High Court Should OK Patient Use. Eight years ago, 56 percent of California voters approved Proposition 215, allowing sick people to use marijuana for medical purposes when approved by a physician. In all, 35 states have approved similar legislation. The only problem is that the federal government still outlaws the use of marijuana, for any reason, which has created enormous legal headaches for sick individuals, doctors and law enforcement. Fortunately, the legal Catch-22 will be addressed this winter when the U.S. Supreme Court at last considers whether the federal government can prosecute sick people who use marijuana on the advice of their doctor. [continues 488 words]
Advocates For Decriminalization Think Voters Will OK Medical Use When Chuck Ream first began suffering severe stomach pains in 1968, doctors gave him antacids. As the pain grew worse - endoscopies would later reveal gastritis, ulcers and lack of a proper membrane in the duodenum - he was prescribed barbiturates, tranquilizers and more antacids. They worked, sort of, at first. But when the pain worsened again, a friend suggested he try smoking marijuana. "I tried it, and my stomach untightened, and I could breathe a little bit," he said. "It didn't solve all my problems, but it allowed me to function and return to school." [continues 1463 words]
What do Rodney Dangerfield, Michelle Phillips, Bill Maher, Jesse Ventura, Frances McDormand and Jennifer Aniston have in common? They've come clean about pot and they want others to as well. Comedian Rodney Dangerfield's new autobiography, It's Not Easy Being Me: A Lifetime of No Respect But Plenty of Sex and Drugs (HarperCollins), contains surprising news: he smokes marijuana. Dangerfield, 82, says he's been smoking pot for nearly 50 years, joking, "I was a hippie long before hippies were born." [continues 1730 words]
Just as the administration's Iraqi mission has been damaged by the scandal of prisoner abuse and other failures, the policy in Afghanistan has been undercut by the rebirth of the Afghani poppy, the main ingredient in heroin. Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage admitted during a hearing last month that last year was the ''biggest year ever -- for poppy cultivation and growth in Afghanistan. So you would be wrong if you don't hold us responsible.'' The future looks even worse: A U.N. report says that two out of every three Afghan farmers plan to increase their poppy crop in 2004. [continues 548 words]
Driven in large measure by harsh drug laws, our prison population has grown from 200,000 to two million over the past 30 years. Now, the tide is turning and, by legislation or referendum, one state after another is changing these laws. But not New York, where the hardline Rockefeller laws remain the nation's most draconian. The laws enjoy little public or political support. Just about all interested parties -- legislators, advocates of various persuasions, and all sectors of the criminal justice system -- favor change. Most favor putting drug law offenders in treatment rather than prison. But there is widespread disagreement about how to go about this. How far should sentences be reduced? What should be done about offenders now in prison? Who (judges or prosecutors) should have the last word about where a defendant goes? [continues 319 words]
With two federal watchdog agencies freeing the White House drug czar to overtly influence state ballot initiatives, the Senate is poised to reauthorize this anti-democratic exercise for the next five years - the wheels greased by a ten-year total of $4 billion in taxpayer-funded advertising designed to sway the votes of those who pay for it. The General Accounting Office recently declared the Bush administration's $22-million multimedia ad campaign touting new Medicare drug benefits to be marred by "omissions and other weaknesses" though not downright illegal. The GAO has also agreed to examine whether the administration's video news releases with fake reporters promoting the Medicare changes violate laws against government "covert propaganda." [continues 2542 words]
SARATOGA -- Company Makes Key Hires As It Readies To Roll Out Hair-Based Test DrugRisk Solutions LLC isn't moving into its new home for another few months. But the company already has made two powerful acquisitions: Patrick Carpenter and Harry Puglisi Jr. Carpenter, 44, is the former laboratory operations director at Quest Diagnostics Inc.'s hair-testing lab in Las Vegas. Before that, he reported to Gen. Barry McCaffrey, former President Bill Clinton's drug czar. Carpenter is DrugRisk's new director of laboratories. [continues 630 words]
The beauty of Jefferson's marketplace of ideas is that it opens our society to all voices and all arguments, presuming the most persuasive will rise to the top. But those who promote the War on Drugs find this a dangerous concept. Drug reform makes too much sense and in recent years has been too compelling to voters. Already, seven states and the District of Columbia have legalized medical marijuana through voter initiatives (and two more states through legislation) and a recent Gallup poll shows that 74 percent of Americans are on that side of the issue. [continues 704 words]
The beauty of Thomas Jefferson's marketplace of ideas is that it opens our society to all voices and all arguments, presuming the most persuasive will rise to the top. But those who promote the War on Drugs find this a dangerous concept. Drug reform makes too much sense and in recent years has been too compelling to voters. Already, seven states and the District of Columbia have legalized medical marijuana through voter initiatives (and two more states through legislation), and a recent Gallup poll shows that 74 percent of Americans are on that side of the issue. [continues 706 words]
The beauty of Jefferson's marketplace of ideas is that it opens our society to all voices and all arguments, presuming the most persuasive will rise to the top. But those who promote the War on Drugs find this a dangerous concept. Drug reform makes too much sense and in recent years has been too compelling to voters. Already, seven states and the District of Columbia have legalized medical marijuana through voter initiatives (and two more states through legislation) and a recent Gallup poll shows that 74 percent of Americans are on that side of the issue. [continues 706 words]
EVERETT -- The stereotypical drug user is no longer a middle-aged man with rotting teeth and a lengthy criminal rap sheet, said former national drug czar Barry McCaffrey. Instead, it's becoming teens like those in Snohomish County and other parts of the country. McCaffrey, retired Army general and director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy during the Clinton administration, spent most of yesterday trying to steer the very people in that at-risk category away from drug use during the third annual Snohomish County Youth Meth Summit. The summit, held at the Everett Events Center, was sponsored by the Snohomish County Sheriff's Office and local anti-drug group Lead on America. [continues 373 words]
EVERETT -- Former national drug czar and retired general Barry McCaffrey will headline this year's Snohomish County Youth Meth Summit on Feb. 5 at the Everett Events Center. McCaffrey, who stepped down as the director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy in January 2001, said he will share his anti-drug message with students during the six-hour summit. "Methamphetamine is the worst thing that has happened to America, period, on the drug issue," he said yesterday. "It's a building crescendo. [continues 561 words]
Early-Intervention Campaign From FCB, Ogilvy Kicks Off On Super Bowl WASHINGTON The White House's latest anti-drug media effort, which launches during the Super Bowl this Sunday, links drug use with drinking in TV ads for the first time in the campaign's five-year history, sources said. The new work, from New York shops Foote Cone & Belding and Ogilvy & Mather, also promotes the concept of "early intervention" - another first. That marks a shift in focus from the campaign's usual prevention-based messages. Early intervention is a drug-treatment strategy favored by drug czar John Walters. [continues 877 words]
The Old Failures of New and Improved Anti-Drug Education I'm at the February 2001 Teens at the Table conference, a feel-good event sponsored by a coalition of Los Angeles youth organizations and high schools. It's designed to boost self-esteem and teach teenagers how to make smart decisions. In one of the sessions, a group of students is about to learn how easy it is to stay off drugs. It doesn't require anything as lame as red ribbons or "Just Say No" chants. It just takes knowing what constitutes a healthy decision -- one that is all your own -- coupled with a little real-life practice. [continues 4101 words]
Terence Hallinan has lost his bid for re-election to Kamala Harris, who says she will maintain his approach to law enforcement while running a more efficient district attorney's office. Hallinan's humane charging policies have had direct, beneficial impacts on the lives of countless thousands of citizens. Here's one small example, hardly ever publicized... "Welfare fraud" is a crime that usually involves poor people failing to notify the Dept. of Human Services that they got a low-level jobs (so their checks don't get cut off and maybe they'll have enough to buy their kid a bike...) In such cases, Hallinan allowed people to avoid prosecution by making restitution to the state. Which meant they could hold onto their jobs and their public housing. To his critics, such cases represented "failure to prosecute" and the stats were used against him in the media. But in the real world, many of those failures to prosecute translated into lives not ruined, homelessness averted. [continues 1393 words]
Federal, State Pot Laws Need To Jibe Americans wondering if they still live in the land of liberty have only to ponder the reinstatement of a right most probably didn't know was threatened: the right to talk to one's doctor freely and openly, about anything. Even marijuana. Last week, by declining to hear a Bush administration appeal, the U.S. Supreme Court let stand a 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that doctors have a constitutional right to advise ill patients about the benefits of marijuana. [continues 380 words]
The entire nation owes radio broadcaster Rush Limbaugh a debt of gratitude, because his ordeal has exposed every drug warrior in America as a rank hypocrite. One thing we don't hear from American politicians very often is silence. By refusing to criticize Rush Limbaugh, every drug warrior has just been exposed as a shameless, despicable hypocrite. And that's good news, because the next time they do speak up, there'll be no reason for anyone to listen. The revelation that Limbaugh had become addicted to painkillers - drugs he is accused of procuring illegally from his housekeeper - has caused a media sensation ever since the megastar's shocking, on-air confession on Oct. 10. [continues 362 words]
Why Hasn't President George Bush Uttered A Word Criticizing Limbaugh's Law-Breaking? The entire nation owes radio broadcaster Rush Limbaugh a debt of gratitude, because his ordeal has exposed every drug warrior in America as a rank hypocrite. One thing we don't hear from American politicians very often is silencer. By refusing to criticize Rush Limbaugh, every drug warrior has just been exposed as a shameless, despicable hypocrite. And that's good news, because the next time they do speak up, there'll be no reason for anyone to listen. [continues 382 words]
Why Does The Bush Administration Seem So Intent On Denying Medical Marijuana To Adults In Extreme Discomfort? THE WHITE HOUSE Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) -- whose anti-pot road show blew through Boston last week -- wants you to believe that everything about marijuana is bad, bad, bad. That the plant's promising medicinal benefits are simply a "Trojan-horse issue," perpetrated by drug-reform advocates who are taking advantage of sick and dying people to advance a decriminalization agenda. [continues 1534 words]
In a silent rebuke to the Bush administration, the US Supreme Court Tuesday refused to hear the federal government's appeal of a lower court decision blocking the feds from punishing doctors who recommend marijuana to their patients. While drug reform and patient advocates hailed the decision as a victory, the ruling does not make medical marijuana legal, nor does it prevent the federal government from continuing its policy of raids and arrests of medical marijuana providers. It does, however, block the Justice Department from threatening to suspend the prescription privileges of doctors who recommend medical marijuana. In so doing, it removes one tactic from the Justice Department's arsenal of techniques to harass the medical marijuana movement. [continues 755 words]
