New Mexico’s SBIRT program, Sangre de Cristo, received the New Mexico Primary Care Association's Program of the Year Award. SBIRT is designed to expand the continuum of care available for those struggling with, or at risk of developing, substance use disorders. As of February 2005, more than 130,000 patients nationwide have been screened through seven SBIRT grantees. President Bush’s FY ‘06 budget request includes $30.8 million for SBIRT—an increase of $5.8 million over FY ‘05 funds.

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Director Walters was in Orlando, Florida yesterday, where he highlighted student drug testing as an effective prevention and intervention tool at two national conferences, the National High School Athletic Coaches Association Convention and the American School Counselors Association Conference.

Director Walters emphasized the dangers of youth steroid abuse and the importance of random student drug-testing to 150 coaches at the Athletic Coaches Association event. Over 1,200 counselors, who are also on the front lines of prevention and intervention, were in attendance at the American School Counselors Association. He discussed the Bush Administration’s commitment to reducing drug abuse and its support for increasing treatment funding and the benefits of random student drug-testing.

While Director Walters was in Orlando, he had several media interviews, which included a live television interview on WESH-ABC. To read more please click here.

Click here for more information on how to start a student drug-testing program in your community.

On Saturday, June 25, 2005, the Bi-national Alliance of Border Coalitions is hosting a bi-national border-wide observance of International Day Against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking. Events will be taking place from the Texas-Chihuahua border all the way to the California-Baja border. While each region will have its own unique way of observing the day, the message is consistent and demonstrates the unification of prevention, treatment, and supply reduction efforts.

The Bi-national Alliance of Border Coalitions was formed in March 2005 with the support of ONDCP, CADCA, and CSAP. This body serves as a mechanism to develop and continue cooperation between collations on both sides of the border working together to reduce alcohol and drug abuse.

Please click here for more information.

Marijuana and Opium cultivation is declining due to the intensive efforts by the Mexican government. Marijuana cultivation fell 23 percent between 2003 and 2004. Opium poppy cultivation also fell in 2004, declining 27 percent. This estimate is particularly important because most of the Mexican-produced heroin, and a substantial portion of the marijuana, supplies the U.S. drug market. In order to monitor production of illegal drugs where the cultivation affects the United States, satellite imagery and survey-sampling are used to produce these estimates.

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Today, state drug czars and mayors' chiefs of staff from around the country gathered at ONDCP in Washington, D.C. to discuss some of the important drug issues communities are facing. ONDCP's Deputy Director for State and Local Affairs, Scott Burns, hosted officials from 27 states and 11 cities, including Idaho, Boston, Texas, Chicago, Arizona, Portland, and Guam. Attendees were briefed on national progress made in the areas of prevention, treatment, and supply reduction and shared experiences and expertise with their colleagues on developing and implementing balanced state and local drug strategies.

Deputy Director Burns said, "Bringing state and local officials together offered an important opportunity to develop relationships and share the resources and information needed to further reduce drug use in every city and every state."

Click here to learn about the drug situation in your city or state

In a decisive 161–264 vote, opposing an amendment to H.R. 2862, the United States House of Representatives sent a resounding message that it will continue to protect the integrity of our scientific research and review process for medicines.

The Hinchey Amendment would have restricted enforcement of the Controlled Substances Act and would have circumvented the recent Supreme Court decision to uphold the Federal Government’s authority to prohibit the local cultivation and use of marijuana.

The defeat of the Hinchey Amendment underscores the fact that making marijuana legal under the guise of medicine not only would send our young people the wrong message about the drug’s harmfulness, but it could undermine the important progress we have made in reducing youth drug use by 17 percent over the last three years.

Want to know how the Representative from your district voted? Please click here to find out.

Today Congressman Hinchey and Congressman Rohrabacher proposed an amendment to the Department of Justice appropriations bill that would prohibit the DOJ from using funds to prevent the States of Alaska, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, Vermont, or Washington from implementing state "medical" marijuana laws. The U.S. House of Representatives struck down the amendment by a resounding vote of 264 to 161, dealing another defeat to "medical" smoked marijuana.

We recently saw another story about the effectiveness of random student drug-testing in schools—this time in Gainesville, GA. We are continually pleased to hear the resounding success of random student drug testing in schools and communities all across the country.

Hall County Athletic Director Gordon Higgins said the system's year-old student-athlete drug testing policy was a hit, especially among the athletes themselves.

"The feedback we got from the student-athletes was that the program was having the desired effect of discouraging the use of drugs by the athletes in general," Higgins said.

Scott Burns has been the Deputy Director of State and Local Affairs at the ONDCP since 2002. Mr. Burns travels throughout country representing President Bush and Director Walters, meeting with state and local officials on issues affecting their communities; such as, marijuana, methamphetamine, and reducing prescription drug abuse.

Most recently, Burns was appointed by the White House to serve as the United States' representative to the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), an international organization charged with eliminating doping and drug use in sport.

Here is an excerpt from an article about Mr. Burns by Thomas Burr from the Salt Lake Tribune:

Scott Burns used to tell a funny anecdote about his visit to the big city.

It was the former Iron County attorney's favorite story about dealing with folks who swear every other word, drive like maniacs and flash unkind hand gestures.

Burns has new stories now.

More than three years in Washington, D.C., will do that to you. The native Utahn, tapped by President Bush in 2002 to be a deputy to the nation's drug czar, has crisscrossed the country, visiting with police, court and elected officials in all 50 states. He has toured the U.S.-Mexican border, ridden shotgun with Drug Enforcement Administration agents and spoken to countless groups about efforts to curb drug use.

"Now that is the norm," says Burns, an energetic 47-year-old who misses the Utah vistas but treasures the chance to make a difference nationwide.

"It has been a great adventure, it really has. I have been places and have been able to do things that I never thought I would."

Four years ago, Burns drove two minutes from home to work in a cramped and aging office up a wooden staircase from the hometown pharmacy on Cedar City's Main Street. Now, he works a block from the White House in an office adorned with a bronze seal that proclaims "Executive Office of the President of the United States."

It's a stark difference.

Here is an excerpt from a New York Times article (registration required) by Lessley Anderson about medical marijuana:

I AM not one of the "seriously ill Californians" that Proposition 215, the state's medical marijuana law passed by voters in 1996, was designed to help. I'm a 31-year-old marathon runner who's generally in peak health, unless I've had a few too many margaritas. But two months ago, I decided to read Proposition 215 to find out just how sick you had to be to obtain marijuana legally.

I made a startling discovery. The state health code listing the conditions for which marijuana can be recommended by a doctor includes migraine right after AIDS, cancer and glaucoma. Every month or so, I get a migraine headache from dehydration or the stress of a deadline. Although I had a hard time believing someone like me might qualify as a medical marijuana patient, there it was in cold print.

In the previous few years, some three dozen Amsterdam-style marijuana markets had opened up in San Francisco, their forbidden aromas spilling out from behind closed doors in nearly every neighborhood. I had a perverse desire to sample the wares of my local marijuana shop, the way I shop for a wheel of Brie at my neighborhood fromagerie.

This was all before last Monday's ruling by the United States Supreme Court that users of medical marijuana, in the 11 states that permit it, can be prosecuted by the federal government. But neither the State of California nor the City and County of San Francisco has yet announced any plans to change their medical marijuana policies as a result of the decision.

Even though a doctor's note won't prevent medical marijuana patients from being arrested by the federal authorities, such prosecutions have been extremely rare. To judge by the laissez-faire attitudes that I encountered - from the health department, to sympathetic doctors, to the marijuana emporiums - little seems likely to change for those seeking access to medical marijuana in San Francisco. And gaining access was remarkably easy.

To get in the door of my local marijuana store, the Green Cross, you need a city-issued identification card showing you have a doctor's recommendation for marijuana use. The only person I knew who had ever had one of these "cannabis club cards" was a dialysis patient. But after reading the letter of the law, it looked possible that even I might be entitled to one. I decided to try.

Youth Anti-drug ads from the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) were awarded the highly prestigious gold "Effie" at the New York American Marketing Association’s (NYAMA) annual awards ceremony on Tuesday night. The award, the highest honor for a public service campaign, was given for the agency’s National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign Early Intervention youth advertising.

The Early Intervention campaign is a series of five 30-second television ads aimed at teens to show the power of peers to stop substance abuse among their friends. The winning youth ads, "Lake," "Truck," "Letter," "Supermarket," and "Car," can be viewed at www.mediacampaign.org.

ONDCP Director John Walters said, "These ads have made a big difference in teens’ perceptions of drug use. The initiative helps build on our progress in reducing teen drug use by 17 percent over the last three years by focusing on those closest to youth drug users – their peers."

The U.N.'s International Narcotics Control Board has issued a statement regarding this week's SCOTUS decision. In their press release, they recognized the need to promote science and research about "medical" marijuana and not the pro-drug politics of legalization. Here's part of the text:

"The International Narcotics Control Board (INCB) welcomes the decision of the United States Supreme Court, made on 6 June, reaffirming that the cultivation and use of cannabis, even if it is for “medical” use, should be prohibited.

“INCB has for many years pointed out that the evidence that cannabis might be useful as a medicine is insufficient”, said Professor Hamid Ghodse, President, INCB. “Countries should not authorise the use of cannabis as a medicine until conclusive results based on research are available. Sound scientific evidence for its safety, efficacy and usefulness is required to justify its use in medical practice. Any research into cannabis as a medicine should involve the World Health Organization, as the responsible international health agency.”

INCB has expressed concern that organizations advocating the legalization of cannabis, and of narcotic drugs in general, are using the issue of medical cannabis as a “back door” to legalisation. “Cannabis is the most widely abused drug in the United States and in the world,” Professor Ghodse said. “Cannabis is classified under international conventions as a drug with a number of personal and public health problems. It is not a ‘soft’ drug as some people would have you believe."

More reaction to Monday's Supreme Court ruling. Here's the latest from today's San Francisco Chronicle on Alameda County's action to stop a pot clinic from opening in their community:

"Because some neighbors do not want medical marijuana distributed near homes or schools, the board had considered opening a dispensary in Fairmount Hospital. Doing so, county officials said, would make it easier to regulate the drug and screen patients.

But Supervisor Gail Steele said Monday's Supreme Court decision in a California case doomed the idea, which she said may have been impractical anyway. Steele said supervisors feared losing federal health funding if the dispensary were in a county-run hospital."

The Chronicle's Wednesday edition also reported extensively on the State-wide impact of the ruling:

"Alameda County supervisors moved ahead with regulations on for creating more medical marijuana dispensaries, but backed away from locating one in a county hospital because they worried it might endanger federal health care funds following a new U.S. Supreme Court ruling on medicinal cannabis use.

On the day after the Supreme Court affirmed the federal government's right to prosecute pot-smoking patients in state's with medical marijuana laws, other California communities responded to the justice's 6-3 ruling in other ways. They included instructing local law enforcement to stop returning marijuana seized from people citing a doctor's recommendation to enacting temporary bans on news clubs.

In Northern California's Mill Valley, for example, officials unanimously approved a 45-day moratorium on cannabis clubs Monday night while rejecting an application from a group that wanted to open the city's first. California's Department of Health Services said it would have to review the high court's ruling before moving forward with a plan to create a statewide database of county-issued cannabis users cards.

San Francisco Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi, who has been developing rules for monitoring the dispensaries that some see as too laid-back even by liberal city standards, said Tuesday the court's decision means that local officials will have to dance "a very fine pirouette between federal, state and local legal and policy land mines and the confidentiality of patients themselves."

"Communities that overwhelmingly support medical marijuana are now becoming host to clubs that operate in a regulation-free environment, and that creates an uneasy tension between everybody involved," Mirkarimi said.

Even before the Supreme Court issued its ruling Monday, cities throughout California and nine other states that sanction medicinal pot use were wrestling with how to regulate the cannabis clinics, co-ops and clubs popping up in their communities.

Last year, the city of Oakland cracked down on the dispensaries taking root in a section of downtown that had acquired the nickname "Oaksterdam," limiting the number of clubs to four and forcing at least eight others to close. More than a dozen communities have crafted similar laws, while many others have instituted temporary bans while they come up with their own."

From the Associated Press:

"Vikings running back Smith suspended for upcoming season

EDEN PRAIRIE, Minn.—Troubled Minnesota Vikings running back Onterrio Smith has been suspended by the NFL for the entire 2005 season for violating the league’s substance abuse policy.

The announcement had been expected for several weeks, ever since Vikings head coach Mike Tice suspended Smith indefinitely after a run-in at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport on April 21, when Smith was stopped after his bag set off a screening device. A search found several vials of dried urine and “The Original Whizzinator,” which is marketed as a way to beat drug tests."

More bad news today for drug legalization groups who have preyed upon the compassion of Americans to advance their agenda of legalizing marijuana. According to KITV 4 news in Hawaii:

"In Hawaii, physicians have prescribed more than 2,500 people marijuana for medical purposes. U.S. Attorney Ed Kubo said the ruling will end that.

"I believe medical marijuana is dead in Hawaii. It's finished. It's gone forever. Congress has decided, according to the court, to make marijuana illegal for all purposes except FDA testing and federal law will preempt state law under those circumstances," Kubo said."

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The fallout continues after yesterday's Supreme Court ruling on so-called "medical" marijuana. One activist said that "The ruling could have a chilling effect" and prevent state legislatures from pursuing medical marijuana laws. Here's what we've seen since yesterday's ruling:

• Yesterday, the State of Oregon announced that they would stop issuing “medical” marijuana cards to patients as a result of the decision.

• Rhode Island Governor Donald Carcieri yesterday pledged to veto medical marijuana legislation pending in the Rhode Island General Assembly in light of the U.S. Supreme Court ruling.

• The Connecticut legislature passed a “medical” marijuana bill on Saturday but now passage in the house is considered doubtful according to State officials. According to the Hartford Courant, Christopher Morano, the State's Chief Attorney said that, "I think the Supreme Court's decision today will hamper the state's effort to pass a medical marijuana bill...In light of the ruling, any bill that the state might pass would be largely symbolic."

• Dozens of California cities and counties including San Francisco, Fresno and Sausalito have already passed or are now considering moratoriums on allowing pot clubs to operate in their communities. Just yesterday, Mill Valley banned marijuana dispensaries in their communities as a result of the decision.

• In Alaska, state Attorney General David Marquez indicated the state may suspend Alaska's medical marijuana registration list in response to the U.S. Supreme Court decision Monday allowing the federal government to override state laws allowing medical marijuana.

The Supreme Court ruled against medical marijuana today in a stinging defeat to the pro-drug legalization forces. Here's the ONDCP statement.

STATEMENT BY THE WHITE HOUSE DRUG CZAR ABOUT THE U.S. SUPREME COURT’S DECISION REGARDING SO-CALLED MEDICAL MARIJUANA

     (Washington, D.C.)—John Walters, Director of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP), and President Bush’s “Drug Czar,” today issued the following statement regarding the United States Supreme Court’s decision regarding so-called medical marijuana.

     Director Walters said, “Today’s decision marks the end of medical marijuana as a political issue. Our Nation has the highest standards and most sophisticated institutions in the world for determining the safety and effectiveness of medication. Our national medical system relies on proven scientific research, not popular opinion. To date, science and research have not determined that smoking a crude plant is safe or effective. We have a responsibility as a civilized society to ensure that the medicine Americans receive from their doctors is effective, safe, and free from the pro-drug politics that are being promoted in America under the guise of medicine.

     Too many of our citizens suffer from pain and chronic illnesses. Smoking illegal drugs may make some people “feel better.” However, civilized societies and modern day medical practices differentiate between inebriation and the safe, supervised delivery of proven medicine by legitimate doctors. In 1999, the Institute of Medicine (IOM) published a review of the available scientific evidence in an effort to assess the potential health benefits of marijuana and its constituent cannabinoids. The review concluded that smoking marijuana is not recommended for any long-term medical use, and a subsequent IOM report declared, “marijuana is not a modern medicine.”

     For years, pro-drug groups seeking the legalization of marijuana and other drugs have preyed on the compassion of Americans to promote their political agenda and bypass F.D.A.’s rigorous standards which have safeguarded our medical supply for over 100 years. Marinol—the synthetic form of THC and the psychoactive ingredient contained in marijuana—is already legally available for prescription by physicians whose patients suffer from pain and chronic illness.”

A huge loss for pro-marijuana advocates today.

"WASHINGTON—Federal authorities may prosecute sick people who smoke pot on doctors' orders, the Supreme Court ruled Monday, concluding that state medical marijuana laws don't protect users from a federal ban on the drug.

The decision is a stinging defeat for marijuana advocates who had successfully pushed 10 states to allow the drug's use to treat various illnesses.

Justice John Paul Stevens, writing the 6-3 decision, said that Congress could change the law to allow medical use of marijuana.

The closely watched case was an appeal by the Bush administration in a case that it lost in late 2003. At issue was whether the prosecution of medical marijuana users under the federal Controlled Substances Act was constitutional."

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Director Walters visited Bal Harbour, Florida last week to address the annual meeting of the National Association of State Alcohol and Drug Abuse Directors. During his remarks, he discussed the Administration's support for increasing treatment funding and the benefits of random student drug testing. He also discussed drug testing during interviews on radio stations in Tallahassee, Orlando, Jacksonville, and Tampa.

During the last session of the Florida state legislature, two bills were introduced which pertained to testing students for steroids. They both failed to make it out of the state legislature before the legislature adjourned.

Here's part of the report from Saturday's Miami Herald:

"Random drug screening is an effective measure that local school boards should consider adopting, said John Walters, addressing the National Association of State Alcohol and Drug Abuse Directors on Friday in Bal Harbour.

"[Random drug testing in public high schools] would dramatically change the face of substance abuse immediately," Walters said. Such a policy has been effective in the workforce and the military, he said.

"The question is: Why not apply this to young people?"....

Walters said it's "common sense" to focus on young people, who are more likely to experiment with drugs or alcohol.

Instead of seeing the tests as a punishment to the students, testing should be viewed as a "public tool," he said."

Listen to Director Walters on News and Notes with Ed Gordon on NPR. He appeared on the program this morning to dispel "drug war" myths and discuss how drug use takes away our freedoms.