The Bush administration's habit of politicizing its scientific agencies was on display again last week when the Food and Drug Administration, for no compelling reason, unexpectedly issued a brief, poorly documented statement disputing the therapeutic value of marijuana. The statement was described as a response to numerous inquiries from Capitol Hill, but its likely intent was to buttress a crackdown on people who smoke marijuana for medical purposes and to counteract state efforts to legalize the practice. Ordinarily, when the FDA addresses a thorny issue, it convenes a panel of experts who wade through the latest evidence and then render an opinion as to whether a substance is safe and effective. This time the agency simply issued a skimpy one-page statement asserting that "no sound scientific studies" supported the medical use of marijuana. [continues 211 words]
WASHINGTON -- The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has concluded that "no sound scientific studies" support the medical use of marijuana, contradicting a 1999 review by a panel of highly regarded scientists. The announcement Thursday inserts the health agency into yet another fierce political fight. Susan Bro, an agency spokeswoman, said the statement resulted from a past combined review by federal drug enforcement, regulatory and research agencies that concluded that "smoked marijuana has no currently accepted or proven medical use in the United States and is not an approved medical treatment." She said that the agency was issuing the statement because of numerous inquiries from Capitol Hill but would likely do nothing to enforce it. [continues 496 words]
MILAN Italy famously shuts down in August, and that may explain the sleepy response to a report last weekend that drug abuse in northern Italy has been significantly underestimated. But acknowledging that cocaine use has surged, Italian authorities said they were treating the findings as a wake-up call. Officials are so concerned with the rise in cocaine consumption that they plan to initiate a nationwide awareness campaign targeting young people this autumn. "We're looking closely at the issue, which is very preoccupying," Carlo Giovanardi, minister for relations with Parliament, said in a telephone interview. [continues 674 words]
TEL AVIV - The parties my father votes for never get into Parliament. One year he'll vote for some economist with thick glasses who promises a revolution in tax law, the next year for an irate teacher with a ponytail who advocates a revolution in the school system, the year after that for a restaurateur in Jaffa who explains that only a new culinary approach can bring peace to the Middle East. The one thing these candidates have in common is a genuine desire for fundamental change. That and the naivete to believe such change is possible. My father, even at the age of 78, is naive enough to believe this, too. It's one of his finest qualities. [continues 630 words]
Regarding "Drug trade thrives on the West's denial" by Antonio Maria Costa (Views, Feb. 3): International drug policy is a complete failure. Partly responsible for this failure is the spread of misinformation, which is, indeed, "leaving young people confused." When Costa complains that there is no clarity on just how dangerous "drugs like marijuana" are and in the next paragraph talks about "gunshots in the night and the sight of bodies stacking up in morgues" there is a clear intention to link the two ideas in the mind of the reader, even though such violence is related to crack cocaine. [continues 58 words]
Antonio Maria Costa makes the common mistake of assuming that punitive drug laws actually reduce drug use. Consider the experience of the former land of the free. Here in the United States, police searches on public transit, drug-sniffing dogs in schools and random drug testing have led to a loss of civil liberties, while failing miserably at preventing drug use. The drug war is in large part a war on marijuana. Despite clear evidence that draconian laws fail to deter use, the U.S. government uses its superpower status to export a dangerous moral crusade around the globe. The short-term health effects of marijuana are inconsequential compared to the long-term effects of criminal records. The European Union should Just Say No to the American Inquisition. Robert Sharpe, Arlington, Virginia [end]
Sure, prohibition may help stop some from experimenting, but a drug's illegal status may actually attract some young users. Sean McDonnell, Kobe, Japan [end]
VIENNA Colombia's vice president, Francisco Santos Calderon, warned European countries recently that they ignore an increase in cocaine consumption across the Continent at their peril. When looking at the relaxed approach to drug control pursued by some European governments, I am tempted to go even further and conclude that societies have the drug problem they deserve. That rise in cocaine use will no doubt be a topic of discussion as international experts in drug control meet at Wilton Park in England this weekend to consider this question: Is international drug policy working? My answer to that question will be "Yes, but ..." [continues 636 words]
BURG, Switzerland - Albert Hofmann, the father of LSD, walked slowly across the small corner office of his modernist home on a grassy Alpine hilltop here, hoping to show a visitor the vista that sweeps before him on clear days. But outside there was only a white blanket of fog hanging just beyond the crest of the hill. He picked up a photograph of the view on his desk instead, left there perhaps to convince visitors of what really lies beyond the window. [continues 968 words]
LAHORE, Pakistan The terrifying spectacle of a great city once again plunged into chaos and grief underlines one of the more glaring failures of the U.S.-led war on terrorism: the failure to capture Osama bin Laden. Washington has mainly itself to blame. By transferring resources, satellite surveillance and manpower to Iraq, the United States not only took the pressure off bin Laden, but also gave the Taliban, Al Qaeda, drug barons and warlords time and space to reconstitute themselves in Afghanistan, where insurgent attacks are causing the bloodiest summer since 2001. [continues 653 words]
The Laura Dester Shelter here is licensed for 38 children, but at times in the past months it has housed 90, forcing siblings to double up in cots. It is supposed to be a 24-hour stopping point between troubled homes and foster care, but with foster homes backed up, children are staying weeks and sometimes months, making it more orphanage than shelter, a cacophony of need. In a rocking chair, a volunteer used one arm to feed a 5-day-old boy taken from his mother at birth, the other to placate a toddler who was wandering from adult to adult begging, "Bottle?" A 3-year-old who arrived at dawn shrieked as someone rubbed salve on her to kill lice. [continues 1542 words]
WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court has upheld the power of Congress to prohibit and prosecute the possession and use of marijuana for medical purposes, even in the 11 states that permit it. The 6-to-3 decision on Monday, a firm reassertion of federal authority, showed a deep fissure within the coalition that over the past decade has provided the majority for a series of decisions curbing congressional power and elevating the role of the states. Two members of that coalition, Justices Anthony Kennedy and Antonin Scalia, voted this time to uphold federal government authority. [continues 1023 words]
BOGOTA - After pouring $3 billion into Plan Colombia, the United States is about to be betrayed by one of its closest allies in the fight against drugs and terror. The Colombian government is putting the final touches on a scheme to launder the criminal records of top paramilitary commanders - including some of the country's most powerful drug lords - while allowing them to keep their wealth and maintain their control over much of the country. Should the plan be approved, it will be an enormous setback for U.S. counternarcotics and counterterror efforts, as well as for human rights in Colombia. [continues 598 words]
DAVAO CITY, Philippines Tears welled in Clarita Alia's eyes when she saw the three unmarked tombs, one on top of each other. "There they are," she said as she stretched out her trembling hand, almost touching the cold, whitewashed concrete. "They're all gone." "They" are Richard, Christopher and Bobby, three of Alia's eight children who died one after the other at the hands of death squads in this city. Richard, 18, was the first to be killed, in 2001, followed by Christopher, 16, that same year and Bobby, 14, the next year. [continues 903 words]
NEW YORK -- Global fanfare accompanies every International AIDS Conference, but an obscure United Nations meeting next week in Vienna may prove more critical to the course of the global HIV epidemic. Delegates are gathering for the 48th meeting of the Commission on Narcotic Drugs, a largely unpublicized UN entity that sets the international drug control agenda and that this year is focusing on questions of HIV prevention. If recent events are any gauge, the commission - cowed by American hard-liners - will challenge the efficacy of programs, like needle exchange, proven to reduce HIV transmission among active drug users. [continues 635 words]
BANLAO, China - The road to this town, treacherous and narrow, ends after kilometers of knee-deep mud on a mountain path that looks down upon the clouds. It was market day, and the gently sloping main street was so choked with people and goods changing hands that for all the tattered clothes and sun-creased faces, the place radiated a measure of prosperity. The magic of the larger market that has lifted so much of China out of poverty has bypassed most of this region, where peasants live as they have for generations, carrying firewood on their backs and farming the steep, terraced slopes by hand. But Banlao, otherwise lost in the shadows of tall mountains, where Myanmar, formerly Burma, looms visible in the distance, has another source of wealth. [continues 832 words]
Forensic analysis of the remains of 31 militants who seized the public school in Beslan last month has determined that all of them were dependent on drugs, a senior law enforcement official said in a statement reported by Russian news agencies Sunday. Nikolai Shepel, the deputy prosecutor general of Russia's southern federal district, also said that blood tests had found very high levels of heroin and morphine among a majority of the attackers who died at the siege, "which indicates that they were long-term drug addicts and had been using drugs permanently while preparing for the terrorist attack," according to the Interfax wire service. [continues 301 words]
'I don't know where George Soros gets his money," one man said. "I don't know where - if it comes from overseas or from drug groups or where it comes from." George Soros, another declared, "wants to spend $75 million defeating George W. Bush because Soros wants to legalize heroin." After all, a third said, Soros "is a self-admitted atheist; he was a Jew who figured out a way to survive the Holocaust." The suggestion that Soros, who has spent billions promoting democracy around the world, is in the pay of drug cartels came from Dennis Hastert, the speaker of the House of Representatives, whom the Constitution puts two heartbeats from the presidency. After standing by his remarks for several days, Hastert finally claimed that he was talking about how Soros spends his money, not where he gets it. [continues 607 words]
NAALDWIJK, Netherlands: -- James Burton, who once served a year in U.S. federal prison, still gets a kick out of the signs at his marijuana plantation here reminding employees whom to call in the event of an emergency. The Dutch police. Sixteen years ago, Burton did time in a maximum-security facility in Marion, Illinois, and lost his family farm in Bowling Green, Kentucky, after being nabbed with an estimated $112,000 worth of marijuana that he said he needed to stave off glaucoma. Last year, the Dutch government gave him a five-year contract to grow more than 10 times that much. [continues 707 words]
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld made an unannounced visit to Afghanistan on Wednesday to review preparations for the October presidential election and to go over reconstruction and counternarcotics programs. During the daylong visit, he planned consultations with Afghan and United Nations officials, as well as meetings with senior U.S. military officials. Before flying to the Afghan capital, he said that U.S.-led coalition forces were preparing a coordinated effort to attack the narcotics trade in the country, recognizing that drug income could be used to fund insurgents and terrorists. [continues 1116 words]
BOGOTÁ A recently declassified U.S. intelligence report from 1991 says that President Alvaro Uribe of Colombia, now a staunch supporter of Washington's war against drug trafficking, was at that time a close associate of Colombia's most powerful drug lord and an ardent ally of the cocaine traffickers then engulfing this country. A spokesman for Uribe denounced the findings in the Defense Intelligence Agency's 13-year-old report on Colombia's biggest drug traffickers as "the same information" presented in a campaign by political opponents in the 2002 presidential election. And senior U.S. intelligence officials and diplomats cautioned that such reports might not be accurate. However, the statement issued by the presidential spokesman did not directly address the report's most damaging assertion: that Uribe had been linked to the top drug trafficker of the era, Pablo Escobar. [continues 522 words]
(MOSCOW) Vladimir Loginov, 25 years old but with the tired eyes of a man much older, sat reading the Russian criminal code and explaining his fate. He had been arrested on the streets in 1999, accused of possessing approximately a quarter gram of heroin. He spent five years and two months in prison. By the time he left, he had contracted tuberculosis. Under a new Russian drug policy, such a bleak journey through the country's penal system for small-scale drug possession has become much less likely. After years of harsh penalties for people convicted of possessing small amounts of illegal drugs, Russia has liberalized policies underpinning the law. [continues 569 words]
