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OAKLAND, Calif. -- At the high point of their careers, the so-called "Riders" were considered the best and the brightest, veterans whom rookie police officers tried to emulate. Their specialty: bringing in reputed drug dealers in record numbers from the crime-plagued streets of West Oakland. Now, three of the four rogue officers are on trial here for using dishonest and sometimes brutal tactics in making those arrests. Clarence "Chuck" Mabanag, 37; Jude Siapno, 34; and Matthew Hornung, 31, are charged with a total of 26 criminal counts, including kidnapping, the beating of falsely arrested suspects, and submitting falsified police reports....

OTTAWA - The federal government will introduce legislation decriminalizing marijuana within the first four months of the new year, Martin Cauchon, the Justice Minister, suggested yesterday. Mr. Cauchon said that should the House of Commons committee on illegal drugs recommend decriminalization in its report this Thursday, the government will respond quickly. The committee is expected to recommend that growing pot for personal use should not be a crime. A member of the committee said the report will probably suggest a 30-gram limit for personal use. "I mean, we'll see what will be the recommendations of the report," Mr. Cauchon told...

VANCOUVER -- Riding high after U.S. states rejected measures to relax drug laws, drug czar John Walters came to Canada this week to talk tough about a new front in the drug war. Marijuana poses a greater danger to the United States than heroin, cocaine or amphetamines, said Mr. Walters, the director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, in an interview yesterday in Vancouver. About 60 per cent of six million people who need treatment services for drug abuse in the United States are dependent on marijuana, he said. Earlier this month, Mr. Walters campaigned against...

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- On Wednesday, December 4, the Marijuana Policy Project will file a formal "complaint of possible prohibited personnel practice" with the federal Office of Special Counsel, charging White House Drug Czar John Walters with violating federal law by using "his official authority and influence for the purpose of ... affecting the result of an election" -- specifically, the election that included Question 9, MPP's Nevada marijuana initiative. MPP's Executive Director Robert Kampia and Director of Government Relations Steve Fox will discuss the complaint at a noon press conference on December 4. At that time, MPP will also release...

MIDDLETOWN -- Peter Christ and Cliff Thornton are two men with very different backgrounds: Thornton was a substitute teacher in Hartford’s schools, and Christ is a former police officer in western New York state. But both men have reached the same conclusion -- that the ‘war on drugs’ is a massive failure that only deepens the national crisis of addiction and drug-related crime. After 20 years on opposite sides of a war that has cost over $1 trillion in 30 years, with millions of casualties on both sides, the two men, and many more around the country, are pursuing campaigns...

ELYRIA, Ohio (AP) -- A woman has been sentenced to three years of probation for smoking marijuana with her 2-year-old nephew. Her friend was sentenced to four months in jail, three years of probation and 30 days in a work-release program. He is accused of rolling the pot and getting high with the toddler. Lorain County Common Pleas Judge Mark Betleski said he gave Terrence Craig, 22, of Elyria, a harsher sentence than Danielle Wells, 22, because of previous run-ins with the law. In September, Wells -- who now lives in Columbus -- was convicted of corrupting and assaulting the...

Medical marijuana and the feds Debra Saunders If the federal government were right that medical marijuana has no medicinal value, why have so many doctors risked their practices by recommending its use for patients with cancer or AIDS? Marcus Conant, the doctor who identified the first cases of Kaposi's sarcoma among San Francisco AIDS patients, can answer that. Imagine you're the doctor for a 40-year-old lady with breast cancer. They put her on chemotherapy, and every time she takes her therapy, she throws up. She can't sleep; she's up sick all night. She has trouble caring for her children. Medical...

Dole Links License To Drug Test Elizabeth Dole wants to require all teenagers to pass a drug test before getting a driver's license. Dole, the Republican U.S. Senate candidate and a former transportation secretary, has promised to push for a federal law pressuring states to enforce such a measure. "Wouldn't that help them understand how important it is to be drug free?" Dole asked at a recent campaign stop in Washington, N.C. "It's not cool (to abuse drugs). It kills." Then-President Bill Clinton proposed a nearly identical measure in 1996 while campaigning against Dole's husband, former Sen. Bob Dole, and...

This week's winner is Nevada's Lander County Sheriff Michael Kranovich. He was found guilty of embezzling asset forfeiture funds given to the county by the federal government in federal court in Reno on October 25. He is not seeking re-election to a second term, according to the Las Vegas Review Journal. Sheriff Kranovich was convicted of taking $12,000 and $5,000 from the asset forfeiture fund after failing to adequately explain where the money had gone. At one point, he told KOLO-TV in Reno that some of the cash might have been thrown away when he cleaned his desk. Kranovich faces...

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Marijuana Arrests For Year 2001 Second Highest Ever Despite Feds' War On Terror, FBI Report Reveals Washington, DC: Police arrested an estimated 723,627 persons for marijuana violations in 2001, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation's annual Uniform Crime Report, released today. The total is the second highest ever recorded by the FBI, and comprises nearly half of all drug arrests in the United States. "These numbers belie the myth that police do not target and arrest minor marijuana offenders," said Keith Stroup, Executive Director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML). "In fact, the war...

The daylight basement in Leroy Stubblefield's Sweet Home area house seems an unlikely battlefield for America's war on drugs. Stubblefield, a 52-year-old quadriplegic, and two of his caregivers were growing 12 marijuana plants in his basement in a state-licensed operation until Sept. 23, when a federal drug agent seized them in a drug raid. No one was arrested. It is thought to be the first time in Oregon that federal authorities have overstepped state law -- which allows cultivation of marijuana for personal medicinal purposes under a $150 annual license -- and raided a marijuana growing operation. Kevin Neely, spokesman...

On a day when hundreds remembered six people killed in a fire many believe was set in retaliation for a mother's stand against drug dealers, politicians scrambled for ways to address Baltimore's crime problems and the failures of the state's criminal justice system. At an afternoon news conference, Mayor Martin O'Malley outlined a plan calling for enlisting 100 state troopers to help city police, increasing jail and prison capacity by sending some inmates out of state, and finding more volunteers to mentor city children. Lt. Gov. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend asked Gov. Parris N. Glendening to lift a hiring freeze on...

<p>On his first visit to Chicago as the nation's latest drug czar, John Walters sounded an alarm Tuesday about marijuana use by millions of Americans.</p> <p>His visit comes as states including Arizona and Nevada consider ballot initiatives that would loosen laws restricting marijuana use and after others have passed laws allowing the medicinal use of the psychoactive drug.</p>

ELVY MUSIKKA, 63, says she's one of only seven people in the nation to receive legally prescribed medicinal marijuana from the federal government. She earned that distinction after being arrested for growing pot at her Hollywood, Fla., home in the late 1980s. She decided to cultivate and use the controlled substance, she said, to alleviate the effects of severe glaucoma. Since winning a 1988 court battle, she has traveled the country calling for marijuana's legalization for medical use. In Wisconsin recently for the Great Midwest Marijuana Harvest Festival in Madison, Musikka talked with Journal Sentinel reporter Jesse Garza about her...

The war on drugs has accumulated many horror stories, accounts like that of Chrissy Taylor, who at age 19 was sentenced to 20 years for conspiracy to manufacture methamphetamine, because her boyfriend coerced her into picking up a shipment of chemicals. Stories like that of Robert Booker, a first-time offender who was sentenced to life imprisonment for drug conspiracy. The Journey for Justice is committed to spreading these very stories across the nation, heightening public awareness of the thousands of severe penalties doled out each year for nonviolent drug convictions. The combined effort of two national organizations, the November Coalition...

Newsbrief: This Week's Cop Corruption Story http://www.drcnet.org/wol/259.html#thisweekscorruption The Week Online begins a new feature this week. Lest we forget, starting this week, each week's issue will have one news brief about police corruption in the drug war. It won't be difficult to find material. But it may be difficult to beat this week's nominee, the Detroit Police Department, for the sheer size of the corruption. On October 10, a federal grand jury indicted nine people, including a Detroit police officer, a Detroit police civilian employee and a Michigan State Police officer on charges of stealing a whopping 222 pounds of...

ALBANY, Oct. 16 — Flanked by terminally ill people who told tales of unrelenting pain, Tom Golisano today endorsed the medical use of marijuana, and lashed out at Gov. George E. Pataki for blocking a state program to provide the drug to patients. "My approach to this issue is to return the discretion to the doctors, who are trained to make these decisions," said Mr. Golisano, the Independence Party candidate for governor. He charged that Mr. Pataki was opposed "because he is in the pocket of the big drug companies who stand to lose money if medical marijuana is made...

Drug Czar John Walters and groups such as Freevibe [wholly funded by Walters' ONDCP] have stepped up the campaign to prevent children from using drugs. This year a total of $180 million will be spent by the federal government to pay for commercials that Walters said give viewers "tangible, real-world examples of what can go wrong when teens use marijuana." [...] The latest "real life" situation is the most ridiculous of any yet. Freevibe is the organization behind it. Two young boys are sitting around smoking a water bong in a parent's office. As they are talking, one sitting behind...

VOTERS in Nevada are to decide next month whether to become the first state in the United States to legalise marijuana. [...] A September 26 poll in Las Vegas showed a majority of voters supporting the measure, with 55 per cent in favour and 43 per cent opposed. In addition, the group promoting the constitutional change, Nevadans for Responsible Law Enforcement, or NRLE, is flush with money - it has almost £330,000 on hand - and has run TV ads since September 12. Opponents, who waited until September 27 to officially form Nevadans Against Legalising Marijuana, may not even have...