Fifteen people committed to raising public awareness of Henderson County's methamphetamine problem met for the first time Monday to examine ways to educate residents on the drug's impact. In a meeting at Appalachian Counseling on Williams Street, the committee, half of the newly formed Methamphetamine Task Force, began looking at ways to slow the drug's epidemic growth. Talks centered on how to make the community aware of the problem, which has skyrocketed in Henderson County in the past five years. [continues 360 words]
Even before she took the helm of Appalachian Counseling, where 80 to 90 percent of the people in the agency's substance abuse program are seeking treatment for methamphetamine addictions, Jane Ferguson knew how devastating the drug could be. An aunt, who had lived with her family for many years, killed herself in the early 1970s after struggling for nearly 30 years with a meth addiction. Later, the drug "decimated" the southern Illinois town where she grew up. "When I moved here in 2000, nobody knew what it was," Ferguson said. [continues 811 words]
Twenty people whose jobs are affected by methamphetamine use met for the first time Thursday in an effort to combat the highly-addictive drug's impact on Henderson County. In an hour-long meeting at Appalachian Counseling on Williams Street, the newly formed Methamphetamine Task Force discussed some of the meth-related problems facing Henderson County and began looking at ways to slow the drug's epidemic growth. Methamphetamine is an illegal stimulant made with a combination of cold medicine and household chemicals. It currently makes up 85 percent of the drug cases investigated by the Henderson County Sheriff's Department, said Lt. Steve Carter. Addictions, abuse and other incidents connected to the drug have spiked sharply in the past five years. [continues 378 words]
From the moment on Thursday when the young man sat down in Dr. Richard Stein's dental chair in southwestern Kansas and opened his mouth, Dr. Stein was certain he recognized the enemy. This had to be the work, he concluded, of methamphetamine, a drug that is leaving its mark, especially in the rural regions of the Midwest and the South, on families, crime rates, economies, legislatures - and teeth. Quite distinct from the oral damage done by other drugs, sugar and smoking, methamphetamine seems to be taking a unique, and horrific, toll inside its users' mouths. In short stretches of time, sometimes just months, a perfectly healthy set of teeth can turn a grayish-brown, twist and begin to fall out, and take on a peculiar texture less like that of hard enamel and more like that of a piece of ripened fruit. [continues 1326 words]
I'm confused. Are American legislators for drugs or against them? This is an important question, because we are a nation of drug addicts. As harsh and extreme as that sounds, it forms the only honest basis for any meaningful discussion about the true answers for our drug problems in America. Technically, caffeine, nicotine, and alcohol are all classified as drugs. But since these drugs have been around a lot longer than the FDA, no one would dare to tell coffee drinking smokers the jig is up. And Prohibition was a dismal failure. [continues 865 words]
ROSMAN -- Transylvania County Schools tested 266 students during its first year of random drug testing for athletes and other students involved in extracurricular activities. Five returned positive for marijuana use. The school system released the findings during a School Board meeting Monday night at Rosman High School. School Board members and educators hailed the new program as a success, saying it offered students another reason to say no and another way to avoid peer pressure. "You have five who tested positive," said John Tinsley, the director of Athletics and Safe Schools. "But how many did it keep away from drugs?" [continues 336 words]
FLAT ROCK -- Twenty educators, social workers, counselors, nurses, law enforcement officers and business professionals pledged to join forces Thursday afternoon in an effort to slow the epidemic growth of methamphetamine abuse in Henderson County. The group volunteered to create the task force after discussing the highly-addictive drug's impact on the area during a lunch meeting at Highland Lake Inn. Nearly 50 people attended the event, hosted by Appalachian Counseling and the Henderson County Department of Social Services. Methamphetamine is an illegal stimulant made with a combination of cold medicine and household chemicals. It currently makes up 85 percent of the drug cases investigated by the Henderson County Sheriff's Department, said Lt. Steve Carter. Addictions, abuse and other incidents connected to the drug have spiked sharply in the past five years, said those at the meeting, agreeing that something needs to be done. [continues 257 words]
One of the most troubling ethical issues of our time, substance abuse, begins early and innocently in our society, usually when a child tastes his first sip of soda. If that same child sees mom or dad smoking, he'll be far more likely to step outside for a puff or two when someone offers him a cigarette as a teenager, thereby adding nicotine to the caffeine he already enjoys. Long before he's out of his teens, someone will offer him a beer, or a wine cooler. If he likes it, he'll add alcohol to his growing list of addictive substances that society has given him the green light to use. He may get into a little trouble for trying it out before he's of age, but most of the adults around him will wink at his indiscretions. After all, they've been there. [continues 838 words]
To The Editor: On drug testing in Transylvania County schools: Student involvement in after-school activities like sports has been shown to reduce drug use. They keep kids busy during the hours they're most likely to get into trouble. Forcing students to undergo degrading urine tests will only discourage participation in extracurricular activities. Drug testing may also compel marijuana users to switch to harder drugs to avoid detection. Despite a short-lived high, marijuana is the only illegal drug that stays in the human body long enough to make urinalysis a deterrent. Marijuana's fat-soluble organic metabolites can linger for days. [continues 137 words]
We weren't among the ones in favor of the drug testing of students in Transylvania County schools. Some students and parents complained that the policy of random testing of students in extracurricular activities unfairly targeted athletes. Others were concerned that the testing was an invasion of privacy. The School Board voted in July to institute the policy, becoming only the third in the state to do so. We're sure that parents and the School Board hoped that the results of the drug tests would show that drug use isn't a problem at Brevard and Rosman high schools. Wrong. [continues 346 words]
The federal government is going on the offensive against drug paraphernalia, seizing pipes, clips and other items from a half-dozen stores in eastern North Carolina. Federal prosecutors said Monday the searches and seizures are the first in a new campaign designed to make it harder to find materials that could entice teenagers to begin smoking marijuana. "The distribution of drug paraphernalia is a federal felony," U.S. Attorney Frank Whitney said at a news conference in Raleigh. "If we can cut down on the demand for drugs, it will make our jobs easier." [continues 260 words]
Mark Shook says he's fighting a war in this mountain town - complete with explosions, abandoned children and an enemy that will not give up. Shook is Watauga County's sheriff, and for the past year he and others have tried to beat back the spread of methamphetamine through the hills and hollows of western North Carolina. "Meth is choking this town," Shook said recently, moments before taking a call about yet another raid on a possible meth lab. "We are fighting a war - and it's going to spread. I've never seen anything like it." [continues 702 words]
The state Court of Appeals threw out a drug possession conviction Tuesday against a motorist in ruling that deputies didn't have the right to walk a drug-sniffing dog around her car at a license checkpoint. Monica Branch was stopped Nov. 3, 2000, by a community policing unit in Rockingham County. Branch presented a duplicate license and a registration to a deputy, who became suspicious and called in her information to check for outstanding warrants. In the meantime, another deputy walked around her car with a dog that alerted officers to the presence of drugs. Deputies then searched her car without her permission and found marijuana stems and butts in the ashtray, according to the court. They found marijuana in her purse and a female deputy later found cocaine inside Branch's clothing. [continues 185 words]
To The Editor: Community columnist Sparky Hall was right on target in his outstanding column "War on Drugs Targets the Wrong People" (Dec. 12). I'd like to add that the counterproductive war on drugs continues because many people, organizations and industries with political power and influence have a vested financial interest in its continuation. When our grandfathers ended alcohol prohibition, it was not because they decided that alcohol was not so bad, but because of the crime and corruption that prohibition caused. [continues 84 words]
Has This Country Become The Modern Equivalent Of Sparta? If you remember your history lessons from school, I'm sure you will recall that the main business for Sparta was to conduct war. They were real good at it, and all the other Greek cities were scared to death of them. We have the war on terrorism, the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Liberia. We are thinking about one in North Korea, and maybe a few other places we haven't been told about yet. [continues 559 words]
"Too many whites are getting away with drug use. The answer is to find the ones who are getting away with it, convict them, and send them up the river." -- Rush Limbaugh in 1995 Now that Rush Limbaugh is the one struggling to overcome the relentless grip of drug addiction, I suspect he may have changed his mind about how to treat drug addicts. Convicting drug addicts and sending them up the river is the last thing addicts need. What addicts need is not jail but treatment, which Limbaugh now knows from painful experience. As for "finding the ones who are getting away with it," -- no one gets away with drug addiction. [continues 854 words]
SAN FRANCISCO -- Jurors who convicted a man of cultivating marijuana and other federal drug charges say they would have acquitted him had they been told he was growing it for medical purposes for the city of Oakland. "I feel like I made the biggest mistake in my life," juror Marney Craig said. "We convicted a man who is not a criminal." Other jurors reached Monday agreed and planned to write to Ed Rosenthal to apologize. Rosenthal, 58, the self-described 'Guru of Ganja,' faces up to 85 years in prison when he is sentenced June 4. In a courtroom crowded with medical marijuana advocates wearing 'Free Ed' buttons, a federal judge decided Tuesday that Rosenthal can remain free until then. [continues 114 words]
SAN FRANCISCO -- A federal jury Friday found Ed Rosenthal, the author of how-to-grow books on marijuana and how to avoid the law, guilty of marijuana cultivation and conspiracy charges. The federal jury concluded that Ed Rosenthal, the self-described "Guru of Ganja," was growing more than 100 plants, conspiring to cultivate marijuana and maintaining a warehouse for a growing operation. Rosenthal, 58, faces a maximum of 85 years in prison when sentenced June 4. Several people in the courtroom, including Rosenthal's wife and daughter, wept as the verdicts were read by a court clerk. The verdicts were a victory in the federal government's battle against California's 1996 voter-approved medical marijuana law. Rosenthal's arrest last year was among a string of Drug Enforcement Administration raids on medical marijuana suppliers in California. [continues 79 words]
NEW BUFFALO, Mich. -- In this serene lakeside town, a group has gathered at the high school each week since August to try to hammer out a consensus on drug testing in the schools: a pastor, a basketball coach, a sheriff, a social worker, a superintendent and assorted parents, teachers, students and school board members. They have debated whether a first offense should bring counseling or punishment and whether they can best deter drug use through education or testing. They have studied the merits of urine, hair and saliva tests. But week after weary week, they have adjourned without agreement. [continues 555 words]
To The Editor: I read with more than passing interest the full page ad called "the Dole Plan for North Carolina" that appeared Sept. 8 in the Times-News. One of Elizabeth Dole's proposals is to "Increase Federal Drug Penalties." Given that our present drug laws have resulted in a larger percentage of our population being in prison than in any other developed country, I wanted to know more. The ad stated that the Web site DolePlan.com had more detail, but that was not so. [continues 170 words]
COLUMBUS -- N.C. State House of Representatives 113th District candidate Jean Marlowe smokes marijuana, and she wants every voter to know it. The catch is, she does it legally. Saturday, the joint-lighting Libertarian will merge forces with California activist Jack Herer, author of the pro-hemp book The Emperor Wears No Clothes, for a campaign rally on the Polk County Courthouse lawn. Issues addressed will include reducing restrictions on medicinal hemp and marijuana use and preserving the environment. Marlowe, who once spent 10 months in prison for smoking marijuana while on probation, suffers from a mild form of porphyria, a disease that affects the liver. Because of severe allergies, she can't take most medications, so her physician suggested she try marijuana, Marlowe said. [continues 214 words]
Most people who have never lived with a drug addict think that a good way to wake them up and get them to walk the straight and narrow is a stint behind bars. Lock 'em up. That should give them plenty of time to think, and lots of motivation to straighten up and fly right. This no nonsense approach seems logical, reasonable and less expensive than long, drawn out treatment programs. Unfortunately it doesn't work. If only it were that simple. If only the kid who's started running with the wrong crowd could sit in a jail cell for awhile and sweat a few chemicals out of his body and everything could go back to normal. [continues 880 words]
WASHINGTON - Federal authorities have amassed evidence for the first time that an illegal drug operation in the United States was funneling proceeds to Middle East terrorist groups like Hezbollah. Evidence gathered by the Drug Enforcement Administration since a series of raids in January indicates that a methamphetamine drug operation in the Midwest involving men of Middle Eastern descent has been shipping money back to terrorist groups, officials said. "There is increasing intelligence information from the investigation that for the first time alleged drug sales in the United States are going in part to support terrorist organizations in the Middle East," DEA administrator Asa Hutchinson said. [continues 634 words]
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Teenagers say marijuana is easier to buy than cigarettes or beer -- one in three say they can find it in a matter of hours -- but only 25 percent admit trying it, a national survey finds. When the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse polled 1,000 teens last winter, 27 percent said they could buy marijuana in an hour or less; another 8 percent said it would take a few hours. But for the first time since the study began in 1996, teenagers said it was easier to buy marijuana than cigarettes or beer. [continues 529 words]
COLUMBUS -- Classes have been in session at Polk County High School only a few days, but as students start the new school year they also face the possibility of random drug testing in the months to come. Members of the Polk County Board of Education discussed the issue at their July meeting following a recent decision by the U.S. Supreme Court approving random drug testing of public high school students in extracurricular activities. While the school system is only gathering information about the possibility of implementing drug screening tests at this time, Polk County Schools Superintendent Susan McHugh said this could become another weapon in the war on drugs. [continues 884 words]
LOS ANGELES (AP) - The people waging the war on drugs have gone Hollywood. Officials with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration briefed producers, directors and writers on the connection between drug trafficking and terrorism and, offered to consult on movies and television programs. About 40 people, including film directors Michael Mann and Arthur Hiller and people behind such TV series as "Third Watch" and "E.R.," gathered at the Beverly Hills Hotel Wednesday to hear DEA Director Asa Hutchinson, as well as the agency's intelligence chief and a former undercover agent. [continues 209 words]
MILL SPRING -- A Libertarian candidate who has served time for marijuana possession will push for the legalization of medical marijuana and an end to jail sentences for nonviolent criminal offenders if she is elected to the State House. Jean Marlowe, 50, of Mill Spring said Tuesday she will run for the 113th District, which includes Polk County, most of Transylvania County and southern Henderson County. If elected, Marlowe said, she will propose a bill legalizing marijuana for medical use. "Marijuana is an herb put here by the creators. The government should not be arresting people for marijuana possession. They should be arresting terrorists," she said in a phone interview. [continues 347 words]
N.C. Attorney General Roy Cooper said a measure that would make it a crime to defraud a drug or alcohol screening test passed the N.C. Senate will make the state safer. The bill, which passed unanimously, now goes to the House of Representatives for consideration. "Individuals who try to trick drug tests and businesses that profit from drug testing fraud threaten the safety of all North Carolinians," said Cooper, who pushed legislators for the law. In 1996, Kenneth Curtis started an online business in South Carolina to sell urine test substitution kits. Each kit includes a sample of Curtis' drug-free urine, a pouch, a tube and a warming device to heat the sample to the proper temperature. He claims the kit can be kept out of sight of an observer during testing. Curtis was operating out of South Carolina, but when the S.C. General Assembly banned the sale of products for the purpose of defrauding a drug test, he moved his business to Hendersonville. [end]
Part of a continuing series on threatened cuts in services for substance abuse and mental health care. Legitimate questions deserve to be answered. When discussing the impending state cutbacks of treatment options for addicts and alcoholics, it is critical to address the very real frustrations of those who have had to stand on the sidelines and watch others destroy themselves. A reader, Beth A. Kinstler, from Savannah, Ga., writes, "It's natural to want to blame others for the problems of one's self or those close to us. In the case of Susan Hanley Lane's sister, she wants to throw the guilt bag at society and anyone else she can throw it at except for the one person she should throw it at, her sister. It was her sister who made the decision to drink to excess and not get help." [continues 832 words]
Fourth in a series on impending cutbacks of services and lack of treatment options for substance abuse and mental health care. Terrorism cannot survive without one crucial ingredient: fear. The fact that the subject of terrorism has taken hold of the national psyche is indisputable proof that at least one major objective of the terrorists behind the Sept. 11 bombing of the World Trade Center has been met. America is scared. People who are afraid often react quite differently than they would normally react. For an intriguing lesson in what blind fear can accomplish, we need look no further than the 1950s when a charismatic senator named Joe McCarthy destroyed the careers of God only knows how many competent, experienced people by the mere suggestion that they were communists. [continues 820 words]
Third in a series on proposed budget cuts that would greatly reduce substance abuse and mental health care services in North Carolina. Dear Susan, I just finished reading your editorial of Monday, June 10, and am writing you through tears. I am so sorry about the loss of your sister. But thank you for giving a voice to all of us who are left desperate and frustrated by the way our society treats victims of substance abuse. I recently lost my ex-husband to a morphine overdose. And as I sit here sorting through his estate, I see the doctors and hospitals treated him for everything but drug abuse and happily charged him for their "care." [continues 870 words]
To The Editor: I don't believe for a moment that columnist Susan Lane is blaming others for her sister's substance abuse as an out-of-state writer suggests. Ms. Lane is decrying the cutbacks in funding for mental health care, which is needed by substance abusers and others. The letter writer from Georgia suggests that substance abusers have brought on their own unfortunate conditions. This is true. So my question is this: Why do people want medical insurance with benefits for prescription drugs when their health conditions are brought about by their own health habits? [continues 139 words]
To The Editor: Regarding your June 15 editorial on drug testing, the most commonly abused drug and the one most closely associated with violence is almost impossible to detect with urinalysis. That drug is alcohol, and it takes far more lives every year than all illegal drugs combined. Hangovers don't contribute to workplace productivity and drug tests do absolutely nothing to discourage America's number one drug problem. Drug tests have the potential to do more harm than good. The invasive tests may compel users of relatively harmless marijuana to switch to harder drugs to avoid testing positive. Despite a short-lived high, marijuana is the only drug that stays in the human body long enough to make urinalysis a deterrent. Marijuana's organic metabolites are fat-soluble and can linger for days. [continues 84 words]
A recent Darts & Laurels supported the effort to further criminalize the sale of urine. Without going far into the debate over the utter folly of the drug war, I can offer at least one good reason to avoid such legislation. There may be a chance that it would legally invalidate all drug tests. Drug tests, like many other clinical assays, estimate the concentration of a particular metabolite by comparing it to what scientists call a "standard curve" -- the assay results in response to a range of known concentrations. Most such assays include the "zero point" -- the response elicited by a control sample with endogenous levels of a given metabolite only. In this case, that zero point would be best measured with clean urine. [continues 54 words]
Women Often Have Difficulty With Recovery Because Of The Role Played By Menstruation "Throughout history women have been set up to be addicts," stated Donna M. Corrente last Tuesday during a lecture given at the 16th annual Addiction: Focus on Women conference held at Kanuga Episcopal Conference Center. Corrente is the director of the Center for Women's Recovery and manager of the primary residential services at Hanley-Hazelden Center, West Palm Beach, Fla. According to Corrente, historically women were considered the weaker of the sexes and unable to bear any form of pain. When discomfort of any sort was experienced, they were immediately given a pill, potion or remedy to ease the pain. Due to the legal use of opiates and cocaine, in combination with this attitude, by the end of the 19th century close to two-thirds of addicts were women. [continues 732 words]
To The Editor: For some reason, unknown at the time, I ripped out the column by Susan Hanley Lane this past Monday regarding the death of her sister. It bothered me, but not in the way many would've responded to it. I didn't see it as a tragic indictment of society although that's the way it was written. In fact, it infuriated me. I believe my anger was justified. Each day I pull up the obituaries for Savannah, and today I came upon the obituary for a Charles Turner, 48, from Chicago -- Charlie to his doting mother, June. [continues 168 words]
Second in a series on proposed budget cuts that would greatly reduce substance abuse and mental health care services in North Carolina. If anyone you love has a drinking problem or is getting a little too dependent on pain pills, if any teens you know are getting into trouble, hanging out with the wrong crowd and failing in school, if you know someone whose mental illness has ravaged his life, you might want to call the Governor's Mansion soon. At the very least, your local representative in the state Legislature needs to hear from you. Now! [continues 836 words]
Darts & Laurels Laurel - To Rep. Trudi Walend, a Brevard Republican, for introducing legislation last week to outlaw selling urine to help people cheat on drug tests. Rep. Larry Justus, R-Dana, is a co-sponsor. Democrats have introduced an identical bill in the Senate. The efforts of Kenneth Curtis to sell kits designed to beat drug tests spurred the legislation. Curtis moved his company, Privacy Protection Services, from Greenville, S.C., to Hendersonville after he was convicted in South Carolina of selling urine to defraud drug test results. His company sold urine samples, warming packs and a device designed to surreptitiously deliver urine. Walend is right, to propose closing the loophole in North Carolina law that could allow Curtis to operate here. [Content not related to drug policy snipped for brevity] [end]
First in a series about the impending cutbacks of services and lack of treatment options for substance abusers. Sometimes a story drops in your lap, even when you don't want it to. When the reporter from Florida called me about a woman who died in jail recently, I already knew I needed to work on the story. Evidently the officers should have known when they picked the woman up that she'd never make it in jail. But why should they go out of their way for someone who refused to help herself? They'd been down this road with her before and nothing ever changed. She was just a drunk. [continues 884 words]
A Hendersonville High School junior was suspended from school on Friday after rolling papers, a measuring scale and marijuana were found in his possession. The school resource officer, Sumner County Sheriff's Deputy Michael Hudson, was called in to assist school personnel in the search of two students, after they were caught being outside, ditching a class. Both students "smelled of smoke,'' according to court records. And when the 17-year-old male was searched, police found rolling papers in his pocket and a measuring scale in his socks. A search of his car yielded 46.8 grams of leafy green substance that later tested positive for marijuana. [continues 337 words]
The worst thing about black and white thinking is that it eclipses shades of gray. Gray is that fuzzy, puzzling area that leaves most of us wondering where right ends and wrong begins. For instance: Who is the more insidious threat to the American way of life? A member of the Taliban, or an American businessman with a keen sense of a unique market need? Silly question, isn't it? Or is it? If we allow ourselves to go beyond black and white answers to the gray area where legitimate questions are entertained, we might start by asking, "Tell me more about each of these men." [continues 862 words]
WASHINGTON - A U.S. Supreme Court decision will not dissuade a Marietta, S.C., businessman from continuing to sell from his Hendersonville office kits to fool drug tests. But because of the ruling the kits must lack one particular ingredient - urine. Kenneth Curtis lost a Supreme Court appeal that asked for permission to sell his urine, part of a business that caters to people who are trying to beat drug tests. A 1999 South Carolina law made urine sales illegal, and it was Curtis' challenge of the law that justices refused to review Monday. [continues 429 words]
The Afghan Spring Opium Is As Good As Harvested Noor Mohammad Khan Charai, Afghanistan Mohammad Gui, tattered shoes planted in the mud, will keep a close watch on his two little acres in the coming weeks, waiting for the buds to bloom. He won't be alone. Five hundred miles up, racing silently through space, U.S. reconnaissance satellites will be watching, too, camera eyes cocked for the first signs of vivid red, the flowering of opium poppies. Here on the edge of Afghanistan's Desert of Death and on east and north across this deeply poor land, the deadly narcotic is again the raw material of life and livelihood for hundreds of thousands of people. [continues 575 words]
To The Editor: I had to write in support of the mom who wrote that her son's school is regularly searched by drug sniffing dogs. I, too, find this most disturbing. I agree with her that our children need to be monitored and that should be the parents' responsibility. If an unborn child deserves full protection under the law, so should our children going to school. When do their rights end, and when do they begin? At what age? I have questions. Do these searches take place in certain schools or in all schools? Do they search just public schools or private schools as well? When they search, do they search the whole school, including the principal's office and the teachers' lounge? [continues 53 words]
To The Editor: My son came home Jan. 30 and told me the drug dogs were in school that day. I asked him if this was the first time and he said no, they do this every month or so. I was appalled. This is middle school! One minute we teach our children about their civil rights and then in the next minute show them that those rights don't mean crap. Yes, drugs in school are a problem, but they're not new. There were plenty of drugs in school when I was there (30-plus years ago). [continues 214 words]
To The Editor: In her Jan. 21 column on corruption in Mexico, Susan Hanley Lane referenced Mexican Foreign Minister Jorge Castaneda extensively and asked if he has anything to say about drug-related corruption. Indeed he does. Castaneda has long been a critic of U.S. drug policies modeled after alcohol prohibition. In a September 1999 Newsweek column, Castaneda asked "(w)hat is the purpose of investing hundreds of millions of dollars in the fight against drugs, plunging countries into civil war, strengthening guerilla groups and unleashing enormous violence and corruption upon entire societies, if American leaders can simply brush off questions about drug use in their youth?" [continues 201 words]
New wars and real wars don't stop old wars and deadly wars that are smart enough to go underground. Now that the tragedy of Ground Zero has captured the imagination of the American people, everyone is champing at the bit to enlist in the war against terrorism, and the war on drugs has slipped silently into a nonissue. On a recent edition of the "News Hour," Mexican Foreign Minister Jorge Castaneda spoke candidly about the effects of Sept. 11 on Mexico. As in America, the financial aftershocks have resounded throughout the Mexican economy. Castaneda candidly admitted that Mexico is in a full blown recession. [continues 848 words]
A person who pleads or is found guilty and sentenced for a felony offense in Sumner County does not always end up serving that sentence in jail, and that can be a big break to the taxpayers. Many times, a defendant in a non-violent crime will be sentenced to a certain amount of time to be served on community corrections. It means the person is not incarcerated, but can remain in the community, hopefully gainfully employed, while being monitored closely for compliance with the orders of the court. [continues 717 words]
MARIETTA, S.C. -- Bodily fluids do not often make headlines. But urine has made Kenneth Curtis both famous and infamous. Curtis was convicted in a Greenville, S.C., court Dec. 14 under a 1999 South Carolina law that made it a crime to sell urine to defraud drug screening tests. He continues, however, to insist on national television and in local newspaper interviews that the government and employers are violating the rights of those subjected to the widely used procedure. While waiting for his appeal, which could take two or more years, a judge has ordered the 43-year-old former pipe fitter not to leave South Carolina and not to sell any more urine. [continues 864 words]
To The Editor: The Times-News editorial of Thursday hit home for me -- "State should outlaw urine kits." Readers should know that this law is drafted for North Carolina. In mid-August I drafted a law for North Carolina mirroring the South Carolina law. Unfortunately I learned of the problem after it was far past the April deadline for introducing new legislation. For the remainder of the session I along with several General Assembly attorneys searched for an appropriate bill in process that could be amended to include my draft. There was no such bill found available. Today I contacted the lead bill drafting attorney and renewed the work to pass this law in 2002. Surely every legislator will vote to make it illegal in North Carolina to sell urine to help people cheat on drug tests. Trudi Walend Brevard, NC [end]
