Lawmakers and those who testified on behalf of a bill that would expand access to a drug that reverses the effects of opiate overdoses discuss the legislation outside the House Health and Welfare Commitee meeting Wednesday, April 2, 2014. Pictured from left are Rep. Bernard LeBas, D-Ville Platte; State Fire Marshal Butch Browning; Rep. Helena Moreno, D-New Orleans; East Baton Rouge Parish Coroner Dr. Williams "Beau" Clark; and Louisiana Fireman's Association President Kenny Hunt. Gov. Bobby Jindal signed the bill into law on Wednesday, May 28, 2014. (Emily Lane, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune)

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Fewer people are being hospitalized for opioid-related conditions in Louisiana, according to a new federal study. (txking)

Louisiana was one of only four states to show a decline in the rate of opioid-related hospital stays between 2009-2014, new federal data shows. During that same time period, opioid-related hospitalizations nationwide increased by a rate of nearly 24 percent.

The report, published by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, a division of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, said Louisiana showed a 6.4 percent decline in hospitalizations due to the misuse of prescription pain relievers and the use of illicit opioids like heroin and fentanyl.

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Dog treats containing Cannabidiol, better known as CBD, a chemical compound extracted from the marijuana plant, are a growing business as owners seek ways to treat hyperactive and nervous canines.

Even for a puppy, Kat Donatello's black Labrador, Austin, was hyperactive. After experimenting with natural supplements on her older dog, Donatello slipped a special biscuit to Austin. "It just kind of took the edge off of him," she recalled.

The treat contained Cannabidiol, better known as CBD, a chemical compound extracted from the marijuana plant.

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BATON ROUGE -- Growing up on a cotton farm in Missouri in the 1950s, Bill Richardson didn't know a thing about marijuana. Nobody talked about it, he never saw it and he certainly never smoked it.

"I didn't inhale," Richardson, LSU's 71-year-old vice president for agriculture and dean of the College of Agriculture, said with a smile in a recent interview.

Richardson has become the unlikely leader of an effort to get LSU into the pot business.

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A community can get a federal grant to mentor teens about drug use, but our government refuses to uphold the federal law stating that marijuana is a Schedule I narcotic and therefore is illegal. Thus many states are now practicing unregulated pharmacology in their sales of marijuana. These states are seeing increases in vehicular accidents and deaths, calls to poison control, arrests for use in schools, teen admissions to treatment centers and hospital emergency admissions.

New Orleans City Council just reduced the penalties of simple possession of marijuana to a fine, which to the legalization movement is a victory. Louisiana's Legislature is now offering us "medical marijuana," of which there is no such thing. The FDA, however, has approved Cesamet, Marinol and soon Epidiolex for various epilepsy syndromes. These drugs have passed through an effective and rigorous scientific process unlike what will be produced in select Louisiana pharmacies.

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In a series of speeches in 1971 President Richard Nixon called drug abuse "America's public enemy number one in the United States." In remarks from the White House on June 17, 1971, Nixon said, "In order to fight and defeat this enemy, it is necessary to wage a new, all-out offensive." This, as best anybody can tell, is the opening salvo in America's War on Drugs.

You'd think that if something really were public enemy number one that people would know to be afraid of it without prompting.

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RE: "43 died of heroin overdoses in New Orleans in 2015, coroner says." Metro. January 29.

The spike in heroin overdoses in Orleans and Jefferson parishes is alarming. Also alarming is the lack of resources for people who are battling opioid addiction. Until the barriers to treatment are addressed and access to care is available, opioid abuse and the corresponding overdoses will not decrease.

The quickest and most efficient way to address the current opioid crisis is to make sure that substance abuse treatment services, including detox, are readily available to the community. Treatment beds are severely limited in both Orleans and Jefferson parishes, leading to long wait lists at most substance abuse treatment facilities. This uptick in opioid overdoses should be recognized as a public health issue. Without readily available treatment options, an addict will continue to use until, inevitably, that person is met with deadly results.

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Last Thursday, Hank Green was one of three Youtube celebrities tasked with making President Obama seem accessible to millennials. Green asked Obama about marijuana legalization in Colorado and Washington during an interview in the White House.

After assuring Colorado and Washington marijuana residents the feds won't go kamikaze on their crop, Obama called U.S. drug policy "counterproductive," suggesting a public health approach to drug use.

It was the first time in awhile I'd heard him talk about the issue. Despite, speaking to new people, however, the stance is nothing revolutionary from Obama . The President ran on this approach in 2008, when he promised to steer the Department of Justice away from raiding medical marijuana patients.

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Re: Jerome McCollum, "We should be realists when it comes to marijuana," Oct. 7, 2B

As a growing body of data reveals the dangers with marijuana use and the increasing problems in Colorado, where recreational pot is now legal, I continue to oppose the decriminalization and legalization of marijuana. As mentioned in a Times column (10/5/14), I explained why at a recent conference. Interested readers should go to www.valuesvotersummit.org and scroll down on the front page to find my speech.

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Congressman John Fleming does not believe in marijuana being legal. During a recent conference when asked to compare marijuana with alcohol, he said alcohol has been accepted by cultures for thousands of years while marijuana hasn't.

While that is generally true, so what? If marijuana is safer than alcohol and causes less harm for the individual and society, which it clearly does, than it is illogical to keep marijuana illegal with alcohol being legal.

I don't care about what tradition has been. If someone is right on a public policy, than he/she doesn't need to bring up tradition. Their argument should stand on its' own merits.

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Thirty years ago, a college kid in Kentucky was caught growing marijuana plants in his closet. That turned him into a convicted felon, and though he's been on the right side of the law ever since, he still can't vote. On any job application, he must check the box next to "Have you ever been convicted of a felony?"

All this misery for growing a plant whose leaves the past three presidents admit having smoked.

We know this story because Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky keeps telling it. That a Southern Republican probably running for president is condemning such prosecutions as unfair speaks volumes on the collapsing support for the war on marijuana - part of the larger war on drugs.

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'The rest of the world kind of slowly recedes from memory, experience'

Marijuana activist Marc Emery returns to Canada on Tuesday morning after a four-and-a-half-year stint in American prisons for selling marijuana seeds to a U.S. buyer. Postmedia phoned him at a Louisiana detention centre to learn more about his return.

Q: What's the plan for today?

A: I get put on a plane at probably about 10 or 11 (EST) in the morning and arrive in Detroit around three. At that point, U.S. marshals deliver me under the tunnel to the Canadian border point and Jodie (his wife) and some friends of mine should meet me there. If it's nice weather, we'll have (a few) hours in Centennial Park by city hall. Hopefully by nine or 10 o'clock, Jodie and I will retire and go get something to eat. Then we've got to get on a plane at six in the morning and fly to Toronto for a whole variety of things, not the least of which is to buy some stuff like new glasses and a cellphone. I've never texted in my life so people have to show me how these things all work.

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B.C. marijuana activist Marc Emery returns to Canada on Tuesday morning after a four-and-a-half-year stint in U.S. prisons for selling marijuana seeds to a U.S. buyer. Nick Eagland of Postmedia News phoned him at a Louisiana detention centre to learn more about his return.

Q What's the plan for today?

A I get put on a plane at probably about 10 or 11 (EST) in the morning and arrive in Detroit around three. At that point, U.S. marshals deliver me under the tunnel to the Canadian border point and [wife] Jodie and some friends of mine should meet me there. If it's nice weather, we'll have [a few] hours in Centennial Park by city hall. Hopefully by nine or 10 o'clock, Jodie and I will retire and go get something to eat. Then we've got to get on a plane at six in the morning and fly to Toronto for a whole variety of things, not the least of which is to buy some stuff like new glasses and a cellphone. I've never texted in my life so people have to show me how these things all work.

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He's back. Pot activist Marc Emery returns to Canada on Tuesday morning after a four-and-a-half-year stint in American prisons for selling marijuana seeds to a U.S. buyer. Postmedia phoned him at a Louisiana detention centre to learn more about his return.

Q: What's the plan for today?

A: I get put on a plane ... in the morning and arrive in Detroit around three. At that point, U.S. marshals deliver me under the tunnel to the Canadian border point and Jodie and some friends of mine should meet me there.

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Medical Marijuana Bill Dies in the Senate

Medical marijuana has been legal in Louisiana since 1991, allowing doctors to prescribe pot to certain patients. But sometimes-conflicting federal law and no state infrastructure for dispensing and regulating marijuana have effectively neutered that law, though it remains on the books.

On April 30, the Senate Committee on Health and Welfare voted to defer Senate Bill 541 from state Sen. Fred Mills, R-Breaux Bridge. That bill deletes the current law and replaces it with a comprehensive means of regulating the prescription of marijuana, including creating a Therapeutic Marijuana Utilization Review Board and coordinating authority with the state's Department of Agriculture and Forestry, the Louisiana Board of Pharmacy and the Louisiana Board of Medical Examiners. The committee voted 6-2 against the bill.

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When the sheriffs and district attorneys team up in Baton Rouge, they are pretty much guaranteed to have their way.

So Louisiana remains out of step, spending millions putting harmless potheads in prison long after the rest of the South has recognized that marijuana possession poses no serious threat to civic order, and made it a relatively minor offense. A Senate committee shot down the latest attempt Tuesday to inject some humanity and common sense into our laws.

That we need to do so is apparent from the case of Bernard Noble, as the Lens recently reported. Noble was sentenced a couple of years ago to five years after police found he was carrying enough dope for a couple of joints. That sentence would surely be savage enough for most tastes, but Orleans Parish District Attorney Leon Cannizzaro is a tough hombre. Cannizzaro pushed for more time on grounds that Noble is a multiple offender. Indeed, he is, but all but one of his busts have been for simple possession, and the 13 years that Noble is serving cannot square with any decent concept of justice.

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Regarding your recent story, "Strange bedfellows push incarceration limits":

So state Sen. Bob Kostelka, R-Monroe, is "not concerned by Louisiana's high incarceration rate." He remains dead set against House Bill 14, which would reduce sentences for second and third convictions of marijuana possession, which even "hard on crime" Gov. Bobby Jindal supports and would save the state about $4 million a year. He says, "If you do the crime, you do the time," and "We're not putting innocent people in jail. We're not incarcerating people unless they've been convicted and are guilty."

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Twenty states and the District of Columbia have passed medical marijuana laws legalizing the use and production of medical marijuana for qualifying patients under state law.

Some states have legalized marijuana for public use with across-the-counter purchases.

Approximately 50 years ago, Switzerland legalized drugs. The result was the drug users took over all public facilities like parks and swimming pools. Used needles were strewn on lawns, sidewalks and overflowing trashcans. My wife and I witnessed that mess in Lucerne in the early 1960s.

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Thank you for making the case for marijuana legalization in your Feb. 2 editorial. The days when politicians can get away with confusing the drug war's tremendous collateral damage with a comparatively harmless plant are coming to an end.

If the goal of marijuana prohibition is to subsidize violent drug cartels, prohibition is a grand success. The drug war distorts supply and demand dynamics so that big money grows on little trees. If the goal is to deter use, marijuana prohibition is a catastrophic failure.

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Another reason for re-legalizing cannabis (marijuana) that doesn't get mentioned is because it is biblically correct since God created all the seed-bearing plants saying they're all good on literally the very first page of the Bible.

Christ Jesus requests that we love one another, and you can't do that by caging humans for using what God says is good.

A sane or moral argument to continue punishing and caging responsible adults for using cannabis doesn't exist.

Stan White

Dillon, Colo.

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