This
Week
in
History
11/12/04
November 12, 1970: Keith Stroup forms the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML). November 14, 1999: In an editorial, the Lancet, one of the world's leading medical journals, says, "On the medical evidence available, moderate indulgence in cannabis has little ill effect on health." November 15, 1984: Spanish police arrest Jorge Ochoa on a US warrant, and the US and Colombia both apply for his extradition. The Medellin cartel publicly threatens to murder five Americans for every Colombian extradition. Spanish courts ultimately rule in favor of Colombia's request and Ochoa is deported. He serves a month in jail on charges of bull-smuggling before he is paroled. November 15, 2001: Asa Hutchinson, administrator for the Drug Enforcement Administration, and Republican Gov. Gary Johnson of New Mexico debate the war on drugs in front of about 150 people at Yale Law School. Johnson says, "[The war on drugs is] the biggest head-in-the-sand issue that is with us today... Drug prohibition is what is killing us, not drug use. A minority of the crowd sides with Hutchinson in what turned out to be a heated debate. November 15, 2002: NFL star and NORML advisory board member Mark Stepnoski is interviewed on the Fox's The O'Reilly Factor. (The transcript can be read at http://www.mpp.org/USA/news_2047.html online.) November 17, 1993: At an International Network of Cities on Drug Policy conference in Baltimore, Maryland, former Colombian high court judge Gomez Hurtado tells the Americans present, "Forget about drug deaths, and acquisitive crime, and addiction, and AIDS. All this pales into insignificance before the prospect facing the liberal societies of the West. The income of the drug barons is greater than the American defense budget. With this financial power they can suborn the institutions of the State and, if the State resists... they can purchase the firepower to outgun it. We are threatened with a return to the Dark Ages." November 18, 1986: A US federal grand jury in Miami releases the indictment of the Ochoas, Pablo Escobar, Carlos Lehder, and Jose Gonzalo Rodriguez Gacha under the RICO statute. The indictment names the Medellin cartel as the largest cocaine smuggling organization in the world.
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