Regarding Carl Hiaasen's Sep. 27 column, Gov. Rick Scott's crusade to drug-test welfare applicants is an expansion of big government for the sake of a culture war. The most commonly abused drug and the one most closely associated with violent behavior isn't included in drug tests. That drug is legal alcohol, and it takes far more lives each year than all illegal drugs combined.

The war on some drugs has given the land of the free the highest incarceration rate in the world, while failing miserably at preventing illicit drug use. Despite the big government approach, the U.S. has higher rates of marijuana use than the Netherlands, where marijuana is legally available.

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Tonyaa Weathersbee makes the common mistake of confusing drug-related crime with prohibition-related crime in her Sept. 22 column.

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.

With alcohol prohibition repealed, liquor bootleggers no longer gun each other down in drive-by shootings, nor do consumers go blind drinking unregulated bathtub gin. While U.S. politicians ignore the drug war's historical precedent, European countries are embracing harm reduction, a public health alternative based on the principle that both drug abuse and prohibition have the potential to cause harm.

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Gov. Rick Scott's crusade to drug-test cash welfare applicants is turning out to be another thick-headed scheme that's backfiring on Florida taxpayers.

The biggest beneficiaries are the testing companies that collect $10 to $25 for urine, blood or hair screening, a fee being paid by the state (you and me) whenever the applicant tests clean -- currently about 97 percent of the cases.

The law, which easily passed the Legislature this year, was based on the misinformed and condescending premise that welfare recipients are more prone to use illegal drugs than people who are fortunate enough to have jobs.

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Gov. Rick Scott's crusade to drug-test cash welfare applicants is turning out to be another thick-headed scheme that's backfiring on Florida taxpayers.

The biggest beneficiaries are the testing companies that collect $10 to $25 for urine, blood or hair screening, a fee being paid by the state (you and me) whenever the applicant tests clean -- currently about 97 percent of the cases.

The law, which easily passed the Legislature this year, was based on the misinformed and condescending premise that welfare recipients are more prone to use illegal drugs than people who are fortunate enough to have jobs.

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Not Always Sensible

I was recently assigned to review a case for possible appellate issues. The case involved a 60-year-old man who was caught selling some of his Lortabs to an undercover officer.

The sale consisted of 25 pills in exchange for $100. The pills weighed 16.2 grams.

Under Florida law, any sale of pills in excess of 14 grams carries with it a mandatory sentence of at least 15 years with no gain time or early release permitted.

The cost for imprisoning this man for 15 years will exceed $400,000. Thought you would like to know where your money goes.

Kevin Monahan, attorney,

Palatka

[end]

On many levels, John Reilly Schultz is a sick man. He even said so himself.

Unlike many of the people who turn to using or selling drugs because they see it as a way of escaping neglected, impoverished communities that are short on jobs and long on despair, Schultz didn't have that hurdle.

He's a developer. He has a respected family name. He has children. And he has a $500,000 home in Ortega.

Yet while those advantages weren't enough to stop him from pursuing a crack cocaine habit, what happened last October should not have taken place.

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I was shocked to hear that 157 people have died just in Hillsborough CounA-ty from accidental overdose of drugs just since January. While I work in this business of substance abuse treatment, that number is still shocking, and I know it must be shocking to others.

For years we have fought the 'new addiction trend' that was alcohol, heroin, then marijuana, then crack cocaine, and now Oxys and Roxies, short for oxycodone or Roxicodone.

And we learned each drug is different and treatment needs are different. But with the right dose of treatment and the right intervention, recovery from addiction is possible.

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Our state government recently passed a law to stop the illegitimate sale of drugs like oxycodone by pill mills. That part is good; however, the law was not thought out well because even legitimate users are finding that they can't get their prescriptions filled.

WESLEY CHAPEL

[end]

Twenty-Five Years After 'Miami Vice' Became Part of the Country'S Cocaine Culture Lore, Miami Is Leading the Nation in the Beginning Of the End of America'S Three-Decade Cocaine Epidemic, Say Experts

In these rough economic times, another pricey extravagance appears to be waning in South Florida: cocaine.

The city that gave rise to Sonny Crockett and Ricardo Tubbs has seen a decline in people seeking treatment for cocaine addiction or dying from the drug. Twenty five years after Miami Vice became part of the country's cocaine culture lore, Miami is leading the nation in the beginning of the end of America's three-decade cocaine epidemic, say experts.

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Testing For All Adults On Welfare Is Unconstitutional, A Lawsuit Says

TALLAHASSEE - A state law that requires poor Floridians to pass a drug test before receiving cash welfare assistance - a key tenet of Gov. Rick Scott's campaign - is now being challenged in federal court.

The complaint, from a Navy veteran in Orlando and the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida, acknowledges that the state can drug test in specific instances, such as when there are public safety issues or in cases affecting certain public school children.

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Aims to Limit Abuse of Prescription Drugs

The state's long-debated prescription drug database opened for business Thursday, but it will be another six weeks before pharmacists and others who dispense controlled substances can access that information.

More than 100 drugs that have the potential of being abused, such as OxyContin and Xanax, are subject to the new rules. Pharmacists will have seven days to load the information into the state's database, which will be used to target junkies and doctors who overprescribe - so-called "pill mills." The patient receiving the drug and the doctor writing the prescription will be entered into the database.

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WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. -- Florida has long been the nation's center of the illegal sale of prescription drugs: Doctors here bought 89 percent of all the Oxycodone sold in the country last year. At its peak, so many out-of-staters flocked to Florida to buy drugs at more than 1,000 pain clinics that the state earned the nickname "Oxy Express."

But with the help of tougher laws, officials have moved aggressively this year to shut down so-called pill mills and disrupt the pipeline that moves the drugs north. In the past year, more than 400 clinics were either shut down or closed their doors.

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TAMPA -- When drug dealers started disappearing from street corners this year, Tampa police detectives thought something was going on.

And when officers made traffic stops, they began noticing something odd.

They were finding "massive amounts" of preloaded debit cards along with ledgers and laptop computers, said Sgt. Terry Goff in an exclusive interview with The Tampa Tribune and News Channel 8.

They soon uncovered what Goff said was an explosion of tax fraud that permeated the city's poorest neighborhoods and some of its most influential conclaves. Erstwhile street criminals were using laptops and mailboxes to steal hundreds of millions of dollars by filing fraudulent tax returns with stolen Social Security numbers.

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Here's a suggestion that would help stimulate this economy: Eliminate the ridiculous "war on drugs."

Legalize the drugs, regulate them and tax the heck out of them. Here we'd have a new source of revenue and stimulate a new income crop! Then use the billions wasted eradicating marijuana and coca crops, and putting people in jail for having "roaches" in their car ashtrays, to restart the Civilian Conservation Corps. Put people to work repairing our crumbling infrastructure, such as bridges and roads.

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Casino Fire Signals A New Stage In Criminal Violence That Mexico-U.S. Must Battle Together

The appalling barbarity of a deliberately set casino fire that left 52 people dead in the northern city of Monterrey last week is all the more reason for Mexican President Felipe CalderA3n to intensify his country's courageous fight against drug criminals and for the United States to do everything it can to help its southern neighbor. Mexico is waging the fight of its life, with an uncertain outcome that carries huge stakes for the future of that country and the well-being of the United States, as well.

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A serious crackdown on the illicit use of prescription drugs now under way in Florida should change the Sunshine State's disgraceful reputation as a pill-mill state.

It's a new type of drug war that law enforcement officials believe will save lives.

Federal and state officials announced results last week from a three-year investigation known as Operation Oxy Alley in which 32 people were arrested, mostly in South Florida. The charges ranged from intent to distribute controlled substances to racketeering conspiracy - -- the latter charge being a relatively new strategy in the fight against the abuse of prescription drugs. It will likely not be the last time federal and state officials pursue operators of pill mills as organized crime participants and racketeers.

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If you're drinking the Kool-Aid in Tallahassee, the current effort to privatize Florida prisons involves an amazing moment of convergence: a tea party governor working with a conservative Legislature to lower incarceration while reducing costs and helping former prisoners.

Corrections Secretary Ed Buss, speaking at a Florida TaxWatch event, spoke convincingly about "redefining corrections" and reducing the "corrections industrial complex."

Meanwhile, the actual bid document, created amid secrecy and almost zero public or legislative input, sets performance standards at a disappointing level "comparable to existing Department of Corrections facilities" and fudges issues of recidivism and hidden costs.

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Up To $60,000 Saved Yearly On Rejected Applicants May Be Nullified By Expenses

TALLAHASSEE -Since the state began testing welfare applicants for drugs in July, about 2 percent have tested posiA-tive, preliminary data show.

Ninety-six percent proved to be drug free, leaving the state on the hook to reimburse the cost of their tests.

The initiative might save the state a few dollars anyway, bearing out one of Gov. Rick Scott's arguments for impleA-menting it. However, the low drug test fail-rate undercuts another of his arguA-ments: That people on welfare are more likely to use drugs.

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BROOKSVILLE - County commissioners unanimously overturned a recent decision by its planning members and rejected plans by Operation Par to open a drug abuse clinic off Kass Circle in Spring Hill.

Dozens of residents at Tuesday's commission meeting spoke against the clinic, saying it would increase the crime rate, make it unsafe for children and seniors and devalue property.

Operation Par representatives said the clinic would be well-maintained and would not have any adverse effects to the community.

Planning commissioners last month approved the zoning for the clinic, agreeing with their staff saying they could not find any reason to deny the request.

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There is a natural tendency among politicians new to Tallahassee to assume that when they encounter resistance to change it is because of inertia rather than informed experience. The latest debacle involves the bold and quick decision by the Republican-led Legislature to privatize 30 state prison facilities in 18 South Florida counties. A minor detail not discussed at the time: up to $25 million in public money to provide severance pay to more than 4,000 Department of Corrections workers.

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