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Posts published by “Fred Gardner”

The Actual War On Drugs

On a typical morning in Department 10, one of the four municipal courts on the first floor of the Hall of Justice, 26 people wait…

Coincidental Killings

The Tran case had been on hold for more than three years when it finally went to trial in the fall of 2000. The corporate…

Parking Problems

The Beatles serenaded Lovely Rita in 1960s Liverpool, but Y2K San Francisco was choking with cars, tickets were costly, and outbursts of rage against Parking…

Ferris Fain Comes Up Again

Hardly any subject is more than two degrees of separation removed from marijuana. This week Bruce Jenkins of the Chronicle picked an all-star team of…

Supreme Hypocrisy

Ruth Bader Ginsburg's connection to the Hallinan saga is indirect and faint, but the AVA is a newspaper, above all, and the Supreme Court is now…

The Trial of Ken Hayes & Mike Foley

In May, 1999, two men who ran CHAMP, a cannabis dispensary in San Francisco's Castro district —Ken Hayes, then 33, and Mike Foley, 34— were…

Liaison to the Pot Partisans

Over the Transom #1 (a sampler) Terence Hallinan's pro-marijuana perspective led some growers from outside the city to contact the DA's office seeking the green…

A Farm in the City

"My liaison to the medical marijuana community" is how District Attorney Terence Hallinan sometimes introduced me. "Public Information officer" was the job description, and I…

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