WASHINGTON -- Republican Rep. Todd Tiahrt of Kansas has again provoked the ire of home-rule advocates and AIDS activists in the nation's capital by successfully leading a fight to ban federal support of needle-exchange programs to help drug addicts. The debate came during consideration this week of a $4.7 billion spending bill for the District of Columbia, which the House passed but which President Clinton has threatened to veto if the final version includes the ban on needle exchanges. [continues 528 words]
DUBLIN -- A major Dublin drug dealer was sentenced to life in prison Thursday after being convicted for the 1996 murder of Veronica Guerin, a prominent Dublin journalist who reported aggressively on organized crime. The dealer, Brian Meehan, 34, who had pleaded not guilty, was convicted in the Special Criminal Court in Dublin, which was established to prosecute political terrorists and other criminals. Meehan was accused of being the driver of the motorcycle that took the gunman to intercept Guerin's car on the outskirts of Dublin on June 26, 1996. She was shot in the face and chest six times by a man with a .357-caliber Magnum pistol. The gunman, publicly identified only as Mr. A, has been arrested but not tried. His trial is expected later this year. [continues 81 words]
Washington - Here's a commercial certain to grab attention during a break in Dawson's Creek. Teen-age Bobby shows up at the door to pick up date Jennifer and for the first time meets Dad, who politely asks where the kids are heading. "I thought we'd go to party at a friend's house, have some beers," answers Bobby. "Then on the way home there's a good chance I'll date rape your daughter." The jaw-dropping spot closes with this kicker: "Face brutal truth about underage drinking." That is the message that some lawmakers and others concerned with underage drinking and its link to drug use and similar social problems would like to see transmitted as part of the national anti-drug campaign. At present, the almost $1 billion, five year effort - best known for its famous "your brain on drugs" ad - is silent on the subject of alcohol. [continues 409 words]
Ruling: Car Passengers' Personal Items Can Be Examined In Some Instances, Justices Say. Washington-Police officers who have probable cause to search a car for illegal drugs can search the personal belongings of passengers who are under no suspicion of illegal activity, the Supreme Court ruled Monday, clarifying a 1982 decision that expanded police authority over motorists and their passengers. The 6-3 decision overturned a ruling by the Supreme Court of Wyoming, which held last year that a purse belonging to a passenger could not be included in a search of a car and its contents unless there was reason to suspect the passenger of a crime or the driver of concealing evidence in the passenger's belongings. [continues 171 words]
WASHINGTON -- The active ingredients in marijuana appear to be useful for treating pain, nausea and the severe weight loss associated with AIDS, according to a new study commissioned by the government. The report, the most comprehensive analysis to date of the medical literature about marijuana, said there was no evidence that giving the drug to sick people would increase illicit use in the general population. Nor is marijuana a ``gateway drug'' that prompts patients to use harder drugs like cocaine and heroin, the study said. [continues 536 words]
Almost 70 years after the failure of Prohibition, the much-trumpeted "war on drugs," begun more than a decade ago, has itself hugely misfired. "We have a failed social policy and it has to be re-evaluated," says Barry R. McCaffrey, the four-star general in charge of national drug control policy. The boomerang effect of the failed policy was richly detailed in recent articles by Timothy Egan of The Times. School systems deteriorate while tax dollars build new prisons. Municipal police forces have grown so militarized that drug warrants are served in armored personnel carriers. Young mothers are imprisoned for years for simple drug possession. Young black males in California are now five times as likely to go to prison as to a state university. [continues 168 words]
WASHINGTON -- Sidney Gottlieb, who presided over the CIA's Cold War efforts to control the human mind and provided the agency with poisons to kill Fidel Castro, has died at age 80. Mr. Gottlieb died Sunday in the Blue Ridge foothills village of Washington, Va., where he had spent his later years caring for dying patients, trying to run a commune, folk-dancing, consciousness-raising and fighting lawsuits from survivors of his secret tests. Friends and enemies alike said he was a kind of genius, striving to explore the frontiers of the human mind for his country while searching for religious and spiritual meaning in his life. [continues 365 words]
Major shipments of Mexican prescription drugs are being smuggled into Southern California from Tijuana, fueling greater sales through illegal back-room clinics and storefronts, state and federal officials say. The pervasive black market sales, mainly by Latino merchants, has emboldened shop owners not only to sell pharmaceuticals to immigrant customers but to take a more dangerous new step: Some merchants are giving injections and practicing medicine on customers. Tustin police are investigating whether the illegal practice contributed to the death Monday of 18-month-old Selene Segura Rios. The girl died two hours after receiving what her parents were told was a penicillin injection in the back room of a toy store. [continues 247 words]
NEW YORK -- In what city officials described as the toughest municipal policy against drunken driving in the nation, the New York City Police Department will begin seizing cars from people arrested on charges of drunken driving, Mayor Rudolph Giuliani announced Saturday. The plan, which is to take effect at 12:01 a.m. Monday, will allow a police officer to seize a suspect's car where it is stopped, regardless of the driver's circumstances. ``This will be a very, very useful way to reduce even more the number of traffic fatalities in the city,'' Giuliani said at a news conference at police headquarters in lower Manhattan. [continues 415 words]
States say federal government has no right to any of $206 billion WASHINGTON -- U.S. governors, displaying a united front on an issue critical to their state budgets, plan to urge President Clinton today to halt attempts by the federal government to claim a portion of more than $200 billion that states captured last year in a landmark legal settlement with the tobacco industry. One after another, governors attending a four-day conference indicated their resolve Sunday to defend their share of the tobacco settlement, even though the president has included a major chunk of that money in his proposed budget. [continues 615 words]
Education: Authority over students is expanding as zero-tolerance rules cover night,weekend incidents. Assuming a role assigned to parents or police,a growing number of public schools are disciplining students for their misbehavior off campus. Students driving drunk on a weekend or caught fighting at the mall not only risk arrest and further consequences at home. Now, as the call for safe schools intensifies, they also may be suspended or expelled. Police stopped the car of a Newport Beach high school senior last February for playing the Grateful Dead too loud. It was a Tuesday, after the teen's school day had ended, and he was running some errands for his mother. The officer found a pipe and marijuana residue that was insufficient to issue Ryan Huntsman a citation, but school officials decided it was enough for a disciplinary transfer to another school 89 days before graduation. [continues 1773 words]
MERIDA, Mexico - President Clinton on Monday strongly endorsed Mexico's narcotics-fighting efforts, weeks before an expected showdown with Congress over whether to give this country its annual passing grade as an ally in the drug war. "Mexico should not be penalized for having the courage to confront its problems," visiting Clinton said in a speech at an ornate theater here in the capital of Yucatan state, signaling that he will certify Mexico as he has in the past. As a highlight of his 23-hour trip, Clinton also reached agree-ment with Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo on a detailed list of steps their countries will take in fighting narcotics trafficking. It was on of eight agreements on cross-border concerns, ranging from immigration to tuberculosis, announced during the trip. [continues 680 words]
The proportion of new prison inmates who were drug users at the time of their arrest increased this decade, while drug treatment in state and federal prisons fell sharply, according to a study released on Tuesday by the Justice Department. "What is particularly tragic," said Richard Rosenfeld, a professor of criminology at the University of Missouri at St. Louis, "is that drug treatment in prison, where it can be coerced, has proven to be effective as an anti-crime program. "This is an unintended consequence of prison expansion," Mr. Rosenfeld said in an interview. "Each time we spend a dollar on building a new prison or expanding an existing one, it is one less dollar for drug treatment." [continues 300 words]
Rehnquist says growth in caseload is spurred by new federal crimes Los Angeles Times WASHINGTON -- Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, in his year-end report on the judiciary, faulted Congress yesterday for turning local offenses into federal crimes, a trend that he said has overburdened the U.S. courts. Last year, the number of new crime cases in the federal judiciary rose by 15 percent, he said, the largest increase in nearly three decades. The rise was propelled mostly by drug and immigration cases, he added. [continues 539 words]
When an airplane crashes, scores of investigators descend on the site, searching for the ``black box'' and piecing together the wreckage in a grim effort to find out what went wrong. The investigators work for an independent government agency, the National Transportation Safety Board -- not for the company that built the plane, not for the airline that flew it and not for the Federal Aviation Administration, which gave its stamp of approval to both the manufacturer and the airline. By contrast, when a drug harms patients, there is no independent agency to find out what went wrong. There is not even a formal program or system in place to require that early signs of trouble be reported. [continues 482 words]
An ambitious U.S. effort to help train and equip Mexico's armed forces to pursue drug smugglers is a shambles, officials of both countries say, souring American relations with an ally that Washington has worked intensely to court. Three years after the Pentagon began donating dozens of helicopters to the Mexican army and training hundreds of Mexican soldiers in the United States, officials have seen only a handful of the anti-drug operations intended in the program. The helicopter fleet has been grounded by mechanical problems, and angry Mexican generals are sharply cutting the number of troops they will send to train. [continues 528 words]
Eager to do business with Raul Salinas de Gortari, a brother of the former President of Mexico, Citibank executives ignored some of the bank's safeguards against the laundering of illicit funds, a congressional report says. As the bankers took in millions of dollars from Salinas, they never asked for standard information on his financial background and made virtually no effort to verify the source of the money, the report said. After Salinas was arrested for murder in 1995 and lawyers for the bank had begun monitoring his accounts, his personal banker in New York quietly advised Salinas' wife to move the money elsewhere, apparently without the consent of the legal department. [continues 498 words]
The Clinton administration initially opposed it, and the Colombian government was taken by surprise. But a recent congressional initiative, spurred by direct appeals to conservative Republicans by the Colombian national police, has more than tripled drug-fighting money to Colombia and made the country a top recipient of U.S. foreign aid. The increase brings the assistance to $289 million for 1999, up from $80 million in 1997 and $88.6 million this year. It is mainly in the form of weapons, helicopters and surveillance planes and will sharply increase the American-supplied firepower to the Colombian police. [continues 475 words]
Doctors see rise in `honeymoon' cystitis Viagra, which has revved up the sex lives of many men, may have another down side, this one among the female partners of the men taking it. More and more older women are suffering from frequent, urgent, burning urination -- usually found among women half their age and sometimes called honeymoon cystitis, say three doctors who noticed the condition among their patients in Covington, Ga. The condition has been especially prevalent in women 55 to 75, the doctors said in a letter published recently in the New England Journal of Medicine. [continues 93 words]
Elderly people who smoke may be contributing to the premature loss of their memory. A study over a two-year period of 9,223 people 65 and older who did not have dementia found that those who smoked were more likely to have suffered impairment in short-term memory, time and place orientation, attention and calculation than people who had never smoked, said Lenore Launer of Erasmus University Medical School, Rotterdam, Netherlands. Former smokers were somewhere in between. "Smoking may damage cerebral functioning by silent small strokes that are not clinically detected," he reported at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Neurology. - --- Checked-by: Patrick Henry [end]
Inmate rapes investigated Los Angeles Times FRESNO -- Five correctional officers have been indicted by a special Kings County grand jury on conspiracy and other charges stemming from a 1993 rape at Corcoran State Prison by an inmate enforcer nicknamed ``the Booty Bandit.'' The five officers, including a lieutenant, were booked at Kings County Jail late Thursday on a variety of criminal charges including conspiracy to aid and abet sodomy and preparing false reports. The indictments came after a three-month investigation by the state attorney general's office into allegations of planned rapes and cover-ups at the San Joaquin Valley prison. [continues 258 words]
Military, insurgent pressures paralyze town in Colombia CALAMAR, Colombia -- The bloody struggle over the future of Colombia, raging between shadowy groups of men and women with masks and false names, is closing in on Calamar, a main transit point in the coca trade scratched out of the jungle 20 years ago by the refugees of earlier conflicts in this stricken country. Many residents have not left the town, less than a square mile, in a year. The only road out is controlled by paramilitaries who have established a checkpoint a few miles from the nearest military base and charge coca growers and food suppliers simply to get their products in and out of town. [continues 675 words]
NEW YORK - Officials announced the indictments Friday of 102 members of a drug operation that sold millions of dollars' worth of crack cocaine to white-collar workers in midtown Manhattan. Authorities said that the dealers from five gangs largely sold their drugs indoors, rarely fought over territory and catered to their most-cherished customers, what the dealers called the "S and T crowd" - the suit and tie crowd. The sales were made over the course of a decade. Officials said the gang members' practice of selling drugs indoors and the fact that they shunned firearms indicated the adaptability of the drug trade. [continues 175 words]
TIJUANA, Mexico -- In a new case raising friction between American and Mexican law enforcement officials, two Mexican drug enforcement agents are in jail here on kidnapping charges that might have been trumped up by corrupt police working with traffickers. The two Mexican agents, part of an anti-drug unit that works closely with U.S. officials, were preparing to buy a ton of marijuana from Tijuana traffickers as part of a buy-and-bust operation when they were arrested by Baja California state police summoned by one of the traffickers. [continues 358 words]
WASHINGTON -- Most of the top investigators of an elite Mexican police unit that was trained by Americans might have ties to drug traffickers, U.S. officials say. The disclosure threatens to undermine an ambitious effort to overhaul the deeply corrupt law-enforcement system of Mexico. U.S. government experts traveled to Mexico late last month to administer routine lie-detector tests to dozens of police agents. Now officials say some investigators who failed had been chosen for their posts after elaborate U.S.-designed screening. [continues 336 words]
Officer charged: An alleged drug theft rocks a police force that, whatever other controversy dogged it, long held itself all but immune to graft. LOS ANGELES -- As a police officer in the LAPD's busiest precinct, near downtown Los Angeles, Rafael Antonio Perez was responsible for investigating gang crimes and testifying against suspects in court. Last month, it was Perez who entered the courtroom in handcuffs and a blue county jail jumpsuit to hear charges against him: stealing three kilograms (about 6 1/2 pounds) of cocaine from an evidence locker at the Los Angeles Police Department. [continues 723 words]
NEW YORK -- With the arrests Saturday of two cruise ship employees as their vessel docked in Manhattan, federal law enforcement officials revealed the existence of an unusual drug ring they said used luxury ocean liners to funnel cocaine, hashish and marijuana from New York City to Bermuda. These officials estimated that the operation, which involved slightly more than a dozen people with code names like "Fidel," "007," "Ratty" and "Puny," accounted for 25 percent to 50 percent of the illegal drugs flowing into Bermuda in recent years. [continues 362 words]
Politicians, police, private firms gain by exploiting crime trends They are on the news almost nightly: carjackers, sexual predators, workplace gunmen, home-invasion robbers, ``road rage'' killers. By the numbers, there are fewer and fewer of them. Yet fear of them has held steady. That fear has overwhelmed reality, causing many Americans to feel more threatened by crime even as the nation has become a safer place in which to live. The reasons for that disparity are complex, and sometimes shockingly deliberate. Police stoke fear in part because they take crime seriously, but also to prime their budgets; politicians feel deeply about the issue, but also manipulate it to win votes. News organizations amplify fear by ratcheting up their crime coverage, even as crime declines, because it helps ratings. Security companies, theft-detection manufacturers and others tap into deeply held fears and end up turning a profit. [continues 636 words]
When Washington voters decide in November whether to legalize the use of marijuana for relief of cancer and other debilitating illnesses, they won't be alone. Voters in Oregon, Alaska, Nevada and, potentially, Colorado will cast ballots on nearly identical measures. That's no accident: Nearly all the money and much of the political horsepower behind Initiative 692 and similar proposals elsewhere is being provided by the California-based Americans for Medical Rights. That group is principally supported by three wealthy businessmen: billionaire global financier George Soros; John Sperling, founder of the for-profit University of Phoenix; and Peter Lewis, chief executive officer of Ohio-based Progressive Insurance. [continues 591 words]
Health-care experts split on medication available in Europe A drug widely available in Europe that may reduce the urge to drink is being tested in the United States, which has an estimated 13.7 million alcoholics. The French maker of the drug hopes to have it on the U.S. market in 2000. Many experts on dependency say the drug -- acamprosate, which would be sold in the United States as Campral -- is badly needed. Only two other medications can treat alcoholism and both can have unpleasant or potentially dangerous side effects. [continues 436 words]
A drug widely available in Europe that may reduce the urge to drink is being tested in the United States, which has an estimated 13.7 million alcoholics. Its French maker hopes to have it on the U.S. market in 2000. Many experts on dependency say the drug--acamprosate, which would be sold in the United States as Campral--is badly needed. Only two other medications can treat alcoholism and both can have unpleasant or potentially dangerous side effects. Doctors say prescribing acamprosate to help alcoholics remain sober could possibly save thousands of people from painful relapses while reducing the cost of rehabilitation, which was $5 billion last year. [continues 457 words]
U.S. won't enforce IAAF suspensions Another drug scandal rocked international sports Monday when track and field's world governing body announced that two of America's top athletes, sprinter Dennis Mitchell and 1996 Olympic shot-put champion Randy Barnes, had been suspended for possible doping offenses. The U.S. track and field federation said that it would not enforce the suspensions of Barnes and Mitchell, calling the allegations unproved. The federation also accused the world governing body of violating the Amateur Sports Act of 1978, a federal law that entitles American athletes to due process before they are declared ineligible to compete. [continues 487 words]
HOUSTON -- After years of blocking U.S. efforts to investigate corruption in their ranks, Mexican law enforcement officials have allowed the jailed former head of their national police to travel secretly to the United States to testify about drug payoffs at high levels of the Mexican government. In what U.S. officials described as a ground-breaking collaboration between the two countries, former Police Director Adrien Carrera Fuentes told a federal grand jury in Houston in June that he collected nearly $2 million in drug bribes in 1993 and 1994 and turned the money over to a former colleague, Mario Ruiz Massieu, two officials familiar with the testimony said. [continues 621 words]
Collaboration On High-Ranking Drug Case A First After years of blocking U.S. efforts to investigate corruption in their ranks, Mexican law enforcement officials have allowed the jailed former head of their national police to travel secretly to the United States to testify about drug payoffs at high levels of the Mexican government. In what U.S. officials described as a groundbreaking collaboration between the two countries, former Police Director Adrian Carrera Fuentes told a federal grand jury in Houston in June that he collected nearly $2 million in drug bribes in 1993 and 1994 and turned the money over to a former colleague Mario Ruiz Massieu, two officials familiar with the testimony said, [continues 520 words]
Accord Would End All Pending And New Suits WASHINGTON -- It's Plan B for the tobacco industry -- and this time there's a chance it may work. Last week word emerged of secret negotiations between cigarette makers and state attorneys-general to strike a deal. They are reportedly after a settlement that could end all present and future anti-tobacco lawsuits by states in return for payments by the tobacco industry of between $180 billion and $200 billion in the next 25 years. Already, the industry has settled lawsuits with four states for sums totaling $36 billion over the next 25 years. [continues 329 words]
WASHINGTON -- The use of methamphetamine is rising dramatically in the Western United States, the Justice Department reported Saturday in an extensive new study that also shows America's crack-cocaine epidemic appears to have peaked. In what amounts to a new phase in the ongoing war on drugs, President Clinton released $32 million in federal grants Saturday to help local officials devise strategies tailored for their communities. ``To stop the revolving door of crime and narcotics, we must make offenders stop abusing drugs,'' Clinton said in his weekly radio address. [continues 237 words]
WASHINGTON -- With Los Angeles Dodgers general manager Tommy Lasorda as a star witness, the Senate on Wednesday launched its latest effort to amend the Constitution to ban desecration of the American flag. Appearing before a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on the issue, Lasorda recalled a famous 1976 incident at Dodger Stadium in which Chicago Cubs outfielder Rick Monday snatched a flag from two protesters who had doused it with lighter fluid and were prepared to ignite it in center field. Calling the act ``one of the most heroic acts ever to take place on the field during a major league baseball game,'' Lasorda testified that he was equally struck by the response of the fans, who stood up spontaneously and sang ``God Bless America.'' [continues 399 words]
WASHINGTON - Remember that old fried-egg ad with its warning, "This is your brain on drugs"? It's going big time this year, with the federal government spending $195 million - rivaling the annual advertising campaigns of American Express, Nike or Sprint - to plaster the airwaves with anti-drug messages. The ad campaign, a five-year project being given a send-off today in Atlanta by President Clinton and House Speaker Newt Gingrich, could turn into a $1 billion government investment in stopping teen drug use. [continues 380 words]
CORNWALL, Ontario -- There is no mistaking Ron Martelle. He is a big man with ties as loud as his voice and a white truck with the license plate ``WY EARP.'' Martelle, 55, might be familiar to some television viewers in the United States because he recorded a commercial for the U.S. tobacco industry's campaign against higher cigarette taxes. In the spot, he described himself as a former Mountie who happened to be mayor of this straight-shooting town on the banks of the St. Lawrence River when Canada sharply raised tobacco taxes, turning Cornwall into what he called Dodge City. [continues 947 words]
BOGOTA, Colombia -- Bowing to demands from Washington, the Colombian government has agreed to test a granular herbicide to kill coca crops, despite public warnings from the chemical's American manufacturer against its use in Colombia. In the U.S., tebuthiuron is used mostly to control weeds on railroad beds and under high-voltage lines far away from food crops and people. The Environmental Protection Agency requires a warning label on the chemical that says it could contaminate ground water, a side effect Colombian environmental officials fear could prevent peasants from growing food where coca once grew. [continues 289 words]
NEW YORK -- Americans may be literally drinking themselves into a state of dehydration, a new survey reports. While Americans drink an average of eight cups of water and other hydrating beverages each day, they counter the positive effects by drinking five servings of caffeinated or alcoholic beverages, which dehydrate the body, according to a survey of the drinking habits of 3,000 people. The result, said Dr. Barbara Levine, director of the Nutrition Information Center at the New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center, is a dehydrated nation. The problem is that the alcohol and caffeine in these beverages are diuretics, substances that cause a person to urinate more, resulting in a net loss of water. [continues 238 words]
Trial in Utah on Cholestin is pivotal battle between FDA and booming herbal industry FARMINGTON, Utah -- Here in the heart of the nation's herbal and vitamin industry, a stainless steel contraption was hard at work on a recent morning, spitting out clear plastic capsules at the rate of 90,000 an hour. Each contained precisely 600 milligrams of a fine, brick-colored powder that federal health officials are trying to ban. The powder, a pulverized strain of rice called red yeast, is imported from China, where it has been consumed for 2,000 years, both as an herbal remedy (it was thought to improve blood flow) and a food (it spices up tofu and makes a tasty marinade for duck and pork). [continues 837 words]
WASHINGTON -- Signs developed Tuesday that the Senate's weeks-long impasse on anti-smoking legislation might be broken. The Senate voted, 52-46, for a Republican amendment to use some of the money that would be raised from higher cigarette prices on drug abuse programs. The vote was the first on the legislation in three weeks, and plans were made to vote today on proposals to use other money from the tobacco legislation for income-tax cuts. No one involved was prepared to assert that the bill was out of the woods. But in a brief interview, Sen. Trent Lott of Mississippi, the Republican leader, said, ``If we're going to start having some votes, then something might happen.'' [continues 358 words]
MEXICO CITY -- Mexico has advised the United States that it will prosecute U.S. Customs agents and informers who carried out an undercover money-laundering operation on Mexican soil and will seek the agents' extradition to face criminal trial here. In a meeting on Monday in Caracas, Venezuela, Foreign Secretary Rosario Green of Mexico handed Secretary of State Madeleine Albright a list of Mexican laws that the customs agents violated, according to preliminary results of Mexican investigations. Mexico is preparing to accuse the agents of entrapment, engaging in money-laundering and usurping the authority of Mexican law enforcement, Ms. Green said in news interviews. [continues 311 words]
SAN FRANCISCO - Seeking a showdown with the federal government, the founders of three medical marijuana clubs in this area have defied orders to shut down, hoping to place their fate in the hands of a jury. U.S. District Court Judge Charles Breyer ordered six Northern California clubs closed on May 13 as part of a civil case brought by the Department of Justice, which accused the clubs of distributing marijuana in violation of federal law. Three outlets closed voluntarily. But clubs in Oakland, San Francisco and Marin County have remained open since the ruling, purposely inviting contempt-of-court charges, the clubs' owners said. Such charges would allow the owners to demand a federal jury trial in California, where voters in 1996 approved a ballot issue legalizing marijuana for medical use. [continues 213 words]
New York Times SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic -- In the early 1990s, Colombia's drug barons were fed up and eager to rearrange their business. Impatient with the Mexican traffickers who were demanding half of every load delivered and distributed in the United States, they went looking for a country with weak law enforcement, proximity to the United States and established drug-distribution networks. It did not take long for them to find the Dominican Republic. By the spring of 1995, Colombian cartels were ensconced here and looking to expand their network, which is what led one boss to invite Hidalgo Elias Velez, the Colombian owner of a struggling tropical-woods business here, to a lavish party outside Bogota, Colombia, and recruit him as an agent. [continues 909 words]
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- The debate over the propriety of handing out sterile syringes to people who inject illegal drugs, to reduce the spread of AIDS, has reached the White House, where President Clinton's two main policy advisers on the issue have staked out opposing positions. Their disagreement makes prospects for government financing of needle-exchange programs more unlikely when a ban on such spending, imposed by Congress in 1992, expires at the end of March. One adviser, Sandra Thurman, the White House director of national AIDS policy, advocates spending on the programs as a way of saving lives by reducing the incidence of AIDS contracted from shared needles. But at a spirited meeting earlier this month, the other adviser, Barry McCaffrey, the retired Army general who is the administration's director of national drug policy, ferociously opposed any government subsidy. [continues 794 words]
BLAINE, Whatcom County - There was little reason to notice an elderly Canadian couple crossing the border into Lynden last month. But when their car was pulled over by U.S. Customs workers as part of a drug-enforcement "block blitz," 20 pounds of high-grade Canadian-grown marijuana was found in their trunk. Officials weren't entirely surprised. Since U.S. Customs initiated its tough new border emphasis in December, they've made dozens of marijuana busts - many from unlikely suspects like the elderly couple. [continues 1020 words]
For a year the Clinton administration has presented the stunning arrest of Mexico's drug-enforcement chief as proof of that government's strong will to fight corruption. But now U.S. analysts have concluded that the case shows much wider military involvement with drug traffickers than Mexican authorities have acknowledged. According to an extensive classified report by the Drug Enforcement Administration and other intelligence assessments, the arrest last year of the former official, Gen. Jesus Gutierrez Rebollo, came after secret meetings between Mexican army officers and Mexico's biggest drug mafia, officials say. [continues 514 words]
In a bid to win support for sweeping tobacco legislation, the major cigarette producers have showered lawmakers with record campaign contributions, even as some old allies are swearing off tobacco money. Tobacco interested pumped $4.5 million into the coffers of federal candidates and national political parties in 1997, an industry record for a non-election year. An analysis done for the New York Times by the Campaign Study Group, a research company in Springfield, Va., shows that the industry began stepping up its contributions in 1995 and 1996, with accelerated donations continuing into last year, the most recent for which federal elections records are available. [continues 311 words]
