(visit last week's Week Online)

or check out The Week Online archives

1. Fungus Funding

In last week's editions of the Week Online and DRCNN, we reported on a U.S. government-funded project to develop killer fungi to wipe out coca, opium poppy, and marijuana plants around the world. The story noted that as of press time, a spokeswoman for Agricultural Research Services (ARS), the USDA program that received the funding for the research, had not returned phone calls requesting information on the status of the project. This Monday, however, we received a call from the spokeswoman, Sandy Miller Hayes, who corrected and clarified some of the points DRCNet made in the original story. (Original story online at http://www.drcnet.org/wol/076.html#fungi.)

First, Hayes stressed that contrary to most published reports about the project (including the Week Online), ARS researchers will not tamper with the fungi's genetic codes. Rather, the research will focus on naturally-occurring mycoherbicides and test the feasibility of cultivating and releasing them in greater concentrations in target areas. "We're not trying to develop any kind of superbug here," she said.

Asked whether a mycoherbicide would know the difference between industrial hemp and cannabis, Hayes said, "We are asked that question a lot, and I believe the answer is no. A fungus which selectively attacked marijuana plants would probably destroy industrial hemp as well." But, she added, the ARS project will focus only on coca for the time being.

What about the danger of mycoherbicides spreading to "legitimate" drug crops, grown for medicinal purposes, as well as other narcotics crops considered acceptable in some countries and not in others? Hayes acknowledged that care would have to be taken to protect medicinal crops. "Of course," she added, "every country would decide for itself whether and how to use these fungi."

Finally, asked about the potential for the fungi to mutate and spread to non-drug crops, Hayes said ARS scientists believe such a scenario is unlikely.

"First, the subspecies of the kind of fungus we're talking about, fusarium oxysporum erythroxyli in the case of coca, does not reproduce sexually. Second, there is no record of other subspecies of fusarium oxysporum recombining. Third, when virulent strains of fungi mutate, their pathogenicity tends to become diluted, so the new strain is less powerful than the old."

Hayes said the project is still in the early phases, and there are no plans yet to introduce fusarium oxysporum erythroxyli in situ. "We're still hiring scientists" to work on the project, she said.

DRCNet will continue to monitor the story.

2. Clinton's New Drug Control Strategy Repeats Mistakes of the Past

Scott Ehlers, Senior Policy Analyst, Drug Policy Foundation, [email protected]

There are few things on which Democrats and Republicans can agree, but the budgetary priorities of the federal government's drug war is one issue that Presidents Reagan, Bush, and Clinton have all endorsed year after year. If Clinton has his way, FY 2000 will be another one of those years when law enforcement dominates the Drug Control Budget, while treatment and prevention receive lip service and inadequate funding.

On February 1, the White House released its $17.8 billion Drug Control Budget for FY 2000, an increase of $735 million (+4.3%) over 1999's regular appropriations. The request is actually slightly lower than the $17.9 billion that was allocated to federal anti-drug efforts in FY 1999 when the $844 million in "emergency support" is included. Supply reduction efforts (police, prisons, prosecutors, military, interdiction, and eradication) make up 66% of the budget, while demand reduction (drug testing, anti-drug advertising, prevention, and treatment) make up 34%. The year 2000 budget request increases allocations to supply reduction efforts by almost $525 million (+4.7%) and demand reduction by $210 million (+3.6%).

Highlights include:

• $50 million more for infrared and color cameras with ground sensors along the Southwest Border;
• $22 million more for the DEA's Operation FIREBIRD, which will allow "DEA components around the world to act as one cohesive unit through instantaneous access to critical law enforcement and intelligence information";
• $73.5 million more for the Department of Defense's interdiction efforts; and,
• $10 million more for the National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign, for a total of $195 million for the campaign in 2000.

Unfortunately, Republicans are seeking to make the Strategy even more lopsided. On February 4, House and Senate Republicans held a press conference to accuse Clinton of being soft on drugs, calling his anti-drug budget a "just say maybe" plan because more funds were not devoted to interdiction. According to Rep. Porter Goss (R-FL), "The only way we can win this is to just say 'no'. This is a serious war. This is not a war you just say 'maybe' about. This is a war you win."

Rep. Goss failed to note how many people he was willing to throw in prison to "win" the drug war.

The FY 2000 drug control budget request can be viewed at http://www.whitehousedrugpolicy.gov/news/press/1999/020199.html.

3. Pentagon Restricts Use of Troops in Border Drug War

The Houston Chronicle reported last Friday (1/29) that the Pentagon has issued new rules requiring special permission for armed border anti-drug patrols, a move that experts predict all but ends the use of military personnel in such operations. Military anti-drug border missions henceforth will not take place as a matter of course, but only with the specific permission of the Secretary of Defense or his deputy, according to DOD spokesman Lt. Col. Mike Milord.

The Pentagon first proposed ending its border anti-drug patrols in January of last year, following the fatal shooting of Esequiel Hernandez, a high school sophomore from the border town of Redford, Texas, by camouflaged Marines on a secret anti-drug patrol. An internal Pentagon review cited "systemic failures at every level" of the fatal mission, and a report from U.S. Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX), charged that the Justice and Defense departments withheld information from the criminal investigations of the case.

The Hernandez shooting did not dissuade U.S. Rep. James Traficant (D-OH) from introducing legislation to increase the number of troops on the border by 10,000, from the several hundred on patrol previously. The legislation was passed 261-150 by the House of Representatives in a vote taken in September, 1997. Troop increases were opposed, however, by Rep. Silvestre Reyes (D-TX), a former Border Patrol agent, as well as the Justice and Defense departments, and the measure did not come to a vote in the Senate.

Timothy Dunn, author of The Militarization of the U.S.-Mexico Border, told The Week Online, "Getting these border missions to go through the Secretary or his deputy is very significant. That's about as close as we can get to them saying, we're not going to do this, without them saying that. It is unfortunately just up to them, at their bureaucratic discretion. There's not a strong public control over it, or even public input into it, and that's unfortunate; that makes it less secure. But it is nonetheless a very significant change. And it should not have taken the loss of this boy's life to make that change."

See our interview with Timothy Dunn, below. Also check out the following related links:

Week Online coverage:
http://www.drcnet.org/wol/011.html#borderwar
http://www.drcnet.org/wol/017.html#border
http://www.drcnet.org/wol/031.html#hernandez
http://www.drcnet.org/wol/058.html#hernandez

Drug Policy Forum of Texas Esequiel Hernandez focus, including picture gallery:
http://www.mapinc.org/DPFT/hernandez/

American Friends Service Committee Immigration Law Enforcement Monitoring Project
http://www.afsc.org/pdesc/pd139.htm

War on Drugs: Military Perspectives and Problems -- special report for DRCNet by Joseph Miranda
http://www.drcnet.org/military/

4. Interview with Timothy Dunn

The Week Online spoke with Timothy Dunn, author of "The Militarization of the U.S.-Mexico Border, 1978-1992: Low Intensity Conflict Doctrine Comes Home," University of Texas Press, 1996.

WOL: Is it accurate to say that the Pentagon has effectively ended their border drug patrols?

Dunn: I don't know if they've ended them, but they've set themselves a much higher threshold to meet in determining whether or not they will do them. They haven't said that they won't do them, but they have said they will have to get the permission of the Secretary of Defense or one of his deputies. It's going to take something pretty extraordinary for them to decide that it's worthy of the Secretary's attention. We might do it, but we probably won't, I think that's what they're saying. So in practical terms, it probably won't happen. But they're leaving the door open that they can, and they won't have to notify anybody or tell anybody.

WOL: To what extent does this new policy address the border drug policy problem?

Dunn: Well, I think it affects the most obvious and the most clearly dangerous parts of the posting of armed troops along the border. The other parts of the relationship, the institutional relationship between the military and law enforcement communities, is not affected. And as you may recall from my book, I noted that Joint Task Force 6, the military unit that coordinates all the military support for anti-drug efforts of the various police bodies, they provide a vast array of types of assistance. They have 19 different types of missions, and only four or five involve the use of ground troops. So all of those other types of assistance are left on the table, things like engineering and construction support, building the border walls that have been put up in Arizona and California, road building so the Border Patrol can get in certain areas more easily.

Besides that, more serious types of militarization left are training and intelligence support. In training, they're allowed to teach everything from first aid and map reading and rifle marksmanship, which sounds pretty modest, to things like suspect interrogations and the use of pyrotechnics and booby traps -- you know, some really gruesome stuff that law enforcement has no business in the world getting involved with. And you can imagine, in suspect interrogations, law enforcement at least has to wave at the Constitution. Military, in their operations abroad, do not. And all the allegations that have been lodged about training of torturers, and so forth, at the military's School of the Americas at Ft. Benning, involve that kind of stuff, suspect interrogation.

So that's a very dangerous area to be getting involved with in law enforcement and the military, and that's on the books, we can do that for you. And all sorts of other stuff included, like raid planning, which is reminiscent of Waco, and all those kinds of things. So again, the law enforcement people have no business planning a raid to look like a military program, and the military certainly can't help plan a police raid, because that's not what they do.

WOL: What about the Border Patrol? Is there a danger of another incident as occurred in Redford, but involving, say, Border Patrol or other civilian agencies, that have become more similar to the military in the way they function?

Dunn: Well, had the Border Patrol been out there instead of the military unit that was out there when that shooting occurred of Esequiel Hernandez out in Redford, I don't think the Border Patrol agents would have shot at him. Like the military guys responded, you know, dramatically, overreached and misread the situation, and Border Patrol agents are less likely to do that. In fact, earlier that year, some Border Patrol agents were in the area when Hernandez was firing his rifle. Worrying that they could get hit by a stray bullet, they drove over and told him to knock it off. He didn't know they were there. So, the situation was resolved without the use of force; that's the positive side.

On the down side, the Border Patrol has a long record of very questionable shootings along the border of people whom they viewed as threatening, and it's very questionable in certain instances whether there was a significant threat, or any threat at all. Going back to 1992, in the most famous case, a Border Patrol agent using the civilian equivalent of an M-16, an AR-15 semiautomatic rifle, out on a drug patrol near Nogales, Arizona, shot a Mexican, undocumented border crosser in the back, as he was running back toward the border to get away. And the guy was unarmed, and he had no drugs on him. There are a lot of incidents like that. In fact, there've been a couple in these last six to nine months in California and Arizona, where undocumented immigrants were shot by the Border Patrol.

WOL: So how do things need to change?

Dunn: Ultimately, the relationship between the Border Patrol and the military, or the military and civilian policing bodies generally, needs to just end. Because it's a dangerous relationship. You shouldn't have the police being trained by the military and starting to act more like the military, which can still happen under current guidelines. And you shouldn't have the military getting involved in domestic police matters. That's wholly inappropriate on both sides, and ultimately it's a threat to democracy.

We should return to the status quo before the early 1980s, when this new law was passed that allowed military collaboration with the police. You did not see military collaboration with the police on a regular, ongoing basis. Failing that, they ought to at least keep the relationship limited to the less militaristic end of the continuum.

WOL: Is there anything you'd like to add in conclusion?

Dunn: Well, I don't want to downplay the significance of this decision. Getting these border missions to go through the Secretary or his deputy is very significant. That's about as close as we can get to them saying, we're not going to do this, without them saying that. It is unfortunately just up to them, at their bureaucratic discretion. There's not a strong public control over it, or even public input into it, and that's unfortunate; that makes it less secure. But it is nonetheless a very significant change. And it should not have taken the loss of this boy's life to make that change. You don't have to be a genius to see that the use of ground troops along the border, people who have no clue about what's going on out there and are heavily armed, it didn't take a genius to see that could lead to some kind of human rights catastrophe. Any common sense could have judged the same thing, and sure enough, that's what happened. And it shouldn't have taken the loss of that boy's life for this to happen.

WOL: Common sense is not the hallmark of our national drug policy.

Dunn: Not in the least, no. [laughter]

WOL: Thank you for your time.

(Purchase "Militarization of the U.S.-Mexico Border" online from amazon.com, and DRCNet will earn 15%! Just go to http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0292715803/drcnet/ to see more about the book and get us credit if you decide to buy a copy.)

5. Needle Exchange Controversy in Australia

Marc Brandl, [email protected]

Pictures splashed on the pages of a Sydney paper showing a teenager shooting up has brought the issue of needle exchanges to the headlines and spurred a government official to close one exchange site.

In last Sunday's edition of the Sun-Herald, several pictures appeared showing people shooting up, including one youth about to inject with the help of a fellow user. The boy was identified as being only twelve years of age. The area where the incident took place, Redfern, a suburb of Sydney, is predominantly a very low-income aboriginal community with a growing drug problem.

The day after the photos were printed, New South Wales (NSW) Health Minister Andrew Refshauge closed the needle exchange in Redfern. The story didn't end though, when a memo from the Health Department in April surfaced directing all government run needle exchanges to give out clean needles to drug users regardless of age if there was a good chance the person was injecting drugs already. Information also came to light from police and people who know the youth that he was in fact 16, and not twelve and that the photos may not be very recent.

State wide elections next month in NSW may have also contributed to the quick decision on the part of the Health Minister. The Week Online spoke with Dr. Alex Wodak, director of the Alcohol and Drug Service at St. Vincent's Hospital in Sydney and chair of a recent review of NSW's needle exchanges. "Had there not been elections coming so soon, it might have been handled more appropriately." According to Wodak, Health Minister Refshauge is also Minister for Aboriginal Affairs and has worked closely with the aboriginal community most of his career, including serving in the Aboriginal Medical Service (AMS) as a young doctor. As it turns out, the local chapter of the AMS in Redfern is opposed to needle exchange and prevailed upon the minister to close down the exchange in lieu of the pictures being published.

"This is particularly unfortunate because it is a well regarded program," said Wodak. "The staff [of the Redfern clinic] do a tough job. One half the staff are aborigine themselves, and they exchange about 30,000 needles a month. They also attend about 20 overdoses a month and they haven't lost one yet. Scrapping the program is a very high risk thing to do."

High rates of sexually transmitted disease among members of the aboriginal community brings a heighten sense of urgency in keeping HIV infection rates low. Wodak worries, "The presence of high rates of sexually transmitted infections means that the aborigines are at considerable risk an African type spread of HIV infection."

In the wake of the needle exchange program closure and controversy, two stories on a much more positive note made the news. On Monday, The Age newspaper reported that an experimental drug user caution program in Victoria was deemed a success by several top police and health officials. The programs' supporters include the Chief Superintendent of police in the district where the trial is being held, the Chief Commissioner of police in Victoria, and the Health Minister, Rob Knowles. The program allows first time offenders caught in possession of small quantities of any illegal drug to get a "professional assessment" of their drug use and treatment rather than criminal sanctions.

In other encouraging news, the Sydney Morning Herald published comments from the new president of the NSW Law Society, Ms. Margaret Hole, on Tuesday. On drug policy, she said, "For the law society, the first constructive step is to decriminalize the personal use of marijuana. The second positive step this year is to support a trial, as proposed in the Australian Capital Territory, of legal heroin use."

6. Memorial

Many of our readers in the harm reduction community knew Rod Sorge, a long-time harm reduction activist, most recently at the Harm Reduction Coalition in New York. Rod passed away last week, after a long illness, though we're told he was in good spirits in recent months. A memorial is being held on Feb. 20th, at Housing Works, 743 E. 9th St. (corner Ave. D), New York City. For more information, call Allan Clear or Paul Cherashore at (212) 213-6376.

Rod Sorge received a Citizen's Action Award from the Drug Policy Foundation in 1996 -- read it on their web site at http://www.dpf.org/html/1996_awardees.html#ran1 and learn more about his considerable contributions to harm reduction and drug policy.

7. Event Info

Last week we listed a number of upcoming seminars and conferences of interest to reformers, online at http://www.drcnet.org/wol/076.html#seminars and http://www.drcnet.org/wol/076.html#conferences in last week's archive of The Week Online. Since last week, we've learned that this year's North American Syringe Exchange Convention, scheduled for this April in Chicago, has been canceled in order to protect the solvency of NASEN's core programs. Next year's NASEC, in Portland, Oregon, is still expected to take place. We at DRCNet will miss seeing those of you who had planned to attend, and wish you well until we meet again in Portland or elsewhere. Check out NASEN's web site at http://www.nasen.org.

Some new listings that have come in this week:

March 10-12, Bern, Switzerland, Conference on Heroin Assisted Treatment for Dependent Drug Users. See http://www.admin.ch/bag/sucht/aktuell/e/aktuell1.htm for information.

March 20-21, Toronto, Canada, The Second International Conference on Drug War Prisoners, sponsored by the Curriculum Committee of the Department of Sociology, York University. For information, contact John Beresford at [email protected].

March 27-29, Washington, DC, Families Against Mandatory Minimums workshop. For information, call FAMM at (202) 822-6700 or e-mail [email protected].

April 20, Oklahoma City, "PROTEST THE WAR" demonstration at the State Capitol. For information, contact Norma Sapp at (405) 840-4367 or Micheal Pearson at [email protected].

8. First Prisoner Released Under Michigan 650 Lifer Law Reform

(bulletin from Families Against Mandatory Minimums, http://www.famm.org)

LANSING: JeDonna Young, the first person released under the reform of Michigan's notorious 650 Lifer Law, walked out of prison this morning (Friday, January 29) after serving 20 years in prison. The 650 Lifer Law mandated life without parole for anyone convicted of selling more than 650 grams of heroin or cocaine -- the harshest drug law in the nation. Young, incarcerated in Scott Correctional Facility, was one of the first individuals convicted under the law. During the 20 years she spent in prison, Young earned a B.A. degree, volunteered with children's visitation program, and worked as a prison paralegal.

Young's parole was made possible by reform of the 650 Lifer Law by the Michigan legislature this summer. Families Against Mandatory Minimums, Michigan Project, spearheaded the broad coalition that worked to change the law. FAMM, a non-profit organization working for sentencing reform, has over 35,000 members nationally (3,500 members in Michigan).

"We are thrilled that JeDonna Young is going home," said Laura Sager, director, MI FAMM. "Like so many others, Young was caught under a law designed for drug kingpins, that instead snared mostly low-level couriers and addicts --including many first-time offenders, like Young.

"Further reform of Michigan's drug law is urgently needed," said Sager. "Michigan's mandatory minimum sentences for drug offenses are still among the harshest in the nation. We must still eliminate harsh mandatory minimum and consecutive sentences for the lesser drug offenses, that can result in decades-long sentences. Judges need to have the discretion to use sentencing guidelines, to base sentence on an individual's criminal history, role in the offense, and seriousness of the offense."

NOTE: 60 Minutes II (a new Wednesday program on CBS) will air an exclusive interview with JeDonna Young and Laura Sager very soon, possibly as early as next week. Also, this week's issue of Time magazine sums up many of the problems with mandatory minimum sentences in a detailed article titled, "A Get-Tough Policy that Failed," citing Michigan as one of many states reconsidering mandatory minimum sentences.

9. Increased Penalties, Prison Sentences Don't Deter Drug Use, ABA Study Finds

(from the NORML Weekly News, http://www.norml.org)

February 4, 1999, Washington, D.C.: Increased enforcement of drug laws and stiffer penalties do not deter the use of marijuana and other drugs, a new study by the American Bar Association found.

"The current policy of simply arresting and incarcerating drug users does not work," said Myrna Raeder, chairwoman of the ABA's Criminal Justice Section.

The ABA study, The State of Criminal Justice, found illicit drug use on the rise despite increased federal funds, higher levels of drug arrests, and higher incarceration rates than at any time in our nation's history. The report also determined that law enforcement priorities are shifting from dealers to users. "While drug arrests were up from 1992 to 1997, nearly 80 percent of those arrests were for possession," it found.

FBI figures report that police arrested nearly 700,000 Americans on marijuana charges in 1997. Eighty-seven percent of these arrests were for simple possession. In all, law enforcement arrested more than 1.5 million people on drug charges.

The ABA found that the total number of people who had used drugs within the previous month increased approximately 18 percent between 1992 and 1997. It estimated that 14 million Americans are regular drug users, but noted that nearly 80 percent of them only use marijuana.

Copies of the ABA report are available from the ABA Service Center at (800) 825-2221 (cite product code 5090073).

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