cannabisnews.com: Federal Official Issues Pot Warning Federal Official Issues Pot Warning Posted by CN Staff on April 03, 2003 at 13:02:00 PT By Liz Heitzman of the Tribune’s Staff Source: Columbia Daily Tribune An official with the White House’s drug policy office today urged Columbians "not to fall for the lie" that marijuana is an innocent drug.While noting repeatedly that he was not in Columbia to tell people how to vote, Scott Burns in a news conference attacked many of the primary arguments presented by those who support Proposition 1. The proposed local ordinance on Tuesday’s ballot would reduce penalties for small amounts of the drug and give seriously ill citizens "the right" to use it for medicinal use with a physician’s recommendation. Proponents have said that students convicted of possessing 35 grams or less of marijuana under the proposition would not lose their federal financial aid for education.Burns, deputy director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, reiterated statements made by officials with his office that students could still lose their aid if the proposition is passed. Acknowledging that the Higher Education Act says students convicted under state and federal laws will lose their aid, Burns said the spirit of the law is to ensure that "if you get high all the time, we don’t want to give you money." Changing Columbia’s law to make possession of small amounts of marijuana a municipal violation was a way to "trick" the system, the official said.Phoenix Programs rehabilitation center, 607 S. Fifth St., hosted the news conference also attended by First Ward Councilwoman Almeta Crayton and Paul Robinson, a physician in adolescent medicine. It was followed by a luncheon at a south Columbia banquet center, where the topic was to be "the dangers of marijuana."Crayton, who voted against the measure when it came before the Columbia City Council in January, said she worried that passage of the proposition would lead to increased usage."It’s not the smoking of marijuana, it’s what comes afterward," she said. "It’s a serious thing," she said of marijuana. "It affects more than just you because you want to get high."Proponents of the Columbia measure, who were not allowed to attend the news conference, said that Burns’ visit amounted to campaigning against the measure."I think it is ironic that the White House is coming in here and saying they are here to clear up misinformation. Yet we’ve had more misinformation coming in from these guys in the last 48 hours than throughout the whole campaign," said Mark Jones, a supporter of the initiative.Note: Envoy insists he’s not saying how to vote.Source: Columbia Daily Tribune (MO)Author: Liz Heitzman of the Tribune’s Staff Published: Thursday, April 03, 2003Copyright: 2003 Columbia Daily TribuneContact: editor tribmail.comWebsite: http://www.showmenews.com/Related Articles:Pot Initiative Draws Federal Attention http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread15864.shtmlProp 1 Pits Proponents Against Law Enforcement http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread15849.shtmlMarijuana Proposition Worries Law Enforcementhttp://cannabisnews.com/news/thread15845.shtmlWhite House Weighs in on Pot Issue http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread15835.shtml Home Comment Email Register Recent Comments Help Comment #12 posted by mayan on April 03, 2003 at 18:55:47 PT Yeah, Right... "An official with the White House’s drug policy office today urged Columbians "not to fall for the lie" that marijuana is an innocent drug. While noting repeatedly that he was not in Columbia to tell people how to vote, Scott Burns in a news conference attacked many of the primary arguments presented by those who support Proposition 1." No, Burns isn't telling people how to vote, he just happens to be in Columbia less than a week before the Proposition 1 vote screaming about the evils of the "dreaded devil weed"! What an insult to my intelligence!The way out is the way in... Complete Timeline Presentation To 9/11 Presser: http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0304/S00029.htmA 9/11 Victim Asks For Answers: http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/WO0304/S00045.htmVoices of September 11 Calls For Answers: http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/WO0304/S00059.htm [ Post Comment ] Comment #11 posted by The GCW on April 03, 2003 at 18:14:40 PT An interview with Hunter S. Thompson The doctor will see you now http://www.boulderweekly.com/coverstory.html (includes photo) - - - - - - - - - - - - by Ben Corbett (Editorial boulderweekly.com) It’s always because we love that we are rebellious; it takes a great deal of love to give a damn one way or another what happens from now on. The situation for human beings is hopeless… For the while that’s left, though, we can remember the Great and the gods.–Kenneth PatchenBOULDER–Gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson pleaded no contest to spraying a man in the face with a fire extinguisher after the charge was reduced to a petty offense… Thompson, who entered a plea to petty disorderly conduct Friday, was initially charged with misdemeanor assault in the April fire extinguisher episode at Boulder’s Fox Theater… At public speaking appearances, Thompson sometimes sprays a fire extinguisher toward the audience to close shows. He was showing some people the technique in his dressing room when….–Las Vegas Review-JournalThat was back in 1997, the last time Thompson made a foray into Boulder. From patchouli-smeared activists to spike-haired punks, country trash to white-collared reptiles, it was a rare appearance, and the venue was packed. As the evening rolled on, what began as a Q&A session turned into an orgy of mayhem. At one point a woman leapt up to the stage with a wrinkled copy of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, yelling "Spill some Chivas on my book!" As Hunter drenched the volume, the woman bared her breasts and the audience groaned in ecstasy. Later, some guy offered Thompson a whiff of ether from a flask that he’d brought along. Shunning the rag, the Doctor began sniffing the fumes straight from the bottle.Months later the author was in Denver doing a book-signing for his release of The Proud Highway, and nearly 300 fans attended the event. Anyone who bought a copy could do a shot of Chivas Regal with Hunter. At one point a shy 12-year-old kid walked up to Thompson, shook his hand, and began walking away in teary-eyed bliss. "Hey kid, wait!" Thompson held the bottle up. "Don’t you want a shot?" The outlaw journalist has become a spokesman for several generations of disenfranchised Americans, and his words are buoys of truth in the flotsam of a dying democracy. His fans are those who never bought into the program, and they are many. Drug-crazed menace? Serious scribe of American letters? Hunter S. Thompson has become a simultaneous postmodern hero and modernist antihero in one sweep; as much an epiphany as an enigma to the American public; a voice of reason in absolutely unreasonable times.The Doctor’s new book, Kingdom of Fear, comes as the author’s autobiographical pummeling of the senses that dates back to his childhood when, at 9 years old, the FBI grilled him for destroying a mailbox and he called their bluff. "And I learned a powerful lesson," writes Thompson, "Never believe the first thing an FBI agent tells you about anything–especially if he seems to believe you are guilty of a crime. Maybe he has no evidence." Although Kingdom of Fear is billed as a memoir, the volume is more a salad of the author’s personal battle with his own talent, which begins to take shape during a stint as an Air Force sportswriter. The style is fragmented, jumping from prophecy to flashback, and segues through some of the most impacting events of the 65-year-old’s life as a journalist, author, and now icon. The volume ends at Thompson’s first encounter with his assistant (and now fiancée) Anita, one of the inspirations for the book, who enlightens Thompson with the words, "You have the soul of a teenage girl in the body of an elderly dope fiend." In high Thompson fashion, during the interview, the Good Doctor was getting ripped, writing his column, and gambling all at once.BC: What are you watching?HST: Yeah, hold on, you caught me at a… Kentucky/Butler. Hold on just a second… Goddamn, Kentucky 25 straight wins! This is gonna go on for about three minutes or so, uh, Indiana/Pittsburgh. Yeah, I’m predicting these games. I write the column for ESPN on Sunday nights.BC: You’re writing the column right now?HST: Yeah, yeah. Holy shit. Well, I also have a significant financial investment in these games. Yesterday I was No. 2 of all the ESPN people predicting it. I did well yesterday.BC: How much did you win?HST: Oh, Christ that was about a $5,000 investment. And I have others. But boy, it looks like Louisville and Butler fucked me up today. (To himself) Let’s see, Irvine/Michigan State, oh boy, that’s tough. Texas/Connecticut… I think Texas will win there. I don’t know. Fuck. I haven’t seen Connecticut play.BC: What’s the most you’ve ever won?HST: I can’t remember. I remember losing $4,000 to Ed Bradley one time. Somehow I don’t remember the wins quite as well as I do the horrible losses. He was out here for this year’s tournament too, and then he got called off to the fucking war.BC: So what’s your status with Rolling Stone these days?HST: I don’t really like talking about Rolling Stone. People ask me all the time. Well, you know, that was a great run for me. Rolling Stone was one of the… well, maybe the best magazine of the time. But things changed drastically. The attitude’s changed. I didn’t fit in there anymore, and I still wouldn’t now. It got very corporate.BC: They probably wouldn’t be around today if you wouldn’t have written a lot of that stuff.HST: Yeah, you’re probably right. A lot of people have said that. I think you’re all right. I don’t like to uh… Well, fuck why not? Wenner is a pig. Yeah, he actually turned into one. BC: With your new book, why the title Kingdom of Fear?HST: That’s what I perceived this country to be at the time. From any direction you look at this country, everything that’s happening is motivated by fear and terrorism and war. It’s a national panic encouraged by these low-rent, evangelical punks in the White House. In two years Bush and his crowd–or rather, his crowd and Bush–have turned this country from a prosperous nation of peace into a broke nation at war. In two years they’ve destroyed the economy, our place in the world, and the future of the children. And the next three generations are going to be paying for this war. BC: Why the subtitle "LoathsomeSecrets of A Star-Crossed Child in the Final Days of the American Century?" HST: The American century ended in 1999. Well, let’s say 2000. And that’s what it was called, "The American Century." A man named Henry Luce came up with that. But this isn’t the American Century for sure, and it has nothing to do with the American Dream at all. The country has gone back to the worst of its kind of evangelical right-wing freaks. And what really bothers me is that the voters keep voting for Bush, even though they’re going broke more so everyday. We’ve raised several generations of stupid people. Ignorant and stupid. And I really can’t understand that. Hell, it happened so fast. BC: How did you get into doing your Hey Rube column for ESPN?HST: John Walsh, the managing editor at ESPN, is an old friend of mine. He was an editor at Rolling Stone when I was there. We became good friends, and one day he asked me if I thought I could write a sports column for ESPN. I was in a decent mood and said, "Yeah, of course." The column is one of my favorite things. It keeps me on deadline and it’s a relief to get the column to write. Just pure writing. BC: Well, here’s my favorite one. I want to read a segment and maybe get some comment. This is from Feb. 11, 2002, titled "Terrorism at the Superbowl":The news out of Washington is getting darker and weirder by the hour. On some days it has the look of a full-bore Terrorist cell operating out of the White House basement, spewing fear and desperation on a nation of suddenly impoverished patriots. Where is Bill Clinton now that we finally need him? HST: Jesus Christ. Well, I hate to say it, but it seems to be all accurate and prophetic even. I mean it’s not that difficult to be prophetic with this country and this administration. You can imagine your worst fears, and then figure they’ll probably come true.BC: That’s pretty edgy stuff. Especial-ly written only five months after Sept. 11. Nobody was criticizing Washington yet. You seem to make a career of taking a sports writer’s approach to politics.HST: Well yeah. That’s an interesting mix, writing a sports column and politics. Being a sportswriter, I guess I’ve kind of brought that style to everything I’ve done since then. And I’m still a sportswriter. But I branched out–heh heh. Excuse me a second. [To Anita] I’m looking for that pipe. Where is that goddamned….BC: So we have bin Laden and Saddam, and then we have the American propaganda machine. Who exactly are the terrorists here, and why should we fear them? HST: Well, we should fear the White House I think more than the terrorists. In the Kingdom of Fear, people tend to be a lot more obedient. Fear makes people behave differently. BC: What do you think about the anthrax letters being sent to Congress?HST: I think that was bullshit, and they were probably planted. My feeling from the beginning was that the tragedy at the World Trade Center was also rigged. I can’t say that for sure, but I’ve had that uneasy feeling from the very beginning. I haven’t been convinced of anything otherwise. They haven’t done a goddamn thing yet to convince anybody that bin Laden actually did that. I never believed that a gang of Arabs sitting around a fire in Afghanistan cooked this up and pulled it off. [To Anita] Where’s that thing that was in the New York Times today? Here’s a story out of the Times. "Reporters Respond Eagerly to Pentagon Welcome Mat." (from the March 23 edition.)Carefully devised by the Pentagon to counter years of complaints by news organizations about restrictions on combat coverage, the new policy of (embedding) more than 500 reporters with invading troops has produced riveting images of fighter jets on carriers and tanks plowing across the Iraqi desert, accompanied by household faces like Ted Koppel… and of surrendering Iraqi soldiers with their hands held high. [To himself: Oh goddamn!]… Pentagon planners have also reached out to diverse outlets where public opinion is shaped by including reporters from MTV, Rolling Stone, People Magazine and Men’s Health, and foreign journalists running the gamut from Al Jazeera, the Arabic language television channel, to Russia’s Tartusk news agency. News organizations have expressed satisfaction with the arrangements.BC: What do you think?HST: Jesus Christ, that’s absolute bullshit. I’ve covered wars. By being embedded, it’s almost like being captured. You’re given access to whatever they want to give you access to, and they make you really grateful for it. It’s like doling out the access. That happened in the Vietnam War a lot. But the Pentagon decided journalists would never have access to another war. BC: So what access do they have now?HST: They don’t have access. That’s the point. By embedding them, they totally co-opt them. And then their copy is, let’s say, "approved." Nothing gets out of there without going through the military machine. All of our news really from Iraq and Afghanistan for probably the last two years has strictly been the product of Psy-Ops and the CIA.BC: Was it the same when you were reporting on Vietnam?HST: Not at all. They didn’t have that censorship in place. The first time they implemented it was in [1983] Grenada, and I was shocked. It was a practice run for the next war in Panama. Grenada was the first time really that all access was cut off. BC: But you were independent at the time. You didn’t have to take orders, right?HST: There was no control over the press, but that was their first attempt to do that. I remember the first time I’d ever seen razor wire, and they tried to kick me out of my hotel. They took it over, and I refused to leave. That was the first time I’d ever been ordered around by the Army.BC: How does the media coverage compare to when you were in Saigon?HST: I was in Saigon at the end, but I went out to various places in the field. For journalists, Vietnam was a very free war. That’s why the Pentagon blames the media for losing the war. We had a lot of violence down there with the reporters.BC: During Nixon, who controlled whom? Did the press control the White House, or did the White House control the press?HST: It was about 50/50 on any given day. That was the beauty of it. That was also true in Vietnam. You could go anywhere you could get. You know a lot of people were killed and shot over there. Our photographer was killed on the last goddamned day of the war. But at least we got the truth out about that war. We haven’t had the truth about any war since then. BC: What do you think will happen with this war?HST: This war is going to go on for 20 or 30 years. It’s been going on for 12 already. We’ll be there certainly the rest of my lifetime, and pretty much into infinity. Look at Korea. That’s a country we invaded and went to war with 50 years ago, and look what we got out of that. Fifty years is nothing. For what amounts to one person’s lifetime, we’ve been fighting a war with the same country.BC: You wrote in your book that Bush is now getting us into a war with the entire Arab-speaking world.HST: Oh yeah, this is World War III.cont... [ Post Comment ] Comment #10 posted by afterburner on April 03, 2003 at 18:06:40 PT: ekim, Lehder, and, of course, Virgil Hear how David Malmo-Levine rebuts the 2 favorite arguments of the prohibitionists, in an amazingly broad context of the possible future once people come to their senses and re-legalize cannabis and hemp. (on Pot-TV: Hempology 101's 2003 St. Phattie's Day Celebration in B.C., Canada [ http://www.pot-tv.net/ram/pottvshowse1857.ram ] with David Malmo-Levine [20:46 - 37:02]).ego destruction or ego transcendence, that is the question.Talk "it" up. Preview the freedom and creativity future: dare I say, "American ingenuity"? [ Post Comment ] Comment #9 posted by The GCW on April 03, 2003 at 17:14:25 PT Is He fooling anyone???? While noting repeatedly that he was not in Columbia to tell people how to vote, Scott Burns ...There are only two outcomes at this election and Scott Burns represents one of those certain outcomes. Scott Burns has used time and effort to effect how the vote is counted, plain and simple.His blatent lie seems to indicate the use of brainwashing mind manipulation. The total disregard for Truth is so obvious.The urine sucker is there to tell citizens how to vote. [ Post Comment ] Comment #8 posted by ekim on April 03, 2003 at 16:07:49 PT great points made here i want to thank all who write. at a time while everyone is thinking of what it means to have freedom. it is only fitting that every effort is made to inform the people of just how hurt full and downright hatefull this prohibition on cannabis really is. we find ourselves with very little options keep doing what we have been doing or changing the mind set to look at the bright side of this issue. we have shown the planet time after time what this great united states can do. we have welcomed people from all over it to come here to live side by side and work and play together. many of the problems of today will be worked on and made better. its called igaa new a tee the ability of solving a problem if the person is free to use his mind to be creative. let the people use the plant and see what will happen. can you imagine the new products and potential of creating new jobs and products with a plant that has been outlawed for 80 years. it is just mind blowing to conceive. [ Post Comment ] Comment #7 posted by JR Bob Dobbs on April 03, 2003 at 15:40:10 PT LTE Sirs, If the purpose of the press conference at which Scott Burns spoke was not to oppose Proposition 1, I'd like to know what actually was on the agenda. A lecture on "The Dangers Of Marijuana" certainly doesn't sound very impartial. The only reason Mr. Burns repeatedly denied that he was electioneering is because he does not want to be the subject of a lawsuit, like the one facing John Walters after he tried the same tactic in Nevada last fall. But, like Mr. Walters, Mr. Burns feels the need to fervently oppose any change in the law which might threaten his job security.-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-I bet "The Dangers Of Marijuana" seminar was a lot like the drug-cop convention in Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas (he says, donning his tea-shades and scraping something off his pant leg)... [ Post Comment ] Comment #6 posted by Lehder on April 03, 2003 at 15:02:51 PT no drug war is possible without propaganda & lies "An official with the White House’s drug policy office today urged Columbians "not to fall for the lie" that marijuana is an innocent drug."The lie is that marijuana is dangerous. A bigger lie is that it is even a little bit harmful. The biggest lie of all is that its smokers fall into some kind of degeneracy, and this widespread, foolish belief of the public is the result of the government's vicious propaganda over many decades.The truth is that marijuana is universally used in very constructive ways. That is the nature of its effect. Marijuana enhances productivity, health, creativity and general well-being. It extends one's natural abilities in a very mild and natural way and does so without the slightest negative consequence. IT'S NOT ALCOHOL. IT'S NOTHING LIKE ALCOHOL. IT DOESN'T MAKE YOU DRUNK. It doesn't even produce a hangover. It prevents the formation of malignant tumors. Read about how millions of responsible people use marijuana to their advantage:http://www.marijuana-uses.com/examples/Marijuana does tend to induce thought - useful, productive thought - and tends to make the user a little too reflective to be carried away by thoughtless hate rhetoric of the kind on talk radio and in mainstream articles about marijuana. The sudden experience of thought may be a discomfort to the very stupid or the extremely prejudiced, and a thinking population should certainly be regarded as a danger to a deceitful, brutal government. We should spend less time arguing with the lies of government about the "dangers" of marijuana - over and over, the same lies - and more time advertising the many benefits that marijuana offers. I really think that people who have never smoked imagine, as a result of propaganda, the effects of marijuana to be quite debilitating - like those of alcohol only many thousands of times more intense and requiring incarceration of the smoker - when in fact the opposite is true. [ Post Comment ] Comment #5 posted by Virgil on April 03, 2003 at 14:33:40 PT I'm not finished yet I was forgetful in resetting the preview button for comment 4. This Cato report should be quoted by someone at the NORML convention on April 20. These 9 pages could enlighten many people if they are circulate. I am going to print them out and put a jacket on them. This report says it all. I did want to include this paragraph for immediate consumption. It is like brain candy to a reformer.From page 4 of 9 -The single most important law that Congress must repeal is the Controlled Substances Act of 1970. That law is probably the most far-reaching federal statute in American history, since it asserts federal jurisdiction over every drug offense in the United States, no matter how small or local in scope. Once that law is removed from the statute books, Congress should move to abolish the Drug Enforcement Administration and repeal all of the other federal drug laws. [ Post Comment ] Comment #4 posted by Virgil on April 03, 2003 at 14:20:39 PT The harms of cannabis prohibition It sounds to me like the reformers need a similar conference under the banner of "The Harms of Cannabis Prohibition."Thwy could inform the public that the cannabis policy wsa driven by madness that makes one of the most nutricious foods on the planet illegal and the best herbal plant for what ails you illegal and the ideal recreational escape illegal. If Jefferson would have thought that cannabis prohibition needed implementing he would have seen it in the Constitution. The recent Cato Reort to the 108th Congress- http://www.cato.org/pubs/handbook/hb108/hb108-17.pdf - makes nonsense of all the prohitionist crap that never once mentions the word freedom.On page 171 the Cato report plainly says-. repeal the Controlled Substances Act of 1970,. repeal the federal mandatory minimum sentences and the mandatory sentencing guidelines,. direct the administration not to interfere with the implementation of state initiatives that allow for the medical use of marijuana, and. shut down the Drug Enforcement Administration.Ours is a federal republic. The federal government has only the powers granted to it in the Constitution. And the United States has a tradition of individual liberty, vigorous civil society, and limited government. Identification of a problem does not mean that the government ought to undertake to solve it, and the fact that a problem occurs in more than one state does not mean that it is a proper subject for federal policy. Perhaps no area more clearly demonstrates the bad consequences of not following such rules than does drug prohibition. The long federal experiment in prohibition of marijuana, cocaine, heroin, and other drugs has given us crime and corruption combined with a manifest failure to stop the use of drugs or reduce their availability to children. In the 1920s Congress experimented with the prohibition of alcohol. On February 20, 1933, a new Congress acknowledged the failure of alcohol prohibition and sent the Twenty-First Amendment to the states. Congress recognized that Prohibition had failed to stop drinking and had increased prison populations and violent crime. By the end of 1933, national Prohibition was history, though many states continued to outlaw or severely restrict the sale of liquor.The segment of the PDF Cato report is only 9 pages long and should be read by everyone interested in rebuilding America from the Cconstitution on up.On page 173 it says-There are a number of reasons why Congress should end the federal government’s war on drugs. First and foremost, the federal drug laws are constitutionally dubious. As previously noted, the federal government can exercise only the powers that have been delegated to it. The Tenth Amendment reserves all other powers to the states or to the people. However misguided the alcohol prohibitionists turned out to have been, they deserve credit for honoring our constitutional system by seeking a constitutional amendment that would explicitly authorize a national policy on the sale of alcohol. Congress never asked the American people for additional constitutional powers to declare a war on drug consumers. That usurpation of power is something that few politicians or their court intellectuals wish to discuss. Second, drug prohibition creates high levels of crime. Addicts commit crimes to pay for a habit that would be easily affordable if it were legal. Police sources have estimated that as much as half the property crime in some major cities is committed by drug users. More dramatic, because drugs are illegal, participants in the drug trade cannot go to court to settle disputes, whether between buyer and seller or between rival sellers. When black-market contracts are breached, the result is often some form of violent sanction, which usually leads to retaliation and then open warfare in the streets.These 9 pages are already compact thought and should be read in its entirety. Here is a paragraph that touches on what we have lost by eliminating state experimention.From page 7 0f 9- One of the benefits of a federal republic is that different policies may be tried in different states. One of the benefits of our Constitution is that it limits the power of the federal government to impose one policy on the several states. [ Post Comment ] Comment #3 posted by Sam Adams on April 03, 2003 at 14:04:06 PT Must....punish....youth... I believe young people should be taught discipline and self-control. However, these people take it step further - they get off on punishing the young. It's sadism. Young people are happy and beautiful and having so much fun - they must pay! What twisted freaks.....My state recently implemented standardized testing. What a joke. What if every adult had to take a test at the end of each year, and a failing grade meant they were fired and disqualified from future jobs - irregardless of how good of a job they were doing. How long do you think that would last? That's what the drug war is all about...it feeds off the weakest and most vulnerable in society. It's the Democrats throwing the sadistic right-wingers a bone - here's $50 billion, go beat on kids, poor people, and brown people. As long as none of our backers in the rich elite are bothered, do what you want. [ Post Comment ] Comment #2 posted by 420toker on April 03, 2003 at 13:30:41 PT You heard it folks Burns said the spirit of the law is to ensure that "if you get high all the time, we don’t want to give you money." More to the point we dont care how good you are or what good you are capable of. If you get high ANY of the time we want to dispose of you. [ Post Comment ] Comment #1 posted by FoM on April 03, 2003 at 13:16:55 PT FDA Press Release FDA Acts Against Potentially Risky Products March 31, 2003Illegally Marketed as Street Drug AlternativesThe Food and Drug Administration (FDA) today announced enforcement actions against firms that are marketing street drug alternative products, some of which contain ephedra or other sources of ephedrine. FDA sent warning letters to eight firms because they marketed products that they claim can be used as alternatives to street drugs. Today's actions are the latest in a series of FDA moves designed to protect Americans from potentially serious risks of products claiming to be dietary supplements that may actually pose health risks. The FDA is aware that some products purporting to be legal dietary supplements are being marketed as street drug alternatives. These street drug alternatives, however, are not dietary supplements under the legal definition, because they are not intended to be used to augment the diet, to promote health or to reduce the risk of disease. Therefore, these products cannot legally be marketed in the U.S. as dietary supplements. FDA's actions today resulted primarily from the agency's active surveillance of these firms' web sites. The investigation revealed that these firms are selling their products for "recreational" purposes -- i.e., to affect the mental or psychological states of those taking the products. The products are marketed under a variety of names with labeling that claims or implies that they produce such effects as euphoria, a "high," altered consciousness, or hallucinations. "Illegal street drugs masquerading as dietary supplements have no legitimate place in the U.S. marketplace," said FDA Commissioner, Mark B. McClellan, M.D., Ph.D. "These products pose potentially serious risks to minors and others who take them, without providing any medical benefits. Simply put, they pose an unacceptable risk to public health."In March of 2000, FDA issued guidance for industry designed to prevent such marketing of street drug alternatives because of their potential public health risk. The guidance is available on line at: http://www.fda.gov/cder/guidance/index.htmFDA's action today warns firms to stop promoting their products as street drug alternatives and requests that the firms notify the agency within 15 days regarding the corrective action they plan to take. Since the beginning of this year, FDA action against such street drug alternative products as "Black Beauties" and "Yellow Jackets" has resulted in the destruction of millions of dollars worth of these products.Complete Article: http://www.fda.gov/bbs/topics/NEWS/2003/NEW00889.htmlAdditional Materials:List of Firms Receiving Warning Letters for Marketing Illegal Street Drug Alternatives: http://www.fda.gov/bbs/topics/NEWS/ephedra/streetalternatives.htmlSample Warning Letter [PDF] -- http://www.fda.gov/bbs/topics/NEWS/ephedra/warningsample.pdfSample Warning Letter [HTML] -- http://www.fda.gov/bbs/topics/NEWS/ephedra/warningsample.html [ Post Comment ] Post Comment