Prohibition has enriched violent mobsters and corrupted law enforcement officials. It has caused gang warfare, stray bullets, and dead police officers. It has failed to keep drugs off our streets (or even out of our prisons and schools), and has made it easier for young people to obtain illegal substances (black market dealers don't typically ask for identification). It has even made the illegal products more dangerous, since there is no regulation of the production or distribution for quality, purity and dosage. It has pushed addicts underground, rather than into treatment. After thirty years of the drug war, children can purchase drugs on any street corner in America.

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In the years I have gone to school here at Boise State, The Arbiter has always had a very liberal perspective, and didn't seem to give very good, if any coverage from a conservative perspective. Reading the articles by Brandon Stoker has provided a nice balance and better presentation of that conservative point of view. It has been a new and fresh experience, and I appreciate both his efforts, and whoever took the risk of bringing him on as an opinion writer. Both deserve congratulations for their actions.

I also want to thank you for returning Dilbert to the comic's section. I always enjoy those short clips too.

Rhead Hatch

Boise State Graduate Student

[end]

Brandon Stoker does little to further his argument against Cannabis legalization other than trot out the same tired and disproved propaganda we have heard for years from his crowd.

Gateway theory? Give me a break! I've smoked Cannabis for over 30 years (with no ill effects whatsoever) and lead a happy normal productive life and have no desire to "graduate" to harder drugs. Furthermore, no one I know who still smokes has this perceived desire either. His usage of terms like "Flower children" and "Mary Jane" tip you off right away that his is nothing more than a continuation of the Culture War spawned during the 1960's that continues today.

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Liberal Thinking And Legalizing Drugs Are Equally Dangerous

I love reading arguments in favor of drug legalization. They often include statements to the effect of "marijuana is not as bad as smoked tobacco," or "marijuana causes fewer auto accidents than alcohol." People might as well argue "methamphetamine isn't any worse than snorting pseudo ephedrine, red phosphorous, hydrochloric acid, drain cleaner, battery acid, lye, lantern fuel and antifreeze." Apparently, these are all thoroughly convincing rationalizations that justify drug legalization. After all, lots of other things are worse than drugs.

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I'm writing about Robert Sharpe's outstanding letter, "Drug war only fuels crime."

I'd like to add that if tough-on-drugs policies worked, the quixotic goal of a drug free America would have been reached a long time ago.

And if tolerant drug policies created more drug use, the Netherlands would have much higher drug usage rates than the United States.

They do not.

In fact, the Dutch use marijuana and other recreational drugs at much lower rates than Americans do.

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"The United States is at war," said Micahel Badnarik, the 2004 Libertarian presidential candidate. Badnarik spoke Thursday in the Student Union Jordan Ballroom. "I'm not talking about the war in Iraq," he continued. "We are engaged in a... war of ideas. We are in a war between individualism and collectivism."Badnarik, a self-declared expert on the Constitution, lectured to a group of around 100 supporters and students about the abuses of the Constitution throughout American history up to and including the present.One of the major themes of his lecture was a comparison of the United States with its current form and institutions to the Communist Manifesto of Marx and Engels. According to Badnarik, the United States is not a truly capitalist nation. "The United States is .. supposed to be the antithesis of communism," Badnarik said. "The first item in the Communist Manifesto is the abolition of private property. Our Founding Fathers said that private property was as sacred as the word of God and the communists think we're going to abolish private property."Badnarik cited the recent Supreme Court ruling on eminent domain and compared it with the first plank of the Communist Manifesto. "The purpose of the Constitution and the government it creates is to protect you private property," Badnarik said.Badnarik said his taxes, when he lived in California, totaled 48 percent. "When do you get to say 'alright, that's too much'?" he asked. "The founding fathers asked that same question. The Founding Fathers decided that if the government is taking or controlling one third of your productive output the system we have is no better than the feudal system we tried to replace," Badnarik said.He also spoke on topics such as the drug war. According to Badnarik, the U.S. Government has no business restricting the use of drugs. Badnarik referred to Prohibition during the early 1900s as "the first drug war.""We passed... the 18th Amendment and alcohol was now not only illegal but unconstitutional," Badnarik said. "The government ha! s no aut hority to tell you what you can or cannot drink. The 18th Amendment was technically unconstitutional."Badnarik said more people died because of alcohol during prohibition but not because they drank more. He said that it was because of the black market created by making alcohol illegal. Badnarik said he blamed bootleggers and gangsters such as Al Capone, who thrived on the underground market, for violence that resulted from a profitable black market for liquor. "We are doing the same thing with drugs," Badnarik said. He noted that Coca-Cola contained twelve grams of cocaine at one time and that opium was once available at drug stores."We didn't have the drug problem until we made it illegal, and now that it's illegal it makes a lot of money.... $10,000 to make the drugs and you can sell it for $1,000,000, and that kind of profit margin is worth killing for," Badnarik said.He also related a story of how he was arrested trying to get into a presidential debate during the last election to illustrate limitations set by government on political freedom.The lecture was followed by a question and answer period in which attendees asked about specific points of the Libertarian platform. Questions ranged from the status of Area 51 to immigration to education.

[end]

DETROIT -- In the 1980s, a frying egg was used as a scary metaphor for a brain sizzling on drugs.

Two decades later, the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy's National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign has launched an Above the Influence campaign -- a play on the saying "under the influence" -- to remind teens to just say no to drugs but in a unique way.

Unlike the previous ads that have tried to shock teens into action, the new ads use humor, exaggeration and shame to play on teens' desires to maintain their identities and reject negative influences. The ads will run through April.

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JEROME -- If life lessons are learned by taking the right turns at major forks in the road and coming full-circle, Mario Umana, has been a model student.

As a juvenile probation officer for Jerome County since 2003, this former U.S. Marine is still on a mission, using his head and heart to guide young people back to the right path.

He knows the pressures that assault young people at every bend and offers them options to turn their lives around before it's too late.

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Kudos to Brian Holmes for an excellent Oct. 31 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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Out of all the thousands of words available to the American policy maker, the one most difficult to utter, even in private, is the word failure. Much in the same a way a broken 2x4 hits the gut, the word just cannot grab hold of the surrounding air and make its way from the mouths of our elected officials.

But, alas, without even much provocation, the Bush Administration has done just that.

By proposing a series of cuts to the grossly ineffective and asinine drug programs, our leaders are finally getting the hint: The war on drugs has been a complete and abysmal failure. However, it didn't take a mountain of evidence, criminally, socially nor judicially, to make a case strong enough to warrant the cutbacks. Instead, it took the mother of all hurricanes to stir the fiscal pot. Hurricane Katrina, followed closely by Rita, gave immediate rise to fund-raising awareness. And what better way to fund disaster relief than to kill all of those failed drug war programs that did nothing more than incarcerate generations of minority youth and petty users. But, at least the proposal makes sense to just about everyone.

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Perhaps, by the time this article is published, Graham v. Holder; 5:05-cv-137-0c-10GRJ, U.S. District Court, Ocala, will be resolved, but until I'm satisfied that I've been proven WRONG. . . my research and investigation indicates that America's" WAR on DRUG S" is the Mother of all Frauds-with dead-bodies on both sides.

Albeit that Title 21 U.S.C. 841(a)(1) is a "forged" (1970) and "altered" (1996) instrument. . . without. . . force of law; it is irrefutable that the legislative branch has no single "enumerated power" or group of "powers" cobbled together that would even come close to granting the Ninety-First Congress the Power to enact major legislation that would directly PROHIBIT, FORBID, make LAWFUL, or make "UNLAWFUL," the People's "unalienable right" to wear a hat, plant a garden, (Raich v. Ashcroft;) or; "[m]anufacture, distribute, or dispense;" ANYTHING NOT EXPRESSLY PROHIBITED OR FORBIDDEN BY LAW. . . and. . . Congress didn't!

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Replacing marijuana prohibition with a system of taxation and regulation similar to that used for alcoholic beverages would produce combined savings and tax revenues of between $10 billion and $14 billion per year -- finds a June 2005 report by Dr. Jeffrey Miron, visiting professor of economics at Harvard University.

The report has been endorsed by more than 530 distinguished economists, who have signed an open letter to President Bush and other public officials calling for "an open and honest debate about marijuana prohibition," adding, "We believe such a debate will favor a regime in which marijuana is legal, but taxed and regulated like other goods."

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Restorative justice programs for non-violent offenders reduce costs to taxpayers. These intensive programs get to the root of the problem instead of focusing on incarceration and punishment. Jail expansions are much more expensive in the long run than effective, successful treatment. Existing today nationwide are examples of such innovative programs, with statistics proving success. A huge percentage of incarcerated people are substance abuse offenders who have mental disorders such as depression, bi-polar disorder and/or schizophrenia (dual diagnoses). The stigma and shame of mental illness creates denial and avoidance on the part of the offender, communities and governmental agencies. All of these disorders are highly treatable with consistent modern psychiatric resources and medications. Once released, drug crimes recur because the mentally ill offender is unsuccessfully self-medicating.

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Gem County is receiving a lot of scrutiny about methamphetamine use right now. Court records show the majority of felony crimes are directly related to meth use. Over the last few years, this use has increased at a time when the number of labs "cooking" it in vast quantities has diminished. Most of the meth now coming into the Treasure Valley comes from Mexico, stored in a pastoral local where there's little law enforcement while it awaits shipment to the rest of the country.

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And they're still blowing smoke! "Medical marijuana - only for the most needful because smoke is still dangerous." More bogeyman! All the other reasons legislators have used to discredit the positive attributes of medical marijuana have failed scrutiny by the truth; by doctors, by psychiatrists, by real people!

First of all, tobacco smoke has numerous detrimental byproducts including formaldehyde (that's right, folks - embalming fluid), carbon monoxide (car exhaust, anyone?), nicotine and I do believe, cyanide (a real, body-friendly poisonous compound), other nasty ingredients and tar! Marijuana is essentially clean except for the tar.

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All school-sponsored groups will be subject to the drug policy

FILER -- It took more than a year to complete, but Filer School Board members have finally approved a random drug-testing policy for their students.

The new random drug testing policy -- which also contains a provision for administering breathalyzer tests for alcohol -- will take effect during the next school year. It will add to a testing policy based upon reasonable suspicion that has been enforced in the district since 1990.

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Renaissance Alliance Counselor Facilitates Drug Rehab

How bad is drug abuse in the Wood River Valley? Teachers, counselors, police and students are aware of it, so why isn't the general public?

One counselor comes at the issue with a highly trained eye. Greg Greenfield, 52, learned from his own harrowing experiences. Clean and sober for more than a decade, Greenfield remembers all too well what drove him to drink and do drugs.

Despite his past, for 35 years he's been a working contract carpenter. He has spent 20 of those years working around the Wood River Valley. For the last five years he's also worked as an aftercare facilitator for the Walker Center in Hailey, a drug and alcohol treatment center based in Gooding. It has similar aftercare programs in several Idaho towns.

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5th District Court Rules That City Cannot Be Forced To Process Pro-Cannabis Initiative

The City of Sun Valley this week successfully turned away litigation trying to force city officials to process an initiative petition to legalize marijuana.

In 5th District Court in Hailey on Monday, Feb. 28, Judge Robert Elgee issued a summary judgment in favor of the city, ruling that a 2004 pro-marijuana initiative filed by the Bellevue-based Liberty Lobby of Idaho is unconstitutional.

Adam King, assistant city attorney, said Elgee also ruled Monday that the city does not have the authority to process an unconstitutional initiative petition and cannot be made to put such a petition before citizens for a vote.

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Bellevue-Based Liberty Lobby Seeking To Legalize Cannabis In Sun Valley

A longstanding legal dispute between the city of Sun Valley and a Bellevue-based group trying to legalize marijuana could come to a climax at the end of this month.

After a series of legal maneuvers in the last two months, the Liberty Lobby of Idaho and a city attorney have asked that the 5th District Court rule on whether the city must process an initiative petition that seeks a special vote on the pot-legalization issue. The court has scheduled a hearing on the matter for Monday, Feb. 28.

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Idaho Is Only State In Region Lacking Medical Marijuana Law

BOISE -- Now that every other state in the Northwest has passed some form of medicinal marijuana legalization over the last decade, one organization wants to bring similar legislation to Idaho.

"Idaho needs to step up to the plate," said Tim Teater, state coordinator of the Idaho affiliate of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, or NORML. "The time is long past for Idaho to pass this law."

At a news conference in the Statehouse on Monday, Teater said he is involved in talks with several Idaho legislators about the issue. He wants lawmakers to introduce a bill that would give patients suffering from serious illnesses, or their primary caregivers, the ability to grow marijuana without fear of prosecution.

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