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Testi originali Luglio 2000

Articoli su Peter McWilliams

20 Jun 2000
National Review
Website: http://www.nationalreview.com/

Dan Mindus
MURDER IN CALIFORNIA THE CASE OF PETER MCWILLIAMS (1949-2000).

Ushering in outbreaks of hysteria, Peter McWilliams, best-selling author and medical-marijuana activist, died on Wednesday. Some -- mostly libertarians -- are freely tossing around the word "murder" to describe the federal government's role in the 50-year-old McWilliams' passing. "What the federal government did is nothing less than cold-blooded, premeditated murder," charged Steve Dasbach, the national director of the Libertarian Party. Before we consign such talk to the Vince Foster lunatic fringe, perhaps some background would be appropriate. Unless otherwise noted, the quotes that follow are selected from three columns on the deceased crusader by the hardly hysterical William F. Buckley Jr. "For his illness [AIDS and cancer] he smokes every day. But after you do that for a few weeks you cease to get high. Marijuana becomes just something that stops nausea, eases pain, reduces interocular pressure, relaxes muscles, and takes the "bottom" out of a depression. So where do we go from here? To jail?"
Exactly.
"Six thirty in the morning, nine DEA agents crash into McWilliams' house finding him at work on his computer. They simultaneously tell him he is not under arrest and handcuff him. They spend three hours going over every piece of paper in his house (they find one ounce of marijuana, which is within the California legal limit) and walk away with his computer. That is the equivalent of entering the New York Times and walking away with the printing machinery. "How is this possible, given that California's Proposition 215 exempted patients from criminal penalties for the cultivation or possession of marijuana? "The feds take the position that the California proposition is after all overridden by federal legislation."
McWilliams is arrested and charged. "The U.S. attorney in Los Angeles intends to recommend that McWilliams spend the next 10 years in jail for violating federal drug laws.The meltdown is therefore now scheduled. One hopes that Peter McWilliams, something of a bird of paradise, is left alone to take proper care of himself."
Sadly, this proved to be wishful thinking. The judge prohibited McWilliams from mentioning that he had AIDS and cancer, thus denying him the traditional common law defense that necessity, the need to prevent greater harm, forced him to break the law. This despite the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals's unanimous ruling in 1999 that "medical necessity" can be a viable defense for people accused of breaking federal marijuana laws. One would think such a ruling would apply to McWilliams, who suffers from a not uncommon side-effect of anti-viral AIDS drugs: nausea. Without marijuana, McWilliams simply couldn't keep his meds down.
The judge further prohibited McWilliams from mentioning Proposition 215, for this was a federal case. Facing the prospect of a ten-year mandatory minimum sentence, and no plausible defense, McWilliams pled guilty. Bail was set at $250,000 and McWilliams's mother mortgaged the family home. "One aspect of the bail regulation would have pleased George Orwell: He has to submit to a daily urine test to establish that he has not taken marijuana. If such a test were to prove positive, back he'd go to jail, and the family house, presumably, to the auction block." According to McWilliams, "The Federal prosecutor personally called my mother to tell her that if I was found with even a trace of medical marijuana, her house would be taken away."
And so, the meltdown. Fearing foreclosure on his mother's house, McWilliams stopped taking the marijuana that controlled his nausea. He was found in his bathroom, having choked on his own vomit. One might say that this is no more a murder than a plane crash, which can be blamed on the airline or the FAA. But there's the crucial difference of intent. Here, the prosecutors knowingly prevented McWilliams from taking the medication -- marijuana -- that he claimed was saving his life. Perhaps they didn't believe him, and perhaps they didn't know any better, but these are the arguments of a defendant arguing that he is only guilty of manslaughter in the second degree.
Look in the papers tomorrow for more wisdom on the subject from Mr. Buckley.

•••

03 Jul 2000
Columbus Dispatch
Website: http://www.dispatch.com/

Steve Stephens
FREETHINKER NOW SILENCED BY THE FEDS' DRUG VENDETTA

To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven: A time to be born, and a time to die.
These words from Ecclesiastes begin best-selling author Peter McWilliams' book How To Survive the Loss of a Love.
McWilliams' time to die came last month. The government did not kill him directly, although McWilliams would still be alive if not for the hounding of federal prosecutors and the decisions of a federal judge.
McWilliams, 50, admittedly smoked dope and encouraged others to do the same. Marijuana was the only substance that relieved McWilliams' nausea, which was caused by the drugs that fought his AIDS and cancer. He founded Medical Marijuana Magazine online to help others. But, despite California laws legalizing medical marijuana, DEA agents stormed McWilliams' Los Angeles home and the offices of his publishing company and charged him with growing, possessing and conspiring to sell the evil weed. McWilliams pleaded guilty to a lesser charge after federal Judge George King denied him a defense. The judge would not allow McWilliams to introduce into evidence information about his illness or California's law. And, of course, King ordered weekly urine tests for McWilliams, whose nausea, without the marijuana, became uncontrollable. McWilliams was out on bail and awaiting sentencing when he died, choking on his own vomit, in his bathtub. I knew McWilliams only casually. We traded a few e-mails after he read one of my columns on the Dispatch Web site last year. He retained his humor and optimism, although the feds had started the campaign that ended in his destruction.
Conservative commentator William F. Buckley knew McWilliams much better than I. In a recent column, Buckley called his friend "a wry, mythogenic guy, humorous, affectionate, articulate, shrewd, sassy." "Imagine such a spirit ending its life at 50, just because they wouldn't let him have a toke," Buckley wrote. McWilliams' political philosophy was summed up in the title of his 1993 book Ain't Nobody's Business If You Do: The Absurdity of Consensual Crimes in a Free Society.
"This book is based on a single idea," McWilliams wrote. "You should be allowed to do whatever you want with your own person and property, as long as you don't physically harm the person or property of a nonconsenting other." In the book, McWilliams notes that the government has jailed more than 750,000 people for acts "that did not physically harm the person or property of another."
"Throwing people in jail is the extreme," McWilliams wrote, but the DEA proved him wrong. The war on drugs now transcends questions of liberal vs. conservative. It now pits government against citizen, power against liberty, politics against common sense.
McWilliams was targeted not because he used marijuana but because he spoke out.
"If the DEA has seized my computer to silence me, it has failed," McWilliams wrote recently in Liberty magazine. But that failure was only temporary.
McWilliams -- a voice favoring life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, a voice opposing conformity -- is now silenced forever.
But they can't silence everyone. As Ecclesiastes says, there is a time to keep silence and a time to speak.
The time to speak is now.

•••

19 Jun 2000 Michigan Daily
Website: http://www.michigandaily.com/

UNNECESSARY DEATH
Medical Marijuana Saves Lives

Last Wednesday, author turned medical marijuana advocate Peter McWilliams was found in his California home, choked to death on his own vomit. After being arrested for selling marijuana to medical buyers' clubs, McWilliams was barred from using California's Prop. 215 (which legalized medical marijuana in that state) as a defense in his federal trial. He was forced to plead guilty and sentenced to a parole that denied him the right to use the only medicine that allowed him to stomach a powerful cocktail of AIDS and cancer drugs: marijuana. This begs the question: how many more must die before this legitimate medicine can reach the sick and the dying? McWilliams' AIDS and Cancer had been in remission with his use of potent prescription drugs. But the only way he and many other sufferers of these disorders can cope with the overwhelming toll of these drugs is with a substance that is still illegal in most states. The power of federal law to override local initiatives, as well as a continued rejection by the government's top drug authorities of marijuana's medicinal claims is directly responsible for this man's death. He is the victim of lawmaker's continued ignorance. Their reliance on prohibitionist tactics has long overstayed its welcome. The tragic death of Peter McWilliams highlights the government's continued failure to accept the virtues of medical marijuana, despite its historic usage. Our lawmakers continually withstand the ravages of alcohol, a drug that contributes to over 100,000 deaths annually. They also contribute huge subsidies to tobacco farmers, who sell products that are directly responsible for hundreds of thousands of premature deaths. The best figures available indicate that marijuana may fight certain types of cancer. Some use it to relieve symptoms of certain lung diseases like asthma. It has also never been responsible for a single death. It is only our unwillingness to accept the failure of the war on marijuana that continues to deny patients the medicine they direly need.

ARTICOLI SULLE MORTI IN SCOZIA

16 Jun 2000
Irish Examiner Website: http://www.examiner.ie/

Conor Keane BUG THAT KILLED HEROIN ADDICTS IDENTIFIED BY SCIENTISTS

A SOIL BASED bacteria that thrives in dead flesh has been identified as the heroin contaminant which caused the deaths of 37 addicts in Ireland, Scotland, England and Wales. Clostridium novyi Type A is the name of the bacteria which health experts believe caused the deaths of the 36 injecting heroin users. Experts at the Public Health Laboratory Service in Cardiff, Wales, and at the Centre for Disease Control in Atlanta, Georgia, are now satisfied that the bacteria clostridium novyi Type A is the source of the illness which baffled health chiefs since it first emerged in Glasgow on April 19. Professor Brian Duerden, medical director of the Public Health Laboratory Service said: ''Clostridium novyi Type A is well known as a cause of severe infection in domestic animals but rarely does so in humans. ''As far as we know, this is the first time this bacteria strain has ever caused an outbreak of infection in drug injectors.'' The bacterium was first identified at the beginning of the last century and was responsible for thousands of deaths during the First World War. A spokesman for the Greater Glasgow Health Board said: "Our suspicion is that these clostridium have been in the heroin that the patients have been injecting. We might be talking about bacteria, but basically this is a human tragedy."He said the new cases which emerged in recent days show the bad batch of heroin is still in use. The bacteria, which is not always fatal, has killed more than 50% of those who have contracted it since April. Eight of the 15 heroin addicts who were infected in Dublin died, along with 20 of the 43 addicts infected in Glasgow, and nine of the 16 victims in England and Wales. The bacteria's spores can lie dormant in soil for months or years, and only become active in very particular circumstances, as the bacteria can only live in an oxygen free environment. The illness has only affected drug users who inject heroin directly into muscle as opposed to a blood vein and women seem to be more susceptible than men to the illness. Experts believe that the injection site may have dead tissue close by, which has no oxygen supply and allows the spores to activate and grow. The scientists also speculate that the citric acid often added to the drug before injecting may help activate the dormant spores. The bacteria does not cause problems but powerful toxins they release travel throughout the body wreaking havoc with vital organs including the heart. Medical experts urge addicts with symptoms to get to hospital quickly. The infection is difficult to treat, even with modern antibiotics, but surgeons may be able to cut away the dead tissue containing the bacteria to save patients.

•••

14 Jun 2000
New York Times
Website: http://www.nytimes.com/

Sarah Lyall
CONTAMINATED HEROIN MYSTIFIES AND SCARES BRITAIN

GLASGOW -- They started showing up in hospitals here in the middle of April, gravely ill heroin addicts with huge, painful skin abcesses, skyrocketing white-blood-cell counts and dangerously low blood pressure. Since then, 63 similar cases have been identified, as far afield as Dublin, Liverpool and Manchester, and 32 people have died.
The outbreak is most likely caused by bacteria in a contaminated batch of heroin, experts said. Doctors said they did not know whether the contaminated supply had been exhausted or whether there is more, perhaps much more, to come.
The outbreak has sent shivers of fear through the communities of hard-core heroin users in Britain and Ireland linked, city to city, by a drug-supply chain. The wave of deaths has also presented British, Irish and American investigators with a stubborn medical mystery as they try to identify a cause. Two investigators from the Federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta flew in to help recently. But they have not been able to determine what the culprit is or what batch of heroin is harboring it.
Although heroin is a notoriously high-risk drug whose use carries a high mortality rate -- Glasgow, with 611,000 residents, had 150 heroin-related deaths in 1999 -- public health officials said they had never faced anything like this.
"I've been in the business for 13 years and I've never seen any cases like this before at all," said Dr. Laurence Gruer, a consultant in public health medicine at the Greater Glasgow Health Board. "My colleagues in intensive-care units have never seen people like this, who've been dying so quickly. And the pathologists who perform the autopsies have never seen anything like this before, where when they opened up the bodies, the internal organs looked quite clean. It really does seem like this is a silent killer."
It is no coincidence that 35 of the reported cases, and 17 of the deaths, have come from Glasgow, where heroin found a serious foothold 20 years ago. Even as Glasgow undergoes something of a cultural and business renaissance, officials estimate that as many as 12,000 to 15,000 heroin addicts live here, many sleeping on streets, in homeless shelters or in the public housing complexes that dot the city.
"They live in a different city from the one we live in," said Jonah Sullivan, project manager for the Gorbals Addiction Service, an outreach program in Glasgow. "A lot of heroin users live outside of our experience entirely."
After the first few cases, which were ascribed to overdoses and then re-examined in light of new evidence, the pattern became clear. All the victims have been "muscle poppers," addicts who inject heroin directly into their muscles, usually because their veins have been so badly damaged from long-term drug abuse -- and more than half have been women, because female addicts are reportedly more likely to inject into their muscles than male addicts are.
The illness begins as an infection on the spot where the heroin was injected, usually in the arm, leg, buttocks or groin. The primary infection becomes grossly swollen and painful, killing surrounding tissue and requiring large chunks of affected flesh to be surgically removed. Unless treated at the initial stage, the infection sends deadly toxins coursing through the bloodstream, leading rapidly to heart failure. Of the patients admitted to Glasgow hospitals in the second stage of the illness, 90 percent have died.
"We found that once they became ill they tended to die within 24 to 48 hours," Dr. Gruer said. "Their hearts failed, even though the ICU physicians were pumping them full of all the drugs they could think of. None of them were having an effect."
Health officials have not identified the victims by name or released more than sketchy details of the cases. But several addicts and drug-treatment workers interviewed here described watching friends and clients die from the illness.
Kathleen Rozanski was an early case. Ms. Rozanski, an addict in her mid-20's, developed an infection that looked like a hard-boiled egg on her stomach and began to behave as though she were losing her mind, said Tessa McKay, 24, who was interviewed in the Turning Point Drug Crisis Center, a 24-hour clinic. "She was acting strange, forgetting things," Ms. McKay said. "It was as if her memory was gone."
But her friend refused for several days to get help. "She started to go blue," Ms. McKay said. "And when she got to the hospital, she was already dead."
In their search to pinpoint a cause, investigators have ruled out contamination of the citric acid that addicts use to dissolve heroin and the injection needles. The researchers have ruled out anthrax and botulism, both suspects at one point.
The most likely explanation so far, Dr. Gruer said, is that the cases all stem from heroin that has been unknowingly contaminated with a type of clostridium, a bacterium commonly found in soil and dust that, in the form of spores, can live in a dormant stage for years.
In the right situation," Dr. Gruer said, "if they get into the body, especially into dead tissue, they can be activated and start multiplying, and cause an infection, which then produces a deadly toxin." But even if the culprit is identified as clostridium, it remains unclear what treatment can be developed to eliminate the toxins that the bacteria throw off.
Although the pace of the illness has slowed, it has proved hard to get the bad heroin off the streets. Several new cases were identified early in June. Part of the problem is that by the time most addicts with the illness reach a hospital, they have exhausted their affected supply and there are no narcotics left to examine.
"The difficulty is that we don't know how the batch was prepared of its size, whether it was 1 kilo," about two pounds, "or 100 kilos, or anything about it," Mr. Sullivan said.
Most of Britain and Ireland's heroin reportedly originates in western Asia, enters Britain via Dover and travels through Liverpool before heading farther north, where it reaches the streets through a vast network of small-time dealers.
It seems highly likely, said Dr. Joe Barry, a specialist in public health medicine at the Eastern Regional Health Authority in Dublin, that the heroin was contaminated after it had left its source, perhaps by dealers here who were trying to increase its bulk with other substances.
"It's hard to know whether we're at the beginning, middle or end of this," said Dr. Thomas Gilhooly, a general practitioner with a large number of addicted patients in Glasgow's depressed East End and the clinical director of the Lanarkshire Drug Service outside the city.
There is one positive development, Dr. Gilhooly said. The deaths have so terrified some addicts that, unable to quit altogether, they have at least switched from injecting to smoking heroin, a safer if less potent method.
But change comes hard to heroin users. "While many of them are very concerned, they can also be quite fatalistic," said the Turning Point project manager, George Hunter. "Given that they're injecting themselves three, four, five times a day, this is just one more risk."
Willie Scott, 28, who has been using heroin on and off for six years and is one of 12 addicts in the Turning Point residential program, agreed.
"Every time you take a hit," Mr. Scott said, "you're taking a chance of killing yourself. We all know that. I've lost best mates. But heroin is such a gripping drug. It gets such a hold of you that even seeing your best friend lying dead in a coffin isn't enough to stop you from injecting."

•••

10 Jun 2000
International Herald-Tribune
Website: http://www.iht.com/

Marlene Cimons
HEALTH EXPERTS PUZZLED BY A BRITISH ISLES ILLNESS
59 Cases Among Drug Users Are Stirring Fear

WASHINGTON - In a scenario eerily reminiscent of the beginnings of the, AIDS epidemic, nearly five dozen intravenous drug users in Scotland, Ireland and England since April have become ill or died of an unidentified illness.
The baffling ailment is characterized by excessive swelling and redness at the injection site, low blood pressure and a high white blood cell count, often followed by heart failure.
More than half of the victims have died - most of them about two days after being admitted to a hospital despite treatment with broad-spectrum antibiotics and other measures.
While cultures of their blood and tissue have shown multiple organisms, none has yet been identified as the likely culprit.
In Glasgow, which has long had the reputation of being Britain's heroin capital, the cases have been largely treated as a drug problem.
But the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, contacted last month by the British health authorities to help in the investigation, said Thursday in its first public report that "the emergence of a new illness is possible," stressing that it appears to be confined to intravenous drug users.
"This is a serious illness among members of this particular community," said Marc Fischer, coordinator of the U.S. agency's surveillance project for unexplained deaths and critical illnesses. "Something is going on, but we're not sure at this point what it is."
"The greatest likelihood," Dr. Fischer added, "is that it is an organism previously known and described and showing itself in a new way."
He emphasized, however, that because the early part of the illness involves a local reaction at the injection site, "this suggests that it is somehow related to that practice. "
The experience of AIDS, which is believed to have begun in Africa, has taught the public health community a sobering lesson that it has not forgotten: Deadly infectious agents are but an airplane ride away.
Surveillance has been heightened in Britain and Ireland. In the United States, the Centers for Disease Control sent letters last week to state health authorities alerting them to the cases. Thus far, no U.S. cases have been reported.
Health officials are disseminating information about the illness to healthcare practitioners and trying to identify possible risk factors so that prevention strategies can be developed. They are questioning surviving patients to see what they might have in common, specifically sources of their drugs and the timing of their injections.
So far 59 cases have been reported 30 in Glasgow, 15 in Dublin and 14 in scattered sites in England, with 30 deaths among them, the Centers for Disease Control said.
Health officials at first feared that the cause might be anthrax, because the bacterium had been isolated from the spinal fluid of an intravenous drug user in Oslo who became ill and died. But investigators have found no evidence of anthrax in any of the British cases.
Cultures have revealed several different bacteria, however, some of which can cause potentially serious diseases.
Because antibiotics failed to help any of the patients, the health authorities speculated that the agent could be a toxin-producing one. Also, the patients typically have a high count of white blood cells, which is often the body's response to an infection or to a toxinproducing agent, Dr. Fischer said.
Once a toxin is produced, the illness is difficult to treat unless specific antitoxins are available for the disease.
A few toxin-related illnesses, such as botulism and tetanus, can be treated with antitoxins. But, Dr. Fischer said, "We can't treat a toxin when we don't know what it is."

Articolo sul metadone via bancomat

10 Jun 2000
The Irish Times (Ireland)
http://www.ireland.com/

SMART CARD WOULD HELP IN RURAL HEROIN ADDICTS

The introduction of a smart card computerised system allowing heroin addicts to receive methadone treatment from any chemist, rather than one designated chemist, would aid the treatment of rural addicts, according to a doctor in the midlands.
In a submission to the National Drugs Strategy, Dr Patrick Troy, who worked to establish two methadone treatment centres in the Midlands Health Board region, said tying an addict's supervised consumption of methadone to their local chemist often prevented stabilised users from getting work.
"Some of my clients make a 50 mile round trip for a prescription to get three days' supervised consumption in the pharmacy near their home. Some stabilise so well they can go back to work, but what if they live in one town and get a job in another?
"I would like to see some vision in the system to give clients more mobility, because as it currently stands treatment can hamper further progress," Dr Troy said.
Seventeen heroin addicts attend the recently set-up treatment centre in St Vincent's Hospital in Athlone; 12 addicts are on a waiting list for the centre.
In Portlaoise the heroin problem is described as "more discrete" and 10 people get treatment at the centre there, including a boy aged 16. There is no waiting list.
Many of the heroin addicts in the midlands are local people who became addicted to heroin while living in Britain or Dublin and some move home for treatment.
Other addicts, most notably from Athlone, come from marginalised and deprived communities there.
Dr Patrick Doorley, the director of public health for the Midlands Health Board, said there was no major heroin problem in the area but health workers were determined not to become complacent. "I worked in Dublin's north inner city in the 1980s and we were receiving informal information from youth workers on the ground on how the drugs problem was increasing well before it hit the headlines. You always have to be on the lookout for signs the problem is evolving," he said.
In the midlands region a health promotion manager oversees the drugs issue, with four health education officers also taking part in a schools education programme. Community drug councillors operate clinics which, according to Dr Dooley, run a "confidential and non-judgmental service".

Articolo sui campionati europei di calcio

14 Jun 2000
Daily Record and Sunday Mail (UK)
Website: http://www.record-mail.co.uk/rm/

ENGLAND FANS ARE A BUNCH OF DOPES
PEACE PIPES: DUTCH POLICE SAY CANNABIS HAS HELPED STOP EURO 2000 BECOMING BATTLEFIELD FOR THE YOBS

ENGLISH football yobs are smoking so much pot at Euro 2000 that they are too chilled out to run riot. The England fans have been consoling themselves by making the most of liberal Dutch laws which allow cannabis to be smoked freely in bars and cafes. And Dutch police believe it is one of the reasons why English hooliganism has yet to rear its ugly head at the tournament.
After England's embarrassing 3-2 defeat by Portugal on Monday, the cannabis bars of Eindhoven were packed full.
And there was no trouble reported despite the dramatic defeat, which came after England had gone 2-0 in front. Last night, Eindhoven police spokesman Johann Beelen said: "Cannabis does make people relax so that played a part. "The police operation went very well. Every Englishman in the city told us they were satisfied with the policing, even the known hooligans."
Before the game, Dutch shop-owners and civic leaders admitted they feared the worst. And after the match, locals were geared for a bloody backlash from the English lunatic fringe. But there were just five arrests, three of them for ticket tout offences.
There was a carnival atmosphere before the game, with a brass-band playing on top of a double-decker bus. City official Guus Bos, of the public prosecution office, said: "Everyone is having a ball. I've just left some England fans chatting and dancing with a group of Portuguese supporters."
Matthew Burgin, 28, with a group of fans who travelled from Cardiff for the match, shook hands with Mr Bos. He said: "People tend to assume the worst when you're abroad, and sometimes the real fans don't get a chance. It's forgotten the bad ones are in a minority."
The authorities were so worried about trouble they insisted on only under-strength beer being made available to the English in plastic glasses.
Loud music drowned out any prolonged chanting, with the volume turned up at the remotest sign of potential problems. Meanwhile, Record readers were quick to point out yesterday that Rule Britannia, taken up as an anthem by English fans, was actually written by Scots. It was composed in 1740 by James Thomson of Roxburghshire and David Mallet, of Perthshire.
They later fell out, each claiming the other had not been involved in the writing.

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