| December 31, 1997 #027 | ||||||||||
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A DrugSense publication
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Table of Contents
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FEATURE ARTICLE (Top) | ||||||||||
President Clinton Tells People What They Want to Hear,
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by Kendra E. Wright,
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On December 20 in his weekly radio address President Clinton said he had
good news; "our teenagers are beginning to turn away from drugs." This was
news most Americans wanted to hear. In fact a Harvard survey released the
week before showed that adolescent drug use was the top health concern of
Americans. | ||||||||||
Unfortunately, President Clinton was telling people what they wanted to
hear, not what the research actually showed. The survey the President was
reporting on showed an increase in adolescent drug use in every age group
except 8th graders where there was a statistically insignificant decline in
use. | ||||||||||
In fact, every year of the Clinton administration adolescent drug use has
increased - now half of America's adolescents try an illegal drug before
they graduate from high school. Across the country there are reports of
youths dying of heroin overdoses, visiting emergency rooms after taking
pills and a host of other drug abuse problems. | ||||||||||
By sugar coating the survey results President Clinton avoided facing up to
the failure of current policies in stopping adolescent abuse. In fact,
President Clinton continues to lead us in the same direction that has failed
in every previous year of his administration. His time in office has seen
record drug arrests, record levels of incarceration, record drug budgets and
record spending on anti-drug education - all with increased adolescent drug
use every year. It hasn't worked.
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Maybe it is time to face the facts of our failed drug strategy: the war on
drugs hurts our families and our kids. | ||||||||||
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WEEKLY NEWS IN REVIEW (Top) | ||||||||||
Domestic News
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Adolescents
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It's been said that the war on drugs won't be won in the courtroom, but on
the playground. If that's so, then there may be a glimmer of hope in this
difficult battle. | ||||||||||
According to an annual national survey widely regarded as the most accurate
assessment of illegal drug use by teenagers, the appeal of drugs appears to
be slipping among older adolescents, while drug use among eighth-graders has
stopped climbing for the first time since 1992. | ||||||||||
True, the announcement by President Clinton isn't much to cheer about; some
Republican lawmakers said it showed that America was losing ground. The
survey gave them lots of ammunition - nearly half of all seniors who
graduated from high school this year admitted having tried marijuana at
least once, compared with 45% the year before. It's also troubling that 5.8%
of seniors said they smoked marijuana daily in the month before the survey,
up from 4.9% last year. | ||||||||||
But the report, done by the National Institute of Drug Abuse, also showed
that the level of experimentation with harder drugs such as cocaine and
heroin among graduating seniors had risen more modestly than in recent
years. | ||||||||||
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The Clinton administration will begin next month a small-scale test of its
$195 million advertising campaign to persuade young people to stay away from
drugs, the head of the Office of National Drug Control Policy said
yesterday. | ||||||||||
Barry R. McCaffrey said the government will spend $20 million on radio,
television and print ads during the four-month test in 12 cities, including
Washington and Baltimore. | ||||||||||
The program is intended to combat rising levels of drug use among the
nation's youth. | ||||||||||
During the test phase, the campaign will rely primarily on ads prepared by
the Partnership for a Drug-Free America and the Ad Council. Results of the
test will be used to tailor messages chosen for the nationwide phase
beginning later in 1998, McCaffrey said. | ||||||||||
The other 10 cities included in the test phase are: Atlanta; Denver;
Houston; Milwaukee; San Diego; Tucson; Hartford, Conn.; Sioux City, Iowa;
Boise, Idaho; and Portland, Ore. | ||||||||||
Copyright 1997 The Washington Post Company
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[end]
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Heroin
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Contending that efforts to halt drugs at the border or to "Just Say No" have failed, San Francisco Supervisor Gavin Newsom says it is time to treat heroin abuse less as a crime and more like a medical problem. | ||||||||||
Newsom is asking the board to seek a federal waiver that would ease restrictions and allow private doctors "full discretion" to prescribe methadone, a synthetic drug that blunts the craving for heroin. | ||||||||||
Currently, only state-licensed and federally approved clinics can distribute the drug, which means there are long waiting lists in most places. | ||||||||||
Such waivers have been issued only in New York City, Connecticut and
Baltimore - which has the highest rate of heroin-related emergency room
visits in the nation. | ||||||||||
The board's Family, Health and Environment Committee is expected to hear the matter next month. Meanwhile, Newsom is asking for public input at a town hall meeting on January 24 at the Potrero Hill Neighborhood House. | ||||||||||
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Marijuana
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Before a San Francisco appeals court ruling threw the future of medical marijuana outlets in doubt, an organization calling itself the Orange County Cannabis Co-op was taking steps to open an office in Garden Grove. | ||||||||||
Marvin Chavez, who listed a Garden Grove post office box as his address when he applied for a business license, said he hoped to open an office where meetings of a medical support group could be held and where marijuana could be offered to the sick and suffering who have a medical prescription for it. | ||||||||||
But city officials, anxious to keep Chavez from establishing roots in the area, will examine ways to keep the co-op out of the city. | ||||||||||
"He paid a business tax. We have no authority to deny him the right to pay that tax," Police Capt. Dave Abrecht said. "If he opens up a storefront and tries to sell or furnish marijuana, we would arrest him." | ||||||||||
"Frankly, this is very alarming," said City Councilman Ken Maddox. | ||||||||||
This month, the 1st District Court of Appeal reinstated a ban on the sale of
marijuana in San Francisco, despite passage of California's medical
marijuana initiative. | ||||||||||
Copyright Los Angeles Times
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[end]
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Just about everyone in Hollywood who hears about the Hollywood Blacklist of
old declares, "If I had been there, I would have" and then proclaims one
bold and daring act of creative freedom-fighting after another. Some,
especially those who were not there, have contempt for anyone who cooperated
with the Blacklist in any way. But I'll bet that even those who recently
blackballed Elia Kazan from industry recognition because of his
participation in the old Blacklist have knuckled under to the current
Blacklist time and time again. | ||||||||||
Yes, there is a Blacklist, a code of censorship imposed by Washington, that nearly everyone in Hollywood religiously adheres to. It is more insidious than the anticommunist Blacklist of half a century ago because no one discusses it. No one has to"everyone self-censors. The Blacklist is so ubiquitous that most people are not even aware of it any more. It just is. | ||||||||||
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Militarization
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MEXICO CITY - Hoping to build a new bulwark against the flow of illegal
drugs from Latin America, the United States is providing the Mexican
military with extensive covert intelligence support and training hundreds of
its officers to help shape a network of anti-drug troops around the country,
U.S. and Mexican officials say.
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The officials say the assistance has included training, equipment and advice
from the Central Intelligence Agency to establish an elite army intelligence
unit that has quietly moved to the forefront of Mexico's anti-drug effort,
sometimes ahead of a new civilian police force that the United States is
also pledged to support. | ||||||||||
The effort has proceeded despite growing U.S. concern that it may lead to
more serious problems of corruption and human rights in one of Mexico's most
respected institutions, U.S. officials say. In fact, a new U.S. intelligence
analysis of the military's drug ties will cite evidence of extensive
penetration of the officer corps, two people who have seen draft versions of
the assessment said. | ||||||||||
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PANAMA CITY, Panama - Despite a series of street protests, months of
delicate negotiations have led to a plan for a U.S.-led anti-drug center on
an American military base here. | ||||||||||
The center - intended to monitor drug smuggling throughout Latin America after the United States turns over its bases to Panama at the end of 1999 - has been a hotly contested topic in Panama. Although most Panamanians support the center, some have protested what they see as the United States going back on its word to pull its soldiers out of the country. | ||||||||||
They recall the 1989 U.S. invasion, and say their government is turning the
country over to foreigners. | ||||||||||
But on Tuesday, U.S. diplomat Thomas MacNamara and Panamanian official Jorge
Ritter signed an agreement in Miami allowing the center to go ahead,
Panamanian President Ernesto Perez Balladares said. "
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We have reached an agreement, and now we will enter into a phase in which we
will invite other Latin American countries to participate," Perez Balladares
said, adding that Mexico, Brazil and Colombia have been especially
interested in the plan. The president didn't give details of the agreement,
but said they would be released soon. | ||||||||||
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Sentencing
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As is the case each holiday season, New York's governor commutes the
sentences of prisoners whose conduct behind bars has proved them worthy of
early release. This year, Gov. Pataki used the occasion to grant clemency to
three prisoners who had been serving long terms under New York state's tough
Rockefeller drug laws. By so doing, Mr. Pataki followed in the footsteps of
Governors Cuomo and Carey before him. | ||||||||||
But he should lead instead of follow. There was a time, early in his
administration, when Mr. Pataki seemed poised to do just that and push for
reform of these draconian laws - laws that have, over time, added needlessly
to prison overcrowding and run up huge costs to taxpayers. Rightly and
compassionately, Mr. Pataki criticized the statutes as a relic of another
era, when hard time seemed the best way to stop a rising incidence of drug
crime. | ||||||||||
Yet since those days, drug crime hasn't diminished. If anything, time has
proved that tough punishment isn't the be-all answer it was supposed to have
been. Yet Mr. Pataki isn't even hinting at reform these days. Even as he
announced the clemencies, he was careful to avoid raising speculation that
he might appeal to the Legislature for change. | ||||||||||
"While I remain firmly committed to continuing our successful effort to
fight crime, these individuals worked hard to earn a second chance," the
governor said in releasing the names of the prisoners chosen for early
parole. | ||||||||||
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The Drug War
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With inmates at 72 federal prisons crafting hundreds of millions of dollars in pajamas, desk chairs and other products, American manufacturers are complaining prison labor is stealing their jobs and profits. | ||||||||||
The idea that some workers, whose taxes pay to keep an inmate in jail, might lose their jobs because of prison labor "just doesn't sit well with us," said Douglas Brackett, executive vice president of the American Furniture Manufacturers Association in High Point, N.C. Furniture makers | ||||||||||
especially have rallied around a bill introduced last month by Rep. Peter Hoekstra, R-Mich., that would stamp out an advantage enjoyed by Federal Prison Industries - a requirement that federal agencies shop first with the inmate program, even though the goods aren't always cheaper or better made. | ||||||||||
"Plain and simple, (the program) takes job opportunities away from thousands
of honest, hard-working Americans," Hoekstra said. | ||||||||||
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The CIA described it as the most intensive investigation in the agency's
history. But the result of the yearlong probe into the CIA's reported role
in introducing crack cocaine into black neighborhoods in Los Angeles left
more questions than good answers. | ||||||||||
Officially, the CIA investigators say they found zero evidence to support the allegations raised in a controversial three-part series published in | ||||||||||
1996 in the San Jose Mercury News. The newspaper reported that the spy
agency aided and abetted a drug pipeline between Colombia and the San
Francisco Bay area that operated for almost a decade. The newspaper said
that two civilian supporters of the Nicaraguan Contras sold large amounts of
crack cocaine to gangs in Los Angeles starting in 1981. Profits from those
drug sales, according to the newspaper series, were funneled to CIA-backed
Contra rebels fighting Nicaragua's leftist government. | ||||||||||
The CIA proclaimed innocence and took issue with the paper's evidence. Thus
the investigation. | ||||||||||
Further clouding the investigation, conducted by the inspector generals at
the CIA and the Justice Department, is the last- minute decision to delay
release of both reports - indefinitely - citing "ongoing law enforcement
concerns."
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The real truth about whether the CIA was involved in the drug- trafficking
scheme may never be known, particularly with some of its former agents
questioning the agency's self-described "intensive investigation." That,
coupled with the spy agency's decision to hoard the reports, does not help
its already fragile credibility on this issue. | ||||||||||
[end]
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An in-house probe that exonerated the CIA of helping to spark the nation's
crack epidemic did nothing to erase widespread suspicions in the black
community that the agency introduced the drug to inner cities, some local
African-American leaders said Thursday. | ||||||||||
"It doesn't carry a lot of weight with me," said Tommy Fulcher, head of a
Santa Clara County anti-poverty organization. "They've investigated
themselves."
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Gayle Tiller, first vice president of the San Jose chapter of the NAACP,
compared the CIA investigators to a pack of wolves probing who killed the
chickens in a hen house. | ||||||||||
"It doesn't make any sense," she said. | ||||||||||
The probe was conducted by the CIA's inspector general, an independent investigative unit within the agency. The investigation was ordered after the Mercury News reported in an August 1996 series that a decade before, two Nicaraguan drug dealers sold tons of cocaine that was converted into crack and sold in predominantly black neighborhoods in Los Angeles. The proceeds were then used to help fund CIA-backed rebels in Nicaragua, the series said. | ||||||||||
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International News
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Canada Customs officers believe the contraband, found in a container on a
visiting ship, is cocaine. | ||||||||||
Canada Customs officers have seized a "very significant" amount of suspected
cocaine from a ship at Vancouver terminal, calling it one of the country's
biggest drug seizures in recent history. | ||||||||||
"This is really significant in terms of seizures made in the whole country this year," said Paula Shore, a representative of Customs Border Services. | ||||||||||
"We're pleased to have the drugs off the streets."
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The contraband was found Saturday night in a container on a foreign
commercial ship, which was docked at the Vancouver terminal on the downtown
waterfront. | ||||||||||
Officials believe the seizure is cocaine, and lab tests were being conducted
Sunday to confirm that. | ||||||||||
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SARNIA, Ont. (CP) - If everything goes according to plan, farmers could be
planting seeds this spring for Ontario's first commercial hemp crop in 50
years. | ||||||||||
Health Minister Allan Rock released proposed regulations on the weekend for
a commercial hemp industry in southwestern Ontario. | ||||||||||
Area MPs have been lobbying for action on the crop for years. | ||||||||||
Rose-Marie Ur, who represents Lambton-Kent-Middlesex riding in southwestern
Ontario, said the final regulations should be proclaimed in time for spring
planting. | ||||||||||
"Unless there's major, major problems, we still can meet our spring
deadline," she said. | ||||||||||
Farmers grew hemp in the Forest area in Lambton County in the 1940s but a
backlash against marijuana led the government to regulate hemp production
out of existence. | ||||||||||
Hemp, grown for fibre and oil, is related to - but not the same as - other
cannabis plants grown for the production of marijuana. | ||||||||||
"Not only is it a good alternative crop, it has been a crop in the Lambton
part of my riding in the earlier years," said Ur. "It's not like we're
re-inventing the wheel here."
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She said Ontario will be several years ahead of jurisdictions in the United
States in hemp production, and that will provide millions in export revenue
for Canada. | ||||||||||
[end]
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Editors note: The IoS Cannabis Campaign has web pages at:
http://www.independent.co.uk/sindypot/index.htm
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A group campaigning for the decriminalisation of cannabis has called on the
Cabinet minister whose son was arrested for supplying the drug to help make
cannabis legal. | ||||||||||
A spokesman for the Campaign to Legalise Cannabis said that the minister should "impress the need for decriminalisation" upon cabinet colleagues. | ||||||||||
"Now he has had a taste of it, I think he should use his position within
government to persuade his colleagues of the absurdity of the law," said Don
Barnard. "The devastation that this experience has caused to the family
concerned will be absolute and completely disproportionate to the offence
involved," said Mr Barnard. | ||||||||||
"The stress of being arrested, going to a police station, wondering whether
your house is to be searched and wondering whether your son is going to be
put in the cells is awful. | ||||||||||
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Every father must dread the arrest of his teenage son for dealing in drugs. When, however, a father is a senior Cabinet Ministers in a government which has said it will not countenance softening the law against drugs, but is under intense pressure from its own supporters to bring that about, the shame and embarrassment of the father must be almost unbearable. | ||||||||||
A word of sympathy is in order for the Minister faced with the duty of taking his own son to the police station to make a confession. | ||||||||||
The incident should not deflect the Government from its admirable resolve
not to give in to the legalisation lobby. That lobby will use the fact that
a Cabinet Minister's son deals in drugs to argue that the fight against
drugs is already lost: the only choice left now is the unconditional
surrender. If middle classes and underclass are united in their consumption
of illegal drugs, the argument in favour of decriminalisation - they will
say - is irresistible. | ||||||||||
But the reasoning is spurious and should not be heeded. Our society has slid
down quite enough slippery slopes already. | ||||||||||
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BERNE, Switzerland (Reuters) - Swiss who grow hallucinogenic plants to make
beer or other legal products cannot be prosecuted under drug laws,
Switzerland's highest court has ruled. | ||||||||||
A Federal Court decision handed down Monday said an investigating magistrate
in the canton of Valais had jumped the gun last year by seizing 8.5 tons of
Indian hemp from a commune that grew the weed, the Swiss SDA news agency
reported. | ||||||||||
The commune twice asked in vain to get the crop back, arguing it was only
filling industrial orders, including one for 1,100 pounds of dried hemp
blossoms from a brewery that specializes in hemp beer. | ||||||||||
The judges ruled the magistrate should have considered that the blossoms
could be used to make an entirely legal product. | ||||||||||
The fragrant flowers can now be released to the brewery provided it confirms
it ordered them and gives assurances that the crop will be used only for
brewing. | ||||||||||
[end]
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Pope John Paul II, urging more efforts to combat drug use, today suggested that there should be more places where young people can have "healthy" fun. | ||||||||||
Visiting a parish on Rome's outskirts which largely lack cultural, social
and sports facilities, easy transport to the capital's centre and other
development the Pope noted it has a drug problem. | ||||||||||
"I think about the lack of centres capable of offering healthy entertainment
and occasions for cultural growth for adolescents and adults," the pope told
the parishioners. | ||||||||||
"Faced with such situations, don't be inactive," the Pope urged. "It's up to
you, in the first place, to construct a new solidarity, which will
facilitate prevention and the rehabilitation of all those who unfortunately
fall into the net of drug addiction."
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He urged families to react courageously against drug use, "this plague of
our times."
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He added that the Catholic Church, convinced that "interventions of the
social and medical kind are not enough," seeks increased emphasis on "human
and Christian values in society and an authentic solidarity toward
individuals, especially if weak and alone."
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[end]
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HOT OFF THE 'NET (Top) | ||||||||||
MAP Site Awarded Political Site of the Day
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The Media Awareness Project web site has been awarded the Political Site of
the Day for Sunday, December 28. | ||||||||||
For details or to submit your organization's site please see
http://www.penncen.com/psotd/
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DRUGSENSE TIP OF THE WEEK (Top) | ||||||||||
MAP Mailing List and Article Finding Hints
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Looking for a past item from MAPTalk, MAPNews or MAPTips? Want to subscribe, unsubscribe or find out more about what each of these lists has to offer? | ||||||||||
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what you need. | ||||||||||
This page also provides a description of each list along with a form for handling list processor commands without all that extra e-mail. | ||||||||||
Articles cited in the DrugNews-Digest are available on the Media Awareness
Project's Wide Web site at http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/ for two weeks
following publication. | ||||||||||
Older articles are kept in the MAPNews-Digest archive at
http://www.mapinc.org/lists/mapnews/
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Archives are keyword searchable and both provide a simple search form. More
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Mark Greer
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