WASHINGTON -- President Bush signed legislation on Wednesday lifting a ban that for nearly a decade has prevented city officials here from using local tax money for needle exchange programs.

Officials of the District of Columbia Health Department said that with the ban lifted, they would allocate $1 million for such programs in 2008.

Since 1999, the nation's capital, which reports having the highest rate of AIDS infection of any major city in the country, has been the only city barred by federal law from using municipal money for needle exchanges. A recent report by the city showed that intravenous drug users' sharing of needles was second only to unprotected sex as a leading cause of H.I.V. transmission.

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The power to destroy does not carry within it the power to control. A century of failed colonial rule and the American misadventure in Vietnam etched that lesson on global consciousness for a time. It has taken the huge problems that affluent, nuclear-armed nations are encountering in the miserable ruins of Afghanistan and Iraq to drive it home anew.

Call it the paradox of overwhelming but insufficient force. It is surfacing in a struggle in Afghanistan over the wisdom of chemically eradicating that nation's expanding poppy fields. They are the source of (1) the livelihoods of many Afghan peasants, (2) a record flood of heroin into Western markets and (3) funding for the Taliban and other terrorist forces.

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The District Can Finally Use Its Own Money for Needle-Exchange Programs.

FOR NEARLY 10 years, Congress prevented the District of Columbia from using its own money to fund needle-exchange programs, interventions that greatly reduce the risk for intravenous drug users of contracting or spreading HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. The obstruction ended with passage this week of the omnibus budget bill.

The ban had been in place since 1998, when Rep. Todd Tiahrt (R-Kan.) attached a rider to the District's budget that prevented the District from spending even its own funds to save lives. The provision survived every attempt to remove it. But with Democrats now in charge, Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.) and Rep. Jose E. Serrano (D-N.Y.) succeeded in stripping the language from legislation.

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When JamesOn Curry was drafted by the Chicago Bulls last June, some reporters called the choice risky, because of one mistake Mr. Curry made in high school. Others, though, correctly saw it as a terrific story of redemption, showing the power of giving youth who make bad mistakes a second chance.

Mr. Curry was a promising North Carolina high school student whose basketball prowess secured him a college scholarship at the University of North Carolina. At age 17 he was caught selling marijuana. His scholarship vanished along with all the recruiters who had promised him the moon and the stars. He faced a future with limited prospects.

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Foreign Officer Says Crime Fighting in Colombia Has Improved

The Colombian Ambassador to the United States touted the country's improvement in fighting crime and boosting the economy in a speech Thursday evening at Marvin Center.

Carolina Barco, Colombia's ambassador since 2002, described the drug trade as an international issue that must be addressed throughout the world, not a problem specific to her country

"We must all be responsible," Barco said.

Barco also discussed Plan Colombia, U.S. legislation aimed at reducing drug trafficking.

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Whether or not he wins the Democratic nomination, Barack Obama has won my respect not only because he inspires pride and hope for the future of our country, but because of the way he confronts the skeleton in his closet: drugs.

It often seems that our understanding of civic duty is informed by an unhealthy obsession with the Vietnam War, but Obama is too young for that. And while I don't always agree with him, I am always impressed by the way he handles himself.

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Sophomore Erin Taylor doesn't want to end up like her friend who was pulled over by a police officer for a broken taillight and ended up being charged with possession of marijuana and paraphernalia. As president of GW NORML, which advocates for the legalization of marijuana, Taylor wants to know her rights.

On Nov. 19 NORML along with GW ACLU, which advocates for the protection of citizens' rights, held an event to raise awareness among students about their constitutional rights in police encounters.

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AMONG THE tragic data in the District's recently released HIV-AIDS study, the statistic on intravenous drug use is the most infuriating. Why? Because the tool needed to slow transmission of HIV by this route is well understood, but Congress forbids the District from using its own money to pay for it. We're talking about needle exchange.

In response to the report's finding that the two most common modes of HIV transmission in the District were heterosexual sex (37 percent) and men having sex with men (27 percent), Mayor Adrian M. Fenty (D) announced Monday that more condoms would be distributed at no charge and that he would push for increased HIV testing in emergency rooms. Yet, when it comes to plans for addressing the third most common transmission route, IV drug use (14 percent), Mr. Fenty was silent.

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Regarding the Nov. 26 editorial "Penalties for Crack":

First, the composition of the U.S. Sentencing Commission does not reflect the makeup of the communities most affected by lowering crack cocaine penalties. By far, crack is most prevalent in African American communities. Yet there is not a single African American on the commission.

And no parents of any race were at this month's hearing to testify about the struggle to keep crack dealers away from their children or to keep their children from becoming dealers themselves. I have personally surveyed more than 500 African American family members, ministers, law enforcement personnel, teachers and others in the Washington area. When asked about lowering crack cocaine penalties, their response generally is: Don't they know those dealers would be right back on our streets?

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Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.) is calling on city leaders to allocate public funds to needle exchange programs to help combat the District's high HIV-AIDS rate.

Norton said yesterday that a report released Monday that identified 3,269 new HIV cases in the District from 2001 to 2006 focused too heavily on transmission of the disease through sex and not enough on transmission through infected needles for drug use. The administration of Mayor Adrian M. Fenty (D) pledged to combat the disease on several fronts, including tripling the number of free condoms distributed by the government.

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As he often does, Rep. Mark Souder (R-Ind.) ignored the facts and engaged in ad hominem attacks in his Nov. 20 letter, "Politico - Ideological Prism?"

Instead of disputing Politico's report that Rep. Souder incorrectly labeled the American Federation of Teachers, the National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence, the United Methodist Church and others as "drug-legalization groups" because they oppose a law he wrote that strips financial aid from college students with drug convictions, the congressman decided to attack the credibility of reporter Ryan Grim.

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The Sensible Reduction of Jail Time for Drug Offenders Should Be Made Retroactive.

THIS MONTH, a measure of rationality was injected into federal sentencing guidelines when more lenient penalties for crack cocaine became the law of the land. The new guidelines will affect defendants convicted in the future, but they also should be made retroactive. That would bring some measure of equity to thousands of offenders -- roughly 85 percent of them African American men -- already serving unjustifiably long prison terms.

In May, the U.S. Sentencing Commission, which has the authority to craft sentencing guidelines for federal crimes, sent to Congress a proposal that would reduce the penalties for crack offenses. For example, a first-time offender caught with five grams of crack previously faced a prison term of up to 78 months; under the new sentencing scheme, he faces a maximum of 63 months. The commission had forwarded such recommendations several times before, only to have them vetoed by Congress. This time, to lawmakers' credit, the measure was allowed to stand.

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n. 1. a person who believes in the doctrine of the freedom of the will

2. a person who believes in full individual freedom of thought, expression and action

3. a freewheeling rebel who hates wiretaps, loves Ron Paul and is redirecting politics

How to make sense of the Ron Paul revolution? What's behind the improbably successful (so far) presidential campaign of a 72-year-old 10-term Republican congressman from Texas who pines for the gold standard while drawing praise from another relic from the hyperinflationary 1970s, punk-rocker Johnny Rotten?

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The Post's news story about the ban on farmers growing hemp -- a useful product that has no psychoactive properties -- illustrates how irrational U.S. drug policy has become ["Farmers Ask Federal Court to Dissociate Hemp and Pot," Nov. 12]. But I was also struck by the fact that the same section of The Post had more than two full pages of ads for alcohol -- a drug far more dangerous than marijuana. For example, in March the Lancet, the British medical journal, ranked alcohol as the fifth most dangerous recreational drug out of 20 cited, while marijuana was ranked only 11th (and tobacco, incidentally, ranked ninth).

Richard F. Kennedy

Lorton

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The proposed free-trade agreement with Colombia has stalled in Congress. The success and stability of Colombia and the Pan-American region depend on our ability to recognize the importance of this agreement to the United States, to Colombia's economy, to human rights progress and to enhanced U.S. national security.

This fall I spent several days in Colombia, meeting with President Alvaro Uribe and other high-ranking officials in the government and military. I visited refugee camps, economic development zones and counter-drug operations. The Colombia I recently visited is drastically different from the place I visited seven years ago when I served as the U.S. national drug czar.

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As a retired police officer who worked the trenches of the drug war, I was grateful that Jerry Seper did not say that putting Francisco Javier Arellano-Felix in prison for life will make any difference in the availability of prohibited drugs ("Ex-cartel leader to be sentenced on drug charges," Nation, Monday). That was refreshing. We in law enforcement know (but won't tell unless you ask) that every drug dealer shot or arrested is quickly replaced. The only net effect of this drug dealer's being put behind bars for life is that more than a million tax dollars will be wasted. Will we ever be as wise as our grandparents and end this new Prohibition?

Education specialist

Law Enforcement Against Prohibition

Washington

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Failure to make shorter crack sentences retroactive criticized.

WASHINGTON - Congress approved the biggest change in sentencing guidelines for crack cocaine in the last 20 years this week, but advocates are still pressuring lawmakers for more equitable sentencing.

Before the guideline changes, distributing or purchasing five grams of crack - equivalent to five sugar packets - triggered a mandatory five-year prison sentence. It took distributing about 500 grams of powdered cocaine for the same sentence. With the new guideline changes, nearly 80 percent of defendants convicted of federal crack cocaine offenses will face sentences 16 months shorter on average.

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Recently, the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments about a case in which the judge refused to impose the notoriously high sentence required for crack cocaine, Kimbrough v. U.S. While the case doesn't challenge the sentencing disparity directly, it calls attention to the statute that punishes crack cocaine with sentences 100 times greater than for powder cocaine, despite the fact that there is no difference in the chemical makeup of the two forms of cocaine.

In addition, new sentencing guidelines will go into effect Nov. 1 for people convicted of federal crack cocaine offenses. The U.S. Sentencing Commission has finally corrected the inconsistency between the federal guidelines and mandatory minimum sentences that resulted in people sentenced to more time in prison than required by the law.

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The Life of Hunter S. Thompson

An Oral Biography

By Jann S. Wenner and Corey Seymour

Little, Brown. 467 pp. $28.99

Reading "Gonzo" takes us back to a counterculture moment in U.S. history that seemed very modern and cutting-edge at the time but was still taking its cues from the rhetoric of Hemingway. It was a time in America when many men were he-men and proud of it: The really masculine ones fought wars, scaled mountains, built bridges. The mid-list guys found bars where they could beat each other up, drove 100 miles an hour through hairpin turns, laboriously dragged their couches out onto the front lawn, where they could set them on fire. Those were men's adventures; adventurous women tested their mettle by hooking up with abusive men and finding out just how much abuse they could take.

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Should judges have the discretion to depart from severe sentencing guidelines if they lead to unjust results? The Supreme Court wrestled with this question Oct. 2 during oral arguments in a crack-relatedcase, Kimbrough v. United States . The case had percolated up through the lower courts because the trial judge refused to impose a required sentence he found deeply unfair.

At the peak of the panic over crack cocaine in the mid-1980s, Congress passed a rash of laws requiring longer prison sentences. One such law created a 100-to-1 disparity between crack and cocaine offenses. You have to get caught with 500 grams of powder cocaine -- but only five grams of crack cocaine -- to get a mandatory minimum sentence of five years.

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