More Foot Patrols To Bolster Safety

I 'm glad that the police can follow the smell of marijuana smoke -- but can't hear the cries of women being raped. How many man-hours -- and how much money -- has been spent to prosecute people for marijuana usage -- or gods forbid -- jogging nude with a pumpkin on their heads? Why isn't community safety the priority of our police?

The last attack was at Williamson Village, at 7:45 p.m., which clearly illustrates a basic lack of personal safety in Boulder. The reason is clear: Since I've moved to Boulder in 1999, I've seen foot patrols by police in two locations: the Pearl Street Mall, and 13th Street on University Hill.

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Dear Editor,

If health outcomes determined drug laws instead of cultural norms, marijuana would be legal. Unlike alcohol, marijuana has never been shown to cause an overdose death, nor does it share the addictive properties of tobacco. Like any drug, marijuana can be harmful if abused, but jail cells are inappropriate as health interventions and ineffective as deterrents.

The first marijuana laws were enacted in response to Mexican immigration during the early 1900s, despite opposition from the American Medical Association. Dire warnings that marijuana inspires homicidal rages have been counterproductive at best. White Americans did not even begin to smoke pot until a soon-to-be entrenched federal bureaucracy began funding reefer madness propaganda.

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(Re: "Still smokin'," Buzz, Dec. 18.) Cheech and Chong have been effective splitting my gut exposing the prohibition, persecution and extermination of the relatively safe, socially acceptable, God-given plant, cannabis, for what it is. But cannabis prohibition is not funny. I was angry when I heard George Bush and John Ashcroft's ignoids caged Chong over this bullshit. Government is screwing the country bad with this subsidized discrimination and persecution; it's as though America is run by Nazis trying to destroy us.

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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

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The reunion between comedy legends Richard "Cheech" Marin and Tommy Chong was going to get under way in 2002 or so. But a not-so-funny thing happened, and Chong ended up in federal prison for trafficking in water pipes (which is kind of like imprisoning Don Rickles for telling a Polack joke).

So logistics and life pushed Cheech & Chong back to '08, and it's finally here, with two sold-out shows at the Paramount Theatre on Saturday and tickets still available for Sunday. The duo's groundbreaking '70s stoner humor has lived on though movies like Half Baked and the Harold and Kumar series. Besides fans from back in the day, the shows are attracting a new crowd of young fans. The pair spoke from Boston about reuniting after a rancorous decades-long falling out.

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With their long-awaited reunion and a new film in the works, Cheech and Chong light it up in high style by Ben Corbett

We use suppositories now," Cheech Marin and Tommy Chong chime simultaneously when asked if they still smoke marijuana.

It's been 23 years since they've performed together, yet the chemistry is as impressively tight as the duo's 1970s prime, when crafting routines like Acapulco Gold, Basketball Jones, Earache My Eye and Blind Melon Chitlin - sketches as American and timeless as the minds that created them. Not to mention the infinite laughs they still inspire more than three decades after the fact. During TBS's Cheech and Chong Roasted held at Ceasar's Palace in November, the program attracted 2.4 million viewers, breaking the network's former record, and only illustrating that none other than Cheech and Chong can fill the vacuum they left in their own wake back in 1985.

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Why is the press aiding and abetting the deprivation of rights under the color of law?

Millions of Americans have been arrested and their property has been seized for violating the marijuana laws.

Millions of us have the right to question the validity of these laws and are denied the right to the due process of law.

Marijuana is still illegal because the judiciary does not recognize marijuana users as persons and does not recognize marijuana as property. Only persons and property under the Constitution's 4th and 5th Amendments are protected from unreasonable deprivation of liberty and property.

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Children found in homes where drug dealing or manufacturing is going on will get better care under new policies put in place Thursday, officials said.

Denver District Attorney Mitch Morrissey and other officials announced new child abuse policies that give specifics for how drug-endangered children will be treated.

"These are children who are not only at risk for child abuse but medical problems from exposure to chemicals found in drugs or used in their manufacture," Morrissey said. "Some people say drug cases are victimless crimes, but they are not victimless crimes when children are involved."

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Every week I write the Cop Shop -- my favorite task at this paper. My life is so boring, and some of my neighbors' lives are so interesting in all these incredible, horrible, spectacular ways.

The Telluride cops sometimes capture, in their police reports, a side of this town in a way official records rarely do.

Every week we brawl over little things, we pass out on the sidewalk, we steal our roommate's stuff and pilfer little girls' bicycles.

And why are we acting so boneheaded?

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Don Marostica has a concern. He's seen what substance abuse can do to people, and he knows that many times the stories involve children.

Based on that, and having seen people in prisons and jails who struggle with substance abuse, the state representative from Loveland has lent his name to a local anti-methamphetamine campaign.

Marostica has teamed up with John Giroux's CLEAR - the Coalition of Loveland for Education, Awareness and Resources in the fight against meth - to help the group raise money.

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Are we ready to repeat repeal? Dec. 5 marked the 75th anniversary of America's decision, in 1933, to re-amend the Constitution and set ourselves free from alcohol prohibition, a 13-year failed experiment.

So is it time to free ourselves once more from an impractical and misguided prohibition effort -- the ill-starred "war on drugs" of punitive federal and state laws passed since the 1970s?

Yes, argued two groups -- Law Enforcement Against Prohibition and the Criminal Justice Policy Foundation -- at a press event here last week.

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Insurance May Not Cover Drug Cleanup, Even When The Homeowners Didn't Know

Marcia and Robert Ashbaugh were shocked to discover their son-in-law was extracting the chemicals used to make meth in the basement of their two-story Loveland home.

Their second unpleasant surprise came when they learned their insurance company didn't want to pay the $30,000 claim to clean up their contaminated property.

"They treat you like, 'Well, you had an illegal activity, so it's your problem,' " said Marcia Ashbaugh.

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WASHINGTON, D.C. - America ended Prohibition 75 years ago this week. The ban on the sale of alcohol unleashed a crime wave, as gangsters fought over the illicit booze trade. It sure didn't stop drinking. People turned to speakeasies and bathtub gin for their daily cocktail.

Prohibition - and the violence, corruption and health hazards that followed - lives on in its modern version, the so-called War on Drugs. Former law-enforcement officers gathered in Washington to draw the parallels. Their group, Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP), has called for nothing less than the legalization of drugs.

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A 19-year-old Coloradan faces drug possession charges after a patron reported a group of teenagers smoking pot in the back of an Aspen movie theater. The police arrived promptly and pulled the teenagers out of the new Kevin Smith comedy, Zack and Miri Make a Porno, to interrogate them. The accused stoner confessed to possessing less than an ounce of marijuana and was subsequently arrested. One more example of the police using our hard-earned taxpayer money to keep our movie theaters safe from giggly youngsters.

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The United States uses corn for ethanol because hemp is illegal. Hemp was made illegal due to a greedy component of capitalism combined with ignorance. Hemp prohibition is grave and dysfunctional, affecting world improvement, as Dennis Newman (Letter: "Change needed on ethanol," Nov. 13, 2008), exposes. Instead of embracing hemp for what it is; a God-awesome creation, America's leaders strive to exterminate it. 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.

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Reformation Summit Urges Action

Marijuana proponents are renewing discussion on the legality of the drug in Colorado.

Political activists and marijuana enthusiasts met on the campus of Regis University in Denver on Saturday morning for the first statewide Marijuana Reform Seminar.

The free event, hosted by Safer Alternative For Recreation and Sensible Colorado, drew a crowd of roughly 200.

"We're here to learn how to change the laws, not break the laws," Brian Vicente, the director of Sensible Colorado, said. "We want to come out of this a stronger, more sound, movement."

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Forensic Hygienist Makes Presentations On 'Clandestine' Meth Labs

A "tweaker" to-do list, highlighted Tuesday in a presentation by a forensic hygienist, underscored the scattered and potentially dangerous mind of someone locked in a cycle of methamphetamine addiction.

At first glance, the list appeared harmless - that is, until reading the last item.

It was a reminder for the user to kill a woman and kidnap another.

"This drug," said Caoimhin Connell, owner and operator of Bailey-based Forensic Applications and a law enforcement officer, "really, truly takes the humanity out of the human. It is so destructive.

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For University of Colorado senior Mike West, the most effective remedy for chronic pain is, well, chronic.

Recovering from a shoulder injury he suffered while skateboarding, West said he obtained a medical-marijuana card in April so he could treat his pain.

"I could have gotten a prescription for opiates, but I didn't want to deal with the addictive and depressive side effects that go with them," West said Monday. "My doctor agreed, so we filled out the paperwork and mailed it in.

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Lecture Warns Against Dangers Of Substance Abuse

FARMERS KORNER - An emergency room nurse from Maine schooled Summit High School students on substance abuse this week, demonstrating what awaits for those who visit the ER with a gut full of drugs or alcohol. "I guarantee that if you enter drugs and alcohol into your life, something is going to suffer," said registered nurse Linda Dutil. "I guarantee it."

The teenagers echoed gagging sounds as Dutil flipped through a slideshow - in the high school's auditorium - of a man receiving a stomach pumping tube through the nose. She called their attention to the pills mixed with vomit and blood on the chest. Fortunately, the percentage of Summit County high-school students using drugs and alcohol appears to have fallen in recent years.

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The combined 19 arrests made this week in Larimer County show how law enforcement agencies are dealing with the changing world of methamphetamine and marijuana distribution, a police drug investigator said this week.

The Larimer County Drug Task Force made 18 arrests Tuesday in the county following months of investigating methamphetamine dealers. On Wednesday, the Larimer County Sheriff's Office made its biggest marijuana bust at a single location, confiscating 1,307 plants and 47 pounds of finished pot at a LaPorte home.

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