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wednesday, may 5, 2010
LOCAL HOME PAGE
65, 9 a.m. 77, noon 81, 5 p.m. 73, 9 p.m.
Obituaries Helen M. Ranney, 89, created a process that made it easier to identify carriers of the sickle cell gene. B7
Ask Tom
Post food critic Tom Sietsema will be online at 11 a.m. to discuss options for dining in Washington. Go to
washingtonpost.com/local.
THE DISTRICT
School lunch overhaul
The D.C. Council approves tough standards for school nutrition and exercise, but drops a proposal for calorie limits after a request by the U.S. Agriculture Department. B6
Medical marijuana a challenge for doctors
If Congress signs off on D.C. law, details like dosage left up to patient
by Lena H. Sun
For doctors such as Pradeep
Chopra, long accustomed to pre- scribing carefully tested medica- tions by the exact milligram, medical marijuana presents a particular conundrum. On Tuesday, the D.C. Council gave final approval to a bill es-
tablishing a legal medical mari- juana program. If Congress signs off, District doctors — like their counterparts in 14 states, includ- ing Rhode Island, where Chopra works — will be allowed to add pot to the therapies they can rec- ommend to certain patients, who will then eat it, smoke it or va- porize it until they decide they are, well, high enough. The exact dosage and means of
delivery — as well as the some- times perplexing process of ob- taining a drug that remains ille- gal under federal law — will be left largely up to the patient. And
that, Chopra said, upends the way doctors are used to dis- pensing medication, giving the strait-laced medical establish- ment a whiff of the freewheeling world of weed. Even in states that allow for
marijuana’s medical use, doctors cannot write prescriptions for it because of the drug’s status as an illegal substance. Physicians can only recommend it. And they have no control over the quality of the drug their patients ac- quire.
“I worry about that,” said Cho- pra, a pain medicine specialist.
“That’s what’s throwing a lot of [doctors] off.” The District’s measure, like those elsewhere, specifies cer- tain conditions and illnesses that qualify for medical marijuana. A patient who has HIV, glaucoma, multiple sclerosis, cancer or a chronic debilitating condition will be able to receive a doctor’s recommendation to possess up to four ounces in a 30-day period. Unlike in many states, the Dis-
trict law would not allow pa- tients and caregivers to grow
marijuana continued on B5
The three 18-year-old suspects charged in the death of D.C. principal Brian Betts are, from left, Deontra Q. Gray, Alante Saunders and Sharif T. Lancaster. They were ordered held without bond Tuesday.
Teens charged in slaying have criminal records
Millions participate in web of cybersex services, experts say
by David Nakamura
and Paul Schwartzman
When D.C. principal Brian
Betts contacted a phone-sex chat line to arrange a meeting that po- lice said led to his slaying last month, he was entering a vast world of telephone and online so- cializing used by millions of Americans each day, said experts who monitor the largely unreg- ulated but highly profitable in- dustry.
PHOTOS BY KATHERINE FREY/THE WASHINGTON POST
The annual Blue Mass at St. Patrick’s Catholic Church in the District marks the beginning of National Police Week in Washington.
Honoring those officers who made the ultimate sacrifice
lished in 1962 by President John F. Kennedy and a joint resolution of Congress, planned events pay tribute to those who have lost their lives in the line of duty.
T
Metro initiatives for safety, service
Interim leader presents plan; oversight panel responds to U.S. audit
by Ann Scott Tyson
Metro’s interim general man-
ager, Richard Sarles, outlined steps Tuesday to ease rush-hour congestion on the Red Line and tackle chronic escalator and el- evator problems as part of his six- month action plan to improve customer service and safety. Meanwhile, the organization responsible for overseeing safety at Metro, the Tri-State Oversight Committee, said Tuesday that it is
undergoing a major overhaul in response to a Federal Transit Ad- ministration audit that found that it lacked sufficient authority and independence to be effective. During a roundtable with re-
COURTLAND MILLOY
Courtland Milloy is away. His column will resume when he re- turns.
porters at Metro headquarters, Sarles offered new details of his plan to improve Metro’s service reliability and prevent accidents. To ease traffic jams on the Red Line during peak travel periods, Sarles said that starting in June or July, he would adjust Red Line schedules for the first time since 2004, slightly lengthening the time between trains but adding more eight-car trains. The goal is to reduce congestion without sac- rificing capacity. Several factors have combined to clog Red Line trains during rush hour, including crowded platforms, which slow boarding; manual train operations, re- quired since June’s fatal Red Line crash; and the opening of the New York Avenue Station, Sarles said. “Because of the congestion, we can’t stick to the schedule,” he said, and so it must be adjusted. The change would increase the time between trains from 21 three minutes between Grosve-
⁄2
metro continued on B4
to
ens of thousands of law enforcement officers from around the world converge on Washington every May to participate in National Police Week. Estab-
A police officer’s cap rests at the front of the church during Tuesday’s Blue Mass.
Dozens of companies use phone lines and Web pages to of- fer traditional dating services and more explicit adult-oriented hookups. The services, descend- ants of the 900 and 976 pay-per- call chat lines popular beginning in the mid-1980s, entice users with a chance to connect with strangers anonymously and then, potentially, meet them in person for sexual encounters.
Some of the most popular adult-oriented chat sites have more than 1million visitors log- ging in each day, said Mark Brooks, a consultant who edits an industry news site called Online-
personalswatch.com. What happens after users turn over their credit cards for month- ly membership payments (or af- ter they listen to ads on one of the growing number of free sites) is largely left to chance — and users are generally good about taking precautions, Brooks and others in the industry said.
chat lines continued on B5
D.C. PRINCIPAL KILLED IN APRIL
Past cases include theft, a sex offense
by Dan Morse and Keith L. Alexander
The three 18-year-olds charged with killing a well-known D.C. principal have lengthy criminal records that include violent crimes and in one case charges of a sex offense at age 11. In addition, one had abscond- ed from a juvenile detention cen- ter, another had been released to his mother against the wishes of a judge and the third was wanted at the time of the slaying for fail- ing to appear in court, according to court records in Montgomery County and the District. “These guys should not have been walking the streets. Now we see what happened: A principal beloved by his students was mur- dered,” said Gregory Wims, presi- dent of the Victims’ Rights Foun- dation based in Gaithersburg. Brian Betts, 42, was found shot
to death in an upstairs bedroom of his Silver Spring home April 15. Montgomery police said he had met at least one of the sus- pects on a phone-sex chat line in the hours before he was killed. All three suspects — Sharif T.
Lancaster, Alante Saunders and Deontra Q. Gray — made their first appearances in court Tues- day and were ordered held with- out bond on charges of murder,
suspects continued on B5
Montgomery backs out of raises for public employees
In preliminary votes, council moves to break terms of union deals
by Michael Laris
The Montgomery County Council on Tuesday unanimously declared its intent to break the terms of contracts with public employee unions by freezing pay and ending controversial benefits arrangements known as “phan- tom” cost-of-living increases.
The collective bargaining agreement with the police union, backed by a recent arbitrator’s de- cision, called for a 3.5 percent raise for members in the fiscal year starting July 1. The contract with the firefighters union called for a 10.5 percent raise for most members. The council votes, which were required by law, are preliminary. Final decisions will come later this month. But they mark the be- ginning of a series of difficult de- cisions after weeks of pained rhetoric, and they signal the council’s direction. The council also indicated
Tuesday that it would continue to push for across-the-board fur- loughs for all county employees, despite the threat of a lawsuit from Montgomery’s powerful public school system, which has rejected the unpaid days off. As they decide how many work- ers to lay off, how high to boost taxes, which union contract pro- vision to back out of, and where to cut deepest, council members say they are trying to balance many compelling but competing needs. “There are many moving parts
that have yet to be put together,” said council President Nancy Flo- reen (D-At Large). “It’s a great jig-
saw puzzle — a Rubik’s Cube. We’re just starting.”
Gino Renne, president of the
general government employees union, said it is “premature” to reach any conclusions about final outcomes because county law re- quires another round of negotia- tions. “All unions accept the fiscal challenge. That’s clear to us,” Renne said. What council mem- bers “need to do is let the process play itself out and then we’ll see where we are,” he said. Just how do officials who be-
council continued on B6
Montgomery council gives the go-ahead to ‘science city’ plan
Bioscience center could boost county’s efforts for new transit system
by Miranda S. Spivack
The Montgomery County Council’s unanimous approval Tuesday of a plan to spur crea- tion of a $10 billion, 17.5 million- square-foot center for bioscience research could strengthen coun- ty efforts to win support for a new rapid transit system to serve
the area. County officials hope the de- velopment, which could be two decades in the making, could po- sition Montgomery as an inter- national center for biosciences that would rival North Carolina’s Research Triangle or Palo Alto, Calif. The county is home to al- most 300 biotech companies and institutions, including MedIm- mune, Human Genome Sciences, United Therapeutics, Qiagen, Novavax and Howard Hughes Medical Institute. The project would be built west of Interstate 270 off Shady Grove Road.
“This creates the market and the density that the Corridor Cit- ies Transitway needs,” said Mont- gomery Planning Board Chair- man Royce Hanson, whose staff devised much of the plan ap- proved by the council. The “sci- ence city” could triple the num- ber of jobs in the area west of In- terstate 270 to at least 60,000, many of them high-paying. The development also will include re- tail and 9,000 housing units. The transitway would link the Shady Grove Station on Metro’s Red Line with the science city and run north, ending a few
miles south of Clarksburg. Without the additional riders, the light-rail line endorsed by the County Council would be too costly to compete for federal money. The allocation of federal transit funds is based largely on whether transit projects save enough passengers enough time to justify the federal investment. Hanson said it would be three
to five years before county resi- dents see big changes in the area, because it takes several years for businesses, academic institu-
science continued on B10
B
DC MD VA S
JOHN KELLY’S WASHINGTON
Sweet relief for some troops
Army Sgt. Shane Welsh visits a couple Montgomery County schools to tell tales and thank students and their relatives for notes and treats sent to his unit in Iraq. B2
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