Doctor Recounts Chemical Warfare Research Program Army doctors gave soldier volunteers synthetic marijuana, LSD and two dozen other psychoactive drugs during experiments aimed at developing chemical weapons that could incapacitate enemy soldiers, a psychiatrist who performed the research says in a new memoir. The program, which ran at the Army's Edgewood, Md., arsenal from 1955 until about 1972, concluded that counterculture staples such as acid and pot were either too unpredictable or too mellow to be useful as weapons, psychiatrist James Ketchum said in an interview. [continues 799 words]
White-Collar Crime Gives Way to Security FBI criminal cases have fallen sharply since the 9/11 terrorist attacks as the bureau shifts its focus from drugs and white-collar offenses to anti-terrorism, Justice Department statistics show. Over the past five years, prosecutions in which the FBI acted as lead investigator have fallen about 25%, from nearly 19,000 in fiscal 2001 to just more than 14,000 in fiscal 2005. Convictions in FBI cases are down roughly 11% during the same period, from about 13,500 to just more than 12,000. [continues 464 words]
WASHINGTON -- Liberal and conservative Supreme Court justices expressed doubt Monday that sick patients should be allowed to use doctor-recommended marijuana to relieve pain. Justice Antonin Scalia, one of the five conservatives on the nine-member court, said federal law criminalizing marijuana trumps a California law that allows chronically ill patients to use it. Making an exception for patients, liberal Justice David Souter said, could open the door to widespread marijuana use and to fraudulent claims of illness by recreational pot smokers in California and the 10 other states that allow medical marijuana. [continues 523 words]
Angel Raich, a 39-year-old mother of two, smokes marijuana eight times a day in her Oakland home. Angel Raich says marijuana, prescribed by her doctor, helps relieve her ailments which include tumors in her brain, seizures, spasms and nausea. She does it to relieve pain from a brain tumor and more than a dozen other maladies. And she does it with her doctor's blessing and the permission of the state of California, which allows medical patients to use the otherwise illegal weed if recommended by a physician. [continues 1000 words]
Plans to make marijuana available by prescription to British multiple sclerosis sufferers promise to shake up the debate in the United States over legalizing marijuana for medicinal purposes. Sativex, an inhaler that dispenses medical marijuana in mist form, is in the final stages of testing by the United Kingdom's Department of Health, a spokeswoman said. Sativex's developer, GW Pharmaceuticals, a British company, hopes to sell medical pot in Western Europe and the Commonwealth countries, including Canada. The U.S. market is a "long-term objective," company spokesman Mark Rogerson said. [continues 259 words]
Plans to make marijuana available by prescription to British multiple sclerosis sufferers also promise to shake up the debate in the USA over legalizing marijuana for medicinal purposes. Sativex, an inhaler that dispenses medical marijuana in mist form, is in the final stages of testing by the United Kingdom's Department of Health, a spokeswoman said. Once approved, Sativex's developer, GW Pharmaceuticals, a British company, hopes to sell medical pot in western Europe and the Commonwealth countries, including Canada. The U.S. market is a "long-term objective," company spokesman Mark Rogerson says. [continues 429 words]
WASHINGTON -- Police should be able to arrest the front-seat passenger in a car in which cocaine was found hidden in the back seat, a lawyer for the state of Maryland told the Supreme Court on Monday. "Probable cause (to make an arrest) is a fluid concept depending on the context," Gary Bair told the justices. Three men in a car containing crack cocaine and a large amount of cash created a "reasonable inference" that all were involved in drug sales, Bair said. [continues 471 words]
WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court dealt the Bush administration two defeats Tuesday, siding with its opponents in cases aimed at curbing the use of marijuana for medical purposes and policing pornography on the Internet. The court declined to consider whether the U.S. government can penalize doctors who discuss the potential benefits of marijuana with cancer sufferers and others. The White House had asked the court to review a decision last year by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which said that threatening doctors with the loss of their license for discussing medical marijuana violated their free-speech rights. [continues 418 words]
Michigan became the first state to require all welfare applicants to take a drug test Friday, despite an American Civil Liberties Union lawsuit that claims the practice is unconstitutional. "The ACLU's suit is frivolous and we're going ahead despite it," said John Truscott, spokesman for Michigan Gov. John Engler, a Republican. "It puts the ACLU on the side of defending someone's right to be a drug abuser." The ACLU filed a class action suit in federal court in Detroit Thursday, seeking to block Michigan from testing new welfare applicants for marijuana, cocaine, opiates and other banned substances via urinalysis. The ACLU asked Michigan to voluntarily postpone the program until the matter can be decided in court. Michigan refused. [continues 308 words]
WASHINGTON -- Responding to a request from a federal judge, the Justice Department is considering whether to permit government-supervised use of marijuana as a treatment for certain sick people. If Justice agrees to settle a lawsuit as proposed by a district judge in Philadelphia, government-approved marijuana could be available to thousands of AIDS and cancer sufferers and other patients. In return, the 160 plaintiffs in the case would drop their lawsuit. Now, only about eight patients nationwide receive government-approved marijuana under a program administered by the Department of Health and Human Services. [continues 292 words]
WASHINGTON -- Responding to a request from a federal judge, the Justice Department is considering whether to permit government-supervised use of marijuana as a treatment for certain sick people. If Justice agrees to settle a lawsuit as proposed by a district judge in Philadelphia, government-approved marijuana could be available to thousands of AIDS and cancer sufferers and other patients. In return, the 160 plaintiffs in the case would drop their lawsuit. Now, only about eight patients nationwide receive government-approved marijuana under a program administered by the Department of Health and Human Services. [continues 288 words]
