KLAMATH FALLS, Ore. - First, Sheriff Tim Evinger eliminated ketchup, salt, coffee and pepper at the jail, a move he says saved an instant $30,000 a year in runaway beverage and condiment costs. Now, Evinger has decided to start charging inmates $60 a day to help cover the costs of their stay behind bars. "My constituents expect me to use whatever means I have to keep the jail open to its full extent," the sheriff said. It is an idea that first surfaced about 15 years ago in Alabama, and has since spread rapidly across the country, to about one-third of the county jails in the United States. [continues 718 words]
Officials Think That The Ruling May Encourage More Doctors To Discuss The Drug With Patients. PORTLAND -- Tuesday was a busy morning for Brookings resident and activist Robert Walker, better known to hundreds of his fellow medical marijuana patients in the state as Brother Bob. His phone rang constantly with news of a big, and somewhat unexpected, court win: U.S. Supreme Court judges had turned away an appeal by the Bush administration to punish doctors who recommend medical marijuana to their patients. [continues 424 words]
PORTLAND, Ore. - Student-athletes subject to random drug testing at an Oregon high school were almost four times less likely to use drugs than their counterparts at a similar school who were not tested, a study shows. The one-year pilot study by researchers at Oregon Health & Sciences University compared Wahtonka High School in The Dalles, where all student-athletes were subject to random testing, and Warrenton High School, a demographically similar school near Astoria, where they were not. Of the 135 athletes subject to the random testing at Wahtonka, only 5.3 percent said they were using illicit drugs by the end of the school year, versus 19.4 percent of the 141 athletes at Warrenton. [continues 319 words]
PORTLAND, Ore. - Student-athletes subject to random drug testing at an Oregon high school were almost four times less likely to use drugs than their counterparts at a similar school who were not tested, a study shows. The one-year pilot study by researchers at Oregon Health & Sciences University compared Wahtonka High School in The Dalles, where all student-athletes were subject to random testing, and Warrenton High School, a demographically similar school near Astoria, where they were not. Of the 135 athletes subject to the random testing at Wahtonka, only 5.3 percent said they were using illicit drugs by the end of the school year, versus 19.4 percent of the 141 athletes at Warrenton. [continues 192 words]
PORTLAND, Ore. -- Student-athletes subject to random drug testing at an Oregon high school were almost four times less likely to use drugs than their counterparts at a similar school who were not tested, a study shows. The one-year pilot study by researchers at Oregon Health & Sciences University compared Wahtonka High School in The Dalles, where all student-athletes were subject to random testing, and Warrenton High School, a demographically similar school near Astoria, where they were not. Of the 135 athletes subject to the random testing at Wahtonka, only 5.3 percent said they were using illicit drugs by the end of the school year, versus 19.4 percent of the 141 athletes at Warrenton. [continues 432 words]
PORTLAND, Ore. - Student athletes subject to random drug testing at an Oregon high school were almost four times less likely to use drugs than their counterparts at a similar school who were not tested, a study shows. The one-year pilot study by researchers at Oregon Health & Sciences University compared Wahtonka High School in The Dalles, where all student athletes were subject to random testing, and Warrenton High School, a demographically similar school near Astoria, where they were not. Of the 135 athletes subject to random testing at Wahtonka, only 5.3 percent said they were using illicit drugs by the end of the school year, compared with 19.4 percent of the 141 athletes at Warrenton. [continues 427 words]
The woman with a face that could belong to a Junior League society matron and the shoes -- gold, spangly, strappy, precariously high -- of another kind of madam entirely, stood with her eyes cast down, ready for drug court Judge Mary Spencer McGowan's scolding. She didn't have long to wait. "You can't be playing that game," McGowan lectured. "You need to have a little more confidence in yourself." The woman was in for a double tongue lashing, for dabbling in both prostitution and the drugs that had corrupted her weekly urine screen, the results of which McGowan was looking at in black and white. [continues 1872 words]
Across Arkansas, substance abuse recovery centers are straining to accommodate an influx of methamphetamine addicts, and some say the rising tide of meth users turned 12-steppers will have a lasting effect on the way they do business. In fiscal 1999, 1,925 meth addicts were admitted to state-funded substance abuse centers -- 14.4 percent of all patients, according to statistics provided by the Bureau of Drug and Alcohol Abuse Prevention. That's a 56.5 percent increase over the 1,230 meth users admitted during fiscal 1997 -- the year the viciously addictive drug, often home-brewed, first really made its presence felt in Arkansas. The sharpest one-year increase, 41.7 percent, occurred in fiscal 1998, when 1,744 such addicts were admitted. [continues 557 words]
