Free Republic

A CARGO vessel thought to be the mother ship of an international drugs-smuggling operation was escorted in to Sydney last night after being boarded by the Royal Australian Navy in a high-seas raid. Police, navy personnel and customs officials went on board the North Korean- registered Pong Su about 70 miles off the central New South Wales coast after a chase through stormy seas to international waters. Surveillance teams were alerted last Wednesday, when 50 kilograms (110lb) of high-grade heroin believed to have come from Golden Triangle in South-East Asia was found on a beach at Lorne, on the coast...

THE O'REILLY FACTOR February 21, 2003 FACTOR Follow-Up O'REILLY: Thanks for staying with us. I'm Bill O'Reilly. And, in THE FACTOR "Follow-Up" Segment tonight, bad news in the drug war. The U.S. inexplicably did not destroy the poppy fields in Afghanistan, and the Bush administration has not moved the military to the borders to back up the Border Patrol as the patrol has requested. Result: It is business as usual for drug dealers around the country, and some believe America is waging a phony war on narcotics. Joining us now from Washington is Heidi Bonnett from the National Defense Council...

JALALABAD, Afghanistan - When the sun peeks over the horizon and a cold, November fog covers the fields, Afghanistan's poppy growers get to work. This is planting season in the country that last year regained the title of world's largest producer of opium. But that distinction, however dubious, may be short-lived. Some farmers this year are not planting poppies, the source of the opium used to make heroin. They say they fear jail because of a new government ban on poppy growing - and their fear could be a first sign that Afghans outside the capital, Kabul, are following the...

On Veterans Day By Jim Garamone American Forces Press Service WASHINGTON, Nov. 6, 2002 – Up until the 1960s veterans groups used the red poppy as the symbol of Veterans Day. In Great Britain, it still is. The symbol comes from a poem written by a Canadian doctor John M. McCrae in 1915: "In Flanders fields the poppies blow Between the crosses, row on row, That mark our place; and in the sky The larks, still bravely singing, fly Scarce heard amid the guns below. We are the Dead. Short days ago We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,...

Cannabis poses a greater threat to health than tobacco, lung experts have warned. The warning comes on the day that Home Secretary David Blunkett is due to make a Commons statement about the future of government drug policy. Many young people are simply not aware that smoking cannabis may put them at increased risk of respiratory cancers and infections . Dame Helena Shovelton: The Home Affairs Select Committee has recommended that cannabis is downgraded from a class B drug to class C. This would mean that possession would lead to a caution, rather than arrest. The British Lung Foundation is...