DRUG addicts steal property or carry out frauds to the sum of pounds 11,000 a year each in order to feed their habit, say researchers. Those who inject drugs, primarily heroin, need pounds 324 a week to buy their supplies and resort to a range of crimes including shoplifting, car theft, housebreaking, mugging and fraud. Researchers at the NHS Scottish Centre for Infection and Environmental Health based their calculations on interviews with nearly 1,000 injecting drug abusers contacted in the community, through treatment centres and needle exchange schemes. [continues 248 words]
A PERTH lawyer is to bring a test case against laws banning illicit drug use in the home, claiming the legislation is undemocratic and unconstitutional. Colin McKerlie said yesterday that the Supreme Court appeal would challenge the right of state parliament to curb the behaviour of individuals unless they were acting in a way that affected others. Mr McKerlie is preparing appeal documents after his client, Trevor Dunen, was convicted yesterday of possession of cannabis and a smoking implement, following a raid on his suburban home last year. [continues 296 words]
IN a month of record drug seizures, Australian Federal Police and Customs yesterday showed off their latest haul - 500kg of cocaine with an estimated street value of $140 million. An 18-month investigation codenamed Shard led police and Customs officials to intercept a 12m New Zealand-registered yacht, the Ngaire Wha - under full sail allegedly with a full cargo of cocaine - near Patonga, north of Sydney, about 4am yesterday. Three men were arrested on board, and another three were detained on a nearby public wharf. Police claim those on the yacht were planning to take the drugs, wrapped in hessian, ashore in a small dinghy. [continues 305 words]
An unused pinball parlour on Darlinghurst Road, Kings Cross, is likely to become the site of Australia's first legal heroin injecting room. It is understood 66 Darlinghurst Road is leased to Greater Union Theatres under a 10-year contract believed to be worth more than $300,000 a year. However, the building proved unsuitable for a pinball business and remains vacant, with the Uniting Church finalising negotiations to sub-lease the site for an unspecified but smaller rental. The owner of the building, a Sydney businessman with wider property interests in the area, is understood to have passed police probity checks, although he has not yet agreed formally to the sub-lease proposal. [continues 461 words]
MYTH: Marijuana is a gateway drug. FACT: For every 104 people who have used marijuana, there is only one regular user of cocaine and less than one heroin addict. (1) MYTH: Marijuana is addictive. FACT: Less than one percent of people who consume marijuana do so on a daily or near daily basis. An even smaller minority develop dependence on marijuana. Withdrawal symptoms, if experienced at all, are mild. (2) MYTH: Marijuana lowers motivation. FACT: For twenty five years, researchers have searched for a marijuana- induced amotivational syndrome and have failed to find it. Of course, people who are constantly intoxicated, no matter what the drug, are not likely to be productive. (3) [continues 329 words]
SANTA FE -- The Senate voted 37-4 on Wednesday to oppose drug legalization in a slap at Republican Gov. Gary Johnson. The governor has received widespread national media attention for advocating the legalization of marijuana, heroin and other illicit drugs. The Senate stopped short of endorsing a measure that chastised Johnson for "wasting valuable time and resources, including travel expenses, to advocate the legalization of horrendous narcotics such as heroin." With Lt. Gov. Walter Bradley casting the deciding vote, the Senate voted 20-19 to table an amendment by Sen. Phil Griego, D-San Jose, that said "Johnson is once again offering sound bites rather than solutions to the drug epidemic." [continues 474 words]
Cigarette giant British-American Tobacco encouraged and relied on smuggling to boost its sales in Latin America for at least several years, according to internal company memos in which senior executives discuss the role of smuggling in building market share and profits. The documents, dating from the early to mid-1990s, do not prove that employees of British-American, the world's second-largest tobacco company, directly took part in smuggling operations. But they suggest that high-ranking officials could control the clandestine movement of cigarettes across national boundaries and sought to do so to compete with rivals they thought were doing the same. [continues 1573 words]
One in six teenagers is smoking daily and up to one in five is drunk regularly, a new study shows. Research by Trinity College in Dublin looked at the social habits of the pupils in 16 different schools and found up to a third of the 14 and 15 year olds had used at least one illegal drug. Almost one in five of the teenagers interviewed said they had used illegal drugs in the previous month. Cannabis is the most commonly used substance -- followed by inhalants -- and most children begin experimenting just after their 12th birthday. [continues 152 words]
A billion dollars seems like a lot to spend for guilty pleasure. But that is what the Clinton administration proposes in Colombia - a billion dollars to fight drugs this year, and another half billion in 2001. There will be arguments in Congress, but what is really at stake is pleasure, not politics. Americans seek pleasure, and so buy cocaine and heroin in record amounts - but we are ashamed of what we perceive as a weakness. Blame the work ethic or our Puritan heritage, TV, boredom. The end result is that even as we buy certain drugs, we make those drugs illegal. For three decades, the United States has spent billions to buy drugs and billions more to wage a "war" against those who sell and use them, prompting us to arm ourselves as no modern nation ever has in peacetime. Yet illegal drugs remain cheaper, more potent, available and popular than ever. [continues 617 words]
A doctor hired six months ago to help treat heroin addicts at the Hamilton jail quit suddenly this week. Dr. Lisa Doupe, one of three doctors at the Hamilton-Wentworth Detention Centre, resigned Monday effective immediately. She said she could best make change elsewhere. "My resignation was a personal decision," said Doupe. "I'd much rather work constructively ... My whole life has been about returning people to function, returning people to work ... That is my raison d'etre as a physician ... (My resignation) is not a statement. It's just an issue. It didn't fit for me." [continues 518 words]
Nelson, New Zealand -- Motueka hemp advocate Peter Smale says he is disappointed by a decision not to allow trial crops to proceed in time for this planting season. Mr Smale last month applied for a licence to grow industrial hemp under trial conditions. He received a letter from Medsafe, the business unit of the Ministry of Health, stating that trials would not proceed this planting season. An inter-agency working party including the police, Customs, the New Zealand Hemp Industries Association and the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry is discussing a legislative framework, and plans to allow trials to proceed. [continues 209 words]
WASHINGTON - Hearing a case in which women were arrested from their hospital beds, Supreme Court justices Wednesday debated whether hospitals can test pregnant women for drug use and give the results to police. "This is being done for medical purposes," suggested Justice Antonin Scalia. "The police didn't show up at the hospital and say, 'We'd like to find a way to bust your patients.' " But Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said she did not see how arresting women after they gave birth would protect the fetus, the primary concern of a South Carolina public hospital. "I looked at the (hospital) consent form; it doesn't say anything about police," she said. [continues 254 words]
Julie is a survivor. Although she's still rail-thin, the light in her brown eyes and her confident voice prove that she's feeling much better than she did eight months ago, when she weighed only 68 pounds and was wracked with painful muscle spasms, the result of seven years of suffering with fibromyalgia. She credits her recovery to marijuana. "I would go so far as to say that it saved my life, because I was not able to keep food down," says Julie, a former child-protection worker in her early 30s. "It seemed to help with the digestion process as well. And it kept me sane enough through a period of incredible pain to wait it out and get through it." [continues 539 words]
LEBANON -- About 10 p.m. Wednesday, John Adams, 64, settled into his tan recliner to watch television for the last time, his cane within easy reach. At that moment outside Adams' door, Lebanon police officers Kyle Shedran, 25, and Greg Day, 24, stood armed and prepared for the worst. In the darkness, five to seven other officers were there for backup. Shedran and Day knocked. Adams' wife, Loriane, 61, moved to the door. In the next moment, everyone's lives changed forever, victims of a horrendous mistake. [continues 561 words]
When the International Olympic Committee took back Andreea Raducana's gold medal because the team doctor gave her a cold remedy containing a tad of the forbidden substance ephedrine, it was as idiotic as it was unjust. And it's proof that Draconian zero-tolerance regulations that brook no discretion in their application can be as unfair as those times when discretion is abused. In the case of the 16-year-old Romanian gymnast, it is generally believed that the dreaded substance not only didn't enhance her performance,it could have impeded it. That's something the Court of Arbitration for Sport, to whom she appealed, preferred to overlook in the name of the current popular god of zero-tolerance. [continues 255 words]
Who goes down when grow-ops get busted - regular folks or organized crime? It has been in all the papers lately, so it must be true: B.C. is under attack by mobsters. According to police rhetoric, marijuana cultivation has evolved into the kind of criminal industry that would make Al Capone weep, with an estimated 10,000 grow operations - run predominately by vicious bikers and Vietnamese gangs - generating more than $4 billion in the province annually. Constantly retelling the stories of B.C. Bud fetching prices as high as $6000 U.S. per pound and being traded kilo-for-kilo for cocaine, the police have carefully crafted the public image of "the grower" as the community threat du jour, the neighbourhood menace who lowers property values, preys on your children and threatens the fabric of society. But the problem with this rhetoric is that it leaves no room for individual cases - it says nothing about who the grower is, why they're growing, what they plan to do with it or how much cash their crop will actually reap, assuming it even makes it to harvest. So who's really growing all that pot? The odds are good it's someone you already know. [continues 1344 words]
JENNIFER SAUNDERS is wise to decry the waste of human capital expended in the drug war ("Dealing with crime not simple", Letters, October 2). However, Jennifer needs to expand her argument to define crime and offence. Drug taking is a vice, not a crime. Drug taking fails the John Stuart Mill "freedom" test and the Thomas Jefferson "break my leg or pick my pocket" argument of what is of legitimate concern to government. Before the idea of demonisation, medicalisation and criminalisation was ever thought of, American Lysander Spooner wrote the essay Vindication of Moral Liberty in 1875. [continues 214 words]
The Supreme Court Should Reaffirm Privacy Rights The Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution prohibits "unreasonable searches and seizures" and also says that warrants should be issued only for "probable cause" of criminal activity. But the U.S. Supreme Court has held that some warrantless searches by police are reasonable if they occur in special circumstances. The danger is always that the exceptions will swallow the rule, undermining the right of privacy. In two cases argued this week, the justices were asked to expand the exception to allow police - with the aid of doctors in one case and dogs in the other - to search individuals without either a warrant or probable cause. The court should decline the invitation. [continues 617 words]
Oct. 6, 2000 - The Colorado State Patrol announced Thursday that it has arrested a Tucson man near Pueblo in connection with the largest single cocaine seizure ever made by the patrol. Troopers found 75 kilograms of cocaine, valued on the street at $1.4 million, in a suitcase, spare tire and hidden compartments of a 1998 Ford Expedition. It was packaged in bricks that were 2 inches thick, 6 inches long and 4 inches wide and wrapped in duct tape, according to Trooper Richard Breece, spokesman for the patrol. [continues 134 words]
Officials from three countries will work together on a wide range of strategies to wipe out the menace, seen as the "greatest security threat' BANGKOK -- Thailand has obtained important support from the United States and China to tackle its worsening drug problem, described by officials here as the country's ""greatest security threat''. Its officials are currently drafting separate cooperation agreements on drug suppression with their counterparts in Beijing and Washington ahead of an international narcotics conference to be held in Bangkok next week. [continues 606 words]
LIMA, Peru -- Like most of the murky details surrounding the conduct of Peru's leadership in recent days, it may never be known whether President Alberto Fujimori actually faced ouster by military coup last week, as has been widely reported. But what appears certain, diplomats and former senior military officers say, is that many of Peru's darkest secrets were on the verge of being revealed after Fujimori's closest former adviser fled the country Sept. 24 in the wake of a scandal. [continues 683 words]
An article and headline on the national anti-drug campaign hurt the reputation of the Office of National Drug Control Policy and Director Barry McCaffrey ("White House drug czar target of fraud probe," News, Oct. 5). McCaffrey and the office are not targets of a "fraud probe." In fact, congressional inquiries into expenses of the campaign follow our aggressive actions to protect the public purse. Gen. McCaffrey's office withheld payment of $18 million to government agencies and private contractors because it was not satisfied with the reasonableness of these costs. Our office first called for an audit when we noticed billing irregularities. [continues 67 words]
The Supreme Court Should Protect Maternity Patients From Release Of Nonconsensual Drug Tests To Police. Medical officials who turn over drug-test results to police as evidence for criminal prosecution of maternity patients without their knowledge or consent violate the sanctity of doctor-patient confidentiality. The Supreme Court, now considering the constitutionality of disclosing those results to a law enforcement agency, should also rule that such breaches of confidentiality violate the Bill of Rights protection against unwarranted searches and perhaps self-incrimination. [continues 256 words]
SPRINGFIELD — Hampden County District Attorney William M. Bennett has stepped up efforts to battle a Nov. 7 ballot question that would let more drug offenders get treatment instead of jail. As a result, supporters of Question 8 accuse him of waging a political campaign on the job. Bennett met with the Union-News editorial board and conducted a press conference yesterday with the police chiefs of Palmer, Ludlow, Wilbraham, Hampden, and Monson to warn that Question 8's passage would boost the Western Massachusetts drug trade. [continues 657 words]
LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) – Calling methamphetamine a cheap poison that is destroying lives and communities across the country, Gov. Dirk Kempthorne of Idaho and Mike Johanns of Nebraska kicked off a drug policy meeting Thursday. About 70 people, including judges, police officers and substance abuse counselors from Nebraska, Idaho, Wyoming, Arizona, Montana, New Mexico and American Samoa met in Lincoln for the two-day conference to discuss ways to reduce the demand for illegal drugs. "The problem is getting worse," said Shawn Kellerman, a former meth addict turned drug counselor. "The clients are getting younger and younger." [continues 385 words]
As Christopher Cox's Libertarian opponent in the 47th Congressional District, I have to say that R. Scott Moxley's observations are hardly surprising ("Clintonesque Cox," Sept. 29). Moxley alleges that Cox released his report on U.S.-Russian policy to make Al Gore look bad and thereby help the George W. Bush campaign. Well, duh! It's an election year, and that's how the game is played. Of greater concern is Cox's continuing aggressive support for the failed war on drugs. Just this week, he posted a statement on the Internet that includes the following remarks: "Our goal should be not simply to decertify Mexico as a partner in the war on drugs but in fact to fully certify them, to bring them to the point where they are in compliance and to bring the United States' efforts up to par, where we will not have to admit honestly to ourselves that drug use among adults has gone up every year in this country since 1992, the first sustained increase since the 1970s; where we will have to no longer admit to ourselves that marijuana use among teens is doubling." [continues 124 words]
Deal may allow Bini to keep his badge in failed drug bust that led to shooting death Suspended Denver police officer Joseph Bini beamed after pleading guilty Thursday to a misdemeanor charge that may allow him to keep his badge. Bini, 31, was headed for trial next week on three felony charges when prosecutors cut the deal, largely because of a judge's ruling that barred them from presenting most of their evidence to a jury. Bini was the only officer charged in connection with a botched no-knock raid that claimed the life of Ismael Mena on Sept. 29, 1999, when officers struck the wrong house. [continues 423 words]
BANGKOK -- The Thai Senate plans to ask the government to declare martial law along parts of the Thai-Myanmar border to fight amphetamine smugglers, a senator has said. Maha Sarakham Senator Witthaya Masena, the Senate foreign affairs committee spokesman, said his committee and the Senate committees on local administration and military affairs had agreed that the government should declare martial law in border areas. He said the three committees had visited border areas in northern provinces and were told the situation was getting worse. [continues 58 words]
In 1989, when I was a lawyer in Burnaby, I represented a pretty 17-year-old McDonald's manager who'd been busted for simple possession of marijuana. It seemed like a simple enough case: she'd been stopped at a police road check, the cop smelled pot in the car, found a baggie of weed under the seat, and then took her down to the station where he'd questioned her for two hours before charging her with possession, and letting her go. [continues 1025 words]
Marc Emery, founder of Vancouver's HempBC, publisher of Cannabis Culture magazine, the man the National Post called "Canada's Pot Millionaire", has resurfaced in cyberspace. After having computers, pot seeds, furniture and 10 grand worth of bongs seized in a series of raids on his Vancouver offices in 1996 and 1997, Emery said goodbye to the material world and now has recreated himself as an Internet entity with his own TV station: PotTV (http://www.pottv.com/). Moored to the planet by a few small buildings on the Sunshine Coast, bobbing safely in the international waters of the world wide web, Emery figures he's in a key position for the final conflict in the War On Drugs. He's Switzerland - or perhaps Tokyo Rose. [continues 1141 words]
Concerned about what he called a "rampant" youth drug problem, a local businessman said he mailed a $1,000 check to Mobile County school Superintendent Harold Dodge to begin drug testing students. Dodge, who said he had not received the money by Thursday night, said the school system would either hold but not cash the check or return it, unless board members direct him to do otherwise. "We did look at the topic several years ago, and we have questions about who would pay for it," Dodge said. [continues 311 words]
MARION, Ill., Oct. 6 - George W. Bush harshly rebuked the Clinton administration today for its handling of drug policy and offered his own plan to pour $2.7 billion over five years into drug prevention and treatment programs. The crux of the Texas governor's speech was that the White House has placed a low priority on drug control, erasing the gains made during the 12 years of the Reagan and Bush administrations ending in 1993. Since then, Bush said, drug use among teens has skyrocketed to unprecedented levels - a charge that drew an angry response from the Clinton administration. [continues 927 words]
THE SUPREME COURT heard oral arguments this week in a pair of cases that balance privacy interests against the war on drugs. One asks whether police can set up a traffic roadblock at which drug-sniffing dogs are led around cars to check for drugs, while the other asks whether a public hospital may test pregnant women for cocaine use and pass the results on to law enforcement authorities. The cases are different but present the same general question: To what extent can authorities use warrantless searches that are ostensibly intended to serve governmental interests other than punishing crime as tools of criminal investigation and prosecution? [continues 312 words]
The Northwest Suburban High School District 214 school board Thursday approved a policy that will allow students to be tested for drugs on a voluntary basis in their high school. Board members, who say they hope the policy can at least help some families address issues of substance abuse, unanimously approved the policy though the district's high schools may not unanimously support it. It will be up to each individual school to decide whether to participate in the program. Schools deciding to participate can start as soon as they receive the test kits. [continues 250 words]
Tulia: One of every six blacks was arrested. Some residents see raid as state-sponsored 'ethnic cleansing.' TULIA, Texas--The officers and deputies came in the morning. They arrested pig farmers and warehouse workers, single mothers and lithe young men who once were heroes for the town's pride and joy--its high school football team. Forty-three people in all. The biggest drug raid in Swisher County's history also was the worst day in memory for Tulia's small, tightknit African American community. In a matter of hours, one of every six black residents had been indicted for selling cocaine. [continues 1857 words]
"Barry," President Clinton said, turning to White House drug control policy director Barry R. McCaffrey at last week's Cabinet meeting, "did you and Donna have a good time at the Olympics?" McCaffrey, who accompanied Health and Human Services Secretary Donna E. Shalala on the delegation to Australia, launched into a lengthy review of his schedule there, including meetings with anti-drug officials, with WADA--the World Anti-Doping Agency--a news conference with Olympic marathoner Frank Shorter on drugs and sports, and on and on and on. [continues 163 words]
A dangerous knockoff of the club drug Ecstasy is popping up in suburbs of major U.S. cities, where it has been blamed in the recent deaths of nine young adults and teenagers. The Drug Enforcement Administration and U.S. Customs are warning that dealers are passing off the amphetamine PMA (paramethoxyamphetamine) as Ecstasy, a less potent stimulant and hallucinogen that is popular at clubs, rave parties and college campuses. A DEA intelligence briefing issued Thursday predicted more overdoses and deaths as club drugs become more widespread and more users unknowingly take PMA. [continues 431 words]
The U.S. Supreme Court will wrestle with the issue of whether the Constitution permits a public hospital to report pregnant women who test positive for cocaine to the police. Meanwhile, citizens ought to examine another question: Is this an effective way to protect children? At issue is a policy at the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston under which pregnant women were tested for drugs without a search warrant. Evidence for those who tested positive then was forwarded to police who took the women into custody. [continues 491 words]
TULIA, Tex., Oct. 4 -- 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 suspects were arrested on charges of selling small amounts of cocaine. In some cases, hometown juries later meted out sentences ranging from 20 years to more than 300 years. In Tulia, an isolated place ringed by cotton farms and cattle ranches on the high plains of the Texas panhandle, local officials declared the operation a stunning success. In all, 22 of the defendants were sent to prison while others received probation. The undercover agent at the center of the operation, Tom Coleman, was even named by the state as lawman of the year. [continues 1664 words]
A researcher cites low returns on questionnaires in the random tests, not a lawsuit filed by parents Oregon Health Sciences University has withdrawn its random student-athlete drug-testing program from Lincoln County schools. Dr. Linn Goldberg, an OHSU researcher in charge of the random drug-testing program, notified the Lincoln County School District earlier this week that five district schools would no longer participate in the drug testing and questionnaires. His decision comes on the heels of a lawsuit filed by parents of two Toledo High School athletes who objected to the drug-testing program, although Goldberg said the suit wasn't a factor in the withdrawal. [continues 403 words]
HOUSTON, Oct. 6 - Black and Hispanic motorists across Texas are more than twice as likely as non-Hispanic whites to be searched during traffic stops while black drivers in certain rural areas of the state are also far more likely to be ticketed, according to two studies examining possible racial profiling. The investigations by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and by The Dallas Morning News were released this week and brought an immediate challenge from the Texas Department of Public Safety. State officials described the Morning News study as flawed, citing other statistics in denying that the agency practiced racial profiling. [continues 654 words]
ANDREW SEYMOUR writes typical unquestioning propaganda in his article "Drug officers weed out pot" (Saturday Sun, Sept. 30) He doesn't mention the human costs of the war on drugs, only the apparent glee of officers as they steal private property and kill living plants, destroying lives in the process. How many real criminals get away while the OPP spends money and time pulling up plants and arresting growers? Why are our tax dollars being spent to fund these vicious practices, when they could be diverted to health care, education, social services, etc.? Is it anyone's business what plants people grow in their back yards? (It is, until they change the law) [end]
The case of a U.S. woman who fled to B.C. after being charged for watering plants at the home of a medicinal marijuana advocate highlights the gap between Canadian values and America's war on drugs. With her peasant skirts, willowy looks and gentle voice, Renee Boje appears to be just the sort of British Columbia flower child one would expect to meet in Robert's Creek, a short ferry ride up the coast from Vancouver. But not everyone agrees. American drug enforcement officials insist Ms. Boje, 30, is a serious criminal on the run from justice, a woman guilty of such a horrible crime that she must be punished as harshly as rapists and murderers. [continues 2262 words]
It's almost a year to the day that my wife, Diana Coldwell, got a standing ovation at the Labour Party conference when she called for the legalisation of cannabis for therapeutic use. Is the Labour party listening to its members and the general public? I think not. Ill people cannot be persecuted, prosecuted and dragged through the courts. Surely there must be some sound evidence of the therapeutic benefit, otherwise how can the Home Office justify approval for trials on cannabis? Whilst I welcome the Home Office approval, it could be many years before a safer delivery system is developed. In the meantime, the Government continues tacitly to endorse the prosecution of ill and dying people. such twisted logic beggars belief. Andrew Coldwell, Huddersfield, Yorkshire [end]
There are few issues on which Americans are as much out of sync with their elected leaders as they are on the so-called war on drugs: suppression of crops and traffickers abroad, interdiction at the border, criminal sanctions for users at home. If it's hard to find voters who believe U.S. drug policies are working, it's even harder to find politicians willing to recognize and confront that they're not. For the past four years, Bill Zimmerman, with funding from billionaire financier and philanthropist George Soros and a few other deep-pocket libertarians, has been making a living exploiting that gap. Since 1996 Zimmerman's Campaign for New Drug Policies has managed to pass initiatives in seven states, from Maine to California, legalizing the medical use of marijuana, and chances are good he'll add a few more this fall. So far, his record is seven wins and no losses. [continues 1748 words]
Police Had No Reason To Stop Him, Judge Says A Milwaukee man caught with cocaine after allowing police to search him has had his conviction reversed by a judge who ruled that the man could not be detained simply because he was walking quickly toward a suspected drug house. A Milwaukee County prosecutor, however, said that the decision should have no impact on drug investigations. "I don't think it's going to have any effect whatsoever on any other case," said Assistant District Attorney Tom McAdams. [continues 333 words]
When history makes a list of the many things that have come from Detroit to benefit the nation, buprenorphine may not be among them. Who cares about making the world a better place for heroin addicts? But just one junkie can devastate a family; heroin traffic can destroy a neighborhood; nasty needles spread disease, including AIDS; desperate addicts lie, cheat and steal to pay for a fix; dealers live high on the misery; taxpayers spend millions in futile efforts to destroy the system. [continues 277 words]
LA PAZ, Bolivia -- The government agreed yesterday to a broad range of demands by Indian peasant leaders, buckling under the pressure of three weeks of road blockades that paralyzed the economy, caused food shortages and threatened to force the resignation of President Hugo Banzer. Despite all the concessions, the government has refused to accept demands by coca growers in the Chapare region to stop short of the government goal of eradicating all coca plants by Feb. 1, and allow peasant families to grow small private plots. [continues 329 words]
CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa -- George W. Bush used America's heartland as a stage yesterday to propose a five-year $2.7 billion plan to create a "drug-free society," vowing beefed-up enforcement along the nation's borders and more cooperation with Mexico. "Unfortunately, in the last seven and a half years, fighting drug abuse has ceased to be a national priority," the Republican presidential nominee told a crowd of supporters at a community center in Cedar Rapids. "Drug policy has been pursued without urgency, without energy and without success." [continues 409 words]
Rhode Island Incumbent Flies South Amid Questions JOHNSTON, R.I. -- It's quite a choice for mayor this year: The incumbent, William Macera, was pulled over by police with a campaign aide who was charged with driving while using marijuana. The same day, write-in candidate Louis Vinagro was charged with threatening a state official trying to inspect his pig farm. Then there's George Resnick, a Republican candidate considered a long shot in this heavily Democratic community. "I don't want to vote for a pothead," Anthony Esposito, a 77-year-old retiree, said yesterday as he entered a restaurant next to Town Hall. "I might vote for the pig farmer. He isn't a bad person. He gives a lot of money away to charity." [continues 270 words]
