The Event Returns After an 11-Year Absence, and a Few Hundred Show Up to Watch. The revival of Gainesville's Hemp Fest - a celebration of the many uses of the hemp plant - may have attracted a smaller crowd Saturday than in the past, but organizers believe they are closer than ever to their goal of at least limited legalization of marijuana. Hemp Fest was held at the Bo Diddley Community Plaza in downtown Gainesville on Saturday after an 11-year absence, drawing a modest crowd for music, speeches and booths of vendors and organizations. [continues 409 words]
Florida's Drug Test Requirement For Welfare Recipients Predictably Fails First Round In Court It would be easy to praise Gov. Rick Scott and the Florida Legislature for the laudable goals of curbing drug use among welfare recipients by testing applicants and saving money by denying users aid. Easy to praise, that is, if wholesale testing really saved money and if applying for temporary cash assistance itself proves probable drug use. In the face of contrary evidence, the best the governor and Legislature could hope to achieve with a new law was to build a barrier to help for those in need. [continues 543 words]
I felt compelled to respond to the article "Police are winning the pill mill battle, but heroin may fill the void." This article presented some interesting points that are often avoided. The direct correlation between oxycodone and heroin is an epidemic. The heroin scene has been strongly affecting other states, although Florida residents have not yet had to face this issue because of the overwhelming availability of pharmaceutical heroin - prescription opiates - that are flooding the streets. Palm Beach and Broward counties have been aware of this pill mill epidemic, and are finally starting to make headway with enforcing new laws. The people supporting these pill mills are addicts, and crossing the threshold from prescription pills to heroin is going to be a simple and mindless transition. [continues 123 words]
State Sen. Ellyn Bogdanoff, R-Fort Lauderdale, and state Rep. Ari Porth, D-Coral Springs, are at it again. The two lawmakers are trying to pass needed, positive legislation to help the state of Florida reduce the costs of operating its prisons. Lawmakers ought not to miss the opportunity to do so -- again. The legislation -- CS/HB 177 and SB 448 -- establishes a re-entry program for nonviolent offenders that offers intensive substance abuse treatment, adult education courses and vocational training as alternatives to long prison sentences. The idea is to reduce recidivism, which is essential if state officials want to get a handle on the costs of incarceration. [continues 345 words]
New Law Helps Police Tackle State's Prescription Drug Epidemic State lawmakers and law enforcement officials are working to change Florida's reputation as the nation's pill-mill capital for addictive painkillers like oxycodone. Pain-management clinics are the main reason for the prescription drug epidemic that kills roughly seven Floridians a day. Although the problem has been rampant in South Florida in recent years, last Tuesday's arrest of an Indialantic doctor, suspected of being one of the state's most prolific distributors of oxycodone, shows the Space Coast has not escaped the scourge of pill mills. [continues 449 words]
A federal judge this week shot legal holes through Florida's requirement that all welfare applicants undergo drug testing. We hope Gov. Rick Scott, who promoted the ill-advised tests, backs off the policy before more money is wasted defending it in court. The judge temporarily suspended the drug testing requirement, faulting the fact that results lack confidentiality and noting that the policy violates constitutional protections. That's because it forces welfare applicants to be tested even when there are no grounds to reasonably suspect that they are drug users. [continues 294 words]
The office manager for a pain management medical clinic in Bonita Springs says Lee County deputies are harassing customers and the business. Public records show deputies have been called to the shopping center where the clinic is attended more than 550 times in the past 10 months - -- nearly 10 times as often as they were alerted for the prior four years. The manager is upset deputies ask patients outside questions such as,"What are you doing here?" Other tenants at Sunshine Professional Center on Bonita Beach Road are upset that their customers ask questions such as "What are the cops doing here?" [continues 158 words]
It didn't take long for Florida's new policy of drug testing welfare recipients to run afoul of the Constitution. The state implemented the testing July 1, and on Monday a federal judge in Orlando issued a temporary injunction to halt it on the grounds that it likely violated the Fourth Amendment protections against illegal searches and seizures. The case is to constitutional jurisprudence what a fastball over the middle of the plate is to Albert Pujols. Gov. Rick Scott promoted drug testing of welfare recipients as being necessary to safeguard public dollars. But U.S. District Judge Mary Scriven rejected that argument, writing: "If invoking an interest in preventing public funds from potentially being used to fund drug use were the only requirement to establish a special need, the state could impose drug testing as an eligibility requirement for every beneficiary of every government program. Such blanket intrusions cannot be countenanced under the Fourth Amendment." [continues 404 words]
Some are saying that drug testing for welfare recipients is unconstitutional. Really? I am employed by a major corporation, where I do business with government agencies. In order for me to maintain my employment and do business with these agencies, it is required that I be drug tested. Yet my tax dollars are being used to pay welfare recipients who deem it inappropriate. So the recipients of our tax dollars cannot have their liberties infringed upon and be drug tested, yet my job demands it and the welfare recipients are relying on my compliance. Kim Lee Clearwater [end]
Federal Judge Mary Scriven has blocked drug testing as a condition of receiving welfare payments. She says that it violates the Fourth Amendment regarding searches. What is the financial difference between Florida's Legislature gambling that a major hurricane will not wreak havoc on our economy and expanded casino gambling? None. If a major hurricane strikes Florida, the wreckage is there for all to see, and ers will be assessed because Florida's hurricane insurance program is underfunded. Casino gambling eats away at the income and assets of a person or family who cannot resist the lure of making a quick buck. Then Florida taxpayers eat the losses when losers seek free medWhat about mandatory testing when you apply for a job, even if there is no probable cause? Is that legal? What about random drug testing in police departments nationwide? Such tests have been upheld in the courts for years. [continues 53 words]
Florida drug laws make little sense. While marijuana is illegal, even for people in serious pain, we are instead encouraged to get a prescription for pills like OxyContin, Oxycodone or Valium, which are 20 times worse for you. Drug companies, doctors and pharmacies are dispensing millions of doses of these highly addictive, often deadly pills while non-violent taxpayers in victimless crimes are being jailed for marijuana use. Illegal marijuana creates crime because of its inflated value. Legal marijuana would have almost no value, putting dealers out of business, and U.S. taxpayers would save billions. DOVER [end]
The young woman arrived at the emergency room a few weeks ago ready to give birth. She had her baby that day - just a few hours after she had refilled a prescription for pain medication. She brought her prescription bottle along with her, claiming that she needed it for back pain. And her doctor believed that refilling this medication was appropriate for a woman about to give birth - despite known risks to the fetus. Cases like this young mother's make it clear why we need to do more research on drug-addicted women having babies. At USF Health, we are working to find answers to keep mothers and babies healthy through the Women's Health Collaborative. [continues 605 words]
When it came to drug testing welfare applicants, the state aimed for the cup first and asked questions later. Anybody with a rudimentary understanding of the U.S. Constitution knew that Florida's blanket testing program was doomed. Michigan tried the same thing more than a decade ago, and it was ultimately tossed by federal courts. Sure enough, U.S. District Judge Mary Scriven temporarily halted Florida's drug-testing program this week, ruling that "there was a substantial likelihood" it wouldn't pass constitutional muster. [continues 439 words]
If Gov. Rick Scott and Florida legislative leaders would get over their obsession with privatizing prisons, perhaps they might focus on the real cause of Florida's runaway correction spending. This state locks too many people up for too long. A succession of "get tough on crime" mandatory minimum sentencing laws are primarily responsible for a state incarceration rate that is 26 percent higher than the national average. An Associated Press report this month cited the case of a man serving a mandatory five-year prison sentence for possession of a handful of Lortab tablets, "prescription-only pills containing a small amount of a controlled substance but mostly made up of the same ingredient found in Tylenol and similar over-the-counter painkillers." [continues 200 words]
The Injunction Says Testing Applicants For Welfare May Be Illegal Search And Seizure A federal judge on Monday temporarily blocked Florida's controversial law requiring welA-fare applicants be drug tested in order to receive benefits. Judge Mary Scriven issued a temporary injunction against the state, writing in a 37-page order that the law could violate the Constitution's Fourth AmendA-ment ban on illegal search and seizure. 'The constitutional rights of a class of citizen are at stake,' Scriven wrote in an order filed in the Middle District of Florida Orlando Division. [continues 743 words]
In a Strange About-Face, the President Tries to Hack Medical Marijuana Off at the Knees. The new federal crackdown on medical marijuana announced on October 7 by the four California U.S. Attorneys sent chills throughout the industry. It was a stunning reversal by the Obama administration. Only two years ago, Deputy U.S. Attorney General David Ogden wrote his infamous "Ogden Memo," announcing the feds wouldn't bother businesses in compliance with their own state laws. It proved a dose of Miracle-Gro to California, where pot-selling stores multiplied since voters approved the state's 1996 medical marijuana law. By late last year, California reportedly had more dispensaries than Starbucks outlets. [continues 3154 words]
Earlier this year, state Sen. Ellyn Bogdanoff first trotted out legislation to revamp Florida's out-of-kilter prescription-drug laws. No more mandatory-minimums for prescription-drug trafficking. Sentences that often punish addicts "" not drug kingpins "" with absurdly heavy-handed sentences for relatively light quantities. And the bill would've based trafficking weight on the amount of controlled substance in a pill, not gross weight. Makes sense. Her push didn't succeed. But the Fort Lauderdale Republican plans to take another crack at it. This time, lawmakers must discard their "tough-on-crime" blinders and see not only the prospect of significant savings, but also the chance to restore judicial discretion. [continues 311 words]
Regarding Carl Hiaasen's Sep. 27 column, Gov. Rick Scott's crusade to drug-test welfare applicants is an expansion of big government for the sake of a culture war. The most commonly abused drug and the one most closely associated with violent behavior isn't included in drug tests. That drug is legal alcohol, and it takes far more lives each year than all illegal drugs combined. The war on some drugs has given the land of the free the highest incarceration rate in the world, while failing miserably at preventing illicit drug use. Despite the big government approach, the U.S. has higher rates of marijuana use than the Netherlands, where marijuana is legally available. [continues 68 words]
Tonyaa Weathersbee makes the common mistake of confusing drug-related crime with prohibition-related crime in her Sept. 22 column. Attempts to limit the supply of illegal drugs while demand remains constant only increase the profitability of drug trafficking. For addictive drugs like heroin, a spike in street prices leads desperate addicts to increase criminal activity to feed desperate habits. The drug war doesn't fight crime, it fuels crime. With alcohol prohibition repealed, liquor bootleggers no longer gun each other down in drive-by shootings, nor do consumers go blind drinking unregulated bathtub gin. While U.S. politicians ignore the drug war's historical precedent, European countries are embracing harm reduction, a public health alternative based on the principle that both drug abuse and prohibition have the potential to cause harm. [continues 82 words]
Inside Florida
