NEWARK - New Jersey leads the nation in the proportion of prison inmates jailed for non-violent drug offenses, as a result of punitive, inflexible laws that are burdensome to taxpayers and ineffective in curbing drug abuse, a reform group says. The Washington-based Drug Policy Alliance said, in a report to be released today, that 36 percent of New Jersey's 28,000 prison inmates are serving sentences for drug crimes, compared with the national average of 20 percent. The group quoted figures from the New Jersey state Department of Corrections as of June 2002. [continues 108 words]
High Court Paves Way For States To Allow It WASHINGTON (AP) - The Supreme Court cleared the way Tuesday for state laws allowing ill patients to smoke marijuana if a doctor recommends it. Justices turned down the Bush administration's request to consider whether the federal government can punish doctors for recommending or perhaps just talking about the benefits of the drug to sick patients. An appeals court said the government cannot. Nine states have laws legalizing marijuana for people with physician recommendations or prescriptions: Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, Nevada, Oregon, and Washington. And 35 states have passed legislation recognizing marijuana's medicinal value. [continues 373 words]
LAST WEEK'S ruling by the New Jersey Supreme Court on student drug testing offers schools another option for fighting substance abuse. But under the wording of the carefully phrased opinion, random drug testing of high school students is likely to remain rare. That's a good thing. In a 4-3 vote, the court upheld the program used by Hunterdon Central Regional High School, which randomly tests students involved in all extracurricular activities and all students who park cars on school property. School officials say the testing was a reaction to increased drug use and has been a deterrent. [continues 130 words]
The men sit quietly in rows, holding their Bibles and listening to a man speak reassuringly about the second coming of Jesus Christ. "People are going to see Christ coming, and the souls of the dead are going to be coming with him," Bill Thomson said. "We will all be with Christ. All the believers." The audience - some members just out of jail, others fresh off the streets of Paterson - are riveted by the lecture. They ask questions and highlight Scripture with yellow markers. A few say "amen." [continues 1452 words]
"So cool -- it rocks -- there's music, you can eat, you can run around, you can sign each other's shirts, you can get dirty -- and it's way better than school," exulted Kianna Underwood, a fifth-grader at Hillside Elementary School, at last Thursday's fifth-grade party. Underwood wasn't the only one having a blast last Thursday. Fifth-grade students from all over the district gathered at Woodman Field to celebrate the end of the school year -- and their successful completion of the 17-week D.A.R.E. program -- with games, deejay dancing, sports and safety demonstrations, and a barbecue. It was the sixth annual party given to the students by the Montclair Police Department, in cooperation with other local entities interested in keeping Montclair children safe and free of drugs. [continues 394 words]
VANCOUVER, British Columbia - A police crackdown on drug dealers in downtown Vancouver is causing more harm than good for the neighborhood's AIDS and hepatitis epidemic, a Human Rights Watch report says, asserting that addicts are being driven away from needle-exchange programs and other services. Called Operation Torpedo, the crackdown has gotten some pushers off the streets, "but at a high cost," said the report issued Wednesday by the New York-based rights group. Its findings were echoed by health-care workers and addicts in the city, known for progressive drug policies. [continues 283 words]
A Midland Park fifth-grade student was taken into custody after he tried to sell marijuana to a fourth-grader at Highland Elementary School, police said Thursday. The 11-year-old boy, whose name was withheld because he is a juvenile, had a small amount of marijuana in his backpack and offered to sell it to the younger boy at the school, where both are students Wednesday morning, said Lt. John Casson. "In my 35 years here, it's the youngest drug case I've seen," Casson said. "I'd like to think it's an isolated incident." A teacher who learned about the discussion told school administrators, who contacted police, said Principal Rick Triano. [continues 171 words]
NEW YORK - A group of activists, elected officials, and celebrities on Thursday called for the repeal of the state's Rockefeller-era drug laws, demanding that Gov. George Pataki and the state Legislature get rid of them by a June 4 deadline. "It is unbelievable that we've allowed it to go on this long," hip-hop entrepreneur Russell Simmons said of the decades-old laws. He was joined at a news conference by well-known figures including Susan Sarandon, Tim Robbins, former gubernatorial candidate Andrew Cuomo, and presidential hopeful Al Sharpton. [continues 293 words]
NEW YORK - Seven years ago, Pedro Pietri was diagnosed with glaucoma. He began using prescription medicine, but it gave him headaches and actually made his eyes hurt more. So he tried something else: marijuana. "It really helps," said the New York poet as he pulled off his dark shades. "It relieves the tension, the tension in my nerves." Hoisting a large, bright-green marijuana leaf made of cardboard, Pietri joined more than 200 other activists in New York on Saturday for the Global March for Cannabis Liberation, an event that coincided with about 225 similar demonstrations worldwide. [continues 633 words]
NEW YORK - Chronic cocaine use harms brain circuits that help produce the sense of pleasure, which may help explain why cocaine addicts have a higher rate of depression, a study suggests. It's not clear whether cocaine kills brain cells or merely impairs them, or whether the effect is reversible, said the study's author, Dr. Karley Little. But it's bad news for cocaine addicts in any case, he said. "I personally wouldn't want to lose 10 [percent] or 20 percent of my reward-pleasure center neurons, or have them just deranged or not working right," said Little, of the Ann Arbor, Mich., Veterans Affairs Medical Center and the University of Michigan. [continues 123 words]
ATLANTIC CITY - Citing potential administrative nightmares, the state asked a judge Thursday to delay enforcement of a ruling that bans police and prosecutors from sharing the loot seized in civil forfeiture cases. Last month, Superior Court Judge G. Thomas Bowen declared the practice unconstitutional after a challenge by a former Cumberland County sheriff's deputy whose 1990 Ford Thunderbird was seized by the state because her teenage son had been caught selling marijuana from it. The state will appeal the Dec. 11 ruling to the Appellate Division within two weeks, according to John Hagerty, spokesman for the state Division of Criminal Justice. [continues 269 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]
Denial is the main theme that emerges from a recent Herald News investigation into the region's brisk heroin trade. Reporter Andrew Glazer paints a disturbing picture of an underground menace, long thought to be easily recognizable and far from home. Suburban teens are traveling to Paterson to purchase some of strongest heroin available in the United States, and urban treatment centers don't have enough beds to help them heal once the drug has had its run. The heroin for sale in Paterson today is a superior product in every way: cheap, easy to use, devilishly addictive. [continues 367 words]
A young woman lies in a field after a heroin overdose! Andrew Glazer's front-page article "Heroin: Pure, Cheaper, Deadlier" in the Dec. 1, Herald News is a depressing commentary that reminds us illegal drugs continue to rob young people from our neighborhoods and our futures. What is our defense? Drug abuse has been doing its dirty work long enough. Politicians need to finally put their votes where their mouths are and consider the problem a matter of life and death. [continues 175 words]
WASHINGTON - The typical medicinal marijuana user is likely to resemble someone from the baby boom generation - or older -- rather than a 20-something poster child, according to a congressional study. Data collected in Hawaii and Oregon - two of the eight states allowing marijuana use for medical treatment - show that the majority of users are males, 40 years old or older, who take the drug for severe pain or persistent muscle spasms, said the report. The study by the General Accounting Office, which covered Alaska and California as well, also said the relaxed drug laws in those four states have had minimal impact on fighting crime, although they at times complicate prosecution of drug cases. [continues 458 words]
PATERSON - Vinny Lombardi awoke in a daze, a rat gnawing at his chest. He was living under a bridge, wearing blood-stained jeans. After 29 years of shooting heroin, the veins in his arms had collapsed. He had started to inject in his groin. The blood flowed freely. At about the same time, Luther Frierson sunk deep into depression after the death of his 19-year-old daughter. She had overdosed on cocaine in the bedroom next to his. He had no idea she was using. He was blinded by his own addiction. [continues 804 words]
As dawn breaks over Yemen, farmers in rugged mountains 6,000 feet above the desert plain begin to cut their hillside harvest by hand. Crop bundles are carted in pickup trucks over dusty roads to the cities. A day later, suitcases and overnight parcels packed with those bundles arrive at Newark Liberty International Airport. Just last year, U.S. Customs inspectors seized more than 17,000 pounds of bundled khat leaves at Newark airport. Nationwide, seizures have nearly doubled over the past three years. [continues 961 words]
SAN FRANCISCO - A federal appeals court ruled for the first time Tuesday that the government cannot revoke doctors' prescription licenses for recommending marijuana to sick patients. A three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously found that the Justice Department's policy interferes with the free-speech rights of doctors and patients. "An integral component of the practice of medicine is the communication between doctor and a patient. Physicians must be able to speak frankly and openly to patients," Chief Circuit Judge Mary Schroeder said. [continues 108 words]
If more young people realized that many of their peers aren't drinking or taking drugs, fewer would feel compelled to experiment. "Students very often over-perceive alcohol and drug abuse among peers," says Pamela Negro, director of Rowan University's Center for Addiction Studies. "Social norms [an alcohol and drug prevention approach used by professionals] is about correcting those misperceptions so that young people make wiser choices." Negro will join other educators and law enforcement officials for a daylong conference on substance abuse prevention Friday at Waterloo Village in Stanhope. [continues 311 words]
It's high season for New Jersey's pot growers, and a marijuana tip line run by the state police is ringing off the hook. A daughter turns in her mother. A suspicious neighbor tattles on the guy next door. One grower rats out another. In the war against drugs, money has become a powerful weapon in New Jersey - - reward money, that is. In newspaper ads and on billboards, the state police have made an offer that's hard to resist: up to $1,000 for anyone who turns in a pot grower. [continues 663 words]
