Gregg Allman Talks (And Laughs) About Music And A Bunch Of Other Stuff

8 p.m. Dec. 30. Ridgefield Playhouse, 80 East Ridge Rd., Ridgefield. (203) 438-5795, ridgefieldplayhouse.com.

I've got Gregg Allman on the line and he's telling me a story about the time he and the rest of the Allman Brothers Band lived together and ate psilocybin tablets (the active ingredient in magic mushrooms) every day for eight weeks.

Suddenly I realize that he misunderstood my question. It's not that I don't want to know about the drug-filled life of a rock star, but I haven't asked about it yet.

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DANBURY -- It's a single sheet of paper, easily overlooked among the sheaves of legal documents that are gradually filling Felix Cordova's criminal case file in Danbury Superior Court.

But sometime in the not-to-distant future, it will likely provide Danbury police with more than $20,000 to pay for a training course, purchase surveillance equipment, or make undercover purchases of illegal narcotics as part of a drug investigation.

Earlier this month, detectives from the department's Special Investigations Division busted the 33-year-old Cordova and several other people in connection with a street-level heroin selling operation based out of their Foster Street apartment.

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Heroin, a drug usually associated with skeletal addicts in the inner city, is increasingly infiltrating Connecticut's suburbs.

The suburban heroin scene is more sanitized and less obvious. Users are typically young and white and living in comfortable homes. Most, at least at first, don't even inject the drug.

"The more refined, suburban way of doing things is snorting it," Glastonbury Police Chief Thomas Sweeney said.

In most cases, young suburbanites start out by trying, then quickly becoming hooked on, prescription painkillers, authorities said. As their addiction deepens and they need more of the expensive pills to get the same high, they take a disturbingly quick path to heroin, which is potent, widely available and cheap.

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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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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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EAST HADDAM - Among ideas passed around at a drug forum Thursday was one for parents and children to have secret codes.

Erinn Knoll, community liaison for the Middlesex County Substance Abuse Council, suggested encoded messages could be a good step toward preventing drug and alcohol use in youth.

If a teen, out at a party, calls home and says to her mother, "No, I didn't get the laundry done," Mom's ears may perk. It could be an encrypted message allowing the teen to say in a manner her friends will not understand, "I do not feel comfortable here, come and get me."

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SOUTHINGTON - This week the Southington Drug Task Force wants to make sure everyone remembers the ongoing battle against drugs and alcohol, despite all the other messages they've been bombarded with recently.

This effort was epitomized by hundreds of people coming out to the town green Wednesday night for the 18th annual Red Ribbon Rally against drugs and alcohol.

Task force member Sgt. Lowell DePalma said the event is a way to help people remember, when they are being inundated with concerns about the economy or elections, that there are still issues right here in town.

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CANTON - - Kelsey Jones, a fixture on the Canton High School honor roll, was in pre-calculus the morning a police dog sniffed her locker for drugs.

A voice over the public-address system had ordered students and staffers to stay in their classrooms. Teachers were told in an e-mail from Principal Gary Gula that police K-9 units were on school grounds for a drug sweep authorized by the school board and superintendent.

"Please do NOT discuss this with your students," Gula stressed.

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In the article "Criminalization best deterrent against drugs," [Oct. 2, 2008] the author presents information in support of criminalizing drug abuse that would more appropriately be used against such arguments. The author mentions, "there are enough drugs controlled by the doctors in government that are already abused," and cites "painkillers" as an example. Many find this a compelling reason for the prescription of medicinal marijuana for pain since it is not physically addicting like painkillers and less likely to cause physical harm. The author points out how several prescription medications are sold on the street, but unless she is arguing for the full criminalization of all addictive prescription drugs, then her argument seems to misdirect the point.

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Students for a Sensible Drug Policy is a group dedicated to changing the way our legal system deals with drug users. However, it is hard to see how there could be any sensible way of dealing with drug users other than punishing them as criminals. Drug users cannot live as responsible citizens due to their addiction and the danger attached to it.

The SSDP's value statement says, "because the War on Drugs has historically been justified as necessary to protect youth, it is our responsibility as young people to stop this harmful war from being waged in our names any longer. As scholars, we seek solutions to society's drug problems through focused research, honest dialogue and informed debate rather than unquestioned extremism, punishment, and propaganda."

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With so many on-campus organizations, it is nearly impossible for students know of every club. Even further, when a student initially hears about Students for Sensible Drug Policy (SSDP), not much is known about the organizations intentions or goals. However, those who find more information will come to realize what it is these individuals do during their weekly meetings and that it does not involve any form of illegal drug use.

SSDP brings together those who are resolute on changing the way society treats substance abuse. Donald Halas, a 7th-semester environmental science and natural resources management major and current president of SSDP, clarifies SSDP as an organization that is working to "completely abolish" the War on Drugs. Previous efforts of the group include advocating for the UConn administration to adopt a Good Samaritan policy, which was enacted last year.

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Coalition Against Substance Abuse To Make Presentation To Parents Of Ridgefield Students

RIDGEFIELD -- A survey of Ridgefield High School students done in April showed 26 percent of the student body drank to excess on at least one occasion in the previous weeks.

Of the 1,270 students who took part in anonymous survey, 24 percent felt that it was important to use restraint -- not to drink alcohol, use drugs or have sex.

These statistics and more will be given to parents Monday at 7:30 p.m. in East Ridge Middle School in a presentation by the Coalition Against Substance Abuse.

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Imagine you're Cheye Calvo, the white mayor of Berwyn Heights, an affluent part of Prince George's County in Maryland. Coming home one night in late July, you find on your front porch a large package that, unbeknownst to you, happens to contain a lot of marijuana.

As it turns out, your spouse is the victim of a drug-smuggling scheme that targets innocent customers in the UPS system. You bring the box inside; moments later, the SWAT officers standing by break in and shoot your two beautiful Labradors. As the dogs lie there bleeding to death, you're held in the same room, handcuffed for hours. Nearly a month later, you have yet to receive an apology.

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To the editor:

The annual D.A.R.E. (Drug Abuse Resistance Education) car show in Torrington is the best in the area, with a huge, wonderful variety of rare vehicles. Friday's cruise was a great success, judging by the large crowds it drew. However, the D.A.R.E. program itself is a dismal failure and a waste of tax money.

According to the General Accounting Office (GAO), the politically popular program has had "no statistically significant long-term effect on preventing youth illicit drug use." In addition, students who participate in D.A.R.E. demonstrate "no significant differences... [in] attitudes toward illicit drug use [or] resistance to peer pressure" compared to children who had not been exposed to the program." Such criticism has plagued D.A.R.E. throughout its 25-year history, yet police departments continue to promote the failed program at the expense of effective law enforcement because it is a cash cow, providing hundreds of millions of dollars in state and federal aid, paid by taxpayers.

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Recent studies show that marijuana use amongst teens is on the decline, yet it is still in widespread use and their number-one drug of choice.

A report released in May by the White House Office of National Drug Policy states that although marijuana use among teens has dropped by 25 percent since 2001, more teens use marijuana than all other illicit drugs combined. The study also states that teens are using marijuana to "self-medicate" to deal with de-pression, thus furthering and worsening the depression.

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Rise in Heroin Use Tied to Painkillers

Norwich, Conn. -- Police say a new generation of heroin addicts trying to replace the high they get from prescription opiates, such as Oxycontin, is fueling the drug trade in Norwich.

On Thursday, law enforcement officials launched raids in Norwich and Sprague and arrested 22 people who they suspect are involved in drug trafficking. Norwich police said Friday they have made two additional arrests, bringing to 24 the number of people charged in connection with Operation Jersey Barrier, a crackdown on the narcotics trade in Norwich.

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CANTON - - The 30 or so people who attended an informational meeting Monday on last month's controversial drug sweeps at Canton middle and high schools fell into two camps: those who support it and those who believe it went too far.

"I applaud the superintendent for going forward with this search," said Sandy Sarmuk, a grandmother who is also a retired teacher. "The presence of the police in the building should be [a] comfort to every kid in the school."

Others, including Elisa L. Villa, the mother and lawyer who organized the meeting, sharply disagreed. In their view, the searches chipped away at students' civil liberties, created a climate of fear and violated the school board's policy, which permits such searches only in response to a specific concern.

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I'd like to comment about how appalling it is that our tax dollars are going to the Narcotics Task Force to bust and demoralize people that are involved with something that is practically legalized everywhere else in the world, including this country - marijuana.

I'm speaking of the 52-year-old who was busted recently. I know this person and he is as harmless and low key as anyone could possibly be. Yet, your article paints him as a top-notch drug dealer. This could not be further from the truth.

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The very idea that charges are being pursued against Easton's Ronald Terebesi seems somewhat ludicrous, and news that after the accused issued a not-guilty plea a deal may be struck to have Terebesi enter a drug rehabilitation program is not comforting, when seen through the civil liberties lens.

First, let's get one thing straight: Crimes are crimes and should be punished as crimes. That a law is ethically and morally valid is beside the point for law enforcement personnel. It is the job of legislatures to debate the validity of a law - the prohibition against marijuana for example - not those police personnel charged with the task of enforcement.

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I recently had the surprising experience of having a witness invoke his privilege against self-incrimination under the Fifth Amendment in response to a question posed in a deposition of a civil litigation. The question was whether that witness ever violated certain laws pertaining to illicit drug use. That an individual would elect not to answer that question was not the surprise; rather, it was the fact the witness was the chairman of the board of directors of a publicly regulated company.

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