Tube roses are little roses and pens in glass tubes. Also on the legislator's list of evil products are cigar splitters. Splitters are plastic tubes that split cigars lengthwise. Both are sold at convenience stores.

Our legislators apparently believe that these products will increase the use of illegal drugs. So the legislature passed "An Act to Provide for the Regulation of Certain Devices that May be Used as Drug Paraphernalia."

Our legislator's fear is that drug users will use glass tube roses to smoke crack or methamphetamine and cigar splitters will be used to split cigars so they can be packed with marijuana. In the legislators' thought process, this is reason enough to require these products to be kept behind the counter and anyone wishing to buy them must sign for them. It's pandering to the public for votes by bragging how tough on drugs they are. Toughness, not logic, is the legislators' quest.

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Since late 2003, the Sampson County Meth Task Force, Inc. has been working to confront the methamphetamine crisis head-on, providing intervention opportunities designed to prevent or break the cycle of drug abuse caused by those who manufacture, sell or use the highly addictive drug.

The group, that got its initial start with a $500 donation from Star Telephone Membership Corporation, Inc., has grown over the years and has been able to meet the needs of those who suffer from the disease and train those who can help with treatment and recovery.

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INGOLD - Sampson County Sheriff Jimmy Thornton tracks back through at least an acre and a half of land just off of Wright Bridge Road and looks through a bag of plumbing fixtures buried deep behind a make-shift camp. It’s full of garbage.

“This is some living, huh?” Thornton says as he puts the bag down and looks over unused food that is sitting under a canvas cover.

Working off tips from residents in the area and in association with the annual Drug Eradication Day, agencies came together to uncover no less than four sites that were growing marijuana in the area, the biggest one being about a mile off U.S. Highway 701 and just north of Garland.

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Countries such as Israel, Canada and the Netherlands all have national medical marijuana programs. Israel's has some 700 patients enrolled and expects that number to reach 1,200 in September.

According to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, the program has widespread acceptance, with the chief of the Bone Marrow Transplant Program at Hadassah Ein Kerem Hospital noting that marijuana "stimulates the appetite and minimizes nausea and vomiting, which is of great importance in Oncology. It also has anti-inflammatory properties, which helps in cases of infection or inflammation caused by radiation."

It's time for the U.S. to catch up.

[end]

I'd like to add that one of the medications prescribed by my personal physician for my arthritis pain and inflammation has the rare, potential side effect of death.

In other words, if I take this medication as prescribed, I can die as a result.

On the other hand, marijuana has never been documented to kill a single person in the 5,000-year history of its use.

For me, marijuana is the more effective medication. Right now, if adult citizens opt for the safer and more effective medication, they are subject to arrest and being sent to jail with violent criminals.

Is something wrong with this situation? I think so.

Shouldn't adult citizens have the freedom to choose what goes into their own bodies in the privacy of their own homes?

Kirk Muse Mesa, Ariz.

[end]

A heartbreaking trend in this country's never-ending drug problem is playing out in Northwest North Carolina. Prescription-drug deaths, as well as prescription-drug abuse and crime, are rising in rural counties.

More organizations and individuals should join law-enforcement officers and confront the problem before its human and financial costs spiral. "It's unbelievable how bad this is," Donna Reeves of Wilkes County recently told the Journal's Monte Mitchell. Her 20-year-old daughter, Casey, was one of 18 people who died in Wilkes County in 2006 of a prescription-drug overdose. There were more than 22 "unintentional poisonings," a state category made up mostly of prescription-drug deaths, per 100,000 people in parts of the mountains and foothills in 2006-2007, compared with 10 deaths per 100,000 in the rest of the state.

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At a time when researchers are plunging into the rainforest in search of new medicines, there is a growing consensus that an herb easily cultivated here may help patients struggling with cancer, AIDS, multiple sclerosis and other painful, difficult-to-manage conditions.

The herb is marijuana.

The North Carolina House Health Committee is considering a measure that, if approved, would make North Carolina the 15th state to legalize its medical use. We think state lawmakers are right to at least consider a need to expand options for health care and help alleviate patient suffering.

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School Board Won't Contest Court's Ruling

With the conclusion of a more than two-year legal fight, Graham County educators won't face random tests for drugs and alcohol.

The county's school board decided not to ask the N.C. Supreme Court to review a June 2 decision by the state Court of Appeals striking down its drug-testing policy.

The court ruled random testing violated employees' rights under the state constitution to be free from unreasonable searches.

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Moore County Sheriff Lane Carter should be commended for his handling of his son's drug arrest. A less honorable man may have been tempted to look the other way or call off his investigators.

That was never an option for our sheriff. Many families in Moore County share Carter's plight as they have watched a loved one spiral through the downward cycle of prescription abuse -- for many, a certain path into the -criminal justice system.

Prescription narcotics can be more addictive than illegal street drugs. Many people falsely believe that because a drug is prescribed by a doctor, it must be safe. A narcotic is a narcotic, whether obtained from a pharmacy, street--corner drug dealer or family medicine cabinet.

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WILKESBORO -- Donna Reeves was worried about her daughter Casey's drug use.

"I told her, 'I don't want to get that phone call (that) somebody's found my daughter dead,'" Reeves said.

"Mom, I know my limits," Casey told her.

But one Saturday, Casey stayed in bed uncharacteristically late. Her father had gone out of town to a charity event and her mother was upstairs.

"I was the one who had to make that phone call to her daddy and tell him that his daughter was dead, because I'm the one who found her," Reeves said.

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It is absolutely insane that drug testing teachers is somehow violating their constitutional rights when practically every other job in this state requires drug testing, everything from convenience store cashiers to office and factory workers.

If it is a violation of teachers' rights then why is it not also a violation of the rights of every other worker in the state? From today forward, I hope every employee in the state of North Carolina refuses to take drug tests, claiming it violates their constitutional rights. If enough people do this, maybe the three judges who ruled on this case will realize you can't hold one group of people to a different standard than the rest of us. If random drug testing is okay for the employees of Stanley Furniture or Mission Hospital, then it definitely should be okay for teachers, who are responsible for this state's most valuable asset, the education of our children.

Kim Deyton, Asheville

[end]

Lawmakers Won't Touch a Popular Law, Even If It Would Save $190 Million Over Five Years

North Carolina's habitual-felon law is powerful: A three-time criminal who breaks into a parking meter or has a crack pipe with cocaine residue can be sentenced as if he were a rapist.

It is expensive: These longer sentences add an average of$195,000 in prison costs for each habitual felon, a News & Observer analysis shows. Since the law took effect in 1994, taxpayers have committed an additional $1.5 billion to house habitual felons -- and an additional $264 million to build prisons for them. And it is untouchable at the General Assembly. District attorneys and sheriffs have squashed all attempts to change it by painting opponents as coddlers of criminals, said former Rep. Joe Kiser, a Republican and the former sheriff of Lincoln County.

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RALEIGH - Graham County Schools violated employees' constitutional rights by deciding to subject them to random tests for drugs and alcohol, the state Court of Appeals ruled this morning.

Reversing Superior Court Judge James U. Downs' order in favor of the school board, the three-judge panel said the board violated the state constitution's prohibitions on unreasonable searches.

"Constitutional rights are not lightly cast aside," Judge Linda Stephens wrote.

Said Stephens: "... we should recall that the cherished liberties enjoyed in our brief historical moment have been inherited by this generation only because they have been nurtured and protected by earlier generations of Americans so driven in their pursuit of liberty that life itself was not too great a cost to purchase liberty for themselves and their posterity."

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The Pitt County Sheriff's Office investigated 46 cases of illicit prescription drug use in 2008. That only scratched the surface of a growing issue, Sheriff Mac Manning said.

"That's one detective who is working what amounts to a case a week," Manning said. "And we know there is a much bigger problem." The problem is becoming so commonplace, Manning, with assistance from state Rep. Marian McLawhorn, D-Pitt, is pursuing legislation that would allow North Carolina's 100 sheriffs to access the Controlled Substances Reporting System database that is operated by the state's Department of Health and Human Services.

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Court: Teachers' Rights Violated

The Graham County school board violated employees' constitutional rights by deciding to subject them to random tests for drugs and alcohol, the state Court of Appeals ruled Tuesday.

The ruling could discourage other boards from following the lead of the tiny school system of 1,200 students in the far-western mountains. Reversing an order by Superior Court Judge James U. Downs, the appeals court ruled the policy violates the North Carolina constitution's prohibitions on unreasonable searches.

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Rebuffing Pleas For Mercy, The Sentencing Judge Calls Conduct 'Way Over The Line.'

Former Charlotte-Mecklenburg police officers Gerald Holas and Jason Ross, accused of protecting a drug dealer, were each sentenced Wednesday to nine years in prison for conspiring to distribute cocaine. Federal authorities say the sentences are the longest imposed on Charlotte law enforcement officers they can recall.

The officers admitted they shielded a drug dealer's cocaine operation but said they did so in an effort to gain information they could use to arrest his suppliers and customers, according to court documents. In a packed courtroom at Charlotte's federal courthouse, Holas apologized to family and friends.

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Editor:

The issue of industrialized hemp doesn't get its fair share of air time. Politicians disregard the fact that hemp isn't marijuana and they cannot be grown near each other, and downplay the potential for industrialized use and possible revitalization of the agriculture industry.

As many people know hemp can be grown almost anywhere, and can be used for many things such as paper, clothing, oils, fuel, food, and the list goes on.

We destroy millions of trees each year that can only produce paper that can be recycle 3 times, while hemp paper can be recycled 7 times.

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SHELBY - Fewer teens in Cleveland County are lighting up cigarettes, taking swigs of alcohol and puffing marijuana, according to numbers released this month by the Cleveland County Health Department.

For more than 10 years the department has surveyed kids in schools about their drug usage. The results showed a significant decrease in the usage of the gateway drugs for 2009 compared to 2006.

Jimmy Hines, director of community health services, credits the public health programs, school officials and parents for the decrease this year in the report.

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Arnold Schwarzenegger proved last week (May 5) he's not a girly-man when it comes to the debate over whether marijuana should be legalized and taxed in California. Gov. Arnold called for a large-scale study of the consequences of legalizing pot for recreational use in California and suggested that the study might benefit from looking at the effects of drug legalization moves already made by European countries.

It's true that Schwarzenegger is a lame duck and that his politically daring call was driven largely by his bankrupt state's search for new sources of tax revenue.

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RALEIGH - Some state criminal justice advocates say they would welcome an end to the disparity in federal sentences for crack cocaine and powder cocaine crimes.

The issue has spawned several fair sentencing bills and received national attention after the Obama administration recently signaled its support, particularly the elimination of harsh penalties for low-level drug offenses. "We wholeheartedly support those proposals," said Katy Parker, legal director of the North Carolina chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union in Raleigh. "There is no medical or scientific distinction in powder cocaine or the base form known as crack. There's no research proving that crack is more addictive than powder cocaine."

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