TROY - Fearing that any change in the Rockefeller era drug laws will take away one of their most potent tools in fighting violent crime, district attorneys across the state are waging a campaign to keep the laws in place. Steuben County District Attorney John C. Tunney said the district attorneys also believe that the premise most reformers are basing their mantra upon is based in myth more than fact. Tunney, who is president of the New York State District Attorneys Association, along with fellow district attorneys James Murphy of Saratoga County, Kenneth Bruno of Rensselaer and Robert M. Carney of Schenectady, presented their case to The Record's editorial board on Thursday. [continues 743 words]
Roseanna Knight's life story is a difficult and painful one, but she tells it in hopes that others who are struggling with addictions will receive the help they need. Roseanna Knight is fighting for her life - and winning. Roseanna started drinking alcohol when she was just 12 years old. She started smoking marijuana with her mother at the same time. The alcohol soon took control. It helped numb feelings of worthlessness arising from sexual abuse and abandonment. Nine years later, still drinking, but having given up drug use, she had twin boys. [continues 789 words]
Imagine finally mustering the courage to go to a recovery house to conquer the drug or alcohol master you've become enslaved to, only to find you'll have to give up everything and everyone familiar in order to do it. That's what young people in New Westminster must do. Sydney Weaver-MacMillan, a youth and family counsellor with Fraserside's addictions services, sees about 70 young people between the ages of 12 and 24 every year. They're addicted to everything from alcohol to marijuana to cocaine to heroin. [continues 357 words]
Townshipper Harvests Seeds Used In Strange Brew COMPTON - Hardly a day goes by without a local newspaper or national media outlet reporting on the arrest of another illicit marijuana producer. But some people are out there growing cannabis legally, not for smoking but pretty much for everything else. Marijuana is produced from an annual herbaceous flowering plant known as Cannabis sativa. But just like tomato plants and other flowering plants that come in a number of different varieties, so to does the infamous Cannabis sativa plant. One of the varieties of the plant is grown illegally to produce marijuana. Its 'look-alike' cousin is used to produce hemp. Unfortunately, only a person trained to look for specific differences between the two varieties would be able to differentiate between them in the field. [continues 862 words]
Rewards for anti-drug scripts are a bad idea. THE practice of advertisers paying to prominently display their products in a movie is well-known, but the federal government's troubling TV version of that arrangement is only now coming to light. The Clinton administration's policy -- to quietly give financial incentives to networks that insert anti-drug messages into such prime-time programs as "ER" and "The Drew Carey Show" -- may sound innocuous. But it is blatant government manipulation of the airwaves. The practice should be scuttled. [continues 303 words]
Suit Seeks Link Between Agency And Crack Epidemic Oakland, Calif. attorneys William Simpich Jr. and Katya Komisaruk have taken on their share of long-shot cases and won. But their most recent -- a federal class action that would hold the Central Intelligence Agency and the Department of Justice liable for the crack cocaine epidemic of the 1980s -- makes their previous battles look easy. Simpich and Komisaruk don't seem worried by the suggestion that they are tilting at windmills. "People said that about the tobacco litigation -- they said no one can sue Philip Morris," Simpich says. But then damning private industry documents were made public, he says, "and there was no stopping those suits. I think the same thing can happen here." [continues 1183 words]
