BAGHDAD -- Every night around 8, Mohammed Fakhri watches the street boys emerge from the shadows of the capital's rough-and-tumble Betaween neighborhood. They roam past Fakhri's metalworking shop, watchful -- he says -- for an opportunity to commit robberies. He believes they are not driven simply by boredom and poverty, but by drugs. From his narrow workshop amid the warren of small streets and sagging British colonial-era buildings, Fakhri has watched drug use soar in the capital since the war ended, he said. [continues 801 words]
Scientists are working in government labs and at sites deep in the Andean jungle to develop a new weapon in the war on drugs: a superrobust cocoa-bean tree. They hope that a disease-resistant cocoa-bean tree will one day prove superprofitable, making drug crops such as coca, the source of the raw material used to make cocaine, less attractive for farmers to grow. Nothing would please the U.S. chocolate industry more than a steady stream of cocoa beans from strong trees. That is why the Chocolate Manufacturers Association is partially funding the project, which is being run out of the State Department. The Agriculture Department also is taking part, contributing money and expertise in plant genetics and selective breeding. [continues 818 words]
A federal court in Oregon said Attorney General John Ashcroft overstepped his authority when he moved to bar doctors in that state from helping terminally ill patients commit suicide, a move that would have nullified Oregon's physician-assisted suicide law. U.S. District Judge Robert E. Jones said the federal Controlled Substances Act, which Mr. Ashcroft said barred physician-assisted suicide, wasn't intended to forbid the practice. He also said Washington was "never authorized to establish a national medical practice or act as a national medical board." [continues 512 words]
