This month legislation was signed into law by Governor Paterson that would bar legislative districts from counting imprisoned individuals in state prisons as part of their population. New York became the second state, following Maryland, to end the practice.

For years New York activists called for the dismantling of prison-based gerrymandering (PBG) that allowed mostly rural counties to inflate their population numbers. This resulted in financial rewards for those communities that utilized it. Brent Staples of the NY Times colorfully described PBG when he once said, "There are many ways to hijack political power. One of them is to draw state or city legislative districts around large prisons -- and pretend that the inmates are legitimate constituents." The new change could dramatically change the state's political dynamics.

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Police Department Circulates Memo Warning Officers To Watch For Drug Dealers Who Use Underwear With Secret Pockets

Brooklyn police officers were involved in the ultimate "debriefing" last month when a prisoner being questioned told them about the latest in criminal fashion: underwear with secret pockets.

A memo circulated to all members of the New York Police Department, and viewed by The Wall Street Journal, warns officers to be aware that "drug dealers are using underwear with secret pockets sold in stores from several different companies to hold drugs and small weapons."

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Legalization of drugs -- long an issue championed mainly by fringe groups -- is rapidly moving to the mainstream in Latin America.

The recent surprise statement by former Mexican President Vicente Fox in support of "legalizing production, sales and distribution" of drugs made big headlines around the world.

Fox, a former close U.S. ally who belongs to the same center-right political party as President Felipe Calderon, rocked the boat at home by indirectly criticizing the very premise of Calderon's all-out military offensive against Mexico's drug cartels, which has cost 28,000 lives since 2006.

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Regarding the July 31 Bruce Dunn op-ed: "Science supports medical marijuana":

While there have been studies showing that marijuana can shrink cancerous tumors, medical marijuana is essentially a palliative drug. If a doctor recommends marijuana to a cancer patient undergoing chemotherapy and it helps them feel better, then it's working. In the end, medical marijuana is a quality-of-life decision best left to patients and their doctors.

Drug warriors waging war on non-corporate drugs contend that organic marijuana is not an effective health intervention. Their prescribed intervention for medical marijuana patients is handcuffs, jail cells and criminal records. This heavy-handed approach suggests that drug warriors should not be dictating health care decisions. It's long past time to let doctors decide what is right for their patients; sick patients should not be jailed for daring to seek relief by way of marijuana.

Robert Sharpe

Arlington, Va.

Sharpe is a policy analyst for Common Sense for Drug Policy.

[end]

New York City police made nearly 170,000 "stop and frisks" between April and the end of June, 21% more than were conducted in the year-earlier period, according to statistics released on Tuesday.

The 169,403 stops made by police increased the total number of stops over the first half of this year to 319,156, which is up about 2% the year-earlier period. The NYPD generated a record number of "Stop and Frisk Reports" in the 2009 first half.

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To the Editor:

Re "Colombia Can Win Mexico's Drug War" (Op-Ed, July 30):

Gustavo A. Flores-Macias is quite correct to point to the important improvements in good governance in Colombia as an explanation for that country's relative success against the drug cartels. He recommends that Mexico follow the same course. That would be a good thing, although as he points out, political and security reforms would be needed to do so.

The more fundamental issue is the raging demand for illegal drugs, in the United States and in Europe. If Colombia drives out the cartels, they just move elsewhere. Mexico's location means, however, that it will remain a focus of cartel activity.

The real game-changer will be when the United States learns the lesson of Prohibition and legalizes, regulates and taxes these drugs.

John Peeler

Lewisburg, Pa., July 30, 2010

The writer is professor emeritus of political science at Bucknell University.

[end]

This is in response to Julia Dostal's column of July 17 about medical marijuana. She is largely misinformed.

The New York medical marijuana bill was introduced by Assembly Health Committee Chair Richard Gottfried in 1997 has been getting voted out of one committee after another since 2002.

There is certainly ample anecdotal evidence that marijuana is medicine, but there is more than that. In 1999, the National Academy of Sciences Institute of Medicine reported, "nausea, appetite loss, pain anxiety ... all can be mitigated by marijuana."

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To the Editor:

Re "V.A. Easing Rules for Patients Who Use Medical Marijuana" (front page, July 24):

The Department of Veterans Affairs deserves to be commended for ceasing to penalize veterans who use medical marijuana in states where it is legal. No longer will these veterans be cruelly denied pain medications or other needed services.

But as your article points out, the department still forbids its own doctors from recommending medical marijuana to their veteran patients, who, as a consequence, are forced to go to private physicians that may be unaffordable. Veterans and advocates have called on the department to allow its doctors to recommend medical marijuana directly. The very least we can do for returning veterans is to provide unfettered access to the medicine that works best for their conditions.

Daniel Robelo

Berkeley, Calif., July 26, 2010

The writer is a research associate at the Drug Policy Alliance.

[end]

BOTH the United States and Mexico have approached the war on Mexican drug cartels with Colombia in mind.

Washington's Merida Initiative, loosely modeled on its Plan Colombia antidrug campaign from a decade ago, provides Mexico with money for helicopters, police training and command-and-control technology. The Mexican government, meanwhile, has taken steps to modernize its judicial system, purge the police of corruption and improve intelligence services.

But according to a Government Accountability Office report released this summer, the billions of dollars spent by Mexico and the United States over the last four years have done little to thwart Mexico's cartels.

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Last weekend, Dwight Gooden was in Cooperstown, of all places, and if you don't find that ironic, you don't know anything about Dwight Gooden.

He was there to support his friend Andre Dawson, who was being inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame, and to play in a charity softball game. There was a time in Mr. Gooden's life, when he was young and pitching for the Mets, that a similar ceremony for him in Cooperstown seemed inevitable, a mere formality that would cap a brilliant career.

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Albert Einstein (1879-1955) famously defined insanity as "doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."

Nothing better describes the war on drugs. The 40-year war on drugs has cost U.S. taxpayers $1 trillion, thousands of lives and broken up families and failed to meet any of its goals.

Cocaine, heroin and marijuana were sold in drug stores without a prescription as medicine and treated as such in the early years of the last century. Yet the deadly drug of tobacco is legal (because it's taxed) which kills hundreds of thousands a year.

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The Bloomberg administration has quietly been fixing up its sons and daughters with cool summer internships, as reported Tuesday in The New York Times. Which is probably fine: It is hard to see nepotism as much of a sin when it is really just another chapter of Darwinism, the drive possessed by all creatures to finagle a better future for their offspring.

No matter how much Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg preached about meritocracy, no one expected that the laws of nature would be repealed when he was elected.

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ALBANY - A poll released today by Cornell University Survey Research Institute found that nearly two-thirds of New Yorkers are in favor of legalizing marijuana for medical use.

A higher percentage of upstate residents support it than people who live downstate - 67 percent versus 62 percent.

There is a marked difference in attitude between Democrats and unaffiliated voters on one side and Republicans on the other, according to the poll. Sixty-six percent of Democrats and 68 percent of unaffiliated voters support legalization for medical use, while a plurality of Republicans -- 48 percent - said they are against it.

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Many years ago, when I was a resident in pediatrics, an adolescent patient asked me if I had ever smoked pot. It wasn't a friendly question, more an oh-yeah-says-you response to my own inquiries, warning me off.

No patient has asked me that for decades. But recently, I have found myself in several all-pediatrician conversations about the topic.

Doctors, and the parents who look to them for advice, need a way to integrate their standards of honesty with what we know about preventing substance abuse -- and with new research that makes it clear we know a lot more today than anyone did when we were young. (Which may help explain some of the dumb decisions made by so many of us, including me.)

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When night falls, police officers blanket some eight odd blocks of Brownsville, Brooklyn. Squad cars with flashing lights cruise along the main avenues: Livonia to Powell to Sutter to Rockaway. And again.

On the inner streets, dozens of officers, many fresh out of the police academy, walk in pairs or linger on corners. Others, deeper within the urban grid, navigate a maze of public housing complexes, patrolling the stairwells and hallways.

This small army of officers, night after night, spends much of its energy pursuing the controversial Police Department tactic known as "Stop, Question, Frisk," and it does so at a rate unmatched anywhere else in the city.

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As we move toward the end of the budget crisis, the legalization of medical marijuana is still on the minds of many. Although approval of medical marijuana in the budget seems less likely these days, there is still a slight chance it can be worked in. Only about 30 percent of the budget is left to be passed and so far it seems as though medical marijuana will be left out.

However, the battle isn't over yet. Even if medical marijuana doesn't get passed through the budget, it still may get passed as a stand-alone bill.

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Critics' claim that marijuana is "too dangerous" a substance to allow for therapeutic purposes demonstrates a willful ignorance of the science surrounding its use ("Medical marijuana too dangerous, costly," June 30).

For example, in February, the results of a series of randomized, placebo-controlled clinical trials performed by the University of California concluded that inhaled cannabis is safe and effective as a medicine, particularly in the treatment of multiple sclerosis and neuropathic pain.

Months earlier, the American Medical Association's Council on Science and Public Health reported, "Results of short term controlled trials indicate that smoked cannabis reduces neuropathic pain, improves appetite and caloric intake especially in patients with reduced muscle mass, and may relieve spasticity and pain in patients with multiple sclerosis."

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Ex-convicts and single moms with children are about to start living side by side in an unusual housing experiment that begins later this month in Harlem.

One new tenant at the building, known as Castle Gardens, is Belkis Alonzo. She and her 4-year-old daughter have been staying with relatives for two years since her divorce, sharing a bedroom with Ms. Alonzo's mother in a small three-bedroom apartment with her sister, brother-in-law and nephew.

She'll be sharing the laundry facilities and roof-deck garden with Carl Dukes, who served 31 years in an upstate prison for first-degree murder.

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Gerald Turetsky's recent commentary, "Medical marijuana too dangerous, costly" (June 30), contains substantial misinformation that could lead New Yorkers to make unethical decisions about helping fellow citizens.

He confuses the impact of marijuana with the impact of marijuana prohibition, and perpetuates myths that have been summarily disproved for decades. Contaminants in the plant arise because cultivation has been forced into an underground market, not because the plant is inherently problematic.

As data from my own laboratory show, marijuana need not cause lung problems. The plant does not change brain structure in adults, create dependence on hard drugs, or weaken human immune function.

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Re "Marijuana bill has many flaws," Friday letter:

This writer's description of pending medical-marijuana legislation in Albany is seriously flawed. The bill before the Legislature is based on the state's Controlled Substances Act, the law that regulates the sale and use of dangerous narcotics. Consistent with that law, a dispenser of the drug must get a license from the Department of Health, just as a pharmacy would. Dispensers must have no criminal background; clear a character and competency check; prove they are capable of complying with state laws; and document the steps they will take to keep the drug secure. Because the law gives the Department of Health the power to license (and limit) dispensers, problems other states have faced regarding dispensary placement and over-saturation will be avoided.

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