Table of Contents

* Breaking News (12/30/24)

* This Just In

(1) Feds Turn To Europe For Advice On Drugs
(2) Physical Punishment Of Drug Addicts Banned
(3) No Jail For Cannabis Doctor
(4) Marijuana May Relieve Chemo Patients' Nausea

* Weekly News in Review

Drug Policy-

COMMENT: (5-8)
(5) Conviction of McLean Pain Doctor Overturned
(6) OPED: Sex, Drugs And Stereotypes
(7) Drug War Poses Another Tough Task Along Border
(8) Man Accused Of Paying Workers With Cocaine

Law Enforcement & Prisons-

COMMENT: (9-12)
(9) State Fills Up Prisons With Drug Criminals
(10) Candidates Share Meth-Beating Plans
(11) Border Patrol Agents' Conviction Riles Union Chief
(12) States List Meth Offenders On Web

Cannabis & Hemp-

COMMENT: (13-15)
(13) Cannabis Cafes Get Nudge To Fringes Of A Dutch City
(14) Assembly Sends Hemp Bill To Governor
(15) Pot Grow Op Busts Are Set To Soar
(16) Ex-Contract Worker Gets 20 Years In Jail Instead

International News-

COMMENT: (17-23)
(17) U.S. Anti-Cocaine Effort Fails
(18) More Injection Sites Urged - Even In Fraser Health Region
(19) Safe-Injection Site Expected To Survive
(20) Dryden, Brison Back Injection Site
(21) Prisoners To Get Carrot And Stick Treatment
(22) Woman Lashed In Somalia Over Cannabis
(23) Mexican Prosecutors Promise Arrests Of Police

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* What You Can Do This Week

    Join A Media Activism Roundtable Online

* Letter Of The Week

    School Drug Testing Just Doesn't Work / By Pete Guither

* Feature Article

    Another Forfeiture Outrage / By Radley Balko

* Quote of the Week

    William Faulkner

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Tories Seeing How Swedes, Danes Deal With Druggies

Federal Health Minister Tony Clement appears to be looking for advice from Sweden before his government decides whether to kill Insite, Canada's only safe-injection site.

The Swedish Embassy in Ottawa has confirmed Clement was to meet Sweden's drug policy co-ordinator, Bjorn Fries, in Stockholm yesterday.

Clement was also to meet with the director of European Cities Against Drugs, described on its website as "Europe's leading organization promoting a drug-free Europe."

"He got .  . . almost three hours on drug policies but not really harm-reduction issues because that is not what we do in Sweden," said a Swedish Embassy official, speaking on condition of anonymity.

"We don't really do that," said the official, referring to safe-injection sites like Vancouver's Insite facility.

European Cities Against Drugs, backed by 245 signatory municipalities in 27 countries, appears to be opposed to safe-injection sites.

The Swedish official said the organization is focusing on "a sort of rehabilitation-diversion program" as an alternative to safe-injection sites.

[snip]

Mark Townsend of the PHS Community Services Society, which operates Insite, said Clement may be "clutching around" for a policy to appeal to Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who has expressed concerns about taxpayer support for drug use.

"The bottom line with the safe-injection site [is] the science is in, Health Canada is recommending it, the police are recommending it, the RCMP are recommending it," said Townsend.  "[Harper] can try and invent a world that's flat, but unfortunately it's round and he is going to have to face that."

[snip]

Newshawk:	CMAP http://www.mapinc.org/cmap

Pubdate:	Fri, 25 Aug 2006

Source:	Province, The (CN BC)

Copyright:	2006 The Province

Website:	http://www.canada.com/theprovince/

Details:	http://www.mapinc.org/media/476

Author:	Ian Bailey, The Province

Alert:	Save Lives by Preserving InSite http://www.mapinc.org/alert/0334.html

Cited:	European Cities Against Drugs http://www.ecad.net/

Bookmark:	http://www.mapinc.org/topics/InSite

Continues:	http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v06.n1122.a04.html

China's first bill on drug control will forbid drug-rehab centers from physically punishing or verbally humiliating drug addicts.

The draft anti-drug law, which is under review at a top legislature session, requires drug-rehab centers to take protective measures when drug addicts try to hurt themselves.

The centers should pay drug addicts for work they do, demands the bill.

The draft law, the first specifically designed to crack down on drug trafficking, advocates non-discriminatory environments for people undergoing rehabilitation with regard to access to education, employment and social security support.

"Drug takers are law violators, but they are also patients and victims. Punishment is needed, but education and assistance are more important," Zhang Xinfeng, Vice Minister of Public Security, said in a briefing to lawmakers of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress.

[snip]

In addition to building a more lenient environment for drug addicts, the draft law is also designed to intensify the anti-drug efforts.

Police will be authorized to force people suspected of taking drugs to take biological body sample tests and proven drug addicts would be registered and forced to undertake rehabilitation.

[snip]

According to the bill, owners and managers of discos, bars, and night clubs will be ordered to post anti-drug signs in prominent places on their premises and to report drug takers to the police.

It will also authorize police to search people and their luggage for illegal drugs at key public places such as train stations, long- distance bus stations and border crossings.

[snip]

Pubdate:	Fri, 25 Aug 2006

Source:	China Daily (China)

Contact:

Website:	http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/

Details:	http://www.mapinc.org/media/911

URL:	http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2006-08/25/content_673803.htm

A SYDNEY doctor and cannabis campaigner who grew almost 50,000 "benign" marijuana plants will not be jailed, a Newcastle court has ruled.

Andrew John Katelaris was convicted on March 8 this year after pleading not guilty to cultivating a large commercial quantity of cannabis.

He grew the 49,519 plants on his property at Salisbury, near Dungog in the NSW Hunter Valley, between December 2004 and January 2005.

Laboratory tests revealed the plants, which had initially been estimated by police to have a street value of up to $40 million, had little or no tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the ingredient that makes cannabis potent as a drug.

The NSW District Court, which heard sentencing submissions for Katelaris today, accepted the cannabis had no value as an intoxicant.

[snip]

Pubdate:	Thu, 24 Aug 2006

Source:	Australian, The (Australia)

Website:	http://www.theaustralian.com.au/

Details:	http://www.mapinc.org/media/35

Author:	By Graham Storer

URL:	http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,20241671-1702,00.html

Marijuana may help prevent nausea in certain situations -- relief many cancer chemotherapy patients can't obtain from existing drugs, says a University of Guelph psychology professor.

Linda Parker's research was published in recent issues of the journal Physiology and Behavior.

Many chemotherapy patients vomit walking into clinics in anticipation of treatment.  The symptoms can deter some patients from continuing with recommended treatment, said Parker, a behaviour neuroscientist.

"Known antiemetic drugs aren't effective in treating this learned nausea," she said.

Medication can control vomiting in 60 to 70 per cent of chemotherapy patients, but many still suffer from nausea.

Using rats and shrews, Parker has been able to determine how two compounds found in marijuana -- THC (the chemical that makes people feel high) and cannabidiol (CBD) -- can treat vomiting and nausea.

"People report that if they smoke marijuana before they go for chemotherapy treatment, they don't experience the anticipatory nausea or vomiting," Parker says.

She's been collaborating with THC discoverer, Raphael Mechoulam, at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.

[snip]

Pubdate:	Thu, 24 Aug 2006

Source:	Windsor Star (CN ON)

Copyright:	2006 The Windsor Star

Contact:

Website:	http://www.canada.com/windsor/windsorstar/

Details:	http://www.mapinc.org/media/501

Bookmark:	http://www.mapinc.org/mmj.htm (Cannabis - Medicinal)

Bookmark:	http://www.mapinc.org/mmjcn.htm (Cannabis - Medicinal - Canada)

Continues:	http://www.mapinc.org/norml/v06.n1118.a06.html

Domestic News- Policy

The conviction of a pain doctor at the center of a closely watched trial was overturned last week.  William Hurwitz will get a new trial.  In Asheville, N.C., a thoughtless new anti-drug campaign was exposed as such in a local publication.  Despite the media's focus on immigration issues and how they relate to border security, a report reminds readers that the drug war makes such issues even more complex.  And, according to a story out of Florida, cocaine is so easy to get that it's being offered as a commodity for migrant laborers who don't mind giving some of their wages to the company store.

Appeals Court Says Judge Erred in Jury Instructions

A federal appeals court threw out the conviction of William E. Hurwitz yesterday, granting the prominent former Northern Virginia pain-management doctor a new trial because jurors were not allowed to consider whether he prescribed drugs in good faith.

The decision again galvanized the national debate that the Hurwitz case had come to symbolize: whether fully licensed doctors prescribing legal medication to patients in chronic pain should be subject to prosecution if their patients abuse or sell the drugs. Patient advocate groups strongly supported Hurwitz and expressed concern that his conviction would have a chilling effect on pain doctors.

The Richmond-based U.S.  Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit acknowledged that prosecutors presented "powerful" evidence at Hurwitz's trial that was "strongly indicative of a doctor acting outside the bounds of accepted medical practice." Hurwitz was convicted in December 2004 of running a drug conspiracy from his McLean office, causing the death of one patient and seriously injuring two others.

But a three-judge panel concluded that U.S.  District Judge Leonard D.  Wexler improperly told jurors that they could not consider whether Hurwitz acted in "good faith" when he prescribed large amounts of OxyContin and other painkillers -- in one instance, 1,600 pills a day.

[snip]

Source:	Washington Post (DC)

Copyright:	2006 The Washington Post Company

Details:	http://www.mapinc.org/media/491

Author:	Jerry Markon, Washington Post Staff Writer

Bookmark:	http://www.mapinc.org/people/Hurwitz (Doctor Hurwitz)

Bookmark:	http://www.mapinc.org/find?232 (Chronic Pain)

Bookmark:	http://www.mapinc.org/oxycontin.htm (Oxycontin/Oxycodone)

Continues:	http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v06/n1115/a01.html

Drug Commission Poster May Do More Harm Than Good

Several weeks ago, the Asheville-Buncombe Drug Commission barraged my neighborhood with a series of peculiar posters.

Full color, they clung to every other tree and pole leading up Hanover Street and into the concrete horizon of the Pisgah View Apartments.

The commission apparently intended the trail of posters as a public-service announcement for female pedestrians in the area, which is to say primarily black and/or underprivileged women.

And the posters are certainly eye-catching, with a blaring red background and a picture of a conventionally attractive woman in a tight, white minidress positioned at its center.

A man in a sporty car with a European plate leans over the passenger seat, poised to make his proposition.  Wearing spiky black heels, the woman bends toward the car, back arched like a cat.  Her hair hangs loose, covering her face.  In letters that perfectly match the woman's dress, the posters proclaim, "It's Scary What You Will End Up Selling For Your Hard Drugs." And beneath the photograph: "Stop. Find a better way." And in even smaller letters: "Asheville cares about the harm of hard drugs.

We're fighting back, together."

Upon viewing the posters, perhaps one sex worker, one drug-addicted individual, will kick off her 4-inch stilettos and run to the Drug Commission's doors.

But wait: There are no doors to open.  The poster gives no physical address, nor phone number, for the group of folks who meet for one hour once a month to discuss how to reduce crime in city neighborhoods.  Beyond the commission's cliched messages, why did the group choose such a glamorized depiction of prostitution, which humiliates rather than educates their target audience - and, in the process, has alienated nearly every woman in the neighborhood.

[snip]

Pubdate:	Wed, 16 Aug 2006

Source:	Mountain Xpress (Asheville, NC)

Copyright:	2006 Mountain Xpress

Details:	http://www.mapinc.org/media/941

Author:	Tamiko Murray

Continues:	http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v06/n1093/a02.html

Mexican Cartels Escalate Conflict Over Roads Into U.S.  For Distribution

RIO GRANDE CITY, Texas - At a Circle K convenience store in this desolate border town, where drugs and illicit earnings flow back and forth almost freely, a man parks his black Ford pickup with tinted windows and begins hawking a live zebra.

The animal, bleeding and abused, usually is found on the African Serengeti.  But in this poor town in one of the poorest counties in the United States, the asking price is $6,000 cash -- no questions asked.

The zebra salesman is a grim reminder of the Wild West atmosphere that prevails along much of the 2,000-mile border, where drugs, people and money are smuggled 24-7.

Before the arrest last week of Francisco Javier Arellano Felix, the alleged leader of Mexico's ruthless Tijuana drug cartel, the national debate over illegal immigrants crossing the border drove the drug war off the front pages.

But America's drug war rages on.  In the Rio Grande Valley sector, cocaine seizures by Border Patrol agents have more than doubled so far this fiscal year and now account for more than half of all Border Patrol seizures along the southern border.

[snip]

Pubdate:	Sun, 20 Aug 2006

Source:	Charlotte Observer (NC)

Copyright:	2006 The Charlotte Observer

Author:	Kevin G.  Hall /McClatchy Newspapers

Bookmark:	http://www.mapinc.org/coke.htm (Cocaine)

Continues:	http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v06/n1107/a04.html

Some workers took part of their pay in crack cocaine, witnesses said at the outset of the trial of a North Florida labor contractor.

JACKSONVILLE - The migrant workers were recruited to Ronald Evans Sr.'s labor camp from homeless shelters, soup kitchens and underpasses -- and took part of their wages in cocaine, a federal prosecutor told jurors at the start of the labor contractor's criminal trial.

Some of the workers who toiled in the potato and cabbage fields took part of their pay in $10 foil packages of cocaine called "bells" that they got at a makeshift company store, with the price of the cocaine and other purchases deducted from their cash wages each week, according to details emerging in the trial.

Sometimes, after deductions for cigarettes, beer and crack and other items, some workers owed the company money at the end of the week, Assistant U.S.  Attorney John Sciorintino told jurors.

The practice affected the "lowest and most vulnerable people in society," he said.

[snip]

Pubdate:	Wed, 16 Aug 2006

Source:	Miami Herald (FL)

Copyright:	2006 The Miami Herald

Details:	http://www.mapinc.org/media/262

Author:	Phil Long

Continues:	http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v06/n1090/a04.html

Law Enforcement & Prisons

In Illinois, a new study shows what drug policy reformers have long suggested: that the state is sending drug offenders to prison in record numbers, but most of the drug offenders are being incarcerated for simple possession.  Fewer are dealers, and even fewer are big time dealers.  Despite these troubling signs, and serious existing methamphetamine laws, candidates for attorney general in Wisconsin are focusing their election debate on how to get even tougher on meth.

A border patrol proponent claims officers were simply doing their job when they shot a drug suspect, so they should not have been convicted for the shooting.  And, finally, USA Today reports that many states are posting lists of convicted meth dealers online, leaving some observers to wonder if that list won't become the meth users' best resource for scoring.

Study:	Possession Tops Sales As a Charge; Big Racial Disparity

After two decades of steadily toughening laws, Illinois now puts more people in prison for drug crimes than any state except California, according to a study released Tuesday by Roosevelt University.

The report also found that more people are being incarcerated for possessing narcotics than for selling them and that the state's prisons hold about five black inmates convicted of drug offenses for every white inmate--one of the largest racial disparities in the country.

The findings cast doubt on the fairness and effectiveness of Illinois' long campaign against illegal drugs, said Kathleen Kane-Willis, a researcher at Roosevelt's Institute for Metropolitan Affairs.

"Just locking folks up is not reducing our drug problems, but it's sure costing us a lot of money," she said.  "I think we need to take a different tactic and start funding treatment at higher levels so people don't have to go to prison."

The raw numbers, experts say, underscore the scope of the issue.  In 1983, 456 people convicted of possessing or selling drugs were behind bars in Illinois, making up 5 percent of the total prison population.  By 2002--the latest year for which detailed federal statistics on imprisonment are available--the number had soared to 12,985, or 38 percent of all inmates.

[snip]

Pubdate:	Tue, 22 Aug 2006

Source:	Chicago Tribune (IL)

Copyright:	2006 Chicago Tribune Company

Details:	http://www.mapinc.org/media/82

Author:	John Keilman and Liam Ford, Tribune staff reporters

Continues:	http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v06/n1114/a04.html

Recently released state figures show a heartening drop in methamphetamine labs in the state - part of a national trend that could cut down on deadly explosions and help the environment.

But that progress in the fight against the dangerous, addictive drug leaves state Attorney General Peg Lautenschlager and the three other candidates for her job to debate another issue: how to fight the out-of-state trafficking of the drug that now accounts for almost all of the meth seized in Wisconsin.

That's making the struggle against meth more like the fight against other drugs, such as cocaine and heroin - a campaign against sophisticated, sometimes international, traffickers, experts said.

"There are, in fact, fewer meth labs popping up around the state, but that's not the same as saying the meth abuse problem has gone away," said Mike Scott, director of the Center for Problem-Oriented Policing affiliated with UW- Madison.  "As important as it is to reduce the local production of meth, one likely consequence is there's going to be more meth that's produced elsewhere and trafficked into the state of Wisconsin."

[snip]

Pubdate:	Wed, 16 Aug 2006

Source:	Wisconsin State Journal (WI)

Copyright:	2006 Madison Newspapers, Inc.

Details:	http://www.mapinc.org/media/506

Author:	Jason Stein

Bookmark:

http://www.mapinc.org/meth.htm
(Methamphetamine)

Continues:	http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v06/n1083/a09.html

Two U.S.  Border Patrol agents facing 20 years in prison for shooting in the buttocks a drug-smuggling suspect should get a new trial because they are "victims of prosecutorial misconduct," including an unjust grant of immunity, says the head of the National Border Patrol Council.

NBPC President T.J.  Bonner said exonerating evidence was withheld during the March trial of Senior Agents Ignacio "Nacho" Ramos and Jose A.  Compean, whose sentencing is set for Tuesday, adding that the agents followed long-established Border Patrol policies in the incident.

He also said the suspect fled into Mexico after the shooting but later was given immunity on drug-smuggling charges to testify against the agents.

"This thing stinks to high heaven," Mr.  Bonner said. "I am outraged and at a loss to explain why there were so many irregularities in this case.  The only thing that is clear is that the prosecutors pointed their guns at the wrong guys, the good guys, and they let the bad guy walk.  Now they want to send these agents to prison for doing their job.

"That offends me, and I believe most Americans would agree," he said.

On Friday, two of the 12 jurors who convicted the agents told the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin in Ontario, Calif., that they were pressured by prosecutors to return guilty verdicts and that other jurors sought a quick verdict because spring break was a week away and they wanted to avoid a long deliberation.

[snip]

Pubdate:	Wed, 16 Aug 2006

Source:	Washington Times (DC)

Copyright:	2006 News World Communications, Inc.

Details:	http://www.mapinc.org/media/492

Author:	Jerry Seper

Continues:	http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v06/n1084/a09.html

Registries Include Makers, Dealers

States frustrated with the growth of toxic methamphetamine labs are creating Internet registries to publicize the names of people convicted of making or selling meth, the cheap and highly addictive stimulant plaguing communities across the nation.

The registries -- similar to the sex-offender registries operated by every state -- have been approved within the past 18 months in Tennessee, Minnesota and Illinois.  Montana has listed those convicted of running illegal drug labs on its Internet registry of sexual and violent offenders since 2003.  Meth-offender registries are being considered in Georgia, Maine, Oklahoma, Oregon, Washington state and West Virginia.

[snip]

The meth-offender registries have not been challenged in court, but the American Civil Liberties Union and other critics say there are legal and practical drawbacks to them.

Graham Boyd, director of the ACLU's Drug Policy Litigation Project, says the prospect of being listed on a meth-offender registry for at least several years after a conviction amounts to an extra punishment "that's not allowed under our Constitution."

[snip]

Boyd also says drug users could use meth-offender registries to locate dealers.  "One group for whom this registry is going to be an incredibly good resource is people looking to buy methamphetamine," he says.

Pubdate:	Wed, 23 Aug 2006

Source:	USA Today (US)

Copyright:	2006 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co.  Inc

Details:	http://www.mapinc.org/media/466

Author:	Donna Leinwand, USA Today

Continues http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v06/n1117/a10.html

Cannabis & Hemp-

This week reveals more of the good, the bad, and the ugly ways the world relates to cannabis and hemp.

The good comes from politicians proposing sensible solutions to two problems - drug tourism in the Netherlands and importing a product that can be grown locally in California.

The bad comes from a city in British Columbia that expects pot grow-op busts to increase tenfold next month thanks to a new law that allows authorities to inspect homes showing unusual power consumption patterns.  No warrant, no judicial process - nothing but an early death for more rights and civil liberties.

The ugly takes us to Malaysia where a man received a 20 year sentence and was whipped 12 times for attempting to buy/sell over 3,000 grams of cannabis.  It gets even uglier when the sentence is actually great news because it reduced the death penalty sentence he was initially given, as no transaction ever took place.

It is great to be aboard the DrugSense Weekly Newsletter on a more regular basis :)

The mayor wants to move most of the city's 16 licensed cannabis cafes to the edge of town, preferably close to the border.

[snip]

The multimillion-dollar trade has spawned a supply chain of illicit growers and underground traders.

[snip]

"People who come from far away don't just come for the five grams you can buy legally over the counter," said Piet Tans, a police spokesman.  "They think pounds and kilos; they go to dealers who operate in the shadows."

The police regularly destroy indoor nurseries, often detected because of the high electricity bills run up by the grow lights, he said.  But new nurseries, hidden in attics and basements, keep springing up to feed the international clientele.  Mr. Tans said the flourishing drug tourism had also attracted pushers of hard drugs from Amsterdam, who often harass people on the streets.

Residents complain of traffic problems, petty crime, loitering and public urinating.  There have been shoot-outs between Balkan gangs. Maastricht's small police force says it cannot cope and is already spending one-third of its time on drug-related problems.

The mayor, Gerd Leers, and the town council have been searching for answers.  Forbidding sales to nonresidents would likely violate European antidiscrimination rules, and closing the cannabis cafes is not the solution either, he said.  "The trade will just go underground because demand will not disappear."

So he has drawn up a scheme to move at least half the cafes away from the charming narrow downtown streets and resettle them along the highways near the borders.

[snip]

Pubdate:	Sun, 20 Aug 2006

Source:	New York Times (NY)

Copyright:	2006 The New York Times Company

Details:	http://www.mapinc.org/media/298

Author:	Marlise Simons

Photo:	http://www.mapinc.org/images/coffeeshop.jpg

Photo:	http://www.mapinc.org/images/plants.jpg

Bookmark:	http://www.mapinc.org/topics/Maastricht

Bookmark:	http://www.mapinc.org/topics/Netherlands

Bookmark:	http://www.mapinc.org/pot.htm (Marijuana)

Continues:	http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v06/n1107/a03.html

Sacramento -- California lawmakers narrowly passed a bill Monday that would allow California's farmers to tap into the $270 million hemp industry by providing the raw materials used to create hemp products.

The bill, AB1147, is a bipartisan effort by Assemblyman Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, and Assemblyman Chuck DeVore, R-Irvine ( Orange County ), that would allow California's farmers to produce hemp oil, seed and fiber -- the raw materials that are used in hemp products.

[snip]

Because state law does not differentiate between hemp and marijuana crops, farmers have been reluctant to grow hemp, fearful that their crops could be confiscated, said DeVore, the only Republican Assembly member to support the bill.

Currently raw hemp is imported from about 30 countries that allow the farming of hemp.

The bill would require farmers to undergo crop testing to ensure that their variety of the cannabis plant is nonhallucinogenic in return for assurances that their crops won't be confiscated by law-enforcement officials.

"Hundreds of hemp products are made right here in California, but manufacturers are forced to import hemp seed, oil and fiber from other countries," said Leno.  "When this bill becomes law, it will be an economic bonanza for California."

[snip]

The bill was approved on a 43-28 vote in the Assembly and now goes to Gov.  Arnold Schwarzenegger's desk.

Pubdate:	Tue, 22 Aug 2006

Source:	San Francisco Chronicle (CA)

Page:	B - 2

Copyright:	2006 Hearst Communications Inc.

Details:	http://www.mapinc.org/media/388

Author:	Kimberly Geiger, Chronicle Sacramento Bureau

Note:	Details about the bill are at

http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/cgi-bin/postquery?bill_number=ab_1147&sess=CUR&house=B&author=leno

Continues:	http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v06/n1113/a07.html

The number of marijuana grow op busts in Surrey will go up tenfold next month because of a new law that allows authorities to inspect homes showing unusual power consumption patterns.

RCMP Supt.  Craig Callins said the detachment estimates there will be "500 or 600" house inspections over a period of a few months as safety inspectors exercise their new powers under the recently adopted legislation.

Based on the results of a 2005 pilot program in Surrey, about 90 per cent of those inspections will likely uncover grow ops.

That works out to about 10 times or 1,000 per cent of the current volume of marijuana grow op raids in Surrey, where a specialist "green team" of Mounties has been averaging about 50 busts every three months.

[snip]

He was careful to say the new campaign doesn't represent a complete cure for the perennial problem of illicit indoor marijuana growing in Surrey, where some estimates place their number in the thousands.

[snip]

According to RCMP estimates, there are 20,000 grow ops in B.C.  which generate $7 billion in illegal revenues.

Rate this article Votes: 0

Pubdate:	Sun, 20 Aug 2006

Source:	Surrey Leader (CN BC)

Copyright:	2006 Surrey Leader

Details:	http://www.mapinc.org/media/1236

Author:	Dan Ferguson

Bookmark:	http://www.mapinc.org/mjcn.htm (Cannabis - Canada)

Continues:	http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v06/n1108/a05.html

PUTRAJAYA:	The trap sprang too early in the drug transaction and

this saved a former contract worker from the death sentence for trafficking.

Saari Jusoh had been jointly charged with Mohd Saufi Jusoh with trafficking in 3,686gm of cannabis at Jalan Tun Abdul Razak in Johor Baru on Sept 8, 1991.

On Dec 11, 1995 the High Court sentenced Saari to death for trafficking.  ( Mohd Saufi was acquitted of the charge. )

Yesterday, the Court of Appeal quashed the conviction and set aside the sentence and ordered that Saari be jailed 20 years and whipped 12 times for drug possession.

Justice Gopal Sri Ram, who led a three-man panel, said there was no sale of drugs in the "transaction" between Saari and an undercover policeman.

"A mere agreement to buy or sell a prescribed drug is not an act of trafficking within Section 39B(1)( a ) of the Dangerous Drugs Act," he said.

"Neither, we may add, do negotiations for a sale amount to the offence of trafficking within section 39B(1)( a ).

"It is our judgment that to constitute the act of selling within Section 2 of the Act, there must have been an actual delivery of the drugs by the appellant accompanied by the physical handing over the agreed price by the agent provocateur.

"Needless to say such a completed transaction did not take place in the present instance because the trap was sprung too early," he said.

Pubdate:	Wed, 16 Aug 2006

Source:	Star, The (Malaysia)

Copyright:	2006 Star Publications (Malaysia) Bhd.

Details:	http://www.mapinc.org/media/922

Bookmark:	http://www.mapinc.org/pot.htm (Marijuana)

Continues:	http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v06/n1101/a09.html

International News

We knew that U.S.  prohibitionists' "Plan Colombia" had failed, but a New York Times article (U.S.  Anti-Cocaine Effort Fails) which was also carried in the Tampa Tribune will help mom and pop connect the dots.  "The closer we can attack to the source, the greater the likelihood of halting the flow of drugs altogether," chortled a confident U.S.  State Department in 2000. Visions of destruction danced in their heads: "If we destroy crops or force them to remain unharvested, no drugs will enter the system." But $4.7 billion thrown at Plan Colombia since then has had no effect - other than spreading out the coca farms into smaller plots.  And despite a war-inflated U.S dollar, in the U.S.  the price of cocaine has actually dropped in the same period.

In Canada, tension builds as North America's first supervised injection center, Insite comes up for renewal this September. Right-wing prime minister Stephen Harper is expected to axe it as a political bone tossed to his conservative base, even though Insite is credited with saving hundreds of lives.  Insite reaped a bounty of praise in the press this week, notably from Liberal leadership candidates Ken Dryden and Scott Brison.

Reading between the lines in a Bermuda newspaper, The Royal Gazette, we find out that Bermuda prisons are as full of illegal drugs as the rest of the world.  While designed to punish drug users for their disobedience, jails worldwide are often places where, ironically, drugs abound.  Prison officials in Bermuda, writes this week's Gazette, are studying "a separate drug-free unit within Bermuda's prison system." New drug-sniffing dogs will be purchased, "to help root out drugs hidden in cells." So much for jailing our way to a drug-free utopia.

Ideas of drug-free utopias seem to be in fashion elsewhere, where the triumph of "fundamentalist rulers" who seized power in the capital city of Mogadishu, Somalia last June, has spelled disaster for those considered sinners.  This week the Associated Press reported fundamentalists there lashed out at marijuana, when a woman was given 11 lashes in a public square as punishment for selling pot.  "The reason we punished them was that we want to stop people selling and using drugs," asserted one fundamentalist official.

And finally this week, the top Mexican prosecutor, Daniel Cabeza de Vaca, promised that soon many "corrupt police" would be arrested. The promise of a crackdown on Mexico's notoriously corrupt police comes in the wake of the arrest of Francisco Javier Arellano Felix in a fishing boat last week.

'Plan Colombia' Produces No Effect

BOGOTA, COLOMBIA - The latest chapter in America's long war on drugs - a six-year, $4.7 billion effort to slash Colombia's coca crop - has left the price, quality and availability of cocaine on American streets virtually unchanged.

The effort, begun in 2000 and known as Plan Colombia, had a specific goal of halving Colombia's coca crop in five years.  That has not happened.  Instead, drug policy experts say, coca, the essential ingredient for cocaine, has been redistributed to smaller and harder-to-reach plots, adding to the cost and difficulty of the drug war.

[snip]

The plan seemed simple enough.  "The closer we can attack to the source, the greater the likelihood of halting the flow of drugs altogether," a State Department report said soon after Plan Colombia began.  "If we destroy crops or force them to remain unharvested, no drugs will enter the system."

Yet recent data show the following results:

As much coca is cultivated today in Colombia as was grown at the start of the large-scale aerial fumigation effort in 2000, according to State Department figures.

Colombia, Peru and Bolivia, the leading sources of coca and cocaine, produce more than enough cocaine to satisfy world demand, and possibly as much tonnage as in the mid-1990s, the United Nations says.

In the United States, the government's tracking over the past quarter-century shows that the price of cocaine has tumbled and that purity remains high, signs that the drug is as available as ever.

[snip]

Pubdate:	Sat, 19 Aug 2006

Source:	Tampa Tribune (FL)

Copyright:	2006 The New York Times Company

Details:	http://www.mapinc.org/media/446

Author:	Juan Forero, The New York Times

Bookmark:	http://www.mapinc.org/topics/coca

Bookmark:	http://www.mapinc.org/topics/Plan+Colombia

Bookmark:	http://www.mapinc.org/coke.htm (Cocaine)

Continues:	http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v06.n1098.a09.html

Vancouver's supervised drug injection site should continue, and more such facilities should be set up in the downtown area and in the Fraser Health region.  That's the recommendation of a University College of the Fraser Valley criminologist who was one of two researchers hired by the RCMP to study the issue.

"If we have one site in one location, that doesn't allow for a majority of people to access it, then we're missing a huge population who might benefit," said Dr.  Irwin Cohen.

"There's probably a market for it in the Surrey-Whalley area," he said.  "You obviously have to have police buy-in and community buy-in."

[snip]

Pubdate:	Sun, 20 Aug 2006

Source:	Tri-City News (CN BC)

Copyright:	2006, Tri-City News

Details:	http://www.mapinc.org/media/1239

Author:	Jeff Nagel

Bookmark:	http://www.mapinc.org/topics/InSite

Continues:	http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v06.n1108.a02.html

Local Health Officials 'Optimistic' Feds Will Grant New
Permit

Vancouver Coastal Health Authority has no backup plan for handling the demise of North America's only safe-injection site because it expects the federal Tories to renew a crucial permit for its operation.

Activists and opposition politicians are not quite so confident, but Coastal spokesman Clay Adams said yesterday: "We have every confidence the federal minister, the government, will give us the exemption.

"We're very optimistic about it."

The exemption allows the administration of otherwise illegal drugs at Insite, operated in the Downtown Eastside by Coastal Health, which provides health services across the region, and the Portland Hotel Society.  It expires Sept. 12.

[snip]

During a visit to Whitehorse, Harper said of Insite, "We are undertaking some evaluations, but this government's concentration in the fight against drugs in the next few years will be on enforcement, prevention and treatment."

[snip]

Pubdate:	Fri, 18 Aug 2006

Source:	Province, The (CN BC)

Copyright:	2006 The Province

Details:	http://www.mapinc.org/media/476

Author:	Ian Bailey, The Province

Alert:	http://www.mapinc.org/alert/0334.html

Cited:	Vancouver Coastal Health Authority http://www.vch.ca/

Bookmark:	http://www.mapinc.org/topics/InSite

Continues:	http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v06.n1093.a08.html

Liberal Leadership Hopefuls Criticize PM For Insite
Stand

VANCOUVER -- Two Liberal leadership candidates say they would make sure Vancouver's supervised drug-injection site remains open and would consider approving new ones elsewhere in the country.

Toronto MP Ken Dryden said the site has been part of the solution to treating addiction problems because addicts feel comfortable getting help there.

"These are people who are in tough shape, have harmed themselves, oftentimes have done harm to others, and the key is to try to find your best answer.  "The safe-injection site is part of that best answer."

Mr.  Dryden and Scott Brison were attending a forum on the safe-injection site yesterday.  The pair and their Liberal colleagues are in Vancouver for a caucus meeting.

[snip]

But the Health Canada exemption runs out Sept.  12 and Prime Minister Stephen Harper has said he's "not committed" to renewing it.

He has said his government would seek expert opinions on the site's impact.  Insite has already been the subject of several scientific, economic and social reports -- some published in international peer- reviewed journals -- that have come to positive conclusions.

Social workers use the studies to argue the facility saves lives. Vancouver police and the RCMP suggest the existence of Insite may serve to reduce Vancouver's high crime rate.  Scientists say it helps addicts get treatment and, though the AIDS research on Insite is preliminary, they believe it may reduce the spread of HIV.

[snip]

Both Mr.  Brison and Mr. Dryden said that as prime minister, they would be willing to approve other safe-injection sites, including in their own ridings if there was a need.

"Of course," Mr.  Brison said. "When there's a critical mass of people that need a safe-injection site, that's a top priority."

[snip]

Mr.  Brison and Mr. Dryden were critical of Mr. Harper, saying his handling of the Insite issue and his refusal to attend the AIDS conference in Toronto show he is uncomfortable with Canadians in those situations.

Pubdate:	Wed, 23 Aug 2006

Source:	Globe and Mail (Canada)

Copyright:	2006, The Globe and Mail Company

Details:	http://www.mapinc.org/media/168

Author:	Lillian Au, Canadian Press

Bookmark:	http://www.mapinc.org/find?142 (Supervised Injection Sites)

Bookmark:	http://www.mapinc.org/hr.htm (Harm Reduction)

Continues:	http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v06.n1115.a08.html

New prisons boss Bryan Payling is to crack down on inmates who refuse to take rehabilitation programmes by withholding privileges.

[snip]

Mr.  Payling hopes to expand the prisons drug testing policy although he said fears that Westgate was chock full of addicted prisoners were vastly over-stated.

He said random mandatory drug testing, which has been running for seven months, showed about ten percent were positive at Westgate while at the Prison Farm and Co-ed Facility tests often found none of those tested were on drugs.

[snip]

Mr.  Payling now wants regular testing of hard-core users as well as random testing.  "It might be every week and every month."

And he wants to expand privileges for inmates who undergo voluntary testing to demonstrate they are drug-free.

[snip]

He said the approach had worked in the UK where prisoners weaning themselves off narcotics were sometimes held in separate units.

"In one of my prisons we set aside a unit which held 120 prisoners. We very quickly filled that up with prisoners who were subscribing to voluntary testing.

[snip]

He plans to look into having a separate drug-free unit within Bermuda's prison system.

[snip]

A new approach will be taken with drug-sniffer dogs with some deployed to alert officers if drugs are on a person and others to help root out drugs hidden in cells.

[snip]

Pubdate:	Mon, 21 Aug 2006

Source:	Royal Gazette, The (Bermuda)

Copyright:	2006 The Royal Gazette Ltd.

Details:	http://www.mapinc.org/media/2103

Author:	Matthew Taylor

Continues:	http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v06.n1115.a05.html

MOGADISHU, Somalia - Islamic leaders in Mogadishu on Thursday gave a woman 11 lashes for selling cannabis, the first female to receive such punishment since the fundamentalist rulers took over the capital in June.

The woman, who throughout the beating insisted she was innocent, was flogged alongside five other men at the Yassin Square in Mogadishu in front of several hundred people.  The small bundle of cannabis, worth around $1 on the streets of the capital, was burned before the crowd.

"The reason we punished them was that we want to stop people selling and using drugs," said a local security official, Sheik Omar Hussein.  "We believe as Islamists that people should stay away from drugs."

The imposition of strict religious rule has sparked fears of an emerging, Taliban-style regime.  The United States accuses Somalia's Islamic leaders of harboring al-Qaida leaders responsible for deadly bombings at the U.S.  embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998.

[snip]

Pubdate:	Thu, 24 Aug 2006

Source:	Associated Press (Wire)

Copyright:	2006 Associated Press

Author:	Mohamed Sheikh Nor, Associated Press Writer

Bookmark:	http://www.mapinc.org/topics/Somalia

Bookmark:	http://www.mapinc.org/pot.htm (Cannabis)

Continues:	http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v06/n000/a308.html

MEXICO CITY Mexico's attorney general said Wednesday there will be a wave of arrests of corrupt police on the Mexico-California border following an investigation into a network of officials protecting the Arellano Felix drug trafficking gang, whose alleged kingpin awaits trial in the United States.

Daniel Cabeza de Vaca told a news conference that the network protected the so-called Tijuana cartel as it smuggled tons of marijuana, cocaine and methamphetamine over the border to U.S. consumers.  The corrupt officers also killed honest colleagues, decapitating three fellow officers in June, he said.

"These criminal groups, especially the Tijuana cartel, depend on the support of corrupt police," Cabeza de Vaca said.  "It's very important.  It sustains their operations."

[snip]

Last week, the U.S.  Coast Guard captured Francisco Javier Arellano Felix, 36, when he was fishing in international waters off the Mexican coast aboard the U.S.-registered sport boat Dock Holiday.

Pubdate:	Thu, 24 Aug 2006

Source:	Herald Democrat (Sherman,TX)

Copyright:	2006 Herald Democrat

http://www.mapinc.org/media/2710

Author:	Ioan Grillo, Associated Press

Continues:	http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v06/n1117/a08.html

RENEE BOJE LEGAL BATTLE FINALLY RESOLVED

A US federal court judge has sentenced American expatriate Renee Boje to one year's probation, during which time she will be allowed to reside in Canada with her family.

http://norml.org/index.cfm?Group_ID=6996

TEEN GETS `TWO YEARS FOR ONE JOINT'

Mitchell Lawrence is serving a two year prison sentence for the heinous crime of not only selling pot (Gasp!), but doing it within 1,000 feet of a school (Double Gasp!!).  The government will spend close to $100,000 to incarcerate this horrible criminal for a non-violent, victimless act.

http://hammeroftruth.com/2006/08/20/teen-gets-two-years-for-one-joint/

SNAKES:	THE MUTHAF*CKIN ANTI-DRUG

Check out this video we made, which pokes fun at our favorite anti-drug commercials (with a little help from Sam L.  Jackson)...

http://daregeneration.blogspot.com/2006/08/snakes-muthafckin-anti-drug.html

WILL DRUG TESTING OF STUDENT ATHLETES PREVENT DRUG ABUSE?

Justice Talking takes on the issue of student drug testing.  Safety First director Marsha Rosenbaum debates Dr.  Robert DuPont about the merits, effectiveness and cost of school drug testing programs.  The debate starts about a third of the way into the audio program.

Audio:	http://www.justicetalking.org/mp3/060821_SchoolDrugTest.mp3

NEW GAO EVALUATION OF ONDCP MEDIA CAMPAIGN

ONDCP Media Campaign: Contractor's National Evaluation Did Not Find That the Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign Was Effective in Reducing Youth Drug Use.  GAO-06-818, August 25.

http://www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-06-818

Highlights - http://www.gao.gov/highlights/d06818high.pdf

A copy of the full report is available through GAO at the above URL or through the Common Sense for Drug Policy website at
http://www.csdp.org/research/d06818.pdf

INTERSECTING VOICES - IMPACTS OF ILLINOIS' DRUG POLICIES

A new study by Roosevelt University's Institute for Metropolitan Affairs finds that Illinois is second only to California in the number of individuals being incarcerated for drug offenses.

http://www.roosevelt.edu/ima/pdfs/intersectingVoices.pdf

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SCHOOL DRUG TESTING JUST DOESN'T WORK

By Pete Guither

Once again, a school is considering the disgusting and reprehensible practice of making children pee in a cup while their teacher listens ( "Drug testing now policy in district," July 31, page A5).

It's only for those who want to be in music or some other competitive activity, but that doesn't make it better.  It makes it incomprehensible.

First, drug testing in schools doesn't work.

The largest study ever conducted on the topic -- funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse -- found that schools that engage in drug testing have identical rates of drug use to schools that don't test their students.

But drug testing is a huge growth industry, and companies are relentless in trying to make schools feel guilty about not purchasing their product.

Second, study after study has shown that extra-curricular activities provide positive experiences that reduce the likelihood of kids using drugs.  By testing only those who try out for these positive activities, you drive away the at-risk kids who could benefit, leaving them, where? On the streets?

Logically, it would make much more sense for schools to test only the kids who are not participating.  But that's illegal. So in order to appear to be doing something useful, schools make the problem worse by sweeping at-risk kids under the rug.

Is there something good that schools can do? Absolutely.  Put that drug testing money into band uniforms.  Add more opportunities and incentives for kids to participate in activities.

And if parents want their kids tested? Go ahead.  What's stopping you? These tests are easily available online or in local stores. Parents groups can raise money to subsidize them if they wish.

And if listening to a child urinate is even appropriate, it should be done by his or her parents.  Not government officials or English teachers.

PETE GUITHER

Bloomington

Pubdate:	Mon, 07 Aug 2006

Source:	Pantagraph, The (IL)

Referenced:	http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v06/n1001/a10.html

Another Forfeiture Outrage

By Radley Balko

The Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that police may keep the $124,700 they seized from Emiliano Gonzolez, an immigrant who by all appearances was attempting to use the money to start a legitimate business.

This is an outrageous ruling.  Consider:

Gonzolez was never charged with any crime in relation to the money, much less convicted.

Gonzalez had an explanation for the money that a lower court found both "plausible" and "consistent." He brought several witnesses forward to corroborate his story (in the preposterous land of asset forfeiture, property can be guilty of a crime, and the burden is often person the police seized the property from to prove he obtained it legally).

The government offered no evidence to counter Gonzolez's explanation.

Instead, the court ruled that the mere fact that Gonzolez was carrying a large sum of money, that he had difficulty understanding the officer's questions, that he incorrectly answered some of those questions (due, Gonzolez says, to fears that if police knew he was carrying that much money, they might confiscate it -- imagine that!), and that a drug dog alerted to the car Gonzolez was driving (which, as dissenting judge Donald Lay noted, was a rental, likely driven by dozens of people before Gonzolez), was enough to "convict" the money of having drug ties, even if there wasn't enough evidence to charge Gonzolez.

The court ruled that despite the fact that Gonzolez's witnesses were credible enough to, in person, convince a lower court he was telling the truth, on appeal, it, the appellate court, reading those witnesses' testimony on paper, simply didn't believe them.

So the police get to keep the lifelong savings Gonzolez, his friends, and relatives had pooled to start a business.  No charge, and no conviction were necessary.

The opinion itself (see
http://www.thenewspaper.com/rlc/docs/2006/moneyseize.pdf) -- like most asset forfeiture cases -- reads like something from a third-rate military junta.  Actual excerpts:

"Possession of a large sum of cash is 'strong evidence' of a connection to drug activity."

"...while an innocent traveler might theoretically carry more than $100,000 in cash across country and seek to conceal funds from would-be thieves on the highway, we have adopted the common-sense view that bundling and concealment of large amounts of currency, combined with other suspicious circumstances, supports a connection between money and drug trafficking."

"Gonzolez had flown on a one-way ticket, which we have previously acknowledged is evidence in favor of forfeiture."

"While the claimants' explanation for these circumstances may be 'plausible,' we think it is unlikely.  We therefore conclude that the government proved by a preponderance of the evidence that the defendant currency was substantially connected to a narcotics offense."

My emphasis added on the last point.  The absurdity of these cases never fails to amaze when you actually see it in print.  The money, not Gonzolez, was found guilty of drug crimes.

The Civil Asset Forfeiture Reform Act of 2000 was supposed to rein in seizure outrages like this one.  Critics of the bill at the time (see http://www.fear.org/hadaway.html) noted that it didn't go nearly far enough.

Looks like they may have been right.

Radley Balko operates the Agitator, where this piece first appeared - http://www.theagitator.com/archives/026952.php

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