November 11 ,1998 #073 |
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A DrugSense publication
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- * Breaking News (12/21/24)
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- * Feature Article
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Debate With ONDCP on Medical Marijuana Issues
By Kevin Zeese
- * Weekly News In Review
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Medical Marijuana-
Medical Marijuana Gains Momentum
D.C. Won't Give Results Of Marijuana Referendum
What's Congress Smoking?
Nearly No Research Done on Pot
Authorities Consider Medical Use of Marijuana
Drug War Policy-
The War At Home
Iowa Rule Letting Police Search Cars Leads to US Supreme Court
A Call to Action Issued on AIDS Among Alameda Blacks
NY Review of Books November 19, 1998
CIA Turned a Deliberate Blind Eye to Contras' Drug Smuggling
Accused Ex-Cop Gets Disability
Newsbuzz - Bugging Plants
International News-
Decriminalisation of Drugs: The Debate Continues With Divergent
Scenarios.
Venezuela: Charges Vowed Against U.S. Agents
Hells Angels Are Among The Most Murderous in the World
Yardies Linked To UKP10M Trade In Scotland's Heroin Capital
Colombia: Wire: Guerrillas Attack Police Garrison In State
- * Hot Off The 'Net
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Cronkite and More On-line using RealVideo on CRRH's Hot Site
- * Quote of the Week
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Albert Einstein
- * Special Notice
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Thanks to DrugNews Screeners - Don Beck and Kevin Fansler
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FEATURE ARTICLE (Top) |
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DEBATE WITH ONDCP ON MEDICINAL MARIJUANA ISSUES
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By Kevin Zeese
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Yesterday, (11/7/98) I debated Chuck Blanchard, General Counsel of
ONDCP, before approximately 85 members of the Special Interest Group on
Addictive Behaviors. The topic was medical marijuana.
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Before the debate Chuck asked what I thought of ONDCP's response to the
medical marijuana votes. I asked what he meant and he described their
non-response. It is evident that they have made a strategic decision to
not respond to the initiatives and in that way not draw attention to
them. Obviously they have learned from the 1996 votes. (Although when
we discussed threats to doctors after the 1996 votes, Chuck mentioned
that McCaffrey has repeatedly told him that he did not threaten doctors
in 1996. Further he said he looked at the tapes of the press conference
and did not see any threats.) He acknowledged that the right wing in
Congress will pressure them to respond, but he thinks they will be able
to stick to their non-response strategy.
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He also mentioned they are waiting for the results of the Institute of
Medicine review on medical marijuana. He said it will be out in January
or February, although he emphasized that they really did not know when
it will be released since IOM is independent of the government. It
seems to me the IOM review will be the key to their reaction. If they
acknowledge the medical benefits of marijuana that will give them some
cover to move forward positively, if not, they will have an excuse not
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The basic public position of ONDCP is there should not be a special
exception to the normal drug approval process. The FDA review process
is what should be followed, the initiatives are an end run around
science. He stated NIH is very open to research requests and noted
they had already approved the Abrams study.
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On the study front one important new thing he said was that any
research on medical marijuana will have to show that it is something
other than the already approved THC that is causing the positive
medical benefit. This is a strange requirement that I have never heard
before. He claims it is required by the Controlled Substances Act for
all Schedule I drugs. If this is their approach then it will create
very difficult obstacles to medical marijuana research.
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He also noted that THC has been recommended for rescheduling to Schedule
III and that a lot of research will be going on around developing a
vaporizer and a suppository for THC.
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Beyond the "let research decide" mantra he mentioned that the current
initiatives cause problems because there is no controlled distribution
system, increase the availability of marijuana generally and will result
in increased adolescent use because kids will think mj is okay.
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While he acknowledged that many of the people who support medical
marijuana and certainly the voters who voted for it were concerned about
compassion for the ill (they were fooled like in the laetrile debates of
the late 70s) the funders behind the initiatives have a broader agenda --
reform generally. They were using issues like medical marijuana to chip
away at the drug laws.
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Of course, I responded to all of these assertions, but will not bore you
with that.
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WEEKLY NEWS IN REVIEW (Top) |
COMMENT: (Top) |
Week after week, Congress and the media refused to focus on anything
beyond the Presidential sex scandal, despite poll after poll giving
Clinton sustained high job-approval ratings. Several days after an
election which reversed the usual off-year trends to a historic degree
and toppled the second most powerful political figure in the nation,
many still seem unable to comprehend the public's unambiguous message
on impeachment.
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In that setting, is it any wonder they are also slow to understand the
significance of last week's vote on medical marijuana?
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Medical Marijuana-
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COMMENT: (Top) |
Considering Medical marijuana first this week underscores its huge
significance to drug policy reform. California and Arizona's
unequivocal 1996 rejection of current policy was too easily dismissed
by ideologues as aberrant. In the interim, both laws were vitiated
within their respective states by entrenched politicians and craven
judiciaries. Last week's electoral success of medical marijuana
together with the defeat of its political foes in California is just
beginning to be understood by more intelligent editorial sources such
as the SF Examiner.
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The Baltimore Sun reported on the silly Congressional attempt to
nullify the DC vote while the Washington Post poked fun at it. Bob
Barr, cited in both articles, is indeed an important symbol; defeat of
politicians of his stripe is the ultimate challenge for drug policy
reform. ONDCP's response has already been signaled; they will insist
on a need to wait for validation by "science;" the AP article suggests
that could be a very long wait, indeed. The courts represent another,
and even less certain mechanism for effecting change; it's ironic that
a detailed account of the class action lawsuit wasn't printed until
Election Day.
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MEDICAL MARIJUANA GAINS MOMENTUM
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Surprise victories for medical marijuana proposals in five states
Tuesday mean California's Proposition 215 was no fluke - and the
federal government will be under pressure to change its hard-line
stance, advocates said yesterday.
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But officials at the White House's office of drug policy said they were
unfazed by the election results in Arizona, Nevada, Alaska, Washington
and Oregon.
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[snip]
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Source: | San Francisco Examiner (CA) |
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Copyright: | 1998 San Francisco Examiner |
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D.C. WON'T GIVE RESULTS OF MARIJUANA REFERENDUM
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Congress Barred Release Of Votes On Measure To Allow Medicinal Use
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WASHINGTON - After casting their ballots on whether to legalize the use
of marijuana for medical treatment, district residents tuned to the
local news on election night to find out the results. That's when they
saw the tally: Zero "yes" votes. Zero "no" votes.
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Zero votes, period.
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How could this be, when thousands remembered voting on Initiative 59
that very morning?
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It turns out that Congress, which controls the inner workings of
district affairs, squelched the release of the results after one of its
most conservative members did not like the smell of the medical
marijuana measure.
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[snip]
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Source: | The Baltimore Sun |
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Copyright: | 1998 by The Baltimore Sun, a Times Mirror Newspaper. |
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Author: | Ellen Gamerman, Sun National Staff |
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WHAT'S CONGRESS SMOKING?
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Inside a computer, inside the Board of Elections and Ethics at One
Judiciary Square downtown, "lies the answer," Alice P. Miller said
yesterday.
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The question is whether it should be legal to use marijuana for medical
reasons. It was on the ballot Tuesday in the District, just as it was
on the ballot in Arizona, Nevada and Washington state.
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[snip]
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Miller, the election board's executive director, might be dismembered
or dispatched to a concentration camp if she asked. Okay, not quite. But
Miller hasn't asked because it might not be politically healthy for
District officials and other living things to know the outcome of the
city's Initiative 59. There's Bob Barr, after all.
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[snip]
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Pubdate: | November 5, 1998 |
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Source: | Washington Post (DC) |
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Copyright: | 1998 The Washington Post Company |
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NEARLY NO RESEARCH DONE ON POT
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Despite ongoing controversy over marijuana's medical efficacy, almost
no research is being done on the topic.
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Some proponents of medical marijuana say sufficient research was
performed in the 1970s and '80s, when the federal government provided
marijuana for studies done mostly by states.
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Many of those studies were suspended in 1991 when the National
Institutes of Health concluded there wasn't enough proof that marijuana
would be better than a synthetic version of tetrahydrocannabinol, or
THC, the drug's major chemical component.
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Proponents said the studies were going to prove the opposite, but the
government stopped supplying the marijuana.
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[snip]
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Pubdate: | Sun, 08 Nov 1998 |
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Copyright: | 1998 Associated Press. |
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Author: | Michelle Boorstein |
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AUTHORITIES CONSIDER MEDICAL USE OF MARIJUANA
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WASHINGTON - Responding to a request from a federal judge, the Justice
Department is considering whether to permit government-supervised use
of marijuana as a treatment for certain sick people.
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If Justice agrees to settle a lawsuit as proposed by a district judge
in Philadelphia, government-approved marijuana could be available to
thousands of AIDS and cancer sufferers and other patients. In return,
the 160 plaintiffs in the case would drop their lawsuit.
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[snip]
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Mail: | USA Today. Letters to the Editor, |
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1000 Wilson Boulevard, Arlington, VA 22229
FAX: 703-247-3108
http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v98.n992.a03.html
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Drug Policy-
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COMMENT: (Top) |
Gore Vidal's long, elegantly vitriolic rant against American
repression has beautifully tied our drug policy to our government's
other troubling assaults on freedom. The article has been broken into
four parts for convenience only; it's a must-read for everyone with a
serious interest in drug policy.
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The Iowa case is typical of the creeping erosion of personal liberty
Vidal complains of; a series of such cases has been used to increase
police search authority based ultimately on nothing more than
unsubstantiated suspicion. One can already sense how this court will
rule.
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The next article highlights drug reform's other "wedge issue" which
probably has significant voter appeal. In terms of public health
urgency, needle exchange is much more significant than medical
marijuana; the decline in AIDS deaths in the US is due to more
effective treatment and is misleading; the real news is that the
overall HIV infection rate is still increasing.
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Michael Massing, author of "The Fix," a book on drug policy, has also
written a long review of influential ex-NYPD Commissioner William
Bratton's 'Turnaround," in which Bratton claims credit for the widely
publicized decline in NYC's crime rate. With extravagant claims made
on behalf of many different approaches to crime and drugs, there is a
real need for us to keep abreast of these issues. Both Massing's
review and Bratton's book deserve to be read.
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The CIA-Contra connection, which was dismissed back in the Eighties
when raised by Senator Kerrey, and once again in the mid-nineties,
when raised by Gary Webb in the San Jose Mercury News, is back under
discussion; this time it's an article from a British newspaper.
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On the lighter side, a felon who just happens to be a policeman, was
awarded disability for the gambling "addiction" which led him to
burglarize houses on his beat. Somehow we don't think the decision
would have been the same if the addiction in question were to heroin.
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Finally, an article from Oregon describes one of the dirty tricks used
by police to increase their arrest totals (and forfeiture revenue).
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THE WAR AT HOME
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The U.S. Bill Of Rights Is Being Steadily Eroded, With Two Million
Telephone Calls Tapped, 30 Million Workers Under Electronic
Surveillance, And, Says The Author, Countless Americans Harassed By A
Government That Wages Spurious Wars Against Drugs And Terrorism.
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[snip]
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Drugs. If they did not exist our governors would have invented them in
order to prohibit them and so make much of the population vulnerable to
arrest, imprisonment, seizure of property, and so on.
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[snip]
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Copyright: | 1998 The Conde Nast Publications Inc. |
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IOWA RULE LETTING POLICE SEARCH CARS LEADS TO US SUPREME COURT
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Des Moines, Iowa Patrick Knowles knew he was speeding that day.
Frustrated that his old car was sputtering, he had stomped on the gas
pedal to keep the engine from dying.
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When a policeman drove by and quickly turned around, Knowles knew he
probably would be pulled over and given a speeding ticket. He did not
expect the officer to tell him he needed to search his car.
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[snip]
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Tuesday, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear Knowles' argument that the
search violated the U.S. Constitution's protection against unreasonable
searches and that the marijuana should not be used as evidence.
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[snip]
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Copyright: | 1998 Associated Press. |
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Author: | Mary Neubauer-The Associated Press |
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A CALL TO ACTION ISSUED ON AIDS AMONG ALAMEDA COUNTY BLACKS
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Alameda County became the first in the nation Thursday to declare a
medical state of emergency over an epidemic of AIDS among
African-Americans, who accounted for half of all AIDS cases countywide
last year.
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The board of supervisors voted unanimously to sound the alarm after
hearing a report that the deadly disease strikes African-Americans in
the county at a rate five times higher than whites.
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[snip]
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Source: | San Jose Mercury News (CA) |
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Copyright: | 1998 Mercury Center |
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Author: | Renee Koury, Mercury News Staff Writer |
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NY REVIEW OF BOOKS NOVEMBER 19, 1998
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A Review Of:
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Turnaround: | How America's Top Cop Reversed the Crime Epidemic by |
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William Bratton and Peter Knobler 329 pages, $25.00 (hardcover)
published by Random House
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Getting Away With Murder: How Politics Is Destroying the Criminal
Justice System by Susan Estrich 161 pages, $19.95 (hardcover) published
by Harvard University Press
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Politics, Punishment, and Populism by Lord Windlesham 278 pages, $35.00
(hardcover) published by Oxford University Press
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The continuing decline in the nation's crime rate-in 1997, it fell for
the sixth consecutive year-has helped to draw attention to a small
group of police chiefs and crime experts who are widely believed to
have brought it about. They include William Bratton, New York's former
police commissioner; Jack Maple, who served as Bratton's deputy and who
is now advising the New Orleans police department; the political
scientist James Q. Wilson; George L. Kelling, coauthor of the recent
book Fixing Broken Windows,[1] and Herman Goldstein, a professor at the
University of Wisconsin and the author of Problem-Oriented Policing.
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Pubdate: | Thu, 19 Nov 1998 |
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Source: | New York Review of Books |
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Copyright: | New York Review of Books, 1998 |
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CIA TURNED A DELIBERATE BLIND EYE TO CONTRAS' DRUG SMUGGLING
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The Central Intelligence Agency deliberately ignored evidence of drug
smuggling by its Contra allies in the Eighties, the agency has admitted.
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The revelations are contained in an internal report by former CIA
Inspector-General Frederick Hitz which investigated widespread
allegations that the CIA co-operated with cocaine traffickers.
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[snip]
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Pubdate: | Sat, 07 Nov 1998 |
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Source: | Independent, The (UK) |
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Mail: | 1 Canada Square, Canary Wharf, London E14 5DL England |
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Copyright: | Independent Newspapers (UK) Ltd. |
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Author: | Andrew Marshall in Washington |
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ACCUSED EX-COP GETS DISABILITY
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Gambling habit leads to pension; may have led to on-duty thefts
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A city retirement board Thursday granted a disability pension of about
$27,000 a year to former San Jose police officer Johnny Venzon Jr.,
charged with stealing from people on his beat. His disability: the
uncontrollable gambling authorities believe led to his alleged string
of on-duty burglaries.
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[snip]
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Source: | San Jose Mercury News (CA) |
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Copyright: | 1998 Mercury Center |
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Author: | Bill Romano, Staff Writer |
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http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v98.n1012.a01.html
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NEWSBUZZ - BUGGING PLANTS
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Local defense lawyers are up in arms after discovering that the
Portland Police have been secretly tracing phone calls-perhaps for
years-to get leads on suspected marijuana growers.
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Defense lawyers, led locally by Pat Birmingham, discovered earlier this
year that the Portland Police installed a device called a trap on the
phone line of American Agriculture. The store, located on Southeast
Stark Street, sells high-tech indoor growing equipment, and police
suspect it's a favorite outlet for marijuana growing supplies.
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A phone trap records the phone numbers of all incoming calls.
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[snip]
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Source: | Willamette Week (OR) |
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International News
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COMMENT: (Top) |
Last week we scooped the English-language media with our story of
Droleg, the Swiss national referendum on drug legalization. A current
check of Drug News reveals that the story is still our private scoop-
no other reports in English. The translation of a more recent article
confirms that the referendum will take place on Nov. 29. Polling to
check the pulse of the electorate is relatively unknown in
Switzerland, so apparently no one has a clue how this will turn out.
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Remember the ill-fated Operation Casablanca, a much-ballyhooed DEA
sting which led the Mexicans to threaten US agents with prosecution
for violating their sovereignty? It turns out that some Venezuelans
were also less than pleased and have made similar threats.
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The reports from Canada and Scotland are eerily similar; violent drug
gangs of exotic strangers battling for turf; they combine classic
drug-scare journalism with an acknowledgement that profitable criminal
markets are powerful lures to immigration.
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Finally, another monotonous report from Colombia: the guerrillas
strike again. Just think of what morale must be among government
conscripts sent to remote bases in the interior.
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DECRIMINALISATION OF DRUGS: THE DEBATE CONTINUES WITH DIVERGENT
SCENARIOS.
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REFORMS. The voting on the Droleg initiative that will take place end
of November will be decisive for current reforms. With the publication
of several competing proposals on the topic, discussions won't be easy.
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After a long period of calm, the approach of the vote on the Droleg
initiative at the end of November has reopened the political debate on
prohibited drugs. The "Sonntags-Zeitung" (a Zurich newspaper) fired the
first salvo Sunday in exposing a report of the Parliamentary working
group, "Politique de la Drogue" (Politics of Illegal Drugs), on
proposed modifications to the federal law on narcotics (LFS). In this
report, the four governmental parties consider the possibility of
testing the decriminalization of drug use solely in certain cities,
similarly to the model of experimental prescription of heroin.
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[snip]
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Translation: | Peter Webster |
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Source: | Le Temps (Switzerland) |
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Pubdate: | 22 September 1998 |
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CARACAS, VENEZUELA - Venezuela plans to prosecute U.S. undercover
agents who took part in a drug money laundering sting operation that
led to the indictment of five Venezuelans, the country's ambassador to
the U.S. said in an interview published Sunday.
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Operation Casablanca, which resulted in the arrest of more than 100
suspects from several Latin American countries in May, violated
Venezuelan sovereignty, Ambassador Pedro Luis Echeverria told the
newspaper El Nacional.
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[snip]
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Source: | Chicago Tribune (IL) |
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Copyright: | 1998 Chicago Tribune Company |
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http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v98.n990.a04.html
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PROVINCE'S CHAPTERS OF THE HELLS ANGELS ARE AMONG THE MOST MURDEROUS IN
THE WORLD.
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Montreal - As the body count continues to rise in Quebec's vicious
biker war, one of its generals-a Hells Angel honcho known as "mom"-went
to trial this week amid some of the heaviest security ever seen in a
Canadian courtroom.
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"Mom" is the nickname of Maurice Boucher, the bespectacled and oddly
preppie-looking overlord of "les Hills," as riders of the outlaw gang
are known to Quebecers. He is accused in the killings of two Quebec
prison guards - hits apparently ordered to teach a lesson after
corrections officials showed disrespect for Angels in custody.
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[snip]
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Source: | Orange County Register (CA) |
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Copyright: | 1998 The Orange County Register |
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SCOTLAND: | YARDIES LINKED TO UKP10M TRADE IN SCOTLAND'S HEROIN |
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CAPITAL
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A NETWORK of drug dealers, with direct links to the notorious Yardie
gangs of Jamaican criminals operating in the English Midlands, has
moved into Fraserburgh, the new heroin capital of Scotland.
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Afro-Caribbean drug barons, supplying heroin and crack cocaine, are
targeting that Banff and Buchan area to secure a lucrative base for
their operations in the north-east, where the market is estimated to be
worth UKP10 million a week.
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[snip]
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Copyright: | The Scotsman Publications Ltd |
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GUERRILLAS ATTACK POLICE GARRISON IN STATE CAPITAL
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BOGOTA, Colombia - Fighting raged all day Sunday in a remote
southeastern town after about 800 leftist rebels attacked a police
base, killing at least four police officers, wounding nine and cutting
off communications.
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The guerrillas of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC,
rained homemade missiles on the police garrison in Mitu, capital of
Vaupes state, where 120 officers were stationed, Gen. Rosso Jose
Serrano told a news conference.
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Serrano said the last radio contact with the garrision was at 2 p.m.,
eight hours after the attack began. Such missiles, fired from modified
propane gas cylinders, were used in an Aug. 3 assault that leveled a
police anti-narcotics base in the same region.
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[snip]
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Copyright: | 1998 Associated Press |
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Author: | Frank Bajak Associated Press |
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HOT OFF THE 'NET (Top)
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CRRH's award winning web site has some new videos on-line for video
streaming for free by anyone with a 28.8K modem and the free Real
Player installed (which can be download through links in our web site.)
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The Cronkite Report, "The Drug Dilemma: War or Peace?" with Walter
Cronkite, 48 minutes, 1995. Veteran TV anchorman and journalist, Walter
Cronkite examines the dilemma and abject failure of the War on Drugs.
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He interviews mothers in prison with outrageously long, Draconian
sentences for trivial drug offenses, and poignantly shows the innocent
victims of this misguided civil war. Cronkite compares the drug war
with the Vietnam War and tells us it's time to declare peace and save
lives.
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http://www.crrh.org/hemptv/news_cronkite95.html
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Investigative Reports, "The War on Drugs: R.I.P." with Bill Curtis, 48
minutes, 1995. This show documents many of the horrors of the drug war,
and advocates that it should "Rest In Peace." It ends with conservative
economist Milton Freeman saying we should stop the war and regulate the
illegal drug market.
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http://www.crrh.org/hemptv/docs_IR-wod-rip.html
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QUOTE OF THE WEEK (Top)
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"Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre
minds." - Albert Einstein
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SPECIAL NOTICE (Top)
Sincere Thanks to DrugNews Screeners - Don Beck and Kevin Fansler
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As the scope and coverage of Drug News has expanded, screening the
weekly submissions to DrugNews (which form the basis for the News &
COMMENTS section of the newsletter) became too much for one person. We
asked for volunteers and have received critical emergency help from Don
Beck and Kevin Fansler under the capable guidance of Editor Richard
Lake.
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Volunteer screening of new items will be an essential feature of the
newsletter from now on. Additional volunteers are needed to provide
coverage for vacations and unexpected emergencies. It is also expected
that screeners will, if desired, have an opportunity to take over some
writing and COMMENTing chores as the Newsletter grows. If you're
interested, please contact Richard,
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News/COMMENTS-Editor: | Tom O'Connell () |
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Senior-Editor: | Mark Greer () |
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