Poll numbers in support of softer drug laws are trending up, according to this week's Time cover story. While only 34 percent of voters favor the complete legalization of marijuana, increasing majorities would support reducing penalties for possession and permitting the use of pot for medicinal purposes. That's the result of a relentless campaign to legalize drugs, funded by billionaire George Soros and others. What Time does not report, however, are other numbers on the rise: the number of young people who currently use marijuana, the number of young marijuana initiates, the number seeking treatment for marijuana abuse, and the potency of today's marijuana. [continues 711 words]
Calling the war on drugs an abject failure that wrongfully imprisons small-time users more in need of medical care, a California drug-reform group backed by three of the country's richest entrepreneurs is targeting Florida as its next battleground. The Campaign for New Drug Policies - which receives heavy support from billionaire financier George Soros, insurance executive Peter Lewis and for-profit university founder John Sperling - recently registered with the Florida Secretary of State's office in Tallahassee in hopes of placing its reform measure on the fall 2002 ballot as a voter-driven initiative. [continues 420 words]
SACRAMENTO, Calif. - Backers of the initiative that puts drug offenders in treatment programs instead of prison are warning that some county probation offices are swallowing too much of the $120 million pie. One of their prime examples is Sacramento County, where more than a third of the money set aside for Proposition 36 will go to the county probation department. "Based on what I know, Sacramento County is the highest at this point," said Bill Zimmerman, executive director of the Campaign for New Drug Policies in Santa Monica and the campaign manager for Proposition 36. [continues 588 words]
Speculation is rife over possible replacements for Vice President Dick Cheney should he be forced to retire because of persistent heart problems. The leading candidate in GOP circles is the man who reportedly was President Bush's first choice for the job - Secretary of State Colin Powell, who bowed to his wife's wishes and demurred. But there's a difference, some note, between campaigning for the job and having it handed to you. Also mentioned is Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge, originally passed over because of his position in favor of abortion rights, and former Sen. Slade Gorton, R-Wash. [continues 959 words]
The deli at one end of my block in Manhattan sells Budweiser, Guinness and 23 other brands of beer. It also offers three varieties of cigars and 30 brands of cigarettes. Adults legally can buy these mind-altering items. A pharmacy fills the other corner. I recently asked its druggist how many psychoactive substances she sells. She handed me product information leaflets for 27 pharmaceuticals. Xanax helps people "feeling keyed up or on edge." Wellbutrin eases "feelings of guilt or worthlessness." Ritalin wrestles hyperactivity despite the difficulty, she says, that kids suffer getting off of it. This pharmacy even carries morphine, a potent opiate sedative. With a doctor's blessing, these items could be legally yours. [continues 579 words]
President Clinton stole the "tough on crime" issue from Republicans by locking up more criminals during his eight years in the White House than any other president in recent history, according to a study by a criminal justice think tank. The Justice Policy Institute says in a study to be released Monday that more inmates were put in federal prisons under Clinton than under Presidents George H.W. Bush and Ronald Reagan combined. About 58 percent of federal prisoners are serving time for drug offenses. [continues 422 words]
WASHINGTON - The White House Office of National Drug Control Policy has taken its anti-drug message to the Internet, and it is secretly tracking those who find it in the process. Search for drug terms like "grow pot" on some Internet sites, and an ad banner that pops up from the drug office may drop a "cookie" program in your computer that tracks your online activities. "It's sort of spooky," said Internet consultant Richard Smith, a privacy advocate and former software engineer. [continues 700 words]
RIO DE JANEIRO (Scripps Howard News Service) -- Brazilian authorities have launched a crackdown on a violent dance craze amid fears that it has claimed the lives of more than a hundred young people. ``Funk balls'' divide Rio's impoverished youth into two gangs which take part in organized fights each weekend at dozens of illegal all-night ``raves.'' About 300,000 young people regularly attend funk balls at more than 100 venues. But the state government, which has ordered an official inquiry, says the events encourage violence, corrupt minors and are linked to drugs. In the last 2-1/2 weeks, two leading party organizers have been arrested and charged with inciting violence. [continues 471 words]
SACRAMENTO - More than a million crimes have been prevented and $21.7 billion in related costs have been saved since the state's "Three Strikes, You're Out" law went into effect five years ago, an author of the landmark legislation said Friday. Secretary of Stale Bill Jones, in providing his interpretation of the "three strikes" results to a crime victims conference, also substantially credited the 1994 bill with a 51 percent reduction in California's homicide rate. Law has helped saved lives [continues 683 words]
SACRAMENTO -- The dealers traded in marijuana, methamphetamine, cocaine and heroin, through inmate networks in San Quentin, New Folsom and Ironwood state prisons. One of them pocketed nearly $20,000, investigators believe. Another worked in concert with a parolee on the run, they say. A third may have been one of as many as a half a dozen suppliers in his ring. And to the consternation of the Department of Corrections, three of the accused drug kingpins were their own officers. ``It looks at this point like we're going to be able to take care of a pretty good-sized cancer,'' Corrections Director Cal Terhune said. ``We don't like to find it, but when we do, we want to root it out.'' [continues 901 words]
SAN FRANCISCO -- The district attorney's office has dropped drug and pornography charges against a nationally known medical marijuana advocate, who angrily accused police of deliberately targeting his residence for a raid and slandering him. Richard Evans, 35, was arrested following a Friday night police visit to his residence that police said was initiated by a silent alarm call. But Evans said in an interview that he believes police intentionally triggered the alarm as an excuse to get inside his residence, where they knew he was growing marijuana for medical use. [continues 254 words]
BRUCE HILTON, director of the National Center for Bioethics, has been an ethics consultant to doctors, hospitals and patients since 1972. He can be reached at Ethctee@aol.com. - -- So now we've heard about the wrestler who won the match in Minnesota. What about us other wrestlers? Those of us who wrestle with sickness and disease, who go to the mat with arthritis or bulimia or addiction or dental cavities, and end up getting flattened, in the wallet at least? We're members of the country's biggest special-interest group -- somewhere around 99.9 percent of the population. We start our lives as hospital patients, and 80 percent of us are back there at the end. [continues 737 words]
Bonnie Erbe is host of the PBS program "To the Contrary." Josette Shiner is president of Empower America. - -- QUESTION: This fall there are six states and the District of Columbia with ballot initiatives seeking voter approval of raw marijuana for unrestricted medical use. Should these initiatives be adopted? JOSETTE SHINER: The nation's capital has joined Oregon, Nevada, Alaska, Colorado, Arizona and Washington state on the front lines of the battle to legalize hard drugs. Marijuana cafes in the shadow of the Capitol dome? It's possible. Just look what happened in California when voters approved a similar initiative. [continues 611 words]
LOS ANGELES -- A top-level inquiry in California into brutality, murder and corruption at a ``super-maximum'' security jail, has drawn attention to shocking conditions in a state not generally associated with an inhumane prison regime Stunned politicians in the state legislature in Sacramento have heard about guards at Corcoran Prison shooting prisoners dead, arranging fights between inmates, instigating at least one rape, and staging a mass beating of black prisoners. Both the governor, Republican Pete Wilson, and his attorney general, Dan Lungren, who hopes to succeed to the governorship in November's elections, have been accused of failing to investigate Corcoran properly because they received $826,000 in campaign contributions from the powerful guards' union. [continues 724 words]
OAKLAND -- The Oakland City Council is expected Tuesday night to make designated providers of medical marijuana ``officers of the city,'' giving them legal immunity from criminal and civil actions. Robert Raich, attorney for the Oakland Cannabis Buyers' Cooperative, said the city's support should block the federal government's efforts to shut down the pot club. ``This will hopefully blast a hole right through the Controlled Substances Act,'' said Raich, who is representing the club and its executive director, Jeff Jones, in the pending federal lawsuit. [continues 350 words]
Smokers who have tried every way of quitting and still can't kick the habit could find the answer in a revolutionary anti-smoking vaccine. The vaccine has been developed by ImmuLogic of Waltham, Mass., which plans to test it shortly on human volunteers. The company has already begun testing a cocaine vaccine on volunteers. This is the first anti-smoking treatment which has attempted to neutralize the addictive effects of nicotine. The vaccine works by provoking an immune response with antibodies which bind to and neutralize the nicotine, preventing it from reaching the body's nicotine receptors and reinforcing the craving which hooks smokers. [continues 234 words]
LONDON -- The British government has issued its first license allowing significant clinical trials of cannabis as a medicine. GW Pharmaceuticals, run by the colorful Geoffrey Guy, has been given permission to grow cannabis and prepare standardized extracts to be tested on patients. Guy explained why past efforts to treat people with the drug had been unsatisfactory. ``You cannot conduct a proper pharmaceutical program if you have to go and buy the stuff behind the bike sheds.'' Several countries have decriminalized personal use of cannabis, many university studies have been conducted to show its beneficial therapeutic effects and a number of doctors have advised patients to use it. [continues 470 words]
JERUSALEM -- The best available protection against nerve gas attack comes from an Israeli-made synthetic equivalent of marijuana, U.S. military experiments have shown. In U.S. Army tests, rats injected with Dexanabinol, a chemical substitute for hashish, were more than 70 percent less likely to suffer epileptic seizures or brain damage after exposure to sarin and other nerve gases, according to results published in the Israeli press Thursday. The drug was developed by an Israeli pharmaceutical firm, Pharmos, to treat head injuries and strokes, but now it looks likely to become part of the standard chemical warfare kit carried by NATO troops after the results of the tests were announced at a conference in Maryland last month. [continues 139 words]
DURHAM, N.C. -- Don't let those Hershey's cravings carry you away -- chocolate stimulates the same receptors in the brain as marijuana. Don't follow John Travolta and plunge an adrenaline needle into someone's heart to reverse an opiate overdose -- that "Pulp Fiction" scene was simply incorrect. Don't get high the day before a calculus exam -- marijuana impairs short-term memory for two days. These are just a few of the tidbits in "Buzzed," a sort of Betty Crocker book for the recreational drug world. In it, three Duke University scientists -- whose motto is "Just Say Know" -- dispel the misconceptions and myths about used and abused drugs from alcohol to Ecstasy. [continues 708 words]
Hardly anyone could have missed the great prison-building boom a few years back. All told, during the first half of the 1990s, states spent nearly $15 billion and added some 400,000 beds to alleviate overcrowding. That increase in capacity, coupled with a significant slowdown in the prison population growth rate since 1994, has brought the construction craze to an end. So it may come as something of a surprise to learn that across the nation, thousands of inmates still are lacking beds, basic medical assistance and sufficient oversight. [continues 571 words]
