Officials from three countries will work together on a wide range of strategies to wipe out the menace, seen as the "greatest security threat' BANGKOK -- Thailand has obtained important support from the United States and China to tackle its worsening drug problem, described by officials here as the country's ""greatest security threat''. Its officials are currently drafting separate cooperation agreements on drug suppression with their counterparts in Beijing and Washington ahead of an international narcotics conference to be held in Bangkok next week. [continues 606 words]
JENNIFER SAUNDERS is wise to decry the waste of human capital expended in the drug war ("Dealing with crime not simple", Letters, October 2). However, Jennifer needs to expand her argument to define crime and offence. Drug taking is a vice, not a crime. Drug taking fails the John Stuart Mill "freedom" test and the Thomas Jefferson "break my leg or pick my pocket" argument of what is of legitimate concern to government. Before the idea of demonisation, medicalisation and criminalisation was ever thought of, American Lysander Spooner wrote the essay Vindication of Moral Liberty in 1875. [continues 214 words]
The Supreme Court Should Reaffirm Privacy Rights The Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution prohibits "unreasonable searches and seizures" and also says that warrants should be issued only for "probable cause" of criminal activity. But the U.S. Supreme Court has held that some warrantless searches by police are reasonable if they occur in special circumstances. The danger is always that the exceptions will swallow the rule, undermining the right of privacy. In two cases argued this week, the justices were asked to expand the exception to allow police - with the aid of doctors in one case and dogs in the other - to search individuals without either a warrant or probable cause. The court should decline the invitation. [continues 617 words]
Oct. 6, 2000 - The Colorado State Patrol announced Thursday that it has arrested a Tucson man near Pueblo in connection with the largest single cocaine seizure ever made by the patrol. Troopers found 75 kilograms of cocaine, valued on the street at $1.4 million, in a suitcase, spare tire and hidden compartments of a 1998 Ford Expedition. It was packaged in bricks that were 2 inches thick, 6 inches long and 4 inches wide and wrapped in duct tape, according to Trooper Richard Breece, spokesman for the patrol. [continues 134 words]
When the International Olympic Committee took back Andreea Raducana's gold medal because the team doctor gave her a cold remedy containing a tad of the forbidden substance ephedrine, it was as idiotic as it was unjust. And it's proof that Draconian zero-tolerance regulations that brook no discretion in their application can be as unfair as those times when discretion is abused. In the case of the 16-year-old Romanian gymnast, it is generally believed that the dreaded substance not only didn't enhance her performance,it could have impeded it. That's something the Court of Arbitration for Sport, to whom she appealed, preferred to overlook in the name of the current popular god of zero-tolerance. [continues 255 words]
Who goes down when grow-ops get busted - regular folks or organized crime? It has been in all the papers lately, so it must be true: B.C. is under attack by mobsters. According to police rhetoric, marijuana cultivation has evolved into the kind of criminal industry that would make Al Capone weep, with an estimated 10,000 grow operations - run predominately by vicious bikers and Vietnamese gangs - generating more than $4 billion in the province annually. Constantly retelling the stories of B.C. Bud fetching prices as high as $6000 U.S. per pound and being traded kilo-for-kilo for cocaine, the police have carefully crafted the public image of "the grower" as the community threat du jour, the neighbourhood menace who lowers property values, preys on your children and threatens the fabric of society. But the problem with this rhetoric is that it leaves no room for individual cases - it says nothing about who the grower is, why they're growing, what they plan to do with it or how much cash their crop will actually reap, assuming it even makes it to harvest. So who's really growing all that pot? The odds are good it's someone you already know. [continues 1344 words]
WASHINGTON - Hearing a case in which women were arrested from their hospital beds, Supreme Court justices Wednesday debated whether hospitals can test pregnant women for drug use and give the results to police. "This is being done for medical purposes," suggested Justice Antonin Scalia. "The police didn't show up at the hospital and say, 'We'd like to find a way to bust your patients.' " But Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said she did not see how arresting women after they gave birth would protect the fetus, the primary concern of a South Carolina public hospital. "I looked at the (hospital) consent form; it doesn't say anything about police," she said. [continues 254 words]
Julie is a survivor. Although she's still rail-thin, the light in her brown eyes and her confident voice prove that she's feeling much better than she did eight months ago, when she weighed only 68 pounds and was wracked with painful muscle spasms, the result of seven years of suffering with fibromyalgia. She credits her recovery to marijuana. "I would go so far as to say that it saved my life, because I was not able to keep food down," says Julie, a former child-protection worker in her early 30s. "It seemed to help with the digestion process as well. And it kept me sane enough through a period of incredible pain to wait it out and get through it." [continues 539 words]
LEBANON -- About 10 p.m. Wednesday, John Adams, 64, settled into his tan recliner to watch television for the last time, his cane within easy reach. At that moment outside Adams' door, Lebanon police officers Kyle Shedran, 25, and Greg Day, 24, stood armed and prepared for the worst. In the darkness, five to seven other officers were there for backup. Shedran and Day knocked. Adams' wife, Loriane, 61, moved to the door. In the next moment, everyone's lives changed forever, victims of a horrendous mistake. [continues 561 words]
A doctor hired six months ago to help treat heroin addicts at the Hamilton jail quit suddenly this week. Dr. Lisa Doupe, one of three doctors at the Hamilton-Wentworth Detention Centre, resigned Monday effective immediately. She said she could best make change elsewhere. "My resignation was a personal decision," said Doupe. "I'd much rather work constructively ... My whole life has been about returning people to function, returning people to work ... That is my raison d'etre as a physician ... (My resignation) is not a statement. It's just an issue. It didn't fit for me." [continues 518 words]
Nelson, New Zealand -- Motueka hemp advocate Peter Smale says he is disappointed by a decision not to allow trial crops to proceed in time for this planting season. Mr Smale last month applied for a licence to grow industrial hemp under trial conditions. He received a letter from Medsafe, the business unit of the Ministry of Health, stating that trials would not proceed this planting season. An inter-agency working party including the police, Customs, the New Zealand Hemp Industries Association and the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry is discussing a legislative framework, and plans to allow trials to proceed. [continues 209 words]
One in six teenagers is smoking daily and up to one in five is drunk regularly, a new study shows. Research by Trinity College in Dublin looked at the social habits of the pupils in 16 different schools and found up to a third of the 14 and 15 year olds had used at least one illegal drug. Almost one in five of the teenagers interviewed said they had used illegal drugs in the previous month. Cannabis is the most commonly used substance -- followed by inhalants -- and most children begin experimenting just after their 12th birthday. [continues 152 words]
IN a month of record drug seizures, Australian Federal Police and Customs yesterday showed off their latest haul - 500kg of cocaine with an estimated street value of $140 million. An 18-month investigation codenamed Shard led police and Customs officials to intercept a 12m New Zealand-registered yacht, the Ngaire Wha - under full sail allegedly with a full cargo of cocaine - near Patonga, north of Sydney, about 4am yesterday. Three men were arrested on board, and another three were detained on a nearby public wharf. Police claim those on the yacht were planning to take the drugs, wrapped in hessian, ashore in a small dinghy. [continues 305 words]
An unused pinball parlour on Darlinghurst Road, Kings Cross, is likely to become the site of Australia's first legal heroin injecting room. It is understood 66 Darlinghurst Road is leased to Greater Union Theatres under a 10-year contract believed to be worth more than $300,000 a year. However, the building proved unsuitable for a pinball business and remains vacant, with the Uniting Church finalising negotiations to sub-lease the site for an unspecified but smaller rental. The owner of the building, a Sydney businessman with wider property interests in the area, is understood to have passed police probity checks, although he has not yet agreed formally to the sub-lease proposal. [continues 461 words]
MYTH: Marijuana is a gateway drug. FACT: For every 104 people who have used marijuana, there is only one regular user of cocaine and less than one heroin addict. (1) MYTH: Marijuana is addictive. FACT: Less than one percent of people who consume marijuana do so on a daily or near daily basis. An even smaller minority develop dependence on marijuana. Withdrawal symptoms, if experienced at all, are mild. (2) MYTH: Marijuana lowers motivation. FACT: For twenty five years, researchers have searched for a marijuana- induced amotivational syndrome and have failed to find it. Of course, people who are constantly intoxicated, no matter what the drug, are not likely to be productive. (3) [continues 329 words]
Cigarette giant British-American Tobacco encouraged and relied on smuggling to boost its sales in Latin America for at least several years, according to internal company memos in which senior executives discuss the role of smuggling in building market share and profits. The documents, dating from the early to mid-1990s, do not prove that employees of British-American, the world's second-largest tobacco company, directly took part in smuggling operations. But they suggest that high-ranking officials could control the clandestine movement of cigarettes across national boundaries and sought to do so to compete with rivals they thought were doing the same. [continues 1573 words]
DRUG addicts steal property or carry out frauds to the sum of pounds 11,000 a year each in order to feed their habit, say researchers. Those who inject drugs, primarily heroin, need pounds 324 a week to buy their supplies and resort to a range of crimes including shoplifting, car theft, housebreaking, mugging and fraud. Researchers at the NHS Scottish Centre for Infection and Environmental Health based their calculations on interviews with nearly 1,000 injecting drug abusers contacted in the community, through treatment centres and needle exchange schemes. [continues 248 words]
A PERTH lawyer is to bring a test case against laws banning illicit drug use in the home, claiming the legislation is undemocratic and unconstitutional. Colin McKerlie said yesterday that the Supreme Court appeal would challenge the right of state parliament to curb the behaviour of individuals unless they were acting in a way that affected others. Mr McKerlie is preparing appeal documents after his client, Trevor Dunen, was convicted yesterday of possession of cannabis and a smoking implement, following a raid on his suburban home last year. [continues 296 words]
A billion dollars seems like a lot to spend for guilty pleasure. But that is what the Clinton administration proposes in Colombia - a billion dollars to fight drugs this year, and another half billion in 2001. There will be arguments in Congress, but what is really at stake is pleasure, not politics. Americans seek pleasure, and so buy cocaine and heroin in record amounts - but we are ashamed of what we perceive as a weakness. Blame the work ethic or our Puritan heritage, TV, boredom. The end result is that even as we buy certain drugs, we make those drugs illegal. For three decades, the United States has spent billions to buy drugs and billions more to wage a "war" against those who sell and use them, prompting us to arm ourselves as no modern nation ever has in peacetime. Yet illegal drugs remain cheaper, more potent, available and popular than ever. [continues 617 words]
SANTA FE -- The Senate voted 37-4 on Wednesday to oppose drug legalization in a slap at Republican Gov. Gary Johnson. The governor has received widespread national media attention for advocating the legalization of marijuana, heroin and other illicit drugs. The Senate stopped short of endorsing a measure that chastised Johnson for "wasting valuable time and resources, including travel expenses, to advocate the legalization of horrendous narcotics such as heroin." With Lt. Gov. Walter Bradley casting the deciding vote, the Senate voted 20-19 to table an amendment by Sen. Phil Griego, D-San Jose, that said "Johnson is once again offering sound bites rather than solutions to the drug epidemic." [continues 474 words]
