"The war on drugs has failed." Those are the words of retired newsman Walter Cronkite from a March Huffington Post blog. Some argue that Cronkite single-handedly sparked the movement against the Vietnam War -- when he speaks, people listen. I did too. Twenty-four years ago, former President Ronald Reagan perpetuated an American convention of the Oval Office: proclaim a war on drugs. In his Oct. 14 yearly radio speech, the 40th president repeated words used by the successive administrations of Bush I, Willie I, Willie II and Bush II. The American government's encounter with drugs began before Reagan, and the first inklings of hostility date back to the '70s, with former President Richard Nixon's founding of the Drug Enforcement Agency. [continues 833 words]
JALALABAD, Afghanistan - With profits from this spring's record opium crop fuelling a broad Taliban offensive, Afghan authorities say they are considering a once-unthinkable way to deal with the scourge: spraying poppy fields with herbicide. Afghans including President Hamid Karzai are deeply opposed to spraying the crop. After nearly three decades of war, western science and assurances can do little to assuage their fears of chemicals being dropped from airplanes. But U.S. officials in Kabul and Washington are pushing for it. And on Thursday the country's top drug enforcement official said he would contemplate spraying opium crops -- even with airborne crop-dusters -- if other efforts fail to cut the size of the coming year's crop. [continues 318 words]
U.S. Wants To Eradicate Opium Fields With Airborne Crop Dusting JALALABAD, Afghanistan - With profits from this spring's record opium crop fuelling a broad Taliban offensive, Afghan authorities say they are considering a once-unthinkable way to deal with the scourge: spraying poppy fields with herbicide. Afghans including President Hamid Karzai are deeply opposed to spraying the crop. After nearly three decades of war, western science and assurances can do little to assuage their fears of chemicals being dropped from airplanes. [continues 436 words]
Drug Czar Notes Sierra Nevada Rife With Growers on Public Land WASHINGTON -- The White House is sending money and some momentary manpower to reinforce the fight against Central Valley marijuana growers. When national drug czar John Walters lands in Fresno on Tuesday, he'll be bringing a commitment of an additional $2.2 million in law enforcement funding. The money will include $100,000 grants for Fresno, Tulare and Kern counties, as well as more support for a coordinated anti-pot campaign. [continues 592 words]
Extra $2.2 Million Is Pledged to State by U.S., in Part to Combat Pot Growing on Public Lands. WASHINGTON -- The White House is sending money and its national drug czar to reinforce the fight against California marijuana growers. When John Walters lands in Fresno on Tuesday, he'll be bringing a commitment of an additional $2.2 million in law enforcement funding. The money will include $100,000 grants for Fresno, Tulare and Kern counties, as well as more support for a coordinated anti-pot campaign. [continues 515 words]
"This is to keep Big Brother out of my exam room," says Philip A. Denney, MD, explaining the civil suit that attorney Zenia Gilg filed on his behalf Aug. 3 in the U.S. District Court for Eastern California. Denney had been sent documents by a sympathizer revealing that in the Fall of 2005, two individuals -an agent of the Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms Bureau, and an informer controlled by the Redding Police Department-had obtained his approval to medicate with cannabis by providing false histories. [continues 1312 words]
In 1996, August 4 fell on a Sunday. That morning, in the wee small hours, some 100 agents from the California Bureau of Narcotic Enforcement, supervised by John Gordnier, the Senior Assistant Attorney General, raided 1444 Market Street, a five-story building that housed the San Francisco Cannabis Buyers Club and Proposition -215 campaign headquarters. Five smaller BNE squads simultaneously raided the homes of Buyers Club staff members in and around the city. The raiders wore black uniforms with BNE shoulder patches. [continues 1491 words]
Raids on July 6 targeted 11 San Diego cannabis dispensaries. Owners of some of the dispensaries not raided that day were heard to say that they were spared because they were running proper establishments. As if the DEA made such distinctions! On July 21 the remaining clubs were visited by law enforcement and told to close or else. They have all complied. "Two DEA agents accompanied by one local cop went around to the clubs," says organizer Dion Markgraff. "They didn't have search warrants. They threatened to arrest everyone if they didn't shut down. Places that let them in had all their medicine stolen. One or two places didn't let them in. Two or three others got word and shut down before they came around. At one of those places the DEA called the landlord and pressured him to make sure they wouldn't re-open." [continues 1404 words]
In Response to More Aggressive Taliban, Attacks Are Double Those in Iraq War As fighting in Afghanistan has intensified over the past three months, the U.S. military has conducted 340 airstrikes there, more than twice the 160 carried out in the much higher-profile war in Iraq, according to data from the Central Command, the U.S. military headquarters for the Middle East. The airstrikes appear to have increased in recent days as the United States and its allies have launched counteroffensives against the Taliban in the south and southeast, strafing and bombing a stronghold in Uruzgan province and pounding an area near Khost with 500-pound bombs. Save & ShareTag This Article Saving options1. Save to description: Headline (required) Subheadline Byline 2. Save to notes (255 character max): Subheadline Blurb None 3. Tag This Article [continues 1181 words]
Unit Accused of Abusing Drugs and Alcohol Officers Relieved of Duty After Killing of 24 Iraqis The marine unit involved in the killing of Iraqi civilians in Haditha last November had suffered a "total breakdown" in discipline and had drug and alcohol problems, according to the wife of one of the battalion's staff sergeants. The allegations in Newsweek magazine contribute to an ever more disturbing portrait of embattled marines under high stress, some on their third tour of duty after ferocious door-to-door fighting in the Sunni insurgent strongholds of Falluja and Haditha. [continues 659 words]
Last week the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, for reasons that are far from clear, chose to enter the debate over medical marijuana with a thoroughly unscientific -- one might even say anti-scientific -- blanket denial that marijuana has any medical value at all. Specifically, the grandiosely titled "Inter-Agency Advisory Regarding Claims That Smoked Marijuana Is a Medicine" referenced a "past examination" that "concluded that no sound scientific studies supported medical use of marijuana for treatment in the United States, and no animal or human data supported the safety or efficacy of marijuana for general medical use." [continues 295 words]
It's no coincidence that the new O'Shaughnessy's includes five articles on post-traumatic stress disorder and three on forgotten aspects of the history of cannabis as medicine. When Tod Mikuriya first became interested in cannabis as a medical student c. 1960, he realized that understanding might be found in two directions: clinical experience (input from patients, then unavailable) and the pre-Prohibition medical literature. So it makes sense that some 40 years later the journal Mikuriya founded would focus on a psychiatric condition that cannabis is being used to treat, and would publish documents filling in the gaps in our historic miseducation. [continues 1288 words]
Last week, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, for reasons that are far from clear, chose to enter the debate over medical marijuana with a thoroughly unscientific - one might even say anti-scientific - blanket denial that marijuana has any medical value at all.Specifically, the grandiosely titled "Inter-Agency Advisory Regarding Claims That Smoked Marijuana Is a Medicine" referenced a "past examination" that "concluded that no sound scientific studies supported medical use of marijuana for treatment in the United States, and no animal or human data supported the safety or efficacy of marijuana for general medical use." That is simply not true. As Scientific American magazine noted on its Web site the next day, the statement simply ignores "the existence of a 1999 report by the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences, which concluded that marijuana was 'moderately well-suited for particular conditions, such as chemotherapy-induced nausea and vomiting and AIDS wasting.'" The Institute of Medicine report, which was commissioned by the "drug czar" at the time, Gen. Barry McCaffrey, and included a series of hearings around the country as well as a complete review of the scientific literature worldwide, summarized its conclusions as follows: "Advances in cannabinoid science of the past 16 years have given rise to a wealth of new opportunities for the development of medically useful cannabinoid-based drugs. [continues 257 words]
Despite Assured Privacy, Addicts Wary Of Internet Five years ago, Barry Karlin sensed a huge business opportunity where most people saw only devastating social blight. There were more than 16 million people in the United States who needed treatment for drug or alcohol addiction, but only one in five addicts who sought help could get it because the number of programs was limited and the cost was so high. Enter the Internet -- or so Karlin imagined. Rather than undergo the shame and awkwardness of face-to-face group counseling programs, addicts could find the support they needed in cyberspace. Karlin calculated the size of the potential market for drug treatment -- online and offline -- at $12 billion. [continues 836 words]
- -A Last-Minute Twist Led by doctors who learned nothing about cannabis in medical school and never employed it in clinical practice, the Medical Board of California decided in April 2004 to discipline the state's leading authority on the subject. Tod Mikuriya, MD, was put on probation for five years, subjected to supervision by a "practice monitor," and fined $75,000 for the cost of his own prosecution. Instead of accepting the punishment, Mikuriya, 74, a Berkeley-based psychiatrist, has gone to great expense to appeal in Superior Court. "It's the principle of the thing," he says without irony. [continues 1601 words]
This week a House subcommittee held hearings on a bill, the Second Chance Act, which is meant to deal with the problems that prisoners encounter on their reentry into society and also with their need for substance abuse treatment. The concern over prisoners and recidivism is justified. Though national crime rates declined steadily over the past decade, the Bureau of Justice Statistics reports that the percentage of released prisoners re-arrested within three years increased from 62.5 percent in 1983 to 67.5 percent in 1994. And given that offenders are arrested for only a fraction of the crimes they commit, even this depressing statistic is an underestimate. Few would dispute that the correctional system must be changed. But how? [continues 729 words]
23-Year-Old Turns Tables on Drug War With Denver Victory It's not even noon and Mason Tvert already has hit seven television and five radio news shows in his post-election victory lap as the architect behind an effort to make Denver the first U.S. city to legalize adult marijuana possession. Tvert has drawn international coverage by turning the tables on the drug war. He calls marijuana the "safer alternative" for society and criticizes the "hypocrisy" of elected officials who condemn pot while condoning alcohol use, despite studies showing that alcohol fuels deadly violence, car wrecks and abuse. [continues 700 words]
WASHINGTON -- The FBI, famous for its straight-laced crime-fighting image, is considering whether to relax its hiring rules over how often applicants could have used marijuana or other illegal drugs earlier in life. Some senior FBI managers have been deeply frustrated that they could not hire applicants who acknowledged occasional marijuana use in college, but in some cases already perform top-secret work at other government agencies, such as the CIA or State Department. FBI Director Robert Mueller will make the final decision. "We can't say when or if this is going to happen, but we are exploring the possibility," spokesman Stephen Kodak said [continues 862 words]
CRC Health Group, the country's largest provider of drug treatment services, has doubled the size of its Silicon Valley headquarters, as concern about methamphetamine-fueled crime continues to rise. CRC inaugurated its new offices in Cupertino on Monday. The privately held company has 87 facilities in 21 states, and treats approximately 22,000 people a day. Kathryn Jett, the director of the California Department of Alcohol and Drug Programs, said people need to understand that methamphetamine addictions are treatable. "We know we are not going to arrest our way out of the methamphetamine problem," she said. [continues 94 words]
Jamaica's deep social and economic crisis due to crime, violence and natural disasters urgently requires us to "put our noses to the grindstone, and shoulders to the wheel" to extricate our beloved country from the iron grip of adversity. There is, however, a huge waste of intellectual energy that should be engaged in the national recovery effort, particularly in the field of education, instead of promoting the low-level priority issue of decriminalising ganja. In recent forums and publications, it was asserted that "the people" want ganja to be decriminalised. This oft-repeated statement is misleading, as it flies in the face of the two national polls whose data stand until new polls are conducted. The Gleaner Don Anderson Poll of August 14 - 28, 2001 reported 53.3 per cent against legalisation; also the Observer Stone Poll of August 26 - 27, 2001 reported a majority of 48.3 per cent against legalisation that includes decriminalisation. [continues 858 words]
