Argentine judge wants High Times writer extradited
By Jason Webb
BUENOS AIRES, Feb 11 (Reuters) - An Argentine judge wants to extradite a writer and former editor at U.S. counter-culture magazine High Times for promoting marijuana use in Argentina over the Internet, a court spokesman said on Friday.
Judge Luis Leiva from the western province of Mendoza has sent a request to the Argentine foreign ministry to ask the United States to extradite Peter Gorman. He wants Gorman to testify after a private complaint by a local bodybuilding champion that he encouraged marijuana use in High Time's online edition.
``He would just have to testify, nothing more,'' the spokesman at Leiva's office said.
In Argentina, promoting criminal activity is itself a crime and those found guilty can face years in prison. But Mendoza legal officials admitted privately that obtaining extradition of a contributor to a U.S. publication is unlikely, and that they only requested it because Argentine law obliged them to do so after the private complaint.
``I believe that this will be the first attempt at extradition of a High Times employee and I hope it goes no further than that,'' Gorman told Reuters from New York.
``I hope it's taken for what it is: a crank complaint by someone who can turn on Net Nanny or any of the other net services and no longer have the site available to them if they no longer wish to,'' said Gorman, who described himself as a ``very straight'' family man.
``I've got coffee and cigarettes here, so obviously I must be a substance user, but they're not putting me in jail for either of those,'' he said.
Gorman, who owns a bar in Iquitos in the Peruvian jungle and has recently written a book, specialises in articles about the medicinal use of plants and marijuana, whose uses he said include treating AIDS patients.
``I wouldn't promote use. But I would promote awareness of things that people are going to use anyway, so there is less harm from their use,'' Gorman said.
High Times was founded in 1974, ruffling U.S. conservatives who were powerless to stop it because of the constitutional right to freedom of speech.
The latest issue was a mixture of wine-magazine type grass connoisseurship, gardening hints and nostalgia for the 1960s.
It included an interview with a veteran rocker who lamented that audiences do not throw marijuana joints on the stage at concerts any more. There was also a ``Bud and Bong Gallery'' of photographs of contributors' pet marijuana plants and favourite smoking implements.