Q. What exactly does the marijuana project do?

A. Though cannabis had been used by man for thousands of years, it wasn't until 1964 that the actual chemical structure of the active ingredient, tetrahydrocannabinol -- THC -- was determined. That stimulated new research on the plant.

At this laboratory, which began in 1968, we often investigate marijuana's chemistry. We also have a farm where we grow cannabis for federally approved researchers. Our material is employed in clinical studies around the country, to see if the active ingredient in this plant is useful for pain, nausea, glaucoma, for AIDS patients and so on. For these tests, researchers need standardized material for cigarettes or THC pills. We grow the cannabis as contractors for the National Institute on Drug Abuse -- NIDA. And the only researchers who can get our material are those with special permits from the Drug Enforcement Administration and NIDA. We have visitors at the building now and then who ask, "Oh, do you give samples?" We say, "No!"

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Drug Policy Network Executive Director Ethan Nadelmann is correct to advocate for the end of our "War on Drugs," which has resulted in nothing but a mountain of deaths, a litany of diseases and the fortification of organized crime ("It's time to end drug prohibition," Dec. 14).

I share his hope that President-elect Obama will allow debate on this issue to flourish and result in a re-examination of the legitimacy of these laws that dictate what one can do with his or her own body -- as thoroughly an anti-American notion as abdridging freedom of speech.

Amesh A. Adalja

Butler

[end]

ROSEBURG, Ore. - Their first love might be the rum or vodka or gin and juice that is going around the bonfire. Or maybe the smoke, the potent marijuana that grows in the misted hills here like moss on a wet stone.

But it hardly matters. Here as elsewhere in the country, some users start early, fall fast and in their reckless prime can swallow, snort, inject or smoke anything available, from crystal meth to prescription pills to heroin and ecstasy. And treatment, if they get it at all, can seem like a joke.

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As a retired police officer who worked the trenches of the drug war spanning three decades, I heartily agree with Ethan Nadelmann's call to end all drug prohibition.

A world without drug dealers and their violence means my colleagues will have more time for the deadly DUI, child molesters and other public-safety threats.

Moreover, the state via its police department cannot stop personal stupidity. It is past time for the police to again focus on public safety. Your personal safety is an issue for family and friends.

Howard J. Wooldridge

The writer is an education specialist with Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP.cc).

[end]

You don't have to go halfway around the world to find a major security threat. It's right across Arizona's southern border.

President-elect Barack Obama's foreign policy priorities need to recognize that U.S. demand for recreational drugs has created a crisis in Mexico, and U.S. domestic security depends on helping Mexico deal with that crisis.

Mexico's drug cartels, which have slaughtered in excess of 5,300 people in Mexico this year, "are as ruthless and brutal as any terrorist organization," Arizona's Sen. John McCain told The Republic's editorial board Thursday.

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WHEN school officials in Canton allowed police officers to search the hallways and parking lots at the middle school and the high school with drug-sniffing dogs last June, their effort netted the arrest of one student found with a small amount of marijuana.

But the search also resulted in a long-running discussion in the community about whether the school was violating students' rights by using a longstanding but rarely employed school board policy that allowed school officials to lock students in their classrooms as it searched for drugs.

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Dear Editor,

Reilly Capps got a bull's-eye (What Drives Cop Shop, Dec. 17, 2008) calling to end cannabis (marijuana) prohibition. Although the cannabis initiative failed a few years ago, all the ski town / counties pass it; Summit with 62% and San Miguel with a very respectable 74 percent. One of the most luciferous consequence of cannabis prohibition though is how it affects "climate change" and America's economy by also prohibiting and exterminating hemp (without THC). The United States uses corn for ethanol because hemp is illegal. America has had technology to build and fuel cars using hemp since the 1930s. Nearly every product produced from petroleum can be made with hemp resins. Some estimates indicate using 10 percent of America's farmland to cultivate hemp would eliminate any need for foreign petroleum. Before greedy ignoids conspired to prohibit hemp, it was referred to as the billion-dollar crop, when the B-word wasn't thrown around so loosely. A sane argument to perpetuate prohibiting free American farmers from utilizing the plant doesn't exist. Even communist Chinese farmers grow hemp; You know, that country America has the highest debt with. And consider how many factories and factory jobs America has lost overseas due to hemp prohibition. If America still grew hemp as it did back in the day, We'd still have those factories because hemp fields need factories nearby. America's future political atmosphere may be more conducive to changing hemp's status as a Schedule I drug along side heroin and LSD. Americans must work hard the next few years to re-introduce hemp as a component of American agriculture. In fact, environmentally conscientious Americans must fight harder than big oil and other mega corporations which profit immensely off hemp prohibition and spend huge fortunes to guarantee its existence. Because hemp prohibition is anti-American and it's shucking the country.

Truthfully,

Stan White

Dillon, Colorado

[end]

Cocaine poses the "leading drug threat in the United States," far outpacing heroin, a new federal report shows.

In fact, the document prepared by Johnstown-based National Drug Intelligence Center ranks heroin fourth on a list of nationwide concerns -- behind methamphetamine and marijuana.

But the report also notes that heroin continues to cause acute problems in the Northeastern U.S., where there are "strong and lucrative markets" for the drug.

Pennsylvania, including Cambria and Somerset counties, is no exception.

"Heroin is our No. 1 problem," said Detective Jason Hunter, Somerset County Drug Task Force coordinator.

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Re "Supervisors vote to issue medical marijuana IDs" (Page B2, Dec. 17): It's a relief that our county supervisors finally decided to obey the law that requires them to implement an ID-card program for medical marijuana users.

Not only will law-abiding patients be able to live without fear of false arrest, taxpayers will not be forced to pay for a costly lawsuit that may result from noncompliance.

Joseph Burch, Citrus Heights

[end]

William G. Brooks III, deputy chief of police in Wellesley, asks in his recent article, "How did we get here?" with respect to the results of Question 2 on the Massachusetts ballot of 2008. The answer is law enforcement intransigence and recalcitrance forced drug law reform advocates to the initiative/referendum system in state after state.

The bitterness and sour grapes at the end, however, reveal the true problem: "The system that brought about this change in our drug laws is flawed and the public was hoodwinked. Now law enforcement is left to deal with this mess."

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What a shame that Alabama school students will be among the first to suffer the effects of the economic downturn, when our state already has some of the lowest per-pupil spending in the nation.

According to the most recent data that I can find, Alabama on average spends a little over $8,000 per student per year. Yet we spend a minimum of $13,000 per year to lock up a nonviolent citizen for smoking marijuana.

Instead of making responsible adult cannabis consumers a burden on state taxpayers by forcing taxpayers to pay for incarceration, why not regulate and tax marijuana like we do with alcohol and tobacco? We could use the taxes collected to make our education system better.

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Abuse of prescription drugs continues to be a major problem among teenagers, although fewer are smoking cigarettes, the 2008 Monitoring the Future survey reported last week.

The survey, conducted for 33 years, found that nearly 10 percent of high school seniors reported nonmedical use of Vicodin and 4.7 percent reported abusing OxyContin. Both are strong opioid pain pills. Seven of the top 10 drugs abused by high school seniors were prescription or over-the-counter medications. "While the long-term general decline is encouraging, especially for cigarettes and alcohol, some of the other findings this year amplify our concerns for potential problems in the future -- especially the nonmedical use of prescription drugs," said Nora D. Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, which funds the study. Monitoring the Future is conducted by researchers at the University of Michigan.

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EL PASO -- With the homicide toll in Juárez surpassing the 1,500 mark, authorities there are left to face what border experts are calling the biggest Mexican dilemma -- ending the bloody street war between drug cartels, controlling thugs who have gone wild and preventing police corruption.

"The last time Mexico had so much turmoil and death was around the turn of the 20th century, and there was a revolution about to happen," said David Shirk, the director of the Trans-Border Institute at the University of San Diego. "It is going to take something with as much impact as that to get the problem solved."

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Those who favor a sensible and compassionate approach to the use of illegal drugs in New Jersey must continually contend with a tough bunch of hard-liners at the Statehouse.

It took more than a decade for them to win approval for a cautious test of programs that give intravenous drug users access to clean needles to slow the spread of HIV/AIDS and other blood-borne diseases.

And they've been trying for nearly four years to legalize the medical use of marijuana under tight restrictions for sufferers who could benefit from its use. Once again, they're butting heads with legislative drug warriors for whom any policy other than banning the stuff represents -- like the pool table Professor Hill warned the people of River City about -- "the road to degradation."

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Bridgewater -- The chief of the Bridgewater State College Police Department would like to get the word out - marijuana has not been legalized.

It's not open the floodgates time. We will be enforcing the law," Police Chief David Tillinghast said.

He said he's heard from multiple students there's a widespread misperception on campus the Nov. 4 ballot initiative decriminalizing possession of up to an ounce of marijuana legalized the drug. The difference is more than just academic, Tillinghast said.

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If you haven't heard of the potent psychedelic plant Salvia divinorum, don't bother looking for it: It's on the verge of being declared illegal in Ohio.

The Ohio House yesterday voted 90-4 to pass legislation making the plant from the mint family a controlled substance. Ohio will become the sixth state to make it illegal.

The bill now goes to Gov. Ted Strickland for his signature.

The Ohio Board of Pharmacy is directed by the bill to develop chemical standards for the amount of the drug in the bloodstream that would trigger a driving-under-the-influence charge.

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Neither Mexico nor the United States has many "drug-related shootings" ("Bloodshed on the Border," Dec. 8).What both Mexico and the United States do have is lots of drug-prohibition-related violent crime. It absolutely will get worse until we end the ban on drugs. Seventy-five years ago, our great-grandfathers regained their sanity and relegalized a different drug, alcohol.

Kirk Muse

Mesa, Ariz.

[end]

The crime, corruption and overdose deaths attributed to illegal drugs are invariably the results of drug prohibition. With alcohol prohibition repealed, liquor bootleggers no longer gunned each other down in violent turf battles. Drug prohibition funds organized crime at home and terrorism abroad, which is then used to justify increased drug-war spending. It's time to end this madness and instead treat all substance abuse, legal or otherwise, as the public-health problem it is.

Robert Sharpe

Common Sense for Drug Policy

Washington, D.C.

[end]

The New Mexico Department of Health's Medical Advisory Board will hold a public hearing in Albuquerque to discuss making new health conditions eligible for the Medical Cannabis Program.

The hearing will be at 9 a.m. Jan. 15 at the Los Griegos Community Center, 1231 Candelaria NW.

So far, the department has received petitions to add medical conditions such as Crohn's Disease, chronic pain, post-traumatic-stress disorder, hepatitis C, bipolar disorder, arthritis, asthma and anorexia.

Right now, conditions are limited to cancer, glaucoma, multiple sclerosis, damage to nervous tissue of the spinal cord with intractable spasticity, epilepsy and HIV/AIDS.

After the meeting, the board will make recommendations to the Health Secretary, who will make final decisions.

[end]

The extensive drug-related violence that has turned Juarez and other Chihuahua state communities into war zones has largely stopped at the border, but the effects of the drug trade stretch far beyond the banks of the Rio Grande.

El Paso, though spared the brazen killings taking place in Mexico, has felt the power of the multibillion-dollar illicit drug trade and has become a major hub for the distribution of drugs headed to markets throughout the United States, officials said.

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