| October 22, 1997 #017 | ||||||
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A DrugSense publication
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Table of Contents
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FEATURE ARTICLE (Top) | ||||||
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Am I a Criminal?
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I am a convicted criminal. Indeed my criminal activities are ongoing. Oh,
it's okay to publish this information. My family knows, and they approve. So
do my friends, my doctor and my spiritual advisors. Even the judge who found
me guilty last week said that he would be proud of me, were I his daughter.
And all of these people know that despite my criminal conviction, several
times a week I get into a van with other volunteers of the Chai Project and
go out into the streets of New Brunswick, and continue to break New Jersey
law by exchanging new syringes for used with injection drug users in order
to slow the spread of HIV in our community. | ||||||
The sharing of injection equipment among drug users is now the fastest
growing mode of transmission of the AIDS virus in the United States.
Responding to this public health disaster, community activists across the
U.S. established syringe exchange programs as early as 1988. Initially, none
of these programs were sanctioned. Nevertheless, in places like Tacoma, San
Francisco, New Haven, and New York City, people who understood the
epidemiology and the lives and the suffering of drug users and their
families, began to break the law. They understood, as do I, that saving
lives is far more important than obeying anachronistic laws which were
enacted during a time when no one could have understood their horrific
implications. And almost as soon as these outlaw programs appeared, experts
began to study them. Soon, study after study came back with proof that
syringe exchange programs significantly reduced HIV transmission among their
participants without increasing the prevalence of drug use in the
communities that they served. | ||||||
So things began to change. One by one, state and local governments dealing
with the enormous human and economic costs associated with injection-related
AIDS began to authorize and fund the programs in their communities. These
elected officials did not legalize syringe exchange programs for political
reasons, for only in the past few years have a majority of Americans
supported such efforts, but for public health, humanitarian, and economic
reasons. Because once they saw that these programs saved lives, and that
hindering the efforts of the people implementing these programs was
tantamount to sentencing thousands of people to horrifying deaths, they
understood that the moral imperative was far greater than any immediate
political concerns. | ||||||
Not so for Governor Christine Todd Whitman, nor the majority of New Jersey's
elected representatives. Governor Whitman has long been a staunch opponent
of syringe exchange. Initially, she stated that her concerns were not
political. She said that providing paraphernalia to drug users would
encourage more people to use illicit substances. Her position, she said, was
a moral one. | ||||||
Last year Whitman's own, hand-picked Advisory Council on AIDS came back with the same conclusions that nearly every single group to study the issue, before or since has reported. Syringe exchange programs save lives. Not only that, but no one who has researched them, no matter how extensively, has found any correlative increase in drug use, either in the individuals or in the communities served. And as an added bonus, the Governor's Advisory Council on AIDS reported that syringe exchange programs would save New Jersey's taxpayers millions of dollars in health care costs every year. | ||||||
Today, Governor Whitman's New Jersey has the third-highest rate of injection-related AIDS in the United States. Some 19,100 New Jersey residents age 13 and over are living with injection-related AIDS or have died from it. Of the total AIDS cases in New Jersey, approximately 50 percent are the direct result of shared injection equipment, while another 20 percent are indirectly related. Dr. Scott Holmberg of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that there are still over 46,000 injection drug users in New Jersey who are not yet infected. And so, several days each week, volunteers from the Chai Project climb into our van and break the law in an effort to make sure that those 46,000 human beings, and their partners and children, do not become statistics. | ||||||
Yes, I am a criminal. And even though Judge Brenner of the New Brunswick
Municipal Court told me that my efforts were noble and that he would be
proud to have me for his daughter, he said that the law was the law and that
I had broken it. He found me guilty. And on August 11th I was sentenced for
my crime. But what is the law? Is it an objective arbiter of right and
wrong? Could the law itself be immoral? And if it is, what does that say of
the people who insist on maintaining it? Because where I come from,
knowingly causing death is murder. And one day Governor Whitman and other
New Jersey officials will have to answer to a moral judgment far greater
than NJ Statute 2C:36-6. It is a judgment based upon the intrinsic
responsibility of all persons to do no harm. And that judgment will most
certainly not be tainted by political considerations. | ||||||
Diana McCague is the Executive Director of the Chai Project of New
Brunswick, New Jersey. | ||||||
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WEEKLY NEWS IN REVIEW (Top) | ||||||
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International News
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The London woman who has lit up the latest challenge to Canada's marijuana
laws made a brief appearance in court on Tuesday and was remanded out of
custody until Nov. 5.
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Lynn Harichy, 36, was arrested and charged with possession of marijuana last
month when she attempted to light up a joint on the steps of London police
headquarters. | ||||||
The mother of two and stepmother of two grown children has multiple
sclerosis and says smoking pot numbs the pain and is superior to
prescription drugs, which can cause weight gain, blisters, a burning
sensation and insomnia. | ||||||
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BRITAIN'S first "drug tsar" declared his opposition yesterday to
decriminalising cannabis and urged "pop icons" to set an example to their
young followers as he prepared to take up his =A3102,000-a-year Whitehall
post. | ||||||
Keith Hellawell, chief constable of West Yorkshire, beat off 200 other
applicants for the job of co-ordinating strategy against drug use. He will
be supported by a deputy, Michael Trace, currently director of the
Rehabilitation for Addicted Prisoners' Trust, and by a six-strong
secretariat based in the Cabinet Office. | ||||||
Mr Hellawell, 55, will formally take up the appointment in January but will be involved immediately in developing new anti-drugs policies. Regarded in Whitehall as a "good communicator", Mr Hellawell courted controversy three years ago when he predicted that cannabis would be legalised in the long run. But he said yesterday that he did not think that it should be. | ||||||
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Dear Mr Hellawell:
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AT YOUR press conference to introduce yourself as the Government's new drugs
tsar, you were asked for your view on the IoS's campaign to decriminalise
cannabis. You replied: "The people who peddle these things love these
campaigns, so they can go into the playground and exert their pressure on
young people to get involved."
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THE scene was pitiful: two girls, aged 8 and 13, sobbing at Jeddah's
international airport after being found with heroin inside their bodies and
held by customs with 18 other members of their family. | ||||||
It was hard to imagine that their plight could have been any worse. Within
hours both faced charges of drug trafficking and possible execution by
sword. | ||||||
Their ordeal began as the family =AD poor farmers from Punjab ostensibly on= | ||||||
pilgrimage to Mecca, home of the Prophet Muhammad =AD disembarked at King Abdel Aziz airport at the end of a flight from Islamabad. | ||||||
As they filed through the airport, a chaotic group of 12 adults and nine children, customs officials noticed that some appeared unusually lethargic and were walking strangely. Their suspicions intensified when they saw that the adults ate and drank nothing, and refused the children refreshments. | ||||||
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THE campaign is launched with a strong plea for reform from the IoS editor, Rosie Boycott. Her arguments receive support from former Drugs Squad officer Ron Clarke and consultant psychiatrist Dr Philip Robson. | ||||||
Prominent individuals join the campaign: from the medical profession,
Professor Colin Blakemore, chairman of the British Neuroscientific
Association, and from the entertainment world, Sir Paul McCartney. Britain's
best- known businessman, Richard Branson, and the creator of the Body Shop
empire, Anita Roddick, send messages of support and endorsement, as does
Alan McGee of Creation Records. | ||||||
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Do you have any memories of a Cabinet member using cannabis? If so, phone
0171-293-2490 or fax 0171-293-2043. | ||||||
JACK STRAW, the Home Secretary, is reviewing the way the police deal with
those caught in possession of cannabis. | ||||||
The move is the first tacit acceptance by the Government that the application of the cannabis law in Britain needs examining and comes at the end of the third week of the Independent on Sunday's campaign for the decriminalisation of cannabis for medicinal and personal use. | ||||||
Last week, the IoS asked each member of the Cabinet if they had ever
personally used cannabis. Of the 22-strong Cabinet, 17 refused to reply and
four - Tony Blair, John Prescott, Ron Davies and Lord Richard - sent under
separate cover the same answer: "We do not take part in surveys. Jack Straw
has made the Government's position perfectly clear. We shall not
decriminalise, legalise or legitimise the use of drugs." Harriet Harman's
office said: "The minister does not wish to reply."
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Lynn Harichy tells me she smoked two joints before I called her, but she doesn't sound stoned. "I've smoked so long I don't get high from it any more," she says, laughing. "When I smoke, I can do interviews." | ||||||
She's been doing a lot of interviews lately, mainly because of a protest she conducted Sept. 15 at a London, Ont., police station that's made her a hero in the cannabis community and a pariah in other quarters. After alerting the media, Harichy, 36 and a mother of four, marched to the front of the London cop shop and got herself arrested for possession of marijuana. | ||||||
Her arrest wasn't all that traumatic. "A female officer arrested me," she recalls. "The police at the station were nice. They didn't fingerprint me." | ||||||
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Medical Marijuana
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BOSTON -- The medical use of marijuana remains a poisonous idea in political
Washington. Williams Weld's support for it was one of Senator Jesse Helms's
stated reasons for blocking his nomination as Ambassador to Mexico, and no
one in Washington wanted even to discuss it. | ||||||
But in the scientific and medical world, there is increasing support for the
use of marijuana as an aid to treatment -- or at least for open-minded
testing. | ||||||
The National Institutes of Health in August issued a report by an
eight-member committee calling for N.I.H. tests of marijuana's efficacy in
four medical areas. The chairman of the committee, William Beaver of
Georgetown University, said: "For at least some potential indications
marijuana looks promising enough to recommend that there be controlled
studies."
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WASHINGTON - A year after he seemed to be an irrelevant footnote to Sen. Bob
Dole's presidential candidacy, Steve Forbes is being touted as a serious
contender for 2000. But some of his old supporters worry that he may want
the presidency too badly. | ||||||
There is, in fact, nothing as ugly as a politician trying to remake his image. Viewed as a moderate in 1996, Forbes was shunned by Christian conservatives. So instead of promoting the flat tax, the undeclared candidate is now campaigning against, of all things, medicinal marijuana. | ||||||
Patients and doctors alike attest to the therapeutic value of marijuana, but
good people can still disagree about the wisdom of allowing its use. Not in
Forbes' view, however. Proponents of relaxing this small facet of the drug
war are, well, evil. | ||||||
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REDWOOD CITY -- San Mateo County Supervisor Mike Nevin wants the county to
look into distributing medical marijuana through local clinics that would
get their pot from police busts. | ||||||
Nevin, president of the board and a retired San Francisco police inspector, pitched the idea to his fellow supervisors Wednesday in a memo. | ||||||
Nevin said the marijuana could be obtained at no government cost after it's used as evidence in criminal trials. It would have to be inspected to make sure it's not contaminated, as some street drugs are, he said. | ||||||
At any given time, Nevin said, the Sheriff's Office has about $165,000 worth of marijuana stored in evidence lockers. It is usually burned after trial. | ||||||
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Denver - A ballot initiative to legalize marijuana for specific medical
purposes has been filed with the state Office of Legislative Legal Services.
Medical conditions for which marijuana would be prescribed include cancer,
glaucoma, HIV, epilepsy or multiple sclerosis, the initiative filed Friday
says. | ||||||
Any person with a medical condition or undergoing treatment for a conditions that produces wasting, severe pain, severe nausea or seizures would also be eligible. Martin Chilcutt, 63, a former psychotherapist, and Dr. Marshall Stiles III, a retired psychiatrist, filed the ballot initiative. | ||||||
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San Mateo County Supervisor Mike Nevin has proposed what would be the
state's first publicly run facility for the distribution of medical
marijuana. | ||||||
Responding to a proposal for a privately run dispensary, Nevin said in a
memo to his board colleagues that the county consider assuming the
responsibility of obtaining and distributing the marijuana through its
hospital and health clinic pharmacies. | ||||||
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THOUSAND OAKS--A 27-year-old woman legally permitted to smoke marijuana to
ease the pain of her chronic migraine headaches has rented space in a local
business center in hopes of opening Ventura County's first cannabis buyers'
club. | ||||||
Andrea Nagy, who works as a legal secretary, has purchased a city business
license for a "pharmaceutical-related" operation and has rented a
360-square-foot storefront in the Village Oaks office complex on Thousand
Oaks Boulevard. | ||||||
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The War on Drugs is failing. We have spent billions and billions of tax
dollars, imprisoned thousands of people whose only crime is addiction and
given politicians control over medical decisions which should be kept
between doctors and patients. Despite this, our kids still continue to
experiment with drugs. Drug related crimes continue to plague our
communities. | ||||||
I-685 offers a more intelligent, compassionate, and effective alternative to
our current drug policies. It is an important step toward a long-term
solution which recognizes and treats drug abuse and addiction for what they
are--public health problems. | ||||||
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Terry Parker says the only thing standing between him and life-threatening
seizures are the 71 marijuana plants police confiscated from his Toronto
apartment. | ||||||
Severely epileptic, Parker, 42, says the drug is the one thing that helps
him fight the debilitating attacks and, with the support of some of the
world's top experts, he heads to court today to challenge Canadian laws
stopping him from growing and possessing marijuana. | ||||||
His seizures, some lasting for 45 minutes, have led to being mistakenly arrested for drunkenness to being hit by a speeding ambulance after collapsing on the street. While a recent attempt to overturn Canada's cannabis laws was unsuccessful, his case is worth watching. Two courts have accepted his marijuana use as medically necessary, decisions rendered in connection with his 1987 acquittal on charges of simple possession. | ||||||
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Needle Exchange
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Needle-exchange programs aimed at fighting the spread of AIDS and other
blood-borne diseases would be legalized in Denver under an ordinance Mayor
Wellington Webb will propose today. Webb's plan, which couldn't go into
effect without a change in state law, calls for amending the municipal code
to allow up to three organizations to exchange needles and refer injecting
drug users for treatment. | ||||||
The amendment would exempt health workers and participants from being arrested for possession of syringes distributed by the registered programs. | ||||||
The intent is to reduce the number of people who transmit HIV through contaminated needles. In needle-exchange programs, drug users who might otherwise share syringes with other addicts and pass along HIV and hepatitis B and C are registered to receive one sterile needle for each dirty one. | ||||||
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Oct. 15 - Mayor Wellington Webb's proposed needle exchange ordinance sends
the wrong message in the war against drugs, the Denver Police Protective
Association said Tuesday. | ||||||
"We're just legitimizing the illegal use of drugs," Kirk Miller, the
association's legislative liaison, said of the proposal to amend the
municipal code to allow up to three programs to exchange clean needles for
dirty ones. | ||||||
The 1,260-member organization plans to fight the ordinance, which will be
discussed today by a city council subcommittee and could go to the full
council on Oct. 27.
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Sentencing
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A federal grand jury has indicted marijuana activist Todd McCormick on
charges of growing 4,116 pot plants in a rented Bel-Air mansion known as
"The Castle," prosecutors said Tuesday. | ||||||
The one-sentence indictment also charges suspected accomplice Kiril N.Dyjine
with two counts of growing marijuana. No indictments were returned against
Renee Danielle Bojo and Aleksandra Evanguedlidi, arrested during the same
July 29 raid. | ||||||
Defense attorneys had requested in August that federal prosecutors postpone
an indictment, arguing that McCormick was acting within bounds of
proposition 215, a voter-approved state law that allows medicinal marijuana
use. | ||||||
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Saying the state attorney general appeared to be looking for a better place
to prosecute San Francisco Cannabis Cultivators Club founder Dennis Peron,
an Alameda County Superior Court judge transferred a marijuana case from
Oakland to San Francisco yesterday. | ||||||
In a ruling that thrilled Peron and five other defendants and angered Attorney General Dan Lungren, Judge Dean Beaupre said his decision was based on "an appearance of improper forum-shopping" by Lungren's office. | ||||||
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The War on Drugs
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Nearly 1,000 more narcotics cops will hit the streets of Queens and The Bronx next month in an unprecedented escalation of the city's war on drugs, The Post has learned. "We are continuing in the war on driving drug traffickers out of New York City," Police Commissioner Howard Safir said, noting that 80 per-cent of all homicides in the city are drug-related. | ||||||
Between 60 and 80 percent of all people arrested in the city have cocaine, marijuana or heroin in their system at the time of arrest, he noted. | ||||||
The police will begin phasing in the extra manpower next month - assigning
more than 400 cops to The Bronx's Motthaven, Hunts Point, Parkchester and
Soundview sections and at least 500 to Jamaica, South Jamaica, St. Albans,
Laurelton and Springfield Gardens in Queens. | ||||||
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SACRAMENTO (AP) -- Saying it would give the news media "special access" to prison information, Gov. Pete Wilson on Monday vetoed legislation that would overturn his administration's restrictions on inmate interviews. | ||||||
"The First Amendment does not guarantee the press a constitutional right of
special access to information not available to the general public, nor does
it cloak the inmate with special rights of freedom of speech," the
Republican governor said in his veto message. | ||||||
But news media representatives said the veto would hurt the public by
limiting its ability, through journalists, to know what takes place behind
prison walls. | ||||||
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ORLANDO -- (AP) -- The Orange County Sheriff's Office hired a deputy last year who admitted he recently had grown marijuana at home. | ||||||
Although drug experience does not necessarily disqualify a law enforcement candidate these days, Jeffery Mann probably is not a typical hire. | ||||||
His pot farming occurred in mid-1995 at the same time he was seeking a state
pardon in a 10-year-old fraud and conspiracy case so he could apply to be a
deputy, sheriff's records show, according to a story published Sunday by The
Orlando Sentinel. | ||||||
Sheriff Kevin Beary, Undersheriff Rick Staly and personnel director Dan Ford
would not comment on why they hired Mann in December over hundreds of other
applicants. | ||||||
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"War," a wise man once observed, "is the health of the State." | ||||||
He was referring, of course, to wars among nations, but he could as easily have been talking about our current moral equivalents: the "war against crime," the "war on drugs" and the "war against terrorism." | ||||||
With foreign threats largely in eclipse and national defense no longer
supplying a ready warrant for expansions of government power, these internal
threats have become the justifications for large and often dubious
expansionism of federal authority and control over Americans' everyday
lives. And the greatest beneficiary of these expansions has been the Federal
Bureau of Investigation. | ||||||
To an extent that should have provoked far more concern and debate than it has, the FBI has grown enormously in budget, manpower, and jurisdiction - all the result of presidential requests or congressional initiatives taken in response to the threats of terrorism and drugs and crime. | ||||||
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SACRAMENTO, Calif., Oct. 14 (UPI) -- California's 15th annual Campaign Against Marijuana Planting seized 132,485 plants this year -- 40 percent more than last year and the biggest haul of the decade. | ||||||
Attorney General Dan Lungren says 66 tons of plants were seized in 260 raids at 675 cultivation sites in 16 counties over a nine-week period. | ||||||
Law enforcement officers arrested 54 suspects and confiscated 25 firearms, including an M-16 assault rifle. Lungren says the plants had a street value of $529 million, which far exceeds the $571,000 that the raids cost. | ||||||
They were more densely planted than in past years, and typically were on outdoor plots on public land and booby-trapped or guarded by dogs. | ||||||
Officials found no apparent connection between plantings and Proposition
215, which authorized the medical use of marijuana. | ||||||
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The broadsides are everywhere. The president warns against those who are "soft" on drugs. Steve Forbes writes of "an insidious effort ... to legalize drugs. Medical marijuana is the stealth legalizer's Trojan horse." It is refreshing that State Sen. John Vasconcellos in California is determined to authorize a simple examination of the factual questions about the use of marijuana. He had impressive sponsors for his bill to establish a Medical Marijuana Research Center at the University of California. | ||||||
Along comes a small book that is a miracle of intelligent concision. It is
called "Marijuana Myths/Marijuana Facts." Its authors are Lynn Zimmer, a
professor of sociology at Queens College, and Dr. John P. Morgan, a
physician and professor at the CCNY Medical School. The publisher is the
Lindesmith Center in New York, a research center outspokenly committed to
the legalization of marijuana. | ||||||
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A measure to repeal a law criminalizing possession of small quantities of
marijuana is on Oregon's 1998 ballot. | ||||||
State elections officials late Tuesday verified that the referendum to
repeal House Bill 3643 gathered 66,947 valid signatures, more than the
required 48,841. The referendum will appear on the Nov. 3, 1998,
general-election ballot as Measure 57, unless otherwise ordered by the
Legislature. | ||||||
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HOT OFF THE 'NET (Top) | ||||||
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Global Internet Liberty Campaign Launches Cyber-Newsletter | ||||||
The Global Internet Liberty Campaign ("GILC"), a coalition of 35
international organizations, which seeks to break down the barriers to
online freedoms all over the world will launch a free, bi-weekly e-zine on
emerging cyber-liberties issues this week. | ||||||
The GILC Alert will feature international human rights issues effecting
cyberspace, for organizing GILC events, promoting cyber liberties issues at
international conferences, producing policy reports and promoting on-line
activist campaigns globally. | ||||||
"The member organizations of GILC have banded together to promote human rights and civil liberties on the net and GILC alert assist netizens everywhere in knowing how to stay involved and informed," Barry Steinhardt, Associate Director of the ACLU and a founder of GILC stated. | ||||||
The American Civil Liberties Union Foundation (ACLU), the Electronic Privacy
Information Center (EPIC), and the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT)
are playing a leadership role in building GILC. | ||||||
Information on how to subscribe to GILC can be found on the World Wide Web
at http://www.gilc.org/
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DRUGSENSE TIP OF THE WEEK (Top) | ||||||
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JRP Web Page Announcement - October 16, 1997
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The Jury Rights Project would like to invite you to a house-warming party in our first permanent home in cyberspace: http://www.lrt.org/jrp.homepage.htm | ||||||
A few weeks ago, we put out a request for someone to take all the JRP files and put them on the Internet. The request was answered by five wonderful volunteers. Sunni Maravillosa was chosen for the project and has proved to be an outstanding choice for Webmistress. See for yourself. Comments and praise can be sent to her at: | ||||||
Sunni also maintains the page for the Liberty Round Table, which has generously agreed to host the JRP home page. We look forward to a long and rewarding partnership. Check out the LRT at: http://www.lrt.org/ | ||||||
We envision the JRP page as a resource for current and historical
information on trial and grand juries. It will be activist-oriented,
encouraging people to first educate themselves about the importance and
power of juries and then to educate others through politics, law, and the
media. The page, with Sunni's marvelous talents, will continue to grow and
expand. Please, check it out and give your input.
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DS Weekly is just another of the many free services DrugSense offers our
members. Watch this feature to learn more about what DrugSense can do for
you. | ||||||
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We wish to thank each and every one of our contributors. | ||||||
Mark Greer
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