Nevada is known for gambling, 24-hour liquor sales and legal prostitution. Yet the main group opposing Question 7, an initiative on the state's ballot next month to allow sale and possession of up to an ounce of marijuana by adults 21 or older, is called the Committee to Keep Nevada Respectable. In Colorado, opponents of Amendment 44, which would eliminate penalties for adults possessing an ounce or less of marijuana, are equally certain of their own rectitude. "Those who want to legalize drugs weaken our collective struggle against this scourge," declares the Colorado Drug Investigators Association. "Like a cancer, proponents for legalization eat away at society's resolve and moral fiber." [continues 533 words]
First, it was Office of National Drug Control Policy Director John P. Walters contending last week that of the "roughly 7 million people we have as an estimate that need treatment because of dependence or abuse of illegal drugs, roughly 60 percent are dependent on marijuana." To which Bruce Mirken, director of communications for the Marijuana Policy Project on Capitol Hill, responded that Mr. Walters was being "deliberately and rather brazenly disingenuous," because the majority of medical-treatment admissions he cited "were referred by the criminal justice system -- i.e., kids were arrested and offered treatment instead of jail." [continues 194 words]
A rising number of marijuana arrests in the U.S. may put marijuana-using students at greater risk of being denied financial aid, according to the non-profit Students for Sensible Drug Policy, but many AU students do not know about the legal provision which mandates this. According to a 1998 provision of the Higher Education Act, federal financial aid is to be revoked for a minimum of one year on the first charge of drug possession and can be suspended indefinitely after the third charge. [continues 560 words]
Physician, Whose Drug Conviction Was Overturned, Deemed a Flight Risk Former Northern Virginia pain-management doctor William E. Hurwitz, whose conviction on drug-trafficking charges was overturned, will not be released from prison until his retrial, a federal judge ruled yesterday. U.S. District Judge Leonard D. Wexler said he was concerned that Hurwitz might flee after a federal jury in Alexandria convicted him in 2004 of running a drug conspiracy out of his McLean office and trafficking in narcotics. Hurwitz is perhaps the most prominent doctor to be targeted in a federal crackdown on what authorities call the over-prescribing of OxyContin and other painkillers. [continues 482 words]
WASHINGTON - A U.S.-Colombia free trade pact that faces a battle in Congress next year could help both nations fight drug trafficking and boost employment in the Andean country, a Colombian trade official said on Thursday. "A sound and formal economy will be the most powerful incentive to keep our people from being involved in undesirable activities," said Hernando Jose Gomez, Colombia's chief negotiator in the bilateral talks. The United States has poured more than $3 billion in mainly military aid since 2000 into Colombia, which produces most of the world's cocaine. [continues 328 words]
Two rooms, one block apart, two worlds: In the federal courthouse downtown, a platoon of lawyers, representing easily $10,000 in nicely tailored wool suits, wage battle over the government's three-year investigation of Douglas Jemal, the daring developer who has done more than anyone else in Washington's private sector to transform a dead downtown into an alluring, vibrant cityscape. Day after dreary day, before a jury that is nodding off and zoning out, government lawyers painstakingly plow through invoice after invoice -- janitorial services, building contractors, repairmen -- trying to build a case that Jemal ripped off the District's taxpayers by bribing a city official and landing highly profitable city leases. [continues 862 words]
As visitors flipped through bins of paintings, lingering on the ones they liked, Anthony Papa couldn't help but recall what a paint and brush had done for him during the 12 years he was behind bars for distributing drugs. He had been desperate, and it was his first offense. "Art saved my life," he said yesterday. "It helped me to retain my sanity and regain my freedom. The greatest thing for me was my discovery as an artist." In a makeshift gallery in the basement of the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library in downtown Washington yesterday, the works of dozens of incarcerated people from across the country were on display. There were serene landscapes and joyous clowns as well as celebrity portraits, including Tupac Shakur, Malcolm X and Ray Charles. There were also sober renderings of prison life: a pair of shackled hands, a roll of toilet paper next to a barren toilet. [continues 545 words]
Stan White ["Maligned Marijuana," letters, Sept. 20] asked how long the Drug Enforcement Administration can keep marijuana away from Americans. I dispute the notion that the agency is keeping marijuana from many citizens. Save for the persistent efforts to place obstacles between patients and their medical marijuana, the millions of Americans who want marijuana don't have much trouble getting it. Nor do users of other illicit drugs, despite decades of ever-escalating drug war policies carried out by the DEA. [continues 64 words]
One of the weirdest episodes in American history is engagingly chronicled in "The U.S. vs. John Lennon," David Leaf and John Scheinfeld's revelatory documentary about the American government's surveillance of the former Beatle in the 1970s. And readers tempted to write that episode off as yet another paranoid fantasy of The Left should take heed: "The U.S. vs. John Lennon" includes the firsthand testimony of the spies themselves, from apostate FBI agents to the unapologetic G. Gordon Liddy. It's all there on the record, for the benefit of those who care enough about history not to repeat it. And at a time when the country is engaged in fresh debates about the fragile relationship between privacy and national security, this particular chapter seems worth revisiting. [continues 726 words]
Standing in the middle of a courtyard yesterday in the Woodland Terrace public housing complex, a 24-year-old mother said life in the Southeast neighborhood was a little better these days -- ever since police started taking down the drug dealers who have long operated openly in the complex. "Before, this whole place would be crowded with people, with boys that don't even live around here," the mother said late yesterday afternoon, her son and daughter at her leg clamoring to go home. [continues 681 words]
Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) may not have expected his $700 million amendment to the defense-spending bill to pass; Democratic amendments are usually shot down one by one. But the senator's proposal to allocate money for narcotics eradication in Afghanistan passed by voice vote in early September. It won the vote of the Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John Warner (R-Va.) among others, and has support from several key GOP members in the House. One is Rep. Mark Souder (R-Ind.), chairman of the Government Reform subcommittee with jurisdiction over drug policy, who admitted on the House floor last week that he is "not always a big ally of Sen. Schumer." [continues 833 words]
Members of a national progressive student organization with a GW chapter want to repeal a federal law that prohibits students with a criminal drug history of being eligible for financial aid. According to a section of the Higher Education Act, legislation creating federal grant and loan programs for colleges and universities, students who have a drug conviction are unable to receive federal financial aid. The national SSDP organization has filed a lawsuit against the government in an effort to repeal this section of the Higher Education Act. [continues 548 words]
It seems as if every week medical researchers, universities and journals report more benefits and therapies available from cannabis/marijuana ["Marijuana Aids Therapy," Vital Evidence, Sept. 13] with fewer side effects. How much longer can the Drug Enforcement Administration's reefer madness keep cannabis away from American citizens? Stan White Dillon, Colo. [end]
WASHINGTON - A prestigious U.S. scientific body is urging governments to adopt politically controversial measures to cut the spread of HIV-AIDS among injection drug users. A new report from the Institute of Medicine, commissioned by UNAIDS and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, suggests the scientific evidence is clear: programs that provide access to methadone therapy and clean syringes reduce the risk of transmission of HIV among people who inject illegal drugs. "A clean needle won't prevent a sexual transmission. . . . But it will prevent a needle-borne transmission," Dr. Hugh Tilson, chair of the panel that wrote the report, said in an interview. [continues 418 words]
WASHINGTON - With Afghanistan's record poppy crop supplying nearly all the world's heroin, lawmakers are questioning the Pentagon's narcotics-fighting efforts there. Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) yesterday demanded that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld explain why he only requested $18 million to fight Afghan drug trafficking, which has helped fuel the Taliban's violent resurgence. The U.S. military has only mounted three joint combat operations to hit opium processing labs with U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration commando teams since agents arrived in Kabul 18 months ago, sources told the Daily News. [continues 203 words]
Who knew Satan worked at the local mall? While bars, cheap hotels and similar places of questionable repute may remain America's favorite spots to sin, two economists say that giving people an extra day to shop at the mall also contributes significantly to wicked behavior -- particularly among people who are the most religious. Jonathan Gruber of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Daniel M. Hungerman of the University of Notre Dame discovered the malevolent Mall Effect by studying what happened when states and counties repeal "blue laws." Those statutes prohibit the sale on Sunday of certain nonessential items, such as appliances, furniture and jewelry, typically sold in shopping malls, as well as liquor and cigarettes. [continues 371 words]
In her Aug. 19 op-ed, "Treat the Addict, Cut the Crime Rate," Nora D. Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, states indisputable facts about the economic and social implications of the lack of treatment of the brain disease of addiction. As a physician who treats patients with addiction, I have made this observation: No patient says, "When I grow up, I want to be an addict and go to jail." Most addicts feel, incorrectly, that addiction is a moral failing rather than a disease. [continues 145 words]
Nora D. Volkow neglected the key element in her Aug. 19 op-ed -- funding. There is good reason that this brilliant Bush administration appointee would make her accurate point that surging rates of violent crime can be cut with drug treatment but neglect the part about funding such programs: During this administration, the anti-drug budget has been reduced from $19.2 billion in 2001 to $12.7 billion for fiscal 2007, a decline of about a third. Robert S. Weiner Accokeek The writer was director of public affairs for the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy from 1995 to 2001. [end]
The Perils of Foreign Policy by Report Card Attempts to explain the vehemence of anti-U.S. feeling abroad correctly home in on Iraq and other unpopular policies of the current administration. But over the past three decades the kudzu-like growth of another U.S. practice, used by Congress and by Democratic and Republican administrations alike, has nurtured seething resentment abroad. This is what might be called "foreign policy by report card," the issuing of public assessments of the performance of other countries, with the threat of economic or political sanctions for those whose performance, in our view, doesn't make the grade. The overuse of these mandated reports makes us seem judgmental, moralistic and bullying. [continues 546 words]
Re: "Fixing Virginia's prison woes," by Ronald Fraser, Aug. 25 Virginia is not the only state grappling with overcrowded prisons. Throughout the nation, states facing budget shortfalls are pursuing alternatives to incarceration for nonviolent drug offenders. A study conducted by the RAND Corporation found that every additional dollar invested in substance-abuse treatment saves taxpayers $7.48 in societal costs. And there is far more at stake than tax dollars. The drug war is not the promoter of family values that some would have us believe. Children of inmates are at risk of educational failure, joblessness, addiction and delinquency. Not only do the children lose out, but society as a whole does too. Incarcerating nonviolent drug offenders alongside hardened criminals is the equivalent of providing them with a taxpayer-funded education in anti-social behavior. [continues 72 words]
Inside District of Columbia
