An Oct. 28 letter to the Daily Herald advocated greater access to marijuana for people suffering chronic pain, citing a study in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). But if you visit the JAMA website and enter the search word "marijuana," you'll also see dozens of articles showing that marijuana can kill more than just pain: it can negatively impact things like cognitive function, moral clarity and the general health and well-being of users and their children and grandchildren.

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Johnsie Gooslin spent Jan. 16, 2015, tending his babies -- that's what he called his marijuana plants.

More than 70 of them were growing in a hydroponic system of his own design.

Sometimes, he'd stay in his barn for 16 hours straight, perfecting his technique.

That night, he left around 8 o'clock to head home. The moon was waning, down to a sliver, which left the sky as dark as the ridges that lined it. As he pulled away, the lights from his late-model Kia swept across his childhood hollow and his parents' trailer, which stood just up the road from the barn. He turned onto West Virginia Route 65. Crossing Mingo County, he passed the Delbarton Mine, where he had worked on and off for 14 years before his back gave out. Though Johnsie was built like a linebacker, falling once from a coal truck and twice from end loaders had taken a toll. At 36, his disks were a mess, and sciatica sometimes shot pain to his knees.

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Thirty people were shot, three fatally, during a violent 18-hour period from Saturday to Sunday in Chicago, which included a police-involved shooting and an attack outside Mount Sinai Hospital.

In the Lawndale neighborhood, a woman's voice echoed as she voiced her frustration at the scene of a double shooting that left a 31-year-old man dead and another man wounded.

"They know it's a drug house," she yelled out at the police and crowd that had gathered. "They don't give a (expletive). I do. I'm tired of this (expletive)."

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Chicago, I'm told, has a morality problem.

That's what White House deputy press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said the other day when asked if violence in our city is related to easy access to guns.

"I think that the problem there is pretty clear that it's a crime problem," she said. "I think crime is probably driven more by morality than anything else."

That's an interesting statement, given the reason the question was posed: The administration had just announced that 20 federal gun agents were being dispatched to Chicago to help with a task force focused on the flow of illegal guns into the city.

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Two Elgin men were arrested after police said they tried to sell pancake mix in a drug deal with undercover officers.

[Name redacted], 18, of the 600 block of Hampton Circle, was charged with four counts of unlawful delivery of a controlled substance, and one count of unlawful possession of a look-alike substance with intent to deliver, police said in a Facebook post Friday.

[Name redacted], 19, of the 300 block of Ann Street, was charged with one count each of unlawful delivery of a controlled substance and possession of a look-alike substance with intent to deliver, police said.

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[Name redacted], is charged with selling about a kilogram of heroin mixed with carfentanil -- the elephant tranquilizer -- and another potent opioid, fentanyl.

A grand jury has indicted a Cincinnati man on charges of selling an elephant tranquilizer in Chicago, the first time someone has been charged here with selling the drug -- which is used by narcotics dealers to boost the potency of heroin, federal prosecutors said Tuesday.

[Name redacted] is accused of selling the mixture of drugs to the informant on Sept. 9 in a vehicle near 93rd and Stony Island on the South Side. An audio recording was made of the deal, authorities say. [Name redacted] allegedly offered to sell the informant a kilogram of the mixture for $65,000.

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I am writing to you in regard to the article "New pitch made for alcohol, drug treatment center near Campton Hills."

The opioid epidemic is a rather common in the U.S., but the opioid overdose statistics in Illinois have risen dramatically over a very short period of time, nearly 1,700 people in our state died from overdoses in 2014. This is a multifaceted problem, but our first step is destigmatization.

The recent opioid overdoses are directly related to an overall decrease of prescribing large amounts of pain killers. This crack down, which is absolutely necessary, causes people with narcotic addiction to seek it through heroin, rather than narcotic pain killers. Many reports all over the U.S. are pointing to heroin laced with fentanyl, a super potent narcotic, most likely from China, as the culprit to the heroin overdoses. This problem is not going away any time soon.

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[photo] Partygoers smoke marijuana during a Prohibition-era themed New Year's Eve party at a bar in Denver, celebrating the start of retail pot sales. Denver is starting work on becoming the first city in the nation to allow marijuana clubs and public pot use in places like restaurants, yoga studios and art galleries. Voters narrowly approved the "social use" measure last November. (Brennan Linsley / AP)

Denver has started work on the nation's first law allowing marijuana clubs and use in public places such as coffee shops or art galleries. But the details about what those pot clubs would look like are very much in the air. Here's what we know, and don't know, about the looming pot clubs headed to Denver:

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Depressed, withdrawn and coping with a death in the family, Joseph thought getting high would help him feel better.

Instead, he said, his marijuana smoking grew into a daily habit that made him paranoid and constantly question how others saw him. He went days without going home, showering or eating much besides potato chips.

"I always thought (marijuana) would bring down my anxiety, but it just made it that much worse," the Rockford-area man said.

One day, after getting so high that he was pacing around, alarmed by his own gaunt appearance and generally "freaking out," Joseph was taken by his brother to a Rosecrance drug treatment center in Rockford, where he entered an inpatient program.

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[photo] A medical marijuana dispensary is proposed for 1154 N. Main St. in Algonquin.

Algonquin officials are considering a medical marijuana company's proposal to open a dispensary in a medical office complex.

ILDISP III LLC, represented by Ross Morreale, is seeking a special-use permit for a free-standing building at 1154 N. Main St., out of which the company would sell marijuana to patients with a prescription.

An attached garage would also be added onto the building, which formerly housed an MRI center, as a secure area for deliveries and waste removal, according to the proposal.

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