Regarding the editorial "Bay City attorney's broadside on BAYANET gets professional reply, but no formal debate:"

Writing as a retired detective, BAYANET is a horrific waste of tax dollars, both federal "free" money and Michigan residents'. We taxpayers must pay the $30,000 per year to lock up those arrested by my colleagues. The feds are $15 trillion in the red, in case anybody cares.

After 40 years of Drug War and a trillion tax dollars spent, drugs are cheaper, stronger and readily available to Michigan residents young and old. We know that every drug dealer arrested is quickly replaced.

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A 27-year-old man who died after a drug stop in Houma Thursday night choked to death after trying to swallow plastic bags of suspected cocaine, marijuana and heroin, according to preliminary results from an autopsy performed Monday.

Gary Alford, an investigator with the Terrebonne Coroner's Office, said the autopsy results for Wayne Michael Williams of Houma are not yet final pending toxicology tests that take several weeks to complete.

"The primary cause is going to be asphyxiation," Alford said. "His drug levels might be very high if one of those bags broke. So that could be a contributing factor also. We're going to have to wait and see."

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It is truly criminal that unscrupulous drug gangs cultivate marijuana in national forests with complete disregard for the environment ("Forests vs. marijuana," Tribune-Herald, Dec. 27). This is solely because the high price of illegal cannabis makes this activity worth the risk.

And so, the U.S. Forest Service will continue with eradication and cleanup efforts and will begin advocating for re-legalizing cannabis as a disincentive to grow pot on public lands. BINGO! Now why hasn't that brilliant idea been forwarded sooner?

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Riverside County officials said Wednesday they have begun legal action to close about three dozen medical marijuana dispensaries in unincorporated areas.

Attorneys filed for an injunction and issued legislative subpoenas against two of the stores, the latest volley since the Board of Supervisors authorized crackdowns on Dec. 13.

The county asked a Riverside County Superior Court judge to declare Platinum Collective in Home Gardens, near Riverside, a public nuisance and issue an injunction to shut down operations at the shop in the 12000 block of Magnolia Avenue, east of McKinley Street. According to the Dec. 21 court filing, the dispensary creates traffic problems, and officials said it poses a safety issue for children who walk past the shop on their way to Villegas Middle School.

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PORTLAND -- A medical marijuana dispensary that's scheduled to open in Portland next month is designed as a California-style wellness center.

Its operator is promoting a free coffee and tea bar, acupuncture clinics, support groups, counseling and a "welcoming vapor lounge."

The new website of Wellness Connection of Maine says, "Patients are always welcome to relax and socialize near our fireplace, or enjoy a free cup of tea with a friend in our cafe space."

The manager of Maine's medical marijuana program says a dispensary with such amenities would violate state regulations aimed at ensuring that dispensaries are places to get medicine for serious illnesses, not places to socialize.

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Re: "Police chief to wage war on drugs," the Times Herald's Dec. 15 opinion:

Police Chief Michael Reaves said at least 90% of the crime in Port Huron is drug-related. City Manager Bruce Brown said it's time for a reinvigorated war on drugs. What they won't say is 90% of so-called "drug crime" is caused by drug prohibition, not the drugs themselves.

When was the last time the Times Herald reported a drive-by shooting at Kroger between the Miller Mob and the Coors Crew, who were trying to protect their turf on aisle nine?

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Since the federal government and Congress are unwilling to heed the wishes of the electorate when it comes to regulating the sale and distribution of marijuana for medicinal purposes, it's up to the states to engage in pressure politics.

States are known as the laboratories of democracy, so it's appropriate that they would also be the places to plant the seeds of sensible change.

Sixteen states have adopted medical marijuana laws, despite the fact that federal law considers pot to be more dangerous than prescription pain pills, and on par with heroin. Nearly 15,000 people died from pain pill overdoses in 2008, but nobody is calling for OxyContin and the like to be pulled from pharmacy shelves. Lethal overdoses of marijuana are unheard of, but pharmacies aren't allowed to stock pot under federal law.

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Regarding your Dec. 13 editorial, not only should medical marijuana be made available to patients in need, but also adult recreational use should be legally regulated.

Drug policies modeled after alcohol prohibition have given rise to a youth-oriented black market. Illegal drug dealers don't ID for age, but they do recruit minors immune to adult sentences.

Throwing more money at the problem is no solution. Attempts to limit the supply of illegal drugs while demand remains constant only increase the profitability of drug trafficking. For addictive drugs like heroin, a spike in street prices leads desperate addicts to increase criminal activity to feed desperate habits. The drug war doesn't fight crime, it fuels crime.

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On two occasions, Maine voters have authorized medical marijuana for people with serious illnesses. This was not a vote to legalize recreational marijuana use, but an attempt to treat the herb as much like a medicine as possible.

Operators of the newest dispensary in Portland should keep that in mind and not take advantage of Mainers' compassion. Unfortunately, that's not what they are advertising.

The website of Wellness Connection of Maine advertises a place for patients to relax near a fireplace and drink tea, while eating food laced with marijuana. It's a setting that sounds more like a cocktail lounge than a dispensary and it is not what voters were promised.

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After $1 Triilion Dollars Wasted on Failed Policies, This Whole Medicinal Weed Thing Really Makes Sense

When I started writing this column a little more than a year ago, I thought medical marijuana was a thinly veiled cover for folks who wanted to legalize the substance. Not that I opposed the notion, nor did I doubt that marijuana has medical value - I've seen it stop nausea in people who couldn't keep any food down and I've seen people who were wasting away get an appetite. But I saw the overall marijuana drama as something of an amusing middle-class cause that really didn't mean much in the big picture. I also saw an explosion of marijuana-related storefronts around town and thought there was money to be made.

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Should juries vote "not guilty" on low-level marijuana charges to send a message about our country's insane marijuana arrest policy?

Jury nullification is a constitutional doctrine that allows juries to acquit defendants who are technically guilty but who don't deserve punishment. As Paul Butler wrote recently in The New York Times, juries have the right and power to use jury nullification to protest unjust laws.

Mr. Butler points out that nullification was credited with ending our country's disastrous alcohol Prohibition as more and more jurors refused to send their neighbors to jail for a law they didn't believe in. He says we need to do the same with today's marijuana arrests.

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The Upper Freehold Township Committee adopted an ordinance this month that is designed to ban medical marijuana facilities in its township ("Construction of pot greenhouses put on hold - Upper Freehold vote prevents town from violating federal law," Dec. 17). The committee said that it would not permit any facility that was engaged in an activity that is against federal law. The ordinance is designed to thwart the New Jersey Compassionate Use Medical Marijuana Act in favor of the federal law, the Controlled Substances Act (CSA).

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"Play faster!" he cried, wildly, over and over. "Play faster!"

The dame who was tickling the ivories complied, out of control herself. The music revved to a dangerous velocity oh, too fast for decent, sober, well-behaved Americans to bear and ... well, you just knew, violence, madness, laughter were just around the corner. The year was 1936 and, oh my God, they were high on marijuana, public enemy No. 1

The scene is from "Reefer Madness," arguably the dumbest movie ever made but smugly at the emotional and ideological core of American drug policy for the last three-quarters of a century. The policy, which morphed in 1970 into an all-out "war" on drugs, has filled our prisons to bursting, created powerful criminal enterprises, launched a real war in Mexico and presided over the skyrocketing of recreational drug use in the United States. The war on drugs just may be a bigger disaster than the war on terror.

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Smoking pot is now more common among 10th graders in the U.S. than smoking cigarettes, and according to the latest federal government survey one out of every 15 high school students smokes marijuana on an almost daily basis. A quarter of the eighth, 10th and 12th graders surveyed reported using marijuana in the last year.

Think this uptick has anything to do with our government's increasingly lenient policies governing marijuana use?

Well, of course it does! "The upward trend in teens' abuse of marijuana corresponded to downward trends in their perception of risk," according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, which released the survey results.

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Proposition 215, passed by voters in 1996, leaves too many things open to interpretation and needs to be clarified by the Legislature.

As the California Legislature gets back to work next week, there's no more important duty than addressing the state's budget crisis. A close second in terms of priorities should be medical marijuana.

While the budget is job one, the Legislature can't say it doesn't have time for clearing up the medical marijuana confusion at the same time. After all, the Legislature last year had the time to debate and pass new laws for 2012 about tanning beds, child safety seats, carrying handguns and a raft of new requirements for employers.

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This week the California Supreme Court received an emergency request to temporarily set aside a Second Appellate Court District ruling which could have made the Mendocino County zip tie program illegal.

The appeals court ruled Long Beach dispensaries crossed the line between decriminalizing medical marijuana possession and authorizing the possession and cultivation of the drug. The county has chosen to wait until the courts decide the case before changing course on zip ties or drafting a new ordinance regulating marijuana dispensaries.

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Stevens County activists dressed in prison stripes recently were tossed out of Gonzaga University's Cataldo Hall where Rick Steves, the travel writer and TV show host, was delivering a speech.

Members of the November Coalition, a foundation dedicated to ending the drug war, had no gripe with Steves' hotel recommendations, but rather with his public support for an initiative to reform Washington's marijuana laws that the protesters say falls short of decriminalization.

"New Approach Washington" is the name of the well-financed effort to bring before the Legislature early next year Initiative 502, which would treat marijuana like a public health issue rather than a crime.

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Panel Winnowing Field of Applicants

The District of Columbia's health department is expected within the next few days to give its first indication of who qualifies to grow medical marijuana in the nation's capital, a significant step in a program aimed at comforting the sick and dying that is more than a dozen years in the making.

A panel of health, regulatory and law enforcement officials tasked with choosing the top 20 out of 28 applications to open cultivation centers in the District is scheduled to complete its initial review by Friday and provide notice to qualifying applicants and Advisory Neighborhood Commissions in the relevant areas by Jan. 4, according to a schedule from the D.C. Health Regulation and Licensing Administration.

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Federal authorities' efforts in recent months to crack down on state-regulated marijuana dispensaries in California have increased tensions over which level of government should take the lead in defining the legal boundaries for drug use and possession.

Marijuana, under the federal Controlled Substances Act, is classified as a Schedule I drug, the same as LSD and ecstasy. The designation means none is recognized as having any medicinal value.

But that view runs counter to the positions of numerous doctors and scientists who've found the plant does, indeed, offer some medicinal benefits to individuals dealing with certain health conditions. More than a dozen states, and the District of Columbia, have been convinced and approved their own laws that either decriminalize marijuana or allow for its medicinal use.

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Whitehall police Officer David Artman remembers the woman's bruised face when he and his partner responded to a domestic dispute. They left that August day, he said, with her intoxicated boyfriend in handcuffs.

Alcohol or drugs factor into domestic violence "almost every time," Artman told seventh-graders during a recent Drug Abuse Resistance Education, or D.A.R.E., program at J.E. Harrison Middle School in Baldwin-Whitehall School District.

The D.A.R.E. program engages kids in discussions about drug abuse, peer pressure, self-esteem and bullying.

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