DRUG WAR BRIEFS: Eradicate Marijuana, Increase Meth Use?

July 25- The Houston Chronicle reports: Rep. Barney Frank, a liberal Massachusetts Democrat, has an unlikely conservative ally, former Reagan aide Lyn Nofziger, in his campaign to lift the federal ban on medicinal marijuana.

Nofziger, Reagan's White House political director, said Wednesday that he became a supporter of medicinal marijuana when his daughter was dying of cancer. Marijuana was the only drug that helped alleviate her nausea and the other side effects of chemotherapy, he said.

"It is not a cure, but it made that part of her life more bearable," said Nofziger, who joined Frank and other medicinal marijuana supporters at a Capitol news conference.

July 25- The Hawaiian Tribune Herald reports: Marijuana eradication in Hawaii contributed to the increase in the use of the drug "ice," according to a government study.

An aide to Mayor Harry Kim is scheduled to meet today with the principal investigator of the three-year study for the National Institute on Drug Abuse. The study gathered information from 450 methamphetamine users in Honolulu, San Francisco and San Diego.

"It's the first study ever done that interviewed users in the community," said study leader Patricia Morgan, associate professor at the School of Public Health at the University of California at Berkeley.

"The use of ice in Honolulu had led to particularly serious physical and psychological problems and significant social disruption in poor working communities where it replaced marijuana, which had become scarce and expensive due to eradication policies," states the report's four-page executive summary. The summary noted that the "overwhelming majority" of meth users in Honolulu began using the drug after 1984.

Marijuana eradication missions on the Big Island began in the late 1970's, said Capt. James Day from the Hawaii County Police Department.

"Residents were both pushed away from pakalolo, their staple drug of choice, and pulled toward ice by a well organized marketing campaign by Asian distributors," the report said. "Also, the overwhelming smokeable drug of choice, marijuana or pakalolo, which has been grown and used throughout the islands for many years, became the target of a government eradication campaign.

"This drove up prices, drastically reduced availability and left locals without their customary, and many would say, relatively benign, smoke."

The report noted that violence was more prevalent in the Honolulu meth users.

"Honolulu females were over twice as likely to engage in violent acts than women in other sites," it said.

The report also found that 94 percent of the men in the study reported committing crimes, as did 91 percent of the women.

The report said meth use in all three cities led to other consequences, including memory loss, depression, isolation, paranoia, anxiety and hallucinations.

July 26- Associated Press reports: John Entwistle, 57-year-old bass player for the rock band The Who, died from a heart attack caused by cocaine use, the Clark County, Nev., coroner said Thursday.

Coroner Ron Flud ruled the death accidental and said it was not an overdose.

July 27- Associated Press reports: A regional director of Mexico's main intelligence agency was slain in the border city of Tijuana, the 11th person killed this week in what authorities say is an escalating drug war.

Jose Juan Palafox, Tijuana chief for the Center for Investigation and National Security, was gunned down at midnight on Friday, said Jorge Campos, the federal deputy Attorney General in charge of the case.

Seven of the slayings in the past week took place in Mexicali, a border city about 95 miles east of Tijuana, and the rest occurred in Tijuana. The bodies of most of the victims bore signs of torture, including mutilations and burns, investigators said.

Palafox was shot numerous times. His body was found in the passenger side of his car.

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