FC: Congress plans to outlaw links to weed web sites, drug info

[Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>]

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Background:
http://www.politechbot.com/cgi-bin/politech.cgi?name=methamphetamine
http://www.politechbot.com/cgi-bin/declan.cgi?term=methamphetamine
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,21152,00.html
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http://www.motherjones.com/news_wire/methweb.html

   Speed Limit

   A bill banning Internet sites that publish or even link to drug-making
   information looks set to sail through Congress -- to the dismay of
   free-speech advocates.

   by Matthew B. Stannard
   April 27, 2000

   A bill banning Internet sites that publish or even link to drug-making
   information looks set to sail through Congress -- to the dismay of
   free-speech advocates.

   by Matthew B. Stannard
   April 27, 2000

   Watch it. The article you're reading could soon be illegal.

   Why? Because of this link.

   Click it, and up pops a site advertising bongs, pipes, and other pot
   paraphenalia. The site is Canadian -- advertising drug paraphernalia
   is illegal in the United States. But if a bill passed by the United
   States Senate last year becomes law, it would also be illegal to link
   to that page with the "intent to facilitate or promote" its business.

   Depending on a federal prosecutor's interpretation of "intent," that
   could make posting this article a federal crime.

   It's one of the more disturbing effects of the Methamphetamine
   Anti-Proliferation Act of 1999. The bill, by Sen. John Ashcroft,
   R-Mo., is aimed at stopping the spread of crank. But it also has
   publishers, civil libertarians, and drug reformers arming for battle
   over free-speech rights.

   "There's just no question there's a First Amendment issue," said
   Richard Boire, a California attorney and director of the Center for
   Cognitive Liberty and Ethics. "You're essentially getting into
   mind-policing."

   As the title implies, the bill was designed to fight the spread of
   methamphetamine -- a goal so popular that liberal Sen. Dianne
   Feinstein, D-Calif., joined with her conservative sometimes-rival,
   Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, in writing one of the legislation's crucial
   sections.

   Now awaiting action on a similar version in the House, the bill
   stiffens penalties for meth makers and includes money for busting labs
   and treating crank addicts. But it also tackles one of the knottier
   roots of the crank problem: recipies for do-it-yourself
   methamphetamine posted to the World Wide Web.

   Such recipes are all over the Internet; some explain how to extract
   ephedrine from cold medicine, while others describe how to set up a
   basic lab. Still others exist as electronic protestors against the
   Ashcroft bill itself. Law enforcement officials blame the online
   recipies for a rise in crank labs. Drug Enforcement Administration
   officials busted 1,627 labs in 1998, a number that has doubled over
   the past decade.

   [...]

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