DPFH NEWSLETTER JUNE 2000


	NEWSLETTER JUNE 2000 VOLUME VIII ISSUE 2


	NOW'S THE TIME! DPFH needs your support


	Another "First" for Hawai'i by Pam Lichty


	As all of you - and much of the U.S. -- know by now, on April 25th the Hawai'i State Legislature passed an historic bill permitting the medical use of marijuana. Governor Cayetano, who introduced his own legislation on the subject in 1999, has said he will sign the measure. This will make Hawai'i the first state to enact such a law by legislation rather than through the voter initiative process. Medical marijuana proponents elsewhere are watching us closely for two reasons: only half the states have an initiative process, and it is far less expensive


	In the extensive media coverage that followed the bill's passage, some inaccurate statements about its content were published. This is understandable since statutory language is an odd form of English and the bill went through many permutations on its way to final passage as SB 862, Senate Draft II, House Draft I. The bill itself can be downloaded at our website: www.drugsense.org/dpfhi. The bill is decidedly imperfect. One of the trade-offs of going the legislative route is the many compromises that must be made to secure passage (at a critical juncture, the bill passed the Senate by a one vote margin.) So


	Another Date-Rape Drug . . . Or a Narco-pharmaceutical Conspiracy?


	Another congressional act that went unnoticed by the general public was the scheduling of yet another "drug". That Congress would schedule a drug was, in the first place, highly unusual, since the DEA is the agency that is legally responsible for doing so. That congress would schedule a substance that was sold in health food stores until 1991 makes the action even more unusual. Perhaps there is more to the story than meets the eye. The "drug" that Congress recently placed on Schedule I (alongside heroin, cocaine, marijuana) is Gamma-HydroxyButyrate, more popularly known as GHB or "Liquid E." It has also been referred to - along with Rohypnol - as


	"date-rape" drug. The reason Congress scheduled it rather than the DEA is that GHB, according to the FDA, is not a drug. Because the DEA could not schedule it, its agents went first to state legislators to persuade them to outlaw the substance. After several gullible state legislatures, including Hawai'i, bought the story and passed draconian laws against it, the agents then went to work on the dimwits in Washington, who proceeded to criminalize it through passing H.R. 2130, the "Hillary J. Farias Date Rape Prevention Drug Act of 1999."


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