Although Justin Guiffre's column ("Put the poor before pot" April 20, p. 4) on marijuana made some interesting points, it did not address the deadlier problems that would surround marijuana legalization. According to a 1994 report in the New England Journal of Medicine titled "Testing Reckless Drivers for Cocaine and Marijuana," 33 percent of reckless drivers who were tested for drugs were high on marijuana.

Could you imagine what would happen on our roads if marijuana use became acceptable and legal in this country? Could you imagine how many more reckless drivers would get behind the wheel high and endanger their own and other people's life if marijuana became legal?

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As a product of Fairfax County schools (West Springfield High School, class of 1992), I was heartbroken at the story of Josh Anderson, the South Lakes High School junior who committed suicide when faced with expulsion for marijuana ["Unbending Rules on Drugs in Schools Drive One Teen to the Breaking Point," Metro, April 5].

It easily could have been me. Like Josh and far too many of his peers now and my peers then, I experimented with marijuana in high school. And, like Josh, I was stupid.

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In 1932, Alphonse Capone, an influential businessman then living in Chicago, used to drive through the city in a caravan of armor-plated limos built to his specifications by General Motors. Submachine-gun-toting associates led the motorcade and brought up the rear. It is a measure of how thoroughly the mob mentality had permeated everyday life that this was considered normal.

Capone and his boys were agents of misguided policy. Ninety years ago, the United States tried to cure the national thirst for alcohol, and it led to an explosion of violence unlike anything we'd ever seen. Today, it's hard to ignore the echoes of Prohibition in the drug-related mayhem along our southern border. Over the past 15 months, there have been 7,200 drug-war deaths in Mexico alone, as the government there battles an army of killers that would scare the pants off Al Capone.

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Josh Anderson had just finished four homework assignments. He did his laundry. He watched TV with his mother -- "House," which he had Tivo'd for viewing that night. He played with the dogs. Then, at his mom's urging, he went up to bed. It was 12:30, and the next day, March 19, was a big one: Josh was scheduled for a hearing that probably would end with his expulsion from the Fairfax County school system.

The Andersons weren't blind to what got Josh into this pickle. He had been caught leaving campus, going to Taco Bell with a friend. When the boys returned to South Lakes High in Reston, an assistant principal confronted them in the parking lot, smelled marijuana and had the car searched. This was the second time in two years that Josh, a junior, had been found with pot.

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It's an indictment of our fact-averse political culture that a statement of the blindingly obvious could sound so revolutionary. "Our insatiable demand for illegal drugs fuels the drug trade," Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told reporters on her plane Wednesday as she flew to Mexico for an official visit. "Our inability to prevent weapons from being illegally smuggled across the border . . . causes the deaths of police, of soldiers and civilians."

Amazingly, U.S. officials have avoided facing these facts for decades. This is not just an intellectual blind spot but a moral failure, one that has had horrific consequences for Mexico, Colombia, Peru, Bolivia and other Latin American and Caribbean nations. Clinton deserves high praise for acknowledging that the United States bears "shared responsibility" for the drug-fueled violence sweeping Mexico, which has claimed more than 7,000 lives since the beginning of 2008. But that means we will also share responsibility for the next 7,000 killings as well.

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Schools Adopt Policy For Safety

A growing number of school districts and states are trying to give teachers random drug tests, citing student safety concerns, but their efforts are running afoul of unions who say such tests violate teacher privacy rights.

In Missouri, the House education committee is weighing a bill that would require districts to randomly test teachers for drug use. Hawaii last year adopted a policy allowing teachers to be randomly tested, but implementation was stalled after the teachers union sued to block the policy as unconstitutional.

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Drug Enforcement Administration spokesman Garrison Courtney said the arrest of 755 people last week made a "dent" in the drug trade ("100,000 foot soldiers in cartels," Page 1, Tuesday). As a Michigan police officer for 18 years, I too made a "dent" from time to time. Of course, all of us in law enforcement know that the dent is repaired within a few days as new drug dealers and mules take the place of those arrested or shot. This process has been going on for about 40 years.

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The brutal murder of retired Mexican army Gen. Mauro Tello in Cancun earlier this month was a stark reminder of the wave of drug-related violence that is tormenting Mexico and that threatens to spill over into the United States.

The escalating violence unleashed by Mexico's drug cartels as they struggle to control trafficking routes and expand their illegal business left 5,700 dead in 2008, with homicide rates spiraling out of control in cities along the U.S. border.

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On Monday, after Richland County, S.C., Sheriff Leon Lott announced that he did not have enough evidence to arrest Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps for smoking marijuana at a November party in Columbia, the gold medalist issued a statement of regret. "I used bad judgment, and it's a mistake I won't make again," Mr. Phelps said. "For young people especially - be careful about the decisions you make. One bad decision can really hurt you and the people you care about."

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BOSTON -- Mexico is not a failing state, as it has become fashionable to say. What has failed is our "war on drugs." That failure and the drug-related violence wracking Mexico suggest it is time to open a national discussion on legalizing drugs.

About 6,600 Mexicans were killed in fighting involving drug gangs last year, and alarms are going off in this country. The U.S. Joint Forces Command, former drug czar Barry R. McCaffrey, former CIA director Michael V. Hayden, former House speaker Newt Gingrich and any number of analysts have speculated that Mexico is crumbling under pressure from drug gangs.

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In the story of the emperor with no clothes, it took someone whose observations are rarely heeded - a child - to point out the obvious fact no one else could acknowledge. In the case of drug policy, it takes people who are usually ignored by Washington policymakers - Latin Americans - to perform the same invaluable service.

Last week, a commission made up of 17 members, from Peruvian novelist Mario Vargas Llosa to Sonia Picado, the Costa Rican who heads the Inter-American Institute on Human Rights, did nothing but admit the truth: The war on drugs is a failure.

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Drink and drive and it's grrrrrrrr-eat! Smoke pot and your flakes are frosted, dude. So seems the message from Kellogg's, which has decided not to renew its sponsorship contract with Michael Phelps after the Olympian was photographed smoking marijuana at a party in South Carolina.

That's showbiz, of course, but the cereal and munchie company had no problem signing Phelps despite an alcohol-related arrest. In 2004, Phelps was fined and sentenced to 18 months probation and community service after pleading guilty to driving while impaired. The silliness of our laws -- and the hypocrisy of our selective attitudes toward mood enhancers -- needs no further elaboration. Even so, things are getting sillier by the minute.

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Sometimes a writer goes searching for one story and finds something quite different, maybe even more important. You can, as I did, stumble upon ordinary people -- like swimming coaches Jenny Baldowski; her sons, Neal and Phillip, of the Augusta Riptides; and Philadelphia swim coach Jim Ellis of the "Pride" biopic -- who are accomplishing gold-medal feats despite limited resources and the negative forces and images working against their efforts with disadvantaged athletes. How do these community coaches handle the fallout when a high-profile athlete, such as Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps, messes up with even a "dumb mistake," as Mr. Ellis said, after all the hurdles these mentors jump, at considerable personal cost, to keep their young athletes involved in sports and swimming a straight and narrow path?

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It's hell being a celebrity, especially if you're young and find yourself at a party, where marijuana and cameras should never mix.

And it's not exactly heaven being sheriff of a county with escalating drug crimes and pressure to treat all offenders equally.

Thus it is that Olympian swimmer Michael Phelps and Sheriff Leon Lott of South Carolina's Richland County are being forced to treat seriously a crime that shouldn't be one.

As everyone knows by now, Phelps was photographed smoking from an Olympic-sized bong during a University of South Carolina party last November. As all fallen heroes must -- by writ of the Pitchforks & Contrition Act -- Phelps has apologized for behavior that was "regrettable and demonstrated bad judgment," and has promised never to be a lesser role model again.

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So Michael Phelps dove headfirst into the bong water. Is anyone really surprised, after all those laps? There has always been something submerged and escapist about the world's greatest swimmer. When presented with a chamber containing a hazy translucent liquid, he did what's become second nature to him. He buried his face in it.

I'm just sorry I wasn't at that University of South Carolina house party to witness Squid Boy's binge firsthand -- not that I would ever make such a staggering misstep myself.

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Why Mexico's President Is Counting on Barack Obama

AS HE TOOK office eight years ago, George W. Bush promised to make relations with Latin America a priority.

The president's first foreign trip was to the ranch of Mexican President Vicente Fox, where Mr. Bush expansively promised "to boldly seize the unprecedented opportunity before us." There was no compelling reason for this hemispheric focus, other than the fact that Mr. Bush had been governor of Texas and was more familiar with Latin America than other parts of the world.

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At the start of the Afghan war, the British government implored the Bush administration to bomb Afghanistan's heroin labs and opium storehouses. The United States refused. America's Afghan partners in the struggle against the Taliban were involved in the drug trade. They were crooked, but useful.

In 2004, Afghan President Hamid Karzai declared a "jihad on the cultivation of drugs." Europeans guffawed. European intelligence had already named both the head of the Afghan Central Bank and Mr. Karzai's "anti-corruption czar" as "drug lords." And Mr. Karzai's youngest brother, Ahmed Wali, was named as a trafficker in early 2005 in U.S. intelligence documents discovered by CBS' "60 Minutes." In fact, there has never been a "drug lord" arrested in post September 11th Afghanistan. Drug Enforcement Administration agents in 2005 found more than nine tons of opium in the office of Sher Muhammad Akhundzada, the governor of Helmand Province. Under British pressure, Mr. Akhundzada was removed, but the next year, Mr. Karzai found a place for him in the Afghan Senate.

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Regarding the chilling Dec. 4 front-page article "Mexico Drug Cartels Send a Message of Chaos, Death":

This mayhem occurs as a direct result of -- and not despite -- increased enforcement of senseless policies that make drugs illegal.

As a 32-year police officer in Maryland, I have seen how the prohibition of drugs empowers violent criminal thugs who sell them in our cities and outside our borders.

If we legalized and regulated drugs, people would buy them from legitimate sources instead of from illegal ones. But until that happens, criminals will do anything to protect their profits, including murdering rival traffickers, police officers, journalists and children.

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WASHINGTON - Sen. Kent Conrad Saturday welcomed the arrival of the first unmanned aerial vehicle to the U.S. Customs and Border Protection's Grand Forks Air Branch. The arrival of the Predator B is the culmination of a four-year effort by Sen. Conrad (D-N.D.) and the congressional delegation to shore up security along the nation's northern border.

"It is vital to America's security that we protect our borders, particularly the northern border," Senator Conrad said. "The Grand Forks Air Branch plays an essential role in helping shut the door on terrorists who want to sneak across remote border points to strike on U.S. soil."

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The mother of a quadriplegic inmate who died in 2004 after suffering breathing problems at the D.C. jail has reached financial settlements with the District government and his care providers, her attorneys disclosed yesterday.

The settlements were reached in the controversial death of Jonathan Magbie, a 27-year-old Maryland man who was paralyzed from the neck down and used a mouth-operated wheelchair.

Magbie died four days into a 10-day jail sentence for possessing marijuana, which he said he used to ease the discomfort caused by his disability. The jail infirmary, where he was housed for several days, wasn't equipped with the ventilator he needed to breathe at night.

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