Thanks for your coverage of Arizona's new medical marijuana law.

This legislation makes Arizona the 15th state to help the sick and dying handle their symptoms without having to turn to an illegal underground market for medicine. Too bad New Yorkers can't make the same choice.

We now have literally thousands of studies of marijuana's safety and medical effects. This research documents the plant's ability to improve the lives of those with chronic pain, HIV, cancer, sleep problems and a host of other ailments.

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THE latest bad news from the world of methamphetamine is that makers of the drug have perfected a one-pot recipe that enables them to manufacture their highly addictive product while on the move, often in their car. The materials they need - a two-liter soda bottle, a few cold pills and some household chemicals - are easily obtained and easily discarded, often in a trash bag dumped along the highway.

There is, however, a simple way to end this mobile industry - and, indeed, most methamphetamine production. We've tried it in Oregon, and have seen how well it works. Just keep a key ingredient, pseudoephedrine, out of the hands of meth producers.

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Eureka, Calif. - THE day after voters in California rejected an initiative to legalize marijuana, a package arrived at the bookstore I own with my husband: eight ounces of premium bud. This was not a gift from a grateful customer, nor was it a new product we'd brought in for the holiday season. The package came from a grower here in Humboldt County who had decided it would be amusing to use our bookstore as the return address.

And it might have gone directly to a buyer in Austin, Tex., except that the grower had used a little too much packaging, pushing it over the Postal Service's weight limit. Stamped packages weighing more than 13 ounces have to be handed over in person at the post office, not dropped anonymously in a mailbox. And so the padded envelope and its aromatic contents were returned to sender - in this case, our antiquarian bookstore, which is better known for shipping signed first editions and vintage bird lithographs than Humboldt County's most famous agricultural product.

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Dear Editor:

No doubt, cannabis (marijuana) will be re-legalized (editorial, Nov. 8). In 2012, Colorado will join the race to end cannabis prohibition and extermination.

Caging responsible adults for using the plant is immoral, vulgar and anti-Christian.

In fact, one reason to legalize cannabis that doesn't get mentioned is because it is biblically correct, since God, the ecologician, indicates he created all the seed-bearing plants saying they are all good, on literally the very first page (Genesis 1:11-12 and 29-30). The only biblical restriction placed on cannabis is to accept it with thankfulness (1 Timothy 4:1-5).

What kind of government cages humans for using what God says is good?

Stan White

Dillon, Colo.

[end]

The number of times New York City police officers stopped, questioned and sometimes frisked people dropped slightly in the third quarter from a year earlier, but was up slightly in the first nine months compared with a year earlier.

Police filled out 137,301 "Stop, Question and Frisk" reports, known as 250s, between July and the end of September, according to statistics provided by the NYPD to the City Council on Wednesday. That number is down about 0.4% compared with the third quarter of 2009. The number resulting in an arrest or a summons-8% and 7%, respectively-was up slightly from a year earlier when 6% of the stops resulted in arrests and 7% resulted in summonses.

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It may have been one of the most surprising outcomes of last week's voting: Californians rejected a proposal which would have legalized the recreational use of marijuana.

The defeat of Proposition 19 has left many in the Golden State and around the country scratching their heads, in part because of California's reputation as a liberal trendsetter, and because that state already had legalized medical marijuana.

Yet the measure allowing adults to have and grow small amounts of pot went down 54-46, with polls showing opposition across the board demographically.

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Last week, I asked a lawyer from a libertarian group for a copy of a brief it had filed in a First Amendment case. Sounding frustrated and incredulous, he said a federal appeals court had sealed the brief and forbidden its distribution.

"It's a profound problem," said the lawyer, Paul M. Sherman, with the Institute for Justice. "We want to bring attention to important First Amendment issues but cannot share the brief that most forcefully makes those arguments."

The brief was filed in support of Siobhan Reynolds, an activist who thinks the government is too aggressive in prosecuting doctors who prescribe pain medications.

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If Proposition 19 passes in California tomorrow and it is no longer illegal to sell, possess or grow marijuana, we may have begun ascending a slope less slippery than opponents of legalizing drugs might think.

American states spend an estimated total of $50 billion a year on our penal system. If Proposition 19 decriminalizes marijuana in California, the entire country will see how much money can be saved with laws based less on puritanical superstition than on facts.

Then there's the issue of tax revenues: federal and state tax revenues for alcohol sales exceed $5.6 billion. Imagine if Prohibition were still in place, and what that would mean for our tight budgets.

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LOS ANGELES - I dropped in on a marijuana shop here that proudly boasted that it sells "31 flavors." It also offered a loyalty program. For every 10 purchases of pot -- supposedly for medical uses -- you get one free packet.

"There are five of these shops within a three-block radius," explained the proprietor, Edward J. Kim. He brimmed with pride at his inventory and sounded like any small businessman as he complained about onerous government regulation. Like, well, state and federal laws.

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Democrat Andrew Cuomo is not a fan of medical marijuana.

Heading into the final week of his campaign for governor, Cuomo told reporters on Sunday that he does not want to see New York follow California's example and legalize pot for medical purposes.

"The dangers of medical marijuana outweigh the benefits," said Cuomo, who has admitted using marijuana in his youth. "I don't think the bill passes."

Told that pot's legalization could generate revenues for the state, he said, "A lot of things could raise revenues. Legalizing prostitution could raise revenues. I'm against that, too."

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To the Editor:

Re "In Mexico, Scenes From Life in a Drug War: Monterrey's Habit" (Op-Ed, Oct. 17):

Ricardo Elizondo Elizondo's essay about the drug war in Mexico says that Mexico must take notice of its own drug use problems and that "there can be no solution until we come to terms with the truth."

I am sure that is true, but there is a larger truth at work that trumps all others in the drug war: We must end the folly of prohibition -- that is, end the drug war -- or there will be no solution.

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Attorney General Eric Holder Jr.'s recent chest-thumping against the California ballot initiative that seeks to legalize marijuana underscores how the war on drugs in this country has become a war focused on marijuana, one being waged primarily against minorities and promoted, fueled and financed primarily by Democratic politicians.

According to a report released Friday by the Marijuana Arrest Research Project for the Drug Policy Alliance and the N.A.A.C.P. and led by Prof. Harry Levine, a sociologist at the City University of New York: "In the last 20 years, California made 850,000 arrests for possession of small amounts of marijuana, and half-a-million arrests in the last 10 years. The people arrested were disproportionately African-Americans and Latinos, overwhelmingly young people, especially men."

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Rhetoric Meets Reality

In November, California residents will have the opportunity to vote on Proposition 19, the legalization of recreational marijuana use. It's surprising that such an initiative is on the ballot and even more surprising that it has a legitimate chance of passing.

In 14 states across the country, medical marijuana has already been legalized, and Proposition 19 seems to be the next logical step in the complete decriminalization of marijuana. With the opportunity to raise hundreds of millions in additional tax revenue and clean out America's overloaded jail system, the legalization of marijuana is logical, both financially and socially.

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Mexico City - EVERY 100 years, Mexico seems to have a rendezvous with violence. As the country gathers on Wednesday night for the ceremony of the "grito" - the call to arms that began the war for independence from Spain - we are enduring another violent crisis, albeit one that differs greatly from those of a century and two centuries ago.

In 1810 and 1910, revolutions erupted that lasted 10 years or more and were so destructive that both times it took decades for the country to re-establish its previous levels of peace and progress. Both episodes furthered Mexico's political development, however, and our collective memory centers on these two dates that have taken on such symmetrical and mythical significance.

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A hate-crime indictment against a teenager accused of beating and racially abusing a Mexican student was dropped by a Supreme Court judge on Tuesday after a request by the Staten Island district attorney. The case was among a rash of alleged bias incidents that increased the police presence in the borough as well as concerns about racial tensions, authorities said.

Richmond County District Attorney Daniel Donovan said the victim withheld information from investigators that conflicted with an initial determination that he was targeted for the beating and robbery simply because he was Mexican. During the course of the investigation, [name1 redacted], 18 years old, admitted he had fought with the group of African-American men after he felt they cheated him on a marijuana sale.

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Bill O'Reilly blames the Mexican government for not doing more to curb its country's drug-related violence, like the 28,000 dead, and crush the drug cartels ("The Madness in Mexico," PostOpinion, Sept. 3).

Apparently, O'Reilly, who fancies himself a student of history, has learned nothing from the self-defeating futility of alcohol prohibition or the decades-long war on drugs.

O'Reilly, who is a staunch suppressionist, opposing even the most modest decriminalization, should ask himself: Have we won the war on drugs? If not, are we any closer to winning the war on drugs?

Before he continues to blame the admittedly inept Mexican government, perhaps he should look in the mirror to see one of the unwitting perpetrators of this fiasco.

At least O'Reilly can control his own attitudes and actions.

Edward S. Hochman, Manhattan

[end]

An NYPD tow truck operator who accused a vengeful Bronx cop of giving him a parking ticket says he was ordered to take a drug test after the Daily News started asking questions.

Marvin Robbins, a tow truck drivers' union official, got a ticket Sunday for parking his Lexus by a fire hydrant outside his apartment in the Melrose Houses.

He says the ticket was written by Officer David Moshier, whom he had met two days earlier at a restaurant on E. 149th St. in the Bronx.

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The full story of the massacre in Tamaulipas, in northeast Mexico, awaits telling by its one survivor. The early news accounts are horrifying: 72 people, said to be migrants from Central and South America on their way to the United States, are waylaid and imprisoned by drug smugglers on a ranch 100 miles south of Texas. They refuse to pay extortion fees and are executed. The survivor, shot in the neck, hears their screams for mercy as he flees. After a gun battle with the authorities, the killers escape in S.U.V.'s. The dead, 58 men and 14 women, are found piled in a room, discarded contraband.

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ALBANY -- The shift by some states to legalize marijuana is being invoked by a pair of New York City attorneys who are challenging whether a Saratoga County man implicated in a coast-to-coast drug smuggling case should be subjected to severe federal penalties at a time when the Justice Department has arguably softened its position on the drug.

Michael Kennedy, an attorney associated with the National Organization to Reform Marijuana Laws (NORML), and his partner, David Holland, are waiting a decision on their arguments filed in the case that's pending in U.S. District Court in Albany. Their motions cite a controversial 2009 Justice Department memo that encouraged federal prosecutors not to pursue criminal prosecutions of medical marijuana growers and users.

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Fewer Financiers Failed Screenings Last Year; Cocaine, Down; Pot, Up

The credit crisis has sobered up Wall Street in more ways than one.

Only 2% of the financial industry failed drug tests last year, compared with 3.6% of the working world, according to drug-testing concern Sterling Infosystems. Retail workers, in comparison, were red-flagged 4.1% of the time.

A review of drug-test data compiled by Sterling, a New York business that screens about 5,900 employees a year for some 270 finance shops, also shows that cocaine is losing its favor among investment professionals, showing up in 7% of the positive tests at Wall Street firms, down from 16% in 2007. But the prevalence of marijuana in positive tests jumped to 80% from 64% between 2007 to 2009.

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