Date: Mon, 29 Jul 2002 14:52:23 -0700
Subject:SD: Drug Dogs Sniff Even 6-Year-Olds Parents Sue Up TOC

Newshawk: Jo-D
Pubdate: Fri, 26 Jul 2002
Source: New York Times (NY)
Copyright: 2002 The New York Times Company
Contact: letters@nytimes.com
Website: http://www.nytimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/298
Author: Tamar Lewin

DRUG DOGS SNIFF EVEN 6-YEAR-OLDS; PARENTS SUE

The parents of 17 students, some as young as 6, filed a lawsuit yesterday
against a South Dakota school board and police department for taking a
drug-sniffing dog into a school to check children in every classroom, from
kindergarten through high school.

The suit, filed in federal court in Sioux Falls, says the principal of the
school, the Wagner Community School, announced in a first-period class in
early May that the school was in a lockdown and that students could not
leave their classrooms. Wagner police and federal officers then took the
dog into classes, the suit contends, frightening some students so badly
that they cried and at least one urinated involuntarily.

Kenneth Cotton, the school district's lawyer, said he could not comment on
the case because he had not talked to the school board or administrators.
"All I know is that I have a sixth grader and a ninth grader," Mr. Cotton
said, "and when I asked them about it, they said a dog had come to their
classrooms, walked up and down in an orderly way and left after about two
minutes. I can't tell you why the dog was brought into the classrooms, but
I know there is a drug problem in the community and zero tolerance for
drugs in the school."

Last month, the United States Supreme Court upheld random drug tests for
students who take part in extracurricular activities, opening the way to
more aggressive drug enforcement in schools.

Since the late 1980's, many schools, including Wagner's, have used dogs to
search lockers and hallways. Courts have allowed that because the lockers
are school property. Education lawyers said that dogs had searched older
students but that two federal appeals courts had found the practice
unconstitutional.

Graham Boyd, director of the American Civil Liberties Union's Drug Policy
Litigation Project and lead lawyer in the South Dakota case, said the use
of the dog, a German shepherd, in the classrooms terrorized many of the
children.

"This is the first time I've heard of dogs being brought into kindergarten
classes," Mr. Boyd said. "It's such a scary disruption for young children.
I absolutely share the commitment of school officials to come up with
solutions to drug abuse, but I'm concerned that some schools seem to lose
all grasp on common sense."

He said the drug searches were especially traumatic to children like
Kayedee Deverney, 11, who has been bitten by dogs three times seriously
enough to require medical treatment. After the dog went to her classroom,
Mr. Boyd said, Kayedee became afraid to attend school, worrying that the
dog would reappear - as it did, in a second lockdown a few days after the
first search.

In one kindergarten classroom, the suit contends, the dog got away from its
handler and chased students around the room, and it put its feet on
students' desks several times and strained against the leash. Students were
told to keep their hands on their desks and not to pet the dog or make
sudden movements. In some classrooms, school officials warned students that
sudden movements might make the dog attack.

The lawsuit seeks both compensation and an order barring dog searches in
classrooms when school resumes on Aug. 20.

Wagner, population about 1,600 and 85 miles west-southwest of Sioux Falls,
is near the Yankton Sioux Reservation, and the children involved in the
lawsuit are Indians.

The lawsuit also names the Interior Department's assistant secretary of
Indian affairs as a defendant because the drug-detecting dog belonged to
the Bureau of Indian Affairs. The civil liberties union has another lawsuit
against the Wagner school board awaiting resolution. It contends that
Wagner's election system for the school board discriminates against
Indians. Indians make up 40 percent of the district's population, but all
members of the school board are white.
__________________________________________________________________________
Distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in
receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.
- ---
MAP posted-by: Jo-D

 
 


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web:     http://www.crrh.org/

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Date: Tue, 30 Jul 2002 08:16:16 -0700
Subject:UK: Brixton blueprint spurs liberalization hopes  Up TOC

Newshawk: CannabisLink.ca (http://cannabislink.ca)
Pubdate: July 11, 2002
Source: Eye Magazine (CN ON)
Website: http://www.eye.net/
Address: 471 Adelaide St. W., Toronto, ON, M5V 1T1 Canada
Contact: eye@eye.net
Author: Abigail Pugh

Brixton blueprint spurs liberalization hopes

BY ABIGAIL PUGH

LONDON -- Brixton, in south London, is inner city in a nutshell. Along with
its street markets, club scene and grand Victorian row houses, the
neighbourhood has long been famous for drug dealing, drug taking and
associated street crimes such as mugging and burglary.

The U.K. media spotlight has been trained on Brixton over the past year due
to dramatically relaxed drug policing strategies there. Those strategies,
including a pilot project started by the local constabulary last year that
gives amnesty to those found in possession of cannabis, have led directly to
the national government revising its classification of the drug and a sudden
flowering of public cannabis consumption throughout the country.

Tim Summers of Cannabis Action London believes the Brixton experiment "shows
that police recognize the need to stop the cat and mouse, to stop searching
school kids' pockets for dope and start focusing on the real problems of
street attacks and violence."

"It's easy now to get away with smoking [cannabis] in bars," says Lisa
Pickering, a student who lives in Brixton. "My boyfriend often has a sly
spliff and nobody's bothered. After 7pm on the main clubbing streets, you'll
get offered drugs -- especially if you're white, because it's assumed you've
come down into the area to score. In central London, you can't have a joint
in a club lineup because the bouncers would stop you: here, the bouncers are
the dealers' friends."

The story of Brixton and drugs goes back to the late '50s. Caribbean
immigrants tended to seek out specific parts of London, with Jamaicans
heading for south London and those from the smaller islands settling in west
London areas such as Notting Hill Gate. The Jamaican influence in Brixton,
combined with high unemployment and poverty rates, meant that scoring was
easier there than anywhere else in London. In 1981, an overtly racist police
crackdown in Brixton intended to drive cannabis off the streets entirely
resulted in riots that spread to many other inner-city areas of the U.K.

Mainstream attitudes toward cannabis underwent a nationwide softening as the
'90s progressed. Cannabis came out of the closet as the middle class drug of
choice, and in doing so, it came down in price and rose in quality.

According to the Independent Drug Monitoring Unit, the average U.K. retail
price for cannabis is about half what it was in the late '80s.

In 1998, the Independent on Sunday -- the ultimate middle-class newspaper --
sponsored a campaign to liberalize cannabis legislation. Summers says
Brixton "was the natural centre of the movement." Protest marches through
Brixton in 1999 and 2000 resulted in zero cannabis arrests, despite an
estimated 30,000 participants. "The people took power, and the police stood
back at these events," he says.

Cannabis prohibition has been a massive draw on police and judicial
resources: in 1999, cannabis possession constituted 68 per cent of all drugs
offences in the U.K., with a cost of =A310,000 to prosecute each suspect.=
 This
expense, coupled with the fact that the London marches showed overwhelming
public support for changes to the law, cued Brixton police to change the way
they handled dope possession.

In June of last year, under Commander Brian Paddick, who took part in the
1981 operation and witnessed its utter failure, police implemented a radical
new plan that became known as the "Brixton experiment."

They changed their response to cannabis possession from arrest and trial to
a simple written warning and confiscation of the drug. This approach has
made cannabis possession, public smoking, and some say casual dealing, very
easy indeed throughout the London borough of Lambeth, of which Brixton is a
part.

The new policy has freed up impressive amounts of police time and money to
fight other crime, halving muggings in the area. It has also focussed extra
punitive efforts on those who deal cocaine and heroin, resulting in
significant increases in arrests for such drugs.

The local force estimates that 2,500 hours of paperwork and the cash
equivalent of two officer salaries were saved during the first six months of
the scheme. Judicial cost savings including legal aid defence, magistrates
and court time have totalled about =A34 million (or about $9.5 million).

A recent poll shows 83 per cent of the Brixton community actively approves
of the policing changes. The London-wide Metropolitan Police assessed the
new approach this spring and has officially deemed it a success, allowing
the scheme to continue.

The new confiscatory approach to cannabis has spread to other London
boroughs, in particular, neighbouring Southwark. Police forces in many other
parts of the U.K. are following developments in London with interest and are
likely to implement their own versions of the revised policing strategy.

The historic, street-level changes in south London quickly took a hold
higher up. In a dramatic loosening of official cannabis policy, which the
Labour government had long been loath to tamper with for fear of upsetting
"middle England" (its conventional conservative voters), that government
started to talk about "our experiment" even though it had initially
distanced itself from events in Brixton.

In October 2001, Home Secretary David Blunkett officially declared his
intention to reclassify cannabis from Class B to Class C, putting it on a
par with anabolic steroids. There is no power of arrest for simple
possession of Class C drugs.

"We need to warn young people that all drugs are dangerous," he said, "but
Class A drugs such as heroin and cocaine are the most harmful. We will only
be successful at delivering this message if our policy as a whole is
balanced and credible...." He added, "the majority of police time is
currently spent on handling cannabis offences. It is time for an honest and
common-sense approach focusing effectively on drugs that cause most harm."

The Home Affairs Committee Report, awaited since Blunkett announced his
intentions last fall, was released this May. It states its support for the
change, and also recommends that ecstasy be reclassified as a class B drug,
from Class A.

With the new police and community laid-back attitudes about public cannabis
use have come opportunities activists and entrepreneurs alike could only
have dreamed about five years ago.

Unofficial Amsterdam-style coffee shops have existed in Brixton for years
and have recently sprung up in several other London boroughs. David Crane
plans to push the envelope still further by very publicly opening a
cannabis-based caf=E9 and club called The Hempire this fall.

He is going to invest =A3200,000 in creating a "plush establishment" in
London's hip Hoxton area, just east of the financial district, and has
already started consulting with police, the local council and drug activist
groups on the venture. Dope-smoking will be welcomed, but customers won't
find cannabis for sale. "We're going for a particular kind of smoker," he
says. "Over 25, works hard, has a good career and a good life."

But Crane's venture is risky. The owner of The Dutch Experience coffee shop
in Stockport, Manchester, was recently jailed and, although now out on bail,
is prevented from speaking to the press; Ganjaland in Bournemouth, Kent, was
raided by anti-cannabis local police. Both establishments have reopened
despite their difficulties.

While the situation looks positive for cannabis activists, there are
detractors. The Labour MP for the Brixton area is reportedly lukewarm about
the new policing strategies, and many police officers themselves are unhappy
about it because they see it as giving ground to criminals.


=



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web:     http://www.crrh.org/

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Date: Tue, 30 Jul 2002 08:27:14 -0700
Subject:Canada: Holy Smoke Storefront Causes Reefer Madness Up TOC

Pubdate: Mon, 29 Jul 2002
Source: Chilliwack Times (CN BC)
Copyright: 2002 Chilliwack Times
Contact: editorial@chilliwacktimes.com
Website: http://www.chilliwacktimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1357
Author:  Lisa Morry

HOLY SMOKE STOREFRONT CAUSES REEFER MADNESS

The Holy Smoke Healing Centre Society has found a home here in Chilliwack,
but not everyone is happy about it.

Holy Smoke founder Brian Carlisle said there is a real need for healing in
the community and the fact that medicinal marijuana users have to drive to
Vancouver to buy their medication.

Holy Smoke is designed as a marijuana resource centre and subsidized legal
assistance centre. Carlisle, who is a paralegal and an ordained minister
with several tattoos and piercings, including a marijuana leaf on his right
arm, said he has the entire history of marijuana law in Canada available
for anyone who wants to read it and he will have lawyers coming into the
storefront at Young and Princess to consult on marijuana law.

"The courthouse is right there. It couldn't be a more perfect location,"
Carlisle said.

Holy Smoke is right on the corner, on street level, in an office that used
to be a distribution centre. The windows are painted with green marijuana
leaves and information is taped to the inside, so passersby can read about
marijuana news if the office is not open.

Carlisle hopes to also include a compassion club-an organization that would
sell organic medicinal marijuana to people who legally qualify for it and
who have had their doctors fill out the appropriate paperwork. However, he
said he needs to find a qualified grower before that can happen.

However, the news that Holy Smoke had settled in Chilliwack was a surprise
to some neighbours. Most nearby merchants said they weren't aware of it.

"It's my first day back from holidays," said Joy Kelly, the receptionist at
Terry D. Mitchell CGA, Inc. Mitchell also said he had never heard of it.

Only one business owner, Heather Young of T.L.C. Esthetics, said she knew
about it.

"I'm not happy with it," she said. "We put up with enough down here," she
added, pointing across the street to a nearby pub.

The RCMP were aware of Holy Smoke's presence, but so far had not officially
visited. Spokesperson David Aucoin said they will be continuing with drug
education, including the DARE program in the schools and with enforcement.

If there are any infractions at Holy Smoke, the RCMP would enforce the law,
Aucoin said.

Medicinal marijuana law is in transition. Last summer, the federal
government enacted legalized medicinal marijuana laws for people with
medical issues. It's a three-tier system, Carlisle explained.

The first is for terminal patients, the second for patients with
debilitating illness and the third for patients classified as other.
However, Carlisle said police and prosecutors are still tackling people
with life-threatening or debilitating illnesses who are growing their own
pot or for possession.

In fact Carlisle, who has long used marijuana to ease his glaucoma, had
plants seized and charges laid against him last year. He said a recent
decision, which has not yet been published, sets a precedent that will
clear him and other medicinal marijuana users who are being prosecuted.

"I can't believe they're still prosecuting me over three plants," he said.
"Here's the problem-the same as in World War II when the German and
Japanese soldiers still thought the war was going on and they were still
shooting at us. The police and prosecutors don't understand the war is over
against the sick and they're still attacking us every time we pass by their
foxhole."

So far eight people, all with cancer, have come into Holy Smoke to ask
questions and taken away doctor's forms to be filled out, Carlisle said.

Carlisle himself, an apparently healthy 32-year-old father, who is engaged
to be married, recently found out that he is terminally ill. He said he has
seven painful conditions and it is the marijuana which has been helping him
to remain as healthy as he currently is. One of the more recent diagnosis,
is Erythma Nodosum, a painful swelling in his legs. At first doctors
thought it might be flesh-eating disease and treated it as such, said
Carlisle, who was wearing bandages on his legs and walking with an obvious
limp.

Carlisle's glaucoma was caused by a severe beating when he was 24. He has
also been diagnosed with ulcerative colitis and an enlarged heart.

That and other health issues are keeping him from pursuing his dream of
being a lawyer, Carlisle said, so he is devoting his energy to Holy Smoke.

"Chilliwack is going to be the marijuana capital when I'm done," he said.
__________________________________________________________________________
Distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in
receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.
- ---
MAP posted-by: Larry Stevens



 
 


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web:     http://www.crrh.org/

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Date: Tue, 30 Jul 2002 08:29:48 -0700
Subject:ABA Journal article on California Medical Marijuana Up TOC

CALIFORNIA LIGHTENS UP ON MEDICINAL POT

Supreme Court Treats Marijuana Like Any Other Prescription

BY MARTHA NEIL

Lighting up a joint on a doctor's order has been legal in California for more
than five years. But that hasn't prevented state and federal authorities from
prosecuting medicinal marijuana users who violate criminal laws.

Now, state and local governments in California are marshaling their forces
for a potential showdown with the feds on this enforcement issue.

A recent decision of the California Supreme Court makes it easier for
defendants to prove their cannabis use is authorized under the Compassionate
Use Act of 1996. Meanwhile, in an effort to apply the state statute, the city
of San Francisco is thinking about establishing a municipally-run program to
cultivate and distribute marijuana to medicinal users.

Treating pot like any other prescription drug, the state's high court decided
July 18 that state residents who use marijuana medicinally can raise the
statute as an affirmative defense to criminal prosecution for cultivation,
possession or use of the drug.

The court also ruled that the defendant need only establish reasonable doubt
as to the facts underlying the defense. By contrast, the trial court had said
the defendant must prove the elements of the defense by a preponderance of
the evidence. People v. Mower, No. S094490.

But that still doesn't resolve the issue of criminal sanctions against those
who need to use marijuana medicinally, even in California. Under federal law,
it's illegal to possess marijuana for any purpose except federally funded
research.

"Now it's up to the feds. If they want to come after patients, they can do
so," says Gerald F. Uelmen. A professor at Santa Clara University School of
Law, he argued for the defense in Mower.

"Thus far, it doesn't appear that they are directing their enforcement
efforts against individuals who are growing it for their own medical needs,"
Uelmen says of federal authorities.

At California clubs promoting medicinal use of marijuana, which are being
targeted by federal drug enforcement authorities, members "are generally 65
percent AIDS patients and 25 percent cancer patients," Uelmen says.
"Marijuana's quite effective in suppressing the nausea and allowing them to
eat."

But enforcement against the clubs is chilling the rights of medicinal users
under the Compassionate Use Act, says Mark Leno, a member of the San
Francisco Board of Supervisors. The Board agreed July 22 to ask voters to
decide in the Nov. 5 election whether the city should consider establishing a
municipal club for such users. The city already has issued some 4,000
identification cards to those users, Leno says.

Since California became the first state to legalize medicinal use of
marijuana in 1996, seven others have followed suit. They are Alaska,
Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, Nevada, Oregon and Washington, says Paul Armentano,
a spokesman for NORML, the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana
Laws.

As Myron Mower found out in 1997, however, such laws don't necessarily offer
much protection to medicinal marijuana users.

Already on probation for a prior cannabis cultivation conviction, Mower was
arrested again after searches of his home showed he was growing up to 31 pot
plants there. This violated the "three-plant policy" the local sheriff's
department had established for medicinal pot growers.

Mower was "extremely" ill with diabetic complications at the time, and had
been advised by his doctor to use marijuana to control his nausea and
maintain his weight, says the opinion. The supreme court ruling reverses
Mower's conviction and remands the case for a new trial "before a properly
instructed jury."

"I would say the most significant aspect of the decision is equating the
position of medicinal marijuana users with those who have medical
prescriptions," Uelmen says. The same defense that the supreme court
permitted in Mower, he notes, would apply in a case involving alleged abuse
of a prescription drug.

In a written statement, California Attorney General Bill Lockyer described
himself as a supporter of the ballot initiative that adopted the
Compassionate Use Act, and said Mower "provides much-needed guidance in
interpreting an initiative that did not clearly specify how the law should
apply."

Meanwhile, some American "cannabis refugees" reportedly are seeking political
asylum in Canada to avoid federal crackdowns on medicinal marijuana clubs in
the United States. Both Canada and Great Britain permit doctor-prescribed pot
use, Armentano says.




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web:     http://www.crrh.org/

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Date: Tue, 30 Jul 2002 16:07:11 -0700
Subject:MSNBC's Donahue on Marijuana Video Now Online Up TOC

We just got the video of MSNBC's new Donahue program on marijuana online on 
our website:

http://www.crrh.org/hemptv/misc_donahue.html

This is the best mainstream US news debate on pot yet. Donahue has Gov. 
Gary Johnson of New Mexico, Sup. Mark Leno of San Francisco, Lynn Nofzinger 
of the Reagan administration and Billy Rogers of the new Nevada marijuana 
regulation initiative debate ex-Drug Czar, General Barry McCaffrey. 
McCaffrey complains that this is the most unbalanced program he has ever 
been on.

Our latest Cannabis Common Sense video is also available on-line:

http://www.crrh.org/hemptv/video_ccs.html

Shannon Floyd and Paul Stanford bring you an extensive Hemp News report 
live on July 26, then Jeff & Tracy come on with Paul and talk about their 
media campaign in Seattle, Portland, & San Francisco announcing, "We're 
your good neighbors and we smoke pot" and more. We also have Jeff & Tracy's 
Seattle Hempfest ad, an excerpt from CNN's Crossfire with NORML's Keith 
Stroup debating DEA witch-doctor Asa Hutchinson, Wyoming Democratic nominee 
for Secretary of State Jim Fagan announces he is for marijuana 
legalization, and Paul takes a few phone calls with questions on medical 
marijuana. Hemp News: Nevada qualifies for a vote for legal adult marijuana 
use and polls show a tie now; Canada warned not to relax drug laws; a note 
from a Doctor can clear criminal charges in California says the CA state 
Supreme Court; protestors support medical marijuana federal victim Brian 
Eppis, a patient being sentenced to 10 years in US federal prison for 
helping sick people and Mikki Norris weighs in on the significance of the 
Eppis case; conservative and liberals unite for a medical marijuana bill in 
the US Capitol, but it's unlikely to advance; and the San Francisco city 
government places a vote on the November ballot for the city to grow and 
distribute medical marijjuana, since the US federal government has arrested 
and charged city-approved private workers for lengthy federal prison terms.

I also put both of these programs in our directories and on the front page 
of www.pot-tv.net too.

We have been upgrading dozens of old video files on our website from old, 
1999 files with one frame a second or so to new, 2002 files with 16 frames 
per second. Of course, they work best with a broadband connection, but even 
telephone modems do much better with these new files.

Yours truly,
Paul Stanford


 
 


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End of Restore-Digest V2002 #151
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