Free Republic

AS HE TROOPS about Europe, with notebook and camera crew, guidebook author Rick Steves witnesses what the late historian Barbara Tuchman called "The March of Folly," the sites of wars and witch hunts waged by feckless rulers. Steves has come home with a mind to take on our leaders' folly, the federal government's enduring, woefully unsuccessful War on Drugs, and the battle front against marijuana. He would replace a strategy of locking people up with a policy designed to lessen harm. It's a lot like the "Four Pillars" approach to drug use adopted by Vancouver, B.C.: treatment, harm reduction, prevention...

Randy Dean Sievert drew ire from Manatee County sheriff's deputies as he aimed his cell phone camera at undercover investigators executing a search warrant in his neighborhood. A deputy confronted Sievert, demanding that he destroy any photos of investigators and their vehicles. Sievert was not a welcome observer of the drug raid. Authorities called him a "known drug dealer" based on a couple of past arrests. Taking photos of undercover officers jeopardized their lives, deputies said. Sievert refused to remove his hands from his pockets and step away from his car after he was confronted about the pictures. Deputies forced...

Study aims to clear haze surrounding pot addiction By Terri Somers UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER March 14, 2008 Atrophy of the brain and cirrhosis of the liver are long-term side effects of heavy alcohol dependence. And withdrawal for alcoholics can bring sometimes fatal delirium tremors and convulsions. Those facts are well known. Barbara Mason But much less is known about marijuana, the nation's most widely used and socially accepted illicit drug. Our knowledge of marijuana is often based on personal experience, observation or anecdotes, despite a growing collection of scientific studies on the topic. Scripps Research Institute addiction expert Barbara Mason...

A fractured state Supreme Court has ruled that random drug testing of student athletes is unconstitutional, finding that each has "a genuine and fundamental privacy interest in controlling his or her own bodily functions." The court ruled unanimously Thursday in favor of parents and students in the lower Columbia River town of Cathlamet who opposed the tiny Wahkiakum School District's policy of random urine tests of middle school and high school student athletes, but some justices said random tests could be justified under different circumstances.

In the increasingly divided American landscape, where language, faith, and prime-time television no longer unite us as they once did, a thin golden line holds the nation together. It connects entities as disparate as Britney Spears, the Miami Dolphins, the Tecumseh High School Science Club, the cashier at your local Walgreen’s, even George W. Bush. Its domain is the restroom stall. Its associated features include tiny plastic cups, attentive strangers, and, on occasion, latex stunt penises and disposable heat packs. It is, of course, the precautionary drug test. In 2008 it doesn’t matter if you’re a millionaire entertainer, a service-industry...

6th Graders To Get Drug TestsPOSTED: 10:41 am EST March 7, 2008 UPDATED: 5:59 pm EST March 7, 2008 ROYAL OAK, Mich. -- A new drug testing system could soon take place in Royal Oak starting in September. Superintendent Thomas Moline said he will be taking a proposal to the school board that will allow voluntary and random drug testing for students as young as 11 years old. Moline said nobody can predict who's going to use drugs and he wants to include middle school and elementary school students. He said it is part of the Save Our Youth Task...

We write a television show. Measured against more thoughtful and meaningful occupations, this is not the best seat from which to argue public policy or social justice. Still, those viewers who followed The Wire — our HBO drama that tried to portray all sides of inner-city collapse, including the drug war, with as much detail and as little judgment as we could muster — tell us they've invested in the fates of our characters. They worry or grieve for Bubbles, Bodie or Wallace, certain that these characters are fictional yet knowing they are rooted in the reality of the other...

Villagers in remote areas of Badakhshan Province, north-eastern Afghanistan, have been using opium as a substitute for medicine for years. They are oblivious to the harm it can do to their health. There is no official data about the number of drug addicts in Badakhshan. However, the United Nations Office for Drugs and Crimes (UNODC) says one million people are addicted to drugs there, 45,000 of whom are women. This video short shows a women’s opium smoking session in the village of Jukhan, tucked away in mountainous Badakhshan. While efforts are being made to rehabilitate drug addicts in the village,...

In the slide show I narrated about the late William F. Buckley, Jr., I didn’t have room to get into a couple of issues we’ve been debating here at the Lab: the Drug Enforcement Administration’s campaigns against medical marijuana and against doctors who treat chronic-pain patients. Mr. Buckley was worried about the D.E.A. well before the OxyContin scare inspired the agency’s Operation Cotton Candy and led to doctors like William Hurwitz and Bernard Rottschaefer being sent to prison. In 1995, after criticizing presidents and members of Congress for pursuing a war on drugs he considered futile, Mr. Buckley wrote: But...

U.S. incarcerates more than any other nation: report Thu Feb 28, 2008 7:20pm EST By James Vicini WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States incarcerates more people than any other country in the world and for the first time in the nation's history, more than one in every 100 American adults is confined in a prison or jail, according to a report released on Thursday. The report by the Pew Center on the States said the American penal system held more than 2.3 million adults at the start of the year. The far more populous nation of China ranked second with...

" For the first time in history, more than one in every 100 American adults is in jail or prison, according to a new report tracking the surge in inmate population and urging states to rein in corrections costs with alternative sentencing programs."

William F. Buckley, author, columnist, TV talk show host, and founding editor of National Review magazine, died today at age 82. Buckley was one of the people most responsible for making the conservative movement a powerful force in the United States during the past six decades. Especially through his influential magazine, Buckley set the agenda for the American right and made it appealing to a mass audience. His editorial approach and political philosophy combined to create an ecumenism on the right that allowed the various factions to work together, although the relationships have always been strained to some degree. However,...

Very sad...

Dead at 82

Just breaking on NRO...

Oklahoma City police recently caught a woman suspected of trafficking drugs. Officers were a bit surprised by who they arrested. The woman has been identified as 41-year-old Susan Freeman, an employee at the North Carolina Attorney General's office.

WASHINGTON, Feb 15 (Reuters) - A leading U.S. doctors group has endorsed using marijuana for medical purposes, urging the U.S. government to roll back a prohibition on using it to treat patients and supporting studies into its medical applications. The American College of Physicians, the second-largest doctors group in the United States, issued a policy statement on medical marijuana this week after it was approved by its governing body, the group said on Friday. The group cited evidence that marijuana is valuable in treating severe weight loss associated with AIDS, and nausea and vomiting associated with chemotherapy in cancer patients....

An explosion has rocked the centre of Mexico City, killing at least one man and injuring two other people. The device was set off near the city's police headquarters, Mexico City police chief Joel Ortega said. No group has so far said it carried out the attack. Investigators believe the bomb was activated remotely by a mobile phone. The dead man's hand was blown off, the police chief said. It is unclear whether he was responsible for the bomb or if he simply picked up the package. The blast occurred at about 1430 (2030 GMT) near the tourist area known...

Jailed: Keith Brown had a speck of cannabis on his shoe A father-of-three who was found with a microscopic speck of cannabis stuck to the bottom of one of his shoes has been sentenced to four years in a Dubai prison. Keith Brown, a council youth development officer, was travelling through the United Arab Emirates on his way back to England when he was stopped as he walked through Dubai's main airport. A search by customs officials uncovered a speck of cannabis weighing just 0.003g - so small it would be invisible to the naked eye and weighing less than...

Medical marijuana in San Francisco may be going up in smoke. In late December, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration sent letters to landlords of buildings that housed medical cannabis dispensaries in the city, telling them they face the loss of their property and possibly prison if the businesses stay open. Now, less than two months later, seven of the city's 28 dispensaries have closed or are on the verge of closing, according to medical marijuana supporters and activists. They fear more will follow. "It's like a dagger in the heart," said Wayne Justmann, a medical marijuana advocate. "We're barely holding...

Presidential Candidate Barack Obama Backs Federal Decriminalization -- “I think the war on drugs has been a failure, and I think we need to rethink and decriminalize our marijuana laws.” Share This Page del.icio.us | digg | Stumble Upon | Facebook January 31, 2008 - Washington, DC, USA Washington, DC: A newly discovered video of a 2004 appearance at Northwestern University by Democratic presidential candidate Senator Barack Obama, in which he calls for the federal decriminalization of marijuana, was posted online today by The Washington Times. In that appearance, Obama states, "I think the war on drugs has been a...

The Geopolitics of Dope January 29, 2008 | 2103 GMT By George Friedman Over recent months, the level of violence along the U.S.-Mexican border has begun to rise substantially, with some of it spilling into the United States. Last week, the Mexican government began military operations on its side of the border against Mexican gangs engaged in smuggling drugs into the United States. The action apparently pushed some of the gang members north into the United States in a bid for sanctuary. Low-level violence is endemic to the border region. But while not without precedent, movement of organized, armed cadres...

LOS ANGELES — The city that popularized the fast food drive-thru has a new innovation: 24-hour medical marijuana vending machines. Patients suffering from chronic pain, loss of appetite and other ailments that marijuana is said to alleviate can get their pot with a dose of convenience at the Herbal Nutrition Center, where a large machine will dole out the drug around the clock. "Convenient access, lower prices, safety, anonymity," inventor and owner Vincent Mehdizadeh said, extolling the benefits of the machine. But federal drug agents say the invention may need unplugging. "Somebody owns (it), it's on a property and somebody...

Over recent months, the level of violence along the U.S.-Mexican border has begun to rise substantially, with some of it spilling into the United States. Last week, the Mexican government began military operations on its side of the border against Mexican gangs engaged in smuggling drugs into the United States. The action apparently pushed some of the gang members north into the United States in a bid for sanctuary. Low-level violence is endemic to the border region. But while not without precedent, movement of organized, armed cadres into the United States on this scale goes beyond what has become accepted...

26 cases tied to informant, DEA agent who manipulated systemGeneva France walked out of federal prison with $68 and a bus ticket home. That's all the government had to offer a woman who had served 16 months of a decade-long prison sentence for a crime she didn't commit. The mother of three returned to her family, but her youngest child -- who was 18 months old when France was sent to prison -- didn't recognize her. And France, 25, had no home to return to. Her landlord had evicted her from the rental during her incarceration, and everything she owned...

Flags are half staff and black bunting covers the FOP Officers Memorial Stone in front of the Chesapeake Police Department as the city mourns the death of an officer killed in the line of duty. Narcotics Detective Jarrod Shivers, 34, was shot Thursday night. Police have charged Ryan David Frederick, 28, with first-degree murder and use of a firearm. Shivers was serving a narcotics warrant at Frederick's home in the 900 block of Redstart Avenue when gunfire erupted. He was hit and other officers retreated. The SWAT team was called in, finally entered the home and didn't find anyone else....

The public health impact of the Government's decision to downgrade cannabis is disclosed today in official figures showing a 50 per cent rise in the number of people requiring medical treatment after using the drug. Since cannabis was downgraded from a Class B to a Class C drug, the number of adults being treated in hospitals and clinics in England for its effects has risen to more than 16,500 a year. In addition, the number of children needing medical attention after smoking the drug has risen to more than 9,200. Almost 500 adults and children are treated in hospitals and...

LIMA, Ohio — Darla Jennings walked through the streets of south Lima last night sobbing as hundreds of people behind her called for justice after the shooting of her daughter, who was killed by police as she held her baby. Tarika Wilson, 26, was shot and her 1-year-old son was wounded when Lima police conducted a drug raid on their home Friday night, prompting members of the black community to organize a candlelight vigil and demand answers from police. "They shot my daughter and her baby," Ms. Jennings said through tears while being consoled by other family members.

The acting Killian police chief allegedly traded firearms for narcotic pain pills with undercover agents to help his wife, according to an affidavit filed in U.S. District Court in Baton Rouge on Thursday. Acting Killian Police Chief Joseph Guy Crawford Jr., 38, allegedly told federal agents that his wife’s prescription did not provide enough pills to keep her pain-free, the affidavit says. The affidavit did not say why the woman allegedly needed the narcotics, and U.S. Attorney David Dugas said he could not comment further on Crawford’s arrest. Crawford was arrested Wednesday after trading a .38-caliber pistol and $40 for...

One of the predictable characteristics of the drug war is how we lurch from danger to danger -- with each substance at some point being described as the most ominous threat to the republic. From marijuana to heroin, from LSD to cocaine, from crack to ecstasy, from methampetemine to steroids -- each over the past eight decades has taken its trendy turn as the threat du jour. All the better to justify the billions of dollars this country spends each year on the drug war. Earlier this month, the U.S. Supreme Court took a small step toward sanity by ruling...

Ongoing warfare with rival drug cartels across the border seemed to have quieted down this year, but the amount of drugs entering through the border and moving through the streets of Laredo – by any means possible - is ever-growing, officials said.Some 165 tons of narcotics, worth $140 million which failed to make their way through Laredo's four international bridges this fiscal year, is proof of this ever-growing trend. That is how much marijuana, cocaine, meth and heroin Mucia Dovalina, chief CBP officer and uniformed public affairs liaison, said was intercepted from Oct. 1, 2006 to Sept. 30, 2007. Finding...

NUEVO LAREDO, Mexico – For Ramón Garza, the incoming mayor here, the reminder is never too far away. The last time a public official – a police chief – promised to restore law and order in a city many consider lawless, he was shot at least 40 times, seven hours after taking office. Mr. Garza, a 45-year-old father of two, knows all too well the challenges ahead for his city and himself as he prepares to take office Tuesday. "Look, I don't need to be reminded, but I'm here to tell you that the situation has improved," he said in...

For the past few months, the federal government has been celebrating the fact that U.S. cities are experiencing "an unprecedented cocaine shortage" due to increased law enforcement in the southwestern United States and Mexico. But fact-checking by NPR reveals that while there are indeed spot shortages of cocaine, they are neither nationwide nor unprecedented. And the scarcity may have unintended consequences. The price of cocaine is one of the main ways the government tallies the score in its war on drugs. The reasoning is that if prices go up, it means that agents are winning — they're squeezing the supply....

Ahh, cancer. One learns so much from being diagnosed with a death-sentence disease. Of course, 95% of it is stuff you would rather not know, but that other 5% is downright interesting. For example, "America's Next Top Model" is much more fun to watch when you've lost 15 pounds without trying. During chemotherapy, vanilla smells good, but vanilla wafers taste disgusting. And eyelashes really do have a purpose; without them, my eyes are a dust magnet. But the most compelling fact I learned was about my friends. Not just what you would expect: how they cooked for my family and...

Santa Ana, CA (AHN) -- A California Highway Patrol Officer has been charged with stealing more than $1 million worth of cocaine from an evidence room. Joshua Blackburn, 32, stole more than 40 kilograms of cocaine from an evidence locker room at the California Highway Patrol office at about 4 a.m. last Friday, according to the Orange County District Attorney's office. He was scheduled to be arraigned on Wednesday but his attorney, John Barnett, requested the hearing postponed because he said he had not received all police reports on the case. Orange County Superior Court Commissioner Cheryl Leininger scheduled the...

December 23, 2007 cop targets wrong house for home invasionIn what I hope is just an isolated incident, an eleven year veteran Philadelphia police officer has been arrested after allegedly participating in a home invasion in nearby Montgomery County, then leading police on a 130 m.p.h. chase:Malik Snell, an 11-year veteran of the police department, was the alleged getaway driver after the home invasion turned violent, Ferman said yesterday. Ferman said Snell led Pottstown police on a chase that reached 130 m.p.h. Philadelphia police said Snell was suspended for 30 days with intent to dismiss. Snell has been a...

LIMA — Two robbers who broke into Luther Ricks Sr.’s house this summer may have not gotten his life savings he had in a safe, but after the FBI confiscated it he may not get it back. Ricks has tried to get an attorney to fight for the $402,767 but he has no money. Lima Police Department officers originally took the money from his house but the FBI stepped in and took it from the Police Department. Ricks has not been charged with a crime and was cleared in a fatal shooting of one of the robbers but still the...

Feds Predict Major Drop in Marijuana Prices Posted in Chronicle Blog by Scott Morgan on Mon, 11/12/2007 - 6:48pm Unless you measure success by the number of people arrested, the failure of the war on marijuana is becoming more obvious than ever before. A new Department of Justice report, Drug Threat Assessment 2008, reveals that increased indoor cultivation is flooding the U.S. market with high quality marijuana. As a result, marijuana users may soon be getting more bud for their buck: In the section, "Predictive Estimates," the report concludes:• Increased cannabis cultivation may result in reduced marijuana prices.The recent increases...

An advocacy group in the United States is seizing upon a study that found students smoking marijuana can get good grades like any other student. The Marijuana Policy Project, a national pro-pot group that wants to decriminalize marijuana, is promoting a new Swiss study finding that teens smoking pot also have strong friendships and weren't more likely to be depressed. A state lawmaker criticized the study, calling it "academics gone wild."

A national pro-pot group that backs a Bay State campaign to decriminalize marijuana is shopping around a new Swiss study showing that teens who smoke grass are just as likely to get good grades as kids who abstain. The study, which is being promoted by the Marijuana Policy Project, found teens who smoked pot were also more likely to have strong relationships with friends and were not any more likely to be depressed than their substance-free counterparts. A top Beacon Hill lawmaker slammed the study, which was published in last month’s issue of Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine. “It’s...

SMITHTOWN, N.Y. (AP) ― Suffolk County's police department is dropping DARE, the widespread school anti-drug program that has faced questions about its effectiveness, the police commissioner said. Commissioner Richard Dormer said Thursday he aimed to replace DARE with another drug-prevention program, but some local lawmakers objected to the idea. With the change, set to take effect in January, the large Long Island county's police force will join a series of school districts and law enforcement agencies that have abandoned the program, formally known as Drug Abuse Resistance Education. Schools and police forces work together to offer it. After nearly 20...

1. AFTER PABLO On the day of his death, December 2nd, 1993, the Colombian billionaire drug kingpin Pablo Escobar was on the run and living in a small, tiled-roof house in a middle-class neighborhood of Medellín, close to the soccer stadium. He died, theatrically, ­ridiculously, gunned down by a Colombian police manhunt squad while he tried to flee across the barrio's rooftops, a fat, bearded man who had kicked off his flip-flops to try to outrun the bullets. The first thing the American drug agents who arrived on the scene wanted to do was to make sure that the corpse...

Kathryn Johnston: A Year Later 92-year-old woman's death has done little to curb the use of paramilitary police tactics around the country. It was one year ago this week that narcotics officers in Atlanta, Georgia broke into the home of 92-year-old Kathryn Johnston. They had earlier arrested a man with a long rap sheet on drug charges. That man told the police officers that they'd find a large stash of cocaine in Johnston's home. When police forced their way into Johnston's home, she met them holding a rusty old revolver, fearing she was about to be robbed. The police opened...

An Accokeek couple is demanding an apology after Prince George's County Sheriff's Deputies burst into their home and killed their dog - all because deputies went to the wrong address. Pam and Frank Myers were tucked away in their home Friday night watching a movie when the warrant squad pounced. "All of a sudden I hear, bang, bang, bang, 'Open the door, police, open the door,'" said Pam Myers. For 45 minutes the Myers were kept prisoner in their own home. "They wouldn't let me go to the bathroom which is like seven feet down the hall," said Frank Myers....

MEMPHIS - A Memphis police sergeant who was named Tennessee Narcotics Officer of the Year for 2006 was charged with selling illegal anabolic steroids and tipping off drug dealers about surveillance and investigations. Sgt. Brady Valentine, 36, a police officer since 1994, was indicted Friday and relieved of duty after a federal complaint was unsealed. The complaint was based on information from informants, wire taps and taped conversations. Valentine was assigned to the West Tennessee Violent Crimes and Drug Task Force, a multi-agency team that regularly lands some of the biggest drug busts in the state. He was honored by...

PORT HURON, Mich. (AP) - A former Wayne County sheriff's deputy who pleaded guilty to drug trafficking could have gotten 20 years in prison, but was sentenced to 30 months' probation instead.

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia (AP) - Saudi authorities beheaded a Ghanian man convicted of smuggling cocaine in his intestinal tract, the Interior Ministry said Thursday. Jamil Ibrahim Hassan was arrested while trying to smuggle cocaine into the kingdom, the ministry said in a statement carried by Saudi Press Agency. Saudi Arabia follows a strict interpretation of Islam under which those convicted of murder, drug trafficking, rape and armed robbery are executed in public with a sword. Thursday's executions brought to 132 the number of people beheaded in the kingdom this year, according to a count by The Associated Press. Saudi Arabia...

Those Rocky Mountains are getting higher. Two municipalities - Denver, Colorado, and the small town of Hailey, Idaho - passed pro-marijuana measures on election day this week, joining a growing number of liberal localities that are reducing or removing penalities on using pot. It's part of a slowly evolving populist rehabilitation of the drug. San Francisco, Oakland and Santa Monica in California, along with Missoula, Montana, and Seattle, Washington, have previously passed laws that give the lowest priority to enforcing existing marijuana laws. ...

By 57-to-43-percent margin, Denver voters have approved a ballot initiative that instructs police to make possession of marijuana in small quantities (less than an ounce) their lowest law enforcement priority. Denverites already had voted to repeal local penalties for possession of less than an ounce, with no noticeable effect on arrests; police just charged pot smokers under state law instead. Citing this history, the Rocky Mountain News says, "once again, the vote likely means nothing." But Mayor John Hickenlooper has promised to appoint a Marijuana Policy Review Panel to decide how the new ordinance should be implemented. Initiative organizer Mason...

The father of a mentally disturbed teenager who fatally shot two Fairfax County police officers last year was sentenced to more than three years in prison yesterday for illegal weapons possession. Brian H. Kennedy, 50, of Centreville, pleaded guilty in August to weapons charges in U.S. District Court in Alexandria as part of a plea bargain. Kennedy admitted that he illegally purchased an AK-47 rifle by failing to disclose on federal background checks that he regularly used marijuana. His son, Michael, used the AK-47 in the May 2006 ambush that killed Detective Vicki O. Armel and Officer Michael E. Garbarino....