There Are Fewer Local Labs, But Problems Remain, Officials Say. The bad news: From 2004 to 2006, Chemung County had more clandestine methamphetamine drug labs than any other county in New York. The good news: The number of known meth labs in the Twin Tiers had significantly dropped. The bad news: Drug abusers in the Tiers are still getting high on meth, but now much of it is coming from labs and suppliers in Canada and Mexico. That's the latest good news-bad news from federal and local law enforcement officials. [continues 644 words]
Investigators sometimes rely on confidential informants to help nail down a case. To catch a thief, use a thief. That axiom is especially true in busting drug dealers. Use a drug user to bring down a dealer. Cast a minnow to hook the big fish. Those minnows are confidential informants -- CI's in police talk. Whatever they're called, they can be a cop's eyes and ears and calling cards. They can vouch for undercover investigators and get them inside the inner circles of criminal enterprises. [continues 1007 words]
New York has a tough job maintaining its reputation as the most heavily taxed state in the nation. It requires our elected officials to keep on the lookout for new things to tax. That gets more difficult every year, because there's not much that isn't taxed except the air we breathe. (Sources tell me the state is working on that, basing the tax on the size of your schnoz). So it comes as no surprise that Gov. Eliot Spitzer wants to tax illegal drugs like cocaine and marijuana. [continues 572 words]
Former Elmiran Moves to California, Where Medical Marijuana is Legal Sherrie Wilkie has found a home where the grass is not only greener, but legal. Wilkie, a 66-year-old grandmother who was arrested in Elmira for running a medical marijuana club, is now living on a marijuana farm in California, where pot can legally be grown and smoked for medicinal purposes. "It's like a big loving family here," Wilkie said of the farm on Tuesday in a telephone interview. "I'm feeling better and healthier and I'm happier." [continues 825 words]
For five years, Sherrie D. Wilkie sold some of the best marijuana in Elmira. She had hashish and exotic pot from Hawaii and Amsterdam. Her drugs were potent and cheap. One variety was so powerful, she labeled it "Oh My God!" Sherrie Wilkie But Wilkie isn't your typical drug dealer. She's a 65-year-old single grandmother who claims she doesn't deal drugs for profit but to help those who are ill and in pain. That's why Wilkie organized a medical marijuana buyers' club about four years ago. Her customers included herself and people with cancer, AIDS, chronic back pain and other ailments. [continues 1258 words]
Cops Raid Grandmother's Home; Push Renewed For Legal Drug Use A 65-year-old Elmira grandmother faces criminal charges after police raided her apartment and confiscated three pounds of pot she was planning to distribute through her medical marijuana buyers club. Sherrie D. Wilkie, who suffers chronic pain from arthritis and other ailments, said she started the buyers club in 1998 and began making regular trips to New York City to buy pot for about a dozen other Twin Tiers residents who use marijuana as medicine. [continues 1001 words]
