Marijuana Organizers Blame a Drug Agent; the City Objects to People Openly Smoking Pot

Plans for the third-annual Portland Hempstalk, a festival celebrating and calling for the legalization of marijuana, went up in smoke Wednesday as the Portland City Council refused to grant a permit.

Organizers say the event was undone by an activist federal agent who has told medical marijuana users that they should turn to Jesus for pain relief.

At a recent marijuana parade, the head of the Drug Enforcement Administration office in Oregon "was exhorting individual medical marijuana patients to give up their addictions to marijuana and take Jesus into their hearts. Jesus would cure their pain," said Ann Witte, a Portland lawyer and one of several Hempstalk planners seeking City Council help. "It is the DEA which is behind the move to stop Hempstalk."

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Parks Department Shuts Down Pot Fest

Organizers for this year's installment of Hempstalk say they've got Tommy Chong and marijuana activist John Trudell lined up, plus a slew of musical acts to entertain the growing crowd. The one thing they don't have: a permit from the city.

In mid-April, the city's Parks Department sent The Hemp and Cannabis Foundation (THCF)-a medical marijuana provider and Hempstalk's main organizer-a letter denying their request for a permit to hold the event at Delta Park, September 8-9. The problem, according to Parks Security Manager Mark Warrington, is that last year's event, which brought an estimated 15,000 people to Waterfront Park, was the site of "widespread smoking of marijuana" and "unlawful consumption of alcohol" in violation of THCF's permit.

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Officials Knew The Campus Had A Problem In 05, Well Before Kraig Crow's Fatal Overdose

Portland police narcotics investigators warned Lincoln High School administrators two years ago that some of their students had admitted selling hard drugs on campus, including cocaine and LSD.

Police couldn't pull together enough evidence during their April 2005 investigation to make arrests, but then-Portland police Capt. Mike Reese shared the findings with Peter Hamilton, Lincoln's former principal.

School officials said they couldn't talk specifically about what they did with the police information, citing student privacy concerns. But Hamilton acknowledged he'd been concerned about student drug use for years and had taken a series of steps to address it. He said he hired a drug and alcohol prevention specialist, beefed up parent patrols of the neighborhood and invited guest speakers to talk to freshmen about the danger of marijuana.

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The War On Drugs Is A War On People

There are a lot of marijuana smokers in Eugene and Lane County. In the rest of Oregon too, for that matter. Doctors, lawyers, politicians, cowboys and Indians, and just plain Joes. I would guess we all know at least one person who consumes marijuana (cannabis, ganja, reefer, herb, bud).

According to the report "The Budgetary Implications of Marijuana Prohibition," from Harvard's Jeffrey Mirons and endorsed by the late Nobel laureate economist Milton Friedman and 500 other economists in the U.S., there are estimated to be some 300,000 adults in Oregon who at least occasionally use pot.

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Coos County - Judges Say Helping a Friend Move Medical Plants Is Possession

Helping a friend move some medical marijuana plants has proved quite costly for Thomas Patrick Fries.

Although Fries, 38, had no criminal record, a Coos County judge convicted him of felony drug possession in 2003.

And on Wednesday, a divided Oregon Court of Appeals upheld Fries' conviction, saying that Oregon's drug laws provide some exemptions but helping a friend move marijuana plants to a new home isn't one of them.

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Portland - Two Students' Arrests After A Fatal Cocaine Deal Stun A Campus That Fears Being Mislabeled

Lincoln High School is not a drug den where rich kids routinely deal cocaine. Nor is it a place where high test scores and affluence shield students and families from the devastating consequences of drugs.

That was the message that students and Principal Peyton Chapman wanted to send Monday, as the school grappled with the fallout from last week's guilty pleas by two students to drug charges related to the August death of 19-year-old Lincoln graduate Kraig Crow.

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The Benefits of Tough Sentencing Laws Diminish As the Prison System Expands, Researchers Say

Oregon is on the verge of a milestone: In the next two years, the state will spend tens of millions more tax money to lock up prison inmates than it does to educate students at community colleges and state universities.

The trend results from more than a decade of explosive prison growth largely fueled by Measure 11, the 1994 ballot initiative that mandated lengthy sentences for violent crimes. Since then, the number of inmates has nearly doubled and spending on prisons has nearly tripled.

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Alcohol kills more people each year than all illegal drugs combined. Prescription overdose deaths are now second only to motor-vehicle crashes as a cause of death from unintentional injury. Television is filled with sophisticated pro-drug messages paid for by alcohol and pharmaceutical companies.

The Bush administration doesn't have a problem with corporate drug pushers, but hoist a "Bong Hits 4 Jesus" banner at an off-campus high school rally in Alaska, and they will fight you all the way to the Supreme Court.

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Despite Federal Cuts, Local Programs Such As Family Drug Court Flourish

ITEM: An Astoria High School senior tells her peers of her struggle since age 13 with methamphetamine: "It's available everywhere ... it's definitely in the schools."

ITEM: Seven suspected dealers are busted here, charged with possessing $44,000 in meth and cocaine. Authorities also seize $16,800 cash and 10 guns, including an AR-15 semiautomatic rifle.

ITEM: Drug deaths are on the rise in Oregon, with the state medical examiner reporting 212 fatalities in 2006 from heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine or a combination of drugs, an 8 percent increase from 2005. Methamphetamine contributed to 89 deaths, three times more than in 1996. Heroin also took 89 lives in Oregon last year.

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I'm writing to urge you to keep bringing up the issue of how the drug war against marijuana users is causing more damage than it is helping our society.

Marijuana causes less harm to both individuals and society than alcohol or tobacco - and yet responsible adult drinkers and smokers are not punished by the state in any way. Responsible marijuana users should be treated the same way, especially those who have medical issues that could benefit greatly from the use of marijuana. They should not be treated as criminals anymore than responsible drinkers are.

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A Feb. 16 guest viewpoint by Jim Greig, "Marijuana more than medicinal," explored the economic benefits of ending pot prohibition, while making the point that users of medical marijuana are honestly seeking therapeutic effects.

After Oregon citizens voted in 1998 to allowed medicinal use of marijuana, I went to meetings and heard story after story about the therapeutic value of cannabis. Victims of automobile and industrial accidents with severe spinal injuries told tales of how marijuana helped them deal with constant pain while allowing them to continue being productive, whereas their prescription pain medicine left them lethargic and unable to function.

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With Help, They Can Become Clean, Get Their Kids Back

The face of meth is the face of a child. Members of Salem's Drug Activity Response Team keep snapshots of children's faces on their wall. That's how they get the stomach to enter drug homes where bugs feast on dried food and meth sits within easy reach of kids.

Yet the face of a child also can inspire a meth-addicted parent to get well, authorities say. During April, Child Abuse and Neglect Prevention Month, the Statesman Journal will report on some of these stories.

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Salem's four-officer Drug Activity Response Team is an outfit operating counter to every preconceived notion one might have about narcotics officers.

There are no flashy suits, fast cars, search warrants, undercover officers or elusive drug kingpins staying one step ahead of their efforts.

The DART officers wear standard police uniforms and spend their days going door-to door in Salem, responding to drug house and drug activity complaints.

They walk up and knock on doors and ask to be let in. Nine out of ten times they are admitted inside without a warrant, said Deputy Chief Steve Bellshaw, head of the department's investigations division.

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Inside the First Amendment

What do you think "Bong Hits 4 Jesus" means?

The U.S. Supreme Court heard March 19 from lawyers for former student Joseph Frederick, who says it means nothing -- and for the Juneau-Douglas, Alaska, school system that suspended Frederick for displaying it on a banner, who say it's drug-related and disruptive.

Whatever the meaning of the "slogan," or lack of one, the case is not about bongs or Jesus -- it's about the extent to which public school officials can or should control the speech of students who attend their schools.

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Medford Woman Turns Her Life Around After Years Of Addiction

EDITOR'S NOTE: This is the 12th in a series of stories on addicts recovering from meth use. The stories run on the first Sunday of each month.

Disguised as a benign mood-booster, drugs first entered Cerella Powell's life by way of her mother.

At 14, Powell struggled to balance school, chores and a dysfunctional home life in Rogue River. Diet pills, Powell's mother promised, would give her daughter energy.

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Counseling Groups Can't Keep Pace With Calls for Help

Drug-related deaths are on the rise in Oregon.

Twenty of those deaths were in Marion County. Three were in Polk County. Heroin use accounted for the most deaths in both counties.

The number of drug-involved deaths in 2006 was an 8 percent increase over the previous year and the highest in the state since 1999, when 248 people died from drug use, according to the report.

The figures don't surprise Jim Seymour, the executive director of Catholic Communities Services in Salem. The nonprofit organization provides drug- and alcohol-abuse counseling.

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In his speech to open the 2007 session of the Oregon Legislature, Gov. Ted Kulongoski spoke eloquently about green things such as sustainability and dollars. Unfortunately, he didn't discuss something else "green" that could be the answer to many, if not all, the fiscal problems in this state. I thought by now some brave legislator might have brought it up for consideration, but it hasn't happened. So I will.

Marijuana. Legalize marijuana and tax it. Shouldn't everything be on the table this session, including raising taxes on a vastly more powerful recreational drug, say alcohol?

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Friday's front-page photographs from Thursday's drug bust in Astoria were the most frightening and disgusting images printed in this newspaper for years.

Guns. Drugs. Money.

All this was seized from two addresses - right in the center of town - by members of the Clatsop County Inter-agency Narcotics Team, augmented by officers from the Clatsop Sheriff's Office, Oregon State Police and Astoria, Warrenton and Seaside police departments.

Is this the picture of the North Coast we want the world to see? Enough firepower to start a small-scale war? Enough coke and meth to get half the town high?

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If appreciative citizens have not yet presented HIV Alliance volunteer Joe Ferguson - the best used-syringe retriever money didn't have to buy - with a couple of pairs of needle-proof gloves, it must be because they missed reporter Jack Moran's story in last Sunday's Register-Guard.

Moran introduced readers to local hero Ferguson, a 38-year-old former Marine reconnaissance swimmer who spends hours of his free time each week searching for and disposing of used needles that have been discarded by drug users. He works barehanded with a "garbage grabber" tool to snag dirty needles.

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Joe Ferguson sniffs out discarded hypodermic needles like a bird dog tracking game.

Aggressive and single-minded in his search, the burly, 38-year-old former Marine reconnaissance swimmer is hell-bent on cleaning up parks and neighborhoods throughout the Eugene-Springfield area where drug users toss needles after shooting up.

"This has become my passion," said Ferguson, who began volunteering last year with the Eugene-based HIV Alliance. He goes about his work with his three children and pets in mind, figuring he's doing his part to make the community safer for those unaware of the danger posed by contaminated needles littering parks and alleys.

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