such legislation at his request. Studies by McCaffrey's office claim alcohol is a "gateway drug" leading to illicit drug use, and the bill had the support of the American Medical Association and the Center for Science in the Public Interest. However, the liquor lobby rallied the opposition, which now includes the Partnership for a Drug-Free America and McCaffrey's own office, which circulated a paper on Capitol Hill warning of the high costs of an anti-alcohol campaign. McCaffrey spokesman Bob Weiner said McCaffrey would now support the amendment only if it were changed to give him authority for such ads without mandating them.)
• Canada Might OK Medical Marijuana (The Associated Press says a measure calling for the legalization of pot for medical reasons passed Tuesday night in the Canadian House of Commons.)
• Marijuana Legalization Too Late For Local Man (The Sudbury Star, in Ontario, describes the prosecution for possession and trafficking of Barry Burkholder of Chelmsford, who says he needs the healing power of cannabis to deal with the pain of chronic arthritis and various ailments associated with hepatitis C. On Wednesday, the federal government moved a step closer to legalizing the use of marijuana for medical purposes, after a Bloc Quebecois motion calling for the legalization of pot for medical reasons passed Tuesday night in the House of Commons.)
• Delay Burns Pot Smoker (The London Free Press, in Ontario, says the Canadian government may be a step closer to permitting the use of marijuana for medical purposes, but multiple sclerosis patient Lynn Harichy isn't holding her breath. "I've heard Allan Rock make promises before," said Harichy, who is facing trial Sept. 27 on a charge of possessing marijuana.)
• Southern Air Force Report Details Bleak Conditions At Ecuador Base (Inside the Pentagon says a military base at Manta, on the Pacific coast in Ecuador, that the United States wants to develop into a "forward operating location" for U.S. counterdrug forces is in bleak condition. The site must undergo extensive repairs and improvements if it is going to host U.S. forces even on a temporary basis, according to a May 10 assessment by an officer in the U.S. Southern Command's Air Force component. The report recommends that, for the time being, Manta should be used only if "absolutely necessary.")
• Court Overturns Drug Conviction / Marijuana Advocates Welcome Court Ruling (Two stories from the Australian Broadcasting Corporation say Judge Robert Ducker, citing medical reasons, has ordered that no conviction be recorded in the case of Lynette Whalen, a Byron Bay woman with lymphatic cancer. Four months ago she was convicted and fined $1,000 for growing seven cannabis plants. Patient advocates say it's not unprecedented.)
• Speaking Of Which (The Daily Yomiuri, in Tokyo, prints a feature article on entrepreneur Koichi Maeda, Japan's most dedicated hemp advocate. "I first became interested in a certain part of the hemp plant about 30 years ago," says Maeda, who is coming up on 50. "But over the past six or seven years, I have become interested in the entire plant." He is the author of "Marijuana Seishun Ryoko," or "A Young Man's Marijuana Travels," a book that has sold 75,000 copies. In it, he draws from his travels in 50 countries to describe various adventures and experiences. Maeda opened Tokyo's first hemp restaurant - Asa Café - in 1998. "I opened on Aug. 15 to commemorate Japan's defeat," he said. "Hemp was legal in Japan until the end of World War II, when it was banned by the Occupation Forces. It was a part of our culture, it was used in Shinto rituals. Even today, the Emperor wears hemp clothing on some occasions. For the last 50 years we have been alienated from our hemp culture, we are still ruled by the American occupation.")
• Medicinal cannabis (A letter to the editor of the Times, in Britain, from the chairman of the Royal College of Nursing's Forum for the Development of Mental Health Nursing Practice notes the Townswomen's Guild has joined the campaign to allow the seriously and terminally ill to use cannabis medicinally. Politicians should return cannabis to the medicinal status it held before the Misuse of Drugs Act of 1971.)
• Hockney Says Drugs Are Fine But Not For Art (The Times says David Hockney, Britain's most celebrated contemporary artist, breezed into London from his California home yesterday and had an immediate brush with controversy. Holding court at the Royal Academy of Arts, he called for the legalisation of cocaine and marijuana and insisted that years of drug-taking had not harmed him in any way. But, he hastened to add, he had never indulged when working because "drugs and art don't mix." He also noted two close friends had died from alcohol rather than illegal substances.)
• Actor In Drug 'Sting' Gets Nine Months (The Daily Telegraph, in Britain, says John Alford, the former star of London's Burning, was jailed yesterday on charges of supplying cannabis and cocaine. Alford, 27, blamed the News of the World for entrapping him into supplying the drugs to a reporter posing as an Arab prince.)
• Actor Jailed For Dealing In Drugs (The Guardian version)
• Nine Months For Drug Case TV Star (The Scotsman version)
• War The Enforcer Can't Win (Scotsman columnist Edward Pearce says the new drive against drugs will actually do more harm than good. A different approach is needed - and we could start by legalising soft drugs. There was a time when homosexual relations were thought unspeakably horrific. Decent people flinched in nausea. The most compassionate talked of illness rather than crime, but policemen were employed to haunt public urinals to hunt for smiles and smile back, to engage in part-way complicity and to lie their heads off when hauling off the morally deformed to social ruin in the courts. This is what the tabloids now do with any celebrity who can be crucified for drug consumption. The accompanying hatreds are much the same. The viciousness of virtue is quite special.)
• Ten-Year Mandatory Drug Term From Today (The Irish Times says the Criminal Justice Act, 1999, passed into law yesterday, mandating a 10-year jail sentence for anyone caught possessing a supply of drugs estimated by the courts to be worth £10,000 or more. At present garda officially estimate the value of cannabis on a basis of its "final" street value of £10 per gram, so possession of a kilo or more of the herb could result in the mandatory 10-year sentence.)
• Weekly Action Report on Drug Policies, Year 5, No. 21 (A summary of European and international drug policy news, from CORA, in Italy)
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  Wednesday, May 26, 1999:

• What happened yesterday in Salem, Oregon (A list subscriber forwards a dispatch from Amy Klare of Oregonians for Medical Rights saying the state senate Judiciary Committee's work session scheduled yesterday for HB 3052, Rep. Kevin Mannix's bill that would nullify much of the Oregon Medical Marijuana Act, was put off until 1 pm tomorrow. The delay was caused primarily by an egregious drafting error - legislative counsel inadvertantly left in language stating "a person may serve as the 'designated primary caregiver' for only one person," language that was not in the compromise agreement with OMR or in officially adopted amendments.)
• Marcia Hood-Brown (A lengthy but ignorant example of sensational, just-say-know-nothing fear-mongering by Willamette Week, in Portland, focuses on the recent heroin-related death of a local 33-year-old who was "a brilliant scholar, an eloquent writer and a beautiful woman." Despite all the evidence to the contrary, the weekly shopper suggests it's the increasing purity of heroin, rather than toxic street contaminants, that killed the victim, ignoring the role of prohibition in either scenario; and implies that eventually, everyone who uses heroin becomes addicted, which is off by about 90 percent. Characteristically, despite an increase in heroin-related deaths in Portland in the last few years, from 33 to an expected 162 this year - almost as many as in all of Switzerland - the free rag fails to inform puddle-towners about heroin-maintenance programs saving addicts' lives and reducing social harm in that country so successfully that similar programs are being considered in Canada, Australia, Britain and elsewhere.)
• Drug-Prevention Programs: Worth It? (A Los Angeles Times article in the Seattle Times says a study released yesterday by the Rand Corp., in Santa Monica, California, estimated that even the best school-based anti-drug prevention programs would curtail students' use of cocaine by an average of only 8 percent during their lifetime - a result that, dollar for dollar, is only a little more cost effective in shrinking demand than coca eradication efforts overseas or interdiction at the border. Government officials at all levels have been spending increasingly more on school-based prevention programs as part of the $40 billion war on drugs, but cocaine use among students is increasing, and the report concludes "It is not likely that with current technology, prevention can play a decisive role in eradicating our current drug problem.")
• Modest Gain Found With School Drug Programs (The original Los Angeles Times version)
• Bob Ames Trial Postponed (An e-mail from the Sacramento medical-marijuana patient invites supporters to his June 22 inquisition and recounts the illegalities carried out by police during his cultivation bust. Sacramento police apparently routinely break into drug suspects' homes in order to search for contraband when they otherwise wouldn't have enough evidence to obtain a search warrant. In court, at Ames' preliminary hearing, Sacramento police admitted their department's policy is to automatically arrest all patients, automatically kill all cannabis, and automatically destroy all cannabis gardens without regard to medical paperwork or other evidence of compliance with California Health & Safety Code Section 11362.5.)
• The War On Drugs, The Mendo Front (The Anderson Valley Advertiser, in Boonville, California, continues its excellent coverage of alleged outrageous government conduct by the DEA and Special Agent Mark Nelson in their pursuit of Redwood Valley resident John Dalton, 44. At a federal court hearing last Wednesday and Thursday in San Francisco, prosecutors and law enforcement easily lived up to their reputation with true-to-form disregard for the rules. U.S. District Court Judge Susan Illston will decide soon whether to proceed with Dalton's trial, scheduled to start Aug. 16. If the government is successful, he faces 30 years to life. But there isn't a single piece of physical evidence linking him to marijuana cultivation. It's a conspiracy case. The evidence amassed by the DEA consists of the dubious testimony of snitches against an expert mechanic and unassuming, long-time resident of Mendocino County.)
• Terence McKenna ~ Condition Report (A list subscriber forwards news that the psychedelic philosopher has been diagnosed with brain cancer in Hawaii and is not expected to live long.)
• Decriminalizing Research (A staff editorial in the Blade, in Toledo, Ohio, says the federal government's decision to soften its stance on research into the medical use of marijuana is overdue, but in part a response to voter sentiment.)
• Michigan Girl Due Big Apology Over Mistaken Marijuana (The Associated Press says the weed discovered in the locker of a 14-year-old girl in Eastpointe turned out to be dried carnation leaves left over from a school celebration.)
• State hearings on expanding the medical use of marijuana (A news release from the Massachusetts Cannabis Reform Coalition, a NORML affiliate, says the legislature's Joint Committee on Health Care will hold a public hearing tomorrow on widening the range of medical conditions for which the Department of Public Health may approve the experimental use of marijuana. Until last Friday, when NIDA announced that it will start to sell research-grade marijuana to any bona fide researcher, not just those funded by NIH, there was no marijuana available to the state's program.)
• Four Guards Charged In Inmate Death (The Associated Press says four prison guards in Uniondale, New York, were indicted Wednesday in the beating death of Thomas Pizzuto, an inmate who allegedly angered them by repeatedly crying out for his methadone prescription. Pizzuto, a recovering heroin addict, had a seizure three days after the alleged beating and died six days after entering the Nassau County jail to serve three months for a traffic violation.)
• Cannabis Conspiracy: The Film Your Government Doesn't Want You To See (A list subscriber posts the URL where the New York Lower East Side Film Festival's best Documentary Feature can be viewed using Real Player.)
• The Action Class for Therapeutic Cannabis is now reopened and again accepting plaintiffs (A news release from the camp of Philadelphia public-interest attorney Lawrence Elliott Hirsch says Judge Katz on May 17 ordered a three-month delay in the federal civil lawsuit proceedings. During the last two months, the number of plaintiffs in Kuromiya v. United States has doubled, from 165 to 320, and more are invited to participate in seeking to overturn the federal ban on medical marijuana.)
• Jenkintown Survey Finds Drug Abuse High Among Youth (The Philadelphia Inquirer says a survey of 285 Jenkintown students in February by the Atlanta-based drug-warrior group, the National Parents' Resource for Drug Education, or PRIDE, found alcohol was the drug of choice for the majority of students in grades six through 12. However, 61 percent of 10th graders said they used marijuana, almost twice the national average of 33 percent. Among high school seniors, 55 percent said they smoked marijuana, compared with a national average of 38 percent. School officials said a DARE program and several antidrug student groups were helping, though 75 of the 285 students reported they had been in trouble with police.)
• High Times Magazine Releases Its First Comprehensive Report On Marijuana in the U.S. (A company press release on Business Wire says the July issue, due out June 1, will feature the magazine's first comprehensive U.S. marijuana report, "Marijuana By The Numbers." Based on the U.S. government's own numbers and independent research by High Times, the report concludes, among other things, that marijuana prohibition costs taxpayers $27 billion a year, almost twice the social costs of marijuana use. More than one-third of adult Americans have smoked marijuana, including at least 11 million in the past month.)
• Police Probing Drug Claims (According to the Calgary Herald, Calgary police say they are investigating Grant Krieger, who was featured in a Herald article Tuesday claiming he intends to distribute marijuana for medicinal purposes through the Universal Compassion Club.)
• MPs Back Move Toward Legalized Medicinal Pot (The Montreal Gazette says the Canadian House of Commons voted last night to urge the federal government to "take steps" toward legalizing marijuana for medical use. Members of the governing Liberal Party united with opposition MPs to approve, 204-29, a diluted version of a Bloc Quebecois motion calling for legalization of the herb so those ill with cancer, AIDS and epilepsy can ease their suffering without fear of prosecution.)
• Medicinal marijuana wins conditional OK (The Canadian Press version in the Calgary Sun)
• Pot Legislation Supported (A lengthier Canadian Press version)
• Commons Backs Pot Law (A brief Toronto Star version)
• Australia More Open Than United States (A letter to the editor of the Sydney Morning Herald, in Australia, from a woman who has just returned after living in the United States for the past year, applauds the open discussion prompted by the recent New South Wales drug summit. In America, "the drug issue was never raised, either in the media or in general conversation." Americans "tend to 'cover up' rather than try to heal the problem.")
• What If Cigarettes Were Illegal? (Another letter to the editor of the Sydney Morning World wonders to what levels people would stoop and what would happen to the price of a cigarette on the black market, if we threw offenders into jail, ostracised users and their families, and limited the supply of quit-smoking programs and technology.)
• Under-25s Targeted In Tough Plan To Break Cycle Of Drugs and Crime (The Scotsman says the British Government yesterday announced ambitious targets to halve the use of hard drugs among young people in England and Wales as part of a tough 10-year plan. Announcing the plan in parliament, Jack Cunningham, the Cabinet Office minister, said the focus was on heroin and cocaine misuse, which is a big cause of crime. The RAC also seized the opportunity to appeal to the Government to address the problem of motorists who drive under the influence of drugs.)
• Ministers Pledge To Halve UK Drug Abuse (The version in Britain's Independent)
• Smugglers Are Still Ahead In Drugs War (The Times, in Britain, says that even as the Government announced ambitious new goals designed to reduce hard drugs abuse, Dr Jack Cunningham, the Cabinet enforcer who has responsibility for co-ordinating drugs policy, admitted the war against drugs in Britain was being lost, with more substances being smuggled into the country causing a collapse in street prices and threatening a new heroin epidemic. His warning came after a grim assessment of the £1.4 billion drugs war by Customs and Excise concluded there was increased demand in the country, leading to more substances coming in.)
• What A Waste As Drugs Tsar Keith Hellawell Publishes His First Annual Audit (An op-ed in the Guardian, in Britain, by Professor Howard Parker, director of the drugs research centre at Manchester University, argues that the coming shortfall in treatment funding could have been avoided but for misplaced faith in prevention and enforcement. The overall budget is biased against treatment, even though we know what works, because the other two sectors are generously funded for political, not proficiency, reasons.)
• This Man Is Paid £106,000 A Year To Stop Britain's Youth Taking Drugs. Is He Worth It? (The Independent says that 16 months after Keith Hellawell was appointed "drugs tsar" by the British Government to spearhead a new anti-drugs crusade, criticism is mounting that he has failed to grasp the detail of his job. "He is aloof, uninspiring and out of touch," said a senior academic in the drugs field yesterday. "Worst of all, he is out of his depth. He is simply not bright enough. He can't hold all the balls up in the air." In a recent radio interview, Hellawell told listeners that doctors are not allowed to prescribe diamorphine, more commonly known as heroin, to addicts - which isn't true. One observer described his appointment as a poisoned chalice. "New Labour has unloaded the political embarrassment of its failing drugs policy on to the drugs tsar," he said. "As a figurehead, Keith Hellawell serves that purpose.")
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  Tuesday, May 25, 1999:

• NORML Weekly Press Release (Policy change may allow for non-government funded medical marijuana research; American Drivers Association campaigns against traffic searches; Californian with pot prescription convicted by feds for cultivation; Arizonans 2 to 1 back pot by prescription.)
• Bill clarifying assisted-suicide law passes House by a wide margin (The Oregonian notes the Oregon legislature has once again contradicted the will of Oregon voters by changing the Death With Dignity Act. Gov. Kitzhaber is expected to sign the bill. Passed by the Senate on April 26 and by the House Monday on a 42-17 vote, the measure allows Catholic-affiliated medical facilities to prohibit physicians from participating in assisted suicide-related activities on their premises, lets pharmacists opt out of filling a lethal prescription as a matter of conscience, prohibits physician-assisted suicide by those who are disabled or elderly but not terminally ill, clarifies residency requirements under the law, and discourages patients from "committing assisted suicide alone" or in a public place.)
• Opponents fume over cigar tax rollback (The Associated Press says the Oregon House of Representatives voted 33-27 Tuesday for HB 3371, which would roll back a voter-approved tax hike on cigars out of concern some cigar stores might close because of out-of-state competition. Tom Novick of Oregon Health Leadership Against Tobacco said voters approved the tax increase because they wanted to steer people away from tobacco, and predicted that the bill would meet with a quick veto by Gov. John Kitzhaber if it passes in the Senate.)
• State Drops All Charges Against Brady (California NORML forwards a news release from Ralph Ellison saying California marijuana journalist and medical-marijuana patient Pete Brady no longer faces four years in state prison for interviewing Libertarian gubernatorial candidate Steve Kubby. However, Brady does still face an unspecified sentence in prison on one remaining charge, a misdemeanor violation of possessing marijuana while on federal probation. A hearing is scheduled for mid-June.)
• B.E. Smith - The Aftermath (A list subscriber forwards an e-mail from Tom Ballanco, one of Smith's attorneys, about the federal cultivation trial in Sacramento that ended Friday with a conviction. "There is a need for action on two fronts, legal and public/political." Plus commentary from Mike Gray and other list subscribers.)
• Customary Abuse: Time for Congress to rein in overzealous drug searches (A staff editorial in the Houston Chronicle says widespread allegations of abuse require federal legislation to ensure that U.S. Customs Service agents do not single out international travelers based on race, detain them for days without charges and subject them to humiliating body cavity searches, shackles and laxatives, all without allowing them access to a lawyer.)
• Focus: Marcus Gumz, Weedstock Warrior (The Wisconsin State Journal says Friday marks the beginning of Weedstock '99 in Fairfield. Local farmer Marcus Gumz has sponsored the camping, music and hemp festival on his land three times since 1995. He's 70 years old and says he's adamantly opposed to smoking, whether it's tobacco or marijuana. Before the county took most of his property, he gave "a big check" to Ronald Reagan and was an active Republican. His activities, especially Weedstock, have made for uncomfortable moments for his two children in state government. Gumz said he hosts Weedstock - which he'd like to rename "Mintstock" - because he needs the money and because he admires event organizer Ben Masel, who has long campaigned for marijuana-law reform. "I believe in the U.S. Constitution, the right to free assembly and free speech. When you've got a Gestapo government that works like jack-booted fascists, that's wrong," says Gumz.)
• Marijuana As Medicine (A letter to the editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer from medical-marijuana user Ed Forcion, who was arrested for lighting up during a protest, says patients feel vindicated by the March 17 Institute of Medicine report that supports the use of marijuana as a medicine. "Vindication isn't what is right, though. What is right is dismissal of all charges against citizens who can prove they use marijuana for medical needs.")
• Concord Family Sues Over Search By Police (The Charlotte Observer, in North Carolina, says Leonard Mackin, Charlene Howie and four children had their home raided May 22 by Concord police using a mistaken search warrant. A lawsuit filed on their behalf Friday in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of North Carolina in Greensboro charged police with negligent judgment and targeting African Americans.)
• If Big Brother Has A Name, It's Bill McCollum (St. Petersburg Times columnist Robyn E. Blumner recaps the campaign against the Fourth Amendment that the U.S. representative from Florida has waged so sucessfully to date. Apparently, McCollum is not satisfied hacking away at privacy and the Constitution from his lowly House seat; he has announced plans to run for the Senate after Connie Mack retires. Since the man is a poster child for government at its biggest and most intrusive, it's astounding that he is so popular among Republicans. But it looks like he has a good shot at winning the primary.)
• DEA Chief Announces His Resignation (The New York Times says after 39 years in law enforcement, Thomas Constantine abruptly announced Monday that by July 1 he would vacate the top office at the Drug Enforcement Administration, which he has headed since March 1994. Now 60 years old, he wants to return to New York and spend more time with his family. Constantine's readiness to assail Mexico's record on drugs set him apart from other senior administration officials. "What was also important for me was a strong reputation for integrity. I wanted to be able to leave here with it," he said.)
• DEA Director Retiring After 5 Years at Post (The Washington Post version)
• Drug enforcement leader resigns (The Agence France-Press version)
• Court Bans Media From Police Raids In Homes (The Chicago Tribune says the U.S. Supreme Court ruled unanimously Monday that police officers cannot bring the media along when they go inside a person's house to execute a warrant or make an arrest. However, the television show, "Cops," isn't about to go off the air.)
• Cop Show's Goof Frees Pot Dealer, Stings Landlady (The Province, in Vancouver, British Columbia, describes how charges came to be stayed against an unnamed marijuana cultivator who caused $40,000 in damages to a rental house in Burnaby. A ruling by an unspecified court in Vancouver means the grower's rights were violated when a camera crew for the television show, "To Serve and Protect," went into the house after the police went in.)
• Pot crusader starts club in Calgary (The Calgary Herald says Grant Krieger, convicted last December of marijuana trafficking, plans to open a medical-marijuana dispensary, the Universal Compassion Club, in Calgary by mid-June. Krieger said he stopped visiting