Drug use in East Jerusalem is rising steadily. Residents of the Palestinian city do not trust the Israeli police to efficiently combat the problem, but in the absence of enforcement institutions of their own they are helpless.

Drug dealers in East Jerusalem operate almost openly, say social workers and residents who are trying to combat the phenomenon. They claim that very often the dealers operate right under the noses of Israeli police officers - beside the branch of the Interior Ministry in East Jerusalem, in the vicinity of Damascus Gate, near the Flower Gate, in the Ras al Amud neighborhood beside the police headquarters and in the Christian Quarter of the Old City, right on the route taken by students on their way to school.

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Supporters of the pro-drug legalization Green Leaf Party waited to see if their high expectations would lead to the euphoria of two Knesset mandates or crash and burn if the party falls just short of the 1.5% vote threshold at their post-election party last night.

Exit polls showed the party teetering between 0-2 seats.

"It would have been nice if the result were conclusive now," said Dan Goldenblatt, the party's director-general. "It's a problem to poll small parties."

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JERUSALEM - Leaders of Israel's pro-marijuana party, who may win their first parliament seat in next week's national elections, were unexpectedly invited to the U.S. Embassy yesterday to explain their make-pot-not-war program.

Members of the Green Leaf Party, whose emblem is an Israeli flag with a marijuana leaf, said they were asked by U.S. officials about their legislative agenda - in particular whether they support legalization of drugs other than pot.

Dan Greenblatt, the second-ranked party candidate on Tuesday's ballot, was pleased by the invitations because he said the embassy usually invites only those parties already represented in the 120-seat Knesset.

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"I want to represent all the people who feel that this country is disappearing through our fingers and has lost its direction," says Green Leaf party candidate Dan Goldenblatt. He still looks a little bemused to be told he is the Anglo most likely to end up in the next Knesset - most polls suggest the party will get a minimum of two seats.

At 32, the Canadian-born lawyer has no parliamentary experience - but then neither does anyone in his party, which has placed him second on their slate for the Knesset. "No one is born an MK," says Goldenblatt. "If we get in "we'll just have to go through a very intensive learning period and get straight to work - and there's a lot of work to be done."

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The Pot Party Battles Nerve Gas

JAFFA--The country is going to pot. No one seems to mind. It makes us feel like we live in a normal 21st-century nation instead of some backward place where two peoples, neither of whom eats pork, kill each other over a piece of scrubby land.

We're having elections at the end of this month. You've probably heard more about them than you ever wanted to know. Same here. The TV and newspapers talk about nothing else, except the sunny prospects for war with Iraq.

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The mainstream pollsters aren't saying it, but Boaz Wachtel of the Green Leaf Party ("Aleh Yarok") believes that he will serve as a member of the next Knesset.

"I think we're going to be the surprise of these elections," he told The Jerusalem Post Sunday.

According to party treasurer Shai Hakim, a Green Leaf-commissioned Gal Hadash (formerly Gallop) poll predicts 2.5 percent of the electorate voting for the party on January 28, with another 4% still undecided. "We wonder whether Mina Tzemah even asks about Green Leaf," he said.

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Every few days, we hear how the IDF and police successfully intercepted a drug shipment at the Lebanese or Egyptian borders. These successes should be applauded, even though security officials admit that they catch less than 10 percent of the drugs smuggled into the country.

At the same time, along the Hatzbani River and the coast of the Sea of Galilee, and at Israeli colleges and universities, hundreds of law- abiding citizens are apprehended each year because of fondness for the cannabis plant (marijuana and hashish). Most of these citizens, who come from all segments of Israeli society, are left with a criminal record that makes them ineligible for employment in the civil service. In the eyes of the state, they have become criminals.

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Palestinian Authority police in Tulkarm took advantage of a curfew break to announce the impounding of a large number of marijuana plants.

Many residents saw the statement Thursday as a sign the civil police are trying to resume normal operations, despite the destruction of their offices and the arrest of many of their men by the IDF.

Tulkarm police chief Col. Bilal Abu Zeid's men discovered more than a thousand plants in the home of a local drug trafficker. The suspect escaped to Israel.

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An Eilat resident who received permission from the Health Ministry to use marijuana for medicinal purposes is nevertheless unable to obtain the drug without breaking the law.

The man, who suffers from cancer, is one of eight terminal patients who received an unusual ministry permit to grow, possess and use marijuana to ease their pain.

But the drug is not legally available in Israel, and the ministry refused to supply them itself. Furthermore, the permit to grow the drug applies only to the patient himself rather than to his wife - and the bedridden terminal patient is physically incapable of doing so. The Eilat patient's wife even tried asking the police to give her husband some of the marijuana they had confiscated during drug raids, but they also refused.

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The Health Ministry is to be commended for granting a terminally-ill cancer patient permission to smoke marijuana to ease his suffering. Not only should medical marijuana be made available to patients in need, but the marijuana prohibition itself should be subjected to a thorough cost-benefit analysis. There is no evidence that punitive marijuana laws do anything other than burden otherwise law-abiding citizens with criminal records.

Consider the experience of the United States, the former record holder in citizens incarcerated.

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The Health Ministry recently gave a terminally-ill cancer patient permission to smoke marijuana to ease his suffering. The ministry's approval was rushed through the required channels because of the patient's serious condition.

Over the past six years, the ministry has given similar permission to eight others, accepting half the requests it received. The director- general of the Health Ministry, Dr. Boaz Lev, said the permit had been expedited due to the patient's condition and the accompanying medical problems.

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A thriving Bronze Age drug trade supplied opium and hashish for medicinal purposes to ancient cultures throughout the eastern Mediterranean, proving a sophisticated knowledge of medicines dating back thousands of years, researchers say.

Ancient ceramic pots containing residues of the drugs, most of them nearly identical in shape and about five inches long, have been found in tombs and settlements throughout the Middle East, dating as far back as 1400 BCE, said Joe Zias, an anthropologist at the Hebrew University.

The drugs were probably used as medicine and the finds are helping researchers better understand how ancient people treated illness and disease.

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Researchers: Narcotics Trade Thrived in Bronze Age Middle East

Jerusalem - A thriving Bronze Age drug trade supplied narcotics to ancient cultures throughout the eastern Mediterranean as balm for the pain of childbirth and disease, proving a sophisticated knowledge of medicines dating back thousands of years, researchers say.

Ancient ceramic pots, most nearly identical in shape and about five inches long, have been found in tombs and settlements throughout the Middle East, dating as far back as 1,400 B.C., said Joe Zias, an anthropologist at Jerusalem's Hebrew University.

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JERUSALEM - A thriving Bronze Age drug trade supplied narcotics to ancient cultures throughout the eastern Mediterranean as balm for the pain of childbirth and disease, proving a sophisticated knowledge of medicines dating back thousands of years, researchers say.

Ancient ceramic pots, most of them nearly identical in shape and about 5 inches long, have been found in tombs and settlements throughout the Middle East, dating as far back as 1,400 B.C., said Joe Zias, an anthropologist at Jerusalem's Hebrew University.

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JERUSALEM (AP) - A thriving Bronze Age drug trade supplied narcotics to ancient cultures throughout the eastern Mediterranean as balm for the pain of childbirth and disease, proving a sophisticated knowledge of medicines dating back thousands of years, researchers say.

Ancient ceramic pots, most of them nearly identical in shape and about five inches long, have been found in tombs and settlements throughout the Middle East, dating as far back as 1,400 B.C., said Joe Zias, an anthropologist at Jerusalem's Hebrew University.

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JERUSALEM -- A thriving Bronze Age drug trade supplied narcotics to ancient cultures throughout the eastern Mediterranean as balm for the pain of childbirth and disease, proving a sophisticated knowledge of medicines dating back thousands of years, researchers say.

Ancient ceramic pots, most of them about 5 inches long, have been found in tombs and settlements throughout the Middle East, dating as far back as 1,400 B.C., said Joe Zias, an anthropologist at Jerusalem's Hebrew University.

The drugs were probably used as medicine, and the finds are helping researchers better understand how ancient people treated illness and disease.

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Ancient Opium Pots Are A Common Discovery In Middle Eastern Digs

JERUSALEM (AP) - A thriving Bronze Age drug trade supplied narcotics to ancient cultures throughout the eastern Mediterranean as balm for the pain of childbirth and disease, proving a sophisticated knowledge of medicines dating back thousands of years, researchers said.

Ancient ceramic pots, most of them nearly identical in shape and about 12 centimetres long, have been found in tombs and settlements throughout the Middle East, dating as far back as 1,400 B.C., said Joe Zias, an anthropologist at Jerusalem's Hebrew University.

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Jerusalem -- Hey man, wanna score some cannabinoids? An Israeli pharmaceutical company is working on a drug mimicking cannabis' chemical constituents -- cannabinoids -- to offer marijuana's therapeutic benefits without the buzz.

The new type of synthetic cannabinoid is "equivalent to ... the best-quality marijuana," says Dr. George Fink, vice president of research at Pharmos, which presented its new bicyclic dextrocannabinoic compounds at the BIO CEO and Investor conference in New York in February.

The cannabis plant contains over 60 cannabinoids. When you smoke (or eat) pot, the cannabinoids bind to two cannabinoid receptors in the body, called CB1 and CB2. CB1 appears to enhance appetite, reduce pain and ease muscle spasms -- and it is also the receptor that produces the psychotropic effects smokers want.

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The Supreme Court yesterday quashed a two-year jail sentence for convicted drug dealer Maxim Cohen after it learned that the police had concealed the fact that an agent involved in the arrest had sold drugs during his police work.

Justices Dalia Dorner, Eliezer Rivlin and Miriam Naor, however, accepted an arrangement between the court-appointed defense attorney and the prosecution, whereby Cohen's two-year sentence would be run concurrently with a sentence he is currently serving.

The agent, Morris Ben-Hamu, a former prison guard, was used by Be'er Sheva police for a four-month period in 1999. The officers who directed Ben-Hamu used hidden recording equipment to document drug deals at addresses provided by the police. It became apparent, however, that the police did not monitor Ben-Hamu's actions once he had been sent to his destination, and did not check whether he turned the recording equipment off during his mission.

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(August 23) - While fewer Israeli teens use drugs than their US peers, the problem is on the rise.

An Ecstasy overdose almost killed his friend two years ago. So Uri, now 20, no longer pops those pills. Although he still smokes pot he stays away from what he considers to be "dangerous drugs."

Teens in Israel are more likely to first reach for alcohol, then cigarettes and then marijuana. Still, professionals are concerned by 1998 figures showing that 5.3% of students aged 12 to 18 and 13.6% of dropouts are lighting up, shooting up and popping illegal drugs.

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