In recent years, inspired by columnist Charlie Reese, I've used a yearend column to sample some of my political beliefs ... or heresies, depending on your point of view.

So here goes.

As I've gotten older, I've become more self-contradictory. Maybe that reflects growing confusion -- or, as I believe, an increasing appreciation for life's complexity.

So I am at once a small-government libertarian on individual issues, and a big-government activist on things like environmental regulation.

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You don't hear much about the nation's "war on drugs" these days. It's a has-been, a glamourless geezer, a holdover from bygone days. Its glitz has been stolen by the "war on terror," which gets the news media hype and campaign trail rhetoric. Railing against recreational drug use and demanding that offenders be locked away is so '90s.

But the drug war proceeds, mostly away from news cameras and photo-ops, still chewing up federal and state resources and casting criminal sanctions over entire neighborhoods. Some four or so decades into an intensive effort to stamp out recreational drug use, billions of dollars have been spent; thousands of criminals, many of them foreigners, have been enriched; and hundreds of thousands of Americans have been imprisoned. And the use of illegal substances continues unabated.

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A long overdue change in federal sentencing guidelines has finally and recently been made. For too long there has been a huge disparity between the sentences for powdered cocaine, aka "the white man's drug," and crack cocaine, aka "the black man's drug."

The difference in federal sentences was so large that it became common practice in Florida for the federal prosecutor to adopt cases made by local agencies under Florida statutes in order for the offender to receive sentences of at least 15 years as opposed to the five or so under state statutes in the mid-1980s.

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A MySpace page for Ohio University's student center included an ad for a Web site that appears at first glance to sell marijuana.

A student employee of the center created the MySpace page to promote concerts at the Athens university's Baker Center, but the official university Web site for the student center included a link to it.

After being notified of the ad, which was posted on Dec. 6, the university took the link to the MySpace page down, said George Mauzy, an OU spokesman.

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So Many Crimes, and Reasons to Not Cooperate

CAMDEN, N.J. -- When her 16-year-old son was shot dead on a street corner here in June, Rosalynn Glasco became the latest mother left to search for justice in a world without witnesses -- where the stigma of being seen as a snitch or the fear of retaliation prevents many from testifying about even the worst crimes.

But Ms. Glasco held out some hope, all the same. Determined not to let her son's killer go unpunished, she urged her daughter and other relatives to work the grapevine in the neighborhood where he was killed, Whitman Park, searching for evidence, and maybe somebody willing to share it.

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There's welcome news about young peoples' healthy choices.

The kids (most of them) are all right (mostly). Twenty-first century American teenagers may be pudgier than in the past, but they're less likely to abuse drugs, get drunk, smoke, commit a violent crime or get pregnant.

The annual Monitoring the Future survey reported generally good news for eighth-, 10th- and 12th-graders. In particular, eighth-graders are making wiser health choices.

In 1996, 21 percent of eighth-graders were smokers; that's dropped to 7 percent. Meanwhile, disapproval of smoking has soared.

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A decision by the National Sentencing Commission will lighten prison terms for as many as 2,500 crack cocaine users and sellers.

The Daily Journal reported the story earlier. Basically, the penalties for crack cocaine, a crystallized form of the drug that is smoked, will be lowered to the penalties for powdered cocaine, that is snorted.

The average crack conviction draws a prison sentence of 10 years. A powder user can expect seven years.

There's a racial overtone to the story, too. Crack cocaine is generally thought to be far more prevalent in the African-American community. Over the years, many had complained that the sentences had as much to do with the skin color of the defendant as they did with the war on drugs.

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Laws Were Ineffective and the Drug's Ravages Overblown, Experts Say.

WASHINGTON -- In the spring of 1986, lawmakers had become alarmed by reports of urban crime waves linked to crack, then a new and highly addictive form of cocaine. News reports were full of images of writhing "crack babies" deeply addicted to the drug through their mothers, doomed to "a life of certain suffering, of probable deviance, of permanent inferiority," as one columnist observed.

The sudden death that June of basketball star Len Bias galvanized Washington into passing extraordinarily strict drug laws. Selling as little as 5 grams of crack would bring a mandatory five-year federal prison term, with no possibility of parole.

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KALAMA -- The police department has high hopes that its newest officer will take a bite out of this small town's oversized drug problem.

'Bati," a 65-pound German shepherd nearly two years old, is Kalama's first drug-sniffing canine, though he still needs to complete 80 hours of training and pass a state certification exam before going on the job.

"When we're doing patrols, we should have more than enough work" for Bati, said Police Sgt. Steve Parker.

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Black Hamilton County residents are sent to prison on drug convictions 19 times more often per capita than whites, but local District Attorney Bill Cox challenged the recent study that reached the conclusion.

The study, compiled by the nonprofit Justice Policy Institute, compared the nation's 200 largest counties. It stated that 97 percent of those counties sent blacks to prison more often than whites for drug-related convictions.

Mr. Cox said the Justice Institute's claims are tied to a Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration study showing that in 2006 about 8.9 percent of blacks admitted to using drugs in the last month, and 8.5 percent of whites admitted to the same practices.

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With every passing year the drug problem seems to get worse. The U.S. government responds by pumping billions more dollars into the war on drugs. Federal spending for this "war without end" is more than twenty times what it was in 1980 and still the drug traffickers appear to be winning. Despite more than six billion dollars spent on "Plan Colombia" alone, cocaine production has actually increased in that country. Now the Bush Administration is asking for $1.4 billion more to aid the Mexican government's drug crackdown through the "Merida Initiative."

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Deputies Nab Two Suspects, One Gets Away; Officials See Increase in Grow Houses

MARION OAKS - Marion County sheriff's deputies dismantled a marijuana grow house Thursday night containing 171 marijuana plants with an estimated street value of approximately $200,000, and arrested two of three men seen fleeing the area.

The third man, who reportedly was seen discarding a .38-caliber revolver, managed to escape, according to a Sheriff's Office report.

Two of the men - [redacted] - were arrested on charges of cultivating marijuana, possession of drug paraphernalia and resisting arrest without violence, according to the Sheriff's Office.

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The owner of an Evergreen Shores home where detectives found more than $450,000 worth of marijuana on Christmas Day lives in Worcester, Mass., and was renting the house to a man named Hung, the owner said Thursday.

"Oh, wow," said Bao Vo, who owns the home on 77th Court Southwest in the Black Lake area, when told that detectives found 300 pot plants at the home. Vo, who did not speak English fluently, passed the phone to his daughter, June.

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Officer: Increase Might Be a Matter of How the Crime Is Classified

Home-invasion robberies have been steadily increasing in Tallahassee over the past couple of years.

There were 27 such robberies in 2005, 38 last year, and 42 through mid-November of this year, according to David McCranie, spokesman for the Tallahassee Police Department.

"The numbers speak for themselves that, yes, we have seen an increase," said Sgt. Gary Bussell, supervisor of the Robbery Task Force, which is made up of TPD detectives and Leon County Sheriff's Office investigators.

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On Dec. 10, the U.S. Supreme Court gave judges some discretion in sentencing for crack cocaine offenses.

One day later, the U.S. Sentencing Commission, intending to narrow the stark disparity between sentences for crack versus powder cocaine, revised sentencing guidelines to make them retroactive.

Why should anyone care about a bunch of drug users -- crack users at that -- who might receive two years off their sentences?

It matters because of the racial inequities in our system. Crack cocaine can be sold in small and rather cheap quantities and therefore is preferred by the lower-income, usually minority, population.

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When the U.S. Sentencing Commission voted recently to allow retroactive reconsideration of some drug convictions, it was wisely chipping away at the edifice of injustice put in place as part of the nation's war on drugs.

The commission is the federal agency that sets sentencing guidelines for the federal courts. The commission is part of the judicial branch, but its actions are not immune to the pressures and constraints of politics. Its members are appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate, and if the guidelines it promulgates clash too dramatically with the preferred policies of the administration in power or of the party in control of Congress, commission members could feel the heat.

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Marian Catholic would join 2 other Catholic high schools in region

Marian Catholic High School in Chicago Heights will likely become the third Catholic high school in the region to require drug testing of its students.

Parents and school officials met last week to discuss the proposal, expected to take effect next fall. Following the example of St. Patrick High School in Chicago and St. Viator High School in Arlington Heights, school officials hope the new policy will give Marian's 1,500 students another reason to turn down drugs, said Principal Kathleen Tait.

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During 2005, agents with the N.C. State Bureau of Investigation responded to 328 clandestine methamphetamine labs in the state, and, through increased public awareness and more stringent laws regulating the sale of a key ingredient in the drug's production, two years later that statewide number has been cut in half.

However, while the number of meth labs SBI authorities have responded to has dipped significantly overall in the last year, including in Sampson, this county and those surrounding it have remained a hot bed for such clandestine drug activity.

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Officials Say Possession by Students Is a Reflection of Community Problem

For the first time in three years Mitchell County leads the surrounding counties in numbers of controlled substance possession cases in its schools.

For the 2006-07 school year - a report compiled by the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction - show 20 cases of possession in two schools: 18 at Mitchell High School and two at Harris Middle School.

Neighboring Yancey County had six incidents that year - two at Cane River Middle School and four at Mountain Heritage High School - and Avery County reported seven incidents, all at Avery Middle School. All counties posted average daily memberships - the seven month average attendance of students - within 60 students of each other.

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LANCASTER - Drinking and illicit drug use by teens has continued to decline, according to a recent survey of high school students in Fairfield County.

However, parents still have cause for concern, officials say. But a new program at Fairfield Medical Center is teaching parents how to help their children make healthy choices when it comes to drugs and alcohol.

Results from the 2006 Youth Survey indicate that about 80 percent of high school seniors have drank alcohol and about 40 percent have smoked marijuana. Although fewer teens reported regularly using alcohol and marijuana, most said those substances were easy to obtain and not particularly harmful. Trisha Saunders says that is the wrong attitude to have.

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