To the editor: With the Gloucester Daily Times' stated opposition of Question 3, I would expect it will push hard for laws to criminalize tobacco and alcohol and give a rousing endorsement of Jack Fellure, the Prohibition Party's candidate for president. Despite the false statements and baseless rhetoric of District Attorney Jonathan Blodgett and others in the establishment, the detrimental effects of marijuana are almost negligible, and far less harmful or addictive than either nicotine or alcohol. Any prohibition against marijuana that is based on the grounds of the minimal harm it does must logically be extended to cigarettes and alcohol for the comparatively massive harm they do. Of course, the harm to society is not the motive for the drug's legal status by of those with a real interest in the criminalization of marijuana. [continues 276 words]
As distribution hubs expand across the country, the price of drugs has dropped and the number of users has skyrocketed A few miles west of downtown, past a terra-cotta-tiled gateway emblazoned with "Bienvenidos," the smells and sights of Mexico spill onto 26th Street. The Mexican tricolor waves from brick storefronts. Vendors offer authentic churros, chorizo and tamales. Chicago's Little Village neighborhood is home to more than 500,000 residents of Mexican descent and is known for its Cinco de Mayo festival and bustling Mexican Independence Day parade. But federal authorities say that Little Village is also home to something else: an American branch of the Mexican Sinaloa drug cartel. [continues 1511 words]
Fewer victims arriving at detox now Pictou County is coming to terms with bath salts. The drug addiction that hit this pocket of northern Nova Scotia like wildfire this spring has been wrangled down to a smouldering burn. In April, area emergency rooms were seeing four to five cases of strung-out bath salts users a week. "A lot of folks were using them non-stop for a week or two at a time," said Greg Purvis, director of addictions services for the Pictou and Cumberland health authorities. [continues 621 words]
Plant-based drugs win accolades as treatments for substance abuse Cynthia Davidson still glows at mere mention of ayahuasca, the Amazon plant known to the Indians as "the vine of the souls." She says it gave her back her life. "The experience I had was literally like 10 years of therapy in one night," enthused the 32- year-old Haida woman, who has struggled with chronic addiction for more than a decade. "I went from cigarettes to drinking to marijuana to snorting cocaine to smoking rock cocaine, then starting to shoot cocaine and heroin. It all just escalated. But after I experienced the ayahuasca =C2=85." [continues 2007 words]
Growing seizures of drug points to its popularity. Police have revealed exactly how many drugs are being pulled off the streets - and cocaine looks to be making a comeback. Figures released to the Weekend Herald show 5469 grams of cocaine was seized by police up to August this year, much higher than in previous years. Methamphetamine and Ecstasy have dropped away, while the emergence of "unknown powders" seized by police and Customs has increased substantially in the last year. Massey University researcher Dr Chris Wilkins said the amounts of cocaine discovered were still low, however it appeared to be growing in popularity. [continues 570 words]
As Montanans, although our intentions were good, we were fooled by marijuana advocates who got free rein and basically legalized marijuana in Montana. Fortunately, the Legislature came to our rescue and placed tight restrictions on the use of marijuana. Let's not be fooled again and go back to the dangerous place that marijuana advocates led us to before, where you could get a marijuana card over the Internet, where unscrupulous doctors held caravans across the state encouraging healthy people to get cards as long as they could pay for it, where felony and misdemeanor probationers easily got cards, where dispensaries opened next to schools, where people drove from other states to get their "weed," when there were 31,000 card holders instead of the current 3,000. [continues 185 words]
To the editor: We are law enforcement leaders in Moffat, Routt and Grand counties, and we wanted to express our concerns about Amendment 64, the effort to legalize "recreational" use of marijuana in Colorado. First, we are concerned about any steps that might increase use of marijuana among children. Studies indicate that increased availability and increased perceptions of acceptability will increase underage use of marijuana, which already accounts for 67 percent of teenage substance abuse treatment in America. The evidence is also compelling to us that marijuana is a gateway drug that leads to use and abuse of even more dangerous drugs like heroin, methamphetamine and cocaine. Because of the permanent, lifelong debilitating effects of marijuana on young people, we are gravely troubled about Amendment 64's potential long term harm to our community's youth. [continues 415 words]
I was astonished to see an ex-cop from Denver do a pro-Amendment 64 ad on the basis that the "war on drugs doesn't work." The fact is that the war on drugs will not go away just because the use of one illicit drug becomes a protected right. There will still be meth, cocaine, heroine and scores of designer narcotics, pharmaceuticals, off-the-shelf substances and unregulated pot that will come across the border and continue to spread in all parts of the country. [continues 234 words]
As a former chief federal prosecutor in Washington state, I observed firsthand our nation's dangerous marijuana policy. Decades of experience demonstrates marijuana prohibition has failed to reduce use by tens of millions of Americans. Instead, international drug cartels, violent gangs and street pushers control the trade and reap the profits. Our sworn officers and agents put themselves at risk every day to defend this flawed policy. Public safety suffers under marijuana prohibition and so does public health. Marijuana use is not without risk, but these risks are nothing like those of heroin, cocaine or meth. Leaving marijuana in the hands of black-market profiteers prevents us from regulating potency or purity, testing for adulterants or requiring accurate labeling. [continues 200 words]
Pot for Medical Purposes? Sure. for Getting High? No. Legalize pot? The nation has flirted with the idea before: Jimmy Carter supported decriminalization in his 1976 campaign, but the idea died after his chief drug adviser was reported to have used cocaine at a Washington, D.C., party. Almost four decades later, though, a pot renaissance is sweeping parts of the USA: Seventeen states and the nation's capital now allow the use of medical marijuana with a doctor's order, which in some places is ludicrously easy to get. Thirteen states have decriminalized pot, which generally means that the punishment for first-time possession of small amounts is a fine with no jail time. [continues 534 words]
Supreme Court to Hear Arguments on Whether Alerts by Canines Should Justify Searches NEW SMYRNA BEACH, Fla. - Aldo the German shepherd and Franky the chocolate Lab are drug-detecting dogs who have been retired to opposite ends of the ultimate retiree state. But their work is still being evaluated, and today it will be before the Supreme Court. The justices must decide whether man's best friend is an honest broker as blind to prejudice as Lady Justice, or as prone as the rest of us to a bad day at the office or the manipulation of our partners. [continues 603 words]
WHENEVER I've interviewed Mexican cartel killers, the aspect that I've found most disturbing about them is that they appear to be sane. Even though they have described to me such unfathomable actions as hacking off the heads of still-living victims, it is something other than mental illness that drives their violence. Their sanity is disconcerting because, if they were simply mad, it would be easier to accept horrific actions like leaving piles of headless corpses in town squares. [continues 794 words]
LITTLE ROCK - Passage of a ballot issue that would legalize marijuana for medical use in the state could lead to "marijuana vending machines," an opponent of the proposal claimed Tuesday, a charge the measure's supporters denied. Jerry Cox, leader of the Family Council Action Committee, said he recently learned that one of the ways marijuana is dispensed to patients in California is through dispensing machines. He questioned whether similar machines would be set up in Arkansas if voters approve the Arkansas Medical Marijuana Act, also known as Issue 5. [continues 512 words]
Like many in our community, we at the Kings County Advertiser have watched with growing alarm as there have been more and more arrests for drug possession and trafficking in our community. The recent methamphetamine bust is yet another terrifying example of how rural Nova Scotia isn't as safe as we might like to believe. The meth bust involved alleged criminal activities throughout many communities in the Valley. The investigation involved numerous local agencies, as well as the federal RCMP drug enforcement unit. Police were able to recover about 10,000 meth pills, 10 pounds of marijuana, $22,000 in cash, 12 cartons of illegal cigarettes and an ounce of cocaine throughout their investigation, but it boggles the mind to think of how many drugs the alleged members of this ring may have been able to traffic over the course of the five-month investigation and beyond. [continues 378 words]
WASHINGTON - Every dog has its day, but not every dog has its day in court. Aldo, a German shepherd, and Franky, a chocolate Labrador retriever, are exceptions. The Supreme Court plans to hear their cases on Wednesday. The basic question in both cases, said Orin S. Kerr, a leading expert on the Fourth Amendment right against unreasonable search, is this: "What do you think of a dog's nose?" It is surely a marvel. But is it also, as the Supreme Court has suggested in previous cases, essentially infallible? [continues 732 words]
In just over a week's time, thousands of people across Massachusetts will be taking time out of their day to find a nearby polling station, to cast their vote in the 2012 presidential election. There will be a few things on their minds, namely, who should be the next president of the United States. But there is another pressing issue concerning many residents of Massachusetts. Question 3 on the state ballot will determine whether marijuana ought to be legalized for medical purposes. If passed, it would be a significant step towards total legalization of marijuana for recreational use. [continues 767 words]
High Court Will Rule Whether a Drug-Sniffing Canine's Alert Is Cause for Searches WASHINGTON - Researchers at UC Davis set up a simple experiment to test police dogs and their fabled ability to detect drugs. They told 18 police dog handlers they had hidden small amounts of illegal drugs in four rooms of a church. Over two days of testing, the drug-sniffing dogs alerted their handlers repeatedly and in every room - 225 times in all. And they were twice as likely to alert on spots marked with red construction paper that the handlers had been told would indicate drugs. [continues 843 words]
The exit of Oxycontin has left a chasm in Canada's underground drug economy and left addicts scrambling to fill the void, according to one of the nation's leading addictions experts. Here on the prairies, a number of them are turning to heroin. "A lot of my patients are reporting that," said Dr. Raju Hajela, the former president of the Canadian Society of Addiction Medicine, who practises in southeast Calgary. Abuse of opioids - opium-like drugs - exploded in Canada when Oxycontin hit and Hajela said governments and even many in the medical community "missed the boat" thinking addicts would seek treatment when Purdue Pharma stopped manufacturing the drug earlier this year. [continues 574 words]
Initiative 502 allows us to answer some simple questions regarding current policy on marijuana: Are our current marijuana laws working? Is their enforcement a good use of our police, prosecutors, judges, and jails? Are they reducing marijuana's availability and use, or increasing public safety? We don't think so. One of us is a travel writer who spends a third of each year abroad and has had the opportunity to observe how other societies deal with marijuana use. The other has served as a state representative for eight years, focusing both on the well-being and education of children as well as criminal justice issues. Both of us have shepherded our own kids through the tricky teen years, and both of us agree that our marijuana laws need an overhaul. That is why we are voting yes on Initiative 502, and we encourage our fellow Washingtonians to do the same. [continues 1063 words]
The medical marijuana question on the Nov. 6 ballot would allow people suffering from ailments such as cancer, HIV and multiple sclerosis to legally obtain the drug. But the language in the proposed law does little to clarify whether marijuana should be treated in the workplace the same as a controlled substance like painkillers. "It could have been written much more clearly," Kabrina Krebel Chang, an assistant professor of business law at Boston University, said. "But, it wasn't." If it passes, Question 3 would allow patients to use marijuana as long as they have written approval from a qualified physician. Nonprofit dispensaries would be set up across the state, with at least one, but no more than five, in each county. There would also be instances where a patient could cultivate a 60-day supply of marijuana if access to a dispensary were limited by finances, distance or a physical incapacity. [continues 607 words]
