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1991 Drug Case Might Take License From Lawyer ('The Oregonian'
Says Portland Attorney Nick Albrecht Has Never Been Prosecuted
In The Seven Years Since Frederick Hugh Sturgis Was Caught In A Cocaine Sting
And Began Cooperating With Authorities, But Now Multnomah County Prosecutors
Are Using The Informant To Go After Albrecht's License To Practice Law)

The Oregonian
letters to editor:
letters@news.oregonian.com
1320 SW Broadway
Portland, OR 97201
Web: http://www.oregonlive.com/

1991 drug case might take license from lawyer

* Nick Albrecht never faced trial and denies he helped launder drug money,
but now the state bar is reviewing the matter

Sunday, June 28 1998

By Peter Farrell of The Oregonian staff

On a spring day seven years ago, regional narcotics officers went to a motel
in Portland on a "reverse" sting -- instead of posing as buyers they posed
as cocaine sellers.

The ruse worked: They arrested a small-time dealer who eventually spilled
the details of a complex money-laundering scheme. He described how, for
almost a decade, drug profits were laundered through business and real
estate deals.

And he said that two Portland lawyers helped hide the money.

One of the lawyers eventually pleaded guilty to racketeering charges. But
the other, Portland attorney Nick Albrecht, escaped prosecution. Now, seven
years after Frederick Hugh Sturgis was caught in the drug sting and began
cooperating with authorities, prosecutors are going after Albrecht's license
to practice law.

A three-member Oregon State Bar trial panel heard testimony during the past
two weeks against Albrecht, a downtown lawyer whose practice has included a
good deal of real estate work. If the panel finds "clear and convincing
evidence" against Albrecht, it almost certainly will recommend that the
state Supreme Court strip him of his license.

The trial is the third time the story Sturgis told has brought accusations
against Albrecht.

Indictment returned

Albrecht and the other attorney, George Haslett Jr., were among four people
accused of racketeering in a 15-page indictment by a Multnomah County grand
jury on Aug. 26, 1993.

One of the others was Brian Keith Charlesworth, whose home at Henry Hagg
Lake in Washington County was raided by 20 officers of the Regional
Organized Crime Narcotics Task Force in March 1992. He later pleaded guilty
in federal court to racketeering involving laundering more than $350,000
from sales of cocaine, methamphetamine and marijuana. The government dropped
drug charges, and Charlesworth was sentenced to seven years, eight months.
An associate in the drug operation also went to prison. So, separately, did
Sturgis.

But the charges against the two attorneys, Albrecht and Haslett, were
dismissed in March 1994. Circuit Judge William C. Snouffer ruled that
Oregon's racketeering laws did not then cover money laundering. But federal
laws did, so Multnomah County handed the case to federal prosecutors, who
quickly got a federal indictment against the lawyer.

Almost a year went by before federal prosecutors dismissed the indictment.
By then, the deadline had passed for county prosecutors to appeal the state
court ruling.

Troubles appear over

It looked as if Albrecht was free of the issue. Haslett, whom Albrecht said
he barely knew, had not been so lucky. There was evidence Haslett was
directly involved in Charlesworth's drug operation. Because he was 71 when
convicted of racketeering on July 28, 1995, he was sentenced to three years'
probation and ordered to resign from the bar organization.

But Norm Frink, Multnomah County's chief deputy district attorney, wasn't
through with Albrecht. Frink wrote a formal letter of complaint to the bar
group in April 1995, saying the district attorney's office had evidence that
Albrecht was involved in crimes. That prompted another investigation and the
recent trial before the bar panel.

According to regional task force documents filed in various court
proceedings, Sturgis told federal narcotics investigators that Albrecht knew
Charlesworth was spending drug money. In fact, Sturgis said the lawyer had
described how to launder money by buying real estate for a low down payment
and then inflating the monthly payments. That way, large sums of cash could
be turned into property without attracting suspicion.

But Sturgis did not testify at the bar trial, in which he could have been
cross-examined. The only direct testimony against the lawyer was from Curtis
Farber, 43, a convicted murderer and reluctant witness with an immunity
agreement from Multnomah County. Farber said he was a middleman in buying
real estate with money Charlesworth provided.

Asked whether he specifically told Albrecht that he was buying real estate
with "drug money," Farber said, "I don't know how it was phrased, but we did
speak on that level, yes."

Scheme is complex

The money-laundering scheme using real estate transactions is complex.

The key figures were Farber, Charlesworth and John Sturgis -- Fred's
brother. They met in the penitentiary, where they were incarcerated for
various crimes. Farber was serving a life sentence for hiring a drug-dealing
friend to kill Harry "Skip" Foss Jr., a big Portland-area cocaine supplier.

The three were released from prison several months apart and eventually
reunited in the money-laundering scheme.

Farber said he started selling cocaine but also worked at a series of
legitimate jobs, including selling real estate partnerships for a local
company. He said he also earned about $2,000 for standing in for
Charlesworth in real estate deals. Sturgis also was involved and, initially,
funneled the money to Farber.

Albrecht's attorney, Marc Blackman, insisted that Albrecht didn't know he
was being used by three former felons to launder drug money.

That's because Charlesworth used at least four aliases backed by false
identification. Albrecht said he only knew Charlesworth by the name David
MaGuire. MaGuire was described as a businessman so rich he was bored by the
petty details of buying real estate and sent Farber to handle them.

And although Albrecht was involved in preparing papers in some transactions
-- normal legal services for which he charged usual fees, Blackman said --
he was not part of others, which Farber completed without a lawyer or, in
one case, with the help of another attorney.

Bar group brings complaint

Beyond money laundering, the bar organization also complains that Albrecht
failed to protect the interests of people whose names appeared on checks
Albrecht deposited in a trust account under Farber's name. Albrecht
testified that he believed what Farber told him -- that the checks came from
investors who wanted to be Farber's partners in real estate deals.

Farber said he and John Sturgis made up the names -- to turn Charlesworth's
money into cashier's checks. Farber said he told Albrecht: "The money did
not come from those people."

When Farber and Charlesworth had a falling out in 1989, Farber asked
Albrecht for all but a few dollars of the trust account money so he could
buy some property. Albrecht gave him a check for about $52,000. Farber
testified that he left Oregon with the money, which mostly belonged to
Charlesworth.

Albrecht said he could disprove several of the bar group's financial
accusations if a computer crash, verified by the technician who tried to fix
it, had not wiped out his records. He also said his wife destroyed some
records stored in his garage that became water-damaged.

Blackman said the bar group's complaint that Albrecht took money belonging
to other people failed to recognize that, by law, the money was under the
control of the person Albrecht knew as "MaGuire" and of Farber. They were
clients, he said, and Albrecht had a duty to follow their directions.

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Panic In Needle Park ('Oregonian' Columnist Steve Duin Writes About
A Sheltered Portland Woman Who Is Surprised Police Are Too Busy
Busting Pot Offenders To Come Pick Up Hazardous Discarded Syringes
From The Gutter At 25th Avenue And Northeast Knott Street)

The Oregonian
letters to editor:
letters@news.oregonian.com
1320 SW Broadway
Portland, OR 97201
Web: http://www.oregonlive.com/

Panic in Needle Park

Sunday, June 28 1998

By Steve Duin
Columnist
The Oregonian

Her son found the syringes at four o'clock Tuesday afternoon. The gutter,
corner of 25th Avenue and Northeast Knott. She didn't waste any time calling
the cops. The nonemergency number. Jane Skopil knew she had a problem, but
she also knew it didn't add up to 9-1-1.

Skopil is a nurse at Providence Portland Medical Center. She recognized the
debris. Blood-clogged syringes, abused and discarded. Drug addict litter,
probably tossed out the window of a car.

Hazardous waste. Not the stuff you wanted to leave in the can for the
garbage hauler or a trash picker down on his luck.

The dispatcher said she'd send a car. She didn't say a needle drop in
Northeast was a low-priority call.

Skopil went to work with a needle magnet, a tool of her trade. Separated out
the sharp objects. Left a note telling the neighborhood kids to steer clear
of the mess.

Waited for the cops.

Called at 5. Called again at 6.

At 6, the dispatcher said there was no record of her calls.

And at 7? At 7 o'clock, the syringes still were in the gutter and a sergeant
from Northeast Precinct was on the phone.

Throw them in the garbage, he said, as Skopil remembers it.

No way, Skopil said: "What if the garbageman gets stuck?"

Well, we're not sending anyone, the sergeant said. That's not our
responsibility.

"Whose responsibility is it?"

I don't know, Skopil recalls the sergeant saying. They're your
responsibility. They're in your yard.

"He was really irritated. We had words," Skopil said. "He didn't want to
deal with me. He might as well have said, 'I don't care what you do with
them.' "

So, imagine you're this sergeant.

Mild-mannered. Midshift.

And imagine you have a lot on your mind when you get word some lady keeps
calling about a boat-load of syringes on her stoop.

Like it's the first time. Like there aren't bloody needles sprinkled on
lawns throughout the city.

Like the precinct is some social-service agency that gets called every time
a bike gets swiped, the baby sitter is running late or something goes bump
in the night.

She should have called the fire department. Those boys are more EMT oriented.

And you -- or dispatch -- should have calmly told her that so she'd learn
something from this.

But you're running low on patience and people skills.

You don't have time for this.

Shots fired in Humboldt? A parking-lot assault on Alberta? A domestic beef
that spills onto the street?

Those are the desperate calls. Those fill up the shifts. Those are the fun
and games in the 25,480 emergency or priority calls the precinct responded
to last year.

Needles in the weeds?

That's life in the big city, lady, not some crime in progress.

It's nasty stuff. . . . but the nasty truth is that it's not what we do.

Who does? Who knows? Maybe you should perform a public service and summon
yourself. But calling the cops?

Get real.

Reality?

The reality is there aren't enough cops to put a dent in auto theft, much
less police our lawns.

The reality is the community better get used to doing more and more of the
policing.

But the reality of last Tuesday night at 25th and Needle Park?

Even as Jane Skopil was on the phone, going back and forth with an irritated
sergent, a patrol car pulled up to the curb and a cop got out and cleaned up
the mess.

"Saw a bumper sticker today," Cmdr. Derrick Foxworth said: " 'I'm always
late, but I'm worth waiting for.' "

You can reach Steve Duin by phone at 221-8597, by fax at 294-5159, by e-mail
at Steveduin@aol.com, or by mail at 1320 S.W. Broadway, Portland, Ore. 97201.

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Five Los Angeles Deputies Sued Over Jailing Of Two Men
('The Orange County Register' Says A Federal Lawsuit Accuses The Deputies
Of Jailing Two African-American Men For Eight Months On Trumped-Up
Drug Charges - Two Other Deputies Are Also Under Investigation)

Date: Wed, 1 Jul 1998 11:35:50 -0700
To: mapnews@mapinc.org
From: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org (MAPNews)
Subject: MN: US CA: 5 L.A. Deputies Sued Over Jailing Of 2 Men
Sender: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Reply-To: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Organization: Media Awareness Project
http://www.mapinc.org/lists/
Newshawk: John W.Black
Source: Orange County Register (CA)
Contact: letters@link.freedom.com
Website: http://www.ocregister.com/
Pubdate: Sun, 28 Jun 1998

5 L.A. DEPUTIES SUED OVER JAILING OF 2 MEN

Five Los Angeles County sheriff's [deputies] are the target of a federal lawsuit
accusing them of jailing two men for eight months on trumped-up drug
charges, it was reported Saturday. Two other deputies also are under
investigation.

The lawsuit filed this month alleges that five deputies violated the civil
rights of James Daily and Barry Bryant "in part due to their
African-American race." Three of the deputies have been suspended, along
with two others not named in the lawsuit, the Torrance Daily Breeze
reported.

The felony case against the suspects was dropped after revelations that for
of the deputies involved had a history of disciplinary procedures because
of racial prejudice, evidence planting and false arrest. Only one deputy
lacked a disciplinary record, according to court documents.

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Prohibition Laws Have Always Tragically Failed (A Letter To The Editor
Of 'The Rocky Mountain News' In Denver From Ross Diercks, A Wyoming
State Representative, Says He Would Like To Join An 'Increasing Number
Of Public Officials And Concerned Citizens In Applauding The Recent Comments
Of Judge John Kane Jr. Regarding Our Nation's Disastrous War On Drugs')

Date: Tue, 30 Jun 1998 10:35:33 -0700
To: mapnews@mapinc.org
From: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org (MAPNews)
Subject: MN: US CO: PUB LTE: Prohibition
Laws Have Always Tragically Failed
Sender: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Reply-To: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Organization: Media Awareness Project http://www.mapinc.org/lists/
Newshawk: cohip@levellers.org (Colo. Hemp Init. Project)
Source: Rocky Mountain News (CO)
Contact: letters@denver-rmn.com
Website: http://insidedenver.com/news/
Pubdate: Sun, 28 Jun 1998

PROHIBITION LAWS HAVE ALWAYS TRAGICALLY FAILED

Let me join an increasing number of public officials and concerned citizens
in applauding the recent comments of Judge John Kane Jr. regarding our
nation's disastrous war on drugs.

It is becoming increasingly obvious that what should have been approached
as a public-health problem has eventuated into a tragic loss of life,
liberty and justice.

Look what it has done to our country. The world's greatest experiment in
freedom and liberty has become the prison capital of the world.

While it is easy for those of us making the laws to beat our chests and
pass legislation that is "tough on crime," it is then left to those like
Kane to enforce the legislature's utopian social-engineering schemes. If
only we lawmakers had to seriously face the entanglements we have wrought
with years of ill-advised legislation.

Prohibition-like lawmaking has always been a tragic failure. It not only
fails to achieve its purpose, it leaves a thriving black market and
crumbing civil liberties in its wake. It forces government to wage war on
its own people rather than the substances it purports to destroy.

I applaud Kane for his insight and courage and urge others to follow his lead.

Ross Diercks - Wyoming House of Representatives Cheyenne

-------------------------------------------------------------------

Suspect Accuses Tobacco Firms Of Smuggling
(A Knight Ridder News Service Article In 'The Seattle Times'
Revealing The Perils Of Prohibitionist Taxes Says An Indictment
Has Been Filed In US District Court In Syracuse, New York,
Charging Las Vegas Businessman Larry Miller With Smuggling Cigarettes
Across The US-Canada Border - Miller Says The RJR Tobacco Company
Was Part Of The Operation - Two Louisiana-Based Managers
Of The Brown & Williamson Tobacco Company Are Already Serving Time
For Running A Different Smuggling Operation Into Canada)

Date: Wed, 01 Jul 1998 23:56:43 -0400
To: mapnews@mapinc.org
From: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org (MAPNews)
Subject: MN: US/Canada: Suspect accuses tobacco firms of smuggling
Sender: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Reply-To: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Organization: Media Awareness Project http://www.mapinc.org/lists/
Newshawk: John Smith
Source: Seattle Times (WA)
Contact: opinion@seatimes.com
Website: http://www.seattletimes.com/
Pubdate: Sunday 28 June 1998
Author: Raja Mishra, Knight Ridder Newspapers

SUSPECT ACCUSES TOBACCO FIRMS OF SMUGGLING

MASSENA, N.Y. - In 1992, Canadian cigarette companies exported twice as
many cigarettes to the United States as they had the previous year. On
paper, it was as if Americans suddenly decided to smoke twice as many
exotic Canadian brands such as Players, Export A and DuMaurier.

In fact, most of those cigarettes were shipped right back into Canada in a
short-lived but profitable black market that started when Canada imposed a
smoker's tax of $2 per pack. Smugglers pocketed the $2 by buying the
cigarettes tax-free in the United States and selling them at taxed rates in
Canada, netting hundreds of millions of dollars.

A major smuggling point was here in Massena, just a few miles from the
Canadian border. Millions of the tax-free cigarettes ended up in the hands
of a Las Vegas businessman named Larry Miller, now 52. Miller and his
associates loaded the cigarettes into tractor-trailers and, using a
little-patrolled Native American reservation, smuggled them back into
Canada, according to an indictment on file in U.S. District Court in Syracuse.

The RJR tobacco company was part of this operation, said Miller, who is
awaiting trial on federal conspiracy charges. He said he frequently briefed
two executives from RJR, maker of the Export A brand, on his smuggling
activities. The executives advised him where to send the cigarettes, he said.

"They provided us with information on what type of cigarettes were selling
in Montreal, in Vancouver, in Toronto," Miller said.

RJR refused to discuss the charges. "We do have a policy of fully
cooperating with law enforcement," said John Singleton, a spokesman for
RJR-Nabisco in Winston-Salem, N.C., the parent company of both the Canadian
and U.S. cigarette manufacturers. "But we can't comment on this ongoing case."

What is certain is that Canada's black market in cigarettes became so
frenzied that after five years its government drastically scaled back its
tobacco tax, even though there was evidence that it cut smoking.

The Canadian experience was among the strongest weapons used by the forces
that defeated the sweeping tobacco bill in Congress in early June. Raise
the cigarette tax by $1.10 per pack, as the now-dead bill would have done,
and a black market will follow, opponents warned.

The tobacco industry conducted a highly effective, $40 million ad blitz,
prominently featuring police officers warning that the black market "may
increase beyond our control" if the bill were passed.

But there are major investigations into whether U.S. and Canadian tobacco
companies and their employees were themselves complicit in the Canadian
black market. Canadian anti-smoking advocates also argue - with ample data
- that the companies had to be aware that the bulk of their exports to the
U.S. were being smuggled back into Canada.

"Had the tobacco companies not engaged in this behavior, we would not have
had a smuggling problem in Canada," said Rob Cunningham, an analyst with
the Canadian Cancer Society.

2 managers serving time

Two Louisiana-based managers of Brown & Williamson, the tobacco company
that makes Kool and Capri, are serving time for running a smuggling
operation into Canada. Federal officials in the United States investigated
the rest of the company but brought no charges.

RJR remains under investigation, said agents from the Royal Canadian
Mounted Police (RCMP). So, the agents said, does Imperial, the tobacco
company that makes Players and DuMaurier cigarettes and is owned by B.A.T,
the same company that also owns Brown & Williamson.

Miller and 20 others face federal charges of running a massive smuggling
ring that netted $687 million in four years. None of the accused had
entered pleas as of last week.

In addition to Miller's detailed descriptions, U.S. Customs agents have
given sworn affidavits, filed in U.S. District Court in Syracuse, that RJR
officials knew of the operation. At this point no charges have been filed
against RJR, although Canadian border agents are investigating the
possibility that company executives aided Miller.

"Why do they figure the buck stops with me? Someone has got to sell the
cigarettes to me in the first place," Miller said in an interview here.
"There are so many more people they could indict."

Anti-smoking and cancer-patient advocacy groups in Canada say the
industry's knowledge of the smuggling is obvious if you look at the
numbers: Exports of Canadian cigarettes to the United States increased
sevenfold, from 2.6 billion cigarettes to 17.7 billion, between 1990 and
1993, the years after Canada raised its tobacco tax. The bulk of these were
Players, DuMaurier and Export A, brands unfamiliar to Americans. Most were
shipped to border states, especially New York.

How the scheme began

In addition to commuting between his home in Las Vegas and his operation in
Massena, a border town of about 11,000 people, Miller could frequently be
found in Moscow, according to a detailed 140-page affidavit filed by the
RCMP in a Hamilton, Ontario, court. He used cigarette profits to help buy a
$22 million casino just off Red Square in the center of Russia's capital.

Miller also made about $35 million from smuggling alcohol into Mexico and
used some of the money to buy and operate a Lear jet, according to the RCMP
affidavit and confirmed by Miller.

A portrait of Miller's cigarette-smuggling cartel emerges in indictments,
affidavits and interviews with Miller and government investigators.

Robert Tavano, 59, and Louis Tavano, 56, hooked up Miller and RJR. Robert
is a former Niagara Falls Republican Party chairman, and Louis, according
to the RCMP affidavit, was an associate of late mafia crime boss Stefano
Magaddino.

The Tavano Boys, as they are known in upstate New York, knew Miller from an
ongoing partnership in slot-machine sales in northern New York. Both
Tavanos are awaiting trial and refused to comment. They have not yet
entered a plea.

Miller says the Tavanos introduced him to two RJR executives: Stan Smith,
executive vice president of RJR-Nabisco's Canadian company, RJR-MacDonald
of Toronto; and Les Thompson, a marketing executive with R.J. Reynolds, the
U.S. tobacco arm of RJR-Nabisco.

The three met in upstate New York, Miller said, just after Canada enacted a
tobacco tax that almost doubled the price of a pack of cigarettes sold
domestically, from an average of $2.94 in U.S. dollars, to $4.83. Exports
to the United States were not taxed, however, creating an opportunity for
high-profit smuggling.

RJR, with the guidance of Smith and Thompson, began selling Canadian
cigarettes to Miller. This was all done above board, and the exports were
duly recorded in RJR's books.

The three would meet often, Miller said. Federal investigators back up his
account. According to a sworn statement filed in federal court in Syracuse
by U.S. Customs agent Gil Schmelzinger, Thompson met with Miller at the
Sonora Island Lodge near Vancouver to discuss black-market operations.

"Les and Stan obviously knew what was going on. We talked about it on
several occasions," Miller said. "Everything was always first class,
whether we met in Vegas, Palm Springs or Toronto. We would go to the best
restaurants, but we always talked business. We used the word `smuggling'
all the time."

Both Thompson and Smith, who have not been charged, refused to comment.

By 1993, the Canadian black market had peaked. Miller's business was
booming, and the entire operation seemed untouchable.

"You could stand on the river and watch them load the boat with cigarettes
stacked up above their head, right out in the daylight," Miller said.

Miller's operation was killed in February 1994, but not by deft police
work. Canadian officials realized the black market was out of control.

Smugglers had gotten so brazen they were selling cigarettes with the U.S.
Surgeon General's warning, as opposed to the Canadian government's warning,
on the streets of Canada. Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien decided to
cut the cigarette tax by an average of $1.17 a pack, eliminating much of
the black-market profit margin. Miller's business dried up overnight.

The next year, exports to the United States plummeted, returning to the
level they were at before the tax increase. Canada's youth smoking rate,
which had dropped 60 percent while the tax was in effect, increased by 27
percent. The overall smoking rate, which had dropped 38 percent, increased
9 percent the year after the tax was cut.

Although Miller's operation was humming along, he needed to recruit
additional truck drivers to help keep up with the increasing flow of
cigarettes. One driver from a trucking company based in Bulgaria offered
his services and dutifully hauled black-market cigarettes for several
months. The company was fictitious and the driver was an undercover agent
for the RCMP.

-------------------------------------------------------------------

Investing In Tobacco Just Being American (More Of 'The Associated Press'
Story In 'The Oakland Tribune' On Doctors With Lucrative Government Subsidies
To Grow Tobacco)

Date: Mon, 29 Jun 1998 11:02:33 -0700
To: mapnews@mapinc.org
From: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org (MAPNews)
Subject: MN: US: Investing in Tobacco Just Being American
Sender: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Reply-To: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Organization: Media Awareness Project http://www.mapinc.org/lists/
Newshawk: Jerry Sutliff
Source: Oakland Tribune
Contact: triblet@angnewspapers.com
Pubdate: Sun, 28 Jun 1998
Author: Associated Press
Editor note: This article appeared on the same page with two other tobacco
articles: : "Tobacco Subsidies and Ethically Challenged 'Doctors'", and
"Government Explains Tobacco-Growing Rights"

INVESTING IN TOBACCO JUST BEING 'AMERICAN'

MISSOURI - Dr. Baltazara Lotuaco, a gynecologist in Kansas City, Mo., says
owning tobacco property is just another part of being American.

The Filipino Immigrant bought a farm about eight years ago as an
investment. It came with 6,400 pounds of tobacco quota.

"But owning a tobacco farm is nothing to do with smoking," she says. "They
can always stop smoking."

Lotuaco says tobacco is like most things: Excess is bad.

"It's like peanuts can be carcinogenic," she says. "And if you have a
peanut farm, you're promoting cancer. It's possible."

Lotuaco says it is unfair to target tobacco when so many other things cause
health problems.

"The air we breathe is bad, all this pollution in the air. The carbon from
the gasoline is carcinogenic. Why do we use cars? Why don't we use a horse
and buggy?"

Dr. Hugh Cripps, a family practitioner in Smithville, Tenn., has been
buying land as an investment for years. Along the way, he's acquired about
9,000 pounds of tobacco quota.

"In our little old county here," he says, "just about every farm has
tobacco on it." Cripps says he's lucky to clear a nickel to 15 cents a
pound each year for his leaf. "I would sell my allotment right now, all of
it, to somebody else," he says. "But the farmers don't do that. They rent
it year by year."

He used to actively grow his tobacco but quit, he says, because of "some
personal pains of conscience." He could have gone a step further and sold
off his tobacco altogether, but wondered what would that have accomplished,
other than to devalue his land?

"At some point It becomes sort of ridiculous to chastise yourself for
what's going on in the world," he says.

-------------------------------------------------------------------

Government Explains Tobacco-Growing Rights (A Third Part
To The Original 'Associated Press' Story In 'The Oakland Tribune'
About Doctors Who Profit From Government Tobacco Subsidies)

Date: Mon, 29 Jun 1998 11:02:53 -0700
To: mapnews@mapinc.org
From: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org (MAPNews)
Subject: MN: US: Government Explains Tobacco-Growing Rights
Sender: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Reply-To: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Organization: Media Awareness Project http://www.mapinc.org/lists/
Newshawk: Jerry Sutliff
Source: Oakland Tribune
Contact: triblet@angnewspapers.com
Pubdate: Sun, 28 Jun 1998
Author: Associated Press
Editor note: This article appeared on the same page with two other tobacco
articles: "Tobacco Subsidies and Ethically Challenged 'Doctors'" and
"Investing in Tobacco Just Being American"

GOVERNMENT EXPLAINS TOBACCO-GROWING RIGHTS

The federal government grants people the right to grow tobacco in specified
amounts, known as quotas and allotments. The Depression era program was
estab-lished to restrict annual production and stabilize prices.

The program is supported largely by a fee farmers pay per pound. There are
penalties for non-participation or exceeding one's quota.

Quotas are the allowed poundage that can be raised by growers of burley, an
aromatic tobacco cured on the stalk. Allotinents measure the pounds and
acreage apportioned to growers of the other main variety of U.S. tobacco,
flue-cured.

These two varieties go into American blend cigarettes along with lesser
amounts of other leaf.

-------------------------------------------------------------------

Tobacco-Owning MDs Urge Nonsmoking ('The Orange County Register' Version
Of The Ironic New Research By 'The Associated Press')

Date: Tue, 30 Jun 1998 10:46:50 -0700
To: mapnews@mapinc.org
From: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org (MAPNews)
Subject: MN: US: Tobacco-Owning MDs Urge Nonsmoking
Sender: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Reply-To: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Organization: Media Awareness Project http://www.mapinc.org/lists/
Newshawk: John W.Black
Source: Orange County Register (CA)
Contact: letters@link.freedom.com
Website: http://www.ocregister.com/
Pubdate: Sun, 28 Jun 1998
Author: Allen G.Breed-The Associated Press

TOBACCO-OWNING MD'S URGE NONSMOKING

They control production of enough tobacco to make 193 million packs of
cigarettes a year

Raleigh,N.C.-Hundreds of doctors across the country own and profit from
tons of tobacco, despite decades of health warnings, scolding from peers
and in some cases their own ethical reservations.

They're family practitioners who warn teen-agers not to smoke,
psychiatrists who treat addiction, oncologists who identify malignant
tumors and surgeons who remove them.

One tobacco-owning doctor was a longtime regional medical director for the
American Cancer Society. Another runs a public health department. A third
writes a newspaper's health tips column.

Almost none smokes.

"I won't smoke," says Stephen Jackson, an orthopedic surgeon in Paducah,
Ky., who co-owns the government rights to grow 1,400 pounds of burley
tobacco a year. "I mean, it will kill you."

All tell their patients not to smoke or chew tobacco.

"I get mad with them, fuss at them every day," says Richard Rush, a family
practitioner from Conway, S.C., with more than 11,000 pounds of flue-cured
tobacco allotted to his farm.

Nonetheless, they are among at least 760 doctors and other health-care
workers who own valuable federal tobacco-growing rights, known as
allotments or quotas, according to a computer analysis by The Associated
Press. They practice in 23 states, from Florida to Alaska, Massachusetts to
California.

Some of the doctors own minuscule government rights, as little as 21 pounds
annually; one in South Carolina has 932,000 pounds.

All told, these doctors control production of more than 7 million pounds of
tobacco - enough to make 193 million packs of cigarettes a year. They also
grow nearly 290,000 pounds of the varieties of leaf used in chewing tobacco
and cigar wrappers.

At last year's sales prices, their leaf would be worth $13 million-although
a large portion of that goes to family members, sharecroppers and those who
lease much of the crop.

For professionals who have taken an oath not to do harm, those numbers are
"shocking and disappointing," says medical ethicist Arthur Caplan.

"I think you just cannot argue that you're going to make money on the back
of this obvious health menace," says Caplan, director of the Center for
Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania. "To own and farm produce
tobacco as a doctor, especially in small communities, sends a resoundingly
wrong message."

The fact that many of these doctors grew up in those small communities is
often their reason for being involved in tobacco. Even so, some are uneasy
about it.

Although they might only get a nickel to 15 cents a pound for leasing their
tobacco rights to farmers, quotas help pay mortgages and add to the land's
assessed value. With talk in Washington about possible $8-a-pound federal
tobacco buyouts someday, the leaf could constitute an even more valuable
asset.

"I'm too greedy," George Burrus, a cardiovascular surgeon in Nashville,
Tenn., says when asked about his decision to keep his 6,500-pound quota,
even though he says he knows tobacco is "Killing people." He clears about
$4,000 a year from leasing his leaf.

"I don't worry about it enough to (sell out) since I don't feel like, say,
the guy that's raising dope."

The AP identified these doctors by cross-checking a federal farm database
with medical rosters from tobacco states. To verify matches, the AP
contacted scores of physicians by telephone.

Some hung up when they heard the word "tobacco." Most who stayed on the
line expressed ambivalence.

"Absolutely schizophrenic" is how Dr. William Grigsby described the notion
of physicians growing tobacco.

"It's crazy, but I'll tell you why we do it," says the general surgeon from
Kingsport, Tenn., who owns about 3,700 pounds of quota. "Almost the only
doctors who raise tobacco have grown up on the farm and have the kinfolks
there."

One is Richard Calhoun. He was raised on a tobacco farm, and tobacco money
helped put him through college and medical school.

On Wednesdays, when other doctors hit the golf course, Calhoun dons bib
overalls and a baseball cap and drives a beatup red flatbed truck around
his mountainside farm in western North Carolina. He raises hay, cattle,
Christmas trees and about 7,000 pounds of burley.

"Tobacco is a proud heritage for North Carolina," says Calhoun, who
practices in Jefferson, near the Tennessee line. "I want to maintain that
part of my heritage."

So while he lectures his three children - ages 9, 11 and 13 - on the ills
of smoking, he makes sure they help out on the farm.

"They're still young, but they know what it is to work in the dirt and that
this is actually a cash crop that can be grown for farm income."

He knows the links between the crop he grows and diseases he treats, from
cancer to heart disease. Is that inconsistent?

"I do feel that tobacco is harmful to one's health," Calhoun replies. "But
more importantly than that, I feel that, as citizens of the United States,
we have the freedom of choice. And I don't think that governmental
regulation should infringe upon one's ability to make choices in this
regard."

Dr. Wendell Levi Jr. agrees. In 45 years as a thoracic surgeon, he has
removed cancer-ravaged lungs, but he has little sympathy for smokers.

"If they're stupid enough to smoke, that's (their) business, I suppose,"
says Levi, a Sumter, S.C., tobacco owner. "I've never had time to feel
guilty about something like that."

Others have thought about it - a lot.

John Patterson, family practitioner and owner of a 900-pound quota in
Irvine, Ky., has reached a moral bargain with himself.

He is the Kentuchy Medical Association's liaison with two farm health
groups and says the $230 a year he earns from tobacco pays for the gasoline
he uses traveling the state trying to help farmers diversify from burley.

"I think the question is: What is that doctor doing with that base?"
Patterson says. "That is the way I've dealt with my ethical dilemma."

-------------------------------------------------------------------

Physicians Growing Tons Of Tobacco ('The San Jose Mercury News'
Version Of 'The Associated Press' Story)

Date: Fri, 03 Jul 1998 06:55:06 -0400
To: DrugSense News Service (mapnews@mapinc.org)
From: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org (MAPNews)
Subject: MN: US: Physicians Growing Tons Of Tobacco
Sender: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Reply-To: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Organization: Media Awareness Project http://www.mapinc.org/lists/
Newshawk: Marcus-Mermelstein Family (mmfamily@ix.netcom.com)
Source: San Jose Mercury News (CA)
Author: Allen G. Breed, Associated Press
Contact: letters@sjmercury.com
Website: http://www.sjmercury.com/
Pubdate: Sun, 28 Jun 1998

PHYSICIANS GROWING TONS OF TOBACCO

For Many, It's A Matter Of Tradition And Business

RALEIGH, N.C. - HUNDREDS OF doctors across the country own and profit from
tons of tobacco, despite decades of health warnings, scoldings from peers,
and in some cases, their own ethical reservations.

They're family practitioners who warn teenagers not to smoke, psychiatrists
who treat addiction, oncologists who identify malignant tumors and surgeons
who remove them.

One tobacco-owning doctor was a longtime regional medical director for the
American Cancer Society. Another runs a public-health department. A third
writes a newspaper column on health tips.

Few of them smoke.

``I won't smoke,'' says Stephen Jackson, an orthopedic surgeon in Paducah,
Ky., who co-owns the government rights to grow 1,400 pounds of burley
tobacco a year. ``I mean, it will kill you.''

All tell their patients not to smoke or chew tobacco.

``I get mad with them, fuss at them every day,'' says Richard Rush, a
family practitioner from Conway, S.C., with more than 11,000 pounds of
flue-cured tobacco allotted to his farm.

Nonetheless, they are among at least 760 doctors and other health-care
workers who own valuable federal tobacco-growing rights, known as
allotments or quotas, according to a computer analysis by the Associated
Press. They practice in 23 states, from Florida to Alaska, Massachusetts to
California.

Some of the doctors own minuscule government rights, as little as 21 pounds
annually; one in South Carolina has 932,000 pounds.

All told, these doctors control production of more than 7 million pounds of
tobacco -- enough to make 193 million packs of cigarettes a year. They also
grow nearly 290,000 pounds of the varieties of leaf used in chewing tobacco
and cigar wrappers.

At last year's sales prices, their leaf would be worth $13 million --
although a large portion of that goes to family members, sharecroppers and
those who lease much of the crop.

For professionals who have taken an oath not to do harm, those numbers are
``shocking and disappointing,'' medical ethicist Arthur Caplan says.

``I think you just cannot argue that you're going to make money on the back
of this obvious health menace,'' says Caplan, director of the Center for
Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania. ``To own and farm and produce
tobacco as a doctor, especially in small communities, sends a resoundingly
wrong message.''

THE FACT that many of these doctors grew up in those small communities is
often their reason for being involved in tobacco. Even so, some are uneasy
about it.

Dr. Edwin Norris has no doubt that a three-pack-a-day habit hastened his
father's death at age 53 from coronary disease. And the Mountain City,
Tenn., general practitioner and cosmetic surgeon has little doubt that
tobacco produced under his 1,925-pound quota is harming other people's
fathers.

``Even though it's legal,'' Norris says, ``we're still responsible for some
of the effects of it.'' His explanation for keeping the tobacco: Neighbors
who actually raise it for him need the poundage to make a living.

Other physicians bought their farms as investments and acknowledge tobacco
proceeds contribute to their wealth.

Although they may only get a nickel to 15 cents a pound for leasing their
tobacco rights to farmers, quotas help pay mortgages and add to the land's
assessed value. With talk in Washington about possible $8-a-pound federal
tobacco buyouts some day, the leaf could constitute an even more valuable
asset.

``I'm too greedy,'' George Burrus, a cardiovascular surgeon in Nashville,
Tenn., says when asked about his decision to keep his 6,500-pound quota,
even though he says he knows tobacco is ``killing people.'' He clears about
$4,000 a year from leasing his leaf.

``I don't worry about it enough to (sell out) since I don't feel like, say,
the guy that's raising dope.''

The AP identified these doctors by cross-checking a federal farm database
with medical rosters from tobacco states. To verify matches, the AP
contacted scores of physicians by telephone.

Some hung up when they heard the word ``tobacco.'' Most who stayed on the
line expressed ambivalence.

``Absolutely schizophrenic'' is how Dr. William Grigsby described the
notion of physicians growing tobacco.

``It's crazy, but I'll tell you why we do it,'' says the general surgeon
from Kingsport, Tenn., who owns about 3,700 pounds of quota. ``Almost the
only doctors who raise tobacco have grown up on the farm and have the
kinfolks there.''

ONE IS Richard Calhoun. He was raised on a tobacco farm, and tobacco money
helped put him through college and medical school.

On Wednesdays, when other doctors hit the golf course, Calhoun dons bib
overalls and a baseball cap and drives a beat-up red flatbed truck around
his mountainside farm in western North Carolina. He raises hay, cattle,
Christmas trees and about 7,000 pounds of burley.

``Tobacco is a proud heritage for North Carolina,'' says Calhoun, who
practices in Jefferson, near the Tennessee line. ``I want to maintain that
part of my heritage.''

He knows the links between the crop he grows and diseases he treats, from
cancer to heart disease. Is that inconsistent?

``I do feel that tobacco is harmful to one's health,'' Calhoun replies.
``But more important than that, I feel that, as citizens of the United
States, we have the freedom of choice. And I don't think that governmental
regulation should infringe upon one's ability to make choices in this
regard.''

-------------------------------------------------------------------

Cannabis Only Dangerous Due To Prohibition (A Letter To The Editor
Of Ireland's 'Examiner' Notes 'It Was Only After World War II
That The Americans Prohibited It In Europe')

From: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org (MAPNews)
To: "MN" (mapnews@mapinc.org)
Subject: MN: UK: PUB LTE: Cannabis Only Dangerous Due To Prohibition
Date: Sun, 28 Jun 1998 17:29:53 -0500
Sender: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Reply-To: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Organization: Media Awareness Project http://www.mapinc.org/lists/
Newshawk: Martin Cooke (mjc1947@cyberclub.iol.ie)
Pubdate: Sat, 27 Jun 1998
Source: The Examiner (Ireland)
Contact: exam_letters@examiner.ie
Author: Oliver Neff

CANNABIS ONLY DANGEROUS DUE TO PROHIBITION

ASK yourself; What do you really know about Cannabis?

Unfortunately many people have a very negative opinion on this subject, but
why? A lot of these opinions are blindly formed due to illegality and public
condemnation.

Even though many facts about cannabis have been proven, groups such as the
Gardai still insist that their often false and narrow minded views are
correct.

Let us compare things to alcohol. If the Government decided tomorrow to make
alcohol illegal, I could guarantee public uproar throughout the country. Did
you know that alcohol is more harmful than Cannabis?

Think about it, how many deaths are there in Ireland each year due to
alcohol, be it drunk-driving or alcohol related illness? How many families
have been destroyed and women battered by alcoholic husbands? Do we ever
hear of deaths or violence in homes due to Cannabis?

The prohibition of growing Cannabis is ridiculous. Plants were created to
grow, it is nature, we do not have the right to outlaw this. Just because we
know that Cannabis can be used as a narcotic, doesn't mean it is the only
plant that can be used for this purpose. In fact, there are plants all over
the country that have this potential usage. I also was surprised to find out
that lettuce could be used as a drug. If lettuce is left to over-ripen, a
white sap begins to form in the main stalk. This sap contains opium, which
is the ground basis of heroin. What is the Government going to do next,
outlaw lettuce?

Ireland, having one of the highest numbers of asthmatics in Europe should
especially consider legislation of Cannabis. In Switzerland in the town of
Illighausen, Max Haberlin, a chronic asthmatic, got the idea when his asthma
cleared up from working in the fields. People basically get this natural
treatment while sleeping, no need for inhalers or chemicals. The Chinese
already used cannabis over 6,000 years ago as a medicine against conditions
such as beriberi, malaria, mental problems and female problems.

Legislation would be of benefit in various ways. This versatile plant could
create jobs as over 50,000 different products can be produced from it.
Things such as: food, paper, cosmetics and clothing. Sale of Cannabis in
shops would prevent young people from coming in contact with dangerous drugs
such as ecstasy and heroin from dealers.

Cannabis is not a gateway drug. The Government is playing its cards poorly.
They are doing the dealers a favour by artificially making it a gateway
drug, through prohibition.

I believe that Cannabis is over rated by public opinion, lack of knowledge
being the main culprit. It is time for people to learn the truth about
Cannabis; it is not a dangerous substance but rather a plant that can be of
benefit to all of us and in many ways.

Its culture reaches far beyond six millennia. It was only after World War II
that the Americans prohibited it in Europe during its restructuring, in the
Marshall Plan.

Oliver Neff, Belleview, Myrtleville, Co Cork.

-------------------------------------------------------------------

Britain Funds Biological War Against Heroin (Britain's 'Sunday Times'
Says Britain Is Engaged In A Secret Attempt To Crush The Worldwide
Heroin Trade With Biological Warfare, A Project Involving Spies, Scientists
And Former Soviet Germ Warfare Experts)

Date: Sun, 28 Jun 1998 14:53:14 -0700 (PDT)
From: Uzondu Jibuike (ucj@vcn.bc.ca)
To: Uzondu Jibuike (ucj@vcn.bc.ca)
Subject: Biowar on heroin (fwd from another list)

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Sun, 28 Jun 1998 09:34:31 EDT
From: Simon Witter (s-witter@msn.com)
Subject: Biowar on heroin

This was one of the lead stories on the front page of today's Sunday Times
(by far the biggest-selling Sunday paper in Britain). It makes fascinating
reading, especially as an adjunct to recent postings about planned aerial
spraying of toxic herbicides (in Colombia).

SW

***

BRITAIN FUNDS BIOLOGICAL WAR AGAINST HEROIN
by Nicholas Rufford
Tashkent

BRITAIN is engaged in a secret attempt to crush the worldwide heroin trade
with biological warfare. The project involves spies, scientists and former
Soviet germ warfare experts.

At a secure research laboratory in Uzbekistan, central Asia, the scientists
are developing a virulent strain of a fungus that destroys opium poppies,
the raw material for heroin.

They have drawn up plans for manufacturing enough fungus to infect thousands
of acres of poppies in the Golden Crescent of central Asia, the source of
90% of Britain's heroin.

Bumper harvests there have recently flooded Britain and western Europe with
cheap heroin. The street price has halved and port and airport seizures have
increased sharply. The fungus may also be used in the Golden Triangle
opium-growing regions of southeast Asia and in South America, the sources of
most of the heroin sold in the United States.

Senior officials in the British and American governments, which are sharing
the cost, believe the project will give them a vital advantage in the war
against heroin.

A British expert, who has worked with the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries
and Food, is supervising the research and has prepared a report after
visiting the laboratory this month. Intelligence services on both sides of
the Atlantic have been involved from the planning stage and may have a role
in the deployment of the fungus, which could be ready to use next year.

Although the fungus can kill opium plants, a more subtle strategy has been
developed to frustrate growers. If the fungus is spread in low doses, the
plants develop but with little opium inside. The growers will therefore
expend money and effort cultivating a useless crop.

The work is being carried out at Uzbekistan's state genetics institute,
which manufactured germ agents for destroying the food crops of the Soviet
Union's enemies during the cold war. The Foreign Office and the American
State Department have contributed $500,000. They will also supply specialist
equipment to the laboratory and train its scientists in mass production of
the fungus.

About 30 researchers, some veterans of secret Soviet biological weapons
programmes, have been employed to refine virulent new strains and to test
them on locally grown opium.

Rustam Makhmudovich, the institute's deputy director, confirmed that the
fungus had already been used in trials to destroy poppy fields in
Uzbekistan's mountainous eastern region.

More work is needed to satisfy the British and the Americans that the fungus
is safe. No harmful side effects have been found and the strain attacks only
opium poppies. The advantage of the fungus over chemical herbicides is that
it reproduces and spreads of its own accord, leaving other plant and animal
life unaffected. A confidential report states: "Experiments in both
controlled environments and the field showed conclusively the fungus was
able to kill the opium poppy in relatively low doses."

The fungus can be sprayed by aircraft onto poppy fields. Once infected,
healthy poppies quickly develop lesions that eventually cover the whole
plant. The infection spreads through the crop by the release of millions of
airborne spores from the dying poppies.

Some United Nations officials, however, fear the West could be accused of
waging germ warfare and that fundamentalist Islamic regimes in Afghanistan
and Iran could exploit the issue to win support from more moderate Islamic
countries.

Senior staff in the UN's drug control programme (UNDCP) brokered the deal
with the Uzbekistan government last year and are handling the project to
avoid accusations of western political interference. Field staff and
consultants have received instructions from the UNDCP's headquarters in
Vienna not to discuss the work.

-------------------------------------------------------------------

The West's Secret Weapon To Win The Opium War (A Related Article
In Britain's Britain's 'Sunday Times' Says 'The Best-Kept Secret In The War
Against Drugs' Is A Research Compound In Tashkent, The Capital Of Uzbekistan,
Where Britain And The United States Are Funding An Effort To Culture A Fungus
Called Pleospora Papaveracea, Which Prohibitionists Hope To Use To Devastate
The Opium Poppy Fields Of Asia's Golden Crescent And Golden Triangle)

Date: Sun, 28 Jun 1998 13:04:51 -0800
To: mapnews@mapinc.org
From: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org (MAPNews)
Subject: MN: UK: The West's Secret Weapon To Win The Opium War
Sender: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Reply-To: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Organization: Media Awareness Project http://www.mapinc.org/lists/
Newshawk: Martin Cooke (mjc1947@cyberclub.iol.ie)
Source: Sunday Times (UK)
Contact: editor@sunday-times.co.uk
Pubdate: Sun, 28 Jun 1998

THE WEST'S SECRET WEAPON TO WIN THE OPIUM WAR

It does not look like the nerve centre of the best-kept secret in the war
against drugs. The perimeter walls are dull concrete topped with barbed
wire; the buildings drab; a guardhouse and a huge mechanical steel gate
offer the only entry.

But the compound set beyond the sprawl of tractor factories and grey
apartment blocks of Tashkent, the capital of Uzbekistan, could hold the
answer to tackling the international trade in heroin.

Inside this cold war relic in one of the most isolated cities in the world,
scientists supported by Britain and America are carrying out a secret
project that challenges some of the most powerful criminals in the world.

Uzbekistan was once part of the Soviet Union and locals know the compound
as a former centre for germ warfare research. A sign outside celebrates the
place as the "Garden of Victory", so called because the compound used to
produce horticultural pathogens, including wheat rust and cereal blight -
biological agents designed to destroy the food crops of the motherland's
enemies.

Though the compound now goes by the more prosaic title of the Uzbekistan
Institute of Genetics, staff are still bussed in, Soviet-style, at 8.30am
and out again at 4.30pm each day. Inside are three large blocks containing
19 laboratories built in the 1950s, a row of greenhouses and an
experimental farm.

The deputy director of the team of scientists is Rustam Makhmudovich, a
nervous, bespectacled figure. "We still are experts in biological research,
even though we no longer take our orders from Moscow," he said last week in
his office on the first floor of the main laboratory building.

"I am not allowed to reveal anything concerning the fungus project. I can
only tell you that we have about 200 scientific staff, including 24
doctoral researchers and 70 other scientists.

"In the Soviet period we were concerned only with military research,
including radiation testing. Now we have other priorities."

Makhmudovich's office is one of the few areas in the building that
resembles an ordinary room. Padlocked steel doors bar the way to the
compound's other facilities. Unexpected visitors are guided swiftly away.

Behind the locked steel doors, spores of a refined and rampant strain of a
fungus called Pleospora papaveracea are stored and cultured. This could be
the weapon that cuts off the heroin trade at source by devastating the
opium poppy fields of Asia's golden crescent and golden triangle, the
principal sources of raw material for the heroin trade.

ORDINARY Pleospora papaveracea is present in southern Europe and throughout
Asia; it can even be found as far south as Tasmania. It is not particularly
deadly to plants and is seen as little more than a nuisance to farmers who
grow poppies legally for medical purposes.

But in the late 1980s Soviet scientists began to take an interest and tried
to develop a more deadly strain. "The fungus causes the poppy leaves to
erupt in lesions," said a British scientist who has witnessed the effect of
these spores. "They spread and coalesce until the plant shrivels and begins
to die."

The new strain was almost lost in the ruins of communism. Just as the
scientists were making progress, the Soviet empire began to implode. When
Uzbekistan became an independent republic in 1991, thousands of papers from
the institute were transported back to Moscow and the research became lost
in the chaos. But in their hurried exit the Kremlin scientists left behind
hundreds of biological samples, frozen inside the laboratory storerooms.

In 1992 the institute reopened and began to blossom again as a civilian
research centre. Its new director, Professor Abdusattar Abdukarimov, an
expert in plant genetics, examined the stored specimens and recognised the
potential of the fungus, but had little money to pursue development. His
attempts to raise interest and funds failed until the institute's work came
to the notice of a British expert in plant pathogens who is also a
consultant to the United Nations drug control programme (UNDCP).

The Foreign Office and American agencies also learnt of the research and
recognised its potential. They pondered two courses of action: pursuing the
research in Uzbekistan, where facilities were less advanced, or
transferring it to the West.

Secrecy, safety and political sensitivity argued for Uzbekistan. The fungus
was an untested biological agent and potentially dangerous. And if such a
biological weapon originated in Britain or America, it might be seen as an
act of germ warfare if deployed against countries such as Afghanistan and
Tajikistan, where opium poppies are an increasingly important crop.

It was agreed to fund the institute in Uzbekistan to conduct further
research; Britain is thought to have supplied approximately a third of the
money, the United States two-thirds; it was all channelled through the UN.

According to western sources, some $500,000 has been supplied for chemicals
and equipment, and the American government is funding salaries for
scientists in Uzbekistan. The institute, as well as the project, has
effectively been taken over by western powers.

The fungus is now being tested on opium poppies being grown in remote parts
of eastern Uzbekistan on the border with Kyrgyzstan.

"Conditions are ideal," said Nazarov Timur, head of drug abuse prevention
for the Uzbekistan government. "A number of illicit cultivation plots are
being treated with small amounts of the fungus. I think they have had 100%
success."

UZBEKISTAN is on the rim of the golden crescent - the region of central
Asia that threatens to become the biggest producer of opium for refining
into heroin.

Where once the golden triangle of Burma, Laos and Thailand dominated the
opium trade, now Afghanistan, Iran and Pakistan are also big producers.

To the south of Uzbekistan an estimated 60,000 hectares of poppies are
under cultivation in Afghanistan, producing enough opium to make almost 300
tons a year of the purest heroin.

Many of the plantations are in the mountainous regions on the
Afghan-Pakistan border and in areas controlled by the Taliban Islamic
militia.

The Taliban has turned a blind eye to opium growing, claiming that farmers
need the income to rebuild their war-scarred villages. The truth is
simpler: opium is a lucrative cash crop which the UN estimates earned
Afghan farmers =A3100m last year; the Taliban is thought to take a 10% cut.

From the poppy fields the opium travels by lorry to southeast Turkey where
gangs operate at least 20 to 30 laboratories for refining it into heroin.
It is then smuggled through the Balkans or, latterly eastern Europe, Russia
and Poland, into western Europe. The golden crescent now supplies about 90%
of the heroin which reaches Britain's streets.

In 1997 opium production in Afghanistan leapt by a quarter to 2,800 tons.
Another bumper crop is forecast this year. The flood of heroin has reduced
the price of a single "wrap" to little more than the cost of a pint of beer.

Against this background, the work at the Tashkent institute has taken on a
greater urgency. MI6 has been kept informed of progress. Earlier this month
a British expert from the Institute of Arable Crops Research - a
government-backed body near Bristol - visited the laboratory complex and
delivered a favourable report on progress.

The work has also been vetted and cleared by the Ministry of Agriculture,
Fisheries and Food, and the International Institute of Biological Control,
at Ascot, which specialises in the environmental effects of natural plant
pathogens.

Plans for deploying the fungus are advancing rapidly. Two scientists are to
be brought from Uzbekistan to Britain to train them in "formulation
technology", to make the fungus in sprayable form, and the use of
fermenters to produce large quantities of it.

Once introduced to a crop, the fungus can spread through the aerial
transmission of its own spores, but the rate of contamination can be
increased by spraying from an aircraft.

Though further tests must be conducted to ensure the fungus has no harmful
side effects - and none has been found so far - the potential for mass
production is already there. A confidential research report states:
"Production capacity to treat approximately 2,000 hectares of illicit opium
poppy crop currently in cultivation in the subregion [central Asia] could
be established relatively easily, and at modest cost."

The aim will not be to wipe out the poppy fields - as opium growers could
simply replant - but to infect the poppies without killing them. Growers,
the theory goes, would still expend time and effort on their debilitated
plants yet produce very little of the drug.

Will the Garden of Victory march onwards against the poppy? Scientists and
UN staff have been forbidden to talk about the project.

"I can talk about other matters but not about this," said Bogdan Lisovich,
representative of the UN drug control programme in Uzbekistan. "There are
very big issues at stake."

-------------------------------------------------------------------

Fungus Nips Drug In Bud (A Second Related Story In Britain's 'Sunday Times'
About Research By Scientists Engaged In Biological Drug Warfare)

Date: Sun, 28 Jun 1998 17:35:29 -0400
To: mapnews@mapinc.org
From: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org (MAPNews)
Subject: MN: UK: Fungus Nips Drug In Bud
Sender: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Reply-To: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Organization: Media Awareness Project http://www.mapinc.org/lists/
Newshawk: Martin Cooke (mjc1947@cyberclub.iol.ie)
Source: Sunday Times (UK)
Contact: editor@sunday-times.co.uk
Pubdate: Sun, 28 Jun 1998

FUNGUS NIPS DRUG IN BUD

The fungus that could be used against the opium growers looks a little like
the mould found on old bread. It develops on the poppies as a greenish and
black fuzzy powder.

Once introduced to a crop, the fungus can spread through the aerial
transmission of its own spores, of which millions can be produced by one
plant. But the rate of contamination can be increased by spraying from the
air.

Once a plant is infected, it begins to show symptoms within three days; by
10 days there are visible lesions on the stem and leaves. Within weeks it
may die.

The bud of the opium poppy contains the sap that is the raw material for
heroin. The seed-pod is slit open while on the plant, allowing the sap to
ooze out. Usually it is left to dry in the sun and the brown,
latex-textured residue is removed later with a scraper.

Morphine is isolated from the opium by a series of boilings and filterings,
using commonly available chemicals, leaving a product that resembles brown
sugar. It is then compacted into blocks and transported to more
sophisticated laboratories to produce heroin.

It takes 12-14 hours to produce heroin from morphine, and 5kg-10kg of
heroin crystals require 50kg-100kg of opium.

If the poppy-killer fungus is used, it would not be the first time that a
natural agent was deployed as a biological weapon. American scientists have
developed a type of algae to kill mosquitoes by shutting off their
digestive systems; in Britain, a bacteria derived from soya is used as a
pesticide by organic farmers; and in Colombia, farmers are experimenting
with a fungus that kills off the borer beetles that threaten their coffee
crop.

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Fungus Nips Drug In Bud (A Related Story In Britain's 'Sunday Times'
About Research By Scientists Engaged In Biological Drug Warfare)

Date: Sun, 28 Jun 1998 17:35:29 -0400
To: mapnews@mapinc.org
From: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org (MAPNews)
Subject: MN: UK: Fungus Nips Drug In Bud
Sender: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Reply-To: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Organization: Media Awareness Project http://www.mapinc.org/lists/
Newshawk: Martin Cooke (mjc1947@cyberclub.iol.ie)
Source: Sunday Times (UK)
Contact: editor@sunday-times.co.uk
Pubdate: Sun, 28 Jun 1998

FUNGUS NIPS DRUG IN BUD

The fungus that could be used against the opium growers looks a little like
the mould found on old bread. It develops on the poppies as a greenish and
black fuzzy powder.

Once introduced to a crop, the fungus can spread through the aerial
transmission of its own spores, of which millions can be produced by one
plant. But the rate of contamination can be increased by spraying from the
air.

Once a plant is infected, it begins to show symptoms within three days; by
10 days there are visible lesions on the stem and leaves. Within weeks it
may die.

The bud of the opium poppy contains the sap that is the raw material for
heroin. The seed-pod is slit open while on the plant, allowing the sap to
ooze out. Usually it is left to dry in the sun and the brown,
latex-textured residue is removed later with a scraper.

Morphine is isolated from the opium by a series of boilings and filterings,
using commonly available chemicals, leaving a product that resembles brown
sugar. It is then compacted into blocks and transported to more
sophisticated laboratories to produce heroin.

It takes 12-14 hours to produce heroin from morphine, and 5kg-10kg of
heroin crystals require 50kg-100kg of opium.

If the poppy-killer fungus is used, it would not be the first time that a
natural agent was deployed as a biological weapon. American scientists have
developed a type of algae to kill mosquitoes by shutting off their
digestive systems; in Britain, a bacteria derived from soya is used as a
pesticide by organic farmers; and in Colombia, farmers are experimenting
with a fungus that kills off the borer beetles that threaten their coffee
crop.

-------------------------------------------------------------------

War On Drugs Impoverishes Farmers ('The Boston Globe'
Says Tens Of Thousands Of Cannabis And Poppy Farmers
In Lebanon's Bekaa Valley Have Become Indigent Since The Civil War Ended
And The Federal Government Launched A Massive Eradication Program
With Support From The United States)

Date: Sun, 28 Jun 1998 17:38:25 -0400
To: mapnews@mapinc.org
From: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org (MAPNews)
Subject: MN: Lebanon: War On Drugs Impoverishes Farmers
Sender: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Reply-To: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Organization: Media Awareness Project http://www.mapinc.org/lists/
Newshawk: emr@javanet.com (Dick Evans)
Source: Boston Globe (MA)
Contact: letters@globe.com
Website: http://www.boston.com/globe/
Pubdate: Sun, 28 Jun 1998
Author: Charles M. Sennott

Newshawk's comment: Note the last paragraph, reflecting the
antiprohibitionist view. Is this journalist starting to "get it"?

WAR ON DRUGS IMPOVERISHES FARMERS

The Bekaa valley in Lebanon gets little from UN

AALBEK, Lebanon - During Lebanon's long civil war, the Bekaa Valley
flourished as one of the world's most fertile regions for growing cannabis
for hashish and poppies for heroin. In 1992, as it struggled to emerge
from more than a decade of self-destruction and lawlessness, Lebanon
successfully controlled its illicit drug crops, with the support of the
United States. But in the process it left tens of thousands of farmers
indigent.

In return, the United States and the United Nations promised to help these
farmers grow other crops, like cherries, apricots, and potatoes. But
farmers say that adequate international aid never materialized. Now, amid
broken promises and economic desperation, they are threatening to plant
those profitable and illegal crops.

A few farmers have already begun planting them. ''We all used to grow
hashish and heroin.''

That is not a secret.

We just want a decent life. These are good people who believe in God and
raise good families,'' said Mohammad Fawaz, a member of the Central Bekaa
Agricultural Cooperative and a candidate in the first local elections here
in 30 years. ''We were never comfortable growing illegal crops.

We just did it to survive,'' Fawaz said. ''During the war, it was either
that or pick up a gun. It was chaos here then. We don't want to return to
those days ever again.

But desperation forces people to do desperate things.

And I am afraid these farmers are desperate.'' The plight of the Bekaa
farmers has surfaced in the cynical aftermath of aggressive US rhetoric
about the ''war on drugs.'' Critics attacked these kinds of US and UN
eradication strategies at the recent UN drug summit as futile efforts that
are destructive for local economies. Critics say the drug eradication
efforts lack long-range alternative development programs for poor farming
communities. The Bekaa's highly profitable fields of pink flowering opium
poppies and green stalks of cannabis that once flourished along the
roadsides were all but destroyed in the past six years as US-funded
Lebanese troops burned fields and sprayed contaminants on crops from US
helicopters. The effort was by all accounts successful, and last year the
Clinton administration removed Lebanon from its list of major
drug-producing nations. But the effort also triggered an agrarian revolt,
led by a religious leader named Sheik Sobhi Toufeili, who used to be part
of the Hezbollah guerrilla movement.

The Shiite cleric's so-called Hunger Revolution has tapped into a
groundswell of populist resentment among the farmers who feel betrayed by
the West and ignored by the wealthy elite of Beirut. Even the Daily Star,
Lebanon's respected English-language daily, reluctantly acknowledged in a
February editorial the legitimacy of Toufeili's protest movement. ''His
motives were geared toward his own political gain, but his outcry for the
government to invest in the social and economic well-being of the region is
justified,'' the paper wrote. ''The international community owes Lebanon
support in its continued effort to prevent the re-emergence of the drug
business.'' Western officials in Lebanon concede that international aid
distributed largely through UN development programs has failed to meet its
promises.

The United Nations has spent $13 million in recent years to help farmers.

But its own studies estimate the costs run four times that simply to create
adequate irrigation in the area. US officials point out that USAID has
begun its own five-year plan targeting the farmers with millions of dollars.

The highlight of their effort, said James Stephenson, a USAID
representative in Lebanon, was a shipment this winter of 3,000 Holstein
cows flown into the Bekaa from New England, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and
Maryland. The dairy cows were dismissed by farmers and other critics as a
token effort that does not approach the hundreds of millions of dollars
that other countries such as Turkey have received for their antidrug
efforts. In the garden of his modest home, Bassam, 29, explained the basic
economics behind his decision to grow cannabis once again. If he
cultivates it on a 500-square-yard field, he will produce approximately
four kilos of hashish, worth roughly $8,000, at minimal labor cost. If he
grows potatoes or government-subsidized tobacco on the same field, he will
produce a crop worth about $350 and have to pay laborers at least $150 to
tend and harvest the plants. ''Our families are starving.

We believed the US when it said it would help us. We destroyed the old
crops, but now we have nothing.

Where is America now that I owe the local bakery $700 for bread?'' asked
Bassam, who spoke on condition that his last name not be used. ''We stopped
the drugs here, and now America turns its back on us.'' Bassam said that
about 10 percent of Bekaa farmers have returned to illegal crops on small,
remote patches of land. But he warned that most farmers are tempted to do
the same if there is no alternative. Mohammad Fawaz lives in a comfortable
home. His wife and daughters offered a silver platter of fresh fruit, and
tea served in china cups. He said he is among the wealthier farmers because
he saved his money and bought large tracts of land on which he grows
primarily tobacco, potatoes and apricots. ''For most farmers, it is a
180-degree turn for the worse now,'' he said. ''The US government promised
to deliver aid through the UN. But we have not seen a penny.'' Fawaz said
the money that has been channeled through the United Nations, whose
antidrug efforts has been dominated and funded by the United States, has
been absorbed into the organization's administrative costs.

The farmers have been offered UN loans at interest rates between 12 and 18
percent.

UN-subsidized pesticides and fertilizers are also expensive. Ross
Mountain, a UN Development Program coordinator, told farmers during a
recent tour of a poor village in the Bekaa, ''I hear your complaints loud.
I hear your frustrations, and I share them.'' A UN report found that 60
percent of the 54,000 farmers in the region grew cannabis during the war
and that the successful US-led eradication efforts left virtually all of
those farmers out of work. The impoverished region already faced economic
calamity.

The Bekaa has limited access to potable water, inadequate social and health
services, and the highest illiteracy rate in the country. Water is the key
to the transition away from drug crops, which require minimal irrigation.
There are large underground aquifers from nearby mountains and rivers, but
those sources are very difficult to reach.

And the infrastructure necessary to use them for irrigation is expensive.
Mountain said that after the United Nations took care of basic needs for
the population, there was only $13 million left to create an irrigation
system that requires an investment of more than $50 million. Phillip
Coffin, a researcher for the New York-based nonprofit Lindsmith Center,
says there is a pattern in other poor countries, of the United States and
the United Nations ''shaking a carrot in front of farmers and beating with
a stick at the same time.'' Coffin added, ''It is part of the misguided
global drug war by the US and the UN, which ignores the economics of the
drug trade and the fact there will always be poor farmers who will grow as
long as there is demand for drugs.''

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[End]