3-Day Crackdown In 5 Northeast Counties Results In 355 Arrests BOAZ - One of the country's most dangerous gangs is believed to be behind drug dealing and other crimes in DeKalb and Marshall counties, according to law enforcement officials. At a news conference Friday in Boaz, Assistant FBI Director Kenneth Kaiser said the El Salvador-based gang MS-13 has a presence in the area. "We have a major concern about them," he said. "They are a very violent, prevalent group." [continues 420 words]
A Politician Says That If the U.S. Doesn't Pass a Free-Trade Agreement, His Country Could Be Forced to Withdraw. BOGOTA, COLOMBIA -- A prominent politician closely allied with President Alvaro Uribe said his nation should pull out of a U.S.-financed effort to fight drug trafficking and terrorism if the American Congress does not pass a free-trade agreement with his country. Sen. Carlos Garcia, a presidential aspirant and leader of the largest bloc in Colombia's Congress, said Monday in an interview that the failure to pass the trade accord could force the government to withdraw from Plan Colombia, which has cost the United States about $5 billion over seven years. [continues 705 words]
Five More Lawmakers Are Arrested, Accused of Having Ties to Illegal Paramilitary Groups. BOGOTA, COLOMBIA -- The scandal involving alleged links between Colombian lawmakers and illegal paramilitary groups widened Thursday with the arrest of five more members of Congress, including a senator who is the brother of Foreign Minister Maria Consuelo Araujo. The arrests of Sen. Alvaro Araujo and the others could further tarnish President Alvaro Uribe, who since being reelected to a second term in a landslide last year has been rocked by allegations that some close legislative supporters have ties to the right-wing armies. The arrests are also bound to increase calls that Maria Araujo resign. [continues 299 words]
The lush, green replacements began arriving the day after an Olympic Peninsula-based drug task force raided Steve Sarich's North Everett home, carting away an estimated 1,500 marijuana plants. By Sunday, nine days after the Jan. 13 raid, Sarich's new nursery numbered 50 plants -- eight big enough for their own pots, 15 starter-sized plants with roots and 27 freshly cut clones, each stuck into its own egg-sized pod of sod. "If they didn't arrest me with 1,500, it's not likely they're going to come back and arrest me for 50," said Sarich, whose advocacy group, CannaCare, says it has provided marijuana plants for 1,200 patients all over the state. Some of his new plants, delivered by patients in Longview, Federal Way and Vancouver, Wash., are descendants of the plants he lost. [continues 790 words]
San Francisco -- Kevin Reed launched his medical marijuana business two years ago, armed with big dreams and an Excel spreadsheet. Happy customers at his Green Cross cannabis club were greeted by "bud tenders" and glass jars brimming with high-quality weed at red-tag prices. They hailed the slender, gentle Southerner as a ganja good Samaritan. Though Reed set out to run it like a Walgreens, his tiny storefront shop ended up buzzing with jazzy joie de vivre. Turnover was Starbucks-style: On a good day, $30,000 in business would walk through the black, steel-gated front door. [continues 1926 words]
U.S. Likely Will Back Effort, Officials Say BOGOTA, COLOMBIA - Colombia to the rescue? Overwhelmed by a flourishing opium trade, Afghanistan's government is getting help from a country that knows about narcotics operations. A team of Colombian narcotics police, which spent two weeks in Afghanistan, has come up with a series of recommendations, including better evidence-gathering, airport surveillance, training and organization. U.S. State Department and congressional sources said this week they support Colombia's suggestions and would push for implementation. [continues 474 words]
Washington -- Rep. Patrick Kennedy, D-R.I., pleaded guilty Tuesday to a charge of driving under the influence of prescription drugs in a plea bargain with prosecutors stemming from a middle-of-the-night incident last month in which he nearly sideswiped a police cruiser. District of Columbia Superior Court Magistrate Judge Aida Melendez placed the six-term congressman on supervised probation for a year. He was ordered to attend weekly meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous, confer regularly with a psychiatrist, submit to random urine tests and contribute $100 to a crime victims fund and $250 to the Boys and Girls Club of Greater Washington, where he will also do 50 hours of community service. [continues 100 words]
Both political parties represented in the B.C. Legislature deserve praise for agreeing on Bill 25, the Safety Standards Amendment Act. This act will require B.C. Hydro to tell municipalities about homes with unusual rates of power consumption -- too high or too low. They will then have the authority to search those homes, after giving 48 hours notice. One NDP MLA, Nicholas Simons, and privacy commissioner David Loukidelis see this as an invasion of privacy. They are correct -- but it is such a minimal intrusion that no law-abiding citizen has anything to worry about. [continues 260 words]
Both political parties represented in the B.C. Legislature deserve praise for agreeing on Bill 25, the Safety Standards Amendment Act. This act will require B.C. Hydro to tell municipalities about homes with unusual rates of power consumption -- too high or too low. They will then have the authority to search those homes, after giving 48 hours notice. One NDP MLA, Nicholas Simons, and privacy commissioner David Loukidelis see this as an invasion of privacy. They are correct -- but it is such a minimal intrusion that no law-abiding citizen has anything to worry about. [continues 250 words]
MAPLE RIDGE - Ridge Meadows Hospital can't contain its crystal-meth addicts. Maple Ridge-Mission MLA Randy Hawes said he's been in touch with Solicitor-General John Les about it, and is hoping a solution can be found as soon as possible. Hawes said he has spoken to Les on the need for a "holding place for people that are in drug psychosis and considered dangerous." "They are violent and they are a medical problem . . . they're not a police problem, but the hospital's not equipped for that," he said. [end]
Forum Elicits Sharp Differences, Often Provocative Views Make every sixth-grader pass a reading test before graduating. Strap satellite locators to all sex offenders. Lock up employers who knowingly hire illegal immigrants. Ax a well-know anti-drug program from public classrooms. Create separate stand-alone schools for gifted children. Seated on a riser at the front of a ballroom in the Holiday Inn in Huntsville on Friday, Lt. Gov. Lucy Baxley found herself as the lone big-money candidate awash in a river of provocative ideas from four lesser-known people who also hope to become Alabama's next governor. [continues 661 words]
New Fight: Agency contradicts Findings of Scientist On Uses WASHINGTON -- The Food and Drug Administration said Thursday that "no sound scientific studies" supported the medical use of smoked marijuana. The statement, which contradicts a 1999 review by top government scientists, inserts the health agency into yet another fierce political fight. Susan Bro, an agency spokeswoman, said Thursday's statement resulted from a combined review by federal drug enforcement, regulatory and research agencies that concluded "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 FDA was issuing the statement because of numerous inquiries from Capitol Hill but would likely do nothing to enforce it. [continues 152 words]
For 500 years the fiercely independent Kuna people of Panama have fought off everything from conquistadors to tourism pushers. Now they face an interloper that threatens them with the scourge of addiction. After keeping the world at bay for five centuries, the Kuna Indians on Panama's unspoiled Caribbean coast now confront an insidious intruder: cocaine traffickers. The fiercely independent tribe inhabits Kuna Yala, a semiautonomous area that includes a coastal strip and the San Blas islands. The region is known mainly to foreign eco-tourists who can afford to reach its isolated white sand beaches. [continues 913 words]
Gov. George E. Pataki on Saturday commuted the sentence of a Bronx man serving nine years in prison for drug possession, the 33rd time he has taken such action in his 11 years as governor. The clemency granted to the man, Darryl Best, 49, who is imprisoned at Otisville Correctional Facility in Orange County, was the first this year. The governor granted no executive clemencies last year. Best will now be eligible for release form prison in January. He was originally sentenced in 2001 to a prison term of 15 years to life on a charge of first-degree possession of a controlled substance, according to the governor's office. It was his only criminal convection. [continues 162 words]
When Gov. George E. Pataki signed a law a year ago reducing what he called "unduly long sentences" for drug crimes, he predicted that hundreds of nonviolent drug offenders would be released from prison. But so far, only 142 prisoners - about 30 percent of those originally eligible for new sentences under the revised law - have been freed, according to a report released yesterday by the Legal Aid Society. The new sentencing provisions of the Drug Law Reform Act of 2004 changed the mandatory sentencing laws imposed in 1973 when Nelson Rockefeller was governor. [continues 152 words]
MAPLE RIDGE - District of Maple Ridge staff members are planning a bylaw change that could penalize people who carry drug paraphernalia into public parks. The change to parks regulations, which is aimed at a variety of anti-social behaviours, will likely be presented to council in the next few weeks, according to Brock McDonald, director of business licensing, permits and bylaws. McDonald said the city is also looking at constructing more public washroom facilities as an alternative to people using the bushes as a latrine. Many of the violations are committed by Maple Ridge's population of homeless people and drug addicts. But the municipality might be overstepping its jurisdiction if it attempts to pass such a regulation, said Murray Mollard, executive director of the BC Civil Liberties Association. Regulations haven't solved it in the past and he doubts they will now. [end]
ABBOTSFORD - His business licence application is still being reviewed by City of Abbotsford officials, but Tim Felger says that isn't stopping him from conducting business. Known for his pro-marijuana activism, Felger has applied for a business licence for a bookstore and political office in a leased building in downtown Abbotsford -- an office he says he'll need in order to prepare for November municipal elections. "It's too early to tell how much of a run-around they're giving me," Felger said of city officials "I'm going to get my message out if I have to sit on the street corner and do it." [continues 57 words]
CHILLIWACK - City council took a couple of steps last week aimed at public safety. They supported a motion to join the B.C. Crime Prevention Association and they also have directed staff to organize a public forum about the use and production of methamphetamines, commonly known as crystal meth. "This is a very big concern in the community, and it's something we have to get ahead of very quickly," Coun. Chuck Stam said. No date was set for the forum at the council meeting but the event is likely to take place sometime in the fall. While the city is at the forefront of things when it comes to organizing the forum, they will be looking for other groups and individuals to play key roles, including the Sto:lo Nation who recently put on a forum examining the drug's perils. [end]
The Rhode Island legislature passed a bill yesterday allowing the use of medical marijuana, three weeks after the Supreme Court ruled that federal authorities could prosecute those who use the drug for medicinal purposes, even in states with laws allowing it. The bill passed the State Senate by a vote of 33 to 1 last evening and will head to the desk of Gov. Donald L. Carcieri, who is likely to reject it. Supporters of the bill, which passed the House 52 to 10 last week, are confident they have the necessary three-fifths majority to override a veto and make Rhode Island the 11th state to authorize patients to use the drug. [continues 100 words]
WASHINGTON - U.S. Officials warned this month in an internal assessment that an American-financed poppy eradication program aimed at curtailing Afghanistan's huge heroin trade had been ineffective, in part because President Hamid Karzai "has been unwilling to assert strong leadership." A cable sent on May 13 from the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, the Afghan capital, said the provincial officials and village elders, many of whom are suspected of having ties to the drug trade, had impeded destruction of significant poppy acreage and that top Afghan officials, including Karzai, had done little to overcome the local resistance. [continues 333 words]
