The legalisation of cannabis moved a step closer yesterday as doctors announced details of the first medical trials for the drug. Over the next three years, 900 sufferers of multiple sclerosis and post-operative pain will be given regular doses of cannabis through an inhaler or as a pill. If the drug is shown to ease the volunteers' symptoms without causing side effects, doctors could be prescribing cannabis pills to some of Britain's 85,000 MS sufferers within five years. [continues 484 words]
POLICE Commissioner Peter Ryan has admitted the State's law enforcement officers are are not winning the war against drugs. In an interview with the Daily Mail newspaper in London, Mr Ryan said drugs remained at the root of most crime in NSW. "No, we are not winning on the drugs front," he told the newspaper. Mr Ryan's office claimed yesterday the comments were not new but they drew an imediate response from Premier Bob Carr, who called for greater community support in the war against drugs. [continues 352 words]
FRESH outbreaks of vigilante activity in Tralee and the north Kerry area suggest the IRA are once again taking the law into their own hands and dealing with alleged drug pushers in their own inimitable fashion. Despite Sinn Fein's strong denials, there is little doubt among gardai that republicans were behind the latest incident in which an alleged dealer was abducted and threatened with a gun. There can no place in Irish society for this sort of violence which mirrors the punishment beatings employed by terrorists on the streets of Belfast. [continues 72 words]
Multiple charges linked under first-offence warning policy TASMANIA Police's drug policy - already one of the most liberal in the country - has been broadened again. A directive issued by senior police has expanded the cannabis cautioning program to allow pcop1e facing multiple drug charges to escape with a caution. The policy has generated a mixed response from operational police. Some believe it is a sensible approach while others say it is too lenient. Acting Police Commissioner Jack Johnston denied it was a softening of policy, while Opposition police spokesman Rene Hidding accused the State Government of going easy on drug crime. [continues 360 words]
LONDON - The legalisation of cannabis in Britain moved a step closer yesterday as doctors announced details of the first medical trials of the drug. Over the next three years, 900 sufferers of multiple sclerosis and post-operative pain will be given regular doses of cannabis through an inhaler or as a pill. If the drug is shown to ease the volunteers' symptoms without side effects, doctors could be prescribing cannabis pills to some of Britain's 85,000 MS sufferers within five years. [continues 141 words]
State targets more ex-offenders Nearly 6,200 criminals released on parole and probation in Maryland have been ordered to report to authorities twice a week for urine tests as part of a landmark attempt to overhaul how the state supervises drug-addicted ex-offenders, according to state officials. The figure is more than five times higher than it was just two months ago--a sign that the state's ambitious Break the Cycle program is expanding rapidly. Under the plan, all 25,000 drug addicts on parole and probation in Maryland eventually will be required to undergo treatment and frequent testing--and face swift, escalating punishments if they skip a treatment session or test positive for drug use. [continues 825 words]
WASHINGTON, Jan 11 (Reuters) - The child welfare system is completely overwhelmed and unable to help children because their parents are not being treated for drug and alcohol problems, a report said on Monday. The number of abused or neglected children has more than doubled, from 1.4 million in 1986 to more than three million in 1997, according to the study, headed by Joseph Califano, a former secretary of Health, Education and Welfare who now heads the Centre on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University. [continues 375 words]
A CORK transport company manager who imported massive amounts of cannabis resin for John Gilligan has been jailed for three years by Dublin Circuit Criminal Court. John Dunne made a profit of about IEP600 after his expenses for each consignment, but gardai estimated that Gilligan made some IEP100,000 profit each time on a shipment of some 250 kilograms, Judge Kieran O'Connor was told. Det Sgt Noel Browne said Gilligan paid a IEP1,000 fee per consignment to Dunne who then had to pay groupage fees of IEP300-IEP400 each time. Gardai had uncovered what was a most sophisticated drugs operation in the course of the Veronica Guerin murder investigation. [continues 343 words]
Police swept through Vancouver's downtown east side yesterday scooping up crack-cocaine dealers. Sixty-six warrants were issued for 80 drug-related charges in Operation Crackdown. The arrests continued through the night as wave after wave of drug dealers turned up at the Carnegie Centre. Of the 66 people targeted, 46 were Honduran refugee claimants, and one was from El Salvador, said Insp. Gary Greer. "The significant issue here is out of the 66 people charged, 46 are foreign criminals who are here as refugee claimants. But in our opinion, in reality, they are here to traffic in drugs and to ultimately destroy our community." [continues 385 words]
John Ferguson still shudders when he sees it: A girl sitting on the steps of the Carnegie Centre with a mirror in her lap, trying to find the vein in her neck she'll shoot with cocaine. Ferguson, the centre's security supervisor, calls this corner of Hastings and Main a "drug circus." It's a circus run by drug-dealing ringmasters who sell poison to a sad audience, more in need of hospital than jail. And the show is becoming steadily more despairing -- and dangerous. [continues 259 words]
Plant loses its drug image and proves a popular part of food, clothes and cosmetics. Hemp seed wholesalers are chipping away at mainstream mores around marijuana by using its natural seeds in foods neither the health conscious or health oblivious can ignore. Chips, bagels, cookies, cheese and pie made with hemp seeds were selling well at Lifestyle Market on Douglas Street throughout the Christmas season, said managing partner Carmine Sparanese. All of the hemp-based food products look and taste like the real thing. That's because, according to suppliers and wholesalers, products made form hemp are the real thing - a highly versatile natural source of protein, fibre, vitamins, and essential fatty acids and amino acids. [continues 518 words]
