The controversy over medical marijuana is obscuring a related trend, say federal and state anti-drug officials -- the end of California's hippie pot-growing era. "Of the big gardens, 95 percent of the major grows are by Mexican nationals, while before, they were run by hippies," said Bill Ruzzamenti, director of the federal government's Central Valley High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area initiative. Most of these growers use undocumented immigrant workers to grow the pot on large plantations hacked out of the wilderness on state and federal park and forest land, clearing the brush surreptitiously and using harsh chemicals that pollute water supplies, the officials say. [continues 183 words]
Laws In Conflict -- Environment Dicey For Patients, Dealers A decade after Californians approved the medical use of marijuana, the state's battle with the federal government over the use of marijuana still is being fought hard, with contradictory results. In the past five years, the number of medical marijuana clubs -- stores authorized under state law where people can buy cannabis with a doctor's approval -- has tripled in the state, to more than 300. But club operators and pot growers are increasingly subject to federal arrests, seizures and prosecution. [continues 1180 words]
Relapses Are All Too Common Among Addicts If there's anything backers and opponents of Proposition 36 agree on, it's that most of the drug treatment funded under the measure will fail -- at least in the short term. Many of the measure's most ardent defenders are quietly trying to dampen expectations that its hundreds of millions of dollars in counseling services will help addicts kick their habits fast. Get used to failure, they say. In California and across the nation, the vast majority of people getting treatment relapse into drug use after leaving the programs. [continues 638 words]
Criticism In U.S. Emerging From Left And Right In the 1980s, when President Ronald Reagan sent weapons and CIA agents to fight leftist revolutionaries in Central America, debate raged in Congress and protests flared on U.S. streets. More than a decade later, with President Clinton gearing up a similar military effort in Colombia, the reaction has been little more than a yawn. The difference is the peculiar politics of drugs. Lawmakers and average Americans alike have supported the $1.3 billion Colombian aid package, which passed Congress in June and began to be delivered in September, as a necessary step to stop the flow of cocaine and heroin to U. S. streets. [continues 1030 words]
CURILLO, Colombia-Ever since a year ago, when leftist guerrillas captured this southern farm town in a hail of bullets and grenade explosions, Washington's adversaries have run things just the way they want. The rebels have reorganized the local coca-growing business into a booming, tightly run enterprise. Curillo's streets are clean, common crime has nearly disappeared and justice is simple. Those who disobey the rebels have a choice: Leave town or be killed. This is the growing empire of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known by its Spanish initials FARC. [continues 2104 words]
U.S.-funded Anti-Drug Campaign Is Forcing Thousands Of Peasants To Flee Or Join Rebels. Across the cocaine heartland, there is fear and pain - with lots more on the way. As the U.S.-backed anti-drug offensive called Plan Colombia gathers force in the coca-growing lowlands of southern Colombia, the hemisphere's worst refugee problem is about to grow dramatically. In coming months, tens of thousands of coca farmers and other civilians are expected to flee the advance of army troops backed by attack helicopters and herbicide-spewing planes. [continues 984 words]
Government Officials Admit That Crop Substitution Is A Tough Sell In Impoverished Countryside When Felipe Alvarado signed up for a government program to uproot his illegal coca plants and switch to legal crops, he didn't expect things to work out so badly. But six years after Alvarado went legal, he is worse off than ever. He's been thrown in jail; his corn, rubber and yucca plants have been killed by government aerial fumigation; and his earnings have plummeted. Unfortunately for the Colombian and U.S. governments, Alvarado's predicament is just one of countless examples of failure for the decade-old attempt to cut the cultivation of coca, the plant that provides the raw material for cocaine. Instead, Colombia's total acreage planted with coca has expanded dramatically, more than tripling since 1995, to an estimated 350,000 acres. [continues 1132 words]
Despite Official Denials, Feared Fighters Known For Death Squad Tactics Work Closely With The Army "We're not bad. We're waaaay bad," said Joanny, puffing out his chest in a boast that would have fit right in at a gathering of any U.S. inner-city gang. Except for a few details. Such as the machine gun cradled in Joanny's arms and the bandoliers of bullets over his shoulders. And the long trail of corpses that he and his fellow paramilitary gunmen have left in recent months. [continues 1192 words]
U.S.-Financed Campaign Aims To Beat Back Traffickers, Rebels First in a four-part series. The soldiers stormed into the jungle lab, overturning drums filled with coca paste. They spread gasoline and lit a match. With a roar and loud crackling, flames engulfed the building. But something wasn't quite right with this apparently picture-perfect victory in the war on drugs. Why was the troop commander frowning? "This is nothing, really," said Maj. Cesar Avendano in a low voice. "It's just a laboratory. There are a lot more around here. And the guerrillas are only a few kilometers away. It doesn't change anything." [continues 2058 words]
