How will a police officer know whether someone is carrying more than an ounce of marijuana? Will those caught smoking it present sufficient probable cause for an officer to search them or their car? How will officers cite people for possessing small amounts of marijuana, and will there be an appeals process? A day after voters overwhelmingly approved a ballot initiative to decriminalize possession of small amounts of marijuana, law enforcement officials around the state wondered how they would implement the new law and how it would change their work. [continues 774 words]
As a student at Stonehill College, Suffolk District Attorney Daniel F. Conley found himself in a room with guys passing around a bong. "When it came to me, I inhaled so hard that it burned my lungs," he says. "I don't want to sound Clintonesque; I inhaled, but I couldn't handle it." Gerry Leone, Middlesex district attorney, also admits to smoking pot. "It was years ago, when I was a young man," he said. "I tried it once, and it wasn't something I was ever into." [continues 1153 words]
An administrative law judge recommended yesterday that a professor at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst be allowed to grow marijuana for research purposes, possibly making the state host to the nation's second laboratory authorized to grow the drug. Professor Lyle Craker, a horticulturist who specializes in medicinal plants, has won support from both Senators Edward M. Kennedy and John F. Kerry in his effort to grow marijuana for research. Marijuana is now only legally grown at the University of Mississippi, but Craker has argued that the drug grown there is neither potent enough nor readily available to researchers. [continues 297 words]
Three days after unanimously voting to become the first Massachusetts town in nearly a decade to begin a needle-exchange program for drug users, Westport's Board of Selectmen bowed to public pressure yesterday and voted not only to rescind its decision but to ban any such future program. The selectmen's vote Monday night to create the program ignited a firestorm. Yesterday, nearly 200 people crowded into Town Hall, forcing the board to move the meeting outside on the building's front steps, selectmen said. [continues 476 words]
Budget Cuts Force Those Addicted To Wait For Space, Or Go Without When all else fails, they come to Ludy Young. They come confessing their crimes, they come and kneel before her to pray or beg for help. One woman, nearing withdrawal, recently burst into tears, pleading with her: "Please, please, I need your help. I need a bed." Increasingly, however, the emergency room counselor whose office is a spare basement room at Boston Medical Center finds she can't help. [continues 912 words]
State Budget Ax Poised Over Methadone Clinics In a musty trailer beside the highway, hidden on a small road wedged between the South End and South Boston, Dan Granger takes his place among the steady throng of early-morning visitors. When the 52-year-old auto-body worker gets to the front, a nurse reaches into a bowl of chalky white tablets, dissolves one in hot water, and hands him a plastic cup filled with a Tang-flavored solution. Like a growing number of heroin addicts, Granger swills the orange cocktail with relief, elation, and gratitude - that his addiction is again diverted. [continues 799 words]
Drug's Advocates Call For A Look At Its Benefits Amanda began using it last year and has since done it a half-dozen times. The 20-year-old Boston University student knows it may leave permanent brain damage, but the warm, fuzzy feeling she gets from it each time outweighs any long-term potential ailment, she said. "There are other things I could be doing that would be much worse for me," said Amanda, who spoke on condition that her last name not be used. "I don't want to end up a vegetable, but I haven't heard anything concrete that would stop me from using it." [continues 1245 words]
AMHERST - With a wreath of plastic cannabis plants in her hair, an attention-getting red strobe light, and a broomstick to point at passersby, University of Massachusetts freshman Erin Pfeiffer last week prodded her fellow students to overcome their historical apathy and do what few have done before: vote in the town's election. The 18-year-old psychology major's interest in local politics wasn't motivated by a passion for fighting suburban sprawl or beefing up the town's recycling program. Her aim was more personal: to make Amherst a beacon of hope for marijuana smokers around the country. [continues 1016 words]
CARACAS - For years, the long, mountainous border separating Colombia and Venezuela has offered drug traffickers ample opportunity to ferry their cargo. And smugglers have taken advantage of the easy route to Venezuela's porous ports. Last year, more than 110 tons of Colombian heroin and cocaine passed through Venezuela before it was shipped to the United States and Europe, representing nearly one-sixth of all illegal drugs produced in Latin America, US officials said. But now traffickers have a faster and more secure route, which before carried the risk of interception by US military jets: air. [continues 868 words]
