More than two months since his arrest on trafficking of methamphetamine or \u201cice\u201d charges, Rep. Ray Palacios (Cov-Saipan) said he will undergo drug testing during the first week of 2012.<\/p>\n
Palacios said the only thing that\u2019s stopping him from taking the drug test is \u201clack of money\u201d for the testing. He added that he would have liked to undergo drug testing but doesn\u2019t have the extra $50 or so to do it.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am broke. My take home pay is only $212 after all deductions. But yes I will take the drug test [this] week,\u201d Palacios told Saipan Tribune.<\/p>\n
Superior Court associate judge David A. Wiseman on Thursday found Palacios in contempt for disobeying court orders requiring him to make monthly payments in connection with a consolidated 11-year-old civil case. Palacios has many financial obligations.<\/p>\n
House Speaker Eli Cabrera (R-Saipan) asked House members to undergo drug testing in October to help remove suspicion in anyone’s mind about lawmakers, following Ray Palacios\u2019 arrest on charges of drug trafficking and alleged drug use.<\/p>\n
As of yesterday, only nine have submitted themselves to drug testing. While most results came back \u201cnegative,\u201d other results have yet to be received. The nine included Delegate Gregorio Kilili Sablan (Ind-MP).<\/p>\n
Three more said they will undergo drug testing: Rep. Ray Basa (Cov-Saipan), Rep. Ray Tebuteb (R-Saipan), and Rep. Tony Sablan (R-Saipan).<\/p>\n
Besides Cabrera and Delegate Sablan, the following have also undergone drug testing since October: Floor leader George Camacho (Ind-Saipan), Rep. Teresita Santos (Ind-Rota), Rep. Ray Yumul (R-Saipan), Rep. Frank Dela Cruz (R-Saipan), Rep. Edmund Villagomez (Cov-Saipan), Rep. Joseph Palacios (R-Saipan), and Rep. Fred Deleon Guerrero (Ind-Saipan). The latter has yet to get his results back.<\/p>\n
Rep. Froilan Tenorio (Cov-Saipan) said yesterday he will not undergo drug testing.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhy should I need to prove to anybody that I\u2019m not a drug addict, just because somebody was arrested on drug charges?\u201d Tenorio asked.<\/p>\n
Rep. Stanley Torres (Ind-Saipan) also said earlier he won\u2019t undergo drug testing, pointing out that while he is advocating for the legalization of marijuana, he doesn\u2019t use drugs. <\/p>\n
Other House members either didn’t want to comment or couldn’t be reached for comment. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
More than two months since his arrest on trafficking of methamphetamine or \u201cice\u201d charges, Rep. Ray Palacios (Cov-Saipan) said he will undergo drug testing during the first week of 2012.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-157794","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157794","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=157794"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157794\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=157794"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=157794"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=157794"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}