Federal Prosecutors Target Legal Marijuana Trade Despite Obama's Liberal Stance on Medical Use of Cannabis Steve DeAngelo doesn't have the luxury of worrying about a threatened US government crackdown on medical marijuana dispensaries like the one he runs in Oakland, California. For him, the crackdown is already in full swing. As the head of the largest pot dispensary in the country, with more than 80,000 customers and annual revenues of more than $20m, DeAngelo always knew he would have a big target on his back if the federal authorities chose to challenge the state laws that allow him and thousands of other operators across the United States to sell marijuana on the open market. [continues 1277 words]
Arnold Schwarzenegger has never apologised for smoking pot - and loving it -- at the height of his bodybuilding career in the 1970s. Now, as a struggling Republican governor of California reaching a crossroads in his political career, he might yet become America's most visible advocate for legalising marijuana. The actor-turned-politician gladdened the heart of every joint-roller and dope fiend across the Golden State earlier this week when he said it was time for a full debate on legalisation. [continues 433 words]
Anti-Corruption Drive Paves Way For Biggest Scalp Since Escobar In Never-Ending War When Colombia's most notorious drug lord, Diego Montoya, was cornered by a special army commando unit on a remote coastal ranch last week, he did what came naturally: he offered the soldiers $5m each if they would let him go free. The move wasn't quite as desperate as it sounds. As an ever-growing scandal in Colombia has revealed in recent weeks, Montoya has successfully bribed a large number of military and police personnel for years, to facilitate his cocaine shipments to the United States. To date, 26 officers, both commissioned and non-commissioned, have been arrested, two generals have resigned and the spotlight has now turned on an admiral in the Colombian navy. [continues 349 words]
Marijuana is the most valuable cash crop in the United States, worth more to its growers than corn and wheat combined, according to a new report by a leading American drug reform lobbyist that cites the US government's own figures. Decades of government efforts to crack down on both the cultivation and consumption of pot have had a counter-productive effect, since even the most conservative government estimates suggest domestic marijuana production has increased tenfold in the past 25 years. It is the leading cash crop in 12 states, and one of the top five crops in 39 states. [continues 393 words]
MARIJUANA is the most valuable cash crop in the United States, worth more to its growers than corn and wheat combined, according to a new report that cites the US government's own figures. Author of the report Jon Gettman, a leading drug-reform lobbyist, says that marijuana is "larger than cotton in Alabama, larger than grapes, vegetables and hay in California, larger than peanuts in Georgia, and larger than tobacco in both South Carolina and North Carolina". Decades of government efforts to crack down on both the cultivation and consumption of pot have had, if anything, a counter-productive effect, since even the most conservative government estimates suggest that domestic marijuana production has increased tenfold in the past 25 years. [continues 306 words]
LOS ANGELES - Marijuana is the most valuable cash crop in the United States, worth more to its growers than corn and wheat combined, according to a new report by a leading American drug reform lobbyist that cites the US government's own figures. Decades of government efforts to crack down on both the cultivation and consumption of pot have had a counter-productive effect, since even the most conservative government estimates suggest domestic marijuana production has increased tenfold in the past 25 years. [continues 416 words]
Jason Beck is one of San Francisco's best known providers of medical marijuana. And that, in turn, is proving downright dangerous. A few days ago, two intruders kicked down the door of his house, put a gun to his head and fleeced the place of several thousand dollars' worth of weed along with other valuables. Mr Beck had previously decided not to keep his marijuana supply at his shop, Alternative Herbal Health Services, in part because of a armed robbery there last December, in which he was pistol-whipped five times and both he and his customers had their money stolen. [continues 471 words]
He's the Alan Titchmarsh of the pot world, with countless grow-your-own tomes and a licence to supply for medicinal use. But in what some are calling a Bush show trial, Ed Rosenthal now faces 40 years in jail. There are two reasons why the case of Ed Rosenthal has become a cause celebre for the marijuana-decriminalisation movement. The first is that, for the past 30 years, he has been the world's foremost cultivator of cannabis plants, and a pioneer in hydroponic growing techniques. [continues 1433 words]
Vindication was at hand for the black population of the small Texas town of Tulia yesterday, after a judge recommended quashing the convict-ions of 38 residents caught up in a notorious drug sting based solely on the tainted testimony of a dishonest and overtly racist undercover agent. Family members wept with joy as even the prosecution conceded it could not defend the convictions, which have become a byword for small-town injustice and institutional racism in the four years since the original arrests were made. [continues 333 words]
An undercover narcotics agent whose questionable testimony led to the arrests of half the black men in a small town in Texas four years ago was being cross-examined for a second day yesterday, in a court hearing that defence lawyers hope will lead to the exoneration of 22 people still in prison on drug charges. The 1999 drug sting in the town of Tulia has become a byword for everything that is wrong with the United States' war on drugs in rural areas. [continues 397 words]
An American travel writer who specialises in guiding readers through the world's trouble spots has been kidnapped in Panama, apparently by Colombian guerrillas on a cross-border raid. Robert Young Pelton, author of The World's Most Dangerous Places and other books offering advice on avoiding precisely the kind of trouble he has now encountered, was seized along with two travel companions during an armed raid on a cluster of Indian villages in the so-called Darien Gap, an area of remote rainforest frequented by arms and drugs smugglers. [continues 167 words]
Winona Ryder was carrying eight powerful painkilling drugs at the time of her shoplifting arrest last year, obtaining them from different doctors under at least two different names, her prosecutors have alleged. In a brief prepared ahead of her sentence hearing tomorrow, the Los Angeles d istrict attorney's office suggested the 31-year-old Hollywood actress has a serious addiction problem. It has recommended mandatory drug therapy as part of her punishment for stealing more than $5,000 (UKP3,100) of designer clothing from Saks Fifth Avenue, Beverly Hills, on 12 December 2001. [continues 179 words]
When 46 People Were Arrested For Drug Offences In The Sleepy Texas Town Of Tulia, The Local Lawman Was Hailed As A Hero. But There Was A Problem - Almost All Of The Defendants Were Black, And There Wasn't A Shred Of Evidence. Andrew Gumbel Reports On An Extraordinary Story Of Racism And Police Corruption Kizzie White was still fast asleep when the police came knocking on her door in the early hours on 23 July, 1999. She had no idea what they could possibly want. After all, she was an ordinary 24-year-old mother of two small children living in Tulia, a small, dusty farming town of 5,000 souls in northern Texas. She had never been in trouble for anything in her life. [continues 2854 words]
THE BUSH administration is expected to nominate an old-fashioned policy hawk as the country's new "drugs tsar" despite debate on the effectiveness of America's war on drugs. John Walters, a political conservative who believes drugs are a moral issue and have nothing to do with health or social policy, is likely to have his nomination as head of the Office of National Drug Control Policy confirmed in days. With it could come a raft of initiatives favouring punishment over treatment at home and military intervention against the drug cartels of Latin America. [continues 391 words]
U.S. police and drug enforcement officials said yesterday they had uncovered a narcotics racket following the arrest of more than 200 people, including doctors and nurses, involved in the illegal distribution of a powerful painkiller intended for cancer patients. The arrests followed months of painstaking undercover work in eastern Kentucky to combat the spread of OxyContin, a drug based on synthetic morphine, which produces effects similar to heroin. At least 59 people are believed to have died in the area around Lexington as a result of OxyContin overdoses, and the drug is being peddled with increasing frequency in the US. Most of those arrested were street dealers offering Oxy, as it is known, at between $25 and $50 per pill. [end]
Why America's War On Drugs Is Nothing Like The Movies This is South Central Los Angeles, ground zero of America's war on drugs. The streets are near-deserted, the storefronts long since shuttered and abandoned after the ravages of the 1980s crack-cocaine epidemic and the 1992 LA riots that caused any investment, any faith in the future, to flee the area. At the corner of Avalon and 42nd Street, one forlorn intersection among many, a police patrol car pulls over a puffing maroon Chevy. The occupants, two young black men and one older one, are ordered out and told to kneel on the pavement with their hands above their heads. [continues 2029 words]
She won't be marching in the streets. She won't be calling for the overthrow of capitalism and of corporate control of the global economy (although she might be sorely tempted). Nevertheless, if anyone is going to shake the over-rehearsed stiltedness out of this summer's American political conventions and capture the imagination of those for whom the whole circus is supposedly intended -- the voters -- then surely Arianna Huffington is the woman for the job. Peppy, witty, shamelessly contrary and eternally combative, Arianna is the driving force behind the Shadow Conventions that are stalking the mainstream politicians, both in Philadelphia where the Republicans have officially anointed George W. Bush as their presidential candidate, and in Los Angeles where the Democrats are gathering to crown Al Gore. [continues 472 words]
Ruben Gonzalez makes no secret of being a gang member. Tattoos seared across his back identify him as one of the Langdon Street gang, one of the toughest in Los Angeles, which controls the drug trade in the steaming heart of the smog-ridden San Fernando Valley. A few weeks ago, Ruben (not his real name) got out of prison after a six-month stretch for possession and went looking for a job. This was not out of a simple desire to reform; his parole officer had said that if he didn't find work within a month, he could expect to be locked up again. [continues 1466 words]
THE US tobacco industry trembled at the prospect of an avalanche of lawsuits yesterday after a Californian woman with terminal lung cancer won an unprecedented $50 million (UKP34m) in punitive damages from Philip Morris, maker of the Marlboro brand she says is killing her. The award, granted by a jury in the San Francisco County Superior Court, was three times higher than the amount being sought by the plaintiff's lawyers and more than 25 times higher than any previous punitive damages inflicted on a tobacco company. [continues 501 words]
UNITED STATES police forces and criminal and legal systems have "a persistent and widespread pattern of human rights violations," and the country fails "to deliver the fundamental promise of rights for all," according to a harsh report published by Amnesty International today. The report will be a shock for a country that prides itself on the protection of human rights and which regularly deplores abuses in other countries. Amnesty has published reports on the United States before, campaigning to bring an end to the death penalty. But the approaching campaign is the first comprehensive review of the state of human rights in the US, or any other Western country. The group's most recent campaigns have focused on China and Turkey. [continues 331 words]
