Parental alcohol and drug abuse is producing a population explosion of battered and neglected children, overwhelming the nation's child welfare and family court systems and shattering the traditional disposition to keep children with their natural parents. From 1986 to 1997, the number of abused and neglected children jumped from 1.4 million to 3 million, a 114 percent increase, more than eight times greater than the 14 percent increase in the children's population. At least seven -- some professionals say nine -- of 10 cases of child abuse and neglect are caused or exacerbated by alcohol and drug abuse and addiction. Children whose parents abuse alcohol and drugs are almost three times likelier to be abused and more than four times likelier to be neglected. [continues 772 words]
Thank you for your recent words about the inhumanity of our country's approach to drug use. You are right, 30 years in prison for a minor possession makes no sense, not for the individual who can become a hardened criminal while in prison, not for his family and not for society, which must spend huge amounts of money to punish someone for what is essentially harmless behavior. I am a graduate student in the department of history at the University of Massachusetts. I have been researching the war on drugs for a number of years, and the whole thing strikes me as being tragically mishandled. It makes me sad to see so many people's lives destroyed for the sake of the careers of some opportunistic politicians. Our country must not throw away many of the freedoms we once considered precious. We must be careful not to go too far and risk turning ourselves into a police state. J.G., Amherst, Mass. [end]
MEXICO CITY—Mexican police recently captured the man believed to be the country's most notorious drug money launderer, detained and interrogated him for three weeks, then set him free despite a federal warrant for his arrest, according to Mexican sources. The alleged money launderer, Humberto Garcia Abrego, brother of jailed Gulf cartel kingpin Juan Garcia Abrego, had been the subject of an intense manhunt since February 1997, when he allegedly paid three federal judges almost $1 million in bribes to be freed from prison. He was never questioned about the alleged payoffs during his recent incarceration, according to an official familiar with his interrogation. [continues 1186 words]
A new "early warning system" designed to spot emerging drug abuse trends in Maryland is up and running, and analysts at the University of Maryland in College Park are poring over the first set of results, authorities said. The program was established last fall at the request of Lt. Gov. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend (D) in response to what appeared to be signs of increased heroin use among teenagers in the Baltimore suburbs. The federal government and most states already attempt to monitor drug use with regular surveys and studies, but those findings usually are available only after a lag time of a year or two. The Maryland program's goal is to detect trends more quickly, and then pass the information on to law enforcement, school and drug treatment personnel. [continues 610 words]
Vice President Cites 'Spiritual Problem' Releasing the administration's annual drug control strategy yesterday, Vice President Gore called drug abuse a "spiritual problem" and said that young people beset with feelings of emptiness and alienation are more likely to succumb to "messages that are part of a larger entity of evil." Gore called for greater efforts to improve schools and create greater economic opportunity for young people, especially in minority and low-income communities. The administration seeks nearly $18 billion for drug control programs in its new budget. As with its previous drug control efforts, the administration would allocate about two-thirds of anti-drug spending for law enforcement, interdiction and other efforts to attack the supply of illicit drugs; the remaining one-third would go to prevention, treatment and other programs to reduce the demand. [continues 422 words]
VATICAN CITY, Feb. 8 -- Marijuana and a brain cyst may have impaired the reasoning of a Swiss Guardsman who fatally shot his commander and the commander's wife here last May, then took his own life, Vatican officials said. Closing the books on the first killings within Vatican precincts in 150 years, the officials said a nine-month probe into the incident led investigators to the same conclusion they expressed at the time: That Cedric Tornay, 23, shot Col. Alois Estermann and his wife, Gladys, in their Vatican apartment with his service revolver before killing himself -- dismissing the possibility of other suspects and ruling out a conspiracy. [continues 205 words]
Activists Registering Disdain For Laws With a 'Not Guilty' In courthouses across the country, an unprecedented level of juror activism is taking hold, ignited by a movement of people who are turning their back on the evidence they hear at trial and instead using the jury box as a bold form of civil protest. Whether they are African Americans who believe the system is stacked against them, libertarians who abhor the overbearing hand of government or someone else altogether, these jurors are choosing to ignore a judge's instructions to punish those who break the law because they don't like what it says or how it is being applied to a particular defendant. [continues 4386 words]
Holdout in Colo. Case Found Guilty of Obstructing Justice CENTRAL CITY, Colo. -- When the jurors first filed into secluded room to begin their deliberations, Laura Kriho moved quickly to claim the chair at the head of the table. It was a signal to the others that she was up to something. As it turned out, she was. And over the course of the next two days, the 34-year-old college research assistant would make legal history, becoming the embodiment of an escalating phenomenon in which jurors refuse to convict despite the evidence presented at trial -- and in her case being punished for it. Jury deliberations normally are secret. But because Kriho herself became the subject of a criminal investigation, her still-evolving case offers a rare window on the 12 strangers who come together to decide someone's fate and what can happen when one of those jurors has her own view of justice. [continues 1086 words]
Rep. Bill McCollum (R-Fla.) does not present himself as a man of self-doubts or second thoughts. On his Web site, he informs us that he "is considered the House of Representatives' foremost authority on crime." He has relentlessly pursued the president as a House impeachment manager. He has pushed resolutely for tougher crime and immigration laws. So it's interesting to see McCollum, who represents Orlando and surrounding territory, pleading the case of a drug-using, check-kiting, parole-busting immigrant from Canada. [continues 863 words]
In his Jan. 2 op-ed column, "Raid on Rights," Nat Hentoff is mistaken about a change in the law that allows federal officials to wiretap conversations of a given suspect regardless of the phone the suspect uses. First, Mr. Hentoff suggests that so-called roving wiretaps are a new idea. In fact, they have been legal for more than a decade. In 1986 Congress authorized the roving wiretap to deal with the sophisticated criminal who tries to avoid electronic surveillance by constantly switching phones. This law allows law enforcement to tap the criminal, not the phone. [continues 392 words]
Now that Billy Jeff has succeeded so handsomely in his scheme to bait the Republican Party into self-destructing, it's time to begin the inevitable, endless process of figuring out the Meaning of It All. It isn't all bad; there are collateral benefits to be found in the nation's long ordeal. People of good heart are delighted at the prospect of such God-awful Neanderthals as Rep. Bob Barr (R-Ga.) trying to live up to their new-found roles as guardians of the right of women to be legally protected from sexual harassment. [continues 853 words]
In the Jan. 12 editorial "Battles in the Drug War," The Post erred in stating that the decline in coca cultivation in Peru and Bolivia is due in part to a policy of aerial spraying. Neither Peru nor Bolivia uses aerial spraying as a means to eradicate illicit coca crops. The only country in the hemisphere that does is Colombia -- and there, U.S. anti-drug policy has been a spectacular failure. Colombia is by far the largest recipient of U.S. antidrug funding, totaling almost $1 billion to date. Yet over the past decade, drug production in Colombia has risen an estimated 260 percent, and coca production has more than tripled, making Colombia the world's leading producer. Only five years ago, no heroin was produced in Colombia. The country now ranks third in the world in poppy cultivation and fourth in heroin production. [continues 391 words]
McCaffrey Pledges $1 Million Toward Advanced Olympic Testing Olympic athletes should be available for drug testing 365 days a year, not just during Olympic years, and there should be an independent agency to administer such tests, said Barry McCaffrey, director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy. McCaffrey, the White House's drug czar, put those and other recommendations for eliminating athlete drug use into a 10-page policy paper sent to International Olympic Committee members. McCaffrey will be part of the U.S. delegation led by U.S. Olympic Committee President Bill Hybl that will attend the IOC world conference on doping held in Lausanne, Switzerland, Feb. 2-4. [continues 400 words]
The Post's editorial "Reprieve for Illegals" [Jan. 3] does a great disservice to readers by presenting a skewed view of the American public's sentiments about the presence of illegal immigrants. On what basis does The Post make the claim that "many Americans" would prefer to keep illegals in this country? Certainly that was not my impression when I accompanied a group of foreign journalists who visited San Diego and El Paso several years ago. Quite the opposite: The current representative from El Paso, Sylvester Reyes, built his reputation and was elected on the basis that he would deal sternly with illegals who transported drugs and terrorized neighborhoods. [continues 178 words]
Federal authorities announced one of the largest cocaine seizures in U.S. history yesterday and local Arizona police said they found a pair of tunnels under the U.S.-Mexican border that they suspect were built to sneak drugs into the Southwest. The capture of nearly five tons of cocaine aboard a Houston-bound ship and the discovery of the tunnels in Nogales, Ariz., illustrated two of the ways U.S. land and sea borders continue to come under pressure from international drug traffickers despite interdiction efforts by U.S. law enforcement agencies. [continues 464 words]
Nearly 6,200 criminals released on parole and probation in Maryland have been ordered to report to authorities twice a week for urine tests as part of a landmark attempt to overhaul how the state supervises drug-addicted offenders, according to state officials. The figure is more than five times higher than it was just two months ago - -- a sign the state's ambitious "Break the Cycle" program is expanding rapidly. Under the plan, all 25,000 drug addicts on parole and probation in Maryland eventually will be required to undergo treatment and frequent testing -- and face swift, escalating punishments if they skip a treatment session or test positive for drug use. [continues 690 words]
MEXICO CITY, Jan. 14—Legal reforms designed to strengthen the rule of law and end deep-seated corruption in Mexico's justice system are largely failing, according to a new report. The 123-page report released today by Human Rights Watch, an international human rights group, says that the use of illegal arrests and detentions, torture, forced confessions and fabricated evidence are still widespread and that top government officials and judges deliberately look the other way. Numerous judicial reforms implemented by Mexico in recent years have provided a framework for a cleaner, more accountable judicial system, the group acknowledged. But instead of being used to bring about real change, they are being used to quiet domestic and international criticism of a system that still tolerates abuses. [continues 229 words]
State Targeting More Ex-Offenders Nearly 6,200 criminals released on parole and probation in Maryland have been ordered to report to authorities twice a week for urine tests as part of a landmark attempt to overhaul how the state supervises drug-addicted ex-offenders, according to state officials. The figure is more than five times higher than it was just two months ago--a sign that the state's ambitious Break the Cycle program is expanding rapidly. Under the plan, all 25,000 drug addicts on parole and probation in Maryland eventually will be required to undergo treatment and frequent testing--and face swift, escalating punishments if they skip a treatment session or test positive for drug use. [continues 816 words]
SATELLITE photos inform the U.S. government that the cultivation of coca, raw material of cocaine, is sharply down in Peru and Bolivia and up in Colombia. It follows that: When producing-country governments cooperate, it counts. A natural fungus helped in Peru, but there and in Bolivia official policy supported spraying, crop substitution and aerial interdiction, and they are working. Americans and Latins alike need to know this in order to fit politically and to keep the heat on producers and shippers. [continues 228 words]
Miami Community Repeats a Pattern of Violence and Hope MIAMI—The bicycles flit by the window of the Rev. Richard Bennett's office in Liberty City, one of Miami's most chronically troubled and violent neighborhoods. They are not ridden by children, but by young men who seem too big, too bulky, for the small, low-slung seats. "If the police come to catch you on the corner loitering, as long as you're moving, well, you're not really loitering," explained Bennett, 42, executive director of the African American Council of Christian Clergy. "They're brilliant young men. They just need to get jobs." [continues 1326 words]
Drug Trade's Spread in Mexico Gives Words a New Start MEXICO CITY—Enter the land of narco-scandals, where narco-realtors launder narco-profits, narco-babies grow up to be narco-juniors, and narco-ballads glorify narco-traffickers who hire narco-spies and narco-chauffeurs to serve the narco-empires they build with narco-dollars. These days it's almost impossible to pick up a Mexican newspaper without narco-headlines detailing the exploits of narco- kidnappers, narco-cops or narco-politicians. Or, for that matter, to hold a conversation without at least one reference to a narco-something-or-other. [continues 734 words]
The Grateful Dead's American Adventure By Carol Brightman Clarkson Potter. 356 pp. $27.50 The publishing world dumped a slew of new books about the Grateful Dead into book stores a few years ago -- even before the legendary singer of the band, Jerry Garcia, died in 1995. With the exception of Dark Star by Robert Greenfield, most of them were better left off the shelves. By today's lightning-fast standards, Carol Brightman seems to have completely missed her prime marketing moment with Sweet Chaos. Unhurried by the pressure of immediate demand, however, Brightman has, in the end, produced the most exhaustive and beautifully written book so far about the venerable band. With insight and clarity, she captures the essence of not only the Grateful Dead but the entire '60s era in which the band began. [continues 776 words]
TICONDEROGA, N.Y.—This is a reading comprehension exercise for children. It is written by Susan Fineman, a reading specialist in the New Haven, Conn., school district. A company is trying to erase an embarrassing mistake it made on pencils bearing an anti-drug message. The pencils carry the slogan "Too Cool to Do Drugs." But a sharp-eyed fourth-grader in northern New York noticed that when the pencils are sharpened, the message turns into "Cool to Do Drugs" and then, simply, "Do Drugs." [continues 327 words]
'Not a New Passion' for Teacher-Turned-Speaker The new House speaker, J. Dennis Hastert, yesterday signaled a radically different Republican approach to education, an issue Democrats have successfully used in recent years to batter the GOP. Hastert (R-Ill.), in his first public appearance since taking over Wednesday from Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.), used school events in Chicago and suburban Elgin and Aurora to announce a $2.5 million grant to expand public school drug and safety programs. A former high school history teacher and coach, Hastert vowed to make education a priority on the congressional agenda -- and to do it on a bipartisan basis. "This is a time when we need to come together to get results," the speaker told students at the Crawford First Alternative High School in Chicago. "This is not a new passion for me." [continues 692 words]
Justice Dept. Feared It Would Block Prosecutions DENVER, Jan. 8—A federal appeals court ruled today that prosecutors can offer plea bargains in exchange for testimony, overturning a court decision that declared the common practice illegal. In a 9 to 3 vote, the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the panel's earlier ruling that plea-bargained testimony constituted bribery was "patently absurd." The panel's July 2 decision stunned the federal criminal justice system, and the Justice Department said law enforcement would be paralyzed if the decision were allowed to stand. [continues 336 words]
For the moment, the multipurpose room at Rogers Heights Elementary School in Bladensburg is a theater and classroom. Actor Alan Rubinstein becomes Joe, a rebellious character who can't accept responsibility when his mother chastises him for keeping his room messy or when a teacher scolds him for making bad grades or when a friend complains that he borrowed a toy and broke it. Joe, dressed in a red baseball cap, gray slacks and a white T-shirt with the words "Just Say No to Drugs" on it, weaves through the audience of children sitting cross-legged on the floor to get advice on how to solve his problem. [continues 775 words]
Peru and Bolivia have sharply reduced the cultivation of coca, the raw material of cocaine, in the past year, but production of the illegal crop in Colombia has exploded, according to newly released U.S. government figures. "These are absolutely astounding changes in both Peru and Bolivia," said Clinton administration drug policy director Barry R. McCaffrey in unveiling the figures, which were derived from CIA satellite photography. "The main reason is the political will of the democratic governments there. . . . The United States has played a modest supporting role, but these countries now see eradication as in their own national interests." [continues 553 words]
Flurry of Revelations Designed to Cast Clinton in Favorable Light President Clinton offered another sneak preview of his proposed 2000 budget yesterday, trumpeting about $215 million his plan includes to help states impose tougher drug testing and treatment policies for prisoners and parolees. The Roosevelt Room announcement was the latest in a flurry of formal announcements and orchestrated leaks coming from the White House about its budget. The goal, say White House aides, is for these flurries to accumulate into a fresh blanket of domestic policy initiatives between now and Clinton's State of the Union address, planned for Jan. 19, and the official release of his budget on Feb. 1. [continues 758 words]
An Unlikely Leader Takes Helm With High Spirits and 'Hooya' ST. PAUL, Minn., Jan. 4 -- Jesse "the Body" Ventura was sworn in as Minnesota's 38th governor today. In the end, the tough-talking ex-wrestler did not rappel down the granite walls of the State Capitol's rotunda, as he had threatened, but no one seemed truly disappointed: The nation's most celebrated and unlikely governor has become a Minnesota folk hero, if only because he makes anything seem possible. [continues 786 words]
Here are some pretty amazing facts from the United Nations' Human Development Report of 1998: The world consumed more than $24 trillion in goods and services last year, six times the figure for 1975. Of the world's 6.8 billion people, 4.4 billion live in developing countries, the rest in rich industrial or transition countries. The 3 richest people in the world own assets that exceed the combined gross domestic products of the world's poorest 48 countries. Among the 4.4 billion people who live in developing countries, three-fifths have no access to basic sanitation; almost one-third are without safe drinking water; one-quarter lack adequate housing; one-fifth live beyond reach of modern health services; one-fifth of the children do not get as far as grade five in school and one-fifth are undernourished. [continues 135 words]
Demanding a fundamental change in the nation's crime-fighting strategy, Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist yesterday called on Congress to halt the politically popular practice of enacting federal laws against an ever-greater number of crimes once handled in state courts. "The trend to federalize crimes that traditionally have been handled in state courts . . . threatens to change entirely the nature of our federal system," Rehnquist said in his year-end report on the federal judiciary. The chief justice was unusually blunt in questioning the motives behind recently enacted statutes that have made federal crimes out of misdeeds ranging from carjackings to failure to pay child support. And while Rehnquist has occasionally expressed concern about the growing jurisdiction of the federal courts, his new report is by far the most explicit and represents his first formal complaint to Congress on behalf of the federal judiciary. As a result, legislators and others who follow the courts said it appears certain to frame legislative debate in the coming year. [continues 831 words]
