The U.S. election didn't produce a blue wave or a red wave, but some are celebrating a green wave as voters in Arizona, Montana, New Jersey and South Dakota approved the legalization of recreational marijuana. Meanwhile, Oregonians decriminalized the possession of small amounts of harder drugs, including cocaine, heroin and methamphetamines. "Drugs, once thought to be the scourge of a healthy society, are getting public recognition as a part of American life," the New York Times gushed. In reality, drugs are very much a scourge, particularly in the lives of young children. In 2019 parental substance abuse was listed as a cause for a child's removal to foster care 38% of the time, a share that has risen steadily in the past decade. Experts suggest this is an underestimate and the real number may be up to 80%. [continues 566 words]
Mom guilt is here to stay. The stress of trying to be a calm, nurturing parent while also trying to keep our jobs, stay on top of school notices and remain married isn't going away. Not to mention the feeling that we're doing none of them particularly well. But that won't stop some people from trying anything. Author Ayelet Waldman, for instance, tried LSD. In her new book, "A Really Good Day," she documents her experiment with "microdosing," taking very small quantities of LSD -- enough to make you calmer, more aware of your environment, more able to focus on your work, but without all those wacky hallucinations. [continues 684 words]
It's Not the Well-Off Who'll Pay LAST week, the board of The Fontaine, a luxury Upper East Side co-op, sued a resident over what it alleges is a constant, overwhelming smell of marijuana wafting from his apartment. This may just be a glimpse of our future. After all, Colorado and Washington state voters just passed ballot initiatives to allow state-regulated marijuana sales. And Gov. Cuomo in his State of the State Address just suggested that pot possession shouldn't be illegal. [continues 607 words]
Holder Says Federal Agents Have Other Priorities and That Only Certain Cases Would Merit Action. WASHINGTON - Rep. Jared Polis on Thursday quizzed Attorney General Eric Holder about federal enforcement of marijuana laws in states such as Colorado, which have approved it for medical use and are seeing a growing number of dispensaries. In his first appearance as a new member of the House Judiciary Committee, the Boulder Democrat, who recently held a "coffee with your congressman" event at a coffee shop adjoining a dispensary in Nederland, quizzed Holder about comments from a federal Drug Enforcement Administration agent suggesting the Justice Department was planning to raid dispensaries in Colorado. [continues 293 words]
The column by Michael Fitzgerald on a legal marijuana dispensary or drug cartels (Dec. 20) raised important issues. The importance of Stockton having a legal medical marijuana dispensary and having proper control over it. Most people have known someone with terminal cancer, or a similar illness. Even with powerful prescription drugs, such as morphine, to help control the discomfort of the illness they can bring with them negative side effects. Medical marijuana is another valuable tool that physicians need to have available to prescribe to patients with special circumstances. [continues 132 words]
State officials cannot explain surge but say many schools fighting crime Tennessee students committed more drug offenses last year than all other serious offenses put together. The number of times students were caught using, selling or carrying drugs in schools statewide shot up by 502 to a record 2,793 in a school year. They made up nearly 67% of the 4,196 zero-tolerance offenses - those serious enough to warrant expulsion or transfer to an alternative school - reported in 2003-04. [continues 613 words]
More Directed To Alternative Schools For Classes, Counsel Under Tennessee's zero-tolerance policy, any student caught using, selling or carrying drugs at school can be kicked out for a year. But many aren't. Instead, a growing number of offenders are being sent to alternative schools, where they can get back on track academically and get extra help for other problems. It's an option that many districts, including Metro, find more appealing than putting a student out on the streets. [continues 485 words]
Almost half of the Tennessee high school students responding to a random poll say they've smoked marijuana, and 12% of them admit they tried it before their 13th birthday. Fewer than 5% say they've snorted cocaine, shot up with heroine, sniffed glue or inhaled fumes from paints or sprays to get high, a statewide youth survey shows. Slightly more say they've experimented with either Ecstasy or methamphetamines or used steroid pills or shots without a doctor's prescription. [continues 269 words]
Zero-Tolerance Incidents Up 10.8% In State The number of times Tennessee students attacked their teachers or took drugs, guns or other weapons to school has gone up 10.8% since the 1999-2000 school year, a new state report shows. Zero-tolerance offenses - those serious enough to carry mandatory suspensions - grew from 3,651 incidents in 1999-2000 to 4,047 in 2001-02, while the total number of students statewide increased by less than 1%, the report says. [continues 685 words]
Media reports have estimated the state's current budget deficit to be $255 million. A newly released report by the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice in San Francisco reveals that taxpayers spend $21,000 per inmate per year for incarceration. In lieu of incarceration, substance-abuse treatment for drug offenders would cost around $2,500 per individual per year. This is a difference of $18,500. We were unable to find statistics on the number of nonviolent offenders currently in Kansas prisons, but the national total is more than 1.2 million, which averages out to 24,000 nonviolent inmates per state. Saving $18,500 per inmate would save a total of $444 million for Kansas. By releasing our nonviolent offenders, Kansas could save enough to eliminate our huge deficit and be about $189 million in the black. Wichita [end]
Buster, A Dog Trained To Sniff Out Narcotics, Is One Of The Family At Nixa High School. NIXA - As Nixa High School Officer Brian Loveland walks the hallways, students often ignore him and lavish attention on Buster. The 3I-year-old black Labrador laps it up unabashedly, playfully circling Loveland and wagging his tail. "He's a very friendly dog," said senior J.P. Szesny, 19, who stopped to hug Buster Wednesday at Nixa's 1,100-student high school. "It's not unusual for us to go up and pet him." [continues 623 words]
Principal: Five Eighth-Graders At Hickory Hills Involved In Drug Incident. Three eighth-grade Hickory Hills Middle School girls were rushed to a hospital Thursday after apparently ingesting prescription drugs. The three - including one who reportedly brought the pills to school - were treated and released Thursday afternoon from Cox Medical Center North, officials said. "It's serious. You can tell them to say no all you want but often the person who offers them drugs is a friend or a friend of a friend," Principal Kelly Allison said. "It's not some guy standing in a long trench coat in a dark corner. It's really never like that - it's someone you know." [continues 648 words]
The Senate will soon be voting on the nomination of John Walters for drug czar. I urge everyone who is interested in drug-law reform to ask our two senators to oppose Walters' nomination. Walters rejects a health-centered approach to substance abuse, and he insists on a continuation and expansion of the failed policy of trying to arrest our way out of the drug problem. He embraces a puritanical approach to substance use, claiming that rehabilitation is not the primary aim of arresting drug users, but that arrest and imprisonment serve primarily to punish people for their moral transgressions. [continues 111 words]
Schools Implement Anti-Corruption Plan TIJUANA, Mexico -- Ismael Iglesias seems an unlikely foot soldier in President Vicente Fox's war against this country's cancerous culture of corruption. A junior high student in the raucous border city of Tijuana, Iglesias is tall and handsome and giggles a little when he speaks to strangers. From his scuffed shoes to his gel-slicked hair, the boy with a toothy smile is every inch an awkward 14-year-old. But for the past five months, Iglesias and his classmates have read books, watched videos and talked about corruption that plagues this city and much of Mexico. [continues 1189 words]
Traffickers Being Extradited To U.S. For Trial, AG Says MEXICO CITY -- Mexico's attorney general, in an attempt to show dramatic progress in the war on drugs in the first days of President Vicente Fox's term, announced Thursday that narcotics seizures have increased substantially. Attorney General Rafael Macedo de la Concha said a number of Mexican traffickers are being sent to the United States for trial and that Mexico's powerful drug cartels are finally feeling the heat. Cocaine seizures alone have nearly doubled during the first 100 days of Fox's administration in comparison with that of his predecessor, President Ernesto Zedillo, said Macedo. [continues 530 words]
Chad Riley, 32, self-employed, Kapahulu Note: The Advertiser received nearly 200 responses from readers to its series on marijuana eradication efforts. The series is posted at: Part One: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v00.n444.a01.html Part Two: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v00.n442.a05.html Part Three: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v00.n447.a06.html Part Four: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v00/n453/a07.html [end]
Drug-Related Violence Spurs Allegations MEXICO CITY -- The leading challenger in the upcoming presidential election has injected the drug issue into the campaign amid a wave of violence, accusing the ruling party of being in league with Mexico's narcotics cartels. Vicente Fox, the presidential candidate of the right-of-center National Action Party, made the charges at a news conference and a later interview with a wire service. "It's very naive to think that a president of the republic belonging to the Institutional Revolutionary Party will sort out drug trafficking," Fox told Reuters in the interview. [continues 835 words]
Mexico Reports Increase In Cocaine Addiction Cases MEXICO CITY - The 39-year-old mother of three said there was no way to escape the drug dealers who invaded her working-class neighborhood. "On both sides of our house they sell cocaine," said Elena, who asked not to be otherwise identified. "Many don't let their children go outside, but you can't lock them in forever." As a result, her 19-year-old son became addicted to what she calls "little rocks" - crack cocaine. [continues 833 words]
Officials Argue For Certification MEXICO CITY -- Mexico fired an opening salvo Wednesday in the annual debate about whether the country should be certified as a U.S. ally in the drug war. Top government and military officials issued a report designed to put the best face on Mexico's antinarcotics efforts, including statistics showing that seizures of cocaine and marijuana had increased in 1999. The cocaine haul in the past two months alone is about 40 percent of the total for the year, the officials said. Seizures of marijuana were reported up 46 percent over 1998's total. [continues 755 words]
Organization Endures Turf War, Sting Operations, Death Of Leader MEXICO CITY -- Mexico's infamous Juarez drug cartel has taught U.S. and Mexican law enforcement officials a stinging lesson: The gang will not go away any time soon. The cartel, which was the dominant drug-smuggling organization in Mexico for most of the 1990s, has survived everything that police on both sides of the border could throw at it. The organization, made up of at least three independent cells, has adjusted amoebalike to the unexpected death of its boss in 1997, to a vicious turf war that followed, and then to aggressive sting operations aimed at midlevel leaders by both the United States and Mexico. [continues 868 words]
