WASHINGTON -- The State Department has concluded that its strategy to persuade peasant farmers in Colombia to replace their coca fields with legal crops is failing, administration officials said Friday. The alternative development strategy, for which Congress has allocated more than $50 million, has suffered from a lack of security in the coca-growing regions, a lack of follow-up by the Colombian government, and the difficulty of finding crops that can thrive in areas with poor soil, the officials said. The United States has invested nearly $2 billion since 2000 to support the country's armed forces, fumigate drug crops and provide economic options to farmers in Colombia and its neighbors. The U.S. ambassador to Colombia, Anne Patterson, ordered a review of the program late last year. [continues 269 words]
Last week police busted Noelle Bush, the 24-year-old daughter of Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, for allegedly forging a prescription for the anti-anxiety drug Xanax. The offense is a felony punishable by up to five years in prison. Gov. Bush, realizing that punishment alone would be of little help, paid $1,000 to bail out his daughter and probably will send her back to one of the treatment centers she reportedly has been in before. [continues 285 words]
Attorney General John Ashcroft, obviously not busy enough with investigations on multiple terror fronts, will now be looking over the shoulders of Oregon doctors who care for terminally ill patients. His order Tuesday directing federal drug agents to go after doctors who participate in assisted suicide - a practice legal under Oregon law - is an unwarranted intrusion that makes no sense except as an exercise of unvarnished ideology. Ashcroft is a longtime critic of assisted suicide. His directive is aimed squarely at overruling an Oregon law, twice approved by voters, that permits doctors to prescribe lethal drugs for terminally ill patients who ask for them under narrow and tightly controlled circumstances. But under the order to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, any doctor who prescribes such drugs, even one acting within the terms of the Oregon law, can lose his or her license to prescribe. [continues 380 words]
Spirit Of Cooperation Between U.S., Mexico Is Bearing Fruit Drug trafficking has been a contentious issue between Mexico and the United States for decades. Washington complains that corruption south of the border makes controlling illegal drugs difficult. Mexicans reply that they wouldn't have the problem were it not for their northern neighbor's insatiable appetite for illegal substances. But since the advent of a fairly elected administration in Mexico last year, the old disagreements have shifted toward a spirit of cooperation. [continues 232 words]
Grand-Goave, Haiti - It was just over a year ago that a peasant mob in this poor coastal town ripped off a four-ton shipment of Colombian cocaine, a haul worth $20 million even at local prices. Fishermen became instant millionaires. Farmers frequented nightclubs. And the sudden largess spawned a host of new social ills. But the populist drug seizure here in a nation that had become a major trans-shipment hub for Colombian cocaine headed to the United States also pointed to the latest, and perhaps strangest, trend in Caribbean drug smuggling. [continues 726 words]
LONDON -- Marijuana is illegal in Britain, but police in south London have decided to stop pursuing pot smokers and instead focus their resources on combating hard drugs and violent crimes. In a six-month test that began recently, police in the London borough of Lambeth are issuing warnings to people caught with small amounts of cannabis. They're confiscating the drug, but are not prosecuting. The new policy, initiated by the Lambeth Division and approved by the central Metropolitan Police office, amounts to a de facto decriminalization of marijuana in one part of the capital and has sparked a national debate about Britain's drug laws. [end]
Former U.S. Attorney Speaks Out Having seen the federal war on drugs firsthand, former U.S. Attorney Daniel J. French isn't sure it's working. "If you judge the war on drugs by the number of people using narcotics. it would be difficult to say we're winning the war on drugs," Mr French said. Although Mr. French stopped short of saying the war was lost, he said prosecutors and police take groups of drug dealers off the streets only to see others take their place. [continues 763 words]
Govt Says Anti-Money Laundering Act Will Make Seizures Easier KUALA LUMPUR - The Malaysian government has seized assets worth close to RM22 million (S$10 million) from big-time drug dealers in the country. Deputy Finance Minister Datuk Shafie Mohd Salleh said the assets were seized under the Dangerous Drugs Act (Seizure of Assets) between 1996 and last year. He said the government hoped to catch more drug dealers with the enforcement of the Anti-Money Laundering Act soon. The Act would make it easier for the authorities to seize assets from unlawful activities, he said when winding up the debate on the Anti-Money Laundering Bill 2001 in Parliament on Wednesday. [continues 151 words]
ASHFORD, Wash. - In the dark evergreen forests that shroud the flanks of Mount Rainier, there always has been a whiff of danger. The paw print of a black bear in the mud. A cougar's gold fur glinting through the brush. These days, the biggest hazards are man-made. The recent discovery of a makeshift shack, a camp stove and several containers of chemicals - the makings of a major backwoods methamphetamine lab - has prompted the closure of the 26,000-acre Tahoma State Forest in western Washington. [continues 714 words]
WASHINGTON - Twenty-one years ago, Joe Velasquez was arrested for telling an undercover police officer where to buy cocaine. Velasquez, a legal immigrant from Panama, served three years' probation, paid a $5,000 fine and has not run afoul of the law since. But his offense and a twist in American immigration law came back to haunt Velasquez when he returned from visiting his mother in Panama over Christmas in 1998. Velasquez was arrested at Newark (N.J.) International Airport and held for four months without bail at a county jail. The Immigration and Naturalization Service ordered him deported to Panama, where he had not lived since he was a child. Velasquez's wife, three sons and two grandsons are all U.S. citizens. [continues 154 words]
Drug Certification Offends Nations And Doesn't Work; Suspend It Every year on March 1, the White House issues a report card on the drug-fighting performance of other countries. The purpose of the report is to induce other nations to cooperate in the U.S. war against narcotics. What it actually does is anger the countries involved and convince them of Washington's arrogance. Consider the words of Mexican President Vicente Fox: "Certification is more than an affront to Mexico and to other countries. It is a sham that should be denounced and canceled." And that's from the politically conservative leader of a friendly neighboring nation. [continues 160 words]
BOGOTA, Colombia -- With the hopes of a war-weary nation on his shoulders, Andres Pastrana won the presidency in June 1998. He was the candidate for peace who Colombians believed would bring Latin America's largest and oldest rebel group to the peace table. But more than 2 1/2 years later, peace remains elusive, and Pastrana's popularity has plummeted. The rebels refuse to negotiate, and the swath of territory Pastrana ceded to them as a haven for peace talks remains firmly in their grasp. Many Colombians, frustrated over the lack of progress, have lost faith. [continues 645 words]
EVERETT - A chemist from the State Patrol's crime lab in Marysville has been accused of taking heroin sent to the lab for testing in criminal cases and using it to relieve back pain. Michael Hoover, 51, an 11-year patrol veteran, was charged yesterday in Snohomish County Superior Court with evidence tampering and official misconduct. Each charge carries a maximum penalty of a year in jail and a $5,000 fine. Felony charges were not filed because Hoover was not caught possessing heroin, although surveillance videotape showed him stealing the drug from evidence submitted to the crime lab, deputy prosecutor Jim Townsend said. [continues 133 words]
President tells all to Rolling Stone President Clinton, in an interview to be published today in Rolling Stone, says the Republicans outmaneuvered him into a failed policy on gays in the military, calls some current anti-drug policies unfair and confesses a sneaking empathy for a disgraced predecessor, Richard Nixon. The Republicans "didn't want me to have a honeymoon" during those first days in office, Clinton said, and so forced the issue of his campaign promise to allow gays to serve openly, knowing they had the votes in Congress to defeat it. [continues 262 words]
BUENOS AIRES Members of Colombia's largest guerrilla group kidnapped five American and five other foreign oil workers Thursday in an Amazon region of Ecuador and hijacked a helicopter to take them across the Colombian border into territory they control, according to the Ecuadoran government. The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, know as FARC, has increasingly operated across Colombia's borders in recent months. But Thursday's kidnapping was the most brazen effort yet in what appears to be a campaign to instill fear in Colombia's neighbors that a planned, U.S.-backed offensive in southern Colombia in the coming months will spread the conflict. [continues 517 words]
Forty Of The 43 People Arrested During A Sting In Tulia Are Black. But That Group Makes Up Less Than 10 Percent Of Its Population TULIA, Texas - On the morning of July 23, 1999, Billy Wafer, a forklift driver, was swept up in the biggest drug sting in local history: In this town of only 4,500 people, 43 people were arrested, accused of selling small amounts of cocaine. Hometown juries later meted out sentences ranging from 20 years to more than 300 years. [continues 1305 words]
WASHINGTON - It has been 10 years since the Supreme Court upheld the use of drunken-driving Checkpoints on city streets, and nearly twice that long since the court ruled that airport police could use drug- detecting dogs to sniff passengers' luggage. So it was perhaps inevitable that the justices would be confronted with the question they considered Tuesday: Can the police, by adding a trained dog, turn a sobriety checkpoint into a constitutionally permissible way of checking motorists for drugs? If the question was obvious enough, the answer was not. The court upheld sobriety checkpoints in 1990 as public health and safety measures, a method of getting dangerous drivers off the road that was sufficiently distinct from ordinary law enforcement as to not require the suspicion of individual wrongdoing that the Fourth Amendment usually imposes on a search or seizure. [continues 327 words]
WASHINGTON -- The use of illegal drugs by children 12 to 17 dropped sharply from 1997 to 1999, the federal government said yesterday. But drug use among people 18 to 25 went up. The study found a 21 percent drop from 1997 to 1999 among those 12 to 17 who said they had used an illegal drug in the month before they were surveyed. But the survey results among people 18 to 25 -- who are among those most likely to commit crimes -- showed a worsening problem. Use of illicit drugs rose 28 percent in two years; 14.7 percent in this age group reported using an illicit drug in 1997, while 18.8 percent said they had done so in 1999. [end]
WASHINGTON -- President Clinton on Wednesday defended his decision to release $1.3 billion in anti-drug aid to Colombia as administration officials sought to shift attention away from military assistance and toward efforts to build civil institutions and wean peasants from drug production. Clinton said Colombia's ambitious program to combat the drug traffickers and guerrilla groups that have destabilized the country needs "to have a chance to succeed.". A broad bipartisan majority in Congress approved the landmark aid package in late June. Lawmakers imposed conditions intended to push Colombia to improve its human rights record, but they authorized Clinton to waive the conditions in the interests of national security. [continues 120 words]
CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico -- She is a sweet-faced Catholic schoolgirl of 14. An architect's daughter. The sort of kid the teachers favor at school. The kind who still sleeps with stuffed animals at home. But on a hot afternoon four months ago on a bridge between her home of Juarez, Mexico, and El Paso, Texas, Paloma left childhood behind. At that moment, driving a stranger's car slowly toward a U.S. customs inspection station, Paloma became a felon. She knew there was a load of marijuana in the car. A friend had convinced her that all she had to do was drive the more than 250 pounds of pot into the United States to collect what seemed to her the fantastic sum of $500. Maybe, Paloma thought, I'll spend it at the mall. [continues 988 words]
BEIJING - A kilogram of heroin sealed Ding Aguo's doom. On June 22, the 31-year-old woman was executed by firing squad here along with six other people convicted of drug trafficking. The next day, 11 drug dealers in the city of Chengdu were rounded up, paraded before a stadium of spectators, then led away to be shot. Within a single week, authorities put to death at least 48 people as part of an aggressive national anti-drug campaign. More than a dozen others were executed for committing violent crimes. [continues 610 words]
FLORENCIA, Colombia -- U.S. Special Forces trainers quietly arrived in Colombia last week and have begun preparing this country's second anti-narcotics military battalion, a key element in the $1.3-billion American anti-drug aid package for this nation, U.S. and Colombian sources confirmed. Colombian soldiers with rifles drawn surrounded both the trainers and the U.S. Air Force C-17 transport plane that brought them into this southern town about two hours by highway from guerrilla-held territory. The 83 trainers then were transported to Larandia, a military base 40 miles from here, according to a Colombian Armed Forces spokeswoman. [continues 284 words]
FLORENCIA, Colombia - US Special Forces trainers quietly arrived in Colombia last week to begin preparing this country's second antinarcotics military battalion, a key element in a $1.3-billion American aid package, US and Colombian sources said. Colombian soldiers with rifles drawn surrounded both the 83 trainers and the US Air Force C-17 transport plane that brought them into this southern town about two hours by highway from guerrilla-held territory. The trainers then were transported to a nearby military base, according to a Colombian Armed Forces spokeswoman. [continues 104 words]
Under pressure from the United States, Colombia has reluctantly agreed to take the first step toward developing a powerful biological herbicide against the coca and heroin-poppy fields that are spreading almost unchecked across its countryside, Colombian and U.S. officials said Wednesday. For years, U.S. officials have been quietly debating ways to conduct field tests of such an herbicide, developed from a fungus that occurs naturally in many types of coca and other plants. Now, Colombian officials say they are completing a proposal to the United Nations that would include testing for the presence of the fungus, Fusarium oxysporum, in coca, the raw material of cocaine. [continues 314 words]
LOS ANGELES - Peter McWilliams, 50, a best-selling author who advocated the medicinal use of marijuana, died June 14 at his home here. He had AIDS and non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. At his death, he was awaiting sentencing in federal court on a charge of conspiring to possess, manufacture and sell marijuana. He and co-defendant Todd McCormick were arrested in 1997 after law enforcement officers raided an estate where the two allegedly were growing more than 4,000 marijuana plants. [continues 231 words]
Afew lines in the disgraceful report by Human Rights Watch lays out the reason why all Americans should be alarmed by the disparate incarceration rates between blacks and whites. "The racially disproportionate nature of the war on drugs is not just devastating black Americans," authors of the report concluded. "It contradicts faith in the principles of justice and equal protection of the laws that should be the bedrock of any constitutional democracy; it exposes and deepens the racial fault lines that continue to weaken the country and belies its promise as a land of equal opportunity, and it undermines faith among all races in the fairness and efficacy of the criminal justice system. Urgent action is needed, at both the state and federal level, to address this crisis for the American nation." [continues 412 words]
Having been on the front lines of the battle against gangs and drug dealing, I'm not surprised that federal prosecutors are investigating police corruption in Bellwood and Maywood. For more than a year, my neighbors and I have wondered why our efforts to get rid of the gang- and drug-related activity on our block have been in vain. Instead of getting rid of criminal activities, we've watched "for sale" signs pop up as law-abiding citizens look for a way out. [continues 593 words]
RIOBLANCO DE SOTARA, Colombia -- The children and their teachers were in the schoolyard, they say, playing soccer and basketball and waiting for classes to begin when the crop duster appeared. At first they waved, but as the plane drew closer and a gray mist streamed from its wings, teachers rushed the pupils into classrooms. Over the next two weeks, planes taking part in a U.S.-sponsored program to eradicate heroin poppy cultivation returned repeatedly. Again and again, residents charge, the government planes also sprayed buildings and fields that were not supposed to be targets, damaging residents' health and crops. [continues 233 words]
Such A Contraband Search Is Ruled Unconstitutional WASHINGTON - Law enforcement agents who walk the aisles of a bus squeezing passengers' carry-on bags for contraband are conducting an unconstitutional search, the Supreme Court ruled yesterday. The 7-2 decision, the court's second recent ruling in favor of a defendant in a contested police search, overturned the narcotics conviction of a man who carried a 1-pound brick of methamphetamine in a duffel bag he stowed in the bin above his seat on a Greyhound bus. [continues 554 words]
Rampart: Request is similar to D.A.'s offer of amnesty to officers who witnessed misconduct by colleagues. LAPD officers who know of colleagues involved in the Rampart corruption scandal should be allowed to testify confidentially to the civilian inspector general without being disciplined by the department, the police union president said Monday. "This is for officers subject to LAPD administrative charges, not criminal charges," said Ted Hunt, president of the Los Angeles Police Protective League. Hunt's request is similar to the amnesty offer made last week by Dist. Atty. Gil Garcetti, who said he will promise confidentiality to police officers who witnessed colleagues' crimes or misconduct but failed to report it to their superiors. [continues 132 words]
Six American magazines have received financial incentives for these articles in an arrangement with the US drug control authorities NEW YORK - Under a little-known financial agreement with the magazine industry, the Office of National Drug Control Policy has encouraged magazines indirectly to include anti-drug messages in their editorial content. An article in the online magazine Salon on Friday reported that six magazines - US News & World Report, The Sporting News, Family Circle, Seventeen, Parade and USA Weekend - had benefited from a media campaign that the office put in place over the last year, giving financial incentives to magazines for content that the office considers sympathetic to its anti-drug message. [continues 402 words]
A state judge in New Orleans has removed six teenage boys from a juvenile prison after finding they had been brutalized by guards, kept in solitary confinement for months for no reason and deprived of shoes, blankets, education and medical care. The descriptions of conditions at the prison in Jena, in central Louisiana, are stark. But the criticism is particularly troubling, say federal officials and attorneys for the prisoners, because the prison is run by Wackenhut Corrections Corp., the world's largest for-profit prison operator. The judge said the company, which generally has a good reputation in the industry, had treated the youths no better than animals. [continues 275 words]
Medicine:Many Experts Worry About The Increasing Number Of Prescriptions For Hyperactivity Among Preschoolers. In a finding that medical experts called "troubling" and "very surprising," researchers reported today that the number of preschoolers taking stimulants, antidepressants and other psychiatric drugs rose sharply from 1991 to 1995. The use of stimulants-most commonly methylphenidate, the generic form of Ritalin--increased twofold to threefold for children ages 2 through 4 enrolled in two state Mediciad programs and one health maintenance organization in the Northwest, the researchers found. [continues 743 words]
LOS ANGELES - Top police officials here offered a scathing public indictment of the command and supervision within their troubled department Wednesday, saying that thousands of new officers had been hired with little vetting and then allowed to run virtually out of control. These lapses, the officials said, were especially bad at some of the special divisions designed to use aggressive tactics against gangs and crack cocaine dealers, and had thus contributed to a scandal that has shocked this city with reports of widespread and unchecked police corruption. [continues 171 words]
Former Officer Details Dealings For Investigators LOS ANGELES - Disgraced former Los Angeles Police Officer Rafael Perez and his partner used a drug addicted homeless woman as one of their regular informants, feeding her habit with crack cocaine as payment for information, according to documents obtained by the Los Angeles Times. Perez and officer Nino Durden would then use that information to shake down drug dealers, stealing their money and drugs for their own profit, Perez alleges in transcripts of his interviews with investigators. The officers would also use the information to make legitimate arrests, but according to the transcripts, Perez now concedes that about half of all his arrests at Rampart Division were somehow illegal. There were so many, he said, that he cannot remember the details of them all. [continues 255 words]
LOS ANGELES -- Significantly broadening the scope of the Rampart Division corruption scandal, Los Angeles Police Chief Bernard C. Parks has disclosed that 99 people are believed to have been framed by disgraced ex-officer-turned-informant Rafael Perez and his former partners. Parks, in his most detailed update on the scandal since it broke in September, also called upon District Attorney Gil Garcetti to move forward as quickly as possible to dismiss cases "en masse" instead of prolonging the investigation and delaying "the obvious." He said at least three wrongly convicted people remain behind bars. Others have either served their time, have been paroled or placed on probation, officials said. [continues 213 words]
WASHINGTON -- Colombian President Andres Pastrana began campaigning Tuesday for Congress to approve more than $1 billion in emergency aid to his embattled government, but argued strongly against any attempt to tie the aid to his military's actions on human rights. Pastrana, who met with President Clinton on Tuesday, said in an interview later that although his government was committed to improving its human-rights record, its efforts would not be helped by further pressure from Washington. "We are not going to respect human rights because the United States Congress imposes conditions on the aid," Pastrana said. "We are going to do it because it is the policy of my government." [continues 633 words]
Native Americans Use It During Religious Ceremony MIRANDO CITY, Texas -- Salvador Johnson heads out before dawn on a recent winter morning, traipsing through cactus and mesquite brush with a shovel and a gunny sack, searching for peyote. He is one of five licensed peyote dealers in the nation, and has spent most of his life searching for peyote in the wild brush country between Laredo and Hebbronville. He sifts dried peyote buttons -- small rounded pieces of light brown cactus -- through his fingers on a table behind his frame house in this town of 300, located halfway between Hebbronville and Laredo. [continues 1846 words]
When the 20th century began, it was illegal to sell cigarettes in 14 states, and selling a lottery ticket was a federal crime. Cigarettes are a "noxious" product, the Supreme Court said in 1900 as it upheld Tennessee's prohibition on sales. And lotteries are a "widespread pestilence" that must be killed off, the court ruled three years later. At the same time, narcotics such as opium, morphine and heroin were sold over the counter and from mail-order catalogs as balms for what one writer called the "nervous pace of modern life." The evolution of U.S. laws on personal vices makes for one of the oddest, most fascinating chapters of 20th century legal history. Unlike, for example, the universal recognition of murder and robbery as crimes, judgments on crimes of bad behavior have come and gone, riding on the tides of public opinion. [continues 780 words]
BOGOTA, Colombia - By eavesdropping on wiretapped telephones, police investigators uncovered a full-service drug ring. Gang members were trucking cocaine into this capital and loading it onto public transportation for the ride to the airport, where cooperative airline cleaning crews were sending it to the United States. Proceeds were laundered through wire transfers at foreign exchange houses. Police turned the findings over to prosecutors, who ordered a further investigation to determine who was driving the trucks, sneaking the drugs onto planes and cashing the checks. [continues 448 words]
Male Ethnicity Is Not A Factor, Study Says Men's alcohol abuse and shaky employment status rank among the most important precipitating factors in domestic violence against women, while ethnicity plays virtually no role at all, according to one of the most comprehensive studies to date of assailants and their victims. The nationwide research, led by University of California at Los Angeles and the University of Southern California physicians and published today in the New England Journal of Medicine, also confirmed that women are at greatest risk of being assaulted by former partners, underscoring women's vulnerability after a breakup. [continues 376 words]
The U.S. Supreme Court justices heard arguments Wednesday in a case testing the Food and Drug Administration's authority to regulate the nicotine in tobacco products. The skeptical tenor of the questioning indicates that the court is likely to issue an opinion that rejects the agency's assertion of jurisdiction, wiping out the agency's 1996 initiative aimed at preventing tobacco companies from spreading nicotine addiction by selling and marketing their deadly products to young people. That would be a shame. [continues 345 words]
WASHINGTON - When the Food and Drug Administration decided in 1997 to let prescription drug companies use television to advertise directly to consumers, it unleashed a surge in demand. Patients are requesting expensive brand-name drugs more often and doctors are willingly - if not always happily - prescribing them. The upside is that many patients are being treated with the most up-to-date medications for conditions - such as high cholesterol - that they might not have known they had if an advertisement had not led them to a doctor's office. [continues 229 words]
The target of a new anti-drug initiative now speeding toward final congressional approval is a worthy one big international drug traffickers. But, as too often happens when Congress collaborates with the Clinton administration to toughen law enforcement policies, civil liberties stand to suffer. The measure, called the Foreign Narcotics Kingpin Designation Act, overwhelmingly passed the House two weeks ago. A House-Senate conference committee incorporated the measure in the annual intelligence authorization bill that needs only a final floor vote in the Senate before going to the president's desk for his signature. All of this occurred without any public hearings or extended debate to explore the legislation's implications for due process and other constitutional values. [continues 165 words]
BOGOTA, Colombia - A car bomb exploded on a busy Bogota avenue today, killing at least seven people and injuring 41 in an attack police suspected was either the work of Marxist rebels or powerful drug gangs enraged by the Supreme Court's decision this week to approve the extradition to the United States of two reputed drug kingpins. The bomb destroyed a two-story house and a restaurant in an upscale neighborhood and blew out the windows of banks, hotels and three seven-story apartment buildings across the avenue about 150 feet away. It appeared most of the victims were passers-by. [continues 524 words]
MEXICO CITY - Mexico's former top drug prosecutor, accused of money laundering and aiding narcotics traffickers, died of an apparent drug overdose yesterday in New Jersey, adding another twist to a five-year saga of murder, corruption and betrayal among Mexico's political elite. Mario Ruiz Massieu, 48, was a key player in Mexican power politics and analysts said his death will likely make it more difficult to understand the political slayings that rocked Mexico in 1994. Ruiz Massieu's family was part of the upper crust of Mexico's political elite and had strong ties to former President Carlos Salinas de Gortari. [continues 561 words]
Facilities Must Prove Drug Is Needed By Patients SAN FRANCISCO - A federal appeals court created a potentially major opening in federal drug laws Monday, ruling that medical marijuana centers may be allowed to distribute cannabis if they can prove that the drug is needed to protect patients against imminent medical harm. In its decision, the three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said that a federal judge should have considered patients' medical needs for marijuana when he ordered a cannabis club in Oakland last year to stop distributing the drug. [continues 385 words]
NEW YORK - The prevalence of AIDS among prisoners in the United States is five times that of the general population, and the rates for some other sexually transmitted disease are even higher, according to a recent study. Reporting on the first comprehensive study of these diseases in prisons and jails, the lead author, Theodore Hammett, said the high prevalence of AIDS among prisoners reflects their widespread use of drugs before they were imprisoned. He presented the findings Tuesday at the National HIV Prevention Conference in Atlanta. Prisons are a critical setting for detecting and treating sexually transmitted diseases, Mr. Hammett said, but the quality of health care varies widely [end]
LEGISLATION to address the conflict between freedom of religion and other civil rights is sponsored in the House by Rep. Charles T. Canady, a conservative Republican from Florida. He finds himself in the odd position of working to reverse a decision by Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, a conservative icon. Until 1990, the high court generally had sided with the religious claimants who invoked the First Amendment protection for "the free exercise of religion." For example, the court had ruled that the children of Jehovah's Witnesses need not salute the flag at school, that states could not deny unemployment benefits to a Seventh Day Adventist who refused to work Saturdays and that the Amish could not be forced to send their children to high school. [continues 163 words]
The Clinton administration and Congress are struggling to decide what Washington should do to help Colombia, one of Latin America's most complex and troubled nations. The country's two overwhelming problems are a growing trade in cocaine and heroin and a 35-year civil war against Marxist guerrillas. President Andr6s Pastrana is well intentioned, and deserves American support. But Washington must draw a sharp distinction between the two struggles. Helping Colombia to reduce its narcotics production is an American interest. [continues 353 words]
