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This
Week
in
History
2/11/05
February 11, 1982: Attorney General William French Smith grants an exemption sparing the CIA from a legal requirement to report on drug smuggling by agency assets. This occurs only two months after President Reagan authorizes covert CIA support for the Nicaraguan contra army and some eight months before the first known documentary evidence reveals that the contras had started collaborating with drug traffickers. February 11, 1988: An international heroin seizure record is set, still in effect today, 2,816 pounds in Bangkok, Thailand. February 11, 1999: Researchers in Boston, Massachusetts find no link between marijuana use by pregnant mothers and miscarriages. February 11, 2001: President Jorge Battle of Uruguay becomes the first head of state in Latin America to call for legalization of drugs. February 12, 2002: DEA agents raid the Harm Reduction Center, a medical marijuana club in San Francisco. President George W. Bush issues his National Drug Control Strategy on the same day. February 14, 1929: Mobsters commit the St. Valentine's Day Massacre, which becomes a symbol of the mob violence engendered by Alcohol Prohibition. February 14, 1995: The US House of Representatives approves several drug-related bills, including one which replaces the police, prevention and drug court provisions of the 1994 Crime Act with a $10 billion block grant program. February 14, 1996: Fairfax police chief Jim Anderson speaks out in favor of California's medical marijuana initiative. February 16, 1982: During a speech in Miami, Florida, vice president George Herbert Walker Bush promises to use sophisticated military aircraft to track the airplanes used by drug smugglers. Several days later, Bush orders the US Navy to send in its E2C surveillance aircraft for this purpose. In October the General Accounting Office issues an opinion finding that "it is doubtful whether the [south Florida] task force can have any substantial long-term impact on drug availability." February 17, 1997: Legislation to repeal an 18 year-old state law permitting physicians to prescribe marijuana for patients suffering from cancer or glaucoma is voted down by a Virginia Senate committee in a 9-6 vote. February 18, 1999: Dr. Frank Fisher, a pain doctor from Northern California, is arrested and charged with five counts of murder. Over the following six years, all charges and legal proceedings against Fisher fizzle.
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