Farmers in Jamaica Are Offering a Different Kind of Travel Experience. (AP) - Call them ganja tours: smoky, mystical - and technically illegal - journeys to some of the island's hidden cannabis plantations. The tours pass through places like Nine Mile, the tiny hometown of the reggae legend and famous pot lover Bob Marley. Here, in Jamaica's verdant central mountains, dreadlocked men escort curious visitors to farms where marijuana plants grow. Similar tours are offered just outside the western resort town of Negril. [continues 90 words]
Along the plains of eastern Colorado, on a patch of soil where his father once raised alfalfa, Ryan Loflin is growing a leafy green challenge to the U.S. drug laws. His fields are sown with hemp, a tame cousin of marijuana that was once grown openly in the United States but is now outlawed as a controlled substance. Last year, as Colorado voters legalized marijuana for recreational use, they also approved a measure laying a path for farmers like Mr. Loflin, 40, to once again grow and harvest hemp, a potentially lucrative crop that can be processed into goods as diverse as cooking oil, clothing and building material. This spring, he became the first farmer in Colorado to publicly sow his fields with hemp seed. [continues 958 words]
Human rights abuses in the war on drugs are widespread and systematic. They must be stopped. This week, representatives from many nations will gather at the annual meeting of the United Nations Commission on Narcotic Drugs in Vienna to determine the appropriate course of the international response to illicit drugs. Delegates will debate multiple resolutions while ignoring a truth that goes to the core of current drug policy: human rights abuses in the war on drugs are widespread and systematic. Consider these numbers: Hundreds of thousands of people locked in detention centers and subject to violent punishments. Millions imprisoned. Hundreds hanged, shot or beheaded. Tens of thousands killed by government forces and non-state actors. Thousands beaten and abused to extract information, and abused in government or private "treatment" centers. Millions denied life-saving medicines. These are alarming figures, but campaigns to address them have been slow and drug control has received little attention from the mainstream human rights movement. [continues 530 words]
Regarding "An ugly truth in the war on drugs" by Fernando Henrique Cardoso and Ruth Dreifuss (Views, March 11): Rather than ignoring the issue, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime is doing everything possible to ensure that drug control does not lead to human rights abuses. In doing so, we are pursuing our primary purpose, which is drug control, in tandem with the three pillars of the United Nations: peace, security and development, and human rights. The authors of the article have quoted us selectively. They say that while the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime acknowledges that drug users are pushed to the margins of society, we have failed to note that these people's human rights have been ignored. Not true. The same report quoted in the article also highlighted the human rights of drug users. [continues 77 words]
There is nothing clandestine about Julian Rojas's coca plot, which is tucked deep within acres of banana groves. It has been mapped with satellite imagery, catalogued in a government database, cross-referenced with his personal information, and checked and rechecked by the local coca growers' union. The same goes for the plots worked by Mr. Rojas's neighbors and thousands of other farmers in this torrid region east of the Andes who are licensed by the Bolivian government to grow coca, the plant used to make cocaine. [continues 1312 words]
MEXICO CITY - Mexico's outgoing president, Felipe Calderon, was never much loved. His election in 2006 was overshadowed by claims of fraud by a leftist challenger. He then struggled with a deep recession brought on by the global financial crisis. And throughout his term he sponsored an army-led "war on drugs," which has left a death toll variously estimated at between 65,000 and 100,000. Little wonder that most Mexicans are eager to see him leave office on Saturday. [continues 831 words]
Anthony Orozco, a 19-year-old community-college student, was driving home from a Walmart store with a few friends in this western U.S. state one day recently when he was pulled over by the police. After an officer found marijuana in the car, he was issued a summons for possession and drug paraphernalia - petty offenses each carrying a $100 fine - and given a court date. "We get treated like criminals," Mr. Orozco said. But is he one? In the recent American elections, residents of Colorado and Washington State broke a longstanding taboo and voted for the legalization of recreational marijuana use. As the first American states to treat small amounts of marijuana like alcohol, they are poised to become national test cases for drug legalization. But no one said it would be simple. [continues 989 words]
WHENEVER I've interviewed Mexican cartel killers, the aspect that I've found most disturbing about them is that they appear to be sane. Even though they have described to me such unfathomable actions as hacking off the heads of still-living victims, it is something other than mental illness that drives their violence. Their sanity is disconcerting because, if they were simply mad, it would be easier to accept horrific actions like leaving piles of headless corpses in town squares. [continues 794 words]
Cannabis and the New Green Economic Revolution. by Doug Fine. 319 Pages. Illustrated. Gotham Books, $28; Ukp17. "Too High to Fail" is a good rebuttal to those who say stoners never accomplish anything. Doug Fine did. He has written a well-researched book that uses the clever tactic of making the moral case for ending marijuana prohibition by burying it inside the economic case. We've become a ruthless society, and almost everything (I'm looking at you, Environment and Health Care) has to be sold as "first, it's good for business." To his credit, Mr. Fine doesn't do what so many of us do and scream, "Can't we just stop jailing potheads because that would be the right thing?" Also to his credit, he never admits he's one of them. [continues 936 words]
Vancouver in British Columbia, Ciudad Juarez in northern Mexico and Helmand Province in southern Afghanistan are unlikely cousins. But together these three places and their ilk have wrought a remarkable change in one of the world's most important debates over the past two years. For decades, the idea of legalizing narcotics was supported by only a small minority. But as global markets in illicit drugs have expanded exponentially since the early 1990s, policy makers and law enforcement agencies alike have been overwhelmed by the challenge posed by the prohibition of a long list of drugs. Markets have spread to places that for decades had no significant drug problem, like China and Indonesia, while the numbers of addicts in countries like Iran have grown hugely. [continues 794 words]
U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder announced last week that the federal government will no longer prosecute dispensers of medical marijuana if they comply with state law. That should bring relief to people who need marijuana for health reasons and free up law enforcement resources for more important work. There is considerable evidence that marijuana can be useful in treating pain, nausea, weight loss and other symptoms associated with chemotherapy and H.I.V. and other illnesses. Thirteen states, including California, have legalized marijuana for medical purposes, which remains illegal under federal law. [continues 185 words]
Vienna-based UNODC Executive Director Antonio Maria Costa said in an interview released by Austrian weekly Profil that drug money often became the only available capital when the crisis spiralled out of control last year. "In many instances, drug money is currently the only liquid investment capital," Costa was quoted as saying by Profil. "In the second half of 2008, liquidity was the banking system's main problem and hence liquid capital became an important factor." The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime had found evidence that "interbank loans were funded by money that originated from drug trade and other illegal activities," Costa was quoted as saying. There were "signs that some banks were rescued in that way." [continues 51 words]
MADRID: One of Colombia's most notorious drug lords, Leonidas Vargas, was shot dead in his Madrid hospital bed on Thursday, Spanish police said. At least one person entered the room in Madrid's October 12th Hospital where Vargas was being treated for a serious illness, and shot the drugs kingpin four times just before 8 p.m. local time, police said. Spanish newspaper El Mundo said the assassin asked another patient who was sharing the Colombian's room if he was Vargas. [continues 172 words]
MEXICO CITY: Mexican congressmen called for a federal investigation of potential drug cartel ties to the nation's beauty pageants Friday, days after a 23-year-old beauty queen was detained on suspicion of drug and weapons violations. Congressional leaders warned that cartels may have infiltrated contests to launder money, and said a full investigation was needed. To many, former preschool teacher Laura Zuniga, named Miss Sinaloa in the drug-plagued northern state's annual beauty contest, symbolizes declining ethics in Mexico. [continues 404 words]
LONDON - A group of senior British scientists has condemned the government's push to toughen the penalties for possessing marijuana, saying in a letter published Tuesday the move ignores scientific evidence. Britain's House of Lords voted to reclassifying the drug Tuesday, and the House of Commons, Britain's powerful lower house, already approved the measure earlier this month and the Lords' vote is seen as a formality. The Home Office said it expected the change to come into effect in January. [continues 275 words]
Marijuana may be something of a wonder drug -- though perhaps not in the way you might think. Researchers in Italy and Britain have found that the main active ingredient in marijuana -- tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC -- and related compounds show promise as antibacterial agents, particularly against microbial strains that are already resistant to several classes of drugs. It has been known for decades that Cannabis sativa has antibacterial properties. Experiments in the 1950s tested various marijuana preparations against skin and other infections, but researchers at the time had little understanding of marijuana's chemical makeup. [continues 121 words]
SEATTLE - The American travel writer and public television host Rick Steves is a certain kind of innocent abroad - benignly suburban to the core, with a bit of a paunch and the ever-quizzical look of someone who would try raw squid for breakfast and not complain about it. At 52, he has spent a third of his adult life living out of a suitcase, ever in search of that bargain room with a view, encouraging his fellow Americans to become "temporary locals." His influence is vast and one of the reasons U.S. citizens aren't more hated abroad in Bush's final days. [continues 699 words]
A man being held in a Dutch police cell on suspicion of growing cannabis got an unintended treat in his lunch -- a piece of hashish-laced cake, a spokesman said Thursday. "It was an accident," said Alwin Don, police spokesman in the southern province of Zeeland. The hash cake had earlier been seized by police in an unrelated investigation and stored in a refrigerator -- close to lunch packets served to suspects being held in cells at the police station in Goes, 180 kilometers (110 miles) south of Amsterdam. [continues 118 words]
Cannabis remains the most widely used drug in Europe, but cocaine abuse rose sharply last year despite record amounts of the drug being seized, an annual report by the EU drugs agency said Thursday. Heroin use and drug injecting were declining, the report said, but the number of drugs-related deaths remained high at 7,000-8,000 people in the EU's 27 member states and Norway in 2005, the last year for which data is available. [continues 220 words]
AMSTERDAM, Netherlands: The Dutch Health Ministry announced plans Wednesday to extend its experimental medical marijuana program for five years, despite setbacks. Under the program, launched in 2003, standardized marijuana is grown by government-licensed growers under controlled conditions and sold by prescription in pharmacies. But few patients, even armed with a doctor's prescription, bought the regulated weed since they could buy it at a third of the price in "coffee shops," where it remains illegal but tolerated if sold in small amounts. [continues 474 words]
BANNA SALA, Laos: Fields of brightly colored opium poppies, Corsican gangsters and the CIA's secret war: The mystique of the Golden Triangle clings to the jungle-covered mountains here like the morning mist. But the prosaic reality is that after years of producing the lion's share of the world's opium, the Golden Triangle is now only a bit player in the business. Three decades ago, the northernmost reaches of Laos, Thailand and Myanmar produced more than 70 percent of all opium sold worldwide, most of it refined into heroin. Today the area averages about 5 percent of the world total, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. [continues 1760 words]
For all its global reach, there is something antiquated about the drug trade. The story of a bag of cocaine peddled in an American suburb, for instance, often begins in the Andes, where Quechua and Aymara Indians have harvested coca for centuries. Cooked in nearby labs and transported through Mexico into the United States by Mexican cartels, cocaine's path to market is not unlike that of a shirt - a straightforward chain from raw material in the third world to finished product in the first. [continues 605 words]
CHICAGO: Drug abuse experts say the arrest of former Vice President Al Gore's son underscores the growing problem of prescription drug abuse among America's youth. College students use the stimulant Adderall, an attention deficit drug, to get a speedy high or pull all-nighters. The other drugs police say they found in Al Gore III's possession -- marijuana, Xanax, Valium and Vicodin -- also are campus favorites, experts say. "Al Gore's son is just like everyone else's," said Dr. Donald Misch, director of health services at Northwestern University in Evanston. "The only thing missing was the No. 1 abused drug, which is alcohol." [continues 760 words]
MEXICO CITY: Mexico's two main drug cartels are reaching out to each other in an attempt to end a recent round of bloody turf battles, Mexican and U.S. officials confirmed Monday. The officials told The Associated Press the talks are aimed at stopping battles to control lucrative trafficking routes to the U.S. market. The circumstances of the negotiations between the Sinaloa and the Gulf cartels -- first reported in The Dallas Morning News' Monday -- were not clear. The gangs decided that the turf battles were costing them too much money, too much weaponry and too many deaths in their own ranks, leading them to seek a sort of nonaggression pact, according to a top official in the administration of President Felipe Calderon. [continues 325 words]
SAN FRANCISCO: Ed Rosenthal, the self-proclaimed marijuana "guru," was convicted again Wednesday in federal court of illegally growing hundreds of marijuana plants that he said were meant to treat sick people, which state law allows. The decision highlighted the growing tension between federal law and laws in 11 states that have legalized marijuana to some degree. Rosenthal, 63, was convicted of three cultivation and conspiracy charges after U.S. District Court Judge Charles Breyer prohibited the marijuana activist's lawyers from telling the jury Rosenthal was working for a marijuana club sanctioned by local government officials. [continues 189 words]
Dr. Tod Mikuriya, a California psychiatrist who was widely regarded as the grandfather of the medical marijuana movement in the United States, died May 20 at his home in Berkeley. He was 73. The cause was complications of cancer, his family told California news organizations. Mikuriya, who helped make the use of marijuana for medicinal purposes legal in California, spent the last four decades publicly advocating its use, researching its effects and publishing articles on the subject. He was an architect of Proposition 215, the state ballot measure that in 1996 made it legal for California doctors to recommend marijuana for seriously ill patients. He was also a founder of the California Cannabis Research Medical Group and its offshoot, the Society of Cannabis Clinicians. Sometimes Mikuriya's work found little favor. In 1996, General Barry McCaffrey, director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy derided the doctor's medical philosophy as "the Cheech and Chong show," referring to two Hollywood movie characters known for their marijuana-themed humor. [end]
U.S. Hopes For Colombia-Like Stability KABUL: In a walled compound near Kabul, two members of Colombia's counternarcotics police force are trying to teach raw Afghan recruits how to wage close-quarter combat. Using mock wooden AK-47 assault rifles, Lieutenant John Castaneda and Corporal John Orejuela demonstrate commando tactics to about 20 new members of what is intended to be an elite Afghan drug strike force. The recruits - who U.S. officials say lack even basic law enforcement skills - watch wide-eyed. [continues 1814 words]
MEXICO CITY: A top Mexican anti-drug official said Tuesday that Mexican soldiers and police are opening "thousands of fronts" against drug cartels, prompting intense attacks on security forces. Mexico is going after the cartels' entire structures rather than just leaders, sending large detachments of soldiers and federal police into areas where traffickers operated almost openly, Assistant Secretary of Public Safety Patricio Patino told The Associated Press on Tuesday. Traffickers have responded by launching a spate of previously rare attacks on troops, police and investigators. Monday saw a coordinated attack by gunman on a high-ranking intelligence official who investigated drug smuggling. He was shot dead in an SUV on his way to work at the attorney general's office in the Mexican capital. [continues 296 words]
BRUSSELS, Belgium: U.S. anti-drug czar John Walters urged European nations Tuesday to use their influence with Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez to help curb what he called an increasing flow of cocaine through the country's air and sea ports. Walters told reporters during talks at European Union headquarters there were growing reports of cocaine smuggling along routes through Venezuela. "I know some European nations have more extensive cooperation with the Venezuelan government and we hope that we can use that to try to cut some of these off," Walters said. [continues 503 words]
BOGOTA, Colombia: The street price of cocaine fell in the United States last year as purity rose, the White House drug czar said in a private letter to a key senator, indicating increasing supply and seemingly contradicting U.S. claims that US$4 billion (€2.9 billion) in aid to Colombia is stemming the flow. The drug czar, John Walters, wrote that retail cocaine prices fell by 11 percent from February 2005 to October 2006, to about US$135 (€99) per gram of pure cocaine. That's way below the US$600 a gram pure cocaine fetched in 1981, when the U.S. government began collecting data, and near the level it has been at since the early 1990s. [continues 520 words]
AUCKLAND, New Zealand: A new report by British researchers in The Lancet argues that alcohol and tobacco are more dangerous than some illegal drugs, including marijuana or Ecstasy. The study, based on evidence of actual risks and harms associated with drugs, suggests that alcohol and tobacco be legally reclassified as among the top 10 most dangerous drug substances. The report follows an independent commission by theA Royal Society of ArtsA that described Britain's drug laws as driven by "moral panic." [continues 556 words]
UNITED NATIONS: Asian medical experts appealed for global action to help curb the growing HIV/AIDS crisis in their region, home to more than 8.5 million infected people. "The HIV/AIDS epidemic in Asia is often overlooked, compared to Africa .. how many infections do we need before taking action?" Baatar Choisuren, Mongolia's U.N. ambassador, said Wednesday. The briefing by officials from Malaysia, India and Mongolia was sponsored by UNAIDS, the U.N. joint program on the epidemic. Asia has the second-highest level of HIV infection in the world after sub-Saharan Africa, and most victims belong to marginalized social groups which do not receive adequate support, according to Dr. Adeeba Kamarulzaman of the Malaysian AIDS Council. [continues 518 words]
KABUL: Sitting and eating quietly on his father's lap, the 18-month-old boy was oblivious to the infection running through his veins. But his father, a burly farmer, now a widower and father of four, knew only too well. It was the same one that killed his wife, the boy's mother, four months ago. The man started to cry. "When my wife died, I thought, well, it is from God, but at least I have him," he said. "Then I learned he is sick too. I asked if there is medicine and the doctors said no. They said, 'Just trust in God.'" [continues 1514 words]
WASHINGTON: The State Department's annual drug report said Thursday that Myanmar remained the world's second-largest opium poppy grower, after Afghanistan, although opium production continued to fall. Myanmar, also known as Burma, remains vulnerable to periodic spikes in opium production, the department's global survey of the drug war said. Opium is heroin's main ingredient. Burmese rebel groups, meanwhile, were said to be a continuing major source of methamphetimine. The country's reduction in opium cultivation has been accompanied by spikes in the production and trafficking of synthetic drugs, the report said. [continues 147 words]
Regarding Orlando Patterson's article, "The other losing war," (Views, Jan. 16): 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 U.S. drug war does not fight crime, it fuels crime. With alcohol prohibition repealed in 1933, liquor bootleggers no longer gun each other down in drive-by shootings, nor do American consumers go blind drinking unregulated bathtub gin. [continues 103 words]
KINGSTON, Jamaica: Preoccupation with Iraq has drawn attention from another unwinnable American war that has been far more destructive of life both at home and abroad and has caused far greater collateral damage in other countries, in addition to spreading contempt for American foreign engagements. This is the failed war on drugs. It was Nixon who, in 1971, first declared war on drugs. As with Iraq, the strategy is flawed in its conception and execution, made worse by a refusal to change course in the face of failure. [continues 618 words]
A Colombian senator and son of a presidential candidate assassinated by deceased drug kingpin Pablo Escobar has called for a congressional debate on the taboo subject of drug legalization. "The current repressive approach against drug trafficking hasn't worked despite the huge amounts of blood we Colombians have shed," Sen. Juan Manuel Galan, of the opposition Liberal Party, told The Associated Press on Thursday. "It's time to look at different options, together with other drug-production nations, as a way to break the back of the drug traffickers." [continues 416 words]
Peru's president is promoting the virtues of legal coca, but the country's defense minister said Wednesday that Peru remains committed to eradicating the illegal portion of the crop that is the raw material for cocaine. "Should illegal coca leaf crops disappear? There is no doubt. That is the objective," Defense Minister Allan Wagner told Radioprogramas radio. "How to achieve that requires a lot of intelligence and political sensitivity to know how this can truly advance." Eradication is a touchy -- and deadly -- issue in Peru, the world's second-largest producer of cocaine after Colombia. [continues 334 words]
ALBUQUERQUE: Two police officers have sued Burger King Corp., alleging personal injury, negligence, battery and violation of fair practices after they were served hamburgers that had been sprinkled with marijuana. "It gives a whole new meaning to the word 'Whopper,'" plaintiffs attorney Sam Bregman said Monday. "The idea that these hoodlums would put marijuana into a hamburger and therefore attempt to impair law enforcement officers trying to do their jobs is outrageous." The civil lawsuit was filed Friday in state District Court in Bernalillo County by Mark Landavazo and Henry Gabaldon, officers for the Isleta Pueblo tribal police. [continues 220 words]
Marco L. has a memento of the late summer night when he and two friends were sprayed with gunfire by men on scooters, as the friends chatted near the Gate of San Gennaro in the heart of Naples. A bullet is still lodged near his hip. The ochre walls of the piazza are also scarred, with pockmarks from bullets gone astray. The security grate on the toy shop has 80 bullets holes, the owner estimates. "They must have mistaken us for someone else," said Marco L., a baby- faced 22-year-old in a red sweatshirt and jeans, who spent 15 days in a hospital. He refused to give his surname for fear of retribution. "They fired 12 or 13 shots and all three of us were hit," he said. [continues 926 words]
Colombia's vice president has it out for coke-snorting celebrities, targeting people like supermodel Kate Moss who he said are directly financing his country's violent, drug-fueled civil conflict. "Cocaine not only destroys you, it also destroys a country," is the theme of a hard-hitting Colombian-led advertising campaign designed to change attitudes among Europeans about their booming cocaine habit in the same way that "Just Say No" did in the United States. Moss herself doesn't appear in the ads, but Vice President Francisco Santos said she's a perfect example of liberal European attitudes toward drug use -- she's enjoyed a career comeback even after a British tabloid published photos of her apparently snorting cocaine. [continues 536 words]
Mexican country music was blaring in the background at the Sol y Sombra bar a few weeks back when several men in military garb broke up the late-night party. Waving machine guns in the air, they screamed at the crowd to stay put and then dumped the contents of a heavy plastic bag on the dance floor. Five human heads rolled to a bloody stop. "This is not something you see every day," said a bartender, who asked not to be named for fear of losing his own head. "Very ugly." [continues 1497 words]
Afghanistan's opium production has soared "out of control," the U.N. drugs and crime agency warned Tuesday, adding that proceeds from the opium harvest were being used to fund the resurgent Taliban. The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime is calling on NATO and Afghan troops to attack heroin labs, opium bazzars and convoys transporting the narcotic, said Preeta Bannerjee, a spokeswoman for the agency. Opium production in Afghanistan rose 59 percent in 2006 to a record 165,000 hectares (408,000 acres) -- representing 92 percent of the world's opium, according to U.N. figures. [continues 451 words]
The Italian Red Cross and other organizations launched a campaign Monday to promote the idea of licensing Afghanistan's illegal opium production to make morphine. "This system we advocate provides for one part of the Afghan opium to be used to make legal morphine, rather than illegal heroin," Massimo Barra, president of the Italian Red Cross told reporters in Rome. The campaign seeks to promote trade agreements with Afghanistan and stems from a study released last year by The Senlis Council -- a European think-tank on drug policy -- that examined the potential for licensing poppy cultivation in Afghanistan to provide legal, opium-based painkillers. [continues 329 words]
MAASTRICHT, Netherlands - Watched over by a contented Mona Lisa with a large reefer between her lips, clients of the Smoky Boat offer a cozy picture of peace, playing backgammon and sipping juice between puffs from cigarettes laced with hashish or marijuana. The tranquillity, however, could come to an abrupt end. Marc Josemans, the owner of the Smoky Boat, a cannabis cafe on a docked river barge in Maastricht, said he might soon be packing up his menu of pungent "Nirvana Special," "Silver Haze" and "Super Skunk." [continues 1073 words]
BOGOTA, Colombia The latest chapter in America's long war on drugs - a six-year, $4.7 billion effort to slash Colombia's coca crop - has left the price, quality and availability of cocaine on American streets virtually unchanged. The effort, begun in 2000 and known as Plan Colombia, had a specific goal of halving this country's coca crop in five years. That has not happened. Instead, drug policy experts say, coca, the essential ingredient for cocaine, has been redistributed to smaller and harder-to-reach plots, adding to the cost and difficulty of the drug war. [continues 2465 words]
SAN FRANCISCO -- The newest attraction planned for Fisherman's Wharf, this city's most popular tourist destination, has no sign, no advertisements and not a scrap of sourdough. Yet everyone seems to think that the new business, the Green Cross, will be a hit, drawing customers from all over the region to sample its pungent wares. For some, that is exactly the problem. The Green Cross is a cannabis club, one of scores that sell marijuana to patients with a doctor's note. They have sprouted around California in the decade since the passage of Proposition 215, which legalized the use and sale of marijuana to those with chronic pain, illness or infirmity. San Francisco, a hot spot in the AIDS epidemic, voted overwhelmingly in favor of the proposition in 1996 and has about 30 clubs, serving about 25,000 patients and caregivers. [continues 782 words]
KUNMING, China This scenic capital of China's southern Yunnan Province has earned itself a more unsavory sobriquet - China's AIDS capital. Historically, this multi-ethnic region of stunning valleys and gorges, including a site locals say is the fabled region of Shangri-La, stood out in mostly Han China for its uniquely diverse culture and beauty. Now the province, where China's first HIV cases were discovered in the early 1990s, is home to about 30,000 of the 140,000 Chinese who are HIV- positive, according to official reports. And that is almost certainly an underestimate, said Yang Maobin, director of Daytop, an HIV/AIDS care center in Kunming. Experts say that in reality there could be as many as 200,000 HIV cases in Yunnan and 300,000 more in the neighboring autonomous regions of Guangxi and western Xinjiang. [continues 944 words]
SAN FRANCISCO The newest attraction planned for Fisherman's Wharf, this city's most popular tourist destination, has no sign, no advertisements and not even a scrap of sourdough. Yet everyone seems to think that the new business, the Green Cross, will be a hit, drawing customers from all over to sample its sweet-smelling wares. For some, that is exactly the problem. The Green Cross is a cannabis club, one of scores that sell marijuana to patients carrying a doctor's note. The clubs have sprouted around California in the decade since the passage of Proposition 215, which legalized the use and sale of marijuana to those suffering from chronic pain, illness or infirmity. [continues 1103 words]
If health safety determined drug laws, instead of cultural norms, marijuana would be legal ("The politics of pot," editorial, April 24). Unlike alcohol, marijuana does not cause death by overdose, nor does it share the addictive properties of tobacco. Marijuana can be harmful if abused, but prison cells are inappropriate as health interventions and ineffective as deterrents. By raiding voter-approved medical marijuana providers in California, the very same Bush administration that claims illicit drug use funds terrorism is forcing cancer and AIDS patients into the hands of street dealers. Apparently marijuana prohibition is more important than protecting the United States from terrorism. Robert Sharpe Washington [end]
