There is a destination where you're about five times more likely to be incarcerated than the rest of the world. It's got only 4 percent of the planet's population but claims more than 20 percent of the world's population behind bars. It's not Syria, and it's not Cuba. That place is the United States of America.

The Bureau of Justice Statistics reports that the number of prisoners in the United States has increased more than seven times during this author's almost 50 years. Two million people in America live behind the walls. America imprisons at an astounding rate of 716 of every 100,000 people. The Prison Policy Initiative ranks Florida 10th in the U.S., imprisoning people at a rate of 891 people per 100,000. Florida's "lock 'em up" rate ranks well above authoritarian regimes such as Cuba, Rwanda and the Russian Federation. In 1970, the Florida Department of Corrections imprisoned just 8,793. Thirty years later, the number has multiplied more than 11 times to greater than 100,000 men and women in state prisons.

[continues 236 words]

Re: Notorious drug kingpin escapes | July 13

In Don Winslow's most recent book, The Cartel, he describes the elaborately choreographed escape of the head of the fictional El Federacin, the world's most powerful drug cartel. The book's time proximity to Joaquin 'El Chapo' Guzman's escape (it was just published in June) gives Winslow's story a prescient quality.

Winslow's account also undercuts the simplistic accusation (made by Donald Trump among others) that the escape is evidence of Mexican malevolence toward the United States. By portraying the global impact and political complexities of the illegal drug business, he shows that it is the marketplace that determines the direction of the drug business. Thus it is not a problem that will be solved by changing immigration law or policy. How would tweaking immigration policy have curtailed the illegal importation of alcohol during Prohibition?

[continues 64 words]

For the past three years, Florida's Legislature has failed to pass a bill that would create a needle exchange program leaving the state without a program to help drug addicts avoid exposure to disease through dirty needles.

But stark new figures released this week show heroin use is surging across the country and is up around 63% in the last decade, according to a new report by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention. In another recent study, doctors at the University of Miami and Jackson Memorial Hospital found that over one year, cases of infection at Jackson Memorial caused by injection drug use led to 17 deaths at a cost of $11.4 million, much of it borne by taxpayers.

[continues 746 words]

John Morgan, 59, is founder of the Morgan & Morgan law firm, headquartered in Orlando. He also is chairman of the pro-medical marijuana group United For Care, which is planning a second attempt, in 2016, to get statewide approval for a constitutional amendment to legalize medical marijuana in Florida. He spoke with staff writer Scott Powers.

What kind of business opportunities are likely to emerge if medical marijuana is legalized?

There will be greenhouses and grow houses; there will be dispensaries; there will be different industries that will produce ways to deliver medical marijuana, whether its brownie pans or pipes or whatever. And there will be real estate opportunities that will emerge.

[continues 591 words]

In response to 'False assumptions' (Your Views, July 7): The users of cannabis claim not a single person has died from using it. This may be true in regard to overdoses, but it is damaging to one's lungs and leads to other drug abuse, including pills, cocaine and stronger synthetic marijuana. These stronger forms of marijuana lead to hallucinations and people harming themselves or others.

Marijuana is not conducive to people driving, operating heavy equipment or doing any other job where the public is concerned.

Drugs are poisoning our younger people, and marijuana is the first phase and should remain illegal.

Stephen Burchett, Seffner

[end]

I last served on a jury in 2007. When the 25 or so of us were called and brought into the courtroom, we were told the defendant was being tried for drug trafficking a=C2=80" four dime bags of marijuana. About ha lf of the people groaned in disA-belief, with one asking, "You brought us all the way down here for this?"

A few said they thought drugs should be legalized. One woman told how drug convictions ruined her brother's life. Others simply felt the amount involved wasn't worth prosecuting.

[continues 512 words]

In response to "Giant joint riles some" (July 7): Excellent report by Mike Salinero. He quoted one "drugfree" leader, "When you promote drug legalization on a float in a parade, it can give a really bad message to children." That may be obvious to adults, but not to kids.

Even the widely reported transition to recreational marijuana in Colorado, Washington, Alaska and Oregon has had no effect.

According to the "Monitoring The Future" reports, use of marijuana among U.S. adolescents decreased sharply in 2014, just as the media was reporting efforts to legalize in several additional states.

We must base policy not on belief or opinion, but on evidence when it is available.

John Chase, Palm Harbor

[end]

I know that everyone is entitled to his or her opinion, but the recent commentary you ran called 'What happened to the pot stigma?' (Views) has some false assumptions in it. Many of us don't believe that cannabis is dangerous. How many people have died from ingesting cannabis? Not a single one, I believe. How many deaths are caused yearly from prescription pain medicines? Forty-six deaths a day and rising. Also, I would like to point out that a new study in The Lancet Psychiatry found no increase in teen pot usage in states where medical marijuana is legal.

Jamie Howe, New Port Richey

[end]

Pro-Pot Group's Float Rolled Through Temple Terrace

Nothing says Fourth of July like an orange stretch limo pulling a giant marijuana cigarette down Main Street.

Local members of the National Organization to Reform Marijuana Laws used a float in Temple Terrace's Independence Day parade Saturday to promote their views. The reaction from anti-drug groups was anything but mellow.

The Hillsborough County Anti-Drug Alliance and Drug Free America Foundation sent out a dual news release Monday afternoon criticizing the float and questioning why parade organizers allowed it.

[continues 629 words]

Tommy Powell, international drug smuggler, picked an odd time to think about where he would like to retire.

It was 1984. Powell, who was just in his mid 30s, had been extradited after spending a decade on the lam overseas. He stood accused of importing more than 300,000 pounds of marijuana into the United States. A maximum sentence of life plus 70 years would have left details of his retirement entirely in the hands of the Federal Bureau of Prisons.

[continues 1350 words]

The Easy-To-Make Narcotic Is Often Made In Abandoned Buildings

ST. PETERSBURG - An overdose during the weekend and the discovery of a mobile home lab showcase a resurgent crime problem in Pinellas County: Methamphetamine activity, by one measure, has nearly doubled in the past six months.

Deputies discovered the overdose victim in the intersection of Alternate 19 and Klosterman Road and made three arrests in the discovery of the meth lab nearby, operating out of an abandoned trailer at 4720 Roberts Road.

[continues 427 words]

Re: Fact And Fiction On Medical Pot | June 22, Editorial

The referenced Lancet article concluded that while pot use is higher in states that have legal pot as medicine, usage did not increase when the medical marijuana law was enacted.

Corroboration is found in another statistic in the same database used by researchers who wrote that article. In 15 of the last 16 years, 12th-graders have said that marijuana availability has decreased from the year before. During that 16-year period, almost 20 states enacted medical marijuana laws. These two facts, taken together, directly contradict the Florida Sheriffs Association's assertion that enacting medical marijuana laws makes pot easier for adolescents to get.

John G. Chase, Palm Harbor

[end]

One of the key arguments used by opponents of legalizing medical marijuana in Florida should be put to rest. A study recently published in The Lancet Psychiatry concludes that medical marijuana laws do not increase use of marijuana by teenagers.

As the supporters of medical marijuana prepare for another campaign for a constitutional amendment, this important study should reduce the overheated rhetoric and ease some public concerns.

To be sure, heavy pot use can cause physical and psychological dangers in youths whose brains and personalities are still forming.

[continues 436 words]

Marijuana Has Gotten More Dangerous. At Stake Is The Safety Of Our Youth

Twenty years ago, drug dealers were seen for what they were - criminal and dangerous elements in our society. They were shunned by the mainstream. People who sold marijuana were considered losers, in the business of harming our children. Parents warned their kids to stay away from those known to use drugs.

But thanks to the marijuana lobby, what was once scorned is hyped and celebrated - even as the drug has become more potent, with THC, the intoxicating chemical, present at much higher levels than in the 1990s. Dealers run state-sanctioned dispensaries, lobby to further legalize their product and receive positive media coverage when doing so.

[continues 678 words]

South Florida's elected officials have begun lining up behind a proposal to make minor marijuana possession a civil infraction rather than a criminal charge.

The pitch is the same: Hand out $100 fines rather than jail time. It's being made by a number of local lawmakers in different cities and counties. And there are plenty of good reasons why they're right.

Diverting those caught with a small amount of marijuana toward civil infractions would help alleviate criminal court backlogs and jail overcrowding. In 2010, more than 757,000 Americans sat in jail on pot charges, according to the ACLU; Nearly 58,000 in Florida alone. The move also would free up police to investigate more serious crimes and provide an alternative to ruining a person's life for a relatively harmless act.

[continues 541 words]

Pot enforcement was a big ongoing story back when I landed my first newspaper job 45 years ago. Oh my, how we did love those police-combat-scourge-of-marijuana stories.

The Mississippi town where I worked suffered plenty of sure-enough serious crime, but robberies and burglaries, even the occasional Saturday night juke-joint killing, would hardly turn an editor's head. If the local police managed a pot bust, that was front page stuff.

The stories ran alongside photographs of the police chief, the arresting officer, the mayor himself, all them stern faced, standing behind a table displaying baggies of marijuana, rolling papers, a roach clip, a bong the size of an alto saxophone.

[continues 404 words]

The latest drug craze, flakka, is coming on with a rush, sending up to 20 people a day to emergency rooms across Broward County.

Such a flood of cases from a single street drug has doctors striving to devise treatments, and medical researchers laboring to understand the drug that delivers an instant high - and causes organ failure, scours kidneys like drain cleaner and sends users into a state of gibbering helplessness.

Holy Cross Hospital's Dr. John Cunha calls flakka "the perfect storm."

[continues 671 words]

HALLANDALE BEACH - People caught with a bag of marijuana weighing less than 20 grams would face a fine instead of arrest under a plan pushed by Commissioner Keith London.

Hallandale Beach may be the first city in Broward County to embrace the relaxed law.

London says he has been following a similar push by elected leaders in Miami Beach and Miami-Dade County to treat misdemeanor possession of marijuana as a civil offense with a $100 fine.

Miami-Dade commissioners are expected to vote on the plan June 30. Miami Beach has already given preliminary approval to a similar proposal.

[continues 244 words]

The new visibility of police violence toward African-Americans has stoked public debate about policing: What about body cameras? Should we reform police training? Perhaps we should go slow on all that military gear?

I find it difficult to sit through any of this while the underlying issue goes unaddressed: It's the drug economy, stupid.

It's well past time to legalize marijuana. But it's also time to consider decriminalizing nonviolent crimes involving other drugs, or at least to reclassify lower-level, nonviolent offenses as misdemeanors. We should also expunge felony convictions for many classes of nonviolent drug offenses to re-enfranchise, economically and politically, those who have staffed the drug trade.

[continues 450 words]

The new visibility of police violence toward African-Americans has stoked public debate about policing: What about body cameras? Should we reform training? Perhaps we should go slow on all that military gear?

I find it almost impossible to sit through any of this while the underlying issue goes unaddressed: It's the drug economy, stupid.

It's well past time to legalize marijuana. But it's also time to consider decriminalizing nonviolent crimes involving other drugs, or at least to reclassify lower-level, nonviolent offenses as misdemeanors. We should also expunge felony convictions for many classes of nonviolent drug offenses a=C2=80" those involving marijuana bu t for other drugs, too a=C2=80" to re-enfranchise, economically and politically, those who have staffed the drug trade.

[continues 776 words]