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The Week Online with DRCNet, Issue 143 - June 30, 2000
The Week Online with DRCNet, Issue #143 - June 30, 2000 Thursday 06 Nov 1997 http://www.drcnet.org/wol/143.html#oregonokay 5. High UN Official Calls for Global Attack on Internet Drug Information http://www.drcnet.org/wol/143.html#unagain 7. French Education Minister Broaches Cannabis Decriminalization, Ecstasy Quality Controls http://www.drcnet.org/wol/143.html#francedebate 8. Greens Nominate Nader, Questions Remain on His Support of Drug Reform Planks http://www.drcnet.org/wol/143.html#nader 9. Dutch Parliament Approves Resolution to Allow Regulated Marijuana Cultivation http://www.drcnet.org/wol/143.html#dutchcannabis 10. REPORT: Risk of Marijuana Arrest Varies Greatly from State to State, County to County http://www.drcnet.org/wol/143.html#marijuanareport ================ 4. Oregon Okays Medical Marijuana For Alzheimer's Agitation, New Initiative Moves Forward http://www.drcnet.org/wol/143.html#oregonokay The Oregon Health Division has expanded the state's medical marijuana program by adding "agitation of Alzheimer's disease" to the list of qualifying medical conditions, making patients eligible to use state-sanctioned marijuana. Some Alzheimer's patients develop the agitation syndrome, which is defined as the inability to settle down and includes symptoms such as verbal outbursts, pacing, and restlessness, all of which may lead to patient combativeness. Oregon is one of a handful of states to allow seriously ill people to use marijuana for medical conditions. Measure 67, the successful 1998 initiative allowing medical marijuana use for Oregon residents, already provides for its use in cancer, glaucoma, HIV/AIDS, cacheixia, severe pain, severe nausea, seizures and persistent muscle spasms. Oregon has more than 60,000 Alzheimer's patients, but health officials don't expect an immediate rush to treat the syndrome with marijuana. Typically, doctors prescribe psychoactive drugs to treat the disease. While little research exists on the effects of marijuana on Alzheimer's agitation, the Health Division heard testimony from a seven-member panel of mental health specialists and a patient advocate recommending its inclusion for the syndrome. But Liz McKinney, executive director of the Oregon Trail Chapter Alzheimer's Association, said her organization is in no rush to promote medical marijuana to treat the syndrome. She told the Portland Oregonian, "It's too early to recommend or deny [the use of marijuana]." McKinney said extensive scientific study was needed to examine both positive and negative effects on marijuana on Alzheimer's agitation. "That clearly has not happened yet, and we really cannot endorse it at this point," she said. The advisory panel also lobbied to include anxiety and bipolar disorders on the list of approved diseases, but that effort failed. Under Oregon medical marijuana law, to gain approval from the state Health Division, eligible users need a doctor's written statement supporting the use of the weed. Kelly Page, manager of the state's medical marijuana program, said about 700 people have registered to use medical marijuana since the law went into effect last May. Some 350 physicians have signed medical marijuana statements. Meanwhile, the group sponsoring this year's Oregon marijuana legalization initiative is suing Oregon Secretary of State Bill Bradbury for his refusal to accept electronic signatures for their petitions. The signatures in question were gathered through The Campaign for Restoration of Hemp needs 66,786 signatures by July 7 to qualify for the November ballot. Organizers say they have already collected more than 67,000 signatures and that only a few hundred were gathered electronically. The lawsuit will thus not directly impact the current drive, but is a test case for new technologies. The initiative, the Oregon Cannabis Tax Act, would allow the state to sell marijuana to patients and to any adult residents through the state liquor store system. The state would be empowered to tax marijuana sales. In related news, Washington State's Medical Quality Assurance Commission has added diseases that cause severe gastrointestinal symptoms and seizures or muscle spasms to the list of conditions qualifying under the state's medical marijuana law, according to the NORML Foundation. ================ 5. High UN Official Calls for Global Attack on Internet Drug Information http://www.drcnet.org/wol/143.html#unagain The UN official in charge of the global body's International drug control office called last week for a crackdown on the use of the Internet in the drug trade. But his comments left unclear whether he draws a distinction between the use of the Internet to disseminate information about drugs and drug policy and its use in criminal activity by drug trafficking organizations. Pino Arlacchi, head of the UN Office for Drug Control and Crime Prevention (ODCCP, http://www.undcp.org), based in Vienna, told a New York press conference last Thursday that his organization will explore giving "universal jurisdiction" to Internet drug crimes because cyber crime so easily evades traditional national jurisdictions. Under international law, the only crimes that now qualify for universal jurisdiction are genocide and crimes against humanity. Because of the global nature of the drug trade, Arlacchi told the press conference, "It is extremely difficult to route a case into a precise jurisdiction, so we believe this problem is encouraging us to go in the direction of universal jurisdiction." He said the idea will be explored in depth at a UN symposium at year's end in Palermo, Italy, to mark the signing of an international convention on organized crime. The symposium will address expanding universal jurisdiction to money laundering and Internet crime. Arlacchi admitted, however, that use of the Internet in actual drug trafficking or for online drug sales is "very small, it is minimal." Arlacchi's remarks provided hints that he has more than drug traffickers' use of the Internet in mind. The former Italian Mafia prosecutor added that, "The Internet is more and more important in providing exchanges of information, in expanding the market, particularly the final market, and we are very worried about it." Arlacchi said that by searching one key word, which he refused to identify, "You receive advice on where to find drugs, you receive a lot of extremely dangerous information." Even worse, in the drug bureaucrat's view, "You can enter a completely different world where the issue [drug policy] is treated in the opposite view as it should be. Unfortunately, some of these views are spreading and we are now thinking about some instrument to at least stop the expansion of this flow of information." The preceding statement appears clearly directed not at drug traffickers but at organizations and individuals expressing policy preferences different from those of the UN ODCCP. To Sarah Andrews, policy analyst for the Electronic privacy Information Center, a non-profit civil liberties organization (http://www.epic.org), Arlacchi's remarks "sound like an argument for censorship." Andrews told DRCNet that Arlacchi's proposal should be seen in context. "This is part of a larger attempt to control the Internet on the international level," she noted. "The European Union has drafted similar legislation," she said, adding that "this reprises the arguments about cryptography, where law enforcement officials spoke of dire threats but the number of crimes linked to it is really small." Andrews said EPIC would oppose such a move by the UN. "This is an exaggerated response to a small problem," she said. "There is a need for security," she added, "but giving law enforcement more access to private communications only gives them overreaching powers." Another UN drug agency, the International Narcotics Control Board, has called on nations to restrict the right of their citizens to discuss drug legalization. (See http://reason.com/9808/col.coffin.html for an excellent discussion by Phil Coffin in Reason magazine.) Arlacchi drew charges of lacking realism after he spearheaded a major UN drug summit in 1998; the summit's title was "Drug Free in Ten Years: We Can Do It." ================ 7. French Education Minister Broaches Cannabis Decriminalization, Ecstasy Quality Controls http://www.drcnet.org/wol/143.html#francedebate Jack Lang, the French Minister of Education and one of the stars of Prime Minister Lionel Jospin's cabinet, stepped into a political firestorm by proposing a "national debate" on how best to address marijuana use and other drug issues. The 60-year-old Lang, a Socialist and member of the Paris showbiz glitterati, was Minister of Culture under Socialist Prime Minister Jacques Mitterand for nine years. He gained notoriety then for championing gay rights and providing state funds for techno music as part of a government arts program. He joined Jospin's cabinet in February, in the aftermath of a powerful teachers' union strike that left the government reeling. Lang called for "tolerance" toward marijuana and an end to what he called the "legalistic" approach. In an interview in France-Soir, he was quoted as saying, "We should put our cards on the table, working with doctors and educators and not just over cannabis. We should talk about alcohol and tobacco, which are much more destructive among the young." Even more controversial was his declaration that he supported social welfare organizations that send teams out to nightclubs to test the quality of the drugs being sold, particularly ecstasy, which is popular in the rave and techno scenes. Lang's remarks sparked immediate criticism. Phillippe de Villiers, a leader of the conservative Assembly for France, told the Irish Independent that Lang's remarks were "mind-boggling" and called for his "immediate departure." Similarly, the Federation of Pupils' Parents accused Lang of failing to ensure the moral and civic education of the young. "A drug is still a drug and none is without danger," said the federation. And the opposition UDF Party told the Independent that Lang seemed to be calling for legal ecstasy. Lang has given no indication he plans to step down. France lies on the harsh end of the European drug policy spectrum, making Lang's comments a breakthrough of sorts. France has long criticized its Dutch neighbors for their lenient policies, even though they appear to be working better than the French approach. According to the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction, a European Union body, the prevalence of hard drug addicts in the Netherlands is 1.6 per thousand. In France, that number is 2.4 per thousand. Britain, with some of the harshest drug laws in Europe, is least successful in preventing drug use, said the Centre. ================ 8. Greens Nominate Nader, Questions Remain on His Support of Drug Reform Planks http://www.drcnet.org/wol/143.html#nader Ralph Nader won the Green Party presidential nomination at the party's national convention in Denver last weekend and, in keeping with the party's platform, used his coronation to speak out in general against the war on drugs. As part of a lengthy acceptance speech, Nader criticized the criminal justice system for locking up minorities involved in drugs in disproportionate numbers while letting corporations and their executives roam free: "At home our criminal justice system, being increasingly driven by the corporate prison industry that wants ever more customers, grossly discriminates against minorities and is greatly distorted by the extremely expensive and failed war on drugs. These prisons often become finishing schools for criminal recidivists. At the same time, the criminal justice system excludes criminally behaving corporations and their well defended executives," said Nader. But the candidate was silent on a number of other drug reform planks in the party platform. These include: * Initiatives to move toward decriminalization of victimless crimes, including possession of small amounts of marijuana; * Debate on hemp as a major potential source of pulp and paper substitute; * Acknowledgement that the war on drugs has failed and the drug problem worsened; * Support for drug counseling and treatment for those who need it; * Opposition to mandatory drug testing on civil liberties grounds; and * Support for new sentencing policies, including community service for first-time offenders and "Drug Court" diversion programs. Whether and to what extent Nader will campaign on the party's drug reform planks is unclear. While he criticized the prison industry and the war on drugs in his acceptance speech, he did not mention marijuana decriminalization, drug treatment, mandatory minimums or any other issues at the center of the drug policy movement. DRCNet's repeated attempts to get any comment from the Nader campaign on drug policy and the national Green Party's more extensive and defined stands on drug policy have yet to receive any response. The Nader campaign web site (http://www.votenader.com/) does not refer to drug reform issues in any way. Nader allies, however, claim he opposes the drug war. One of the convention's organizers, Dean Myerson of the Colorado Green Party, told DRCNet, "Nader has come out against the drug war; he is in favor of treating addiction as a medical issue, he is in favor of the industrial use of hemp and the medicinal use of marijuana. He has said this publicly." Myerson added that Nader told him that drug policy was the most popular issue when he speaks on college campuses. Not all Greens were so sanguine about Nader's drug politics. Some of them nominated counterculture hero Stephen Gaskin for the presidential slot in an effort to prod Nader on drug policy issues. Gaskin, the author of Marijuana Spirituality, is best known as the founder of The Farm, a Tennessee commune originally peopled in the early 1970s by a band of San Francisco hippies. The Farm is still in operation. According to Gaskin, consumer advocate par excellence Nader won't campaign on drug policy reform because, "He's hung up on pot being a faulty consumer product that is dangerous to the consumer. During one of our conversations he told me, 'I'm kind of straitlaced. I'm afraid marijuana, cocaine and heroin hurt people.' Just the fact they got to him enough that he put [those three drugs] in the same breath showed he needed more information," Gaskin said. Gaskin conceded that Nader opposes mandatory minimums, but he argued that Nader is steering away from drug policy because he fears that drug policy will alienate more people than it will bring into his campaign. "Ralph is a little like Al Gore and a little like George Bush in that they figure it is the political kiss of death and they're afraid to touch it," Gaskin continued. "They need to understand there are more people sympathetic to that cause than there are on the religious right." Myerson, however, scoffs at Gaskin's views. Saying that the party is solidly behind Nader, he added that, "Early on we pursued a number of people to accept our nomination. I don't think that was done out of any frustration with Ralph Nader. Stephen Gaskin was approached by some Greens before Ralph had made a final decision to run. I don't think it had anything to do with Ralph's position on issues." Clearly, the Greens are solidly behind Nader. The question remains, is Nader solidly behind the party platform? (DRCNet will cover another third party's positions on drug policy next week, the Libertarians.) ================ 9. Dutch Parliament Approves Resolution to Allow Regulated Marijuana Cultivation http://www.drcnet.org/wol/143.html#dutchcannabis (courtesy NORML Foundation, http://www.norml.org) The Dutch Parliament narrowly adopted a resolution this past Tuesday to allow regulated marijuana cultivation, which the government hopes will curb the illicit export of marijuana, an estimated $8.5 billion business. Legislators passed the resolution by a 73-72 vote. The resolution now awaits the cabinet's consideration, which will likely come on Friday. Coffee shops in the Netherlands re permitted to openly sell marijuana and hash, but it remains a crime to grow marijuana. "One of the main objectives is to fight crime," said Labor Party parliamentarian Thanasis Apostolou, who drafted the resolution. "By regulating the supply we would know who is selling what and where it is going." "The Dutch are clearly in the lead in creating a more workable marijuana policy," said Allen St. Pierre, Executive Director of the NORML Foundation. "This is in stark contrast to the US, where most elected officials continue to look for new ways to punish marijuana smokers." ================ 10. REPORT: Risk of Marijuana Arrest Varies Greatly from State to State, County to County http://www.drcnet.org/wol/143.html#marijuanareport (courtesy NORML Foundation, http://www.norml.org) Washington, DC: The risk of being arrested for marijuana smoking is far greater in some states than others, and far greater in some counties within a state than in other counties within that same state. A marijuana smoker in Alaska or New York, for example, is three times more likely to be arrested than a marijuana smoker in Pennsylvania, North Dakota or Hawaii. Similarly, a smoker in New York City is nine times more likely to be arrested than a smoker in Nassau County, New York; and a smoker in Trinity County, California, is nine times more likely to be arrested than a smoker in Lassen County, California. These are the conclusions from a new study released today by the NORML Foundation in Washington, DC. According to the study's author, public policy analyst Jon Gettman, PhD, 38% of all marijuana arrests in the United States, nearly 700,000 each year, occur in only 10 counties. The complete study, including state and national maps, Dr. Gettman's commentary and analysis, and charts ranking the 50 states and counties within each state, is available online (http://www.norml.org/facts/arrestreport/). Gettman reviewed county and state marijuana arrest data nationwide from 1995-97. Detailed data were not available for the District of Columbia, Kansas or Vermont. Arrest counts and rates are provided in the report for 2,951 of the nation's 3,140 counties, accounting for 95.5% of the total estimated marijuana arrests for the year. "While total marijuana arrests appear to be leveling off, they remain at the highest levels in United States history, both in absolute numbers and in terms of arrest rates," Gettman said. "The greater the level of arrests, the more important it has become for the government to justify these arrests and the accompanying economic and social costs." County Data Fulton County, Georgia claimed the most marijuana arrests per 100,000 population (775.76) in counties over 250,000 people, with Douglas County, Nebraska (769.82) a close second. Smaller counties had the highest marijuana arrest rates in the country. Texas contained five counties in the top 10 arrest rates and 12 in the top 25. The national average marijuana arrest rate was 256 per 100,000 people. Hudspeth, Texas, a county with a population of 3,079 on the US-Mexico border, had the highest arrest rate in the country at 6,430.66 per 100,000 residents -- about one out of every 15 people. Daggett Couny, Utah, a popular tourist area near both Grand Teton and Yellowstone national parks, with a population of only 794, had the second highest arrest rate in the country at (5,289.67). Statewide Data In 1997, Alaska had the highest arrest rate with 417.71 people arrested on marijuana charges per 00,000 population, followed closely by New York at 404.59. The marijuana arrest rate was the lowest in Pennsylvania with 125.57 per 100,000 population, followed by North Dakota (131.05) and Hawaii (134.37). Police in New York state by far arrested the highest number of people on marijuana charges with 73,380, followed by California (58,068) and Texas (54,731). The state with the lowest number of marijuana arrests was North Dakota (840), followed by Delaware with 1,376 arrests.
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