Free Republic

IT HAPPENED IN CHURCH. Judge Michael T. McSpadden of the 209th District Court stood up and testified that he knows the way. Black ministers were seated on one side of the aisle, white judges on the other. The preachers had invited Harris County's felony court judges to meet and discuss how they might work to restrict the flow of young black men from Houston neighborhoods to state prisons. The way he knows to do that, McSpadden said, is to reduce the penalty for delivery or possession of less than a gram of a controlled substance. Make the crime a misdemeanor...

Those listed below includes innocent victims of police raids. Remember: Some, though not all, of the below victims never engaged in a single drug activity, yet they were still murdered due to the "War on Drugs." Even those who did and do engage in drug use do not warrant death. It was (and is) a personal choice and it was (and is) individual's own bodies. John Adams -- Tennessee A 62-year-old black man was shot and killed by five white police officers in Lebanon, Tennessee after they burst through the front door of his home at 10:00 PM on...

Madness is not enlightenment, but the search for enlightenment can easily be mistaken for madness.” --Martin (Asylum 1996-1997)[1] Some people take drugs to escape difficult life situations. Some take drugs to assist in treating pain, physical or psychological. Some take drugs simply to get high. The reasons for taking drugs are legion. But under the War on Some Drugs prohibition, the US government has given itself the right to dictate which drugs and highs are acceptable. Now a movement is growing in the US to push those convicted of drug charges into drug treatment instead of jail. Although US jails...

Anne McLellan's Reversal on Support for Medicinal Marijuana Should Make Canadians Sick Recently I went in hospital for a test that required injecting me with a radioactive drug. I told them, as I always do, that drugs invariably hit me harder than most people, and they nodded and shot me up with the standard dose, as always, and I vomited nonstop for the next eight hours. One of these days I'll write a column exploring why donning a white uniform induces deafness -- but not today. This column's about what they did for my nausea that day -- which was...

Rainbow Farm Resembles Graveyard Year After Two Lives Lost. VANDALIA -- Rainbow Farm Campground today resembles nothing so much as a graveyard. Overgrown weeds choke fields that were once neatly mowed. Charred remnants of buildings and signs provide a haunting background to the rusting hulk of a late-model Volkswagen Beetle slowly decaying in a parking lot. And near the property's entrance at 59896 Pemberton Road, a spray-painted sign provides a simple epitaph: TOM AND ROLLIE ARE FREE. That sign, painted on weathered plywood, begs some compelling questions about the lives of campground owner Grover "Tom" Crosslin, 46, and his friend...

WASHINGTON ( AP ) Federal authorities have amassed evidence for the first time that an illegal drug operation in the United States was funneling proceeds to Middle East terrorist groups like Hezbollah. Evidence gathered by the Drug Enforcement Administration since a series of raids in January indicates that a methamphetamine drug operation in the Midwest involving men of Middle Eastern descent has been shipping money back to terrorist groups, officials said. ``There is increasing intelligence information from the investigation that for the first time alleged drug sales in the United States are going in part to support terrorist organizations in...

<p>The public debate over marijuana has been plagued by difficulties, not the least of which is a lack of accurate information. Any policy debate that draws activists promoting their cause is likely to suffer from confusion. But the debate over marijuana has been further muddled by careless or gullible media reports. Too often, journalists are fed misleading advocacy information that they swallow whole.</p>

CARSON CITY -- As attention has focused nationwide on a provocative proposal to make Nevada the first state with legal marijuana, a new poll shows support for the idea is fading. The survey, commissioned by the Review-Journal and reviewjournal.com, found 55 percent of likely voters oppose Question 9 on the November election ballot. Passage then and again in 2004 would change the state constitution and allow adult Nevadans to possess 3 ounces or less of marijuana without fear of arrest. Forty percent of the respondents back Question 9, and 5 percent are undecided. The results are a dramatic shift from...

The American Inquisition got another one last month. Singer Dionne Warwick, who was found with nearly a dozen marijuana cigarettes at the Miami airport recently, had her charges dropped in return for promising to undergo "drug treatment" and to make anti-drug public-service announcements. Let's not dwell on the fact that a poor kid found with a few joints in a bad neighborhood isn't offered the same deal Warwick got. The two- tier system of punishment for drug offenses is old news. Just look what happens when the child of a senator is caught with contraband. Rather, let's look at what...

WASHINGTON - The federal drug director is urging schools to offer help to students who use drugs, not just toss them out. Guidelines in a report released Thursday by the Office of National Drug Control Policy urge treatment and counseling for drug-using high schoolers rather than simply suspending or expelling them. ``The goal is to say we believe we can do a better job of making kids healthy,'' said John P. Walters, who directs the office. Kicking students out of school without treatment can create ``drug-using dropouts,'' an even bigger problem, the report said. The advice challenges policies in many...

Lagos - A Nigerian man has been arrested for chopping off his wife's leg after accusing her of carelessly exposing her body during a post-natal medical examination, police said Thursday. Adamu Hussaini, 52, was arrested last week in northern Bauchi State and is to appear in court soon for the offence, state police commissioner Mohammed Bate told reporters. He said Hussaini, a professional butcher, accused his wife Amina of exposing her body carelessly to a male doctor who had examined her during post-natal treatment. "The woman was being examined two weeks after she delivered twins," Bate said. He said Hussaini...

> News    |    Print This Story Boston Woman Faces Murder Charges Vicitm's Body Found In Providence POSTED: 12:21 p.m. EDT August 28, 2002 BOSTON -- Prosecutors believe they've solved a murder mystery involving a young woman whose body was put in a trash bin in Revere, Mass., and later discovered in a recycling plant in Providence, R.I. Watch David Boeri's Report Investigators said that Daisy Carias was stabbed to death by her lesbian lover -- a Boston woman who was living with another woman. NewsCenter 5's David Boeri said that Katushka Garcia, 26, was married to and living with one...

Nobody's looking to execute David "Murder One" Williams. But Luke "Mega" Jones, named in the same federal indictment, is a different story. The government wants Jones to pay with his life for a lengthy career of drug dealing and violence. With the Jones case, U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft has added Connecticut to the list of states in which he has trumped the decisions of local federal prosecutors. He has directed federal prosecutors to seek a death sentence against the Bridgeport drug kingpin. Jones' case marks the first federal death penalty case in Connecticut, and brings to 16 the number...

It hasn't been a good year for offenders accused of buying or selling so-called club drugs, such as Ecstasy and GHB. In March, a grand jury returned murder charges against two people in their friend's overdose death. Randall Corbett of Erwinville and Heather Smith of Baton Rouge were arrested after 32-year-old Marsha Fisher was found dead in her home off Cedarcrest Avenue. Prosecutors say Corbett, Smith and Fisher were friends who used drugs together. That friendship turned deadly, prosecutors say, when Corbett gave Smith money to buy Ecstasy and Fisher had an adverse reaction to the drug. Paramedics found her...

Nuns at a Brisbane orphanage allegedly raped children and forced them to eat faeces, rotting food and their own vomit. A woman in her late 50s has come forward to tell of her experiences at the hands of nuns at Nazareth House in Wynnum on Brisbane's eastside during the 1940s and 1950s. Lizzie Walsh, as she was known as a child at the orphanage, has told this week's The Bulletin magazine she was subjected to violence for seven years. During her time at Nazareth House, Ms Walsh claims she was raped by a nun with a flagstick "to get the...

Thailand's government may circulate fake drugs to put users off by making them sick. Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra says the speed pills will make the drug unattractive and scare people off using them. The Bangkok Post says the idea was proposed by Sitha Thiwaree, secretary to the deputy defence minister. He told a drugs seminar the mainstream drug market will be destroyed by flooding it with the fake drugs at low prices or even free of charge. The prime minister says the suggestion was made "in jest" but should still be considered by the Public Health Ministry . Other ideas...

The mother of an eight-year-old crack dealer told authorities she'd rather give up her kids than evict the tenant who allegedly supplied the dope. "The parents said they needed that money for rent," Mark Kastner, a spokesman for the province's children's services department, said yesterday afternoon. "The parents advised us to keep the kids, and that's what we'll do until we can ascertain where this family is going." The fate of the three siblings in children's service custody -- including the eight-year-old nabbed while holding crack cocaine during a drug deal -- may be decided today. The case of the...

A proposal likely to be on the November election ballot should be rejected by Ohio voters, because it virtually raises a white flag in the war against drugs. The measure, set forth as a proposed constitutional amendment as a result of a statewide petition drive, probably will be labeled as State Issue I. It would allow people convicted of using illegal drugs - even repeat offenders - to demand that judges send them to drug treatment programs instead of jail. In such cases, judges would be permitted to order treatment for no more than 18 months, followed by a maximum...

"My hands are bloody; so are Hollywood's," declares Hollywood screenwriter Joe Eszterhas in a recent commentary piece in which he also acknowledges he has throat cancer. "My cancer has caused me to attempt to cleanse mine," he adds. In the piece ("No smoke: A Hollywood writer's deal with God," Outlook, Aug. 18), the multimillionaire screenwriter literally begs his Hollywood colleagues to stop using alluring images of cigarettes, which, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, kill 440,000 Americans annually. The CDC also says that every day almost 5,000 under the age of 18 try their first cigarette....

By JOHN COLES A MUM was treated “like a criminal” — for raising the alarm about a freed paedophile. Melanie Singer, 24, posted a leaflet to 250 homes after twisted Tony Adams was let out early from prison. But Adams complained of harassment — and Melanie ended up being arrested. She was fingerprinted, photographed and had DNA swabs taken. And she was later given a formal caution which will hang over her for five years. Mum-of-two Melanie, an assistant at an infants’ school, said: “The system stinks. People have every right to know if someone like this is living in...