Maptalk-Digest Tuesday, December 22 1998 Volume 98 : Number 502
Million Marijuana March in Los Angeles
From: Jim Rosenfield <>
Fwd: Editorial Reply / USA
From: Mark Greer <>
Re: MAP: riddled with = signs and various confusing numbers
From: (Matt Elrod)
Avoid Gobbledygook with MS Outlook E-mail Posts
From: "Don Beck" <>
Fwd: 'It's the Drugs, Stupid'
From: Mark Greer <>
Phoenix proves to be financial albatross for paren...
From: Mike Gogulski <>
need source for Jacob Sullum column
From: Mike Gogulski <>
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Subj: Million Marijuana March in Los Angeles
From: Jim Rosenfield <>
Date: Tue, 22 Dec 1998 09:29:23 -0800
Dear Friends:
If you are in the Southern California Area and would like to help organize
the May 1, 1999 Million Marijuana March in Los Angeles, please contact me
and let me know how you want to participate. If you'd like to recommend
someone to this
effort and wnat me to contact them, give me the contact info and I will
handle it.
Please give me any lists of SoCal sympathizers, activists and contacts you
may have. If you have a list which you cannot hand over but which has
SoCal contacts,
can we arrange a co-mailing of some sort to locate candidates for action
positions?
Jim Rosenfield
tel: 310-836-0926 fax: 310-836-0592
Visit http://www.insightweb.com
------------------------------
Subj: Fwd: Editorial Reply / USA
From: Mark Greer <>
Date: Mon, 21 Dec 1998 10:46:05 -0800
>X-Authentication-Warning:americium.baremetal.com: mapinc set sender to
> using -f
>Date: Thu, 17 Dec 1998 16:40:28 -0600
>From: "Bobby, Susan (ISFPC)" <>
>Subject: Editorial Reply / USA
>To: "'Daily Telegraph / Austrailia'" <>
>Cc: "'Mark Greer'" <>
>X-Mailer: Microsoft Exchange Server Internet Mail Connector Version 4.0.996.62
>
>Heroin Maintenance is a Good Thing
>by Susan Bobby
>
>Lord Mayor Frank Sartor shows himself to be an honorable and reasonable
>man in support of helping those that need help, a willingness to act
>ethically in the face of criticism, and the courage to accept reality.
>His support of a heroin maintenance trial affirms those statements.
>
>I was appalled to read the opinions of Gary Womsley and Matt
>Thistlethwaite that seem to be formed out of bigotry and ignorance.
>Their attempt to oppose heroin maintenance trials indicates that they
>have obviously not studied the nature of addiction. It is always amazing
>to me when people are willing to arrogantly flaunt their ignorance if it
>is in support of some dearly held political opinion. This mentality is
>reminiscent of the men who punished those who had the audacity to state
>that the world was round or that the earth circled the sun. Because it
>did not fit their ideological and political beliefs, they not only
>resisted the facts, but castigated, rebuked, and even imprisoned the
>truth-tellers. But History remembers those men with scorn, ridicule,
>and shame. I'm giving Gary and Matt the benefit of the doubt that they
>are just ignorant and not truly evil, self-aggrandizing, and pretentious
>little men.
>
>Addicts of any kind, be they addicted to alcohol, nicotine, opiates, or
>any other addictive substance, are physically, psychologically and
>medically dependent upon that substance. No matter that the addict
>begins of his own free will, the resulting chemical changes in their
>bodies are real. They are not criminal, they are not immoral, they are
>not evil, they just 'are'. The ability of the addict to stop the
>substance is dependent on a plethora of factors. Studies in the United
>States have shown that nicotine and alcohol addicts that want to stop
>their addiction, make an average of 15 attempts to quit before they are
>successful. And these are the people that are truly motivated to quit.
>Some people stay addicted their entire lives and sometimes suffer the
>lung cancer, emphysema, heart and liver disease that accompany those
>substances. A free society offers the individual that lifestyle choice.
>'Daddy' government should not interfere except to educate and advise.
>Because nicotine and alcohol are drugs that are officially sanctioned,
>those addicts are able to attain their drug-of-choice at market value
>and legally. We discovered the uselessness, futility, and black market
>that accompanied the prohibition of alcohol earlier this century.
>Addicts of substances not officially sanctioned by the Garys and Matts
>of this age have yet another hurtle. Among these addicts are also those
>that are motivated to quit and those that will stay addicted their
>entire life, but the hypocrisy of the 'drug war' and the ensuing black
>market make their addiction a 'crime' and make the substances that they
>are addicted to worth more than gold.
>
>Prescription heroin administered in medically controlled conditions will
>allow the heroin addict that is motivated to quit the opportunity to do
>so without being thrown into prison in case of a re-lapse. It will
>ensure that the addict that needs help quitting has access to medical
>personnel when necessary, and will ensure that only pure heroin of a
>known composition is ingested. This will eliminate deaths from
>over-doses and unknown purity and give addicts and their family's that
>love them the opportunity to hope for the future. These addicts will
>then have the same '15 attempts' to finally quit that other addicts are
>given. And there will always be some people that stay addicted their
>entire lives and sometimes suffer the consequences (sound familiar?),
>but all addicts will now have an opportunity to live their life as best
>they can, participate more fully in their family's life, and enjoy the
>self-esteem that comes from removing the stigma of illegality and making
>time for employment. A major advantage for society is that the
>astronomical prices of the black market are avoided and, therefore, the
>crime that accompanies that black market is ELIMINATED. This truly
>enhances the quality of life of all peoples.
>
>Don't let your ideological and political beliefs obscure the facts.
>History will judge you too.
>
>Susan Bobby
>207 Elmhurst St.
>Valparaiso, IN 46385
>(219) 531-2810 home
>(219) 399-4137 work
> email
>
>
Mark Greer
Executive Director
DrugSense
http://www.drugsense.org
http://www.mapinc.org
------------------------------
Subj: Re: MAP: riddled with = signs and various confusing numbers
From: (Matt Elrod)
Date: Tue, 22 Dec 1998 12:37:47 -0800
Jim asked:
}Has anyone come up with a definitive reason that these odd symbols come
}through on some folks postings?
When an email message contains an extended character, such as a copyright
symbol or a foreign language diacritic, a character not found on a
keyboard, mail servers will up and translate the email from ...
Content-type: text/plain; charsetUS-ASCII
Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit
... to ...
Mime-version: 1.0
Content-type: text/plain; charset"iso-8859-1"
Content-transfer-encoding: quoted-printable
The ISO-8859-1 character set includes encoded extended characters.
For instance, a copyright symbol is encoded as A9
See http://www.bbsinc.com/iso8859.html for a complete list.
IF the ISO mime header is left intact AND the receiving mail program knows
how to deal with ISO encoding, then these codes are translated back to
extended characters and the email message will look fine. If the ISO mime
header gets lunched, as can happen when ISO encoded email is sent to a
mailing list, then ISO encoded email looks horrible.
To prevent this problem, senders should remove extended characters from
their email.
Matt
------------------------------
Subj: Avoid Gobbledygook with MS Outlook E-mail Posts
From: "Don Beck" <>
Date: Tue, 22 Dec 1998 16:59:41 -0600
Thanks to our webmaster Matt we editors have Roboauditor's help in not
posting non-supported characters to the MAPNews. Way back when (a few short
months ago, actually) before Roboauditor came to the rescue, I had to learn
how to keep my Microsoft Outlook email program honest:
1. Tools/Options menu, click on Mail Format tab, select "Plain Text" in the
Message Format drop-down list.
2. Internet E-Mail tab, select the MIME radio button and select "None" in
the "Encode mail message using" drop-down list. Click "Apply" and "OK".
Now, if you want to send a message using stationery or MS Rich Text Format,
click on Actions/New Mail Message Using..., etc. Regards,
Don Beck <>
- ----------------------------------------------------
Subj: Re: MAP: riddled with signs and various confusing numbers
From: Richard Lake <>
Date: Mon, 21 Dec 1998 22:09:07 -0500
>On Mon, Dec 21, 1998 at 03:12:36PM -0800, Jim Rosenfield wrote:
Chris's original post came through riddled with signs and various
confusing numbers etc. Hopefully I corrected most of the errors.
Has anyone come up with a definitive reason that these odd symbols come
through on some folks postings?
I only want responses from those that KNOW the answer, thanks.
>The answer has as much to do with your mail reader as their mail reader.
>
>Many mail readers may use "Smart quotes" or other "High Ascii" charicters.
>Unfortunatly these things are not universally supported. It basically
>means that their reader is configured in such a way that it is sending
>the mail in a format which your reader interprets differntly.
>
>The simple answer is that ALL mail should use only 7 bit "low" ascii.
>(and no HTML either)
Friends,
We who post the news, the , deal with this problem all
the time. Stephen is correct, but the problem is hard to explain. Perhaps
Matt or Mike will jump in here and do a better job than I.
My bottom line way of thinking of it is that the mail reader programs of
many, probably the majority of folks who receive our news emails worldwide,
are simply not set up to handle anything but "low" ascii code. The reasons
may be in either the email program or the font set the program uses,
depending on the software and operating system.
The message being discussed had code that was not low ascii code. Often
this causes signs followed by a hex code number to appear. It also can
cause the ends of lines to have signs at the end of all the message lines.
Many of us use Eudora as an email program to do the news work. Why? Because
it can be told not to send "quote printable" and styled text (this in
addition to it's superb filtering and a tool that makes headline work easy
by creating ALL CAPS or Word Caps lines out of other lines). This helps.
Smart quotes, the long em dash used in printing, the British Pound sign,
and many other characters which do not appear on the U.S. keyboard cause
problems. So our rule of thumb is that nothing we can not find on the U.S.
keyboard gets sent, even if it came to us OK and readable with our email
program. This is why you will see things like UKP1,250 instead of the pound
sign and the amount 1,250 in many news items. We change it when we see
the problem. Our good newshawk from western Ireland, Martin Cooke, knows
about the problem and fixes the pound signs for us.
This may not help anyone, but please look at the following:
http://www.bbsinc.com/iso8859.html
This is a table we use to help us figure out what the strange plus
numbers actually mean. May as well be some foreign language for most of us.
I guess what I am trying to say is that the answer is not simple, and
involves problems not well understood by even a lot of folks who write
software code. It is well beyond something that can be explained well in an
email message, IMHO. And, for sure, something that I can not explain very
well at all, but I know the problem when I see it.
Richard
------------------------------
Subj: Fwd: 'It's the Drugs, Stupid'
From: Mark Greer <>
Date: Tue, 22 Dec 1998 12:24:57 -0800
>X-Authentication-Warning:americium.baremetal.com: mapinc set sender to
> using -f
>X-Sender:
>X-Mailer: Windows Eudora Pro Version 2.2 (32)
>Date: Sun, 20 Dec 1998 15:01:25 -0800
>To: (Editor, J-I)
>From: Gerald Sutliff <>
>Subject: "It's the Drugs, Stupid"
>
>Editor
>Journal-Inquirer
>via e-mail
>
>Dear Editor,
>
>Your editorial about the inability of Long Lane's staff to address the "drug
>abuse" problem of its involuntary residents is not quite on point. Most
>drug abusers have emotional or "adjustment" problems before they ever began
>using drugs. Drug abuse hardly makes things better for them but ignoring
>the underlying cause of drug abuse is also stupid. No drug abuser, young or
>old, deserves incarceration. Each needs love, understanding, tolerance and
>help. Blaming the drugs alone is a self defeating conundrum.
>
>Gerald M. Sutliff
>6400 Christie Ave., #1409
>Emeryville, CA 96408-1024
>
>
>
>
Mark Greer
Executive Director
DrugSense
http://www.drugsense.org
http://www.mapinc.org
------------------------------
Subj: Phoenix proves to be financial albatross for paren...
From: Mike Gogulski <>
Date: Tue, 22 Dec 1998 20:04:21 -0500
Fascinating, really... a company which produces opiates and cocaine...
>From:
>Subject: drugs: Phoenix proves to be financial albatross for paren...
>To:
>Subject: drugs: Phoenix proves to be financial albatross for paren...
>X-Inquisit-UserID: 25507021
>X-Inquisit-AgentID: 75191854
>X-Inquisit-AgentName: drugs
>Date: Tue, 22 Dec 1998 03:52:59 PST
>
>
> Phoenix proves to be financial albatross for parent Meconic
> (Herald Scotland; 12/19/98)
>
> THE Meconic opiates-to-bittering agents chemicals group is hoping to
>announce the disposal of its Phoenix Chemicals contract chemicals
manufacturing
> subsidiary early in the new year.
>
> The business was acquired in 1996 for #6m, but it has suffered from the
>lumpy nature of its sales, and in the past six months from difficulties in
>developing new products.
>
> These problems increased its half-time loss to #929,000.
>
> The overall group interim pre-tax profits dropped 38% to #1.31m, and
>chairman Terry James is forecasting that the full-year outcome will be
slightly
> lower than the #6.75m achieved in the 1997-98 financial year.
>
> Robyn Coombs at house broker Merrill Lynch is expecting a total of
#6.3m and
> an improvement to #7.3m for 1999-2000, although she warns of some
>uncertainties.
>
> The interim dividend has been held at 2p per share.
>
> Meconic was floated in 1995 at 135p, and reached 422p at one point, but
it
>has been out of favour because it is a small capitalisation company -
currently
> worth #56m.
>
> The downgrading of the chemicals sector has not helped either.
>
> The shares reacted yesterday by dropping 12p to 156.5p where they trade
at
>12.7 times likely earnings.
>
> Finance director Jim Cook said that the Phoenix sale will remove much
of the
> volatility from the profits performance but he refused to say how much the
>disposal will bring.
>
> The on-going Macfarlan Smith operations saw an overall decline in
profits of
> 10% to #2.81m.
>
> Part of the blame was due to the changes made by the German government
to
>the way **drug** addicts are treated, including all addicts now having to
be
>registered with their addresses.
>
> As a consequence, sales of dihydrocodeine - which is used to wean them
from
>dependency - plunged, and the former German market of seven tonnes
annually of
>the material has now disappeared.
>
> Sales of bulk opiates rose by 17% in volume terms thanks in part to
>increased capacity at the Murrayfield plant in Edinburgh.
>
> That reflected the acquisition of the ICN Alkaloida of Hungary's
customer
>base in Europe and the Far East, although there was a fall of about a
sixth in
>non-codeine bulk opiates.
>
> Macfarlan Smith - as the only legal supplier of opiates in the UK - has
>suffered from high poppy straw prices due to poor harvests in India in
>particular.
>
> Chief executive Ken Green fears this could continue unless the Tasmanian
>poppy harvest next month is as good as he hopes and there is an
improvement in
>India.
>
> The company supported the Home Office in its successful court case in
London
> to prevent the import of bulk opiates from Norway.
>
> A subsidiary on Hoescht, Cox & Barnstaple had requested an import
licence.
>However, a 1961 United Nations' declaration stipulates that no country
which is
> self-sufficient in bulk opiates is allowed to import the product.
>
> The high-profile contract to supply galantamine to Shire
Pharmaceuticals and
> Janssen for the treatment of Alzheimer's Disease is now moving into full
gear.
>
> The company's new #7m plant, which is in the process of getting the US
Food
>and **Drug** Administration approval, will process this autumn's daffodil
bulb
>crop from which the active ingredient is extracted on a contract which runs
>until 2002.
>
> There is the question as to whether the synthetic version of galantamine
>will then be used, cutting out Meconic.
>
> However, it is now engaged on its own synthetic chemical - active on
behalf
>of another, undisclosed customer - which could, possibly, be more important
>than galantamine.
>
> The Murrayfield plant is also being used for this process, but other
>contracts are being sought from prospective clients who want extracts from
>natural materials.
>
> There was a 40% surge in **cocaine** volumes with the painkiller
>increasingly used in nasal surgery, and good demand for methadone which is
>used as a **heroin** substitute, and the pethidine pain killer.
>
> In the specialty fine chemicals division, sales of the Bitrex bittering
>agent were marginally firmer with the adversive being increasingly branded
on
>household products.
>
> Because of the expenditure on the new production facilities, debt rose
to
>more than #15m but should now begin to drop off.
>
> Chairman Terry James is retiring soon after nine years in the job to
make
>way for Peter Savage, until recently deputy chairman of Inspec.
>
> FACT FILE Interim 1998-99 1997-98 Pre-tax profit #1.31m #2.11m Turnover
>#26.8m #24.0m Dividend 2.0p 2.0p
>
> EPS 2.53p 4.09p
>
>(Copyright 1998)
>
> _____via IntellX_____
>
>{U:HeraldScotland-1222.00396} 12/19/98
>
>
>
>
>>
>[ ] Put an X here to receive a form through which you may inspect,
> modify, or stop this Agent. {drugs}
>
>
>
>Questions? Email -- we're here to help! Delivered
via the Inquisit(TM) business intelligence service
<http://www.inquisit.com>. All articles Copyright 1998 by their respective
source(s); all rights reserved. The information contained in this message
is for use by licensed Inquisit subscribers only and may not be forwarded,
distributed, published or broadcast in any medium.
>
------------------------------
Subj: need source for Jacob Sullum column
From: Mike Gogulski <>
Date: Tue, 22 Dec 1998 20:43:59 -0500
I don't yet have a source for this, but know that it comes from a
Knight-Ridder paper.
Anyone who can find it, please send to
Peace,
Mike Gogulski
MAP Editor
>Date: Tue, 22 Dec 1998 04:06:24 -0800
>From: NewsHound <>
>To:
>Reply-To:
>X-Hound-Title: dpr
>X-Hound-HitID: 130935504
>X-Hound-Score: 59
>X-Hound-Story-Date: 02:10 a.m. PST Tuesday , December 22, 1998
>X-Hound-Headline: Subtle as a Frying Pan
>Subject: Subtle as a Frying Pan
>
>
>
>NewsHound article from "dpr" hound, score "59."
>
>
>Published: Tuesday, December 22, 1998
>------------------------------------------------------------
>
>Subtle as a Frying Pan
>Today's hit-you-over-the-head anti-drug propaganda can't help but become
>tomorrow's camp.
>
>
>JacobSullum
>Syndicated Columnist The other day, I passed a car with a bumper sticker
>that read "DARE to Think for Yourself." At first, I thought it was a
>satirical jab at Drug Abuse Resistance Education, the mindlessly
>puritanical program that is omnipresent in American schools despite a lack
>of evidence that it does any good.
>
>On reflection, though, I wasn't sure how to interpret the exhortation on
>the sticker. DARE purports to teach kids how to resist "peer pressure," so
>its promoters probably do see themselves as encouraging independent
>thinking.
>
>According to this view, only a true iconoclast accepts the government's
>claims about drugs at face value. That conviction, of course, makes the
>bumper sticker even funnier; the only question is whether the humor was
>intended. I'm inclined to think it wasn't, since public discussion of the
>drug issue is rife with messages that subvert themselves.
>
>Look down in the men's room of certain restaurants, and you will see "Just
>Say No to Drugs" imprinted on the perforated plastic liner at the bottom of
>the urinal. Leaf through a catalog of school supplies, and you will come
>across various items bearing similar slogans, including the doormats kids
>trample as they enter and exit the building.
>
>In a similar vein, the Associated Press recently reported an embarrassing
>incident involving a Plainview, N.Y., business called the Bureau for
>At-Risk Youth. Last fall, the company marked Drug Prevention Week by
>distributing special pencils to hundreds of schools around the country.
>
>"Too Cool to Do Drugs," the pencils proclaimed. But after repeated
>sharpening, the message became "Cool to Do Drugs" and then simply "Do
>Drugs."
>
>The problem -- discovered, aptly enough, by a fourth-grader in Ticonderoga,
>N.Y. -- led to a recall of the defective product. The AP story said, "a new
>batch of pencils will have the message written in the opposite direction,
>so when they are sharpened, they (will) read `Too Cool to Do' and finally
>`Too Cool."'
>
>Too Cool to Do? Apparently, the new pencils will encourage kids to be
>teachers instead of drug addicts.
>
>Sometimes anti-drug messages subvert themselves less directly. A memorable
>scene in the 1989 film "Drugstore Cowboy" shows protagonist Matt Dillon
>laughing as he watches an anti-drug commercial on TV. This sort of reaction
>is not limited to junkies who knock over pharmacies.
>
>When the Partnership for a Drug-Free America started airing its "This is
>your brain on drugs" ad in the 1980s, the eye-catching image of a frying
>egg must have seemed awfully clever. But the spot quickly generated a rash
>of lampoons -- including a T-shirt announcing "This is your brain on drugs
>with a side of bacon" -- that neutralized any power the message may have
>had to scare people.
>
>The Partnership clearly did not learn anything from that experience,
>because its latest batch of ads -- co-sponsored by the federal government
>and financed with your tax dollars -- includes a spot that plays off the
>fried-egg theme: A sexy young woman who exemplifies the skinny "heroin
>chic" look smashes an egg and wrecks a kitchen with a frying pan while
>screaming about the damage done by drug use.
>
>The Partnership has thus taken a concept that was not exactly subtle to
>begin with and transformed it into a very loud, over-the-top bit of
>hectoring. If the spot has not already been mocked on a sketch comedy show,
>it's only because broadcasters have promised to reinforce the government's
>ad campaign, which is bringing them a lot of money.
>
>The combination of titillation and moralism in the frying-pan ad is
>reminiscent of the old paperbacks that warned people away from drugs even
>while treating them to a salacious peek at the demimonde. "A cheap and evil
>girl sets a hopped-up killer against a city," says the cover of William
>Irish's "Marihuana," which shows a menacing man smoking a joint over the
>prone body of a woman in a low-cut red dress.
>
>Books with titles like "Reefer Girl," "Dream Club" and "The Pusher"
>featured similar themes and illustrations. A sample of the covers is
>available as a set of magnets at a gift shop near my apartment.
>
>So if the folks at DARE, the Bureau for At-Risk Youth and the Partnership
>for a Drug-Free America ever wonder whether their work will amount to
>anything, they should take heart: Today's anti-drug propaganda is
>tomorrow's camp.
>
>Sullum, who lives in New York, is senior editor of Reason magazine.
>Distributed by Creators Syndicate, which maintains a Web site
>(www.creators.com) from which Sullum can be e-mailed.
>
>
>
>------------------------------------------------------------
>NewsHound is a service of Knight-Ridder, Inc.
>For more information, write to:
>
>This material is copyrighted and may not be republished without permission
>of the originating newspaper or wire service.
>------------------------------------------------------------
>
>
>For more information, visit the NewsHound website at http://www.newshound.com
>or send an email to .
>
------------------------------
End of Maptalk-Digest V98 #502
******************************
Mark Greer () ___ ___ _ _ _ _
Media Awareness Project /' _ ` _ `\ /'_`)('_`\
P. O. Box 651 | ( ) ( ) |( (_| || (_) )
Porterville, CA 93258 (_) (_) (_) \__,_)| ,__/
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URL: http://www.mapinc.org/lists/ (_)
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